Some years ago we had taken our passage for Alexandria on board a packet from Valletta. The Ægyptus, spick and span new from the Toulon dockyard, with the tricolor flaunting over her stern all resplendent with gilded sphynxes, lay, steam up and ready for departure, near the centre of the Great Harbour, amid that glorious cluster of cities which the knights of St John reared round the banner of the Cross, when Christendom was forced to shorten her cords and draw in her outposts before the swelling power of the unbelievers. Berth selected, baggage stowed away, and hour of dinner ascertained, we were at leisure to enjoy the familiar but never palling glories of the sky and scenery, and to amuse ourselves in watching the travellers of various nations who, party by party, mounted the deck, speculating the while on whatever promised in the first aspect of those who were to be our messmates on the five days' voyage. They were not numerous or very interesting—a party of French artists, bloused and bearded, who returned from their brief circuit of Valletta as full of the stalwart figures and novel costume of its garrison (the Forty-Second) as of the picturesque grandeur of its palaces, or the Titanic sublimity of its bulwarks—a grey-haired English veteran proceeding to his divisional command in India, with wife and daughters, and a most ante-Napierian baggage-train, received by M. le Commandant with scowling courtesy, as if the stately dame were perfide Albion in proper person—then one or two half-Frenchified Moslems, returning from their studies in Paris with a complement of Western vice and science—and lastly, in coarse brown robe, sandalled feet, and shaven crown, with shining breviary beneath the arm, three Capuchin monks, going forth to make disciples for Holy Church in the far East. Each of the latter had his trunk—one of those lanky, hog-backed articles in which the continental European rejoices—and on the trunk his name and destination painted. Two, if we remember, were bound for Agra—the destination of the third we never can forget. On his coffer the painter had inscribed, as coolly, we daresay, as a railway porter would ticket your portmanteau for York or Glasgow,

"Fr. Anastasio
Tibet."

"It is a far cry to Loch Ow;" and whether brother Anastasius and his long pack ever reached their destination as per ticket we know not. But Tibet and its capital have since been visited by two brethren of his Church, though not of his order; and we have to thank Mr Prinsep for calling attention to their narrative in the very able abstract which he has published.[8]

To many readers, possibly, the name of Tibet calls up but a vague and shadowy image of a sort of eastern Lapland, which serves as a top-margin to the map of Hindostan, and produces lamas, generally understood to be a species of shawl goats from whose fleece the Messrs Nicol make world-renowned paletÔts. Our purpose, then, is to define our ideas of the region called Tibet, and to gather together as we may, from old and new sources, some picture more or less dim and fragmentary of the land and its inhabitants.

Conquerors and congresses may make rivers the frontiers of polities and zollvereins, but mountains are the true boundaries of races.[9] The Rhine may part Germany from France, but the Vosges, not the Rhine, parts the German from the Frenchman. Not Tweed, but the Grampians, have marked in our native land the marches of Celt and Saxon. On the side of the Five Rivers the Indian population shades gradually from the true Hindoo into the shaggy robber of the valleys west of the Indus; at the extremity of the peninsula the Tamul tribes of the continent have peopled the coast of Ceylon, as the ancient BelgÆ peopled the coast of Kent. But along the northern limit of India runs a barrier which,

"With snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,"

dividing the Caucasian from the Mongolian race now as completely as it did two or three thousand years ago.

From the plains of the Punjab, hard baked beneath the blazing May sun—from the dusty levels of Sirhind, where meagre acacias cheat the eye with promise of shade—from the long lines of thatched pyramids that greet the traveller in the Doab, as he approaches a British cantonment—eastward through the rich misgoverned tracts of populous Oude, that year by year pour forth their streams of stalwart soldiers, servants, and labourers, to push their fortune in the service of the Kumpanee Buhadoor or its representatives—still eastward from the fertile prairies of Tirhoot and Purneea—from the bamboo thickets and rice swamps of northern Bengal—yet far eastward from the ultima Thule of Anglo-Indian power, where the majestic flood of Burrampooter sweeps down into Assam from the unknown hills—from all these

"Dusk faces with white muslin turbans wreathed"

look northward through the clear morning air on the same mighty Himalaya,[10] stretching beyond their ken its awful barrier of unchanging snow.

In mounting from the plains of India over the arduous passes, ranging from 12,000 to 20,000 feet above the sea, through which the pressure of human need, curiosity, and superstition, has forced a scanty and intermittent stream of intercourse, the traveller, after traversing the last ridge of the Himalaya, instead of having to descend again to the level of the southern regions, finds himself but little raised above a vast table-land, in some places extending in barren wastes of plain, or of bare monotonous hills, intersected by sudden deep valleys or great ravines, in which the rivers flow and the few villages are scattered; in others forming an endless alternation of lofty mountain ranges and low valleys, but the bottom of these last still many thousand feet above the plains of the Indian peninsula. To this elevated region, stretching from the Indus north-west of Kashmeer, to the extremest point of Assam, and somewhat farther east, a space of more than 1500 miles, the name of Tibet applies. The limits of its extent northward are somewhat more vague; but if they be considered to include a breadth of three or four degrees of latitude (33°-36°) towards the western extremity, and of nine or ten degrees (28°-38°) in the eastern and widest part, the estimate will not be far wrong. The identity throughout this "very large and long countrey," (to borrow the expression of an old traveller,) consists in the general use of the same language and customs, the prevalence, except in the extreme west, of the same faith, and the possession of the same religious books, written or printed in a character common to all. To these we might perhaps add the domestication of the shawl-goat and the yak throughout the whole territory.

The name of Tibet does not appear to be known, or at least applied, either in the country itself or by its Hindoo neighbours. Tubbet, or Tobot, is stated to have been the Mongolian appellation of a nation who anciently occupied the mountainous country on the north-west confines of China. Our old travellers doubtless learned the word from the Mongols; and from them also it has been adopted as the name of the high country north of India, in all the Mussulman languages of Western Asia. It was more particularly, perhaps, applied in these to Balti and Ladakh, the two most westerly districts, which, in the time of Bernier, were commonly distinguished as Little and Great Tibet. The natives apply to their country the name of BÓd or PÓt, and as Bhoteeas they are themselves known in Hindostan; though the appellation of Bhotan has in our geography-books come to be confined to a small dependency of Tibet bordering on the north of Assam, where the race comes most closely in contact with our knowledge and the British power, just as our forefathers gave the title of Dutch specially to that fraction of the Teutonic or Deutsch race which most nearly adjoined their shores.

The central and most elevated portion of this region is the province of Ngari—called by the people of the adjoining British territory Hyundes, or "Snowland." It embraces extensive desert tracts, intersected by several lofty ranges, the chief being that of Kylass, the sacred celestial mountain of Indian mythology. The table-land at the foot of Kylass, on which lie the twin lakes of RÁkas Thal and ManasarÁwur, at a height of 15,250 feet above the sea, is probably the most elevated in Asia, or in the world. On the shores of these sacred lakes occurred, some years ago, the catastrophe of a curious historical episode. Zorawur Singh, commanding the troops, of Goolab Singh of Jummoo, (now well known as the Lord of Kashmeer,) after overrunning Little Tibet and subjugating Ladakh, advanced up the Indus and beyond it, till he had occupied posts on the frontier of the Nepalese Himalayas, as if he meditated a foray on the Grand Lama's capital at last. But it proved a Moscow expedition on a small scale. His troops, unused to such a climate, and straitened for fuel, were beset in the depth of winter by a superior force from Lhassa, and, helpless from cold, were overpowered: their leader was slain, their officers captured, and the mass perished in heaps miserably. A few poor, frost-maimed wretches—the sole relics of Zorawur Singh's adventurous band—brought the tale to the British station at Almora, having fled across passes 16,000 feet high in mid-winter. The bleak aspect of the Tibetan plain, as seen from the pass of Niti, somewhat westward of the lakes—shrubless, treeless, houseless—is compared by a traveller to the dreary moors of Upper Clydesdale, with stone and scanty brown herbage in the place of heather. Some of the most celebrated rivers in the world have their not unworthy source in the lofty table which forms the base of the Hindoo Olympus. The Ganges rises in the mountains immediately adjoining Ngari on the south-west, the Gogra, which, were size alone to decide the rights of river nomenclature, might perhaps claim the Ganges as a tributary, has its source in Ngari; so have the Indus, the Sutlej, and the Sanpoo. The Sanpoo, after flowing eastward behind the Himalayan range for some eight hundred miles, is lost to geography in the untraversed regions south-east of Lhassa. In the last century, D'Anville identified the Sanpoo with the Irawaddy, flowing through the whole extent of the Burman Empire to the sea at Rangoon; but the sagacity of Rennel suggested that the Burrampooter, emerging from unexplored mountains into the valley of Assam, and bearing to the sea a flood of waters greatly exceeding the Ganges, is the true Sanpoo. Turner, who, in his mission, reached the banks of the Sanpoo, indicates its course from the information of the Lamas in entire coincidence with Rennel's view.[11] In later years, however, Klaproth has revived the theory of D'Anville, apparently without good grounds. The Dihong, which is the principal contributor to the Burrampooter in Assam, though its course above the plains remains unexplored, bursts on our knowledge with a stream of such capacity as quite justifies the length attributed to it by the supposition that it is identical with the Sanpoo. And there seems little reason to doubt that the two great rivers, Ganges and Sanpoo, rising from the same lofty region, within 150 miles of one another, after diverging to an interval of some 17° of longitude, combine their waters in the plains of Bengal. In Rennel's time, the Burrampooter, after issuing westward from the Assam valley, swept south and south-eastward, and, forming with the Ganges a fluvial peninsula, entered the sea abreast of that river below Dacca. And so almost all English maps persist in representing it, though this eastern channel is now, unless in the rainy season, shallow and insignificant; the vast body of the Burrampooter cutting across the neck of the peninsula under the name of Jenai, and uniting with the Ganges near Pubna (about 150 miles north-east of Calcutta), from which point the two rivers, under the local name of Pudda, flow on in mighty union to the sea.

