Note 49 — Chapter III · JOURNEY TO DONGTSE.

The Emperor allows Chinese soldiers serving in Tibet a family allowance of six srang a month and sixty pounds of rice per head as subsistence allowance, in addition to their monthly pay of six srang.49 On the next day (January 2) Ugyen surveyed the town and its great monastery, the Palkhor choide. A stone wall nearly two miles and a half long surrounds the town. He estimated its length, by means of his prayer-beads, to be 4500 paces.50 At each pace he dropped a bead and muttered om mani padme hum, and the good people of Gyantse who accompanied him in his circumambulation (lingkor) little suspected the nature of the work he was doing. When he reached the foot of a mendong called Gojogs, and situated to the north of the Djong, he took the bearing of the Tse-chan monastery, one of the most ancient religious establishments of Tibet. It bore south-west, and was nearly three miles from him. To the north of Gyantse he saw Ritoi gomba, a cloistered lamasery with five or six long houses, each with a large number of cells. To the south-south-east of Gyantse djong is the road to Pagri, in the direction of the Nia-ni monastery and the Niru chu, one of the principal feeders of the Nyang chu, which drains the northern glacier of the Chumo-lha ri mountain. To the north-east of Gyantse the Nyang chu is visible for a great distance, and Ugyen conjectured from its course that it came from the snow-clad Nui-jin kang-sang mountains, which stretch out to the north and north-east. On the uplands to the north of Gyantse, and some three miles away, is the Choilung gomba.