CHAPTER XII - AN ACCOUNT OF TIBET

Summary

This country, from Ladak to the frontier of China, is called by the natives Pu, pronounced as the French do Dominus, or as the Scotch do the Greek upsilon. It is full of hills: they might be called mountains if they were not so near to those in the Deb Rajah's kingdom; however, one has few of them to climb, the road leading through the valleys. Save here and there a monastery or a nunnery, they are left to the musk goats and other wild animals. The country is bare, stony, and unsheltered; hardly a tree is to be seen, except in the neighbourhood of villages, and even there in no great numbers. On the road from Pari-jong there are a great many ruinous houses, occasioned by a war with the Bhutanese about sixty years ago.

The valleys produce wheat and barley, and peas. The first are ground by water-mills of a very simple construction; the last is food only for cattle. The peasants and the bulk of the inhabitants live on flour made into dough, or baked with oil produced in the country; on mutton or the flesh of the cow-tailed cattle. The higher class of people eat rice brought from the Deb Rajah's country, unleavened bread made into twisted rolls with butter, mutton soup thickened with pounded rice, mutton boiled in joints or cut in pieces; beef, not much; sweetmeats and fruits brought from China and Kashmir.