Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/90

70 These are all the observations I could make of this people, of whom we saw little. The Mongols spoke in a disparaging way of their physical and moral qualities, and described their language to be a mixture of Mongol, Chinese, and words of their own.

The temple of Chobsen, which was the starting point of all our subsequent excursions, stands on the northern border of the hilly region which we have mentioned It is forty miles NNE. of Si-ning, in 37° 3′ north latitude, and 100° 58′ east longitude from Greenwich, fixing the latter approximately by existing maps. Its elevation is 8,900 feet above the sea. The temple comprises a principal shrine, surrounded by a mud wall, and a number (perhaps 100) of smaller buildings, which were all destroyed by the Dungans three years before our arrival, the shrine alone, protected by its wall, escaping.

The temple is of brick, in the usual quadrangular