high as trees,
beneath which any unfortunate traveller would be buried. Here we must
wait, there was nothing else to be done.

One alleviation we found, and only one. In a ruined room of the
monastery was a library of many volumes, placed there, doubtless, by the
monks who were massacred in times bygone. These had been more or less
cared for and re-arranged by their successors, who gave us liberty to
examine them as often as we pleased. Truly it was a strange collection,
and I should imagine of priceless value, for among them were to be found
Buddhistic, Sivaistic and Shamanistic writings that we had never before
seen or heard of, together with the lives of a multitude of Bodhisatvas,
or distinguished saints, written in various tongues, some of which we
did not understand.

What proved more interesting to us, however, was a diary in many tomes
that for generations had been kept by the Khubilghans or abbots of the
old Lamasery, in which every event of importance was recorded in great
detail. Turning over the pages of one of the last volumes of this
diary, written apparently about two hundred and fifty years earlier, and
shortly before the destruction of the monastery, we came upon an
entry of which the following--for I can only quote from memory--is the
substance--

"In the summer of this year, after a very great sandstorm, a brother
(the name was given, but I forget it) found in the desert a man of the
people who dwell beyond the Far Mountains, of whom rumours have reached
this Lamasery from time to time. He was living, but beside him were the
bodies of two of his companions who had been overwhelmed by sand and
thirst. He was very fierce looking. He refused to say how he came into
the desert, telling us only that he had followed the road known to the
ancients before communication between his people and the outer world
ceased. We gathered, however, that his brethren with whom he fled had
committed some crime for which they had been condemned to die, and that
he had accompanied them in their flight. He told us that there was a
fine country beyond the mountains, fertile, but plagued with droughts
and earthquakes, which latter, indeed, we often feel here.

"The people of that country were, he said, warlike and very numerous but
followed agriculture. They had always lived there, though ruled by Khans
who were descendants of the Greek king called Alexander, who conquered
much country to the south-west of us. This may be t