Title: Himalayan Journals — Complete
 - Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.
Author: Hooker, Joseph Dalton
Language: English
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HIMALAYAN JOURNALS
or
NOTES OF A NATURALIST

IN BENGAL, THE SIKKIM AND NEPAL HIMALAYAS,
THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS, etc.

JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER, M.D., R.N., F.R.S.

Volume I

First published 1854

To CHARLES DARWIN, F.R.S., etc.
These volumes are dedicated,
by his affectionate friend,
J.D. HOOKER
Kew, Jan. 12th, 1854

-------------------------


Chapter I

Sunderbunds vegetation--Calcutta Botanic Garden--Leave for
Burdwan--Rajah's gardens and menagerie--Coal-beds, geology, and
plants of--Lac insect and plant--Camels--Kunker--Cowage--
Effloresced soda on soil--Glass, manufacture of--Atmospheric
vapours--Temperature, etc.--Mahowa oil and spirits--Maddaobund
--Jains--Ascent of Paras-nath--Vegetation of that mountain.

CHAPTER II.

Doomree--Vegetation of table-land--Lieutenant Beadle--Birds--
Hot springs of Soorujkoond--Plants near them--Shells in them--
Cholera-tree--Olibanum--Palms, form of--Dunwah pass--Trees,
native and planted--Wild peacock--Poppy fields--Geography and
geology of Behar and Central India--Toddy-palm--Ground,
temperature of--Baroon--Temperature of plants--Lizard--Cross
the Soane--Sand, ripple-marks on--Kymore hills--Ground,
temperature of--Limestone--Rotas fort and palace--Nitrate of
lime--Change of climate--Lime stalagmites, enclosing leaves--
Fall of Soane--Spiders, etc.--Scenery and natural history of
upper Soane valley--_Hardwickia binata_--Bhel fruit--
Dust-storm--Alligator--Catechu--_Cochlospermum_--
Leaf-bellows--Scorpions--Tortoises--Florican--Limestone
spheres--Coles--Tiger-hunt--Robbery.

CHAPTER III.

Ek-powa Ghat--Sandstones--Shahgunj--Table-land, elevation, etc.
--Gum-arabic--Mango--Fair--Aquatic plants--Rujubbund--
Storm--False sunset and sunrise--Bind hills--Mirzapore--
Manufactures, imports, etc.--Climate--Thuggee--Chunar--
Benares--Mosque--Observatory--Sar-nath--Ghazeepore--
Rose-gardens--Manufactory of attar--Lord Cornwallis' tomb--
Ganges, scenery and natural history of--Pelicans--Vegetation--
Insects--Dinapore--Patna--Opium godowns and manufacture--
Mudar, white and purple--Monghyr islets--Hot springs of
Seetakoond--Alluvium of Ganges--Rocks of Sultun-gunj--
Bhaugulpore--Temples of Mt. Manden--Coles and native tribes--
Bhaugulpore rangers--Horticultural gardens.

CHAPTER IV.

Leave Bhaugulpore--Kunker--Colgong--Himalaya, distant view of
--Cosi, mouth of--Difficult navigation--Sand-storms--
Caragola-Ghat--Purnea--Ortolans--Mahanuddy, transport of
pebbles, etc.--Betel-pepper, cultivation of--Titalya--Siligoree
--View of outer Himalaya--Terai--Mechis--Punkabaree--Foot of
mountains--Ascent to Dorjiling--Cicadas--Leeches--Animals--
Kursiong, spring vegetation of--Pacheem--Arrive at Dorjiling--
Dorjiling, origin and settlement of--Grant of land from Rajah--
Dr. Campbell appointed superintendent--Dewan, late and present--
Aggressive conduct of the latter--Increase of the station--Trade
--Titalya fair--Healthy climate for Europeans and children--
Invalids, diseases prejudicial to.

CHAPTER V.

View from Mr. Hodgson's of range of snowy mountains--Their extent
and elevation--Delusive appearance of elevation--Sinchul, view
from and vegetation of--Chumulari--Magnolias, white and purple--
_Rhododendron Dalhousiae, arboreum_ and _argentium_--Natives of
Dorjiling--Lepchas, origin, tradition of flood, morals, dress,
arms, ornaments, diet--Cups, origin and value--Marriages--
Diseases--Burial--Worship and religion--Bijooas--Kumpa Rong,
or Arrat--Limboos, origin, habits, language, etc.--Moormis--
Magras--Mechis--Comparison of customs with those of the natives
of Assam, Khasia, etc.

CHAPTER VI.

Excursion from Dorjiling to Great Rungeet--Zones of vegetation--
Tree-ferns--Palms, upper limit of--Leebong, tea plantations--
Ging--Boodhist remains--Tropical vegetation--Pines--Lepcha
clearances--Forest fires--Boodhist monuments--Fig--
Cane-bridge and raft over Rungeet--Sago-palm--India-rubber--Yel
Pote--Butterflies and other insects--Snakes--Camp--
Temperature and humidity of atmosphere--Junction of Teesta and
Rungeet--Return to Dorjiling--Tonglo, excursion to--Bamboo,
flowering--Oaks--_Gordonia_--Maize, hermaphrodite flowered
--Figs--Nettles--Peepsa--Simonbong, cultivation at--European
fruits at Dorjiling-Plains of India.

CHAPTER VII.

Continue the ascent of Tonglo--Trees--Lepcha construction of hut
--Simsibong--Climbing-trees--Frogs--Magnolias, etc.--Ticks
--Leeches--Cattle, murrain amongst--Summit of Tonglo--
Rhododendrons--_Skimmia_--Yew--Rose--Aconite--Bikh
poison--English genera of plants--Ascent of tropical orders--
Comparison with south temperate zone--Heavy rain--Temperature,
etc.--Descent--Simonbong temple--Furniture therein--
Praying-cylinder--Thigh-bone trumpet--Morning orisons--Present
of Murwa beer, etc.

CHAPTER VIII.

Difficulty in procuring leave to enter Sikkim--Obtain permission to
travel in East Nepal--Arrangements--Coolies--Stores--Servants
--Personal equipment--Mode of travelling--Leave Dorjiling--
Goong ridge--Behaviour of Bhotan coolies--Nepal frontier--Myong
valley--Ilam--Sikkim massacre--Cultivation--Nettles--Camp
at Nanki on Tonglo--Bhotan coolies run away--View of Chumulari--
Nepal peaks to west--Sakkiazong--_Buceros_--Road to
Wallanchoon--Oaks--Scarcity of water--Singular view of
mountain-valleys--Encampment--My tent and its furniture--
Evening occupations--Dunkotah-Cross ridge of Sakkiazong--Yews--
Silver-firs-View of Tambur valley--Pemmi river--Pebbly terraces
--Geology--Holy springs--Enormous trees--_Luculia
gratissima_--Khawa river, rocks of--Arrive at Tambur--
Shingle and gravel terraces--Natives, indolence of--Canoe ferry
--Votive offerings--Bad road--Temperature, etc.--Chingtam
village, view from--Mywa river and Guola--House--Boulders--
Chain-bridge--Meepo, arrival of--Fevers.

CHAPTER IX.

Leave Mywa--Suspension bridge--Landslips--Vegetation--Slope
of river-bed--Bees' nests--Glacial phenomena--Tibetans,
clothing, ornaments, amulets, salutation, children, dogs--Last
Limboo village, Taptiatok--Beautiful scenery--Tibet village of
Lelyp--_Opuntia--Edgeworthia_--Crab-apple--Chameleon and
porcupine--Praying-machine--_Abies Brunoniana_--European
plants--Grand scenery--Arrive at Wallanchoon--Scenery around--
Trees--Tibet houses--Manis and Mendongs--Tibet household--
Food--Tea-soup--Hospitality--Yaks and Zobo, uses and habits of
--Bhoteeas--Yak-hair tents--Guobah of Walloong--Jatamansi--
Obstacles to proceeding-Climate and weather--Proceed--
Rhododendrons, etc.--Lichens--_Poa annua_ and Shepherd's
purse--Tibet camp--Tuquoroma--Scenery of pass--Glaciers and
snow--Summit--Plants, woolly, etc.

CHAPTER X.

Return from Wallanchoon pass--Procure a bazaar at village--Dance
of Lamas--Blackening face, Tibetan custom of--Temple and convent
--Leave for Kanglachem pass--Send part of party back to Dorjiling
--Yangma Guola--Drunken Tibetans--Guobah of Wallanchoon--Camp
at foot of Great Moraine--View from top--Geological speculations
--Height of moraines--Cross dry lake-bed--Glaciers--More
moraines--Terraces--Yangma temples--Jos, books and furniture--
Peak of Nango--Lake--Arrive at village--Cultivation--Scenery
--Potatos--State of my provisions--Pass through village--
Gigantic boulders--Terraces--Wild sheep--Lake-beds--Sun's
power--Piles of gravel and detritus--Glaciers and moraines--
Pabuk, elevation of--Moonlight scene--Return to Yangma--
Temperature, etc.--Geological causes of phenomena in valley--
Scenery of valley on descent.

CHAPTER XI.

Ascend to Nango mountain--Moraines--Glaciers--Vegetation--
_Rhododendron Hodgsoni_--Rocks--Honey-combed surface of snow
--Perpetual snow--Top of pass--View--Elevation--Geology--
Distance of sound--Plants--Temperature--Scenery--Cliffs of
granite and hurled boulders--Camp--Descent--Pheasants--Larch
--Himalayan pines--Distribution of Deodar, note on--
Tassichooding temples--Kambachen village--Cultivation--Moraines
in valley, distribution of--Picturesque lake-beds, and their
vegetation--Tibetan sheep and goats--_Cryptogramma crispa_
--Ascent to Choonjerma pass--View of Junnoo--Rocks of its summit
--Misty ocean--Nepal peaks--Top of pass--Temperature, and
observations--Gorgeous sunset--Descent to Yalloong valley--
Loose path--Night scenes--Musk deer.

CHAPTER XII.

Yalloong valley--Find Kanglanamo pass closed--Change route for
the southward--_Picrorhiza_--View of Kubra--
_Rhododendron Falconeri_--Yalloong river--Junction of gneiss
and clay-slate--Cross Yalloong range--Yiew--Descent--Yew--
Vegetation--Misty weather--Tongdam village--Khabang--Tropical
vegetation--Sidingbah mountain--View of Kinchinjunga--
Yangyading village--Slopes of hills, and courses of rivers--
Khabili valley--Ghorkha Havildar's bad conduct--Ascend Singalelah
--Plague of ticks--Short commons--Cross Islumbo pass--Boundary
of Sikkim--Kulhait valley--Lingcham--Reception by Kajee--Hear
of Dr. Campbell's going to meet Rajah--Views in valley--Leave for
Teesta river--Tipsy Kajee--Hospitality--Murwa beer--Temples
--_Acorus Calamus_--Long Mendong--Burning of dead--
Superstitions--Cross Great Rungeet--Boulders, origin of--
Purchase of a dog--Marshes--Lamas--Dismiss Ghorkhas--Bhoteea
house--Murwa beer.

CHAPTER XIII.

Raklang pass--Uses of nettles--Edible plants--Lepcha war--
Do-mani stone--Neongong--Teesta valley--Pony, saddle, etc.--
Meet Campbell--Vegetation and scenery--Presents--Visit of Dewan
--Characters of Rajah and Dewan--Accounts of Tibet--Lhassa--
Siling--Tricks of Dewan--Walk up Teesta--Audience of Rajah--
Lamas--Kajees--Tchebu Lama, his character and position--Effects
of interview--Heir-apparent--Dewan's house--Guitar--Weather
--Fall of river--Tibet officers--Gigantic trees--Neongong lake
--Mainom, ascent of--Vegetation--Camp on snow--Silver-firs--
View from top--Kinchin, etc.--Geology--Vapours--Sunset effect
--Elevation--Temperature, etc.--Lamas of Neongong--Temples--
Religious festival Bamboo, flowering--Recross pass of Raklang--
Numerous temples, villages, etc.--Domestic animals--Descent to
Great Rungeet.

CHAPTER XIV.

Tassiding, view of and from--Funereal cypress--Camp at Sunnook--
Hot vapours--Lama's house--Temples, decorations, altars, idols,
general effect--Chaits--Date of erection--Plundered by Ghorkas
--Cross Ratong--Ascend to Pemiongehi--Relation of river-beds to
strike of rocks--Slopes of ravines--Pemiongehi, view of--
Vegetation--Elevation--Temple, decorations, etc.--Former
capital of Sikkim--History of Sikkim--Nightingales--Campbell
departs--Tchonpong--_Edgeworthia_--Cross Rungbee and
Ratong--Hoar-frost on plantains--Yoksun--Walnuts--View--
Funereal cypresses--Doobdi--Gigantic cypresses--Temples--
Snow-fall--Sikkim, etc.--Toys.

CHAPTER XV.

Leave Yoksun for Kinchinjunga--Ascend Ratong valley--
Salt-smuggling over Ratong--Landslips--Plants--Buckeem--
Blocks of gneiss--Mon Lepcha--View--Weather--View from Gubroo
--Kinchinjunga, tops of--Pundimcliff--Nursing--Vegetation of
Himalaya--Coup d'oeil of Jongri--Route to Yalloong--Arduous
route of salt-traders from Tibet--Kinchin, ascent of--Lichens--
Surfaces sculptured by snow and ice--Weather at Jongri--Snow--
Shades for eyes.

CHAPTER XVI.

Ratong river below Mon Lepcha--Ferns--Vegetation of Yoksun,
tropical--_Araliaceae_, fodder for cattle--Rice-paper plant
--Geology of Yoksun--Lake--Old temples--Funereal cypresses--
Gigantic chart--Altars--Songboom--Weather--Catsuperri--
Velocity of Ratong--Worship at Catsuperri lake--Scenery--Willow
--Lamas and ecclesiastical establishments of Sikkim--Tengling--
Changachelling temples and monks--Portrait of myself on walls--
Block of mica-schist--Lingcham Kajee asks for spectacles--
Hee-hill--Arrive at Little Rungeet--At Dorjiling--Its deserted
and wintry appearance.

CHAPTER XVII.

Dispatch collections--Acorns--Heat--Punkabaree--Bees--
Vegetation--Haze--Titalya--Earthquake--Proceed to Nepal
frontier--Terai, geology of--Physical features of Himalayan
valleys--Elephants, purchase of, etc.--River-beds--Mechi river
--Return to Titalya--Leave for Teesta--Climate of plains--
Jeelpigoree--Cooches--Alteration in the appearance of country by
fires, etc.--Grasses--Bamboos--Cottages--Rajah of Cooch Behar
--Condition of people--Hooli festival--Ascend Teesta--Canoes
--Cranes--Forest--Baikant-pore--Rummai--Religion--Plants
at foot of mountains--Exit of Teesta--Canoe voyage down to
Rangamally--English genera of plants--Birds--Beautiful scenery
--Botanizing on elephants--Willow--Siligoree--Cross Terai--
Geology--Iron--Lohar-ghur--Coal and sandstone beds--Mechi
fisherman--Hailstorm--Ascent to Kursiong--To Dorjiling--
Vegetation--Geology--Folded quartz-beds--Spheres of feldspar--
Lime deposits.


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

LITHOGRAPHIC VIEWS.

Fig. I. The Dhak, _i_Butea frondosa,_/i_ and _i_Cochlospermum
gossypium,_/i_ with the Kymore Hills in the background. p.53
Fig. II. View of Kinchinjunga from Mr. Hodgson's bungalow at
Dorjiling, from a sketch by W. Tayler, Esq., B.C.S. Frontispiece.
Fig. III. From Chingtam, looking up the Tambur Valley. p.196
Fig. IV. Nango mountain, from the summit of the great moraine in
Yangma Valley, looking eastward. p.232
Fig. V. Junnoo mountain from the Choonjerma Pass. p.264

WOOD ENGRAVINGS.

Fig. 1. Old tamarind trees. p.17
Fig. 2. Crossing the Soane River above Tura, with the Kymore Hills in
the background. p.47
Fig. 3. Equatorial sun-dial, Benares Observatory. p.74
Fig. 4. Equinoctial sun-dial, Benares Observatory. p.75
Fig. 5. Azimuth circle, Benares Observatory. p.76
Fig. 6. Monghyr on the Ganges. p.88
Fig. 7. Punkabaree, Sikkim Terai, and Balasun River. The trees in the
foreground are _i_Araliaceae._/i_ p.105
Fig. 8. Lepcha girl and Boodhist priest. From a sketch by Miss
Colvile. p.129
Fig. 9. _i_Pinus longifolia,_/i_ in the great Rungeet Valley. p.148
Fig. 10. Construction of a cane suspension-bridge. p.149
Fig. 11. Lepcha boy carrying a bamboo water-vessel. From a sketch by
Miss Colvile. p.156
Fig. 12. Amulet usually worn by Lepchas. p.161
Fig. 13. Trunk-like root of _i_Wightia gigantea,_/i_ ascending a
tree, which its stout rootlets clasp. p.164
Fig. 14. Interior of Boodhist temple at Simonbong. p.172
Fig. 15. Trumpet made of a human thigh-bone. p.173
Fig. 16. Tibetan amulet set with turquoises. p.176
Fig. 17. Head of Tibet Mastiff. From a sketch taken in the zoological
gardens by C. Jenyns, Esq. p.203
Fig. 18. View on the Tambur River, with _i_Ambies brunoniana_/i_.
p.207
Fig. 19. Wallanchoon village, East Nepal. p.210
Fig. 20. Head of a Tibetan demon. From a model in the possession of
Captain H. Strachey. p.226
Fig. 21. Ancient moraines surrounding the lower lake-bed in the
Yangma valley (looking west). p.234
Fig. 22. Second lake-bed in the Yangma valley, with Nango mountain,
(looking east). p.237
Fig. 23. Diagram of the terraces and glacial boulders, etc., at the
fork of the Yangma valley (looking north-west up the valley). The
terraces are represented as much too level and angular, and the
boulders too large, the woodcut being intended as a diagram rather
than as a view. p.242
Fig. 24. View of the head of the Yangma valley, and ancient moraines
of debris, which rise in confused hills several hundred feet above
the floor of the valley below the Kanglachem pass (elevation 16,000
feet). p.245
Fig. 25. Skulls of _i_Ovis ammon._/i_ Sketched by J. E. Winterbottom,
Esq. p.249
Fig. 26. Ancient moraines, in which small lake-beds occur, in the
Kambachen valley (elevation 11,400 feet). p.260
Fig. 27. Brass box to contain amulets, from Tibet. p.270
Fig. 28. Pemiongchi goompa (or temple) with Chaits in the foreground.
p.286
Fig. 29. Costumes of Sikkim lamas and monks, with the bell, mani,
dorje, and trident. p.291
Fig. 30. The Do-mani stone, with gigantic Tibetan characters. p.294
Fig. 31. Implements of worship in the Sikkim temples. p.314
Fig. 32. Chaits at Tassiding, with decayed funereal cypresses. p.316
Fig. 33. Vestibule of temple at Tassiding. p.319
Fig. 34. Southern temple, at Tassiding. p.320
Fig. 35. Middle temple, at Tassiding, with mounted yaks. p.321
Fig. 36. Chair, altar, and images in the great temple at Tassiding.
p.322
Fig. 37. Ground-plan of southern temple at Tassiding. p.323
Fig. 38. Interior of temple at Pemiongchi, the walls covered with
allegorical paintings. p.329
Fig. 39. Doobdi temple, with young and old funereal cypress. p.337
Fig. 40. Summit of Kinchinjunga, with Pundim on the right; its black
cliff traversed by white granite veins. p.347
Fig. 41. Image of Maitrya, the coming Boodh. p.357
Fig. 42. Stone altar, and erection for burning juniper ashes. p.361
Fig. 43. Facsimile of the vermilion seal of the Dhurma Rajah of
Bhotan, head of the Dookpa sect of Boodhists. Opposite p.372
Fig. 44. A Mech, native of the Sikkim Terai. Sketched by Miss
Colvile. p.406
Fig. 45. Mech pocket-comb (of wood). p.408



PREFACE

HAVING accompanied Sir James Boss on his voyage of discovery to the
Antarctic regions, where botany was my chief pursuit, on my return I
earnestly desired to add to my acquaintance with the natural history
of the temperate zones, more knowledge of that of the tropics than I
bad hitherto had the opportunity of acquiring. My choice lay between
India and the Andes, and I decided upon the former, being principally
influenced by Dr. Falconer, who promised me every assistance which
his position as Superintendent of the H.E.I.C. Botanic Garden at
Calcutta, would enable hum to give. He also drew my attention to the
fact that we were ignorant even of the geography of the central and
eastern parts of these mountains, while all to the north was involved
in a mystery equally attractive to the traveller and the naturalist.

On hearing of the kind interest taken by Baron Humboldt in my
proposed travels, and at the request of my father (Sir William
Hooker), the Earl of Carlisle (then Chief Commissioner of Woods and
Forests) undertook to represent to Her Majesty's Government the
expediency of securing my collections for the Royal Gardens at Kew;
and owing to the generous exertions of that nobleman, and of the late
Earl of Auckland (then First Lord of the Admiralty), my journey
assumed the character of a Government mission, £400 per annum being
granted by the Treasury for two years.

I did not contemplate proceeding beyond the Himalaya and Tibet, when
Lord Auckland desired that I should afterwards visit Borneo, for the
purpose of reporting on the capabilities of Labuan, with reference to
the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, sugar, indigo, spices,
guttapercha, etc. To this end a commission in the navy (to which
service I was already attached) was given me, such instructions were
drawn up as might facilitate my movements in the East, and a suitable
sum of money was placed at my disposal.

Soon after leaving England, my plans became, from various causes,
altered. The Earl of Auckland* [It is with a melancholy satisfaction
that I here record the intentions of that enlightened nobleman.
The idea of turning to public account what was intended as a
scientific voyage, occurred to his lordship when considering my
application for official leave to proceed to India; and from the hour
of my accepting the Borneo commission with which he honoured me, he
displayed the most active zeal in promoting its fulfilment.
He communicated to me his views as to the direction in which I should
pursue my researches, furnished me with official and other
information, and provided me with introductions of the most essential
use.] was dead; the interest in Borneo had in a great measure
subsided; H.M.S. "Maeander," to which I had been attached for service
in Labuan, had left the Archipelago; reports of the unhealthy nature
of the coast had excited alarm; and the results of my researches in
the Himalaya had proved of more interest and advantage than had been
anticipated. It was hence thought expedient to cancel the Borneo
appointment, and to prolong my services for a third year in India;
for which purpose a grant of £300 (originally intended for defraying
the expense of collecting only, in Borneo) was transferred as salary
for the additional year to be spent in the Himalaya.

The portion of the Himalaya best worth exploring, was selected for me
both by Lord Auckland and Dr. Falconer, who independently recommended
Sikkim, as being ground untrodden by traveller or naturalist.
Its ruler was, moreover, all but a dependant of the British
government, and it was supposed, would therefore be glad to
facilitate my researches.

No part of the snowy Himalaya eastward of the northwest extremity of
the British possessions had been visited since Turner's embassy to
Tibet in 1789; and hence it was highly important to explore
scientifically a part of the chain which, from its central position,
might be presumed to be typical of the whole range. The possibility
of visiting Tibet, and of ascertaining particulars respecting the
great mountain Chumulari,* [My earliest recollections in reading are
of "Turner's Travels in Tibet," and of "Cook's Voyages." The account
of Lama worship and of Chumulari in the one, and of Kerguelen's Land
in the other, always took a strong hold on my fancy. It is,
therefore, singular that Kerguelen's Land should have been the first
strange country I ever visited (now fourteen years ago), and that in
the first King's ship which has touched there since Cook's voyage,
and whilst following the track of that illustrious navigator in south
polar discovery. At a later period I have been nearly the first
European who has approached Chumulari since Turner's embassy.] which
was only known from Turner's account, were additional inducements to
a student of physical geography; but it was not then known that
Kinchinjunga, the loftiest known mountain on the globe, was situated
on my route, and formed a principal feature in the physical geography
of Sikkim.

My passage to Egypt was provided by the Admiralty in H.M.
steam-vessel "Sidon," destined to convey the Marquis of Dalhousie,
Governor-General of India, thus far on his way. On his arrival in
Egypt, his Lordship did me the honour of desiring me to consider
myself in the position of one of his suite, for the remainder of the
voyage, which was performed in the "Moozuffer," a steam frigate
belonging to the Indian Navy. My obligations to this nobleman had
commenced before leaving England, by his promising me every facility
he could command; and he thus took the earliest opportunity of
affording it, by giving me such a position near himself as ensured me
the best reception everywhere; no other introduction being needed.
His Lordship procured my admission into Sikkim, and honoured me
throughout my travels with the kindest encouragement.

During the passage out, some days were spent in Egypt, at Aden,
Ceylon, and Madras. I have not thought it necessary to give here the
observations made in those well-known countries; they are detailed in
a series of letters published in the "London Journal of Botany," as
written for my private friends. Arriving at Calcutta in January, I
passed the remainder of the cold season in making myself acquainted
with the vegetation of the plains and hills of Western Bengal, south
of the Ganges, by a journey across the mountains of Birbhoom and
Behar to the Soane valley, and thence over the Vindhya range to the
Ganges, at Mirzapore, whence I descended that stream to Bhaugulpore;
and leaving my boat, struck north to the Sikkim Himalaya. This
excursion is detailed in the "London Journal of Botany," and the
Asiatic Society of Bengal honoured me by printing the meteorological
observations made during its progress.

During the two years' residence in Sikkim which succeeded, I was laid
under obligations of no ordinary nature to Brian H. Hodgson, Esq.,
B.C.S., for many years Resident at the Nepal Court; whose guest I
became for several months. Mr. Hodgson's high position as a man of
science requires no mention here; but the difficulties he overcame,
and the sacrifices he made, in attaining that position, are known to
few. He entered the wilds of Nepal when very young, and in
indifferent health; and finding time to spare, cast about for the
best method of employing it: he had no one to recommend or direct a
pursuit, no example to follow, no rival to equal or surpass; he had
never been acquainted with a scientific man, and knew nothing of
science except the name. The natural history of men and animals, in
its most comprehensive sense, attracted his attention; he sent to
Europe for books, and commenced the study of ethnology and zoology.
His labours have now extended over upwards of twenty-five years'
residence in the Himalaya. During this period he has seldom had a
staff of less than from ten to twenty persons (often many more), of
various tongues and races, employed as translators and collectors,
artists, shooters, and stuffers. By unceasing exertions and a
princely liberality, Mr. Hodgson has unveiled the mysteries of the
Boodhist religion, chronicled the affinities, languages, customs, and
faiths of the Himalayan tribes; and completed a natural history of
the animals and birds of these regions. His collections of specimens
are immense, and are illustrated by drawings and descriptions taken
from life, with remarks on the anatomy,* [In this department he
availed himself of the services of Dr. Campbell, who was also
attached to the Residency at Nepal, as surgeon and assistant
political agent.] habits, and localities of the animals themselves.
Twenty volumes of the Journals, and the Museum of the Asiatic Society
of Bengal, teem with the proofs of his indefatigable zeal; and
throughout the cabinets of the bird and quadruped departments of our
national museum, Mr. Hodgson's name stands pre-eminent. A seat in the
Institute of France, and the cross of the Legion of Honour, prove the
estimation in which his Boodhist studies are held on the continent of
Europe. To be welcomed to the Himalaya by such a person, and to be
allowed the most unreserved intercourse, and the advantage of all his
information and library, exercised a material influence on the
progress I made in my studies, and on my travels. When I add that
many of the subjects treated of in these volumes were discussed
between us, it will be evident that it is impossible for me to divest
much of the information thus insensibly obtained, of the appearance
of being the fruits of my own research.

Dr. Campbell, the Superintendent of Dorjiling, is likewise the
Governor-General's agent, or medium of communication between the
British Government and the Sikkim Rajah; and as such, invested with
many discretionary powers. In the course of this narrative, I shall
give a sketch of the rise, progress, and prospects of the Sanatarium,
or Health-station of Dorjiling, and of the anomalous position held by
the Sikkim Rajah. The latter circumstance led indirectly to the
detention of Dr. Campbell (who joined me in one of my journeys) and
myself, by a faction of the Sikkim court, for the purpose of
obtaining from the Indian Government a more favourable treaty than
that then existing. This mode of enforcing a request by _i_douce
violence_i_ and detention, is common with the turbulent tribes east
of Nepal, but was in this instance aggravated by violence towards my
fellow-prisoner, through the ill will of the persons who executed the
orders of their superiors, and who had been punished by Dr. Campbell
for crimes committed against both the British and Nepalese
governments. The circumstances of this outrage were misunderstood at
the time; its instigators were supposed to be Chinese; its
perpetrators Tibetans; and we the offenders were assumed to have
thrust ourselves into the country, without authority from our own
government, and contrary to the will of the Sikkim Rajah; who was
imagined to be a tributary of China, and protected by that nation,
and to be under no obligation to the East Indian government.

With regard to the obligations I owe to Dr. Campbell, I confine
myself to saying that his whole aim was to promote my comfort, and to
secure my success, in all possible ways. Every object I had in view
was as sedulously cared for by him as by myself: I am indebted to his
influence with Jung Bahadoor* [It was in Nepal that Dr. Campbell
gained the friendship of Jung Bahadoor, the most remarkable proof of
which is the acceding to his request, and granting me leave to visit
the eastern parts of his dominions; no European that I am aware of,
having been allowed, either before or since, to travel anywhere
except to and from the plains of India and valley of Katmandu, in
which the capital city and British residency are situated.] for the
permission to traverse his dominions, and to visit the Tibetan passes
of Nepal. His prudence and patience in negotiating with the Sikkim
court, enabled me to pursue my investigations in that country. My
journal is largely indebted to his varied and extensive knowledge of
the people and productions of these regions.

In all numerical calculations connected with my observations, I
received most essential aid from John Muller, Esq., Accountant of the
Calcutta Mint, and from his brother, Charles Muller, Esq., of Patna,
both ardent amateurs in scientific pursuits, and who employed
themselves in making meteorological observations at Dorjiling, where
they were recruiting constitutions impaired by the performance of
arduous duties in the climate of the plains. I cannot sufficiently
thank these gentlemen for the handsome manner in which they
volunteered me their assistance in these laborious operations.
Mr. J. Muller resided at Dorjiling during eighteen months of my stay
in Sikkim, over the whole of which period his generous zeal in my
service never relaxed; he assisted me in the reduction of many
hundreds of my observations for latitude, time, and elevation,
besides adjusting and rating my instruments; and I can recall no more
pleasant days than those thus spent with these hospitable friends.

Thanks to Dr. Falconer's indefatigable exertions, such of my
collections as reached Calcutta were forwarded to England in
excellent order; and they were temporarily deposited in Kew Gardens
until their destination should be determined. On my return home, my
scientific friends interested themselves in procuring from the
Government such aid as might enable me to devote the necessary time
to the arrangement, naming, and distributing of my collections, the
publication of my manuscripts, etc. I am in this most deeply indebted
to the disinterested and generous exertions of Mr. L. Horner, Sir
Charles Lyell, Dr. Lindley, Professor E. Forbes, and many others; and
most especially to the Presidents of the Royal Society (the Earl of
Rosse), of the Linnean (Mr. R. Brown), and Geological (Mr. Hopkins),
who in their official capacities memorialized in person the Chief
Commissioner of Woods and Forests on this subject; Sir William Hooker
at the same time bringing it under the notice of the First Lord of
the Treasury. The result was a grant of £400 annually for three years.

Dr. T. Thomson joined me in Dorjiling in the end of 1849, after the
completion of his arduous journeys in the North-West Himalaya and
Tibet, and we spent the year 1850 in travelling and collecting,
returning to England together in 1851. Having obtained permission
from the Indian Government to distribute his botanical collections,
which equal my own in extent and value, we were advised by all our
botanical friends to incorporate, and thus to distribute them. The
whole constitute an Herbarium of from 6000 to 7000 species of Indian
plants, including an immense number of duplicates; and it is now in
process of being arranged and named, by Dr. Thomson and myself,
preparatory to its distribution amongst sixty of the principal public
and private herbaria in Europe, India, and the United States
of America.

For the information of future travellers, I may state that the total
expense of my Indian journey, including outfit, three years and a
half travelling, and the sending of my collections to Calcutta, was
under £2000 (of which £1200 were defrayed by government), but would
have come to much more, had I not enjoyed the great advantages I have
detailed. This sum does not include the purchase of books and
instruments, with which I supplied myself, and which cost about £200,
nor the freight of the collections to England, which was paid by
Government. Owing to the kind services of Mr. J. C. Melvill,
Secretary of the India House, many small parcels of seeds, etc., were
conveyed to England, free of cost; and I have to record my great
obligations and sincere thanks to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam
Navigation Company, for conveying, without charge, all small parcels
of books, instruments and specimens, addressed to or by myself.

It remains to say something of the illustrations of this work.
The maps are from surveys of my own, made chiefly with my own
instruments, but partly with some valuable ones for the use of which
I am indebted to my friend Captain H. Thuillier, Deputy
Surveyor-General of India, who placed at my disposal the resources of
the magnificent establishment under his control, and to whose
innumerable good offices I am very greatly beholden.

The landscapes, etc. have been prepared chiefly from my own drawings,
and will, I hope, be found to be tolerably faithful representations
of the scenes. I have always endeavoured to overcome that tendency to
exaggerate heights, and increase the angle of slopes, which is I
believe the besetting sin, not of amateurs only, but of our most
accomplished artists. As, however, I did not use instruments in
projecting the outlines, I do not pretend to have wholly avoided this
snare; nor, I regret to say; has the lithographer, in all cases, been
content to abide by his copy. My drawings will be considered tame
compared with most mountain landscapes, though the subjects comprise
some of the grandest scenes in nature. Considering how conventional
the treatment of such subjects is, and how unanimous artists seem to
be as to the propriety of exaggerating those features which should
predominate in the landscape, it may fairly be doubted whether the
total effect of steepness and elevation, especially in a mountain
view, can, on a small scale, be conveyed by a strict adherence to
truth. I need hardly add, that if such is attainable, it is only by
those who have a power of colouring that few pretend to. In the list
of plates and woodcuts I have mentioned the obligations I am under to
several friends for the use of drawings, etc.

With regard to the spelling of native names, after much anxious
discussion I have adopted that which assimilates most to the English
pronunciation. For great assistance in this, for a careful revision
of the sheets as they passed through the press, and for numerous
valuable suggestions throughout, I am indebted to my
fellow-traveller, Dr. Thomas Thomson.



HIMALAYAN JOURNALS.

CHAPTER I.

Sunderbunds vegetation--Calcutta Botanic Garden--Leave for
Burdwan--Rajah's gardens and menagerie--Coal-beds, geology, and
plants of--Lac insect and plant--Camels--Kunker--Cowage--
Effloresced soda on soil--Glass, manufacture of--Atmospheric
vapours--Temperature, etc.--Mahowa oil and spirits--Maddaobund
--Jains--Ascent of Paras-nath--Vegetation of that mountain.

I left England on the 11th of November, 1847, and performed the voyage
to India under circumstances which have been detailed in the
Introduction. On the 12th of January, 1848, the "Moozuffer" was steaming
amongst the low swampy islands of the Sunderbunds. These exhibit no
tropical luxuriance, and are, in this respect, exceedingly
disappointing. A low vegetation covers them, chiefly made up of a dwarf-
palm (_Phoenix paludosa_) and small mangroves, with a few scattered
trees on the higher bank that runs along the water's edge, consisting of
fan-palm, toddy-palm, and _Terminalia._ Every now and then, the paddles
of the steamer tossed up the large fruits of _Nipa fruticans,_ a low
stemless palm that grows in the tidal waters of the Indian ocean, and
bears a large head of nuts. It is a plant of no interest to the common
observer, but of much to the geologist, from the nuts of a similar plant
abounding in the tertiary formations at the mouth of the Thames, and
having floated about there in as great profusion as here, till buried
deep in the silt and mud that now forms the island of Sheppey.*
[Bowerbank "On the Fossil Fruits and Seeds of the Isle of Sheppey," and
Lyell's "Elements of Geology," 3rd ed. p. 201.]

Higher up, the river Hoogly is entered, and large trees, with
villages and cultivation, replace the sandy spits and marshy jungles
of the great Gangetic delta. A few miles below Calcutta, the scenery
becomes beautiful, beginning with the Botanic Garden, once the
residence of Roxburgh and Wallich, and now of Falconer,--classical
ground to the naturalist. Opposite are the gardens of Sir Lawrence
Peel; unrivalled in India for their beauty and cultivation, and
fairly entitled to be called the Chatsworth of Bengal. A little
higher up, Calcutta opened out, with the batteries of Fort William in
the foreground, thundering forth a salute, and in a few minutes more
all other thoughts were absorbed in watching the splendour of the
arrangements made for the reception of the Governor-General of India.

During my short stay in Calcutta, I was principally occupied in
preparing for an excursion with Mr. Williams of the Geological
Survey, who was about to move his camp from the Damooda valley
coal-fields, near Burdwan, to Beejaghur on the banks of the Soane,
where coal was reported to exist, in the immediate vicinity of
water-carriage, the great desideratum of the Burdwan fields.

My time was spent partly at Government-House, and partly at Sir
Lawrence Peel's residence. The former I was kindly invited to
consider as my Indian home, an honour which I appreciate the more
highly, as the invitation was accompanied with the assurance that I
should have entire freedom to follow my own pursuits; and the
advantages which such a position afforded me, were, I need not say,
of no ordinary kind.

At the Botanic Gardens I received every assistance from Dr.
McLelland,* [Dr. Falconer's _locum tenens,_ then in temporary
charge of the establishment.] who was very busy, superintending the
publication of the botanical papers and drawings of his friend, the
late Dr. Griffith, for which native artists were preparing copies on
lithographic paper.

Of the Gardens themselves it is exceedingly difficult to speak; the
changes had been so very great, and from a state with which I had no
acquaintance. There had been a great want of judgment in the
alterations made since Dr. Wallich's time, when they were celebrated
as the most beautiful gardens in the east, and were the great object
of attraction to strangers and townspeople. I found instead an
unsightly wilderness, without shade (the first requirement of every
tropical garden) or other beauties than some isolated grand trees,
which had survived the indiscriminate destruction of the useful and
ornamental which had attended the well-meant but ill-judged attempt
to render a garden a botanical class-book. It is impossible to praise
too highly Dr. Griffith's abilities and acquirements as a botanist,
his perseverance and success as a traveller, or his matchless
industry in the field and in the closet; and it is not wonderful,
that, with so many and varied talents, he should have wanted the eye
of a landscape-gardener, or the education of a horticulturist.
I should, however, be wanting in my duty to his predecessor, and to
his no less illustrious successor, were these remarks withheld,
proceeding, as they do, from an unbiassed observer, who had the
honour of standing in an equally friendly relation to all parties.
Before leaving India, I saw great improvements, but many years must
elapse before the gardens can resume their once proud pre-eminence.

I was surprised to find the Botanical Gardens looked upon by many of
the Indian public, and even by some of the better informed official
men, as rather an extravagant establishment, more ornamental than
useful. These persons seemed astonished to learn that its name was
renowned throughout Europe, and that during the first twenty years
especially of Dr. Wallich's superintendence, it had contributed more
useful and ornamental tropical plants to the public and private
gardens of the world than any other establishment before or since.*
[As an illustration of this, I may refer to a Report presented to the
government of Bengal, from which it appears that between January,
1836, and December, 1840, 189,932 plants were distributed gratis to
nearly 2000 different gardens.] I speak from a personal knowledge of
the contents of our English gardens, and our colonial ones at the
Cape, and in Australia, and from an inspection of the ponderous
volumes of distribution lists, to which Dr. Falconer is daily adding.
The botanical public of Europe and India is no less indebted than the
horticultural to the liberality of the Hon. East India Company, and
to the energy of the several eminent men who have carried their views
into execution.* [I here allude to the great Indian herbarium,
chiefly formed by the staff of the Botanic Gardens under the
direction of Dr. Wallich, and distributed in 1829 to the principal
museums of Europe. This is the most valuable contribution of the kind
ever made to science, and it is a lasting memorial: of the princely
liberality of the enlightened men who ruled the counsels of India in
those days. No botanical work of importance has been published since
1829, without recording its sense of the obligation, and I was once
commissioned by a foreign government, to purchase for its national
museum, at whatever cost, one set of these collections, which was
brought to the hammer on the death of its possessor. I have heard it
remarked that the expense attending the distribution was enormous,
and I have reason to know that this erroneous impression has had an
unfavourable influence upon the destination of scarcely less valuable
collections, which have for years been lying untouched in the cellars
of the India House. I may add that officers who have exposed their
lives and impaired their health in forming similar ones at the orders
and expense of the Indian government, are at home, and thrown upon
their own resources, or the assistance of their scientific brethren,
for the means of publishing and distributing the fruits of their
labours.] The Indian government, itself, has already profited largely
by these gardens, directly and indirectly, and might have done so
still more, had its efforts been better seconded either by the
European or native population of the country. Amongst its greatest
triumphs may be considered the introduction of the tea-plant from
China, a fact I allude to, as many of my English readers may not be
aware that the establishment of the tea-trade in the Himalaya and
Assam is almost entirely the work of the superintendents of the
gardens of Calcutta and Seharunpore.

From no one did I receive more kindness than from Sir James Colvile,
President of the Asiatic Society, who not only took care that I
should be provided with every comfort, but presented me with a
completely equipped palkee, which, for strength and excellence of
construction, was everything that a traveller could desire.
Often _en route_ did I mentally thank him when I saw other
palkees breaking down, and travellers bewailing the loss of those
forgotten necessaries, with which his kind attention had
furnished me.

I left Calcutta to join Mr. Williams' camp on the 28th of January,
driving to Hoogly on the river of that name, and thence following the
grand trunk-road westward towards Burdwan. The novelty of
palkee-travelling at first renders it pleasant; the neatness with
which every thing is packed, the good-humour of the bearers, their
merry pace, and the many more comforts enjoyed than could be expected
in a conveyance _horsed by men_, the warmth when the sliding
doors are shut, and the breeze when they are open, are all fully
appreciated on first starting, but soon the novelty wears off, and
the discomforts are so numerous, that it is pronounced, at best, a
barbarous conveyance. The greedy cry and gestures of the bearers,
when, on changing, they break a fitful sleep by poking a torch in
your face, and vociferating "Bucksheesh, Sahib;" their discontent at
the most liberal largesse, and the sluggishness of the next set who
want bribes, put the traveller out of patience with the natives.
The dust when the slides are open, and the stifling heat when shut
during a shower, are conclusive against the vehicle, and on getting out
with aching bones and giddy head at the journey's end, I shook the dust
from my person, and wished never to see a palkee again.

On the following morning I was passing through the straggling
villages close to Burdwan, consisting of native hovels by the road
side, with mangos and figs planted near them, and palms waving over
their roofs. Crossing the nearly dry bed of the Damooda, I was set
down at Mr. M'Intosh's (the magistrate of the district), and never
more thoroughly enjoyed a hearty welcome and a breakfast.

In the evening we visited the Rajah of Burdwan's palace and
pleasure-grounds, where I had the first glimpse of oriental
gardening: the roads were generally raised, running through rice
fields, now dry and hard, and bordered with trees of Jack, Bamboo,
_Melia, Casuarina,_ etc. Tanks were the prominent features:
chains of them, full of Indian water-lilies, being fringed with rows
of the fan-palm, and occasionally the Indian date. Close to the house
was a rather good menagerie, where I saw, amongst other animals, a
pair of kangaroos in high health and condition, the female with young
in her pouch. Before dark I was again in my palkee, and hurrying
onwards. The night was cool and clear, very different from the damp
and foggy atmosphere I had left at Calcutta. On the following morning
I was travelling over a flat and apparently rising country, along an
excellent road, with groves of bamboos and stunted trees on either
hand, few villages or palms, a sterile soil, with stunted grass and
but little cultivation; altogether a country as unlike what I had
expected to find in India as well might be. All around was a dead
flat or table-land, out of which a few conical hills rose in the
west, about 1000 feet high, covered with a low forest of dusky green
or yellow, from the prevalence of bamboo. The lark was singing
merrily at sunrise, and the accessories of a fresh air and dewy grass
more reminded me of some moorland in the north of England than of the
torrid regions of the east.

At 10 p.m. I arrived at Mr. Williams' camp, at Taldangah, a dawk
station near the western limit of the coal basin of the Damooda
valley. His operations being finished, he was prepared to start,
having kindly waited a couple of days for my arrival.

Early on the morning of the last day of January, a motley group of
natives were busy striking the tents, and loading the bullocks,
bullock-carts and elephants: these proceeded on the march, occupying
in straggling groups nearly three miles of road, whilst we remained
to breakfast with Mr. F. Watkins, Superintendent of the East India
Coal and Coke Company, who were working the seams.

The coal crops out at the surface; but the shafts worked are sunk
through thick beds of alluvium. The age of these coal-fields is quite
unknown, and I regret to say that my examination of their fossil
plants throws no material light on the subject. Upwards of thirty
species of fossil plants have been procured from them, and of these
the majority are referred by Dr. McLelland* [Reports of the
Geological Survey of India. Calcutta, 1850.] to the inferior oolite
epoch of England, from the prevalence of species of _Zamia,
Glossopteris,_ and _Taeniopteris._ Some of these genera,
together with _Vertebraria_ (a very remarkable Indian fossil),
are also recognised in the coal-fields of Sind and of Australia.
I cannot, however, think that botanical evidence of such a nature is
sufficient to warrant a satisfactory reference of these Indian
coal-fields to the same epoch as those of England or of Australia; in
the first place the outlines of the fronds of ferns and their
nervation are frail characters if employed alone for the
determination of existing genera, and much more so of fossil
fragments: in the second place recent ferns are so widely
distributed, that an inspection of the majority affords little clue
to the region or locality they come from: and in the third place,
considering the wide difference in latitude and longitude of
Yorkshire, India, and Australia, the natural conclusion is that they
could not have supported a similar vegetation at the same epoch.
In fact, finding similar fossil plants at places widely different in
latitude, and hence in climate, is, in the present state of our
knowledge, rather an argument against than for their having existed
cotemporaneously. The _Cycadeae,_ especially, whose fossil
remains afford so much ground for geological speculations, are far
from yielding such precise data as is supposed. Species of the order
are found in Mexico, South Africa, Australia, and India, some
inhabiting the hottest and dampest, and others the driest climates on
the surface of the globe; and it appears to me rash to argue much
from the presence of the order in the coal of Yorkshire and India,
when we reflect that the geologist of some future epoch may find as
good reasons for referring the present Cape, Australian, or Mexican
Flora to the same period as that of the Lias and Oolites, when the
_Cycadeae_ now living in the former countries shall
be fossilised.

Specific identity of their contained fossils may be considered as
fair evidence of the cotemporaneous origin of beds, but amongst the
many collections of fossil plants that I have examined, there is
hardly a specimen, belonging to any epoch, sufficiently perfect to
warrant the assumption that the species to which it belonged can be
again recognised. The botanical evidences which geologists too often
accept as proofs of specific identity are such as no botanist would
attach any importance to in the investigation of existing plants.
The faintest traces assumed to be of vegetable origin are habitually
made into genera and species by naturalists ignorant of the
structure, affinities and distribution of living plants, and of such
materials the bulk of so-called systems of fossil plants is composed.

A number of women were here employed in making gunpowder, grinding
the usual materials on a stone, with the addition of water from the
Hookah; a custom for which they have an obstinate prejudice.
The charcoal here used is made from an _Acacia_: the Seiks, I
believe, employ _Justicia Adhatoda,_ which is also in use all
over India: at Aden the Arabs prefer the _Calotropis_, probably
because it is most easily procured. The grain of all these plants is
open, whereas in England, closer-grained and more woody trees,
especially willows, are preferred.

The jungle I found to consist chiefly of thorny bushes, Jujube of two
species, an _Acacia_ and _Butea frondosa,_ the twigs of the
latter often covered with lurid red tears of Lac, which is here
collected in abundance. As it occurs on the plants and is collected
by the natives it is called Stick-lac, but after preparation
Shell-lac. In Mirzapore, a species of _Celtis_ yields it, and
the Peepul very commonly in various parts of India. The elaboration
of this dye, whether by the same species of insect, or by many from
plants so widely different in habit and characters, is a very curious
fact; since none have red juice, but some have milky and
others limpid.

