Kim

of the great deodar-forests; through oak feathered and plumed with

ferns; birch, ilex, rhododendron, and pine, out on to the bare

hillsides' slippery sunburnt grass, and back into the woodlands' coolth

again, till oak gave way to bamboo and palm of the valley, the lama

swung untiring.

Glancing back in the twilight at the huge ridges behind him and the

faint, thin line of the road whereby they had come, he would lay out,

with a hillman's generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for the

morrow; or, halting in the neck of some uplifted pass that gave on

Spiti and Kulu, would stretch out his hands yearningly towards the high

snows of the horizon. In the dawns they flared windy-red above stark

blue, as Kedarnath and Badrinath--kings of that wilderness--took the

first sunlight. All day long they lay like molten silver under the

sun, and at evening put on their jewels again. At first they breathed

temperately upon the travellers, winds good to meet when one crawled

over some gigantic hog's-back; but in a few days, at a height of nine

or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit; and Kim kindly allowed a

village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving him a rough blanket-coat.

The lama was mildly surprised that anyone should object to the

knife-edged breezes which had cut the years off his shoulders.

'These are but the lower hills, chela. There is no cold till we come

to the true Hills.'

'Air and water are good, and the people are devout enough, but the food

is very bad,' Kim growled; 'and we walk as though we were mad--or

English. It freezes at night, too.'

'A little, maybe; but only enough to make old bones rejoice in the sun.

We must not always delight in soft beds and rich food.'

'We might at least keep to the road.'

Kim had all a plainsman's affection for the well-trodden track, not six

feet wide, that snaked among the mountains; but the lama, being

Tibetan, could not refrain from short cuts over spurs and the rims of

gravel-strewn slopes. As he explained to his limping disciple, a man

bred among mountains can prophesy the course of a mountain-road, and

though low-lying clouds might be a hindrance to a short-cutting

stranger, they made no earthly difference to a thoughtful man. Thus,

after long hours of what would be reckoned very fair mountaineering in

civilized countries, they would pant over a saddle-back, sidle past a

few landslips, and drop through forest at an angle of forty-five onto

the road again. Along their track lay the villages of the

hillfolk--mud and earth huts, timbers now and then rudely carved with

an axe--clinging like swallows' nests against the steeps, huddled on

tiny flats half-way down a three-thousand-foot glissade; jammed into a

corner between cliffs that funnelled and focused every wandering blast;

or, for the sake of summer pasture, cowering down on a neck that in

winter would be ten feet deep in snow. And the people--the sallow,

greasy, duffle-clad people, with short bare legs and faces almost

Esquimaux--would flock out and adore. The Plains--kindly and

gentle--had treated the lama as a holy man among holy men. But the

Hills worshipped him as one in the confidence of all their devils.

Theirs was an almost obliterated Buddhism, overlaid with a

nature-worship fantastic as their own landscapes, elaborate as the

terracing of their tiny fields; but they recognized the big hat, the

clicking rosary, and the rare Chinese texts for great authority; and

they respected the man beneath the hat.

'We saw thee come down over the black Breasts of Eua,' said a Betah who

gave them cheese, sour milk, and stone-hard bread one evening. 'We do

not use that often--except when calving cows stray in summer. There is

a sudden wind among those stones that casts men down on the stillest

day. But what should such folk care for the Devil of Eua!'

Then did Kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down, footsore

with cramping desperate toes into inadequate crannies, take joy in the

day's march--such joy as a boy of St Xavier's who had won the

quarter-mile on the flat might take in the praises of his friends. The

hills sweated the ghi and sugar suet off his bones; the dry air, taken

sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built out his upper

ribs; and the tilted levels put new hard muscles into calf and thigh.

They meditated often on the Wheel of Life--the more so since, as the

lama said, they were freed from its visible temptations. Except the

grey eagle and an occasional far-seen bear grubbing and rooting on the

hillside; a vision of a furious painted leopard met at dawn in a still

valley devouring a goat; and now and again a bright-coloured bird, they

were alone with the winds and the grass singing under the wind. The

women of the smoky huts over whose roofs the two walked as they

descended the mountains, were unlovely and unclean, wives of many

husbands, and afflicted with goitre. The men were woodcutters when

they were not farmers--meek, and of an incredible simplicity. But that

suitable discourse might not fail, Fate sent them, overtaking and

overtaken upon the road, the courteous Dacca physician, who paid for

his food in ointments good for goitre and counsels that restore peace

between men and women. He seemed to know these hills as well as he

knew the hill dialects, and gave the lama the lie of the land towards

Ladakh and Tibet. He said they could return to the Plains at any

moment. Meantime, for such as loved mountains, yonder road might

amuse. This was not all revealed in a breath, but at evening

encounters on the stone threshing-floors, when, patients disposed of,

the doctor would smoke and the lama snuff, while Kim watched the wee

cows grazing on the housetops, or threw his soul after his eyes across

the deep blue gulfs between range and range. And there were talks

apart in the dark woods, when the doctor would seek herbs, and Kim, as

budding physician, must accompany him.

'You see, Mister O'Hara, I do not know what the deuce-an' all I shall

do when I find our sporting friends; but if you will kindly keep within

sight of my umbrella, which is fine fixed point for cadastral survey, I

shall feel much better.'

Kim looked out across the jungle of peaks. 'This is not my country,

hakim. Easier, I think, to find one louse in a bear-skin.'

'Oah, thatt is my strong points. There is no hurry for Hurree. They

were at Leh not so long ago. They said they had come down from the

Karakorum with their heads and horns and all. I am onlee afraid they

will have sent back all their letters and compromising things from Leh

into Russian territoree. Of course they will walk away as far to the

East as possible--just to show that they were never among the Western

States. You do not know the Hills?' He scratched with a twig on the

earth. 'Look! They should have come in by Srinagar or Abbottabad.

Thatt is their short road--down the river by Bunji and Astor. But they

have made mischief in the West. So'--he drew a furrow from left to

right--'they march and they march away East to Leh (ah! it is cold

there), and down the Indus to Hanle (I know that road), and then down,

you see, to Bushahr and Chini valley. That is ascertained by process

of elimination, and also by asking questions from people that I cure so

well. Our friends have been a long time playing about and producing

impressions. So they are well known from far off. You will see me

catch them somewhere in Chini valley. Please keep your eye on the