Chapter XII

The next day all details were arranged and three of our party, including myself, were to accompany Emil and Jast. The morning following found each party with its guide and attendants all ready to depart in different directions, with the understanding that we   should carefully observe and record all that occurred, and should meet sixty days later at Emil’s home in the village just spoken of, two hundred miles distant. We were to keep in communication with each other through our friends. This was accomplished each evening by these friends conversing with each other or traveling back and forth from party to  party. If we wished to communicate with our Chief or with any other member of our  party, all we need do was to give our message to our friends and in an incredibly short time, we would have the answer. In giving these messages, each would write them out in full and note the time to the minute on each message; then when the answer came we would do the same. When we came together again, we compared notes and found that all noted corresponded. Aside from this our friends would travel from one camp to another and converse with us. We kept accurate records of these appearances and disappearances; also we noted the time, the place, and the conversations and all checked fully when we compared notes later.

At times after this we were widely separated; one party would be in Persia, one in China, one in Tibet, one in Mongolia, and one in India, always accompanied by our friends. At times they traveled in the invisible, as we called it, distances as great as one thousand miles and kept us informed as to the happenings and progress in each camp.

The destination of the party to which I was assigned proved to be a small village to the southwest, located on an elevated plateau well up in the foothills of the Himalayas and about eighty miles from our starting point. We did not take any provisions for the trip but we were amply provided for at all times and had very comfortable quarters. We arrived at our destination early in the afternoon of the fifth day, were greeted by a delegation of villagers, and shown to comfortable quarters.

We noted that the villagers treated Emil and Jast with the utmost reverence. We were told that Emil had never visited the village but that Jast had been there before. The occasion    of his first visit was in response to a call for help to rescue three villagers from the fierce snow-men that inhabit some of the wildest parts of the Himalayas. This present visit was  in response to a similar call and also to minister to the sick who could not leave the  village. These so-called snow-men are outcasts and renegades who have lived in the snow and ice regions of the mountains until they have developed a tribe that is able to live in   the mountain fastnesses without contact with any form of civilization. Though not numerous, they are very fierce and warlike and, at times, capture and torture those who  are unfortunate enough to fall into their hands. It proved that four of the villagers had   been captured by these wild snow-men. The villagers, being at their wits’ end to know what to do, had sent out a messenger to get in touch with Jast and he had come to the rescue, bringing Emil and us along.

Of course, we were all excited, thinking we were to get sight of these wild people, whom we had heard of but supposed did not exist. We at first believed that a rescue party would be organized and we would be allowed to join, but these hopes were shattered when Emil announced that he and Jast would go alone and that they would go immediately.

In a few moments they disappeared and did not return until the second evening, with the four captives, who told weird tales of their adventures and of the strange people that had captured them. It seems that these strange snow-people go entirely naked, that their  bodies have become covered with hair like that of a wild animal, and that they can withstand the intense cold of the mountain altitudes. They are said to move over the ground very swiftly; in fact, it is claimed that they are able to pursue and capture the wild animals that live in the region that they inhabit. These wild people call the Masters. “The Men from the Sun,” and when the Masters go among them for the prisoners they do not resist. We were also told that the Masters had made a number of attempts to reach these wild people but these attempts had come to naught because of the fear in which the  people held them. It is said that if the Masters do go among them, the snow-men will not eat or sleep, but stay in the open night and day, so great is their fear. These people have lost all contact with civilization, even forgetting that they had ever contacted other races or that they are the descendants from them, so far have they separated themselves from others.

We were able to get Emil and Jast to say but little about this strange wild tribe, nor could we influence them to take us to them. When we questioned, the only comment was,  “They are God’s children, the same as we are, only they have lived so long in hatred and fear of their fellow men and they have so developed the hatred and fear faculty that they have isolated themselves from their fellow men to such an extent that they have completely forgotten they are descendants of the human family, and think themselves the wild creatures they appear to be. They have gone on in this way until they have even lost the instinct of the wild creatures, for the wild creature knows by instinct when a human being loves it and it will respond to that love. All we can say is that man brings forth that which he gazes upon and separates himself from God and man, and in this way he can go lower than the animal. It would serve no purpose to take you among them. It would, instead, harm those people. We are in hopes some day to find some one among them who will be receptive to our teaching and in this way reach them all.”

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