.. VAN”; « . gm“; 4.....- “T: "91.1.. ‘0 .1 {w} .. .. an...” a. .. BERKELEY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORN!A mga CHINESE PILGRIM ON THE ROAD TO LH’ASA. THE LAND OF THE LAMAS NOTES OF A JOURNEY THROUGH CHINA MONGOLIA AND TIBET WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY WILLIAM WOODVILLE ROCKHILL LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1891 A [L rights reserved Copyright, 1891, by THE CENTURY 00‘. ANTHROPOLOGY mu!“ /' Add'l < .v”, . GHFI 2 1):) 753 H o Aumaoroioay LIBRARY PREFACE . N I the following pages I have endeavored to give the results obtained during a journey of several thousand miles through a very imperfectly known portion of the Chinese Empire. My object has been to supply facts concerning the country, of an historical, geographical, and ethnographical nature, and not to attempt to turn out a well-finished bit of literary work. Besides the notes collected on my journey, I have been able to improve and complete my work in many cases by those made during a four years’ residence in Peking, when I was in daily and intimate intercourse with natives from various parts of Tibet and the border-land of Kan-su. Chinese literature, so rich in geo- graphical and anthropological lore, has also been of great service to me, having supplied me with many facts, and has enabled me to offer explanations of customs, names, etc., which, while they may not always turn out to be correct ones, cannot fail to be of value. In transcribing native words, whether Chinese, Tibetan, or Mongol, I have used as far as possible the system of transcrip- tion of Chinese imagined by Sir Thomas Wade, in which the let- ters have pretty much the same value as in French. As regards Tibetan, in which language there are a number of sounds foreign to Chinese, I have thought fit to accent some of the vowels, but all, as in the Wade system, are to be pronounced as in French. Tibetan is not, as most Asiatic languages, pronounced as it is written, so I had either to transcribe the written characters, which would have afforded to those unacquainted with the language only absolutely unpronounceable words, or else to give the 1711819694 PREFACE sounds as heard in the spoken language. I have selected the latter course; those who know Tibetan can easily find the native words thus transcribed, and those who have no knowledge of this language will be spared much trouble, and be able to pronounce the words with the softest of Tibetan accents, that of Lh’asa. I have passed over as rapidly as possible my journey through China, for the country I traversed has been in great part studied before me by other travelers who have told better than I could possibly do, of its beauty or dreariness, of its resources, of the customs and legendary lore of the people. The route map is a reduction from my survey on a quarter- inch scale, made with prismatic compass, hypsometer and ane- roid; and while I claim no very great degree of exactitude for it, I used every care in its preparation, and I believe it will prove of some value in adding to our knowledge of the topography of the country I traversed and in correcting a few errors of the only two travelers who have, previous to my journey, been over parts of it, General Prjevalsky and Pundit Kishen Singh. WASHINGTON, January 22, 1891. II. III. IV. VI. VII. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. CONTENTS PAGE PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU FU .............. 1 LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR ............ 34 KOKO-NOR AND TS’AIDAM ............................... 118 SOURCES OF THE YELLOW RIVER. NORTHEASTERN TIBET. THE NAM-TS’O TRIBE ................................. 168 PASSAGE OF THE DRE CH’U (THE RIVER OF GOLDEN SANDS) —JYEKUNDO, DERGE, THE HORBA STATES, GIRONG. . .. 196 TA-CHIEN-LU (DARCHEDO) —ITS COMMERCE. NOTES ON THE 'GOVERNMENT, COMMERCE, SYSTEM OF TAXATION, POPU- LATION, FOREIGN RELATIONS, ETC., OF TIBET .......... 272 TA-CHIEN-LU, YA-CHOU, CH’UNG-CH’ING, I-CH’ANG, SHANG- HAI ................................................. 298 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES AND TABLES FOREIGN TRIBES OF KAN-SU . .......................... 323 ORIGIN OF THE PRAYER, “OM MANI PADME HUM ” ...... 326 EARLY ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE KOKO-NOR AND EASTERN TIBET .............................................. 335 DIVINATION BY SHOULDER-BLADES. SCAPULAMANCY OR OMOPLATOSCOPY ...................................... 341 POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 0F EASTERN TIBET .............. 344 ORIGIN OF THE TIBETAN PEOPLE, AS TOLD IN THE “MANI KAMBUM,” CHAPTER XXXIV ............................ 355 NOTES ON THE LANGUAGE 0F EASTERN TIBET. .......... 361 ITINERARY, AND BAROMETRIC OBSERVATIONS ............ 371 ILLUSTRATIONS CHINESE PILGRIM ON THE ROAD TO LH’ASA ............ FrontiSpiece SILVER SCALES AND CASE, SHOE OF SYCEE .......... .. . . . . . .Page 3 THE COURTYARD OF AN INN .................................. 6 CAVE—DWELLINGS IN LOESS COUNTRY (FEN HO VALLEY) ....... 13 WOOLEN SOCKS, SANDALS, ETC., WORN IN KAN-8U ............. 49 KUMBUM (T’A-ERH-SSI'I) ....................................... 57 HAT WORN BY KOKO-NOR TIBETANS AND MONGOLS ............ 59 SILVER CHARM-BOX (MADE AT LH’ASA) ........................ 60 GI’IKOR AND BLACK LAMAS AT THE KUMBUM FAIR ............. 64 THE BUTTER BAS-RELIEFS AT KUMBUM ...................... 70 INTERIOR OF A TIBETAN TENT .............................. 76 MATCHLOCK AND ACCOUTREMENT ............................. 78 THE INCARNATE GODS OF TIBET (FROM A TIBETAN PAINTING) .. 84 YELLOW HAT WORN BY LAMAS .............................. 85 PAGES FROM TIBETAN PSALM-BOOK ........................... 89 LIBATION-BOWL .............................................. 90 HAND-DRUM (Damaru) ........................................ 101 IMAGE 0F GODDESS DROLMA (MADE AT CH’AMDO) .............. 103 HOLY-WATER VASE .......................................... 106 SILVER COINS OF CHINESE TURKESTAN ........................ 111 A GUILT-OFFERING AT TANKAR ............................... 114 TIBETAN CAMP NEAR THE BAGA—NOR .......................... 119 BOOT AND GARTER ......................................... 122 CAMPING IN THE KOKO-NOR .................................. 124 CHARM-Box MADE OE WOOD .................................. 129 TS’E-PA-ME (AMITABHA), MADE AT DOLON-NOR ................. 131 VILLAGE OF BARON TS’AIDAM ................................... 138 MONGOL STEEL AND TINDER BOX ............................. 143 PRAYER-WHEELS TURNED BY WIND ........................... 147 COPPER AND SILVER PRAYER-WHEELS ......................... 153 INTERIOR OF A MONGOL TENT ................................ 160 SILVER CHATELAINE, KNIFE, SEAL, ETC. ....................... 166 Vii viii ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE JAMBYANG (MANJUSHRI), MADE AT LH’ASA ........... . ......... 168 SHOOTING A BEAR NEAR KARMA-T’ANG ....................... 171 EYE-SHADE AND CASE ........................................ 175 NOR-BU JYABO, MADE AT LH’ASA .............................. 179 ROSARY AND HORN MADE OF HUMAN BONES. . ................ 183 TEA-POTS AND OTHER HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS .................. 193 CROSSING THE DRE CH’U ..................................... 199 SILVER RING (JYEKUNDO WORK) .............................. 204 MONEY BAGS, TIBETAN COINS ................................. 207 TIBETAN BOOTS AND GARTERS ................................ 210 THE DREN-KOU VALLEY ...................................... 225 BRONZE BELL (DERGE WORK) ................................ 228 STEEL AND TINDER CASE (DERGE WORK) ..................... 231 EASTERN TIBETAN WITH LIT’ANG HEAD-DRESS ................. 243 SILVER INK-BOTTLE, PENS AND PEN-CASE .................... 246 EVENING DEVOTIONS IN A TIBETAN VILLAGE .................. 249 MONGOL AND CHINESE MODE OF DUMB BARGAINING ............ 251 TIBETAN SWORD (DERGE WORK). . .l ........................... 257 SILVER SHIRT-CLASP ......................................... 271 EASTERN TIBETAN (CHRISTIAN) ...... ‘ ......................... 273 WOMEN’S SILVER JEWELRY ...... 276 WOMEN’S AND MEN’S GOLD JEWELRY (LH’ASA WORK) .......... 283 TAMDRIN (GILT BRONZE, LH’ASA WORK) ..................... 293 TEA PORTERS ON THE ROAD TO TA-CHIEN-LU ................. 300 SSU-CHUAN STRAW SANDALS .................................. 304 RAFT ON THE YA HO .......... . ............................. 312 MENDIOANT TAOIST MONK ........ ....................... 317 THE AUTHOR’S CARD ........................ .. .............. 320 DIVINATORY MARKS ON SHEEP’S SCAPULA ................ - ..... 343 MAPS. ROUTE MAP FROM HSI-NING TO TA-CHIEN-LU Facing page 1 GENERAL MAP OF CHINESE EMPIRE. . . . . “ “ 321 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS gfiwk g_v I '\_a I.» 1 ‘ W FE???“ .. an u .FOLLOKVfi'D BYSUNG-PNN TRA DERS ' i 1201174 2'00) 4 Wm. mama“ \5\J\\SP.\ ROUTE MAP F - T “635% WWW) “2900) , [32- t‘sb | nor clz’u clzz'any rz [a [ yomba 30—— ZZZ”? Z‘any N“ ca‘awxg), >1 Jyékunh ‘ JYEK EXPLANKHON EASTERN TIBET. SCALE OFSTATUTE M|LES ® , r _.—. PM ST .— 9;, = ’Zake =Vlake = 771.78?" = river = mountain = mountain pass == Zamasery = Valley. ARY 0F WTJDAN" KATA t Hag-hug) = plain ‘ é ) OF .. EXPLORATlONS . '1? IN THE ,] KOKO-NOR,TS’AIDAM,_“ ' AND " I J. WELLS N.Y. NOTEJ'zyures zfilvareni/zeses give izezylu‘s 2'22 fleet abore Sea-level. SE. = SnowPea/E. ‘ .....M' Rock/52713 Zfouta 97 94§_Long 'Ltude E ast .__. 9|9 from‘ Gr eenwlch {LO 0 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS I PEKLNG, T’AI-YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU FU ‘3‘ IBET has been my life hobby. I began while at col— ' lege to study the few works written by Europeans on this subject, and was later on led to learn Chinese as a means of gaining further information about the country and its inhabitants. In 1884 I was attached to the United States Legation at Peking, and it seemed then as if I might be able to carry out cherished schemes of exploration in Tibet if I could but learn the spoken language, a know- ledge which, from the first, I held to be an absolute requi- site of success. No foreigner could help me, for none spoke the language, and none of the natives Whom I at first met would consent to teach me, being suspicious of the use I might make of my knowledge. I finally gained the friendship of an intelligent lama from Lh’asa, and with him for the next four years I studied Tibetan, giving also some time to the study of Chinese. European travelers who had attempted to enter Tibet had usually done so from either India or western China. The frontiers along both these countries are thickly in- habited, or rather the only practicable roads through these border-lands pass by large towns and villages, and so those 1 2 THE LAND or THE LAMAS travelers had found themselves confronted on the very threshold with the one serious obstacle to ingress to the country, a suspicious people, who see in every stranger desirous of Visiting their country a dangerous interloper, whose sole purpose is to steal the treasures with which they think their land is teeming, and a possible forerunner of invading armies. To the north, Tibet is composed of high plateaux inter- sected by numerous chains of mountains running from east to west, a bleak, arid country, either desert or inhabited by a scattered population of nomads. To the south of these pastoral tribes, and then only in the larger valleys, live a sedentary people who cultivate the soil. Hence it appears that a traveler, coming from the north, can advance much farther into the country without hav- ing to fear serious opposition by the people than from any other side. These considerations and the further fact that the only serious attempt to enter Tibet from the north, that of Fathers Huc and Gabet in 1845, had proved successful, made me choose this route as the one I would follow. In the winter of 1888, having resigned my post of Sec- retary of Legation, I made preparations for my journey. The route selected was the highway, which, passing by Hsi-an Fu and Lan—chou Fu, leads to Hsi-ning Fu near the Koko-nor, and which from that point is known as the northern route to Lh’asa. My outfit was simple and inex- pensive, for, dressing and living like a Chinaman, I was incumbered neither with clothes nor foreign stores, bed— ding, tubs, medicines, nor any of the other endless im- pedimenta which so many travelers consider absolute necessities. The most rapid and on the whole the most convenient PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HsI-AN, LAN-CHOU FU 3 way to travel in northern China is by cart; each will carry about 300 pounds of goods, and still leave room enough for a passenger and driver, and the tighter one is packed in one of these primitive conveyances the more comfortably will one ride, for, as these carts are innocent of springs or seats, the jogging when they are empty is SILVER SCALES AND CASIO, AND SHOE 0]“ SYCEE. dreadful. I made a cont “act with a cart firm to supply me with two carts, with two mules to each, to take me to Lan-chou Fu, the capital of the province of Kan-su, in thirty-four days. For every day over this they were to pay me Tls. 2,‘ I giving them the same amount for every day gained on the time agreed upon. This arrangement 1 A tuel or ounce of silver is worth Reference,” p. 675. In Mongol the about $1.25. In Chinese it is called word Hang becomes law, a word used licmg. The word tacl is of Dutch or by Russians instead of Mel. Malay origin. See Yule, “ Glossary of 4 THE LAND or, THE LAMAs worked admirably, and I reached my destination two days ahead of time. Early on the morning of December 17th, having donned the comfortable Chinese dress, and taken leave of the German Minister, whose guest I had been while in Peking, I left for a five weeks’ jog through north- ern China, accompanied by one servant, a man called Liu Chung-shan, who had traveled with Lieutenant Younghusband through Chinese Turkestan to India a year or two previously. It was late at night when we reached Tou-tien, a large, straggling Village, composed of inns and eating-houses, where we stopped only for a few hours to feed the mules and rest, taking advantage of the bright moonlight to push on. I found it somewhat difficult at first to accus- tom myself to this mode of starting in the middle of the night, or rather as soon as the moon rose, but as it is a custom of the country, it is best to comply with it, other— wise one arrives too late at the inns to get either rooms or food. Every one we passed in the night the drivers thought was a brigand, and, to judge from the number of watch~ houses and patrolmen along the road, there seemed to be some reason for their fears. Even within the immediate vicinity of Peking, and notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of the high officials, highway robbery and brig- andage break out afresh every Winter. Poverty usually prompts the peasant to adopt this means of making both ends meet. The road as far as Pao-ting Fu, the capital of the prov- ince of Chih-li, lay over the flat but wonderfully fertile plain which stretches across all the eastern and northern parts of the province, but which at this season of the year did not present a single feature of interest. Some PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU Fr. 5 twenty miles before reaching Pao-ting we passed through the town of An-su (“Peace and Tranquillity ”), an appro- priate name for a place which owes its local celebrity to the numerous “sing-song girlies” who go from one inn to the other singing songs which they accompany on the .s-Mt-Iersien (three-stringed banjo). An-su Hsien has not, how- ever, a monopoly of this mode of entertaining the weary traveler, for all along my route through this province I found these “ wild flowers,” as the Chinese euphemistically call them, ugly, dirty, powdered, and rouged, and many of them not more than ten or twelve years old. Pao-ting Fu,‘ though not large, is a densely populated city, and a very important business center, receiving great quantities of foreign goods from Tientsin, with which city it has good river communication. The streets are narrow and dirty, the shops small but well-stocked with every variety of merchandise. A number of foreign mission— aries, both Catholic and Protestant, live here in extremely comfortable quarters, and do not appear to be overbur— dened with work. Leaving Pao-ting for T’ai—yuan Fu, the capital of the province of Shan-hsi, the road at first lay over a level, densely populated, and well—cultivated country, now bare in the extreme. Even the dead grass had been carefully raked up to supply fuel for the k’ng, for this, with sorghum stalks, roots, and dry twigs which they knock off the trees, is all the people use to heat their homes and cook their food, though coal is both cheap and plentiful in the hills near-by. At Ching-feng-tien, a small village, we stopped for the night in a wonderfully clean inn. Throughout northern China the inns are all alike. They are built around the 1 Itis 110 miles S. S.W. of Peking, or third of a statute mile. Ihave followed 335 Ii. The Ii is usually estimated as a this estimate throughout this work. 6 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS four sides of a large central yard. The buildings opening on the street are the kitchen, restaurant and innkeeper’s rooms; around the other sides of the court are numerous little COURTYARD OF AN INN. TIIE mm rooms for guests, those facing the portc-cochére, which passes through or beside the kitchen, being usually the best fitted up. On one side of the yard are long, open sheds for mules and horses. Each room (and this applies PEKING, T’AI—YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 7 not only to inns but to all houses) is supplied with a k’ang or stove-bed, which in some respects is even an improvement on the bed wardrobes of our country, for not only is this k’cmg a bed, but it is a hotbed. With a k’cmg, a room is furnished; without it, it is uninhabitable. One end of every room is raised about two feet from the ground and covered with a thick coating of mud or tiles. In the interior is an empty space, at one end of which is built a chimney on the outer wall of the house; at the other is a hole through which fuel is put into this structure. When the fire is lit, this hole is closed and the fuel smol- ders until entirely consumed, imparting such a high de- gree of temperature to the whole k’cmg that hardly any bed covering is necessary even in the coldest night of winter. But this is precisely what makes a heated k’omg so uncomfortable to one not used to it; roasting on the side next the k’meg and freezing on the side away from it, there is no position in which one can get comfortable all over. In Kan-su there is another variety of k’cmy but the principle is the same. The noise in a Chinese inn is deafening, and it never ceases day or night. Each guest yells from his door to the Into-chi, or servants, for everything he wants, the huO-chi- shout back, the cook bawls out the names of the dishes as they are ready, the cart-drivers wrangle with the chang-kwci-ti (innkeeper), and the mules bray, and the pigs, of which there are always a half-dozen about, grunt and squeal, till one in sheer desperation joins in the general hubbub, and tries to shout it down. At Fu—ch’eng—i, a small market town, with a likin station, which I reached on the second day out from Pao-ting, the plain of Chih-li comes to an end in this direction, and the loess country commences. A few miles 8 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS to the west, at Ch’eng-ting Chou,’ it imparted its yellow color to the whole country, and gradually increased in thickness as we approached the range of mountains which divides Chih-li from Shan-hsi, till at Huo-lu, Hsien, where we stopped for breakfast, the road was in a cut about thirty feet deep. Passing Huo-lu, the road entered a rough broken country of limestone formation, and crossed several ranges of low hills. On the morn- ing of the 23d of December, I-reached the Great wall, and passed through the “northern heavenly gate” (Pei- t’icn men),altitude 2000 feet. This branch of the Great wall, which forms the boundary line between the provinces of Chih-li and Shan-hsi for several hundred miles, differs from that usually visited by tourists at Nan-k’ou, a little to the north of Peking, in that it is everywhere faced with stone, instead of brick, as at the latter place. While on the subject of the Great wall, I must note that there are two Great walls: one called the frontier wall (Men ch’cng), extending from the gulf of Chih-li to Ch’ia-yii kuan, at the western extremity of Kan-su; the other, known as “ the long wall” (Ch’ang-ch’ew) or “the myriad li wall” (sz-l/i (:h’cwg), branches oif from the first near its eastern end, and, describing an arc of a circle around the northwestern extremity of the province of Chih-li, follows the crest of the range dividing that province from Shan-hsi, for several hundred miles. These two walls were built at different times from the third century B. c. to the fourteenth century A. D., and to oppose various enemies, Turks, Mongols, or Manchus. In size, shape, and material they differ considerably. The 1A little to the west of this city This river frequently figures on our flows the Hu-to ho which hasits source maps as P’u—t’ao ho “Grape river,” but in the VVu-t’ai district in Shan-hsi. erroneously. PEKING, T’AI—YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU FIT 9 former is faced with brick until it reaches the eastern border of Shan-hsi, from which point to its western extremity it is of dirt; the latter is faced with brick or stone throughout its whole length, and is altogether a much more imposing structure. This section of the country through which I was travel- ing is rich in mineral wealth, in coal and iron especially; as to agriculture it is largely dependent upon the rain— fall, for irrigation is impossible as there is very little running water 1 and the peculiar cellular formation of the loess which sucks up moisture from the lower beds alone makes cultivation a possibility. Drought is inevitably followed by famine throughout this Shan-hsi loess region. In many places, to add to the size of their fields the peas- ants terrace the hillsides, and carefully cultivate every level bit of ground, on which they raise wheat, beans, and cabbages. Their houses are mostly of limestone, neatly cut in blocks, giving them a much more substantial ap- pearance than is usual in Chinese buildings. Along the banks of the few streams were numbers of small flour-mills in which the nether stone revolved while the upper one was held in place by chains fastened to the side of the building. The next town of any importance I passed through was Ping—ting Chou, a small place, but if p’ai—lou or “memo— rial arches” are only erected to commemorate Virtuous acts, as I believe they are intended to be, it must be the most virtuous place in the empire. Every twenty or thirty feet throughout the whole length of the main street was a p’ai-lou, but as I saw no new ones, the people have, per- haps, abandoned virtue and walk now in the way of sin. 1Between Yii-shui and Hsi—ch’iao ning water. That obtained from wells p’u, a distance of 140 lz', I saw no run— was very brackish, and not abundant. 