After breakfast, Mr. Williams and I started on an elephant, following
the camp to Gyra, twelve miles distant. The docility of these animals
is an old story, but it loses so much in the telling, that their
gentleness, obedience, and sagacity seemed as strange to me as if I
had never heard or read of these attributes. The swinging motion,
under a hot sun, is very oppressive, but compensated for by being so
high above the dust. The Mahout, or driver, guides by poking his
great toes under either ear, enforcing obedience with an iron goad,
with which he hammers the animal's head with quite as much force as
would break a cocoa-nut, or drives it through his thick skin down to
the quick. A most disagreeable sight it is, to see the blood and
yellow fat oozing out in the broiling sun from these great punctures!
Our elephant was an excellent one, when he did not take obstinate
fits, and so docile as to pick up pieces of stone when desired, and
with a jerk of the trunk throw them over his head for the rider to
catch, thus saving the trouble of dismounting to geologise!

Of sights on the road, unfrequented though this noble line is, there
were plenty for a stranger; chiefly pilgrims to Juggernath, most on
foot, and a few in carts or pony gigs of rude construction.
The vehicles from the upper country are distinguished by a far
superior build, their horses are caparisoned with jingling bells, and
the wheels and other parts are bound with brass. The kindness of the
people towards animals, and in some cases towards their suffering
relations, is very remarkable, and may in part have given origin to
the prevalent idea that they are less cruel and stern than the
majority of mankind; but that the "mild" Hindoo, however gentle on
occasion, is cruel and vindictive to his brother man and to animals,
when his indolent temper is roused or his avarice stimulated, no one
can doubt who reads the accounts of Thuggee, Dacoitee, and poisoning,
and witnesses the cruelty with which beasts of burthen are treated.
A child carrying a bird, kid, or lamb, is not an uncommon sight, and
a woman with a dog in her arms is still more frequently seen.
Occasionally too, a group will bear an old man to see Juggernath
before he dies, or a poor creature with elephantiasis, who hopes to
be allowed to hurry himself to his paradise, in preference to
lingering in helpless inactivity, and at last crawling up to the
second heaven only. The costumes are as various as the religious
castes, and the many countries to which the travellers belong.
Next in wealth to the merchants, the most thriving-looking wanderer
is the bearer of Ganges' holy water, who drives a profitable trade,
his gains increasing as his load lightens, for the further he wanders
from the sacred stream, the more he gets for the contents of his jar.

Of merchandise we passed very little, the Ganges being still the high
road between north-west India and Bengal. Occasionally a string of
camels was seen, but, owing to the damp climate, these are rare, and
unknown east of the meridian of Calcutta. A little cotton, clumsily
packed in ragged bags, dirty, and deteriorating every day, even at
this dry season, proves in how bad a state it must arrive at the
market during the rains, when the low wagons are dragged through
the streams.

The roads here are all mended with a curious stone, called Kunker,
which is a nodular concretionary deposit of limestone, abundantly
imbedded in the alluvial soil of a great part of India.* [Often
occurring in strata, like flints.] It resembles a coarse gravel, each
pebble being often as large as a walnut, and tuberculated on the
surface: it binds admirably, and forms excellent roads, but
pulverises into a most disagreeable impalpable dust.

A few miles beyond Taldangah we passed from the sandstone, in which
the coal lies, to a very barren country of gneiss and granite rocks,
upon which the former rests; the country still rising, more hills
appear, and towering far above all is Paras-nath, the culminant
point, and a mountain whose botany I was most anxious to explore.

The vegetation of this part of the country is very poor, no
good-sized trees are to be seen, all is a low stunted jungle.
The grasses were few, and dried up, except in the beds of the
rivulets. On the low jungly hills the same plants appear, with a few
figs, bamboo in great abundance, several handsome _Acanthaceae_; a
few _Asclepiadeae_ climbing up the bushes; and the Cowage plant, now
with over-ripe pods, by shaking which, in passing, there often falls
such a shower of its irritating microscopic hairs, as to make the
skin tingle for an hour.

On the 1st of February, we moved on to Gyra, another insignificant
village. The air was cool, and the atmosphere clear. The temperature,
at three in the morning, was 65 degrees, with no dew, the grass only
61 degrees. As the sun rose, Parasnath appeared against the clear
grey sky, in the form of a beautiful broad cone, with a rugged peak,
of a deeper grey than the sky. It is a remarkably handsome mountain,
sufficiently lofty to be imposing, rising out of an elevated country,
the slope of which, upward to the base of the mountain, though
imperceptible, is really considerable; and it is surrounded by lesser
hills of just sufficient elevation to set it off. The atmosphere,
too, of these regions is peculiarly favourable for views: it is very
dry at this season; but still the hills are clearly defined, without
the harsh outlines so characteristic of a moist air. The skies are
bright, the sun powerful; and there is an almost imperceptible haze
that seems to soften the landscape, and keep every object in
true perspective.

Our route led towards the picturesque hills and values in front.
The rocks were all hornblende and micaceous schist, cut through by
trap-dykes, while great crumbling masses (or bosses) of quartz
protruded through the soil. The stratified rocks were often exposed,
pitched up at various inclinations: they were frequently white with
effloresced salts, which entering largely into the composition tended
to hasten their decomposition, and being obnoxious to vegetation,
rendered the sterile soil more hungry still. There was little
cultivation, and that little of the most wretched kind; even
rice-fields were few and scattered; there was no corn, or gram
(_Ervum Lens_), no Castor-oil, no Poppy, Cotton, Safflower, or other
crops of the richer soils that flank the Ganges and Hoogly; a very
little Sugar-cane, Dhal (_Cajana_), Mustard, Linseed, and Rape, the
latter three cultivated for their oil. Hardly a Palm was to be seen;
and it was seldom that the cottages could boast of a Banana,
Tamarind, Orange, Cocoa-nut or Date. The Mahowa (_Bassia latifolia_)
and Mango were the commonest trees. There being no Kunker in the soil
here, the roads were mended with angular quartz, much to the
elephants' annoyance.

We dismounted where some very micaceous stratified rock cropped out,
powdered with a saline efflorescence.* [An impure carbonate of soda.
This earth is thrown into clay vessels with water, which after
dissolving the soda, is allowed to evaporate, when the remainder is
collected, and found to contain so much silica, as to be capable of
being fused into glass. Dr. Boyle mentions this curious fact (Essay
on the Arts and Manufactures of India, read before the Society of
Arts, February 18, 1852), in illustration of the probably early epoch
at which the natives of British India were acquainted with the art of
making glass. More complicated processes are employed, and have been
from a very early period, in other parts of the continent.] Jujubes
(_Zizyphus_) prevailed, with the _Carissa carandas_ (in fruit), a
shrub belonging to the usually poisonous family of Dog-banes
(_Apocyneae_); its berries make good tarts, and the plant itself
forms tolerable hedges.

The country around Fitcoree is rather pretty, the hills covered with
bamboo and brushwood, and as usual, rising rather suddenly from the
elevated plains. The jungle affords shelter to a few bears and
tigers, jackals in abundance, and occasionally foxes; the birds seen
are chiefly pigeons. Insects are very scarce; those of the locust
tribe being most prevalent, indicative of a dry climate.

The temperature at 3 a.m. was 65 degrees; at 3 p.m. 82 degrees; and
at 10 p.m., 68 degrees, from which there was no great variation
during the whole time we spent at these elevations. The clouds were
rare, and always light and high, except a little fleecy spot of
vapour condensed close to the summit of Paras-nath. Though the nights
were clear and starlight, no dew was deposited, owing to the great
dryness of the air. On one occasion, this drought was so great during
the passage of a hot wind, that at night I observed the wet-bulb
thermometer to stand 20.5 degrees below the temperature of the air,
which was 66 degrees; this indicated a dew-point of 11.5 degrees, or
54.5 degrees below the air, and a saturation-point of 0.146; there
being only 0.102 grains of vapour per cubic foot of air, which latter
was loaded with dust. The little moisture suspended in the atmosphere
is often seen to be condensed in a thin belt of vapour, at a
considerable distance above the dry surface of the earth, thus
intercepting the radiation of heat from the latter to the clear sky
above. Such strata may be observed, crossing the hills in ribbonlike
masses, though not so clearly on this elevated region as on the
plains bounding the lower course of the Soane, where the vapour is
more dense, the hills more scattered, and the whole atmosphere more
humid. During the ten days I spent amongst the hills I saw but one
cloudy sunrise, whereas below, whether at Calcutta, or on the banks
of the Soane, the sun always rose behind a dense fog-bank.

At 9.30 a.m. the black-bulb thermometer rose in the sun to 130
degrees. The morning observation before 10 or 11 a.m. always gives a
higher result than at noon, though the sun's declination is so
considerably less, and in the hottest part of the day it is lower
still (3.30 p.m. 109 degrees), an effect no doubt due to the vapours
raised by the sun, and which equally interfere with the photometer
observations. The N.W. winds invariably rise at about 9 a.m. and blow
with increasing strength till sunset; they are due to the rarefaction
of the air over the heated ground, and being loaded with dust, the
temperature of the atmosphere is hence raised by the heated
particles. The increased temperature of the afternoon is therefore
not so much due to the accumulation of caloric from the sun's rays,
as to the passage of a heated current of air derived from the much
hotter regions to the westward. It would be interesting to know how
far this N.W. diurnal tide extends; also the rate at which it gathers
moisture in its progress over the damp regions of the Sunderbunds.
Its excessive dryness in N.W. India approaches that of the African
and Australian deserts; and I shall give an abstract of my own
observations, both in the vallies of the Soane and Ganges, and on the
elevated plateaus of Behar and of Mirzapore.* [See Appendix A.]

On the 2nd of February we proceeded to Tofe-Choney, the hills
increasing in height to nearly 1000 feet, and the country becoming
more picturesque. We passed some tanks covered with _Villarsia_, and
frequented by flocks of white egrets. The existence of artificial
tanks so near a lofty mountain, from whose sides innumerable
water-courses descend, indicates the great natural dryness of the
country during one season of the year. The hills and vallies were
richer than I expected, though far from luxuriant. A fine _Nauclea_
is a common shady tree, and _Bignonia indica_, now leafless, but with
immense pods hanging from the branches. _Acanthaceae_ is the
prevalent natural order, consisting of gay-flowered _Eranthemums,
Ruellias, Barlerias,_ and such hothouse favourites.* [Other plants
gathered here, and very typical of the Flora of this dry region, were
_Linum trigynum, Feronia elephantum, Aegle marmelos, Helicteres
Asoca, Abrus precatorius, Flemingia_; various _Desmodia, Rhynchosiae,
Glycine,_ and _Grislea tomentosa_ very abundant, _Conocarpus
latifoliusa, Loranthus longiflorus,_ and another species;
_Phyllanthus Emblica,_ various _Convolvuli, Cuscuta,_ and several
herbaceous _Compositae._]

This being the most convenient station whence to ascend Paras-nath,
we started at 6 a.m. for the village of Maddaobund, at the north base
of the mountain, or opposite side from that on which the grand
trunk-road runs. After following the latter for a few miles to the
west, we took a path through beautifully wooded plains, with
scattered trees of the Mahowa (_Bassia latifolia_), resembling
good oaks: the natives distil a kind of arrack from its fleshy
flowers, which are also eaten raw. The seeds, too, yield a concrete
oil, by expression, which is used for lamps and occasionally
for frying.

Some villages at the west base of the mountain occupy a better soil,
and are surrounded with richer cultivation; palms, mangos, and the
tamarind, the first and last rare features in this part of Bengal,
appeared to be common, with fields of rice and broad acres of flax
and rape, through the latter of which the blue _Orobanche indica_
swarmed. The short route to Maddaobund, through narrow rocky vallies,
was impracticable for the elephants, and we had to make a very
considerable detour, only reaching that village at 2 p.m. All the
hill people we observed were a fine-looking athletic race; they
disclaimed the tiger being a neighbour, which every palkee-bearer
along the road declares to carry off the torch-bearers, torch and
all. Bears they said were scarce, and all other wild animals, but a
natural jealousy of Europeans often leads the natives to deny the
existence of what they know to be an attraction to the proverbially
sporting Englishman.

Illustration-OLD TAMARIND TREES.

The site of Maddaobund, elevated 1230 feet, in a clearance of the
forest, and the appearance of the snow-white domes and bannerets of
its temples through the fine trees by which it is surrounded, are
very beautiful. Though several hundred feet above any point we had
hitherto reached, the situation is so sheltered that the tamarind,
peepul, and banyan trees are superb. A fine specimen of the latter
stands at the entrance to the village, not a broadheaded tree, as is
usual in the prime of its existence, but a mass of trunks irregularly
throwing out immense branches in a most picturesque manner; the
original trunk is apparently gone, and the principal mass of root
stems is fenced in. This, with two magnificent tamarinds, forms a
grand clump. The ascent of the mountain is immediately from the
village up a pathway worn by the feet of many a pilgrim from the most
remote parts of India.

Paras-nath is a mountain of peculiar sanctity, to which circumstance
is to be attributed the flourishing state of Maddaobund. The name is
that of the twenty-third incarnation of Jinna (Sanscrit "Conqueror"),
who was born at Benares, lived one hundred years, and was buried on
this mountain, which is the eastern metropolis of Jain worship, as
Mount Aboo is the western (where are their libraries and most
splendid temples). The origin of the Jain sect is obscure, though its
rise appears to correspond with the wreck of Boodhism throughout
India in the eleventh century. The Jains form in some sort a
transition-sect between Boodhists and Hindoos, differing from the
former in acknowledging castes, and from both in their worship of
Paras-nath's foot, instead of that of Munja-gosha of the Boodhs, or
Vishnoo's of the Hindoos. As a sect of Boodhists their religion is
considered pure, and free from the obscenities so conspicuous in
Hindoo worship; whilst, in fact, perhaps the reverse is the case;
but the symbols are fewer, and indeed almost confined to the feet of
Paras-nath, and the priests jealously conceal their esoteric
doctrines.

The temples, though small, are well built, and carefully kept.
No persuasion could induce the Brahmins to allow us to proceed beyond
the vestibule without taking off our shoes, to which we were not
inclined to consent. The bazaar was for so small a village large, and
crowded to excess with natives of all castes, colours, and provinces
of India, very many from the extreme W. and N.W., Rajpootana, the
Madras Presidency, and Central India. Numbers had come in good cars,
well attended, and appeared men of wealth and consequence; while the
quantities of conveyances of all sorts standing about, rather
reminded me of an election, than of anything I had seen in India.

The natives of the place were a more Negro-looking race than the
Bengalees to whom I had previously been accustomed; and the curiosity
and astonishment they displayed at seeing (probably many of them for
the first time) a party of Englishmen, were sufficiently amusing.
Our coolies with provisions not having come up, and it being two
o'clock in the afternoon, I having had no breakfast, and being
ignorant of the exclusively Jain population of the village, sent my
servant to the bazaar, for some fowls and eggs; but he was mobbed for
asking for these articles, and parched rice, beaten flat, with some
coarse sugar, was all I could obtain; together with sweetmeats so
odiously flavoured with various herbs, and sullied with such
impurities, that we quickly made them over to the elephants.

Not being able to ascend the mountain and return in one day,
Mr. Williams and his party went back to the road, leaving Mr. Haddon
and myself, who took up our quarters under a tamarind-tree.

In the evening a very gaudy poojah was performed. The car, filled
with idols, was covered with gilding and silk, and drawn by noble
bulls, festooned and garlanded. A procession was formed in front; and
it opened into an avenue, up and down which gaily dressed
dancing-boys paced or danced, shaking castanets, the attendant
worshippers singing in discordant voices, beating tom-toms, cymbals,
etc. Images (of Boodh apparently) abounded on the car, in front of
which a child was placed. The throng of natives was very great and
perfectly orderly, indeed, sufficiently apathetic: they were
remarkably civil in explaining what they understood of their
own worship.

At 2 p.m., the thermometer was only 65 degrees, though the day was
fine, a strong haze obstructing the sun's rays; at 6 p.m., 58
degrees; at 9 p.m., 56 degrees, and the grass cooled to 49 degrees.
Still there was no dew, though the night was starlight.

Having provided doolies, or little bamboo chairs slung on four men's
shoulders, in which I put my papers and boxes, we next morning
commenced the ascent; at first through woods of the common trees,
with large clumps of bamboo, over slaty rocks of gneiss, much
inclined and sloping away from the mountain. The view from a ridge
500 feet high was superb, of the village, and its white domes half
buried in the forest below, the latter of which continued in sight
for many miles to the northward. Descending to a valley some ferns
were met with, and a more luxuriant vegetation, especially of
_Urticeae._ Wild bananas formed a beautiful, and to me novel
feature in the woods.

The conical hills of the white ants were very abundant. The structure
appears to me not an independent one, but the debris of clumps of
bamboos, or of the trunks of large trees, which these insects have
destroyed. As they work up a tree from the ground, they coat the bark
with particles of sand glued together, carrying up this artificial
sheath or covered way as they ascend. A clump of bamboos is thus
speedily killed; when the dead stems fall away, leaving the mass of
stumps coated with sand, which the action of the weather soon
fashions into a cone of earthy matter.

Ascending again, the path strikes up the hill, through a thick forest
of Sal (_Vateria robusta_) and other trees, spanned with cables
of scandent _Bauhinia_ stems. At about 3000 feet above the sea,
the vegetation becomes more luxuriant, and by a little stream I
collected five species of ferns and some mosses,--all in a dry state,
however. Still higher, _Clematis, Thalictrum,_ and an increased
number of grasses are seen; with bushes of _Verbenaceae_ and
_Compositae._ The white ant apparently does not enter this
cooler region. At 3500 feet the vegetation again changes, the trees
all become gnarled and scattered; and as the dampness also increases,
more mosses and ferns appear. We emerged from the forest at the foot
of the great ridge of rocky peaks, stretching E. and W. three or four
miles. Abundance of a species of berberry and an _Osbeckia_
marked the change in the vegetation most decidedly, and were frequent
over the whole summit, with coarse grasses, and various bushes.

At noon we reached the saddle of the crest (alt. 4230 feet), where
was a small temple, one of five or six which occupy various
prominences of the ridge. The wind, N.W., was cold, the temp. 56
degrees. The view was beautiful, but the atmosphere too hazy: to the
north were ranges of low wooded hills, and the course of the Barakah
and Adji rivers; to the south lay a flatter country, with lower
ranges, and the Damooda river, its all but waterless bed snowy-white
from the exposed granite blocks with which its course is strewn.
East and west the several sharp ridges of the mountain itself are
seen; the western considerably the highest. Immediately below, the
mountain flanks appear clothed with impenetrable forest, here and
there interrupted by rocky eminences; while to the north the grand
trunk road shoots across the plains, like a white thread, as straight
as an arrow, spanning here and there the beds of the mountain
torrents.

On the south side the vegetation was more luxuriant than on the
north, though, from the heat of the sun, the reverse might have been
expected. This is owing partly to the curve taken by the ridge being
open to the south, and partly to the winds from that quarter being
the moist ones. Accordingly, trees which I had left 3000 feet below
in the north ascent, here ascended to near the summit, such as figs
and bananas. A short-stemmed palm (_Phoenix_) was tolerably
abundant, and a small tree (_Pterospermum_) on which a species
of grass grew epiphytically; forming a curious feature in the
landscape.

The situation of the principal temple is very fine, below the saddle
in a hollow facing the south, surrounded by jungles of plantain and
banyan. It is small, and contains little worthy of notice but the
sculptured feet of Paras-nath, and some marble Boodh idols;
cross-legged figures with crisp hair and the Brahminical cord.
These, a leper covered with ashes in the vestibule, and an
officiating priest, were all we saw. Pilgrims were seen on various
parts of the mountain in very considerable numbers, passing from one
temple to another, and generally leaving a few grains of dry rice at
each; the rich and lame were carried in chairs, the poorer walked.

The culminant rocks are very dry, but in the rains may possess many
curious plants; a fine _Kalanchoe_ was common, with the berberry, a
beautiful _Indigofera,_ and various other shrubs; a _Bolbophyllum_
grew on the rocks, with a small _Begonia,_ and some ferns. There were
no birds, and very few insects, a beautiful small _Pontia_ being the
only butterfly. The striped squirrel was very busy amongst the rocks;
and I saw a few mice, and the traces of bears.

At 3 p.m., the temperature was 54 degrees, and the air deliciously
cool and pleasant. I tried to reach the western peak (perhaps 300
feet above the saddle), by keeping along the ridge, but was cut off
by precipices, and ere I could retrace my steps it was time to
descend. This I was glad to do in a doolie, and I was carried to the
bottom, with only one short rest, in an hour and three quarters.
The descent was very steep the whole way, partly down steps of sharp
rock, where one of the men cut his foot severely. The pathway at the
bottom was lined for nearly a quarter of a mile with sick, halt,
maimed, lame, and blind beggars, awaiting our descent. It was truly a
fearful sight, especially the lepers, and numerous unhappy victims
to elephantiasis.

Though the botany of Paras-nath proved interesting, its elevation was
not accompanied by such a change from the flora of its base as I had
expected. This is no doubt due to its dry climate and sterile soil;
characters which it shares with the extensive elevated area of which
it forms a part, and upon which I could not detect above 300 species
of plants during my journey. Yet, that the atmosphere at the summit
is more damp as well as cooler than at the base, is proved as well by
the observations as by the vegetation;* [Of plants eminently typical
of a moister atmosphere, I may mention the genera _Bolbophyllum,
Begonia, Aeginetia, Disporum, Roxburghia, Panax, Eugenia, Myrsine,
Shorea, Millettia,_ ferns, mosses, and foliaceous lichens; which
appeared in strange association with such dry-climate genera as
_Kalanchoe, Pterospermum,_ and the dwarf-palm, _Phoenix._ Add to this
list the _Berberis asiatica, Clematis nutans, Thalictrum
glyphocarpum,_ 27 grasses, _Cardamine,_ etc., and the mountain top
presents a mixture of the plants of a damp hot, a dry hot, and of a
temperate climate, in fairly balanced proportions. The prime elements
of a tropical flora were however wholly wanting on Paras-nath, where
are neither Peppers, _Pothos, Arum,_ tall or climbing palms,
tree-ferns, _Guttiferae,_ vines, or laurels.] and in some respects,
as the increased proportion of ferns, additional epiphytal orchideous
plants, _Begonias,_ and other species showed, its top supported a
more tropical flora than its base.



CHAPTER II.

Doomree--Vegetation of table-land--Lieutenant Beadle--Birds--
Hot springs of Soorujkoond--Plants near them--Shells in them--
Cholera-tree--Olibanum--Palms, form of--Dunwah Pass--Trees,
native and planted--Wild peacock--Poppy fields--Geography and
geology of Behar and Central India--Toddy-palm--Ground,
temperature of--Barroon--Temperature of plants--Lizard--Cross
the Soane--Sand, ripple marks on--Kymore hills--Ground,
temperature of--Limestone--Rotas fort and palace--Nitrate of
lime--Change of climate--Lime stalagmites, enclosing leaves--
Fall of Soane--Spiders, etc.--Scenery and natural history of
upper Soane valley--_Hardwickia binata_--Bhel fruit--
Dust-storm--Alligator--Catechu--_Cochlospermum_--
Leaf-bellows--Scorpions--Tortoises--Florican--Limestone
spheres--Coles--Tiger-hunt--Robbery.

In the evening we returned to our tamarind tree, and the next morning
regained the trunk road, following it to the dawk bungalow of
Doomree. On the way I found the _Caesalpinia paniculuta,_ a
magnificent climber, festooning the trues with its dark glossy
foliage and gorgeous racemes of orange blossoms. Receding from the
mountain, the country again became barren: at Doomree the hills were
of crystalline rocks, chiefly quartz and gneiss; no palms or large
trees of any kind appeared. The spear-grass abounded, and a
detestable nuisance it was, its long awns and husked seed working
through trowsers and stockings.

_Balanites_ was not uncommon, forming a low thorny bush, with
_Aegle marmelos_ and _Feronia elephantum._ Having rested
the tired elephant, we pushed on in the evening to the next stage,
Baghoda, arriving there at 3 a.m., and after a few hours' rest, I
walked to the bungalow of Lieutenant Beadle, the surveyor of roads,
sixteen miles further.

The country around Baghoda is still very barren, but improves
considerably in going westward, the ground becoming hilly, and the
road winding through prettily wooded vallies, and rising gradually to
1446 feet. _Nauclea cordifolia,_ a tree resembling a young
sycamore, is very common; with the Semul (_Bombax_), a very
striking tree from its buttressed trunk and gaudy scarlet flowers,
swarming with birds, which feed from its honeyed blossoms.

At 10 a.m. the sun became uncomfortably hot, the thermometer being
77 degrees, and the black-bulb thermometer 137 degrees. I had lost my
hat, and possessed no substitute but a silken nightcap; so I had to
tie a handkerchief over my head, to the astonishment of the
passers-by. Holding my head down, I had little source of amusement
but reading the foot-marks on the road; and these were strangely
diversified to an English eye. Those of the elephant, camel, buffalo
and bullock, horse, ass, pony, dog, goat, sheep and kid, lizard,
wild-cat and pigeon, with men, women, and children's feet, naked and
shod, were all recognisable.

It was noon ere I arrived at Lieutenant Beadle's, at Belcuppee (alt.
1219 feet), glad enough of the hearty welcome I received, being very
hot, dusty, and hungry. The country about his bungalow is very
pretty, from the number of wooded hills and large trees, especially
of banyan and peepul, noble oak-like Mahowa (_Bassia_), _Nauclea,_
Mango, and _Ficus infectoria._ These are all scattered, however, and
do not form forest, such as in a stunted form clothes the hills,
consisting of _Diospyros, Terminalia, Gmelina, Nauclea parvifolia,
Buchanania,_ etc. The rocks are still hornblende-schist and granite,
with a covering of alluvium, full of quartz pebbles. Insects and
birds are numerous, the latter consisting of jays, crows, doves,
sparrows, and maina (_Pastor_); also the _Phoenicophaus tristis_
("Mahoka" of the natives), with a note like that of the English
cuckoo, as heard late in the season.

I remained two days with Lieutenant Beadle, enjoying in his society
several excursions to the hot springs, etc. These springs (called
Soorujkoond) are situated close to the road, near the mouth of a
valley, in a remarkably pretty spot. They are, of course, objects of
worship; and a ruined temple stands close behind them, with three
very conspicuous trees--a peepul, a banyan, and a white,
thick-stemmed, leafless _Sterculia,_ whose branches bore dense
clusters of greenish foetid flowers. The hot springs are four in
number, and rise in as many ruined brick tanks about two yards
across. Another tank, fed by a cold spring, about twice that size,
flows between two of the hot, only two or three paces distant from
one of the latter on either hand. All burst through the gneiss rocks,
meet in one stream after a few yards, and are conducted by bricked
canals to a pool of cold water, about eighty yards off.

The temperatures of the hot springs were respectively 169 degrees,
170 degrees, 173 degrees, and 190 degrees; of the cold, 84 degrees at
4 p.m., and 75 degrees at 7 a.m. the following morning. The hottest
is the middle of the five. The water of the cold spring is sweet but
not good, and emits gaseous bubbles; it was covered with a green
floating _Conferva._ Of the four hot springs, the most copious
is about three feet deep, bubbles constantly, boils eggs, and though
brilliantly clear, has an exceedingly nauseous taste. This and the
other warm ones cover the bricks and surrounding rocks with a thick
incrustation of salts.

_Confervae_ abound in the warm stream from the springs, and two
species, one ochreous brown, and the other green, occur on the
margins of the tanks themselves, and in the hottest water; the brown
is the best Salamander, and forms a belt in deeper water than the
green; both appear in broad luxuriant strata, wherever the temp. is
cooled down to 168 degrees, and as low as 90 degrees. Of flowering
plants, three showed in an eminent degree a constitution capable of
resisting the heat, if not a predilection for it; these were all
_Cyperaceae,_ a _Cyperus_ and an _Eleocharis,_ having their roots in
water of 100 degrees, and where they are probably exposed to greater
heat, and a _Fimbristylis_ at 98 degrees; all were very luxuriant.
From the edges of the four hot springs I gathered sixteen species of
flowering plants, and from the cold tank five, which did not grow in
the hot. A water-beetle, _Colymbetes_(?) and _Notonecta,_ abounded in
water at 112 degrees, with quantities of dead shells; frogs were very
lively, with live shells, at 90 degrees, and with various other water
beetles. Having no means of detecting the salts of this water, I
bottled some for future analysis.* [For an account of the
_Confervae,_ and of the mineral constituents of the waters, etc. see
Appendix B.]

On the following day I botanized in the neighbourhood, with but poor
success. An oblique-leaved fig climbs the other trees, and generally
strangles them: two epiphytal _Orchideae_ also occur on the latter,
_Vanda Roxburghii_ and an _Oberonia._ Dodders (_Cuscuta_) of two
species, and _Cassytha,_ swarm over and conceal the bushes with their
yellow thread-like stems.

I left Belcuppee on the 8th of February, following Mr. Williams'
camp. The morning was clear and cold, the temperature only 56
degrees. We crossed the nearly dry broad bed of the Burkutta river, a
noble stream during the rains, carrying along huge boulders of
granite and gneiss. Near this I passed the Cholera-tree, a famous
peepul by the road side, so called from a detachment of infantry
having been attacked and decimated at the spot by that fell disease;
it is covered with inscriptions and votive tokens in the shape of
rags, etc. We continued to ascend to 1360 feet, where I came upon a
small forest of the Indian Olibanum (_Boswellia thurifera_),
conspicuous from its pale bark, and spreading curved branches, leafy
at their tips; its general appearance is a good deal like that of the
mountain ash. The gum, celebrated throughout the East, was flowing
abundantly from the trunk, very fragrant and transparent. The ground
was dry, sterile, and rocky; kunker, the curious formation mentioned
at Chapter 1, appears in the alluvium, which I had not elsewhere seen
at this elevation.

Descending to the village of Burshoot, we lost sight of the
_Boswellia,_ and came upon a magnificent tope of mango, banyan,
and peepul, so far superior to anything hitherto met with, that we
were glad to choose such a pleasant halting-place for breakfast.
There are a few lofty fan-palms here too, great rarities in this soil
and elevation: one, about eighty feet high, towered above some
wretched hovels, displaying the curious proportions of this tribe of
palms: first, a short cone, tapering to one-third the height of the
stem, the trunk then swelling to two-thirds, and again tapering to
the crown. Beyond this, the country again ascends to Burree (alt.
1169 feet), another dawk bungalow, a barren place, which we left on
the following morning.

So little was there to observe, that I again amused myself by
watching footsteps, the precision of which in the sandy soil was
curious. Looking down from the elephant, I was interested by seeing
them all in _relief,_ instead of _depressed,_ the slanting
rays of the sun in front producing this kind of mirage. Before us
rose no more of those wooded hills that had been our companions for
the last 120 miles, the absence of which was a sign of the nearly
approaching termination of the great hilly plateau we had been
traversing for that distance.

Chorparun, at the top of the Dunwah pass, is situated on an extended
barren flat, 1320 feet above the sea, and from it the descent from
the table-land to the level of the Soane valley, a little above that
of the Ganges at Patna, is very sudden. The road is carried zizgag
down a rugged hill of gneiss, with a descent of nearly 1000 feet in
six miles, of which 600 are exceedingly steep. The pass is well
wooded, with abundance of bamboo, _Bombax, Cassia, Acacia,_ and
_Butea,_ with _Calotropis,_ the purple Mudar, a very handsome
road-side plant, which I had not seen before, but which, with the
_Argemone Mexicana,_ was to be a companion for hundreds of miles
farther. All the views in the pass are very picturesque, though
wanting in good foliage, such as _Ficus_ would afford, of which I did
not see one tree. Indeed the rarity of the genus (except
_F. infectoria_) in the native woods of these hills, is very
remarkable. The banyan and peepul always appear to be planted, as do
the tamarind and mango.

Dunwah, at the foot of the pass, is 620 feet above the sea, and
nearly 1000 below the mean level of the highland I had been
traversing. Every thing bears here a better aspect; the woods at
the foot of the hills afforded many plants; the bamboo
(_B. stricta_) is green instead of yellow and white; a little
castor-oil is cultivated, and the Indian date (low and stunted)
appears about the cottages.

In the woods I heard and saw the wild peacock for the first time.
Its voice is not to be distinguished from that of the tame bird in
England, a curious instance of the perpetuation of character under
widely different circumstances, for the crow of the wild jungle-fowl
does not rival that of the farm-yard cock.

In the evening we left Dunwah for Barah (alt. 480 feet), passing over
very barren soil, covered with low jungle, the original woods having
apparently been cut for fuel. Our elephant, a timid animal, came on a
drove of camels in the dark by the road-side, and in his alarm
insisted on doing battle, tearing through the thorny jungle,
regardless of the mahout, and still more of me: the uproar raised by
the camel-drivers was ridiculous, and the danger to my barometer
imminent.

We proceeded on the 11th of February to Sheergotty, where Mr.
Williams and his camp were awaiting our arrival. Wherever cultivation
appeared the crops were tolerably luxuriant, but a great deal of the
country yielded scarcely half-a-dozen kinds of plants to any ten
square yards of ground. The most prevalent were _Carissa carandas,
Olax scandens,_ two _Zizyphi,_ and the ever-present _Acacia
Catechu._ The climate is, however, warmer and much moister, for I
here observed dew to be formed, which I afterwards found to be usual
on the low grounds. That its presence is due to the increased amount
of vapour in the atmosphere I shall prove: the amount of radiation,
as shown by the cooling of the earth and vegetation, being the same
in the elevated plain and lower levels.* [See Appendix C.]

The good soil was very richly cultivated with poppy (which I had not
seen before), sugar-cane, wheat, barley, mustard, rape, and flax.
At a distance a field of poppies looks like a green lake, studded
with white water-lilies. The houses, too, are better, and have tiled
roofs; while, in such situations, the road is lined with trees.

A retrospect of the ground passed over is unsatisfactory, as far as
botany is concerned, except as showing how potent are the effects of
a dry soil and climate during one season of the year upon a
vegetation which has no desert types. During the rains probably many
more species would be obtained, for of annuals I scarcely found
twenty. At that season, however, the jungles of Behar and Birbhoom,
though far from tropically luxuriant, are singularly unhealthy.

In a geographical point of view the range of hills between Burdwan
and the Soave is interesting, as being the north-east continuation of
a chain which crosses the broadest part of the peninsula of India,
from the Gulf of Cambay to the junction of the Ganges and Hoogly at
Rajmahal. This range runs south of the Soane and Kymore, which it
meets I believe at Omerkuntuk;* [A lofty mountain said to be
7000-8000 feet high.] the granite of this and the sandstone of the
other, being there both overlaid with trap. Further west again, the
ranges separate, the southern still betraying a nucleus of granite,
forming the Satpur range, which divides the valley of the Taptee from
that of the Nerbudda. The Paras-nath range is, though the most
difficult of definition, the longer of the two parallel ranges;
the Vindhya continued as the Kymore, terminating abruptly at the Fort
of Chunar on the Ganges. The general and geological features of the
two, especially along their eastern course, are very different.
This consists of metamorphic gneiss, in various highly inclined beds,
through which granite hills protrude, the loftiest of which is
Paras-nath. The north-east Vindhya (called Kymore), on the other
hand, consists of nearly horizontal beds of sandstone, overlying
inclined beds of non-fossiliferous limestone. Between the latter and
the Paras-nath gneiss, come (in order of superposition) shivered and
undulating strata of metamorphic quartz, hornstone, hornstone-
porphyry, jaspers, etc. These are thrown up, by greenstone I believe,
along the north and north-west boundary of the gneiss range, and are
to be recognised as forming the rocks of Colgong, of Sultangunj, and
of Monghyr, on the Ganges, as also various detached hills near Gyah,
and along the upper course of the Soane. From these are derived the
beautiful agates and cornelians, so famous under the name of Soane
pebbles, and they are equally common on the Curruckpore range, as on
the south bank of the Soane, so much so in the former position as to
have been used in the decoration of the walls of the now ruined
palaces near Bhagulpore.

In the route I had taken, I had crossed the eastern extremity alone
of the range, commencing with a very gradual ascent, over the
alluvial plains of the west bank of the Hoogly, then over laterite,
succeeded by sandstone of the Indian coal era, which is succeeded by
the granite table-land, properly so called. A little beyond the coal
fields, the table-land reaches an average height of 1130 feet, which
is continued for upwards of 100 miles, to the Dunwah pass. Here the
descent is sudden to plains, which, continuous with those of the
Ganges, run up the Soane till beyond Rotasghur. Except for the
occasional ridges of metamorphic rocks mentioned above, and some
hills of intruded greenstone, the lower plain is stoneless, its
subjacent rocks being covered with a thicker stratum of the same
alluvium which is thinly spread over the higher table-land above.
This range is of great interest from its being the source of many
important rivers,* [The chief rivers from this, the great watershed
of western Bengal, flow north-west and south-east; a few
comparatively insignificant streams running north to the Ganges.
Amongst the former are the Rheru, the Kunner, and the Coyle, which
contribute to the Soane; amongst the latter, the Dammooda, Adji, and
Barakah, flow into the Hoogly, and the Subunrika, Braminee, and
Mahanuddee into the Bay of Bengal.] and of all those which water the
country between the Soane, Hoogly, and Ganges, as well as from its
deflecting the course of the latter river, which washes its base at
Rajmahal, and forcing it to take a sinuous course to the sea. In its
climate and botany it differs equally from the Gangetic plains to the
north, and from the hot, damp, and exuberant forests of Orissa to the
south. Nor are its geological features less different, or its
concomitant and in part resultant characters of agriculture and
native population. Still further west, the great rivers of the
peninsula have their origin, the Nerbudda and Taptee flowing west to
the gulf of Cambay, the Cane to the Jumna, the Soane to the Ganges,
and the northern feeders of the Godavery to the Bay of Bengal.

On the 12th of February, we left Sheergotty (alt. 463 feet), crossing
some small streams, which, like all else seen since leaving the
Dunwah Pass, flow N. to the Ganges. Between Sheergotty and the Soane,
occur many of the isolated hills of greenstone, mentioned above,
better known to the traveller from having been telegraphic stations.
Some are much impregnated with iron, and whether for their colour,
the curious outlines of many, or their position, form quaint, and in
some cases picturesque features in the otherwise tame landscape.

The road being highly cultivated, and the Date-palm becoming more
abundant, we encamped in a grove of these trees. All were curiously
distorted; the trunks growing zigzag, from the practice of yearly
tapping the alternate sides for toddy. The incision is just below the
crown, and slopes upwards and inwards: a vessel is hung below the
wound, and the juice conducted into it by a little piece of bamboo.
This operation spoils the fruit, which, though eaten, is small, and
much inferior to the African date.

At Mudunpore (alt. 440 feet) a thermometer, sunk 3 feet 4 inches in
the soil, maintained a constant temperature of 71.5 degrees, that of
the air varying from 77.5 degrees, at 3 p.m., to 62 at daylight the
following morning; when we moved on to Nourunga (alt. 340 feet),
where I bored to 3 feet 8 inches with a heavy iron jumper through an
alluvium of such excessive tenacity, that eight natives were employed
for four hours in the operation. In both this and another hole,
4 feet 8 inches, the temperature was 72 degrees at 10 p.m.; and on
the following morning 71.5 degrees in the deepest hole, and
70 degrees in the shallower: that of the external air varied from
71 degrees at 3 p.m., to 57 degrees at daylight on the following
morning. At the latter time I took the temperature of the earth near
the surface, which showed, surface 53 degrees, 1 inch 57 degrees,
2 inches 58 degrees, 4 inches 62 degrees, 7 inches 64 degrees.

The following day we marched to Baroon (alt. 345 feet) on the
alluvial banks of the Soane, crossing a deep stream by a pretty
suspension bridge, of which the piers were visible two miles off, so
level is the road. The Soane is here three miles wide, its nearly dry
bed being a desert of sand, resembling a vast arm of the sea when the
tide is out: the banks are very barren, with no trees near, and but
very few in the distance. The houses were scarcely visible on the
opposite side, behind which the Kymore mountains rise. The Soane is a
classical river, being now satisfactorily identified with the
Eranoboas of the ancients.* [The etymology of Eranoboas is
undoubtedly _Hierrinia Vahu_ (Sanskrit), the golden-armed.
Sons is also the Sanskrit for gold. The stream is celebrated for its
agates (Soane pebbles), which are common, but gold is not now
obtained from it.]

The alluvium is here cut into a cliff, ten or twelve feet above the
bed of the river, and against it the sand is blown in naked
_dunes._ At 2 p.m., the surface-sand was heated to 110 degrees
where sheltered from the wind, and 104 degrees in the open bed of the
river. To compare the rapidity and depth to which the heat is
communicated by pure sand, and by the tough alluvium, I took the
temperature at some inches depth in both. That the alluvium absorbs
the heat better, and retains it longer, would appear from the
following, the only observations I could make, owing to the tenacity
of the soil.

2 p.m.
Surface           104 degrees
22.5 inches        93 degrees
5 inches           88 degrees
Sand at this depth 78 degrees.
5 a.m.
Surface            51 degrees
28 inches          68 degrees

Finding the fresh milky juice of _Calotropis_ to be only
72 degrees, I was curious to ascertain at what depth this
temperature was to be obtained in the sand of the river-bed, where
the plant grew.

Surface    104.5 degrees,
1 inch     102 degrees,
2 inches    94 degrees,
2.5 inches  90 degrees,
3.5 inches  85 degrees (Compact),
8 inches    73 degrees (Wet),
15 inches   72 degrees (Wet).

The power this plant exercises of maintaining a low temperature of 72
degrees, though the main portion which is subterraneous is surrounded
by a soil heated to between 90 degrees and 104 degrees, is very
remarkable, and no doubt proximately due to the rapidity of
evaporation from the foliage, and consequent activity in the
circulation. Its exposed leaves maintained a temperature of 80
degrees, nearly 25 degrees cooler than the similarly exposed sand and
alluvium. On the same night the leaves were cooled down to 54
degrees, when the sand had cooled to 51 degrees. Before daylight the
following morning the sand had cooled to 43 degrees, and the leaves
of the _Calotropis_ to 45.5 degrees. I omitted to observe the
temperature of the sap at the latter time; but the sand at the same
depth (15 inches) as that at which its temperature and that of the
plant agreed at mid-day, was 68 degrees. And assuming this to be the
heat of the plant, we find that the leaves are heated by solar
radiation during the day 8 degrees, and cooled by nocturnal
radiation, 22.5 degrees.

Mr. Theobald (my companion in this and many other rambles) pulled a
lizard from a hole in the bank. Its throat was mottled with scales of
brown and yellow. Three ticks had fastened on it, each of a size
covering three or four scales: the first was yellow, corresponding
with the yellow colour of the animal's belly, where it lodged, the
second brown, from the lizard's head; but the third, which was
clinging to the parti-coloured scales of the neck, had its body
parti-coloured, the hues corresponding with the individual scales
which they covered. The adaptation of the two first specimens in
colour to the parts to which they adhered, is sufficiently
remarkable; but the third case was most extraordinary.

During the night of the 14th of February, I observed a beautiful
display, apparently of the Aurora borealis, an account of which will
be found in the Appendix.

_February_ 15.--Our passage through the Soane sands was very
tedious, though accomplished in excellent style, the elephants
pushing forward the heavy waggons of mining tools with their
foreheads. The wheels were sometimes buried to the axles in sand, and
the draught bullocks were rather in the way than otherwise.

The body of water over which we ferried, was not above 80 yards wide.
In the rains, when the whole space of three miles is one rapid flood,
10 or 12 feet deep, charged with yellow sand, this river must present
an imposing spectacle. I walked across the dry portion, observing the
sand-waves, all ranged in one direction, perpendicular to that of the
prevailing wind, accurately representing the undulations of the
ocean, as seen from a mast-head or high cliff. As the sand was finer
or coarser, so did the surface resemble a gentle ripple, or an
ocean-swell. The progressive motion of the waves was curious, and
caused by the lighter particles being blown over the ridges, and
filling up the hollows to leeward. There were a few islets in the
sand, a kind of oases of mud and clay, in laminae no thicker than
paper, and these were at once denizened by various weeds. Some large
spots were green with wheat and barley-crops, both suffering
from smut.

We encamped close to the western shore, at the village of Dearee
(alt. 330 feet); it marks the termination of the Kymore Hills, along
whose S.E. bases our course now lay, as we here quitted the grand
trunk road for a rarely visited country.

On the 16th we marched south up the river to Tilotho (alt. 395 feet),
through a rich and highly cultivated country, covered with indigo,
cotton, sugar-cane, safflower, castor-oil, poppy, and various grains.
Dodders (_Cuscuta_) covered even tall trees with a golden web,
and the _Capparis acuminata_ was in full flower along the road
side. Tilotho, a beautiful village, is situated in a superb grove of
Mango, Banyan, Peepul, Tamarind, and _Bassia._ The Date or
toddy-palm and fan-palm are very abundant and tall: each had a pot
hung under the crown. The natives climb these trunks with a hoop or
cord round the body and both ancles, and a bottle-gourd or other
vessel hanging round the neck to receive the juice from the
stock-bottle, in this aerial wine-cellar. These palms were so lofty
that the climbers, as they paused in their ascent to gaze with wonder
at our large retinue, resembled monkeys rather than men. Both trees
yield a toddy, but in this district they stated that that from the
_Phoenix_ (Date) alone ferments, and is distilled; while in
other parts of India, the _Borassus_ (fan-palm) is chiefly
employed. I walked to the hills, over a level cultivated country
interspersed with occasional belts of low wood; in which the pensile
nests of the weaver-bird were abundant, but generally hanging out of
reach, in prickly _Acacias._

The hills here present a straight precipitous wall of horizontally
stratified sandstone, very like the rocks at the Cape of Good Hope,
with occasionally a shallow valley, and a slope of debris at the
base, densely clothed with dry jungle. The cliffs are about 1000 feet
high, and the plants similar to those at the foot of Paras-nath, but
stunted: I climbed to the top, the latter part by steps or ledges of
sandstone. The summit was clothed with long grass, trees of
_Diospyros_ and _Terminalia,_ and here and there the
_Boswellia._ On the precipitous rocks the curious white-barked
_Sterculia foetida_ "flung its arms abroad," leafless, and
looking as if blasted by lightning.

A hole was sunk here again for the thermometers, and, as usual, with
great labour; the temperatures obtained were--
Air.
9 p.m.    64.5 degrees
5.30 a.m. 58.5 degrees
4 feet 6 inches, under good shade of trees
9 p.m.    77 degrees
11 p.m.   76 degrees
5.30 a.m. 76 degrees

This is a very great rise (of 4 degrees) above any of those
previously obtained, and certainly indicates a much higher mean
temperature of the locality. I can only suppose it due to the
radiation of heat from the long range of sandstone cliff, exposed to
the south, which overlooks the flat whereon we were encamped, and
which, though four or five miles off, forms a very important feature.
The differences of temperature in the shade taken on this and the
other side of the river are 2.75 degrees higher on this side.

On the 17th we marched to Akbarpore (alt. 400. feet), a village
overhung by the rocky precipice of Rotasghur, a spur of the Kymore,
standing abruptly forward.

The range, in proceeding up the Soane valley, gradually approaches
the river, and beds of non-fossiliferous limestone are seen
protruding below the sandstone and occasionally rising into rounded
hills, the paths upon which appear as white as do those through the
chalk districts of England. The overlying beds of sandstone are
nearly horizontal, or with a dip to the N.W.; the subjacent ones of
limestone dip at a greater angle. Passing between the river and a
detached conical hill of limestone, capped with a flat mass of
sandstone, the spur of Rotas broke suddenly on the view, and very
grand it was, quite realising my anticipations of the position of
these eyrie-like hill-forts of India. To the left of the spur winds
the valley of the Soane, with low-wooded hills on its opposite bank,
and a higher range, connected with that of Behar, in the distance.
To the right, the hills sweep round, forming an immense and
beautifully wooded amphitheatre, about four miles deep, bounded with
a continuation of the escarpment. At the foot of the crowned spur is
the village of Akbarpore, where we encamped in a Mango tope;* [On the
24th of June, 1848, the Soane rose to an unprecedented height, and
laid this grove of Mangos three feet under water.] it occupies some
pretty undulating limestone hills, amongst which several streams flow
from the amphitheatre to the Soane.

