62 THE PULSE OF ASIA
lege boys might in America. Going up the pass .they sang a little, but a temperature of eight degrees Fahrenheit at half past six in the morning, and a steep ascent through snow, made it necessary to attend strictly to business. Coming down, however, they sang vigorously and musically for hours, sometimes all together, and sometimes one alone, the others joining in the chorus. From the laughter and gestures it appeared that they often inserted sentiments about one another. In the intervals of singing they cracked jokes and did "stunts" in the way of running down steep places with their loads, conduct utterly different from that of the sober professional coolies whom we had employed a month before in Kash mir.
Another incident illustrating Ladakhi character occurred one noon when we reached the village of Ibrahim's parents-in-law. Nothing would do but that I must go in and have a cup of tea. So in I went, by a devious way, through the stable and up some stone stairs to the second story and the large living-room, low and smoky. Sooty cobwebs hung in festoons from the shining black rafters of the flat roof, smoke-blackened heads of barley were tied as ornaments, or as votive offerings, about the capitals of the wooden pillars, and two long shelves supported a row of black pots and pewter plates. The glory of the house was the _mud oven about two feet high, with several openings for pots. Its sides were neatly adorned with clay bas-reliefs of flowers. The chief defect was the absence of an effective chimney. An
V
entire goat-skin, open only at the neck, served as a bellows. I was given the seat of honor on the floor in a corner, where a little mattress, hard, thin, and square, was placed for my
IIIFカラー高解像度
