MY FIRST MISSION TO BHUTAN
foliage giving the most vivid and delicate colouring to the scene. In every direction we could see evidences of better cultivation and more prosperity than in any valley we had hitherto traversed. Unfortunately the inhabitants are reputed to be very quarrelsome, and constant litigation, which means heavy bribes to the officials called in to decide their cases, has tended to keep the villagers more impoverished than they ought to be.
All night there was a continuous thunderstorm to the west, and we suffered from a heavy rainfall, but apart from this our camp was very comfortable, as sites had been levelled for our tents and fine mats put down, sheds erected for our followers, and—the greatest comfort of all—cows had been brought to camp, so we had fresh and clean milk.
The rain in the night had quite spoilt the surface of the road for the next day’s march, and what would otherwise have been a pleasant, easy, and pretty ride through fine forests became a hard struggle for man and beast to keep their footing on the clayey soil. It took me one hour, and forty minutes to get to the top of the Pele-la (11,100 feet). Then it began to rain, and a heavy fog coming on as well, we saw little and fared badly. It was very unlucky, as the country was a succession of wide, open glades, affording most excellent grazing stations. The road, too, under ordinary circumstances would have been good, and as it was showed signs of having been well aligned; portions had been paved, and other soft places corduroyed with flat timber. Another hour and a half saw us at our camp on a flat just below the village of Rokubi (9400 feet), about forty feet above the Siche-chhu, where again excellent huts had been built, a great comfort in the rain and raw cold.
Next day’s march lay through beautiful country, but was marred by rain and mist, and we reached camp wearied out by an eighteen miles’ march under such disagreeable conditions. A very good road led us gradually down from Rokubi through very pretty scenery to Chandenbi, passing on the way a side valley through which was a direct but
155
