incarnation of Arya Tara. I visited the cell she lived in, and saw her tomb and an image of her. There are now two ascetics living here, who have made vows never to come out nor to speak a word so long as they live. When I approached them they smiled and seemed pleased with the little present I made them. The beadle who accompanied me said they had been immured in their cells for ten years.
Resuming our journey, we passed by Sangri Jong, and following a narrow path, scarcely a yard wide, overhanging the eddying river, reached Logang ferry;[1] but, though we shouted for an hour to the boatmen on the other side, we could not get them to come over for us, so we had to return to the village of Jong at the western base of the Densa-til mountain. Here we got lodgings for the night in the house of the headman.
November 5.—A little before dawn we left Jong and made for the Nango[2] ferry. There is an iron suspension bridge at this place, but it is so much out of repair that it cannot be crossed over, and we were ferried across in a large boat, together with a number of traders and their donkeys. The river is very narrow here, scarcely a hundred yards in breadth. Passing through the village of Khyungar we entered Tse-tang,[3] the capital of Yarlung, and formerly a place of great importance. Our guide procured lodgings for us in the house of a woman whose husband, a Kashmiri, had died a year or so before and who was now living alone with her husband's son. The Kache (Kashmiri) received us very kindly, but after a short conversation with me he became alarmingly suspicious of my true character, and kept continually turning the conversation to the Shaheb-logs ("Englishmen") he had known at Katmandu, and the greatness of the Engrez Maharani ("Queen of England"). As often as he spoke of these
- ↑ From Sangri khamar the traveller turned westward along the river-bank till he came in front of Logang (or Lu-kang-tu), where there is a ferry-boat.—(W. R.)
- ↑ Nyen on the maps. I find no mention of this bridge in the reports of other explorers.—(W. R.)
- ↑ Called Chethang by all the other explorers. A. K. calls it "a large town containing 1000 houses, a bazar, a gomba, and a fort," 'Report of Explor. made by A. K.,' p. 83. Explorer Ugyen-gyatso, who visited in October, 1883, says, "Mahomedan shops were found in the market in which wheat and meat soup were sold. It is curious that the lama notes that pork is specially cheap at this place, three annas being the price paid for a pig's head, and eight annas for a quarter. Radishes, carrots, and yak's flesh are also sold in the public market." 'Report of Explor. from 1856 to 1886,' p. 27. Nain Singh, who visited Chetang in 1873, says there are 700 lamas in the two monasteries, see Jour. Roy. Geog. Soc, xlvii. 117.—(W. R.)
