Note 35 — Chapter V · FROM TASHILHUNPO TO YAMDO SAMDING, AND THENCE TO LHASA.

We and our ponies crossed the river in a roughly made boat about 20 feet long, but a number of skin coracles were also carrying travellers and freight from one side to the other. It was sunset when we reached the village of Jim-khar, belonging to the Namgyal Ta-tsan, the great monastic establishment of Potala at Lhasa. Here we obtained lodgings for the night in the sheepfold attached to the house of the headman, or gyan-po. All the members of the gyan-po’s family were ill with small-pox, and he himself had but recently recovered from it. It began to rain shortly after our arrival, and what with the leaks in the roof and the noise made by nine ponies tied up near us, we passed a miserable night, and were glad to resume our journey at the first streak of dawn. After proceeding some distance we came in sight of the ruins of Chu-shul djong, on a ledge of rocks about a mile from where the Tsang-po is joined by the Kyi chu, the river of Lhasa. Some two hundred years ago Chu-shul was a place of importance, but now it is but a village of about sixty houses, surrounded by wide fields, where barley, rape, buckwheat, and wheat are grown.35