the Holy City. It has had built over it a roof supported
on two jutting walls of granite, and it is undoubtedly
of a very early, even possibly of a pre-historic, type ;
“ Cup marks ” outside Lhasa.
it marks the entrance to the plain in which Lhasa lies,
though, as I have said, a projecting spur from the south
still conceals the Potala from one’s eyes. It is for
this reason of great religious interest and veneration,
and in front of it stands a twenty-foot heap of pebbles
raised by pious pilgrims in thanksgiving for the nearness
of their long-expected goal. It is bedaubed coarsely
with yellow and blue and red, and, it must be confessed,
is one of the ugliest things we saw in the country.
Close as we thought ourselves to be, it was nearly
two miles yet, two long miles impatiently covered— past
strange strata of gneiss jutting out perpendicularly from
the hill sides like huge armour plates— past an interesting
example of the strange “ cup marks ” which are found
all the world over in the Eastern and Western hemispheres
alike, which no living man can even attempt
to explain, and at which no one just then even wished
to look— past treacherous swamps of vivid green grass
growing on soil more water than earth— two miles
that seem like ten, before that interminable southern
spur is outridden, before the place of our desire was
reached.
You may see from afar the spot at which the first
glance of the Potala may be obtained. Beside a barley
field is a low mud-coloured chorten, and beside the
chorten is a heap of stones larger even than that before
the great Buddha behind us. There is not much else
to mark the place, but assuredly nothing more was
needed on that day.
It was about half-past one in the afternoon, and a
light blue haze was settling down in between the ravines
of the far-distant mountains that to the east ringed in
the plain, and nearer to hand on either side threw their
spurs forward like giant buttresses from north to south.
There was a smell of fresh spring earth and the little
rustle of a faint wind in the heads of barley ; the sun
was merciless in a whitened sky wherein from horizon
V O L . 11. i i *