here is scarcely a foot of level ground. It is wedged into the angle
where three valleys come together, the Tar and the Chen rivers meeting
just below the town to form the Tarchendo, and our first view of the
place as we turned the cliff corner that here bars the gorge, was very
striking, grey walls and curly roofs standing out sharply from the
flanking hillsides.

Within the walls of Tachienlu, China and Tibet meet. As we made our way
through the long, dirty main street, here running parallel with the Tar
which comes tumbling down from the snow-fields of the Tibetan range, I
was struck at once by the varied aspect of the people. The dense crowd
that surged through the streets, some on horseback and some on foot, was
more Tibetan than Chinese, but the faces that peered out from the shops
were unmistakably of the Middle Kingdom. Groups of fierce-looking
fellows, clad in skins and felt, strode boldly along, their dark faces
bearing indelible marks of the hard, wild life of the Great Plateau.
Many of them carried weapons of some sort, for the Chinese have scorned
to disarm them. Among them walked impassively the blue-gowned men of the
ruling race, fairer, smaller, feebler, and yet undoubtedly master. It
was the triumph of the organizing mind over the brute force of the lower
animal. Almost one man in five was a red-robed lama, no cleaner in dress
nor more intelligent in face than the rest, and above the din of the
crowd and the rush of the river rose incessantly weird chanting and the
long-drawn wail of horns from the temples scattered about the town.
Lamaism has Tachienlu in its grip, and I could have fancied myself back
in Himis lamassery, thousands of miles away on the western frontier of
Tibet. It was an extraordinarily picturesque scene, full of life and
sound and colour.

Marco Polo described the territory lying west of Ya-chou as "Thibeth,"
and a century ago the Chinese frontier stopped at Tachienlu, but to-day
Batang, a hundred and twenty-five miles to the west as the crow flies,
is the western limit of Szechuan. In actual fact, however, direct
administration by the Chinese stops at the Ta Tu, on the right bank of
the river the people being governed by their tribal chiefs. Tachienlu
is in the principality of the King of Chala, whose palace is one of the
two or three noteworthy buildings in the place, and the Tibetan
population of some seven hundred families, not counting the lamas, is
directly under his authority.