Page:Three Years in Tibet.djvu/77

Rh came to an agreement for the exchange of knowledge, he instructing me in Tibetan Buddhism and literature and I teaching him Chinese Buddhism. This understanding arrived at, we took leave of Tukje and set out for Tsarang in the province of Lo, where the Mongolian scholar had his home. On our way thither, we visited the famous Chumik Grvatsa. Chumik Gyatsa means a hundred fountains, and is the Mukutinath of Samskrt, which Hindus as well as Buddhists regard as a place of great sanctity. The place apparently obtained the name it bears from the numberless springs abounding thereabout, and a spot of particular fame there was called Sala Mebar, Chula Mebar, Dola Mebar, which means burning in earth, burning in water, burning in rock. On seeing the spot I found this n^stery to be nothing more than the fancy of the ignorant natives, who saw a burning jet of natural gas escaping from a crevice in a slab of rock, that formed a lid, so to say, over and close to the surface of a beautiful crystal-like fountain, which was about one by two feet in size, so that its prolonged flame looked, at the first glance, as if it were crawling over the water. I noticed, however, that the mountains round about bore ample evidences of old volcanic eruptions, at one time or another, an extinct crater now changed to a pond, lava-rocks, and so on, being all present. We passed a night encamped on the bank of the river Kaligahga, that flows at the foot of the mountain which we had just descended, after leaving the ' hundred fountains ' behind us. The following morning we had a disastrous time for three hours in trying to cross a stream. In the first place I made a blunder in attempting to wade across the stream on my horse, which, with my weight on his back and treacherous mud-beds under his feet, found himself in a perilous condition as soon as he had walked a few steps into the stream. I, of course, got