Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/173

 by this place. After a tedious journey of about three miles through the sand and over the rocks, we got sight of the famous village of Netang, where the great saint and Buddhist reformer, Atisha, or Dipankara, died.

An old woman led us to the Jya khang, where we were most hospitably received, and though there were other travellers stopping in it, we were accommodated for the sum of a tanka in a well-ventilated outer room, the inner ones being reserved for officials, particularly Chinese. Netang has about forty or fifty houses, all built closely together, but many are only miserable hovels.

May 30.—We were off at an early hour, as to-day we wanted to reach Lhasa. The hamlets of Norbu-gang and Chumig-gang, through which we passed, had a number of fine substantial houses belonging to civil officers (Dung-khor) of Lhasa, and around them were gardens and groves of trees. Leaving these places behind, we travelled for some miles over a gravelly plain, the river some distance on our right.

When near a gigantic image of the Buddha, cut in low relief on the face of a rock, Potala and Chagpori came in sight, their gilt domes shining in the sun’s rays. My long-cherished wish was accomplished—Lhasa, the sacred city, was before me.

Four miles over a fairly good road now brought us to the Ti chu zamba, a large and handsome stone bridge about 120 paces long and eight broad, beneath which flowed a rivulet coming from the hills to the north-west, where stands the monastery of Tsorpu, founded by Karma Bagshi, one of the two celebrated lamas who resided at the Imperial court of China in the time of the Emperor Kublai.

The Ti chu zamba is in the lower part of the big village of Toilung, around which are numerous hamlets, each amid a little grove of pollard willows. The adjacent plain, watered as it is by the Kyi chu and the Ti (or Toilung) chu, is extraordinarily fertile. The country around was everywhere cultivated, and the barley, wheat, and buckwheat were in many places already a foot high.

The road now became alive with travellers, mostly grain-dealers or argol-carriers, on their way to the city with trains of yaks, ponies, mules, and donkeys with jingling bells.