ingenuity to bear upon assisting her to make a captive of my heart and person. Fortunately my faith proved stronger than temptations, and enabled me to remain true to the teachings of the Blessed One. Had I yielded then, Tsarang would have had to-day one more dirt-covered and grease-shining priest among its apathetic inhabitants, and that would have been all.
But, things having come to the pass which I have described, it became urgent that I should make haste in discovering some secret passage into Tibet. But it was as dangerous for me in Tsarang as it had been in Kātmāndu to disclose my real intentions, and whatever discovery I might make for my own purposes, I had to make it in some indirect and roundabout way. After having once more racked my brains, I finally hit upon the plan of working upon the weaknesses of the local people. The Tibetan Government had began to levy customs duties even on personal valuables. It was a most outrageous act; supposing one wanted to do trade with the inhabitants of the north-west plain of Tibet, and to take thither a stock of coral ornaments, or some useful knick-knacks imported from Europe, how could one avoid being unjustly set upon and robbed of the best part of one's would-be profit, on first setting foot upon Tibetan soil? Ah! there must be ways and bye-ways by which to accomplish this, and to be absolutely safe from guards and sentinels! Surely the plains might be reached, if one did not mind three days of hard trudging over the trackless snow of the Himālayan Range, to the north of the Dhavalagiri peak, and thence to Thorpo? Having once got the villagers into the right humor, in some such way, it was not necessarily a very hazardous job to keep on tapping them for information. On the other side of that mountain yonder, they would volunteer to tell me, there was a river which might be forded at such and such a point, but which was dangerously treacherous at others; or, that
