The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1904-09-21
WONDERFUL LHASL.
HOW THE FIRST SIGHT OF IT
AFFECTED THE ESGLISHMEN.

To-day we have come in under the
very walls of the Forbidden City. This
is perhaps only a conventional express
sion, Tor Lhasa has no city walls. They
were pulled down in 1721 by Deepen
named Parpi. and the sand embank-
nent which was built at the same time
by him to protect the western gate from
inundation Is one of the first things
that attract the eye as one rides in to-
ward Potala. The road runs straightly
In from the west. It passes the high
white ana red wall which incloses Nor
bpling. the summer palace Of the Grand
Lama, about six hundred yards on the
right. A little further on 1t runs be-
meath the tangled and overgrown PLAN
tations attached to Kundeling Monas-
terry, which stretch out green and cool
beside the Gusty Ling-kor, the little
worn lane which has become famous
throughout the Buddhist world. Even
as one approaches it two trabas, one of
them OF extreme age. come along twill
ing their prayer wheels and muttering
necessarily the one phrase of Larnaism
as they 60 From the heights of the
neck above, which almost joins Potala
and Chagport, there is to be seen at
last the great view Of Lhasa, to the
traveller the most fascinating and, per-
haps, also the most beautiful city pam
Drama in the world.
There IS almost nothing missing from
this splendid spectacle. Architecture,
forest trees, wide spaces, rivers and
streams, mountains, everything lies out
before one looking down from the
height upon Lhasa Immediately at ones
feet. Nor is this quite all the charm.
There has been nowhere along the jour-
ney a hint of what the end was to be,
The dark, forbidding spurs and ravines
Of the valley interlocking one behind
another promised nothing Of this, and
the delight Of Lhasa's beauty is dou-
bled by its utter unexpectedness.
1t is true that we had passed through
green fields and marshes cloaked Shout
der high with rushes; 1t is true that
here and there a densely matted PLAN
tation had moved out to view from be-
hind a projecting spur, or seen afar,
had slowly grown in size beside the
road as we came along. But there was
nothing less, perhaps, in the maps of
Lhasa than anywhere Ito promise us in
the heart OF a city these wild stretches
Of dense wood, this close-eropped graz
ing land and this marshy grass, ringed
and delimited by high trees, or the lazy
streainlets Of brown transparent water
over which the branches almost meet.
In Lhasa there is in this belt Of wood
land interposirg mile wide green belt
between the palace and the town.
Round the fringes of the town itself
and creeping up between the houses of
the village at the foot of the Potala
there are more trees-trees numerous
enough to give 1t a reputation as a gar
den city. But in this stretch of green,
unspoiled by house or temple and al
most fcaalsss Lllasa has feature
which no other city on earth can rival
1t Is all u part Of that splendid religious
pride which has been the making, and
may yet prove the undoing, of Tibet.
1t was right that there should be belt
Of nature round the palace of their in
carnate king-deity, and there the belt
IS, wrapping the Potala inside the city
with something of the isolation which
guards from the outer world the world
Of this strange and beautiful town.
That one-third Of .tte whole available
space within the Ling-kor was thus lost
nnattered nothing: it may even have
been an additional reason for the ordi-
nance.
Between and over the glades and
woodland the city of Lhasa itself peeps,
an adobe stretch of narrow streets and
flat-topped houses unsigned here and
there with blaze of golden roofs or
gilded gyan-tsen. But there is an ac-
tual difficulty in looking at it. Beside
one, the Potala drags the eye of the
mind like a lodestone. For, indeed,
sheer bulk and magnificent audacity
with which simplicity has wrought a
marvel in stone could do no more than
they have done In this huge palace tenn
pie of the Grand Lama. 1t would domi-
nate London; Lhasa 1t simply eclipses.
BY European standards it is impossible
to Judge it. There Is little in which
comparison can be made. Perhaps, in
the austerity OF its huge stretches of
blank, unveiled, unornamented wall,
and in the fiat, unabashed slants of its
tremendous southeastern face, there is
a suggestion Of the massive grandeur of
Egyptian work. but one only thinks of
the likeness to dismiss 1t again. This is
not only product Of Isamaism, but of
Lamaism as it could only be exhibited
In the capital Of the faith. The con-
trast of color is no small part of the
spectacle, and it also is as unlike Tibet
and the gaudv preference of it's inhabi-
tants as could be imagined. The vivid
white of the buttressing curtains-each
q wilderness of windows and the home
OF hundreds Of the crimson clad dwarfs
who stand lin the sun at the stair heads,
or, pygmy like, man the roof tops.
strikes a clear and harmonious note
with the sea of green which washes up
to their bases But one is hardly ready
for the perfect taste which not only de-
cided for the rich maroon color of the
central building resting-three times as
large as Stafford l1ouse-upon and be-
tween its white supporting bulk of ma
sorry, but added, with the sparing
hand Of the old illuminator, the golden
finals which recompose the whole from
roof to roadway. It is in such perfect
taste that the glistening tops of the Jo-
kang, visible enough mile away across
the trees, seem trifie overdone and
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