life and death and beyond death, are connected closely by education,
tradition, and authority with Lhassa.

Passing along faces of precipices and over waterless plateaux of
blazing red gravel--'waste places,' truly--the journey was cheered by
the meeting of red and yellow lamas in companies, each lama twirling
his prayer-cylinder, abbots, and skushoks (the latter believed to be
incarnations of Buddha) with many retainers, or gay groups of
priestly students, intoning in harsh and high-pitched monotones, Aum
mani padne hun. And so past fascinating monastic buildings, through
crystal torrents rushing over red rock, through flaming ravines, on
rock ledges by scaffolded paths, camping in the afternoons near
friendly villages on oases of irrigated alluvium, and down the Wanla
water by the steepest and narrowest cleft ever used for traffic, I
reached the Indus, crossed it by a wooden bridge where its broad,
fierce current is narrowed by rocks to a width of sixty-five feet,
and entered Ladak proper. A picturesque fort guards the bridge, and
there travellers inscribe their names and are reported to Leh. I
camped at Khalsi, a mile higher, but returned to the bridge in the
evening to sketch, if I could, the grim nudity and repulsive horror
of the surrounding mountains, attended only by Usman Shah. A few
months earlier, this ruffian was sent down from Leh with six other
soldiers and an officer to guard the fort, where they became the
terror of all who crossed the bridge by their outrageous levies of
blackmail. My swashbuckler quarrelled with the officer over a
disreputable affair, and one night stabbed him mortally, induced his
six comrades to plunge their knives into the body, sewed it up in a
blanket, and threw it into the Indus, which disgorged it a little
lower down. The men were all arrested and marched to Srinagar, where
Usman turned 'king's evidence.'