ted on the rock, writings on the wall, white stones piled
upon black, have emitted their ray of protest and malevolence in vain.

The Lamas knew we must come. Hundreds of years ago a Buddhist saint
wrote it in his book of prophecies, Ma-ong Lung-Ten, which may be bought
to-day in the Lhasa book-shops. He predicted that Tibet would be invaded
and conquered by the Philings (Europeans), when all of the true religion
would go to Chang Shambula, the Northern Paradise, and Buddhism would
become extinct in the country.

And now the Lamas believe that the prophecy will be fulfilled by our
entry into Lhasa, and that their religion will decay before foreign
influence. The Dalai Lama, they say, will die, not by violence or
sickness, but by some spiritual visitation. His spirit will seek some
other incarnation, when he can no longer benefit his people or secure
his country, so long sacred to Buddhists, from the contamination of
foreign intrusion.

The Tibetans are not the savages they are depicted. They are civilized,
if medieval. The country is governed on the feudal system. The monks are
the overlords, the peasantry their serfs. The poor are not oppressed.
They and the small tenant farmers work ungrudgingly for their spiritual
masters, to whom they owe a blind devotion. They are not discontented,
though they give more than a tithe of their small income to the Church.
It must be remembered that every family contributes at least one member
to the priesthood, so that, when we are inclined to abuse the monks for
consuming the greater part of the country's produce, we should remember
that the laymen are not the victims of class prejudice, the plebeians
groaning under the burden of the patricians, so much as the servants of
a community chosen from among themselves, and with whom they are
connected by family ties.

No doubt the Lamas employ spiritual terrorism to maintain their
influence and preserve the temporal government in their hands; and when
they speak of their religion being injured by our intrusion, they are
thinking, no doubt, of another unveiling of mysteries, the dreaded age
of materialism and reason, when little by little their ignorant serfs
will be brought into contact with the facts of life, and begin to
question the justness of the relations that have existed between
themselves and their rulers for centuries. But at present the people
are medieval, not only in their system of government and their religion,
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