Round
An Adjacent Enclosure Are The Houses Occupied In Winter By The
Christians When They Come Down With Their Sheep And Cattle From The
Hill Farms.
All is absolutely plain, and as absolutely clean and
trim.
The guest-rooms and one or two of the Tibetan rooms are
papered with engravings from the Illustrated London News, but the
rooms of the missionaries are only whitewashed, and by their extreme
bareness reminded me of those of very poor pastors in the Fatherland.
A garden, brilliant with zinnias, dianthus, and petunias, all of
immense size, and planted with European trees, is an oasis, and in it
I camped for some weeks under a willow tree, covered, as many are,
with a sweet secretion so abundant as to drop on the roof of the
tent, and which the people collect and use as honey.
The mission party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Shreve, lately arrived,
and now in a distant exile at Poo, and Mr. and Mrs. Heyde, who had
been in Tibet for nearly forty years, chiefly spent at Kylang,
without going home. 'Plain living and high thinking' were the rule.
Books and periodicals were numerous, and were read and assimilated.
The culture was simply wonderful, and the acquaintance with the
latest ideas in theology and natural science, the latest political
and social developments, and the latest conceptions in European art,
would have led me to suppose that these admirable people had only
just left Europe. Mrs. Heyde had no servant, and in the long
winters, when household and mission work are over for the day, and
there are no mails to write for, she pursues her tailoring and other
needlework, while her husband reads aloud till midnight.
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