The upper part of the Indus valley, with the adjoining pastures, bears the name of Chanthan, or the Northern Plains, and produces the finest shawl wool. The export of this was long almost monopolised by the Ladakh market for the supply of Kashmeer, but much of it now finds its way direct to British India by the Sutlej valley and more eastern passes. The population is most scanty, and partially nomadic—the names which dot it on the map being mostly mere shepherd shelters, or clusters of nomad tents round a few houses of sunburnt brick. Tashigong, the only place of any extent, is the site of an important monastery. North of the Indus, and separated from it by a range of mountains, is the extensive salt lake of Pangkung. On the Singhkhabab, or Indus, farther westward, are strung, as it were, the principalities of Ladakh and Balti. These consist of a mass of mountain ranges rising from a base elevated 11,000 feet and more above the sea. This rugged country occupies the whole breadth of the Indus drainage from the Kashmeer Himalyas to the Karakoram mountains. The levels along the borders of the streams, and the slopes at the bases of the mountains, are diligently cultivated and irrigated, being first formed into terraced steps by a great accumulation of patient labour—a practice that prevails through the whole extent of the Himalaya Mountains. The uncultivated part of the country has the usual Tibetan aspect of bleakness and sterility.

Balti, or Little Tibet, is still independent under various chieftains, of whom the most powerful resides at Skardo, a considerable village, doing duty for a city where cities are so scarce. Ladakh was conquered by the Sikh feudatory, Goolab Singh, in 1835; and after the Sutlej victories of 1846, possession was confirmed to him by Lord Hardinge, at the same time that Kashmeer was made over to his tender mercies. Le, the capital, and probably the only aggregation of dwellings worthy of the name of town, situated in the valley of the Indus, and containing from 700 to 1000 houses, had before that period been visited by only two or three Europeans, of whom the persistent and unfortunate Moorcroft was the first in this century. Captain H. Strachey, of the Bengal army, belonging to the commission appointed to define the boundary between Ladakh and the Chinese or Tibetan dependencies, spent several years, between 1846 and 1849, in those regions; and far more accurate and full information than has ever yet been obtained may be expected from his researches. The whole population of Balti, and a half in Ladakh, are Sheea Mahommedans.

Returning to the centre of the table-land, we have, on the north-east of Ngari, extensive and almost unknown deserts, containing numerous salt-lakes, and haunted by a scanty nomad population, called by the Tibetans Sok, and supposed to represent the ancient Sacians. South-east lie the provinces of U and Tsang, or, conjointly, U-Tsang, to which the natives specially apply the name of BÓd, and which may be considered as Tibet Proper. It is that part of the region to which we turn with most curiosity and interest, as containing the centre of spiritual and chief political supremacy—Lhassa, so long the unreachable Timbuctoo of the East. Lhassa is situated in the province of U, on a northern tributary of the Sanpoo, by which it is separated from Tsang. The latter territory is immediately governed by the Teshoo Lama, the potentate with whom we made an accidental acquaintance in Warren Hastings' time—our first and last brief but cordial intercourse with Tibet Proper. The provinces of U-Tsang are intersected by lofty alpine ranges, which, as they trend east and south-east, converge, but without uniting, insomuch that, in the inexpressibly rugged country where the frontiers of Tibet, Burma, and China approach one another, we find four parallel valleys traversed by four of the greatest rivers of Asia, embraced within the narrow space of one hundred miles. The Tibetan portion of this wild region, known as Kham, is inhabited by a rough race, of warlike and independent character, retaining many primitive superstitions beneath the engrafted Lamanism, and treating with little respect the Chinese pretensions to sovereignty. Through this region the missionaries Huc and Gabet were escorted back to China—the first Europeans, there can be little doubt, who ever trod those wilds. The plundering excursions of the Kham-pa extend all across the breadth of Tibet, and the fear of them haunts even the pilgrims to Kylass and the ManusarÁwur Lake.

The Bhotan territory remains, which, from language, religion, manners, and political connection, may justly be considered as Tibetan, though occupying not the table-land north of the Himalaya, but the whole breadth of the range itself, from the Tsang country to Assam. Bhotan is a mass of mountains clothed in perpetual verdure, its slopes covered with forests of large and lofty trees; populous villages, girt with orchards, are scattered along the sides and summits of the spurs; every declivity of favourable aspect is carved into terraces, cultivated to the utmost, and carefully irrigated from the abundant streams. Nothing could be physically in greater contrast with the bleak and arid plains or rocky hills of Tibet. The people of Bhotan are a remarkably fine race. Scarcely anywhere else in the world shall we find an equal proportion of men so straight, so well made, and so athletic, many of them more than six feet high. Deformity is almost unknown, except that arising from goitre, which is very prevalent among them, as it is, indeed, over the whole extent of the Himalaya, and of the Turaee, or forest tract, at the base of the mountains; whilst Tibet Proper is entirely free from it. Tibetan geographers, according to Csoma de KÖrÖs, compare Ngari, with its fountains, to a tank, U-Tsang to the irrigating channels, and Kham to the field irrigated. We do not appreciate the aptness of the similitude. More intelligibly, European geographers have likened Tibet in form to a vast cornucopia pouring from its wide eastern mouth vast rivers forth, to fertilise the happier plains of China, Siam, Burma, and Assam.

All these countries, with the exception of Little Tibet, or Balti, and of Ladakh since its seizure by the Sikhs, acknowledge more or less directly the supremacy of the Dalai Lama at Lhassa, and, beyond him, that of China. Since the accession of the existing Manchoo dynasty to the throne of Pekin, they have always maintained two envoys at the court of Lhassa. Mr Prinsep aptly compares the position of these ministers to that of a British resident at the court of Luknow or Hyderabad. They do not, however, appear to meddle much with the ordinary internal administration, nor is their military force maintained in the country large. Besides a few hundred men at Lhassa, and guards established at intervals on the post-road from China, they take upon them the superintendence of the passes of the Himalaya, and see to the exclusion of Europeans by those inlets with unrelaxing rigour. In other parts of Tibet there are no Chinese.

