AN EXPLORATION OF EASTERN BHUTAN
and is used as a temporary mart in the cold weather, but at this time of the year it is merely a collection of deserted thatched huts in the midst of a sea of grass, and by no means healthy, so instead of halting there I pushed on up the hills, beyond the fever zone. I had visited Dorunga a few months before in the cold weather, in the company of Sir Ugyen Wang-chuk, the Tongsa Penlop, and it had then presented a very different aspect. The place was full of bustle and movement and alive with traders from the hills, a striking contrast to its present appearance. On that occasion I entered the hills a little further to the west, at Subankhata, and accompanied Sir Ugyen for a few marches till we came to the Kuru-chhu, on the direct road to Tongsa. On this 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 Sikhim by Sir Joseph Hooker, but had since become extinct, and for which £1000 was offered by orchid-growers. I had been on the look-out 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-chhu Valley a few months before.
At Dorunga I had a great deal of difficulty about carriage, as no arrangements had been made beforehand and I could get no coolies; however, I had four elephants, and with them and another elephant I found belonging to one of the tea-gardens, and which I impressed into my service, I started the most necessary baggage up the track to Dewangiri, leaving the remainder in charge of the Havildar till I could make arrangements from Dewangiri. Transport difficulties were augmented by the arrival of tools for road-making lent to the Tongsa by the Government of Assam, and as the store-keeper had made no arrangements for forwarding them I was obliged to take them with me. The road we had to follow was nothing but a track running up the bed of the stream, and quite
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