breach of religious discipline, he did not say. The Marwa beer which his servants gave us was excellent, as it usually is in a monastery. We then went on to visit Ugyen, the horse dealer from whom I had bought my black pony at Darjeeling. We found him in a large new house with a corrugated iron roof; his old house had been burnt down. One of the rooms was being fitted up by a Chinese carpenter from Darjeeling as a sort of oratory with the usual Buddhist emblems and carvings. His mother, a dirty but well-mannered and very sweet-voiced old lady, received us with great civility and presented pomegranates and Marwa beer. Ugyen showed us a number of Bhutanese cloaks, saddle-bags, swords and other equipment, some of them curious and rather nicely worked in wool and cotton; but though he was evidently anxious to trade, I found his ideas of their value much larger than my own. His father resides in Western Bhutan on the other side of the Juldoka river, where he acts as agent for the Bhutan Rajah in dealing with the Nepalese settlers who are rapidly crossing from our territory into independent Bhutan. The relations between them and the Bhutanese are said to be fairly good at present, but as the Nepalese get stronger and more numerous they are certain to resist the exactions of Bhutanese tax gatherers, and collisions will ensue. Between such a deter¬ mined, persevering and courageous race as the Nepalese, and a turbulent, cowardly and overbearing set of semi-savages as the Bhutanese, there must sooner or later be quarrels. If the Nepalese are not checked I see no reason why they should not by degrees colonise all that is worth having of the lower parts of Bhutan adjoining the Dooars, and in this case we should find them very much more desirable neighbours than the Bhutanese, The constant struggle for power which is taking place between the various chiefs in Bhutan, together with the anarchy, oppression and misrule which prevail in that country, make it highly desirable that such good neighbours as the Nepalese should be encouraged.
On August 14th, Paul was obliged to return to Darjeeling, so I said good-bye to him, and after some trouble got three coolies to take my things on to Rississum, an easy march of about thirteen miles. Though the population round Kalimpong is so large, and the pay for coolies higher than they can make by carrying their own goods to market at Dar¬ jeeling, they are not easy to find, as at this time of year the maize harvest is going on in the lower and warmer fields on the road a little beyond Kalimpong. I called on Mr. Sutherland, a missionary who had been established here for some years, and was working with some success among the Lepchas at Sittong, where he had a small church, and also among the Nepalese in the Kalimpong district. A great improvement in the moral and material condition of the Lepcha converts is already visible, as Mr. Gammie had already told me. They do not wander and change their residence so often, they cultivate better, and do not live so much hand to mouth as formerly. Their family relations are also improving, and though the Lepcha race is dying out and becoming amalgamated by intermarriage with the Bhutias in British Sikkim, yet the mortality from fever and scarcity of food in the spring is not so great as formerly.
The day was hot though cloudy, and the road for some miles beyond Kalimpong being level and easy and mostly through cultivated or grazing
