Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/138

 been far below zero. We had enjoyed snow, rain, almost spring-like warmth and piercing cold all in the space of a  few short days.

For hours we had seen the lonely group of buildings standing before us on the foothills of a mountain chain  whose height far exceeded the range we had just crossed.

Nowhere else, not even in the Far West have I seen distances so deceptive. In that clear atmosphere twenty miles is nothing to the eye. Take it all in all we accomplished the journey with surprising ease as I came to know later;  nevertheless our sufferings were intense.

Picture to yourself two broad ravines, one filled with large trees, the other horrible in its desolation, between  which lay a narrow tongue of sloping land extending back  toward the snow-clad peaks, which towered above us to  stupendous heights.

It was on this projection that the lamasery of Psam-dagong stood, a cluster of square, white dwellings, flat roofed, with one pretty tower a little off the centre, rising above  them, gilded and glittering with a thousand colors in the  setting sun.

Once a famous shrine, the lamasery of Psam-dagong, about a century ago, became practically deserted, the Tale Lama  at Lh’asa having so ordered it. Why this was I propose to explain in the chapters which follow, and need only add  here that when I was at Psam-dagong it was little better  than a mass of ruins, presided over by one old lama, of  whom more anon.

But I am rambling on about these matters which, though of the highest interest to us at the time, are really quite immaterial in comparison with what follows. Let me break the spell by recording the end of our long journey at once.

Our ascent from the plains below was discovered by those in the lamasery, and upon reaching the gates we found ourselves challenged by a young lama of the yellow order, who  bowed low before us.

“Peace be unto you, my lords lamas!” he said, in that subdued tone which one sometimes observes among Catholic  devotees, “may your days be days of happiness and your  nights be nights of peaceful sleep. What is your business at the holy house of Psam-dagong?”

I do not know what answer Mr. Mirrikh made him, for he spoke in Hindustanee, and Ah Schow, who translated the