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 elsewhere said, all bought up for rations for the Chinese soldiery. The Bhotanese are more industrious than the Lepchas, and better husbandmen; besides having superior crops of all ordinary grains, they grow cotton, hemp, and flax. The cotton is cleansed here as elsewhere, with a simple gin. The Lepchas use no spinning wheel, but a spindle and distaff; their loom, which is Tibetan is a very complicated one framed of bamboo; it is worked by hand, without beam treddle, or shuttle. On the 18th we were marched, three miles only, to Singdong (alt. 2,116 feet), and on the following day five miles farther, to Katong Ghat (alt. 750 feet), on the Teesta river, which we crossed with rafts, and camped on the opposite bank, a few miles above the junction of this river with the Great Rungeet. The water, which is sea-green in colour, had a temperature of 53.5 degrees at 4 p.m., and 51.7 degrees the following morning; its current was very powerful. The rocks, since leaving Tunlloong, had been generally micaceous, striking north-west, and dipping north-east. The climate was hot, and the vegetation on the banks tropical; on the hills around, lemon-bushes ("Kucheala," Lepcha) were abundant, growing apparently wild.