We rested one day high up in the Rockies, to visit a lake carved out of
pure jade, whose property is to colour every reflection on its bosom to
its own tint. A belt of brown dead timber on a gravel scar, showed,
upside down, like sombre cypresses rising from green turf and the
reflected snows were pale green. In summer many tourists go there, but
we saw nothing except the wonderworking lake lying mute in its circle of
forest, where red and orange lichens grew among grey and blue moss, and
we heard nothing except the noise of its outfall hurrying through a jam
of bone-white logs. The thing might have belonged to Tibet or some
unexplored valley behind Kin-chinjunga. It had no concern with the West.
As we drove along the narrow hill-road a piebald pack-pony with a
china-blue eye came round a bend, followed by two women, black-haired,
bare-headed, wearing beadwork squaw-jackets, and riding straddle. A
string of pack-ponies trotted through the pines behind them.
'Indians on the move?' said I. 'How characteristic!'
As the women jolted by, one of them very slightly turned her eyes, and
they were, past any doubt, the comprehending equal eyes of the civilised
white woman which moved in that berry-brown face.
