That is ascertained by process of elimination , and also by asking questions from people that I cure so well . Our friends have been a long time playing about and producing impressions . So they are well known from far off . You will see me catch them somewhere in Chini valley . Please keep your eye on the umbrella . ' It nodded like a wind-blown harebell down the valleys and round the mountain sides , and in due time the lama and Kim , who steered by compass , would overhaul it , vending ointments and powders at eventide . ` We came by such and such a way ! ' The lama would throw a careless finger backward at the ridges , and the umbrella would expend itself in compliments . They crossed a snowy pass in cold moonlight , when the lama , mildly chaffing Kim , went through up to his knees , like a Bactrian camel -- the snow-bred , shag-haired sort that came into the Kashmir Serai . They dipped across beds of light snow and snow-powdered shale , where they took refuge from a gale in a camp of Tibetans hurrying down tiny sheep , each laden with a bag of borax . They came out upon grassy shoulders still snow-speckled , and through forest , to grass anew . For all their marchings , Kedarnath and Badrinath were not impressed ; and it was only after days of travel that Kim , uplifted upon some insignificant ten-thousand-foot hummock , could see that a shoulder-knot or horn of the two great lords had -- ever so slightly -- changed outline . At last they entered a world within a world -- a valley of leagues where the high hills were fashioned of a mere rubble and refuse from off the knees of the mountains . Here one day 's march carried them no farther , it seemed , than a dreamer 's clogged pace bears him in a nightmare . They skirted a shoulder painfully for hours , and , behold , it was but an outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile ! 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 XXXXX , as to himself , ` it was asked of the Lord whether the world were everlasting .
Bactrian Gods Tibetans cloud-shadows day harebell hours hummock lama ointments