BOOTAN. 
39 
acceptance of the challenge, turned out more to the credit of our po¬ 
liteness, than to our exhibition of any superior dexterity. 
Great part both of the preceding and the present day was em¬ 
ployed in receiving the visits of the inhabitants of Buxadewar, who 
came to take leave previously to my departure, which I had fixed for 
the next day. 
Early on the morning of Thursday, the 22d of May, we went to pay 
our last visit to the Soobah. The interview was employed in apologies 
for our detention, on his part, and in acknowledgments for our polite 
and attentive reception, on mine. After several compliments, we took 
a cup of tea, and the usual spirituous liquors; and he conducted me 
to the bottom of the stairs, where he presented me with a white pelong 
handkerchief: we then shook hands, and parted. 
The Soobah was about thirty years of age, of a middling stature, his 
person good, neither meagre nor corpulent; his complexion clear, and 
not quite of so deep a hue as that of most of his countrymen, though 
they are all much less swarthy than the natives of Bengal. His coun¬ 
tenance was open and ingenuous; and if any opinion of the internal 
character may be formed, from the general outline and gesture of the 
person, I should judge him to possess an artless and benevolent mind. 
Easy in-liis manners, and graceful in his deportment, his- orders were 
delivered in the mildest tone of voice, totally exempt from every dic¬ 
tatorial air of authority. 
Buxadewars, called also Passaka, is a place of great natural strength; 
and, being a frontier station of these mountains, has been rendered 
6 Plate I. 
