PA-U-RONG
The next day's march was the last stage to the Yalung. We began by descending a rough path from the eminence which is crowned by the village. Our road then led up and down the south side of a deep ravine, with many tortuous windings. The path—such as it was—had in some places been torn away by recent landslips. Wild-flowers and wild fruit-trees were in blossom, and the young vegetation was delightfully fresh and green. Squirrels were common, and we caught sight of some beautiful long-tailed green parrots. A steep path led us down to a confined valley named Lan Yi Pa, and outside its solitary hut we stopped for our midday meal. The woman of the house, with a nose quick to scent the proximity of untold wealth, hastened to offer me, on bended knee, a present of three eggs. From here the road led steeply to the crest of a hill, and after turning several corners we found ourselves in full view of the noble waters of the Yalung.
When we reached a projecting corner of the road at a spot called Hsin Yi La, I was requested by the ula people to fire a shot from my gun in the direction of the village of Pa-U-Rong, which now lay at our feet and was in full view. This I did, on learning that it was a custom with which all travellers approaching Pa-U-Rong were expected to comply. The village, with its comparatively rich fields, has often been the prey of mountain robbers, and any travellers who approach without giving a warning signal are presumed to be coming with no good intent, and may find all the inhabitants of the valley fully clad in the panoply of war, ready to give them a hostile reception. From the spot where I fired the warning gun the road again descended steeply, but after crossing a deep gully we found ourselves in the large village of Pa-U-Rong, and were received by the people with friendly faces.
The valley slopes gradually towards the river, and, though it is of small area, it is thoroughly well cultivated with wheat, barley and other grain, and several kinds of vegetables. The actual banks of the river are very steep, and on them there is no cultivation. The level of Pa-U-Rong is about 7,700 feet, and the river, which has a considerable rise and fall, is on an average about 200 feet lower. The village—with two or three scattered suburbs in other parts of the valley—contains a population of perhaps two thousand, and was the largest and most prosperous centre of population we had come across since leaving Tachienlu.
MOUNTAINS AND SNOW
We had now descended, for the time being, from the icy heights of the Chinese Alps, and were in a region of green vegetation and tranquil beauty. But the snowy peaks and passes were still in full view, and amid the rich scenery that now surrounded me it was the wild splendour of the mountains, and the snow, and the dark primeval forests that haunted me still. The scenery through which I had passed was not of the kind that could be looked at, admired and then forgotten. The purple crags and jewelled peaks rising in sombre majesty from the white slopes of the sun-lit snow-fields were sights upon which one might gaze from dawn till dark and ever find new treasures of beauty, and which, when the eye had once seen, the mind could never forget. Surely our great prose-poet—never more full of enthusiasm and spiritual insight than when describing the glories of his beloved Alps—spoke with truth when he told us that in the whole range of inorganic nature there could perhaps be found no object "more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen under warm light."[197] But, as Ruskin well knew, it is the dark setting of rock and crag that lends so rare a beauty to wide stretches of untrodden snow. The wild and desolate aspects of nature have indeed a charm that is different in kind from that which belongs to sylvan or merely "pretty" scenery, for they touch profounder depths in our nature than can be reached by the faery beauty of dale and wood and running water. The feelings they excite can only be compared to the deepest religious emotions of which our nature is capable. "Surely, if beauty be an object of worship," said Tyndall, "those glorious mountains, with rounded shoulders of the purest white—snow-crested and star-gemmed—were well calculated to excite sentiments of adoration."[198] Thus it is that in the presence of Nature's holiest shrines it is generally best to be alone. If we have companions, all we ask of them at such times is that they should be silent. The wonders of mountain and snow, ocean and sky, need not the explanatory or descriptive notes of any commentator when we have the reality before our own eyes. The man to whose deeper nature they do not at once appeal will not learn their secrets any the better for listening to the ecstatic ejaculations of the noisy friend who is for ever at his elbow telling him how lovely are those purple mountains, or how rich the colours of that splendid sunset. It is better to acquire the reputation of being insensible to all beauty than to force oneself to listen patiently and respond cheerfully to such well-meant chatter. The feelings that such aspects of Nature produce within us are not feelings that any man has ever yet learned to put into words. Speech, after all, can only interpret the thoughts that lie on the surface of our natures; the deeper thoughts and the nobler emotions elude the grasp of mere human language. The mystic well knows, and the poet well knows, that their sublimest visions cannot be adequately rendered, even by the use of the most splendid imagery and allegory, in the terms of written or spoken language. And similarly it is known to every lover of Nature, though he be no poet, that the deepest mysteries of Nature's loveliness are only revealed to him who possesses, in the unsounded depths of his own soul, the key that can unlock them. And what he has learned he can no more communicate to others than a Saint Teresa or a Saint Ignatius can describe in fitting words the visions that were shown to them in their mystic trances.
LONELINESS
Each of us, after all, must act as the pilot of his own soul in its solitary voyage through the unknown. The loneliness of the individual human soul is one of the saddest facts of human experience, but there are divine moments in the lives at least of some of us when by the contemplation of the supremely beautiful in Nature or in Art, or by the stirring of some profound emotion, we feel that our loneliness is a mere appearance that will pass away: moments in which we feel that we are in communion and fellowship with the perfect beauty and white truth that lie beyond the fleeting shadowland in which we daily move. And though our splendid visions may not be always present to fill us with rapture, we feel that the spiritual wisdom they have given us can at all times be drawn upon to help and guide us through the darker hours of our lonely daily life.