for the sunshine is always warm in that dry, cloudless climate. When the little black cows had been driven and pulled out of the way, I descended to an almost closed shed used for the two or three hardy sheep and goats, and was ushered, stooping, into a dark stable containing a little pony, shaggy like all the animals. Bending low once more, I climbed over a high sill, and was in the warm, close, family living-room. Light and air came in through a hole in the roof a foot square, surmounted by a chimney-pot a foot high, made of three stones set up to keep out the snow. A few bits of ragged cloth on the mud floor for sleeping purposes, a half-dozen metal utensils, and an iron pot full of Himalayan tea, kept warm over some embers of dried dung, comprised all the visible equipment for housekeeping. After my host had persuaded me to take a seat on the floor, a half-palsied old woman insisted upon twice ladling out for me a bowl of tea. It was surprisingly good in view of the fact that a poor grade of leaves had been steeped half an hour or more with milk, butter, salt, and soda. In richer houses I was often served with tea which had been improved by being churned violently in a slender, greasy black churn, twenty inches long by four in diameter, in order to mix the rancid butter well into the compound before it was poured into the drinking-bowls.
As we sipped our tea, my host said that because of the unusually stormy winter, the snow, which was then nearly twelve feet deep, would not melt till June, two weeks later than the regular time. He went on to say that the earth, which we had seen scattered over many acres of the deep snow, had been dug up in the fall, stored in the stables and
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