Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/125

Rh famine was a thing of the past, a Lama monk, robed in yellow, came here from behind the ranges of the Great Khingans. He walked around the lake, entered each house, then returned to the shore, cut thin poles and stuck them in the earth at seven paces apart until he had entirely encircled the water, putting on each one of the rods a bit of red cloth with a holy phrase written upon it. When the lake had thus been surrounded with this portentous circle, the Lama summoned all the people together and spoke to them as follows:

"'The great teacher, Buddha Sakya-muni, did not desire your death and looked in silence on your crime. However, as evidence of his displeasure at your departure from his precepts, he has ordained that the fish shall no longer multiply in your lake, nor shall any flock of migrating birds ever come down again to its surface.'

"Since that day there have never been any fish in the Lake of Chor. They sometimes have come in from the river but have immediately turned back or perished in the cursèd water. It is the same with the birds. Ducks, geese and swans often circle for hours on end above Chor, but none of them, even the most tired or the wounded birds, ever venture to touch the water with their breasts, on account of the poisonous vapours which the Lama caused to rise from it."

Such was the tale of the old Manchu, and he lived in calm and undisturbing ignorance of the fact that it was not the curse of the yellow Lama that kept the lake free of fowl but that the birds, with the help of their keen, intuitive sense of danger, detected in the strong fumes of the lake the warning that it was no proper place for them to rest or feed. Of course, with the story-loving Oriental, it builds a better tale to have these riders of the air pass down from generation to generation the command