The Lamasery of Kounboum contains nearly 4,000 Lamas; its site is one of enchanting beauty. Imagine in a mountain’s side a deep, broad ravine, adorned with fine trees, and harmonious with the cawing of rooks and yellow-beaked crows, and the amusing chattering of magpies. On the two sides of the ravine, and on the slopes of the mountain, rise, in an amphitheatrical form, the white dwellings of the Lamas of various sizes, but all alike surrounded with a wall, and surmounted by a terrace. Amidst these modest habitations, rich only in their intense cleanliness and their dazzling whiteness, you see rising, here and there, numerous Buddhist temples with gilt roofs, sparkling with a thousand brilliant colours, and surrounded with elegant colonnades. The houses of the superiors are distinguished by streamers floating from small hexagonal turrets; everywhere the eye is attracted by mystic sentences, written in large Thibetian characters, red or black, upon the doors, upon the walls, upon the posts, upon pieces of linen floating like flags, from masts upon the tops of the houses. Almost at every step you see niches in form resembling a sugar-loaf, within which are burning incense, odoriferous wood, and cypress leaves. The most striking feature of all, however, is to see an exclusive population of Lamas walking about the numerous streets of the Lamasery, clothed in their uniform of red dresses and yellow mitres. Their face is ordinarily grave; and though silence is not prescribed, they speak little, and that always in an under tone. You see very few of them at all about the streets, except at the hours appointed for entering or quitting the schools, and for public prayer. During the rest of the day, the Lamas for the most part keep within doors, except when they descend by narrow, tortuous paths to the bottom of the ravines, and return thence, laboriously carrying on their shoulders a long barrel containing the water required for domestic purposes. At intervals you meet strangers who come to satisfy a devotional feeling, or to visit some Lama of their acquaintance.