ABSTRACT
When, on the sixteenth of April, 1721, in Lhasá, the Capuchin Fathers gave me the Decree by which the Holy Congregation of Propaganda bestowed on them the exclusive right to the Mission in the Kingdom of Thibet, I immediately obeyed, and left Lhasá on the twenty-eighth with the Reverend Father Giuseppe Felice from Morro of Jesi, Capuchin Preacher and Apostolic Missionary to Thibet. The usual road from Lhasá to Kutti passes through the cities of Giegazzè and Secchià [Shigatse and Sakya], mentioned in my description of Third Thibet. But on account of the disturbed state of the country owing to the change of Government, we avoided Giegazzè and went by the city of Ghiangh-ze [Gyantse], 1 so to my sorrow I did not meet the Very Reverend Father Felice of Montecchio, the Capuchin Ex-Prefect, Preacher and Apostolic Missionary to Thibet, who had stopped at Bengalá and Pattná from 1708 until 1721, and was now on his way to Lhasá. During the journey we crossed the high and difficult mountain called Langùr. Everyone suffers from violent headache, oppression in the chest and shortness of breath during the ascent, and often from fever, as happened to me. Although it was nearly the end of May there was deep snow, the cold was intense and the wind so penetrating that, although I was wrapped in woollen rugs, my lungs and heart were so affected that I thought my end was near. Many people chew roasted rice, cloves, cinnamon, Indian nuts, here called Sopari, and Arecca [Areca nuts], by the Portuguese and others in India. As the mountain cannot be crossed in one day, there is a large house for the use of travellers. But the difficulty of breathing is so great that many cannot remain indoors and are obliged to sleep outside. Only a short time before our passage, an aged Armenian merchant who was on his way to Lhasá died in this place in one night. All these ills cease when Mount Langùr has been left behind. Many believe such discomforts are caused by exhalations from some minerals in the bowels of the mountain, but as until now no trace of these minerals has been discovered, I am inclined to think the keen, penetrating air is to blame; I am the more persuaded of this because my chest and breathing became worse when I met the wind on the top of Langùr, and also because many people were more affected inside the house where the air is made still thinner by the fire lit against the cold, than when sleeping in the open air. It would have been the reverse had the illness been caused by exhalations from minerals or pestilential vapours from the earth. 2
