146 
BOOTAN. 
cloudless sky with most powerful lustre. We were urgently entreated 
to pass the night here; many arguments were used to dissuade us from 
proceeding, and we were assured it was utterly impracticable to reach 
Tassisudon before midnight; but all was in vain ; for the recollection 
of our past sufferings at Wandipore, determined us not to hazard, if 
we could possibly avoid it, an exposure to similar calamities; a reso¬ 
lution which the wretched appearance of this solitary mansion, and the 
more comfortable prospect of home, tended strongly to confirm. After 
partaking therefore of the scanty fare which this miserable place afforded, 
milk and roasted rice, we mounted our horses, and, in the blaze of day, 
moved slowly on ; for a prodigious high mountain lay before us, 
clothed with thick woods, and we had to climb it by a steep ascent. 
We were four hours in arriving at its summit, where we looked, as well 
as from many openings in the road, upon an assemblage of mountains 
behind mountains, thrown together, like the fragments of a ruined 
world, in wild disorder. On the summit, which was crowned with a 
little level space, was one of those long monuments already men¬ 
tioned, inscribed with the mystic words, Oom Mauneepaimee oom. We 
found here two servants belonging to the Daeb, and one of the Tasse 
Zoompoon’s, with whom, having taken a cup of tea, we advanced on 
our way, greatly refreshed and exhilarated. 
The descent was so gradual and short, compared with the preceding 
ascents of this day’s journey, as to strike us very forcibly with an 
opinion, that the elevation of Punukka was much inferior to that of 
Tassisudon ; and hence we accounted for its superior warmth. 
Wild animals are so extremely rare, as far as my experience and 
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