till I had visited Kongra Lama. He was a portly man, and, I think, at
heart good-natured: I had no difficulty in drawing him on to talk
about Tibet, and the holy city of Teshoo Loombo, with its thousands
of gilt temples, nunneries, and convents, its holiest of all the holy
grand Lamas of Tibet, and all the wide Boodhist world besides. Had it
even been politic, I felt it would be unfair to be angry with a man
who was evidently in a false position between myself and his two
rulers, the Rajah and Dewan; who had a wife and family on the smiling
flanks of Singtam, and who longed to be soaking in the warm rain of
Sikkim, drinking Murwa beer (a luxury unknown amongst these Tibetans)
and gathering in his crops of rice, millet, and buckwheat. Though I
may owe him a grudge for his subsequent violence, I still recall with
pleasure the hours we spent together on the banks of the Lachen.
In all matters respecting the frontier, his lies were circumstantial;
and he further took the trouble of bringing country people to swear
that this was Cheen, and that there was no such place as Kongra Lama.
I had written to ask Dr. Campbell for a definite letter from Tchebu
Lama on this point, but unfortunately my despatches were lost; the
messenger who conveyed them missed his footing in crossing the
Lachen, and escaped narrowly with life, while the turban in which the
letters were placed was carried down the current.

Finally the Soubah tried to persuade my people that one so
incorrigibly obstinate must be mad, and that they had better leave
me. One day, after we had had a long discussion about the geography
of the frontier, he inflamed my curiosity by telling me that
Kinchinjhow was a very holy mountain; more so than its sister-peaks
of Chumulari and Kinchinjunga; and that both the Sikkim and Tibetan
Lamas, and Chinese soldiers, were ready to oppose my approach to it.
This led to my asking him for a sketch of the mountains; he called