The whole of this country, though so near the tropic, is the coldest and bleakest inhabited by a civilised people on the surface of the earth, if we except Siberia. Forests of cedar, holly, and other Himalayan trees, are met with in the valleys of the extreme east, bordering upon China. Lhassa is surrounded with trees of considerable size; and a few straggling willows or poplars, artfully pollarded for the multiplication of their staves, are found by the watercourses of Ladakh and Tibet Proper; but the vast extent of the table-land is bare and desolate, and as devoid of trees as Shetland. The ancient Hindoos are said to have esteemed it as a vault over hell. The only shrubs that dot the waste are the Tartaric furze, or the wizened wormwood, with its white parched stalks, or perchance, in more favoured spots, a few stunted rose-bushes. Though the winter is long and severe, snow is not frequent in the valleys. The air is of a purity and brilliance which dazzles and fatigues the eye, and its excessive dryness produces effects analogous to those of the scorching May winds in the torrid plains of Hindostan;—

vegetation is dried to brittleness, and leaves may be rubbed between the fingers into dust. Mahogany chests, and furniture belonging to Turner's party, which had stood the climate of Bengal for years, warped and split under the cold dry winds of Tibet. Wood seems subject to no other cause of injury from time.

As might be expected, tillage is scanty, and the population depend much on imported food. Villages are small, seldom containing more than twenty houses. These, in the better parts of the country, have a cheerful appearance, the dwellings being all white-washed, with doors and windows picked out in red or yellow. Lhassa would seem to be the only city of Tibet worthy of that title: the Chinese geographers, indeed, and native itineraries, speak of one or two others, but nothing is known of them. Teshoo Loombo on the Sanpoo, ten days from Lhassa, though the residence of the second personage in Tibet, seems to be merely a monastic establishment. Indeed, the large convents are probably, after Lhassa, the most considerable nuclei of population in the country; and Lhassa itself has perhaps grown to importance as an appendage to the PotÁla, or residence of the Grand Lama.

No European traveller has described this celebrated city before M. Huc, and we cannot say that he succeeds in bringing its aspect before his readers very vividly. When within a day's journey of the city, one of the most rugged mountain passes of the many which the missionaries had met with, in their journey from the east of Tartary, still intervened. "The sun was about to set as we completed our descent of the innumerable zigzags of the mountain path. Issuing into a wide valley, we beheld on our right Lhassa, the famous metropolis of the Buddhistic world. The multitude of aged trees, which encircle the city as with a girdle of foliage—the lofty white houses, terminating in flat roofs surrounded by turrets—the numerous temples, with their gilded canopies—the Boodhala, crowned by the palace of the Dalai Lama—all unite to give Lhassa a majestic and imposing appearance." The city is stated to be nearly two leagues in circumference, and it is now without walls. Outside the suburbs are numerous gardens planted with the large trees mentioned above. The main streets are wide, well laid-out, and tolerably clean in dry weather; but the dirt of the suburbs is unspeakable. The houses, which are large, and several stories high, are whitewashed, according to universal Tibetan custom, the doors and windows being bordered in red or yellow. M. Huc does not enter into any detail of their architecture, but we may suppose that these houses are analogous in character to what is seen in other parts of Tibet. The lower part of a house presents lofty dead walls, pierced only by two or three air-holes; above these are from one to half-a-dozen tiers of windows with projecting balconies, and, over all, flat, broad-brimmed roofs, at a variety of levels; add to this, that the houses run into one another so strangely that it is difficult to determine the extent of each mansion, and that the groups of building generally contract in extent as they rise. On the whole, we may conceive a Tibetan city like a cluster of card-houses of various altitudes. In the suburbs of Lhassa there is one quarter entirely built of the horns of sheep and oxen set in mortar. The construction is solid, and the effect highly picturesque, the varied colour and texture of the two species facilitating the production of a great variety of patterns. Lhassa bustles with the continual traffic of crowds attracted by commerce or devotion from all parts of Asia, and presents an astonishing variety of physiognomy, costume, and language.

Less than a mile north of the town a conical craggy hill rises like an island from the middle of the wide valley. On this hill, Potala, (the name of which M. Huc writes Boodhala, and interprets, questionably,[12] to mean "Mount of Buddha,") is the residence of the Tibetan flesh-and-blood divinity. It is a great cluster of temples and other buildings, terminating in a lofty four-storied edifice towering over the others, crowned by a dome or canopy entirely covered with gold, and encircled by a range of gilded columns. From this lofty sanctuary the great Lama may contemplate on festival days the crowds of his adorers moving in the plain, and prostrating themselves at the foot of the holy hill. The subordinate buildings of this acropolis serve as residences to a crowd of Lamas of all ranks, who form the court and permanent attendants of the sacred sovereign. Two avenues lined with trees lead from the city to the Potala, generally thronged with mounted lamas of the court, and with pilgrims from a distance, who, as they move along, thread their long rosaries, and mutter the sacred symbol of their faith. The crowds around the Potala are in continual motion, but generally grave and silent, as if in religious abstraction. It is probably etiquette to be so.

Unfortunately our missionaries have ventured on no graphic illustrations; and the only attempt that we know of to delineate this interesting citadel of Buddhism, is a plate contained in the narrative of Grueber and Dorville's journey, given by Athanasius Kircher in his China Illustrata. It is meagre enough, but yet looks genuine, and not a mere Amsterdam concoction.

A singular legend is stated by Huc to exist, both at Lhassa and among the dwellers by the Koko-Noor, (the great salt lake on the north-east frontier of Tibet,) that the waters of that basin formerly occupied a subterraneous site beneath the capital city; but, on the breaking of a charm which detained them there, they passed off under ground, and flooded the valley where the lake now exists. It is curious that Turner met with a version of this same tradition on the southern frontier of Tibet; but there it was related that Buddha, in compassion to the few and wretched creatures who then inhabited the land, drew off the waters through Bengal. A similar tradition regarding the valley of Katmandoo exists in Nepaul.

The people of Tibet are of the great Mongolian family, and exhibit its characters in a very marked degree;—platter face, with prominent cheek-bones, button-hole eyes and upright eyelids, squashed nose, wide mouth, retiring chin, scant beard, coarse black hair, deeply-marked and weather-beaten countenances; naturally of a pale-brown colour, but tanned to any depth of copper, not without a ruddy tint at times; of a considerable variety of stature. The English traveller who, in traversing the steep valley-sides of the Himalaya, comes for the first time on a party of Tibetans driving southward their flock of sheep and goats—each little quadruped, like a camel from Lilliput, laden with some twenty pounds of salt or borax—is struck at once with the idea that he has stumbled on a group of Esquimaux out of Parry's voyages. These quaint, good-humoured people frequent the fairs of the British hill-territory, to exchange their salt for wheat and barley; and sometimes they get so far from home as to astonish, with unwonted apparition, the evening promenaders at Simla or Mussooree.

These uncouth peasants, though perhaps the best ethnographic studies, are not to be taken as samples of the culture and refinement of Tibet. The higher classes of the country have only been known to those few travellers who have penetrated to the capitals—Ladakh on the one side, Lhassa and Teshoo Loombo on the other. All these seem to have been most favourably impressed with the kindly and simple, but by no means unpolished manners of the educated class; the plain and unaffected language, the mild and unassuming demeanour, of the ruling prince at Teshoo Loombo—which Turner, at the same time, says was characteristic of all well-educated Tibetans—fully accords with the character of the regent-minister at Lhassa, as he appears in the later narrative of M. Huc.

Dark woollen cloth is the standard material of dress, formed into a wide frock, trousers, and leggings, the last replaced in the wealthy by boots of Russia, or other costly leather. Over all is worn a capacious mantle of cloth, sometimes lined with fur. From a red girdle depend various purses, containing the wooden teacup inseparable from a Tibetan, flint and steel, and other odds and ends. Gay broad-brimmed hats are in vogue at Lhassa, but are rarer in the west. The women dress much like the men, and plait the hair in narrow tresses hanging on the shoulders. On the top of the head the Ladakh women wear a flat lappet of cloth or leather, descending in a peak behind, stuck over with beads of turquoise, amber, and cornelian; and the back hair is gathered in a queue, which is lengthened by tassels of coloured worsted intermixed with shells, bells, and coins, until it nearly touches the ground. Though not veiled, like the Moslem women, with muslin or calico, their charms are subjected to a much more efficacious disguise. Before leaving home, every respectable woman at Lhassa plasters her face with a black sticky varnish like raspberry jam, which gives her an aspect scarcely human. The practice is said at Lhassa to have been introduced some centuries ago, in order to check the immorality which was then rampant in the city. But it appears to be widely diffused, and is probably ancient. Rubruquis refers to something like it in the thirteenth century. Grueber and Dorville, who travelled through Tibet and Nepaul in 1661, say, "The women of these kingdoms are so hideous that they are liker demons than human creatures; for through some superstition, instead of water they always use a stinking oil to wash with; and with this they are so fetid and so bedaubed that they might be taken for hateful hobgoblins." But tastes differ, and the same unguent which the missionaries represent as intended to render the women hideously unattractive, or at least a modification of it in fashion at Ladakh, Moorcroft appears to think is adopted as a cosmetic. From all the fathers could learn, the black varnish has not altogether reformed Tibetan morals.

