In the evening we were visited by the Dewan, the head and front of all our Sikkim difficulties, whose influence was paramount with the Rajah, owing to the age and infirmities of the latter, and his devotion to religion, which absorbed all his time and thoughts. The Dewan was a good-looking Tibetan, very robust, fair, muscular and well fleshed; he had a very broad Tartar face, quite free of hair; a small and beautifully formed mouth and chin, very broad cheekbones, and a low, contracted forehead: his manners were courteous and polite, but evidently affected, in assumption of better breeding than he could in reality lay claim to. The Rajah himself was a Tibetan of just respectable extraction, a native of the Sokpo province, north of Lhassa: his Dewan was related to one of his wives, and I believe a Lhassan by birth as well as extraction, having probably also Kashmir blood in him.[98] Though minister, he was neither financier nor politician, but a mere plunderer of Sikkim, introducing his relations, and those whom he calls so, into the best estates in the country, and trading in great and small wares, from a Tibet pony to a tobacco pipe, wholesale and retail. Neither he nor the Rajah are considered worthy of notice by the best Tibet families or priests, or by the Chinese commissioners settled in Lhassa and Jigatzi. The latter regard Sikkim as virtually English, and are contented with knowing that its ruler has no army, and with believing that its protectors, the English, could not march an army across the Himalaya if they would. [98] The Tibetans court promiscuous intercourse between their families and the Kashmir merchants who traverse their country.