The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1905-01-22
MAGNIFICENCE OF POTALA.
RESIDENCE OF GRAND LAMAlN
LHASSA, CAPITAL OF TIBET

The correspondent Of the London
Times who accompanied the British
military expedition to Tibet gives the
following graphic account Of Lhassa.
the Forbidden City," the home of
the Lama.
To-day, august 81 we have come
in under the very walls of the For
hidden City. This is perhaps only
conventional expression, for Lhassa
has no city walls. They were pulled
down in 1921 and the sand embank-
ment, which was built at the same
time to protect the western gate from
inundation, is one of the first things
that attract the eye as one rides III
toward Potala, the palace temple OF
the Lama, built on a hill overlooking
the city. The road run straightly in
from the west. It passes the high
white and red wall which incloses
Norbuling, the summer palace of the
Grand Lama, about 600 yards on the
right. A little farther on it runs be-
meath the tangled and overgrown
plantations attached to Kundeling
Monastery, which stretch out green
and cool beside the gusty Ling-kor,
come famous through the Buddhist
world.
Even as one approaches it. two
trabaS, one Of them Of extreme age,
GENE along twirling their prayer
wheels and muttering necessarily the
one phase of LamaiSm as they 60
From the nights Of the neck above,
which almost joins Potala and Chag-
pori, there is to be seen at last the
great view of Lhassa, to the traveller
the most fascinating and perhaps also
the most beautiful city panorama in
the world.
There is almost nothing missing
from this splendid spectacle. Archi-
lecture, forest trees, wide spaces, rfv-
ers and streams, mountains-every-
thing lies out before one looking down
from the hight upon Lhassa inmedi-
ately at ones feet.
The Lama's Temple Palace.
Between and under the glades and
woodland the city Of Lhassa itself
peeps, an adobe stretch Of narrow
streets and fiat-topped houses en-
signed here and there with a blaze of
golden roofs or gilded guan-tsen. But
there is an actual difficulty in looking
at ii. Besides one, the Potala drags
the eye of the mind like a lodestone.
For, indeed, sheer bulk and the mag
nifcent audacity with which simple
ity has wrought a marvel in stone
could do no more than they have done
in this huge palace temple of the
Grand Lama. 1t would dominate
London; Lhassa it simply ecipses.
BY European standard it is impossible
to Judge il. There is little to 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 it again.
This is not only a product of Lama
ism, but of Lamaism as it would only
he exhibited in 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 pref
erences of its inhabitants as could be
imagined. The vivid white of the but
tressing curtains-each a wilderness
Of windows and the home of hundreds
VI int GInllSO4-Nldu QMdIlS WIN
sn the sun at the stair heads, or, pig
ny-like, man the roof tops-strikes
q clean and harmonious note with the
sea of green which washes up to their
bases. But one Is hardly ready for the
perfect taste which is not only decided
for the rich maroon color Of the CEN
trail building restiRg-three times as
large as Stafford House-upon and be-
tween its white supporting bulk and
masonry, but added. with the sparing
hand of the old illuminator, the gold
en- finals which recompose the whole
from roof TO roadway. It is in sucn
perfect taste that the glistening tops
of the Jo-kang, visible enough a mile
away across the trees, seem a trif1e
overdone, and even trif1e vulgar in
comparison.
Nine Hundred Feet Wide.
The top of Potala is 436 feet above
the ground The extreme width of the
main building, exclusive of the outly-
ing portions. is about 900 feet, and it
may thus be possible to conceive the
mere dimensions OF pile of Missionary
which II is almost impossible to de-
scribe in spite of the simplicity, which
after all, remains its most imposing
feature. And imposing It is; in
AE-~@ ~----