10 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS The town is on the edge of a plateau. The road to the base of this is both steep and rough; it is called the “ Declivity of the southern heavenly gate ” (Nam-Men men p’o- 1%), and its lower extremity is marked by a very fine stone arch. The watershed between the basins of the Hu-to ho and the Fen ho,1 the principal river of Shan-hsi, was reached on the T’u-hsii ling (altitude 4800 feet), and that night we stopped at the small village of Huang men, “the yellow gate,” a most appropriate name, for it is the gate to the yellow loess country. We left there at 2 A. M., the moon shining brightly. Before us lay a broad expanse of bare, yellow hills made bright in the moonbeams; not a house, tree, or shrub to be seen anywhere, but precipitous rifts and chasms, many of them four or five hundred feet deep, intersecting the hills in every direction and casting great shadows across the landscape. Thus viewed at night, the scene was weird in the extreme. Some twenty-five miles farther on, at Shih—lieh (or tieh), We had to stop to change the axles of the carts, as west of this point all vehicles are of a broader gauge than in Chili-1i. On the morning of the 26th I arrived at T’ai-yuan Fu, which, like all other large cities in northern China, is sur- rounded for miles with tombs and temples in every stage of dilapidation. The city, which is situated on the left bank of the Fen ho, is not large, not more than eight li by five, and the suburbs are insignificant, with none of the life and bustle usually met around large Chinese cities. In fact T’ai-yuan has not the commercial importance one would expect, although the size and neatness of its houses bear testimony to the well-known thriftiness of its people. 1Richthofen has transcribed the cent maps, both German and English, name of thisriver Fawn. This spelling but Fuen is an impossible sound in has been adopted on most of the re- Chinese. PEKING, T’AI—YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU FU 11 As bankers the Shan-hsiites are unexcelled, and as mer- chants and traders they show both energy and enterprise combined with much honesty. In all the neighboring provinces, in Mongolia, Tibet, and Ssu-ch’uan, I found them, and everywhere their thrift and integrity were acknowledged by all. Shan-hsi produces hardly anything for exportation save iron and salt, while it imports cotton stuffs, tea, tobacco, opium, wheat, and rice.1 In the northern part of the province the people live on white potatoes and oats; far- ther south the food does not differ much from that of the population of Chih-li—wheat bread, vermicelli, cabbages, bean-curd, and now and then a little pork or mutton. The people are smaller than in Chih-li and readily dis— tinguished by the most unobservant from the inhabitants of that province; they are a kind, obliging folk, with whom one may apprehend no trouble, and without any of the blustering and quarrelsomeness of their neighbors to the east. On the 27th of December I was up by one in the morning, and soon ready for an early start, when, to my dismay, I found that my last maximum and minimum thermom- eter, which I had hung up in my doorway, had been stolen. I stormed, and threatened the innkeeper and all his men for over an hour, but I was unable to get it back. The problem of the best mode of safely carrying thermometers over the rough roads had much preoccupied me, but the question was rapidly settling itself; breakage and thieves were 1011 the road between Pao-ting and very thin black earthenware, made T’ai—yuan I passed endless numbers at Ping-ting Chou. Baron von Richt- ' of mules and donkeys carrying east- hofen, “Report on the Provinces of ward cast-iron ware, wheel-tires, pig- Honan and Shansi,” p. 24, estimates iron, shovels, coal, coke, and lime; the yearly production of iron in this also hundreds of coolies carrying a province at about 160,000 tons. 12 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS relieving me of any further anxiety; I had now but three thermometers left. The road from T’ai-yuan led almost due south for nine days’ journey down the valley of the Fen ho to near its mouth, and then to the great bend of the Yellow River in front of T’ung-kuan.1 Our road led through a number of large towns and villages; the country was well cultivated, the fields irrigated with the water of the Fen ho. A few miles south of Ping-yao Hsien2 (212 li from T’ai-yuan) we passed under a beautiful memorial arch (p’ai—lou) made of limestone, most delicately chiseled and polished; it is one of the finest I have seen in China. Besides these arches, one passes continually in this province “road tablets” (tao-pci) erected to commemorate a mother’s or father’s eightieth birthday, oflicial preferment, a kind- ness received, or what not. They are slabs of stone, eight or ten feet long and about three broad, set in small brick structures with ornamental tile roofing. In no other province of China have I seen such numbers of “road tablets.” At one place, not far from Wen-hsi Hsien, I counted twenty in a row. At Liang—t’u, about eighty miles south of T’ai-yuan, I noticed a fine, stone bridge of eight arches spanning the Fen ho. It is the only bridge over this river between T’ai- yuan and its mouth, but is no longer serviceable, its western extremity having been carried away by a freshet. Here we had to stop for some little time to let a convoy of criminals 1 A high road leads from T’ai-yuan ‘3 Richthofen, op. cit, p. 20, says of northtoTai—Chou,Ta-t’ung,and K’uei- this town that it is foremost among hua Ch’eng, in Mongolia. Another, commercial centers in the plain of but not suitable for cart travel, goes T’ai—yuan, that it commands the road west to Fen-Chou, Yung-ning, and to Ta-t’ung and Mongolia, and also an thence across the Yellow River into important bridle-path to Huai ching Shen-hsi. It is but little traveled. Fu in Ho-nan. I found it a lively, The altitude of T’ai-yuan is approxi— dirty place, with wonderfully narrow mately 3240 feet. streets. and well-stocked shops. PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 13 pass us. First came four mounted soldiers with pistols in their hands, followed by five open carts. On each was a heavy wooden cage about three feet square. Inside crouched '(.\Z-I'1’l\’.\ 0H Nil-Isl) .HLLKHOO SSHO'I NI SDNI’I'IEIAiG-CI V0 a prisoner in red rags (a sign that he was condemned to death), with a heavy block of wood fastened to one foot, sticking out of the cage, and with iron chains around his neck and body. The long, tangled hair of these culprits fell 14 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS around their dirty unshaven faces ; they looked the picture of profoundest human degradation. Two of them had been brought in these cages all the way from Ili, in Turkestan, a journey of over four months, for no other purpose than to chop off their heads in their native province. Although cave-dwellings dug in the loess were seen at intervals from near Huo-lu Hsien, they became nu- merous only in the valley of the Fen ho. Among the poorer people these cave-dwellings are simply holes dug in the vertical side of a loess cliff, a sufficient thickness of it being left in front to constitute a wall for the dwelling; in this a door and a window are out. In the vicinity of Tai Chou in northern Shan-hsi I have seen some two stories high, but such are not usual. The better class of cave or cliff dwelling consists of a brick- lined, arched excavation about twenty-five feet long and twelve broad. The front is also of brick, and the floor is usually paved with tiles. Many of the houses in central Shan-hsi, which are not cave-dwellings, have been, never- theless, built in the same style, consisting of several vaulted chambers covered by a flat roof on which is a foot or more of earth. At Ling-shih Hsien, and for some miles to the south of it, the loess attains its greatest thickness, forming a range of hills which cuts the valley at right angles. The river flows through a gorge, and along its side is a bridle-path, but the highroad crosses over the hills by a pass famous in Chinese history, the Han-hou ling (alt. 4160 feet).1 The road was very steep and narrow, and in the dark- ness of night we groped our way along the side of a deep gorge. Every hundred feet or so a recess had been cut in the cliff where a cart could stop while one going in an 1 This pass is also called Kan-pi ling, Han-hsin ling. and Ling— shih ling. PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 15 opposite direction passed it; and, so as to tell each other of their position on the road, the carters and mule-drivers (and there was no end to them on either side of the moun- tain)1 kept shouting all the time the weird cry peculiar to their occupation. We reached the top at dawn. A heavy iron-covered gate here closes the road, and a few inns are clustered around it where one can get a cup of tea, and some hot dumplings stuffed with hashed mutton and cabbage, one of the few really good dishes met with in northern China. At Huo Chou we were once more in the valley bot- tom, and trundled on to Chao-ch’eng Hsien where we stopped for the night. The Chiang ho, an affluent of the Fen, flows by this place, and over it is a bridge which attracted my attention by its peculiar ornamenta— tion. While built, like most stone bridges in northern China, with parapets on either side made of sandstone slabs about five feet long and three high set between pil- lars, these slabs, unlike any I had seen elsewhere, were covered with comic has-reliefs in which the chief actors were monkeys. The tops of the pillars, which are usually sculptured to represent lions, were in this case cut into cubes, pyramids, cones, drums, heaps of fruit, monkeys, etc., each pillar having a difierent capital. Furthermore, at the north end of the bridge was a bronze or iron cow, about five feet long, resembling the famous bronze cow near the Summer Palace at Peking, although of inferior workmanship. 1Between T’ai-yuan and theYellow stuffs, flour, etc. Richthofen esti- River we continually passed long mated the quantity of flour carried lines of carts, mule or donkey, ear— north over the Han-hon ling at about rying merchandise north. The prin- 200 tons daily, and tobacco, he says, cipal goods were cotton, tobacco, occupied nearly as conspicuous a brick-tea (for Mongolia), cotton place in this traflic. 16 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS Along this part of our route, game was wonderfully plentiful; hares, pheasants, and ducks could be bought for a few cents, and so tame and numerous were the pheas— ants we saw pecking corn in the fields beside the road that when we threw stones at them they only moved off a few feet and recommenced eating. Since leaving Peking, we had had the fine weather which invariably prevails in Chih-li during the winter months, but from T’ai— yuan it became overcast, and we had several severe snow- storms before reaching the Yellow River. This cloudy weather with occasional falls of snow continued during the rest Of our journey through China, but we had very little windy weather, to my astonishment, for Violent north- westerly winds blow at and around Peking nearly every day during this season of the year. I next passed through P’ing-yang Fu, one of the most important prefectural cities in the southern portion of the province, but now in a ruined condition, which argues badly for its present prosperity.1 Some thirty miles to the south of this city we left the river Fen, which here bends westward, and continued for three days (147 miles) in a southwesterly direction, passing numerous towns and villages, none of which deserve even a passing men- tion, and finally came to the bank of the Yellow River. The country during this part of the journey was an un- interesting plain; the only trees were persimmons2 and 1 “The story is told, that several years ago, a band of rebels, coming from Honan, entered the city quite unexpectedly, but left again after a slight pillage. When they were at some distance, the mandarins, in order to give some substance to their projected report to the Emperor of having saved the city by martial de- fense. ordered some shots to be fired after them from the wall. The rebels, considering this an ungrateful treat— ment, turned back, and destroyed the city, killing a great many people.” —Richthofen, op. cit., p. 22. 2 Chester Holcombe, “ Journal North China Branch, R. A. 8.,” New Series X, 64, speaking of this part of Shan- hsi, says, “large orchards of persim- mon trees, grafted, are found, and not PEKING, T’AI—YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 17 jujubes. The mountains bordering the plains to the east, called Feng—tiao shan, were in this part more elevated and with barer and more serrated peaks than farther north, reaching their greatest height a little to the north- east of P’u Chou,l where they may have an altitude of about 3000 feet above the plain. On the morning of January 5th, I came to the Yellow River, where, meeting the Hua shan range, it is deflected from its southerly course, makes a sharp bend eastward, and enters a mountainous country. The river was between 500 and 600 yards wide, a sluggish, muddy stream, then covered with floating ice about a foot thick. On the Shan- hsi side were only a few hovels in which lived the ferry- men, and near-by, on the top of a loess cliff, the ruins of an old fort; while on the right bank, which rose rap- idly by a series of loess-covered hills to the dark, rocky heights of the Hua shan range, was the town of T’ung- kuan, one of the most important customs stations in the empire. . The Yellow River here is shallow, in the main channel only is it over four or five feet deep ,2 and, from the prox- imity of the houses on the Shan-hsi side to its bank, I con- clude that it never rises much above the level at which I infrequently the traveler meets with apparatus by which persimmon whis— key is distilled. . . . The product tastes not unlike a poor quality of Scotch whiskey.” 1 Strategically speaking P’u Chou is of some importance, for it com- mands the roads leading to the two principal ferries across the Yellow River: the one, west of the city, called P’u Ch’ing kuan (or Tai-chin kuan acc. to Richthofen); the other, south of the city 80 If, T’ung-kuan. One hundred and twenty li south-south- west of the city is Kiai Chou, with 2 the largest salt works in China. Rich- thofen has estimated that there is produced annually about 150,000 tons of salt from the marshes around it. 2 Holcombe, op. cit., p. 65, says: “ It was nowhere more than six feet deep, and on returning, three of the boat- men sprang into the water in mid- stream and waded ashore, carrying a line from the ferry-boat to prevent us from rapidly drifting down with the current. The water was just up to their hips.” He crossed it in October. 18 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS saw it.1 The common people around T’ung—kuan speak of this place as the “head of the Yellow River,” for within a short distance from here its three principal affluents, the Wei, the L0, and the Fen, empty into it. I experienced not a little delay, and a very considerable loss of temper, before I could even get the ferrymen to consent to take us over to T’ung-kuan. After declaring for over two hours that there was too much ice on the river to attempt a passage, they finally accepted the terms I offered them, and agreed to try it, but four hours more were lost before we could get together the crew of seven or eight men. Three or four came, and after a while said that they must go and fetch the others who were smoking opium in their den; when the latter finally turned up, it was without the first who had staid to have their turn at the pipe, so that at last even the stolid peasants who were waiting like us to be ferried across lost patience, and seized the heavy sweeps, and with but half a crew we pushed off, the boat so loaded down with passengers and my carts and mules that the ice came up to the gunwale. While half a dozen men armed with poles and boat—hooks kept the blocks of ice from crushing down on us, the others worked the sweeps, with the usual amount of shouting and yelling indulged in by Chinese on such occasions, and in due time we reached the farther bank. T’ung—kuan, though not a large place, is, and has been from olden times, a point of much strategic importance, as the trunk-roads between Eastern China and the West and Northwest meet here. Hence, also, its importance as 1 T’ung-kuan is about 450 miles off rapidly in the lower part of the from the mouth of the Yellow River, river, hence the terrible inundations and the river there is not over 1300 which at short intervals sweep over feet above sea-level. There is hardly Ho-nan and An—hui. sufficient slope for the waters to flow PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HSI—AN, LAN-CHOU EU 19 a customs station and likin barrier, for nearly all the traffic between Shan—hsi, Chih-li, Ho-nan, Kan-su, Shen- hsi and Ssu—ch’uan passes here, and the main route to Tibet, Burmah, India, and Turkestan lies through it. The town is surrounded by high walls with two truly monumental gates, and other walls run for some distance along the crest of the hills to the east of it. At the inn where I stopped to breakfast I met the Nepalese tribute mission going Nepalwards. It had left Peking about a month before me, but had come by the Ho-nan route. The mission was in no hurry to get home as the chiefs and even the servants were in receipt of a daily allowance from the Chinese government as long as they were in the empire, and were transported, fed, and lodged free of all expense, nor did they have to pay any duties or ootroi dues on their goods, either when going to Peking or when returning home. There were about forty persons in the mission, a number of them Chinese from the Tibetan border—land or from Lh’asa, these latter acting as interpreters for the Goorkhas, with Whom they conversed in Tibetan. All tribute missions to the Court of Peking are treated with the same liberality as was this one, and as the members of such missions can bring to Peking a very large amount of goods to sell free of all charges, and carry back to the frontier of their own country an equally large quantity under the same favorable con- ditions, it is no wonder that the right to present tribute to the emperor is considered a valuable privilege, and is eagerly sought after by tribes and peoples living near the Chinese border. The road between T’ung-kuan and Hsi-an Fu, the capi- tal of the province of Shen-hsi, a distance of 110 miles, is a fine highway—for China—with a ditch on either side, 20 THE LAND or THE LAMAS rows of willow-trees here and there, and substantial stone bridges and culverts over the little streams which cross it. The basin of the Wei ho, in which this part of the province lies, has been for thousands of years one of the granaries of China. It was the color of its loess-covered soil, called “yellow earth” by the Chinese, that sug- gested the use of yellow as the color sacred to imperial majesty. Wheat and sorghum are the principal crops, but we saw also numerous paddy-fields where flocks of flamingoes were wading, and fruit-trees grew everywhere. Hua Hsien, through which we passed the day after leaving T’ung—kuan, once a thriving town, now only a heap of ruins, has a bustling village outside its dilapidated walls. It was here that the late Mohammedan rebellion broke out, and direly has it suffered for its crime, for at present Hua Hsien’s only claim to remembrance is the superior quality of its persimmons. I bought a large quantity of dried ones, and found them quite as good as represented, being, to my mind, far better than our best dried figs, and not unlike them in taste. For several months after a piece of bread and some dried persimmons consti- tuted my daily lunch, and, when among the Mongols and Tibetans, I