25б JVE PROCEED TO THE MOUNTAINS. 



All this time our friends, the sons of the prince, 

 the Gigen and Siya, who were in the reception 

 chamber, made signs to us on their fingers, laughed, 

 and played all sorts of childish tricks whenever their 

 father's attention was turned another way. The 

 relations of the young princes to their father ap- 

 peared to be of the most servile character ; they 

 were terribly afraid of him, and obeyed all his 

 wishes unhesitatingly. The princes also kept up 

 an espionage, and were not ashamed even in our 

 presence to whisper to the lamas in attendance all 

 kinds of tittle-tattle and gossip about their father 

 and brother ; towards their inferiors they behaved 

 in the most despotic manner. 



Our audience lasted about an hour. On taking 

 leave the prince gave the Cossack interpreter twenty 

 lans (5/.), and permitted us to hunt in the neighbour- 

 ing mountains. Thither we proceeded the following 

 day, pitching our tent at the summit of a pass near 

 the axis of the main rano-e. Our camels remained 



о 



in the town, in the charge of Sordji and the Cossack, 

 who was again taken ill more seriously than before ; 

 the chief cause of his malady was home-sickness. 

 The prince sent us some guides and another lama, 

 probably to act as a spy on our movements. 



The mountains to which we now removed are, 



to the Asiatic mind an enemy who appears beneath the walls of a 

 hostile city and does not destroy it, is no victor, but rather the con- 

 quered party. The Chinese Government took advantage of this cir- 

 cumstance to spread the report among their faithful subjects of their 

 victory over the Europeans. [Yet they can scarcely have suppressed 

 the knowledge of the destruction of the emperor's summer-palace ; 

 and thaf'just act of the English chiefs, which raised so unreasonable a 

 clamour, finds in the circumstances here stated a new justification. — Y.] 



