An Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet - Prajna Quest

;210 TIBET.have little doubt, by many persons who were at that time resident atCalcutta ;for Paima was the messenger deputed to Bengal, in the year1773, and was the first native of Tibet who had visited Bengal, at leastsince it became subject to the British government.We proceeded early in the morning, on Tuesday, 16th September,over an extensive plain ; a desart, I think, it might be termed, for therewas not a vestige of vegetation upon it, except a few thistles, a littlemoss, and some scanty blades of withered grass.The wind was violentlyhigh, and so sharp that we dared not expose our faces to itsfury : the want of caution the day before had left our noses, sore mementosof its keen rudeness, and we now rode muffled up in such amanner, that we could but just breathe.To the very great and suddenchange of climate I attributed what I had suffered : warmth;, and agood night's rest, lemoved all my ills.From Phari, tothe distance of more than twenty miles north fromhence, Iwas told that the most boisterous winds perpetually prevailin the dry summer months, raising clouds of dust and sand from theplains, almost intolerable to the traveller; and in other seasons, conveyinga degree of cold, unknown even in the severest winters ever feltin Europe. Such, they said, is sometimes the intenseness of the frosthere, though in so low a latitude as twenty-eight degrees, that animalsexposed in the open fields,are found dead, with their heads absolutelysplit by itsforce.Having travelled about nine miles, we met with three springs issuingout of the plain, near the foot of a hill, to whose waters theTibetians ascribe medicinal virtues. They send out three separate