Along their track lay the villages of the hillfolk--mud and earth huts, timbers now and then rudely carved with an axe--clinging like swallows' nests against the steeps, huddled on tiny flats half-way down a three-thousand-foot glissade; jammed into a corner between cliffs that funnelled and focused every wandering blast; or, for the sake of summer pasture, cowering down on a neck that in winter would be ten feet deep in snow.

And the people--the sallow, greasy, duffle-clad people, with short bare legs and faces almost Esquimaux--would flock out and adore.

The Plains--kindly and gentle--had treated the lama as a holy man among holy men.

But the Hills worshipped him as one in the confidence of all their devils.
Theirs was an almost obliterated Buddhism, overlaid with a nature-worship fantastic as their own landscapes, elaborate as the terracing of their tiny fields; but they recognized the big hat, the clicking rosary, and the rare Chinese texts for great authority; and they respected the man beneath the hat.
'We saw thee come down over the black Breasts of Eua,' said a Betah who gave them cheese, sour milk, and stone-hard bread one evening.

'We do not use that often--except when calving cows stray in summer.