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 30 shllings
per lb. at Lhassa, which is sixty times its value in India. Rice at
Lhassa, when cheap, sells at 2 shillings for 5 lbs.; it is, as I have