generally found it answer better to call them together and reason
quietly with them, submitting any point in dispute to an arbitration
of parties mutually selected.

Nearly all the rivers in Nepaul are formed principally from the
melting of the snow on the higher ranges. A vast body of water
descends annually into the plains from the natural surface drainage of
the country, but the melting of the snows is the main source of the
river system. Many of the hill streams, and it is particularly
observable at some seasons in the Koosee, have a regular daily rise
and fall. In the early morning you can often ford a branch of the
river, which by midday has become a swiftly-rolling torrent, filling
the channel from bank to bank. The water is intensely cold, and few or
no fish are to be found in the mountain streams of Nepaul. When the
Nepaulese come down to the plains on business, pleasure, or pilgrimage
their great treat is a mighty banquet of fish. For two or three
_annas_ a fish of several pounds weight can easily be purchased. They
revel on this unwonted fare, eating to repletion, and very frequently
making themselves ill in consequence. When Jung Bahadur came down
through Chumparun to attend the _durbar_ of the lamented Earl Mayo,
cholera broke out in his camp, brought on simply by the enormous
quantities of fish, often not very fresh or wholesome, which his
guards and camp followers consumed.

Large quantities of dried fish are sent up to Nepaul, and exchanged
for rice and other grain, or horns, hides, and blankets. The
fish-drying is done very simply in the sun. It is generally left till
it is half putrid and taints the air for miles. The sweltering,
half-rotting mass, packed in filthy bags, and slung on ponies or
bullocks, is sent over the frontier to some village bazaar in Nepaul.
The track of a consignment of this horrible filth can be recognised
from very far away. The perfume hovers on the road, and as you are
riding up and get the first sniff of the putrid odour, you know at
once that the Nepaulese market is being recruited by a _fresh_
accession of very _stale_ fish. If the taste is at all equal to the
smell, the rankest witches broth ever brewed in reeking cauldron would
probably be preferable. Over the frontier there seems to be few roads,
merely bullock tracks. Most of the transporting of goods is done by
bullocks, and intercommunication must be slow and costly. I believe
that near Katmandoo, the capital, the