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0206 Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1
Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1 / Page 206 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000231
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glances at their comely features and their turquoise-
decked tresses. The men were genial, frank, and
dirty. We once more had become sensitive in
the matter of cleanliness,—we could again criticise
the unwashed,—for had we not bathed? Yea, at the
first village, riding up the mountain-side near a
high-perched monastery, we found a hot spring, a
blessed gift from the Plutonian deeps! The awful
need which it subserved, the revelling joy which it
produced, give to that water a perennial current
through memory's greenest field.
The Maharajah of Kashmir was mighty enough
to send conquering armies from Srinagar, sixteen
marches distant from Leh, and reduce a country
whose military vigour had been sapped for ages by
partial application of the non-resistance principle—
dear to the hearts of Gautama and of Jesus. But
the Maharajah himself was not mighty enough to
escape the "protection" of a valorous European
people whose hearts, like those of all their brethren,
have never learned to love humility. So it came
to pass that in Panamirgh, twenty marches distant
from the nearest permanent British official, we came
upon a proclamation of King Edward's enthrone-
ment, avouched in proper English and hung in the
dak-bungalow. In such strange and outcast places
do the antennæ that radiate from London and Pekin
now learn to touch each other, to irritate, withdraw,
return, first at Leh, then at Lhasa, then farther
afield.
Thrusting aside all contemplation of the eventual,
the probable, and the vexed ethical, we rode merrily
on through this valley of sumptuous scenery,