them were roofless, the poplar rods which support the mud having been used for fuel.  Conical stacks of the dried excreta of animals, the chief fuel of the country, adorned the roofs, but the general aspect was ruinous and poor.  The people all invited me into their dark and dirty rooms, inhabited also by goats, offered tea and cheese, and felt my clothes.  They looked the wildest of savages, but they are not.  No house was so poor as not to have its ’family altar,’ its shelf of wooden gods, and table of offerings.  A religious atmosphere pervades Tibet, and gives it a singular sense of novelty.  Not only were there chod-tens and a gonpo in this poor place, and family altars, but prayer-wheels, i.e. wooden cylinders filled with rolls of paper inscribed with prayers, revolving on sticks, to be turned by passers-by, inscribed cotton bannerets on poles planted in cairns, and on the roofs long sticks, to which strips of cotton bearing the universal prayer, Aum mani padne hun (O jewel of the lotus-flower), are attached.  As these wave in the wind the occupants of the house gain the merit of repeating this sentence.

The remaining marches to Leh, the capital of Lesser Tibet, were full of fascination and novelty.  Everywhere the Tibetans were friendly and cordial.  In each village I was invited to the headman’s house, and taken by him to visit the chief inhabitants; every traveller, lay and clerical, passed by with the cheerful salutation Tzu, asked me where I came from and whither I was going, wished me a good journey, admired Gyalpo, and when he scaled rock ladders and scrambled gamely through difficult torrents, cheered him like Englishmen, the general jollity and cordiality of manners contrasting cheerily with the chilling aloofness of Moslems.

The irredeemable ugliness of the Tibetans produced a deeper impression daily.  It is grotesque, and is heightened, not modified, by their costume and ornament.  They have high cheekbones, broad flat noses without visible bridges, small, dark, oblique eyes, with heavy lids and imperceptible eyebrows, wide mouths, full lips, thick, big, projecting ears, deformed by great hoops, straight black hair nearly as coarse as horsehair, and short, square, ungainly figures.  The faces of the men are smooth.  The women seldom exceed five feet in height, and a man is tall at five feet four.

The male costume is a long, loose, woollen coat with a girdle, trousers, under-garments, woollen leggings, and a cap with a turned-up point over each ear.  The girdle is the depository of many things dear to a Tibetan—­his purse, rude knife, heavy tinder-box, tobacco pouch, pipe, distaff, and sundry charms and amulets.  In the capacious breast of his coat he carries wool for spinning—­for he spins as he walks—­balls of cold barley dough, and much besides.  He wears his hair in a pigtail.  The women wear short, big-sleeved jackets, shortish, full-plaited skirts, tight trousers a yard too long, the superfluous length forming folds