leading commerce with the people
of Lha-Ssa, who manufacture them with the ash of various aromatic trees
mixed with musk and gold dust. Of these various ingredients, they
elaborate a pink paste, which is then moulded into small cylindrical
sticks, three or four feet long. These are burned in the Lamaseries, and
before the idols which are worshipped in private houses. When these
pastile-sticks are once lighted, they burn slowly, without intermission,
until they are completely consumed, diffusing all around a perfume of the
most exquisite sweetness. The Thibetian merchants, who repair every year
to Peking in the train of the embassy, export considerable quantities of
it, which they sell at an exorbitant price. The Northern Chinese
manufacture pastile-sticks of their own, which they sell equally under
the name of Tsan-Hiang; but they will sustain no comparison with those
which come from Thibet.

The Thibetians have no porcelain, but they manufacture pottery of all
sorts in great perfection. As we have already observed, their own
breakfast, dinner, and tea service, consists simply and entirely of a
wooden cup, which each person carries either in his bosom, or suspended
from his girdle in an ornamental purse. These cups are made of the roots
of certain fine trees that grow on the mountains of Thibet. They are
graceful in form, but simple and without any sort of decoration, other
than a slight varnish which conceals neither their natural colour nor the
veins of the wood. Throughout Thibet, every one, from the poorest
mendicant up to the Tale-Lama, takes his meals out of a wooden cup. The
Thibetians, indeed, make a distinction of their own, unintelligible to
Europeans, between these cups, some of which are bought for a few small
coins, while others cost up to a hundred ounces of silver, or nearly 40
pounds. If we were asked what difference we had discerned between these
various qualities of cups, we should reply, most conscientiously, that
they all appeared to us pretty nearly of the same value, and that with
the best disposition in the world to be convinced, we had utterly failed
to perceive any distinction of moment between them. The first-quality
cups, however, according to the Thibetians, have the property of
neutralizing poisons.

Some days after our arrival at Lha-Ssa, desirous of renewing our
meal-service, which had become somewhat worn, we went into a cup-shop. A
Thibetian dame, her face elaborately varni