tiger, and other ferocious animals rushed out suddenly upon the unwary traveller. Not a soul appeared to cheer the eye, or offer provisions for money. All around was stillness and utter desolation. And at night, when they desired to taste a little repose, it was necessary to kindle an immense fire, and heap upon it large quantities of green reeds, which, by the crackling and hissing noise which they made in burning, might frighten away the wild beasts.
This pestilential desert occupied him twenty days in crossing, after which human dwellings, and other signs of life, appeared. The manners of the people among whom he now found himself were remarkably obscene and preposterous. Improving upon the superstitious libertinism of the ancient Babylonians, who sacrificed the modesty of their wives and daughters in the temple of Astarte once in their lives, these Tibetians invariably prostituted their young women to all strangers and travellers who passed through their country, and made it a point of honour never to marry a woman until she could exhibit numerous tokens of her incontinence. Thieving, like want of chastity, was among them no crime; and, although they had begun to cultivate the earth, they still derived their principal means of subsistence from the chase. Their clothing was suitable to their manners, consisting of the skins of wild beasts, or of a kind of coarse hempen garment, less comfortable, perhaps, and still more uncouth to sight. Though subject to China, as it is to this day, the paper money, current through all other parts of the empire, was not in use here; nor had they any better instrument of exchange than small pieces of coral, though their mountains abounded with mines of the precious metals, while gold was rolled down among mud and pebbles through the beds of their torrents. Necklaces of coral adorned the persons of their women and their gods, their earthly and