found them a highly prized gift. Before reaching Wei-nan Hsien,1 we passed over some of the loess hills at the base of the Hua shan range, and from their summits I got for the first time a View of the Wei River, a rather broad but apparently shallow stream, with a very sluggish current. Near the top of these hills was a little archway in the upper part of which was a small shrine dedicated to “the Lord of primordial Heaven” (Yuan-Men Shana-ti.) My knowledge of Chinese mythol— ogy is too crude tolallow me to identify this deity, but 1 Eighteen miles west of Hua Hsien. PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 21 his title is an uncommon one; I never heard it before or since. Wei-nan Hsien was the largest and busiest place I had seen in Shen-hsi. A small stream flows to the west of it, and is spanned by a fine stone bridge with a very pom- pous name. The business part of the city is the suburbs. This is generally the case with Chinese towns in the north; merchants by transacting their business outside of the city proper escape the payment of octroi dues, and travelers can reach or leave the inns at any hour of the night, while if they lodged in the town they would have to await the opening of the gates at dawn. We next passed through Lin-t’ung Hsien, famous in Chinese history as the resting-place of, She'Huang-ti, the great emperor of the Chin dynasty, who founded the empire, built the Great wall, burnt the Confucian books and the literati. His capital was at Hsi-an Fu (called in those days Ch’ang-an), and his tomb is in a hill, less than a mile to the southeast of Lin-t’ung, known as the Li shan. Ssu Ma—ch’ien, the Herodotus of China, says that “ An army of more than 70,000 laborers, gathered from all parts of the empire, was employed in excavating the bowels of the earth at this spot, down to ‘threefold depth’; and in the heart of the cavern thus formed palatial edifices were constructed, with positions duly allotted to each rank of the official hierarchy, and these buildings were filled With marvelous inventions, and rare treasures of every kind. Artificers were set to work to construct arbalists, ready strung with arrows, so set that they would be shot off and would transfix anyone who should penetrate within their reach. Rivers, lakes, and seas were imitated by means of quicksilver, caused to flow by mechanism in constant circulation. Above, the configura— 22 THE LAND ‘OF THE LAMAS tion of the heavens, and below, the outline of the countries of the earth were depicted. Lights were made with the fat of the ‘man-fish’ with the design of keeping them continually burning. Urh She (the young emperor) said: It behooves not that those of my father’s female consorts who have borne no children should go forth into the world; and he required of them, hereupon, that they should follow the dead emperor to the tomb. The num- ber of those who consequently went to death was very great. When the remains had been placed beneath ground, it chanced that some one said: The artificers who have made the enginery know all that has been done, and the secret of the treasure will be noised abroad. When the great ceremony was over, the central gate of the avenue of approach having already been closed, the lower gate was shut, and the artificers came out no more. Trees and hedges were planted over the spot to give it the appearance of an ordinary mountain.”1 All trace of this splendor has forever disappeared, and Lin- t’ung is only noted to-day for its hot springs, over which some former emperors have built handsome bathing pavil- ions open to the people. The water is sulphurous, and in the warmest springs has a temperature of 1060 F. A five hours’ ride from Lin-t’ung brought us to Hsi-an Fu, the capital of the province of Shen-hsi, and the most important city in this part of China. The length, height, and solidity of its walls are exceeded only by those of Peking; and the life and movement within the city, its streets paved with flagstones, the imperial palace, and imposing temples and governmental buildings, complete the resemblance with the capital. The political and com- 1W. F. Mayers, “Journal North China Branch, Royal Asiatic Society,” New Series XII, p. 14. PEKING, T’AI—YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 23 mercial importance of Hsi—an is attributable to its central position. Here converge the roads leading into Kan-su, Ssu—ch’uan, Ho-nan, Hu-peh, and Shan-hsi. The pecu- liarly mountainous nature of the country surrounding the 'Wei basin, the existence of only two practicable roads through the range on the south, the Tsung-ling shan, and two through the mountainous province of Kan-su on the west, all of which converge to this plain, and consequently to Hsi—an, have given the city from of Old a very great importance, both strategical and com- mercial.1 The enterprise and wealth of its merchants and traders, who have availed themselves of all the natural advantages of their city, is well-known in China. Throughout Kan-su and Ssu—ch’uan, in Mongolia, Tur- kestan and Tibet one meets lac—slum merchants and traders. At Ya-chou Fu, the center of the tea trade in western Ssu—ch’uan, most of the tea factories are owned by them, and at Lan-chou Fu, in Kan-su, more than half of the tobacco factories, the principal industry of that city, are in their hands.2 To Kan-su, with which province I was chiefly concerned, Hsi-an sends chinaware, cotton piece goods, silks, tea (Hu—nan brick tea), and some wheat, while it receives from it Lan-chou water-pipe tobacco (slam-yen), bean-oil, opium 1 Chinese itineraries supply the following data: From Hsi—an Fu to Ch’eng-tu (Ssu-ch’uan), 2300 li (766 miles). From Hsi-an Fu to Lan-chou (Kan-su), 1470 It (390 miles). From Hsi-an Fu to Hami (Turkestan), 4480 It (1493 miles). From Hsi-an F11 to Kuldja (Turkestan), 8020 li (2673 miles). From Hsi-an Fu to Yarkand (Turkestan), 9250 h’ (3083 miles). From Hsi-an Fu to Peking, 1632 12‘ (544 miles). 2For administrative purposes, Hs'i- A very handsome breed of smooth- an is divided into two prefectures haired greyhounds is found in a dis- (Hsien), Ch’ang-an and Hsien-ning, trict about fifty miles north of Hsi—an. the first name being that under which They are called Hsi kou or “Western this city was known in the time of its dogs,”and most likely were originally greatest splendor. imported from Turkestan. 24 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS of a superior quality, musk, rhubarb, lambskins, hides, furs, and medicines. At Hsi-an is centered the trade in turquoise beads, articles much valued among the Mongols and Tibetans. They are found in Ho-nan, and used in roughly rounded pieces as taken from the mine, or in small disks, all of them having a hole drilled through them. They are sold by weight, the average price being about five taels a catty, _ and no traveler passing through Hsi-an on his way to the Koko-nor, Mongolia, or Tibet should omit laying in a supply of them,1 for with them he can buy better than with money all the necessaries of life such as butter, milk, cheese, etc., to be procured among the people inhabiting those regions. The Protestants have no missionaries at Hsi-an, but now and then some Bible colporteurs stop here for a few days, though, from what Chinese have told me, their books are neither eagerly bought nor carefully read, and I doubt very much if they do any good in this way, an opinion shared by many missionaries in China.2 The Catholics have a church here, and there are about 30,000 Christians in the province; the bishop does not, however, live here, but at Kun-yuan fang. Having completed a few purchases of chinaware, tur— quoise beads, tea, etc., and changed my carts for the larger ones used in western China, I left Hsi-an on the 1He should take in preference round beads; the flat ones are not so much prized, at least among Tibetans. Mongols prefer the green- ish or ofi-color beads. 2 See, for example, Rev. James Gilmour’s “Among the Mongols,” p. 193: “But it seems very doubtful, if, in many cases, much good is .accomplished by placing the Bible in the hands of a heathen as a first step towards his enlightenment.” Mr. Gilmour advocates, however, giv- ing them tracts, but I believe that these are not more efficacious, espec— ially as many I have seen in the hands of Chinese are purely polemical, attacking the Roman Catholic doc- trine, more even than Buddhism and Taoism. PEKING, T’AI—YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 25 afternoon of the 10th of January, and pushed on as far as Hsien-yang on the left bank of the Wei ho, at the head of navigation on that river. The country was a flat, yellow- ish plain for miles around; away on the left was the dark line of the Tsung—ling mountains, closing the Wei valley to the south, while to the north the loess rose in gentle s10pes towards the highlands of Kan-su. Crossing the Wei ho by a very rickety bridge put up every winter as soon as the river freezes, we entered the town, where the size and number of the shops, the life in the streets, and the crowds in every inn testified to the commercial activity of this locality.1 From Hsien-yang the road steadily ascended through a well-cultivated country over successive ranges of loess hills, the general direction of which is northeast and southwest; at Yung-shou Hsien,2 72 miles from Hsi-an, we had reached an altitude of 4950 feet, and a few miles beyond this little town we crossed the first range of mountains at an elevation of 5125 feet above sea level. On the evening of the 12th we reached Pin‘Chou,3 or Hsin-ping Chou, in the valley of the Ch’ing ho, a large affluent of the Wei, into which river it empties a little to the west of Lin-t’ung. We saw but few villages on the way; the people either living in scattered farm-houses, or in cave-dwellings, passed unobserved. In the Ch’ing ho valley were quantities of fruit-trees, pear and juj ube being especially numerous. The 1 Kreitner, “ Im Fernen Osten,” p. 483, calls it Yen-yang, and Richthofen Han-yang. Its altitude is 2140 feet above sea level. Hsi-an is 1800, or, according to Colonel Mark Bell, 1700 feet. 2Kreitner calls this place Yung- sso shien. Instead of passing by Ch’ien chou I took a short cut by way pears, though large, were of T’ieh Fo ssu, some 15 h' to the west of it, thus lessening the dis- tance to Yung shou some 12 miles. 3 Kreitner calls this second pass Tu- ssai; the only name I heard given it was Liu-p’an shan, “ six zigzag moun— tains,” a very frequently used one in northern China. The altitude of Pin Chou is approximately 3140 feet. 26 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS coarse, and not to be compared with the “white pear” growing around Peking. A few miles beyond Pin Chou we passed through a small village at the foot of a high sandstone cliff, far up in the face of which a number of little temples had been excavated; access is gained to them by ladders hanging down the rock. All around these temples little niches have been cut in the cliff, and in them the people light small lamps so numerous that the Whole surface of the rock has become blackened by the smoke. This hill is called Hua-kuo shan, “the hill of flowers and fruits,” from the beauty and excellence of the flowers and pears which grow on its flank. About five miles farther on we came to the “Big Buddha temple” (Ta F0 83%)} The valley is here bounded on its southwestern side by a bed of sandstone over a hundred feet thick. In the vertical face of the rock a number of cave-temples have been cut; only one, however, is still in repair. The chamber constituting the temple is circular, about fifty feet in diameter and siXty high, in shape im- perfectly spherical, the top ending in a cone. The rock inside the chamber has only been partly removed, the greater portion of it having been sculptured into a colos- sal statue of the Buddha seated cross-legged on a lotus, with raised right hand and opened left, the conventional representation of the Buddha preaching. On either side of this figure, but a little in front of it, are two statues of demiurges. The statue of the Buddha is about forty- five feet high, the others, twenty; all three are thoroughly Chinese in shape and ornamentation, and are covered with a thick coating of paint and gold-foil. The temple is entered by an archway passing under a high, brick ter- 1Kreitner transcribes its name “ Ta-fh-zh ”! PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU FU 27 race built against the rock; a large hole in the upper sur- face, prolonged through the rock into the cave, admits light into the sanctuary. The other temples to the right of this one are much smaller, some of them not over six feet in height and ten broad. Kreitner says that the principal image is the largest statue of the Buddha in China; this is a mistake, for there are a number larger, and even among stone statues this one cannot take the first place.l In 1887, while on a journey through eastern Mon- golia and northern Shan-hsi, I had occasion to visit the famous Yung k’an temples about ten miles northwest of Ta-t’ung Fu on the road to K’uei-hua-ch’eng. The prin- cipal stone statue there is over sixty feet high and incomparably finer than that of the Ta Fo ssii.2 To the left of the temple a number of small chambers have been excavated in the rock, accessible only by steps cut in the stone. These rooms were probably originally used by the priests attached to the temples, but at present they are occupied by some of the villagers. At T’ing k’ou,3 some ten miles beyond this place, we left the valley bottom, and for the next hundred miles (as far as Ping-hang Fu) traveled over an open, level country, with small villages here and there, and solitary farm- houses, each surrounded by a high wall worthy of a fron- 1The picture which Kreitner, op. south of Honan Fu, dating from the cit, p. 505, has of this temple does not give even a rough idea of its shape or of the statues. 2 The Yuug k’an temples date from the Toba dynasty (A. D. 386—532). Probably the Ta Fo ssfi temples were excavated at the same time, as the sovereigns of this dynasty are said to have made a number of such cave- temples. Richthofen, “Report on the Provinces of Honan and Shansi,”p. 5, mentions a cave-temple a few miles Wei dynasty (i. 0., Toba), and dedi- cated to the mother of Buddha. 3 At T’ing-k’ou the Hei shui flows into the Ch’ing ho. The latterriver has its principal source southwest of Ping- liang Fu. It receives the Ma-lien he not far to the east of Ch’ang-wu Hsien, which is forty li west of T’ing k’ou. Kreitner, op. cit, p. 508, calls the Ch’ing ho at T’ing-k’ou the Ma-lien ho, but he is unquestionably wrong. See “Shui-tao ti kang,” VI, 14. 28 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS tier guard-house. The average altitude of this section of country is over 4000 feet. Seventy li west of T’ing k’ou, at the little village of Yao-tien1 (altitude 4600 feet), we entered the province of Kan-su, half of the village belonging to that province, half to that of Shen-hsi. In the center of the village, on the Kan-su side, commence rows of willow-trees, ten feet apart, on either side of the road, and they are continued from here to Liang-chou Fu, in northwestern Kan-su. It is said that Tso Tsung—t’ang, the conqueror of Kashgaria and sometime governor-general of Kan-su, having heard that it was customary in western countries to have shade trees along the highways, had them planted. To him is also due the vigilant patrolling, still kept up by his successors, along this road. In no province of China have I met with so many patrol stations and soldiers as here. The men are well-dressed, armed with percussion rifles, and seem to discharge their duties fairly well. The troops stationed in Kan-su must be very numerous; in every town and village I saw large detachments of them. This province contains numerous troublesome elements, Mohammedans, border tribes, and large numbers of convicts. The country is, moreover, very thinly settled, and highway robbery and brigandage would soon become open rebellion if not kept under strict control. I cannot conceive why Lieutenant Kreitner should speak of such a miserable place as Ping-hang Fu, where I arrived on the 16th of January, as a “ziemlich grosse Staubstadt ” with 60,000 inhabitants; for, at the outside, it may have 10,000, and it is one of the poorest-looking cities I have seen in China, a country of dilapidated towns. The greater part of the land within the city walls has 1 Kreitner, op. cit, p. 508, calls this village Yan~ye. PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 29 been turned into vegetable gardens, and this is the only neat-looking bit of ground in the place. The Taot’ai’s Yamen is half in ruins, and poverty, decay, and neglect are seen at every turn. Ping-liang is, however, an im- portant market-town, and in the eastern suburbs are many well-stocked shops.1 To the west of Ping-liang we entered a narrow valley bordered by low hills of sandstone and shale, the ground covered with brush, with here and there a small farm- house or two, around which pheasants were disputing with the domestic fowls the possession of stray grains of wheat on the threshing floors. We ascended impercep- tibly till we reached Wa-ting kuan,2 a small but important place built on a rocky ledge at the junction of the road to Ku—yuan Chou with the highway. From this point the road rapidly ascended, the latter part of it being very steep, although showing remarkable engineering skill in its construction, till we reached the top of another Lin p’cm sham (altitude 9358 feet),3 in a range trending northeast and southwest; and after a rapid descent over a good road we arrived at Lung-té Hsien, as miserable a town as any I had yet seen. The poverty of the people throughout all this part of Kan-su, is painfully visible. The Villages are composed solely of dingy, mud hovels, not over twelve feet square, 1A very bad road goes from Ping- liang to Han-chung in west Shen-hsi by way of Feng-hsiang Fu, from which place a good road leads to Hsi- an Fu. 2 Kreitner’s Ooting-ye. 3Colonel Bell, “ Proc. Royal Geo. Society,” XII, 66, gives its altitude as 8700 feet, and Kreitner, who calls it Lo pan san, 2606 meters. Nearly all the traflic seen on the road was going eastward and consisted of water-pipe tobacco. We passed daily about one hundred camel loads (266 pounds to a camel), and twenty-five carts, each carrying 1500 pounds. The range in which is this Liu p’an shan does not, as Colonel Bell thinks, constitute the watershed of theYellow and Wei Rivers ; for the K’u-shui ho, which flows by Ching-ning, 30 miles farther west, empties into the Wei. The watershed is crossed 3 miles to the west of T’ai-p’ing tien. o 30 THE LAND on THE LAMAS a k’ang, in which grass or dry powdered manure is burnt, taking up more than half of the room. On a long flat stove made of mud, in which a fire of grass is kept burning by means of a box-bellows, is a thin cast-iron pan, the only cooking utensil in the house; a quern or small hand- mill, a few earthenware pots, some bits of dirty felt and cotton complete the furniture of one of these dens, in which frequently eight or ten persons live huddled together. Around the mouth of the k’ang lie a few lank pigs, while half a dozen dirty, skinny children, clothed only in too short and much patched jackets, gambol about and romp in the mud with asthmatic fowls and mangy dogs. The food of the people is vermicelli, and cakes of wheat flour called mo-kuei or mo-mo, varying in size and thickness but never in their sodden indigestibility. Only at New Year they indulge their taste for meat, eating such quantities of pork, or mutton if they be Mohammedans, that they frequently sicken and die from the effects of their-gor- mandizing. Their only pleasure, excepting this yearly feast, is opium smoking, nor can I fairly begrudge it to those who lead such lives, people who cannot possibly rise above their present level, who are without any of the comforts, to say nothing of the pleasures, of life. If it destroys their appetite for food, so much the better, for they will have stilled the gnawing pangs of hunger which otherwise they would feel every instant of their lives; and under the effects of the drug their imagination is excited, they talk, forget their woes, and enjoy themselves for a. brief while, Men, women, and often young girls and boys in- dulge in opium smoking, except they be Mohammedans, who never touch it, using invariably the native drug (t’lu- yen) which costs about 200 cash an ounce, and which does not have as deleterious an efiect upon them as the foreign; PEKING, T’AI-YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 31 this is, fortunately, so expensive that it is absolutely beyond their reach. The Kan-su people are a gentle, kind- hearted set, ready to oblige, and honest withal; and, though they have, like all mankind, certain objectionable traits, among which procrastination is the most provoking, I hold them to be the pleasantest people in China. After leaving Lung-t6 we followed a stony gorge for about twenty miles, and came to the town of Hui-hing, where there is a large number of convicts. They roamed about the streets and in the inns, with heavy iron chains around their legs and iron collars on their necks; some of them, who had tried to escape, with logs of wood fastened to one leg. None seemed in the least ashamed of these ornaments, and all took their punishments with the usual Chinese stoicism. On the way down the valley leading to this town, I had repeatedly asked passers-by the name of the stream which flowed through it, but had received no satisfactory answer. At the inn at Hui-ning it was my first question