t is this class that rules
Mongolia--under Russia. Still another group might be compared to the
begging friars when their brief, glorious day was past; they wander
about the country, east, west, south, to Lhasa, to Omei Shan, to Peking,
with little purpose or plan. As Huc says, "vagabondizing about like
birds of passage," finding everywhere food and a tent corner, if not a
welcome. They neither teach nor heal, and represent the most worthless
though perhaps not the most vicious among the lamas.

A third class, and the largest, has no parallel, I think, in any Western
church at any period. These are the lamas who, sent like the others to
the lamasseries at an early age, after having received the prescribed
training,--taking their "degrees," as Huc calls it,--return to their
homes to live the life of the ordinary Mongol, in no wise to be
distinguished from the "black man" save by their shorn heads and the red
and yellow dress, which they do not always wear. They marry after a
fashion, at least they take wives, though without even the ordinary
scanty formalities, and probably the tie is as enduring as the "black
man's" marriage. In Southwest Mongolia I was told a lama marries just
like other people, while in some northern districts he has no right to
his wife, and if a "black man" takes her away he has no redress. The
Mongol who attended me on the first stages from Kalgan was a lama with
wife, children, and home, faithful and hard-working, at least for a
Mongol, and a useful member of society.

The question one naturally asks is, Why do these men become lamas; do
they do it willingly or under compulsion? Apparently the matter is
decided for them by their parents, who send them when boys to some
lamassery where they are duly and meagrely trained; but they do not seem
to chafe at their condition when they grow up, for the advantages are
very real. The parents save in not having to buy wives for their sons,
while the lama himself is always sure of support if he goes back to his
lamassery, and he is free from all demands by the Government for
military service.

It is said that the Chinese Government has encouraged Lamaism with the
idea of keeping down the population; in this way it would avert the
danger of Mongol invasion. But Lamaism has already done that in another
way, by killing the vigour and warlike temper of the people. The memory
of Genghis Khan still lives in the land where he was born; tradition
holds that the Gr