Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1904-11-07
AT LHASA'S GATES.
Grand Lama's Palace a Wonderful Ar
chitectural Feature.

| To-Day We nave come III ZIG
very walls of the Forbidden City. This
is perhaps only a conventional express
sion, for Lhasa has no city walls IheE
were pulled down in 1721 by Deepen
named Karpi, and the sand embank-
ment which was built at the same time
| by him to protect the western gate
! from inundation is one of the hrst
things that attract the eye as one
rides in toward Potala. The road
runs straight in from the west. 1t
passes the high white and red wall
which incloses Norbuling, the summer
palace of the Granda Lama, about SIX
hundred yards on the right. a little
further on it runs beneath the tangled
and overgrowr plantations attached to
kundeling Monastery, which stretch
out green and cool beside the gusty
Lingk or, the little Worn lane which
has become famous throughout the
| Buddhist world. Even as. one APP
proaches it two trabas. one of them of
extreme age. come along tWirling their
prayer wheels and muttering incessant-
| ly the one phrase of LamaiSm as they
go. From the heights of the neck
above, which almost joins Potala and
! Chagpori, there is to be seen at last
/
or the most fascinating and, perhaps.
also the most beautiful, city panorama
| in the world.
| There is nothing missing from this
splendid spectacle. Architecture, for
est trees. wide spaces, rivers and
streams, mountains. everything lies out
before one looking down from the
height upon Lhasa Immediately at
II; oil fIa
charm. There has been nowhere along
| the journey a hint of what the end was
to be. The dark. forbidding spurs
and ravines of the valley interlockinS
one behind another promised nothing
of this. and the delight of Lhasa's
beauty is doubled by its utter unex-
pectedness.
1t is true that we had passed
! through green fields and marshes
clnaked shoulder high with rushes; it
is true that here and there a densely
matted plantation had moved out to
view from behind projecting spur, or,
seen afar, had slowly grown in size be-
side the road as we came along. But
there was nothing-less, perhaps. in
the maps of Lhasa than anywhere-to
promise US in the heart of city these
wild stretches of dense wood, this
close-cropped grazing land and this
marshy grass, ringed and delimited by
high trees or the lazy streamlets Of
brown. transparent water over which
the branches almost meet.
In Lhasa there is in this belt of
woodland interposing 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 treasures
numerous enough to give it reputa-
ton as garden city. But in this
stretch of green. unspoiled by house or
temple and almost rOadless. LhaSa has
n feature which no other city on earth
can rival. 1t is all a part of that
splendid religious pride which has been
the making and may vet prove the un-
doing of Tibet. 1t was right that
there should be belt of nature around
the palace of their incarnate king
deity. and there the belt is. wrapping
the PotTla inside the city With some
thing the isolation which guards
from the outer world the whole of this
strange and beautiful town. That one
third of the whole available space
within the Ling-kor was thus lost
ma tered 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
fiat-tOpped houses unsigned here and
there with a blaze Of golden roofs or
| 4 JtrY
actual difficulty in locking at it. Be-
side ono, the P0tala drags the eye os
, the mind like lodcsfoue. For. indeed.
sheer bulk and magnificent audacity
| with which simplicity has wrought
marvel in stone could do no
more than they have done in this
. huge palace temple Of the Grand
Luna. It would dominate Lon
! don; Lhasa it simnly eclpses. BY
: European standards it is impossible to
Judge it, There is little to which COM
/ rlrSon can he made Perhaps. in the
) aust Gritty of its hug stretches of blank
unveiled, unornam"ntcd wall, and in
the fiat, unah3shed slHnts of its ire
mendous southeast RI face. there is a
, suggestion Of the iHnssive grandeur Of
Egg ptian work. but one only thinks Of
the likeness 10 dismiss il again. This
{ is not only product of Lamaism, but
. Of Lan1aism IS it could only be ex-
hibted III the capital of the faith. The
contrast of color is no small part Of the
spectacle. and it also is as unlike Tibet
and the gaudy preferences Of its in
habtants us could be imagined. The
vivid white of the buttressing curtains
each q wilderness of the windows and
the home of hundreds Of crimson clad
, dwarfs. who stand in the sun at the
stair heads, or. pygnlylike, man the
roof tops-strikes clear and harmoni-
. Gus note with the sea of green which
=; washes up to their bases. But one is
hardly ready for the perfect taste
: which not only decided for the rich
maroon color of the central building,
. reStine-three times as large as
Stafford House-upon and between its
white supporting bulk of masonry. but.
added with the sparin, hand of the old
illumination. the golden finals which
recompoSn the whole from roof to road