to the inn- keeper, and then I learnt that its name was nothing less than Ch’i—shih—ehr—tao chiao-pu-kan ho, “ Seventy-two-ar- rived-with—feet—not-dry River.” I must admit'that I thought I was being hoaxed, but on consulting an excellent Chinese guide-book I found that it spoke of this river or rivulet as the Shih-tzu ho or “ String-of—characters River.” The name given me unquestionably meeting with all the re— quirements of length, I duly entered it on the list of rivers of China. An—ting Hsien, through which we next passed, is in the center of a broad and fertile valley of loess formation. The population of the adjacent Villages is smaller than one would expect, and much fallow soil is met with, but the people have a much more prosperous appearance than 32 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS in the country farther east. Several important roads pass through this town,1 and, were it not for the proximity of Lan-chou, An-ting would be a very important com- mercial center; the transit trade is considerable, and there is here a likin station Whose receipts are very large. Thirteen miles to the west of An—ting we crossed a low pass (altitude 7865 feet),2 and entered the valley of the Hao-wei ho which flows into the Yellow River about ten miles to the east of Lan-chou. The soil grew stonier as we neared a range of granite mountains running north and south, which a few miles farther on deflects the Yellow River in its easterly course, and forces it to take a great bend to the north. Here and there in the lower part of the valley I saw some small paddy-fields and numerous little grist~mills, built, with absolute disregard of possible freshets, along the bank of‘ the river. Most of the vil- lages, however, and the greater portion of the cultivated land, were on the hillsides. Some two miles more, through a rocky gorge leading due north, and we came on the Yellow River, where, issuing out of a gorge of granite rocks, deep down in which it has worn a narrow channel, it bends suddenly to the north and flows swiftly on through a broad, open country till lost in the distance. The river was not over 175 yards wide in the gorge, swift and beautifully clear, but partly covered with huge blocks of ice which had got jammed in this narrow channel. The yellow color of its water in its lower course is due, in a measure, to the dust blown into it below Ning-hsia Fu, but principally to the loess silt continually brought down by the important affluents which flow into it near T’ung- 1 A road goes to Kung Ch’ang Fu 2Kreitner calls this pass Tshe-da and thence to Hsi-an via Ch’in Chou, ling, and gives its altitude as 2200 or to Han-Chung Via Li Hsien, Hsi meters (about 6820 feet). The Hao- 110, and Lfieh—yang. wei ho is also called Ko-men ho. PEKING, T’AI—YUAN, HSI-AN, LAN-CHOU EU 33 kuan. Only occasionally in its upper course are its waters discolored and blackish, owing to rains in the vicinity of Ho Chou in western Kan-su. A few miles more through the loess which covers, to a great depth, the western slope of the range of mountains we had just crossed, and, passing through Tung-kuan p’u, we saw some six miles ahead of us the walls of Lan-chou Fu, and the high chimney of the now abandoned woolen factory; and an hour or two later I had reached the house of Mons. l’Abbé de Meester, of the Belgian Catholic Mission, in the southern suburb, who most hospitably received me and gave me a little pavilion in his neat compound. Here my cart journey of 1350 miles was at an end, and I could once more stretch my limbs to their full length. What must have been the satisfaction felt by my carters ~ also when the long drive was over, I can only imagine by my own. It was a source of endless speculation with me how these men kept themselves in condition. When- ever the road was at all rough they went on foot; they hardly ever slept at the inns where we stopped, as their teams occupied nearly all their time; cat-naps caught on the way seemed to satisfy them. Their food, moreover, was of a most unsubstantial nature, vermicelli, bread, and tea d discrétion. I changed my drivers only twice between Peking and Lan-chou Fu, but none of them, on arriving at the end of their long journey, seemed any the worse for their work. II LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR AN-CHOU EU, the capital of the province of Kan-su, is situated on the right bank of the Yellow River in a broad loess valley, whose principal width is' on the left bank, the hills from Tung—kuan p’u to Lan-chou forming an arc of a circle with about a three-mile radius, its western extremity in front of the city and opposite a spur of the southern hills. Though not very extensive, it is densely populated (70,000 to 80,000 inhabitants),1 a majority of the people being Mohammedans. To the west of the Chinese is the Manchu city, which is but sparsely inhabited, the greater part being given up to govern— mental uses.‘ There are no suburbs of any importance, except on the south side, where stands the closed woolen factory erected by Tso Ts’ung-tang, besides a number of tobacco factories and a few houses. The walls are kept in excellent repair, and cannon of foreign make are mounted on them. On a hill which commands the city to the west is an entrenched camp, but most of the garrison, 8000 men, are stationed in the Manchu city. A great deal of tobacco is grown around Lan-chou, and the preparation of it is the principal industry of this place. A large proportion of this business is in the hands of Shen- 1 Kreitner, op. cit, p. 54, gives the ported to contain 40,000 houses. He population as half a million, and 0010- does not mention, however, whether nel Bell, op. cit, p. 68, says it is re- they are all inhabited. 34 i LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 35 hsi people who, besides natural enterprise, have capi- tal, two requisites for success in trade sadly lacking in Kan-su. The Lan-chou tobacco plant is not large, but has a fine, broad leaf with very small fibres. In the pre- paration of the famous water-pipe tobacco (shut yen) the leaves are not plucked until they have been thoroughly frosted, by which means, it is said, the tobacco acquires its peculiarly bright, reddish color. The first operation in the factories, of which there are some fifty, is to chop the leaves and pour a quantity of linseed oil over them. When the mass has become thoroughly saturated, it is made into blocks about four feet square, and put under a press, whereby most of the oil is expressed. The block is then planed into fine shreds, like Turkish tobacco, and very slightly compressed in small moulds. When these cakes have dried a little, they are ready for the market.1 Two varieties of tobacco, differing only in price, are made by this process; a third and superior one, called frequently “ green tobacco,” is made by plucking the leaf before it gets frosted, and drying it so that it will retain the green color. To intensify this color, a small quantity of sul- phate of copper (lu-shih nae-tan) is mixed in when the linseed oil is poured over the tobacco. The rest of the process of manufacture of this variety is similar to that of the other kinds. This industry, the annual value of which can not exceed half a million of dollars, is, as remarked, the only impor- 1 Each cake weighs two ounces (liang). The first quality is called po-t’iao yen (citing yen at Shanghai), the second is [many yen “yellow to- bacco,” the third mien you “powdered tobacco.” The three varieties are ex- ported in cases, each weighing 120 catties (156 pounds), worth at Lan- chou from Tls. 9 to Tls. 13 a case, ac- cording to quality. Lan-chou annually exports 20,000 cases ‘of po-t’iao and 30,000 of Izuang yen and mien yen. Between Lan-chou and Peking, or Shanghai, from Tls. 7 to Tls. 8 Main is levied on each case. Richthofen, op. cit, p. 40, says it sells at Hsi-an for Tls. 26 a- picul (133 pounds). 36 THE LAND on THE LAMAS tant one of this city. The tea trade in the province is a government monopoly (kmm shang), and only Hu—nan brick tea can be bought in it, although a small quantity from other localities is surreptitiously introduced, generally by the officials themselves, and is cheaper than the brick tea. Tso T’sung-tang, when governor-general, endeavored to add to the industries of this province the manufacture of woolen goods, and thus utilize the immense quantities of wool to be had at a nominal price from the Mongols and Tibetans. He had built, at great expense, the factory previously referred to, and equipped it with the most im— proved European machinery, but carelessness and rascality brought his venture to a premature and disastrous end. The Russians are so far the only foreigners who have attempted to trade in Kan-su. For many years they have had shops in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, and recently an enterprising firm opened houses in five of the principal cities of western Kan-su,1 but the provincial authorities and the native mercantile classes have made their ven- ture abortive, and when I was in the province all these stores, save the principal one at Lan—chou, were closed. The Chinese had, very naturally, insisted on the Russians paying the same imposts as native merchants, since they were not in localities privileged by treaties. This did not leave the latter a sufficient margin to be able to carry on business, and they had temporarily closed, with the hope, however, of soon being able to reopen their shops, as their minister at Peking was in negotiations with the Tsung—li Yamen to have them accorded the same advantages as if doing business at open ports.2 Some years 1At Su-chou, Kan-Chou, Liang- chintzes, brassware, rugs, hardware, chou, Hsi-ning, and Lan-chou. cotton piece-goods, matches, looking- 2Their-shopsinLan-choucontained glasses, and a variety of other odds red, blue, and violet broadcloths, and ends suitable to Mongols and LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 37 may, however, elapse, unless other complications come to the aid of Russia, before the Chinese make such an important concession. Nevertheless, it appears highly improbable that the Russians will be able to “ drive British goods from Kan-su,” as Colonel Bell seems to fear, for their cheapest and shortest route for receiving or ship- ping merchandise is by way of Hankow, the route taken bv nearly all foreign goods, whether British, American, or German, destined to Hsi- an or Kan-su. The country around Lan-chou 1s not highly cultivated, nor is it even very productive, the rainfall being insufli- cient, and the amount of snow usually small. The winter weather, I was told by old residents, is fine, and not very cold, slightly misty, with light westerly and northwesterly winds. \ These climatic conditions extend to the whole val- ley of the Yellow River, west of Lan-chou, and to that of the Hsi—ning River, until near Tankar ; but north and south of Lan-chou, towards Liang-chou, and especially Kan— chou,‘ the rainfall is much heavier, the summer heat greater, and the winters correspondingly warmer. What has been said of the climate of the Yellow River valley does not, of course, apply to the higher country in the mountainous region adjoining it; there snow and rain fall in great quantities. The people in Lan-chou, and in all the cities of western Kan-su, live on vermicelli, cabbage, potatoes, and mutton. Rice is but little used by them on account of its price, face of the water in certain wells near Kan-Chou. It is used to lubri— cate cart-wheels. Samples have been Tibetans. The sales were not impor- tant, not exceeding Tls. 1000 a month. One of the principal difficulties to contend with was the absence of any article, save rhubarb and musk, suit- able for exportation, and the agent was remitting nearly all the money received in checks to Hankow. 1 Mineral oil is found on the sur- sent to Shanghai and analyzed; the oil is said to have great illuminat- ing power. Kerosene is brought in small quantities only to Kan-su Where it is sold for medicinal purposes at forty cash a catty. 38 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS which is sufficiently high to exclude it from their daily food. A fine quality is grown at Kan-Chou, but that is the only locality in the province where it will thrive, and the crop is not large. Mutton throughout Kan-su is wonderfully cheap, 400 or 500 cash (80 cents to $1.00) being the usual price for a fine sheep. The bread, made in a variety of shapes, is vastly superior to that of any other part of China, and is nearly as white and light as ours. Lan-chou Fu, until about four years ago, was the resi- dence of the governor-general of Kan-su and Chinese Turkestan. Recently, Turkestan (Hs'in chiang, or “the New Dominion”) was put under a governor (Tao—t’ai); and the governor-general administers from Lan-chou both Kan- su and Shen-hsi, his presence being much more needed in the disaffected province of Kan-su than in the purely Chinese one of Shen-hsi.1 The\most interesting portion of the population of Kan-su are the Mohammedans, who, from what information I have been able to gather, form about one-fourth of the whole.2 Their number was greatly reduced by the terrible butcheries during the late rebellion (in the little town of Tankar, for example, with a present population of not over 10,000, some 10,000 Moham- 1 Lan-chou Fu is strategically an important place, for it commands the road to Turkestan and the best, though at present the least traveled, one to Tibet. From here a good cart-road leads to Ili-Kuldja in Lan-chou to Liang-chou, 630 12‘ Lan-chou to Hsi—ning, Lan-chou t0 Ho-chou, Lan-chou to Ning~hsia, - ninety days, to Kobdo in forty, to Sa-chou in twenty-two, and from that point to Hotien and Kashgar. It is also near Ho-chou, the chief Moham- medan center in the province, and a hotbed of rebellion. Distances are: (210 miles). — 435 h' (145 miles). - 3201i (107 miles). 940 Ii (314 miles). .Lan—chou to Lh’asa, - - 4270 12' (1423 miles). 2 No census has been made of Kan- su since 1858. Mr. P. S. Popoff, in his paper on the population of China, gives that of Kan-s11 in 1879 as 5,411,188, no very exaggerated esti- mate I feel convinced, though his au- thority for this number is not a very trustworthy one. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NLNG, KUMBUM, TANKAR 39 medans were put to death), and in several localities they are still obliged to comply with so many vexatious regu- lations, that large numbers are prevented from returning to their former homes. The Kan-s11 Mohammedans generally are far from conversant with the tenets of their faith, and confine themselves to the observance of a few rules of life, such as abstaining from the use of pork, and also of other meats if the animals were killed by unbelievers, from opium, and wine, but are not particular as to the last rule.1 They are taught by the Alums to read and write Arabic, but I never met one among them, not even an Ahon, who would have been considered a passable Arabic scholar. Whenever they quoted to me passages of the Koran, it was in Chinese, and I was told that it was in this language they studied it. Some among them recite the daily prayers, and make the prescribed ablutions, but these are few in number, and are much admired by their co-religionists. Mohammedans here are divided into two sects, known “white-capped Hui-hui,” and “ black—capped Hui- hui.” One of the questions which separate them is the hour at which fast can be broken during the Rama- dan.2 The black-capped Hui-hui are more frequently called Salar, and are much the more devout and fanatical. They live in the vicinity of Ho-chou,“ in and around 1They also cut their mustaches and the Salarcondemnthis. as pagan- m brosse, and frequently shave a ish. The usual way by which one small portion beneath the nose. finds out to which sect a Moham— They are Chinese enough to comply with the custom of letting their beards grow only after the age of forty. 2Another point which divides them is that the white-capped burn in- cense, as do the ordinary Chinese; medan belongs is by asking him if he burns incense. 3 Ho-chou has a population of about 30,000, nearly entirely Mohammedan. There are twenty-four mosques in the city, and its schools are very highly spoken of by all believers. This city 40 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS Hsiin-hua ~t’ing, their chief town being known as Salar pakun (or paken). The first teacher of the schism followed by them was a man called Ma Ming-hsin, who lived in the middle of the last century, but the Salar themselves, who are of Turkish extraction, have been settled in western Kan-su for at least four centuries. The Salar, and many of the Mohammedans of the other sect, have distinctly un-Chinese features, aquiline noses, long, oval faces, and large eyes, peculiarities easily accounted for by an infusion of Turkish stock with the Chinese, of Which we should find, if proof were necessary, ample and conclusive testimony in Chinese histories and ethnological works.1 The Salar have retained their original language, and still speak it with such purity that it is perfectly intelli— gible to the traders from Hotien and Kashgar who come to is a source of constant anxiety to the provincial government on account of the latent spirit of revolt in its people. Scarcely a year passes without some revolt in or around it, and a large garrison has to be kept there. 1Colonel Yule, “Marco Polo,” 2d edit., II, 23, quoting a Russian work, has it that the word Salar is used to designate Ho-chou, but this is not ab- solutely accurate. Prjevalsky, “Mon- golia,” II, 149, makes the following complicated statement: “The Kara- tangutans outnumber the Mongols in Koko-nor, but their chief habitations are near the sources of the Yellow River where they are called Salirs; they profess the Mohammedan reli- gion, and have rebelled against China.” I will only remark here that the Salar have absolutely no connec— tion with the so-called Kara—tangu- tans, who are Tibetans. In a note by Archimandrite Palladius, in the same work (II, 70), he attempts to show a connection between the Salar and a colony of Mohammedans who settled in western Kan-su in the last century, but the “Ming shih” (History of the Ming dynasty) already makes mention of the Salar, remnants of various Turkish tribes (Hsi-ch’iang) who had settled in the districts of Ho-chou, Huang-Chou, T’ao-chou, and Min-chou, and who were a source of endless trouble to the empire. See Wei Yuan, “ Sheng-wu chi,” VII, 35, also “Huang ch’ing shih kung t’u,” V, 7. The Russian traveler, Potanin, found the Salar living in twenty—four villages, near Hsiin-hua t’ing on the south bank of the Yellow River. See “Proc. Roy. Geo. $00.,” IX, 234. The Annals of the Ming dynasty (“ Ming- shih,” Ch. 330) say that Ail-ting wei, 1500 Ii southwest of Kan-ch01], was in old times known as Sa-Ii Wei-wu-chr. These Sari Uigurs are mentioned by Du Plan Carpin (p. 651), as Sari Huiur. Can Sula be the same as Sari :9 LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 41 Hsi—ning and Ho-chou.1 Occasionally an Ahon from Tur- kestan, or even more remote regions, comes to Kan-su; thus about three years ago one came from Tarpatia (i. (3. Turkey), visited all the towns and villages of the western part of the province, and was everywhere received with the greatest kindness.2 Chinese New-year was so near at hand when I reached Lan—chou that I had to defer my departure for Hsi-ning until the festivities were over. The delay caused me no regret, for the time passed quickly with my kind host and in visits to the manager of the Russian store, Mr. Vassin- ieif who had passed the greater part of his life among the Mongols, at Kobdo and Uliasutai, and with whom, although we had to carry on our conversation in Chinese, I enjoyed myself immensely. Finally New-year, with its fire-crackers and visiting, was over, and, having hired three mules to carry my luggage and bought a pony for myself, I left on the third of the first moon (February 3d) for Lusar, a small village about twenty miles south of Hsi-ning, where I hoped to be able to organize a little caravan, and strike out through the Koko-nor steppe towards Tibet. It was most delightful to feel one’s self free in move- ment and in the saddle—no longer cramped up in a small cart—and the ride to Hsin ch’eng,8 a village some thirty 1 Chinese Mohammedans speak of their faith as Kai chiao, or hsiao chiao, and of themselves as Hui-hm or Kei— chiao join. Hsiao chiao or “ little doc— trine,” is used as opposed to ta— chiao or “great doctrine” the common form of Chinese belief. Hui-hm, in olden times Hui-ha, was used to desig- nate the Uigurs, or all Turkish tribes. '2A Mohammedan of Tankar once gave me the following curious de— scription of Turkey. It is,'he said, called Rum, and is under the just and mild rule of the Padishah. The country enjoys great happiness and prosperity, thieving and murder are unknown within its borders, and perfect honesty and justice distin- guish its officials! 