` 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 snow-line , and the next had moved downward perhaps six inches on the hillside . Once cleaned out and set to the work , his fat bare legs could cover a surprising amount of ground , and this was the reason why , while Kim and the lama lay in a leaky hut at Ziglaur till the storm should be over-past , an oily , wet , but always smiling Bengali , talking the best of English with the vilest of phrases , was ingratiating himself with two sodden and rather rheumatic foreigners . He had arrived , revolving many wild schemes , on the heels of a thunderstorm which had split a pine over against their camp , and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly impressed baggage-coolies the day was inauspicious for farther travel that with one accord they had thrown down their loads and jibbed . They were subjects of a Hill Rajah who farmed out their services , as is the custom , for his private gain ; and , to add to their personal distresses , the strange Sahibs had already threatened them with rifles .
The most of them XXXXX rifles and Sahibs of old : they were trackers and shikarris of the Northern valleys , keen after bear and wild goat ; but they had never been thus treated in their lives .
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