Dec. 1848. INTERVIEWS WITH DEWAN. 299 



of promoting an intercourse with us, and the danger of con- 

 tinuing to violate the terms of our treaty, that Dr. Campbell 

 had been authorised by government to seek an interview 

 with His Highness. At present our relations were singu- 

 larly infelicitous. There was no agent on the Sikkim 

 Rajah's part to conduct business at Dorjiling, and the 

 Dewan insisted on sending a creature of his own, who had 

 before been dismissed for insolence. Malefactors who 

 escaped into Sikkim were protected, and our police inter- 

 rupted in the discharge of their duties ; slavery was prac- 

 tised ; and government communications were detained for 

 weeks and months under false pretences. 



In his interviews with us the Dewan appeared to advan- 

 tage : he was fond of horses and shooting, and prided him- 

 self on his hospitality. We gained much information from 

 many conversations with him, during which politics were 

 never touched upon. Our queries naturally referred to 

 Tibet and its geography, especially its great feature the 

 Yarou Tsampoo river ; this he assured us was the Burram- 

 pooter of Assam, and that no one doubted it in that country. 

 Lhassa he described as a city in the bottom of a flat-floored 

 valley, surrounded by lofty snowy mountains: neither grapes, 

 tea, silk, or cotton are produced near it, but in the Tartchi 

 province of Tibet, one month's journey east of Lhassa, rice, 

 and a coarse kind of tea are both grown. Two months' 

 journey north-east of Lhassa is Siling, the well-known great 

 commercial entrepot* in west China ; and there coarse silk 

 is produced. All Tibet he described as mountainous, and 

 an inconceivably poor country : there are no plains, save flats 

 in the bottoms of the valleys, and the paths lead over lofty 

 mountains. Sometimes, when the inhabitants are obliged 

 from famine to change their habitations in winter, the old 



* The entrepot is now removed to Tang-Keou-Eul. — See Hue and Gabet. 



