akes, costs fifty ounces of
silver, or about twenty pounds.

Money offerings are still more expensive, for they are always accompanied
with a tea-general. The money is not distributed at service time. After
prayers, the presiding Lama announces that such a pilgrim, of such a
place, has offered so many ounces of silver to the holy family of Lamas,
and that the whole sum equally divided produces such a quotient. In the
course of the day, the Lamas proceed to the Offering-office, where their
respective proportion is scrupulously delivered to them.

There is no particular period or day fixed for the reception of
offerings: they are always welcome; however, at the four great festivals
of the year, they are more numerous and more important than at other
times, on account of the greater number of pilgrims. After the Feast of
Flowers, the King of Souniout, who was at Kounboum, made an offering,
before he returned into Tartary, of six hundred ounces of silver, and a
tea-general for eight days! with butter and cakes; the total expense
amounted to six hundred pounds! When the offering is made by a
distinguished personage, it is customary for the Living Buddha to be
present at the ceremony, and he receives for his especial share an ingot
of silver weighing fifty ounces, a piece of red or yellow silk, a pair of
boots, and a mitre, arranged in a basket decorated with flowers and
ribands, and covered with a rich khata. The pilgrim prostrates himself
on the steps of the altar, where the Living Buddha is seated, and places
the basket at his feet. A Chabi takes it up, and in return, presents to
the pilgrim a khata in the name of the Living Buddha, whose business
throughout is to preserve the impassibility and dignity befitting his
assumed divinity.

Besides the distributions and the offerings the Lamas of Kounboum employ
various means of improving their temporal condition. Some of them keep
cows, and sell to their colleagues the milk and butter which help to
season their tea and oatmeal. Others form themselves into a joint stock
company, and undertake the preparation of the teas-general which the
pilgrims present to the community: others are tailors, dyers, bootmakers,
hatters, and so on, and make up, for a fixed remuneration, the clothes of
the Lamas. Lastly, a few of the number have shops, wherein they sell, at
enormous profit, various goods, which they procure from Tang-Keou-Eul or
Si-Ning-Fou.

In the class of industria