52,0 
TIBET. 
Hence we find no prudent traveller ever attempting to undertake a 
journey, without previously appealing to this authority, and endea¬ 
vouring to obtain an auspicious presage. The same signal of favour 
is deemed indispensably requisite in every important enterprise, and 
the same wary circumspection enters equally into all the more minute 
concerns of domestic life. The union of the sexes, and the giving 
names to infants, are neither of them events to be accomplished without 
a regular appeal to the same decisive oracle. 
Among that order of men, to whom the due performance of every 
ceremony connected with their religion is committed, some are found 
who are peculiarly skilled in this obscure science; and the declaration 
of its decisions belongs, of course, to the discreet, initiated Gylong. 
I cannot here enumerate the various modes of seeking out some 
decisive presage, which they usually practice. The sortes sanctorum 
is a pious and venerated appeal: in trivial affairs, the mind is often 
governed by a casual cast of the die; and hence, dice are almost 
always found to constitute an appendage to a Tartar dress. 
The custom of these regions obliged me, sometimes, to have recourse 
to the oracular denunciations of my attendant Gylong; which indeed 
I had little difficulty in doing, as I found he had the consideration 
seldom to suffer his decisions to oppose my wishes. I consequently 
thought it prudent to travel as he directed, and never commenced a 
journey without his previous concurrence. I soon learned to confide 
in his discretion, and he never failed to calculate for me, both every 
auspicious and inauspicious presage. 
The same superstition that influences their view of the affairs of 
