Their women were highly decorated with [[172]]numerous brass ornaments with pendants, and silver bracelets inlaid with malachite. Teeth of musk-deer were freely used as ornaments, as well as being used for such useful purposes as picking one’s teeth, cleaning the nails, and so on.
The chief wore his hair parted in the centre, and plaited into small tresses which joined into a single pigtail behind. The skin was of a sallow yellowish colour. The upper portion of the eye, as is often the case in people who are constantly exposed to a brilliant light, was much discoloured, and a peculiar whitish tinge veiled the entire iris of the eye. In the way of clothing they showed a marked preference for bright red and yellow textiles, and on their visits into Kumaon they had invested their savings in buying old regimental brass buttons, with which the women were freely ornamented. Bracelets of glass beads, and also necklaces of coral and amber, were displayed with pride.
Tibetan Boy in his Gold-embroidered Hat
These people had beautiful tents, the inside being most comfortable, with Chinese carpets spread on the floor, cushions to rest the head and back upon, and cured skins spread everywhere where they might come in useful. Elaborate altars, some double-tiered, with as many as seven images of Buddha, were to be seen, and upon them [[173]]burning lights galore, incense-sticks alight filling the tent with saintly fumes. Bags of butter and chura and sweet paste hung from every tent-pole. All round the tent, inside and also outside, were high walls of double sacks of borax. Outside, on high posts, with an ingenious contrivance to prevent animals going up, a lot of meat was prepared, with salt, in thin slices, and exposed to the sun to dry.
As is always the case, with this tribe too travelled a number of Lamas, who practically controlled everything. One of these Lamas had as repulsive and murderous a face as it is given to any human being to possess. True enough, his first boast was that he had killed three people (the natives said a good many more). His manner towards the people was most brutal. He was a tall man of marvellous muscular development, and between his most repulsive lips, which never seemed to close, he displayed a set of most powerful long pointed teeth, such as those one would see in a wild animal. His head-gear consisted of a vizor made of long, bristly hair—not unlike the half of a chimney-sweeper’s brush—which he fastened round the forehead and back of the head with a string.
This gentleman was inclined to be overbearing, [[174]]even intrusive; and, to show his courage as well as muscular power (possibly to frighten me), he thumped and knocked about his people in a merciless manner, always taking care to select the helpless and weaker ones. His brutality irritated me considerably. I was standing near his tent, and he came in with a long knife—he had been making himself a stick to beat the people with. He was still foaming with rage. There was a woman, his servant, sitting near the fire, and he asked her whether the tea was ready in the raksang. She replied it was not, upon which he administered a terrific kick in her stomach which would have killed any woman but a Tibetan. I could stand no more. I seized my rifle by the muzzle and applied the butt upon his face in a fashion which somewhat flattened his nose more than it originally was and loosened some teeth. All bullies are cowards in any country, and he made no reply whatever.
No doubt I shall be blamed—as I have been before—for administering my own justice in other people’s countries, but I cannot help feeling that the weak should ever and at any cost be protected against unwarranted attacks of the brutally strong.
A Brigand