During our two days' stay here, I had the advantage of the society of
Mr. C. E. Davis, who was our guide during some rambles in the
neighbourhood, and to whose experience, founded on the best habits of
observation, I am indebted for much information. At noon we started
to ascend to the palace, on the top of the spur. On the way we passed
a beautiful well, sixty feet deep, and with a fine flight of steps to
the bottom. Now neglected and overgrown with flowering weeds and
creepers, it afforded me many of the plants I had only previously
obtained in a withered state; it was curious to observe there some of
the species of the hill-tops, whose seeds doubtless are scattered
abundantly over the surrounding plains, and only vegetate where they
find a coolness and moisture resembling that of the altitude they
elsewhere affect. A fine fig-tree growing out of the stone-work
spread its leafy green branches over the well mouth, which was about
twelve feet square; its roots assumed a singular form, enveloping two
sides of the walls with a beautiful net-work, which at _high-water
mark_ (rainy season), abruptly divides into thousands of little
brushes, dipping into the water which they fringe. It was a pretty
cool place to descend to, from a temperature of 80 degrees above, to
74 degrees at the bottom, where the water was 60 degrees; and most
refreshing to look, either up the shaft to the green fig shadowing
the deep profound, or along the sloping steps through a vista of
flowering herbs and climbing plants, to the blue heaven of a
burning sky.

The ascent to Rotas is over the dry hills of limestone, covered with
a scrubby brushwood, to a crest where are the first rude and ruined
defences. The limestone is succeeded by the sandstone cliff cut into
steps, which led from ledge to ledge and gap to gap, well guarded
with walls and an archway of solid masonry. Through this we passed on
to the flat summit of the Kymore hills, covered with grass and
forest, intersected by paths in all directions. The ascent is about
1200 feet--a long pull in the blazing sun of February. The turf
consists chiefly of spear-grass and _Andropogon muricatus,_ the
kus-kus, which yields a favourite fragrant oil, used as a medicine in
India. The trees are of the kinds mentioned before. A pretty
octagonal summer-house, with its roof supported by pillars, occupies
one of the highest points of the plateau, and commands a superb view
of the scenery before described. From this a walk of three miles
leads through the woods to the palace. The buildings are very
extensive, and though now ruinous, bear evidence of great beauty in
the architecture: light galleries, supported by slender columns, long
cool arcades, screened squares and terraced walks, are the principal
features. The rooms open out upon flat roofs, commanding views of the
long endless table-land to the west, and a sheer precipice of 1000
feet on the other side, with the Soane, the amphitheatre of hills,
and the village of Akbarpore below.

This and Beejaghur, higher up the Soane, were amongst the most
recently reduced forts, and this was further the last of those
wrested from Baber in 1542. Some of the rooms are still habitable,
but the greater part are ruinous, and covered with climbers, both of
wild flowers and of the naturalised garden plants of the adjoining
shrubbery; the _Arbor-tristis,_ with _Hibiscus, Abutilon,_
etc., and above all, the little yellow-flowered _Linaria
ramosissima,_ crawling over every ruined wall, as we see the
walls of our old English castles clothed with its congener
_L. Cymbalaria._

In the old dark stables I observed the soil to be covered with a
copious evanescent efflorescence of nitrate of lime, like soap-suds
scattered about.

I made Rotas Palace 1490 feet above the sea, so that this table-land
is here only fifty feet higher than that I had crossed on the grand
trunk road, before descending at the Dunwah pass. Its mean
temperature is of course considerably (4 degrees) below that of the
valley, but though so cool, agues prevail after the rains.
The extremes of temperature are less marked than in the valley, which
becomes excessively heated, and where hot winds sometimes last for a
week, blowing in furious gusts.

The climate of the whole neighbourhood has of late changed
materially; and the fall of rain has much diminished, consequent on
felling the forests; even within six years the hail-storms have been
far less frequent and violent. The air on the hills is highly
electrical, owing, no doubt, to the dryness of the atmosphere, and to
this the frequent recurrence of hail-storms may be due.

The zoology of these regions is tolerably copious, but little is
known of the natural history of a great part of the plateau; a native
tribe, prone to human sacrifices, is talked of. Tigers are common,
and bears are numerous; they have, besides, the leopard, panther,
viverine cat, and civet; and of the dog tribe the pariah, jackal,
fox, and wild dog, called Koa. Deer are very numerous, of six or
seven kinds. A small alligator inhabits the hill streams, said to be
a very different animal from either of the Soane species.

During our descent we examined several instances of ripple-mark
(fossil waves' footsteps) in the sandstone; they resembled the
fluting of the _Sigillaria_ stems, in the coal-measures, and
occurring as they did here, in sandstone, a little above great beds
of limestone, had been taken for such, and as indications of coal.

On the following day we visited Rajghat, a steep ghat or pass leading
up the cliff to Rotas Palace, a little higher up the river. We took
the elephants to the mouth of the glen, where we dismounted, and
whence we followed a stream abounding in small fish and aquatic
insects (_Dytisci_ and _Gyrini_), through a close jungle,
to the foot of the cliffs, where there are indications of coal.
The woods were full of monkeys, and amongst other plants I observed
_Murraya exotica,_ but it was scarce. Though the jungle was so
dense, the woods were very dry, containing no Palm, _Adroideae,_
Peppers, _Orchideae_ or Ferns. Here, at the foot of the red
cliffs, which towered imposingly above, as seen through the tree
tops, are several small seams of coaly matter in the sandstone, with
abundance of pyrites, sulphur, and copious efflorescences of salts of
iron; but no coal. The springs from the cliffs above are charged with
lime, of which enormous tuff beds are deposited on the sandstone,
full of impressions of the leaves and stems of the surrounding trees,
which, however, I found it very difficult to recognize, and could not
help contrasting this circumstance with the fact that geologists,
unskilled in botany, see no difficulty in referring equally imperfect
remains of extinct vegetables to existing genera. In some parts of
their course the streams take up quantities of the efflorescence,
which they scatter over the sandstones in a singular manner.

At Akbarpore I had sunk two thermometers, one 4 feet 6 inches, the
other 5 feet 6 inches; both invariably indicated 76 degrees, the air
varying from 56 degrees to 79.5 degrees. Dew had formed every night
since leaving Dunwah, the grass being here cooled 12 degrees below
the air.

On the 19th of February we marched up the Soane to Tura, passing some
low hills of limestone, between the cliffs of the Kymore and the
river. On the shaded riverbanks grew abundance of English genera--
_Cynoglossum, Veronica, Potentilla, Ranunculus sceleratus, Rumex,_
several herbaceous _Compositae_ and _Labiatae_; _Tamarix_ formed a
small bush in rocky hillocks in the bed of the river, and in pools
were several aquatic plants, _Zannichellia, Chara,_ a pretty little
_Vallisneria,_ and _Potamogeton._ The Brahminee goose was common
here, and we usually saw in the morning immense flocks of wild geese
overhead, migrating northward.

Here I tried again the effect of solar and nocturnal radiation on the
sand, at different depths, not being able to do so on the alluvium.

Noon:
Temperature of air 87 degrees
Surface      110 degrees
1 inch       102 degrees
2 inches      93.5 degrees
4 inches      84 degrees
8 inches      77 degrees (sand wet)
16 inches     76 degrees (sand wet)
Daylight of following morning:
Surface       52 degrees
1 inch        55 degrees
2 inches      58 degrees
4 inches      67 degrees
8 inches      73 degrees (sand wet)
16 inches     74 degrees (sand wet)

From Tura our little army again crossed the Soane, the scarped cliffs
of the Kymore approaching close to the river on the west side.
The bed is very sandy, and about one mile and a half across.

The elephants were employed again, as at Baroon, to push the cart:
one of them had a bump in consequence, as large as a child's head,
just above the trunk, and bleeding much; but the brave beast
disregarded this, when the word of command was given by his driver.

The stream was very narrow, but deep and rapid, obstructed with beds
of coarse agate, jasper, cornelian and chalcedony pebbles. A clumsy
boat took us across to the village of Soanepore, a wretched
collection of hovels. The crops were thin and poor, and I saw no
palms or good trees. Squirrels however abounded, and were busy laying
up their stores; descending from the trees they scoured across a road
to a field of tares, mounted the hedge, took an observation, foraged
and returned up the tree with their booty, quickly descended, and
repeated the operation of reconnoitering and plundering.

The bed of the river is here considerably above that at Dearee, where
the mean of the observations with those of Baroon, made it about 300
feet. The mean of those taken here and on the opposite side, at Tura,
gives about 400 feet, indicating a fall of 100 feet in only 40 miles.

Near this the sandy banks of the Soane were full of martins' nests,
each one containing a pair of eggs. The deserted ones were literally
crammed full of long-legged spiders (_Opilio_), which could be
raked out with a stick, when they came pouring down the cliff like
corn from a sack; the quantities are quite inconceivable. I did not
observe the martin feed on them.

The entomology here resembled that of Europe, more than I had
expected in a tropical country, where predaceous beetles, at least
_Carabideae_ and _Staphylinideae,_ are generally considered
rare. The latter tribes swarmed under the clods, of many species but
all small, and so singularly active that I could not give the time to
collect many. In the banks again, the round egg-like earthy chrysalis
of the _Sphynx Atropos_ (?) and the many-celled nidus of the
leaf-cutter bee, were very common.

A large columnar _Euphorbia_ (_E. ligulata_) is common all along the
Soane, and I observed it to be used everywhere for fencing. I had not
remarked the _E. neriifolia_; and the _E. tereticaulis_ had been very
rarely seen since leaving Calcutta. The _Cactus_ is nowhere found; it
is abundant in many parts of Bengal, but certainly not indigenous.

Illustration--CROSSING THE SOANE, WITH THE KYMORE HILLS IN THE
DISTANCE.

From this place onwards up the Soane, there was no road of any kind,
and we were compelled to be our own road engineers. The sameness of
the vegetation and lateness of the season made me regret this the
less, for I was disappointed in my anticipations of finding
luxuriance and novelty in these wilds. Before us the valley narrowed
considerably, the forest became denser, the country on the south side
was broken with rounded hills, and on the north the noble cliffs of
the Kymore dipped down to the river. The villages were smaller, more
scattered and poverty-stricken, with the Mahowa and Mango as the
usual trees; the banyan, peepul, and tamarind being rare. The native,
are of an aboriginal jungle race; and are tall, athletic, erect, much
less indolent and more spirited than the listless natives of
the plains.

_February_ 21.--Started at daylight: but so slow and difficult
was our progress through fields and woods, and across deep gorges
from the hills, that we only advanced five miles in the day; the
elephant's head too was aching too badly to let him push, and the
cattle would not proceed when the draught was not equal. What was
worse, it was impossible to get them to pull together up the inclined
planes we cut, except by placing a man at the head of each of the
six, eight, or ten in a team, and simultaneously screwing round their
tails; when one tortured animal sometimes capsizes the vehicle.
The small carts got on better, though it was most nervous to see them
rushing down the steeps, especially those with our fragile
instruments, etc.

Kosdera, where we halted, is a pretty place, elevated 440 feet, with
a broad stream front the hills flowing past it. These hills are of
limestone, and rounded, resting upon others of hornstone and jasper.
Following up the stream I came to some rapids, where the stream is
crossed by large beds of hornstone and porphyry rocks, excessively
hard, and pitched up at right angles, or with a bold dip to the
north. The number of strata was very great, and only a few inches or
even lines thick: they presented all varieties of jasper, hornstone,
and quartz of numerous colours, with occasional seams of porphyry or
breccia. The racks were elegantly fringed with a fern I had not
hitherto seen, _Polypodium proliferum,_ which is the only
species the Soane valley presents at this season.

Returning over the hills, I found _Hardwickia binata,_ a most
elegant leguminous tree, tall, erect, with an elongated coma, and the
branches pendulous. These trees grew in a shallow bed of alluvium,
enclosing abundance of agate pebbles and kunker, the former derived
from the quartzy strata above noticed.

On the 23rd and 24th we continued to follow up the Soane, first to
Panchadurma (alt. 490 feet), and thence to Pepura (alt. 587 feet),
the country becoming densely wooded, very wild, and picturesque, the
woods being full of monkeys, parrots, peacocks, hornbills, and wild
animals. _Strychnos potatorum,_ whose berries are used to purify
water, forms a dense foliaged tree, 30 to 60 feet high, some
individuals pale yellow, others deep green, both in apparent health.
_Feronia Elephantum_ and _Aegle marmelos_* [The Bhel fruit, lately
introduced into English medical practice, as an astringent of great
effect, in cases of diarrhoea and dysentery.] were very abundant,
with _Sterculia,_ and the dwarf date-palm.

One of my carts was here hopelessly broken down; advancing on the
spokes instead of the tire of the wheels. By the banks of a deep
gully here the rocks are well exposed: they consist of soft clay
shales resting on the limestone, which is nearly horizontal; and this
again, unconformably on the quartz and hornstone rocks, which are
confused, and tilted up at all angles.

A spur of the Kymore, like that of Rotas, here projects to the bed of
the river, and was blazing at night with the beacon-like fires of the
natives, lighted to scare the tigers and bears from the spots where
they cut wood and bamboo; they afforded a splendid spectacle, the
flames in some places leaping zig-zag from hill to hill in front of
us, and looking as if a gigantic letter W were written in fire.

The night was bright and clear, with much lightning, the latter
attracted to the spur, and darting down as it were to mingle its fire
with that of the forest; so many flashes appeared to strike on the
flames, that it is probable the heated air in their neighbourhood
attracted them. We were awakened between 3 and 4 a.m., by a violent
dust-storm, which threatened to carry away the tents. Our position at
the mouth of the gulley formed by the opposite hills, no doubt
accounted for it. The gusts were so furious that it was impossible to
observe the barometer, which I returned to its case on ascertaining
that any indications of a rise or fall in the column must have been
quite trifling. The night had been oppressively hot, with many
insects flying about; amongst which I noticed earwigs, a genus
erroneously supposed rarely to take to the wing in Britain.

At 8.30 a.m. it suddenly fell calm, and we proceeded to Chanchee
(alt. 500 feet), the native carts breaking down in their passage over
the projecting beds of flinty rocks, or as they burned down the
inclined planes we cut through the precipitous clay banks of the
streams. Near Chanchee we passed an alligator, just killed by two
men, a foul beast, about nine feet long, of the mugger kind.
More absorbing than its natural history was the circumstance of its
having swallowed a child, that was playing in the water as its mother
was washing her utensils in the river. The brute was hardly dead,
much distended by the prey, and the mother was standing beside it.
A very touching group was this: the parent with her hands clasped in
agony, unable to withdraw her eyes from the cursed reptile, which
still clung to life with that tenacity for which its tribe are so
conspicuous; beside these the two athletes leaned on the bloody
bamboo staffs, with which they had all but despatched the animal.

This poor woman earned a scanty maintenance by making catechu:
inhabiting a little cottage, and having no property but two cattle to
bring wood from the hills, and a very few household chattels; and how
few of these they only know who have seen the meagre furniture of
Danga hovels. Her husband cut the trees in the forest and dragged
them to the hut, but at this time he was sick, and her only boy, her
future stay, it was, whom the beast had devoured.

This province is famous for the quantity of catechu its dry forests
yield. The plant (_Acacia_) is a little thorny tree, erect, and
bearing a rounded head of well remembered prickly branches. Its wood
is yellow, with a dark brick-red heart, most profitable in January
and useless in June (for yielding the extract).

Illustration--SOANE VALLEY AND KYMORE HILLS COCHLOSPERMUM GOSSYPIUM
AND BUTEA FRONDOSA IN FLOWER.

The _Butea frondosa_ was abundantly in flower here, and a gorgeous
sight. In mass the inflorescence resembles sheets of flame, and
individually the flowers are eminently beautiful, the bright
orange-red petals contrasting brilliantly against the jet-black
velvety calyx. The nest of the _Megachile_ (leaf-cutter bee) was in
thousands in the cliffs, with Mayflies, Caddis-worms, spiders, and
many predaceous beetles. Lamellicorn beetles were very rare, even
_Aphodius,_ and of _Cetoniae_ I did not see one.

We marched on the 28th to Kota, at the junction of the river of that
name with the Soane, over hills of flinty rock, which projected
everywhere, to the utter ruin of the elephants' feet, and then over
undulating hills of limestone; on the latter I found trees of
_Cochlospermum,_ whose curious thick branches spread out
somewhat awkwardly, each tipped with a cluster of golden yellow
flowers, as large as the palm of the hand, and very beautiful: it is
a tropical Gum-Cistus in the appearance and texture of the petals,
and their frail nature. The bark abounds in a transparent gum, of
which the white ants seem fond, for they had killed many trees.
Of the leaves the curious rude leaf-bellows are made, with which the
natives of these hills smelt iron. Scorpions appeared very common
here, of a small kind, 1.5 inch long; several were captured, and one
of our party was stung on the finger; the smart was burning for an
hour or two, and then ceased.

At Kota we were nearly opposite the cliffs at Beejaghur, where coal
is reported to exist; and here we again crossed the Soane, and for
the last time. The ford is three miles up the river, and we marched
to it through deep sand. The bed of the river is here 500 feet above
the sea, and about three-quarters of a mile broad, the rapid stream
being 50 or 60 yards wide, and breast deep. The sand is firm and
siliceous, with no mica; nodules of coal are said to be washed down
thus far from the coal-beds of Burdee, a good deal higher up, but we
saw none.

The cliffs come close to the river on the opposite side, their bases
clothed with woods which teemed with birds. The soil is richer, and
individual trees, especially of _Bombax, Terminalia_ and _Mahowa,_
very fine; one tree of the _Hardwickia,_ about 120 feet high, was as
handsome a monarch of the forest as I ever saw, and it is not often
that one sees trees in the tropics, which for a combination of beauty
in outline, harmony of colour, and arrangement of branches and
foliage, would form so striking an addition to an English park.

There is a large break in the Kymore hills here, beyond the village
of Kunch, through which our route lay to Beejaghur, and the Ganges at
Mirzapore; the cliff's leaving the river and trending to the north in
a continuous escarpment flanked with low ranges of rounded hills, and
terminating in an abrupt spur (Mungeesa Peak) whose summit was
covered with a ragged forest. At Kunch we saw four alligators
sleeping in the river, looking at a distance like logs of wood, all
of the short-nosed or mugger kind, dreaded by man and beast; I saw
none of the sharp-shouted (or garial), so common on the Ganges, where
their long bills, with a garniture of teeth and prominent eyes
peeping out of the water, remind one of geological lectures and
visions of _Ichthyosauri._ Tortoises were frequent in the river,
basking on the rocks, and popping into the water when approached.

On the 1st of March we left the Soane, and struck inland over a rough
hilly country, covered with forest, fully 1000 feet below the top of
the Kymore table-land, which here recedes from the river and
surrounds an undulating plain, some ten miles either way, facing the
south. The roads, or rather pathways, were very bad, and quite
impassable for the carts without much engineering, cutting through
forest, smoothing down the banks of the watercourses to be crossed,
and clearing away the rocks as we best might. We traversed the empty
bed of a mountain torrent, with perpendicular banks of alluvium 30
feet high, and thence plunged into a dense forest. Our course was
directed towards Mungeesa Peak, the remarkable projecting spur,
between which and a conical hill the path led. Whether on the
elephants or on foot, the thorny jujubes, _Acacias,_ etc. were
most troublesome, and all our previous scratchings were nothing to
this. Peacocks and jungle-fowl were very frequent, the squabbling of
the former and the hooting of the monkeys constantly grating on the
ear. There were innumerable pigeons and a few Floricans (a kind of
bustard--considered the best eating game--bird in India). From the
defile we emerged on an open flat, halting at Sulkun, a scattered
village (alt. 684 feet), peopled by a bold-looking race (Coles)* [The
Coles, like the Danghas of the Rajmahal and Behar hills, and the
natives of the mountains of the peninsula, form one of the aboriginal
tribes of British India, and are widely different people from either
the Hindoos or Mussulmen.] who habitually carry the spear and shield.
We had here the pleasure of meeting Mr. Felle, an English gentleman
employed in the Revenue department; this being one of the roads along
which the natives transport their salt, sugar, etc., from one
province to another.

In the afternoon, I examined the conical hill, which, like that near
Rotas, is of stratified beds of limestone, capped with sandstone.
A stream runs round its base, cutting through the alluvium to the
subjacent rock, which is exposed, and contains flattened spheres of
limestone. These spheres are from the size of a fist to a child's
head, or even much larger; they are excessively hard, and neither
laminated nor formed of concentric layers. At the top of the hill the
sandstone cap was perpendicular on all sides, and its dry top covered
with small trees, especially of _Cochlospermum._ A few larger
trees of _Fici_ clung to the edge of the rocks, and by forcing
their roots into the interstices detached enormous masses, affording
good dens for bears and other wild animals. From the top, the view of
rock, river, forest, and plain, was very fine, the eye ranging over a
broad flat, girt by precipitous hills;--West, the Kymore or Vindhya
range rose again in rugged elevations; South, flowed the Soane,
backed by ranges of wooded hills, smoking like volcanos with the
fires of the natives;--below, lay the bed of the stream we had left
at the foot of the hills, cutting its way through the alluvium, and
following a deep gorge to the Soane, which was there hidden by the
rugged heights we had crossed, on which the greater part of our camp
might be seen still straggling onwards;--east, and close above us,
the bold spur of Mungeesa shot up, terminating a continuous stretch
of red precipices, clothed with forest along their bases, and over
their horizontal tops.

From Sulkun the view of the famed fort and palace of Beejaghur is
very singular, planted on the summit of an isolated hill of
sandstone, about ten miles off. A large tree by the palace marks its
site; for, at this distance, the buildings are themselves
undistinguishable.

There are many tigers on these hills; and as one was close by, and
had killed several cattle, Mr. Felle kindly offered us a chance of
slaying him. Bullocks are tethered out, over-night, in the places
likely to be visited by the brute; he kills one of them, and is from
the spot tracked to his haunt by natives, who visit the stations
early in the morning, and report the whereabouts of his lair.
The sportsman then goes to the attack mounted on an elephant, or
having a _roost_ fixed in a tree, on the trail of the tiger, and he
employs some hundred natives to drive the animal past the
lurking-place.

On the present occasion, the locale of the tiger was doubtful; but it
was thought that by beating over several miles of country he (or at
any rate, some other game) might be driven past a certain spot.
Thither, accordingly, the natives were sent, who built machans
(stages) in the trees, high out of danger's reach; Mr. Theobald and
myself occupied one of these perches in a _Hardwickia_ tree, and
Mr. Felle another, close by, both on the slope of a steep hill,
surrounded by jungly valleys. We were also well thatched in with
leafy boughs, to prevent the wary beast from espying the ambush, and
had a whole stand of shall arms ready for his reception.

When roosted aloft, and duly charged to keep profound silence (which
I obeyed to the letter, by falling sound asleep), the word was passed
to the beaters, who surrounded our post on the plain-side, extending
some miles in line, and full two or three distant from us.
They entered the jungle, beating tom-toms, singing and shouting as
they advanced, and converging towards our position. In the noonday
solitude of these vast forests, our situation was romantic enough:
there was not a breath of wind, an insect or bird stirring; and the
wild cries of the men, and the hollow sound of the drums broke upon
the ear from a great distance, gradually swelling and falling, as the
natives ascended the heights or crossed the valleys. After about an
hour and a half, the beaters emerged from the jungle under our
retreat; one by one, two by two, but preceded by no single living
thing, either mouse, bird, deer, or bear, and much less tiger.
The beaters received about a penny a-piece for the day's work; a rich
guerdon for these poor wretches, whom necessity sometimes drives to
feed on rats and offal.

We were detained three days at Sulkun, from inability to get on with
the carts; and as the pass over the Kymore to the north (on the way
to Mirzapore) was to be still worse, I took advantage of Mr. Felle's
kind offer of camels and elephants to make the best of my way
forward, accompanying that gentleman, _en route,_ to his
residence at Shahgunj, on the table-land.

Both the climate and natural history of this flat on which Sulkun
stands, are similar to those of the banks of the Soane; the crops are
wretched. At this season the dryness of the atmosphere is excessive:
our nails cracked, and skins peeled, whilst all articles of wood,
tortoiseshell, etc., broke on the slightest blow. The air, too, was
always highly electrical, and the dew-point was frequently 40 degrees
below the temperature of the air.

The natives are far from honest: they robbed one of the tents placed
between two others, wherein a light was burning. One gentleman in it
was awake, and on turning saw five men at his bedside, who escaped
with a bag of booty, in the shape of clothes, and a tempting strong
brass-bound box, containing private letters. The clothes they dropped
outside, but the box of letters was carried off. There were about a
hundred people asleep outside the tents, between whose many fires the
rogues must have passed, eluding also the guard, who were, or ought
to have been, awake.



CHAPTER III.

Ek-powa Ghat--Sandstones--Shahgunj--Table-land, elevation, etc.
--Gum-arabic--Mango--Fair--Aquatic plants--Rujubbund--
Storm--False sunset and sunrise--Bind hills--Mirzapore--
Manufactures, imports, etc.--Climate of--Thuggee--Chunar--
Benares--Mosque--Observatory--Sar-nath--Ghazeepore--
Rose-gardens--Manufactory of Attar--Lord Cornwallis' tomb--
Ganges, scenery and natural history of--Pelicans--Vegetation--
Insects--Dinapore--Patna--Opium godowns and manufacture--
Mudar, white and purple--Monghyr islets--Hot Springs of Setakoond
--Alluvium of Ganges--Rocks of Sultun-gunj--Bhaugulpore--
Temples of Mt. Manden--Coles and native tribes--Bhaugulpore
rangers--Horticultural gardens.

On the 3rd of March I bade farewell to Mr. Williams and his kind
party, and rode over a plain to the village of Markunda, at the foot
of the Ghat. There the country becomes very rocky and wooded, and a
stream is crossed, which runs over a flat bed of limestone, cracked
into the appearance of a tesselated pavement. For many miles there is
no pass over the Kymore range, except this, significantly called
"Ek-powa-Ghat" (one-foot Ghat). It is evidently a _fault,_ or
shifting of the rocks, producing so broken a cliff as to admit of a
path winding over the shattered crags. On either side, the precipices
are extremely steep, of horizontally stratified rocks, continued in
an unbroken line, and the views across the plain and Soane valley,
over which the sun was now setting, were superb. At the summit we
entered on a dead flat plain or table-land, with no hills, except
along the brim of the broad valley we had left, where are some
curious broad pyramids, formed of slabs of sandstone arranged in
steps. By dark we reached the village of Roump (alt. 1090 feet),
beyond the top of the pass.

On the next day I proceeded on a small, fast, and wofully
high-trotting elephant, to Shahgunj, where I enjoyed Mr. Felle's
hospitality for a few days. The country here, though elevated, is,
from the nature of the soil and formation, much more fertile than
what I had left. Water is abundant, both in tanks and wells, and
rice-fields, broad and productive, cover the ground; while groves of
tamarinds and mangos, now loaded with blossoms, occur at
every village.

It is very singular that the elevation of this table-land (1100 feet
at Shahgunj) should coincide with that of the granite range of Upper
Bengal, where crossed by the grand trunk road, though they have no
feature but the presence of alluvium in common. Scarce a hillock
varies the surface here, and the agricultural produce of the two is
widely different. Here the flat ledges of sandstone retain the
moisture, and give rise to none of those impetuous torrents which
sweep it off the inclined beds of gneiss, or splintered quartz.
Nor is there here any of the effloresced salts so forbidding to
vegetation where they occur. Wherever the alluvium is deep on these
hills, neither _Catechu, Olibanum, Butea, Terminalia, Diospyros,_
dwarf-palm, or any of those plants are to be met with, which abound
wherever the rock is superficial, and irrespectively of its
mineral characters.

The gum-arabic _Acacia_ is abundant here, though not seen below,
and very rare to the eastward of this meridian, for I saw but little
of it in Behar. It is a plant partial to a dry climate, and rather
prefers a good soil. In its distribution it in some degree follows
the range of the camel, which is its constant companion over
thousands of leagues. In the valley of the Ganges I was told that
neither the animal nor plant flourish east of the Soane, where I
experienced a marked change in the humidity of the atmosphere on my
passage down the Ganges. It was a circumstance I was interested in,
having first met with the camel at Teneriffe and the Cape Verd
Islands, the westernmost limit of its distribution; imported thither,
however, as it now is into Australia, where, though there is no
_Acacia Arabica,_ four hundred other species of the genus
are known.

The mango, which is certainly _the_ fruit of India, (as the
pine-apple is of the Eastern Islands, and the orange of the West,)
was now blossoming, and a superb sight. The young leaves are
purplish-green, and form a curious contrast to the deep lurid hue of
the older foliage; especially when the tree is (which often occurs)
dimidiate, one half the green, and the other the red shades of
colours; when in full blossom, all forms a mass of yellow, diffusing
a fragrance rather too strong and peculiar to be pleasant.

We passed a village where a large fair was being held, and singularly
familiar its arrangements were to my early associations. The women
and children are the prime customers; for the latter
whirl-you-go-rounds, toys, and sweetmeats were destined; to tempt the
former, little booths of gay ornaments, patches for the forehead,
ear-rings of quaint shapes, bugles and beads. Here as at home, I
remarked that the vendors of these superfluities occupy the
approaches to this Vanity-Fair. As, throughout the East, the trades
are congregated into particular quarters of the cities, so here the
itinerants grouped themselves into little bazaars for each class of
commodity. Whilst I was engaged in purchasing a few articles of
native workmanship, my elephant made an attack on a sweetmeat stall,
demolishing a magnificent erection of barley-sugar, before his
proceedings could be put a stop to.

Mr. Felle's bungalow (whose garden smiled with roses in this
wilderness) was surrounded by a moat (fed by a spring), which was
full of aquatic plants, _Nymphaea, Damasonium, Villarsia cristata,
Aponogeton,_ three species of _Potamogeton,_ two of _Naias, Chara_
and _Zannichellia_ (the two latter indifferently, and often together,
used in the refinement of sugar). In a large tank hard by, wholly fed
by rain water, I observed only the _Villarsia Indica,_ no
_Aponogeton, Nymphaea,_ or _Dammonium,_ nor did these occur in any of
the other tanks I examined, which were otherwise well peopled with
plants. This may not be owing to the quality of the water so much as
to its varying quantity in the tank.

All around here, as at Roump, is a dead flat, except towards the
crest of the ghats which overhang the valley of the Soane, and there
the sandstone rock rises by steps into low hills. During a ride to a
natural tank amongst these rocky elevations, I passed from the
alluvium to the sandstone, and at once met with all the prevailing
plants of the granite, gneiss, limestone and hornstone rocks
previously examined, and which I have enumerated too often to require
recapitulation; a convincing proof that the mechanical properties and
not the chemical constitution of the rocks regulate the distribution
of these plants.

Rujubbund (the pleasant spot), is a small tarn, or more properly the
expanded bed of a stream, art having aided nature in its formation:
it is edged by rocks and cliffs fringed with the usual trees of the
neighbourhood; it is a wild and pretty spot, not unlike some
birch-bordered pool in the mountains of Wales or Scotland,
sequestered and picturesque. It was dark before I got back, with
heavy clouds and vivid lightning approaching from the south-west.
The day had been very hot (3 p.m., 90 degrees), and the evening the
same; but the barometer did not foretell the coming tempest, which
broke with fury at 7 p.m., blowing open the doors, and accompanied
with vivid lightning and heavy thunder, close by and all round,
though no rain fell.

In the clear dry mornings of these regions, a curious optical
phenomena may be observed, of a _sunrise_ in the _west,_ and _sunset_
in the _east._ In either case, bright and well-defined beams rise to
the zenith, often crossing to the opposite horizon. It is a beautiful
feature in the firmament, and equally visible whether the horizon be
cloudy or clear, the white beams being projected indifferently
against a dark vapour or the blue serene. The zodiacal light shines
from an hour or two after sunset till midnight, with singular
brightness, almost equalling the milky way.

_March_ 7.-Left Shahgunj for Mirzapore, following the road to
Goorawal, over a dead alluvial flat without a feature to remark.
Turning north from that village, the country undulates, exposing the
rocky nucleus, and presenting the usual concomitant vegetation.
Occasionally park-like views occurred, which, where diversified by
the rocky valleys, resemble much the noble scenery of the Forest of
Dean on the borders of Wales; the _Mahowa_ especially
representing the oak, with its spreading and often gnarled branches.
Many of the exposed slabs of sandstone are beautifully waved on the
surface with the _ripple-mark_ impression.

Amowee, where I arrived at 9 p.m., is on an open grassy flat, about
fifteen miles from the Ganges, which is seen from the neighbourhood,
flowing among trees, with the white houses, domes, and temples of
Mirzapore scattered around, and high above which the dust-clouds were
coursing along the horizon.

Mr. Money, the magistrate of Mirzapore, kindly sent a mounted
messenger to meet me here, who had vast trouble in getting bearers
for my palkee. In it I proceeded the next day to Mirzapore,
descending a steep ghat of the Bind hills by an excellent road, to
the level plains of the Ganges. Unlike the Dunwah pass, this is
wholly barren. At the foot the sun was intensely hot, the roads
alternately rocky and dusty, the villages thronged with a widely
different looking race from those of the hills, and the whole air of
the outskirts, on a sultry afternoon, far from agreeable.

Mirzapore is a straggling town, said to contain 100,000 inhabitants.
It flanks the river, and is built on an undulating alluvial bank,
full of kunker, elevated 360 feet above the sea, and from 50 to 80
above the present level of the river. The vicinity of the Ganges and
its green bank, and the numbers of fine trees around, render it a
pleasing, though not a fine town. It presents the usual Asiatic
contrast of squalor and gaudiness; consisting of large squares and
broad streets, interspersed with acres of low huts and groves of
trees. It is celebrated for its manufactory of carpets, which are
admirable in appearance, and, save in durability, equal to the
English. Indigo seed from Bundelkund is also a most extensive article
of commerce, the best coming from the Doab. For cotton, lac, sugar,
and saltpetre, it is one of the greatest marts in India. The articles
of native manufacture are brass washing and cooking utensils, and
stone deities worked out of the sandstone.

There is little native vegetation, the country being covered with
cultivation and extensive groves of mango, and occasionally of guava.
English vegetables are abundant and excellent, and the strawberries,
which ripen in March, rival the European fruit in size, but hardly
in flavour.

During the few days spent at Mirzapore with my kind friend, Mr. C.
Hamilton, I was surprised to find the temperature of the day cooler
by nearly 4 degrees than that of the hills above, or of the upper
part of the Soane valley; while on the other hand the nights were
decidedly warmer. The dewpoint again was even lower in proportion,
(7.5 degrees) and the climate consequently drier. The atmosphere was
extremely dry and electrical, the hair constantly crackling when
combed. Further west, where the climate becomes still drier, the
electricity of the air is even greater. Mr. Griffith mentions in his
journal that in filling barometer tubes in Affghanistan, he
constantly experienced a shock.

Here I had the pleasure of meeting Lieutenant Ward, one of the
suppressors of Thuggee (_Thuggee,_ in Hindostan, signifies a
deceiver; fraud, not open force, being employed). This gentleman
kindly showed me the approvers or king's evidence of his
establishment, belonging to those three classes of human scourges,
the Thug, Dakoit, and Poisoner. Of these the first was the Thug, a
mild-looking man, who had been born and bred to the profession: he
had committed many murders, saw no harm in them, and felt neither
shame nor remorse. His organs of observation and destructiveness were
large, and the cerebellum small. He explained to me how the gang
waylay the unwary traveller, enter into conversation with him, and
have him suddenly seized, when the superior throws his own linen
girdle round the victim's neck and strangles him, pressing the
knuckles against the spine. Taking off his own, he passed it round my
arm, and showed me the turn as coolly as a sailor once taught me the
_hangman's knot._ The Thug is of any caste, and from any part
of India. The profession have particular stations, which they
generally select for murder, throwing the body of their victim into
a well.

The Dakoit (_dakhee,_ a robber) belongs to a class who rob in
gangs, but never commit murder--arson and housebreaking also forming
part of their profession. These are all high-class Rajpoots,
originally from Guzerat; who, on being conquered, vowed vengeance on
mankind. They speak both Hindostanee and the otherwise extinct
Guzerat language; this is guttural in the extreme, and very singular
in sound. They are a very remarkable people, found throughout India,
and called by various names; their women dress peculiarly, and are
utterly devoid of modesty. The man I examined was a short, square,
but far from powerful Nepalese, with high arched eyebrows, and no
organs of observation. These people are great cowards.

The Poisoners all belong to one caste, of Pasie, or dealers in toddy:
they go singly or in gangs, haunting the travellers' resting-places,
where they drop half a rupee weight of pounded or whole _Datura_
seeds into his food, producing a twenty-hours' intoxication, during
which he is robbed, and left to recover or sink under the stupifying
effects of the narcotic. He told me that the _Datura_ seed is
gathered without ceremony, and at any time, place, or age of the
plant. He was a dirty, ill-conditioned looking fellow, with no bumps
behind his ears, or prominence of eyebrow region, but a remarkable
cerebellum.

Though now all but extinct (except in Cuttack), through ten or
fifteen years of unceasing vigilance on the part of Government, and
incredible activity and acuteness in the officers employed, the Thugs
were formerly a wonderfully numerous body, who abstained from their
vocation solely in the immediate neighbourhood of their own villages;
which, however, were not exempt from the visits of other Thugs; so
that, as Major Sleeman says,--"The annually returning tide of murder
swept unsparingly over the whole face of India, from the Sutlej to
the sea-coast, and from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin. One narrow
district alone was free, the Concan, beyond the ghats, whither they
never penetrated." In Bengal, river Thugs replace the travelling
practitioner. Candeish and Rohilkund alone harboured no Thugs as
residents, but they were nevertheless haunted by the gangs.

Their origin is uncertain, but supposed to be very ancient, soon
after the Mahommedan conquest. They now claim a divine original, and
are supposed to have supernatural powers, and to be the emissaries of
the divinity, like the wolf, the tiger, and the bear. It is only
lately that they have swarmed so prodigiously,--seven original gangs
having migrated from Delhi to the Gangetic provinces about 200 years
ago, and from these all the rest have sprung. Many belong to the most
amiable, intelligent, and respectable classes of the lower and even
middle ranks: they love their profession, regard murder as sport, and
are never haunted with dreams, or troubled with pangs of conscience
during hours of solitude, or in the last moments of life. The victim
is an acceptable sacrifice to the goddess Davee, who by some classes
is supposed to eat the lifeless body, and thus save her votaries the
necessity of concealing it.

They are extremely superstitious, always consulting omens, such as
the direction in which a hare or jackall crosses the road; and even
far more trivial circumstances will determine the fate of a dozen of
people, and perhaps of an immense treasure. All worship the pickaxe,
which is symbolical of their profession, and an oath sworn on it
binds closer than on the Koran. The consecration of this weapon is a
most elaborate ceremony, and takes place only under certain trees.
They rise through various grades: the lowest are scouts; the second,
sextons; the third are holders of the victims' hands; the highest,
stranglers.

Though all agree in never practising cruelty, or robbing previous to
murder, never allowing any but infants to escape (and these are
trained to Thuggee),--and never leaving a trace of such goods as may
be identified,--there are several variations in their mode of
conducting operations; some tribes spare certain castes, others none:
murder of woman is against all rules; but the practice crept into
certain gangs, and this it is which led to their discountenance by
the goddess Davee, and the consequent downfall of the system.
Davee, they say, allowed the British to punish them, because a
certain gang had murdered the mothers to obtain their daughters to be
sold to prostitution.

Major Sleeman has constructed a map demonstrating the number of
"Bails," or regular stations for committing murder, in the kingdom of
Oude alone, which is 170 miles long by 100 broad, and in which are
274, which are regarded by the Thug with as much satisfaction and
interest as a game preserve is in England: nor are these "bails" less
numerous in other parts of India. Of twenty assassins who were
examined, one frankly confessed to having been engaged in 931
murders, and the least guilty of the number to 24. Sometimes 150
persons collected into one gang, and their profits have often been
immense, the murder of six persons on one occasion yielding 82,000
rupees; upwards of 8000 pounds.

Of the various facilities for keeping up the system, the most
prominent are, the practice amongst the natives of travelling before
dawn, of travellers mixing freely together, and taking their meals by
the way-side instead of in villages; in the very Bails, in fact, to
which they are inveigled by the Thug in the shape of a
fellow-traveller; money remittances are also usually made by
disguised travellers, whose treasure is exposed at the custom-houses,
and, worst of all, the bankers will never own to the losses they
sustain, which, as a visitation of God, would, if avenged, lead, they
think, to future, and perhaps heavier punishment. Had the Thugs
destroyed Englishmen, they would quickly have been put down; but the
system being invariably practised on a class of people acknowledging
the finger of the Deity in its execution, its glaring enormities were
long in rousing the attention of the Indian Government.

A few examples of the activity exercised by the suppressors may be
interesting. They act wholly through the information given by
approvers, who are simply king's evidences. Of 600 Thugs engaged in
the murder of 64 people, and the plunder of nearly 20,000 pounds, all
except seventy were captured in ten years, though separated into six
gangs, and their operations continued from 1826 to 1830:
the last party was taken in 1836. And again, between the years 1826
and 1835, 1562 Thugs were seized, of whom 382 were hanged, and 909
transported; so that now it is but seldom these wretches are ever
heard of.

To show the extent of their operations I shall quote an anecdote from
Sleeman's Reports (to which I am indebted for most of the above
information). He states that he was for three years in charge of a
district on the Nerbudda, and considered himself acquainted with
every circumstance that occurred in the neighbourhood; yet, during
that time, 100 people were murdered and buried within less than a
quarter of a mile of his own residence!

Two hundred and fifty boats full of river Thugs, in crews of fifteen,
infested the Ganges between Benares and Calcutta, during five months
of every year, under pretence of conveying pilgrims. Travellers along
the banks were tracked, and offered a passage, which if refused in
the first boat was probably accepted in some other. At a given signal
the crews rushed in, doubled up the decoyed victim, broke his back,
and threw him into the river, where floating corpses are too numerous
to elicit even an exclamation.

At Mirzapore I engaged a boat to carry me down the river to
Bhagulpore, whence I was to proceed to the Sikkim-Himalaya.
The vessel, which, though slow and very shabby, had the advantage of
being cooler and more commodious than the handsomer craft.
Its appearance was not unlike that of a floating haystack, or
thatched cottage: its length was forty feet, and breadth fifteen, and
it drew a foot and a half of water: the deck, on which a kind of
house, neatly framed of matting, was erected, was but a little above
the water's edge. My portion of this floating residence was lined
with a kind of reed-work formed of long culms of _Saccharum._
The crew and captain consisted of six naked Hindoos, one of whom
steered by the huge rudder, sitting on a bamboo-stage astern; the
others pulled four oars in the very bows opposite my door, or tracked
the boat along the riverbank.

In my room (for cabin I cannot call it) stood my palkee, fitted as a
bed, with mosquito curtains; a chair and table. On one side were
placed all my papers and plants, under arrangement to go home; on the
other, my provisions, rice, sugar, curry-powder, a preserved ham, and
cheese, etc. Around hung telescope, botanical box, dark lantern,
barometer, and thermometer, etc., etc. Our position was often
_ashore,_ and, Hindoo-like, on the lee-shore, going bump, bump,
bump, so that I could hardly write. I considered myself fortunate in
having to take this slow conveyance down, it enabling me to write and
arrange all day long.

I left on the 15th of March, and in the afternoon of the same day
passed Chunar.* [The first station at which Henry Martyn laboured in
India.] This is a tabular mass of sandstone, projecting into the
river, and the eastern termination of the Kymore range. There is not
a rock between this and the Himalaya, and barely a stone all the way
down the Ganges, till the granite and gneiss rocks of the Behar range
are again met with. The current of the Ganges is here very strong,
and its breadth much lessened: the river runs between high banks of
alluvium, containing much kunker. At Benares it expands into a broad
stream, with a current which during the rains is said to flow eight
miles an hour, when the waters rise 43 feet. The fall hence is 300
feet to its junction with the Hooghly, viz., one foot to every mile.
My observations made that from Mirzapore to Benares considerably
greater.

Benares is the Athens of India. The variety of buildings along the
bank is incredible. There are temples of every shape in all stages of
completion and dilapidation, and at all angles of inclination; for
the banks give way so much that many of these edifices are fearfully
out of the perpendicular.

The famed mosque, built by Aurungzebe on the site of a Hindoo temple,
is remarkable for its two octagonal minarets, 232 feet above the
Ganges. The view from it over the town, especially of the European
Resident's quarter, is fine; but the building itself is deficient in
beauty or ornament: it commands the muddy river with its thousands of
boats, its waters peopled with swimmers and bathers, who spring in
from the many temples, water-terraces, and ghats on the city side:
opposite is a great sandy plain. The town below looks a mass of poor,
square, flat-roofed houses, of which 12,000 are brick, and 16,000 mud
and thatch, through the crowd of which, and of small temples, the eye
wanders in vain for some attractive feature or evidence of the
wealth, the devotion, the science, or the grandeur of a city
celebrated throughout the East for all these attributes. Green
parrots and pigeons people the air.

The general appearance of an oriental town is always more or less
ruinous; and here the eye is fatigued with bricks and crumbling
edifices, and the ear with prayer-bells. The bright meadows and green
trees which adorn the European Resident's dwelling, some four miles
back from the river, alone relieve the monotony of the scene.
The streets are so narrow that it is difficult to ride a horse
through them; and the houses are often six stories high, with
galleries crossing above from house to house. These tall, gaunt
edifices sometimes give place to clumps of cottages, and a mass of
dusty ruins, the unsavoury retreats of vermin and filth, where the
_Calotropis arborea_ generally spreads its white branches and
glaucous leaves--a dusty plant. Here, too, enormous spiders' webs
hang from the crumbling walls, choked also with dust, and resembling
curtains of coarse muslin, being often some yards across, and not
arranged in radii and arcs, but spun like weaver's woofs.
Paintings, remarkable only for their hideous proportions and want of
perspective, are daubed in vermilion, ochre, and indigo.
The elephant, camel, and porpoise of the Ganges, dog, shepherd,
peacock, and horse, are especially frequent, and so is a running
pattern of a hand spread open, with a blood-red spot on the palm.
A still less elegant but frequent object is the fuel, which is
composed of the manure collected on the roads of the city, moulded
into flat cakes, and stuck by the women on the walls to dry,
retaining the sign-manual of the artist in the impressed form of her
outspread hand. The cognizance of the Rajah, two fish chained
together, appears over the gates of public buildings.

The hundreds of temples and shrines throughout the city are its most
remarkable feature: sacred bulls, and lingams of all sizes, strewed
with flowers and grains of rice meet the eye at every turn; and the
city's boast is the possession of one million idols, which, of one
kind and another, I can well believe. The great Hindoo festival of
the _Holi_ was now celebrating, and the city more than
ordinarily crowded; throwing red powder (lac and flour), with
rose-water, is the great diversion at a festival more childish by far
than a carnival.

Through the kindness of Mr. Reade (the Commissioner), I obtained
admission to the Bishishar-Kumardil, the "holiest of holies." It was
a small, low, stone building, daubed with red inside, and swarming
with stone images of Brahminee bulls, and various disgusting emblems.
A fat old Brahmin, naked to the waist, took me in, but allowed no
followers; and what with my ignorance of his phraseology, the clang
of bells and din of voices, I gained but little information.
Some fine bells from Nepal were evidently the lion of the temple.
I emerged, adorned with a chaplet of magnolia flowers, and with my
hands full of _Calotropis_ and _Nyctanthes_ blossoms.
It was a horrid place for noise, smell, and sights. Thence I went to
a holy well, rendered sacred because Siva, when stepping from the
Himalaya to Ceylon, accidentally let a medicine chest fall into it.
The natives frequent it with little basins or baskets of rice, sugar,
etc., dropping in a little of each while they mutter prayers.

Illustration--EQUATORIAL-SUNDIAL

The observatory at Benares, and those at Delhi, Matra on the Jumna,
and Oujein, were built by Jey-Sing, Rajah of Jayanagar, upwards of
200 years ago; his skill in mathematical science was so well known,
that the Emperor Mahommed Shah employed him to reform the calendar.
Mr. Hunter, in the "Asiatic Researches," gives a translation of the
lucubrations of this really enlightened man, as contained in the
introduction to his own almanac.

Illustration--EQUINOCTIAL SUN-DIAL.

Of the more important instruments I took sketches; No. 1, is the
Naree-wila, or Equatorial dial; No. 2, the Semrat-yunta, or
Equinoctial dial; No. 3, an Equatorial,  probably a Kranti-urit, or
Azimuth circle.* [Hunter, in As Soc. Researches, 177 (Calcutta); Sir
R. Barker in Phil. Trans., lxvii. 608 (1777); J. L. Williams, Phil.
Trans., lxxxiii. 45 (1793).] Jey-Sing's genius and love of science
seem, according to Hunter, to have descended to some of his family,
who died early in this century, when "Urania fled before the
brazen-fronted Mars, and the best of the observatories, that of
Oujein, was turned into an arsenal and cannon foundry."

