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ordered industry, inordinate piety, and average morality. On the third day we were at the base
of huge Kardung. Its glacis of solid ice proved
steeper, its eighteen thousand feet elevation narrower, than the front and crest of Sasar. The ponies on which we had cantered through the low lands (twelve thousand to thirteen thousand feet elevation) were quite out of the climbing if burdened with aught save their own weight. They could have done it on stones, but the deceitful ice laid hold upon their feet and tripped them to a bone-breaking fall. Substitution of yaks, happily found at the base of the ice-slope, permitted us to top the slippery height, whence we looked far down into the Indus valley. Now, indeed, the way was won, for ere the night had gone two hours, we were in the dakbungalow at Leh, and there were English magazines, a few months old, but for us, contemporaries. Lassoo had told us of the Padre Sahib—we were to see white faces again. Of these we found five all told : an Englishman and his wife, a German and his wife, and a young unmarried Englishwoman, a few months out, all of the Moravian Mission. Yea, and there were others, baby faces in both households. It was the usual story—pathetic to all save the actors.
For forty years this mission has been at Leh, and there are forty poor Ladakis who profess some sort of allegiance to the gods of the good sahibs. Plainly, conversion is not supposed to be an intellectual process. Its usual course may thus be described : There is a dispensary whose bottles and powders affect the body. There are brilliant chromos
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