turning them backward to climb steps or steep places. From the hotel windows and the terraced roads of the town, which occupies the crest of a knife-edged ridge, one has a full view of the front of Kunchinjinga and the long running line of snows across the deep chasm of the Ranjit. All too soon sunset reversed the pageant of the morning, and as the white peaks changed to gold, flame color, and rose-pink, blue and purple mists filled each ravine and valley. The rosy phantom lingered long before fading to cold gray and silver, the western sky glowing for a full hour, and a young white moon showing through the leafless trees.
The bazaar or market-place was empty then, for its gala time is on Sunday morning, when the tea-pickers come from remotest plantations to show and buy their finery; but there was a curio-shop whose owner was chiefest curio of the lot—one of the many who announce that they will surely reach Lhasa. He was then studying Tibetan, and produced an alleged lama who was disloyally teaching him the language and the religious exercises and formula that would help him to enter Lhasa in disguise. The lama fitted well into the room full of prayer-wheels, skull drums, skull bowls, tobacco-pouches, relic-boxes, bells, and images, and his presence surely helped business. With serious face the would-be explorer told how he should be welcomed to Lhasa as an envoy of the Theosophical Societies of Paris and London; how he should gather religious objects for Prince Ferdinand d'Este, and butterflies for Baron Rothschild, the latter guaanteeing all the expenses
