generally bloodshot, giving them a disgusting appearance.
Both sexes wore a sort of woollen gaiter, open at the calf, the
protruding muscle of which looked as if nothing could have confined it;
their shoes, as far as the dust would allow me to see, were of the same
material. They seemed good-natured and inoffensive, but are not free
from the vice of drunkenness; they consume quantities of tea prepared
with rancid lard.

Had I been asked to determine the origin of this race, I should have
pronounced it to be a mixture of Naples lazzaroni with the scum of an
Irish regiment. The ruddy complexions of some of the women, and the
swarthy look of many of the men, might fairly warrant such a conclusion.
They were so importunate and offensive as they pressed round me that I
hurried over my sketch of the temple, and made my escape from them, not,
however, without once more looking round with interest on the crowd of
beings whose distant habitations were upon the northern slope of the
Himalayan chain, hitherto unvisited by any European, except Dr. Hooker,
and consequently almost totally unknown.

I quite envied them the journey they were about to undertake, which would
occupy them three weeks; the large droves of sheep by which they are
always accompanied carried their limited worldly possessions, together
with the various tokens of civilization which they had procured in the
(to them) highly civilized country they were now visiting, and on which
no doubt their Bhootan friends would look with no little awe and
wonderment.

This wandering and singular race do not visit Nepaul solely to worship at
the temple of Bhood, but have an eye to business as well as religion. I
shall have occasion by and by to speak of the numerous articles which
they import into Nepaul, on the backs of sheep, over the rocky passes
which lead from the cold region they inhabit.

On our way from the temple of Bhood, which, by the by, had just been
furbished up and whitewashed by a great man from H'Lassa, an emissary of
the Grand Lama's, we passed through the town of Katmandu, which was
entered by a massive gateway, the city being surrounded by a wall. Long
narrow streets, very fairly paved, lead in all directions; the houses are
not so high as those of Benares or Cairo, the streets are broader, and
some of them would admit of the passage of a carriage. They are all well
drained and comparatively clean, contrasting most favourably in that
respect with a