104 TRAVEL, AD VENTURE, AXD SPOET. 



up their singing and dancing for several nights till 

 morning. In addition to all this, huge savage 

 Tibetan dogs used to come down the mountain-sides 

 from a Lama nunnery above, and prowl round my 

 tent, or poke into it, in search of what they could 

 find; and the letting them, loose at all was highly 

 improper conduct on the part of the virtuous sister- 

 hood. One splendid red dog came down regularly, 

 with long leaps, which I could hear distinctly ; and 

 I had quite an affection for him, until, one night, I 

 was awakened from an uneasy slumber by finding his 

 mouth fumbling at my throat, in order to see if I was 

 cold enough for his purposes. This was a little too 

 much, so I told Silas to watch for it and pepper it 

 with small -shot from a distance; but, either acci- 

 dentally or by design, he shot it in the side from 

 close quarters, killing it on the spot, its life issuing 

 out of it in one grand, hoarse, indignant roar. Pos- 

 sibly it occurred to my servant that the small-shot from 

 a distance might be a rather unsafe proceeding. As 

 if these things were not enough, I had a visitor of 

 another kind, one night, who puzzled me not a little 

 at first. I was lying awake, exhausted by one of the 

 paroxysms of my illness, when a large strange-looking 

 figure stepped into the moonlight just before my tent, 

 and moved about there with the unsteady swaying 

 motion of a drunken man, and with its back towards 

 me. My first idea was that this was one of the 

 Chinese Tartars encamped beside the temple, who 



