70 LACHEN VALLEY, Chap. XX. 



you want ? you can see the sun much better with those 

 brasses and glasses * lower down • it is very cold here, and 

 there is no food : " — to all which I had but one reply, that 

 I should not return till I had visited Kongra Lama. He 

 was a portly man, and, I think, at heart good-natured : I 

 had no difficulty in drawing him on to talk about Tibet, 

 and the holy city of Teshoo Loombo, with its thousands of 

 gilt temples, nunneries, and convents, its holiest of all the 

 holy grand Lamas of Tibet, and all the wide Boodhist 

 world besides. Had it even been politic, I felt it would 

 be unfair to be angry with a man who was evidently in a 

 false position between myself and his two rulers, the Rajah 

 and Dewan ; who had a wife and family on the smiling 

 flanks of Singtam, and who longed to be soaking in the warm 

 rain of Sikkim, drinking Murwa beer (a luxury unknown 

 amongst these Tibetans) and gathering in his crops of rice, 

 millet, and buckwheat. Though I may owe him a grudge 

 for his subsequent violence, I still recal with pleasure the 

 hours we spent together on the banks of the Lachen. In 

 all matters respecting the frontier, his lies were circumstan- 

 tial ; and he further took the trouble of bringing country 

 people to swear that this was Cheen, and that there was 

 no such place as Kongra Lama. I had written to ask Dr. 

 Campbell for a definite letter from Tchebu Lama on this 

 point, but unfortunately my despatches were lost; the 

 messenger who conveyed them missed his footing in 

 crossing the Lachen, and escaped narrowly with life, while 

 the turban in which the letters were placed was carried 

 down the current. 



Finally the Soubah tried to persuade my people that one 

 so incorrigibly obstinate must be mad, and that they had 

 better leave me. One day, after we had had a long discus- 



* Alluding to the sextant, &c. 



