From the Rungmi valley we crossed on the 14th southward to that of Runniok, and descended to Dikkeeling, a large village of Dhurma Bhoteeas (Bhotanese), which is much the most populous, industrious, and at the same time turbulent, in Sikkim. It is 4,950 feet above the sea, and occupies many broad cultivated spurs facing the south. This district once belonged to Bhotan, and was ceded to the Sikkim Rajah by the Paro Pilo,[[329]] in consideration of some military services, rendered by the former in driving off the Tibetans, who had usurped it for the authorities of Lhassa. Since then the Sikkim and Bhotan people have repeatedly fallen out, and Dikkeeling has become a refuge for runaway Bhotanese, and kidnapping is constantly practised on this frontier.
[329] The temporal sovereign, in contra-distinction to the Dhurma Rajah, or spiritual sovereign of Bhotan.
The Dewan halted us here for three days, for no assigned cause. On the 16th, letters arrived, including a most kind and encouraging one from Mr. Lushington, who had taken charge of Campbell’s office at Dorjiling. Immediately after arriving, the messenger was seized with violent vomitings and gripings: we could not help suspecting poison, especially as we were now amongst adherents of the Dewan, and the Bhotanese are notorious for this crime. Only one means suggested itself for proving this, and with Campbell’s permission I sent my compliments to the Dewan, with a request for one of his hunting dogs to eat the vomit. It was sent at once, and performed its duty without any ill effects. I must confess to having felt a malicious pleasure in the opportunity thus afforded of showing our jailor how little we trusted him; feeling indignant at the idea that he should suppose he was making any way in our good opinion by his familiarities, which we were not in circumstances to resist.
The crafty fellow, however, outwitted me by inviting us to dine with him the same day, and putting our stomachs and noses to a severe test. Our dinner was served in Chinese fashion, but most of the luxuries, such as béche-de-mer, were very old and bad. We ate, sometimes with chop-sticks, and at others with Tibetan spoons, knives, and two-pronged forks. After the usual amount of messes served in oil and salt water, sweets were brought, and a strong spirit. Thoba-sing, our filthy, cross-eyed spy, was waiter, and brought in every little dish with both hands, and raised it to his greasy forehead, making a sort of half bow previous to depositing it before us. Sometimes he undertook to praise its contents, always adding, that in Tibet none but very great men indeed partook of such sumptuous fare. Thus he tried to please both us and the Dewan, who conducted himself with pompous hospitality, showing off what he considered his elegant manners and graces. Our blood boiled within us at being so patronised by the squinting ruffian, whose insolence and ill-will had sorely aggravated the discomforts of our imprisonment.
Not content with giving us what he considered a magnificent dinner (and it had cost him some trouble), the Dewan produced a little bag from a double-locked escritoire, and took out three dinner-pills, which he had received as a great favour from the Rimbochay Lama, and which were a sovereign remedy for indigestion and all other ailments; he handed one to each of us, reserving the third for himself. Campbell refused his; but there appeared no help for me, after my groundless suspicion of poison, and so I swallowed the pill with the best grace I could. But in truth, it was not poison I dreaded in its contents, so much as being compounded of some very questionable materials, such as the Rimbochay Lama blesses and dispenses far and wide. To swallow such is a sanctifying work, according to Boodhist superstition, and I believe there was nothing in the world, save his ponies, to which the Dewan attached a greater value.
To wind up the feast, we had pipes of excellent mild yellow Chinese tobacco called “Tseang,” made from Nicotiana rustica, which is cultivated in East Tibet, and in West China according to MM. Huc and Gabet. It resembles in flavour the finest Syrian tobacco, and is most agreeable when the smoke is passed through the nose. The common tobacco of India (Nicotiana Tabacum) is much imported into Tibet, where it is called “Tamma,” (probably a corruption of the Persian “Toombac,”) and is said to fetch the enormous price of 30s. per lb. at Lhassa, which is sixty times its value in India. Rice at Lhassa, when cheap, sells at 2s. for 5 lbs.; it is, as I have elsewhere said, all bought up for rations for the Chinese soldiery.
The Bhotanese are more industrious than the Lepchas, and better husbandmen; besides having superior crops of all ordinary grains, they grow cotton, hemp, and flax. The cotton is cleansed here as elsewhere, with a simple gin. 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.
On the 18th we were marched, three miles only, to Singdong (alt. 2,116 feet), and on the following day five miles farther, to Katong Ghat (alt. 750 feet), on the Teesta river, which we crossed with rafts, and camped on the opposite bank, a few miles above the junction of this river with the Great Rungeet. The water, which is sea-green in colour, had a temperature of 53·5° at 4 p.m., and 51·7° the following morning; its current was very powerful. The rocks, since leaving Tunlloong, had been generally micaceous, striking north-west, and dipping north-east. The climate was hot, and the vegetation on the banks tropical; on the hills around, lemon-bushes (“Kucheala,” Lepcha) were abundant, growing apparently wild.
The Dewan was now getting into a very nervous and depressed state; he was determined to keep up appearances before his followers, but was himself almost servile to us; he caused his men to make a parade of their arms, as if to intimidate us, and in descending narrow gullies we had several times the disagreeable surprise of finding some of his men at a sudden turn, with drawn bows and arrows pointed towards us. Others gesticulated with their long knives, and made fell swoops at soft plantain-stems; but these artifices were all as shallow as they were contemptible, and a smile at such demonstrations was generally answered with another from the actors.
From Katong we ascended the steep east flank of Tendong or Mount Ararat, through forests of Sal and long-leaved pine, to Namten (alt. 4,483 feet), where we again halted two days. The Dingpun Tinli lived near and waited on us with a present, which, with all others that had been brought, Campbell received officially, and transferred to the authorities at Dorjiling.