Trees, Tibetans, and the Telegraph 121
to these lovely sights, when we have climbed by an ever-reversing, ever-returning trail far up the granite facing of a high cliff, there lay far below us the wondrous Nubra valley, green, gold, and russet groves, yellowing fields of grain, and behold ! there were men's houses ! White, squared, well-roofed, walled about, and set in orderly array, trooping toward a goodly village called Panamirgh. A nobler sight one may not see than this Himalayan
w hich the high gods look down to bless. Here La maism, sheltered by Sasar's icy rampart on the port h, by Kardung's glassy heights on the south, still t urns its prayer-wheels, flutters its painted appeals to the passing breeze, builds its white shrines more n umerous than the living men, piles its myriad carved stones on roadside monuments, sounds its solemn rums, teaches Buddha's distorted word, yet practi ses a peaceful life and a resigned death, all unmind ful of the thin streams of Hinduism or Mohammed anism, flowing backward, forward, along the road wh ich time and Asia's genius, Patience, have worn th ough the tranquil valley, over the for-bidding moun tains, this way to Yarkand and far Kitai, and there to Leh, Kashmir, and all the Indian world beyo nd.
Dark superstiti ons may haunt the minds of these remote valley peo ple, but the outward expression of religious feeling s seemly enough. The chortens —wayside tombs of saints and shrines for living prayer—are white, sh apely structures, so much beyond the building cap acity of any one generation of this sparse people t hat they attest the secular
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