1144 
THROUGH ASIA 
of about five by her side. Both women, as well as 
the man, were dressed in exactly the same style as the 
Mongols, but had laid aside their sheepskins, leaving 
only the left arm covered. All the rest of the upper 
part of the body, down to the waist, was bare. 1 he 
younger woman was well-shaped and strongly made, and 
her skin was a copper-brown colour. In general appear- 
ance they bore a close resemblance to the Mongol type, 
at any rate it seemed so to me who saw these people 
for the first time. Indeed I should have been ready 
to set them down for Mongols, had it not been for their 
language, and the peculiar construction of their tent, both 
of which betrayed a different race. Immediately opposite 
the entrance, upon a box, was a domestic shrine of the 
same character as that which I have described among 
the Mongols. Our Tangut host too wore a gavo (case) 
round his neck, containing a burkhan (image of Buddha). 
We were invited to take tea. Then I noticed the 
different parts of the tent and inquired their several 
names, and even wrote them down, to the great dis- 
quietude of Loppsen, who urged that the Tanguts might 
misinterpret what I was doing, and imagine I had come 
with evil intentions. The two women laughed heartily 
at my desperate attempts to pronounce the intricate 
Tibetan words, with their artificial accumulation of con- 
sonants at the beginning. They could not for the life 
of them take their eyes off me. Their hair hung about 
their dirty heads in a vast number of thin plaits, some 
of which fell down over their shoulders and back, some 
in front over the bosom. From the end of the lowest 
plait behind, as well as from the ends of two others on 
each side of the head, there hung three heavy gay- 
coloured adornments, consisting of red and blue ribbons, 
pieces of cloth, and glass beads of different colours. 
These pendulous impediments flapped against their backs 
at every movement, and must have been extremely 
irksome whenever they moved their heads. 
The tent had a four-square ground-plan, giving easily 
three or four times the amount of space there is in an 
