t Father, Johann Grueber, who visited Tibet in 1661, attributed the
custom to a religious whim:--'The women, out of a religious whim, never
wash, but daub themselves with a nasty kind of oil, which not only
causes them to stink intolerably, but renders them extremely ugly and
deformed.' A hundred and eighty years afterwards Huc noticed the same
habit, and attributed it to an edict issued by the Dalai Lama early in
the seventeenth century. 'The women of Tibet in those days were much
given to dress, and libertinage, and corrupted the Lamas to a degree to
bring their holy order into a bad repute.' The then Nome Khan (deputy of
the Dalai Lama), accordingly issued an order that the women should never
appear in public without smearing their faces with a black disfiguring
paste. Huc recorded that though the order was still obeyed, the practice
was observed without much benefit to morals. If you ask a Tomo or
Tibetan to-day why their women smear and daub themselves in this
unbecoming manner, they invariably reply, like the Mussulman or Hindu,
that it is custom. Mongolians do not bother themselves about causes.

The Tomo women wear a flat green distinctive cap, with a red badge in
the front, which harmonizes with their complexion--a coarse, brick red,
of which the primal ingredients are dirt and cutch, erroneously called
pig's blood, and the natural ruddiness of a healthy outdoor life in a
cold climate. A procession of these sirens is comely and picturesque--at
a hundred yards. They wrap themselves round and round with a thick
woollen blanket of pleasing colour and pattern, and wear on their feet
high woollen boots with leather or rope soles. If it was not for their
disfiguring toilet many of them would be handsome. The children are
generally pretty, and I have seen one or two that were really beautiful.
When we left a camp the villagers would generally get wind of it, and
come down for loot. Old newspapers, tins, bottles, string, and cardboard
boxes were treasured prizes. We threw these out of our cave, and the
children scrambled for them, and even the women made dives at anything
particularly tempting. My last impression of Lingmathang was a group of
women giggling and gesticulating over the fashion plates and
advertisements in a number of the _Lady_, which somebody's _memsahib_
had used for the packing of a ham.

The Tomos, though not naturally given to cleanliness, realize the
hygienic value of their hot springs. There are r