with him the same day, and putting our stomachs
and noses to a severe test. Our dinner was served
in Chinese fashion, but most of the luxuries, such
as beche-de-mer, were very old and bad. We ate,
sometimes with chop-sticks, and at others with Tibetan
spoons, knives, and two-pronged forks. After the
usual amount of messes served in oil and salt water,
sweets were brought, and a strong spirit. Thoba-sing,
pur filthy, cross-eyed spy, was waiter, and brought in
every little dish with both hands, and raised it to his
greasy forehead, making a sort of half bow previous to
depositing it before us. Sometimes he undertook to
praise its contents, always adding, that in Tibet none
but very great men indeed partook of such sumptuous
fare. Thus he tried to please both us and the Dewan,
who conducted himself with pompous hospitality,
showing off what he considered his elegant manners
and graces. Our blood boiled within us at being so
patronised by the squinting ruffian, whose insolence
and ill-will had sorely aggravated the discomforts of
pur imprisonment.
Not content with giving us what he considered a
magnificent dinner (and it had cost him some trouble),
the Dewan produced a little bag from a double-locked
escritoire, and took out three dinner-pills, which he had
received as a great favour from the Eimbochay Lama,
and which were a sovereign remedy for indigestion and
all other ailments; he handed one to each of us,
reserving the third for himself. Campbell refused h is ;
but there appeared no help for me, after my groundless
suspicion of poison, and so I swallowed the pill with
the best grace I could. But in truth, it was not
poison I dreaded in its contents, so much as being
compounded of some very questionable materials, such
as the Eimbochay Lama blesses and dispenses far and
wide. To swallow such is a sanctifying work, accord-»
ing to Boodhist superstition, and I believe there was
nothing in the world, save his ponies, to which the
Dewan attached a greater value.
To wind up the feast, we had pipes of excellent
mild yellow Chinese tobacco, made from Nicotiana
rustica, which is cultivated in East Tibet, and in West
China. I t resembles in flavour the finest Syrian
tobacco, and is most agreeable when the smoke is passed
through the nose. The common tobacco of India is
much imported into Tibet, where it is called “ Tamnia,’’
(probably a corruption of the Persian “ Toombac,”)
and is said to fetch the enormous price of 30s. per lb.
at Lhassa, which is sixty times its value in India.
Eice at Lhassa, when cheap, sells at 2s. for 5 lb s ,; it
is all bought up for rations for the Chinese soldiery.
On the 18th we were marched three miles only, and
on the following day five miles farther, to Katong Ghat
on the Teesta river, which we crossed with rafts, and
camped on the opposite bank, a few miles above its
junction with the Great Eungeet. The water, which
is sea-green in colour, had a temperature of 53j°; its
current was very powerful. The climate was hot, and
the vegetation on the banks tropical; on the hills
around, lemon-bushes were abundant, apparently
growing wild.
The Dewan was now getting into a very nervous and