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Every cake is wrapped in red paper, and about twenty cakes are sewed up together into a hide tightly bound with rope. The caravan was bound for Shigatse. As we rode by, several of the men came up to us and put some impertinent and inconvenient questions. They were well armed and looked like robbers, so we politely refused their proposal that we should travel together southwards.
They have a great number of monks and priests, each of whom is called a Lama. The principal one is the Dalai Lama, in Lhasa, but almost on a par with him is the Tashi Lama, the head of Tashi-lunpo, the large monastery at Shigatse. The third in rank is the High Lama at Urga in northern Mongolia. These three and some others are incarnated deities.
The jewel is Buddha, and in all images he is represented as rising up from the petals of a lotus flower. The more frequently a man repeats these four words, the greater chance has he of a happy existence when he dies and his soul passes into a new body. We reached Shigatse and pitched our tents in a garden on the outskirts of the town.
They were full of pilgrims flocking to the great Lama temple in Shigatse. Two days later was the New Year of the country, and then the Lamaists celebrate their greatest festival. Pilgrims stream from far and near to the holy town.
When we were only a day's journey from Shigatse, the second town of Tibet, the caravan was ferried across the river. I myself with two of my servants took my seat in a hide boat, dexterously managed by a Tibetan, and we drifted down the Brahmaputra at a swinging pace. A number of other boats were following the same fine waterway.
There are to be found not only nomads, but also settled people, dwelling in small villages of stone huts in the deeper river valleys, especially that of the Brahmaputra, and cultivating barley. A few towns also exist here; they are all small, the largest being Lhasa and Shigatse.
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