An Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet - Prajna Quest

TIBET. 227steep rock r it consisted of about one hundred and fifty fiouses, whichrose in rows, one behind the other.They were square, pretty regularin their form, and the wliitened wails had a band about their tops, twoor three feet broad, of a deep garnet colour, which, with the addition oftemples, gilded ornaments, and the decorated dwellings of their superiorpriests, made a very handsome and brilliant spectacle. The wholebuilding was surrounded by high walls, which were continued alongthe ridge of tiierock, and crossed by many intermediate gateways orlodgments, so as to command the monastery, which fronted towards thecastle, as well as to overlook the other side of the rock, which wasextremely rugged, and almost perpendicular.In this neighbourhood we were pestered by a multitude of beggars,of all ages, and of both sexes: among them were some boys, who puton masks, and played a variety of antic tricks ;and we came suddenlyupon two old women in rags, at the corner of a street, strumming thecittaur, a rude kind of stringed instrument, and capering clumsily totheir own miserable music.The profession of the mendicant tribe is not unknown, as I perceived,in 'Tibet, but it is conducted with a better policy than inEurope; as they practise, and perhaps with more success, tricks ofmerriment, never shocking human nature with the cantof fictitiousmisery, or with assumed deformity. A few bits of silver, which I threwupon the ground, presently employed them all in a scramble, and gaveme time to make my escape.About a mile farther, crossing the river, we kept by the courseof it, through the valley of Jhansu, which was extremely rich with