us feeling from cleanliness
and refinement, or at least pious care. One feels that they must be the
relics of a decayed spirituality, preserved not insincerely, but in
ignorant superstition, like other fetishes all over the world. Yet this
feeling of scepticism is not so strong after a month or two in Tibet. At
first one is apt to think of these dirty people as merely animal and
sensual, and to attribute their religious observances to the fear of
demons who will punish the most trivial omission in ritual.

Next one begins to wonder if they really believe in the efficacy of
mechanical prayer, if they take the trouble to square their conscience
with their inclinations, and if they have any sincere desire to be
absorbed in the universal spirit. Then there may come a suspicion that
the better classes, though not given to inquiry, have a settled dogma
and definite convictions about things spiritual and natural that are
not easily upset. Perhaps before we turn our backs on the mystery of
Tibet we will realize that the Lamas despise us as gross materialists
and philistines--we who are always groping and grasping after the
particular, while they are absorbed in the sublime and universal.

After all, devious and unscrupulous as their policy may have been, the
Tibetans have had one definite aim in view for centuries--the
preservation of their Church and State by the exclusion of all foreign
and heretical influences. When we know that the Mongol cannot conceive
of the separation of the spiritual and temporal Government, it is only
natural to infer that the first mission, spiritual or otherwise, to a
foreign Court should introduce the first elements of dissolution in a
system of Government that has held the country intact for centuries. And
let it be remarked that Great Britain is not responsible for this
deviation in a hitherto inveterate policy.

But to return to Phari. My last impression of the place as I passed out
of its narrow alleys was a very dirty old man, seated on a heap of
yak-dung over the gutter. He was turning his prayer-wheel, and muttering
the sacred formula that was to release him from all rebirth in this
suffering world. The wish seemed natural enough.

It was a bright, clear morning when we turned our backs on the old fort
and started once more on the road to Lhasa. Five miles from Phari we
passed the miserable little village of Chuggya, which is apparently
inhabited by ravens and sparrows, and a diminutive m