The strange, repulsive custom of polyandry, or the marriage of one woman to several brothers, is diffused over the greater part of Tibet, though it is not mentioned by Huc as existing at Lhassa. It is not confined to the lower ranks, but is frequent also in opulent families. Turner mentions one instance in the neighbourhood of Teshoo Loombo, where five brothers were living together very happily under the same connubial compact.

Moorcroft speaks of three meals a-day as the practise of Ladakh, but this extraordinary symptom of civilisation does not seem to be general. In Eastern Tibet, regular meals are not in vogue; the members of a family do not assemble to dine together, but "eat when they're hungry, drink when they're dry." We remember to have heard a graphic description of the Tibetan cuisine from a humourous shikaree, or native Nimrod, of our Himalayan provinces. "The Bhoteea folk," he said, "have a detestable way of eating. They take a large cooking-pot full of water, and put in it meat, bread, rice, what not, and set it on the fire, where it is always a-simmering. When hungry, they go and fish out a cupful of whatever comes uppermost, perhaps six or seven times a-day. Strangers are served in the same way. If a man gets hold of a bone, he picks it, wipes his hands on his dress, and chucks it back into the pot; so with all crumbs and scraps, back they go into the pot, and thus the never-ending, still beginning mess stews on."

Tea, however, is a staple article of diet, and is served on all occasions. A vast quantity is imported, artificially compressed into the form of solid bricks of about eight pounds weight, in which shape it requires little packing, and forms a most handy article for barter. Instead of infusing it after our fashion, they pulverise a piece of the brick and boil it in water, with a proportion of salt and soda; then churn it up with a quantity of butter, and serve the mess in a teapot. At Tassisudon, Turner admired the dexterity (comparable to that of a London waiter manipulating a bottle of soda-water) with which the raja's attendant, before serving the liquid, "giving a circular turn to the teapot, so as to agitate and mix its contents, poured a quantity into the palm of his hand, which he had contracted to form as deep a concave as possible, and hastily sipped it up." When taken as a meal, tsamba, or the flour of parched barley, is added, each man mixing his own cupful up into a sort of brose or gruel with his five natural spatulÆ. Meat is abundant, but is taken as an extra or embellishment, rather than as a staple of diet. In cookery, the people appear to have none of the genius of their neighbours, either of India or of China. Hares, winged game, and fish, though abundant, are not eaten, so that they have scarcely any meat but mutton, (excepting occasionally yak beef,) and their mutton they have but three ways of serving—viz., absolutely raw, frozen, and boiled. The frozen meat having been prepared in winter may then be kept throughout the year, and carried to any part of Tibet. European travellers generally commend this meat, which undergoes no process of cookery.

The Tibetans, being no great water-drinkers, the liquid next in importance to tea is an acidulous beverage made from fermented barley, known through more than 20° of longitude as chong. Turner absurdly calls it whisky, but it is rather analogous to beer. It requires a large quantity to produce intoxication, but, nevertheless, that result is attained.

One of the peculiar customs which prominently mark the whole Tibetan race is the use of the khata, or scarf of ceremony. This is a fringed scarf of Chinese silk gauze, which is interchanged on all occasions of ceremonious intercourse, even the most trivial, and in every rank of society. They are to be had of qualities and prices suited to all pockets, and no Tibetan travels without a stock of them. In paying formal visits, in asking a favour, or returning thanks for one, in offering a present or delivering a message to a superior, the khata is presented. On the meeting of friends after long separation, the first care is to exchange the khata. In epistolary correspondence, also, it is customary to enclose the khata; without it, the finest words and most magnificent presents are of no account. Turner mentions that the Bhotan Raja once returned a letter of the Governor-General's, because it was unaccompanied by this bulky but polite incumbrance.

Of all the quaint modes of salutation among men, that in fashion at Lhassa is surely the quaintest and most elaborate; and we can fancy that it affords room for all the graces of a Tibetan Chesterfield. It consists in uncovering the head, sticking out the tongue, and scratching the right ear! and these three operations are performed simultaneously.

Tibet has always been a subject of curiosity, not more from its inaccessibility than from the singular nature of its government, resting, as is well known, in the hands of a sovereign, elective under a singular and superstitious system, who, by the name of Dalai (the ocean) Lama, is not only king and spiritual father, but also the embodied divinity of his people. The Buddhistic faith, numbering as its adherents a greater population than any other existing creed, when driven from its native soil, India, (in which it has long been totally extinct, though its gigantic footsteps still mark the surface in all parts of the peninsula,) spread over Nepaul, Ceylon, the kingdoms of the Transgangetic Peninsula, China, Corea, Japan, Tibet, and the whole Mongolian region to the confines of Siberia. The essential idea of Buddhism appears to be a peculiar development of the notion which runs through nearly all the Asiatic pagan philosophies, and which, interwoven with the fantasies of the innumerable Gnostic sects, once spread its influence to the centre of the Christian world—viz., that all the external world is but a transient manifestation of the Divine Being, and the souls of all living creatures are emanations from Him; that these souls, whilst included in material and perishable bodies, are in a state of imperfection, degradation, and suffering; and that the great object of intelligent creatures should be final release from the clog of the flesh, and abdication of all personal identity, to be absorbed in the universal soul. Considerable difference of opinion exists among the learned as to the true epoch of Sakya Muni or Gautama, the Indian deified saint, or Buddha, who was the propagator of the doctrine in the particular form which derives its appellation from him; but the latest of the various periods assigned for his death is 543 B.C. After a long life spent in preaching humility, self-denial, meditation on the divine perfections, and the celebration of solemn ritual services of praise and worship, he is believed himself to have been, at death, absorbed into the divine essence on account of his great attainments in sanctity. Sakya was followed by a succession of sacred personages, who are to be regarded either as mortals whose attainments in sanctity have reached, in repeated transmigrations, to a divine eminence, though not yet to the final absorption of a Buddha, or as voluntary incarnations of souls whose virtue had attained to freedom from the necessity of renewed terrestrial life, but who chose to dwell again on earth in order to aid men in the attainment of perfection, and facilitate their reunion with the universal soul. It is this part of the system which has assumed an exaggerated prominence in Tibet and Mongolia, where these regenerations have gradually, in the general faith, taken the form of continual and manifold incarnations of Buddha, or the Divine Being.

In combination with this doctrine, and the stress laid on meditation and ritual worship, a vast proportion of the inhabitants, both in Tibet and Mongolia, one at least out of every family where there are more than one son, devote themselves to a religious life, and many of these dwell together in monastic communities. The Shabrongs or Regenerate Buddhas are so numerous that many of the chief convents possess one. These personages, though all esteemed divine, appear somehow to vary in spiritual consideration as well as temporal grandeur, as one Marian idol in the Church of Rome has more sanctity and miraculous power ascribed to it than another has. The most eminent and most venerated of all is the Dalai Lama. The exercise of his authority is in theory unlimited; he is the centre of all government. But since, in the capacity of manifested divinity, he could not, without derogation of his sacred character, mix himself up with the numerous trivialities of human affairs, few questions are actually submitted to him; he is regarded only in the most amiable light, as absorbed in religious duty, or interfering only to exercise the most benign attributes. The general administration of the government is carried on by another personage, also a Shabrong, nominated by the supreme Lama, and known as the NomÉ-Khan; by the Chinese and the Western Tibetans, he is generally called King of Tibet Proper. The NomÉ-Khan is appointed for life, and can only be removed by a coup-d'État. He is assisted in administration by four lay ministers called Kalongs.

The provinces are governed by ecclesiastical princes receiving their investiture from the Dalai Lama, and acknowledging his supremacy, but enjoying apparently a good deal of practical independence.