3Hsin ch’eng (“new town”) is quite a large market town, advanta- geously situated at the junction of the roads to Ho-chou, Hsi-ning, P’ing- fan, and Liang-chou; the road to 42 ' THE LAND OF THE LAMAS miles west of Lan-chou and on the Yellow River, was a most agreeable one, especially as Abbé de Meester accompanied me that far. The bottom of the valley was stony, and, in most places, unfit for culture, or even for habitation. The land on the hillsides was tilled, however, and irrigation ditches carried the river water all over it. The water is raised by immense wheels, generally fifty to sixty feet in diameter; they belong to villages, and in a few cases to individuals, who, for a small consideration, sell the water to the peasants. The price is calculated by the quantity which flows from the wheel while a given length of joss—stick burns. The principal crops grown in this part of the Yellow River valley are wheat, tobacco, a poor quality of cotton, beans, cabbages of enormous size, red peppers, and potatoes. The villages we passed were neither numerous nor large, though several showed by the extensive ruins which surrounded them that, probably, they had been, before the rebellion, thriving little towns. At Hsin-ch’eng a branch of the Great wall crosses the Yellow River, and follows the right bank for some miles southward; it is like every part of the wall I have seen west of Chih—li, which as said before is made of earth, without any brickwork, and it has a ditch along its front. Some nine miles farther, in a southerly direction, through a gorge of red sandstone formation, we came to the mouth of the Hsi-ning ho,1 where in a little ferry-boat we crossed the Yellow River. the last two places going up the val- 1 Usually called Hsi ho. It also ley of the Hsiao-ssfi ho. This river bears also the names of Ni-shui he and P’ing-fan ho, and on some Euro- pean maps it has, for some unknown reason, been even given a Mongol name, Charing go]. Forty-four li east of Hsin ch’eng there is a Ku ch’eng, or “old town.” bears in Chinese geographies the name of Huang ho. The Yellow River, where the Hsi ho empties into it, is not over 100 yards wide and is quite shallow. On the rocks along its banks I saw no water—marks more than ten» feet above the surface of the stream. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 43 A line drawn north and south and passing by this point would divide the purely Chinese region of Kan- su from that in which there is a large foreign element. In this western section the Chinese occupy the large towns and principal valleys, while the non-Chinese tribes are relegated to the smaller and more elevated valleys, near the two great chains of mountains which traverse the country from east to west. Ho tui-tzu, where we stopped the first night after cross- ing the Yellow River, is a small village near the left bank of the Hsi ho. I was obliged to remain here a day while I sent a man, over the mountains to the south of us, to the San ch’uan (Huc’s “ Trois Vallons ”), with a letter to a lama of that place. While at Lan-chou a Mongol in the service of Mr. Vassinieff gave me a letter to this man, tell- ing me that he would be a good one to secure as a com- panion on my travels, as he had accompanied Potanin for two years, and knew the country around the Koko-nor. Finding it would take me too much out of my way to go to San ch’uan myself, I sent him the letter with a note asking him to meet me at Lusar. Our earliest knowledge of the San-ch’uan is through Huc, who says that its people are called Dschiahour, but this is a mistake as this name applies only to people of Tibetan race, and the San-ch’uan is peopled with Mongols, whose early home was probably in the Ordos territory, to the north of Shen-hsi. Their features are distinctly Mongol and so is their language, though they make use of many Chinese and Tibetan words and expressions. They all speak Chinese and wear the Chinese dress, except on fes— tive occasions when the women don the Mongol costume. My experience of the San-ch’uan Mongols does not bear out Huc’s statement concerning their quarrelsome, blood- 44 THE LAND or THE LAMAS thirsty nature; I found them quite as timid as the other tribes of their race. Hue evidently misunderstood his informant who must have told him that the Jya Hor,‘ meaning the Tibetans along the Kan-su border, were a truculent, bloodthirsty, bullying lot, and he, thinking the name applied to the San-ch’uan Mongols, gave them all the martial Virtues they long to have, but sadly lack. There are no Chinese living in the San-ch’uan, and the population does not exceed three hundred families. These people are devout Buddhists, and have several small lama- series. They derive large profits from the sale of the mules they raise, which are much prized throughout western 1 See Hue, “Souvenirs d’un Voy- age,” II, 36. Dschmhom' is a Tibetan expression composed of two words - nga, “China,” and HOT, a Tibetan tribal name; it is pronounced Jya- H072 There are two other regions inhabited by Horba: one in eastern Tibet, called Horsc’ k’a-nga, or Hor- chyolo; another north of the Nam t’so in western Tibet, known as Nab-Ear or “western Horba.” The San-Ch’uan Mongols are included by the Chinese among the T’u-sszi, or Aboriginal agricultural tribes, of Kan-su, and frequently figure in Chinese works as “Chi T’u-ssfi,” and “Yen T’u-ssfi,” or “Chi Yen tsai kou T’u-ssfi.” The “Illustrated Account of the Tribu- taries of the Empire” (“ Huang ch’ing chih kung t’u”), published in the lat- ter part of the eighteenth century, mentions a number of Mongol tribes living in the southern portion of the Nien-pei district, the section of country now occupied by the San- eh’uan Mongols. The same work (V, 55) mentions a tribe, called Tung-kou, living in the same district (Hsien), whose chieftains bear the family name of Li, and who descend from Li K’o-yung, a Shat’o Turk and famous warrior of the Tang period. (See W. F. Mayers,“ Chinese Reader’s Manual,” p. 117.) Potanin, “Proceedings Roy. Geo. Soc,” IX, 234, speaking of the Amdo Mongols (Prjevalsky’s Taldy or Daldy), says “they are governed by elders, Whose office is hereditary, and who trace their descent from a half historical, half legendary, prince, Li Ching- wang. . . . Some of the Amdos pro- fess Islam, others retain Lamaism.” These Mongols were found by Potanin and Prjevalsky in the upper Ta-t’ung valley, and consequently within the territory under the rule of the Mon- gol prince styled Mori \Vang (Prjeval— sky’s Murwang). The only Moham- medan Mongols I heard of were called Tolmuk or Tolmukgun. They were said to live north of Tankar (probably meaning the Ta-t’ung val- ley), and numbered some 300 or 400 families. The Chinese Tung—kou, Potanin’s Amdo Mongols, Prjeval- [sky’s Taldy, Doldy, or Daldy, and my Tolmukgun are probably one and the same tribe. It is a bare possibility that the title of the Mongol prince referred to above, viz., Mord, may be connected with the family name of LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 45 Kan-su. San-ch’uan is also of interest from the fact that Huc’s servant Santan Chemda still lives there. I spoke to the old man’s nephew about him, and Abbé de Meester knew him well. He is still hale and hearty, a lover—of good cheer and gambling, and a lukewarm Christian. The mode of culture in the lower part of the ESL-ho val- ley shows that rain and snow suffice to supply the requi- site amount of moisture only when proper precautions are taken.1 All. the fields are covered with pebbles so as to protect the soil from the direct rays of the sun and the action of the wind. By this means small crops of wheat, beans, peas and other vegetables are raised. How- ever, the greater part of the valley is fallow, though bearing marks of former cultivation. the first chief of the Tung-kon, Li K’o-yung. At all events, it appears likely that the name Daldy or Taldy has reference to that name, and that it represents the Chinese Ta Li-tzzi. It is certainly not a Mongol ethnic appellation. Prjevalsky, “ Reise in Tibet,” p. 185, says, “the Daldy or Doldy live to the north of Sining and are called Karlun by the Tangutans, and Tunschen by the Chinese. . . The Mongols call them Zagan Mongol or White Mongols.” In connection with this statement it is interesting to read in the history of the Tang dynasty, that “in the sixth year of Hsing—yuan (A. D. 790), the T’ufan took our Pei-t’ing (Urumtsi) vice- royalty. . . . There were 60,000 tents of the Shat’o people adjacent to Pei- t’ing, which were also subject to the Huiho, and the Huiho (Uigurs) never ceased from plundering them, so that they were reduced to great distress. The Kolu people and the White-robed T’u-chiieh (Turks) were on friendly terms of intercourse with the Huiho, and yet had to complain of their rob- beries, and, consequently, when the T’ufan sent them valuable presents to bribe them, they gave in their al- legiance.” These Kolu, whose name is also written Kolohu, were a Turk- ish tribe situated northeast of Pei- t’ing (near the modern Urumtsi). They are generally known as Karluks. The VVhite-robed T’u-chiieh were the ten hordes of the Western Turks. See S. W. Bushell, “The Early His- tory of Tibet,” in “Jour. Roy. Asiat. 800.,” N. 8., XII, 504. The Tung-kou of the “ Huang ch’ing chih kung t’u ” are very probably the Kolu of the “ T’ang shu,” and the name may be rendered “ Eastern (Tung) Kolu” (or Kou-lu). 1 As the Hsi-ho in its lower course flows between high walls of loess, and is fifty to seventy—five feet below the bottom of the valley, irrigation is impossible. The river is a small stream about twenty-five yards wide, shallow, clear, and swift. The ranges of hills on either side of it are of red argillaceous limestone and sandstone, on top of which is a thick bed of loess. The southern range is the higher of the two, probably averaging 800 to 1000 feet above the river. 46 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS Some three miles beyond Hsiang-t’ang,‘ at the mouth of the Ta-t’ung ho (pronounced Tei-t’ung), we entered a nar— row gorge through a range of high mountains of limestone and quartz formation, which here intersects the valley. The road is cut in the rock, in places two hundred or three hundred feet above the river, for a distance of about twelve miles; and this presents the only serious obstacle to cart travel between Lan-chou and Hsi-ning, Here I saw large parties of gold-washers, but their profits are, I was told, very small. It is a common saying among the people, that when a man has tried in vain to make a live- lihood by every conceivable method, he finally takes to gold-washing. From the western extremity of this gorge,2 where is Lao—ya ch’eng (or p’u), Huc’s “Village of the old duck,” to Hsi-ning, a distance of some forty-eight miles, the valley is nearly everywhere in a high state of culture; villages and scattered farm-houses are seen on all sides, rows of willow-trees border the fields, which are irrigated from the river, and a general appearance of thrift is notice- able. Nien-po was the only city we passed between Lan-chou and Hsi—ning; it is a small one without suburbs, but car- ries on an important business with the tribes in the adjacent mountains, especially during the fairs which are held several times a year, when large numbers of mules are sold.3 From here to Lusar I journeyed in com- Lao-ya p’u to Nien-po, a distance of 1 Potanin, op. cit, p. 234, says that Li Ko-yung’s tomb is at Hsiang-t’ang (Shang dang). On some of our maps this place is called Santza. ' 2It is called Lao-ya hsia or “the gorge of Lao—ya p’u.” 3 I cannot imagine how Huc man- aged to take two days to travel from 17 miles over an excellent road. He must have stopped the first night at Kao-miao-tzfi (or t’ang), 7 miles west of Lao-ya p’u. Huc calls Nien-po N ing-pei Hien, but the name is locally pronounced Nien-pei. On our maps, however, it figures as Nan p0 ! LAN-CHOU FU, HSI—NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 47 pany with a large party of Khalkha Mongols‘ from Urga, near the Russian frontier. Their tribe is the richest in i the empire, and numbers of this people may be seen during the winter months at all the great lamaist sanc- tuaries in northern China, Mongolia, or Tibet, where they nearly always bring presents of considerable value, horses, camels, silver, satins, etc. Not far to the west of the village of Ch’ang-ch’i-tsai we passed in front of a high sandstone cliff, against the face of which a small temple painted in gaudy colors has been built. It is known as “ the White Horse Temple” (Pai mm 8817), and the following legend is told concerning its erec- tion : Long ago a herd of horses were grazing on the top of this cliff, and among them a mare with a blind white colt. For some prank the mare reprimanded him, when, not recognizing his parent’s voice, he kicked her. Hardly had he done so than his sight was restored; he saw his wickedness, and, filled with shame, threw himself from the cliff, and was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. To commemorate this act of self-destruction in vindication of the claims of filial devotion, the White Horse Temple was built on the spot where the colt met with his death. When about eleven miles from Hsi-ning we passed through the “little gorge” (HSiao hsia), first crossing the river by a substantial bridge of . heavy logs, constructed somewhat on the cantilever system. At the ends of the bridge are cribs of logs, held in place by heavy stones around and overlapping them. Each successive tier pro- jects farther over the stream than the one immediately under it, and when about twenty-five feet above the river the cribs reach to within fifty feet of each other. The in- tervening space is spanned by three long logs, and small 1 Their name is pronounced Halha. 4-8 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS ones, split, form the floor. The structure, though simple, can resist the strongest flood. Such bridges are common throughout the Kan-su border-land and the west of China. generally.1 The road through this gorge presented abso- lutely no difficulty, and, though a little rough, it was soon passed, for it was not over a quarter of a mile long. Abbé Huc, probably from memory, thus describes his passage through it: “Un jour avant d’arriver a Si—Ning Fu, nous efimes une route extrémement pénible, tres dangereuse, et qui nous invita souvent a nous recommander a la protec- tion de la divine Providence. Nous marchions a travers d’énormes rochers et le long d’un profond torrent dont les eauX tumultueuses bondissaient a nos pieds. Le goufire était toujours béant devant nous; il eut suffi d’un faux pas pour y rouler; nous tremblions surtout pour les cha- meaux, si maladroits et si lourds quand il faut marcher sur un chemin scabreuX. Enfin, grace a la bonté de Dieu, nous arrivames sans accident a Si-Ning.” From here I could see in the distance the walls of Hsi- ning, and shortly afterward I entered the town, and put up in a large inn in the eastern suburb. Hsi—ning Fu is commercially and strategically the most important town in western Kan-su; from here diverge roads going north, south, east, and west, through broad, well—settled valleys, leading into the heart of the country inhabited by the foreign or aboriginal tribes of this border-land. The western one is the road to the Koko—nor steppe and Tibet; the southern to Kuei-té, on the Yellow River, and thence to Sung-p’an t’ing in northwestern Ssu- ch’uan, while the northern traverses a thickly settled and 1 They are met with throughout the Brit. Arch.” Session 1882—83, pp. 72, Himalaya, and in Norway or Sweden. 73, and fig. 92. See W. Simpson, “Architecture in 2 Hue, “ Souvenirs d’un Voyage the Himalaya,” in “Trans. Roy. Inst. dans la Tartarie,” etc., II, 53. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 49 highly cultivated country, and passes through Mobashen, one of the most important trading posts of the sec- tion. the city.1 The eastern road is the one I followed to reach Marco Polo speaks of this place as Sin-ju, and it is fre- quently referred to by mediaeval writers as Selin g, by which name it is still known to Mongols and Tibet- ans. This pronuncia- tion seems to show that Hsi-ning was first made known to Tibet- ans through the peo- ple of Ssu—ch’uan, who pronounce the charac- ter Ming as ling, a sound never given it at pres- ent in any part of Kan-su.2 \VUOLEN SOCKS, HEMP SANDALS, AND LEATHER MOCCASINS “'ORN BY CHINESE OF \VES'I‘ERN KAN-8U. The city is not over three-quarters of a mile from. east to west, and a third of a mile from north to south; and at least half of the space inside its walls is taken up by official buildings. 1 The Chinese say that Hsi-ning is situated at the mouth of four valleys, considering the valley of the Hsi ho, to the east and west of the city, as two distinct ones. These valleys are called Pei-ch’uan, Tung-ch’uan, Nan- ch’uan and Hsi-ch’uan: “North River,” “East River,” “South River,” and _‘ ‘West River.” Ch’uan also means “valley.” 2 In Polo’s time Hsi-ning was Hsi— ning Chou. The latter word is pro- nounced jw by the Mongols. At 4 The sole suburb is present Tibetans call this town Seling K’ar or Kuar, and the Mongols, Seling K’utun, K’ar and K’utzm meaning “fortified city.” Rob. Shaw, “Visits to High Tartary,” p. 38, refers to it as Zilm or Zirm, and in “Report on the Trans-Himalayan Explorations . . . during 1865—67,” p. 26, it is called Jiling. Orazio della Penna, “Breve Notizia del Regno del Tibet,” writes the name of this place, Scilin, Sci- lingh and. Silin. 50 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS on the eastern side and is half a mile long, but has only one important street, in which are a great number of inns, eating-houses, butcheries, bakeries, and other stores. The’ population of Hsi-ning is probably between 30,000 and 40,000, a large proportion of which is Mohammedan. There is a garrison of 3000 men, and also a considerable floating population. Although the trade carried on here is unquestionably large, it does not amount to any great sum annually, as the merchants and traders of the place are sadly in need of capital. I was told by one of the responsible merchants that there were not over two or three houses that realized an annual profit of Tls. 1000, and that Tls. 50 or 100 was about all the average shopkeeper could reason- ably expect.1 While manyof the people. of Hsi-ning show by their features traces of their foreign lineage, a number of their customs point even more clearly to the same fact. Here, for the first time, I saw women wearing a dark blue or black veil across the lower part of the face when on the street, in fact a decent Mohammedan woman would not 1 Bean oil (ching ya) is the princi- pal export. It is worth Tls. 2. 3 a pic- 11], and sells at Lari-Chou for Tls. 3. 5. It is usually carried down in sum- mer on rafts (fa-ta?) made of inflated ox-hides, on which some planks are tied. They frequently descend the Yellow River as far as Ning-hsia F11. The oil is carried in tubs or goatskius.’ The hides composing the raft are sold at the end of the journey. Wool, musk, rhubarb, lambskins, furs, gold, and salt (from the Ts’aidam) are ex— ported,but in small quantities, except lambskins, in which there is a large trade. Cotton piece-goods, mostly native, iron and copper ware, woolen stuffs,silks, saddles and harness,guns, boots, hats, felt, flour, vermieelli (kna- micn), Hami raisins, chinaware, to- bacco, and a number of other articles of minor value are the principal goods sold. Native white cotton-cloth (Ian pu) sells for Tls. 0. 5. 3 to Tls. O. 6. 0 a piece measuring 36 to 40 Chinese feet; blue cotton-cloth, Tls. 0. 7. 0 a piece. Foreign cotton piecegoods are disliked, for they are not as strong as native. They sell for Tls. 2 to Tls. 2. 5. 0 a piece. Russian red leather (Imi- g/m‘i in Tibetan), foreign paper, pens, and penholders are in demand. The last two articles are much prized by the lamas, who prefer them to the Chinese goods; engrossing pens are the only kind they will buy. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 51 venture out without one. Sending a guest repeated pres- ents of food, drinking wine with him from one cup, lead- ing his horse on his arrival and departure, holding the stirrup, and assisting him into the saddle, are all customs foreign to the Chinese, as far as my observation goes. There exists at Hsi-ning, and also at a number of other localities along the Kan-su frontier, a set of men known as Hsi—chia or [Isiah-chic, and divided into Mongol and Tibetan ones. In the localities where they reside they act as commercial agents for the Mongols and Tibetans, with whose languages they are thoroughly conversant, as all of them pass a certain number of years among the peoples with whom their families have business relations. Their duties are hereditary, and secure to them much influence among the tribes and no inconsiderable profit. I had in my service, while at Lusar, a Fan Hsieh-chia or Tibetan Hsieh-chia, and found his knowledge of the habits, language, and people most extensive and accurate.‘ Hsi—ning, besides being the chef-lieu of a prefecture (Fat) and an important military post, is the residence of the imperial controller-general of the Koko—nor, or Seling Amban2 as he is called by Tibetans and Mongols. the Hsieh-chia who came under my notice. (If. what is said, infl'a, of 1 Hsich-chia, may mean “rest home ” or “ rest family.” In this con- nection the passage in Huc’s work (II, 54) where he speaks of the “Mai- sons de Repos” is of interest. It is very possible that originally,' and even down to Hue’s time, the Hsieh- chia kept inns where Tibetans and Mongols could put up free of all charge, the commissions received by the keepers of these establishments on all the purchases of their guests more than compensating them for what their board cost, but such is no longer the custom, at least with all the Kutso of Tibetan princes; these two classes are very similar, as far as duties and privileges are concerned. 2 Amber» is a Manchu word equiva- lent to the Chinese Ta-clz’cn “minis— ter of state.” There is also an Amban residing at Lh’asa, and an assistant Amban at Shigatsé in Ul— terior Tibet. The official title of the Seling Amban is Ch’ing-hai pan shih- wu ta-cli’en, that of the Lh’asa Amban is Chu Ts’ang Ta-ch’en or “minister-resident in Tibet.” 