7 4 
BOOTAN. 
different than our habits, and our manners. I had a pleasure in recog¬ 
nising a more striking similitude in the productions of his country 
> 
and our own, as well as in the temperature of the climate. We had 
often met with strawberries and raspberries growing wild, in great 
abundance; and had seen apple, walnut, pear, peach, and apricot 
trees; the ash, the birch, the maple, yew, pine, and fir; but I looked 
for the oak in vain. The forests abounded with other handsome timber 
trees, to whose names and kinds I was equally a stranger. 
The Raja expressed a wish that my servants should leave the room. 
He then began to lay aside something of his formality, and conversed 
with less reserve. He dwelt much upon his friendship for the Governor 
General, and ascribed a durability to their connexion, in strict unison 
with the doctrine of the metempsychosis. He told me that he under¬ 
stood the contents of the Governor’s letter, in which I was mentioned 
in high expressions of confidence and regard; and assured me of the 
particular satisfaction he experienced, in seeing a person so intimately 
known to, and deputed by, his friend; enjoining me to esteem him in 
the same light. Then carrying on an allusion, which agreed per¬ 
fectly with the tenets of their faith, he claimed with Mr. Hastings 
the nearest spiritual alliance; and, rejecting every degree of mortal 
relation, asserted theirs to be no other than emanations from the same 
soul; thus indicating a new species of affinity of unlimited extent 
and compass; embracing, in one comprehensive system, the imma¬ 
terial spirit, or animating principle of all the good and great, uncon¬ 
fined to place, to nation, or religion, but indelibly distinguished by a 
more permanent and definite similitude, than the operation of nature 
