to be overcome. Corduroy itself is no luxurious floor.
Your beast will like it only a little better than the quagmire
he has scrambled through. The wood is slippery,
and though the ribbing of the road prevents a long slide
it ensures a short one at almost every step.
The path on the bare mountain-side, bad as it was,
is better than that which threads the close pine trunks
of Champi-tang. Torrential rain may wash a path
away, but nothing so entirely ruins a made track as the
drip from trees. There is something about the slow
persistence that does harm which even a water-spout
could not compass. And if by this time you have any
spirit of curiosity left in you, you may notice that the
corduroy work upon the road coincides with those very
parts, which at the first blush you might consider most
protected by foliage overhead. It is getting late now
in the afternoon, and you will thank your good fortune
in having as companions unfeeling men who made
you rise at five. The worst is over, and you can stumble
along at more than two miles an hour. The hill-sides
opposite become clothed with forestry, and after an
hour or two you will find yourself before the blazing
hearth of the luxurious bungalow at Champi-tang.
On the following day, you go down to Chumbi.
You make your way along a greasy path, now passing
underneath a lonely little shrine, half hidden by the
trees, now emerging among the bared, charred trunks
of the pine army which was burnt three years ago.
Doubling the spurs again and again, you make your
way at a fairly level altitude, until a Bhutia-tent marks
the division between the official main road by the
Kag-ue monastery, and the short cut over the hills
to Chema. Down the first you elect to go. The road
The interior of the Kag-u6 Monastery above Rinchengong.