TOWARDS THIBET 173 



which the ordinary winter clothes of the people 

 are made. 



The people, too, present a strange spectacle to 

 the gaze of the foreigner. Lamas in their once-red 

 robes mingle with half- clad Thibetans in sheepskins. 

 The women walk swiftly, in shoes with upturned 

 toes, for they ceased here to bind their feet after 

 the great Mohammedan rising sixty years ago. 

 Vendors of furs chaffer with Chinese-garbed shop- 

 keepers ; here you may see a patient receiving 

 from the proprietor of a medicine shop a packet of 

 mysterious ingredients ; there a wild-looking Drocwa 

 tribesman bargains over the skins hung from his 

 saddle ; one and all stop and gaze curiously at the 

 foreigner, for they see but few in Taochow. 



We stayed one day only, and were off the next 

 morning just after sunrise, our objective being the 

 village of Meiwu, situated in Thibet proper, some 

 35 miles distant, whence we hoped to hunt the goa, 

 or Thibetan gazelle. 



For a time our road lay along the dried bed of 

 a river. It wandered down between the flat-roofed 

 houses and clumps of aspens quivering with autumn 

 gold, through the main street, and into the market 

 place of the city itself, where fat, oleaginous ducks 

 squabbled for precedence in its muddy pools. An 

 insignificant, mud-walled village hung poised on 

 the spur of a mud cliff; three deserted forts lay 

 in the valley's mouth ; a white choten glimmered on 

 the hill-side, and on the neck of the ridge straddled 

 a wall. It was the boundary. Beyond lay Thibet ; 

 Thibet, despite the unveiling of Lhasa, still one of 

 the mysterious countries of the world. The 

 Chinese claim the allegiance of its inhabitants, and 



