The lay-brothers are often skilful workmen, and are sometimes lent or hired out as labourers, especially as housebuilders and decorators. No tax of any kind is levied on the church, which is frequently very rich in land, flocks, and herds, and in contributions from the people: land is sometimes granted by the Rajah, but is oftener purchased by the priests, or willed, or given by the proprietor. The services, to which I have already alluded, are very irregularly performed; in most temples only on festival days, which correspond to the Tibetan ones so admirably described in MM. Huc and Gabet’s narrative; in a few, however, service is performed daily, especially in such as stand near frequented roads, and hence reap the richest harvest. Like all the natives of Tibet and Sikkim, the priests are intolerably filthy; in some cases so far carrying out their doctrines as not even to kill the vermin with which they swarm. All are nominally bound to chastity, but exemptions in favour of Lamas of wealth, rank, or power, are granted by the supreme pontiffs, both in Tibet and Sikkim. I constantly found swarms of children about the Lamaseries, who were invariably called nephews and nieces. Descending from the Catsuperri temples, I encamped at the village of Tengling (elevation 5,257 feet), where I was waited upon by a bevy of forty women, Lepchas and Sikkim Bhoteeas, accompanied by their children, and bringing presents of fowls, rice and vegetables, and apologising for the absence of their male relatives, who were gone to carry tribute to the Rajah. Thence I marched to Changachelling, first descending to the Tengling river, which divides the Catsuperri from the Molli ridge, and which I crossed. Tree-ferns here advance further north than in any other part of Sikkim. I did not visit the Molli temples, but crossed the spur of that name, to the Rungbee river, whose bed is 3,300 feet above the sea; thence I ascended upwards of 3,500 feet to the Changachelling temples, passing Tchongpong village. The ridge on which both Pemiongchi and Changachelling are built, is excessively narrow at top; it is traversed by a “via Sacra,” connecting these two establishments; this is a pretty wooded walk, passing mendongs and chaits hoary with lichens and mosses; to the north the snows of Kinchinjunga are seen glimmering between the trunks of oaks, laurels, and rhododendrons, while to the south the Sinchul and Dorjiling spurs shut out the view of the plains of India.