Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/125

 top of the pass with a perfect blizzard in full operation outside.

Of course if I was writing a book of travels in Thibet it would be scarcely en regle to shift my scenes thus abruptly; but  this is not a book of travel, and although my notes are fairly  bursting with incidents, I am trying in my feeble way to  treat of the occult, and to the occult my story must be  confined.

I ought, however, to say a descriptive word about these guard houses, which, like the inns already described, are  found all over Eastern Thibet. Although actually a Chinese institution, and supposed to be kept in repair by the government—they are intended to be on all the great roads at a  distance of two miles apart—it is only once in awhile  you meet one in shape to afford even shelter from a shower,  and that is why the Thibetans, who know by sad experience  what it is to depend upon the Chinese government for anything, have established the inns and try to make them what the guard houses should be but are not.

The guard house we had come upon was, however, one of the best of its class. Picture to your mind a square, box-like structure, about twenty feet each way, one story in height, built of mud and whitewashed. There was a large door in front and two rooms within, opening off each side of the hall which was supposed to accommodate our mules, and I must confess did, and very comfortably too. The rooms were small and each had its window and k’ang, while in addition was a wooden bench running around the walls and painted bright red with Thibetan characters cut in the wood, meaning, according to Mr. Mirrikh, “the sublime ruler of the Flowery Kingdom, trusted sincerely that his elder brother might enjoy a comfortable night’s rest.”

Outside, the walls were decorated with rude paintings, dragons, horsemen and grinning gods with huge moustaches being scattered freely over the whitewash; on the walls within  were pictorial representations of sabres, bows, arrows and  spears, supposed to take the place of armed soldiers to  defend the traveller from the robbers with which all Thibet  is infested, though, strangely enough, we never encountered  them once.

“By Jove, quite Chinese, you know!” exclaimed the Doctor, when he saw these pictured weapons. “They are to scare the robbers off!”