SIKHIM AND BHUTAN
were grown, but the potatoes planted by Bogle had failed. The flower garden contained hollyhocks, sunflowers, African marigolds, nasturtiums, poppies, larkspurs, and roses. At one entertainment he describes Turner had strawberries for tea, and a bull-fight closed the day’s amusements. He found the monasteries the educational centres of the country. Boys were taken from the villages and educated there, and in families containing more than four boys it was obligatory to dedicate one of them to the order. The monastery was the channel to public office, and, in fact, nearly all the Government officials were chosen from men who had been trained in one. Marriage was an obstacle to any rise in rank, and but few of the official class were married; and this practice of celibacy, common to the priestly and governing classes—to the one from motives of religion, and to the other from motives of self-interest—formed a natural bar to the increase of population.
Neither from the narrative of his Mission nor from his report of it to Warren Hastings can it be gathered that Turner was charged with any particular political business in Bhutan, but Eden says that it appears from the proceedings of the Collector of Rangpur of June 11, 1789, that he was instructed to cede to Bhutan the district of Falakata, as the result, it may be presumed, of Hamilton’s report. The only matter of any political interest, so far as Bhutan is concerned, to be found in his report, dated March 2, 1784, of the results of his Mission is the following opinion he records about trade relations with Bhutan:
“The regulations for carrying on the commerce of the Company through the dominions of Bhutan by means of the agency of native merchants were settled by the treaty entered into by Mr. Bogle in the year 1775. The Deb Raja having acknowledged to me the validity of that treaty, it became unnecessary to enter into another, since no new privileges and immunities appear to be requisite until the commerce can be established on a different footing
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