Illustration--BRASS AZIMUTH CIRCLE

The observatory is still the most interesting object in Benares,
though it is now dirty and ruinous, and the great stone instruments
are rapidly crumbling away. The building is square, with a central
court and flat roof, round which the astrolabes, etc. are arranged.
A half naked Astronomer-Royal, with a large sore on his stomach, took
me round--he was a pitiful object, and told me he was very hungry.
The observatory is nominally supported by the Rajah of Jeypore, who
doles out a too scanty pittance to his scientific corps.

In the afternoon Mr. Reade drove me to the Sar-nath, a singular
Boodhist temple, a cylindrical mass of brickwork, faced with stone,
the scrolls on which were very beautiful, and as sharp as if freshly
cut: it is surmounted by a tall dome, and is altogether about seventy
or a hundred feet high. Of the Boodh figures only one remains, the
others having been used by a recent magistrate of Benares in
repairing a bridge over the Goomtee! From this place the Boodhist
monuments, Hindoo temple, Mussulman mosque, and English church, were
all embraced in one _coup d'oeil._ On our return, we drove past
many enormous mounds of earth and brick-work, the vestiges of Old
Benares, but whether once continued to the present city or not is
unknown. Remains are abundant, eighteen feet below the site of the
present city.

Benares is the Mecca of the Hindoos, and the number of pilgrims who
visit it is incalculable. Casi (its ancient name, signifying
splendid), is alleged to be no part of this world, which rests on
eternity, whereas Benares is perched on a prong of Siva's trident,
and is hence beyond the reach of earthquakes.* [Probably an allusion
to the infrequency of these phenomena in this meridian; they being
common both in Eastern Bengal, and in Western India beyond the
Ganges.] Originally built of gold, the sins of the inhabitants were
punished by its transmutation into stone, and latterly into mud and
thatch: whoever enters it, and especially visits its principal idol
(Siva fossilised) is secure of heaven.

On the 18th I left Benares for Ghazepore, a pretty town situated on
the north bank of the river, celebrated for its manufacture of
rose-water, the tomb of Lord Cornwallis, and a site of the Company's
stud. The Rose gardens surround the town: they are fields, with low
bushes of the plant grown in rows, red with blossoms in the morning,
all of which are, however, plucked long before midday. The petals are
put into clay stills, with twice their weight of water, and the
produce exposed to the fresh air, for a night, in open vessels.
The unskimmed water affords the best, and it is often twice and even
oftener distilled; but the fluid deteriorates by too much
distillation. The Attar is skimmed from the exposed pans, and sells
at 10 pounds the rupee weight, to make which 20,000 flowers are
required. It is frequently adulterated with sandal-wood oil.

Lord Cornwallis' mausoleum is a handsome building, modelled by
Flaxman after the Sybil's Temple. The allegorical designs of Hindoos
and sorrowing soldiers with reversed arms, which decorate two sides
of the enclosed tomb, though perhaps as good as can be, are under any
treatment unclassical and uncouth. The simple laurel and oak-leaf
chaplets on the alternating faces are far more suitable
and suggestive.

_March_ 21.--I left Ghazepore and dropped down the Ganges; the
general features of which are soon described. A strong current four
or five miles broad, of muddy water, flows between a precipitous bank
of alluvium or sand on one side, and a flat shelving one of sand or
more rarely mud, on the other. Sand-banks are frequent in the river,
especially where the great affluents debouche; and there generally
are formed vast expanses of sand, small "Saharas," studded with
stalking pillars of sand, raised seventy or eighty feet high by gusts
of wind, erect, stately, grave-looking columns, all shaft, with
neither basement nor capital, the genii of the "Arabian Nights."
The river is always dotted with boats of all shapes, mine being
perhaps of the most common description; the great square, Yankee-like
steamers, towing their accommodation-boats (as the passengers'
floating hotels are called), are the rarest. Trees are few on the
banks, except near villages, and there is hardly a palm to be seen
above Patna. Towns are unfrequent, such as there are being mere
collections of huts, with the ghat and boats at the bottom of the
bank; and at a respectful distance from the bazaar, stand the neat
bungalows of the European residents, with their smiling gardens,
hedgings and fencings, and loitering servants at the door. A rotting
charpoy (or bedstead) on the banks is a common sight, the "_sola
reliquia_" of some poor Hindoo, who departs this life by the side
of the stream, to which his body is afterwards committed.

Shoals of small goggled-eyed fish are seen, that spring clear out of
the water; and are preyed upon by terns and other birds; a few
insects skim the surface; turtle and porpoises tumble along, all
forming a very busy contrast to the lazy alligator, sunning his green
and scaly back near the shore, with his ichthyosaurian snout raised
high above the water. Birds are numerous, especially early and late
in the day. Along the silent shore the hungry Pariah dog may be seen
tearing his meal from some stranded corpse, whilst the adjutant-bird,
with his head sunk on his body and one leg tucked up, patiently
awaits his turn. At night the beautiful Brahminee geese alight, one
by one, and seek total solitude; ever since having disturbed a god in
his slumbers, these birds are fated to pass the night in single
blessedness. The gulls and terns, again, roost in flocks, as do the
wild geese and pelicans,--the latter, however, not till after making
a hearty and very noisy supper. These birds congregate by the sides
of pools, and beat the water with violence, so as to scare the fish,
which thus become an easy prey; a fact which was, I believe, first
indicated by Pallas, during his residence on the banks of the Caspian
Sea. Shells are scarce, and consist of a few small bivalves; their
comparative absence is probably due to the paucity of limestone in
the mountains whence the many feeders flow. The sand is pure white
and small-grained, with fragments of hornblende and mica, the latter
varying in abundance as a feeder is near or far away. Pink sand* [I
have seen the same garnet sand covering the bottom of the Himalayan
torrents, where it is the produce of disintegrated gneiss, and whence
it is transported to the Ganges.] of garnets is very common, and
deposited in layers interstratified with the white quartz sand.
Worm-marks, ripple-marks, and the footsteps of alligators, birds and
beasts, abound in the wet sand. The vegetation of the banks consists
of annuals which find no permanent resting-place. Along the sandy
shores the ever-present plants are mostly English, as Dock, a
_Nasturtium, Ranunculus sceleratus, Fumitory, Juncus bufonius,_,
Common Vervain, _Gnaphalium luteo-album,_ and very frequently
_Veronica Anagallise._ On the alluvium grow the same, mixed with
Tamarisk, _Acacia Arabica,_ and a few other bushes.

Withered grass abounds; and wheat, dhal (_Cajanus_) and gram
(_Cicer arietinum_), _Carthamus,_ vetches, and rice are the
staple products of the country. Bushes are few, except the
universally prevalent Adhatoda and _Calotropis._ Trees, also,
are rare, and of stunted growth; Figs, the _Artocarpus_ and some
_Leguminosa_ prevail most. I saw but two kinds of palm, the
fan-palm, and _Phoenix_: the latter is characteristic of the
driest locality. Then, for the animal creation, men, women, and
children abound, both on the banks, and plying up and down the
Ganges. The humped cow (of which the ox is used for draught) is
common. Camels I occasionally observed, and more rarely the elephant;
poneys, goats, and dogs muster strong. Porpoises and alligators
infest the river, even above Benares. Flies and mosquitos are
terrible pests; and so are the odious flying-bugs,* [Large
Hemipterous insects, of the genus _Derecteryx._] which insinuate
themselves between one's skin and clothes, diffusing a dreadful
odour, which is increased by any attempt to touch or remove them.
In the evening it was impossible to keep insects out of the boat, or
to hinder their putting the lights out; and of these the most
intolerable was the abovementioned flying-bug. Saucy crickets, too,
swarm, and spring up at one's face, whilst mosquitos maintain a
constant guerilla warfare, trying to the patience no less than to the
nerves. Thick webs of the gossamer spider float across the river
during the heat of the day, as coarse as fine thread, and being
inhaled keep tickling the nose and lips.

On the 18th, the morning commenced with a dust-storm, the horizon was
about 20 yards off, and ashy white with clouds of sand; the trees
were scarcely visible, and everything in my boat was covered with a
fine coat of impalpable powder, collected from the boundless alluvial
plains through which the Ganges flows. Trees were scarcely
discernible, and so dry was the wind that drops of water vanished
like magic. Neither ferns, mosses, nor lichens grow along the banks
of the Ganges, they cannot survive the transition from parching like
this to the three months' floods at midsummer, when the country is
for miles under water.

_March_ 23.--Passed the mouth of the Soane, a vast expanse of
sand dotted with droves of camels; and soon after, the wide-spread
spits of sand along the north bank announced the mouth of the Gogra,
one of the vastest of the many Himalayan affluents of the Ganges.

On the 25th of March I reached Dinapore, a large military station,
sufficiently insalubrious, particularly for European troops, the
barracks being so misplaced that the inmates are suffocated: the
buildings run east and west instead of north and south, and therefore
lose all the breeze in the hottest weather. From this place I sent
the boat down to Patna, and proceeded thither by land to the house of
Dr. Irvine, an old acquaintance and botanist, from whom I received a
most kind welcome. On the road, Bengal forms of vegetation, to which
I had been for three months a stranger, reappeared; likewise groves
of fan and toddy palms, which are both very rare higher up the river;
clumps of large bamboo, orange, _Acacia Sissoo, Melia, Guatteria
longifolia, Spondias mangifera, Odina, Euphorbia pentagona,
neriifolia_ and _trigona,_ were common road-side plants.
In the gardens, Papaw, _Croton, Jatropha, Buddleia, Cookia,_
Loquat, Litchi, Longan, all kinds of the orange tribe, and the
cocoa-nut, some from their presence, and many from their profusion,
indicated a decided change of climate, a receding from the desert
north-west of India, and its dry winds, and an approach to the damper
regions of the many-mouthed Ganges.

My main object at Patna being to see the opium Godowns (stores), I
waited on Dr. Corbett, the Assistant-Agent, who kindly explained
everything to me, and to whose obliging attentions I am much indebted.

The E.I. Company grant licences for the cultivation of the poppy, and
contract for all the produce at certain rates, varying with the
quality. No opium can be grown without this licence, and an advance
equal to about two-thirds of the value of the produce is made to the
grower. This produce is made over to district collectors, who
approximately fix the worth of the contents of each jar, and forward
it to Patna, where rewards are given for the best samples, and the
worst are condemned without payment; but all is turned to some
account in the reduction of the drug to a state fit for market.

The poppy flowers in the end of January and beginning of February,
and the capsules are sliced in February and March with a little
instrument like a saw, made of three iron plates with jagged edges,
tied together. The cultivation is very carefully conducted, nor are
there any very apparent means of improving this branch of commerce
and revenue. During the N.W., or dry winds, the best opium is
procured, the worst during the moist, or E. and N.E., when the drug
imbibes moisture, and a watery bad solution of opium collects in
cavities of its substance, and is called Passewa, according to the
absence of which the opium is generally prized.

At the end of March the opium jars arrive at the stores by water and
by land, and continue accumulating for some weeks. Every jar is
labelled and stowed in a proper place, separately tested with extreme
accuracy, and valued. When the whole quantity has been received, the
contents of all the jars are thrown into great vats, occupying a very
large building, whence the mass is distributed, to be made up into
balls for the markets. This operation is carried on in a long paved
room, where every man is ticketed, and many overseers are stationed
to see that the work is properly conducted. Each workman sits on a
stool, with a double stage and a tray before him. On the top stage is
a tin basin, containing opium sufficient for three balls; in the
lower another basin, holding water: in the tray stands a brass
hemispherical cup, in which the ball is worked. To the man's right
hand is another tray, with two compartments, one containing thin
pancakes of poppy petals pressed together, the other a cupful of
sticky opium-water, made from refuse opium. The man takes the brass
cup, and places a pancake at the bottom, smears it with opium-water,
and with many plies of the pancakes makes a coat for the opium. Of
this he takes about one-third of the mass before him, puts it inside
the petals, and agglutinates many other coats over it: the balls are
then again weighed, and reduced or increased to a certain weight if
necessary. At the day's end, each man takes his work to a rack with
numbered compartments, and deposits it in that which answers to his
own number, thence the balls (each being put in a clay cup) are
carried to an enormous drying-room, where they are exposed in tiers,
and constantly examined and turned, to prevent their being attacked
by weevils, which are very prevalent during moist winds, little boys
creeping along the racks all day long for this purpose. When dry, the
balls are packed in two layers of six each in chests, with the
stalks, dried leaves, and capsules of the plant, and sent down to
Calcutta. A little opium is prepared of very fine quality for the
Government Hospitals, and some for general sale in India; but the
proportion is trifling, and such is made up into square cakes. A good
workman will prepare from thirty to fifty balls a day, the total
produce being 10,000 to 12,000 a day; during one working season
1,353,000 balls are manufactured for the Chinese market alone.

The poppy-petal _pancakes,_ each about a foot radius, are made
in the fields by women, by the simple operation of pressing the fresh
petals together. They are brought in large baskets, and purchased at
the commencement of the season. The liquor with which the pancakes
are agglutinated together by the ball-maker, and worked into the
ball, is merely inspissated opium-water, the opium for which is
derived from the condemned opium, (Passewa,) the washing of the
utensils, and of the workmen, every one of whom is nightly laved
before he leaves the establishment, and the water is inspissated.
Thus not a particle of opium is lost. To encourage the farmers, the
refuse stalks, leaves, and heads are bought up, to pack the balls
with; but this is far from an economical plan, for it is difficult to
keep the refuse from damp and insects.

A powerful smell of opium pervaded these vast buildings, which Dr.
Corbett* [I am greatly indebted to Mr. Oldfield, the Opium Agent, and
to Dr. Corbett, for a complete set of specimens, implements, and
drawings, illustrating the cultivation and manufacture of Opium.
They are exhibited in the Kew Museum of Economic Botany.] assured me
did not affect himself or the assistants. The men work ten hours a
day, becoming sleepy in the afternoon; but this is only natural in
the hot season: they are rather liable to eruptive diseases, possibly
engendered by the nature of their occupation.

Even the best East Indian opium is inferior to the Turkish, and owing
to peculiarities of climate, will probably always be so. It never
yields more than five per cent. of morphia, whence its inferiority,
but is as good in other respects, and even richer in narcotine.

The care and attention devoted to every department of collecting,
testing, manipulating, and packing, is quite extraordinary; and the
result has been an impulse to the trade, beyond what was anticipated.
The natives have been quick at apprehending and supplying the wants
of the market, and now there are more demands for licences to grow
opium than can be granted. All the opium eaten in India is given out
with a permit to licensed dealers, and the drug is so adulterated
before it reaches the retailers in the bazaars, that it does not
contain one-thirtieth part of the intoxicating power that it did
when pure.

Patna is the stronghold of Mahommedanism, and from its central
position, its command of the Ganges, and its proximity to Nepal
(which latter has been aptly compared to a drawn dagger, pointed at
the heart of India), it is an important place. For this reason there
are always a European and several Native Regiments stationed there.
In the neighbourbood there is little to be seen, and the highly
cultivated flat country is unfavourable to native vegetation.

The _mudar_ plant (_Calotropis_) was abundant here, but I
found that its properties and nomenclature were far from settled
points. On the banks of the Ganges, the larger, white-flowered,
sub-arboreous species prevailed; in the interior, and along my whole
previous route, the smaller purple-flowered kind only was seen.
Mr. Davis, of Rotas, was in the habit of using the medicine
copiously, and vouched for the cure of eighty cases, chiefly of
leprosy, by the _white mudar,_ gathered on the Ganges, whilst
the purple of Rotas and the neighbourhood was quite inert:
Dr. Irvine, again, used the purple only, and found the white inert.
The European and native doctors, who knew the two plants, all gave
the preference to the _white_; except Dr. Irvine, whose experience
over various parts of India is entitled to great weight.

_March_ 29.--Dropped down the river, experiencing a succession
of east and north-east winds during the whole remainder of the
voyage. These winds are very prevalent throughout the month of March,
and they rendered the passage in my sluggish boat sufficiently
tedious. In other respects I had but little bad weather to complain
of: only one shower of rain occurred, and but few storms of thunder
and lightning. The stream is very strong, and its action on the
sand-banks conspicuous. All night I used to hear the falling cliffs
precipitated with a dull heavy splash into the water,--a pretty
spectacle in the day-time, when the whirling current is seen to carry
a cloud of white dust, like smoke, along its course.

The Curruckpore hills, the northern boundary of the gneiss and
granite range of Paras-nath, are seen first in the distance, and then
throwing out low loosely timbered spurs towards the river; but no
rock or hill comes close to the banks till near Monghyr, where two
islets of rock rise out of the bed of the river. They are of
stratified quartz, dipping, at a high angle, to the south-east; and,
as far as I could observe, quite barren, each crowned with a little
temple. The swarm of boats from below Patna to this place was
quite incredible.

_April_ l.--Arrived at Monghyr, by far the prettiest town I had
seen on the river, backed by a long range of wooded hills,--detached
outliers of which rise in the very town. The banks are steep, and
they appear more so owing to the fortifications, which are extensive.
A number of large, white, two-storied houses, some very imposing, and
perched on rounded or conical hills, give a European aspect to
the place.

Monghyr is celebrated for its iron manufactures, especially of
muskets, in which respect it is the Birmingham of Bengal. Generally
speaking, these weapons are poor, though stamped with the first
English names. A native workman will, however, if time and sufficient
reward be given, turn out a first rate fowling-piece. The inhabitants
are reported to be sad drunkards, and the abundance of toddy-palms
was quite remarkable. The latter, (here the _Phoenix sylvestris,_)
I never saw wild, but it is considered to be so in N.W. India; it is
still a doubtful point whether it is the same as the African species.
In the morning of the following day I went to the hot springs of
Seeta-koond (wells of Seeta), a few miles south of the town.

Illustration--MONGHYR ON THE GANGES, WITH THE CURROCKPORE HILLS IN
THE DISTANCE.

The hills are hornstone and quartz, stratified and dipping southerly
with a very high angle; they are very barren, and evidently identical
with those on the south bank of the Soane; skirting, in both cases,
the granite and gneiss range of Paras-nath. The alluvium on the banks
of the Ganges is obviously an aqueous deposit subsequent to the
elevation of these hills, and is perfectly plane up to their bases.
The river has its course through the alluvium, like the Soane.
The depth of the former is in many places upwards of 100 feet, and
the kunker pebbles it contains are often disposed in parallel
undulating bands. It nowhere contains sand pebbles or fossils;
concretions of lime (kunker) alone interrupting its uniform
consistence. It attains its greatest thickness in the valleys of the
Ganges and the Soane, gradually sloping up to the Himalaya and
Curruckpore hills on either flank. It is, however, well developed on
the Kymore and Paras-nath hills, 1200 to 1500 feet above the Ganges
valley, and I have no doubt was deposited in very deep water, when
the relative positions of these mountains to the Ganges and Soane
valleys were the same that they are now. Like every other part of the
surface of India, it has suffered much from denudation, especially on
the above-named mountains, and around their bases, where various
rocks protrude through it. Along the Ganges again, its surface is an
unbroken level between Chunar and the rocks of Monghyr. The origin of
its component mineral matter must be sought in the denudation of the
Himalayas within a very recent geological period. The contrast
between the fertility of the alluvium and the sterility of the
protruded quartzy rocks is very striking, cultivation running up to
these fields of stones, and suddenly stopping.

Unlike the Soorujkoond hot-springs, those of Seetakoond rise in a
plain, and were once covered by a handsome temple. All the water is
collected in a tank, some yards square, with steps leading down to
it. The water, which is clear and tasteless (temp. 104 degrees), is
so pure as to be exported copiously, and the Monghyr manufactory of
soda-water presents the anomaly of owing its purity to Seeta's
ablutions.

On my passage down the river I passed the picturesque rocks of
Sultangunj; they are similar to those of Monghyr, but very much
larger and loftier. One, a round-headed mass, stands on the bank,
capped with a triple-domed Mahommedan tomb, palms, and figs.
The other, which is far more striking, rises isolated in the bed of
the river, and is crowned with a Hindoo temple, its pyramidal cone
surmounted with a curious pile of weathercocks, and two little
banners. The current of the Ganges is here very strong, and runs in
deep black eddies between the rocks.

Though now perhaps eighty or a hundred yards from the shore, the
islet must have been recently a peninsula, for it retains a portion
of the once connecting bank of alluvium, in the form of a short
flat-topped cliff, about thirty feet above the water. Some curious
looking sculptures on the rocks are said to represent Naragur (or
Vishnu), Suree and Sirooj; but to me they were quite unintelligible.
The temple is dedicated to Naragur, and inhabited by Fakirs; it is
the most holy on the Ganges.

_April_ 5.--I arrived at Bhagulpore, and took up my quarters
with my friend Dr. Grant, till he should arrange my dawk for Sikkim.

The town has been supposed to be the much-sought Palibothra, and a
dirty stream hard by (the Chundum), the Eranoboas; but Mr. Ravenshaw
has now brought all existing proofs to bear on Patna and the Soane.
It is, like most hilly places in India, S. of the Himalaya, the seat
of much Jain worship; and the temples on Mount Manden,* [For the
following information about Bhagulpore and its neighbourhood, I am
indebted chiefly to Col. Francklin's essay in the Asiatic Researches;
and the late Major Napleton and Mr. Pontet.] a few miles off, are
said to have been 540 in number. At the assumed summer-palaces of the
kings of Palibothra the ground is covered with agates, brought from
the neighbouring hills, which were, in a rough state, let into the
walls of the buildings. These agates perfectly resemble the Soane
pebbles, and they assist in the identification of these flanking
hills with those of the latter river.

Again, near the hills, the features of interest are very numerous.
The neighbouring mountains of Curruckpore, which are a portion of the
Rajmahal and Paras-nath range, are peopled by tribes representing the
earliest races of India, prior to the invasion of young Rama, prince
of Oude, who, according to the legend, spread Brahminism with his
conquests, and won the hand of King Jannuk's daughter, Seeta, by
bending her father's bow. These people are called Coles, a
middle-sized, strong, very dark, and black-haired race, with thick
lips: they have no vocation but collecting iron from the soil, which
occurs abundantly in nodules. They eat flesh, whether that of animals
killed by themselves, or of those which have died a natural death,
and mix with Hindoos, but not with Mussulmen. There are other tribes,
vestiges of the Tamulian race, differing somewhat in their rites from
these, and approaching, in their habits, more to Hindoos; but all are
timorous and retiring.

The hill-rangers, or Bhagulpore-rangers, are all natives of the
Rajmahal hills, and form a local corps maintained by the Company for
the protection of the district. For many years these people were
engaged in predatory excursions, which, owing to the nature of the
country, were checked with great difficulty. The plan was therefore
conceived, by an active magistrate in the district, of embodying a
portion into a military force, for the protection of the country from
invasions of their own tribes; and this scheme has answered perfectly.

To me the most interesting object in Bhagulpore was the Horticultural
Gardens, whose origin and flourishing condition are due to the
activity and enterprise of the late Major Napleton, commander of the
hill-rangers. The site is good, consisting of fifteen acres, that
were, four years ago, an indigo field, but form now a smiling garden.
About fifty men are employed; and the number of seeds and vegetables
annually distributed is very great. Of trees the most conspicuous are
the tamarind, _Tecoma jasminoides, Erythrina, Adansonia,
Bombax,_ teak, banyan, peepul, _Sissoo, Casuarina, Terminalia,
Melia, Bauhinia._ Of introduced species English and Chinese flat
peaches (pruned to the centre to let the sun in), Mangos of various
sorts, _Eugenia Jambos,_ various Anonas, Litchi, Loquat and
Longan, oranges, _Sapodilla_; apple, pear, both succeeding
tolerably; various Cabool and Persian varieties of fruit-trees; figs,
grapes, guava, apricots, and jujube. The grapes looked extremely
well, but they require great skill and care in the management.
They form a long covered walk, with a row of plantains on the W.
side, to diminish the effects of the hot winds, but even with this
screen, the fruit on that side are inferior to that on the opposite
trellis. Easterly winds, again, being moist, blight these and other
plants, by favouring the abundant increase of insects, and causing
the leaves to curl and fall off; and against this evil there is no
remedy. With a clear sky the mischief is not great; under a cloudy
one the prevalence of such winds is fatal to the crop. The white ant
sometimes attacks the stems, and is best checked by washing the roots
with limewater, yellow arsenic, or tobacco-water. Numerous Cerealia,
and the varieties of cotton, sugar-cane, etc. all thrive extremely
well; so do many of our English vegetables. Cabbages, peas, and beans
are much injured by the caterpillars of a _Pontia,_ like our
English "White;" raspberries, currants, and gooseberries will not
grow at all.

The seeds were all deposited in bottles, and hung round the walls of
a large airy apartment; and for cleanliness and excellence of kind
they would bear comparison with the best seedsman's collection in
London. Of English garden vegetables, and varieties of the Indian
Cerealia, and leguminous plants, Indian corn, millets, rice, etc.,
the collections for distribution were extensive.

The manufacture of economic products is not neglected. Excellent
coffee is grown; and arrow-root, equal to the best West Indian, is
prepared, at 18s. 6d. per bottle of twenty-four ounces, about a
fourth of the price of that article in Calcutta.

In most respects the establishment is a model of what such
institutions ought to be in India; not only of real practical value,
in affording a good and cheap supply of the best culinary and other
vegetables that the climate can produce, but as showing to what
departments efforts are best directed. Such gardens diffuse a taste
for the most healthy employments, and offer an elegant resource for
the many unoccupied hours which the Englishman in India finds upon
his hands. They are also schools of gardening; and a simple
inspection of what has been done at Bhagulpore is a valuable lesson
to any person about to establish a private garden of his own.

I often heard complaints made of the seeds distributed from these
gardens not vegetating freely in other parts of India, and it is not
to be expected that they should retain their vitality unimpaired
through an Indian rainy season; but on the other hand I almost
invariably found that the planting and tending had been left to the
uncontrolled management of native gardeners, who with a certain
amount of skill in handicraft are, from habits and prejudices,
singularly unfit for the superintendence of a garden.



 CHAPTER IV.

Leave Bhagulpore--Kunker--Colgong--Himalaya, distant view of--
Cosi, mouth of--Difficult navigation--Sand storms--
Caragola-Ghat--Purnea--Ortolans--Mahanuddee, transport of
pebbles, etc.--Betel-pepper, cultivation of--Titalya--Siligoree
--View of outer Himalaya--Terai--Mechis--Punkabaree--Foot of
mountains--Ascent to Dorjiling--Cicadas--Leeches--Animals--
Kursiong, spring vegetation of--Pacheem--Arrive at Dorjiling--
Dorjiling, origin and settlement of--Grant of land from Rajah--
Dr. Campbell appointed superintendent--Dewan, late and present--
Aggressive conduct of the latter--Increase of the station--Trade
--Titalya fair--Healtby climate for Europeans and children--
Invalids, diseases prejudicial to.

I took as it were, a new departure, on Saturday, April the 8th, my
dawk being laid on that day from Caragola-Ghat, about thirty miles
down the river, for the foot of the Himalaya range and Dorjiling.

Passing the pretty villa-like houses of the English residents, the
river-banks re-assumed their wonted features the hills receded from
the shore; and steep clay cliffs, twenty to fifty feet high, on one
side, opposed long sandy shelves on the other. Kunker was still most
abundant, especially in the lower bed of the banks, close to the (now
very low) water. The strata containing it were much undulated, but
not uniformly so; horizontal layers over or under-lying the disturbed
ones. At Colgong, conical hills appear, and two remarkable
sister-rocks start out of the river, the same in structure with those
of Sultangunj. A boisterous current swirls round them, strong even at
this season, and very dangerous in the rains, when the swollen river
is from twenty-eight to forty feet deeper than now. We landed
opposite the rocks, and proceeded to the residence of Mr. G. Barnes,
prettily situated on one of the conical elevations characteristic of
the geology of the district. The village we passed through had been
recently destroyed by fire; and nothing but the clay outer walls and
curious-looking partition walls remained, often white-washed and
daubed with figures in red of the palm of the hand, elephant,
peacock, and tiger,--a sort of rude fresco-painting. We did not
arrive till past mid-day, and the boat, with my palkee and servant,
not having been able to face the gale, I was detained till the middle
of the following day. Mr. Barnes and his brother proved most
agreeable companions,--very luckily for me, for it requires no
ordinary philosophy to bear being storm-stayed on a voyage, with the
prospect of paying a heavy demurrage for detaining the dawk, and the
worse one of finding the bearers given to another traveller when you
arrive at the rendezvous. The view from Mr. Barnes' house is very
fine: it commands the river and its rocks; the Rajmahal hills to the
east and south; broad acres of indigo and other crops below; long
lines of palm-trees, and groves of mango, banana, tamarind, and other
tropical trees, scattered close around and in the distance. In the
rainy season, and immediately after, the snowy Himalaya are
distinctly seen on the horizon, fully 170 miles off. Nearly opposite,
the Cosi river enters the Ganges, bearing (considering its short
course) an enormous volume of water, comprising the drainage of the
whole Himalaya between the two giant peaks of Kinchinjunga in Sikkim,
and Gossain-Than in Nepal. Even at this season, looking from Mr.
Barnes' eyrie over the bed of the Ganges, the enormous expanses of
sand, the numerous shifting islets, and the long spits of mud betray
the proximity of some very restless and resistless power. During the
rains, the scene must indeed be extraordinary, when the Cosi lays
many miles of land under water, and pours so vast a quantity of
detritus into the bed of the Ganges that long islets are heaped up
and swept away in a few hours; and the latter river becomes all but
unnavigable. Boats are caught in whirlpools, formed without a
moment's warning, and sunk ere they have spun round thrice in the
eddies; and no part of the inland navigation of India is so dreaded
or dangerous, as the Ganges at its junction with the Cosi.

Rain generally falls in partial showers at this season, and they are
essential to the well-being of the spring crops of indigo. The stormy
appearance of the sky, though it proved fallacious, was hailed by my
hosts as predicting a fall, which was much wanted. The wind however
seemed but to aggravate the drought, by the great body of sand it
lifted and swept up the valleys, obscuring the near horizon, and
especially concealing the whole delta of the Cosi, where the clouds
were so vast and dense, and ascended so high as to resemble
another element.

All night the gale blew on, accompanied with much thunder and
lightning, and it was not till noon of the 9th that I descried my
palkee-boat toiling down the stream. Then I again embarked, taking
the lagging boat in tow of my own. Passing the mouths of the Cosi,
the gale and currents were so adverse that we had to bring up on the
sand, when the quantity which drifted into the boat rendered the
delay as disagreeable as it was tedious. The particles penetrated
everywhere, up my nose and down my back, drying my eyelids, and
gritting between my teeth. The craft kept bumping on the banks, and
being both crazy and leaky, the little comfortless cabin became the
refuge of scared rats and cockroaches. In the evening I shared a meal
with these creatures, on some provisions my kind friends had put into
the boat, but the food was so sandy that I had to bolt my supper!

At night the storm lulled a little, and I proceeded to Caragola Ghat
and took up my dawk, which had been twenty-eight hours expecting me,
and was waiting, in despair of my arrival, for another traveller on
the opposite bank, who however could not cross the river.

Having accomplished thirty miles, I halted at 9 a..m. on the
following morning at Purnea, quitting it at noon for Kishengunj.
The whole country wore a greener garb than I had seen anywhere south
of the Ganges: the climate was evidently more humid, and had been
gradually becoming so from Mirzapore. The first decided change was a
few miles below the Soane mouth, at Dinapore and Patna; and the few
hygrometrical observations I took at Bhagulpore confirmed the
increase of moisture. The proximity to the sea and great Delta of the
Ganges sufficiently accounts for this; as does the approach to the
hills for the still greater dampness and brighter verdure of Purnea.
I was glad to feel myself within the influence of the long-looked-for
Himalaya; and I narrowly watched every change in the character of the
vegetation. A fern, growing by the roadside, was the first and most
tangible evidence of this; together with the rarity or total absence
of _Butea, Boswellia, Catechu, Grislea, Carissa,_ and all the
companions of my former excursion.

Purnea is a large station, and considered very unhealthy during and
after the rains. From it the road passed through some pretty lanes,
with groves of planted Guava and a rattan palm (_Calamus_), the first
I had seen. Though no hills are nearer than the Himalaya, from the
constant alteration of the river-beds, the road undulates remarkably
for this part of India, and a jungly vegetation ensues, consisting of
the above plants, with the yellow-flowered Cactus replacing the
Euphorbias, which were previously much more common. Though still 100
miles distant from the hills, mosses appeared on the banks, and more
ferns were just sprouting above ground.

The Bamboo was a very different species from any I had hitherto met
with, forming groves of straight trees fifteen to twenty feet high,
thin of foliage, and not unlike poplars.

Thirty-six miles from Purnea brought me to Kishengunj, when I found
that no arrangements whatever had been made for my dawk, and I was
fairly stranded. Luckily a thoughtful friend had provided me with
letters to the scattered residents along the road, and I proceeded
with one to Mr. Perry, the assistant magistrate of the district,--a
gentleman well known for his urbanity, and the many aids he affords
to travellers on this neglected line of road. Owing to this being
some festival or holiday, it was impossible to get palkee-bearers;
the natives were busy catching fish in all the muddy pools around.
Some of Mr. Perry's own family also were about to proceed to
Dorjiling, so that I had only to take patience, and be thankful for
having to exercise it in such pleasant quarters. The Mahanuddee, a
large stream from the hills, flows near this place, strewing the
surrounding neighbourhood with sand, and from the frequent
alterations in its course, causing endless disputes amongst the
landholders. A kind of lark called an Ortolan was abundant: this is
not, however, the European delicacy of that name, though a migratory
bird; the flocks are large, and the birds so fat, that they make
excellent table game. At this time they were rapidly disappearing; to
return from the north in September.

I had just got into bed at night, when the bearers arrived; so
bidding a hurried adieu to my kind host, I proceeded onwards.

_April_ 12.--I awoke at 4 a.m., and found my palkee on the ground,
and the bearers coolly smoking their hookahs under a tree (it was
raining hard): they had carried me the length of their stage, twelve
miles, and there were no others to take me on. I had paid twenty-four
pounds for my dawk, from Caragola to the hills, to which I had been
obliged to add a handsome douceur; so I lost all patience. After
waiting and entreating during several hours, I found the head-man of
a neighbouring village, and by a further disbursement induced six out
of the twelve bearers to carry the empty palkee, whilst I should walk
to the next stage; or till we should meet some others. They agreed,
and cutting the thick and spongy sheaths of the banana, used them for
shoulder-pads: they also wrapped them round the palkee-poles, to ease
their aching clavicles. Walking along I picked up a few plants, and
fourteen miles further on came again to the banks of the Mahanuddee,
whose bed was strewn with pebbles and small boulders, brought thus
far from the mountains (about thirty miles distant). Here, again, I
had to apply to the head-man of a village, and pay for bearers to
take me to Titalya, the next stage (fourteen miles). Some curious
long low sheds puzzled me very much, and on examining them they
proved to be for the growth of Pawn or Betel-pepper, another
indication of the moisture of the climate. These sheds are twenty to
fifty yards long, eight or twelve or so broad, and scarcely five
high; they are made of bamboo, wattled all round and over the top.
Slender rods are placed a few feet apart, inside, up which the Pepper
Vines climb, and quickly fill the place with their deep green glossy
foliage. The native enters every morning by a little door, and
carefully cleans the plants. Constant heat, damp, and moisture,
shelter from solar beams, from scorching heat, and from nocturnal
radiation, are thus all procured for the plant, which would certainly
not live twenty-four hours, if exposed to the climate of this
treeless district. Great attention is paid to the cultivation, which
is very profitable. Snakes frequently take up their quarters in these
hot-houses, and cause fatal accidents.

Titalya was once a military station of some importance, and from its
proximity to the hills has been selected by Dr. Campbell (the
Superintendent of Dorjiling) as the site for an annual fair, to which
the mountain tribes resort, as well as the people of the plains. The
Calcutta road to Dorjiling by Dinajpore meets, near here, that by
which I had come; and I found no difficulty in procuring bearers to
proceed to Siligoree, where I arrived at 6 a.m. on the 13th.
Hitherto I bad not seen the mountains, so uniformly had they been
shrouded by dense wreaths of vapour: here, however, when within eight
miles of their base, I caught a first glimpse of the outer
range--sombre masses, of far from picturesque outline, clothed
everywhere with a dusky forest.

Siligoree stands on the verge of the Terai, that low malarious belt
which skirts the base of the Himalaya, from the Sutlej to
Brahma-koond in Upper Assam. Every feature, botanical, geological,
and zoological, is new on entering this district. The change is
sudden and immediate: sea and shore are hardly more conspicuously
different, nor from the edge of the Terai to the limit of perpetual
snow is any botanical region more clearly marked than this, which is
the commencement of Himalayan vegetation. A sudden descent leads to
the Mahanuddee river, flowing in a shallow valley, over a pebbly
bottom: it is a rapid river, even at this season; its banks are
fringed with bushes, and it is as clear and sparkling as a trout
stream in Scotland. Beyond it the road winds through a thick
brushwood, choked with long grasses, and with but few trees, chiefly
of _Acacia, Dalbergia Sissoo,_ and a scarlet fruited _Sterculia._
The soil is a red, friable clay and gravel. At this season only a few
spring plants were in flower, amongst which a very sweet-scented
_Crinum,_ Asphodel, and a small _Curcuma,_ were in the greatest
profusion. Leaves of terrestrial Orchids appeared, with ferns and
weeds of hot damp regions. I crossed the beds of many small streams:
some were dry, and all very tortuous; their banks were richly clothed
with brushwood and climbers of Convolvulus, Vines, _Hiraea, Leea,
Menispermeae, Cucurbitaceae,_ and _Bignoniaceae._ Their pent-up
waters, percolating the gravel beds, and partly carried off by
evaporation through the stratum of ever-increasing vegetable mould,
must be one main agent in the production of the malarious vapours of
this pestilential region. Add to this, the detention of the same
amongst the jungly herbage, the amount of vapour in the humid
atmosphere above, checking the upward passage of that from the soil,
the sheltered nature of the locality at the immediate base of lofty
mountains; and there appear to me to be here all necessary elements,
which, combined, will produce stagnation and deterioration in an
atmosphere loaded with vapour. Fatal as this district is, and
especially to Europeans, a race inhabit it with impunity, who, if not
numerous, do not owe their paucity to any climatic causes. These are
the Mechis, often described as a squalid, unhealthy people, typical
of the region they frequent; but who are, in reality, more robust
than the Europeans in India, and whose disagreeably sallow complexion
is deceptive as indicating a sickly constitution. They are a mild,
inoffensive people, industrious for Orientals, living by annually
burning the Terai jungle and cultivating the cleared spots; and,
though so sequestered and isolated, they rather court than avoid
intercourse with those whites whom they know to be kindly disposed.

After proceeding some six miles along the gradually ascending path, I
came to a considerable stream, cutting its way through stratified
gravel, with cliffs on each side fifteen to twenty feet high, here
and there covered with ferns, the little _Oxalis sensitiva,_ and
other herbs. The road here suddenly ascends a steep gravelly hill,
and opens out on a short flat, or spur, from which the Himalaya rise
abruptly, clothed with forest from the base: the little bungalow of
Punkabaree, my immediate destination, nestled in the woods, crowning
a lateral knoll, above which, to east and west, as far as the eye
could reach, were range after range of wooded mountains, 6000 to 8000
feet high. I here met with the India-rubber tree (_Ficus elastica_);
it abounds in Assam, but this is its western limit.

From this steppe, the ascent to Punkabaree is sudden and steep, and
accompanied with a change in soil and vegetation. The mica slate and
clay slate protrude everywhere, the former full of garnets. A giant
forest replaces the stunted and bushy timber of the Terai Proper; of
which the _Duabanga_ and _Terminalias_ form the prevailing trees,
with _Cedrela_ and the _Gordonia Wallichii._ Smaller timber and
shrubs are innumerable; a succulent character pervades the bushes and
herbs, occasioned by the prevalence of _Urticeae._ Large bamboos
rather crest the hills than court the deeper shade, and of the latter
there is abundance, for the torrents cut a straight, deep, and steep
course down the hill flanks: the galleys they traverse are choked
with vegetation and bridged by fallen trees, whose trunks are richly
clothed with _Dendrobium Pierardi_ and other epiphytical Orchids,
with pendulous _Lycopodia_ and many ferns, _Hoya, Scitamineae,_ and
similar types of the hottest and dampest climates.

The bungalow at Punkabaree was good--which was well, as my
luggage-bearers were not come up, and there were no signs of them
along the Terai road, which I saw winding below me. My scanty stock
of paper being full of plants, I was reduced to the strait of
botanising, and throwing away my specimens. The forest was truly
magnificent along the steep mountain sides. The apparently large
proportion of deciduous trees was far more considerable than I had
expected; partly, probably, due to the abundance of the _Dillenia,
Cassia,_ and _Sterculia,_ whose copious fruit was all the more
conspicuous from the leafless condition of the plant. The white or
lilac blossoms of the convolvuluslike _Thunbergia,_ and other
_Acanthaceae_ were the predominant features of the shrubby
vegetation, and very handsome.

All around, the hills rise steeply five or six thousand feet, clothed
in a dense deep-green dripping forest. Torrents rush down the slopes,
their position indicated by the dipping of the forest into their
beds, or the occasional cloud of spray rising above some more
boisterous part of their course. From the road, at and a little above
Punkabaree, the view is really superb, and very instructive.
Behind (or north) the Himalaya rise in steep confused masses.
Below, the hill on which I stood, and the ranges as far as the eye
can reach east and west, throw spurs on to the plains of India.
These are very thickly wooded, and enclose broad, dead-flat, hot and
damp valleys, apparently covered with a dense forest. Secondary spurs
of clay and gravel, like that immediately below Punkabaree, rest on
the bases of the mountains, and seem to form an intermediate neutral
ground between flat and mountainous India. The Terai district forms a
very irregular belt, scantily clothed, and intersected by innumerable
rivulets from the hills, which unite and divide again on the flat,
till, emerging from the region of many trees, they enter the plains,
following devious courses, which glisten like silver threads.
The whole horizon is bounded by the sea-like expanse of the plains,
which stretch away into the region of sunshine and fine weather, in
one boundless flat.

In the distance, the courses of the Teesta and Cosi, the great
drainers of the snowy Himalayas, and the recipients of innumerable
smaller rills, are with difficulty traced at this, the dry season.
The ocean-like appearance of this southern view is even more
conspicuous in the heavens than on the land, the clouds arranging
themselves after a singularly sea-scape fashion. Endless strata run
in parallel ribbons over the extreme horizon; above these, scattered
cumuli, also in horizontal lines, are dotted against a clear grey
sky, which gradually, as the eye is lifted, passes into a deep
cloudless blue vault, continuously clear to the zenith; there the
cumuli, in white fleecy masses, again appear; till, in the northern
celestial hemisphere, they thicken and assume the leaden hue of
nimbi, discharging their moisture on the dark forest-clad hills
around. The breezes are south-easterly, bringing that vapour from the
Indian Ocean, which is rarefied and suspended aloft over the heated
plains, but condensed into a drizzle when it strikes the cooler
flanks of the hills, and into heavy rain when it meets their still
colder summits. Upon what a gigantic scale does nature here operate!
Vapours, raised from an ocean whose nearest shore is more than 400
miles distant, are safely transported without the loss of one drop of
water, to support the rank luxuriance of this far distant region.
This and other offices fulfilled, the waste waters are returned, by
the Cosi and Teesta, to the ocean, and again exhaled, exported,
expended, re-collected, and returned.

Illustration--PUNKABAREE BUNGALOW AND BASE OF THE HIMALAYA.

The soil and bushes everywhere swarmed with large and troublesome
ants, and enormous earthworms. In the evening, the noise of the great
_Cicadae_ in the trees was almost deafening. They burst suddenly into
full chorus, with a voice so harshly croaking, so dissonant, and so
unearthly, that in these solitary forests I could not help being
startled. In general character the note was very similar to that of
other _Cicadae._ They ceased as suddenly as they commenced. On the
following morning my baggage arrived, and, leaving my palkee, I
mounted a pony kindly sent for me by Mr. Hodgson, and commenced a
very steep ascent of about 3000 feet, winding along the face of a
steep, richly-wooded valley. The road zigzags extraordinarily in and
out of the innumerable lateral ravines, each with its water course,
dense jungle, and legion of leeches; the bite of these blood-suckers
gives no pain, but is followed by considerable effusion of blood.
They puncture through thick worsted stockings, and even trousers,
and, when full, roll in the form of a little soft ball into the
bottom of the shoe, where their presence is hardly felt in walking.

Not only are the roadsides rich in plants, but native paths, cutting
off all the zigzags, run in straight lines up the steepest
hill-faces, and thus double the available means for botanising; and
it is all but impossible to leave the paths of one kind or other,
except for a yard or two up the rocky ravines. Elephants, tigers, and
occasionally the rhinoceros, inhabit the foot of these hills, with
wild boars, leopards, etc.; but none are numerous. The elephant's
path is an excellent specimen of engineering--the opposite of the
native track, for it winds judiciously.

At about 1000 feet above Punkabaree, the vegetation is very rich, and
appears all the more so from the many turnings of the road, affording
glorious prospects of the foreshortened tropical forests.
The prevalent timber is gigantic, and scaled by climbing
_Leguminosae,_ as _Bauhinias_ and _Robinias,_ which sometimes sheath
the trunks, or span the forest with huge cables, joining tree to
tree. Their trunks are also clothed with parasitical Orchids, and
still more beautifully with Pothos (_Scindapsus_), Peppers, _Gnetum,_
Vines, Convolvulus, and _Bignoniae._ The beauty of the drapery of the
Pothos-leaves is pre-eminent, whether for the graceful folds the
foliage assumes, or for the liveliness of its colour. Of the more
conspicuous smaller trees, the wild banana is the most abundant, its
crown of very beautiful foliage contrasting with the smaller-leaved
plants amongst which it nestles; next comes a screw-pine (_Pandanus_)
with a straight stem and a tuft of leaves; each eight or ten feet
long, waving on all sides. _Araliaceae,_ with smooth or armed slender
trunks, and _Mappa_-like _Euphorbiaceae,_ spread their long petioles
horizontally forth, each terminated with an ample leaf some feet in
diameter. Bamboo abounds everywhere: its dense tufts of culms, 100
feet and upwards high, are as thick as a man's thigh at the base.
Twenty or thirty, species of ferns (including a tree-fern) were
luxuriant and handsome. Foliaceous lichens and a few mosses appeared
at 2000 feet. Such is the vegetation of the roads through the
tropical forests of the Outer-Himalaya.

At about 4000 feet the road crossed a saddle, and ran along the
narrow crest of a hill, the top of that facing the plains of India,
and over which is the way to the interior ranges, amongst which
Dorjiling is placed, still twenty-five miles off. A little below this
a great change had taken place in the vegetation, marked, first, by
the appearance of a very English-looking bramble, which, however, by
way of proving its foreign origin, bore a very good yellow fruit,
called here the "yellow raspberry." Scattered oaks, of a noble
species, with large lamellated cups and magnificent foliage,
succeeded; and along the ridge of the mountain to Kursiong (a dawk
bungalow at about 4800 feet), the change in the flora was complete.

The spring of this region and elevation most vividly recalled that of
England. The oak flowering, the birch bursting into leaf, the violet,
_Chrysosplenium, Stellaria_ and _Arum, Vaccinium,_ wild strawberry,
maple, geranium, bramble. A colder wind blew here: mosses and lichens
carpeted the banks and roadsides: the birds and insects were very
different from those below; and everything proclaimed the marked
change in elevation, and not only in this, but in season, for I had
left the winter of the tropics and here encountered the spring of the
temperate zone.

The flowers I have mentioned are so notoriously the harbingers of a
European spring that their presence carries one home at once; but, as
species, they differ from their European prototypes, and are
accompanied at this elevation (and for 2000 feet higher up) with
tree-fern, Pothos, bananas, palms, figs, pepper, numbers of epiphytal
Orchids, and similar genuine tropical genera. The uniform temperature
and humidity of the region here favour the extension of tropical
plants into a temperate region; exactly as the same conditions cause
similar forms to reach higher latitudes in the southern hemisphere
(as in New Zealand, Tasmania, South Chili, etc.) than they do in
the northern.

Along this ridge I met with the first tree-fern. This species seldom
reaches the height of forty feet; the black trunk is but three or
four in girth, and the feathery crown is ragged in comparison with
the species of many other countries: it is the _Alsophila gigantea,_
and ascends nearly to 7000 feet elevation.

