down from the height upon Lhasa stretching out at our
feet. The dark forbidding spurs and ravines of the
valley of the Kyi chu, up which we had come, interlock
one with another and had promised nothing of all this ;
the beauty of Lhasa is doubled by its utter unexpectedness.
It is true that we had only yesterday and that
Pargo Kaling : the Western Gate of Lhasa.
very day passed through green fields and marshes cloaked
shoulder high with rushes ; it is true that here and there
a densely-matted plantation had swung slowly beside
our road to meet us as we moved along ; but there was
nothing— fesS perhaps in such maps and descriptions of
Lhasa as we had than anywhere else— to promise us this
city of gigantic palace and golden roof, these wild
stretches of woodland, these acres of close-cropped
