GOITRES. 
23 
These frightful excrescences are sometimes removed 
with the knife by the native surgeons, who are much 
more unskilful than the commonest farrier in Europe ; 
they mangle dreadfully the patient upon whom they 
operate, but it is astonishing how soon he recovers, 
in consequence of the pure state of his blood arising 
from the simplicity of his diet. So free are these 
people from a feverish habit of body that after the 
loss of a limb, which is removed by a most clumsy 
and summary process, a poultice of turmeric combined 
with a few herbs is applied, which occasions a gradual 
suppuration and thus the stump heals in an incredibly 
short space of time. 
Early in the afternoon of this day we came to a 
rude bridge which it was necessary to cross in order 
to save a circuit of several miles. This we determined 
to do, in spite of the hazard which is by no means 
trifling to one unaccustomed to so novel a method 
of transportation. The bridge consisted simply of 
two ropes of about an inch and half in diameter made 
of twisted creepers, eighteen inches apart, passed 
through a hoop and secured on either side of the 
stream by strong bamboos driven firmly into the earth 
parallel to each other. The passenger places himself 
between the parallel ropes within the hoop, on the 
lower rim of which he is seated, and, holding a rope in 
either hand, pulls himself across. To the hill-men this 
is a sufficiently easy process and they perform it with- 
out the slightest apprehension ; but to any one who 
has never before trusted himself upon such an equi- 
vocal machine, over a deep and impetuous torrent at 
an elevation of from eighty to a hundred feet, it is a 
matter of no ordinary periL Nothing can be well con- 
