1078 
THROUGH ASIA 
of handsome stone as specimens, leaving behind those I 
brought from camp No. XXXVI. We could not of 
course take the whole structure with us : it would have 
made three camel-loads. Besides, the only importance 
of the stones was of an ethnographical character, an im- 
portance which did not outbalance their intrinsic solid 
weight. 
I now looked upon the obo, not as a great rarity, 
but as a ridiculous and idiotic piece of nonsense. It 
was our first acquaintance with the crass exaggerations 
of Lamaism, Instead of being an important historical 
document relating to the great Mongol pilgrim road to 
Lhasa, which (as I have just said) crossed the border- 
range of Tsaidam in that neighbourhood, it was merely 
an empty formula. I he most beautiful sentence would 
l)ecome stupid and inane if repeated four thousand times. 
To write the Lord’s Prayer four thousand times would 
not be a stroke of genius ; but to engrave a formula 
of prayer upon stone that number ol times, when each 
letter demanded a special expenditure of strength, time, 
and labour — it was unquestionably an idiotic proceeding. 
But then what else can you expect from fanatics who 
deliberately strangle the common sense with which Mother 
Nature thought fit to endow them ? I felt somewhat 
crestfallen over the whole business. Still it had done 
no harm ; I had only gleaned a smaller harvest than 
1 hoped for. One gain was at any rate sure : we had 
now indubitable proof that we had hit upon one of the 
great highroads that lead to Lhasa. The obo, the tomb, 
the footpath, and the cairn of stone.s on the summit of 
the first pass, all were indisputable witnesses of the fact. 
Meanwhile lower down the valley the men lighted upon 
the trails of two or three camels and of several large 
troops of khulans. The Taghliks maintained that the 
khulan persistently shuns inhabited districts, and is never 
found in the vicinity of human beings. They therefore 
believed, that at the very least we still had two day’s- 
stages before us to reach the nearest inhabited region. 
