SIKHIM AND BHUTAN
habits after having spent a very happy twenty years amongst them with friends in every degree, from the Maharaja himself to some of the humblest coolies.
They now profess Buddhism and are generally very devotional, although they originally worshipped the spirits of the mountains, rivers and forests, a natural outcome of their surroundings. Leading solitary, isolated lives, everything would tend to foster such beliefs in a country where the mighty snows appear immortal, the raging torrents irresistible, as though impelled by some unseen avenging spirit, combined with the curious shapes taken by everything when veiled in grey mist and the ghostlike and awesome forms to be met in the shadows of the damp dripping forests full of phosphorescent stumps of old trees scattered round in strange contortions, with the accompaniment of the weird sound of the wind, as it moans round some projecting crag or through some giant tree, and where even the melancholy cry of the birds is pitched in a minor key, all must encourage such beliefs and leave a deep impression on the character of the people who live amidst it.
A few Lepcha families are to be found in the lower valleys of Western Bhutan, and also in Eastern Nepal, where they apparently settled at the time they came to Sikhim.
The next race to enter Sikhim, probably long before the time of the accession of the Sikhim Rajas, were the Bhuteas who are of Tibetan origin and who spread at the same time into Bhutan. In Sikhim they number a little over 6000 and are more traders and herdsmen than agriculturists, although they cultivate small areas round their houses. They are for the most part of good physique, big and sturdy with a Mongolian type of features, and are not so reserved or so fond of isolation as the Lepchas. Their houses are substantially built at elevations always above 4000 feet and never in the hot steamy valleys. The whole family, sons and sons' wives, live together under one roof in patriarchal fashion, instead of each man having his own
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