Among the Celestials : vol.1 / Page 23 (Color Image)

0023	Among the Celestials : vol.1

CHAP. I.] EARLY WANDERINGS.

to go everywhere in the two months, which

was all I then had available. The scenery of

such valleys as those of Kangra and Kulu was

enchanting, and then came the excitement of

preparing to cross my first snow-pass. I had

pictured to myself every imaginable horror

from descriptions in books (written, of course,

as I afterwards understood, from experiences

at exceptional seasons), and I can still recall

my disappointment at finding that all these

horrors had degenerated down to simple heart-

breaking plodding through soft deep snow hour

after hour, with an icy wind blowing, and the

sun striking down on the top of my head and

combining with the rarefaction of the air to

give me as bad a headache as I ever had.

Then, too, the feeling of disgust and despair

at the sight of those bare brown mountains

which lie beyond the first forest-clad zone of

the Himalayas, their cold and almost repellent

appearance, which clearly warns the traveller

against entering their rigid clutches all this I

remember well, as well as the rawness and in-

experience of the whole of my arrangements,

and the discovery that I could not march for

twenty or thirty miles a day, as I had imagined

B 2

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books