up in a much more abrupt and imposing manner than the surroundings of any scene amid the high Alps. On the right the snow-slopes were especially striking, being both beautiful and grand. A dazzling sheet of unbroken white snow rose up for more than a thousand feet, on a most steep incline, to vast overhanging walls of what I may call stratified névé, from which huge masses came down every now and then, with a loud but plangent sound. So, all around, there were great ridges, fields, domes, walls, and precipices of snow and ice. No scene could give a more impressive idea of eternal winter, or of the mingled beauty and savagery of high Alpine life. Even Phúleyram, my Kunáwar Múnshi, was struck by it. Up to this point I was not aware that he knew any English, and had not heard him speak in any language for days, he being rather sulky at having to walk for the most part; but on this occasion he suddenly turned round to me, and, to my intense surprise, said in English, "I think this must be the region of perpetual snow." That was doubtless a reminiscence of old book-knowledge of English which had almost passed from his mind, but was recalled by the extraordinary scene around, and it came in quite ingenuously and very appropriately.

My attention, however, was soon recalled to a more practical matter. Knowing the danger of crossing a glacier at this height, and in the threatening weather which had been gathering for several days, I had given strict orders that all the bigárrís, or porters, should keep together and beside me; but, on the very summit of the pass, in the middle of the glacial lake, I found that three of them were missing, and that they were the three who were the most lightly laden, and who carried my most important effects-namely, my tent-poles, my bedding, and the portmanteau which contained my money. The tent - poles might have been dispensed

with; but still the want of them would have caused great inconvenience in an almost treeless region, where they could not have been replaced. I could only have supplied the want of the bedding by purchasing sheepskins, furs, or blankets alive with body-lice; and the loss of the rupees would have been worse than either. I have no doubt this was a planned arrangement, whoever devised it; for the bigárris who carried these light burdens were strong men, and the obvious motive was that I should be compelled to turn back from Zanskar and take the Chandra-Bhaga route.

On discovering this state of matters I was excessively angry, not so much because of the attempt to force my steps, as on account of the danger in which some ignorant fools had placed us all. Though the morning had been fine, bad weather had been gathering for several days; the sky was now obscured; clouds were rolling close round, and to have been overtaken by a snowstorm on that glacier would have been almost certain death to us all. So long as the sky was clear and we had the snow-walls to guide us, it was easy enough to cross it; but where would we have been, in a blinding snowstorm, on a glacier at least 18,000 feet high, with no central moraine, and lapping over on halfa-dozen different sides? Moreover, the snow would cover the rotten honeycombed ice which bridged over innumerable crevasses. All the people about me, except, perhaps, the dhirzi, were quite ignorant of the danger we were in, and that exasperated me more at this tricky interference. As I was determined not to turn on my steps, I saw that not a moment was to be lost in taking decided measures: so I made my servants and the bigárris continue across the glacier, with instructions to camp at the first available spot on the Zanskar side, and threatened them if they delayed; while I myself rode back, accompanied by one man, in

search of the missing coolies and their loads.

There was an obvious danger in this, because it involved the risk of being cut off from my people and baggage; but it was really the only thing to be done in the circumstances consonant with a determination to proceed.

So I waited until my party disappeared on the brow of the glacier, and then rode back in a savage and reckless humour over ice which I had previously crossed in a very cautious manner. I could easily retrace our track until we got to the great stony ridges, and then the man I had taken with me was useful. On getting off there, and descending the valley a short way, I found my three light-laden gentlemen quietly reposing, and immediately forced them to resume their burdens, and go on before me. Even then they showed some unwillingness to proceed; and I had to act the part of the Wild Horseman of the Glacier, driving them before me, and progging whoever happened to be hindmost with the iron spike of my heavy alpenstock, which considerably accelerated their movements. There was the most urgent reason for this, because, had we been half an hour later in getting over the summit of the pass, the probability is that we should have been lost. It began to snow before we got off the glacier; and when we descended a few hundred feet it was snowing so heavily on the ice-lake we had just left that we could not there have seen two yards before our faces, and it would have been quite impossible to know in which direction to turn, the tracks of our party being obliterated, and the crevasses, which ran in every direction, affording no guidance. Even on the narrow glaciers of the Alps a number of people have been lost by being caught in snowstorms; so it can be imagined what chance there would have been for us on a great lake of ice above 18,000 feet high. Without the tracks and a sight of the surrounding snow-walls to guide us, we could only have

wandered about hopelessly in the blinding storm; and if we did not fall into a crevasse, through rotten ice concealed by the new-fallen snow, we might have wandered on to one of the outlets where the ice flowed over in steep hanging glaciers which it would have been impossible to descend.

Fortunately, however, we managed to keep the proper track in spite of the snow which was beginning to blind us. On reaching our camp I found it pitched on a morass about 1500 feet below the summit of the pass. The thermometer was two degrees below freezing-point, and a little snow continued to fall about us. I felt extremely exhausted after the exertion and excitement of the day; but some warm soup and the glow of a fire of birch branches revived me, and I soon fell into a deep refreshing sleep.

CHAPTER XXXII.

MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS.

THE SCENE AT MIDNIGHT-FLAMING STARS-IMMENSITY OF THE UNIVERSE-SNOWY PEAKS AND STARLIT SPACES-PERFECTION OF ORGANIC EXISTENCE

MISERY OF SENTIENT LIFE -THE HARDWAR TIGRESS THE AFRICAN CONTINENT OPINION OF EASTERN SAGES-EVEN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE-WORDSWORTH

-GOETHE'S DAS GÖTTLICHE-JOHN FOSTER-MONADS-PRAC

TICAL CONCLUSION.

A LITTLE after midnight I was awakened by the intense cold; and went out of my tent, and a little way up the pass, to look upon the scene around. Everything was frozen up and silent. The pools of water about us had ice an inch thick; my servants were in their closed rautí, and the bigárrís were sleeping, having, for protection from the cold, twisted themselves into a circle round the embers of their dying fire. There was the awful silence of the high mountains when the snow and ice cease to creep under the influence of the sunbeams. The storm had ceased;

"The mute still air

Was music slumbering on her instrument;"

the snow-clouds also had entirely passed away. The moon, which was little past its full, cast a brilliant radiance on the savage scene around, so that every precipice, snow-wall, and icy peak was visible in marvellous distinctness; and in its keen light the great glaciers