mud, through and over which one has gingerly to pick
one’s way, stepping from stone to stone, enters the
house as freely as ourselves, and in the sudden dark
one can only just distinguish the corner down which a.
precipitous ladder slants. It is impossible here to choose
one’s steps, so one plunges through the mud and stones
to reach the base of the ladder, which, it must be
remembered, is the only way in which a visitor or
resident, high or low, can reach the house itself. Up
the slippery iron-sheathed treads one goes, clinging
desperately to the polished willow handrail, and at the
top one is confronted across the passage by the durbar
room of the house.
This is also the chapel, and three seated figures of
gilt bronze, properly draped with katags, are ranged
in recesses along the opposite wall. On either side of
them the wall is pigeon-holed for books. No photograph
can even suggest the decoration of this room.
Colour covers every single square inch of wall space
or pillar from end to end. Scarlet and emerald green,
gold and Reckitt s blue predominate to the exclusion
of half-tones, harmonising, however, more than would
be thought possible. Above this room, which is lighted
by a vertical opening in- the roof, is the floor on which
the family lives, and it is curious to emerge from the (
mud and untidiness of the ground level to the dainty
finish of this beautiful series of rooms. There were
seventeen living rooms, and of these ten were decorated
in the same lavish manner as below. Ornament was not
confined to the walls ; latticed screens of paper, silk
and even glass separated one part of a room from the
other, and all and everything were figured with richly-
tinted specimens of local or Chinese draughtmanship. The Reception Hall of Lha-lu House at Lhasa.