Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/91

 matter. The senior Amban started to-day for Lhasa viâ Gyantse and Nangartse djong. All the ponies of Shigatse had been requisitioned to supply his numerous retinue with riding and pack animals, so the junior Amban and the Shape could not get off for want of ula, and the local authorities of Gyantse were ordered to supply what they could to them as soon as the senior Amban reached their place. In the meanwhile the Chinese were strolling about the Shigatse market, carrying off the best of everything, paying nothing, or only a nominal price for the things they took. People coming into town saw their ponies seized by the ta-u officers for the Amban's service, and started off with loads to Gyantse. My men could buy nothing, for most of the people had packed up their wares and fled; but they managed to purchase some mutton and rice inside the monastery, and we found out that good things could be had there at comparatively moderate prices.

December 20.—I passed most of my day reading a collection of hymns, the composition of the second Dalai lama, which I had bought from a Lhasan bookseller. To-day there arrived five men from Gyantse, whose advent was at once detected by the Rogyabas, for these pests are always on the look-out for new-comers, whom they at once surround with clamorous solicitations for alms. Few can escape from their hands without paying them something. As soon as the Rogyabas saw these Gyantse men, they informed all the fraternity of the new prey, on which vulture-like they pounced. Well do they deserve their name, which means "corpse-vultures," though, to speak the truth, they prey on the living. These Gyantse men brought news about the orders issued by the Lhasa Government stopping the egress and ingress of all traders at the frontier passes. The two Djongpon of Phagri were busy executing these orders; no one, it was said, had eluded their vigilance and reached Darjiling. Even some Bhutanese traders on their way to Lhasa were stopped at Phagri; but another party of these people had started