To see this, the intendant eye witness must get up bright and early, and as he goes out to the appointed spot there is the caretaker manipulating the corpse in the following manner.
It is tied to a stake fixed in the ground, then with a knife the flesh is gashed preparatory to calling the vultures from the surrounding heights to come and have a feed. This calling is done respectable and polite fanguage: the birds respond at once and in a remarkably brief space of time do their part leaving nothing but a bare skeleton.
During the year there are a number of religious festivals, one of them being a butter festival. The writer witnessed such a festival some years since in Kumbum where the figures executed in barley flour mixed with butter and some paint added thereto were done exquisitely.
Now as to the town, that is removed from the monastery by a five minutes' walk. The altitude of Labrang is over 10,000 feet and yet as is the case on the Tibetan tablelands, the sun is hot in the middle of the day and in the summer there is some hot weather. It is said there is a population of 1,600 families, reckoning three to.a family, made up of one half Tibetans and the other half of Chinese and Moslems.
The east side of the town. has the barracks where are quartered the Mohammedan soldiers, the high walls of these frown down upon the Tibetan
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.