A rounded meadow revealed itself , when they had reached it , for a vast tableland running far into the valley . Three days later , it was a dim fold in the earth to southward . ` Surely the Gods live here ! ' said Kim , beaten down by the silence and the appalling sweep and dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain . ` This is no place for men ! ' ` Long and long ago , ' said the lama , as to himself , ` it was asked of the Lord whether the world were everlasting . On this the Excellent One returned no answer ... When I was in Ceylon , a wise Seeker confirmed that from the gospel which is written in Pali . Certainly , since we know the way to Freedom , the question were unprofitable , but -- look , and know illusion , chela ! These -- are the true Hills ! They are like my hills by Suchzen . Never were such hills ! ' Above them , still enormously above them , earth towered away towards the snow-line , where from east to west across hundreds of miles , ruled as with a ruler , the last of the bold birches stopped . Above that , in scarps and blocks upheaved , the rocks strove to fight their heads above the white smother . Above these again , changeless since the world 's beginning , but changing to every mood of sun and cloud , lay out the eternal snow . They could see blots and blurs on its face where storm and wandering wullie-wa got up to dance . Below them , as they stood , the forest slid away in a sheet of blue-green for mile upon mile ; below the forest was a village in its sprinkle of terraced fields and steep grazing-grounds . Below the village they knew , though a thunderstorm worried and growled there for the moment , a pitch of twelve or fifteen hundred feet gave to the moist valley where the streams gather that are the mothers of young Sutluj . As usual , the lama had led Kim by cow-track and by-road , far from the main route along which Hurree Babu , that ` fearful man ' , had bucketed three days before through a storm to which nine Englishmen out of ten would have given full right of way . Hurree was no game-shot -- the snick of a trigger made him change colour -- but , as he himself would have said , he was ` fairly effeecient stalker ' , and he had raked the huge valley with a pair of cheap binoculars to some purpose . Moreover , the white of worn canvas tents against green carries far .
Hurree Babu had seen all he wanted to see when he sat on the threshing-floor of Ziglaur , twenty miles away as the eagle flies , and forty by road -- that is to say , two small dots which one day were just below the XXXXX , and the next had moved downward perhaps six inches on the hillside .
Babu Gods Kim Pali Suchzen Sutluj cow-track days snow-line thunderstorm