Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/382

370 370 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. is in this city," he says, "that the person dwells who is like the Pope of these countries. He is the chief and pontiff of all the idolaters, on whom he confers bene- fices and ecclesiastical dignities according to the rites of the country." Oderic describes the Thibetans as living under tents, and leading a nomadic life in the gorges of these lofty mountains. He observes, rather a curious fact, that the walls of the buildings in the capital are entirely black and white in colour.* When, in 1845, we visited the capital of Thibet, we noticed a circum- stance that might perhaps tend to explain the words of the Franciscan missionary. There exists, in the sub- urbs of Lha-Ssa, a quarter in which the houses are entirely built of the horns of oxen and rams ; these odd constructions are extremely durable, and present a very agreeable appearance to the eye. The horns of the oxen being smooth and whitish, and those of the rams, on the contrary, black and rough, these strange materials are wonderfully adapted to form a number of curious combinations and various patterns on the walls ; the interstices between the horns are filled with mortar ; and these are the only houses which are not whitened. The Thibetans have the good taste to leave them of their natural colour, without endeavouring to add any- thing to their wild and fantastic beauty. It would be superfluous to remark that the inhabitants of Lha- Ssa consume a great number of sheep and oxen ; their houses of horns are an incontestable proof of thisf, and it may not be impossible that, in the fourteenth century, t. i. p. 992. f Voyage au Thibet, t. ii. p. 250.
 * " Civitas principalis toto est ex muris albis et nigris." — Bollandus,