Till the end of last century the designation of the successor to all posts in the hierarchy, by this alleged reincarnation, lay in the hands of the ecclesiastics, who pulled the wires, however varied the manner in which the play of identification was played. But for many years past the Court of Peking has been the practical determiner of this mystic succession.
Enough of introduction. I add but one word more. In looking back to the cursory review of recent exploration with which these remarks were commenced, I cannot but note, with some feeling of self-vindication in regard to time and labour heretofore spent in the elucidation of the great Venetian traveller of the Middle Ages, that all the explorers whom I have named have been, it may be said with hardly a jot of hyperbole, only travelling in his footsteps, — most certainly illustrating his geographical notices.
If Wood and Gordon and Trotter have explored Pamir, so did Messer Marco before them. Shaw, Hayward, and Forsyth in Kashgar; Johnson in Khotan; Cooper and Armand David on the eastern frontier of Tibet; Richthofen in Northern and Western China; Ney
a monastery in the Urat country, north of the Hoang-ho. This abbot was rich, and having amassed 30,000 taels he devoutly determined to make an offering of it to the Grand Lama at Lhassa. He set out, accordingly, with a great retinue of monks. But these were excessively averse to the idea of carrying all their silver to Lhassa; probably they chanted in Mongol something like the medieval Latin rhymes Rome: — 'О vos bursæ turgidæ Lassam veniatis, Lassae viget physica bursis constipatis!' So, in crossing a river, they pitched in their own living Buddha and carried back the treasure. The abbot was, however, cast up on the shore, and continued his journey to Lhassa, whence he had returned, two or three years before P. David's visit, to his ancient convent. The brethren, in the belief that their superior had quitted his former shell, had duly selected a young Mongol as his re-incarnation. Their disgust, therefore, was great to see their old chief reappear. The popular feeling was in favour of the old abbot; but the monks, with their ill-gotten gear, were too strong, and the unlucky Gigen was obliged to retire to a remote monastery where he lived as a simple Lama.
