Hence the illegal taxes levied by the Szechuen control, Even at Ta-chien lu illegal taxes are demanded, and luggage is searched no less than twice, at the East Gate and just before reaching it. People still speak the excellent Central troops that were there last year under Gen. Li Pa-ping; soldiers that paid for all they bought, that bought a great deal, and would pay 10 cents for a peach. Going for a stroll one evening at Tachienlu, we met a local woman and her small son returning from the very long journey to Sianfu, in Shensi. They were weary but thank-fut to yet home. An hour later the poor woman was wailing in the street before her house. Her home had be commandeered by the 24th Army during her absence and they otused to quit. No wonder folie gh there for the return of the Nanking troops!
While waiting for the negotiations to be put through we paid.a visit to the great lamasery with its ding hells of prayer, faded banners, weatherrotted prayer flags, golden roofs and 3.700 inmates lounging about in their red, dirty robes like so many faintly loathsome muscidae, As well-known, the lamas control Tibet and hold it in a vise-like grip. They are members of a religion that is origin a philosophy of no mean merit but that has been mutilated,—be smirched and~ indeed—thoroughly metamorphosed by magic and superstition, and they are so, suspicious and conserva that they make even the smallest degree of ion impossible. One wonders th Young Tibet party of Lhasa w ever be successful as a ferment But what is the use of a leaven in poison: ous dough?
The lamas ha d by the nomads but an assault on the lamas ies by undoughtedly prove indeed thicker than outsiders would that blood water, An oficial described their daily to me: in the morning, early, they pray meditate. Phe rest of the day th pend idly strolling about in little youps; buying and selling h ses; ug on banditry, and a banditry t thinks nothing of murder if need be; and in ironically illustrating tenuous the bonds of celibacy really are. Quite apart from the nomic justification for pol: n immorality is of unwentionable degrees, and it the lama bestows his participatory bles ing. This is the romantic lama of the Roof of the World so beloved of the travel book.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.