xx INTRODUCTION 



might have seen the rose of dawn flushing the snowy 

 summits of Kinchinjunga, and far away Mount 

 Everest. And soaring aloft, the eagle might have 

 looked out over the populous plains of India and 

 seen, like silver streaks, the rivers flowing down 

 from the Himalaya to join in the far distance the 

 mighty Mother Ganges. Then its eye might have 

 ranged over the vast forest which clothes in dense 

 green mantle the plain at the foot of the mountains 

 from Nepal to Bhutan and Assam, and from the 

 plain spreads up on the mountain-sides themselves 

 and reaches to the very borders of eternal snow. 

 Over this vast forest with its treasures of tree and 

 plant, animal and insect life, tropical, temperate, 

 and alpine, the eagle might have soared ; and then, 

 passing over the Himalayan watershed, have looked 

 down upon the treeless, open, undulating, almost 

 uninhabited plain of Tibet, and in the distance seen 

 the great Brahmaputra River, which, circling round 

 Bhutan, cuts clean through the Himalaya and, turn- 

 ing westward, also joins the Ganges. 



In the whole world no more wonderful natural 

 scenery is to be found. And the eagle with no 

 unusual effort could see it all in a single day, and 

 see it with a distinctness of sight no man could 

 equal. But keen though its eyesight was and wide 

 though its range, the eagle in all that beautiful 

 region would see not a single beauty. Neither in 

 the sunrise, nor in the snowy mountains, nor in the 

 luxuriant tropical forest, nor in the flowers, the 

 birds, the butterflies, nor in the people and animals, 

 nor in the cataracts and precipices would it see any 

 beauty whatever. The mountain would be to it a 



