Following the Equator eBook

Next day was Sunday.  Friends came in the gray dawn with horses, and my party rode away to a distant point where Kinchinjunga and Mount Everest show up best, but I stayed at home for a private view; for it was very old, and I was not acquainted with the horses, any way.  I got a pipe and a few blankets and sat for two hours at the window, and saw the sun drive away the veiling gray and touch up the snow-peaks one after another with pale pink splashes and delicate washes of gold, and finally flood the whole mighty convulsion of snow-mountains with a deluge of rich splendors.

Kinchinjunga’s peak was but fitfully visible, but in the between times it was vividly clear against the sky—­away up there in the blue dome more than 28,000 feet above sea level—­the loftiest land I had ever seen, by 12,000 feet or more.  It was 45 miles away.  Mount Everest is a thousand feet higher, but it was not a part of that sea of mountains piled up there before me, so I did not see it; but I did not care, because I think that mountains that are as high as that are disagreeable.

I changed from the back to the front of the house and spent the rest of the morning there, watching the swarthy strange tribes flock by from their far homes in the Himalayas.  All ages and both sexes were represented, and the breeds were quite new to me, though the costumes of the Thibetans made them look a good deal like Chinamen.  The prayer-wheel was a frequent feature.  It brought me near to these people, and made them seem kinfolk of mine.  Through our preacher we do much of our praying by proxy.  We do not whirl him around a stick, as they do, but that is merely a detail.  The swarm swung briskly by, hour after hour, a strange and striking pageant.  It was wasted there, and it seemed a pity.  It should have been sent streaming through the cities of Europe or America, to refresh eyes weary of the pale monotonies of the circus-pageant.  These people were bound for the bazar, with things to sell.  We went down there, later, and saw that novel congress of the wild peoples, and plowed here and there through it, and concluded that it would be worth coming from Calcutta to see, even if there were no Kinchinjunga and Everest.

CHAPTER LVI.

There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate:  when he can’t afford it, and when he can. 
                                  —­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair-to-middling views of the stupendous mountains; then, being well cooled off and refreshed, we were ready to chance the weather of the lower world once more.