Family life presents some curious features.  In the disposal in marriage of a girl, her eldest brother has more ‘say’ than the parents.  The eldest son brings home the bride to his father’s house, but at a given age the old people are ‘shelved,’ i.e. they retire to a small house, which may be termed a ‘jointure house,’ and the eldest son assumes the patrimony and the rule of affairs.  I have not met with a similar custom anywhere in the East.  It is difficult to speak of Tibetan life, with all its affection and jollity, as ’family life,’ for Buddhism, which enjoins monastic life, and usually celibacy along with it, on eleven thousand out of a total population of a hundred and twenty thousand, farther restrains the increase of population within the limits of sustenance by inculcating and rigidly upholding the system of polyandry, permitting marriage only to the eldest son, the heir of the land, while the bride accepts all his brothers as inferior or subordinate husbands, thus attaching the whole family to the soil and family roof-tree, the children being regarded legally as the property of the eldest son, who is addressed by them as ‘Big Father,’ his brothers receiving the title of ’Little Father.’  The resolute determination, on economic as well as religious grounds, not to abandon this ancient custom, is the most formidable obstacle in the way of the reception of Christianity by the Tibetans.  The women cling to it.  They say, ’We have three or four men to help us instead of one,’ and sneer at the dulness and monotony of European monogamous life!  A woman said to me, ’If I had only one husband, and he died, I should be a widow; if I have two or three I am never a widow!’ The word ‘widow’ is with them a term of reproach, and is applied abusively to animals and men.  Children are brought up to be very obedient to fathers and mother, and to take great care of little ones and cattle.  Parental affection is strong.  Husbands and wives beat each other, but separation usually follows a violent outbreak of this kind.  It is the custom for the men and women of a village to assemble when a bride enters the house of her husbands, each of them presenting her with three rupees.  The Tibetan wife, far from spending these gifts on personal adornment, looks ahead, contemplating possible contingencies, and immediately hires a field, the produce of which is her own, and which accumulates year after year in a separate granary, so that she may not be portionless in case she leaves her husband!

It was impossible not to become attached to the Nubra people, we lived so completely among them, and met with such unbounded goodwill.  Feasts were given in our honour, every gonpo was open to us, monkish blasts on colossal horns brayed out welcomes, and while nothing could exceed the helpfulness and alacrity of kindness shown by all, there was not a thought or suggestion of backsheesh.  The men of the villages always sat by our camp-fires at night, friendly