Page:Lhasa and its mysteries.djvu/14



following pages give an account, inadequate no doubt, yet I would fain hope, so far as it goes, intelligible and authentic, of Central Tibet, its capital, its Grand Lama hierarchy, and its dreamy hermit people, as they appear to one who has had exceptional advantages for making their acquaintance.

It is now nearly a quarter of a century since I paid my first visit to the mystic land beyond the Himalayas. Soon thereafter, on my return from the war in Burmah (1885-86), where I had had an opportunity of examining the primitive Buddhism of King Thebaw's late subjects, I was stationed for some years at Darjeeling on the borders of the Forbidden Land, where there was a floating colony of several thousand Tibetans, Lamas and laity, fresh from the sacred city, and in daily communication with it. The curiosity naturally aroused by the sight of these strange people, with their picturesque caravans and encampments, was farther stimulated by echoes of the theosophist belief that somewhere beyond the mighty Kanchenjunga there would be found a key which should unlock the mysteries of the old world that was lost by the sinking of the Atlantis continent in the Western Ocean, about the time when Tibet was being upheaved by the still rising Himalayas. Here more obviously and indisputably must lie the key to many unsolved problems in the ethnology, natural history, and geography of the "Roof of the World." At Darjeeling also I made the acquaintance of several of the Survey spies, those brave