stones: within they are airy and comfortable. They are surrounded by
a little cultivation of buck-wheat, radishes, turnips, and mustard.
The inhabitants, though paying rent to the Sikkim Rajah, consider
themselves as Tibetans, and are so in language, dress, features, and
origin: they seldom descend to Choongtam, but yearly travel to the
Tibetan towns of Jigatzi, Kambajong, Giantchi, and even to Lhassa,
having always commercial and pastoral transactions with the Tibetans,
whose flocks are pastured on the Sikkim mountains during summer, and
who trade with the plains of India through the medium of these
villagers.

Illustration--LAMTENG VILLAGE.

The snow having disappeared from elevations below 11,000 feet, the
yaks, sheep, and ponies had just been driven 2000 feet up the valley,
and the inhabitants were preparing to follow, with their tents and
goats, to summer quarters at Tallum and Tungu. Many had goitres and
rheumatism, for the cure of which they flocked to my tent;
dry-rubbing for the latter, and tincture of iodine for the former,
gained me some credit as a doctor: I could, however, procure no food
beyond trifling presents of eggs, meal, and more rarely, fowls.

On arriving, I saw a troop of large monkeys* [_Macacus Pelops?_
Hodgson. This is a very different species from the tropical kind seen
in Nepal, and mentioned at vol. i, Chapter XII.] gambolling in a wood
of _Abies Brunoniana_: this surprised me, as I was not prepared to
find so tropical an animal associated with a vegetation typical of a
boreal climate. The only other quadrupeds seen here were some small
earless rats, and musk-deer; the young female of which latter
sometimes afforded me a dish of excellent venison; being, though