turned to Phari he would find the women very much
bolder, though, I am afraid, not any cleaner. Could he see the
Englishmen in Phari to-day, he might not recognise his compatriots.

Often in civilized places I shall think of the group at Phari in the
mess-room after dinner--a group of ruffianly-looking bandits in a
blackened, smut-begrimed room, clad in wool and fur from head to foot,
bearded like wild men of the woods, and sitting round a yak-dung fire,
drinking rum. After a week at Phari the best-groomed man might qualify
for a caricature of Bill Sikes. Perhaps one day in Piccadilly one may
encounter a half-remembered face, and something familiar in walk or gait
may reveal an old friend of the Jong. Then in 'Jimmy's,' memories of
argol-smoke and frozen moustaches will give a zest to a bottle of beaune
or chablis, which one had almost forgotten was once dreamed of among the
unattainable luxuries of life.

_March 26-28._

Orders have come to advance from Phari Jong. It seems impossible,
unnatural, that we are going on. After a week or two the place becomes
part of one's existence; one feels incarcerated there. It is difficult
to imagine life anywhere else. One feels as if one could never again be
cold or dirty, or miserably uncomfortable, without thinking of that gray
fortress with its strange unknown history, standing alone in the
desolate plain. For my own part, speaking figuratively--and unfigurative
language is impotent on an occasion like this--the place will leave an
indelible black streak--very black indeed--on a kaleidoscopic past.
There can be no faint impressions in one's memories of Phari Jong. The
dirt and smoke and dust are elemental, and the cold is the cold of the
Lamas' frigid hell.

All the while I was in Phari I forgot the mystery of Tibet. I have felt
it elsewhere, but in the Jong I only wondered that the inscrutable folk
who had lived in the rooms where we slept, and fled in the night, were
content with their smut-begrimed walls, blackened ceilings, and
chimneyless roofs, and still more how amidst these murky environments
any spiritual instincts could survive to inspire the religious
frescoings on the wall. Yet every figure in this intricate blending of
designs is significant and symbolical. One's first impression is that
these allegories and metaphysical abstractions must have been
meaningless to the inmates of the Jong; for we in Europe cannot
dissociate the artistic expression of religio