pon
the tops of the houses. Almost at every step you see niches in form
resembling a sugar-loaf, within which are burning incense, odoriferous
wood, and cypress leaves. The most striking feature of all, however, is
to see an exclusive population of Lamas walking about the numerous
streets of the Lamasery, clothed in their uniform of red dresses and
yellow mitres. Their face is ordinarily grave; and though silence is not
prescribed, they speak little, and that always in an under tone. You see
very few of them at all about the streets, except at the hours appointed
for entering or quitting the schools, and for public prayer. During the
rest of the day, the Lamas for the most part keep within doors, except
when they descend by narrow, tortuous paths to the bottom of the ravines,
and return thence, laboriously carrying on their shoulders a long barrel
containing the water required for domestic purposes. At intervals you
meet strangers who come to satisfy a devotional feeling, or to visit some
Lama of their acquaintance.

The Lamasery of Kounboum, indeed, enjoys so high a reputation, that the
worshippers of Buddha resort thither in pilgrimage from all parts of
Tartary and Thibet, so that not a day passes in which there are not
pilgrims arriving and departing. Upon the great festivals, the
congregation of strangers is immense, and there are four of these in the
year, the most famous of all being the Feast of Flowers, which takes
place on the fifteenth day of the first moon. Nowhere is this festival
celebrated with so much pomp and solemnity as at Kounboum. Those which
take place in Tartary, in Thibet, and even at Lha-Ssa itself, are not at
all comparable with it. We were installed at Kounboum on the sixth of
the first moon, and already numerous caravans of pilgrims were arriving
by every road that led to the Lamasery. The festival was in every one's
mouth. The flowers, it was said, were this year of surpassing beauty;
the Council of the Fine Arts, who had examined them, had declared them to
be altogether superior to those of preceding years. As soon as we heard
of these marvellous flowers, we hastened, as may be supposed, to seek
information respecting a festival hitherto quite unknown to us. The
following are the details with which we were furnished, and which we
heard with no little curiosity:--

The flowers of the fifteenth of the first moon consist of
representations, profane and religious, in which all the