A set of 50 photographs and associated handwritten descriptive notes, acquired from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in St. Petersburg. The complete notes, "1904 View of Great Tibet", are available at: http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/u?/tibet,94
"Sera (Se-la ssu). Ten li N. of Lh'asa. It is built against a mountain. There are tree gilded temples, and the buildings are very lofty." (p. 18).
Rockhill, W.W. (1890). Tibet: A geographical, ethnographical, and historical sketch derived from Chinese sources. London: Royal Asiatic Society.
"Ser-ra, or the 'Merciful Hail.'(2) It is said to have been so named out of rivalry to its neighbour, 'The rice-heap' (De-pung), as hail is destructive of rice, and the two monasteries have frequent feuds. […]
It is romantically situated about a mile and a half to the north of Lhasa, on the lower slopes of a range of barren hills named Ta-ti-pu, famous for silver ore, and which surround the monastery like an amphitheatre." (p. 269)
Waddell, L.A. (1899). The Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism. London: Luzac & Co. Available through Google Books at: http://books.google.com/books?id=V-DJFl8VBhEC&pg=RA1-PR7&d
