farious confusion of cups and bowls and lamps, there
was a narrow shelf in front of a glazed recess. I think
that there were on this shelf ten or twelve little brass
bowls full of water, but there were no butter lamps.
The sight of glass in Tibet always attracted attention ;
it was rare enough to see a piece a foot square • this glass
was five times as large, and one wondered how it had
escaped safely across the passes to this sequestered spot.
Behind it a hard-featured Buddha scowled, a very
different representation of the Master from that placid
and kindly countenance which sanctifies him still to
many not of his own creed. Under the abbot’s guidance
we visited the rooms opening out from the temple.
There was nothing of great interest, nothing to distinguish
it from twenty other gompas. We then had
tea with our host, and afterwards we asked permission
to see one of the immured monks. Without any
hesitation the abbot led the way out into the sunshine,
which lay sweltering over the spring-teeming spaces
of the valley below, and venturesome little green plants
were poking up under our feet between the crevices
into the stone footway. We climbed about forty feet,
and the abbot led us into a small courtyard which had
blank walls all round it, over which a peach-tree reared
its transparent pink and white against the sky. Almost
on a level with the ground there was an opening closed
with a flat stone from behind. In front of this window
was a ledge eighteen inches in width, with two basins
beside it, one at each end. The abbot was attended by
an acolyte who, by his master’s orders, tapped three
times sharply on the stone slab ; we stood in the little
courtyard in the sun, and watched that wicket with
cold apprehension. I think, on the whole, it was the
A t Nyen-dé-kyi-buk. The stone wicket of one of the underground cells— open.