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of black beads, and in cups made with the roots of the vine and box-tree. As we departed from Lithang, the Chinese garrison was under arms, to render military honours to Ly-Kouo-Ngan. They acted just as if he had been alive. When the coffin passed, all the soldiers bent their knees and exclaimed: "To the Tou-Sse, Ly-Kouo-Ngan, the poor garrison of Lithang wishes health and prosperity." The petty Mandarin, with the white button, who had become our guide, saluted the garrison in the name of the deceased. This new commander of the caravan was a Chinese of Moslem extraction; but one could find nothing about him which seemed to belong in the least to the fine type of his ancestors: his puny, stunted person, his pointed smiling face, his shrill treble voice, his trifling manners, all contributed to give him the air of a shop-boy, and not in the least that of a military Mandarin. He was a prodigious talker. The first day he rather amused us, but he soon became a bore. He thought himself bound, in his quality of Mussulman, to talk to us, on all occasions, about Arabia, and of its horses that are sold for their weight in gold; about Mahomet, and his famous sabre that cut through metals; about Mecca and its bronze ramparts. From Lithang to Ta-Tsien-Lou, a frontier town of China, is only 600 lis, which are divided into eight stages. We found the end of that frightful route to Thibet exactly like its middle and its beginning. We in vain climbed mountains; we found still more and more before us, all of a threatening aspect, all covered with snow and rugged with precipices; nor did the temperature undergo any perceptible change. It appeared to us, that, since our departure from Lha-Ssa, we had been doing nothing but move round and round in the same circle. Yet, as we advanced, the villages became more frequent, without, however, losing their Thibetian style. The most important of these villages is Makian-Dsoung, where some Chinese merchants keep stores for supplying the caravans. One day's journey from Makian-Dsoung, you pass in a boat the Ya-Loung-Kiang, a large and rapid river. Its source is at the foot of the Bayen-Kharat mountains, close to that of the Yellow River. It joins the Kin-Cha-Kiang, in the province of Sse-Tchouen. According to the traditions of the country, the banks of the Ya-Loung-Kiang were the first cradle of the Thibetian nation. As we were passing the Ya-Loung-Kiang in a boat, a shepherd cross
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