BOOTAN. 
21 
hesitation and difficulty, over this tremendous path, we arrived at a 
small hut, inhabited by a poor but hospitable cripple, who refreshed 
us, as well as he could, with tea, and with a kind of whisky; a treat 
which we afterwards frequently experienced. In the mean time, a mes¬ 
senger sent by the Soobah arrived, with orders to the officer in charge 
of the pass, to give admittance to our party. I looked about for this 
important personage, and was surprised to find him at my elbow; a 
creature that hardly bore the resemblance of humanity; of disgusting 
features, meagre limbs, and diminutive stature, with a dirty cloth 
thrown over his shoulders. He was of a mixed race, between the 
Booteea and the Bengalee; and it was wonderful to observe how greatly 
the influence of a pestilential climate, had caused him to degenerate 
from both. At the foot of the Bootan mountains, a plain extends for 
about thirty miles in breadth, choked, rather than clothed, with the 
most luxuriant vegetation. The exhalations necessarily arising from 
the multitude of springs, which the vicinity of the mountains produces, 
are collected and confined by these almost impervious woods, and 
generate an atmosphere, through which no traveller ever passed with 
impunity. Its effects were fatal to Captain Jones, and to a great part 
of the troops that served under him, in 1 7 72; and Colonel Sir John 
Cuming 3 , one of the few that escaped with life, still feels its injurious 
consequences. Yet even this spot is not without inhabitants, although 
its influence hath wholly debased in them, the form, the size, and the 
strength of human creatures. 
The Soobah’s messenger was soon followed by a led Tangun horse, 
which came neighing and prancing with such impetuosity, that I ex™ 
a Colonel Sir John Cuming is since dead. 
