In each monastery are found Lamas, Chibbis, and a lower grade of ignorant and depraved Lamas, slaves, as it were, of the higher order. They dress, and have clean-shaven heads like their superiors, and do all the handiwork of the monastery; but they are mere servants, and take no direct, active part in the politics of the Lama Government. The Chibbis are novices. They enter the lamasery when very young, and remain students for many years. They are constantly under the teaching and supervision of the older ones, and confession is practised from inferior to superior. After undergoing, successfully, several examinations they become effective Lamas, which word translated means "high priest." These Chibbis take minor parts in the strange religious ceremonies in which the Lamas, disguised in skins and ghastly masks, sing and dance with extraordinary contortions to the accompaniment of weird music made by bells, horns, flutes, cymbals and drums. Each large monastery has at its head a Grand Lama, not to be confounded with the Dalai Lama of Lhassa, who is believed, or rather supposed, to have an immortal soul transmigrating successively from one body into another. The Lamas eat, drink and sleep together in the monastery, with the exception of the Grand Lama, who has a room to himself. For one moon in every twelve they observe a strict seclusion, which they devote to praying, and during which time they are not allowed to speak. They fast for twenty-four hours at a time, with only water and butter-tea, eating on fast-days sufficient food only to remain alive, and depriving themselves of everything else, including snuff and spitting, the two most common habits among Tibetan men. The Lamas have great pretensions to infallibility, and on account of this they claim, and obtain, the veneration of the people, by whom they are supported, fed and clothed. I found them, as a rule, very intelligent, but inhuman, barbarously cruel and dishonourable, and this was not my own experience alone: I heard the same from the overridden natives, who wish for nothing better than a chance to shake off their yoke. Availing themselves of the absolute ignorance in which they succeed in keeping the people, the Lamas practise to a great extent occult arts, by which they profess to cure illnesses, discover murders and thefts, stop rivers from flowing, and bring storms about at a moment's notice. Certain exorcisms, they say, drive away the evil spirits that cause disease. It is certain that the Lamas are adepts at hypnotic experiments, by which means they contrive to let the subjects under their influence see many things and objects that are not there in reality. To this power are due the frequent reports of apparitions of Buddha, seen generally by single individuals, and the visions of demons, the accounts of which alone terrify the simple-minded folk, and cause them to pay all their spare cash in donations to the monastery.