ey
are left alone.

Every Tibetan of the tableland is a hermit by choice, or some strange
hereditary instinct has impelled him to accept Nature's most niggard
gifts as his birthright, so that he toils a lifetime to win by his own
labour and in scanty measure the necessaries which Nature deals lavishly
elsewhere, herding his yaks on the waste lands, tilling the unproductive
soil for his meagre crop of barley, and searching the hillsides for
yak-dung for fuel to warm his stone hut and cook his meal of flour.

Yet north and south of him, barely a week's journey, are warm, fertile
valleys, luxuriant crops, unstinted woodlands, where Mongols like
himself accept Nature's largess philosophically as the most natural
thing in the world.

It seems as if some special and economical law of Providence, such a law
as makes at least one man see beauty in every type of woman, even the
most unlovely, had ordained it, so that no corner of the earth, not even
the Sahara, Tadmor, Tuna, or Guru, should lack men who devote themselves
blindly and without question to live there, and care for what one might
think God Himself had forgotten and overlooked.

These men--Bedouin, Tibetans, and the like--enjoy one thing, for which
they forego most things that men crave for, and that is freedom. They do
not possess the gifts that cause strife, and divisions, and law-making,
and political parties, and changes of Government. They have too little
to share. Their country is invaded only at intervals of centuries. On
these occasions they fight bravely, as their one inheritance is at
stake. But they are bigoted and benighted; they have not kept time with
evolution, and so they are defeated. The conservatism, the
exclusiveness, that has kept them free so long has shut the door to
'progress,' which, if they were enlightened and introspective, they
would recognise as a pestilence that has infected one half of the world
at the expense of the other, making both unhappy and discontented.

The Tuna Plain is like the Palmyra Desert at the point where one comes
within view of the snows of Lebanon. It is not monotonous; there is too
much play of light and shade for that. Everywhere the sun shines, the
mirage dances; the white calcined plain becomes a flock of frightened
sheep hurrying down the wind; the stunted sedge by the lakeside leaps up
like a squadron in ambush and sweeps rapidly along without ever
approaching nearer. Sometimes a herd of wild asses is ming