RETRIBUTION. 
241 
forthwith, therefore, sent a message to the author of 
his present misery, as from his wife, stating her sor- 
row at having rejected his offers of attachment, and 
proposing that he should meet her on the very spot 
which had been the scene of the melancholy catastro- 
phe just described. The delighted lover instantly fell 
into the snare, and just as the dusky shades of even- 
ing were beginning to tint the tops of the mountains, 
he quitted his home and proceeded with a bounding 
heart towards the place of supposed assignation. By 
the time he reached the place, he saw a figure through 
the gloom standing on the extreme verge of the pre- 
cipice. Supposing it to be the object of his unholy 
love, he sprang forward — - in another moment he was 
hurled headlong from the height, and his death- 
shriek was answered by the hoarse laugh of the 
avenger, who stood above the dark gulf into which 
he had plunged the detested and unsuspecting de- 
stroyer of his peace, invoking all the demons with 
whom his superstitious worship had made him fami- 
liar, to torture the spirit which he had just sent to 
dwell among them for ever. 
Such acts of sanguinary revenge are not uncommon 
among all half-civilised nations ; and though the in- 
habitants of Boutan are by no means an implacable 
race generally, yet individual instances of ferocity 
may be heard of which show that the elements of 
the fiercer passons exist among them, and only re- 
quire the necessary provocation to be excited into ter- 
rific energy of action. 
Although these people have had little inter- 
course with any nation more advanced in civilisation 
Y 
