Most of the buildings at Tachienlu appeared in the last stage of decay, especially the temples. One was so full of birds' droppings that we imagined they could never have been cleared away since the day it was built. Two fierce dogs were chained across the threshold; and though I found I could just squeeze myself in out of reach of either, I noticed none of our Chinese coolies cared to follow. Tibetan dogs are noted for their fierceness, and are one of the great difficulties of travel in Tibet. There were boys burning something that had a horrible smell in the great incense-burner in front, while a priest, attended by a boy, was beating a gong and chanting within. This was the only sign of worship we came across. But the passageway between the back and front temple was all hung with oblong bits of paper, on which prayers were written. One day we met two very wild-looking Tibetans, each bent under a load of three huge pieces of slate inscribed with prayers; and presently we met a string of Tibetan women, bent more than double under loads of five, six, or even as many as seven bars of brick tea, each weighing twenty pounds. The world often seems rather topsy-turvy to a traveller.
A dark door like a house door, a dark passage merely partitioned off from a shop, then an alley-way that seemed to be used as a slaughter-house, led up to Kwanyin's temple, a very conspicuous and rather coquettish building on a hill overlooking the town. When we got there, followed by a crowd of the usual tiresome little Chinese boys, and also by two most beautiful Tibetans, on pushing open the door we found numbers of neglected prayers hanging from the rafters, old broken beams lying in a heap, a staircase so rickety that no one liked to go up it, and, at the top of it, a barred door, sufficiently saying "Not at home." One of the Tibetans had such a quantity of hair, and such ringlets, that one of our coolies, with Chinese insolence, touched it to see if it was real. The Tibetan was elderly, and evidently well seasoned to the world, and only laughed at the liberty. But his companion--a beautiful youth, with a face of that feminine type that one only sees now in old books of beauty, arched eyebrows delicately pencilled, aquiline nose, features all too delicate for this workaday world--blushed vividly, and looked so unutterably pained that I longed to apologise, only we lacked a mutual language. He had himself a yet more inordinate quantity of hair, some of which must have been horse-hair, frizzed and raised so as to simulate the high pompadour style; but I think the ringlets that shadowed his translucent complexion must have been his own.