occasion to speak, conveying the bones of his father and mother to the Five Towers, had the infinite happiness to behold there the venerable Buddha. “Behind the great monastery,” he told us, “there is a very lofty mountain, which you must climb by creeping on your hands and feet. Just towards the summit you come to a portico cut in the rock; you lie down on the earth, and look through a small aperture not larger than the bowl of a pipe. It is some time before you can distinguish anything, but by degrees your eye gets used to the place, and you have the happiness of beholding, at length, in the depths of the mountain, the face of the ancient Buddha. He is seated cross-legged, doing nothing. There are around him Lamas of all countries, who are continually paying homage to him.”
Whatever you may think of Tokoura’s narrative, it is certain that the Tartars and the Thibetians have given themselves up to an inconceivable degree of fanaticism, in reference to the Lamasery of the Five Towers. You frequently meet, in the deserts of Tartary, Mongols, carrying on their shoulders the bones of their parents, to the Five Towers, to purchase, almost at its weight in gold, a few feet of earth, whereon they may raise a small mausoleum. Even the Mongols of Torgot perform journeys occupying a whole
year, and attended with immense difficulty, to visit for this purpose the province of Chan-Si.
The Tartar kings sometimes make use of a sepulture which is the height of extravagance and barbarism. The royal corpse is conveyed to a vast edifice, constructed of bricks, and adorned with numerous statues representing men, lions, elephants, tigers, and various subjects of Buddhic mythology. With the illustrious defunct, they bury in a large cavern, constructed in the centre of the building, large sums of gold and silver, royal robes, precious stones, in short, every thing which he may need in another life. These monstrous interments sometimes cost the lives of a great number of slaves. They take children of both sexes, remarkable for their beauty, and make them swallow mercury till they are suffocated; in this way they preserve, they say, the freshness and ruddiness of their countenance, so as to make them appear still alive. These unfortunate victims are placed upright, round the corpse of their master, continuing, in this fashion, to serve him as during life. They hold in their hands the pipe, fan, the small phial of snuff, and the numerous other nick-nacks of the Tartar kings.
To protect these buried treasures, they place in the cavern a kind of bow, capable of discharging a number of arrows, one after the other. This bow, or rather these several bows joined together, are all bent, and the arrows ready to fly. They place this infernal machine in such a manner that, on opening the door of the cavern, the movement causes the discharge of the first arrow at the man who enters; the discharge of the first arrow causes the discharge of the second, and so on to the last—so that the unlucky person, whom covetousness or curiosity should induce to open the door, would fall, pierced with many arrows, in the tomb he sought to profane. They sell these murderous machines ready prepared by the bow-makers. The Chinese sometimes purchase them, to guard their houses in their absence.
After a march of two days, we entered the district called the Kingdom of Efe; it is a portion of the territory of the Eight Banners, which the Emperor Kien-Long dismembered in favour of a prince of the Khalkhas. Sun-Tché, founder of the Mantchou dynasty, laid down this maxim: “In the south, establish no kings; in the north, interrupt no alliances.” This policy has ever since been exactly pursued by the court of Peking. The Emperor Kien-Long, in order to attach to his dynasty the prince in question, gave him his daughter in marriage, hoping by this means to fix him at Peking, and thus to weaken the still dreaded power of the Khalkha sovereigns. He built for him, within the circuit of the Yellow
Town itself, a large and magnificent palace, but the Mongol prince could not adapt or reconcile himself to the stiff arbitrary etiquette of a court. Amid the pomp and luxury accumulated for his entertainment, he was incessantly absorbed with the thought of his tents and his herds: even the snows and frosts of his country were matters of regret. The attentions of the court being altogether inadequate to the dissipation of his ennui, he began to talk about returning to his prairies in the Khalkhas. On the other hand, his young wife, accustomed to the refinements of the court of Peking, could not bear the idea of spending the rest of her days in the desert, amongst milkmaids and shepherds. The Emperor resorted to a compromise which sufficiently met the wishes of his son-in-law, without too violently disconcerting the feelings of his daughter. He dismembered a portion of the Tchakar, and assigned it to the Mongol prince; he built for him, amid these solitudes, a small but handsome city, and presented to him a hundred families of slaves skilled in the arts and manufactures of China. In this manner, while the young Mantchou princess was enabled to dwell in a city and to have a court, the Mongol prince, on his part, was in a position to enjoy the tranquillity of the Land of Grass, and to resume at will the pleasures of nomadic life, in which he had passed his boyhood.
The King of Efe brought with him into his petty dominions a great number of Mongol Khalkhas, who inhabit, under the tent, the country bestowed upon their prince. These Tartars fully maintain the reputation for strength and active vigour which is generally attributed to the men of their nation. They are considered the most powerful wrestlers in southern Mongolia. From their infancy, they are trained to gymnastic exercises, and at the public wrestling matches, celebrated every year at Peking, a great number of these men attend to compete for the prizes, and to sustain the reputation of their country. Yet, though far superior in strength to the Chinese, they are sometimes thrown by the latter, generally more active, and especially more tricky.
In the great match of 1843, a wrestler of the kingdom of Efe had overthrown all competitors, Tartars and Chinese. His body, of gigantic proportions, was fixed upon legs which seemed immovable columns; his hands, like great grappling irons, seized his antagonists, raised them, and then hurled them to the ground, almost without effort. No person had been at all able to stand before his prodigious strength, and they were about to assign him the prize, when a Chinese stepped into the ring. He was short, small, meagre, and appeared calculated for no other purpose than to augment the number of the Efeian’s victims. He advanced, however, with an air of firm confidence; the Goliath of Efe stretched out his brawny