Kursiong bungalow, where I stopped for a few hours, is superbly
placed, on a narrow mountain ridge. The west window looks down the
valley of the Balasun river, the east into that of the Mahanuddee:
both of these rise from the outer range, and flow in broad, deep, and
steep valleys (about 4000 feet deep) which give them their respective
names; and are richly wooded from the Terai to their tops.
Till reaching this spur, I had wound upwards along the western slope
of the Mahanuddee valley. The ascent from the spur at Kursiong, to
the top of the mountain (on the northern face of which Dorjiling is
situated), is along the eastern slope of the Balasun.

From Kursiong a very steep zigzag leads up the mountain, through a
magnificent forest of chesnut, walnut, oaks, and laurels. It is
difficult to conceive a grander mass of vegetation: the straight
shafts of the timber-trees shooting aloft, some naked and clean, with
grey, pale, or brown bark; others literally clothed for yards with a
continuous garment of epiphytes, one mass of blossoms, especially the
white Orchids _Caelogynes,_ which bloom in a profuse manner,
whitening their trunks like snow. More bulky trunks were masses of
interlacing climbers, _Araliaceae, Leguminosae, Vines,_ and
_Menispermeae,_ Hydrangea, and Peppers, enclosing a hollow, once
filled by the now strangled supporting tree, which had long ago
decayed away. From the sides and summit of these, supple branches
hung forth, either leafy or naked; the latter resembling cables flung
from one tree to another, swinging in the breeze, their rocking
motion increased by the weight of great bunches of ferns or Orchids,
which were perched aloft in the loops. Perpetual moisture nourishes
this dripping forest: and pendulous mosses and lichens are met with
in profusion.

Two thousand feet higher up, near Mahaldiram (whence the last view of
the plains is gained), European plants appear,--Berberry, _Paris,_
etc.; but here, night gathered round, and I had still ten miles to go
to the nearest bungalow, that of Pacheem. The road still led along
the eastern slope of the Balasun valley, which was exceedingly steep,
and so cut up by ravines, that it winds in and out of gulleys almost
narrow enough to be jumped across.

It was very late before I arrived at Pacheem bungalow, the most
sinister-looking rest-house I ever saw, stuck on a little cleared
spur of the mountain, surrounded by dark forests, overhanging a
profound valley, and enveloped in mists and rain, and hideous in
architecture, being a miserable attempt to unite the Swiss cottage
with the suburban gothic; it combined a maximum of discomfort with a
minimum of good looks or good cheer. I was some time in finding the
dirty housekeeper, in an outhouse hard by, and then in waking him.
As he led me up the crazy verandah, and into a broad ghostly room,
without glass in the windows, or fire, or any one comfort, my mind
recurred to the stories told of the horrors of the Hartz forest, and
of the benighted traveller's situation therein. Cold sluggish beetles
hung to the damp walls,--and these I immediately secured. After due
exertions and perseverance with the damp wood, a fire smoked lustily,
and, by cajoling the gnome of a housekeeper, I procured the usual
roast fowl and potatos, with the accustomed sauce of a strong smoky
and singed flavour.* [Since writing the above a comfortable house has
been erected at Senadah, the name now given to what was called
Pacheem Bungalow.]

Pacheem stands at an elevation of nearly 7300 feet, and as I walked
out on the following morning I met with English looking plants in
abundance, but was too early in the season to get aught but the
foliage of most. _Chryosplenium,_ violet, _Lobelia,_ a small
geranium, strawberry, five or six kinds of bramble, _Arum, Paris,
Convallaria, Stellaria, Rubia, Vaccinium,_ and various _Gnaphalia._
Of small bushes, cornels, honeysuckles, and the ivy tribe
predominated, with _Symplocos_ and _Skimmia, Eurya,_ bushy brambles,
having simple or compound green or beautifully silky foliage;
_Hypericum,_ Berberry, Hydrangea, Wormwood, _Adamia cyanea,
Viburnum,_ Elder, dwarf bamboo, etc.

The climbing plants were still _Panax_ or _Aralia, Kadsura, Saurauja,
Hydrangea,_ Vines, _Smilax, Ampelopsis, Polygona,_ and, most
beautiful of all, _Stauntonia,_ with pendulous racemes of lilac
blossoms. Epiphytes were rarer, still I found white and purple
_Caeloynes,_ and other Orchids, and a most noble white Rhododendron,
whose truly enormous and delicious lemon-scented blossoms strewed the
ground. The trees were one half oaks, one quarter Magnolias, and
nearly another quarter laurels, amongst which grew Himalayan kinds of
birch, alder, maple, holly, bird-cherry, common cherry, and apple.
The absence of _Leguminosae_ was most remarkable, and the most
prominent botanical feature in the vegetation of this region: it is
too high for the tropical tribes of the warmer elevations, too low
for the Alpines, and probably too moist for those of temperate
regions; cool, equable, humid climates being generally unfavourable
to that order. Clematis was rare, and other _Ranunculaceae_ still
more so. _Cruciferae_ were absent, and, what was still more
remarkable, I found very few native species of grasses. Both _Poa
annua_ and white Dutch clover flourished where accidentally
disseminated, but only in artificially cleared spots. Of ferns I
collected about sixty species, chiefly of temperate genera.
The supremacy of this temperate region consists in the infinite
number of forest trees, in the absence (in the usual proportion, at
any rate) of such common orders as _Compositae, Leguminosae,
Cruciferae,_ and _Ranunculaceae,_ and of Grasses amongst
Monocotyledons, and in the predominance of the rarer and more local
families, as those of Rhododendron, Camellia, Magnolia, Ivy, Cornel,
Honeysuckle, Hydrangea, Begonia, and Epiphytic orchids.

From Pacheem, the road runs in a northerly direction to Dorjiling,
still along the Balasun valley, till the saddle of the great mountain
Sinchul is crossed. This is narrow, stretching east and west, and
from it a spur projects northwards for five or six miles, amongst the
many mountains still intervening between it and the snows.
This saddle (alt. 7400 feet) crossed, one is fairly amongst the
mountains: the plains behind are cut off by it; and in front, the
snows may be seen when the weather is propitious. The valleys on this
side of the mountain run northwards, and discharge their streams into
great rivers, which, coming from the snow, wind amongst the hills,
and debouche into the Teesta, to the east, where it divides Sikkim
from Bhotan.

Dorjiling station occupies a narrow ridge, which divides into two
spurs, descending steeply to the bed of the Great Rungeet river, up
whose course the eye is carried to the base of the great snowy
mountains. The ridge itself is very narrow at the top, along which
most of the houses are perched, while others occupy positions on its
flanks, where narrow _locations_ on the east, and broader ones on the
west, are cleared from wood. The valleys on either side are at least
6000 feet deep, forest-clad to the bottom, with very few and small
level spots, and no absolute precipice; from their flanks project
innumerable little spurs, occupied by native clearings.

My route lay along the east flank, overhanging the valley of the
Rungmo river. Looking east, the amphitheatre of hills from the ridge
I had crossed was very fine; enclosing an area some four miles across
and 4000 feet deep, clothed throughout with an impenetrable, dark
forest: there was not one clear patch except near the very bottom,
where were some scattered hamlets of two or three huts each. The rock
is everywhere near the surface, and the road has been formed by
blasting at very many places. A wooded slope descends suddenly from
the edge of the road, while, on the other hand, a bank rises abruptly
to the top of the ridge, alternately mossy, rocky, and clayey, and
presenting a good geological section, all the way along, of the
nucleus of Dorjiling spur, exposing broken masses of gneiss. As I
descended, I came upon the upper limit of the chesnut, a tree second
in abundance to the oak; gigantic, tall, and straight in the trunk.

I arrived at Dorjiling on the 16th of April; a showery, cold month at
this elevation. I was so fortunate as to find Mr. Charles Barnes
(brother of my friend at Colgong), the sole tenant of a long,
cottage-like building, divided off into pairs of apartments, which
are hired by visitors. It is usual for Europeans to bring a full
establishment of servants (with bedding, etc.) to such stations, but
I had not done so, having been told that there was a furnished hotel
in Dorjiling; and I was, therefore, not a little indebted to Mr.
Barnes for his kind invitation to join his mess. As he was an active
mountaineer, we enjoyed many excursions together, in the two months
and a half during which we were companions.

Dr. Campbell procured me several active native (Lepcha) lads as
collectors, at wages varying from eight to twenty shillings a month;
these either accompanied me on my excursions, or went by themselves
into the jungles to collect plants, which I occupied myself in
drawing, dissecting, and ticketing: while the preserving of them fell
to the Lepchas, who, after a little training, became, with constant
superintendence, good plant-driers. Even at this season (four weeks
before the setting in of the rains) the weather was very uncertain,
so that the papers had generally to be dried by the fire.

The hill-station or Sanatarium of Dorjiling owes its origin (like
Simla, Mussooree, etc.) to the necessity that exists in India, of
providing places where the health of Europeans may be recruited by a
more temperate climate. Sikkim proved an eligible position for such
an establishment, owing to its proximity to Calcutta, which lies but
370 miles to the southward; whereas the north-west stations mentioned
above are upwards of a thousand miles from that city. Dorjiling ridge
varies in height from 6500 to 7500 feet above the level of the sea;
8000 feet being the elevation at which the mean temperature most
nearly coincides with that of London, viz., 50 degrees.

Sikkim was, further, the only available spot for a Sanatarium
throughout the whole range of the Himalaya, east of the extreme
western frontier of Nepal; being a protected state, and owing no
allegiance, except to the British government; which, after the Rajah
had been driven from the country by the Ghorkas, in 1817, replaced
him on his throne, and guaranteed him the sovereignty. Our main
object in doing this was to retain Sikkim as a fender between Nepal
and Bhotan: and but for this policy, the aggressive Nepalese would,
long ere this, have possessed themselves of Sikkim, Bhotan, and the
whole Himalaya, eastwards to the borders of Burmah.* [Of such being
their wish the Nepalese have never made any secret, and they are said
to have asked permission from the British to march an army across
Sikkim for the purpose of conquering Bhotan, offering to become more
peaceable neighbours to us than the Bhotanese are. Such they would
doubtless have proved, but the Nepal frontier is considered broad
enough already.]

From 1817 to 1828 no notice was taken of Sikkim, till a frontier
dispute occurred between the Lepchas and Nepalese, which was referred
(according to the terms of the treaty) to the British Government.
During the arrangement of this, Dorjiling was visited by a gentleman
of high scientific attainments, Mr. J. W. Grant, who pointed out its
eligibility as a site for a Sanatarium to Lord William Bentinck, then
Governor-General; dwelling especially upon its climate, proximity to
Calcutta, and accessibility; on its central position between Tibet,
Bhotan, Nepal, and British India; and on the good example a
peaceably-conducted and well-governed station would be to our
turbulent neighbours in that quarter. The suggestion was cordially
received, and Major Herbert (the late eminent Surveyor-General of
India) and Mr. Grant were employed to report further on the subject.

The next step taken was that of requesting the Rajah to cede a tract
of country which should include Dorjiling, for an equivalent in money
or land. His first demand was unreasonable; but on further
consideration he surrendered Dorjiling unconditionally, and a sum of
300 pounds per annum was granted to him as an equivalent for what was
then a worthless uninhabited mountain. In 1840 Dr. Campbell was
removed from Nepal as superintendent of the new station, and was
entrusted with the charge of the political relations between the
British and Sikkim government.

Once established, Dorjiling rapidly increased. Allotments of land
were purchased by Europeans for building dwelling-houses; barracks
and a bazaar were formed, with accommodation for invalid European
soldiers; a few official residents, civil and military, formed the
nucleus of a community, which was increased by retired officers and
their families, and by temporary visitors in search of health, or the
luxury of a cool climate and active exercise.

For the first few years matters went on smoothly with the Rajah,
whose minister (or Dewan) was upright and intelligent: but the
latter, on his death, was succeeded by the present Dewan, a Tibetan,
and a relative of the Ranee (or Rajah's wife); a man unsurpassed for
insolence and avarice, whose aim was to monopolise the trade of the
country, and to enrich himself at its expense. Every obstacle was
thrown by him in the way of a good understanding between Sikkim and
the British government. British subjects were rigorously excluded
from Sikkim; every liberal offer for free trade and intercourse was
rejected, generally with insolence; merchandise was taxed, and
notorious offenders, refugees from the British territories, were
harboured; despatches were detained; and the Vakeels, or Rajah's
representatives, were chosen for their insolence and incapacity.
The conduct of the Dewan throughout was Indo-Chinese; assuming,
insolent, aggressive, never perpetrating open violence, but by petty
insults effectually preventing all good understanding. He was met by
neglect or forbearance on the part of the Calcutta government; and by
patience and passive resistance at Dorjiling. Our inaction and
long-suffering were taken for weakness, and our concessions for
timidity. Such has been our policy in China, Siam, and Burmah, and in
each instance the result has been the same. Had it been insisted that
the terms of the treaty should be strictly kept, and had the first
act of insolence been noticed, we should have maintained the best
relations with Sikkim, whose people and rulers (with the exception of
the Dewan and his faction) have proved themselves friendly
throughout, and most anxious for unrestricted communication.

These political matters have not, however, prevented the rapid
increase of Dorjiling; the progress of which, during the two years I
spent in Sikkim, resembled that of an Australian colony, not only in
amount of building, but in the accession of native families from the
surrounding countries. There were not a hundred inhabitants under
British protection when the ground was transferred; there are now
four thousand. At the former period there was no trade whatever;
there is now a very considerable one, in musk, salt, gold-dust,
borax, soda, woollen cloths, and especially in poneys, of which the
Dewan in one year brought on his own account upwards of 50 into
Dorjiling.* [The Tibetan pony, though born and bred 10,000 to 14,000
feet above the sea, is one of the most active and useful animals in
the plains of Bengal, powerful and hardy, and when well trained
early, docile, although by nature vicious and obstinate.] The trade
has been greatly increased by the annual fair which Dr. Campbell has
established at the foot of the hills, to which many thousands of
natives flock from all quarters, and which exercises a most
beneficial influence throughout the neighbouring territories.
At this, prizes (in medals, money, and kind) are given for
agricultural implements and produce, stock, etc., by the originator
and a few friends; a measure attended with eminent success.

In estimating in a sanitary point of view the value of any
health-station, little reliance can be placed on the general
impressions of invalids, or even of residents; the opinion of each
varies with the nature and state of his complaint, if ill, or with
his idiosyncracy and disposition, if well. I have seen prejudiced
invalids rapidly recovering, in spite of themselves, and all the
while complaining in unmeasured terms of the climate of Dorjiling,
and abusing it as killing them. Others are known who languish under
the heat of the plains at one season, and the damp at another; and
who, though sickening and dying under its influence, yet consistently
praise a tropical climate to the last. The opinions of those who
resort to Dorjiling in health, differ equally; those of active minds
invariably thoroughly enjoy it, while the mere lounger or sportsman
mopes. The statistical tables afford conclusive proofs of the value
of the climate to Europeans suffering from acute diseases, and they
are corroborated by the returns of the medical officer in charge of
the station. With respect to its suitability to the European
constitution I feel satisfied, and that much saving of life, health,
and money would be effected were European troops drafted thither on
their arrival in Bengal, instead of being stationed in Calcutta,
exposed to disease, and temptation to those vices which prove fatal
to so many hundreds. This, I have been given to understand, was the
view originally taken by the Court of Directors, but it has never
been carried out.

I believe that children's faces afford as good an index as any to the
healthfulness of a climate, and in no part of the world is there a
more active, rosy, and bright young community, than at Dorjiling.
It is incredible what a few weeks of that mountain air does for the
India-born children of European parents: they are taken there sickly,
pallid or yellow, soft and flabby, to become transformed into models
of rude health and activity.

There are, however, disorders to which the climate (in common with
all damp ones) is not at all suited; such are especially dysentery,
bowel complaints, and liver complaints of long standing; which are
not benefited by a residence on these hills, though how much worse
they might have become in the plains is not shown. I cannot hear that
the climate aggravates, but it certainly does not remove them.
Whoever is suffering from the debilitating effects of any of the
multifarious acute maladies of the plains, finds instant relief, and
acquires a stock of health that enables him to resist fresh attacks,
under circumstances similar to those which before engendered them.

Natives of the low country, and especially Bengalees, are far from
enjoying the climate as Europeans do, being liable to sharp attacks
of fever and ague, from which the poorly clad natives are not exempt.
It is, however, difficult to estimate the effects of exposure upon
the Bengalees, who sleep on the bare and often damp ground, and
adhere, with characteristic prejudice, to the attire of a torrid
climate, and to a vegetable diet, under skies to which these are
least of all adapted.

It must not be supposed that Europeans who have resided in the plains
can, on their first arrival, expose themselves with impunity to the
cold of these elevations; this was shown in the winter of 1848 and
1849, when troops brought up to Dorjiling were cantoned in
newly-built dwellings, on a high exposed ridge 8000 feet above the
sea, and lay, insufficiently protected, on a floor of loosely laid
planks, exposed to the cold wind, when the ground without was covered
with snow. Rheumatisms, sharp febrile attacks, and dysenteries
ensued, which were attributed in the public prints to the unhealthy
nature of the climate of Dorjiling.

The following summary of hospital admissions affords the best test of
the healthiness of the climate, embracing, as the period does, the
three most fatal months to European troops in India. Out of a
detachment (105 strong) of H.M. 80th Regiment stationed at Dorjiling,
in the seven months from January to July inclusive, there were
sixty-four admissions to the hospital, or, on the average, 4-1/3 per
cent. per month; and only two deaths, both of dysentery. Many of
these men had suffered frequently in the plains from acute dysentery
and hepatic affections, and many others had aggravated these
complaints by excessive drinking, and two were cases of delirium
tremens. During the same period, the number of entries at Calcutta or
Dinapore would probably have more than trebled this.

 CHAPTER V.

View from Mr. Hodgson's of range of snowy mountains--Their extent
and elevation--Delusive appearance of elevation--Sinchul, view
from and vegetation of--Chumulari--Magnolias, white and purple--
Rhododendron Dalhousiae, arboreum and argenteum--Natives of
Dorjiling--Lepchas, origin, tradition of flood, morals, dress,
arms, ornaments, diet--cups, origin and value--Marriages--
Diseases--Burial--Worship and religion--Bijooas--Kampa Rong,
or Arratt--Limboos, origin, habits, language, etc.--Moormis--
Magras--Mechis--Comparison of customs with those of the natives
of Assam, Khasia, etc.

The summer, or rainy season of 1848, was passed at or near Dorjiling,
during which period I chiefly occupied myself in forming collections,
and in taking meteorological observations. I resided at Mr Hodgson's
for the greater part of the time, in consequence of his having given
me a hospitable invitation to consider his house my home. The view
from his windows is one quite unparalleled for the scenery it
embraces, commanding confessedly the grandest known landscape of
snowy mountains in the Himalaya, and hence in the world.* [For an
account of the geography of these regions, and the relation of the
Sikkim Himalaya to Tibet, etc., see Appendix.] Kinchinjunga
(forty-five miles distant) is the prominent object, rising 21,000
feet above the level of the observer out of a sea of intervening
wooded hills; whilst, on a line with its snows, the eye descends
below the horizon, to a narrow gulf 7000 feet deep in the mountains,
where the Great Rungeet, white with foam, threads a tropical forest
with a silver line.

To the north-west towards Nepal, the snowy peaks of Kubra and Junnoo
(respectively 24,005 feet and 25,312 feet) rise over the shoulder of
Singalelah; whilst eastward the snowy mountains appear to form an
unbroken range, trending north-east to the great mass of Donkia
(23,176 feet) and thence south-east by the fingered peaks of Tunkola
and the silver cone of Chola, (17,320 feet) gradually sinking into
the Bhotan mountains at Gipmoochi (14,509 feet).

The most eloquent descriptions I have read fail to convey to my
mind's eye the forms and colours of snowy mountains, or to my
imagination the sensations and impressions that rivet my attention to
these sublime phenomena when they are present in reality; and I shall
not therefore obtrude any attempt of the kind upon my reader.
The latter has probably seen the Swiss Alps, which, though barely
possessing half the sublimity, extent, or height of the Himalaya, are
yet far more beautiful. In either case he is struck with the
precision and sharpness of their outlines, and still more with the
wonderful play of colours on their snowy flanks, from the glowing
hues reflected in orange, gold and ruby, from clouds illumined by the
sinking or rising sun, to the ghastly pallor that succeeds with
twilight, when the red seems to give place to its complementary
colour green. Such dissolving-views elude all attempts at
description, they are far too aerial to be chained to the memory, and
fade from it so fast as to be gazed upon day after day, with
undiminished admiration and pleasure, long after the mountains
themselves have lost their sublimity and apparent height.

The actual extent of the snowy range seen from Mr. Hodgson's windows
is comprised within an arc of 80 degrees (from north 30 degrees west
to north 50 degrees east), or nearly a quarter of the horizon, along
which the perpetual snow forms an unbroken girdle or crest of frosted
silver; and in winter, when the mountains are covered down to 8000
feet, this white ridge stretches uninterruptedly for more than 160
degrees. No known view is to be compared with this in extent, when
the proximity and height of the mountains are considered; for within
the 80 degrees above mentioned more than twelve peaks rise above
20,000 feet, and there are none below 15,000 feet, while Kinchin is
28,178, and seven others above 22,000. The nearest perpetual snow is
on Nursing, a beautifully sharp conical peak 19,139 feet high, and
thirty-two miles distant; the most remote mountain seen is Donkia,
23,176 feet high, and seventy-three miles distant; whilst Kinchin,
which forms the principal mass both for height and bulk, is exactly
forty-five miles distant.

On first viewing this glorious panorama, the impression produced on
the imagination by their prodigious elevation is, that the peaks
tower in the air and pierce the clouds, and such are the terms
generally used in descriptions of similar alpine scenery; but the
observer, if he look again, will find that even the most stupendous
occupy a very low position on the horizon, the top of Kinchin itself
measuring only 4 degrees 31 minutes above the level of the observer!
Donkia again, which is 23,176 feet above the sea, or about 15,700
above Mr. Hodgson's, rises only 1 degrees 55 minutes above the
horizon; an angle which is quite inappreciable to the eye, when
unaided by instruments.* [These are the apparent angles which I took
from Mr. Hodgson's house (alt. 7300 feet) with an excellent
theodolite, no deduction being made for refraction.]

This view may be extended a little by ascending Sinchul, which rises
a thousand feet above the elevation of Mr. Hodgson's house, and is a
few miles south-east of Dorjiling: from its summit Chumulari (23,929
feet) is seen to the north-east, at eighty-four miles distance,
rearing its head as a great rounded mass over the snowy Chola range,
out of which it appears to rise, although in reality lying forty
miles beyond;--so deceptive is the perspective of snowy-mountains.
To the north-west again, at upwards of 100 miles distance, a
beautiful group of snowy mountains rises above the black Singalelah
range, the chief being, perhaps, as high as Kinchinjunga, from which
it is fully eighty miles distant to the westward; and between them no
mountain of considerable altitude intervenes; the Nepalese Himalaya
in that direction sinking remarkably towards the Arun river, which
there enters Nepal from Tibet.

The top of Sinchul is a favourite excursion from Dorjiling, being
very easy of access, and the path abounding in rare and beautiful
plants, and passing through magnificent forests of oak, magnolia, and
rhododendron; while the summit, besides embracing this splendid view
of the snowy range over the Dorjiling spur in the foreground,
commands also the plains of India, with the courses of the Teesta,
Mahanuddee, Balasun and Mechi rivers. In the months of April and May,
when the magnolias and rhododendrons are in blossom, the gorgeous
vegetation is, in some respects, not to be surpassed by anything in
the tropics; but the effect is much marred by the prevailing gloom of
the weather. The white-flowered magnolia (_M. excelsa,_ Wall,) forms
a predominant tree at 7000 to 8000 feet; and in 1848 it blossomed so
profusely, that the forests on the broad flanks of Sinchul, and other
mountains of that elevation, appeared as if sprinkled with snow.
The purple-flowered kind again (_M. Campbellii_) hardly occurs below
8000 feet, and forms an immense, but very ugly, black-barked,
sparingly branched tree, leafless in winter and also during the
flowering season, when it puts forth from the ends of its branches
great rose-purple cup-shaped flowers, whose fleshy petals strew the
ground. On its branches, and on those of oaks and laurels,
_Rhododendron Dalhousiae_ grows epiphytically, a slender shrub,
bearing from three to six white lemon-scented bells, four and a half
inches long and as many broad, at the end of each branch. In the same
woods the scarlet rhododendron (_R. arboreum_) is very scarce, and is
outvied by the great _R. argenteum,_ which grows as a tree forty feet
high, with magnificent leaves twelve to fifteen inches long, deep
green, wrinkled above and silvery below, while the flowers are as
large as those of _R. Dalhousiae,_ and grow more in a cluster. I know
nothing of the kind that exceeds in beauty the flowering branch of
_R. argenteum,_ with its wide spreading foliage and glorious mass
of flowers.

Oaks, laurels, maples, birch, chesnut, hydrangea, a species of fig
(which is found on the very summit), and three Chinese and Japanese
genera, are the principal features of the forest; the common bushes
being _Aucuba, Skimmia,_ and the curious _Helwingia,_ which bears
little clusters of flowers on the centre of the leaf, like
butcher's-broom. In spring immense broad-leaved arums spring up, with
green or purple-striped hoods, that end in tail-like threads,
eighteen inches long, which lie along the ground; and there are
various kinds of _Convallaria, Paris, Begonia,_ and other beautiful
flowering herbs. Nearly thirty ferns may be gathered on this
excursion, including many of great beauty and rarity, but the
tree-fern does not ascend so high. Grasses are very rare in these
woods, excepting the dwarf bamboo, now cultivated in the open air
in England.

Before proceeding to narrate my different expeditions into Sikkim and
Nepal from Dorjiling, I shall give a sketch of the different peoples
and races composing the heterogeneous population of Sikkim and the
neighbouring mountains.

The Lepcha is the aboriginal inhabitant of Sikkim, and the prominent
character in Dorjiling, where he undertakes all sorts of out-door
employment. The race to which he belongs is a very singular one;
markedly Mongolian in features, and a good deal too, by imitation, in
habit; still he differs from his Tibetan prototype, though not so
decidedly as from the Nepalese and Bhotanese, between whom he is
hemmed into a narrow tract of mountain country, barely 60 miles in
breadth. The Lepchas possess a tradition of the flood, during which a
couple escaped to the top of a mountain (Tendong) near Dorjiling.
The earliest traditions which they have of their history date no
further back than some three hundred years, when they describe
themselves as having been long-haired, half-clad savages. At about
that period they were visited by Tibetans, who introduced Boodh
worship, the platting of their hair into pig-tails, and very many of
their own customs. Their physiognomy is however so Tibetan in its
character, that it cannot be supposed that this was their earliest
intercourse with the trans-nivean races: whether they may have
wandered from beyond the snows before the spread of Boodhism and its
civilisation, or whether they are a cross between the Tamulian of
India and the Tibetan, has not been decided. Their language, though
radically identical with Tibetan, differs from it in many important
particulars. They, or at least some of their tribes, call themselves
Rong, and Arratt, and their country Dijong: they once possessed a
great part of East Nepal, as far west as the Tambur river, and at a
still earlier period they penetrated as far west as the Arun river.

An attentive examination of the Lepcha in one respect entirely
contradicts our preconceived notions of a mountaineer, as he is
timid, peaceful, and no brawler; qualities which are all the more
remarkable from contrasting so strongly with those of his neighbours
to the east and west: of whom the Ghorkas are brave and warlike to a
proverb, and the Bhotanese quarrelsome, cowardly, and cruel. A group
of Lepchas is exceedingly picturesque. They are of short
stature--four feet eight inches to five feet--rather broad in the
chest, and with muscular arms, but small hands and slender wrists.*
[I have seldom been able to insert my own wrist (which is smaller
than the average) into the wooden guard which the Lepcha wears on his
left, as a protection against the bow-string: it is a curved ring of
wood with an opening at one side, through which, by a little
stretching, the wrist is inserted.] The face is broad, flat, and of
eminently Tartar character, flat-nosed and oblique-eyed, with no
beard, and little moustache; the complexion is sallow, or often a
clear olive; the hair is collected into an immense tail, plaited flat
or round. The lower limbs are powerfully developed, befitting genuine
mountaineers: the feet are small. Though never really handsome, and
very womanish in the cast of countenance, they have invariably a
mild, frank, and even engaging expression, which I have in vain
sought to analyse, and which is perhaps due more to the absence of
anything unpleasing, than to the presence of direct grace or beauty.
In like manner, the girls are often very engaging to look upon,
though without one good feature they are all smiles and good-nature;
and the children are frank, lively, laughing urchins. The old women
are thorough hags. Indolence, when left to themselves, is their
besetting sin; they detest any fixed employment, and their foulness
of person and garments renders them disagreeable inmates: in this
rainy climate they are supportable out of doors. Though fond of
bathing when they come to a stream in hot weather, and expert, even
admirable swimmers, these people never take to the water for the
purpose of ablution. In disposition they

Illustration--LEPCHA GIRL AND BHOODIST LAMA.

are amiable and obliging, frank, humorous, and polite, without the
servility of the Hindoos; and their address is free and unrestrained.
Their intercourse with one another and with Europeans is scrupulously
honest; a present is divided equally amongst many, without a syllable
of discontent or grudging look or word: each, on receiving his share,
coming up and giving the donor a brusque bow and thanks. They have
learnt to overcharge already, and use extortion in dealing, as is the
custom with the people of the plains; but it is clumsily done, and
never accompanied with the grasping air and insufferable whine of the
latter. They are constantly armed with a long, heavy, straight
knife,* [It is called "Ban," and serves equally for plough,
toothpick, table-knife, hatchet, hammer, and sword.] but never draw
it on one another: family and political feuds are alike unheard of
amongst them.

The Lepcha is in morals far superior to his Tibet and Bhotan
neighbours, polyandry being unknown, and polygamy rare. This is no
doubt greatly due to the conventual system not being carried to such
an excess as in Bhotan, where the ties of relationship even
are disregarded.

Like the New Zealander, Tasmanian, Fuegian, and natives of other
climates, which, though cold, are moist and equable, the Lepcha's
dress is very scanty, and when we are wearing woollen under-garments
and hose, he is content with one cotton vesture, which is loosely
thrown round the body, leaving one or both arms free; it reaches to
the knee, and is gathered round the waist: its fabric is close, the
ground colour white, ornamented with longitudinal blue stripes, two
or three fingers broad, prettily worked with red and white. When new
and clean, this garb is remarkably handsome and gay, but not showy.
In cold weather an upper garment with loose sleeves is added. A long
knife, with a common wooden handle, hangs by the side, stuck in a
sheath; he has often also a quiver of poisoned arrows and a bamboo*
[The bamboo, of which the quiver is made, is thin and light: it is
brought from Assam, and called Tulda, or Dulwa, by the Bengalees.]
bow across his back. On his right wrist is a curious wooden guard for
the bowstring; and a little pouch, containing aconite poison and a
few common implements, is suspended to his girdle. A hat he seldom
wears, and when he does, it is often extravagantly broad and
flat-brimmed, with a small hemispherical crown. It is made of leaves
of _Scitamineae,_ between two thin plates of bamboo-work, clumsy and
heavy; this is generally used in the rainy weather, while in the dry
a conical one is worn, also of platted slips of bamboo, with broad
flakes of talc between the layers, and a peacock's feather at the
side. The umbrella consists of a large hood, much like the ancient
boat called a coracle, which being placed over the head reaches to
the thighs behind. It is made of platted bamboo, enclosing broad
leaves of _Phrynium._ A group of Lepchas with these on, running along
in the pelting rain, are very droll figures; they look like snails
with their shells on their backs. All the Lepchas are fond of
ornaments, wearing silver hoops in their ears, necklaces made of
cornelian, amber, and turquoise, brought from Tibet, and pearls and
corals from the south, with curious silver and golden charm-boxes or
amulets attached to their necks or arms. These are of Tibetan
workmanship, and often of great value: they contain little idols,
charms and written prayers, or the bones, hair, or nail-parings of a
Lama: some are of great beauty, and highly ornamented. In these
decorations, and in their hair, they take some pride, the ladies
frequently dressing the latter for the gentlemen: thus one may often
see, the last thing at night, a damsel of discreet port, demurely go
behind a young man, unplait his pig-tail, teaze the hair, thin it of
some of its lively inmates, braid it up for him, and retire.
The women always wear two braided pig-tails, and it is by this they
are most readily distinguished from their effeminate-looking
partners, who wear only one.* [Ermann (Travels in Siberia, ii. p.
204) mentions the Buraet women as wearing two tails, and fillets with
jewels, and the men as having one queue only.] When in full dress,
the woman's costume is extremely ornamental and picturesque; besides
the shirt and petticoat she wears a small sleeveless woollen cloak,
of gay pattern, usually covered with crosses, and fastened in front
by a girdle of silver chains. Her neck is loaded with silver chains,
amber necklaces, etc., and her head adorned with a coronet of scarlet
cloth, studded with seed-pearls, jewels, glass beads, etc. The common
dress is a long robe of indi, a cloth of coarse silk, spun from the
cocoon of a large caterpillar that is found wild at the foot of the
hills, and is also cultivated: it feeds on many different leaves, Sal
(_Shorea_), castor-oil, etc.

In diet, they are gross feeders;* [Dr. Campbell's definition of the
Lepcha's _Flora cibaria,_ is, that he eats, or must have eaten,
everything soft enough to chew; for, as he knows whatever is
poisonous, he must have tried all; his knowledge being wholly
empirical.] rice, however, forming their chief sustenance; it is
grown without irrigation, and produces a large, flat, coarse grain,
which becomes gelatinous, and often pink, when cooked. Pork is a
staple dish: and they also eat elephant, and all kinds of animal
food. When travelling, they live on whatever they can find, whether
animal or vegetable. Fern-tops, roots of _Scitamineae,_ and their
flower-buds, various leaves (it is difficult to say what not), and
fungi, are chopped up, fried with a little oil, and eaten.
Their cooking is coarse and dirty. Salt is costly, but prized; pawn
(Betel pepper) is never eaten. Tobacco they are too poor to buy, and
too indolent to grow and cure. Spices, oil, etc. are relished.

They drink out of little wooden cups, turned from knots of maple, or
other woods; these are very curious on several accounts; they are
very pretty, often polished, and mounted with silver. Some are
supposed to be antidotes against poison, and hence fetch an enormous
price; they are of a peculiar wood, rarer and paler-coloured. I have
paid a guinea for one such, hardly different from the common sort,
which cost but 4d. or 6d. MM. Huc and Gabet graphically allude to
this circumstance, when wishing to purchase cups at Lhassa, where
their price is higher, as they are all imported from the Himalaya.
The knots from which they are formed, are produced on the roots of
oaks, maples, and other mountain forest trees, by a parasitical
plant, known to botanists, as _Balanophora_.

Their intoxicating drink, which seems more to excite than to debauch
the mind, is partially fermented. Murwa grain (_Eleusine Coracana_).
Spirits are rather too strong to be relished raw, and when a glass of
wine is given to one of a party, he sips it, and hands it round to
all the rest. A long bamboo flute, with four or six burnt holes far
below the month-hole, is the only musical instrument I have seen in
use among them. When travelling, and the fatigues of the day are
over, the Lepchas will sit for hours chatting, telling stories,
singing in a monotonous tone, or blowing this flute. I have often
listened with real pleasure to the simple music of this rude
instrument; its low and sweet tones are singularly Aeolian, as are
the airs usually played, which fall by octaves: it seems to harmonize
with the solitude of their primaeval forests, and he must have a dull
ear who cannot draw from it the indication of a contented mind,
whether he may relish its soft musical notes or not. Though always
equipped for the chase, I fancy the Lepcha is no great sportsman;
there is little to be pursued in this region, and he is not driven by
necessity to follow what there is.

Their marriages are contracted in childhood, and the wife purchased
by money, or by service rendered to the future father-in-law, the
parties being often united before the woman leaves her parents' roof,
in cases where the payment is not forthcoming, and the bridegroom
prefers giving his and his wife's labour to the father for a stated
period in lieu. On the time of service expiring, or the money being
paid up, the marriage is publicly celebrated by feasting and riot.
The females are generally chaste, and the marriage-tie is strictly
kept, its violation being heavily punished by divorce, beating,
slavery, etc. In cases of intermarriage with foreigners, the children
belong to the father's country. All the labours of the house, the
field, and march, devolve on the women and children, or slaves if
they have them.

Small-pox is dreaded, and infected persons often cruelly shunned: a
suspicion of this or of cholera frequently emptying a village or town
in a night. Vaccination has been introduced by Dr. Pearson, and it is
much practised by Dr. Campbell; it being eagerly sought. Cholera is
scarcely known at Dorjiling, and when it has been imported thither
has never spread. Disease is very rare amongst the Lepchas; and
ophthalmic, elephantiasis, and leprosy, the scourges of hot climates,
are rarely known. Goitre prevails,* [May not the use of the head
instead of the shoulder-strap in carrying loads be a predisposing
cause of goitre, by inducing congestion of the laryngeal vessels?
The Lepcha is certainly far more free from this disease than any of
the tribes of E. Nepal I have mixed with, and he is both more idle
and less addicted to the head-strap as a porter. I have seen it to be
almost universal in some villages of Bhoteeas, where the head-strap
alone is used in carrying in both summer and winter crops; as also
amongst the salt-traders, or rather those families who carry the salt
from the passes to the Nepalese villages, and who very frequently
have no shoulder-straps, but invariably head-bands. I am far from
attributing all goitre, even in the mountains, to this practice, but
I think it is proved, that the disease is most prevalent in the
mountainous regions of both the old and new world, and that in these
the practice of supporting enormous loads by the cervical muscles is
frequent. It is also found in the Himalayan sheep and goats which
accompany the salt-traders, and whose loads are supported in
ascending, by a band passing under the throat.] though not so
conspicuously as amongst. Bhoteeas, Bhotanese, and others. Rheumatism
is frequent, and intermittent fevers, with ague; also violent and
often fatal remittents, almost invariably induced by sleeping in the
hot valleys, especially at the beginning and end of the rains.
The European complaints of liver and bowel disease are all but
unknown. Death is regarded with horror. The dead are burnt or buried,
sometimes both; much depending on custom and position. Omens are
sought in the entrails of fowls, etc., and other vestiges of their
savage origin are still preserved, though now gradually disappearing.

The Lepchas profess no religion, though acknowledging the existence
of good and bad spirits. To the good they pay no heed; "Why should
we?" they say, "the good spirits do us no harm; the evil spirits, who
dwell in every rock, grove, and mountain, are constantly at mischief,
and to them we must pray, for they hurt us." Every tribe has a
priest-doctor; he neither knows nor attempts to practise the healing
art, but is a pure exorcist; all bodily ailments being deemed the
operations of devils, who are cast out by prayers and invocations.
Still they acknowledge the Lamas to be very holy men, and were the
latter only moderately active, they would soon convert all the
Lepchas. Their priests are called "Bijooas": they profess mendicancy,
and seem intermediate between the begging friars of Tibet, whose
dress and attributes they assume, and the exorcists of the aboriginal
Lepchas: they sing, dance (masked and draped like harlequins), beg,
bless, curse, and are merry mountebanks; those that affect more of
the Lama Boodhist carry the "Mani," or revolving praying machine, and
wear rosaries and amulets; others again are all tatters and rags.
They are often employed to carry messages, and to transact little
knaveries. The natives stand in some awe of them, and being besides
of a generous disposition, keep the wallet of the Bijooa always full.

Such are some of the prominent features of this people, who inhabit
the sub-Himalayas, between the Nepalese and Bhotan frontiers, at
elevations of 3000 to 6000 feet. In their relations with us, they are
conspicuous for their honesty, their power as carriers and
mountaineers, and their skill as woodsmen; for they build a
waterproof house with a thatch of banana leaves in the lower, or of
bamboo in the elevated regions, and equip it with a table and
bedsteads for three persons, in an hour, using no implement but their
heavy knife. Kindness and good humour soon attach them to your person
and service. A gloomy-tempered or morose master they avoid, an unkind
one they flee. If they serve a good hills-man like themselves, they
will follow him with alacrity, sleep on the cold, bleak mountain
exposed to the pitiless rain, without a murmur, lay down the heavy
burden to carry their master over a stream, or give him a helping
hand up a rock or precipice--do anything, in short, but encounter a
foe, for I believe the Lepcha to be a veritable coward.* [Yet, during
the Ghorka war, they displayed many instances of courage: when so
hard pressed, however, that there was little choice of evils.] It is
well, perhaps, he is so: for if a race, numerically so weak, were to
embroil itself by resenting the injuries of the warlike Ghorkas, or
dark Bhotanese, the folly would soon lead to destruction.

Before leaving the Lepchas, it may be worth mentioning that the
northern parts of the country, towards the Tibet frontier, are
inhabited by Sikkim Bhoteeas* [Bhote is the general name for Tibet
(not Bhotan), and Kumpa is a large province, or district, in that
country. The Bhotanese, natives of Bhotan, or of the Dhurma country,
are called Dhurma people, in allusion to their spiritual chief, the
Dhurma Rajah. They are a darker and more powerful race, rude,
turbulent, and Tibetan in language and religion, with the worst
features of those people exaggerated. The various races of Nepal are
too numerous to be alluded to here: they are all described in various
papers by Mr. Hodgson, in the "Journal of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal." The Dhurma people are numerous at Dorjiling; they are often
runaways, but invariably prove more industrious settlers than the
Lepchas. In the Himalaya the name Bhotan is unknown amongst the
Tibetans; it signifies literally (according to Mr. Hodgson) the end
of Bhote, or Tibet, being the eastern extreme of that country.
The Lepchas designate Bhotan as Ayeu, or Aieu, as do often the
Bhotanese themselves. Sikkim, again, is called Lhop, or Lho', by the
Lepchas and Bhotanese.] (or Kumpas), a mixed race calling themselves
Kumpa Rong, or Kumpa Lepchas; but they are emigrants from Tibet,
having come with the first rajah of Sikkim. These people are more
turbulent and bolder than the Lepchas, and retain much of their
Tibetan character, and even of that of the very province from which
they came; which is north-east of Lhassa, and inhabited by robbers.
All the accounts I have received of it agree with those given by
MM. Huc and Gabet.

Next to the Lepchas, the most numerous tribe in Sikkim is that of the
Limboos (called "Chung" by the Lepchas); they abound also in East
Nepal, which they once ruled, inhabiting elevations from 2000 feet to
5000 feet. They are Boodhists, and though not divided into castes,
belong to several tribes. All consider themselves as the earliest
inhabitants of the Tambur Valley, though they have a tradition of
having originally emigrated from Tibet, which their Tartar
countenance confirms. They are more slender and sinewy than the
Lepchas, and neither plait their hair nor wear ornaments; instead of
the ban they use the Nepal curved knife, called "cookree," while for
the striped kirtle of the Lepcha are substituted loose cotton
trousers and a tight jacket; a sash is worn round the middle, and on
the head a small cotton cap. When they ruled over East Nepal, their
system was feudal; and on their uniting against the Nepalese, they
were with difficulty dislodged from their strongholds. They are said
to be equally brave and cruel in battle, putting the old and weak to
the sword, carrying the younger to slavery, and killing on the march
such captives as are unable to proceed. Many enlist at Dorjiling,
which the Lepchas never do; and the rajah of Nepal employs them in
his army, where, however, they seldom obtain promotion, this being
reserved for soldiers of Hindoo tribes. Latterly Jung Bahadur levied
a force of 6000 of them, who were cantoned at Katmandoo, where the
cholera breaking out, carried off some hundreds, causing many
families who dreaded conscription to flock to Dorjiling. Their habits
are so similar to those of the Lepchas, that they constantly
intermarry. They mourn, burn, and bury their dead, raising a mound
over the corpse, erecting a headstone, and surrounding the grave with
a little paling of sticks; they then scatter eggs and pebbles over
the ground. In these offices the Bijooa of the Lepchas is employed,
but the Limboo has also priests of his own, called "Phedangbos," who
belong to rather a higher order than the Bijooas. They officiate at
marriages, when a cock is put into the bridegroom's hands, and a hen
into those of the bride; the Phedangbo then cuts off the birds'
heads, when the blood is caught on a plantain leaf, and runs into
pools from which omens are drawn. At death, guns are fired, to
announce to the gods the departure of the spirit; of these there are
many, having one supreme head, and to them offerings and sacrifices
are made. They do not believe in metempsychosis.

The Limboo language is totally different from the Lepcha; with less
of the _z_ in it, and more labials and palatals, hence more pleasing.
Its affinities I do not know; it has no peculiar written character,
the Lepcha or Nagri being used. Dr. Campbell, from whom I have,
derived most of my information respecting these people, was
informed,* [See "Dorjiling Guide," p. 89. Calcutta, 1845.] on good
authority, that they had once a written language, now lost; and that
it was compounded from many others by a sage of antiquity. The same
authority stated that their Lepcha name "Chung" is a corruption of
that of their place of residence; possibly the "Tsang" province
of Tibet.

The Moormis are the only other native tribe remaining in any numbers
in Sikkim, except the Tibetans of the loftier mountains (whom I shall
mention at a future period), and the Mechis of the pestilential
Terai, the forests of which they never leave. The Moormis are a
scattered people, respecting whom I have no information, except from
the authority quoted above. They are of Tibetan origin, and called
"Nishung," from being composed of two branches, respectively from the
districts of Nimo and Shung, both on the road between Sikkim and
Lhassa. They are now most frequent in central and eastern Nepal, and
are a pastoral and agricultural people, inhabiting elevations of 4000
to 6000 feet, and living in stone houses, thatched with grass.
They are a large, powerful, and active race, grave, very plain in
features, with little hair on the face. Both their language and
religion are purely Tibetan.

The Magras, a tribe now confined to Nepal west of the Arun, are
aborigines of Sikkim, whence they were driven by the Lepchas westward
into the country of the Limboos, and by these latter further west
still. They are said to have been savages, and not of Tibetan origin,
and are now converted to Hindooism. A somewhat mythical account of a
wild people still inhabiting the Sikkim mountains, will be alluded
to elsewhere.

It is curious to observe that these mountains do not appear to have
afforded refuge to the Tamulian* [The Tamulians are the Coles,
Dangas, etc., of the mountains of Central India and the peninsula,
who retired to mountain fastnesses, on the invasion of their country
by the Indo-Germanic conquerors, who are now represented by the
Hindoos.] aborigines of India proper; all the Himalayan tribes of
Sikkim being markedly Mongolian in origin. It does not, however,
follow that they are all of Tibetan extraction; perhaps, indeed, none
but the Moormis are so. The Mechi of the Terai is decidedly
Indo-Chinese, and of the same stock as the savage races of Assam, the
north-east and east frontier of Bengal, Arracan, Burmah, etc. Both
Lepchas and Limboos had, before the introduction of Lama Boodhism
from Tibet, many features in common with the natives of Arracan,
especially in their creed, sacrifices, faith in omens, worship of
many spirits, absence of idols, and of the doctrine of
metempsychosis. Some of their customs, too, are the same; the form of
their houses and of some of their implements, their striped garments,
their constant and, dexterous use of the bamboo for all utensils,
their practice of night-attacks in war, of using poisoned arrows only
in the chase, and that of planting "crow-feet" of sharp bamboo stakes
along the paths an enemy is expected to follow. Such are but a few
out of many points of resemblance, most of which struck me when
reading Lieutenant Phayre's account of Arracan,* ["Journal of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal."] and when travelling in the districts of
Khasia and Cachar.

The laws affecting the distribution of plants, and the lower animals,
materially influence the migrations of man also; and as the botany,
zoology, and climate of the Malayan and Siamese peninsula advance far
westwards into India, along the foot of the Himalaya, so do also the
varieties of the human race. These features are most conspicuously
displayed in the natives of Assam, on both sides of the Burrampooter,
as far as the great bend of that river, beyond which they gradually
disappear; and none of the Himalayan tribes east of that point
practise the bloody and brutal rites in war that prevail amongst the
Cookies, Khasias, Garrows, and other Indo-Chinese tribes of the
mountain forests of Assam, Eastern Bengal, and the Malay peninsula.

I have not alluded to that evidence of the extraction of the Sikkim
races, which is to be derived from their languages, and from which we
may hope for a clue to their origin; the subject is at present under
discussion, and involved in much obscurity.

