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

TIBET. 265about ten or twelve feet from the summit of the walls, isoccupied by adeep crimson colour. A frieze, and whitened cornice surrounds thetop. At the angles, and on different parts along the top of the wall,is placed a sort of ornament, which I term fasces. It is a cylinder ofmetal strongly gilt, standing upright upon a short supporter fixed inits centre ; and is commonly about five feet high, and two or three incircumference.Many of them are covered with black cloth, and theseinvariably have a broad white fillet, passed round them in oppositedirections, horizontally and perpendicularly, so as to form the figureof a cross. The sides are marked with letters, beaded and fluted ;andthe top is always crowned with some small ornament. The headsof lions, well executed, projected from the angles of the building ;these also were gilt, and had bells depending from their lower lips.But the most showy part of this structure, which crowns the whole,is a spacious tented canopy, richly gilt, which is supposed to standimmediately over the remains of the Lama, and the centre of the pyramid;it overshadows the summit of the building, from the body ofwhich it is elevated by its own particular support, forming to thewhole an elegant and graceful finish. The edges of the canopy swellout in a bold and easy sweep. The ridge is decorated with the Chinesedrao-on, whose convolutions fill up all that space ;and round thecanopy are hung a prodigious number of small bells, which, as wellas those, which are distributed about all the projections of the building,having thin square pieces of wood fastened to the clapper, makean inconceivable jingle, with every breeze that blows.