1869.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 153 



patches, — the wild, still grandeur of such a scene is an ample reward 

 for the heavy and toilsome ascent. Continuing on through these 

 ranges occasionally descending into valleys covered with yellow and 

 white pine forests, in eight days the Tibetan town of Lithang is reached, 

 situated on a very high plateau, so high that the traveller finds breath- 

 ing very difficult, and after resting a day to recruit his larder with butter 

 and flour, he is glad to leave Lithang with its gilded monasteries, con- 

 taining about 3500 Lamas; and for the next ten days he travels through 

 a fearful country of snowy mountains, the lower ranges of a bare limestone- 

 like formation, the higher peaks covered with perpetual snow, tower- 

 ing into the heavens to an enormous height. During these fatiguing 

 ten days, he crosses the Sambar and Taso snowy mountains and at 

 the western foot of the latter, in a beautiful fertile valley, reaches 

 Bathang, a Tibetan town, like Lithang famous for its Lama monas- 

 teries. 



Bathang is the last town of importance in the eastern king- 

 dom of Tibet which is nominally subject to China ; there is a Chinese 

 mandarin here who, in concert with the Lamas, guards the borders 

 most zealously against the intrusions of outsiders. Thus far from 

 Chentu the Szchuan Capital, we have travelled the grand highway 

 leading from China to Lassa the capital of Tibet, and it is by this 

 route, that some three or four million pounds of tea are annually sent to 

 Lassa from the district of Yarchu. The tea of a very coarse description 

 is carried on pack saddles by yaks and mules to ' Lassa, a journey 

 occupying about four months. 



From Bathang there is another route which leads to Assam, un- 

 travelled as yet by Europeans. — 



Before the Mahomedan war cast its gloom over the fertile province of 

 Yunnan, and while the hundreds of trading caravans annually travelled 

 between Bhamo on the Irrawadi and Talifoo, the present Mahomedan ca- 

 pital of that province, they created a trade, the fame whereof has lived till 

 this day, and the revival of which should form, if not the first, at least 

 the second most important question occupying the commercial mind of 

 England to-day. This question has already received so much attention, 

 that I need not observe that, while it will confer immense benefit on the 

 British possessions in Burma, if re-opened, it cannot be of immediate 

 importance to our Indian possessions, and deep in this conviction I have 