The most important of these princes, and in spiritual estimation but little below the Dalai Lama himself, is the Punjun Rimboochee of Jachee (or Teshoo) Loombo, known to the British in India as Teshoo Lama. The intercourse between the Anglo-Indian Government and this prince arose as follows:—In 1772 the Deb Raja, or sovereign of Bhotan, laid claim to and seized Kooch Bahar, a district at the mouth of the Assam Valley, adjoining Rungpoor. A sepoy force was sent to expel the hill people, which they speedily accomplished, pursuing the enemy to their mountains. The raja, alarmed for his own dominions, applied for the intercession of Teshoo Lama, who was then regent, spiritual, and political, of the whole of Tibet, during the minority of the Lhassa pontiff. The Lama sent a deputation to Calcutta, with a letter to Warren Hastings, then Governor—"an authentic and curious specimen," says Turner, "of his good sense, humility, simplicity of heart, and, above all, of that delicacy of sentiment and expression which could convey a threat in terms of meekness and supplication." The deputation, and the presents which it bore from a country so mysterious and inaccessible, excited intense interest at Calcutta—the Governor at once acceded to the Lama's intercession, and determined to take advantage of the opportunity afforded to acquire knowledge of those obscure regions, and to find, possibly, new outlets to British commerce, under circumstances so favourable and unlooked for. He accordingly despatched Mr George Bogle, a civilian, with presents and specimens of articles of trade. Bogle started in May 1774. There was a good deal of delay and difficulty made on the part of the Tibetan government about granting him a passport; and it was not till October that he arrived at the residence of the Lama. The two seem, during Bogle's visit, which continued till April 1775, completely to have gained each other's confidence and good-will. The Englishman, on his return, always spoke of the Lama as one of the most able and intelligent men he had ever known, maintaining his rank with the utmost mildness of authority, and living in the greatest purity and simplicity of manners. Turner, whose mission will be mentioned presently, found these praises confirmed by the very strong and unusual impression of regard which the sovereign's gentleness and benevolence had left among his subjects. On the other hand, the Lama showed his confidence in Bogle, by remitting to him some time after a considerable sum of money, to be expended in the erection of a temple and dwelling-house on the banks of the Hoogly, for the use of his votaries in Bengal. The characteristic reason assigned for this wish was, that during the numerous series of the Lama's regenerations, Bengal was the only country in which he had been born twice. In 1779, when the Lama, after repeated invitations, visited Pekin, he, in the same friendly spirit, requested Mr Bogle to go round to Canton, promising to obtain the Emperor's permission for his proceeding to the capital. This singular tryst came to nothing in consequence of the death of the Lama at Pekin—in accordance with a fatality which seldom spares the vassal princes of Central Asia on their visits to the Chinese court—and that of Mr Bogle himself about the same time. The brother and minister of Teshoo Lama communicated the circumstances in letters to Mr Hastings, stating that they were in continual prayer for the accomplishment of the transmigration; and, soon after intelligence of this important event was received, the governor sent a renewed deputation as bearers of congratulations, in which (in the lax Anglo-Indian spirit of that age) the continued identity of the Lama was fully recognised. The result of Captain Samuel Turner's mission, as regarded the establishment of commercial intercourse with Tibet, was nothing, but it obtained for us at least a very interesting and valuable book. Turner had the privilege of an interview with the young Lama, at that time past eighteen mouths old; and as the occasion was unique of its kind, we abstract his account of it. The envoy found the infant placed in great form on an elevated mound, covered with embroidered silk; on the left stood the child's father and mother, on the right the officer specially appointed to wait on him. Turner, advancing, presented a white scarf, and put into the Lama's hands the Governor-General's present of a string of pearls and coral. The other things were set down before him, and having then exchanged scarfs with the father and mother, the Englishmen took their seats on the Lama's right. The infant turned towards them, and received them with a cheerful look of complacency. "During the time we were in the room," says Turner, "I observed that the Lama's eyes were scarcely ever turned from us, and when our cups were empty of tea he appeared uneasy, and, throwing back his head, and contracting the skin of his brow, continued to make a noise, for he could not speak, until they were filled again. He took some burnt sugar out of a golden cup containing confectionary and, stretching out his arm, made a motion to his attendant to give it to me. He sent some in like manner to Mr Saunders, who was with me." Turner then made him a speech, expressing the Governor-General's grief at hearing of his decease in China, and his joy at the news of his reappearance; his hope that their former friendship might be increased, and that there might be extensive communication between his votaries and British subjects. "The little creature turned, looking steadfastly towards me with the appearance of much attention while I spoke, and nodded with repeated but slow movements of the head, as though he understood and approved every word, but could not utter a reply.... His whole attention was directed to us; I must own that his behaviour on this occasion appeared perfectly natural and spontaneous, and not directed by any external action or sign of authority."

The existing Punjun or Teshoo Lama is described by Huc from report, in 1816, as a man of about sixty years of age. It is, therefore, very probable that he is the same person who was seen by Turner in infancy; and if so, he has fulfilled the promise of mark, then precociously exhibited. He has great fame throughout Tibet and all Tartary, his partisans claiming for him spiritual power at least equal to that of the Dalai Lama, and never naming him without deep reverence. His influence has waxed the more from the fact that three successive Dalai Lamas have perished before attaining majority. He is said to be of majestic port, and surprising vigour for his age. All pilgrims to the holy sites of Tibet visit Jachee Loombo, and, after making their offerings to the Teshoo, are enrolled in the brotherhood of Gylongs instituted by him, of which all Tartar Buddhists aspire to be members, and which, doubtless, will one day play an important part in the history of that part of Asia. The votaries of Teshoo Lama are satisfied that he is acquainted with all languages, and converses with the pilgrims of all countries, "each in the tongue in which he was born." His predecessor, Panjun Irtinnee, being a native of Ladakh, was able to converse with Mr Bogle in Hindustanee, and as the bystanders believed their unknown language to be English, this strongly confirmed their belief in the polyglot powers of their chief.

Prophecies of coming events, all tending to the glorification of Punjun Remboochee, are in the mouths of all; and that personage is said to be preparing himself, by the practice of military exercises, and the accumulation of horses, for his warlike career.

The Lama next in influence and sanctity appears to be the Geesoo-Tamba, whose residence is at Oorga or Kooren, among the Khalka Tartars, beyond the great Gobi desert, on the banks of the Toola river, which flows northward into the Siberian Lake Baikal. This potentate, from his special influence over the Mongol tribes, is an object of great jealousy at Pekin. In 1839 he alarmed that court by announcing an intended visit. Great stringency was employed in reducing the number of his retinue, but his progress through Mongolia was a continued ovation, the Tartars thronging on all sides to meet and worship him. Geesoo Tamba's visit was hurried over, and, according to the rule in such cases, he died on his way back.[13] Most of the living Buddhas, even in the Tartar convents, are natives of Tibet, and the influence of the Chinese Emperor has been exerted to arrange that the Geesoo Tamba shall always seek his transmigration there.

Other sanctities of celebrity are the Chang-kia-fo, a sort of grand almoner to the court of Pekin, and the Saja-fo, residing near the Himalayas, who has a singular and special mission. He is day and night in prayer for the perpetual fall of snow on the peaks of the mountains; for, according to Tibetan tradition, behind that range dwells a savage race, which only bides the thawing of the snows to pass the barrier, massacre the tribes of Bod, and seize their country.

The story related by Tavernier Grueber and Father Giorgi,[14] regarding the degrading superstition with which the basest personal relics of the reigning Lama were cherished by his votaries, was utterly denied to both Bogle and the French missionaries. The former ascribes the origin of the story to the Lama's practice of distributing little balls of consecrated flour, which the superstition of his more ignorant votaries may have converted into what they pleased.

Convents are exceeding numerous both in Tibet and Mongolia. In the former their number is said to amount to 3000, some near Lhassa containing as many as 15,000 members.

These convents consist usually of groups of whitewashed cells or cottages, clustered together on a hill-side, interspersed with temples of fantastic architecture. Opposite the great entrance to a temple is a sort of altar, above which the idols are enshrined, usually of handsome Caucasian features and colossal size, seated cross-legged. Before the chief image, (representing Maha-muni or Sakya,) and on a level with the altar, is a gilded seat for the Regenerate or Grand Lama of the convent, the rest of the apartment being occupied by rows of carpeted benches.

