comparatively
little to myself. The sliding attracted no special attention as it was
supposed to be the American custom, and I did not deem it prudent to
make an explanation lest the story might bring discredit to my
nationality.

[Illustration: TAIL PIECE--A TURN OUT]

CHAPTER XII.

I had a curiosity to examine the ancient monuments at Tyr, opposite
the mouth of the Amgoon river, but we passed them in the night without
stopping. There are several traditions concerning their origin. The
most authentic story gives them an age of six or seven hundred years.
They are ascribed to an emperor of the Yuen dynasty who visited the
mouth of the Amoor and commemorated his journey by building the
'Monastery of Eternal Repose.' The ruined walls of this monastery are
visible, and the shape of the building can be easily traced. In some
places the walls are eight or ten feet high.

Mr. Collins visited the spot in 1857 and made sketches of the
monuments. He describes them situated on a cliff a hundred and fifty
feet high, from which there is a magnificent view east and west of the
Amoor and the mountains around it. Toward the south there are dark
forests and mountain ridges, some of them rough and broken. To the
north is the mouth of the Amgoon, with a delta of numerous islands
covered with forest, while in the northwest the valley of the river is
visible for a long distance. Back from the cliff is a table-land
several miles in width.

This table-land is covered with oak, aspen, and fir trees, and has a
rich undergrowth of grass and flowers. On a point of the cliff there
are two monuments. A third is about four hundred yards away. One is a
marble shaft on a granite pedestal; a second is entirely granite, and
the third partly granite and partly porphyry. The first and third bear
inscriptions in Chinese, Mongol, and Thibetan. One inscription
announces that the emperor Yuen founded the Monastery of Eternal
Repose, and the others record a prayer of the Thibetans. Archimandrate
Avvakum, a learned Russian, who deciphered the inscriptions, says the
Thibetan prayer _Om-mani-badme-khum_ is given in three languages.[C]

[Footnote C: Abbe Hue in his 'Recollections of a journey through
Thibet and Tartary,' says:--

"The Thibetans are eminently religious. There exists at Lassa a
touching custom which we are in some sort jealous of finding among
infidels. In the evening as soon as the light declines, the Thibetans,
men, women, and c