1848.] Narrative of a Journey to Cho Lagan, #r. 1/3 



flight rather, to their position in Pruang, they were here overtaken 

 and destroyed, but more by want and cold, for it was the middle of 

 winter, than by the prowess of the Lhassa army, who were probably a 

 viler rabble, though far more numerous, than these bastard Sikhs, the 

 refuse of the Jamu hill districts. The Sings well earned their fate 

 by the indiscriminate robbery and violence which they perpetrated on 

 the unoffending Hunias of Gnari : ruined villages and impoverished peo- 

 ple still shew the brand of their devastations throughout the country. 



On the south side of the ravine ran a good sized rivulet, crossing 

 which we ascended the left bank, here not more than 100 feet high, 

 but rising to double or treble that elevation by high ground close upon 

 our left, (eastward) . On the corner of level ground, some half a mile 

 wide, between this hill and the Karnali, stands the village of Toi'yon, 

 straggling loosely over the next mile of the road : there are houses 

 also on the eastern eminence, besides the hamlet, which we passed on 

 the other side of the rivulet. The greater part of the area I have 

 assigned to the village is occupied by the fields, amongst which the 

 houses are scattered here and there, singly or in small groups : I could 

 see nothing in the shape of a street excepting the rows of Choktan 

 walls and towers, ruinous inelegant structures of stone and mud, that 

 lined the road in considerable numbers : none of the houses were within 

 a hundred yards of our road and most of them further, so that I could 

 see little of their construction, but they seemed to be rather long than 

 lofty, with very few doors or windows, the walls whitewashed, and 

 crowned with dark lines, which from their low shallow appearance 

 could be coverings to the walls concealing a flat roof to the interior body 

 of the house. Bhauna explains that the houses are built in hollow 

 squares, two-storied, with a flat terrace roof above, which is dignified 

 with the name of a third story : the apartments are ranged round an 

 open court in the centre, to which all the windows are directed, a single 

 doorway in the middle of one side, being the only aperture in the outer 

 walls. This construction, however, is by no means universal in Hundes, 

 for at Diingpu in Gugi, I myself saw numbers of houses quite open to 

 the front, though otherwise as above described, and very like the dweh\ 

 ings of the Byansi Bhotias. The dark summits of the walls, are the 

 copings formed by layers of Bdma, Hompu, or other brushwood laid 

 upon the top of the parapets and weighed down by stones. 



