Gardening in Northern Alaska 



355 



The Temple of Buddha, in the center 

 of the city, is about 140 feet square. It 

 is three stories high and has three gilded 

 Chinese roofs. It shelters a gigantic 

 bronze statue of Buddha, which has a 

 hammered gold and jeweled headdress. 

 A sacrificial fire, fed with melted butter, 

 burns before the statue. Other statues 

 and relics are kept in other chambers of 

 the same temple, among which is the 

 statue of the Goddess of Women, to 

 which are offered spirits and wheat. 

 The wheat is at once eaten by mice. In 

 the same temple are also rooms for the 

 Dalai Llama and his council. 



The residence of the Dalai Llama is 

 about a mile away from Lhassa, on Mt 

 Bodala. It was built in the seventh 

 century. Near by is the old castle 

 Hodson-Bodala, which is 1,400 feet long 

 and nine stories high. Here are the 

 treasury, the mint, the schools of theol- 

 ogy and medicine, quarters for 1,200 

 officials and 500 monks, and a prison. 

 As many as 1,000 priests take part in 

 religious processions to this mountain. 



M. Zoubikov also minutely describes 

 various monasteries and temples, in- 

 cluding three near Lhassa, where 15,000 

 monks are mainly engaged in learned 

 pursuits. At one of these — Brabun — 

 nearly 6,000 boys, young men, and even 

 gray-bearded patriarchs are studying 

 theology, the total number of resident 

 monks being 8,000. 



SELECTION OF THE LLAMA 



Tibetan Buddhism, brought from In- 

 dia in the seventh century, struggled 

 against the native Shamanism until the 

 ninth century, when a compromise was 



agreed upon. According to the current 

 teaching, there are many spirits which 

 are continually reincarnated in men. 

 The Dalai Llama is the living Buddha. 

 Another defender of the faith is the 

 spirit Choidshen, whose power is mani- 

 fested through pious ascetics who spend 

 their lives in contemplation. 



Since the fifteenth century all power, 

 civil and spiritual, has been nominally 

 in the hands of the Dalai Llama, but 

 China maintains a Manchu resident and 

 an army. In order to avoid strife in 

 selecting a Dalai Llama, the electoral 

 council places three strips of paper with 

 the names of three boys in an urn, and 

 the Manchu resident removes one with 

 a small staff. The new Dalai Llama's 

 education is intrusted to a college of 

 learned men. Until his twenty-second 

 year the government is in the hands of 

 a regent appointed by the Emperor of 

 China. The present Dalai Llama is 

 twenty-seven years old. He is the fifth 

 since 1806, one of the regents having 

 continued in authority for an unusually 

 long time, owing to three children se- 

 lected to be Llamas having died before 

 attaining majority. 



The Dalai Llamas' Council, in whose 

 hands is the actual power, embraces four 

 so-called "Galons," appointed by the 

 Emperor of China. The administra- 

 tion is in the hands of a closed aristoc- 

 racy, and bribery and corruption are 

 nearly universal. Among the common 

 penalties are drowning, torture, flog- 

 ging, banishment, and fines. The Tib- 

 etan army of four thousand men is poorly 

 disciplined, and is armed with bows and 

 old fashioned guns. Robbery flourishes. 



GARDENING JN NORTHERN ALASKA 



By Middleton Smith 



P 



ROBABLY the first experimental 

 gardening in Alaska, north of 

 the Arctic circle, was done by 



the International Polar Expedition to 

 Point Barrow, Alaska, 1 881-1883, which 

 was organized for the purpose of coop- 



