HANLE. 



347 



vince, was attired in his sacerdotal robes of purple cloth, and 

 wore a profusion of ornaments and silver amulets about his 

 person, a costume that contrasted rather oddly with a capital 

 pair of English shooting-boots with which he was shod. He 

 presented us with some rice and a little sugar, both rather 

 rare commodities in Tibet. In return we begged his accept 

 ance of a canister of gunpowder, with which he seemed highly 

 delighted. A similar interchange of civilities with some 

 other traveller in these wilds might account for his possession 

 of the boots. 



v 



Lama Monastery at HanU. 



The hamlet presented a rather animated scene, as most of 

 the inhabitants, male and female, were bustling about pack- 

 ing their goods and chattels on yaks, preparatory to a sojourn 

 in their black blanket-tents in the wilderness, whither they 

 were about to proceed to graze their flocks on the nutritious 

 but scanty herbage. 



To the south and east of Hanle", stretching away for some 

 twenty-five miles to the confines of the Chinese dominions, 

 lies a desolate expanse of rolling uplands and ravines with an 

 exceedingly limited amount of vegetation scattered over them. 

 These stony downs, as they may be termed, the altitude of 



