esorts in the
neighbourhood of Chumbi as fashionable as Homburg or Salsomaggiore;
mixed bathing is the rule, without costumes. These healthy folk are not
morbidly conscious of sex. The springs contain sulphur and iron, and
are undoubtedly efficacious. Where they are not hot enough, the Tomos
bake large boulders in the ashes of a log fire, and roll them into the
water to increase the temperature.

Tomos and Tibetans are fond of smoking. They dry the leaves of the wild
rhubarb, and mix them with tobacco leaves. The mixture is called
_dopta_, and was the favourite blend of the country. Now hundreds of
thousands of cheap American cigarettes are being introduced, and a
lucrative tobacco-trade has sprung up. Boxes of ten, which are sold at a
pice in Darjeeling, fetch an anna at Chumbi, and two annas at Phari.
Sahibs smoke them, sepoys smoke them, drivers and followers smoke them,
and the Tomo coolies smoke nothing else. Tibetan children of three
appreciate them hugely, and the road from Phari to Rungpo is literally
strewn with the empty boxes.

There is a considerable Chinese element in the Chumbi Valley--a frontier
officer, with the local rank of the Fourth Button, a colonel, clerks of
the Customs House, and troops numbering from one to two hundred. These,
of course, were not in evidence when we occupied the valley in December.
The Chinese are not accompanied by their wives, but take to themselves
women of the country, whose offspring people the so-called Chinese
villages. The pure Chinaman does not remain in the country after his
term of office. Life at Chumbi is the most tedious exile to him, and he
looks down on the Tomos as barbarous savages. He is as unhappy as a
Frenchman in Tonquin, cut off from all the diversions of social and
intellectual life. The frontier officer at Bibi-thang told me that he
had brought his wife with him, and the poor lady had never left the
house, but cried incessantly for China and civilization. Yet to the
uninitiated the Chinese villages of Gob-sorg and Bibi-thang might have
been taken from the far East and plumped down on the Indian frontier.
There is the same far-Eastern smell, the same doss-house, the same
hanging lamps, the same red lucky paper over the lintels of the doors,
and the same red and green abortions on the walls.

Much has been written and duly contradicted about the fertility of the
Chumbi Valley. If one does not expect orange-groves and rice-fields at
12,000 feet, it must