52 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS He is always a Manchu of high rank and represents the emperor in all matters relating to the administration of, or ceremonial relations with, the non-Chinese section of the population of this part of the empire. The Koko-nor, the Ts’aidam, and all northeastern Tibet as far as the upper course of the Yang-tzu, are more or less within his jurisdiction. The staff of the Amban comprises a number of secre- taries and clerks (Pih-t’ich-she), and a corps of thirty-two agents or T’zmg-shih; on the latter devolve the principal duties of his office. They carry the orders of their head to the different Chieftains, arbitrate quarrels between tribes, collect the money tribute, and are practically the only representatives of the Chinese government known among the remoter tribes. These szgsé, as they are called by Tibetans and Mongols, have, from the very nature of their duties, innumerable opportunities for making money out of the people, of “eating them,” as Tibetans call it. So, though their pay is only a yearly allowance of Tls. 24 for the keep of a horse, they realize hundreds and some- times thousands of taels on each journey they make. Their principal source of profit is the ulc.1 When any official starts on a journey outside of China proper he receives from the officer who has control of the country through which he is to travel an order on the tribes for a certain number of men, saddle and pack animals, food, etc., to be supplied him at specified stations; this is known as an ula order (y/i pitta). The numbers of men and animals, and quantities of food are generally much in excess of the 1I do not know the origin of the in Ibn Batuta’s Journeys (Defré- word ula, which is used throughout mery’s trans, III, 95), “Quant a la Mongolia and Tibet. It is curious to poste aux chevaux (daus l’Inde) on note, however, that it was used in 1’ appelle ouldk.” India in mediieval times. Thus I find LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 53 real wants of the party to whom the order is given, so the chief of it usually makes the people at each ula station pay him a certain sum of money instead of the sup- plies, etc., to which he is entitled, taking only what is absolutely necessary for him. If, however, he takes all the pack animals, it is because he is carrying merchandise with him to sell at enormous profit, having no freight to pay on it. When one considers that the journeys of these Tungsé frequently last a year, it is easy to realize that their profits make up amply for the smallness of their pay.1 I must mention another source of profit of these officials as it helps us to form an idea of the Chinese administra- tive methods outside the borders of Kan-su. All Chinese wishing to trade among the Mongols and Tibetans across the frontier must apply to the Amban for a pass (pica), for which they pay Tls. 2 for every man they intend taking with them. As this pass is good for only forty days, it almost invariably expires before they can return home, and they become liable to heavy fines and even confisca- tion of their goods. The T’ung-shih do their best to detect any traders they suspect of not having their passes in order, and the latter are obliged, if caught, to give the former presents, frequently of considerable value, for over- looking the irregularity. This system of forty-day passes has had another effect ; it has practically killed legitimate trade between the Kan-su people and the Tibetans and Mongols, and has 1 The highest officials going to or coming from Lh’asa are not above these practices, which weigh terribly on the people, and in many cases drive them to revolt. See Nain Singh’s remarks in “Report on the Trans-Himalayan Explorations . . . during 1865—67,” p. 87, and also the “ Hsi-ch ao t’u liieh,” written by a former Chinese Amban of Lh’asa. He shows by numerous examples how the country has been depopulated by excessive demands of ula. 54 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS encouraged a large contraband trade carried on from Sung-p’an t’ing in northwestern Ssu—ch’uan. Thus, nearly all the tea used outside the Kan-su border is from Ch’iung-chou, and is brought by these Sung-p’an traders, who are known as Sharba.1 . The Amban himself hardly ever crosses the frontier. He occasionally visits the great sanctuaries and lama- series situated within easy reach of Hsi-ning, and once a year he receives the Mongol princes at Tankar. He then distributes to them in the name of the emperor, and in quantities fixed by regulations, satin, embroidered pouches, knives, etc., and exhorts them to obedience. The chieftains do obeisance, kotowing in the direction of Pe- king, in a hall reserved for such functions, and also par- take of a banquet. Every three years these chiefs go to Peking, to carry tribute to the emperor and renew their oaths of allegiance. The former ceremony is known as the “little tribute,” the latter as the “great tribute.”2 The Amban, when I was in Hsi-ning, was Se-leng-o, who had previously been at Lh’asa in the same capacity, 1 This word is probably Tibetan, and means “Easterners.” Sung-p’an t’ing, in northwest Ssu-ch’uan, has been visited by only one European, Captain Wm. Gill, in 1877. The princi— pal products sold there were skins, musk (sold for three times its weight in silver), deer horns, rhubarb and medicines. Gill was misled by his inn— keeper, who told him it took three months to go from Sung-p’an to the Koko-nor. Twenty-five to twenty- eight days are usually employed on this journey. See “River of Golden Sands,” I, 376 et seq. The “Sung- p’an Sifan,” given in Lacouperie’s “Languages of China before the Chinese,” p. 97, is very good Tibetan very badly transcribed. The same may be said of nine-tenths of the words in the so-called Meniak vo— cabularies of Lacouperie, Hodgson, and Baber, and of Francis Garnier’s Mosso phrase, “Voy. d’Expl. en Indo— Chine,” I, 520, where th tché ma sou is only Kd-cha ma she, a common Tibetan expression for “I don’t un— derstand.” 2 From a memorial by the Ainban, published in the “Peking Gazette” of Nov. 4, 1888, it appears that he makes sacrifices to the spirits of the Koko- nor, in the presence of the Mongol chieftains at a place called Tsahan tolha (“White head,” probably thus called from a snow peak nearby) to the north of the lake. On such occasions he also distributes presents in the name of the emperor. I never heard of this ceremony when in the country. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 55 and who is noted among all his subordinates as one of the most close-fisted officials that have ever filled the office. In the inns at Hsi-ning one finds little comfort; most of the space is taken up by stables for horses and _ mules, yards for camels, godowns for wool and oil, and what remains is used by small shopkeepers, or agents of Shen-hsi or eastern houses buying goods for exportation. The rooms are frequently without k’angs, having only copper fire-pans in which they burn bricks made of coal and chopped straw. On the broad, flat rim of the fire-pan stands usually a pot of tea and milk. When there is a k’ang, it is often only a wooden box without any chimney or firing—hole; the planks on top are removed when it is necessary to light it, and, dry powdered manure having been spread inside it, a few live coals are put in, and the planks replaced. The fire smoulders till all the manure is consumed, and the heat thus created is considerable. I had not been in my inn half an hour before two or three policemen made their appearance, and told me that I must send my name to the magistrate, let him know whence I came, where I was going, what was my busi- ness, etc., none of which did I care in the least to tell, especially where I was going.‘ I consequently made up my mind not to remain longer in town than the morrow, and to go at once to Lusar where I knew there were no inquisitive officials. I was most anxious to keep out of the way of Se-leng-o, whom I knew to be strongly opposed to foreigners, and likely to put an extinguisher on my plans of travel in Tibet, if he got any inkling of them. 11n Chinese towns all innkeepers every day to the police magistrate, are obliged to have registers in andbyhim allarrivalsanddepartures which are entered the names, etc., are reported to the magistrate or of all their guests. This is sent prefect. 56 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS The next morning at daylight, having donned a big Mongol gown and fur cap, and with clean-shaved head and face, I left with the Khalkhas I had met near Nien— pei, and rode to Lusar. Passing through the cemetery outside of the city, and crossing the hills, we soon found ourselves in the valley of the Nan-ch’uan. Hardly had we lost sight of Hsi-ning than we seemed to have sud— denly left China and its people far behind, so great were the changes that everywhere met us. No longer were all the passers-by blue-gowned and long-queued Chinese, but people of different languages, and various costumes. There were Mongols, mounted on camels or horses, and clothed in sheepskin gowns and big fur caps, or else in yellow or red lama robes — the women hardly distinguish- able from the men, save those who, from coquetry, had put on their green satin gowns and silver head and meek orna— ments, to produce a sensation on entering Lusar or Kum- bum. There were parties of pilgrims, tramping along in single file, and dressed in white woolen gowns pulled up to the knee, each one with a little load, held by a light wooden framework, fastened to his back. They belonged to some of the Tibetan tribes living in the valleys to the north of Hsi-ning. Many other queer-looking people we passed that morning, of whom I will speak later. Our road led us towards a high, black line of nude and jagged peaks, rising like a wall across the southern extremity of the valley, and called on our maps South Koko-nor range, through a well-cultivated country dotted with numerous villages, inhabited by Chinese, and T’u- ssu, agricultural tribes of mixed Chinese, Tibetan and Turkish descent. When about fifteen miles up the Nan— ch’uan, we turned to the southwest, and, crossing the low hills which here border it, we looked down into a vale of LAN-CHOU FU, HSI—NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 57 loess formation, lying at our feet, and saw a straggling Vil- lage built on the side of a hill, at whose base two small streams met. Here was a grove of slender poplar sap- WOUND}! '(nssaiuzl—vn) lings, black with flocks of oroaking ravens and small, yellow-billed crows; and shaggy, grunting yak, camels with gurgling moans, and little, rough ponies, led by their wild-looking masters, were drinking in the stream. On 58 THE LAND or THE LAMAS the flat roofs of the village houses were men and women, gossiping, spinning yarn, or spreading out manure to dry. This was Lusar. I looked to the left and. there were the golden roofs and spires of the temples of Kumbum, with walls of green and red; and over the hillside round- about, long, irregular lines of low, flat-roofed houses, partly hid behind clean, whitewashed walls, the homes of the 3000 odd lamas who live at this great sanctuary of the Tibetan and Mongol faith. On the hill-slope, between the village and the lamasery, was the fair-ground, where a motley crowd was moving to and fro, where droves of yak and strings of camels were continually passing; and scattered about in the distance were the traveling tents of those who preferred their ordinary dwellings to the small, dingy rooms for- rent in the lamasery or at Lusar. We rode through the crowded street of the village, and entering a little inn, secured four small rooms, opening on a courtyard, for the modest sum of 4000 cash a month, fire and light included. Lusar, which is now a village of perhaps 800 inhabi- tants, about half of whom are Mohammedans, has become important only within the last forty years. Before that, Shen-ch’un, in the valley of the INan-ch’uan, a little above where we left it, did all the business now trans- acted here. This accounts for the fact that Huc makes no mention of this Village in his narrative. Beside the Chinese pOpulation, there is quite a large number of T’u- ssii, one of whom holdsofficial rank, but has no juris- diction over the Chinese, who are amenable only to their own officials at Hsi—ning. The day after my arrival was the 12th of the first moon, when the Chinese in every village and town of the empire LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 59 celebrate the dragon festival. Lusar had its share of the feast, and I went to see the fun. The street of the little Village was filled with a gaily dressed and motley crowd, all pressing on towards the small Chinese temple (Han jen ssz‘o’), at the foot of the hill, where the theatrical repre- sentation was to begin. It was no more nor less amusing than such plays usually are in China, but the spectators more than compensated by the originality and brightness of their costumes for any lack of interest in the show. Among the audience were representatives of all the Tibetan tribes near the Koko-nor, parties of T’u-ssii, Mongols, and traders from eastern and central Tibet, hosts of bare- headed lamas, and beggars in picturesque rags, while ped- dlers with hot dumplings or confectionery, and children and dogs pushed through the laughing and noisy crowd. The Tibetans, both men and women, wore high- collared gowns of sheepskin or undyed cloth, reaching barely to the knee, and hanging very full about the waist. On their shaved heads the men had little pointed r ed caps trimmed with lamb- ’ skin, big clumsy foxskin hats, or else dark-red turbans. The gowns of the “swells” were of garnet-colored cloth, trimmed along the bottom and on the collar with leop- ard, otter, or tiger skin, and those of the fashionable . HAT WORN BY KOKO-LOR TIBETANS AND women, w1th broad bands of MONGOLS. TOP RED: RIM BLUE. red black and green stuff around the hem. Most of the men had a large circular silver ring, set with tur- quoise and coral beads, in the left ear; and the women wore heavy silver pendants, also set with coral beads, in 60 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS SILVER CHARM-BOX. (MADE AT LH’ASA.) both of theirs. But the principal distinction in the dress of the women consisted in their fashion of wearing the hair. It was plaited in innumerable little tresses from the crown of the head, and hung down over their shoulders and back like a cloak. Three broad bands of red satin or cloth, to which were attached embossed silver plates, or cowry shells, pieces of chank-shell,‘ turquoise, coral, or glass beads, were fastened to the hair, two depending from that which fell to the shoulders, one from that which fell to the waist.2 Nearly all, men and women, wore copper or silver charm—boxes (gawo) around their necks, from which also hung their prayer-beads. The T’u-ssii, or agricultural aborigines, were dressed very much like the Chinese, their gowns being a little shorter and fuller; most of their women had red hand- kerchiefs tied around their heads, and wore violet silk gowns of Chinese pattern. 1 It is curious to find the true cowry from India through Lh’asa, as are also (Cyproea moneta), and the chank-shell the amber disks worn by the K’amba (Turbinella rapa), in such a remote women in northeastern K’amdo. locality. They are probably imported 2 See illustration, p. 70. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI—NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 61 But the wildest figures among them all were the Hung mao-tzfi,1 the K’amba of eastern Tibet, with long, matted hair cut in a fringe over the eyes, dirty sheepskin gowns pulled up above the knee, and boots with rawhide soles and red or variegated cloth tops fastened below the knee with a broad garter. In their belts were long, straight swords, and hanging around their necks were charm-boxes and prayer-beads. The day was warm, and they had slipped their right arms out of their gowns, which hung loosely on the left shoulders, and their hands rested defiantly on the hilts of their swords. The Mongols of the Koko-nor and Ts’aidam have adopted nearly in its entirety the dress of their Tibetan neighbors, hoping thereby, like the ass in the lion’s skin, to be taken for those swashbucklers. Young girls dress their hair in Tibetan fashion, but married women retain their national mode and wear two heavy tresses, falling on either side of the face, and encased in black embroidered satin. There were also at the play Tibetans from Lh’asa and Ulterior Tibet, tall men with swarthy complexions, and many of them with angular features. They wore the Chinese queue, and dark violet gowns, trimmed with leopard skin; and their speech was softer than that of their eastern compatriots. Lamas in red cloth, with bare right arms, and shawls thrown over their shaven pates to shade them from the sun, were everywhere, in the shops or on the street, walk- ing about in company with friends and relatives, many of whom had come a month’s journey to see them and attend the fair. 1 Huc translates this expreSSion their sole garment; shirts and by “longues chevelures,” but it breeches are worn only by the means “red-capped men.” The wealthiest or by “les élégants.” sheepskin or pale gown is usually 62 ‘THE LAND OF THE LAMAS Nor were the shops in the little village Without inter- est. In one there was for sale bells, trumpets, little copper bowls in which butter is burnt, and all the other innu- merable things used in the temples; next to it was a shop where heavy leather boots, made for the Tibetan and Mon- gol trade, buckskin boots, and red cloth shoes for lamas, and many other styles to meet the different tastes were offered for sale. i For three or four hours I wandered about, no one pay— ing any special attention to me; some took me for a Mon- gol, others for a Turk, and a few for a foreigner (01088“). All the questions I asked were answered politely, and not an ungracious remark was made to, or, as far as I could hear, about me. I certainly should not have fared half so well in any Chinese town I have ever seen; but the Chi- nese showed themselves most kind during my sojourn of a month and a half at Lusar, confirming the excellent opinion I had already formed of the Kan-su people. Most of them were conversant with Mongol and Tibetan, and had traveled extensively among the border-tribes, so I had an excellent opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of those peoples, and of finding good men to accompany me westward. Though the streets of Lusar were gay and full of life, it was within the temple grounds, about a quarter of a mile off, that the principal attractions of the fair centered. Fol— lowing the crowd which was going in that direction to trade, and, en passant, to do a little praying at the temple, I walked over the hillside covered with open-air restau- rants, butchers’ and bakers’ stalls, dealers in hides and peltries, peep-shows, in which, I am sorry to say, European obscene pictures were the cynosure, gambling tables, and all the endless variety of trades and peoples met LAN-CHOU FU, Hsr-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR (53 With at such fairs in China. Passing under a big white ch’viirten‘ which served as gate to the lamasery, we found ourselves in a broad street, at the end of which was a building with red and green walls, and near it a row of eight small ch’z’lrten. To our right the white-walled lamas’ hou'ses covered the hillside, and behind them we could just see the tops of the golden spires of the chief temple. On either side of the road traders and peddlers had spread out their wares, all the gaudy trinkets and odds and ends capable of captivating the crowd, prayenbeads, mirrors, images of the gods, knives, buttons, silks, cotton piece- goods, tea, Tibetan cloth, incense sticks, salt, sulphur, , wooden bowls, and other articles too numerous to mention; but among them foreign goods were represented only by a few boxes of Vile matches, Russian leather, some Japanese photographs, buttons, and needles. Around a man selling medicines the people crowded, every one anxious to lay in a stock of drugs, and especially plasters, of which Tibetans and Mongols are extraordina— rily fond, and which they delight to stick on their bodies, no matter What their complaint may be. Here I noticed some T’u-ssfi women from near Tankar, wearing long green gowns trimmed with red; two broad bands of red satin or cloth edged with black, on which were sewn disks of chank-shells, passed over their shoulders and crossed in the back. They wore the gray turned-up felt hat and heavy leather boots iii common use among these tribes, and dressed their hair like the married Mongol women. Suddenly the crowd scattered to the right and left, I 1 This word means “offering hold- tions in the Catholic “Path of the er.” Great numbers are built in the Cross,” as pilgrims, when journeying vicinity of lamaseries, and serve to to a shrine, perform prostrations be- point out the roads leading to them. fore each olz’iirtm met on the way They are also something like the sta- thither. (See illustration, p. 64.) 