at Pedong. The rest-house here looks over the
valley to his symmetrical French presbytery and chapel, perched on the
hillside amid waving maize-fields, whose spring verdure is the greenest
in the world. Scattered over the fields are thatched Lamas' houses and
low-storied gompas, with overhanging eaves and praying-flags--'horses
of the wind,' as the Tibetans picturesquely call them, imagining that
the prayers inscribed on them are carried to the good god, whoever he
may be, who watches their particular fold and fends off intruding
spirits as well as material invaders.

Behind the presbytery are terraced rice-fields, irrigated by perennial
streams, and bordered by thick artemisia scrub, which in the hot sun,
after rain, sends out an aromatic scent, never to be dissociated in
travellers' dreams and reveries from these great southern slopes of the
Himalayas.

Pere Desgodins is an erect old gentleman with quiet, steely gray eyes
and a tawny beard now turning gray. He is known to few Englishmen, but
his adventurous travels in Tibet and his devoted, strenuous life are
known throughout Europe.

He was sent out from France to the Tibet Mission shortly after the
murder of Krick and Bourry by the Mishmis. Failing to enter Tibet from
the south through Sikkim, he made preparations for an entry by Ladak.
His journey was arrested by the Indian Mutiny, when he was one of the
besieged at Agra. He afterwards penetrated Western Tibet as far as
Khanam, but was recalled to the Chinese side, where he spent twenty-two
perilous and adventurous years in the establishment of the mission at
Batang and Bonga. The mission was burnt down and the settlement expelled
by the Lamas. In 1888 Father Desgodins was sent to Pedong, his present
post, as Pro-vicar of the Mission to Western Tibet.

With regard to the present situation in Tibet, Father Desgodins
expressed astonishment at our policy of folded arms.

'You have missed the occasion,' he said; 'you should have made your
treaty with the Tibetans themselves in 1888. You could have forced them
to treat then, when they were unprepared for a military invasion. You
should have said to them'--here Pere Desgodins took out his watch--'"It
is now one o'clock. Sign that treaty by five, or we advance to-morrow."
What could they have done? Now you are too late. They have been
preparing for this for the last fifteen years.'

Father Desgodins was right. It is the old story of ill-advised
conciliation and for