Picturesque "Figures and Perplexing Customs in Panchen Lama's Followers From Qun OWN Connsspoxoexr.
Peking, Apr. 20.
Peking has been unusually pieturesque since the Panchen Lama. and his suite took up residence at the Yingtai Palace." One of the attractions of street life now is the sight of a Tibetan lama, clad in a dingy robe of raspberry and gold, and twirling his wooden prayer beads, trying to obtain his directions from a Chinese policeman, whose uniform is an immacul Diack, complete with equally i maculate leggings and a peaked hat. saw such a sight to-day, and the seeker after contrast could not have had a more interesting study. The unkempt lama, with layers of dirt on his skin, was reduced to gesticulation in, an effort to make the spick-and-spain policeman understand his plight. The policeman, quite a short man, seemed almost alarmed at the towering aspect and winging gestures of hi yogator, and finally moved away, still uncomprehending. With such an example of Tibetan manhood, it was not difficult to picture the groups of fighting monks who on occasion take to roystering as a change from the routine of monastic seclusion, Other Ways Other Fashions before. How strange must.
in the Chinese capital app to them, after the primitive atmosphere of Gyangtze! Their! ignorance of modern ways of doing things is highly amusing to the Currency arguments, for example are as inexplicable to them as to the average Westerner. Their ignorance of ordinary practices is diverting. Several of recently went into restaurant and after a hearty meal proceeded to pay the bill on the instalment plan, in coppers, many for every course, which they placed very carefully in every dish they had been eating out of. They waved aside the restaurateur who endeavoured to persuade them that a lump sum would meet his needs Just the same, and that worthy had to be content with a Tibetan settlement, or maybe he would not have received any payment at all. The Tength of time taken by this piecemeal ceremony was a tribute to the heartiness of the lamas' appetite. The shopkeeper couldn't grumble, even if he had to direngage the remains of the food from the coppers after the visitation, These monks, by the re by no means poor; I have heard of several transactions which they have settled in syees The Mongol Pilgri Other new faces, but cleaner, be-Jong to. Mongolian pilgrims. Hundreds of them are coming down te Peking, on foot, horseback, camel, or train, to pay their repects to the Tibetan pope, who in their estimation comes before the: Dalai Lama in the Lamaistie hierarchy. Each of them brings a present, which, in the case of the Mongolian. princes, is generally feycee, and the Panchen is reputed to have collected nearly a million dollars in this way since he left Tibet. The Mongols are prepared to pay quite a small fortune for the: privilege of being received by the Panchen Lama, who undoubtedly is doing quite a service in the furtherance, oF repair, of Sino-Mongolian relations.
But now all audiences have stopped. The Panchen is ill, suffer-_ ing from what I gathered yesterday' was chickenpox. Tuan Chi-jui has ent him the services of his own private physician, and in other ways is showing every conside for his comfort. But, according to the Panchen's Chinese secrsturies, the illness is not serious, expected to affect his plans for a trip south, brigands have been ravaging the cash of the province, writes a correspondent in Ningyuen, under date March 21._ Two or three days ago (he says) T met a batch of Chinese women who had been stripped and savagely: wounded by these robbers. Some 40 captives have recently been carried off to the mountain fastnesses.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.