All this time our friends, the sons of the prince, the Gigen and Siya, who were in the reception chamber, made signs to us on their fingers, laughed, and played all sorts of childish tricks whenever their father's attention was turned another way. The relations of the young princes to their father appeared to be of the most servile character; they were terribly afraid of him, and obeyed all his wishes unhesitatingly. The princes also kept up an espionage, and were not ashamed even in our presence to whisper to the lamas in attendance all kinds of tittle-tattle and gossip about their father and brother; towards their inferiors they behaved in the most despotic manner.
Our audience lasted about an hour. On taking leave the prince gave the Cossack interpreter twenty lans (5l.), and permitted us to hunt in the neighbouring mountains. Thither we proceeded the following day, pitching our tent at the summit of a pass near the axis of the main range. Our camels remained in the town, in the charge of Sordji and the Cossack, who was again taken ill more seriously than before; the chief cause of his malady was home-sickness. The prince sent us some guides and another lama, probably to act as a spy on our movements.
The mountains to which we now removed are,
to the Asiatic mind an enemy who appears beneath the walls of a hostile city and does not destroy it, is no victor, but rather the conquered party. The Chinese Government took advantage of this circumstance to spread the report among their faithful subjects of their victory over the Europeans. [Yet they can scarcely have suppressed the knowledge of the destruction of the emperor's summer-palace; and that just act of the English chiefs, which raised so unreasonable a clamour, finds in the circumstances here stated a new justification. — Y.]
