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The same process accompanies the election of the Gheghen and Hutuktus in all the Lamaite monasteries in Mongolia; but confirmation of the election resides with the Living Buddha and is only announced to Lhasa after the event." The present Bogdo Khan of Outer Mongolia is a Tibetan. He sprang from a poor family living in the neighborhood of Sakkia Kure in western Tibet.
The sakkia turneth no more; the oxen they are gone; The young go forth in chains, the old waken in the night, They waken and weep, for the wheel turns backward, And the dark days are come again upon us Will he return no more? His friendship was like a shady wood, O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice? Hast thou covered up his footsteps with thy flood?
The question is, who is going to steal out to the sakkia to-night, to shut the one sluice and open the other?" No one replied. No one understood quite what Wyndham meant. Shutting one sluice and opening the other did not seem to meet the situation. There was the danger of getting to the sakkia, but there was also an after.
A vision of his home in the mirkaz of Minieh passed before him. He stretched out his hands, and sang in the vibrating monotone of his people: "Turn, O Sakkia, turn to the right, and turn to the left: Who will take care of me, if my father dies? Who will give me water to drink, and the cucumber vine at my door Turn, O Sakkia!"
The man was singing a wild chant of cheerful labour, the soul of the hard-smitten of the earth rising above the rack and burden of the body: "O, the garden where to-day we sow and to-morrow we reap! O, the sakkia turning by the garden walls; O, the onion-field and the date-tree growing, And my hand on the plough-by the blessing of God; Strength of my soul, O my brother, all's well!"
The Arab had been asleep, but his hand ran to his knife by instinct too late, for Wyndham's fingers were at his throat, and he had neither time nor chance to cry Allah! before the breath left him. Wyndham crept on. The sound of the sakkia was in his ears the long, creaking, crying song, filling the night.
The fires of the enemy were dying down, and only here and there Arabs gossiped or drank coffee by the embers. At last Wyndham was able to drop into the narrow channel, now dry, through which, when the sluice was open and the sakkia turned, the water flowed to the house.
The Orient had touched him at last. "Is not the song of the sakkia in thine ear, Mahommed?" he said "Turn, O Sakkia, turn to the right, and turn to the left. The Nile floweth by night and the balasses are filled at dawn The maid of the village shall bear to thy bed the dewy grey goolah at dawn Turn, O Sakkia!" Wyndham was learning at last the way to the native mind. The man rose from his knees.
Then he sat down where the fellah had sat, and the sakkia droned its mystic music over the river, the desert, and the plain. But the buffalo moved slowly-the fellah's song had been a spur to its travel, as the camel-driver's song is to the caravan in the waste of sands.
The sakkia turneth no more; the oxen they are gone; The young go forth in chains, the old waken in the night, They waken and weep, for the wheel turns backward, And the dark days are come again upon us Will he return no more? His friendship was like a shady wood, O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice? Hast thou covered up his footsteps with thy flood?
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