At prayer time, a conch blown at the temple-gate summons the members to their devotions. After making three prostrations to the head, they take their places, according to precedence, on the benches, seating themselves cross-legged and vis-À-vis, as choir and anti-choir. When a bell, rung by the master of the ceremonies, gives the signal, all commence muttering in a low tone a preparatory act of devotion, as they unrol on their knees the rubrical form of the day. After this short recitation is an interval of profound silence. The bell rings again, and then rises a psalmody of responsive choirs, in a grave and melodious tone. The Tibetan prayers, broken usually into verses, and composed in a style of rhythmic cadence, lend themselves with marvellous effect to concerted recitation. At intervals of repose, fixed by the rubrics, the instrumental band executes a piece of music. In the Tartar choirs this is described by Huc as a confused and stunning jumble of instruments, all the performers emulous in din. Turner, however, in a similar description of the service, speaks more respectfully of the Tibetan instrumental music. According to the latter authority also, the Tibetans possess a musical notation. Their instruments are generally on a large scale;—sliding trumpets from six to ten feet long, which Moorcroft describes as of very deep and majestic intonation; kettle drums; cymbals, highly mellow and sonorous; gongs, hautboys; a large shallow drum, mounted on a tall pedestal: these, with the human tibia and the sea-conch, compose their religious band.

From the earliest traveller to the court of the Grand Khan, to the last vice-regal aide-de-camp whose arduous duties have led him up the Sutlej to the pleasant slopes of Cheenee in Kunawur, whence Ramsay of Dalwolsie dealeth law to the millions of India from under the ripening grapes, all witnesses of the Lamaitic worship have been struck with the extraordinary resemblance of many features of the ecclesiastical system and ritual to those of the Roman Catholic Church. Rubruquis, who travelled in the thirteenth century, mentions a Mongolian people called Jugurs, (probably the Chakars of M. Huc,) whom he brands as rank idolaters, but at the same time admits that it is most difficult to distinguish many of their observances from those of the Catholic Church. They had holy candles, rosaries, and conventual celibacy. The further description of these Jugurs identifies them as Buddhists. "They placed their ideas of perfection in the silent and abstracted contemplation of the Divinity. They sit in the temples on two long forms, opposite to each other, repeating mentally the words, Om mam hactami, but without uttering a word." The missionaries of after days are struck by the same resemblances. Father Grueber, in 1661, states that at Lhassa there are two kings—one civil, the other sacred. "They regard the latter as the true and living God, the eternal and celestial Father. Those who approach prostrate themselves before him and kiss his feet, exactly as is done to his holiness the Pope; so showing the manifest deceits of the devil, who has transferred the veneration due to the sole Vicar of Christ to the superstitious worship of barbarous nations, as he has also, in his innate malignity, abused the other mysteries of the Christian faith." Father Desideri, without directly making such comparisons, indicates more marvellous coincidences than any one else; in fact, he drew some aid from a lively imagination when he deduced that the people of Ladakh had some idea of the Trinity, because they sometimes used the singular and sometimes the plural in speaking of the Deity, and from the form of the sacred symbol constantly in their mouths, which he simplifies into Om ha hum! "They adore," he goes on to say, "one Urghien(?), who was born seven hundred years ago. If you ask them if he was God or man, they will answer sometimes that he is both God and man, and that he had neither father nor mother, but was born of a flower. Nevertheless, they have images representing a woman with a flower in her hand, and this, I was told, was the mother of Urghien. They adore several other persons, whom they regard as saints. In their churches you see an altar covered with an altar-cloth; on the middle of the altar is a sort of tabernacle, where, according to them, Urghien resides, although at other times they will assure you that he is in heaven." Turner and Moorcroft, Protestant laymen, were as much struck by the resemblance of the choral service to the mass as the Roman priests, and none testify to it more frequently than our latest travellers, Huc and Gabet. "The crosier, the mitre, the Dalmatica, the cope or pluvial which the Grand Lamas wear in travelling, the double-choired liturgy, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer swung by five chains, and opening and shutting at will; the benedictions given by the Lama, in stretching his right hand over the head of the faithful; the rosary, the ecclesiastical celibate, the spiritual retreats, the worship of the saints; fasts, processions, holy water," (and they might have added, the tonsure, the ringing of bells during service, the conclave assembled in a temple to elect a pontiff, and the appellation of Eternal Sanctuary applied to Lhassa, the Rome of their faith, by the Tartars,) "in all these numerous particulars do the Buddhists coincide with us." The matter-of-fact Moorcroft describes a Lama of Ladakh as dressed almost like a cardinal. Allowing for some accidental and some exaggerated similarities, more analogy remains than can well be explained, without supposing that the Lamas may have borrowed and adapted parts of the Church ritual from the Nestorians, who were early diffused over Asia; or perhaps that the churches of the latter, sinking in corruption and ignorance, had merged in the sea of superstition which surrounded them, leaving only some corrupted relics of external rites floating on the surface to mark that a church of Christ had once existed there.

As the Christian world is divided into Papist and Protestant, and the body of Islam into Soonnee and Sheea, so also the Lamas have their two great sects, the Gelook-pa and Dok-pa, distinguished by the colour of their caps—yellow being adopted by the former, red by the latter.[15] Celibacy is binding only on the Gelook-pa, but all who aspire to superior sanctity profess it. They all abstain from taking animal life, and some of especial austerity will not even take vegetable life, deeming it unlawful to cut down a tree unless it be withered, or to gather fruit unless it be ripe. Strong drink is forbidden to all the sects. The reform which originated the sect of the Gelook-pa, now predominant over Tibet and Mongolia, and claiming the Emperor himself as one of its adherents, was the work of Tsongkhapa, a celebrated Tibetan teacher of the fourteenth century. He is traditionally stated to have derived his doctrine from a mysterious western stranger, endowed with great learning and Slawkenbergian nose. To the innovations in the Lamaitic worship introduced by Tsongkhapa, the missionaries ascribe many of the more striking resemblances to Roman ritual, and they feel inclined to believe that the mysterious stranger from the West may have been a Catholic missionary, whose teaching was imperfectly received or apprehended. The large nose they conceive may only be an indication of the European physiognomy from the Mongolian point of view. We have a counterpart portrait of the Mongolian from a Caucasian pencil, in Benjamin of Tudela, who speaks of the "Copperal Turks" as having no noses, but only two holes in the face through which they breathe. So also Rubruquis, when he was presented to the wife of Scacatai, a Tartar Khan, verily thought she had cut and pared her nose till she had left herself none at all!

Among other Romanising rites we find something analogous to masses for the dead. In a temple at Ladakh, Moorcroft witnessed the consecration of food for the use of the souls of those condemned to hell, without which, it was believed, they would starve. The chief Lama consecrated barley and water, and poured them from a silver saucer into a brass basin, occasionally striking two cymbals together, and chaunting prayers, to which an inferior Lama from time to time uttered responses aloud, accompanied by the rest in an under-tone. Somewhat different appears to have been the annual festival in honour of the dead, or "All Souls," of which Turner gives a striking description. As soon as it became dark, a general illumination was displayed on the summits of all the buildings of the monastery; the tops of the houses on the plain, and of the distant villages, were also lighted, exhibiting altogether a brilliant spectacle. Though accustomed to esteem illuminations the strongest expressions of public joy, Turner now saw them exhibited as a solemn token of melancholy remembrance—an awful tribute of respect to the innumerable generations of the dead. Darkness, silence, interrupted occasionally by the deep slow tones of the kettle-drum, trumpet, gong, and cymbal; at different intervals, the tolling of bells, and loud monotonous repetition of sentences of prayer, sometimes heard when the instruments were silent, all united to produce an impression of seriousness and awe. Remarkably similar is the description given by the Frenchmen of the nocturnal litanies which they witnessed when resident in the convent of Koonboom.[16] Another impressive devotional practice is mentioned by the last travellers, and one which is the more pleasing, as not being confined to the clergy. "They have at Lhassa a touching custom, which we were almost jealous of meeting among unbelievers. In the evening, as the daylight is passing into twilight, all the Tibetans suspend their occupation, and meet in groups, according to sex and age, in the public places of the town. As soon as the parties are formed, all sit down on the ground, and begin to chaunt prayers in a slow and subdued tone. The aggregation of the sound of prayer, rising all over the city, produces a vast and solemn hum of harmony, which strangely moves the spirit."

