and useless life. He takes no interest and no share
in the doings of the little village at his feet. Their
prosperity or their trouble, their sickness or their health,
are alike of no consequence to him. He does not even
pretend to pray for them. He only comes among them
for the purpose of silently collecting the pious offerings
of those whose charity is as meaningless as his own life.
From Rinchengong the road runs northward along
the right bank of the river, flat and straight to Chema.
Half a mile before Chema is reached, the new road
over the Natu la descends between two narrow, stone-
built walls. Chema (which is pronounced “ Pe-ma ” by
the people of Gangtok, to whom this little place is of
some repute because within its boundaries the two
roads from Gangtok to Chumbi and the north descend)
is a town as like Rinchengong as one pea is like another.
The presiding Kazi is Norzan, and his house is the first
that one meets coming down into the town by the
valley of the Yak la. Across a triangular market-place
is a shrine with a long row of small prayer wheels, framed
behind a palisade against the wall. These the pious
inhabitants turn idly as they walk past on their way to
the bridge, and the dirt of many generations of Tibetan
hands has almost clogged the flutings of the handles.
Under an overhanging balcony on the right was a huge
Tibetan mastiff with a red woollen collar, so chained up
to the rafters above that only immediately below the
knot can he place all four legs on the ground at once.
He is, of course, a bad-tempered, mangy brute. But
he is, perhaps, of interest as being, like the hermit’s cave,
the first of an interminable number of his fellows in
Tibet. There is a curiosity nailed up against a wooden
pillar over his head, in the shape of a six-pointed shao
horn.* Mr. Claude White has its fellow in the Residency
at Gangtok. Across the bridge are two or three chortens,
beneath towering prayer poles, attracting the eyes, and
distracting the path of the good people, who may only
pass round them from left to right.
Immediately round the point is the Chinese village,
where the transition to more familiar buildings and
Chema Village. Mme. Dor-d&n’s house to the l e f t ; beyond it Norzan K a zi’s.
customs is very striking. The Chinese in Tibet take to
themselves Tibetan wives, for just so long as their exile
lasts. It must always be remembered that to the
Chinese, residence in Tibet is always regarded as an
exile. They look upon themselves as the over-lords of
* The shao horn has five points. So universal is this rule that the Lhasans
distinguish the species as the Shao-a-ru-chu, or “ ten-pointed ” stag.
VOL. I . 7 *