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We arrived at the cane bridge over the Great Rungeet at 4 p.m., and to our chagrin found it in the possession of a posse of ragged Bhoteeas, though there were thirty armed Sepoys of our own at the guard-house above. At Meepo's order they cut the network of fine canes by which they had rendered the bridge impassable, and we crossed.
We encamped a few hundred feet below the Rajah's house, and close by those of Meepo and the Tchebu Lama's family, who are among the oldest and most respectable of Tibetan origin in Sikkim. The population on this, the north side of the Ryott, consists principally of Sikkim Bhoteeas and Tibetans, while the opposite is peopled by Lepchas.
This creature ranges between 8000 and 13,000 feet, on the Himalaya, often scenting the air for many hundred yards. It is a pretty grey animal, the size of a roebuck, and something resembling it, with coarse fur, short horns, and two projecting teeth from the upper jaw, said to be used in rooting up the aromatic herbs from which the Bhoteeas believe that it derives the odour of musk.
The audience chamber was a mere roofed shed of neat bamboo wattle, about twenty feet long: two Bhoteeas in scarlet. jackets, and with bows in their hands, stood on each side of the door, and our own chairs were carried before us for our accommodation.
The dog gave tongue as twenty or thirty people defiled up the glen, and gathered in front of my tent; they were ragged Bhoteeas, with bare heads and legs, in scanty woollen garments sodden with rain, which streamed off their shaggy hair, and furrowed their sooty faces: their whole appearance recalled to my mind Dugald Dalgetty's friends, the children of the mist.
A great party of Sikkim Bhoteeas had assembled here, all strangers to me: I certainly thought the concourse unusually large, and the previous conduct to Campbell, strange, rude, and quite unintelligible, especially before the Tibetans.
The people embraced Hindoos, Mohammedans, Bhoteeas, Nepaulese and Sikkimites, and presented every variety of dress and figure, having seemingly but one feature or possession in common, and that was a very prominent display of unclean skin and raiment.
This village, or spur, called "Tonghem" by the Limboos, and "Yankutang" by the Bhoteeas, is the winter resort of the inhabitants of the upper Yalloong valley: they received us very kindly, sold us two fowls, and rice enough to last for one or two days, which was all they could spare, and gave me a good deal of information.
A Lama, who is the head man of the place, came out to greet us, with his family and a whole troop of villagers; they were the same class of people as I have elsewhere described as Cis-nivean Tibetans, or Bhoteeas; none had ever before seen an Englishman, and I fear they formed no flattering opinion from the specimen now presented to them, as they seemed infinitely amused at my appearance, and one jolly dame clapped her hands to her sides, and laughed at my spectacles, till the hills echoed.
I have seen it to be almost universal in some villages of Bhoteeas, where the head-strap alone is used in carrying in both summer and winter crops; as also amongst the salt-traders, or rather those families who carry the salt from the passes to the Nepalese villages, and who very frequently have no shoulder-straps, but invariably head-bands.
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