t a considerable town, jointly occupied by Chinese and
by Tartars. The principal commerce of the place is in beasts.

The Grand Lama of the Lamasery is, at the same time, sovereign of the
district. It is he who makes laws, who administers justice, and who
appoints magistrates. When he dies, his subjects go and seek for him in
Thibet, where he is always understood to metempsychosise himself.

At the time of our visit to the Kouren of the Thousand Lamas, everything
was in utter confusion, by reason of a suit between the Lama King and his
four ministers, who are called, in the Mongol language, Dchassak. The
latter had taken upon themselves to marry, and to build houses for
themselves apart from the Lamasery, things altogether subversive of Lama
discipline. The Grand Lama essayed to bring them to order; the four
Dchassak, instead of submitting, had collected a whole heap of
grievances, upon which they framed an accusation against their chief
before the Tou-Toun, the high Mantchou Mandarin, who acts as
Secretary-of-State for the Tartar department.

The suit had been under prosecution two months when we visited the
Lamasery, and we soon saw how the establishment was suffering from the
absence of its principals. Study or prayer there was none; the great
outer gate was open, and seemed not to have been closed at all for some
time past. We entered the interior; all we found there was silence and
solitude. The grass was growing in the courts, and upon the walls. The
doors of the temples were padlocked, but through the gratings we could
see that the seats, the altars, the paintings, the statues, were all
covered with dust; everything manifested that the Lamasery had been for
some time in a state of utter neglect. The absence of the superiors, and
the uncertainty as to the result of the suit, had unloosened all the
bonds of discipline. The Lamas had dispersed, and people began to regard
the very existence of the Lamasery as extremely compromised. We have
since heard that, thanks to enormous bribery, the suit terminated in
favour of the Lama King, and that the four Dchassak were compelled to
conform themselves in all respects to the orders of their sovereign.

We may add to the enumeration of the many celebrated Lamaseries, those of
Blue Town, of Tolon-Noor, of Ge-Ho-Eul; and within the Great Wall, that
of Peking, and that of the Five Towers in Chan-Si.

After quitting the Lamasery of Tchortchi, just as we were enteri