The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-04-03
DARJEELING.

LA EBlJ4NlT'r
 Far below, like stars in an azure sky, shone the lights of Darjeeling, Through a chasm of wind-divided cloud loomed the crest of Kinchinjunga-wan shadow on which the moonbeams lay. In all the strange and beautiful world there is nothing to compare with 12 giants that lift their white arms 10000 feet to make a throne in the heavens for Kin chinjunga.
 We came to Darjeeling with fear and trmebling. Tn Calcutta it was whispered that the Queen of the Shows was in purdah-hidden behind a veil of mist. But we had faith, and crossed the broad Oranges and awoke at the foot of the mountains, where sturdy l little engine climbed skyward through 1 forests of fern and plantain and oak and bamboo. Painting past rhoden- drous 30 feet high, circling the rim of jade bowls 5000 feet deep, we reached the zone of the white-fowered mag nolia and tumbled headlong from the clouds into a new wonder
 Darjecting has more than fills the teapot; it has people as we'll as a leaf of it's own, and both are gratfed on the ] Chinese. Among the booths-dignified by the name of bazar-you rub shoul- l ders with race alien to the men of i the plains. Here are Lepchas-original inhabitants of Sikkim- Mongolian in type, short in stature, broad-chestedand muscular-yellow men with flat noses and oblique eyes. A peaceful, dirty people they were content to remain savages and to worship evil spirits un- l til the TFbetans taught them to plait their hair into pig-tails and to aspire after Nirvana Their women are built on a generous plan, and with ammable smile offer tosbarter the silver hoops in their ears, ther necklaces of amber and comedian and turquoise, and their amulets of prayers and saintly nail parings. They never whine, like the vendors in ttle plains, but have a smile to cover the faud or to acknowledge defeat. 7f
 On Sunday when the people flock from village and tea plantation, you see the Bhotans who are industrious and quarrelsome; the slender and sinewy Limboo( who neither plaits his hair nor wears ornaments; the Moormis from the pestilential forests of Teral; the yellow robbed, bare skulled priests from Tibet and the surdy, aggressive little GG1urka from Nepal, who till we interposed, was pushing his frontier over the Himalays to the border of Burns. All these and more arest your glance in the soping streets, and set you thinking of the strange races on the border of Hindustan.
 A lama whines out his endless prayer, and grave looking urchin wheedles you into possession of a drum fashioned from two skulls covered with fsA. The skulls are of a man and woman who died a violent death and the rattle is necessary to ward off the evil eye, Scoff at the charm, and you become the victim of a revolving prayer wheel de- signed for your salvation or-spun from right to left--for a black paternoster. You will be cheated, yet you will love the cheat, and remembering the plains, will say that 1t is well to dwell in the mountains in tree face of day and in the shadow of the snow
 We rode uot to see Kinchinjunga and Everest It was the witching hour that heralds the dawn-when the moon has withdrawn to her far frontier and the | stars are dreaming. Not a leaf stirred the still air as we climbed through the violets darkness past the sleeping hamlet over which slumbered the white flags that f1utter prayer on the wind. l Ten thousand feet, and we saw the scarlet sun pierce tEle sable rampant of | the horizon and smite with gleaming spear the summit of Kinehinjunga. A | livid light spread over the plain, and the world pulsated with newborn life 1 Such was creations dawn. The luni- | nous air breathed subtle fragrance; the hills were embroidered with strange | ilues; the hills were damascened and 1 the snows melted into gold, as the widening morn spread like q waveless | sea over mountain and plain. A soft | and purple mist "llke a vaporous ame- ] thyst' overflowed the deep valleys and 1 gorges. Behold range upon range of mountains engulfed in dim depths-a shadowy world below a shadowy f1rma- ment.
 | Look well, for this is the earth and not shadow-the earth where men toll | and die and are forgotten. And when your eyes have seen the mountains of the earth, let them look upward and | behold the mountains of Heaven-the everlasting snows spread high between | the clouds and the sun.. A thousand twinkling points of light tip the broken ridges, and from the lazure sky down to the submerged world of neither hills falls an avainache of snow and ice over peaks and walls of granite on which the shadows play. A stainless temple of eternal snow bathed in the splendor of the sun-a silent, inaccessible shrine that holds communion with the heav- ems. This is Kfnehiniunga=-a stupen- dous mass Of gray granite springing sheer 5000 feet, smoothed and polished by avalanches, overhung with mighty