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Mixed colors are more common than solid ones; the tortoise-shell cat of three colors and well mottled being considered particularly desirable. The Persian cat differs from the Angora in the quality of its fur, although the ordinary observer sees little difference between them. All the long-haired cats originated from the Indian Bengalese, Thibetan, and other wild cats of Asia and Russia.
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.... Abandoning their present enterprise against our party they dashed after the deceptive animals and disappeared over the hills in a mad scamper for GOOD LUCK.... This little ruse cleared our pathway and permitted us to reach Saspoula before the sun had set.... Here we passed a number of shrines besides the French and Thibetan convents.... Avoiding the convent with the tri-color floating from its mast we approached the other.... Here again were the dusty idols, banners and flags thrown into one corner, the floors littered with ugly masks and prayer wheels and books and rolls upon rolls of sacred papers mutely breathing their delegated prayers.
On one side, the Thibetan side, there was picturesqueness enough, though not without discomfort too, for many a time the envoys must needs cross mountain-passes so deep in snow that a hundred Thibetans marched ahead treading it down, and not less often they must sleep in the rudest camps and eat the unsavoury cuisine of the country.
He had forgotten all his daily life and even his fears for the future in the fierce exultation of concealing his strangely gotten Thibetan lore from his rival, Alaric Hobbs. "A remarkable mind," growled old Fraser, "but a Yankee and so untrustworthy."
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