Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1913-01-01

M USI ten years ago woman
clothed in rags-dirty, tanned,
almost black by exposure and at
a. 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 it
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 YVES
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 Rilnharts,
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 Riinharts, 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
years old. and Dorothy seven, the two
missionaries set out from Tachienlu
last fall on their arduous and danger
GUS Journey. They have now arrived
at Batang. about a months journey
from Lhasa, whence they have sent tc
this country the most remarkable col
lection of Tibetan photographs evel
secured. The mission station is neal
the lamasary az Batang, which houses
f.! 5000 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
they are Unfortunately 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 o
the Buddhist religion. The wonderful
learning of the Buddhist lama Is alsC
said to be largely product OF west
ern Imagination. The worship consists
largely in noisy incantations, in tbs
process of which guns are sometimes
fred bells ring and horns give forti
deafening blasts.
Huge bonfires are an accepted
means of warding off the demons o
famine, pestilence and war The reli
gion Of the Tibetan is largely a system
OF devil worship, to propitiate ant
ward off wicked spirits. Prayer wheel