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NEARING TH E END
On the next day, the 2nd of August, we still followed
the difficult track along the indentations of the hills
and emerged at last into a wide, well-cultivated plain.
There, moving along a sunken road between wide fields
of peas and wheat, we soon reached the well-wooded
village of Nethang, which boasts the distinction of
having been the residence of the great reformer, Atisha.
The road runs straight through the town, making two
sharp turns at right angles as it does so ; a few lamas
gathered at the door or on the roof-tops to watch us,
a few children stood in the doorways with their fingers
in their mouths and their eyes wide open. There was
no other sign of life.
We made a short halt beyond the village to enable
the proper intervals to be made up, but it was with
impatience that we waited the order to continue our
march. Before us the two spurs of intervening rock
still closed the view of the Plain of Milk completely,
and there was a mile to be traversed before we could
make our way between these forbidding barriers. Once
set moving again, the. column crawled forward under
the rocky sides of the northern spur and at last threaded
through the defile.
Another disappointment was in store for us. Once
inside the gate of the plain, even from that point of
view not a stone nor a pinnacle of Lhasa is to be seen.
We had to possess our souls in patience still. But
that we were near our journey’s end was clear enough.
Here at our left elbows, hacked out on the inner surface
of the roekjAvhs the famous Buddha of which we had so
often heard ; this great monster, thirty feet in height,
and cut in thirty-six inch relief in the natural flattened
surface of the raw rock, gazed over our heads towards
VOL. II. 11