Local color is given in this note:
"We have had an exciting day.... The strategy one must sometimes
employ in traveling through a hostile country is based upon the
principle of deception.... It was the work of Maria too, who had
evidently been reading up on certain occult works of the Eastern
magicians and brought them into play at a moment when we were
surrounded by a band of marauders in the company of my 'Hindu'
friend.... To explain: There is a certain kind of little animal held
sacred among these strolling outlaws.... The possession of one of
these animals is supposed to be a guarantee of future happiness as
well as a protection against all danger.... They are very hard to
entrap and the Ladakian Islamites will spend a month endeavoring to
ensnare one.... We were quite a distance from the convent at Saspoula,
where the road runs around among the rocks and turns back upon itself
like a horseshoe in the wooded hills.... At one of these bends the
pursuers had encamped ready to dash down upon us as we turned the bend
and make away with the girls in the direction of their camp in the
secluded mountain passes.... Maria had secured a number of those
little animals, and, twisting a fine hairpin around one of their hind
legs, she let one by one escape.... The animals clambered toward
the higher elevations where the banditti lay in waiting.... Their
movements being impeded by the hair pins on their legs they offered
an apparently easy PRIZE to the superstitious Islamites.
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