tions, fields and houses all the way up to where the
wind-blown buttresses of sand blanket the hollow scarp
of the southern hills. Far away in the distance beyond,
the town the plain still stretches, always the same
marshy expanse jagged and indented by the spurs of
the encircling hills; six miles away it closes in to the
east at the point to which the curving thread of the high
road to China makes its uncertain way, banked high
across the morass.
Just where the dun town encroaches upon the greenery
you may see clearly the famous Yutok Sampa or Turquoise
roofed bridge. To the right is the Amban’s
house, almost completely hidden in its trees, and on
the other side of the Jo-kang’s gilded canopies, far away
to the left, rise the steep, unbeautiful walls of the Meru
gompa, the last house in Lhasa to the north-east; to
the west of it, amid the greenery of its plantations,
flash the golden ridge-poles of Ramo-che, after the Jo-
kang itself the most sacred of all temples in Tibet. But,
believe me, when you have marked these historic points
the eye will helplessly revert again to the Potala ; it is
a new glory added to the known architecture of the
world.
Nothing in Lhasa, excepting always the interior of
the Jo-kang, comes up to this magnificent prelude. If
a traveller knows that the cathedral doors are hopelessly
shut to him, his wisest course would be to sit a day or
two upon this spur of Chagpo-ri and then depart,
making no further trial of the town ; for he will never
catch again that spell of almost awed thanksgiving that
there should be so beautiful a sight hidden among these
icy and inaccessible mountain crests, and that it should
have been given to him to be one of the few to see it.
chair. When existing the Regent also has this privilege.