lgrimage. Bhutan is perhaps
the least-known country in Asia, the last that has kept its cherished
seclusion since Anglo-Indian troops burst the barrier of Tibet and
flaunted the Union Jack in the streets of the fabled city of Lhassa. But
Bhutan is still a secret, a mysterious, land. Only a few British Envoys,
from Bogle in the latter half of the 18th Century to Claude White and
Bell in the beginning of this, and their companions, had intruded on its
privacy before Colonel Dermot. So that for the lovers it had all the
fascination of the unknown.

Sometimes, among the ice-clad peaks of the giant ranges of the
Himalayas, they crossed snowy passes fourteen thousand feet above the
sea, and did not neglect to throw a stone upon the _obos_--the cairns
that pious and superstitious travellers erect to propitiate the spirits
of the passes. Sometimes the path led under beautiful cliffs of pure
white crystalline limestone that in the brilliant sunlight shone like
the finest marble. Often they journeyed through a lovely land of
gently-sloping hills, of grassy uplands, of deep valleys giving
delightful vistas of snow-clad mountains far away. They walked through
pinewoods, through forests of maple, silver fir, and larch, and miles of
huge bushes of flowering rhododendrons. They toiled up a rough and stony
track over bare and desolate land that was an old moraine and under
moraine terraces one above another, forming giant spurs of the rugged
hills. There were dark and fearsome ravines, so deep that they could
scarcely hear the roar of the foaming torrents rushing among the great
boulders below as they crossed on swaying suspension bridges of iron
chains. These had been built hundreds of years before by long-forgotten
Chinese engineers. Three chains on one level supported the bamboo or
plank footway, while one on either side served as a hand-rail, and a
bamboo or grass lattice-work between them and the roadbearers hid from
sight the deep gorge below. Often these bridges were only of ropes of
twisted withes or grass and swung and swayed in terrifying fashion with
the motion of the traveller. There were broad rivers over the eddying,
swirling waters of which strong cantilever bridges of stout wooden beams
were pushed out from the steep banks.

Truly a beautiful land Bhutan, at its loveliest perhaps in spring, when
the hills and upland meadows where the yaks graze, ten thousand feet
above the sea, blaze with the mingled colours of anemone