BETCHO. 119 



mendino; and re-stuffino- our sandals with 

 mountain grass, for our sandals had long 

 since left us shred by shred, until none 

 remained, nor any leather to make more with. 

 My feet were cut and bleedmg, and in places 

 festered ; so that never did pilgrim long for 

 the shrine which was to be the goal of his 

 journey more ardently than I did for Betcho. 

 And there at last it lay, this summer residence 

 of the prince of this land of wearying mountams, 

 not a grand place as the simple Svans had 

 painted it to us, in which their prince lived in 

 feudal state, but a collection of miserable 

 wooden shanties, most of them with the roofs 

 off, built on an uneven little plain where 

 grass and boulders struggled for predominance, 

 and neither roads nor walls marked out 

 too plainly where man might or might not 

 wander. 



At the entrance to the village, which had 

 won itself a name as a wateiing-place, whose 



