From time to time we met groups of Tibetans, men and women, rough-looking and shy, with the shyness of a wild animal. Generally after a moment's pause to reassure themselves, they answered my greeting in jolly fashion, seeming quite ready to make friends. Occasionally the way was blocked by trains of ox-like yaks, the burden-bearers of the snow-fields, bringing their loads of skins and felt and musk and gold. Astride of one was a nice old man who stuck out his tongue at me in polite Tibetan fashion.
[Illustration: LAMA AND DOG AT TACHIENLU]
After an hour's ride we left the highway and turned into a beautiful green valley, following a very bad trail deeper and deeper into the mountains, the soft meadows gay with flowers forming a charming contrast to the snow-peaks that barred the upper end of the valley. We came first to the New Palace, a large rambling building having no more architectural pretensions than an ordinary Chinese inn. As the king's brother, who makes his home there, was away, I saw nothing more of the place than the great courtyard filled with mangy, half-starved dogs and unkempt men. Not far off is one of the great attractions of the place, at least to the natives,--a hot sulphur spring. To the disappointment of my Tibetan guide I declined to visit it, preferring a leisurely cold lunch on the bank of a rushing stream which was vigorously turning a large prayer-wheel, a cylinder of wood inscribed many times over with the mystic words of the Buddhist prayer, "Om mani padme hum," oftenest repeated perhaps of all prayers. Each revolution of the wheel was equivalent to as many repetitions of the words as there were inscribed on the wood. So night and day, while the stream runs, prayers are going up for the king,--and truly he needs them, poor man, between the bullying of his Chinese overlords and the machinations of turbulent lamas. Other indications of the Buddhist's comfortable way of getting his prayers said for him are found all about Tachienlu. From temple roof and wayside rock flags bearing the same legend wave in the breeze, each flutter a prayer, and just outside the city we rode by a long stone wall, much like those of New England, only its top was covered over with inscribed stones. If you passed by, having the "mani" wall on your right hand, each inscribed stone would pray for you; hence the trail always forks to suit the coming and the going Buddhist, and I remember well the insolent pride with which my Mohammedan servants always took the right hand when passing these walls in Ladakh.