the tourist contingent were unconscious of the cold; coolie No. 108 improving the time by tying large turquoises to holes in the lobes of his ears. They all wore these rough Tibetan turquoise ornaments, and turned many rupees by their sale while we waited for the sun, the lobe of the ear being the regulation showcase for these regular agents of a regular jewel merchant. The smart tourist always suspects the professional dealer, and much more confidingly trusts the simple hillman, and pays him a better price for bits of chalk dyed blue or ground glass of cerulean hue. The tip of Kunchinjinga, 28,150 feet in air, first turned rose-red and then caught the sun's rays, that flashed electrically down the long white line—a spectacle unequaled. Even the tourist's perpetual-motion tongue was silenced as the color pageant proceeded, and Kunchinjinga, with half of its height snow-covered, so transcended all one's imaginings that it did not seem the vision could be reality. Mount Everest, to our bitter disappointment, sulked in a tent of clouds to westward; but Kunchinjinga was visible all day long from our windows, and at sunset ran through its color changes once more.
It was degrees and degrees colder the next morning, but the sky was clearer, and the dazzling stars lighted the white phantom across the Ranjit more clearly. The frost lay like snow on Tiger Hill; the water by the wayside was frozen; and the wind blew with glacial edge that benumbed the little company of sun-worshipers gathered there at dawn. Again the world was suffused with a rose flush, a
