other. The master of the house, the Kitat-Lama, the stutterer, the
missionaries, each had a kitchen of his own. In the phrase of the
Lamasery, we were four distinct families in the house. Notwithstanding
the collection of several families within one enclosure, there prevails
throughout the most perfect order and silence; the inmates seldom
interchange visits, and each attends to his own affairs without in the
smallest degree interfering with those of his neighbour. In the house
where we were located, we never saw our co-dwellers except on very fine
days. It being now the depth of winter, whenever the sun favoured our
court-yard with its rays, the four families forthwith issued from their
respective apartments, and sat themselves down before their doors on
their felt carpets. The Kitat-Lama, whose eyes were still very good,
would occupy himself in mending his wretched garments with bits of old
rags, Akaye would murmur his prayers, scratching all the while his arms,
the skin of which was so rough that it almost resounded to the touch.
The student in medicine would chant, in order to avoid stammering, his
lesson of therapeutics. As to ourselves, it was no easy matter to divert
our attention from the singular spectacle around us; we had, indeed, on
our knees our book of Thibetian dialogues, but our eyes were more
frequently directed to the three families basking in the sun.

The Lamasery of Kounboum contains nearly 4,000 Lamas; its site is one of
enchanting beauty. Imagine in a mountain's side a deep, broad ravine,
adorned with fine trees, and harmonious with the cawing of rooks and
yellow-beaked crows, and the amusing chattering of magpies. On the two
sides of the ravine, and on the slopes of the mountain, rise, in an
amphitheatrical form, the white dwellings of the Lamas of various sizes,
but all alike surrounded with a wall, and surmounted by a terrace.
Amidst these modest habitations, rich only in their intense cleanliness
and their dazzling whiteness, you see rising, here and there, numerous
Buddhist temples with gilt roofs, sparkling with a thousand brilliant
colours, and surrounded with elegant colonnades. The houses of the
superiors are distinguished by streamers floating from small hexagonal
turrets; everywhere the eye is attracted by mystic sentences, written in
large Thibetian characters, red or black, upon the doors, upon the walls,
upon the posts, upon pieces of linen floating like flags, from masts u