Peking to Lhasa : vol.1 / Page 177 (Color Image)

0177	Peking to Lhasa : vol.1

JYE-KUNDO TO CHAMDO 131

allowed on temples and houses of kings. The

houses of lesser people, like the Pum-po, are adorned

with erections made of black yak rope, tied round

and round with broad strips of white linen.

Higher up than the monastery was the red

two-storied verandahed house of the abbot. And

higher still is a small white-washed house with

a high wall where lamas retire to meditate in

solitude—some for a few months, some for life.

The horrid smell of rancid butter and the dirty

narrow streets on the hill-side make the place very

unsavoury. In the more open parts there was a

coarse vegetation which the Tibetans call " deer

grass ".

Madame Nèel was an elderly Parisian lady, the

wife of the Chief of the Railways in Tunis. She

had been five years in China and Tibet and had

been collecting Tibetan books. Two or three of

these years she had spent in the Kumbum monas-

tery, and she had adopted as her son a young lama

of the red sect who was a minor " living Buddha "

from South Tibet. She used to dress in a long red

robe.

She could talk English fluently, and from her

long and intimate acquaintance with Tibetan life

she was able to give Pereira much valuable

information. She said P'eu-yul was the right

name for Tibet. It means the country of the Peu

people. The tribes round Jye-kundo are called

Gaba. Khamba means people of Kham, which is

farther east, but includes these twenty-five Gaba

tribes. These Tibetans hate the Tibetans of

Lhasa and would much prefer to be under Chinese

rule. In Tibet the red sect, the original Buddhists,

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