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

BOOTAN. 51grain, rising with an easy ascent, and bDunded by thick woods.Several cottages were interspersed over tiie corn fields. It is to beremarked, that the husbandmen here level the ground they cultivateon the sides of the hills, by cutting it in shelves, and forming beds of/such a size as the slope will admit ; and these beds being borderedwith a low mound of earth, the water may be retained on them, or letoff, at will. Having heard that there was cinnamon growing in thisneighbourhood, Isent a native into the woods to search after the treehe returned to me within half an hour, with a great quantity both ofits roots and branches. Its value is well known in this country, andit is used both for culinary and medicinal purposes. Its leaves aremuch used in cookery in Bengal, and known by the denomination ofTeezpaut. It appears to me, that the cinnamon in this species is therind of the root only, the bark of the tree having little or no spicyflavour; but the plant being neither in blossom nor bearing fruit, itwas impossible to pronounce, whether it were the true cinnamon, orthat inferior kind termed cassia. The leaf, however, correspondedwith the description given of the true cinnamon, by Linnaeus.We gathered strawberries and raspberries in the fields here, andfound peach trees in great abundance, allladen with fruit.I cannot quit Murichom, without taking notice of one remarkableantiquity ; it was an old Avoman, who was almost deprived of allher strength and faculties, by age. I never beheld in a human beingmarks of age so strong: she sat in the sun, all day; the skin of herface was drawn into innumerable wrinkles ;her arms were almost entirelydevoid of flesh, the bones being covered with a skin, which byH