camel’s dung, the only fuel obtainable and that universally employed to heat the k’ang in Thibet.
“Sok! Sok! Sok!” came the cry again, echoing back from the rocky walls of the mountain pass which lay below us.
Ah Schow informed us that a caravan was coming up, and experience had taught us that Ah Schow, as a rule, when he made a definite and positive statement, was pretty apt to tell the truth.
And while we stand there at the inn door waiting to prove the statement of our chef, let me make a statement on my own account.
We were in Thibet.
We were three travellers journeying through an unknown land, bound on the craziest quest in which ever man engaged.
If any one wishes to put me down as a lunatic after hearing what I have to tell, why I can only say that I would be the last to blame him. In fact, just about that time I was beginning to work around to the same opinion myself.
Now you will not find Zhad-uan put down upon the maps of Thibet; still less will it pay to look for the deserted inn which we had taken possession of that night, never guessing that the town—it consisted of a lamasery and a dozen or two mud houses—was only five miles further on, just over the mountain, on the other slope.
In truth there are no maps of Thibet of any value. If any one of the few travellers who has succeeded in penetrating the country has given a reliable map to the world I never saw it; as for the ordinary ones in the atlas, no two agree, and I vouch for it that all are equally absurd.
Nevertheless here we were in the land of the Grand Lama in spite of the lack of a map, and not a week’s journey distant from that most mysterious of cities, Lh’asa.
Scores of travellers have tried it, each failing signally; few were ever heard of once they had crossed the Thibetan frontier.
Would our fate be different from those who had gone before us into this mysterious land?
God alone knew, on that night when we three stood at the inn door, listening to the cries of the camel drivers. For my part, although not an obstacle had thus far been put in our path by human hands, I had doubts, grave doubts, whether I should ever leave the land of the Tale Lama alive.
