304 
TIBET. 
of covering their columns, the carved decorations of their capitals, and 
even their doors, with a coat of coarse cotton cloth, which seems, in 
some degree, to prevent wood-work from being rent in sunder. The 
few articles of wood, trunks, and boxes, which 1 had with me, would 
often startle us, in the dead of night, with a report as loud as that of 
musquetry. This continued, without intermission, till the glue had 
intirely quitted its hold, and no longer kept the joints together, which 
had been previously softened by the humidity of Bengal, so that they 
were now ready to fall in pieces. As far as I could judge, timber, in 
this climate, seemed subject to no other injury from time; but was 
equally exempt from the silent depredations of decay, and the more 
active violence of any species of destructive vermin. 
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