That six or seven different tribes, without any feudal system or
coercive head, with different languages and customs, should dwell in
close proximity and in peace and unity, within the confined territory
of Sikkim, even for a limited period, is an anomaly; the more
especially when it is considered that except for a tincture of the
Boodhist religion among some few of the people, they are all but
savages, as low in the scale of intellect as the New Zealander or the
Tahitian, and beneath those races in ingenuity and skill as
craftsmen. Wars have been waged amongst them, but they were neither
sanguinary nor destructive, and the fact remains no less remarkable,
that at the period of our occupying Dorjiling, friendship and
unanimity existed amongst all these tribes; from the Tibetan at
14,000 feet, to the Mechi of the plains; under a sovereign whose
temporal power was wholly unsupported by even the semblance of arms,
and whose spiritual supremacy was acknowledged by very few.



CHAPTER VI.

Excursion from Dorjiling to Great Rungeet--Zones of vegetation--
Tree-ferns--Palms, upper limit of--Leebong, tea plantations--
Ging--Boodhist remains--Tropical vegetation--Pines--Lepcha
clearances--Forest fires--Boodhist monuments--Fig--Cane
bridge and raft over Rungeet--Sago-palm--India-rubber--Yel Pote
--Butterflies and other insects--Snakes--Camp--Temperature and
humidity of atmosphere--Junction of Teesta and Rungeet--Return to
Dorjiling--Tonglo, excursion to--Bamboo flowering--Oaks--
Gordonia--Maize, hermaphrodite flowered--Figs--Nettles--
Peepsa--Simonbong, cultivation at--European fruits at Dorjiling
--Plains of India.

 A very favourite and interesting excursion from Dorjiling is to the
cane bridge over the Great Rungeet river, 6000 feet below the
station. To this an excellent road has been cut, by which the whole
descent of six miles, as the crow flies, is easily performed on
pony-back; the road distance being only eleven miles. The scenery is,
of course, of a totally different description from that of Sinchul,
or even of the foot of the hills, being that of a deep
mountain-valley. I several times made this trip; on the excursion
about to be described, and in which I was accompanied by Mr. Barnes,
I followed the Great Rungeet to the Teesta, into which it flows.

In descending from Dorjiling, the zones of vegetation are well marked
between 6000 and 7000 feet by--1. The oak, chesnut, and Magnolias,
the main features from 7000 to 10,000 feet.--2. Immediately below
6,500 feet, the tree-fern appears (_Alsophila gigantea,_ Wall.), a
widely-distributed plant, common to the Himalaya, from Nepal eastward
to the Malayan peninsula, Java, and Ceylon.--3. Of palms, a species
of _Calamus,_ and _Plectocomia,_ the "Rhenoul" of the Lepchas. The
latter, though not a very large plant, climbs lofty trees, and
extends about 40 yards through the forest; 6,500 feet is the upper
limit of palms in the Sikkim Himalaya, the Rhenoul alone attaining
this elevation.*--4. [Four other _Calami_ range between 1000 and 6000
feet on the outer hills, some of them being found forty miles distant
from the plains of India. The other palms of Sikkim are, "Simong"
(_Caryota urens_); it is rare, and ascends to nearly 5000 feet.
_Phoenix_ (probably _P. acaulis,_ Buch.), a small, stemless species,
which grows on the driest soil in the deep valleys; it is the
"Schaap" of the Lepchas, who eat the young seeds, and use the
feathery fronds as screens in hunting. _Wallichia oblongifolia,_ the
"Ooh" of the Lepchas, who make no use of it; Dr. Campbell and myself,
however, found that it is an admirable fodder for horses, who prefer
it to any other green food to be had in these mountains. _Areca
gracilis_ and _Licuala peltata_ are the only other palms in Sikkim;
but _Cycas pectinata,_ with the India-rubber fig, occurs in the
deepest and hottest valleys--the western limit of both these
interesting plants. Of _Pandanus_ there is a graceful species at
elevations of 1000 to 4000 feet ("Borr," Lepcha).] The fourth
striking feature is a wild plantain, which ascends to nearly the same
elevation ("Lukhlo," Lepcha). This is replaced by another, and rather
larger species, at lower elevations; both ripen austere and small
fruits, which are full of seeds, and quite uneatable; that commonly
grown in Sikkim is an introduced stock (nor have the wild species
ever been cultivated); it is very large, but poor in flavour, and
does not bear seeds. The zones of these conspicuous plants are very
clearly defined, and especially if the traveller, standing on one of
the innumerable spurs which project from the Dorjiling ridge, cast
his eyes up the gorges of green on either hand.

At 1000 feet below Dorjiling a fine wooded spur projects, called
Leebong. This beautiful spot is fully ten degrees warmer than Mr.
Hodgson's house, and enjoys considerably more sunshine; peaches and
English fruit-trees flourish extremely well, but do not ripen fruit.
The tea-plant succeeds here admirably, and might be cultivated to
great profit, and be of advantage in furthering a trade with Tibet.
It has been tried on a large scale by Dr. Campbell at his residence
(alt. 7000 feet), but the frosts and snow of that height injure it,
as do the hailstorms in spring.

Below Leebong is the village of Ging, surrounded by steeps,
cultivated with maize, rice, and millet. It is rendered very
picturesque by a long row of tall poles, each bearing a narrow,
vertically elongated banner, covered with Boodhist inscriptions, and
surmounted by coronet-like ornaments, or spear-heads, rudely cut out
of wood, or formed of basket-work, and adorned with cotton fringe.
Ging is peopled by Bhotan emigrants, and when one dies, if his
relations can afford to pay for them, two additional poles and flags
are set up by the Lamas in honour of his memory, and that of Sunga,
the third member of the Boodhist Trinity.

Below this the _Gordonia_ commences, with _Cedrela toona,_ and
various tropical genera, such as abound near Punkabaree. The heat and
hardness of the rocks cause the streams to dry up on these abrupt
hills, especially on the eastern slope, and the water is therefore
conveyed along the sides of the path, in conduits ingeniously made of
bamboo, either split in half, or, what is better, whole, except at
the septum, which is removed through a lateral hole. The oak and
chesnut of this level (3000 feet), are both different from those
which grow above, as are the brambles. The _Arums_ are replaced by
_Caladiums._ Tree-ferns cease below 4000 feet, and the large bamboo
abounds.

At about 2000 feet, and ten miles distant from Dorjiling, we arrived
at a low, long spur, dipping down to the bed of the Rungeet, at its
junction with the Rungmo. This is close to the boundary of the
British ground, and there is a guard-house, and a sepoy or two at it;
here we halted. It took the Lepchas about twenty minutes to construct
a table and two bedsteads within our tent; each was made of four
forked sticks, stuck in the ground, supporting as many side-pieces,
across which were laid flat split pieces of bamboo, bound tightly
together by strips of rattan palm-stem. The beds were afterwards
softened by many layers of bamboo-leaf, and if not very downy, they
were dry, and as firm as if put together with screws and joints.

This spur rises out of a deep valley, quite surrounded by lofty
mountains; it is narrow, and covered with red clay, which the natives
chew as a cure for goitre. North, it looks down into a gully, at the
bottom of which the Rungeet's foamy stream winds through a dense
forest. In the opposite direction, the Rungmo comes tearing down from
the top of Sinchul, 7000 feet above; and though its roar is heard,
and its course is visible throughout its length, the stream itself is
nowhere seen, so deep does it cut its channel. Except on this, and a
few similarly hard rocky hills around, the vegetation is a mass of
wood and jungle. At this spot it is rather scanty and dry, with
abundance of the _Pinus longifolia_ and Sal. The dwarf date-palm
(_Phoenix acaulis_) also, was very abundant.

The descent to the river was exceedingly steep, the banks presenting
an impenetrable jungle. The pines on the arid crests of the hills
around formed a remarkable feature: they grow like the Scotch fir,
the tall, red trunks springing from the steep and dry slopes. But
little resin exudes from the stem, which, like that of most pines, is
singularly free from lichens and mosses; its wood is excellent, and
the charcoal of the burnt leaves is used as a pigment. Being confined
to dry soil, this pine is local in Sikkim, and the elevation it
attains here is not above 3000 feet. In Bhotan, where there is more
dry country, its range is about the same, and in the north-west
Himalaya, from 2,500 to 7000 feet.

The Lepcha never inhabits one spot for more than three successive
years, after which an increased rent is demanded by the Rajah. He
therefore _squats_ in any place which he can render profitable for
that period, and then moves to another. His first operation, after
selecting a site, is to burn the jungle; then he clears away the
trees, and cultivates between the stumps. At this season, firing the
jungle is a frequent practice, and the effect by night is exceedingly
fine; a forest, so dry and full of bamboo, and extending over such
steep hills, affording grand blazing spectacles. Heavy clouds canopy
the mountains above, and, stretching across the valleys, shut out the
firmament; the air is a dead calm, as usual in these deep gorges, and
the fires, invisible by day, are seen raging all around, appearing to
an inexperienced eye in all but dangerous proximity. The voices of
birds and insects being hushed, nothing is audible but the harsh roar
of the rivers, and occasionally, rising far above it, that of the
forest fires. At night we were literally surrounded by them; some
smouldering, like the shale-heaps at a colliery, others fitfully
bursting forth, whilst others again stalked along with a steadily
increasing and enlarging flame, shooting out great tongues of fire,
which spared nothing as they advanced with irresistible might. Their
triumph is in reaching a great bamboo clump, when the noise of the
flames drowns that of the torrents, and as the great stem-joints,
burst, from the expansion of the confined air, the report is as that
of a salvo from a park of artillery. At Dorjiling the blaze is
visible, and the deadened reports of the bamboos bursting is heard
throughout the night; but in the valley, and within a mile of the
scene of destruction, the effect is the most grand, being heightened
by the glare reflected from the masses of mist which hover above.

On the following morning we pursued a path to the bed of the river;
passing a rude Booddhist monument, a pile of slate-rocks, with an
attempt at the mystical hemisphere at top. A few flags or banners,
and slabs of slate, were inscribed with "Om Mani Padmi om." Placed on
a jutting angle of the spur, backed with the pine-clad hills, and
flanked by a torrent on either hand, the spot was wild and
picturesque; and I could not but gaze with a feeling of deep interest
on these emblems of a religion which perhaps numbers more votaries
than any other on the face of the globe. Booddhism in some form is
the predominating creed, from Siberia and Kamschatka to Ceylon, from
the Caspian steppes to Japan, throughout China, Burmah, Ava, and a
part of the Malayan Archipelago. Its associations enter into every
book of travels over these vast regions, with Booddha, Dhurma, Sunga,
Jos, Fo, and praying-wheels. The mind is arrested by the names, the
imagination captivated by the symbols; and though I could not worship
in the grove, it was impossible to deny to the inscribed stones such
a tribute as is commanded by the first glimpse of objects which have
long been familiar to our minds, but not previously offered to our
senses. My head Lepcha went further: to a due observance of
demon-worship he united a deep reverence for the Lamas, and he
venerated their symbols rather as theirs than as those of their
religion. He walked round the pile of stones three times from left to
right repeating his "Om Mani," etc., then stood before it with his
head hung down and his long queue streaming behind, and concluded by
a votive offering of three pine-cones. When done, he looked round at
me, nodded, smirked, elevated the angles of his little turned-up
eyes, and seemed to think we were safe from all perils in the valleys
yet to be explored.

Illustration--PINES (PINUS LONGIFOLIA), RUNGEET VALLEY.

In the gorge of the Rungeet the heat was intolerable, though the
thermometer did not rise above 95 degrees. The mountains leave but a
narrow gorge between them, here and there bordered by a belt of
strong soil, supporting a towering crop of long cane-like grasses and
tall trees. The troubled river, about eighty yards across, rages
along over a gravelly bed. Crossing the Rungmo, where it falls into
the Rungeet, we came upon a group of natives drinking fermented Murwa
liquor, under a rock; I had a good deal of difficulty in getting my
people past, and more in inducing one of the topers to take the place
of a Ghorka (Nepalese) of our party who was ill with fever. Soon
afterwards, at a most wild and beautiful spot, I saw, for the first
time, one of the most characteristic of Himalayan objects of art, _a
cane bridge._ All the spurs, round the bases of which the river
flowed, were steep and rocky, their flanks clothed with the richest
tropical forest, their crests tipped with pines. On the river's edge,
the Banana, _Pandanus,_ and _Bauhinia,_ were frequent, and Figs
prevailed. One of the latter (of an exceedingly beautiful species)
projected over the stream, growing out of a mass of rock, its roots
interlaced and grasping at every available support, while its
branches, loaded with deep glossy foliage, hung over the water. This
tree formed one pier for the canes; that on the opposite bank, was
constructed of strong piles, propped with large stones; and between
them swung the

Illustration--CANE BRIDGE.

bridge,* [A sketch of one of these bridges will be found in Vol. ii.]
about eighty yards long, ever rocking over the torrent (forty feet
below). The lightness and extreme simplicity of its structure were
very remarkable. Two parallel canes, on the same horizontal plane,
were stretched across the stream; from them others hung in loops, and
along the loops were laid one or two bamboo stems for flooring; cross
pieces below this flooring, hung from the two upper canes, which they
thus served to keep apart. The traveller grasps one of the canes in
either hand, and walks along the loose bamboos laid on the swinging
loops: the motion is great, and the rattling of the loose dry bamboos
is neither a musical sound, nor one calculated to inspire confidence;
the whole structure seeming as if about to break down. With shoes it
is not easy to walk; and even with bare feet it is often difficult,
there being frequently but one bamboo, which, if the fastening is
loose, tilts up, leaving the pedestrian suspended over the torrent by
the slender canes. When properly and strongly made, with good
fastenings, and a floor of bamboos laid _transversely,_ these bridges
are easy to cross. The canes are procured from a species of
_Calamus_; they are as thick as the finger, and twenty, or thirty
yards long, knotted together; and the other pieces are fastened to
them by strips of the same plant. A Lepcha, carrying one hundred and
forty pounds on his back, crosses without hesitation, slowly but
steadily, and with perfect confidence.

A deep broad pool below the bridge was made available for a ferry:
the boat was a triangular raft of bamboo stems, with a stage on the
top, and it was secured on the opposite side of the stream, having a
cane reaching across to that on which we were. A stout Lepcha leapt
into the boiling flood, and boldly swam across, holding on by the
cane, without which he would have been carried away. He unfastened
the raft, and we drew it over by the cane, and, seated on the stage,
up to our knees in water, we were pulled across; the raft bobbing up
and down over the rippling stream.

We were beyond British ground, on the opposite bank, where any one
guiding Europeans is threatened with punishment: we had expected a
guide to follow us, but his non-appearance caused us to delay for
some hours; four roads, or rather forest paths, meeting here, all of
which were difficult to find. After a while, part of a
marriage-procession came up, headed by the bridegroom, a handsome
young Lepcha, leading a cow for the marriage feast; and after talking
to him a little, he volunteered to show us the path. On the flats by
the stream grew the Sago palm (_Cycas pectinata_), with a stem ten
feet high, and a beautiful crown of foliage; the contrast between
this and the Scotch-looking pine (both growing with oaks and palms)
was curious. Much of the forest had been burnt, and we traversed
large blackened patches, where the heat was intense, and increased by
the burning trunks of prostrate trees, which smoulder for months, and
leave a heap of white ashes. The larger timber being hollow in the
centre, a current of air is produced, which causes the interior to
burn rapidly, till the sides fall in, and all is consumed. I was
often startled, when walking in the forest, by the hot blast
proceeding from such, which I had approached without a suspicion of
their being other than cold dead trunks.

Leaving the forest, the path led along the river bank, and over the
great masses of rock which strewed its course. The beautiful
India-rubber fig was common, as was _Bassia butyracea,_ the "Yel
Pote" of the Lepchas, from the seeds of which they express a concrete
oil, which is received and hardens in bamboo vessels. On the
forest-skirts, _Hoya,_ parasitical _Orchideae,_ and Ferns, abounded;
the Chaulmoogra, whose fruit is used to intoxicate fish, was very
common; as was an immense mulberry tree, that yields a milky juice
and produces a long green sweet fruit. Large fish, chiefly Cyprinoid,
were abundant in the beautifully clear water of the river. But by far
the most striking feature consisted in the amazing quantity of superb
butterflies, large tropical swallow-tails, black, with scarlet or
yellow eyes on their wings. They were seen everywhere, sailing
majestically through the still hot air, or fluttering from one
scorching rock to another, and especially loving to settle on the
damp sand of the river-edge; where they sat by thousands, with erect
wings, balancing themselves with a rocking motion, as their heavy
sails inclined them to one side or the other; resembling a crowded
fleet of yachts on a calm day. Such an entomological display cannot
be surpassed. _Cicindelae_ were very numerous, and incredibly active,
as were _Grylli_; and the great _Cicadeae_ were everywhere lighting
on the ground, when they uttered a short sharp creaking sound, and
anon disappeared, as if by magic. Beautiful whip-snakes were gleaming
in the sun: they hold on by a few coils of the tail round a twig, the
greater part of their body stretched out horizontally, occasionally
retracting, and darting an unerring aim at some insect.
The narrowness of the gorge, and the excessive steepness of the
bounding hills, prevented any view, except of the opposite mountain
face, which was one dense forest, in which the wild Banana
was conspicuous.

Towards evening we arrived at another cane-bridge, still more
dilapidated than the former, but similar in structure. For a few
hundred yards before reaching it, we lost the path, and followed the
precipitous face of slate-rocks overhanging the stream, which dashed
with great violence below. Though we could not walk comfortably, even
with our shoes off, the Lepchas, bearing their enormous loads,
proceeded with perfect indifference.

Anxious to avoid sleeping at the bottom of the valley, we crawled,
very much fatigued, through burnt dry forest, up a very sharp ridge,
so narrow that the tent sat astride on it, the ropes being fastened
to the tops of small trees on either slope. The ground swarmed with
black ants, which got into our tea, sugar, etc., while it was so
covered with charcoal, that we were soon begrimed. Our Lepchas
preferred remaining on the river-bank, whence they had to bring up
water to us, in great bamboo "chungis," as they are called. The great
dryness of this face is owing to its southern exposure: the opposite
mountains, equally high and steep, being clothed in a rich green
forest.

At nine the next morning, the temperature was 78 degrees, but a fine
cool easterly wind blew. Descending to the bed of the river, the
temperature was 84 degrees. The difference in humidity of the two
stations (with about 300 feet difference in height) was more
remarkable; at the upper, the wet bulb thermometer was 67.5 degrees,
and consequently the saturation point, 0.713; at the lower, the wet
bulb was 68 degrees, and saturation, 0.599. The temperature of the
river was, at all hours of the preceding day, and this morning, 67.5
degrees.* [At this hour, the probable temperature at Dorjiling (6000
feet above this) would be 56 degrees, with a temperature of wet bulb
55 degrees, and the atmosphere loaded with vapour. At Calcutta,
again, the temperature was at the observatory 98.3 degrees, wet bulb,
81.8 degrees, and saturation=0.737. The dryness of the air, in the
damper-looking and luxuriant river-bed, was owing to the heated rocks
of its channel; while the humidity of the atmosphere over the
drier-looking hill where we encamped, was due to the moisture of the
wind then blowing.]

Our course down the river was by so rugged a path, that, giddy and
footsore with leaping from rock to rock, we at last attempted the
jungle, but it proved utterly impervious. On turning a bend of the
stream, the mountains of Bhotan suddenly presented themselves, with
the Teesta flowing at their base; and we emerged at the angle formed
by the junction of the Rungeet, which we had followed from the west,
of the Teesta, coming from the north, and of their united streams
flowing south.

We were not long before enjoying the water, when I was surprised to
find that of the Teesta singularly cold; its temperature being 7
degrees below that of the Rungeet.* [This is, no doubt, due partly to
the Teesta flowing south, and thus having less of the sun, and partly
to its draining snowy mountains throughout a much longer portion of
its course. The temperature of the one was 67.5 degrees, and that of
the other 60.5 degrees.] At the salient angle (a rocky peninsula) of
their junction, we could almost place one foot in the cold stream and
the other in the warmer. There is a no less marked difference in the
colour of the two rivers; the Teesta being sea-green and muddy, the
Great Rungeet dark green and very clear; and the waters, like those
of the Arve and Rhone at Geneva, preserve their colours for some
hundred yards; the line separating the two being most distinctly
drawn. The Teesta, or main stream, is much the broadest (about 80 or
100 yards wide at this season), the most rapid and deep. The rocks
which skirt its bank were covered with a silt or mud deposit, which I
nowhere observed along the Great Rungeet, and which, as well as its
colour and coldness, was owing to the vast number of then melting
glaciers drained by this river. The Rungeet, on the other hand,
though it rises amongst the glaciers of Kinchinjunga and its sister
peaks, is chiefly supplied by the rainfall of the outer ranges of
Sinchul and Singalelah, and hence its waters are clear, except during
the height of the rains.

From this place we returned to Dorjiling, arriving on the afternoon
of the following day.

The most interesting trip to be made from Dorjiling, is that to the
summit of Tonglo, a mountain on the Singalelah range, 10,079 feet
high, due west of the station, and twelve miles in a straight line,
but fully thirty by the path.* [A full account of the botanical
features noticed on this excursion (which I made in May, 1848, with
Mr. Barnes) has appeared in the "London Journal of Botany," and the
"Horticultural Society's Journal," and I shall, therefore,
recapitulate its leading incidents only.]

Leaving the station by a native path, the latter plunges at once into
a forest, and descends very rapidly, occasionally emerging on cleared
spurs, where are fine crops of various millets, with much maize and
rice. Of the latter grain as many as eight or ten varieties are
cultivated, but seldom irrigated, which, owing to the dampness of the
climate, is not necessary: the produce is often eighty-fold, but the
grain is large, coarse, reddish, and rather gelatinous when boiled.
After burning the timber, the top soil is very fertile for several
seasons, abounding in humus, below which is a stratum of stiff clay,
often of great thickness, produced by the disintegration of the
rocks;* [An analysis of the soil will be found in the Appendix.] the
clay makes excellent bricks, and often contains nearly 30 per cent.
of alumina.

At about 4000 feet the great bamboo ("Pao" Lepcha) abounds; it
flowers every year, which is not the case with all others of this
genus, most of which flower profusely over large tracts of country,
once in a great many years, and then die away; their place being
supplied by seedlings, which grow with immense rapidity.
This well-known fact is not due, as some suppose, to the life of the
species being of such a duration, but to favourable circumstances in
the season. The Pao attains a height of 40 to 60 feet, and the culms
average in thickness the human thigh; it is used for large
water-vessels, and its leaves form admirable thatch, in universal use
for European houses at Dorjiling. Besides this, the Lepchas are
acquainted with nearly a dozen kinds of bamboo; these occur at
various elevations below 12,000 feet, forming, even in the
pine-woods, and above their zone, in the skirts of the _Rhododendron_
scrub, a small and sometimes almost impervious jungle. In an
economical point of view they maybe classed as those which split
readily, and those which do not. The young shoots of several are
eaten, and the seeds of one are made into a fermented drink, and into
bread in times of scarcity; but it would take many pages to describe
the numerous purposes to which the various species are put.

Illusration--LEPCHA WATER-CARRIER WITH A BAMBOO CHUNGI.

 Gordonia is their most common tree (_G. Wallichii_), much prized for
ploughshares and other purposes requiring a hard wood: it is the
"Sing-brang-kun" of the Lepchas, and ascends to 4000 feet. Oaks at
this elevation occur as solitary trees, of species different from
those of Dorjiling. There are three or four with a cup-shaped
involucre, and three with spinous involucres enclosing an eatable
sweet nut; these generally grow on a dry clayey soil.

Some low steep spurs were well cultivated, though the angle of the
field was upwards of 25 degrees; the crops, chiefly maize, were just
sprouting. This plant is occasionally hermaphrodite in Sikkim, the
flowers forming a large drooping panicle and ripening small grains;
it is, however, a rare occurrence, and the specimens are highly
valued by the people.

The general prevalence of figs,* [One species of this very tropical
genus ascends almost to 9000 feet on the outer ranges of Sikkim.] and
their allies, the nettles,* [Of two of these cloth is made, and of a
third, cordage. The tops of two are eaten, as are several species of
_Procris._ The "Poa" belongs to this order, yielding that kind of
grass cloth fibre, now abundantly imported into England from the
Malay Islands, and used extensively for shirting.] is a remarkable
feature in the botany of the Sikkim Himalaya, up to nearly 10,000
feet. Of the former there were here five species, some bearing
eatable and very palatable fruit of enormous size, others with the
fruit small and borne on prostrate, leafless branches, which spring
from the root and creep along the ground.

A troublesome, dipterous insect (the "Peepsa," a species of
_Siamulium_) swarms on the banks of the streams; it is very small and
black, floating like a speck before the eye; its bite leaves a spot
of extravasated blood under the cuticle, very irritating if
not opened.

Crossing the Little Rungeet river, we camped on the base of Tonglo.
The night was calm and clear, with faint cirrus, but no dew.
A thermometer sunk two feet in rich vegetable mould stood at 78
degrees two hours after it was lowered, and the same on the following
morning. This probably indicates the mean temperature of the month at
that spot, where, however, the dark colour of the exposed loose soil
must raise the temperature considerably.

_May 20th._--The temperature at sunrise was 67 degrees; the morning
bright, and clear over head, but the mountains looked threatening.
Dorjiling, perched on a ridge 5000 feet above us, had a singular
appearance. We ascended the Simonbong spur of Tonglo, so called from
a small village and Lama temple of that name on its summit; where we
arrived at noon, and passing some chaits* [The chait of Sikkim,
borrowed from Tibet, is a square pedestal, surmounted with a
hemisphere, the convex end downwards, and on it is placed a cone,
with a crescent on the top. These are erected as tombs to Lamas, and
as monuments to illustrious persons, and are venerated accordingly,
the people always passing them from left to right, often repeating
the invocation, "Ora Mani Padmi om."] gained the Lama's residence.

Two species of bamboo, the "Payong" and "Praong" of the Lepchas, here
replace the Pao of the lower regions. The former was flowering
abundantly, the whole of the culms (which were 20 feet high) being a
diffuse panicle of inflorescence. The "Praong" bears a round head of
flowers at the ends of the leafy branches. Wild strawberry, violet,
geranium, etc., announced our approach to the temperate zone.
Around the temple were potato crops and peach-trees, rice, millet,
yam, brinjal (egg-apple), fennel, hemp (for smoking its narcotic
leaves), and cummin, etc. The potato thrives extremely well as a
summer crop, at 7000 feet, in Sikkim, though I think the root (from
the Dorjiling stock) cultivated as a winter crop in the plains, is
superior both in size and flavour. Peaches never ripen in this part
of Sikkim, apparently from the want of sun; the tree grows well at
from 3000 to 7000 feet elevation, and flowers abundantly; the fruit
making the nearest approach to maturity (according to the elevation)
from July to October. At Dorjiling it follows the English seasons,
flowering in March and fruiting in September, when the scarce
reddened and still hard fruit falls from the tree. In the plains of
India, both this and the plum ripen in May, but the fruits are
very acid.

It is curious that throughout this temperate region, there is hardly
an eatable fruit except the native walnut, and some brambles, of
which the "yellow" and "ground raspberry" are the best, some insipid
figs, and a very austere crab-apple. The European apple will scarcely
ripen,* [This fruit, and several others, ripen at Katmandoo, in Nepal
(alt. 4000 feet), which place enjoys more sunshine than Sikkim.
I have, however, received very different accounts of the produce,
which, on the whole, appears to be inferior.] and the pear not at
all. Currants and gooseberries show no disposition to thrive, and
strawberries are the only fruits that ripen at all, which they do in
the greatest abundance. Vines, figs, pomegranates, plums, apricots,
etc., will not succeed even as trees. European vegetables again grow,
and thrive remarkably well throughout the summer of Dorjiling, and
the produce is very fair, sweet and good, but inferior in flavour to
the English.

Of tropical fruits cultivated below 4000 feet, oranges and
indifferent bananas alone are frequent, with lemons of various kinds.
The season for these is, however, very short; though that of the
plantain might with care be prolonged; oranges abound in winter, and
are excellent, but neither so large nor free of white pulp as those
of the Khasia hills, the West Indies, or the west coast of Africa.
Mangos are brought from the plains, for though wild in Sikkim, the
cultivated kinds do not thrive; I have seen the pine-apple plant, but
I never met with good fruit on it.

A singular and almost total absence of the light, and of the direct
rays of the sun in the ripening season, is the cause of this dearth
of fruit. Both the farmer and orchard gardener in England know full
well the value of a bright sky as well as of a warm autumnal
atmosphere. Without this corn does not ripen, and fruit-trees are
blighted. The winter of the plains of India being more analogous in
its distribution of moisture and heat to a European summer, such
fruits as the peach, vine, and even plum, fig, strawberry, etc., may
be brought to bear well in March, April, and May, if they are only
carefully tended through the previous hot and damp season, which is,
in respect to the functions of flowering and fruiting, their winter.

Hence it appears that, though some English fruits will turn the
winter solstice of Bengal (November to May) into summer, and then
flower and fruit, neither these nor others will thrive in the summer
of 7000 feet on the Sikkim Himalaya, (though its temperature so
nearly approaches that of England,) on account of its rain and fogs.
Further, they are often exposed to a winter's cold equal to the
average of that of London, the snow lying for a week on the ground,
and the thermometer descending to 25 degrees. It is true that in no
case is the extreme of cold so great here as in England, but it is
sufficient to check vegetation, and to prevent fruit-trees from
flowering till they are fruiting in the plains. There is in this
respect a great difference between the climate of the central and
eastern and western Himalaya, at equal elevations. In the western
(Kumaon, etc.) the winters are colder than in Sikkim--the summers
warmer and less humid. The rainy season is shorter, and the sun
shines so much more frequently between the heavy showers, that the
apple and other fruits are brought to a much better state. It is true
that the rain-gauge may show as great a fall there, but this is no
measure of the humidity of the atmosphere, and still less so of the
amount of the sun's direct light and heat intercepted by aqueous
vapour, for it takes no account of the quantity of moisture suspended
in the air, nor of the depositions from fogs, which are far more
fatal to the perfecting of fruits than the heaviest brief showers.

The Indian climate, which is marked by one season of excessive
humidity and the other of excessive drought, can never be favourable
to the production either of good European or tropical fruits.
Hence there is not one of the latter peculiar to the country, and
perhaps but one which arrives at full perfection; namely, the mango.
Tile plantains, oranges, and pine-apples are less abundant, of
inferior kinds, and remain a shorter season in perfection than they
do in South America, the West Indies, or Western Africa.

Illustration--LEPCHA AMULET.



 CHAPTER VII.

Continue the ascent of Tonglo--Trees--Lepcha construction of hut
--Simsibong--Climbing-trees--Frogs--Magnolias, etc.--Ticks
--Leeches----Cattle, murrain amongst--Summit of Tonglo--
Rhododendrons--Skimmia--Yew--Rose--Aconite--Bikh poison--
English genera of plants--Ascent of tropical orders--Comparison
with south temperate zone--Heavy rain--Temperature, etc.--
Descent--Simonbong temple--Furniture therein--Praying-cylinder
--Thigh-bone trumpet--Morning orisons--Present of Murwa
beer, etc.

Continuing the ascent of Tonglo, we left cultivation and the poor
groves of peaches at 4000 to 5000 feet (and this on the eastern
exposure, which is by far the sunniest), the average height which
agriculture reaches in Sikkim.

Above Simonbong, the path up Tonglo is little frequented: it is one
of the many routes between Nepal and Sikkim, which cross the
Singalelah spur of Kinchinjunga at various elevations between 7000
and 15,000 feet. As usual, the track runs along ridges, wherever
these are to be found, very steep, and narrow at the top, through
deep humid forests of oaks and Magnolias, many laurels, both
_Tetranthera_ and _Cinnamomum,_ one species of the latter ascending
to 8,500 feet, and one of _Tetranthera_ to 9000. Chesnut and walnut
here appeared, with some leguminous trees, which however did not
ascend to 6000 feet. Scarlet flowers of _Vaccinium serpens,_ an
epiphytical species, were strewed about, and the great blossoms of
_Rhododendron Dalhousiae_ and of a Magnolia (_Talaunaa Hodgsoni_) lay
together on the ground. The latter forms a large tree, with very
dense foliage, and deep shining green leaves, a foot to eighteen
inches long. Most of its flowers drop unexpanded from the tree, and
diffuse a very aromatic smell; they are nearly as large as the fist,
the outer petals purple, the inner pure white.

Heavy rain came on at 3 p.m., obliging us to take insufficient
shelter under the trees, and finally to seek the nearest
camping-ground. For this purpose we ascended to a spring, called
Simsibong, at an elevation of 6000 feet. The narrowness of the ridge
prevented our pitching the tent, small as it was; but the Lepchas
rapidly constructed a house, and thatched it with bamboo and the
broad leaves of the wild plantain. A table was then raised in the
middle, of four posts and as many cross pieces of wood, lashed with
strips of bamboo. Across these, pieces of bamboo were laid,
ingeniously flattened, by selecting cylinders, crimping them all
round, and then slitting each down one side, so that it opens into a
flat slab. Similar but longer and lower erections, one on each side
the table, formed bed or chair; and in one hour, half a dozen men,
with only long knives and active hands, had provided us with a
tolerably water-tight furnished house. A thick flooring of bamboo
leaves kept the feet dry, and a screen of that and other foliage all
round rendered the habitation tolerably warm.

At this elevation we found great scandent trees twisting around the
trunks of others, and strangling them: the latter gradually decay,
leaving the sheath of climbers as one of the most remarkable
vegetable phenomena of these mountains. These climbers belong to
several orders, and may be roughly classified in two groups.--
(1.) Those whose sterns merely twine, and by constricting certain
parts of their support, induce death.--(2.) Those which form a
network round the trunk, by the coalescence of their lateral branches
and aerial roots, etc.: these wholly envelop and often conceal the
tree they enclose, whose branches appear rising far above those of

Illustration--CLASPING ROOTS OF WIGHTIA.

its destroyer. To the first of these groups belong many natural
orders, of which the most prominent are--_Leguminosae,_ ivies,
hydrangea, vines, _Pothos,_ etc. The inosculating ones are almost all
figs and _Wightia_: the latter is the most remarkable, and I add a
cut of its grasping roots, sketched at our encampment.

Except for the occasional hooting of an owl, the night was profoundly
still during several hours after dark--the cicadas at this season not
ascending so high on the mountain. A dense mist shrouded every thing,
and the rain pattered on the leaves of our hut. At midnight a
tree-frog ("Simook," Lepcha) broke the silence with his curious
metallic clack, and others quickly joined the chorus, keeping up
their strange music till morning. Like many Batrachians, this has a
voice singularly unlike that of any other organised creature.
The cries of beasts, birds, and insects are all explicable to our
senses, and we can recognise most of them as belonging to such or
such an order of animal; but the voices of many frogs are like
nothing else, and allied species utter totally dissimilar noises.
In some, as this, the sound is like the concussion of metals; in
others, of the vibration of wires or cords; anything but the natural
effects of lungs, larynx, and muscles.* [A very common Tasmanian
species utters a sound that appears to ring in an underground vaulted
chamber, beneath the feet.]

_May_ 21.--Early this morning we proceeded upwards, our prospect more
gloomy than ever. The path, which still lay up steep ridges, was very
slippery, owing to the rain upon the clayey soil, and was only
passable from the hold afforded by interlacing roots of trees.
At 8000 feet, some enormous detached masses of micaceous gneiss rose
abruptly from the ridge, they were covered with mosses and ferns, and
from their summit, 7000 feet, a good view of the surrounding
vegetation is obtained. The mast of the forest is formed of:--
(1) Three species of oak, of which _Q. annulata ?_ with immense
lamellated acorns, and leaves sixteen inches long, is the tallest and
the most abundant.--(2) Chesnut.--(3) _Laurineae_ of several species,
all beautiful forest-trees, straight-holed, and umbrageous
above.--(4) Magnolias.* [Other trees were _Pyrus, Saurauja_ (both an
erect and climbing species), _Olea,_ cherry, birch, alder, several
maples, _Hydrangea,_ one species of fig, holly, and several
_Araliaceous_ trees. Many species of _Magnoliaceae_ (including the
genera _Magnolia, Michelia,_ and _Talauma_) are found in Sikkim:
_Magnolia Campbellii,_ of 10,000 feet, is the most superb species
known. In books on botanical geography, the magnolias are considered
as most abounding in North America, east of the Rocky Mountains; but
this is a great mistake, the Indian mountains and islands being the
centre of this natural order.]--(5) Arborescent rhododendrons, which
commence here with the _R. arboreum._ At 8000 and 9000 feet, a
considerable change is found in the vegetation; the gigantic purple
_Magnolia Campbellii_ replacing the white; chesnut disappears, and
several laurels: other kinds of maple are seen, with _Rhododendron
argenteum,_ and _Stauntonia,_ a handsome climber, which has beautiful
pendent clusters of lilac blossoms.

At 9000 feet we arrived on a long flat covered with lofty trees,
chiefly purple magnolias, with a few oaks, great _Pyri_ and two
rhododendrons, thirty to forty feet high (_R. barbatum,_ and _R.
arboreum,_ var. _roseum_): _Skimmia_ and _Symplocos_ were the common
shrubs. A beautiful orchid with purple flowers (_Caelogyne
Wallichii_) grew on the trunks of all the great trees, attaining a
higher elevation than most other epiphytical species, for I have seen
it at 10,000 feet.

A large tick infests the small bamboo, and a more hateful insect I
never encountered. The traveller cannot avoid these insects coming on
his person (sometimes in great numbers) as he brushes through the
forest; they get inside his dress, and insert the proboscis deeply
without pain. Buried head and shoulders, and retained by a barbed
lancet, the tick is only to be extracted by force, which is very
painful. I have devised many tortures, mechanical and chemical, to
induce these disgusting intruders to withdraw the proboscis, but in
vain. Leeches* [I cannot but think that the extraordinary abundance
of these _Anelides_ in Sikkim may cause the death of many animals.
Some marked murrains have followed very wet seasons, when the leeches
appear in incredible numbers; and the disease in the cattle,
described to me by the Lepchas as in the stomach, in no way differs
from what leeches would produce. It is a well-known fact, that these
creatures have lived for days in the fauces, nares, and stomachs of
the human subject, causing dreadful sufferings, and death. I have
seen the cattle feeding in places where the leeches so abounded, that
fifty or sixty were frequently together on my ankles; and ponies are
almost maddened by their biting the fetlocks.] also swarm below 7000
feet; a small black species above 3000 feet, and a large yellow-brown
solitary one below that elevation.

Our ascent to the summit was by the bed of a watercourse, now a
roaring torrent, from the heavy and incessant rain. A small
_Anagallis_ (like _tenella_), and a beautiful purple primrose, grew
by its bank. The top of the mountain is another flat ridge, with
depressions and broad pools. The number of additional species of
plants found here was great, and all betokened a rapid approach to
the alpine region of the Himalaya. In order of prevalence the trees
were,--the scarlet _Rhododendron arboreum_ and _barbatum,_ as large
bushy trees, both loaded with beautiful flowers and luxuriant
foliage; _R. Falconeri,_ in point of foliage the most superb of all
the Himalayan species, with trunks thirty feet high, and branches
bearing at their ends only leaves eighteen inches long: these are
deep green above, and covered beneath with a rich brown down. Next in
abundance to these were shrubs of _Skimmia Laureola,_* [This plant
has been lately introduced into English gardens, from the north-west
Himalaya, and is greatly admired for its aromatic, evergreen foliage,
and clusters of scarlet berries. It is a curious fact, that this
plant never bears scarlet berries in Sikkim, apparently owing to the
want of sun; the fruit ripens, but is of a greenish-red or purplish
colour.] _Symplocos,_ and Hydrangea; and there were still a few
purple magnolias, very large _Pyri,_ like mountain ash, and the
common English yew, eighteen feet in circumference, the red bark of
which is used as a dye, and for staining the foreheads of Brahmins in
Nepal. An erect white-flowered rose (_R. sericea,_ the only species
occurring in Southern Sikkim) was very abundant: its numerous
inodorous flowers are pendent, apparent as a protection from the
rain; and it is remarkable as being the only species having four
petals instead of five.

A currant was common, always growing epiphytically on the trunks of
large trees. Two or three species of Berberry, a cherry, Andromeda,
_Daphne,_ and maple, nearly complete, I think, the list of woody
plants. Amongst the herbs were many of great interest, as a rhubarb,
and _Aconitum palmatum,_ which yields one of the celebrated "Bikh"
poisons.* ["Bikh" is yielded by various _Aconita._ All the Sikkim
kinds are called "gniong" by Lepchas and Bhoteeas, who do not
distinguish them. The _A. Napellus_ is abundant in the north-west
Himalaya, and is perhaps as virulent a Bikh as any species.]
Of European genera I found _Thalictrum, Anemone, Fumaria,_ violets,
_Stellaria, Hypericum,_ two geraniums, balsams, _Epilobium,
Potentilla, Paris_ and _Convallariae,_ one of the latter has
verticillate leaves, and its root also called "bikh," is considered a
very virulent poison.

Still, the absence or rarity at this elevation of several very large
natural families,* [_Ranunculaceae, Fumariae, Cruciferae, Alsineae,
Geranicae, Leguminosae, Potentilla, Epilobium, Crassulaceae,
Saxifrageae, Umbelliferae, Lonicera, Valerianeae, Dipsaceae,_ various
genera of _Compositae, Campanulaceae, Lobeliaceae, Gentianeae,
Boragineae, Scrophularineae, Primulaceae, Gramineae._] which have
numerous representatives at and much below the same level in the
inner ranges, and on the outer of the Western Himalaya, indicate a
certain peculiarity in Sikkim. On the other hand, certain tropical
genera are more abundant in the temperate zone of the Sikkim
mountains, and ascend much higher there than in the Western Himalaya:
of this fact I have cited conspicuous examples in the palms,
plantains, and tree-ferns. This ascent and prevalence of tropical
species is due to the humidity and equability of the climate in this
temperate zone, and is, perhaps, the direct consequence of these
conditions. An application of the same laws accounts for the
extension of similar features far beyond the tropical limit in the
Southern Ocean, where various natural orders, which do not cross the
30th and 40th parallels of N. latitude, are extended to the 55th of
S. latitude, and found in Tasmania, New Zealand, the so-called
Antarctic Islands south of that group, and at Cape Horn itself.

The rarity of Pines is perhaps the most curious feature in the botany
of Tonglo, and on the outer ranges of Sikkim; for, between the level
of 2,500 feet (the upper limit of _P. longifolia_) and 10,000 feet
(that of the _Taxus_), there is no coniferous tree whatever in
Southern Sikkim.

We encamped amongst Rhododendrons, on a spongy soil of black
vegetable matter, so oozy, that it was difficult to keep the feet
dry. The rain poured in torrents all the evening, and with the calm,
and the wetness of the wood, prevented our enjoying a fire. Except a
transient view into Nepal, a few miles west of us, nothing was to be
seen, the whole mountain being wrapped in dense masses of vapour.
Gusts of wind, not felt in the forest, whistled through the gnarled
and naked tree-tops; and though the temperature was 50 degrees, this
wind produced cold to the feelings. Our poor Lepchas were miserably
off, but always happy: under four posts and a bamboo-leaf thatch,
with no covering but a single thin cotton garment, they crouched on
the sodden turf, joking with the Hindoos of our party, who, though
supplied with good clothing and shelter, were doleful companions.

I made a shed for my instruments under a tree; Mr. Barnes, ever
active and ready, floored the tent with logs of wood, and I laid a
"corduroy road" of the same to my little observatory.

During the night the rain did not abate; and the tent-roof leaked in
such torrents, that we had to throw pieces of wax-cloth over our
shoulders as we lay in bed. There was no improvement whatever in the
weather on the following morning. Two of the Hindoos had crawled into
the tent during the night, attacked with fever and ague.* [It is a
remarkable fact, that both the natives of the plains, under many
circumstances, and the Lepchas when suffering from protracted cold
and wet, take fever and ague in sharp attacks. The disease is wholly
unknown amongst Europeans residing above 4000 feet, similar exposure
in whom brings on rheumatism and cold.] The tent being too sodden to
be carried, we had to remain where we were, and with abundance of
novelty in the botany around, I found no difficulty in getting
through the day. Observing the track of sheep, we sent two Lepchas to
follow them, who returned at night from some miles west in Nepal,
bringing two. The shepherds were Geroongs of Nepal, who were grazing
their flocks on a grassy mountain top, from which the woods had been
cleared, probably by fire. The mutton was a great boon to the
Lepchas, but the Hindoos would not touch it, and several more
sickening during the day, we had the tent most uncomfortably full.

During the whole of the 22nd, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., the thermometer
never varied 6.5 degrees, ranging from 47.5 in the morning to 54
degrees, its maximum, at 1 p.m., and 50.75 at night. At seven the
following morning it was the same. One, sunk two feet six inches in
mould and clay, stood constantly at 50.75. The dew-point was always
below the temperature, at which I was surprised, for more drenching
weather could not well be. The mean dew-point was 50.25, and
consequent humidity, 0.973.

These observations, and those of the barometer, were taken 60 feet
below the summit, to which I moved the instruments on the morning of
the 23rd. At a much more exposed spot the results would no doubt have
been different, for a thermometer, there sunk to the same depth as
that below, stood at 49.75 (or one degree colder than 60 feet lower
down). My barometrical observations, taken simultaneously with those
of Calcutta, give the height of Tonglo, 10,078.3 feet; Colonel
Waugh's, by trigonometry, 10,079.4 feet,--a remarkable and unusual
coincidence.

_May_ 23.--We spent a few hours of alternate fog and sunshine on the
top of the mountain, vainly hoping for the most modest view; our
inability to obtain it was extremely disappointing, for the mountain
commands a superb prospect, which I enjoyed fully in the following
November, from a spot a few miles further west. The air, which was
always foggy, was alternately cooled and heated, as it blew over the
trees, or the open space we occupied; sometimes varying 5 degrees and
6 degrees in a quarter of an hour.

Having partially dried the tent in the wind, we commenced the
descent, which owing to the late torrents of rain, was most fatiguing
and slippery; it again commenced to drizzle at noon, nor was it till
we had descended to 6000 feet that we emerged from the region of
clouds. By dark we arrived at Simonbong, having descended 5000 feet,
at the rate of 1000 feet an hour; and were kindly received by the
Lama, who gave us his temple for the accommodation of the whole
party. We were surprised at this, both because the Sikkim authorities
had represented the Lamas as very averse to Europeans, and because he
might well have hesitated before admitting a promiscuous horde of
thirty people into a sacred building, where the little valuables on
the altar, etc., were quite at our disposal. A better tribute could
not well have been paid to the honesty of my Lepcha followers. Our
host only begged us not to disturb his people, nor to allow the
Hindoos of our party to smoke inside.

Illustration--SIMONBONG TEMPLE.

Simonbong is one of the smallest and poorest Gumpas, or temples, in
Sikkim: unlike the better class, it is built of wood only.
It consisted of one large room, with small sliding shutter windows,
raised on a stone foundation, and roofed with shingles of wood;
opposite the door a wooden altar was placed, rudely chequered with
black, white, and red; to the right and left were shelves, with a few
Tibetan books, wrapped in silk; a model of Symbonath temple in Nepal,
a praying-cylinder,* [It consisted of a leathern cylinder placed
upright in a frame; a projecting piece of iron strikes a little bell
at each revolution, the revolution being caused by an elbowed axle
and string. Within the cylinder are deposited written prayers, and
whoever pulls the string properly is considered to have repeated his
prayers as often as the bell rings. Representations of these
implements will be found in other parts of these volumes.] and some
implements for common purposes, bags of juniper, English wine-bottles
and glasses, with tufts of _Abies Webbiana,_ rhododendron flowers,
and peacock's feathers, besides various trifles, clay ornaments and
offerings, and little Hindoo idols. On the altar were ranged seven
little brass cups, full of water; a large conch shell, carved with
the sacred lotus; a brass jug from Lhassa, of beautiful design, and a
human thigh-bone, hollow, and perforated through both condyles.* [To
these are often added a double-headed rattle, or small drum, formed
of two crowns of human skulls, cemented back to back; each face is
then covered with parchment, and encloses some pebbles. Sometimes
this instrument is provided with a handle.]

Illustration--TRUMPET MADE OF A HUMAN THIGH-BONE.

 Facing the altar was a bench and a chair, and on one side a huge
tambourine, with two curved iron drum-sticks. The bench was covered
with bells, handsomely carved with idols, and censers with
juniper-ashes; and on it lay the _dorge,_ or double-headed
thunderbolt, which the Lama holds in his hand during service. Of all
these articles, the human thigh-bone is by much the most curious; it
is very often that of a Lama, and is valuable in proportion to its
length.* [It is reported at Dorjiling, that one of the first
Europeans buried at this station, being a tall man, was disinterred
by the resurrectionist Bhoteeas for his _trumpet-bones._] As, however,
the Sikkim Lamas are burned, the relics are generally procured from
Tibet, where the  corpses are cut in pieces and thrown to the kites,
or into the water.

