CHAPTER XX.
Dangers begin in Earnest.
After leaving* the sandy beach of the Brahmaputra behind, about a quarter of a mile's trudging brought me to the outer edge of another expanse of undulating plain, the elevations here and there assuming the height of hills. Following the upper course of the river to the north-west, I saw the titanic heights of the Himalayas, rising one above another. Here I had to pasture my sheep, and, while taking a rest myself, I drank deep and full of the grandeur of the scenery. The sight here obtainable of the mighty peaks covered with glittering snow from the top to the bottom was sublime in the extreme, incomparably more so than what one sees from Darjeeling or Nepal. As for the Brahmaputra, it looked like a shining streamer hung out from the bosom of a great mountain, and waving down and across an immense plain, till the eyes could follow it no more. The sight gave me an uta:
The distant clouds about the snowy range
Pour forth the mighty Brahmaputra stream,
That darts into the farthest skies which meet
The far horizon of the distant lands.
The river in its pride majestic seems
The waving standard of the Buddha, named
Vairochana, all Nature's Brilliant Lord.
Like all the others of my production, this may not be worth the name of uta. Call it a silly conceit of imagination, if you like; but when I made these lines, I was feeling so jubilant that I could not help giving vent to my emotion; for, conceit or no conceit, the imagination would have been impossible to me, had I not succeeded in penetrating into the untrodden wilderness of Tibet.