The Buddhistic, symbol, or mystic form of concentrated prayer, Om mani padme hom, is not only heard from every mouth, or silently repeated on the rosary, but is to be seen written everywhere—in streets, public places, walls of apartments, on the fringes of the ceremonial scarf, on the flags that wave from the house-tops, and from cairns on the mountains; engraven on the rocks, carved on monuments by the way, or formed with stones, in gigantic spelling, on the hill-side, so as to be legible at considerable distances. Rich Buddhists maintain travelling Lamas, to go about, like Old Mortality, with hammer and chisel, multiplying the sacred sentences on the faces of the cliffs, and on stones by the highway. The words are Sanscrit, and came from India with the Buddhist faith in the seventh century. The Lamas say that these sacred words include an infinity of doctrine, which the life of man suffices not to survey, but their infinitesimal amount of meaning to the uninitiated is said to be—"Oh, the precious lotus.—Amen!"

The great difference between the Tibetan lama-serais and the convents of Romanised Europe appears to be, that the members of the former, though subjected to the same rule, and under one superior, cannot be said to live in common, the various gradations of wealth and poverty being as distinctly marked among them as among the laity. Lamas in rags may sometimes be seen begging of their wealthy brethren in the same convent. The revenue of the convent foundation, if it has one, is distributed at intervals in the form of a scanty supply of meal, in rations proportioned to rank in the hierarchy. Occasionally donations from pilgrims also fall to be divided. Sometimes a pilgrim "stands" tea to the whole convent—no small expense, when it numbers several thousand members. Many Lamas augment their means by practising as physicians, fortune-tellers, or exorcists; by various handicrafts, or by keeping retail-shops for the benefit of their brethren. Others are occupied in printing or transcribing religious books. The character is alphabetic, being a modification of the Nagari or Sanscrit letters introduced by Tongmi Sambodha, one of the first missionaries of Buddhism; but printing is, of course, conducted on the Chinese block system. The leaves are loose, printed on both sides, placed between two wooden boards, and tied with a yellow band. The character used in correspondence differs greatly from that of the printed books and literary MSS., being much more rounded and fluent. It is, however, perhaps, like our own writing, only a modification of the other adapted to a current hand.

The classic Tibetan literature appears to consist in two or three great collections, or cyclopÆdias, in many volumes, the greater part translated in remote times from ancient Sanscrit works. From the abstracts given in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, by the one European who has mastered the subject, Alexander Csoma de KÖrÖs,[17] these books appear to be a dreary wilderness of puerile metaphysics and misplaced labour.

According to M. Huc, the Lama physicians reckon 440 maladies affecting the human frame, neither more nor less. Their medical books, which the students of the faculty have to learn by heart, consist of a mass of aphorisms, more or less obscure, and a number of recipes. Most of their medicines are vegetable simples, generally mild and inoffensive. The number of their "simples," however, includes "laudamy and calamy." At least, they have the art of preparing mercury, and use it as a specific, producing salivation. This result they promote by gagging the patient with a stick. Their diagnosis they derive principally from the pulse, professing to discover the seat of disease from its peculiar vibratory motion rather than its frequency. They have not the Chinese horror of bleeding, and practise cupping by help of a cowhorn and oral suction. Small-pox is held in great dread; indeed, they scarcely attempt to treat it, but endeavour to save the uninfected by cutting off all communication at the risk of starving the sufferers. The infected house or village is often razed to the ground.

Some of the baser class of the Lamas seek notoriety and lucre by juggling and disgusting feats, professing to rip open their stomachs, to lick red-hot iron bars, &c. &c., and to perform other such exploits. Messrs Huc and Gabet knew a Lama who was generally reputed able at will to fill a vessel of water by means of a certain form of prayer. They never could get him to perform in their presence, however. He said that, as they had not the same faith, the attempt would be unsuccessful, and perhaps dangerous. He obliged them by reciting his charm, which, it must be confessed, reads so like a Dr Faustus contract, that one cannot but suppose that the preconceived ideas of the good missionaries have lent it a little colouring. The Lama was, perhaps, after all, only an electro-biologist. Respectable Lamas affect to frown on such displays, but wink at them occasionally, for profit's sake.

Lamas of an ascetic spirit, not content with the duties of the convent, sometimes seek the seclusion which the desolate wilds of their country offer so plentifully, dwelling in eyries on the pinnacles of hills, either cut in the rock, or formed of timber attached to the cliff like swallows' nests. Sometimes these eremites, like Simon of the pillar, renounce all intercourse with the world—depending for their sustenance on the gifts of the devout dropt into a sack, which is let down from the inaccessible cell by a long cord.

Convents of nuns also exist, both in Tibet Proper and in Ladakh; they do not, however, appear to have been visited by any traveller, and the French fathers make no mention of them.

The inhumation of the dead is entirely unpractised in Tibet. The body of the sovereign Lama alone is preserved entire, and deposited in a shrine which is ever after looked on as sacred, and visited with religious awe. The bodies of inferior Lamas are burnt, and their ashes carefully preserved, to be enclosed in small metallic images, which have places assigned them in cabinets ranged in the sacred buildings. Sometimes, but not often, bodies are committed to the waters of lakes or rivers; but the common disposal of the dead is by making them over—

——???ess??
??????s? te pas?—

either in carrying the corpses to the tops of lofty eminences, where the divided limbs are left for a prey, or, in depositing them in regular golgothas assigned for the purpose. These are enclosed yards, having openings left in the foot of the walls for the admission of dogs and wolves. But the most popular form of this practice is when the body is cut in pieces at once, and given to the dogs to eat. For the interment, or rather the incanition, of persons of distinction, in certain convents sacred dogs are maintained, which are set apart to this office. Strabo, Cicero, and Justin mention such customs as current among the nations of Central Asia. They prevail not only in Tibet, but among the nomad tribes of Mongolia, and appear to have no connection with the existing religion of these races. The practice of the Parsees is well known to be of a similar character. The most sanctified Lamas are privileged to eat and drink out of the skulls of bodies which have been thus devoured by beasts. Rosaries also are made from these skulls, and the larger bones are often converted into trumpets.

The profane vulgar, though uninstructed in the tedious liturgic lore which the Lamas acquire, not without plentiful corporal chastisement in the days of their pupilage, are enabled to achieve a meritorious amount of devotion by the aid of certain whirligigs, or prayer-mills—cylinders of wood or pasteboard, inscribed with the words of prayer, and rotating on a spindle. These chu-kor, or turn-prayers, which at one time, as a pet subject of allusion with Thomas Carlyle, almost rivalled Thurtell's gig, are either portable or stationary, generally turned by hand, but often by water-power; and in the Tartar huts they are suspended over the fireplace, so as to rotate like smoke-jacks, in behalf of the peace and prosperity of the family.

Various penances are performed by the pilgrims who visit the sacred places. Some make the circuit of the convent buildings laden with enormous piles of sacred books. The task achieved, they are reckoned to have recited all the prayers which form their load. Others perform the same circuit in measuring their length upon the ground at each step. This is a task often undertaken by great numbers following each other in single file; and if the convent be extensive, the day, from dawn till dusk, is occupied in the task. Some penitents, instead of making the tour of a single convent, perform long journeys in this fashion. The practice is known in India; and we remember to have heard of a Hindoo worthy, who, some sixty or seventy years ago, undertook to measure his way from Hurdwar to Calcutta, prophesying the while that, when he should have achieved his dusty task, the days of the Feringees' power would be numbered. Great was the twisting of mustaches and the furbishing of tulwars among the disaffected; but, alas! in passing Cawnpoor the unlucky prophet made his last prostration; he was laid hold of by the general, and hanged.

We had purposed to conclude this paper with a sketch of the journeys of previous travellers in Tibet, and some details of the last very interesting one from which we have derived many particulars, but we have now room for only very brief indications.

The name of Tibet appears to have first become known to Europe in the itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish Rabbi, who travelled to the far East about the year 1160. He mentions that country as producing musk, but errs widely in placing it only four days' journey from Samarkand.

