522 Journal of a trip to Si/cim. [May, 



first occasion. If the intercourse goes on, improve your manners, 

 and your presents. That is the etiquette. I expect Hooker here in a 

 couple of days. I was anxious about him lest he had been caught in 

 the snow in the late bad weather, when crossing the Kanglanamo from 

 Nipal. The Dewan knew of my anxiety, and had some days ago sent 

 off to the frontier for intelligence. To-day he came running down to 

 my tent with a letter from Hooker to me in his hand, and was quite 

 pleased at my satisfaction in receiving it. He is like other folks, an odd 

 compound oif business ; he can be quite pleasing almost, and engaging. 

 He tells me that the wild yak in Thibet is larger than the wild buffalo 

 in India. 



" The lungs alone are a load for a tame yak, he is quite untameable 

 and horridly fierce, he falls upon you with his chest, if he catches 

 you, and rasps you with his tongue, which is so rough that it rubs the 

 flesh off your bones. The Bhotias shoot him with a bell-mouthed 

 blunderbuss of large bore, which has a rest attached to it. They are 

 good marksmen, and will hit a target with it, at a distance that you 

 cannot distinguish between a white horse and a black." 



Talking of the cold in Thibet the other evening, he told me that it 

 was so intense and increased so suddenly in some of the high passes 

 of that country that persons had been frozen stiff while in the act 

 of climbing up a mountain, and remained standing with the chin resting 

 on a stick, until the sun of next day had thawed them, and the bodies 

 tumbled down. Out of Lassa, Digarchi, or Giangtchi, and a few other 

 towns, it is, he says, a wretched country to live in. " The land pro- 

 duces nothing but wheat, the wind is so sharp that it cracks the 

 skin of your face, and as for wood to burn, or build with, there is not 

 a bit anywhere. At Digarchi a stick the size of this tent-pole, 6 feet 

 by 3 inches, would readily fetch 3 Rupees. Sheep they have however, 

 in great abundance, and the wool is of beautiful quality ; but for all 

 that neither the Thibetans or the Chinese can make anything with it 

 equal to English broadcloth. " What did that coat on you cost in 

 Calcutta? there is nothing like your Bunat anywhere," and thus he 

 went on replying to my questions. All Thibetans have the greatest 

 admiration for our broad cloths, and for purple, brown and dark yellow 

 colours will give high prices. "Is there any opium smoking at Lassa?" 

 I asked at one of our meetings. S( There is some, and they are mad to 



