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desolate district, uninhabited for a radius of about forty miles, with the exception of the wretched little village and small monastery of Karzok, on its western shores. Here Hillyard joined me. He said he had had a wretched time as far as sport went, seeing very few Oves. He had, however, got one very good old ram, whose horns were slightly bigger and heavier than mine, but unfortunately one horn was a bit broken at the tip. I was lucky, as mine were perfect, for you seldom find an old ram-who is a most pugnacious old Tartar-whose horns have not suffered somewhat in his many fights.

I went up next morning to a high plateau to try for goa, a beautiful little gazelle, very similar to the Indian ravine deer; but after hunting about for two days, seeing only six or seven in all, and only getting one long shot, I rejoined Hillyard, and we both mumbled out through our chapped lips that we thought we had had enough of it, and would strike for home and warmer climes. But we still had a long way to go, and through some very difficult country. Crossing the Parang river, we marched for three days up its course, through a very narrow valley, hemmed in on either side by giant precipices, devoid of vegetation, gloomy and forbidding, until we reached the bottom of the pass, with its glaciers and perpetual snow rising high above our front. The Parang-la is about 18,600 feet in height, and considered the most dan

VOL. CLXXXVIII.—NO. MCXL.

gerous and difficult of all the known passes in the Himalayas, and only practicable from the beginning of June till the end of September. We toiled up to the foot of the glacier, some five or six miles from its summit, where we encamped under some rocks just below the snow, intending an early start. We did not get off, however, till about five, and the sun, which was soon in power above our heads, began to have its effect on the crust of the snow when we got within about two and a half miles from the top, and we were beat. Our seven yaks and the two ponies (which we had brought from the plains, but sent to Shushul whilst we were in Changchenmo) could get no farther, sinking to their bellies in the snow. The yaks, which are most marvellous animals in snow, either on the flat or in the hills, struggled and fought their way down, but the poor ponies were helpless. We tied their legs and put them on blankets and tried to drag them, but they sank so deep into the snow that it was impossible.

At last we got

three or four blankets and lifted one pony on to his feet on them, and putting three or four others in front and lifting and hauling, we got him on to them, picking up the rear

ones and putting them in front again. By this means we got first one and then the other down, but it took us seven hours to get them down the three miles we had come up in two. The Tartars seemed all right, but we had only five pairs of blue

2 H

glasses left among our seven native servants: we kept on changing them, but we all suffered a little from snow-blindness and frost - bite. I was thankful to get back to where we started from. I had proposed digging holes in the snow for the ponies, covering them up well, and leaving them out for the night, but the Tartars declared they could not live through it, though some traders who were with us, and had two yaks, left them out up to their bellies in snow without cover, and in the morning they struggled out, gave themselves a shake, and seemed as happy as sandboys.

There was a glorious moon, and we started at 2 A.M., when the cold was quite sufficient to ensure the crust of the snow being frozen sufficiently hard to bear, and got fairly comfortably to the top soon after daylight. Then once on the ledge, what a change! Behind us, to the north, Thibet, with its light clear atmosphere, nothing but snow and glacier, not a vestige of green or vegetation; in front of us, to the south, Spiti, a dry, arid, sunburnt country, but the hills on the south sides green from stunted forest vegetation, and with the blue haze of the lower ranges. The descent on the Spiti side of the Parang-la was very trying, as in many places it was almost perpendicular, and led over sharp and jagged rocks, which made it very toilsome for the animals. However, we got well below the pass before we called a halt,

and the next day, after going up through another wild gorge, we were in a sparsely inhabited country.

We now gave our camp and animals a rest for a couple of days, and I went up the hill for napoo, but without success, though I caught a young one which could not follow its dam up the face of a precipice. I should have liked to have taken it with me, but thinking it would die, replaced it in an easier bit of ground close by, and watched its dam return and make off with it in triumph.

Dankar, the capital of Spiti, is a curious place, a conical sandstone rock rising up in the middle of a small arid plain surrounded by mountains, the houses all built into or on the rocks; and about a mile from it is a Llamaserai built on a similar pinacle. Here we said. good-bye to our faithful Tartars and their seven yaks, and after a deal of bargaining agreed to take eleven yaks and twenty men with us over the Spiti glaciers, the next range, sending our ponies several days' march round into the valley of the Sutlej. To our astonishment the next morning we found about thirty yaks and nearly all the village ready to start with us. They said it was not the time of crops and they had nothing to do, and were coming with us for the trip. And they came, men and women. After transporting ourselves and baggage over a wide torrent by a jula bridge, and turning the yaks loose into it, some of them being rolled

head over heels, carried down, and landing 150 yards below where they entered the water, we began a long steep ascent up the mountain and were soon among the glaciers, but most of them are so covered with dirt and stones that one hardly thinks one is walking for miles over solid ice. But the awful cracks in them show what they really are, and we had to make many detours to get round them. The scenery itself was most wild and grand. We descended on the other side through some lovely valleys, and were soon in inhabited

country. Here we parted with our Spiti friends, who said they had had a charming trip. The rains had now begun, and for ten weary days and nights we tramped on through beautiful country, of which we could see but little, as the heavens were opened and the deluge incessant. We were wet to the skin, day and night, for our clothes and tents were sodden, and the latter so heavy that we could hardly get the coolies to carry them. At last we struck the valley of the Sutlej and the high road to Simla, with resthouses, the shelter of which we were thankful for. A few days more saw us back in civilisation.

