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Updated: June 8, 2025
"Very well," I said, "let us start. If the snow won't bear us now, it never will." So we tied up our rugs and the yak's hide in two bundles and, having cut off some more of the frozen meat, began our descent.
The Tibetans give the foals of value messes of pig's blood and raw liver, which they devour greedily, and it is said to strengthen them wonderfully; the custom is, I believe, general in central Asia. At night the Tibetan dogs are let loose, when they howl dismally: on one occasion they robbed me of all my meat, a fine piece of yak's flesh.
How significant it is that among the emblems of royalty in the East the three chiefest are an umbrella-bearer, two men who stand behind and swing great punkahs modelled on the elephant's ear, and two others carrying yak's tails wherewith to scare the flies from the royal person! The elephant is a rajah! There is another mysterious ear which is a stumbling-block to the simple theory-monger.
"Well," he said, "of course I remember our arrival at that Gate after the lady and the old man had pulled us out of the river, and, Horace, talking of spiders reminds me of hanging at the end of that string of yak's hide. Not that I need much reminding, for I am not likely to forget it. Do you know I cut the rope because I felt that I was going mad, and wished to die sane. What happened to you?
In their hands were either iron-tongs, with loose clattering ring, or a yak's tail, or the three-ribbed horn of a black-buck. Some of the yogis, perhaps Goswamies that had come from the country where Eklinga was the tutelary deity, had their hair braided and woven around their foreheads, holding in its fold lotus seeds; beneath the tiara of hair a crescent of white on their foreheads.
The Jogpa, in our mad flight, cut off a long lock of the yak's silky hair. Having secured this, he appeared to be quite satisfied, let go, and sheathed his sword. He quickly concealed the stolen locks in his coat, and then made low bows to us, sticking out his tongue, and declaring that unless such a precaution were taken when parting with a beast, bad luck was sure to come to you.
Hence in the jack-pudding who now masquerades with motley countenance in the market-place of Lhasa, sweeping up misfortune with a black yak's tail, we may fairly see the substitute of a substitute, the vicar of a vicar, the proxy on whose back the heavy burden was laid when it had been lifted from nobler shoulders.
Though the best that could be provided, and larger than my own, they were wretched in the extreme, being of so loose a texture that the wind blew through them: each was formed of two cloths with a long slit between them, that ran across the top, giving egress to the smoke, and ingress to the weather: they were supported on two short poles, kept to the ground by large stones, and fastened by yak's hair ropes.
The roofs of the Tsala tents are nearly flat, and the middle has an opening six inches wide along its whole length. An excavation from twelve to twenty-four inches deep is made in the soil, and a rude wall of stones, about one foot high, is built round it, over which the tent cloth, made in narrow widths of yak's or goat's hair, is extended by ropes led over forked sticks.
On my arrival at Wallanchoon, I was conducted to two tents, each about eight feet long, of yak's hair, striped blue and white, which had been pitched close to the village for my accommodation.
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