piety of many ancestors. So, too, the long, low mounds whereon are placed countless stones resembling this book in size, each bearing in neat carving the myriad-throated prayer, " Om mani padma Hum." From twenty to a thousand feet in length, from ten to thirty feet in width, these masses built up of rubble walls bear not less than millions of these mute appeals for grace—and this in a valley some sixty miles long, and containing not more than six thousand souls. The people have been hewn from the political body to which they belonged. Lhasa is now only their spiritual capital since the Maharajah of Kashmir, some forty years ago, struck at Leh, where reigned a Ladaki king who bent to the distant Dalai Lama's sway. Now the king's palace is empty, and Kashmiri officials lord it over a land whose cue-wearing heads avouch the long reach of China's emperor, overlord to wide-stretched Tibet.
The present rulers from the West seem to have emptied, by fright or famine, several of the big monasteries, even here in secluded Nubra, distant three hard days from Leh. But now again the dingy red robes thread back and forth, carrying consolation to satisfied believers. Groups are seen, wayworn, of calm face and worthy mien, who are just in from Lhasa, five hundred miles away. They bring superstition, inspiration, and direction, as it would be brought from Rome to a secluded valley in Spain or Mexico, by some pilgrim priest of long ago. Perhaps because of the recent exodus of priests to Lhasa, the lamas now, in all the Ladak country, are not a devouring horde of locusts,
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