called by the Tartars Barantola, Bootan, or Tungus, and by the Chinese Tsung, is situated between 26° and 39° north latitude; and, according to Abbé Groffier, is reckoned to be 640 leagues from east to west, and 650 from north to south. It is bounded on the north by the country of the Mongols and the desert of Kohi; on the east by China; on the west by Hindostan, and on the south by the same country and the kingdom of Ava. In the valleys lying between the lower mountains are many tribes of Indian people; and a dispute happening between the heirs of one of the rajahs or petty princes, one party called to their assistance the Boutsans, and the other the British. The latter prevailed; and the fame of British valour being carried to the court of Tibet, the Teefoo-Lama, who ruled the state under the Delai-Lama, at that time in his minority, sent a deputation to Bengal, dehiring peace for the prince who had been engaged in war with the British. This was readily granted by the governor; and Mr Bogle was sent ambassador to the court of Tibet, where he resided several months; and after an absence of a year and a quarter, returned to Calcutta. The account of this gentleman's expedition hath not been published by himself; but from Mr Stewart's letter to Sir John Pringle, published in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. 67, we learn the following particulars, collected from his papers.

"Mr Bogle divides the territories of the Delai-Lama into two different parts. That which lies immediately contiguous to Bengal, and which is called by the inhabitants Doopo, he distinguishes by the name of Bootan; and the other, which extends to the northward as far as the frontiers of Tartary, called by the natives Pu, he styles Tibet. Bootan is ruled by the Dah Teriah, or Deb Rajah. It is a country of steep and inaccessible mountains, whose summits are crowned with eternal snow; they are intersected with deep valleys, through which pour numberless torrents that increase in their course, and at last, gaining the plains, lose themselves in the great rivers of Bengal. These mountains are covered down their sides with forests of stately trees of various sorts; some (such as pines, &c.) which are known in Europe; others, such as are peculiar to the country and climate. The valleys and sides of the hills which admit of cultivation are not unfruitful, but produce crops of wheat, barley, and rice. The inhabitants are a stout and warlike people, of a copper complexion, in size rather above..." above the middle European stature, hasty and quarrelsome in their temper, and addicted to the use of spirituous liquors; but honest in their dealings, robbery by violence being almost unknown among them. The chief city is Taffey Sedain situated on the Patchoo. Tibet begins properly from the top of the great ridge of the Caucasus, and extends from thence in breadth to the confines of Great Tartary, and perhaps to some of the dominions of the Russian empire. The woods, which everywhere cover the mountains in Boutan, are here totally unknown; and, except a few straggling trees near the villages, nothing of the sort be seen. The climate is extremely severe and rude. At Chamraning, where he wintered, although it be in latitude 31° 30', only 8° to the northward of Calcutta, he often found the thermometer in his room at 29° by Fahrenheit's scale; and in the middle of April the standing waters were all frozen, and heavy showers of snow perpetually fell. This, no doubt, must be owing to the great elevation of the country, and to the vast frozen space over which the north wind blows uninterruptedly from the pole, through the vast deserts of Siberia and Tartary, till it is stopped by this formidable wall.

"The Tibetans are of a smaller size than their southern neighbours, and of a less robust make. Their complexions are also fairer, and many of them have even a ruddiness in their countenances unknown in the other climates of the east. Those whom Mr Bogle saw at Calcutta appeared to have quite the Tartar face; they are of a mild and cheerful temper; the higher ranks are polite and entertaining in conversation, in which they never mix either flattered compliments or flattery. The common people, both in Boutan and Tibet, are clothed in coarse woollen stuffs of their own manufacture, lined with such skins as they can procure: but the better orders of men are dressed in European cloth, or China silk, lined with the finest Siberian furs. The use of linen is totally unknown among them. The chief food of the inhabitants is the milk of their cattle, prepared into cheese, butter, or mixed with the flour of a coarse barley or pease, the only grain which their soil produces; and even these articles are in a scanty proportion: but they are furnished with rice and wheat from Bengal and other countries in their neighbourhood. They also are supplied with fish from the rivers in their own and the neighbouring provinces, salted and sent into the anterior parts. They have no want of animal food from the cattle, sheep, and hogs, which are raised on their hills; and are not destitute of game. They have a singular method of preparing their mutton, by exposing the carcase entire, after the bowels are taken out, to the sun and bleak northern winds which blow in the months of August and September, without frost, and to dry up the juices and parch the skin, that the meat will keep uncorrupted for the year round. This they generally eat raw, without any other preparation.

"The religion and political constitution of this country, which are intimately blended together, would make a considerable chapter in its history. It suffices to say, that at present, and ever since the expulsion of the Eluth Tartars, the kingdom of Tibet is regarded as depending on the empire of China, which they call Cathay; and there actually reside two mandarins, with a garrison of a thousand Chinese, at Lahastha the capital, to support the government; but their power does not extend far: and in fact the Lama, whose empire is founded on the surest grounds, personal affection and religious reverence, governs every thing internally with unbounded authority. Every body knows that the Delai Lama is the great object of adoration for the various tribes of heathen Tartars, who roam through the vast tract of continent which stretches from the banks of the Volga to Corea on the sea of Japan, the most extensive religious dominion, perhaps, on the face of the globe. See LAMA.

