Our first concern was to find what had happened to Philipson and the Chinese servants. From where we stood we scanned the slope in all directions, but could see no sign of any one of them. We then began a methodical search, binding together our two cast sheepskins and standing them up sheaf-wise for a landmark on the hillside, and working slowly up and down the slant at about thirty yards apart. I've said the mountain here was regular, which it was in the main, though there were any number of shallow basins in which an army of men could have concealed themselves by lying flat; but as we searched dip after dip and drew blank, lower and lower fell my hopes. Our comrades must have sunk into deep snow as soon as they fell off the raft, and even had they escaped death by battering in the avalanche, they must have met it quickly by suffocation. Somewhere under that great white cloak on the mountain side they lay, and not until the snow was gone, it seemed, should we find their bodies. Yet we kept searching still, hoping against hope, and so intent on the task that we were lost to what was happening behind us. I heard Poyning raise a sharp cry. He was looking back over our tracks towards the place where we had left the sheepskins. There, gathered in a knot, were some half dozen tall, white-robed strangers, who stared at the filthy and unsightly garments, then at us their possessors, plainly in an extremity of surprise. But if the strangers were surprised, we were startled. The appearance of them was matter for amazement indeed. Of the whole half dozen not one stood, I judge, less than six feet three or four inches in height, and the impression of great stature was accentuated by the fact that they all wore long flowing robes the hem of which swept the fast-melting snow at their feet; but it was their faces that set me gaping. Anybody with experience of native races knows that the Mongolian countenance, though it may vary greatly, always preserves certain contours and exaggerations which are unmistakable. These men were no Mongols. Nor was their skin, though ripely tanned by sun and wind, of the peculiar Mongol pigment. These men were a Caucasian stock. The hair of their bare heads, too, crisp and wavy and of a rich chestnut brown shading off into black, spoke plainly of Aryan races and the West.