It is impossible to find words to express adequately the wonderful beauty and variety of scenery I met with during my journeys, the grandeur of the magnificent snow peaks, and the picturesqueness and charm of the many wonderful jongs, or forts, and other buildings I came across; but I hope my photographs may give my readers some idea of what I saw.

A SPLENDID RACE

The Bhutanese are fine, tall, well-developed men, with an open, honest cast of face, and the women are comely, clean, and well dressed and excellent housekeepers and managers. Their religion is Buddhism and their language a dialect of Tibetan. The population of Bhutan is about 400,000.

My experience of the people is that they are universally polite, civil, and clean, and during the whole time I spent in the country I only saw one drunken man. I had every opportunity of judg ing, as I entered numerous houses and temples in all parts of the country, and invariably found them clean and tidy. In many of the houses the floors were washed and polished, and the refreshments they hospitably pressed on me were served in spotlessly clean dishes.

The clothes of the higher officials were always immaculate, their brocades and silks fresh and unstained in any way, and even the coolies were a great contrast to the usual Tibetan or Darjeeling coolie.

The amount of labor expended on their irrigation channels shows that they are an industrious and ingenious people (see pages 401 and 428). Their houses are all large and substantially built.

In the courtyards we found retainers busily occupied in various trades, while the women of the household spin and weave and make clothes for the men-folk in addition to their ordinary duties. A great part of the country is under cultivation, and they raise sufficient crops to support the whole population, including the lamas, who are a great burden to the State (see also page 394).

The men were cheery and jovial, always ready, at the end of a day's march, when we had settled into camp, for a

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game at quoits, shooting at a target with arrows, jumping, etc. They are fond of their beer, but there is no great harm in that, and small wonder they are thirsty after toiling up the hills with their loads. I have drunk many a choonga (bamboo mug) full of the mild ale myself and been none the worse for it.

WHAT BHUTAN IS LIKE

Bhutan lies between 26° 30′ and 28° 30′ north latitude and 88° 45′ and 92° 15′ east longitude, and is bounded by British India on the south, the native state of Tawang, subject to Tibet, on the east, Tibet on the north, and Sikkim and the British district of Darjeeling on the west.

The mountain system may be most easily described as a series of parallel ranges running approximately in a southerly direction from the main ridge of the Himalayan range, where the peaks attain altitudes up to 24,000 and 25,000 feet. The principal rivers are the Am-mochu, Wang-chu, Mo-chu, and Kuru, or Lobrak-chu.

In climate it varies enormously from the ice and snow of the higher altitudes to the damp, overpowering heat in the deep valleys, and in vegetation from the magnificent grazing grounds in the higher regions, covered with alpine flowers, surrounded by snow peaks, high pine forests, rhododendrons, magnolias, chestnuts, and oaks, to luxuriant tropical palms, ferns, and bamboos.

On my second journey I came across quantities of Cypripedium fairianum growing in masses on the magnesium limestone hills. This is the orchid of which one specimen reached England about 1860 in a consignment sent from Sikkim by Sir Joseph Hooker, but had since become extinct, and for which $5,000 was offered by orchid-growers. I had been on the lookout for it for several years, and now, when I did find it, I was just too late, as it had been discovered during the survey of the Am-mo-chu Valley a few months before.

There are magnificent forests of Pinus excelsa, Abies brunoniana, and silver fir, many of the trees exceeding in size anything I have ever seen. If these forests, with the water power at hand on all sides,

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were properly worked, they ought to supply all the tea districts in India with boxes, and would then soon bring in some of the much-needed revenue to Bhutan; but European capital and supervision are absolutely necessary or otherwise the forests will be destroyed.

In eastern Bhutan the hills are densely clothed with forests, but with practically no population, as it is too fever-stricken to allow of any one living there. They are, however, the haunt of almost every kind of wild animal elephant, rhino, tiger, leopard, bison, mythun, sambur, cheetah, hog-deer, barking deer, etc. The river beds are full of runs leading to the various salt-licks which occur in the hills.

On one of my visits in this section a magnificent tusker went up the valley ahead of me, and Ugyen Kazi, who pitched his camp higher up the valley, was obliged to move his tents, owing to the numbers of wild elephants making it too unpleasant for him to stay.

While I was examining some coal deposits a large tigress, with her cub, walked down the valley, and on my return I found her pugs (footprints), with the little one's pug inside one of her own. It is an ideal place for shooting, but not easy to follow game, owing to the extreme steepness of the sandstone cliffs. The elephant in its wild state can go over or down nearly anything, and the tusker I mentioned I found had gone up a precipice 30 feet high at an angle very little short of perpendicular.

A TORRENT FROZEN SOLID IN ONE NIGHT

My second journey opened with an experience of what bad weather can be at these altitudes, for on leaving Chumbi early in December we came upon an exceptionally severe blizzard. The wind rapidly became a veritable hurricane and the temperature dropped to 26° Fahrenheit. A roaring torrent close to our halting place, which at first kept us awake, gradually became more and more silent as the cold increased, and by morning it was frozen solid (see page 366).

I had marched on to a small bungalow at a place called Goutsa, where although everything, even the tea and milk, froze solid, I could at least have a fire and

some protection from the storm; but two of my party had camped out in the hope of shooting a "shau" (Cervus sinencis), news of which had been brought in. The stag was reported to have a magnificent. head, and as I have seen specimens with antlers measuring 64 inches, he was a trophy worth trying for. They, however, saw nothing of him and, greatly to my relief, came in the next day none the worse for their rough experience.

The following morning was brilliant and we went on to Phari, where there is a fine old weather-beaten fort built by the Tibetans, the headquarters of a jongpen, a Tibetan military official. The town is very dirty, the dirtiest I have come across, and the people living in it are also dirty; but it is difficult to keep clean at an elevation of over 15,000 feet, in such a climate, with no fuel except vak's dung, with its accompaniment of acrid smoke.

We had now reached Bhutan and, crossing the Temo-la (16,500 feet), we entered it in glorious weather. We traveled through wonderful scenery, crossing and recrossing torrents and surrounded by pine forests.

THE CASTLE OF Dug-gye

The first place of interest we came to was Dug-gye Jong (see page 368), a fort built to protect this route from a possible raid by Tibet. The fort is magnificently situated on a projecting spur in the middle of the valley, with high snow peaks on either side and lovely views looking down the valley. The jongpen (or general) had sent out gaily caparisoned mules to meet us.

I cannot describe Dug-gye better than Captain Turner, who had visited it 120 years before; the scene does not seem to have altered in the least.

"The approach to the only entrance is defended by three round towers, placed between the castle and the foot of the hill and connected together by a double wall, so that a safe communication between them is preserved even in times of the greatest peril. Around each of these towers, near the top, a broad ledge projects, the edges of which are fortified by a mud wall, with loop-holes adapted to