every ledge. On the top of this ascent one looks away
over the wide waste of the Kyi chu river, and there are
few sights in the world more beautiful than that which
here meets the eye. Far and wide the sunlit river
stretches its shallows ; one could almost believe that
Lhasa was an island in a lake, and the picturesque foliage
of the trees and flowers that rise at the foot of the long
slaty cliffs, just where the southern sunshine washes
them all day and the rock gives out its warmth to them
all night, are more luxuriant than anywhere else beside
the sacred way. The Ling-kor descends here somewhat
abruptly, finding a foothold at the base of the rocks by
which you may climb from here to Chagpo-ri— it is as
it were the sprawled near hind-leg of the couching lion
of stone.
Now the most impressive sight of all the Ling-kor is
in front of us. It is a gigantic rock, flat and facing the
stream squarely ; the whole surface is a close set gallery
of Buddhas of all sizes and colours, jostling each other’s
knees in their profusion ; at a distance in the sunlight
it looks as if a vast carpet of vivid colour has been
thrown over the face of the rock. There can hardly be
less than twenty thousand of these figures, the majority
being small images but two inches high, cut in symmetrical
rows by hundreds upon a convenient surface of
the rock itself, or propped up on detached slabs against
the cliff side. Others, from nine inches fo two feet in
height, cover the entire surface of the great rock disposed
round the big Buddha in the centre. He is twenty feet
in height, and below him in enormous gaudy letters of the
deepest relief is the parent mantra of all the “ om mani
padme hums ” of Tibet. Each letter is cut six feet in
height out of the living rock, and the total length of the