through it, a line of small black figures, men and yaks and ponies, surging slowly forward to some end known only to these heavily burdened, uncouth Tibetans striding cheerfully in the van of the panting column. Sound is dead. It lives again in the heavy grunt of some shaggy beast as he slips, recovers, and struggles forward. Then up to the high, clear heaven floats the wild song of the mountaineers. It rings in the empty air, a triumphant bugle-cry flung into the face of Mother Nature, who, with icy fingers, would slay her children and shroud them here in the eternal silent snows. It is a brave, confident, manly note. By memory's trick comes back to me, as my soul rises to the carol, another song of Asia—the last-heard music ere this —three months agone, in fetid Bokhara. 'T is the low whining and womanish drone of the boy bay-adere, the voice of weakness and of shame.
And if, indeed, in the tired tumult of the city the only concord heard is that which sated luxury sounds, forget not that Asia has yet her mountaintops and her mountain tribes, who shall lift their incorrigible heads to shout and to echo the cry of a strong man's heart. We may spurn the heavy-eyed sloth of the crowded town, but this man of the hills is our brother.
Another memory of the great glacier is that which pictures two among the exhausted toilers, slow, overcome, but persistent. Last of all were they to reach the spent camp at nightfall. They had joined us near the Kirghiz tents, the good Hadji (pilgrim) and his wife. Bound from some obscure town in Western China, they had reached Yarkand in sixty
IIIFカラー高解像度
