We reached Tos nam-gyaling djong[10] early in the afternoon. This place is celebrated for the serge and broadcloth manufactured here. The Tib chu, as it flowed through the town between low banks covered with flowers, and the tall poplars and walnut trees surrounding the high, well-built houses, gave this place a most attractive appearance. We met here a party of Horba[11] with a caravan of yaks laden with salt, which they had brought from the north for sale in this country.
Before reaching the town we passed by the little nunnery of Peru, and shortly after leaving it we came to the large lamasery of Toi Suduling, with about five hundred monks of the Gelugpa sect.
We stopped for the night at Khede-sho,[12] a small town with two castles, and situated near the Tsang-po. The town looks like a fortress, with its old-fashioned solid houses, its narrow streets, the Dombu choskhor, or lamasery, with encircling walls painted blue and red, and an old monastery on top of the hill commanding the town.
It seemed to be a prosperous place; there were flower gardens [[219]]and groves of trees, and in nearly every window and doorway flowers were growing in pots. Two Nyerpa are stationed here, who administer the town and supervise the manufacture of serge and cloth for the Dalai lama and Panchen rinpoche.
RIVER ZEMU, CHATANGLA PASS.
The next morning we passed through two miles of soft sand, and finally came to the mighty Tsang-po, and after much shouting to the boatmen on the farther side to bring over their junk (shanpa),[13] and after a couple of hours waiting in the cold and fog, it came slowly across, rowed by three women and two men, who sang lustily as they pulled.
The river is here about half a mile broad, very deep, but with a sluggish current. We were soon landed at the Dorje-tag ghat, where we paid a tanka for each of our ponies, and five karma (or two [[220]]annas) for each man as ferry charges. The ferry belongs to the Dorje-tag lamasery near by, one of the oldest and holiest of the Nyingma sect. The incarnate lama who rules this lamasery died about a year and a half ago, but he has reappeared recently in the flesh at Darchendo.[14] This convent is at the foot of a range of hills which stretches along the river to beyond Samye, and a large grove extends from near it to the high road.
We stopped for tiffin on the river bank, where I noticed the ground covered with fish-bones and shells. Gopon told me that all the small fry which the people of this country catch are used to manure the fields with, as they are too bony to eat.
Gopon, who, by the way, was a most loquacious fellow, told me while we drank our tea that when a new-born child dies in this country the body is packed in an earthenware jar or wooden box, and is thus kept in the storeroom, or hung from the ceiling of its parents’ house.[15] In Upper Tibet the body is usually kept on the roof with a little turret built over it; though the people who cannot afford to do this keep it also hung from the ceiling, the face turned upwards.