Page:Narratives of the mission of George Bogle to Tibet.djvu/184

12 Any information with regard to the antiquity and to the creed of this religion, as well as to the authority, civil and ecclesiastical of the lamas, could not fail to be extremely interesting.

It would also be desirable to have any facts relative to the state of Tibet with respect to China and Tatary. I have been told that a large river forms a boundary between China and Tibet, which was carefully guarded by the troops of both countries; and that Tibet received European commodities by the valley of Kashmir. But I have learned nothing satisfactory on these subjects, not so much as whether Kashmir and Lesser Tibet are at present dependent on Bhutan or Greater Tibet, or whether the Dalai Lama is still a vassal to China.

It is said that in Tibet it is very common for one lady to have several husbands. I should wish much to know if this practice obtains in all the ranks of society, and whether those husbands who all have intercourse with one woman have not likewise other women that are their wives, with whom likewise they hold an intercourse in common. We have instances in other countries where, though each man in a family had a wife that was properly his own, all the men in the family had likewise an intercourse with all the women in it. Perhaps this may be the case also in Tibet; and if we knew anything of the laws of succession in Tibet, or to whom the children of a wife with several husbands were understood to belong, one might be able to discover how the fact stood, though we had no direct information with regard to it.

The history, government, and religion of Tibet are no doubt more interesting objects of inquiry than its climate or topographical and physical characters; yet these, too, are highly curious. The great rivers of the south and east of Asia appear to issue from its mountains. It is probably, therefore, the highest land in the old continent, and this circumstance, together with the difficulty of access to it, give it a striking analogy to the valley of Quito, in South America, which is the highest land in the new continent, and whose climate and situation M. de la Condamine has exhibited in so interesting a point of view. Though Lhasa is situated in ^ more southern latitude than Alexandria, in Egypt, we are told that