64 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS the lamas running for places of hiding, with cries of (r'ékor lama, Gékor lama! and we saw striding towards us six or eight lamas with a black stripe painted across GEKOR AND BLACK LAMAS IN THE KUMBUM FAIR. their foreheads and another around their right arms— hlaek lamas (heé ho-shaaq) the people call them—armed with heavy whips, with which they belabored any one who ('ame within their reach. Behind them walked a stately LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 65 lama in robes of finest cloth, with head clean-shaved. He was a Gékor, a lama censor or provost, whose duty it is to see that the rules of the lamasery are strictly obeyed, and who, in conjunction with two colleagues, appointed like him by the abbot for a term of three years, tries all lamas for whatever breach of the rules or crime they may have committed. This one had heard of the peep-shows, Punch and Judy shows, gambling tables and other pro- hibited amusements on the fair—grounds, and was on his way with his lictors to put an end to the scandal. I fol- lowed in his wake and saw the peep-show knocked down, Punch and Judy laid mangled beside it, the owners whipped and put to flight, and the majesty of ecclesias- ‘ tical law and morality duly vindicated. Returning to the temple grounds, we passed in front of some of the houses of lama officials, which differed notably from those inhabited by the common herd. They had high, pink walls, with little windows near the flat roofs, which projected slightly over the walls. The easements of these windows were broader at the top than at the bot- tom, as are in fact all windows in Tibetan temples; in them is neither glass nor paper, but heavy planks close them on the inside. Through the open doors of these houses I could see that they were two-storied, a nar- row veranda running in front of the upper story which alone was inhabited, the ground floors serving as stables and storehouses. Passing before the large courtyard of the gold-roofed temple, I entered it by a little door on the left where there was a row of large prayer-wheels, or rather barrels, painted red, each of which I set in motion as I walked by. Below me, in the courtyard, and standing on a broad plank walk, a number of lamas were prostrat- ing themselves before the holy images inside the temple. r F) 66 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS There were three of these; in the center was Gautama Buddha, on his left Dipankara Buddha, and on his right Tsong-k’apa, or Jé rinpoch’é, as he is generally called. These images were about six feet high, and of gilt bronze. As the temple was not open to the public, and there was but little light filtering in, I could not distinguish any- thing else within it. The general style of architecture is Chinese, the same red pillars and sculptured woodwork gaudily painted as met with in all Buddhist temples in northern China. The roof, or rather roofs —-for there are two superposed, the lower one projecting considerably beyond the upper—are of tiles heavily plated with gold. The upper roof is supported by a row of low, red lac- quered pillars, and windows underneath it admit light in to the sanctuary. In the main wall, which is painted red, there are no windows; all the light comes from above. To the right of this “gold-roofed temple” (chin-fling t’ang) 1 is the J é k’ang, the temple of J é rinpoch’é. This also has two superposed roofs, but of green tiles, and the wall is covered to about ten feet from the ground with tiles of the same color, the rest of it being painted red. A narrow walk leads around the temple, on either side of which are rows of prayer-wheels. In front, inclosed by a low wooden paling, is one of the sacred “ white sandal- wood trees” (tsandcm karpo), but not the most sacred one, which is in a special inclosure. The image of Tsong—k’apa is on a throne about ten feet high; it is not over three feet high, and is, I was told, of pure gold. In front of it is an altar where burn innumerable butter-lamps amidst oiferings of fruit, confectionery, bowls of water, etc. From the ceiling hung ceremonial scarfs (k’atag) fifty feet 1 This temple is called by lamas the J o k’ang or “ Home of the Lord (Buddha).” See p. 105, note 2. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 67 long, and Smaller ones were being continually hung on the arms of the god by an attendant lama to whom the worshippers handed them. After looking through the temple we walked around it 011 the outside, keeping it on our right hand, a mode of showing respect for sacred things observed in all lamaist countries. My Chinese servant, who accompanied me in my walk, nearly got into trouble here, for, not knowing the importance attached to the proper performance of this observance, he started off to the right with the build- ing on his left. He had not gone two steps, however, before he was pulled up and turned back in the right way, by a number of lamas and Visitors, with some forcible remarks about his improper conduct in holy places.l Although I did not see the convent treasure-house and the “white sandal-wood tree” until later, I will describe them here. In a small yard inclosed within high walls stand three trees about twenty-five to thirty feet high, a low wall keeping the soil around their roots. These are the famous trees of Kumbum, or rather tree, for to the central one only is great reverence shown, as on its leaves appear outline images of Tsong-k’apa. The trees are probably, as conjectured by Kreitner,2 lilacs (Phila- dclphus coronarius) ; the present ones are a second growth, 1 The main distinction, at least in the eyes of the common people, be- tween the old pre-Buddhist sect of the Beinbos and the Buddhists is that the former walk around sacred buildings keeping them on their left, a way con- sidered unlucky by the lamas. The Romans in their ceremonies circum- ambulated temples keeping them to their right; the Druids observed the contrary. To walk around the lucky way was called Dcasil by the Gaels; and the contrary way or unlucky way, withcrshins or widdersimzis by the low- land Scotch. See Jamieson’s “Scot- tish Dict.,” s. r. Widdersinnis; R. A. Armstrong “ Gaelic Dict.,” p. 184. 2 Kreitncr, “ Im Fernen Osten,” p. 708. I was told that in spring these trees have large clusters of violet flowers, but if they are lilacs I am astonished that the Chinese do not speak of them as such, for that shrub is well known in Kan-su and throughout northern China. (See Prjevalsky, “Mongolia,” II, 79.) 68 THE LAND OF THE LAMAs the old stumps being still visible. There were unfortunately no leaves on the tree when I saw it; and on the bark, which in many places was curled up like birch or cherry bark, I could distinguish no impress of any sort, although Huc says that images (of Tibetan letters, not images of the god) were Visible on it. The lamas sell the leaves, but those I bought were so much broken that nothing could be seen on them. I have it, however, from Moham- medans that on the green leaf these outline images are clearly discernible. It is noteworthy that whereas Huc found letters of the Tibetan alphabet on the leaves of this famous tree, there are now seen only images of Tsong— k’apa (or the Buddha 6!). It would be interesting to learn the cause of this change.1 Next to this inclosure is the treasure-house. On the panels of the gates opening into the yard of this building are painted human skins, the hands, feet, and heads hanging to them and reeking with blood. On the walls of the yard, and protected by a broad roof, are pictures of some of the guardian deities (Ch’z’i-jony) in their hideous trappings of snakes, human skins, skulls, and bones, wal- lowing in blood and surrounded by flames, escorted by imps more ghastly than they, with heads of bulls, hogs, dogs, or eagles. The building is small and very dark, so I could with great difficulty distinguish the curious things with Tibetans call all sweet-smelling wood tsandan (i. 8., sandal—wood). Sir Joseph Hooker, “Himalayan Jour- nals,” I, 298, says that the Lepshas and Bhoteas call the funereal cypress tsandan. The Kumbum tsandan kar- po is certainly not a cypress, how- ever. 1 When Lieutenant Kreitner visited this place (1879), the images on the leaves were as at the present time. See “ Im Fernen Osten,” p. 707. The Arab traveler, Ibn Batuta, saw in the fourteenth century at Deh Fattan on the Malabar coast, in the court- yard of a mosque, a tree called “the tree of testimony.” Every year there was a leaf on it on which was written “by the pen of divine power” the formula: “There is no God but God ; and Mohammedis the envoy of God.” The inhabitants used it to cure. dis- ease. See Ibn Batutah. “Defré- mery’s Transl.,” IV, 85. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI—NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 69 which it is filled. Bowls of silver, ewers of gold, images of the gods in gold, silver, and bronze, pictures, beautifully illuminated manuscripts, carpets, satin hangings, cloi- sonné vases and incense-burners, enough for a museum! One big silver bowl was pointed out to me with a bullet hole through it, made in the late Mohammedan rebel- lion, when the lamasery was attacked, and the lamas with _ gun and sword defended their temples and treasures, and were killed by hundreds on the steps of the sanctuary, or beside their burning houses. But Kumbum fared better than most of the lamaseries of the country, for the Moham- medans spared the temples and the sandal-wood trees, not even taking the gold tiles from the roof, a most extraor- dinary piece 0f sentimentalism on their part, or rather a miraculous interposition of the gods to preserve their holy place. On the 15th of the first moon (Feb. 14th), the Hsi-ning Amban and the high Chinese authorities of this part of the province came to see the butter bas-reliefs to be shown in the temple courtyard that evening. The road by which they were to come was lined for more than half a mile by lamas squatting on the ground, while the abbot and the other convent oflicials, all on foot, stood a little way off awaiting their arrival. Finally the plaintive notes of the Chinese bugle were heard, and the Amban and his suite came in view, the great man borne in a green sedan-chair, a yellow umbrella, the sign of his dignity of ambassador, carried before him. He passed down the long line of lamas, his well-mounted escort carrying bright-colored pennants on the ends of their lances, some blowing bugles Whose notes were echoed back by the deep-sounding con- vent conch-shells and long trumpets shaped like Alpine horns. 70 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS When it had grown dark I again. walked to the gold— roofed temple, for the great sight of the festival, the butter has-reliefs. Outside the southern wall of the temple were the two principal has-reliefs under a high scaffolding, from which hung innumerable banners painted with images of gods and saints, while here and there were gaudy Chinese TUE BUTTER BAS—RELIEFS OF THE 15TH OF THE FIRST MOON AT KUMBUM. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 71 lanterns with pictured sides. The bas-reliefs were about twenty feet long and ten feet high, supported by a frame- work and lit up by rows of little butter-lamps. The sub- jects were religious, representing in the usual lamaist style, gods, scenes in the various heavenly abodes, or the different hells. The central figure in each was about three feet high, and in the background were long processions, battles, etc., each figure — and there were hundreds— not over eight inches in height. Every detail was most carefully worked out in these great slabs of butter, and painted in the florid but painstaking style of lamaist illumination. Around these tableaux had been wrought elaborate frameworks of flowers, birds, Buddhist emblems, from amidst which a squirrel was peeping, or about which a dragon was twisting its long, scaly body. Along the walk which led around the temple were seven smaller bas-reliefs, about eight feet long and four feet high, rep— resenting scenes similar to those in the larger ones, and worthy of the greatest praise, not only on account of the labor bestowed on them, but for their real artistic merit.‘ It takes about three months’ labor to finish one of these bas-reliefs, for which the only reward awaiting the makers is the praise of their fellow-lamas, and a small sum of money given as prize to the designers of the best piece of work. Every year there are new designs, and new artists who bring their experience and skill to add to the beauty of the display, for this feast is held in all lamaseries, though in none, not even in those of Lh’asa, is it so beautiful as at Kumbum. Those lamas who are experts in modeling 1In one of the temples of Potala Wei Ts’ang t’u chih, “have remained at Lh’asa there are impresses in but- unobliterated since his time ; they are ter of the hand and foot of Tsong- worshipped, and large copper bowls k’apa. “ These impresses,” says the filled with butter burn before them.” 72 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS butter travel about from lamasery to lamasery, the fame- of their skill frequently preceding them, and are sure of a hearty welcome, food, and lodgings wherever they choose- to stay. The next morning the bas-reliefs had disappeared, the lamasery had resumed its habitual quiet, and the people were returning to their homes in the mountain or on the steppe. Chinese authors divide the aboriginal or foreign tribes inhabiting the Kan-su border-land into two principal classes, agricultural and nomadic.1 I find mentioned in Chinese works thirty-four different tribes belong- ing to one or other of these classes; but though it is very probable that in most of the T’u-fan there is a cer- tain admixture of Tibetan blood—in some cases a very strong one—they cannot any longer be classed among Tibetan tribes like the Fan—tzu composing the second class? I had no opportunity of collecting much information concerning the T’u-fan, but, from the few I met and whose language I heard, I have become convinced of their mixed descent. Their language is primarily Tibetan but with a very large proportion of Chinese, Turkish, and Mongol words and expressions. Their dress I have pre- viously described; their dwellings and mode of cultivat- ing the soil will be mentioned further on. The Fan-tzii are essentially nomads, and of pure Tibetan stock. They call themselves Bopa (written Bodpa, and 1 To the first they give the name of T’u-jen, “ agriculturalists,” T ’u-farn, “agricultural barbarians,” or Fan min, “ barbarian people ”; to the sec- ond that of Shcng Fan, “ wild barba- rians,” Hsi Fan, “western barbarians,” or more commonly Fan-ted, “barba- rians.” To some among the wildest of this latter class they also apply the name of H62’ Fan-tad, or “black barbarians.” 2 The Mongols are not counted as either Fan-tzu or T’u-fan. They are nearly invariably called Ta-tzzi, a 6 LAN-CHOU FU, HSI—NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 73 usually pronounced as if written Peuba), the generic name for all Tibetans. The Mongols call them Tangutu, or Kara T angutu, “black Tibetans,” an expression which has reference either to their savagery, or to the black tents in which they live.1 The section of country within the Kan-su border inhabited by Tibetans is known to them as Amdo, hence the name they give themselves, Ame-wa ; and those who inhabit the more fertile valleys take the name of Rang—7.0a? To the west of the Amdowa, living in the steppe or the mountains around the Koko-nor, are the Panak’a or Panak’a sum, “the three Pana tribes,” who, save in their more complete independence, differ in nothing from their neighbors. The Amdowa are organized into a large number of bands, under hereditary chiefs respon- sible to the Amban at Hsi-ning for the good behavior of word which I have heard explained in different ways, some referring its origin to the queues worn by the Mongols, others to their mode of bowA ing, and still others giving it as an abridged form of the older Ta-ta—ehr or Ta-ta-tzri', from which came our word Tatar. On the thirty-four bor- der tribes of Kan-su, see Appendix. 1 Orazio della Penna, in Markham’s “Tibet,” p. 309, says that Tangut means “dwellers in houses.” H. H. Howorth, “ History of Hia or Tangut,” p. 4, considers this word a Turki tran- scription of Chinese Tang-hsiarng, the name of the early ancestors of the founders of the Hsia dynasty, and of the same stock as the people now liv- ing in northeastern Tibet. I find in the “Hsi—Ts’ang fu,” p. 2, as follows: “The T’ang—ku-te are descendants of the T’ang-ku-kiieh. The origin of the word Ku-k'iieh is the following: In olden times this people lived in the Altai Mountains of the Western regions. They were expert smiths and fashioned iron helmets commonly known as Ku-kiwh, and from this is derived the name of the country. At present the Tanguts and the other Koko-nor Fan-tzfi wear caps shaped like iron pots, high and with narrow rims, a red fringe hanging down over them; it looks like a helmet and is proof of the correctness of the ety- mology given above.” (See illustra- tion, p. 59.) From this it appears that the word Tangutan was not originally applied to a Tibetan people. Prje- valsky has, very wrongly to my mind, introduced the word Tangutan to des- ignate these Koko-nor Tibetans, and this term Should be discarded, except as a generic term for all Tibetans, in which sense it is in frequent use by Chinese authors. I will use through- out this work the term Koko-nor Tibetans to designate the Amdowa and Panak’a collectively. Prjevalsky, “ Reise in Tibet,” p. 196, mentions two subdivisions of the Amdowa, called Rongwa and Dscha-ehoo (ho), but the latter name is only an’s Dschahours. See page 44, note. 2R¢mg means in Tibetan “ culti- vable valley.” 74 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS their people and the payment of the tribute money or poll-tax. The Amban confers on them Chinese official rank, a button, and a title. These Amdowa have not, as far as I could learn, any supreme chief. Not so the Panak’a, who, though like them divided into numerous bands, have two head chiefs, one living south of lake Koko-nor, the other to the north of it. This latter, the only one about whom I got certain information, is styled Konsa lama, and the office is hereditary in the family of the present incumbent, whose name is Arabtan. He is also, nominally, under the orders of the Amban, and has a blue button.1 The chief to the south of the lake, whose name and style I did not learn, is practically independent of the Chinese, not even supplying the few T’ung-shih who venture into his country with any ula unless paid in full for it. Physically the Koko-nor Tibetans are of slight build—I never saw a fat person among them—and about five feet four inches high, the women quite as tall as, and very frequently taller than, the men. The head is round, the forehead high but narrow, the nose more prominent than in the Chinese, the eyes frequently large and nearly horizontal, the ears closer to the head than in the Mon- gols, but still large, the cheek-bones prominent, the teeth regular and strong. Their muscles are not well developed, except the pectoral ones; the hands and feet are large. They have but little hair on the face and body, and they carefully pull out with tweezers all their beard. They are gay, loving “wein, weib, und gesang,” intelli- gent, and trustworthy when once their word is engaged. However, they are quick-tempered, domineering, and 1 He receives his appointment from the Amban. All such native officials are called Ch’imchai kuan, “ ambassadorial officials.” LAN—CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 75 greedy. Both men and women drink to excess whenever they can, as do all Tibetans, and when under the influence of liquor are very quarrelsome. They are shrewd and enterprising traders, and able to hold their own even with the Chinese, to whom they sell large quantities of lamb- skins, wool, yak-hides, musk, furs (principally lynx and fox skins), rhubarb and deer-horns (M fang). They trans- act their business at fairs held at the different temples and at Tankar, Kuei-té, and Mobashen, and but rarely go to Hsi-ning. They are considered rich by their Chinese and Mongol neighbors, but the wealthiest among them, the Konsa lama Arabtan, does not own more than $20,000 worth of sheep, horses, and cattle, their only form of wealth.1 They have but very few camels, as they are essentially mountaineers, using principally yak or dzo2 (a cross between a domestic cow and a yak) as beasts of burden; moreover, the hair of these animals, which on the belly and legs is nearly a foot long, supplies the material of which they make their tents. Both the Tibetans and the Mongols often use the yak as a saddle animal. A wooden ring is passed through the cartilage of the nose, and a string is attached to it by which the animal is guided and fastened to the ground at night. The Tibetan tents are rectangular, with a flat roof; some of them are not more than ten or twelve feet long, but I have seen many fifty feet long by thirty feet broad. A space about two feet wide is left open along the center of the top, to admit light and let smoke escape. Under it is a ridge-pole supported at each end by vertical posts; 1 Ponies are worth from Tls. 10 to 2 D20 are called pien—niu by the 50, yak Tls. 6, sheep T1. 1, wool Tls. 2 Chinese; they are smaller than the a picul(133lbs.), lambskins T1. 0. 0. 7, yak, but the cows are better milk— musk Tls. 2 an ounce, rhubarb Tls. 4 ers. to 6 a picul. 76 THE LAND or THE LAMAS these are the only posts used for holding up the tent. The roof is stretched by cords which are fastened outside to the sides and corners, and which, passing over short poles A TIBETAN TENT. INTERIOR OI“ some distance from the tent, are pegged to the ground; the lower edge of the tent is held down by iron pins. Huc1 most felicitously compares these tents to huge black spiders 1 Hue, op. cit, II, 159. See also illustration, p. 119. