Peking to Lhasa : vol.1 / Page 169 (Color Image)

0169	Peking to Lhasa : vol.1

THE START FOR TIBET 125

ho-pa. It was quite a summer's day for these

parts.

He lodged that night in a room of the Hsiu

Monastery. It contains about eighty lamas and

is pleasantly situated at the confluence of two

streams which flow into the Yangtze and facing

grass hills. In front is a level patch of grass

about half a mile wide. Here Pereira halted for

a couple of days waiting for the yaks with his

baggage. Of four mules which he had left with

the Tibetans two had died and two had been

sold for twenty-two taels for the two. At the

monastery he bought some quite good butter and

rice. He was also brought a dish of " chiao-ma ",

banana hemp, small long brown roots with bulbous

ends. It tasted like sweet potato but much

better. This was the first vegetable he had seen

since Tangar.

Very steep paths, barely 1 foot wide, led up

the rocky hill-side, past coarse vegetation, to the

narrow uneven tiers of terraces on which are built

the monks' houses, small mud buildings painted

slate-grey in the centre, with narrower bands of

red and white on the sides and above. The roofs

were flat. The temples are of mud painted with

red above a broad tier of brushwood into which

are let bronze designs of various patterns, some

circular, some like bells and some representing

stags. On the edge of the flat roof are curious

large bronze ornaments apparently representing

bells and other ornaments. There were a few

patches of barley cultivation. And at the foot

of the hill is a Tibetan village of about twenty

houses.

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