| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | from the scene, one by one the stars pierced through the skies, and night settled down upon the mountains. Then, as I lay back watching the enchanting scene of peaceful beauty, and as the sense of rest and quiet grew upon me and soothed away the feeling of stern resolve which settles on one through a journey, I thought over the long marches past, the many privations now at an end, and the difficulties overcome. I thought of these, and of those hard latter months of my stay in Kashgar, and I knew that the hardest must be past, and that a brighter time was nearing. At Srinagar I parted with poor Davison, and never saw him again. Two years later he was ordered to the Gilgit frontier, but he caught a chill in crossing the Burzil Pass, and died of enteric fever a few marches beyond it. He had all the makings of a great explorer ; he had unsurpassable energy, what one might almost call blind pluck, for nothing to him was dangerous, and he had an inexhaustible enthusiasm for travel. I may add that, though few of us who knew him suspected him of it, papers written by him, and found among his effects, showed that he thought very seriously upon many subjects not generally supposed to engage the attention of so young an officer as he was, and his loss must be deplored by all who can admire true manliness and resolution. |
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