212 EAST NEPAL. Chap. IX. 



with " Om Mani Padmi om " well carved on them in two 

 characters, and repeated ad infinitum. 



A Tibetan household is very slovenly ; the family live 

 higgledy-piggledy in two or more apartments, the largest 

 of which has an open fire on the earth, or on a stone if 

 the floor be of wood. The pots and tea-pot are earthen and 

 copper ; and these, with the bamboo churn for the brick 

 tea, some wooden and metal spoons, bowls, and platters, 

 comprise all the kitchen utensils. 



Every one carries in the breast of his robe a little wooden 

 cup for daily use ; neatly turned from the knotted roots of 

 maple (see p. 133). The Tibetan chiefly consumes barley, 

 wheat, or buckwheat meal — the latter is confined to the 

 poorer classes — with milk, butter, curd, and parched wheat ; 

 fowls, eggs, pork, and yak flesh when he can afford it, and 

 radishes, a few potatos, legumes, and turnips in their short 

 season. His drink is a sort of soup made from brick tea, 

 of which a handful of leaves is churned up with salt, butter, 

 and soda, then boiled and transferred to the tea-pot, whence 

 it is poured scalding hot into each cup, which the good 

 woman of the house keeps incessantly replenishing, and 

 urging you to drain. Sometimes, but more rarely, the 

 Tibetans make a drink by pouring boiling water over 

 malt, as the Lepchas do over millet. A pipe of yellow 

 mild Chinese tobacco generally follows the meal ; more 

 often, however, their tobacco is brought from the plains of 

 India, when it is of a very inferior description. The 

 pipe, carried in the girdle, is of brass or iron, often with 

 an agate, amber, or bamboo mouth-piece. 



Many herds of fine yaks were grazing about Wallanchoon : 

 there were a few ponies, sheep, goats, fowls, and pigs, but 

 very little cultivation except turnips, radishes, and potatos. 

 The yak is a very tame, domestic animal, often handsome, 



