Page:Narratives of the mission of George Bogle to Tibet.djvu/203

Ch. III.]

were accommodated in a good house near the palace; and soon found it so cold that I was glad to hang my room, which was a wooden balcony, with Bhutan blankets. The window looked to the river, and commanded the best prospect.

The palace of Tassisudon is situated in a valley about five miles long and one broad, entirely surrounded with high mountains. The river Chinchu gallops by; the low grounds near it being covered with rice, and well peopled. Villages are scattered on the brow of the hills. The least steep places produce wheat. Immediately behind Tassisudon there is a very high mountain, rising into two turrets, which are clad with wood almost to the top; and some solitary cottages, the retreat of dervises, are here and there dropped as from the clouds. In these airy abodes they pass their days in counting their beads, and look down with indifference on all the business and bustle of the world, from which they are entirely excluded.

The character of a fakir is held in great estimation in this country. It is not confined, however, to these self-denying sons of abstinence. The statesmen and the provincial governors, when weary of power or dismissed from office, assume the name and garb of a fakir. They retire to their houses, or to a castle they have built on the top of some mountain; but instead of that poverty and those acts of mortification which are the proper characteristics of the hermit's life, they are surrounded by their families and servants; they indulge themselves in the daintiest victuals under the salvo of killing no living creature, and eating no animal food