uccess.

There was much which was pleasant and exhilarating in this movement from
place to place, and in camping under the trees: but it was at times very
fatiguing, and in bad weather very unpleasant. More than once we were
overtaken by severe storms, but happily the worst of these storms came
on us in favoured places, where we could find shelter on escaping from
our tent.

Hill ponies feel themselves strange when in what a friend used to call
the "roomy plains." The pony I had for years was quiet enough in the
hills, but I had to watch it narrowly in the plains, as it seemed to
have always the sense of danger, and was ready to start in a fashion
which more than once almost dismounted me.

Some winters were spent in itinerating in hill districts from which the
people did not go to the Bhabhur. In these winters I had the opportunity
of going to a mela held at Bageswur, about thirty-five miles from Ranee
Khet, at the confluence of the Surjoo and the Kalee. This mela is the
greatest held in the Province. To many it is the grand event of the
year. The people from all parts flock to it for religious, commercial,
and social purposes. In the motley crowd may be seen hill-men from all
the districts of the Himalaya, natives from the plains, Tibetans from
the other side of the snowy range, and Englishmen.

This mela is held in a low valley not far from one of the passes into
Tibet. It is attended by many Tibetans, who succeed in bringing their
ponies through the tremendous defiles which separate their country from
Kumaon. These ponies bring high prices. They also bring sheep laden with
salt and borax. These Mongolians are great stalwart men, with broad
faces, clad in homespun woollen cloth of many folds, which is seldom
taken off till it is worn off. They are accompanied by a few women and
children. They take their religion with them in their praying-wheels,
which they keep going. They are an intensely religious people, as Mr.
Gilmour tells us, but it is in the most mechanical fashion which can be
conceived. If they were mere machines, wound up like their
praying-wheels, they could not to all appearance be more devoid of
thought, feeling, and conscience in the exercise of their religion. I
marked their countenances, and could only wonder at their stolid look.
Much that is absurd is found in man's religion, but the Tibetan form of
it seemed to me the very _ne plus ultra_ of irrationality. Some of these
Mongolians are invetera