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Cholera is scarcely known at Dorjiling, and when it has been imported thither has never spread. Disease is very rare amongst the Lepchas; and ophthalmic, elephantiasis, and leprosy, the scourges of hot climates, are rarely known.
Our Lepchas preferred remaining on the river-bank, whence they had to bring up water to us, in great bamboo "chungis," as they are called. The great dryness of this face is owing to its southern exposure: the opposite mountains, equally high and steep, being clothed in a rich green forest. At nine the next morning, the temperature was 78 degrees, but a fine cool easterly wind blew.
Remembering the Dewan's impracticable saddle at Bhomsong, I stipulated for a horse-cloth or pad, upon which I had no sooner jumped than the beast threw back his ears, seated himself on his haunches, and, to my consternation, slid backwards down a turfy slope, pawing the earth with his fore-feet as he went, and leaving me on the ground, amid shrieks of laughter from my Lepchas.
Sometimes, but more rarely, the Tibetans make a drink by pouring boiling water over malt, as the Lepchas do over millet. A pipe of yellow mild Chinese tobacco generally follows the meal; more often, however, their tobacco is brought from the plains of India, when it is of a very inferior description.
The Lepchas use no spinning wheel, but a spindle and distaff; their loom, which is Tibetan is a very complicated one framed of bamboo; it is worked by hand, without beam treddle, or shuttle. The water, which is sea-green in colour, had a temperature of 53.5 degrees at 4 p.m., and 51.7 degrees the following morning; its current was very powerful.
Campbell, who, like myself, has vainly sought its solution; it is probably a mixture of Tibetan and Lepcha, both as much corrupted as the celebrated "Om mani padmi boom," which is universally pronounced by Lepchas "Menny pemmy boom."
They mourn, burn, and bury their dead, raising a mound over the corpse, erecting a headstone, and surrounding the grave with a little paling of sticks; they then scatter eggs and pebbles over the ground. In these offices the Bijooa of the Lepchas is employed, but the Limboo has also priests of his own, called "Phedangbos," who belong to rather a higher order than the Bijooas.
A currant was common, always growing epiphytically on the trunks of large trees. Two or three species of Berberry, a cherry, Andromeda, Daphne, and maple, nearly complete, I think, the list of woody plants. All the Sikkim kinds are called "gniong" by Lepchas and Bhoteeas, who do not distinguish them.
Instead of this, the proprietor of the hotel proposed a little excursion on horseback into Sikkim, the country of the Lepchas.
At Pemiongchi a superior Lama met me with another overwhelming present: he was a most jolly fat monk, shaven and girdled, and dressed in a scarlet gown: my Lepchas kotowed to him, and he blessed them by the laying on of hands. There is a marsh on this spur, full of the common English Acorus Calamus, or sweet-flag, whose roots being very aromatic, are used in griping disorders of men and cattle.
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