In the succeeding century, when the flood of Mongolian conquest, under Jenghiz and his successors, dissolved all political barriers, and brought the civilisations of the East and West for the first time in contact, a greater amount of intercourse ensued between Europe and interior Asia than has ever occurred before or since. At the noise of the coming Tartars, Europe stood amazed, and even the bewildered Danes were deterred for one season from starting for their herring fishery on our northern shores, lest they should fall into the hands of this mysterious foe. Pouring over Hungary and Poland to the frontiers of Silesia, they defeated and cut in pieces the duke of that country with his army, and it seemed as if the knell of Christendom had sounded, when providentially the death of the great Khan summoned the host back into Tartary; and the invasion of Western Europe, though often threatened, was never resumed. Embassies from the Roman Pontiff and European princes, at first of intercession and supplication, afterwards on more equal terms, when the dread of the Khan had passed away, were despatched and reciprocated. Monks of Flanders, France, and Italy, visited the seat of the Grand Khan, and a Latin archiepiscopate was established in Pekin. French artists worked in gold and silver for the court of Kara-Korum, and a banished Englishman was the first ambassador from the Tartars to the king of Hungary; whilst Mongols of distinction found their way to Rome, to Barcelona, to Paris, to London, to Northampton. "The arts, the faith, and the language of the nations of Asia became a subject of curiosity and study, and it was even proposed to establish a Tartar chair in the university of Paris."[18]

During this extraordinary intercourse, which continued for a century and a half, the lines of travel eastward lay generally to the north of Tibet, and hints of its existence are rare and slight. Marco Polo, indeed, who travelled in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, devotes two of his Herodotean chapters to "the Province of Thibet." A few particulars, such as the existence of powerful dogs, of the musk animal, and the current use of salt in barter, are recognisable, but the country referred to is apparently the wild and rugged region of the Si-fan, towards the east and north-east of Tibet.

Oderic of Portenau, a travelling friar, who died in 1331, mentions Tibet, and is the first who speaks of the Grand Lama as the pope of the idolaters.

The Romish missionaries of later times made repeated attempts to establish themselves in the Trans-Himalayan regions. The first who appears to have succeeded in penetrating them was Antonio d'Andrada, a Portuguese Jesuit, with three companions of his order. In 1624 they ascended the Ganges by Hurdwar and Srinuggur to Budrinath, a celebrated place of Hindoo pilgrimage on the eastern branch of the sacred river. Apprehending hindrances to their advance, they made a desperate attempt to cross the pass into Tibet, (probably the Niti, or one of those nearer Lake ManusarÁwur,) whilst it was still deep in snow, and without a guide. They succeeded, after frightful suffering, in surmounting the pass, but, finding the country at their feet a trackless sheet of snow, were compelled to return. Waiting for the usual convoy after the melting of the winter snow, they again effected the passage, and proceeded to what they call Rudac, the capital of Tibet. There is a fort so called (Radokh or Rohtuk) beyond the Indus, near the head of the Pangkung Lake; but Ladakh or Le is more likely to have been the place intended.

Though it seems scarcely credible that four strangers should have found their way twice across the Himalayan passes unguided, and before the regular season of transit, and yet survive to tell the tale, it must be said that Andrada's description of their Himalayan travels, in other respects, bears every mark of truth. The precipitous paths along the Ganges, the files of pilgrims shouting as they trudged to Budrinath, the demon-like Jogees whom they encountered, the straight and lofty pines and cypresses, the large rose-bushes, and forests of flowering trees, (rhododendron,) the rope bridges, the sufferings in the snow and from the attenuated air, are all plainly drawn from actual experience.

The next visitors to Tibet, and the first Europeans, so far as we know, who reached Lhassa, were the Fathers Albert Dorville and J. Grueber of the Chinese mission. They started from Pekin in June 1661, and travelled through China to Sining-fu, on the north-west frontier. From this place their route probably coincided with that of Huc and Gabet, who reached the same place from Eastern Mongolia. Their journey thence to Lhassa, Grueber describes as extending for three months through the deserts of Kalmuk Tartary, alternately sandy and mountainous. After some stay at Lhassa, they proceeded over the mountain range of "Langur, the highest existing, so that on its summit travellers can scarcely breathe on account of the subtlety of the air; nor can it be passed in summer, on account of the virulent exhalations of certain herbs, without manifest danger to life." Descending into the kingdom of Necbal, (Nepaul,) they passed some time at the capital, Cudmendou (Katmandoo). Quitting Nepaul, they entered the kingdom of Maranga (the Morung, or forest tract below the hills.) Proceeding by Mutgari (Mooteeharee probably, in Tirhoot) to Battana (Patna) on the Ganges, and thence to Benares, they reached Agra after 214 days' travelling from Pekin, exclusive of stoppages. Dorville died of fatigue shortly after the accomplishment of this heroic journey. The narrative, as abstracted in Kircher's China Illustrata, is adorned with some rather good cuts, most of which appear to have been derived from genuine sketches.

In the fifteenth volume of Lettres Edifiantes is an epistle dated from Lhassa, 10th April 1716, by Father Hipolito Desideri, a Jesuit. It relates his journey from Goa to Delhi, where he was joined by a brother missionary; thence by Lahore over the Pir PunjÁl to Kashmeer, and, after a residence of six months there, across the passes of the Himalayas, to Le or Ladakh, which he describes as the royal fortress of the kingdom of Great Tibet, or Buton. Whilst making arrangements to settle at Ladakh, and commencing the study of the language, the fathers heard for the first time of a third Tibet, (viz. the Lhassa country, in addition to Little Tibet or Balti, and Great Tibet, or Ladakh,) and thought it necessary to proceed to explore it. The journey occupied them from August 1715 to March 1716. Desideri and his comrade are the only Europeans who have ever travelled from Ladakh to Lhassa; but, unfortunately, they give no particulars of their route except these dates, and even the great delay which they indicate is not accounted for.

Previous to this, a Capuchin mission had visited Lhassa via Nepaul in 1707, and a few years later, a dozen brethren of that order were established there under Father Horace della Penna. They sent home flourishing accounts of their success; but their additions to our knowledge of the country were very meagre. About 1754 this mission appears to have been expelled, and found refuge for a time in Nepaul. Some fifty volumes, the relics of the mission library, were, in 1847, recovered from Lhassa by Mr Hodgson, through the courtesy of the Grand Lama himself, and were transmitted to Europe to be presented to Pio Nono, whose reputation was then fresh and fragrant. Some itineraries and other curious particulars, derived from the correspondence of the Lhassa mission, are buried, among a mass of crude learning and rubbish, in a quarto published at Rome in 1762, under the name of Alphabetum Tibetanum, by Antonio Giorgi, an Augustin friar.

Of the missions of Bogle and Turner we have already spoken. In 1811, a Mr Manning succeeded in reaching Lhassa by their route, but was arrested and sent back by the Chinese. He died soon after without publishing any particulars of his journey. The sacred lakes of Ngari have been visited by Moorcroft, Captains Henry and Richard Strachey, and one or two more. Ladakh and the adjoining districts have been explored by the two former travellers, the Cunninghams, and others. But within this century, save Manning, no European, till Huc and Gabet, had penetrated to Tibet Proper. The enthusiastic Hungarian scholar, who would have gone with advantages possessed by none else, was cut off just as he deemed this object of his cherished hopes attainable.

A few words remain to be said more particularly of the work which suggested this paper. These need be few, because a translation of the whole work has been announced since we commenced writing.

The book which the missionaries have produced is not altogether satisfactory. It too well justifies its title of Souvenirs by the lamentable paucity of dates, of which there are not half-a-dozen in the whole narrative of their two years' pilgrimage. Even the period of their starting is not stated at the time, and is only to be distinctly gathered from some retrospective calculations. Their geographical starting-point, too, is as obscure as the chronological one. Our maps help us little in following the details of their travels; and that which is inserted in their book is of as little aid as any other, being, in fact, dated five years previous to their journey. Nor, we fear, will they be found to have added much to the materials of future geographers; their work contains no indication of a single bearing or altitude, nor indeed had they the necessary instruments. The possession, indeed, of MS. maps would have endangered their lives in any collision with Chinese authority, such as actually befel them at Lhassa; but many valuable data might have been recorded without graphical embodiment. The worthy men, however, make no pretensions to science; they record of the Ko-ko-noor or Blue Lake on the north-east frontier of Tibet, that it has a flux and reflux of tide, without any further particulars of so marvellous a phenomenon, though they were some time encamped on its banks: they ascribe unquestioningly their sufferings, in passing certain lofty mountains, to poisonous exhalations from the soil; and they quit Tibet without a word as to the vexed question regarding the course of the Sanpoo. But they have given us a most readable and interesting personal narrative of a life of continued hardships, and of frequent suffering and danger in remote regions, the routes through which were partly never before recorded in detail, and partly never before trodden by any European.