490 Journal of a trip to Si/rim. [May, 



rolled round with brass wire, and trumpet ended with brass used for 

 calling to prayers. A bamboo quiver for holding the little rods of 

 spikenard used as incense ; some flowers fresh laid on the table, and a 

 bottle of milk. As we entered the sanctum a young and blooming 

 woman slipped out past us. Mayhap the flower girl of His Holiness. 

 Silukfoke is infested with leopards or lynxes, who often carry off the 

 Lama's young pigs and goats. His cows are numerous and healthy. I 

 asked him about the murrain which is occasionally so fatal at Darjeel- 

 ing, and is raging there now. He knew of it, and attributes its spread 

 to the cows grazing where people urinate, who have eaten of the flesh 

 of animals dead of the disease. 



A party of Thibetans has arrived here to-day en route to Darjeeling, 

 and the Titalya Fair, They have 30 baggage sheep and goats, and with 

 20 women, children of all ages, and as many men, they form the dir- 

 tiest Kafila I ever set eyes on. They make their way by begging, and 

 have a good deal of merchandise in musk, chowrees, salt, blankets, 

 turquoise and striped woollens. There is the ruin of a monastery 

 here of some size. It is of stone, very well built, without mortar, three 

 storied, 75 feet long by 33, with narrow Gothic arched windows, and 

 divided into one large centre and two smaller end apartments. No one 

 can tell how long it has been abandoned, or when it was built. Pro- 

 bably the Goorka conquest of Sikim was the date of the former. There 

 is a row of barberry trees round it, and some pink-flowered Cinchona 

 trees, Sumbrung Koong, near at hand. The present Goomba is a 

 stone building not half the size of the old one, badly built and dis- 

 proportioned. It is more like a lime-kiln than a monastery, and has 

 an ugly grass thatch roof withal. The ruin reminds me greatly of the 

 Old Roman Catholic Churches in the Highlands of Scotland, which 

 have been converted into places of burial by the Protestants, who, it 

 would appear, from their abandoning them as places of worship for the 

 living, were still tolerant enough to retain them for the use of the 

 dead. 



The prettiest thing at Namgialachi is a long solid stone edifice on 

 the road, with a pathway on either side of it. It is called a " Mundong." 

 It is 64 feet long by 10 or 12 broad, and 16 high. It is a solid stone 

 edifice, covered with engraved slabs, which are let into it. Most of these 

 slabs have merely the " Om, mane paime, Om," in the Thibetan charac- 



