212 RUSSIAN EMBASSY TO CHINA book iii
which
few of them escape. They know nothing of war, and have no one to fear
but the Great Mogul. But his territory, which lies to the south of
them, is, as I have said, a country of high mountains and narrow passes
; on the north there is nothing but forests and almost perpetual snow,
and both on the east and west there are vast deserts where one finds
nothing but bitter water ; and whatever inhabited country there is
belongs to Rajas who have not much power.
There is apparently a silver mine in the Kingdom of Bhutan,1 for
the King coins pieces of the value of rupees. These pieces are not
round but octagonal, and there are characters on them which are neither
Indian nor Chinese. Nevertheless, the merchants of Bhutan, who told me
at Patna of all these things, could not inform me where the mine was,
and as for gold the little they have of it is brought to them by the
merchants who come from the east.
This
is all that I have been able to learn concerning the Kingdom of Bhutan,
beyond which the ambassadors passed whom the Duke of Moscovie sent to
China in the year 1659. They passed through the length of Great Tartary
to the north of Bhutan, and arrived at the court of the King of China
with considerable presents. They were some of the most distinguished
nobles of Moscovie, and were at first very well received. But when it
became necessary for them to salute the King—;the custom being to
prostrate oneself three times on the ground—they would not consent to
do so, saying that they would salute according to their own method, and
in the manner that they saluted their own Emperor, who was as great and
as powerful as he of China. As they remained firm in this resolution
they had no audience,
1
This is extremely probable; but it is inconsistent with our author's
own statement on p. 128 that there are no silver mines in Asia except
in Japan. Ainslie (Materia Medica, vol. i. 563) gives a number
of references to authorities on the subject. Silver mines in the
Patkai country, between Assam and Upper Burma, have been recently
described by Colonel Woodthorpe. (See Pro. Oeogl. Soc, January
1887.) A number of mines where argentiferous ores occur in India will
be found enumerated in the chapter on silver in the Economic Geology of India. On Tibetan gold mines see N. Elias & E. D. Ross, Hist, of the Moghuls of Central Asia, 409, 411 f.
