son-Tamba, who himself is resident at the great Kouren, in the
district of the Khalkhas. Meanwhile, the Emperor Khang-Hi, whose
penetrating genius was always occupied with the future, was not entirely
satisfied with these arrangements. He did not believe in all these
doctrines of transmigration, and clearly saw that the Khalkhas, in
pretending that the Guison-Tamba had re-appeared among them, had no other
end than that of keeping at their disposal a power capable of contending,
upon occasion, with that of the Chinese Emperor. To abolish the office
of Guison-Tamba would have been a desperate affair; the only course was,
whilst tolerating him, to neutralise his influence. It was decreed, with
the concurrence of the Court of Lha-Ssa, that the Guison-Tamba should be
recognised legitimate sovereign of the great Kouren; but that after his
successive deaths, he should always be bound to make his transmigration
to Thibet. Khang-Hi had good reason to believe that a Thibetian by
origin, would espouse with reluctance the resentments of the Khalkhas
against the Court of Peking.

The Guison-Tamba, full of submission and respect for the orders of
Khang-Hi and of the Tale-Lama, has never failed since that to go and
accomplish his metempsychosis in Thibet. Still, as they fetch him whilst
he is yet an infant, he must necessarily be influenced by those about
him; and it is said, that as he grows up, he imbibes sentiments little
favourable to the reigning dynasty. In 1839, when the Guison-Tamba made
that journey to Peking, of which we have spoken, the alarm manifested by
the Court arose from the recollection of these events. The Lamas who
flock from all the districts of Tartary to the Lamaseries of the Blue
Town, rarely remain there permanently. After taking their degrees, as it
were, in these quasi universities, they return, one class of them, to
their own countries, where they either settle in the small Lamaseries,
wherein they can be more independent, or live at home with their
families; retaining of their order little more than its red and yellow
habit.

Another class consists of those Lamas who live neither in Lamaseries nor
at home with their families, but spend their time vagabondizing about
like birds of passage, travelling all over their own and the adjacent
countries, and subsisting upon the rude hospitality which, in Lamasery
and in tent they are sure to receive, throughout their wandering way.
Lamasery or tent, they