548 Notes upon a Tour in the SikJcim Himalayah Mountains. [No. 6. 



and about ten men. Wandering round about the house were cows, 

 pigs, poultry, goats and dogs. In the interior of the house there 

 were two fire-places, at both of which food was being cooked, consist- 

 ing of rice and tea. Tea in these mountains is drank after the fol- 

 lowing extraordinary manner. Into a large earthen cooking-pot, full 

 of hot water, a quantity of black tea that has been chopped from the 

 end of a brick of tea, is thrown, together with a little salt, butter 

 and barley-meal ; this mess after being well stirred, is served up in 

 a teapot, each partaker of the tea producing his own wooden tea-cup 

 from the bosom folds of his capacious clothes. In various parts 

 of the house, depending from the ceiling were balls of cotton, 

 yarious little bamboo baskets, — a half-finished woven piece of cotton 

 cloth, earthen cooking pots, gourds, wooden spoons, a cotton-cleaner, 

 a spinning-wheel, several large Chinese hats, nine feet in circumfer- 

 ance, fishing nets, heads of millet, a book of Boodhist prayers, a few 

 English bottles, a pair of cymbals, bows and arrows, bead necklaces, 

 large Lepcha knives, or Ban, hatchets, a drum, several blocks of wood 

 used as tables, a few bamboo mats and a deer skin : — such is the 

 simple property of a Lepcha, one of the happiest, merriest, and 

 most humane of our species. 



Close to our hut we could hear the roar of a cataract, the scenery 

 round about the house was most pleasing. 



After reposing during the heat of the day with the friendly 

 Lepcha family, we started and in an hour reached a Lepcha Lama's 

 house or Goompa, an immense building divided into two compart- 

 ments. The Lama being absent, the whole house was delivered up 

 to us ; we took possession of one room about thirty feet square 

 nicely boarded with broad and well laid planks. At the East end of 

 the room was an altar, but divested of many of its usual utensils. 

 There were nevertheless many holy-water brass cups, eight books of 

 prayers, in a stand close by the altar, a sacred drum with its curious 

 crooked drumstick, a pair of yak horns, cymbals, brass images repre- 

 senting gods, bells, conch-shells, charms and a dorje or the brass 

 sceptre of the priesthood, resembling an English constable's hand- 

 staff, surmounted by a regal crown ; besides these articles forming 

 the furniture of a Boodhist altar, there were English Eau-de-cologne 

 bottles, a tea-cup, a blacking bottle, a two-foot ruler, and lastly, a 