Two boys usually reside in the temple, and their beds were given up
to us, which being only rough planks laid on the floor, proved clean
in one sense, but contrasted badly with the springy couch of bamboo
the Lepcha makes, which renders carrying a mattress or aught but
blankets superfluous.

_May_ 24.--We were awakened at daylight by the discordant orisons of
the Lama; these commenced by the boys beating the great tambourine,
then blowing the conch-shells, and finally the trumpets and
thigh-bone. Shortly the Lama entered, clad in scarlet, shorn and
barefooted, wearing a small red silk mitre, a loose gown girt round
the middle, and an under-garment of questionable colour, possibly
once purple. He walked along, slowly muttering his prayers, to the
end of the apartment, whence he took a brass bell and dorge, and,
sitting down cross-legged, commenced matins, counting his beads, or
ringing the bell, and uttering most dismal prayers. After various
disposals of the cups, a larger bell was violently rung for some
minutes, himself snapping his fingers and uttering most unearthly
sounds. Finally, incense was brought, of charcoal with
juniper-sprigs; it was swung about, and concluded the morning service
to our great relief, for the noises were quite intolerable. Fervid as
the devotions appeared, to judge by their intonation, I fear the Lama
felt more curious about us than was proper under the circumstances;
and when I tried to sketch him, his excitement knew no bounds; he
fairly turned round on the settee, and, continuing his prayers and
bell-accompaniment, appeared to be exorcising me, or some spirit
within me.

After breakfast the Lama came to visit us, bringing rice, a few
vegetables, and a large bamboo-work bowl, thickly varnished with
india-rubber, and waterproof, containing half-fermented millet.
This mixture, called _Murwa,_ is invariably offered to the traveller,
either in the state of fermented grain, or more commonly in a bamboo
jug, filled quite up with warm water; when the fluid, sucked through
a reed, affords a refreshing drink. He gratefully accepted a few
rupees and trifles which we had to spare.

Leaving Simonbong, we descended to the Little Rungeet, where the heat
of the valley was very great; 80 degrees at noon, and that of the
stream 69 degrees; the latter was an agreeable temperature for the
coolies, who plunged, teeming with perspiration, into the water,
catching fish with their hands. We reached Dorjiling late in the
evening, again drenched with rain; our people, Hindoo and Lepcha,
imprudently remaining for the night in the valley. Owing probably as
much to the great exposure they had lately gone through, as to the
sudden transition from a mean temperature of 50 degrees in a bracing
wind, to a hot close jungly valley at 75 degrees, no less than seven
were laid up with fever and ague.

Few excursions can afford a better idea of the general features and
rich luxuriance of the Sikkim Himalaya than that to Tonglo. It is
always interesting to roam with an aboriginal, and especially a
mountain people, through their thinly inhabited valleys, over their
grand mountains, and to dwell alone with them in their gloomy and
forbidding forests, and no thinking man can do so without learning
much, however slender be the means at his command for communion.
A more interesting and attractive companion than the Lepcha I never
lived with: cheerful, kind, and patient with a master to whom he is
attached; rude but not savage, ignorant and yet intelligent; with the
simple resource of a plain knife he makes his house and furnishes
yours, with a speed, alacrity, and ingenuity that wile away that
well-known long hour when the weary pilgrim frets for his couch.
In all my dealings with these people, they proved scrupulously
honest. Except for drunkenness and carelessness, I never had to
complain of any of the merry troop; some of whom, bareheaded and
barelegged, possessing little or nothing save a cotton garment and a
long knife, followed me for many months on subsequent occasions, from
the scorching plains to the everlasting snows. Ever foremost in the
forest or on the bleak mountain, and ever ready to help, to carry, to
encamp, collect, or cook, they cheer on the traveller by their
unostentatious zeal in his service, and are spurs to his progress.

Illustration--TIBETAN AMULET.



CHAPTER VIII.

Difficulty in procuring leave to enter Sikkim--Obtain permission to
travel in East Nepal--Arrangements--Coolies--Stores--Servants
--Personal equipment--Mode of travelling--Leave Dorjiling--
Goong ridge--Behaviour of Bhotan coolies--Nepal frontier--Myong
valley--Ilam--Sikkim massacre--Cultivation--Nettles--Camp
at Nanki on Tonglo--Bhotan coolies run away--View of Chumulari--
Nepal peaks to west--Sakkiazung--Buceros--Road to Wallanchoon
--Oaks--Scarcity of water--Singular view of mountain-valleys--
Encampment--My tent and its furniture--Evening occupations--
Dunkotah--Crossridge of Sakkiazung--Yews--Silver-firs--View
of Tambur valley--Pemmi river--Pebbly terraces--Geology--Holy
springs--Enormous trees--Luculia gratissima--Khawa river, rocks
of--Arrive at Tambur--Shingle and gravel terraces--Natives,
indolence of--Canoe ferry--Votive offerings--Bad road--
Temperature, etc.--Chingtam village, view from--Mywa river and
Guola--House--Boulders--Chain-bridge--Meepo, arrival of--
Fevers.   Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of our relations with
the Sikkim authorities, to which I have elsewhere alluded, my
endeavours to procure leave to penetrate further beyond the Dorjiling
territory than Tonglo, were attended with some trouble and delay.

In the autumn of 1848, the Governor-General communicated with the
Rajah, desiring him to grant me honourable and safe escort through
his dominions; but this was at once met by a decided refusal,
apparently admitting of no compromise. Pending further negotiations,
which Dr. Campbell felt sure would terminate satisfactorily, though
perhaps too late for my purpose, he applied to the Nepal Rajah for
permission for me to visit the Tibetan passes, west of Kinchinjunga;
proposing in the meanwhile to arrange for my return through Sikkim.
Through the kindness of Col. Thoresby, the Resident at that Court,
and the influence of Jung Bahadoor, this request was promptly acceded
to, and a guard of six Nepalese soldiers and two officers was sent to
Dorjiling to conduct me to any part of the eastern districts of Nepal
which I might select. I decided upon following up the Tambur, a
branch of the Arun river, and exploring the two easternmost of the
Nepalese passes into Tibet (Wallanchoon and Kanglachem), which would
bring me as near to the central mass and loftiest part of the eastern
flank of Kinchinjunga as possible.

For this expedition (which occupied three months), all the
arrangements were undertaken for me by Dr. Campbell, who afforded me
every facility which in his government position he could command,
besides personally superintending the equipment and provisioning of
my party. Taking horses or loaded animals of any kind was not
expedient: the whole journey was to be performed on foot, and
everything carried on men's backs. As we were to march through wholly
unexplored countries, where food was only procurable at uncertain
intervals, it was necessary to engage a large body of porters, some
of whom should carry bags of rice for the coolies and themselves too.
The difficulty of selecting these carriers, of whom thirty were
required, was very great. The Lepchas, the best and most tractable,
and over whom Dr. Campbell had the most direct influence, disliked
employment out of Sikkim, especially in so warlike a country as
Nepal: and they were besides thought unfit for the snowy regions.
The Nepalese, of whom there were many residing as British subjects in
Dorjiling, were mostly run-aways from their own country, and afraid
of being claimed, should they return to it, by the lords of the soil.
To employ Limboos, Moormis, Hindoos, or other natives of low
elevations, was out of the question; and no course appeared advisable
but to engage some of the Bhotan run-aways domiciled in Dorjiling,
who are accustomed to travel at all elevations, and fear nothing but
a return to the country which they have abandoned as slaves, or as
culprits: they are immensely powerful, and though intractable to the
last degree, are generally glad to work and behave well for money.
The choice, as will hereafter be seen, was unfortunate, though at the
time unanimously approved.

My party mustered fifty-six persons. These consisted of myself, and
one personal servant, a Portuguese half-caste, who undertook all
offices, and spared me the usual train of Hindoo and Mahometan
servants. My tent and equipments (for which I was greatly indebted to
Mr. Hodgson), instruments, bed, box of clothes, books and papers,
required a man for each. Seven more carried my papers for drying
plants, and other scientific stores. The Nepalese guard had two
coolies of their own. My interpreter, the coolie Sirdar (or headman),
and my chief plant collector (a Lepcha), had a man each.
Mr. Hodgson's bird and animal shooter, collector, and stuffer, with
their ammunition and indispensables, had four more; there were
besides, three Lepcha lads to climb trees and change the
plant-papers, who had long been in my service in that capacity; and
the party was completed by fourteen Bhotan coolies laden with food,
consisting chiefly of rice with ghee, oil, capsicums, salt,
and flour.

I carried myself a small barometer, a large knife and digger for
plants, note-book, telescope, compass, and other instruments; whilst
two or three Lepcha lads who accompanied me as satellites, carried a
botanising box, thermometers, sextant and artificial horizon,
measuring-tape, azimuth compass and stand, geological hammer, bottles
and boxes for insects, sketch-book, etc., arranged in compartments of
strong canvass bags. The Nepal officer (of the rank of serjeant, I
believe) always kept near me with one of his men, rendering
innumerable little services. Other sepoys were distributed amongst
the remainder of the party; one went ahead to prepare camping-ground,
and one brought up the rear.

The course generally pursued by Himalayan travellers is to march
early in the morning, and arrive at the camping-ground before or by
noon, breakfasting before starting, or _en route._ I never followed
this plan, because it sacrificed the mornings, which were otherwise
profitably spent in collecting about camp; whereas, if I set off
early, I was generally too tired with the day's march to employ in
any active pursuit the rest of the daylight, which in November only
lasted till 6 p.m. The men breakfasted early in the morning, I
somewhat later, and all had started by 10 a.m., arriving between
4 and 6 p.m. at the next camping-ground. My tent was formed of
blankets, spread over cross pieces of wood and a ridge-pole,
enclosing an area of 6 to 8 feet by 4 to 6 feet. The bedstead, table,
and chair were always made by my Lepchas, as described in the Tonglo
excursion. The evenings I employed in writing up notes and journals,
plotting maps, and ticketing the plants collected during the
day's march.

I left Dorjiling at noon, on the 27th October, accompanied by Dr.
Campbell, who saw me fairly off, the coolies having preceded me.
Our direct route would have been over Tonglo, but the threats of the
Sikkim authorities rendered it advisable to make for Nepal at once;
we therefore kept west along the Goong ridge, a western prolongation
of Sinchul.

On overtaking the coolies, I proceeded for six or seven miles along a
zig-zag road, at about 7,500 feet elevation, through dense forests,
and halted at a little hut within sight of Dorjiling. Rain and mist
came on at nightfall, and though several parties of my servants
arrived, none of the Bhotan coolies made their appearance, and I
spent the night without food or bed, the weather being much too foggy
and dark to send back to meet the missing men. They joined me late on
the following day, complaining unreasonably of their loads, and
without their Sirdar, who, after starting his crew, had returned to
take leave of his wife and family. On the following day he appeared,
and after due admonishment we started, but four miles further on were
again obliged to halt for the Bhotan coolies, who were equally deaf
to threats and entreaties. As they did not come up till dusk, we were
obliged to encamp here, (alt. 7,400 feet) at the common source of the
Balasun, which flows to the plains, and the Little Rungeet, whose
course is north.

The contrast between the conduct of the Bhotan men and that of the
Lepchas and Nepalese was so marked, that I seriously debated in my
own mind the propriety of sending the former back to Dorjiling, but
yielded to the remonstrances of their Sirdar and the Nepal guard, who
represented the great difficulty we should have in replacing them,
and above all, the loss of time, at this season a matter of great
importance. We accordingly started again the following morning, and
still keeping in a western direction, crossed the posts in the forest
dividing Sikkim from Nepal, and descended into the Myong valley of
the latter country, through which flows the river of that name, a
tributary of the Tambur. The Myong valley is remarkably fine: it runs
south-west from Tonglo, and its open character and general fertility
contrast strongly with the bareness of the lower mountain spurs which
flank it, and with the dense, gloomy, steep, and forest-clad gorges
of Sikkim. At its lower end, about twenty miles from the frontier, is
the military fort of Ilam, a celebrated stockaded post and cantonment
of the Ghorkas: its position is marked by a conspicuous conical hill.
The inhabitants are chiefly Brahmins, but there are also some
Moormis, and a few Lepchas who escaped from Sikkim during the general
massacre in 1825. Among these is a man who had formerly much
influence in Sikkim; he still retains his title of Kazee,* [This
Mahometan title, by which the officers of state are known in Sikkim,
is there generally pronounced Kajee.] and has had large lands
assigned to him by the Nepalese Government: he sent the usual present
of a kid, fowls, and eggs, and begged me to express to Dr. Campbell
his desire to return to his native country, and settle at Dorjiling.

The scenery of this valley is the most beautiful I know of in the
lower Himalaya, and the Cheer Pine (_P. longifolia_) is abundant,
cresting the hills; which are loosely clothed with clumps of oaks and
other trees, bamboos, and bracken (_Pteris_). The slopes are covered
with red clay, and separate little ravines luxuriantly clothed with
tropical vegetation, amongst which flow pebbly streams of transparent
cool water. The villages, which are merely scattered collections of
huts, are surrounded with fields of rice, buckwheat, and Indian corn,
which latter the natives were now storing in little granaries,
mounted on four posts, men, women, and children being all equally
busy. The quantity of gigantic nettles (_Urtica heterophylla_) on the
skirts of these maize fields is quite wonderful: their long white
stings look most formidable, but though they sting virulently, the
pain only lasts half an hour or so. These, however, with leeches,
mosquitos, peepsas, and ticks, sometimes keep the traveller in a
constant state of irritation.

However civilised the Hindoo may be in comparison with the Lepcha, he
presents a far less attractive picture to the casual observer; he
comes to your camping-ground, sits down, and stares with all his
might, but offers no assistance; if he bring a present at all, he
expects a return on the spot, and goes on begging till satisfied.
I was amused by the cool way in which my Ghorka guard treated the
village lads, when they wanted help in my service, taking them by the
shoulder, pulling out their knives for them, placing them in their
bands, and setting them to cut down a tree, or to chop firewood,
which they seldom refused to do, when a little such douce violence
was applied.

My object being to reach the Tambur, north of the great east and west
mountain ridge of Sakkiazung, without crossing the innumerable
feeders of the Myong and their dividing spurs, we ascended the north
flank of the valley to a long spur from Tonglo, intending to follow
winding ridges of that mountain to the sources of the Pemmi at the
Phulloot mountains, and thence descend.

On the 3rd November I encamped on the flank of Tonglo (called Nanki
in Nepal), at 9,300 feet, about 700 feet below the western summit,
which is rocky, and connected by a long flat ridge with that which I
had visited in the previous May. The Bhotan coolies behaved worse
than ever; their conduct being in all respects typical of the
turbulent, mulish race to which they belong. They had been plundering
my provisions as they went along, and neither their Sirdar nor the
Ghorka soldiers had the smallest authority over them. I had hired
some Ghorka coolies to assist and eventually to replace them, and had
made up my mind to send back the worst from the more populous banks
of the Tambur, when I was relieved by their making off of their own
accord. The dilemma was however awkward, as it was impossible to
procure men on the top of a mountain 10,000 feet high, or to proceed
towards Phulloot. No course remained but to send to Dorjiling for
others, or to return to the Myong valley, and take a more circuitous
route over the west end of Sakkiazung, which led through villages
from which I could procure coolies day by day. I preferred the latter
plan, and sent one of the soldiers to the nearest village for
assistance to bring the loads down, halting a day for that purpose.

From the summit of Tonglo I enjoyed the view I had so long desired of
the Snowy Himalaya, from north-east to north-west; Sikkim being on
the right, Nepal on the left, and the plains of India to the
southward; and I procured a set of compass bearings, of the greatest
use in mapping the country. In the early morning the transparency of
the atmosphere renders this view one of astonishing grandeur.
Kinchinjunga bore nearly due north, a dazzling mass of snowy peaks,
intersected by blue glaciers, which gleamed in the slanting rays of
the rising sun, like aquamarines set in frosted silver. From this the
sweep of snowed mountains to the eastward was almost continuous as
far as Chola (bearing east-north-east), following a curve of 150
miles, and enclosing the whole of the northern part of Sikkim, which
appeared a billowy mass of forest-clad mountains. On the north-east
horizon rose the Donkia mountain (23,176 feet), and Chumulari
(23,929). Though both were much more distant than the snowy ranges,
being respectively eighty and ninety miles off, they raised their
gigantic heads above, seeming what they really were, by far the
loftiest peaks next to Kinchinjunga; and the perspective of snow is
so deceptive, that though 40 to 60 miles beyond, they appeared as
though almost in the same line with the ridges they overtopped.
Of these mountains, Chumulari presents many attractions to the
geographer, from its long disputed position, its sacred character,
and the interest attached to it since Turner's mission to Tibet in
1783. It was seen and recognised by Dr. Campbell, and measured by
Colonel Waugh, from Sinchul, and also from Tonglo, and was a
conspicuous object in my subsequent journey to Tibet. Beyond Junnoo,
one of the western peaks of Kinchinjunga, there was no continuous
snowy chain; the Himalaya seemed suddenly to decline into black and
rugged peaks, till in the far north-west it rose again in a white
mountain mass of stupendous elevation at 80 miles distance, called,
by my Nepal people, "Tsungau."* [This is probably the easternmost and
loftiest peak seen from Katmandoo, distant 78 miles, and estimated
elevation 20,117 feet by Col. Crawford's observations. See
"Hamilton's Nepal," p. 346, and plate 1.] From the bearings I took of
it from several positions, it is in about lat. 27 degrees 49 minutes
and long. 86 degrees 24 minutes, and is probably on the west flank of
the Arun valley and river, which latter, in its course from Tibet to
the plains of India, receives the waters from the west flank of
Kinchinjunga, and from the east flank of the mountain in question.
It is perhaps one which has been seen and measured from the Tirhoot
district by some of Colonel Waugh's party, and which has been
reported to be upwards of 28,000 feet in elevation; and it is the
only mountain of the first class in magnitude between Gosainthan
(north-east of Katmandoo) and Kinchinjunga.

To the west, the black ridge of Sakkiazung, bristling with pines,
(_Abies Webbiana_) cut off the view of Nepal; but south-west, the
Myong valley could be traced to its junction with the Tambur about
thirty miles off: beyond which to the south-west and south, low
hills belonging to the outer ranges of Nepal rose on the distant
horizon, seventy or eighty miles off; and of these the most
conspicuous were the Mahavarati which skirt the Nepal Terai. South
and south-east, Sinchul and the Goong range of Sikkim intercepted the
view of the plains of India, of which I had a distant peep to the
south-west only.

The west top of Tonglo is very open and grassy, with occasional
masses of gneiss of enormous size, but probably not in situ.
The whole of this flank, and for 1000 feet down the spur to the
south-west, had been cleared by fire for pasturage, and flocks of
black-faced sheep were grazing. During my stay on the mountain,
except in the early morning, the weather was bleak, gloomy, and very
cold, with a high south-west wind. The mean temperature was 41
degrees, extremes 53.2/26 degrees: the nights were very clear, with
sharp hoar-frost; the radiating thermometer sank to 21 degrees, the
temperature at 3.5 feet depth was 51.5 degrees.

A few of the Bhotan coolies having voluntarily returned, I left
Tonglo on the 5th, and descended its west flank to the Mai, a feeder
of the Myong. The descent was as abrupt as that on the east face, but
through less dense forest; the Sikkim side (that facing the east)
being much the dampest. I encamped at dark by a small village,
(Jummanoo) at 4,360 feet, having descended 5000 feet in five hours.
Hence we marched eastward to the village of Sakkiazung, which we
reached on the third day, crossing _en route_ several spurs 4000 to
6000 feet high, from the same ridge, and as many rivers, which all
fall into the Myong, and whose beds are elevated from 2,500 to
3000 feet.

Though rich and fertile, the country is scantily populated, and
coolies were procured with difficulty: I therefore sent back to
Dorjiling all but absolute indispensables, and on the 9th of November
started up the ridge in a northerly direction, taking the road from
Ilam to Wallanchoon. The ascent was gradual, through a fine forest,
full of horn-bills (_Buceros_), a bird resembling the Toucan
("Dhunass" Lepcha); at 7000 feet an oak (_Quercus semecarpifolia_),
"Khasrou" of the Nepalese, commences, a tree which is common as far
west as Kashmir, but which I never found in Sikkim, though it appears
again in Bhotan.* [This oak ascends in the N.W. Himalaya to the
highest limit of forest (12,000 feet). No oak in Sikkim attains a
greater elevation than 10,000.] It forms a broad-headed tree, and has
a very handsome appearance; its favourite locality is on grassy open
shoulders of the mountains. It was accompanied by an _Astragalus,
Geranium,_ and several other plants of the drier interior parts of
Sikkim. Water is very scarce along the ridge; we walked fully eight
miles without finding any, and were at length obliged to encamp at
8,350 feet by the only spring that we should be able to reach.
With respect to drought, this ridge differs materially from Sikkim,
where water abounds at all elevations; and the cause is obviously its
position to the westward of the great ridge of Singalelah (including
Tonglo) by which the S.W. currents are drained of their moisture.
Here again, the east flank was much the dampest and most
luxuriantly wooded.

While my men encamped on a very narrow ridge, I ascended a rocky
summit, composed of great blocks of gneiss, from which I obtained a
superb view to the westward. Immediately below a fearfully sudden
descent, ran the Daomy River, bounded on the opposite side by another
parallel ridge of Sakkiazung, enclosing, with that on which I stood,
a gulf from 6000 to 7000 feet deep, of wooded ridges, which, as it
were, radiated outwards as they ascended upwards in rocky spurs to
the pine-clad peaks around. To the south-west, in the extreme
distance, were the boundless plains of India, upwards of 100 miles
off, with the Cosi meandering through them like a silver thread.

The firmament appeared of a pale steel blue, and a broad low arch
spanned the horizon, bounded by a line of little fleecy clouds
(moutons); below this the sky was of a golden yellow, while in
successively deeper strata, many belts or ribbons of vapour appeared
to press upon the plains, the lowest of which was of a dark leaden
hue, the upper more purple, and vanishing into the pale yellow above.
Though well defined, there was no abrupt division between the belts,
and the lowest mingled imperceptibly with the hazy horizon.
Gradually the golden lines grew dim, and the blues and purples gained
depth of colour; till the sun set behind the dark-blue peaked
mountains in a flood of crimson and purple, sending broad beams of
grey shade and purple light up to the zenith, and all around.
As evening advanced, a sudden chill succeeded, and mists rapidly
formed immediately below me in little isolated clouds, which
coalesced and spread out like a heaving and rolling sea, leaving
nothing above their surface but the ridges and spurs of the adjacent
mountains. These rose like capes, promontories, and islands, of the
darkest leaden hue, bristling with pines, and advancing boldly into
the snowy white ocean, or starting from its bed in the strongest
relief. As darkness came on, and the stars arose, a light fog
gathered round me, and I quitted with reluctance one of the most
impressive and magic scenes I ever beheld.

Returning to my tent, I was interested in observing how well my
followers had accommodated themselves to their narrow circumstances.
Their fires gleamed everywhere amongst the trees, and the people,
broken up into groups of five, presented an interesting picture of
native, savage, and half-civilised life. I wandered amongst them in
the darkness, and watched unseen their operations; some were cooking,
with their rude bronzed faces lighted up by the ruddy glow, as they
peered into the pot, stirring the boiling rice with one hand, while
with the other they held back their long tangled hair. Others were
bringing water from the spring below, some gathering sprigs of
fragrant _Artemisia_ and other shrubs to form couches--some lopping
branches of larger trees to screen them from nocturnal radiation;
their only protection from the dew being such branches stuck in the
ground, and slanting over their procumbent forms. The Bhotanese were
rude and boisterous in their pursuits, constantly complaining to the
Sirdars, and wrangling over their meals. The Ghorkas were sprightly,
combing their raven hair, telling interminably long stories, of which
money was the burthen, or singing Hindoo songs through their noses in
chorus; and being neater and better dressed, and having a servant to
cook their food, they seemed quite the gentlemen of the party.
Still the Lepcha was the most attractive, the least restrained, and
the most natural in all his actions, the simplest in his wants and
appliances, with a bamboo as his water-jug, an earthen-pot as his
kettle, and all manner of herbs collected during the day's march to
flavour his food.

My tent was made of a blanket thrown over the limb of a tree; to this
others were attached, and the whole was supported on a frame like a
house. One half was occupied by my bedstead, beneath which was stowed
my box of clothes, while my books and writing materials were placed
under the table. The barometer hung in the most out-of-the-way
corner, and my other instruments all around. A small candle was
burning in a glass shade, to keep the draught and insects from the
light, and I had the comfort of seeing the knife, fork, and spoon
laid on a white napkin, as I entered my snug little house, and flung
myself on the elastic couch to ruminate on the proceedings of the
day, and speculate on those of the morrow, while waiting for my meal,
which usually consisted of stewed meat and rice, with biscuits and
tea. My thermometers (wet and dry bulb, and minimum) hung under a
temporary canopy made of thickly plaited bamboo and leaves close to
the tent, and the cooking was performed by my servant under a tree.

After dinner my occupations were to ticket and put away the plants
collected during the day, write up journals, plot maps, and take
observations till 10 p.m. As soon as I was in bed, one of the Nepal
soldiers was accustomed to enter, spread his blanket on the ground,
and sleep there as my guard. In the morning the collectors were set
to change the plant-papers, while I explored the neighbourhood, and
having taken observations and breakfasted, we were ready to start at
10 a.m.

Following the same ridge, after a few miles of ascent over much
broken gneiss rock, the Ghorkas led me aside to the top of a knoll,
9,300 feet high, covered with stunted bushes, and commanding a
splendid view to the west, of the broad, low, well cultivated valley
of the Tambur, and the extensive town of Dunkotah on its banks, about
twenty-five miles off; the capital of this part of Nepal, and famous
for its manufactory of paper from the bark of the _Daphne._ Hence too
I gained a fine view of the plains of India, including the course of
the Cosi river, which, receiving the Arun and Tambur, debouches into
the Ganges opposite Colgongl (see Chapter IV).

A little further on we crossed the main ridge of Sakkiazung, a long
flexuous chain stretching for miles to the westward from Phulloot on
Singalelah, and forming the most elevated and conspicuous transverse
range in this part of Nepal: its streams flow south to the Myong, and
north to feeders of the Tambur. Silver firs (_Abies Webbiana_) are
found on all the summits; but to my regret none occurred in our path,
which led just below their limit (10,000 feet), on the southern
Himalayan ranges. There were, however, a few yews, exactly like the
English. The view that opened on cresting this range was again
magnificent, of Kinchinjunga, the western snows of Nepal, and the
valley of the Tambur winding amongst wooded and cultivated hills to a
long line of black-peaked, rugged mountains, sparingly snowed, which
intervene between Kinchinjunga and the great Nepal mountain before
mentioned. The extremely varied colouring on the infinite number of
hill-slopes that everywhere intersected the Tambur valley was very
pleasing. For fully forty miles to the northward there were no lofty
forest-clad mountains, nor any apparently above 4000 to 5000 feet:
villages and hamlets appeared everywhere, with crops of golden
mustard and purple buckwheat in full flower; yellow rice and maize,
green hemp, pulse, radishes, and barley, and brown millet. Here and
there deep groves of oranges, the broad-leafed banana, and
sugar-cane, skirted the bottoms of the valleys, through which the
streams were occasionally seen, rushing in white foam over their
rocky beds. It was a goodly sight to one who had for his only
standard of comparison the view from Sinchul, of the gloomy
forest-clad ranges of 6000 to 10,000 feet, that intervene between
that mountain and the snowy girdle of Sikkim; though I question
whether a traveller from more favoured climes would see more in this,
than a thinly inhabited country, with irregular patches of poor
cultivation, a vast amount of ragged forest on low hills of rather
uniform height and contour, relieved by a dismal back-ground of
frowning black mountains, sprinkled with snow! Kinchinjunga was again
the most prominent object to the north-east, with its sister peaks of
Kubra (24,005 feet), and Junnoo (25,312 feet). All these presented
bare cliff's for several thousand feet below their summits, composed
of white rock with a faint pink tint:--on the other hand the lofty
Nepal mountain in the far west presented cliffs of black rocks. From
the summit two routes to the Tambur presented themselves; one, the
main road, led west and south along the ridge, and then turned north,
descending to the river; the other was shorter, leading abruptly down
to the Pemmi river, and thence along its banks, west to the Tambur.
I chose the latter.

The descent was very abrupt on the first day, from 9,500 feet to 5000
feet, and on that following to the bed of the Pemmi, at 2000 feet;
and the road was infamously bad, generally consisting of a narrow,
winding, rocky path among tangled shrubs and large boulders,
brambles, nettles, and thorny bushes, often in the bed of the
torrent, or crossing spurs covered with forest, round whose bases it
flowed. A little cultivation was occasionally met with on the narrow
flat pebbly terraces which fringed the stream, usually of rice, and
sometimes of the small-leaved variety of hemp (_Cannabis_), grown as
a narcotic.

The rocks above 5000 feet were gneiss; below this, cliffs of very
micaceous schist were met with, having a north-west strike, and being
often vertical; the boulders again were always of gneiss. The streams
seemed rather to occupy faults, than to have eroded courses for
themselves; their beds were invariably rocky or pebbly, and the
waters white and muddy from the quantity of alumina. In one little
rocky dell the water gushed through a hole in a soft stratum in the
gneiss; a trifling circumstance which was not lost upon the crafty
Brahmins, who had cut a series of regular holes for the water,
ornamented the rocks with red paint, and a row of little iron
tridents of Siva, and dedicated the whole to Mahadeo.

In some spots the vegetation was exceedingly fine, and several large
trees occurred: I measured a Toon (_Cedrela_) thirty feet in girth at
five feet above the ground. The skirts of the forest were adorned
with numerous jungle flowers, rice crops, blue _Acanthaceae_ and
_Pavetta,_ wild cherry-trees covered with scarlet blossoms, and trees
of the purple and lilac _Bauhinia_; while _Thunbergia, Convolvulus,_
and other climbers, hung in graceful festoons from the boughs, and on
the dry micaceous rocks the _Luculia gratissima,_ one of our common
hot-house ornaments, grew in profusion, its gorgeous heads of
blossoms scenting the air.

At the junction of the Pemmi and Khawa rivers, there are high rocks
of mica-slate, and broad river-terraces of stratified sand and
pebbles, apparently alternating with deposits of shingle. On this
hot, open expanse, elevated 2250 feet, appeared many trees and plants
of the Terai and plains, as pomegranate, peepul, and sal; with
extensive fields of cotton, indigo, and irrigated rice.

We followed the north bank of the Khawa, which runs westerly through
a gorge, between high cliffs of chlorite, containing thick beds of
stratified quartz. At the angles of the river broad terraces are
formed, fifteen to thirty feet above its bed, similar to those just
mentioned, and planted with rows of _Acacia Serissa,_ or laid out in
rice fields, or sugar plantations.

I reached the east bank of the Tambur, on the 13th of November, at
its junction with the Khawa, in a deep gorge. It formed a grand
stream, larger than the Teesta, of a pale, sea-green, muddy colour,
and flowed rapidly with a strong ripple, but no foam; it rises six
feet in the rains, but ice never descends nearly so low; its breadth
was sixty to eighty yards, its temperature 55 degrees to 58 degrees.
The breadth of the foaming Khawa was twelve to fifteen yards, and its
temperature 56.5 degrees. The surrounding vegetation was entirely
tropical, consisting of scrubby sal trees, acacia, _Grislea, Emblica,
Hibiscus,_ etc.; the elevation being but 1300 feet, though the spot
was twenty-five miles in a straight line from the plains. I camped at
the fork of the rivers, on a fine terrace fifty feet above the water,
about seventy yards long, and one hundred broad, quite flat-topped,
and composed of shingle, gravel, etc., with enormous boulders of
gneiss, quartz, and hornstone, much water-worn; it was girt by
another broken terrace, twelve feet or so above the water, and
covered with long grass and bushes.

The main road from Ilam to Wallanchoon, which I quitted on
Sakkiazung, descends steeply on the opposite bank of the river, which
I crossed in a canoe formed of a hollow trunk (of Toon), thirty feet
long. There is considerable traffic along this road; and I was
visited by numbers of natives, all Hindoos, who coolly squatted
before my tent-door, and stared with their large black, vacant,
lustrous eyes: they appear singularly indolent, and great beggars.

The land seems highly favoured by nature, and the population, though
so scattered, is in reality considerable, the varied elevation giving
a large surface; but the natives care for no more than will satisfy
their immediate wants. The river swarms with fish, but they are too
lazy to catch them, and they have seldom anything better to give or
sell than sticks of sugar-cane, which when peeled form a refreshing
morsel in these scorching marches. They have few and poor oranges,
citrons, and lemons, very bad plantains, and but little else;--eggs,
fowls, and milk are all scarce. Horned cattle are of course never
killed by Hindoos, and it was but seldom that I could replenish my
larder with a kid. Potatos are unknown, but my Sepoys often brought
me large coarse radishes and legumes.

From the junction of the rivers the road led up the Tambur to Mywa
Guola; about sixteen miles by the river, but fully thirty-five, as we
wound, ascended, and descended, during three days' marches. We were
ferried across the stream in a canoe much ruder than that of the New
Zealander. I watched my party crossing by boat-loads of fifteen each;
the Bhotan men hung little scraps of rags on the bushes before
embarking, the votive offerings of a Booddhist throughout central
Asia;--the Lepcha, less civilised, scooped up a little water in the
palm of his hand, and scattered it about, invoking the river god of
his simple creed.

We always encamped upon gravelly terraces a few feet above the river,
which flows in a deep gorge; its banks are very steep for 600 feet
above the stream, though the mountains which flank it do not exceed
4000 to 5000 feet: this is a constant phenomenon in the Himalaya, and
the roads, when low and within a few hundred feet of the river, are
in consequence excessively steep and difficult; it would have been
impossible to have taken ponies along that we followed, which was
often not a foot broad, running along very steep cliffs, at a dizzy
height above the river, and engineered with much trouble and
ingenuity: often the bank was abandoned altogether, and we ascended
several thousand feet to descend again. Owing to the steepness of
these banks, and the reflected heat, the valley, even at this season,
was excessively hot and close during the day, even when the
temperature was below 70 degrees, and tempered by a brisk breeze
which rushes upwards from sunrise to sunset. The sun at this season
does not, in many places, reach the bottom of these valleys until 10
a.m., and is off again by 3 p.m.; and the radiation to a clear sky is
so powerful that dew frequently forms in the shade, throughout the
day, and it is common at 10 a.m. to find the thermometer sink from 70
degrees in a sheltered spot, dried by the sun, to 40 degrees in the
shade close by, where the sun has not yet penetrated. Snow never
falls.

The rocks throughout this part of the river-course are mica-schists
(strike north-west, dip south-west 70 degrees, but very variable in
inclination and direction); they are dry and grassy, and the
vegetation wholly tropical, as is the entomology, which consists
chiefly of large butterflies, _Mantis_ and _Diptera._ Snowy mountains
are rarely seen, and the beauty of the scenery is confined to the
wooded banks of the main stream, which flows at an average
inclination of fifty feet to the mile. Otters are found in the
stream, and my party shot two, but could not procure them.

Illustration--TAMBUR RIVER & VALLEY (EAST NEPAL) FROM CHINTAM.
(ELEVATION 5000 FT.) LOOKING NORTH.

In one place the road ascended for 2000 feet above the river, to the
village of Chingtam, situated on a lofty spur of the west bank,
whence I obtained a grand view of the upper course of the river,
flowing in a tremendous chasm, flanked by well-cultivated hills, and
emerging fifteen miles to the northward, from black mountains of
savage grandeur, whose rugged, precipitous faces were streaked with
snow, and the tops of the lower ones crowned with the
tabular-branched silver-fir, contrasting strongly with the tropical
luxuriance around. Chingtam is an extensive village, covering an area
of two miles, and surrounded with abundant cultivation; the houses,
which are built in clusters, are of wood, or wattle and mud, with
grass thatch. The villagers, though an indolent, staring race, are
quiet and respectable; the men are handsome, the women, though less
so, often good-looking. They have fine cattle, and excellent crops.

Immediately above Chingtam, the Tambur is joined by a large affluent
from the west, the Mywa, which is crossed by an excellent iron
bridge, formed of loops hanging from two parallel chains, along which
is laid a plank of sal timber. Passing through the village, we camped
on a broad terrace, from sixty to seventy feet above the junction of
the rivers, whose beds are 2100 feet above the sea.

Mywa Guola (or bazaar) is a large village and mart, frequented by
Nepalese and Tibetans, who bring salt, wool, gold, musk, and
blankets, to exchange for rice, coral, and other commodities; and a
custom-house officer is stationed there, with a few soldiers.
The houses are of wood, and well built: the public ones are large,
with verandahs, and galleries of carved wood; the workmanship is of
Chinese character, and inferior to that of Katmandoo; but in the same
style, and quite unlike anything I had previously seen.

The river-terrace is in all respects similar to that at the junction
of the Tambur and Khawa, but very extensive: the stones it contained
were of all sizes, from a nut to huge boulders upwards of fifteen
feet long, of which many strewed the surface, while others were in
the bed of the river: all were of gneiss, quartz, and granite, and
had doubtless been transported from great elevations, as the rocks
_in situ_--both here and for several thousand feet higher up the
river--were micaceous schists, dipping in various directions, and at
all angles, with, however, a general strike to the north-west.

I was here overtaken by a messenger with letters from Dr. Campbell,
announcing that the Sikkim Rajah had disavowed the refusal to the
Governor-General's letter, and authorising me to return through any
part of Sikkim I thought proper. The bearer was a Lepcha attached to
the court: his dress was that of a superior person, being a scarlet
jacket over a white cotton dress, the breadth of the blue stripes of
which generally denotes wealth; he was accompanied by a sort of
attache, who wore a magnificent pearl and gold ear-ring, and carried
his master's bow, as well as a basket on his back; while an attendant
coolie bore their utensils and food. Meepo, or Teshoo (in Tibetan,
Mr.), Meepo, as he was usually called, soon attached himself to me,
and proved an active, useful, and intelligent companion, guide, and
often collector, during many months afterwards.

The vegetation round Mywa Guola is still thoroughly tropical: the
banyan is planted, and thrives tolerably, the heat being great during
the day. Like the whole of the Tambur valley below 4000 feet, and
especially on these flats, the climate is very malarious before and
after the rains; and I was repeatedly applied to by natives suffering
under attacks of fever. During the two days I halted, the mean
temperature was 60 degrees (extremes, 80/41 degrees), that of the
Tambur, 53 degrees, and of the Mywa, 56 degrees; each varying a few
degrees (the smaller stream the most) between sunrise and 4 p.m.: the
sunk thermometer was 72 degrees.

As we should not easily be able to procure food further on, I laid in
a full stock here, and distributed blankets, etc., sufficient for
temporary use for all the people, dividing them into groups or messes.



CHAPTER IX.

Leave Mywa--Suspension bridge--Landslips--Vegetation--Slope
of riverbed--Bees' nests--Glacial phenomena--Tibetans,
clothing, ornaments, amulets, salutation, children, dogs--Last
Limboo village, Taptiatok--Beautiful scenery--Tibet village of
Lelyp--_Opuntia_--_Edgeworthia_--Crab-apple--Chameleon and
porcupine--Praying machine--_Abies Brunoniana_--European plants
--Grand scenery--Arrive at Wallanchoon--Scenery around--Trees
--Tibet houses--Manis and Mendongs--Tibet household--Food--
Tea-soup--Hospitality--Yaks and Zobo, uses and habits of--
Bhoteeas--Yak-hair tents--Guobah of Walloong--Jhatamansi--
Obstacles to proceeding--Climate and weather--Proceed--
Rhododendrons, etc.--Lichens--_Poa annua_ and Shepherd's purse--
Tibet camp--Tuquoroma--Scenery of pass--Glaciers and snow--
Summit--Plants, woolly, etc.

On the 18th November, we left Mywa Guola, and continued up the river
to the village of Wallanchoon or Walloong, which was reached in six
marches. The snowy peak of Junnoo (alt. 25,312 feet.) forms a
magnificent feature from this point, seen up the narrow gorge of the
river, bearing N.N.E. about thirty miles. I crossed the Mewa, an
affluent from the north, by another excellent suspension bridge.
In these bridges, the principal chains are clamped to rocks on either
shore, and the suspended loops occur at intervals of eight to ten
feet; the single sal-plank laid on these loops swings terrifically,
and the handrails not being four feet high, the sense of insecurity
is very great.

The Wallanchoon road follows the west bank, but the bridge above
having been carried away, we crossed by a plank, and proceeded along
very steep banks of decomposed chlorite schist, much contorted, and
very soapy, affording an insecure footing, especially where great
landslips had occurred, which were numerous, exposing acres of a
reddish and white soil of felspathic clay, sloping at an angle of 30
degrees. Where the angle was less than 15 degrees, rice was
cultivated, and partially irrigated. The lateral streams (of a muddy
opal green) had cut beds 200 feet deep in the soft earth, and were
very troublesome to cross, from the crumbling cliffs on either side,
and their broad swampy channels.

Five or six miles above Mywa, the valley contracts much, and the
Tambur (whose bed is elevated about 3000 feet) becomes a turbulent
river, shooting along its course with immense velocity, torn into
foam as it lashes the spurs of rock that flank it, and the enormous
boulders with which its bed is strewn.* [In some places torrents of
stone were carried down by landslips, obstructing the rivers; when in
the beds of streams, they were often cemented by felspathic clay into
a hard breccia of angular quartz, gneiss, and felspar nodules.] From
this elevation to 9000 feet, its sinuous track extends about thirty
miles, which gives the mean fall of 200 feet to the mile, quadruple
of what it is for the lower part of its course. So long as its bed is
below 5000 feet, a tropical vegetation prevails in the gorge, and
along the terraces, consisting of tall bamboo, _Bauhinia, Acacia,
Melastoma,_ etc.; but the steep mountain sides above are either bare
and grassy, or cliffs with scattered shrubs and trees, and their
summits are of splintered slaty gneiss, bristling with pines: those
faces exposed to the south and east are invariably the driest and
most grassy; while the opposite are well wooded. _Rhododendron
arboreum_ becomes plentiful at 5000 to 6000 feet, forming a large
tree on dry clayey slopes; it is accompanied by _Indigofera,
Andromeda,_ _Spiraea,_ shrubby _Compositae,_ and very many plants
absent at similar elevations on the wet outer Dorjiling ranges.

In the contracted parts of the valley, the mountains often dip to the
river-bed, in precipices of gneiss, under the ledges of which wild
bees build pendulous nests, looking like huge bats suspended by their
wings; they are two or three feet long, and as broad at the top,
whence they taper downwards: the honey is much sought for, except in
spring, when it is said to be poisoned by Rhododendron flowers, just
as that, eaten by the soldiers in the retreat of the Ten Thousand,
was by the flowers of the _R. ponticum._

Above these gorges are enormous accumulations of rocks, especially at
the confluence of lateral valleys, where they rest upon little flats,
like the river-terraces of Mywa, but wholly formed of angular
shingle, flanked with beds of river-formed gravel: some of these
boulders were thirty or forty yards across, and split as if they had
fallen from a height; the path passing between the fragments.* [The
split fragments I was wholly unable to account for, till my attention
was directed by Mr. Darwin to the observations of Charpentier and
Agassiz, who refer similar ones met with in the Alps, to rocks which
have fallen through crevasses in glaciers.--See "Darwin on Glaciers
and Transported Boulders in North Wales." London, "Phil. Mag." xxi.
p. 180.] At first I imagined that they had been precipitated from the
mountains around; and I referred the shingle to land-shoots, which
during the rains descend several thousand feet in devastating
avalanches, damming up the rivers, and destroying houses, cattle, and
cultivation; but though I still refer the materials of many such
terraces to this cause, I consider those at the mouths of valleys to
be due to ancient glacial action, especially when laden with such
enormous blocks as are probably ice-transported.

A change in the population accompanies that in the natural features
of the country, Tibetans replacing the Limboos and Khass-tribes of
Nepal, who inhabit the lower region. We daily passed parties of ten
or a dozen Tibetans, on their way to Mywa Guola, laden with salt;
several families of these wild, black, and uncouth-looking people
generally travelling together. The men are middle-sized, often tall,
very square-built and muscular; they have no beard, moustache, or
whiskers, the few hairs on their faces being carefully removed with
tweezers. They are dressed in loose blanket robes, girt about the
waist with a leather belt, in which they place their iron or brass
pipes, and from which they suspend their long knives, chopsticks,
tobacco-pouch, tweezers, tinder-box, etc. The robe, boots, and cap
are grey, or striped with bright colours, and they wear skull-caps,
and the hair plaited into a pig-tail.

The women are dressed in long flannel petticoats and spencer, over
which is thrown a sleeveless, short, striped cloak, drawn round the
waist by a girdle of broad brass or silver links, to which hang their
knives, scissors, needlecases, etc., and with which they often strap
their children to their backs; the hair is plaited in two tails, and
the neck loaded with strings of coral and glass beads, and great
lumps of amber, glass, and agate. Both sexes wear silver rings and
ear-rings, set with turquoises, and square amulets upon their necks
and arms, which are boxes of gold or silver, containing small idols,
or the nail-parings, teeth, or other reliques of some sainted Lama,
accompanied with musk, written prayers, and other charms. All are
good-humoured and amiable-looking people, very square and Mongolian
in countenance, with broad mouths, high cheek-bones, narrow, upturned
eyes, broad, flat noses, and low foreheads. White is their natural
colour, and rosy cheeks are common amongst the younger women and
children, but all are begrimed with filth and smoke; added to which,
they become so weather-worn from exposure to the most rigorous
climate in the world, that their natural hues are rarely to be
recognised. Their customary mode of saluting one another is to hold
out the tongue, grin, nod, and scratch their ear; but this method
entails so much ridicule in the low countries, that they do not
practise it to Nepalese or strangers; most of them when meeting me,
on the contrary, raised their hands to their eyes, threw themselves
on the ground, and kotowed most decorously, bumping their foreheads
three times on the ground; even the women did this on several
occasions. On rising, they begged for a bucksheesh, which I gave in
tobacco or snuff, of which they are immoderately fond. Both men and
women constantly spin wool as they travel.

Illustration--TIBET MASTIFF.

These motley groups of Tibetans are singularly picturesque, from the
variety in their parti-coloured dresses, and their odd appearance.
First comes a middle-aged man or woman, driving a little silky black
yak, grunting under his load of 260 lb. of salt, besides pots, pans,
and kettles, stools, churn, and bamboo vessels, keeping up a constant
rattle, and perhaps, buried amongst all, a rosy-cheeked and lipped
baby, sucking a lump of cheese-curd. The main body follow in due
order, and you are soon entangled amidst sheep and goats, each with
its two little bags of salt: beside these, stalks the huge, grave,
bull-headed mastiff, loaded like the rest, his glorious bushy tail
thrown over his back in a majestic sweep, and a thick collar of
scarlet wool round his neck and shoulders, setting off his long silky
coat to the best advantage; he is decidedly the noblest-looking of
the party, especially if a fine and pure black one, for they are
often very ragged, dun-coloured, sorry beasts. He seems rather out of
place, neither guarding nor keeping the party together, but he knows
that neither yaks, sheep, nor goats, require his attention; all are
perfectly tame, so he takes his share of work as salt-carrier by day,
and watches by night as well. The children bring up the rear,
laughing and chatting together; they, too, have their loads, even to
the youngest that can walk alone.

The last village of the Limboos, Taptiatok, is large, and occupies a
remarkable amphitheatre, apparently a lake-bed, in the course of the
Tambur. After proceeding some way through a narrow gorge, along which
the river foamed and roared, the sudden opening out of this broad,
oval expanse, more than a mile long, was very striking: the mountains
rose bare and steep, the west flank terminating in shivered masses of
rock, while that on the right was more undulating, dry, and grassy:
the surface was a flat gravel-bed, through which meandered the
rippling stream, fringed with alder. It was a beautiful spot, the
clear, cool, murmuring river, with its rapids and shallows, forcibly
reminding me of trout-streams in the highlands of Scotland.

