booths, some piled with fruit and vegetables, others, oddly enough,
with lamps and mirrors and other cheap rubbish which bore the legend
"Made in Germany," others with all sorts of curios. The place was
thronged with people. A few plainsmen and Tibetans Boggley pointed
out, but most of the crowd were hill-people, jolly little squat
men and women hung with silver chains and heavy ear-rings set with
turquoises. Their eyes are very black and all puckered with laughing,
and they have actually rosy cheeks.

They crowded round, trying to sell us curios and lumps of rough
turquoise. When we asked the price of anything, they replied promptly,
"Twenty rupees." We would offer two rupees, and, after a few minutes'
bargaining, they took it quite cheerfully, the thing probably not
being worth eight annas. I bought a prayer-wheel. It is a round silver
thing with a handle rather like a child's rattle, and inside are slips
of paper covered with writing. These are the prayers, and at intervals
you twirl the wheel round, and the oftener you turn it the more devout
you are.

I also purchased some lumps of rough turquoise, though Boggley said
they were not a good blue,--too pale,--and was tying them up in my
handkerchief when Boggley gripped my arm. "Look!" he said. I looked
straight across the valley, "Higher," said Boggley, and I lifted
my eyes literally to the skies; and
there--"suddenly--behold--beyond"--were the everlasting snows.

All day they stayed with us, and as the sun was setting we climbed to
a point of vantage to see the last of them. It has been said they are
a snow-white wall barring the whole horizon. They are like a city
carved by giants out of eternal ice, a city which lieth four-square.