On several occasions afterwards I visited and had excellent sport in Kashmir and the lower ranges, as well as one or two of the Terais and Doons; also Central, Southern India, and Assam, getting specimens of most of the janwar worth shooting in India; but my heart always went out, and does to this day, to Thibet, with its snows, immensity, and grandeur, and nothing but the time required, not only to get there, but to get fit to be able to tackle it successfully, prevented my seeing the grand old Oves and that marvellous Pangong Tso again.

Thibet proper is no country for a man who wants a big bag easily obtained, for the animals are very few, hard to find, and difficult to stalk; nor is it a country for one who dislikes toil and fag and disappointment, with great discomfort and short commons. But it is a marvellous and most interesting country to visit, and as Major Kennion says in his lately published most fascinating book, 'Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya,' the man who has stalked and killed his big Ovis ram is considered to have gained the blue ribbon of Himalayan sport.

T. A. ST QUINTIN.

THE DEVIL'S BANKER.

THE devil was abroad in the fair Burgundian land of Franche Comté; he stalked at his ease among pleasant vineyards and fertile valleys; he held his own unquestioned in the flourishing little towns of the Free County; and his servants did their work with all the zeal they could throw into it. Learned judges, grave physicians, politic statesmen, were all agreed that he was the de facto ruler of at least their part of the world. And as to his victims, they were so many that Master Henry Boguet, the great jurisconsult, after assisting to burn fifteen hundred or so of them, sat down in despair to write a book about it. "The sorcerers," he said, "march in their thousands," "multiplying like the caterpillars in our gardens ;" and, possibly reminiscent of the Emperor Domitian, he added, "Would they were gathered together in a single body; so could we burn them all at one turn and in one fire." The worthy man had done his best. Aided by the hideous principle of the witchfinders' manual, the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' which laid it down that confessions under torture should have all the weight of the testimony of independent witnesses, he had discovered from their own acknowledgment sorcerers disguised as goats, wolves, hares, and cats. In all ages of superstition the goat has been asso.

cat

ciated with the devil of horns and hoofs; the wolf meant something even more sinister; but why the timid hare and the harmless necessary should favour the evil one it is hard to say. But there were proofs irrefragable. For a gentleman returning from the chase one evening near Château de Joux was aware of Grimalkins caterwauling in a tree. At these, being apparently disguised in liquor, he discharged his fowling-piece and wounded one who dropped a bunch of keys-or at least he found himself in possession of a bunch of keys. He recognised them as his wife's, and the conclusion of course was that she was on her way to the "witches' Sabbath." Any housewife of those wine - bibbing days-the early seventeenth century-could have furnished Maitre Boguet with a simple explanation of the mystery. His solution was to burn the poor lady alive.

And no doubt she confessed ; they all confessed, or nearly all

under the torture, of course. That it should never have struck their judges, who were by nature neither knaves nor fools, that such avowals were merely lies dictated by the hope of escape from immediate agony, is marvellous. For they had what the could do. his tongue out in prison because he knew he would con

examples enough of mere fear of pain One man half cut

fess to lies under the torture; but it was found that he could read and write, and they made him put down all they wanted him to say in black and white. When a man condemned to be burned after being torn with red-hot pincers cut his throat with a rusty knife, his judges saw in his act merely the hand of Satan. Another jammed the bone which had been served him for a meal in his prison into a crack in the masonry, and hanged himself to that by bending his knees. All the work of the devil delivering his own!

It had not always been thus: this frenzied fear of Satan and his armies was comparatively a new thing, begotten of the savage wars and their attendant miseries which accompanied the birth of the modern world. For centuries men had looked upon the devil with an impartial eye-rather a dangerous playfellow, perhaps, but often ready to do a good turn. The The "lubber fiend of Milton, the Pucks, the Robin Goodfellows, the Ariels of our own folklore and literature, the dwarfs and gnomes of the mines and forests of Germany, remind us of this. As late as the beginning of the sixteenth century we have striking examples of the "bon diable." The adventures of Dr Torralba have been immortalised by Cervantes. This illustrious physician, highly connected and yet more highly protected, was the master, or rather confidential friend, of a devil named Ezekiel, whom by the way he got from a Domin

ican friar at Rome. There was no vice about Ezekiel. He accompanied his master to church, suggested to him surpassing remedies for human ailmente, and abused him roundly if he ventured to charge his patients too much for knowledge thus acquired gratis. But his great though fatal exploit was the transportation of Torralba through the air to witness the Bourbon's sack of Rome. The doctor was present, saw the walls stormed, and in an hour and a half was back in Valladolid publishing the news. But this was too much for the Inquisition; aviation was not in such favour in those days as at present, and in spite of Torralba's great influence he was laid by the heels. But the Admiral of Castile intervened to protect him. The Inquisitors were reduced to asking the sorcerer to give up Ezekiel. But here Ezekiel's feelings had to be consulted, and nothing could prevent him from appearing to his friend if he so desired. The Holy Office then took refuge in the feeble question: Was Ezekiel orthodox? The answer was that he disliked Luther and Erasmus, and with this ambiguous statement, which, as coming from a devil, might well have been considered a compliment to the two Reformers, the tribunal had perforce to be content. One story says that Torralba was ultimately burned; another that he escaped scot free. The later is probably correct. Another premature airman, the curate of Bargota, also a Spaniard, saved his life and

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