Mongolia to visit the sacred
city that Buddha has blessed.

The secret of romance is remoteness, whether in time or space. If we
could be thrown back to the days of Agincourt we should be enchanted at
first, but after a week should vote everything commonplace and dull.
Falstaff, the beery lout, would be an impossible companion, and Prince
Hal a tiresome young cub who wanted a good dressing-down. In travel,
too, as one approaches the goal, and the country becomes gradually
familiar, the husk of romance falls off. Childe Roland must have been
sadly disappointed in the Dark Tower; filth and familiarity very soon
destroyed the romance of Lhasa.

But romance still clings to the Potala. It is still remote. Like Imray,
its sacred inmate has achieved the impossible. Divinity or no, he has at
least the divine power of vanishing. In the material West, as we like to
call it, we know how hard it is for the humblest subject to disappear,
in spite of the confused hub of traffic and intricate network of
communications. Yet here in Lhasa, a city of dreamy repose, a King has
escaped, been spirited into the air, and nobody is any the wiser.

When we paraded the city yesterday, we made a complete circuit of the
Potala. There was no one, not even the humblest follower, so
unimaginative that he did not look up from time to time at the frowning
cliff and thousand sightless windows that concealed the unknown. Those
hidden corridors and passages have been for centuries, and are, perhaps,
at this very moment, the scenes of unnatural piety and crime.

Within the precincts of Lhasa the taking of life in any form is
sacrilege. Buddha's first law was, 'Thou shalt not kill'; and life is
held so sacred by his devout followers that they are careful not to
kill the smallest insect. Yet this palace, where dwells the divine
incarnation of the Bodhisat, the head of the Buddhist Church, must have
witnessed more murders and instigations to crime than the most
blood-stained castle of medieval Europe.

Since the assumption of temporal power by the fifth Grand Lama in the
middle of the seventeenth century, the whole history of the Tibetan
hierarchy has been a record of bloodshed and intrigue. The fifth Grand
Lama, the first to receive the title of Dalai, was a most unscrupulous
ruler, who secured the temporal power by inciting the Mongols to invade
Tibet, and received as his reward the kingship. He then established his
claim to the godhead by tampering wi