On nearing the lakes the atmosphere seemed saturated with moisture. No sooner had the sun gone down than there was a heavy dew, which soaked our blankets and clothes. We were at 16,550 feet in a narrow, marshy creek in which we had descended precipitously from the last mountain range. From the summit of the range we had seen many columns of smoke rising from the neighborhood of the Devil's Lake. We judged that we must again proceed with great caution.
We cooked our food. In the middle of the night, for greater safety, we shifted our camp in a north-easterly direction on the summit of the plateau. We continued our journey in the morning high above the magnificent blue sheet of the Devil's Lake with its pretty islands.
"Sir, do you see that island?" exclaimed Nattoo, pointing at a barren rock in the lake. "On it," he continued, "lives a hermit Lama, a saintly man. He has been there alone for many years, and he is held in great veneration by the Tibetans. He exists almost entirely on fish and occasional swan's eggs. Only in winter, when the lake is frozen, is communication established with the shore, and supplies of tsamba are brought to him. There are no boats on the Devil's Lake, nor any way of constructing rafts, owing to the absence of wood. The hermit sleeps in a cave, but generally comes out in the open to pray to Buddha."
During the following night, when everything was still, a breeze blowing from the north conveyed to us, faint and indistinct, the broken howls of the hermit.
"What is that?" I asked of the Shokas.
"It is the hermit speaking to God. Every night he climbs to the summit of the rock, and from there addresses his prayers to Buddha the Great."
"How is he clothed?" I inquired.
"In skins."
Late in the afternoon we had an amusing incident. We came to a creek in which were a number of men and women, hundreds of yaks and sheep, and some thirty ponies.
The Shokas became alarmed, and immediately pronounced the folks to be brigands. I maintained that they were not. Kachi had a theory that the only way to tell brigands from honest beings was to hear them talk. The brigands, he declared, usually shouted at the top of their voices when conversing, and used language far from select, while well-to-do Tibetans spoke gently and with refinement. I thought the only thing to do was to go and address the people, when by the tone of voice we should find out who and what they were. This, however, did not suit my Shokas. We were placed in a rather curious position. In order to proceed on our journey we must either pass through the Tibetan encampment or we must march southward round a mountain, which would involve considerable trouble, fatigue, and waste of time. We waited till night came, watching, unseen, the Tibetans below us. As is customary with them, at sundown they retired to their tents. Leaving my men behind, I crawled into their camp during the night and peeped into one of the tents. The men were squatting on the ground, round a fire in the centre, upon which steamed two vessels with stewing tea. One old man had strongly marked Mongolian features, accentuated by the heavy shadows which were cast by the light of the fire on his angular cheek-bones and prominent and wrinkled brow. He was busily revolving his prayer-wheel from left to right, repeating, in a mechanical way, the usual Omne mani padme hun, words which come from the Sanscrit, and refer to the reincarnation of Buddha from a lotus flower, meaning literally, "O God, the gem emerging from a lotus flower." Two or three other men whose faces I could not well see, as they were stooping low, were counting money and examining several articles of Indian manufacture which undoubtedly had been seized from Shokas.