ersonal attire,
and lie down, side by side, round the table. When the guests are very
numerous they arrange themselves in two circles, feet to feet. Thus
reclined, those so disposed, sleep; others, awaiting sleep, smoke, drink
tea, and gossip. The effect of the scene, dimly exhibited by an
imperfect wick floating amid thick, dirty, stinking oil, whose receptacle
is ordinarily a broken tea-cup, is fantastic, and to the stranger,
fearful.

The Comptroller of the Chest had prepared his own room for our
accommodation. We washed, but would not sleep there; being now Tartar
travellers, and in possession of a good tent, we determined to try our
apprentice hand at setting it up. This resolution offended no one, it
was quite understood we adopted this course, not out of contempt towards
the inn, but out of love for a patriarchal life. When we had set up our
tent, and unrolled on the ground our goat-skin beds, we lighted a pile of
brushwood, for the nights were already growing cold. Just as we were
closing our eyes, the Inspector of Darkness startled us with beating the
official night alarum, upon his brazen _tam-tam_, the sonorous sound of
which, reverberating through the adjacent valleys struck with terror the
tigers and wolves frequenting them, and drove them off.

We were on foot before daylight. Previous to our departure we had to
perform an operation of considerable importance--no other than an entire
change of costume, a complete metamorphosis. The missionaries who reside
in China, all, without exception, wear the secular dress of the people,
and are in no way distinguishable from them; they bear no outward sign of
their religious character. It is a great pity that they should be thus
obliged to wear the secular costume, for it is an obstacle in the way of
their preaching the gospel. Among the Tartars, a _black man_--so they
discriminate the laity, as wearing their hair, from the clergy, who have
their heads close shaved--who should talk about religion would be laughed
at, as impertinently meddling with things, the special province of the
Lamas, and in no way concerning him. The reasons which appear to have
introduced and maintained the custom of wearing the secular habit on the
part of the missionaries in China, no longer applying to us, we resolved
at length to appear in an ecclesiastical exterior becoming our sacred
mission. The views of our vicar apostolic on the subject, as explained
in his written instr