202 CHOLA PASS. Chap. XXV. 



strange, rude, and quite unintelligible, especially before the 

 Tibetans. But the Bhoteeas were always a queer, and often 

 insolent people,* whom I was long ago tired of trying to 

 understand, and they might have wanted to show off 

 before their neighbours ; and such was the confidence 

 with which my long travels amongst them had inspired 

 me, that the possibility of danger or violence never entered 

 my head. 



We went into the. hut, and were resting ourselves on a 

 log at one end of it, when, the evening being very cold, the 

 people crowded in ; on which Campbell went out, saying, 

 that we had better leave the hut to them, and that he 

 would see the tents pitched. He had scarcely left, when I 

 heard him calling loudly to me, " Hooker ! Hooker ! the 

 savages are murdering me ! ' I rushed to the door, and 

 caught sight of him striking out with his fists, and strug- 

 gling violently ; being tall and powerful, he had already 

 prostrated a few, but, a host of men bore him down, and 

 appeared to be trampling on him ; at the same moment I 

 was myself seized by eight men, who forced me back into 

 the hut, and down on the log, where they held me in a 

 sitting posture, pressing me against the wall ; here I spent 

 a few moments of agony, as I heard my friend's stifled 

 cries grow fainter and fainter. I struggled but little, and 

 that only at first, for at least five-and-twenty men crowded 

 round and laid their hands upon me, rendering any effort 

 to move useless ; they were, however, neither angry nor 



* Captain Pemberton during his mission to Bhotan was repeatedly treated 

 with the utmost insolence by the officials in that country (see Griffith's Journal). 

 My Sirdar, Nimbo, himself a native of Bhotan, saw a good deal of the embassy 

 when there, and told me many particulars as to the treatment to which it 

 had been subjected, and the consequent low estimation in which both the 

 ambassadors themselves and the Government whom they represented were held 

 in Bhotan. 



