haggard faces, they are sustained with but one thought, one aim, and one hope, to absorb in the prescribed manner some of the sanctity which enshrouds the mystical place they are determined to attain. One sees old women attempting to scale the heights, dragging their aged limbs a few yards, and then sinking down exhausted from the unusual exercise, gasping and palpitating from the rarefied atmosphere, shivering from the intense cold, but buoyed up with that "loadstone to hearts and loadstar to all eyes" which signals to them from the distant snows. Or mothers struggling on with children at their breasts, sometimes even born at some stage of the pilgrimage, but neither births nor deaths affect this slowly moving throng which daily draws nearer its goal. And then the cold grey light dawns on the last morning, the foremost pilgrims are seen running like black specks across the final field of snow, and, as one draws closer, a shrill, weird chorus of cries can be heard, like a flock of seagulls around a wreck. As the last intervening crag is scaled a strange wild scene comes into view. Naked, the devotees are
