I knew, how I cannot say, that now we were far past the furthest borders of Thibet and that in front of us lay untrodden lands.

More mountains stretched beyond that desert, a sea of snowy peaks, hundreds and hundreds of them.
"Near to the monastery, jutting out into the plain like some rocky headland, rose a solitary hill, higher than all behind.

We stood upon its snowy crest and waited, till presently, above the mountains and the desert at our feet shot a sudden beam of light that beat upon us like some signal flashed across the sea.

On we went, floating down the beam--on over the desert and the mountains, across a great flat land beyond, in which were many villages and a city on a mound, till we lit upon a towering peak.

Then I saw that this peak was loop-shaped like the symbol of Life of the Egyptians--the _crux-ansata_--and supported by a lava stem hundreds of feet in height.