Dewey County advocate. [volume] (Timber Lake, S.D.) 1910-1913, 1913-01-03

almost black by exposure and at
~ deaths door with fatigue-stag-
gered to the courtyard of the
China inland mission house at Tachi-
enlu, writes Ruth Nicely in the Living
Church. When strength enough for
speech returned she told her story. 1t
was DR.. Susie Carson Rijnhart, the
first woman missionary who ever pen
etrated the wilds OF Tibet and returned
to tell the story.
All the world knows the wonderful
history of the woman's homeward
journey of 1900 miles, unprotected
and alone, from the interior, near the
outskirts Of Lhasa, where she buried
her baby beneath stone on the noun
tain side and where her husband was
later captured by hostile natives and
murdered
Since that time only one group of
foreigners has penetrated interior
Tibet This was the band of English
men who reached and invaded the sa-
cred city under the command of Col
onel Younghusband. Since the unsuc-
cessful ending of that expedition
Lhasa and interior Tibet have again
been closed to the outside world, a
wonderful region whose mysteries
have been guarded as the holy of
holes and as the impenetrable sane
tuary of the mysterious east.
Successors Of the Rijnharts.
But it is not to remain so. When, in
1901, DR.. Rijnhart returned to her
chosen field, northwestern China, she
took with her two missionaries OF the
Foreign Christian Missionary society,
DR.. and Mrs A. L. Shelton. With
them she established another mission
in Tachienlu, of which DR.. Shelton
and his wife took charge on the death
of the famous woman missionary a
year ago.
Later it was given over to other
hands, for Dr. Shelton and his wife
resolved to emulate the example of
the Rijnharts, and if it be in human
power they intend to penetrate interior
Tibet and to establish a Christian
mission in Lhasa, the very shrine of
Buddha, where no foreigner has ever
been permitted peacefully to enter and
where none has ever dwelt.
With their baby girls, Doris, three
wears old, and Dorothy. seven, the two
| missionaries set out from Tachienlu
last fall on their arduous and danger.
GUS tourney. They have now arrived
at Batang, about months journey
from Lhasa. whence they have sent to
this country the most remarkable col.
lection of Tibetan photographs ever
secured. The mission station is near
the lamasary at Batang, which houses
9 600 lamas or Buddhist priests, and is
one of the five great monasteries OF
Tibet.
The western theosophist's cherished
ideal of this life. pure spirit and lofty
contemplation, is hardly borne out by
the description of the Buddhist lamas
as seen in everyday life by the Shell
tons. To begin with, like all Tibetans
thew are inordinately dirty. The native
of Tibet never bathes, nor is the lama
an exception to this rule. They are
covered with dirt and grease and ex
ude an odor of rancid butter from the
fumes of the butter lamps that fill the
temples.
They are also infested with vermin
which they may not even destroy, be-
cause to kill even the humblest of ami
mails is contrary to the teachings OF
the Buddhist religion. The wonderful
learning Of the Buddhist lama is also
said to be largely product of west
ern imagination The worship consists
largely in noisy lamentations, in the
process of which guns are sometimes
fred, bells ring and horns give forth
deafening blasts.
Huge bonfires are an accepted
means of warding of the demons Of
famine, pestilence and war. The reli
gion of the Tibetan is largely system
of devil worship, to propitiate ant
ward off wicked spirits. Prayer wheels