LAND OF NO BATHS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19389, 26 July 1926, Page 9

LAND OF NO BATHS.

LIFE IN FAR-AWAY TIBET. MISSIONARY'S EXPERIENCES. The Rev. G. Huston Edgar, a missionary of the Chinese Inland Mission, arrived in Sydney recently, on his way to Melbourne. "My present mission station," he said, " is at Tatsienlu, on the eastern frontier of Tibet. The scene of my work is 3000 miles inland from the mouth of the Yangtze-kiang River." Mr. Edgar described the Tibetans as exceedingly hardy, as the climate would eliminate all but the fit. He said they were dirty, and seldom washed. In this way, he said, they were wise, because burning suns and cold winter winds would ruin skin that was too scrupu-, lously washed. The Tibetans dressed in skins, which were never cleaned. The Tibetans, said Mr. Edgar, were the most religious men on ear.th, .praying ceaselessly. They muttered their prayers from morning to night, and wrote them on strips of paper or parchment, rolled them up in cylindrical form, and then encased them in copper or silver, and put a stick through the cylinder, to which a handle was fixed.

The handles of these prayer-wheels were turned assiduously,and at every turn 300 or 400 prayers were "said." Some of the prayer-wheels were so large that yaks and donkeys were used to turn them. Sometimes they were even attached to water or windmills. Their religion was a corrupt form of Buddhism. Eastern Tibet swarmed with robbers, who carried off cattle and robbed caravans. Some of these bands were well organised, and temporarily held large areas of Tibetan country. Mr. Edgar left Tibet on January 30, and it took him two months to reach Shanghai. He found brigands everywhere on his way to the coast. Sometimes hs r required an escort of 40 or 50 armed men. At one point on the journey he and two other Europeans were going down the Yangtze in separate boats when brigands on the bank called upon them to stop. His boat got into a whirlpool, and a brigand fired at him pointblank, but juSt missed him. He eventually got ashore, and they were allowed to proceed after much parleying. The brigand who had fired at him would not let Mr. Edgar go till he had paid him the price of his " wasted " cartridge—2o cents.

It was added by Mr. Edgar that his work in Tibet was not easy, on account of the rooted religious convictions of the Tibetans, but there were signs of success in some directions.