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 77 with long thin legs, their bodies resting upon the ground. Sometimes, to keep off the wind and snow they build a low wall of mud and stones, or else of dry dung, around the outside of the tent, or, when large enough, inside of it; but they do not frequently resort to this expedient in the Koko-nor section, where there is but little snow. In the center of the tent is a long, narrow stove made of mud and stones, with a fireplace in one end and a flue passing along its Whole length, so that several pots may be kept boiling at the same time. These stoves, in which only manure is burnt, have suflicient draft to render the use of bellows needless, and are altogether a most ingenious contrivance. Around the walls of the tent , are piled up skin bags, in which the occupants keep their food, saddles, felts, and innumerable odds and ends, of which only the owner knows the use and value. A small stone mortar for pounding tea, a hand-mill or quern for grinding parched barley, one or two copper kettles and a brass ladle complete the furniture of the abodes of both rich and poor. The inmates sleep on bits of felt laid on the ground, using their clothes as covering; they con- sequently sleep naked. In the spring, all the new-born lambs and kids are hobbled to long ropes on one side of the tents, and add but little to the attractiveness of these always dirty dwellings. Hanging from one tent-rope to another may gener- ally be seen, waving in the wind, festoons of little pieces of cotton on which are stamped the images of gods or some prayers or incantations to keep away demons of disease, and all impending evils. They are called lung m, “wind horses,” are sold by the lamas, and are in use all over Tibet and Mongolia; when traveling, a man will 78 THE LAND or THE LAMAS frequently have a large one attached to the fork of his gun. The Tibetan’s gun is his most valued possession. It is a matchlock with a long fork which pivots around a screw through the stock. The barrel and all the iron MATCHLOCK AND ACCOUTREMENT. work are made by the Chinese, but the Tibetans often make the stock, using very light wood which they cover sometimes with wild-ass skin. They manufacture their own powder and slow-matches, and buy from the Chinese the lead1 for their bullets. They use no wads in loading, and the bullets are much smaller than the caliber of the guns; They can make very good shooting with them at the average range of about 100 yards, but I never saw them hit a moving object, although some of them said they could. These Koko-nor Tibetans do not attach as much value to swords as do the people of eastern Tibet (K’amdo), and usually carry only common ones of Chinese make, with wooden scabbards. 1 In the Ts’aidam and Tibet, lead is often sold for its weight in silver. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 79 The food of the Koko-nor Tibetans, and also of the eastern Tibetans, consists principally of tea and parched barley or tsamba. To this Spartan diet they occasion- ally add vermicelli (kart-mien), sour milk (djo), granu- lated cheese (ch’um), Chmna (Potentilla ansem'na)‘ or boiled mutton. The tea, previously reduced to powder, is put in the kettle when the water is hot and is left to boil for about five‘minutes, a little salt or soda being added. Then it is placed before the inmates of the tent, squatting in a circle.2 Each one draws from the bosom of his gown a little wooden bowl, also used on very rare occasions as a washbowl, and fills it. Taking with his fingers a chunk of butter from a sheep’s paunch filled with it, which has also been set before them, he lets it melt in his bowl, drinking some of the tea and blowing the melted butter to one side; and then adds a handful of tsamba from the small ornamented bag in which it is kept. He deftly works with his right hand the tea, butter, and tsamba into a ball of brown dough which he eats, drinking as much tea as is necessary to wash down the sodden lump. When ch’ura is eaten it is allowed to soften in the cup, and is. afterward worked up with the tsamba and butter. Such is the daily food of this people and also of the Mongols. There are naturally no regular meals; the kettle is always kept full, and each one eats when hungry. When one has eaten sour-milk or anything which soils the bowl, it is customary to lick this clean, and, without further ado, 1 Prjevalsky, “Mongolia,” II, 81. See also Huc, op. cit, II, 168; and H. H. Howorth, “ History of the Mon- gols,” I, 524, where it is called 211mm. The Chinese call it yao-miao-kcn or jen shou kuo, “fruit of respect and longevity,” from its being sent to friends, with wishes for their welfare, by persons returning from the coun- tries where it grows. In Kan-s11 the Chinese call it chomu or chfieh-ma. It is found in many parts of Chi- nese Turkcstan but chiefly in eastern Tibet. 2 The women eat at the same time as the men but not seated with them. 80 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS put it back in the gown. If any mutton is to be eaten it is boiled in the teakettle, and each one picks out a piece from the pot and eats it literally “ 8m: l6 pouce,” using his sheath-knife to remove every particle of meat from the bone, which is always cracked if it contains marrow; and, if a shoulder-blade, is put away for fortune-telling. Both Tibetans and Mongols are most particular in removing all the meat from a bone, and the Tibetans even have a saying to the effect that one may judge of the way a man will manage important business by seeing him pick a bone.1 The greasy hands are wiped over the face, or the boots if they require grease rather than the skin. \The preponderance of testimony tends to prove that monogamy is the rule, and polygamy the exception, among the Koko-nor Tibetans. I believe this is the case among all nomadic Tibetans. Wives are bought from the parents by a go-between, and a man is frequently obliged to give as much as 300 sheep, 10 horses, and 10 yak for a fine-looking girl; so the parents of two or three pretty and clever girls are sure of making their fortune. On marrying, and then only, does a man leave his parents’ tent and start one for himself, although he may previously have had horses and cattle of his own. Families are small; two or three chil- dren are the most I have ever seen in any of their tents. ’ This people sets little store on chastity in women, mar- ried or unmarried, as the existence of the following cus- tom proves. In lamaseries in Amdo, there is held at dif- ferent times a feast known to the Chinese as t’iao mao km, “the hat-choosing festival.” During the two or three days 1 In the fourteenth century John du potu vel de cibo perire aliquo modo Plan Carpin, in his “ Historia Mon go— permittatur: undé ossa, nisi pril‘is ex- lorum,” edit. Soc. de Geog. de Paris, trahatur medulla, dare canibus non p. 640, says of the Mongols, “Apud eos permittunt.” magnum peccatum est si aliquid de LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 81 the feast lasts a man may carry off the cap of any girl or woman he meets in the temple grounds who pleases him, and she is obliged to come at night and redeem the pledge. Chinese are not admitted to play at this game of forfeits, or allowed any of the privileges of this fétc d’amomz The old are but little respected, and it often occurs that a son kills his father when he has become a burden to him. . The present Konsa lama is said to have disposed of his father for this reason. It also frequently happens that when a person is dying a relative or friend asks him, “Will you come back, or will you not?” If he replies that he will, they pull a leather bag over his head and smother him; if hesays he will not, he is let die in peace. The probable explanation of this custom is a fear that the spirit of the dead will haunt its former abode. . The remains of. the dead are exposed on the hillsides in spots selected by lamas; if the body is rapidly devoured by wild beasts and birds of prey, the righteousness of the deceased is held to be evident, but if it remains a long time undevoured, his wickedness is proved. With the exception of the yak-hair cloth used for mak- ing tents, and a coarse kind of woolen stuff out of which summer gowns and bags are made, the Koko-nor Tibet- ans manufacture nothing. They are expert tanners and always make their own sheepskin gowns, the men doing the sewing. They use cream for softening the skins, and any stone of suitable shape as a scraper. All their iron- ware is made by itinerant Chinese smiths who visit their encampments. Their saddles, knives, swords, match— locks, kettles, ladles, and wooden bowls are made for them by the Chinese according to certain patterns chosen by them. 6 82 THE LAND or THE LAMAS The Koko-nor ponies are celebrated all over Mongolia and northern China, as much on account of their speed as for their wonderful endurance. While I do not believe that they are faster than the eastern Mongol horses, their powers of endurance are certainly wonderful. They average, probably, thirteen hands high, and are mostly light gray or black. The Tibetans never feed them, even when traveling, nor at that time are the saddles ever re- moved from their backs. When horses have been ridden too hard and are greatly fatigued, they doctor them with dried meat powdered, or else tea-leaves mixed with tsamba. _ and butter. When on a journey, they hobble and side-line them during the day, and at night attach them by one foot to a rope made fast to the ground with pegs, and only a few feet away from their camp-fire. These horses are never shod 011 the hind feet, and but seldom even on the fore feet. The most influential and wealthy portion of the Koko- nor Tibetans is the lama class, which has greatly increased in numbers in Amdo,‘on account of the reputed holiness of 1 It is extremely difficult to form even a very rough estimate of the population of this part of the Chi- nese empire, as the only basis we have is the number of lamas inhabit- ing the lamaseries of Amdo, which is estimated by persons in a position to be well informed at from 25,000 to 30,000, about two—thirds being Koko- nor Tibetans, the other third Koko- nor and Ts’aidam Mongols, eastern Mongols, and Tibetans. It is safe to reckon that one male out of every three becomes a lama; consequently the population of Koko-nor Tibetans is approximately 30,000 males, or about 50,000, including the females, Who are probably less numerous than the males. It must be borne in mind that outside of the border there are no lamaseries; they are all within the agricultural regions where supplies are easily procured. The largest lamasery is Lh’abrang, four days south of Kuei—té, with about 5000 lamas. Kumbum, which, prior to the Mohammedan rebellion, had over 7000 lamas, has now only 3000. There are twenty-two other lama- series in Amdo, with from 200 to 1000 lamas each. The above estimate of the Tibetan population on the border of Kan—su covers the whole of Kan—su and the north and south Koko-nor, the Golok, of course, excepted. The “ Hsi-yii k’ao ku lu,” Bk. 16, says that a census of the non—Chinese tribes under the supervision of the Hsi-ning Amban, made in 1725, gave 50,020 persons. This includes Tibetan tribes living in K’amdo which I have ex- cluded. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI—NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 83 this country, where the founder of the most popular form of lamaism, known to the Chinese as the “ Yellow Church,” and to Tibetans as Gélu, or “Virtuous School,” was born in the latter part of the fourteenth century. In 1360 at a place or district called Tsong, or Tsong-k’a,1 not far from the lamasery of Kumbum, an Amdo woman named Shing-za a-ch’ii bore her husband, Lu-bum-gé, a child whom they called Tsong-k’a-pa after his birthplace. At the age of seven his mother shaved his head, and consecrated him to the church. From his hair, which she threw on the ground, the famous “white sandal- wood tree” sprung forth. On becoming a novice he re- , ceived the name of Lo—zang draba, “Fame of good sense,” but in after ages he became known as J é rinpoch’é, “ The precious lord.” At the age of sixteen he commenced his theological studies, but a year later, by his teacher’s advice, he went to Lh’asa, then, as now, the chief seat of Buddhist learning,2 and studied in the monasteries of the various sects all branches taught, excelling in each, and gaining many friends and adherents to his theo- ries, especially those concerning the organization and discipline of the clergy, who had become dissolute, and obnoxious to the people and government. Sivaitic and Shamanistic forms of worship and superstitions antago- nistic to the Buddhist faith and to the doctrines preached by the expounders of the Mahayana school had also been introduced, and a reform appeared to be demanded. 1 The little Tibetan work from which I have taken these biographical notes says that this locality also bore the name of Do-mang Tsang-k’a. 2 It is said that he was presented to the “King of the Doctrine (Ch’dgi jya—bo, Dharmardja) who resided in the Bri-kung (Brébung?) lamasery. This dignitary was probably the head of the church of Tibet, and a follower of the Kadamba school. It is possi- ble that Friar Oderic referred to this lama when speaking of lo Abassi. This last name is possibly an inaccurate transcription of a Tibetan title, Lo—zang shé (rab), for example, a common one among lamas of high degree. 84 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS Encouraged and protected by the King of Tibet, Tsong- k’apa founded the Ge’lu denomination, and a few miles out- a, “‘7’ VJ“ / mmvamnwv— “'- ’I‘Nnn::-k‘upu, born at Klnnhum. The Tulé—Imua of Lh‘asa. Pau-ch’en Rmpouh'é of Trashil’unpo. THE INCARNATE GODS OF TIBET. (FROM A TIBETAN PAINTING.) side of Lh’asa he erected what is kn own as Gad'an gomba, 01‘ “the happy lamasery.” His followers were called Ge’lupa or Gadc‘inba, the first name being now universally used. LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 85 The new sect rapidly gained adherents throughout Tibet and Mongolia, and it is probable that at an early date a lamasery was founded near the birthplace of Tsong—k’apa. The name given it was Kumbum, “Hundred thousand ages,” possibly on account of the pictured leaves of “ white sandal-wood tree.” im- the eighteenth century.‘ series in the empire.2 In 1708 the newly incarnate Talé lama Lozang kalzang J yats’o resided at the The Chinese have always called it T’a—erh-ssfi, “the convent of the Dagoba,” under which name we first find it mentioned by Friar Orazio della Penna in the early part of Its fame and riches rapidly grew, and under the fostering care of the emperors of the reigning dynasty in China, who have sedulously protected the lamas, it soon became one of the most important lama— : ’ . if; .t’ , . ; ‘ inf/'0 ‘ YELLOW HAT WORN BY LAMAS IN CHURCH CEREMONIES. Kumbum until the Chinese army had put down the re- bellion in Tibet, and conducted him back to Lh’asa, by which means the Chinese obtained their first permanent foothold in that country.3 I do not propose to examine into the organization of the lamaist church throughout Tibet, nor will I renew the 1 “ Tarsy, paese del regno d’Amdoa, resta lontano una buona giornata da Scilin, o Scilingh.” “ Notizia del Regno del Thibet,” p. 29, in Klap- roth’s edit. On p. 21, he calls it Kung- bung. 2 The most revered lamasery in China is that at Wu-t’ai shan in Shan- hsi which is' said to have been founded in the first century, A. D. 3 The Pan-ch’en Rinpoch’é Paldan Yéshé stayed four months at Kum- o 86 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS vexed question of the origin of the points of similitude in this hierarchy and that of the Church of Rome. How- ever, a few remarks are necessary concerning the organiza— tion of the lamaseries of Amdo. They nearly all belong to the Grélupa sect, which is, as previously mentioned, called by the Chinese “yellow-capped sect,” its followers wearing yellow hats in church ceremonies, to distinguish them from the followers of the old church, who have red ones.1 At the present time, dark red clothes are almost universally worn, except by the lamas of high degree, the reason for this change being that red does not soil as rapidly as yellow, and, moreover, there is no yellow to be had in Tibetan cloth (Chinese, pulo), the stuff of which lamas’ clothes are made. Some of the principal lamaseries receive annual sub- sidies from the emperor; and in these all the lamas en- tered on the registers (:90), comprising only those whose instruction enables them to take part in the church cere- monies, receive an allowance of flour and grain, not enough, however, to feed them during the year. The gifts of the laity, of families and friends, the pay they receive for reading prayers for laymen, or rich lamas who prefer to perform their religious duties vicariously, and numer- ous other perquisites add very considerably to their revenues. The houses in which the lamas live belong to them, and those who have large ones increase their means by renting a part of them to visitors or to other lamas. Another important source of revenue is money- 1ending, which is practised extensively by the lamas in Amdo, and, in fact, in all other countries where they are bum during the winter of 1779—80 when on his way to Peking. See Tur— ner, “Embassy to Court of the Teshoo lama,”p. 459, where he calls it Coom- boo Goombaw(Kumbum gomba). 1 In Tibetan the first sect is some- times called Dja—sér, “ Yellow Cap”; the second Dja-mar, “ Red cap.” The convent of Sérkok. north of Hsi- ning, is a Kadamba one, but this is a reformed sect nearly identical with the Gélupa. a LAN-CHOU FU, HSI-NING, KUMBUM, TANKAR 87 found; the usual rate of interest is two per cent. a month. In Amdo the lamaseries do not own as much property as they do in Tibet, but many of the lamas are quite wealthy; they are enterprising traders, and make fre- quent journeys to Peking, Urga, Lh’asa, or Hsi-an Fu, Where they purchase all the articles most readily sold in their country. , At the head of every lamasery is an abbot (k’cmpo), who is either sent from a large lamasery to fill this office or, in a few cases, is chosen by the lamas. Under him are a certain number of officers, of whom some act as magis- trates and provosts or censors, others attend to the temporal afiairs of the convent, and still others super- intend the ceremonies.1 In a few of the larger lamaseries there is an official appointed by the Amban who assists the lama officials (8mg knew) in enforcing discipline, but Whose principal duty consists in observing the spirit animating the convent, whether it is friendly or hostile to the Chinese government, and keeping the Amban duly posted. This official is styled Erh lao-yeh, or “the second gentleman,” by the Chinese. The rules of the larger lamaseries are very strict, and, while crimes can usually be compounded by the payment of fines, the misdemeanors of the lower-class lamas are punished by whipping, solitary confinement, or expulsion. The ecclesiastical authorities have, even within the limits of China, power of life and death over the lamas of their . convents; the civil authorities can not, or rather do not choose to, assail these prerogatives, and generally submit 1 The Jassak and Gékor lamas act orders and conducts the ceremonies. as provosts; the Nyérpa attends to The Jassak, Gékor, and Wudzépa are the finances,supplies,etc.;the Dronyér appointed by the K’anpo for a term looks after guests; the Wudzépa of years. 88 THE LAND OF THE LAMAS without demur to the decisions of the ecclesiastical courts. In nearly all the large convents there are certain dig- nitaries who do not take part in the administration nor in most of the ceremonies, but who, by their presence and superior sanctity, add to the fame of the establish- ments, and thus cause the laity to increase their offerings marvelously. There are forty-eight of these living saints, or rather incarnations of former saints, in Amdo, the Koko-nor, and the Ts’aidam. Over thirty of them are from Kumbum, while only a Very few are born in central Tibet. They are divided into three classes, according to their greater or lesser degree of holiness; the most holy of all resides in the great lamasery of Kuei-te, and, strange as it must appear, there is none at Kumbum.1 They are Supposed to be in constant prayer for the» welfare of the locality Where they reside; and are fre- quently consulted by the laity as to the success of any undertaking, for as fortune-tellers they are supposed to be “equaled by few, excelled by none.” The Wu-dzé-pa is, as previously said, the director of church ceremonies and of the choirs. In this connection, the system of musical notation used in the convents to teach the lamas to chant is worthy of notice. The books, called yang-gig, “hymn or song books,” contain a kind of descriptive score, consisting of a wavy line showing when and for what space of time the voice should rise or fall. Where the conch-shell should be sounded or the drum beaten is shown by the figure of a 1 Saints of the highest class are styled Kushok. Kushok Tashu rin- poch’é is the first—he resides at Kuei- té; Kushok Duwa is the second, Kushok Ch’ubchen the third. Those of the second class are styled A laksan; those of the third Sér-gi chyong—wa. In Mongol they are called Hutukctu, Chabe’ron, and Ge’gén—their generic name is hubz‘lhan, “incarnations”; in, Tibetan they are known as tru-ku, and in Amdo as Karwa. p811 Saws A .wr ad“. m nfr K .wsm tae m m2. T S , mim M ffin U Otfl U mha K ete «wtn aw, wawi 21d m S n . mum m th .mm U, kmo c F .me U Soon 0 mno H ma; mu amm ae, «1me .1 o W . HWa elam ..m.ma . _ wm>§§u~uOON AdarZOaM—Qv («Jaws UEmOHngHH