The World of Snow.
According to the stock of information I had gathered, I was always to head north until I came to Lake Mānasarovara, and the point I had now to decide was how I might make the shortest cut to that body of fresh water. There was nothing to guide me but my compass and a survey I took of the vast expanse of snow to a great distance before me. The best I could do was guess-work. Following the impulses of instinct more than anything else, except the general direction indicated by the compass, I decided on taking a north-westerly course in making the descent. So I restarted, with the luggage on my back.
So far my route had lain principally on the sunny side of the mountains and the snow, at the most, had not been more than five or six inches deep; but from now onward I had to proceed along the reverse side, covered over with an abundance of the crystal layers, the unguessable thickness of which furnished me with a constant source of anxiety. In some places my feet sank fourteen or fifteen inches in the snow, and in others they did not go down more than seven or eight inches. This wading in the snow was more fatiguing than I had imagined at first, and the staff again rendered me great service; once or twice I found it a difficult job to extricate myself, when my foot, after stamping through the layers of snow, wedged itself tightly between two large pieces of hard stone. This sort of trudging lasted for nearly three miles down a gradual descent, at the end of which I emerged on a snowless beach of loose pebbles and stones of different sizes. By that time my Tibetan boots had become so far worn out, that at places my feet came into direct contact with the hard gravel, which tore the skin and caused blood to flow, leaving the crimson marks of my footsteps behind. During the descent I felt little of my luggage, but now it began to tell on me, as the foot-hold under me consisted of loose round pebbles, when it was not sharp angular slabs of broken rock. Five miles onward, I came upon a pair of ponds formed of melting snow, and respectively about five miles and two and a half miles in circumference. Both the ponds were thick with immense flocks of wild ducks of different sizes, brownish or reddish in color, or spotted black on a white ground. Otherwise the waters of the ponds were as clear as could be, and the scenery around was picturesque in the extreme, so much so that, though with lacerated feet and stark-stiff about my waist with rheumatic pains, I almost forgot all that discomfort as I stood gazing around. The prestige of the ponds, if they had any, was of little matter to me then, but, as I happened to chance upon them all by myself, I was destined to introduce them to the world; and I christened the larger pond, which was rectangular in shape, ‘Ekai,’ after my own name, and the smaller, which described nearly a perfect circle, ‘Jinkow,’ a name which I sometimes use for myself. A little conceit you may call it if you like, but it was only for memory’s sake that I did these things; and when a little way down I came upon a gourd-shaped pond, about a mile and a quarter in circumference, I gave it the name of ‘Hisago Ike’—calabash pond. Still holding to my north-westerly direction, after having gone some distance I saw, to the north-west of a snow-clad mountain that rose far in front of me, two or three tents pitched on the ground. The sight aroused in me a sense of intense curiosity mingled with anxiety. Suppose I went to them; what would their occupants think of a stranger, suddenly emerging upon them from pathless wilds? Once their suspicion was roused, I might in vain hope to allay it; what was I to do then? I espied a declivity below me, which extended north-west in a gradual descent, far out of sight of the tents, and I saw that unless I took it, I should either come on those tents or have my progress barred by a succession of high mountains. With nothing else to help me to arrive at a decision, I then entered on what is termed ‘Danjikwan sanmai’ in Japanese-Buḍḍhist terminology, a meditative process of making up one’s mind, when neither logic nor accurate knowledge is present to draw upon for arriving at a conclusion. The process is, in short, one of abnegating self and then forming a judgment, a method which borders on divination, or an assertion of instinctive powers. The result was that I decided to take the route that lay toward the tents, and by nightfall I came within hailing distance of them, when a pack of five or six ferocious-looking dogs caught sight of me and began barking furiously. They were formidable animals with long shaggy fur and very cruel looks. I had before then been told that when attacked by dogs of this kind I must not strike them, but that I should only ward them off, quietly waving a stick in front of their muzzles, and on this occasion I religiously followed that instruction, and found to my entire satisfaction that the dogs did not try to snap at me. Proceeding thus, and coming outside one of the tents, I called out to its occupants.
TO A TENT OF NOMAD TIBETANS.
CHAPTER XIII.
A kind old Dame.
My call was responded to by an old woman who, coming out of the tent and finding a tattered and tired wayfarer, said more to herself than to me: “Why, it is a pilgrim, poor, poor.” Seeing no reason to suppose that I appeared an object of suspicion to her, I ventured to inform her that I was from the direction of Lhasa, bound for Kang Rinpoche, Mount Kailāsa, and besought her to give me a night’s lodging in her tent, as it was unbearably cold to sleep in the open air. My request was cheerfully complied with and, inside the tent, the old dame expressed her curiosity to know how I happened to be there, as the locality was not one generally visited by pilgrims. She easily believed my explanation to the effect that I had lost my way while heading for the abode of Gelong Rinpoche, and then gave me a cup of tea out of a kettle that stood boiling over the fire; accepting it with thanks, I declined the baked flour offered immediately after. I may observe here that the tea offered me was not brewed in the same way as we take it in Japan, but it was more of the nature of a soup, the ingredients of which were powdered tea-leaves, butter and salt, forbiddingly offensive in smell, until one gets accustomed to it, when it is found to constitute a very agreeable beverage. The Tibetan custom is to serve a guest with a cup of this kind of tea first, and then to regale him with some baked flour. I excused myself for declining the hospitality of my kind hostess by informing her that I adhered strictly to the Buḍḍhist rule of fasting hours, which piece of information produced a very favorable impression on her as to my personality, as she seemed to respect me all the more for it. Then, leading in the conversation that followed, she told me that Gelong Rinpoche’s abode was at a day’s distance, and that this Lama was the holiest of all the priests to be found throughout the whole Jangthang (Jangthang, as I explained, literally means ‘northern plain,’ but in Tibet itself the appellation is applied to its western steppes). Continuing, the old hostess said that a visit to the holy man always resulted in great spiritual benefit, and urged me by all means to call on him. There was a river, she said, in my way, the waters of which were too cold to be forded, and she offered me the use of one of her yaks. Her son was away just then, but she expected him back in the evening, and he could accompany me in the morning, as she wanted him too to pay a visit to the holy man. All this was very acceptable to me, but one thing that troubled me was the sorry condition to which my boots had become reduced; and I asked the dame if I could not mend them. Mending in this case meant, as I was told, patching the worn-out places with yak’s hide, which required, however, two days’ soaking in water before it became soft enough to be sewn. My hostess said that they—she and her son—were to stay only one more day in that particular spot where I had chanced upon them, and suggested that I might make a stay of two or three days at Gelong Rinpoche’s, so as to give myself the time to do some mending. She offered that I should, on the morrow, put on her son’s spare pair of boots and proceed to the holy Lama’s in them, saying that I might give them back to her son after reaching my destination. In the night, just as I was going to sleep, the son turned up, and more conversation ensued amongst us, chiefly concerning the saintly man, of whom the mother and the son knew no end of wonderful things, altogether superhuman in character.
Early the next morning, by order of the good old dame, the son busied himself in getting
