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CHAPTER VIII.
THE POTALA AND THE CATHEDRAL.
F or many days the Mission waited for the Tibetans
to arrange their internal affairs and come to the work
of negotiation. Thé first càmp near Norbu-ling was
abandoned by the expeditionary force,, and the Mission,
with a guard of one battalion of Pathans, moved
across the swampy plain to Lha-lu, which, as we
have seen, had been put at the disposal of Colonel
Younghusband by the four Councillors. Formal visits
were again and again paid within the pr'ecincts of
Lhasa ; the country round was visited and surveyed
with care, one party going as far as the plain beyond
the Pembu la to the north-east. They reported the
existence of a plain even more luxuriant in vegetation
than that of Lhasa, but it was admitted by the
Tibetans that this was nearly the last of their really
fertile tracts of land in a northerly direction. General
Macdonald moved the remainder of the force to a
comparatively dry patch on the plain about a mile
nor’-nor’-east of the Potala, and except for the
commissariat officers, whose work on an expedition
is never done, there was a quiet time for the men
composing the Commissioner’s escort. For many of the
officers, too, there was not very much to do during the