"It is an old notion, that the religion of Tibet is a corrupted Christianity: and even Father Dideferri, a Jesuit (but not of the Chinese mission) who visited the country about the beginning of this century, thinks he can resolve all their mysteries into ours; and affirms, with a truly mystical penetration, that they have certainly a good notion of the Trinity, since in their address to the Deity, they say as often konciok-ek in the plural as konciok in the singular, and with their rotearies pronounce these words, on, ha, hum. The truth is, that the religion of Tibet, from whatever source it sprung, is pure and simple in its source, conveying very exalted notions of the Deity, with no contemptible system of morality: but in its progress it has been greatly altered and corrupted by the inventions of worldly men; a fate we can hardly regret in a system of error, since we know that that of truth has been subject to the same. Polyamy, at least in the sense we commonly receive the word, is not in practice among them; but it exists in a manner still more repugnant to European ideas; for there is a plurality of husbands, which is firmly established and highly respected there. In a country where the means of subsisting a family are not easily found, it seems not impolitic to allow a set of brothers to agree in raising one, which is to be maintained by their joint efforts. In short, it is usual in Tibet for the brothers in the family to have a wife in common, and they generally live in great harmony and comfort with her; but not sometimes little differences will arise (as may happen in families constituted upon different principles), an instance of which Mr Bogle mentions in the case of a modest and virtuous lady, the wife of half a dozen of the Teeffoo Lama's nephews, who complained to the uncle that the two youngest of her husbands did not furnish that share of love and benevolence to the common flock which duty and religion required of them. In short, however strange this custom may appear to us, it is an undoubted fact that it prevails in Tibet.

"The manner of bestowing their dead is also singular; they neither put them in the ground like the Europeans, nor burn them like the Hindoos; but expose them on the bleak pinnacle of some neighbouring mountain, to be devoured by wild beasts and birds of prey, or waited away by time and the vicissitudes of the weather in which they lie. The mangled carcases and bleached bones lie scattered about; and amidst this scene of horror, some miserable old wretch, man or woman, lost to all feelings but those of superstition, generally sets up an abode, to perform the dismal office of receiving the bodies, assigning each a place, and gathering up the remains when too widely dispersed."

To the account of Tibet which we have given from the communications of Mr Bogle, we may add the information which we have obtained from a later traveller, Mr Saunders, at Boglepoor in Bengal, who made a journey into Tibet in the year 1783. His observations chiefly respect the natural productions and diseases of the country.

The plants which Mr Saunders found were almost all European plants, a great number of them being natives of Britain. From the appearance of the hills he concludes that they must contain many ores of metal and pyrites. There are inexhaustible quantities of Tincal (ice that article), and rock salt is plentiful; gold-dust is found in great quantities in the beds of rivers, and sometimes in large masses, lumps, and irregular veins; lead, cinnabar containing a large proportion of quicksilver, copper, and iron, he thinks, might easily be procured. But the inhabitants of Tibet have no better fuel than the dung of animals. A coal mine mine would be a valuable discovery. We are told, that in some parts of China bordering on Tibet coal is found and used as fuel.

It is remarkable that the same disease prevails at the foot of the mountains of Tibet as in Switzerland at the foot of the Alps, a glandular swelling in the throat commonly called goitre. This disease has been ascribed to the use of snow-water, which flows down streams from the mountains in both countries. But in many countries where snow-water is abundant it does not prevail, and in other places far remote from snow it is not unfrequent, as in Sumatra. Mr Saunders thinks that it arises from the air peculiar to the vicinity of certain mountains; and finding the vegetable productions of the mountains of Tibet the same with those of the Alps, that they also may have their influence. An analysis of the water where this disease prevails might throw some light on the subject. We have heard it attributed to the impregnation of water with tufa. This very extraordinary disease has been little attended to, from obvious reasons; it is unaccompanied with pain, seldom fatal, and generally confined to the poorer sort of people. The tumor is unfrightly, and grows to a troublesome size, being often as large as a person's head. It is certainly not exaggerating to say, that one in five of the Rungpore district, and country of Bootan, has the disease.

As those who labour most, and are the least protected from the changes of weather, are most subject to the disease, we universally find it in Bootan more common with the women than men. It generally appears in Bootan at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and in Bengal at the age of eleven or twelve; so that in both countries the disease shows itself about the age of puberty. I do not believe this disease has ever been removed, though a mercurial course seemed to check its progress, but did not prevent its advance after intermitting the use of mercury. An attention to the primary cause will first lead to a proper method of treating the disease; a change of situation for a short while, at that particular period when it appears, might be the means of preventing it.

The venereal disease is not uncommon in Tibet; and what will perhaps surprize the physician, the inhabitants are acquainted with the effects of mercury, and with a method of preparing it so as to render it a safe and efficacious remedy. They know how to deprive it of its metallic form by mixing it with alum, nitre, and vermillion, and exposing it to a certain degree of heat, which they judge of by weighing the fuel.

The language spoken in Tibet is different from that of the Tartars. The astronomers are acquainted with the motion of the heavenly bodies, and able to calculate eclipses; but the lamas are generally ignorant; few of them can read, much less understand their ancient books.