ting small channels, gay with vivid grass and primulas.
Through the Yutok Sampa the road turned sharply to
the left and the gate of Lhasa proper was before us ; it
is a plain hole in the wall without decoration, and without
even a door.
Immediately in front as one penetrates through
the wall is a wide open space with a stream of .water
Street scene in Lhasa : near the Chinese quarter.
running down between weeds and bushes from the left ;
following up this direction with the eye the street is
seen to turn into a small square, and at one end of it a
gigantic willow-tree towers high above the flat, low-lying
roofs. This is the famous tree that grows opposite the
western front of the J o-kang, of which one can from the
gate see but the tops of its golden roofs towering above
the dull, flat buildings with which the cathedral is surrounded.
In front, and indeed in all other directions,
are the squat, uninteresting mud houses of Lhasa. The
Chinese quarter, immediately to our right, which in
general is far better kept than other parts of a Tibetan
community, is as bad as the others. We turned off in
this direction through the quarter and emerged imme-
The entrance to the Chinese Residency in Lhasa.
diately into another wide space of which the unevennesses
were indicated by great pools of black-scummed
water. Under some squalid willows dividing this open
space from the gate,' the main drain of the town runs
fcetidly between black banks, passing beneath the very
walls of the Residency. On these stinking eminences
herds of black pigs were grouting about among rubbish