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My attention was also attracted by some peculiar head-gear worn by the Lamas during their services and ceremonies, when they not only accompany their chanting and prayers with the beating of drums and clashing of cymbals, but they also make a noise on cane flutes, tinkle hand-bells, and sound a large gong.
One of the ceremonies consisted in parading, to the sound of musketry, an enormous loaf of consecrated bread, which, rising in tiers, was surmounted by a pyramid of verdure adorned with ribbons. After that the holy hand-bells, deposited on the step of the altar, were entrusted as insignia of office to the man who was to be the Green Wolf next year.
These myriad bells, with their little copper tongues, seemed to him like the mouths of so many asps, open and ready to sting and to hiss. "Oh!" he said, in a very low voice, "is it possible that my life depends on the slightest vibration of the least of these bells? Oh!" he added, with clasped hands, "bells, do not ring, hand-bells do not clang, mule-bells do not quiver!"
The latter conducted himself with disagreeable familiarity towards us, and hauteur towards the people; he was preceded by immense kettle-drums, carried on men's backs, and great hand-bells, which were beaten and rung on approaching villages; on which occasions he changed his dress of sky-blue for yellow silk robes worked with Chinese dragons, to the indignation of Tchebu Lama, an amber robe in polite Tibetan society being sacred to royalty and the Lamas.
Hear the dinner bells! It must be a hungry town." And that would seem so, indeed. From every hotel and restaurant issued a clamor of hand-bells and of gongs, each apparently vying with the other to make noise. It sounded like a Fourth of July! People began to rush into the Parker-house, and in a jiffy the long tables were filled. The Adams party got seats just in time.
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