56 
E O O T A N. 
cligious thickness. We were conducted hither, on our entrance, and 
lodged by the commandant in a large and lofty apartment, in which 
there were two or three loop holes towards the river, and on the other 
side, a projecting balcony: the floor was boarded with thick planks 
that were pretty well joined together. 
In a nation where no records are kept to perpetuate the memory of 
the achievements of genius, and in which the minds of the people are 
remarkably prone to superstition, perhaps more than a century may 
not be necessary, to deify the author of a great work. Thus it is, that 
the bridge of Ghuka is reckoned to be of more than mortal production. 
No less a being than the dewta Tehuptehup could possibly have con¬ 
trived so curious a piece of mechanism. Neither the origin nor the 
history of this renowned Tehuptehup, can be traced with any degree of 
certainty; but the works they assign to him, the road up the mountain 
we lately passed, (many parts of which are held, it may be said, upon 
a precipice, by pins and cramps of iron uniting together the stones 
that form it,) and the bridge at Chuka, do credit to a genius, who 
deservedly ranks high upon the rolls of fame, and justly claims from 
the inhabitants, decided tokens of respect and gratitude. 
1 
At twelve o’clock, on Monday the 56 th of May, we departed from 
Chuka. The mountains in our way to Punugga, for the distance of 
about ten miles, were in some parts not so completely covered with 
trees, as those we had passed, and we observed a material change in 
the face of them, as well as in the climate. The road side was covered 
with strawberries, which ripen, and decay, unnoticed by the plodding 
peasant of Bootan. I could not view them with the same apathy, but 