Beyond Taptiatok we again crossed the river, and ascended over dry,
grassy, or rocky spurs to Lelyp, the first Bhoteea village; it stands
on a hill fully 1000 feet above the river, and commands a splendid
view up the Yalloong and Kambachen valleys, which open immediately to
the east, and appear as stupendous chasms in the mountains leading to
the perpetual snows of Kinchin-junga. There were about fifty houses
in the village, of wood and thatch, neatly fenced in with wattle, the
ground between being carefully cultivated with radishes, buckwheat,
wheat, and millet. I was surprised to find in one enclosure a fine
healthy plant of _Opuntia,_ in flower, at this latitude and
elevation. A Lama, who is the head man of the place, came out to
greet us, with his family and a whole troop of villagers; they were
the same class of people as I have elsewhere described as Cis-nivean
Tibetans, or Bhoteeas; none had ever before seen an Englishman, and I
fear they formed no flattering opinion from the specimen now
presented to them, as they seemed infinitely amused at my appearance,
and one jolly dame clapped her hands to her sides, and laughed at my
spectacles, till the hills echoed.

_Elaeagnus_ was common here, with _Edgeworthia Gardneri,_* [A plant
allied to _Daphne,_ from whose bark the Nepal paper is manufactured.
It was named after the eminent Indian botanist, brother of the late
Miss Edgeworth.] a beautiful shrub, with globes of waxy,
cowslip-coloured, deliciously scented flowers; also a wild apple,
which bears a small austere fruit, like the Siberian crab. In the bed
of the river rice was still cultivated by Limboos, and subtropical
plants continued. I saw, too, a chameleon and a porcupine, indicating
much warmth, and seeming quite foreign to the heart of these
stupendous mountains. From 6000 to 7000 feet, plants of the temperate
regions blend with the tropical; such as rhododendron, oak, ivy,
geranium, berberry, clematis, and shrubby _Vaccinia,_ which all made
their appearance at Loongtoong, another Bhoteea village. Here, too, I
first saw a praying machine, turned by water; it was enclosed in a
little wooden house, and consisted of an upright cylinder containing
a prayer, and with the words, "Om mani padmi om," (Hail to him of the
Lotus and Jewel) painted on the circumference: it was placed over a
stream, and made to rotate on its axis by a spindle which passed
through the floor of the building into the water, and was terminated
by a wheel.

Above this the road followed the west bank of the river; the latter
was a furious torrent, flowing through a gorge, fringed with a sombre
vegetation, damp, and dripping with moisture, and covered with long
_Usnea_ and pendulous mosses. The road was very rocky and difficult,
sometimes leading along bluff faces of cliffs by wooden steps and
single rotten planks. At 8000 feet I met with pines, whose trunks I
had seen strewing the river for some miles lower down: the first that
occurred was _Abies Brunoniana,_ a beautiful species, which forms a
stately blunt pyramid, with branches spreading like the cedar, but
not so stiff, and drooping gracefully on all sides. It is unknown on
the outer ranges of Sikkim, and in the interior occupies a belt about
1000 feet lower than the silver fir (_A. Webbiana_). Many sub-alpine
plants occur here, as _Lecesteria, Thalictrum,_ rose, thistles,
alder, birch, ferns, berberry, holly, anemone, strawberry, raspberry,
_Gnaphalium,_ the alpine bamboo, and oaks. The scenery is as grand as
any pictured by Salvator Rosa; a river roaring in sheets of foam,
sombre woods, crags of gneiss, and tier upon tier of lofty mountains
flanked and crested with groves of black firs, terminating in
snow-sprinkled rocky peaks.

Illustration--TAMBUR RIVER AT THE LOWER LIMIT OF PINES.

I now found the temperature getting rapidly cooler, both that of the
air, which here at 8,066 feet fell to 32 degrees in the night, and
that of the river, which was always below 40 degrees. It was in these
narrow valleys only, that I observed the return cold current rushing
down the river-courses during the nights, which were usually
brilliant and very cold, with copious dew: so powerful, indeed, was
the radiation, that the upper blanket of my bed became coated with
moisture, from the rapid abstraction of heat by the frozen tarpaulin
of my tent.

The rivers here are often fringed by flats of shingle, on which grow
magnificent yews and pines; some of the latter were from 120 to 150
feet high, and had been blown down, owing to their scanty hold on the
soil. I measured one, _Abies Brunoniana,_ twenty feet in girth.
Many alpine rhododendrons occur at 9000 feet, with _Astragalis_ and
creeping Tamarisk. Three miles below Wallanchoon the river forks,
being met by the Yangma from the north-east; they are impetuous
torrents of about equal volume; the Tambur especially (here called
the Walloong) is often broken into cascades, and cuts a deep
gorge-like channel.

I arrived at the village of Wallanchoon on the 23rd of November.
It is elevated 10,385 feet, and situated in a fine open part of the
Tambur valley, differing from any part lower down in all its natural
features; being broad, with a rapid but not turbulent stream, very
grassy, and both the base and sides of the flanking mountains covered
with luxuriant dense bushes of rhododendron, rose, berberry and
juniper. Red-legged crows, hawks, wild pigeons, and finches,
abounded. There was but little snow on the mountains around, which
are bare and craggy above, but sloping below. Bleak and forbidding as
the situation of any Himalayan village at 10,000 feet elevation must
be, that of Wallanchoon is rendered the more so from the
comparatively few trees; for though the silver fir and juniper are
both abundant higher up the valley, they have been felled here for
building materials, fuel, and export to Tibet. From the naked limbs
and tall gaunt black trunks of those that remain, stringy masses of
bleached lichen (_Usnea_) many feet long, stream in the wind.
Both men and women seemed fond of decorating their hair with wreaths
of this lichen, which they dye yellow with leaves of _Symplocos._

Illustration--WALLANCHOON VILLAGE.

The village is very large, and occupies a flat on the east bank of
the river, covered with huge boulders: the ascent to it is extremely
steep, probably over an ancient moraine, though I did not recognise
it as such at the time. Cresting this, the valley at once opens, and
I was almost startled with the sudden change from a gloomy gorge to a
broad flat and a populous village of large and good painted wooden
houses, ornamented with hundreds of long poles and vertical flags,
looking like the fleet of some foreign port; while a swarm of
good-natured, intolerably dirty Tibetans, were kotowing to me as
I advanced.

The houses crept up the base of the mountain, on the flank of which
was a very large, long convent; two-storied, and painted scarlet,
with a low black roof, and backed by a grove of dark junipers; while
the hill-sides around were thickly studded with bushes of deep green
rhododendron, scarlet berberry, and withered yellow rose. The village
contained about one hundred houses, irregularly crowded together,
from twenty to forty feet high, and forty to eighty feet long; each
accommodating several families. All were built of upright strong
pine-planks, the interstices of which were filled with yak-dung; and
they sometimes rest on a low foundation wall: the door was generally
at the gable end; it opened with a latch and string; and turned on a
wooden pivot; the only window was a slit closed by a shutter; and the
roofs were very low-pitched, covered with shingles kept down by
stones. The paths were narrow and filthy; and the only public
buildings besides the convents were Manis and Mendongs; of these the
former are square-roofed temples, containing rows of praying-
cylinders placed close together, from four to six feet high,
and gaudily painted; some are turned by hand, and others by water:
the latter are walls ornamented with slabs of clay and mica slate,
with "Om Mani Padmi om" well carved on them in two characters, and
repeated _ad infinitum._

A Tibetan household is very slovenly; the family live higgledy-
piggledy in two or more apartments, the largest of which has an open
fire on the earth, or on a stone if the floor be of wood. The pots
and tea-pot are earthen and copper; and these, with the bamboo
churn for the brick tea, some wooden and metal spoons, bowls, and
platters, comprise all the kitchen utensils.

Every one carries in the breast of his robe a little wooden cup for
daily use; neatly turned from the knotted roots of maple (see Chapter
V). The Tibetan chiefly consumes barley, wheat, or buckwheat
meal--the latter is confined to the poorer classes--with milk,
butter, curd, and parched wheat; fowls, eggs, pork, and yak flesh
when he can afford it, and radishes, a few potatos, legumes, and
turnips in their short season. His drink is a sort of soup made from
brick tea, of which a handful of leaves is churned up with salt,
butter, and soda, then boiled and transferred to the tea-pot, whence
it is poured scalding hot into each cup, which the good woman of the
house keeps incessantly replenishing, and urging you to drain.
Sometimes, but more rarely, the Tibetans make a drink by pouring
boiling water over malt, as the Lepchas do over millet. A pipe of
yellow mild Chinese tobacco generally follows the meal; more often,
however, their tobacco is brought from the plains of India, when it
is of a very inferior description. The pipe carried in the girdle, is
of brass or iron, often with an agate, amber, or bamboo mouth-piece.

Many herds of fine yaks were grazing about Wallanchoon: there were a
few ponies, sheep, goats, fowls, and pigs, but very little
cultivation except turnips, radishes, and potatos. The yak is a very
tame, domestic animal, often handsome, and a true bison in
appearance; it is invaluable to these mountaineers from its strength
and hardiness, accomplishing, at a slow pace, twenty miles a day,
bearing either two bags of salt or rice, or four to six planks of
pinewood slung in pairs along either flank. Their ears are generally
pierced, and ornamented with a tuft of scarlet worsted; they have
large and beautiful eyes, spreading horns, long silky black hair, and
grand bushy tails: black is their prevailing colour, but red, dun,
parti-coloured, and white are common. In winter, the flocks graze
below 8000 feet, on account of the great quantity of snow above that
height; in summer they find pasturage as high as 17,000 feet,
consisting of grass and small tufted _Carices,_ on which they browse
with avidity.

The zobo, or cross between the yak and hill cow (much resembling the
English cow), is but rarely seen in these mountains, though common in
the North West Himalaya. The yak is used as a beast of burden; and
much of the wealth of the people consists in its rich milk and curd,
eaten either fresh or dried, or powdered into a kind of meal.
The hair is spun into ropes, and woven into a covering for their
tents, which is quite pervious to wind and rain;* [The latter is,
however, of little consequence in the dry climate of Tibet.] from the
same material are made the gauze shades for the eyes used in crossing
snowy passes. The bushy tail forms the well-known "chowry" or
fly-flapper of the plains of India; the bones and dung serve for
fuel. The female drops one calf in April; and the young yaks are very
full of gambols, tearing up and down the steep grassy and rocky
slopes: their flesh is delicious, much richer and more juicy than
common veal; that of the old yak is sliced and dried in the sun,
forming jerked meat, which is eaten raw, the scanty proportion of fat
preventing its becoming very rancid, so that I found it palatable
food: it is called _schat-tcheu_ (dried meat). I never observed the
yak to be annoyed by any insects; indeed at the elevation it
inhabits, there are no large diptera, bots, or gadflies to infest it.
It loves steep places, delighting to scramble among rocks, and to sun
its black hide perched on the glacial boulders which strew the
Wallanchoon flat, and on which these beasts always sleep. Their
average value is from two to three pounds, but the price varies with
the season. In autumn, when her calf is killed for food, the mother
will yield no milk, unless the herdsman gives it the calf's foot to
lick, or lays a stuffed skin before it, to fondle, which it does with
eagerness, expressing its satisfaction by short grunts, exactly like
those of a pig, a sound which replaces the low uttered by ordinary
cattle. The yak, though indifferent to ice and snow and to changes of
temperature, cannot endure hunger so long as the sheep, nor pick its
way so well upon stony ground. Neither can it bear damp heat, for
which reason it will not live in summer below 7000 feet, where liver
disease carries it off after a very few years.* [Nevertheless, the
yak seems to have survived the voyage to England. I find in Turner's
"Tibet" (p. 189), that a bull sent by that traveller to Mr. Hastings,
reached England alive, and after suffering from languor, so far
recovered its health and vigour as to become the father of many
calves. Turner does not state by what mother these calves were born,
an important omission, as he adds that all these died but one cow,
which bore a calf by an Indian bull. A painting of the yak (copied
into Turner's book) by Stubbs, the animal painter, may be seen in the
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. The artist is
probably a little indebted to description for the appearance of its
hair in a native state, for it is represented much too even in
length, and reaching to too uniform a depth from the flanks.] Lastly,
the yak is ridden, especially by the fat Lamas, who find its shaggy
coat warm, and its paces easy; under these circumstances it is always
led. The wild yak or bison (D'hong) of central Asia, the superb
progenitor of this animal, is the largest native animal of Tibet, in
various parts of which country it is found; and the Tibetans say, in
reference to its size, that the liver is a load for a tame yak.
The Sikkim Dewan gave Dr. Campbell and myself an animated account of
the chase of this animal, which is hunted by large dogs, and shot
with a blunderbuss: it is untameable and horridly fierce, falling
upon you with horns and chest, and if he rasps you with his tongue,
it is so rough as to scrape the flesh from the bones. The horn is
used as a drinking-cup in marriage feasts, and on other grand
occasions. My readers are probably familiar with Messrs. Huc and
Gabet's account of a herd of these animals being frozen fast in the
head-waters of the Yangtsekiang river. There is a noble specimen in
the British Museum not yet set up, and another is preparing for
exhibition in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham.

The inhabitants of these frontier districts belong to two very
different tribes, but all are alike called Bhoteeas (from Bhote, the
proper name of Tibet), and have for many centuries been located in
what is--in climate and natural features--a neutral ground between
dry Tibet Proper, and the wet Himalayan gorges. They inhabit a
climate too cold for either the Lepcha or Nepalese, migrating between
6000 and 15,000 feet with the seasons, always accompanied by their
herds. In all respects of appearance, religion, manners, customs, and
language, they are Tibetans and Lama Booddhists, but they pay tax to
the Nepal and Sikkim Rajahs, to whom they render immense service by
keeping up and facilitating the trade in salt, wool, musk, etc.,
which could hardly be conducted without their co-operation. They levy
a small tax on all imports, and trade a little on their own account,
but are generally poor and very indolent. In their alpine summer
quarters they grow scanty crops of wheat, barley, turnips, and
radishes; and at their winter quarters, as at Loongtoong, the better
classes cultivate fine crops of buck-wheat, millet, spinach, etc.;
though seldom enough for their support, as in spring they are obliged
to buy rice from the inhabitants of the lower regions.
Equally dependent on Nepal and Tibet, they very naturally hold
themselves independent of both; and I found that my roving commission
from the Nepal Rajah was not respected, and the guard of Ghorkas held
very cheap.

On my arrival at Wallanchoon, I was conducted to two tents, each
about eight feet long, of yak's hair, striped blue and white, which
had been pitched close to the village for my accommodation. Though
the best that could be provided, and larger than my own, they were
wretched in the extreme, being of so loose a texture that the wind
blew through them: each was formed of two cloths with a long slit
between them, that ran across the top, giving egress to the smoke,
and ingress to the weather: they were supported on two short poles,
kept to the ground by large stones, and fastened by yak's hair ropes.
A fire was smoking vigorously in the centre of one, and some planks
were laid at the end for my bed. A crowd of people soon came to stare
and loll out their tongues at me, my party, and travelling equipage;
though very civil, and only offensive in smell, they were
troublesome, from their eager curiosity to see and handle everything;
so that I had to place a circle of stones round the tents, whilst a
soldier stood by, on the alert to keep them off. A more idle people
are not to be found, except with regard to spinning, which is their
constant occupation, every man and woman carrying a bundle of wool in
the breast of their garments, which is spun by hand with a spindle,
and wound off on two cross-pieces at its lower end. Spinning,
smoking, and tea-drinking are their chief pursuits; and the women
take all the active duties of the dairy and house. They live very
happily together, fighting being almost unknown.

Soon after my arrival I was waited on by the Guobah (or head-man), a
tall, good-looking person, dressed in a purple woollen robe, with
good pearl and coral ear and finger-rings, and a broad ivory ring
over the left thumb,* [A broad ring of this material, agate, or
chalcedony, is a mark of rank here, as amongst the Man-choos, and
throughout Central Asia.] as a guard when using the bow; he wore a
neat thick white felt cap, with the border turned up, and a silk
tassel on the top; this he removed with both hands and held before
him, bowing three times on entering. He was followed by a crowd, some
of whom were his own people, and brought a present of a kid, fowls,
rice, and eggs, and some spikenard roots (_Nardostachys Jatamansi,_ a
species of valerian smelling strongly of patchouli), which is a very
favourite perfume. After paying some compliments, he showed me round
the village. During my walk, I found that I had a good many
objections to overrule before I could proceed to the Wallanchoon
pass, nearly two days' journey to the northward. In the first place,
the Guobah disputed the Nepal rajah's authority to pass me through
his dominions; and besides the natural jealousy of these people when
intruded upon, they have very good reasons for concealing the amount
of revenue they raise from their position, and for keeping up the
delusion that they alone can endure the excessive climate of these
regions, or undergo the hardships and toil of the salt trade. My
passport said nothing about the passes; my people, and especially the
Ghorkas, detested the keen, cold, and cutting wind; at Mywa Guola, I
had been persuaded by the Havildar to put off providing snow-boots
and blankets, on the assurance that I should easily get them at
Walloong, which I now found all but impossible, owing to there being
no bazaar. My provisions were running short, and for the same reason
I had no present hope of replenishing them. All my party had, I
found, reckoned with certainty that I should have had enough of this
elevation and weather by the time I reached Walloong. Some of them
fell sick; the Guobah swore that the passes were full of snow, and
had been impracticable since October; and the Ghorka Havildar
respectfully deposed that he had no orders relative to the pass.
Prompt measures were requisite, so I told all my people that I should
stop the next day at Walloong, and proceed on the following on a
three days' journey to the pass, with or without the Guobah's
permission. To the Ghorka soldiers I said that the present they would
receive, and the character they would take to their commandant,
depended on their carrying out this point, which had been fully
explained before starting. My servants I told that their pay and
reward also depended on their implicit obedience. I took the Guobah
aside and showed him troops of yaks (tethered by halters and toggles
to a long rope stretched between two rocks), which had that morning
arrived laden with salt from the north; I told him it was vain to try
and deceive me; that my passport was ample, and that I should expect
a guide, provisions, and snow-boots the next day; and that every
impediment and every facility should be reported to the rajah.

During my two days' stay at Walloong, the weather was bitterly cold:
as heretofore, the nights and mornings were cloudless, but by noon
the whole sky became murky, the highest temperature (50 degrees)
occurring at 10 a.m. At this season the prospect from this elevation
(10,385 feet), was dreary in the extreme; and the quantity of snow on
the mountains, which was continually increasing, held out a dismal
promise for my chance of exploring lofty uninhabited regions.
All annual and deciduous vegetation had long past, and the lofty
Himalayas are very poor in mosses and lichens, as compared with the
European Alps, and arctic regions in general. The temperature
fluctuated from 22 degrees at sunrise, to 50 degrees at 10 a.m.; the
mean being 35 degrees;* [This gives 1 degrees Fahr. for every 309
feet of elevation, using contemporaneous observations at Calcutta,
and correcting for latitude, etc.] one night it fell to 64 degrees.
Throughout the day, a south wind blew strong and cold up the valley,
and at sunset was replaced by a keen north blast, searching every
corner, and piercing through tent and blankets. Though the sun's rays
were hot for an hour or two in the morning, its genial influence was
never felt in the wind. The air was never very dry, the wet-bulb
thermometer standing during the day 3.75 degrees below the dry, thus
giving a mean dew-point of 30.25 degrees. A thermometer sunk two feet
stood at 44 degrees, fully 9 degrees above the mean temperature of
the air; one exposed to the clear sky, stood, during the day, several
degrees below the air in shade, and, at night, from 9 degrees to
14.75 degrees lower. The black-bulb thermometer, in the sun, rose to
65.75 degrees above the air, indicating upwards of 90 degrees
difference at nearly the warmest part of the day, between contiguous
shaded and sunny exposures. The sky, when cloudless, was generally a
cold blue or steel-grey colour, but at night the stars were large,
and twinkled gloriously. The black-glass photometer indicated 10.521
inches* [On three mornings the maxima occurred at between 9 and 10
a.m. They were, Nov. 24th, 10.509, Nov. 25th, 10.521. On the 25th, at
Tuquoroma, I recorded 10.510. The maximum effect observed at
Dorjiling (7340 feet) was 10.328, and on the plains of India 10.350.
The maximum I ever recorded was in Yangma valley (15,186 feet),
10.572 at 1 p.m.] as the maximum intensity of sunlight; the
temperature of the river close by fell to 32 degrees during the
night, and rose to 37 degrees in the day. In my tent, the temperature
fluctuated with the state of the fire, from 26 degrees at night to 58
degrees when the sun beat on it; but the only choice was between cold
and suffocating smoke.

After a good many conferences with the Guobah, some bullying, douce
violence, persuasions, and the prescribing of pills, prayers, and
charms in the shape of warm water, for the sick of the village,
whereby I gained some favour, I was, on the 25th Nov., grudgingly
prepared for the trip to Wallanchoon, with a guide, and some
snow-boots for those of my party whom I took with me.

The path lay north-west up the valley, which became thickly wooded
with silver-fir and juniper; we gradually ascended, crossing many
streams from lateral gulleys, and huge masses of boulders. Evergreen
rhododendrons soon replaced the firs, growing in inconceivable
profusion, especially on the slopes facing the south: east, and with
no other shrubs or tree-vegetation, but scattered bushes of rose,
_Spiraea,_ dwarf juniper, stunted birch, willow, honey-suckle,
berberry, and a mountain-ash (_Pyrus_). What surprised me more than
the prevalence of rhododendron bushes, was the number of species of
this genus, easily recognised by the shape of their capsules, the
form and woolly covering of the leaves; none were in flower, but I
reaped a rich harvest of seed. At 12,000 feet the valley was wild,
open, and broad, with sloping mountains clothed for 1000 feet with
dark-green rhododendron bushes; the river ran rapidly, and was broken
into falls here and there. Huge angular and detached masses of rock
were scattered about, and to the right and left snowy peaks towered
over the surrounding mountains, while amongst the latter narrow
gulleys led up to blue patches of glacial ice, with trickling streams
and shoots of stones. Dwarf rhododendrons with strongly-scented
leaves (_R. anthopogon_ and _setosum_), and abundance of a little
_Andromeda,_ exactly like ling, with woody stems and tufted branches,
gave a heathery appearance to the hill-sides. The prevalence of
lichens, common to this country and to Scotland (especially _L.
geographicus_), which coloured the rocks, added an additional feature
to the resemblance to Scotch Highland scenery. Along the narrow path
I found the two commonest of all British weeds, a grass (_Poa
annua_), and the shepherd's purse! They had evidently been imported
by man and yaks, and as they do not occur in India, I could not but
regard these little wanderers from the north with the deepest
interest.

Such incidents as these give rise to trains of reflection in the mind
of the naturalist traveller; and the farther he may be from home and
friends, the more wild and desolate the country he is exploring, the
greater the difficulties and dangers under which he encounters these
subjects of his earliest studies in science; so much keener is the
delight with which he recognises them, and the more lasting is the
impression which they leave. At this moment these common weeds more
vividly recall to me that wild scene than does all my journal, and
remind me how I went on my way, taxing my memory for all it ever knew
of the geographical distribution of the shepherd's purse, and musing
on the probability of the plant having found its way thither over all
Central Asia, and the ages that may have been occupied in its march.

On reaching 13,000 feet, the ground was everywhere hard and frozen,
and I experienced the first symptoms of lassitude, headache, and
giddiness; which however, were but slight, and only came on with
severe exertion.

We encountered a group of Tibetans, encamped to leeward of an immense
boulder of gneiss, against which they had raised a shelter with their
salt-bags, removed from their herd of yaks, which were grazing close
by. They looked miserably cold and haggard, and their little upturned
eyes, much inflamed and bloodshot, testified to the hardships they
had endured in their march from the salt regions: they were crouched
round a small fire of juniper wood, smoking iron pipes with agate
mouthpieces. A resting-house was in sight across the stream--a loose
stone hut, to which we repaired. I wondered why these Tibetans had
not taken possession of it, not being aware of the value they attach
to a rock, on account of the great warmth which it imbibes from the
sun's rays during the day, and retains at night. This invaluable
property of otherwise inhospitable gneiss and granite I had
afterwards many opportunities of proving; and when driven for a
night's shelter to such as rude nature might afford on the bleak
mountain, I have had my blankets laid beneath "the shadow of a great
rock in a weary land."

The name of Dhamersala is applied, in the mountains as in the plains
of India, to a house provided for the accommodation of travellers,
whether it be one of the beautiful caravanserais built to gratify the
piety, ostentation, or benevolence of a rajah, or such a miserable
shieling of rough stone and plank as that of Tuquoroma, in which we
took up our quarters, at 13,000 feet elevation. A cheerful fire soon
blazed on the earthen floor, filling the room with the pungent odour
of juniper, which made our eyes smart and water. The Ghorkas withdrew
to one corner, and my Lepchas to a second, while one end was screened
off for my couch; unluckily, the wall faced the north-east, and in
that direction there was a gulley in the snowy mountains, down which
the wind swept with violence, penetrating to my bed. I had calculated
upon a good night's rest here, which I much needed, having been
worried and unwell at Wallanchoon, owing to the Guobah's obstinacy. I
had not then learnt how to treat such conduct, and just before
retiring to rest had further been informed by the Havildar that the
Guobah declared we should find no food on our return. To remain in
these mountains without a supply was impossible, and the delay, of
sending to Mywa Guola would not have answered; so I long lay awake,
occupied in arranging measures. The night was clear and very cold;
the thermometer falling to 19 degrees at 9 p.m., and to 12 degrees in
the night, and that by my bedside to 20 degrees.

On the following morning (Nov. 26th) I started with a small party to
visit the pass, continuing up the broad, grassy valley; much snow lay
on the ground at 13,500 feet, which had fallen the previous month;
and several glaciers were seen in lateral ravines at about the same
elevation. After a couple of miles, we left the broad valley, which
continued north-west, and struck northward up a narrow, stony, and
steep gorge, crossing an immense ancient moraine at its mouth. This
path, which we followed for seven or eight miles, led up to the pass,
winding considerably, and keeping along the south-east exposures,
which, being the most sunny, are the freest from snow. The morning
was splendid, the atmosphere over the dry rocks and earth, at 14,000
feet, vibrating from the power of the sun's rays, whilst vast masses
of blue glacier and fields of snow choked every galley, and were
spread over all shady places. Although, owing to the steepness and
narrowness of the gorge, no view was obtained, the scenery was wild
and very grand. Just below where perpetual snow descends to the path,
an ugly carved head of a demon, with blood-stained cheeks and
goggle-eyes, was placed in a niche of rock, and protected by a glass.

At 15,000 feet, the snow closed in on the path from all sides,
whether perpetual, glacial, or only the October fall, I could not
tell; the guide declared it to be perpetual henceforward, though now
deepened by the very heavy October fall; the path was cut some three
feet through it. Enormous boulders of gneiss cumbered the bottom of
the gorge, which gradually widened as we approached its summit; and
rugged masses of black and red gneiss and mica schist pierced the
snow, and stood out in dismal relief. For four miles continuously we
proceeded over snow; which was much honey-combed on the surface, and
treacherous from the icy streams it covered, into which we every now
and then stumbled; there was scarcely a trace of vegetation, and the
cold was excessive, except in the sun.

Towards the summit of the pass the snow lay very deep, and we
followed the course of a small stream which cut through it, the walls
of snow being breast-high on each side; the path was still frequented
by yaks, of which we overtook a small party going to Tibet, laden
with planks. All the party appeared alike overcome by lassitude,
shortness and difficulty of breathing, a sense of weight on the
stomach, giddiness and headache, with tightness across the temples.

Just below the summit was a complete bay of snow, girdled with two
sharp peaks of red baked schists and gneiss, strangely contorted, and
thrown up at all angles with no prevalent dip or strike, and
permeated with veins of granite. The top itself, or boundary between
Nepal and Tibet, is a low saddle between two rugged ridges of rock,
with a cairn built on it, adorned with bits of stick and rag covered
with Tibetan inscriptions. The view into Tibet was not at all
distant, and was entirely of snowy mountains, piled ridge over ridge;
three of these spurs must, it is said, be crossed before any descent
can be made to the Chomachoo river (as the Arun is called in Tibet),
on which is the frontier fort of the Tibetans, and which is reached
in two or three days. There is no plain or level ground of any kind
before reaching that river, of which the valley is said to be wide
and flat.

Starting at 10 a.m., we did not reach the top till 3.30 p.m.; we had
halted nowhere, but the last few miles had been most laborious, and
the three of us who gained the summit were utterly knocked up.
Fortunately I carried my own barometer; it indicated 16.206 inches,
giving by comparative observations with Calcutta 16,764 feet, and
with Dorjiling, 16,748 feet, as the height of the pass.
The thermometer stood at 18 degrees, and the sun being now hidden
behind rocks, the south-east wind was bitterly cold. Hitherto the sun
had appeared as a clearly defined sparkling globe, against a dark-
blue sky; but the depth of the azure blue was not so striking as I
had been led to suppose, by the accounts of previous travellers, in
very lofty regions. The plants gathered near the top of the pass were
species of _Compositae,_ grass, and _Arenaria_; the most curious was
_Saussurea gossypina,_ which forms great clubs of the softest white
wool, six inches to a foot high, its flowers and leaves seeming
uniformly clothed with the warmest fur that nature can devise.
Generally speaking, the alpine plants of the Himalaya are quite
unprovided with any special protection of this kind; it is the
prevalence and conspicuous nature of the exceptions that mislead, and
induce the careless observer to generalise hastily from solitary
instances; for the prevailing alpine genera of the Himalaya,
_Arenarias,_ primroses, saxifrages, fumitories, _Ranunculi,_
gentians, grasses, sedges, etc., have almost uniformly naked foliage.

We descended to the foot of the pass in about two hours, darkness
overtaking us by the way; the twilight, however, being prolonged by
the glare of the snow. Fearing the distance to Tuquoroma might be too
great to permit of our returning thither the same night; I had had a
few things brought hither during the day, and finding they had
arrived, we encamped under the shelter of some enormous boulders (at
13,500 feet), part of an ancient moraine, which extended some
distance along the bed of the narrow valley. Except an excruciating
headache, I felt no ill effects from my ascent; and after a supper of
tea and biscuit, I slept soundly.

On the following morning the temperature was 28 degrees at 6.30 a.m.,
and rose to 30 degrees when the sun appeared over the mountains at
8.15, at which time the black bulb thermometer suddenly mounted to
112 degrees, upwards of 80 degrees above the temperature of the air.
The sky was brilliantly clear, with a very dry, cold, north wind
blowing down the snowy valley of the pass.



CHAPTER X.

Return from Wallanchoon pass--Procure a bazaar at village--Dance
of Lamas--Blacking face, Tibetan custom of--Temple and convent--
Leave for Kanglachem pass--Send part of party back to Dorjiling--
Yangma Guola--Drunken Tibetans--Guobah of Wallanchoon--Camp at
foot of Great Moraine--View from top--Geological speculations--
Height of moraines--Cross dry lake-bed--Glaciers--More moraines
--Terraces--Yangma temples--Jos, books and furniture--Peak of
Nango--Lake--Arrive at village--Cultivation--Scenery--
Potatos--State of my provisions--Pass through village--Gigantic
boulders Terraces--Wild sheep--Lake-beds--Sun's power--Piles
of gravel and detritus--Glaciers and moraines--Pabuk, elevation
of--Moonlight scene--Return to Yangma--Temperature, etc.--
Geological causes of phenomena in valley--Scenery of valley
on descent.

I returned to the village of Wallanchoon, after collecting all the
plants I could around my camp; amongst them a common-looking dock
abounded in the spots which the yaks had frequented.

The ground was covered, as with heather, with abundance of creeping
dwarf juniper, _Andromeda,_ and dwarf rhododendron. On arriving at
the village, I refused to receive the Guobah, unless he opened a
bazaar at daylight on the following morning, where my people might
purchase food; and threatened to bring charges against him before his
Rajah. At the same time I arranged for sending the main body of my
party down the Tambur, and so back to Sikkim, whilst I should, with
as few as possible, visit the Kanglachem (Tibetan) pass in the
adjacent valley to the eastward, and then, crossing the Nango,
Kambachen and Kanglanamo passes, reach Jongri in Sikkim, on the south
flank of Kinchinjunga.

Strolling out in the afternoon I saw a dance of Lamas; they were
disfigured with black paint* [I shall elsewhere have to refer to the
Tibetan custom of daubing the face with black pigment to protect the
skin from the excessive cold and dryness of these lofty regions; and
to the ludicrous imposition that was passed on the credulity of MM.
Huc and Gabet.] and covered with rags, feathers, and scarlet cloth,
and they carried long poles with bells and banners attached; thus
equipped, they marched through the village, every now and then
halting, when they danced and gesticulated to the rude music of
cymbals and horns, the bystanders applauding with shouts, crackers,
and alms.

I walked up to the convents, which were long ugly buildings, several
stories high, built of wood, and daubed with red and grey paint.
The priests were nowhere to be found, and an old withered nun, whom
I disturbed husking millet in a large wooden mortar, fled at my
approach. The temple stood close by the convent, and had a broad low
architrave: the walls sloped inwards, as did the lintels: the doors
were black, and almost covered with a gigantic and disproportioned
painting of a head, with bloody cheeks and huge teeth; it was
surrounded by myriads of goggle eyes, which seemed to follow one
about everywhere; and though in every respect rude, the effect was
somewhat imposing. The similarly proportioned gloomy portals of
Egyptian fanes naturally invite comparison; but the Tibetan temples
lack the sublimity of these; and the uncomfortable creeping sensation
produced by the many sleepless eyes of Boodh's numerous incarnations
is very different from the awe with which we contemplate the
outspread wings of the Egyptian symbol, and feel as in the presence
of the God who says, "I am Osiris the Great: no man hath dared to
lift my veil."

I had ascended behind the village, but returned down the "via sacra,"
a steep paved path flanked by mendongs or low stone dykes, into which
were let rows of stone slabs, inscribed with the sacred "Om Mani
Padmi om."--"Hail to him of the lotus and jewel"; an invocation of
Sakkya, who is usually represented holding a lotus flower with a
jewel in it.

On the following morning, a scanty supply of very dirty rice was
produced, at a very high price. I had, however, so divided my party
as not to require a great amount of food, intending to send most of
the people back by the Tambur to Dorjiling. I kept nineteen persons
in all, selecting the most willing, as it was evident the journey at
this season would be one of great hardship: we took seven days' food,
which was as much as they could carry. At noon, I left Wallanchoon,
and mustered my party at the junction of the Tambur and Yangma,
whence I dismissed the party for Dorjiling, with my collections of
plants, minerals, etc., and proceeded with the chosen ones to ascend
the Yangma river. The scenery was wild and very grand, our path lying
through a narrow gorge, choked with pine trees, down which the river
roared in a furious torrent; while the mountains on each side were
crested with castellated masses of rock, and sprinkled with snow.
The road was very bad, often up ladders, and along planks lashed to
the faces of precipices, and over-hanging the torrent, which it
crossed several times by plank bridges. By dark we arrived at Yangma
Guola, a collection of empty wood huts buried in the rocky
forest-clad valley, and took possession of a couple. They were well
built, raised on posts, with a stage and ladder at the gable end, and
consisted of one good-sized apartment. Around was abundance of dock,
together with three common English plants.* [_Cardamine hirsuta,
Limosella aquatica,_ and _Juncus bufonius._]

The night was calm, misty, and warm (Max. 41.5 degrees, Min. 29
degrees) for the elevation (9,300 feet). During the night, I was
startled out of my sleep by a blaze of light, and jumping up, found
myself in presence of a party of most sinister-looking, black, ragged
Tibetans, armed with huge torches of pine, that filled the room with
flame and pitchy smoke. I remembered their arriving just before dark,
and their weapons dispelled my fears, for they came armed with bamboo
jugs of Murwa beer, and were very drunk and very amiable: they
grinned, nodded, kotowed, lolled out their tongues, and scratched
their ears in the most seductive manner, then held out their jugs,
and besought me by words and gestures to drink and be happy too.
I awoke my servant (always a work of difficulty), and with some
trouble ejected the visitors, happily without setting the house on
fire. I heard them toppling head over heels down the stair, which I
afterwards had drawn up to prevent further intrusion, and in spite of
their drunken orgies, was soon lulled to sleep again by the music of
the roaring river.

On the 29th November, I continued my course north up the Yangma
valley, which after five miles opened considerably, the trees
disappearing, and the river flowing more tranquilly, and through a
broader valley, when above 11,000 feet elevation. The Guobah of
Wallanchoon overtook us on the road; on his way, he said, to collect
the revenues at Yangma village, but in reality to see what I was
about. He owns five considerable villages, and is said to pay a tax
of 6000 rupees (600 pounds) to the Rajah of Nepal: this is no doubt a
great exaggeration, but the revenues of such a position, near a pass
frequented almost throughout the year, must be considerable.
Every yak going and coming is said to pay ls., and every horse 4s.;
cattle, sheep, ponies, land, and wool are all taxed; he exports also
quantities of timber to Tibet, and various articles from the plains
of India. He joined my party and halted where I did, had his little
Chinese rug spread, and squatted cross-legged on it, whilst his
servant prepared his brick tea with salt, butter, and soda, of which
he partook, snuffed, smoked, rose up, had all his traps repacked, and
was off again.

We encamped at a most remarkable place: the valley was broad, with
little vegetation but stunted tree-junipers: rocky snow-topped
mountains rose on either side, bleak, bare, and rugged; and in front,
close above my tent, was a gigantic wall of rocks, piled--as if by
the Titans--completely across the valley, for about three-quarters of
a mile. This striking phenomenon had excited all my curiosity on
first obtaining a view of it. The path, I found, led over it, close
under its west end, and wound amongst the enormous detached fragments
of which it was formed, and which were often eighty feet square: all
were of gneiss and schist, with abundance of granite in blocks and
veins. A superb view opened from the top, revealing its nature to be
a vast moraine, far below the influence of any existing glaciers, but
which at some antecedent period had been thrown across by a glacier
descending to 10,000 feet, from a lateral valley on the east flank.
Standing on the top, and looking south, was the Yangma valley (up
which I had come), gradually contracting to a defile, girdled by
snow-tipped mountains, whose rocky flanks mingled with the black pine
forest below. Eastward the moraine stretched south of the lateral
valley, above which towered the snowy peak of Nango, tinged rosy red,
and sparkling in the rays of the setting sun: blue glaciers peeped
from every gulley on its side, but these were 2000 to 3000 feet above
this moraine; they were small too, and their moraines were mere
gravel, compared with this. Many smaller consecutive moraines, also,
were evident along the bottom of that lateral valley, from this great
one up to the existing glaciers. Looking up the Yangma was a flat
grassy plain, hemmed in by mountains, and covered with other
stupendous moraines, which rose ridge behind ridge, and cut off the
view of all but the mountain tops to the north. The river meandered
through the grassy plain (which appeared a mile and a half broad at
the utmost, and perhaps as long), and cut through the great moraine
on its eastern side, just below the junction of the stream from the
glacial valley, which, at the lower part of its course, flowed over
a broad steep shingle bed.

Illustration--ANCIENT MORAINE THROWN ACROSS THE YANGMA VALLEY, EAST
NEPAL (Elevn. 11,000 ft.)

I descended to my camp, full of anxious anticipations for the morrow;
while the novelty of the scene, and its striking character, the
complexity of the phenomena, the lake-bed, the stupendous
ice-deposited moraine, and its remoteness from any existing ice, the
broad valley and open character of the country, were all marked out
as so many problems suddenly conjured up for my unaided solution, and
kept me awake for many hours. I had never seen a glacier or moraine
on land before, but being familiar with sea ice and berg transport,
from voyaging in the South Polar regions, I was strongly inclined to
attribute the formation of this moraine to a period when a glacial
ocean stood high on the Himalaya, made fiords of the valleys, and
floated bergs laden with blocks from the lateral gulleys, which the
winds and currents would deposit along certain lines. On the
following morning I carried a barometer to the top of the moraine,
which proved to be upwards of 700 feet above the floor of the valley,
and 400 above the dry lake-bed which it bounded, and to which we
descended on our route up the valley. The latter was grassy and
pebbly, perfectly level, and quite barren, except a very few pines at
the bases of the encircling mountains, and abundance of
rhododendrons, _Andromeda_ and juniper on the moraines. Isolated
moraines occurred along both flanks of the valley, some higher than
that I have described, and a very long one was thrown nearly across
from the upper end of another lateral gulley on the east side, also
leading up to the glaciers of Nango. This second moraine commenced a
mile and a half above the first, and abutting on the east flank of
the valley, stretched nearly across, and then curving round, ran down
it, parallel to and near the west flank, from which it was separated
by the Yangma river: it was abruptly terminated by a conical hill of
boulders, round whose base the river flowed, entering the dry
lake-bed from the west, and crossing it in a south-easterly direction
to the western extremity of the great moraine.

The road, on its ascent to the second moraine, passed over an immense
accumulation of glacial detritus at the mouth of the second lateral
valley, entirely formed of angular fragments of gneiss and granite,
loosely bound together by felspathic sand. The whole was disposed in
concentric ridges radiating from the mouth of the valley, and
descending to the flat; these were moraines _in petto,_ formed by the
action of winter snow and ice upon the loose debris. A stream flowed
over this debris, dividing into branches before reaching the
lake-bed, where its waters were collected, and whence it meandered
southward to fall into the Yangma.

From the top of the second moraine, a very curious scene opened up
the valley, of another but more stony and desolate level lake-bed,
through which the Yangma (here very rapid) rushed, cutting a channel
about sixty feet deep; the flanks of this second lake-bed were cut
most distinctly into two principal terraces, which were again
subdivided into others, so that the general appearance was that of
many raised beaches, but each so broken up, that, with the exception
of one on the banks of the river, none were continuous for any
distance. We descended 200 feet, and crossed the valley and river
obliquely in a north-west direction, to a small temple and convent
which stood on a broad flat terrace under the black, precipitous,
west flank: this gave me a good opportunity of examining the
structure of this part of the valley, which was filled with an
accumulation, probably 200 feet thick at the deepest part, of angular
gravel and enormous boulders, both imbedded in the gravel, and
strewed on the flat surfaces of the terraces. The latter were always
broadest opposite to the lateral valleys, perfectly horizontal for
the short

Illustration--ANCIENT MORAINES IN THE YANGMA VALLEY.

distance that they were continuous; and very barren; there were no
traces of fossils, nor could I assure myself of stratification.
The accumulation was wholly glacial; and probably a lake had
supervened on the melting of the great glacier and its recedence,
which lake, confined by a frozen moraine, would periodically lose its
waters by sudden accessions of heat melting the ice of the latter.
Stratified silt, no doubt, once covered the lake bottom, and the
terraces have, in succession, been denuded of it by rain and snow.
These causes are now in operation amongst the stupendous glaciers of
north-east Sikkim, where valleys, dammed up by moraines, exhibit
lakes hemmed in between these, the base of the glacier, and the
flanks of the valleys.

Yangma convents stood at the mouth of a gorge which opened upon the
uppermost terrace; and the surface of the latter, here well covered
with grass, was furrowed into concentric radiating ridges, which were
very conspicuous from a distance. The buildings consisted of a
wretched collection of stone huts, painted red, enclosed by loose
stone dykes. Two shockingly dirty Lamas received me and conducted me
to the temple, which had very thick walls, but was undistinguishable
from the other buildings. A small door opened upon an apartment piled
full of old battered gongs, drums, scraps of silk hangings, red
cloth, broken praying-machines--relics much resembling those in the
lumber-room of a theatre. A ladder led from this dismal hole to the
upper story, which was entered by a handsomely carved and gilded
door: within, all was dark, except from a little lattice-window
covered with oil-paper. On one side was the library, a carved case,
with a hundred gilded pigeon-holes, each holding a real or sham book,
and each closed by a little square door, on which hung a bag full  of
amulets. In the centre of the book-case was a recess, containing a
genuine Jos or Fo, graced with his Chinese attribute of very long
pendulous moustaches and beard, and totally wanting that air of
contemplative repose which the Tibetan Lamas give to their idols.
Banners were suspended around, with paintings of Lhassa, Teshoo
Loombo, and various incarnations of Boodh. The books were of the
usual Tibetan form, oblong squares of separate block-printed leaves
of paper, made in Nepal or Bhotan from the bark of a _Daphne,_ bound
together by silk cords, and placed between ornamented wooden boards.
On our way up the valley, we had passed some mendongs and chaits, the
latter very pretty stone structures, consisting of a cube, pyramid,
hemisphere, and cone placed on the top of one another, forming
together the tasteful combination which appears on the cover of
these volumes.

Beyond the convents the valley again contracted, and on crossing a
third, but much lower, moraine, a lake opened to view, surrounded by
flat terraces, and a broad gravelly shore, part of the lake being
dry. To the west, the cliffs were high, black and steep: to the east
a large lateral valley, filled at about 1500 feet up with blue
glaciers, led (as did the other lateral valleys) to the gleaming
snows of Nango; the moraine, too, here abutted on the east flank of
the Yangma valley, below the mouth of the lateral one. Much snow
(from the October fall) lay on the ground, and the cold was pinching
in the shade; still I could not help attempting to sketch this
wonderfully grand scene, especially as lakes in the Himalaya are
extremely rare: the present one was about a mile long, very shallow,
but broad, and as smooth as glass: it reminded me of the tarn in
Glencoe. The reflected lofty peak of Nango appeared as if frozen deep
down in its glassy bed, every snowy crest and ridge being rendered
with perfect precision.

Illustration--LOOKING ACROSS YANGMA VALLEY.

 Nango is about 18,000 feet high; it is the next lofty mountain of
the Kinchinjunga group to the west of Junnoo, and I doubt if any
equally high peak occurs again for some distance further west in
Nepal. Facing the Yangma valley, it presents a beautiful range of
precipices of black rock, capped with a thick crust of snow: below
the cliffs the snow again appears continuously and very steep, for
2000 to 3000 feet downwards, where it terminates in glaciers that
descend to 14,000 feet. The steepest snow-beds appear cut into
vertical ridges, whence the whole snowy face is--as it were--crimped
in perpendicular, closely-set, zigzag lines, doubtless caused by the
melting process, which furrows the surface of the snow into channels
by which the water is carried off: the effect is very beautiful, but
impossible to represent on paper, from the extreme delicacy of the
shadows, and at the same time the perfect definition and precision of
the outlines.

Towards the head of the lake, its bed was quite dry and gravelly, and
the river formed a broad delta over it: the terraces here were
perhaps 100 feet above its level, those at the lower end not nearly
so much. Beyond the lake, the river became again a violent torrent,
rushing in a deep chasm, till we arrived at the fork of the valley,
where we once more met with numerous dry lake-beds, with terraces
high up on the mountain sides.

In the afternoon we reached the village of Yangma, a miserable
collection of 200 to 300 stone huts, nestling under the steep
south-east flank of a lofty, flat-topped terrace, laden with gigantic
glacial boulders, and projecting southward from a snowy mountain
which divides the valley. We encamped on the flat under the village,
amongst some stone dykes, enclosing cultivated fields. One arm of the
valley runs hence N.N.E. amongst snowy mountains, and appeared quite
full of moraines; the other, or continuation of the Yangma, runs
W.N.W., and leads to the Kanglachem pass.

Near our camp (of which the elevation was 13,500 feet), radishes,
barley, wheat, potatos, and turnips, were cultivated as summer crops,
and we even saw some on the top of the terrace, 400 feet above our
camp, or nearly 14,000 feet above the sea; these were grown in small
fields cleared of stones, and protected by dykes.

The scenery, though dismal, (no juniper even attaining this
elevation,) was full of interest and grandeur, from the number and
variety of snowy peaks and glaciers all around the elevated horizon;
the ancient lake-beds, now green or brown with scanty vegetation, the
vast moraines, the ridges of glacial debris, the flat terraces,
marking, as it were with parallel roads, the bluff sides of the
mountains, the enormous boulders perched upon them, and strewed
everywhere around, the little Boodhist monuments of quaint,
picturesque shapes, decorated with poles and banners, the
many-coloured dresses of the people, the brilliant blue of the
cloudless heaven by day, the depth of its blackness by night,
heightened by the light of the stars, that blaze and twinkle with a
lustre unknown in less lofty regions: all these were subjects for
contemplation, rendered more impressive by the stillness of the
atmosphere, and the silence that reigned around. The village seemed
buried in repose throughout the day: the inhabitants had already
hybernated, their crops were stored, the curd made and dried, the
passes closed, the soil frozen, the winter's stock of fuel housed,
and the people had retired into the caverns of their half
subterranean houses, to sleep, spin wool, and think of Boodh, if of
anything at all, the dead, long winter through. The yaks alone can
find anything to do: so long as any vegetation remains they roam and
eat it, still yielding milk, which the women take morning and
evening, when their shrill whistle and cries are heard for a few
minutes, as they call the grunting animals. No other sounds, save the
harsh roar and hollow echo of the falling rock, glacier, or snow-bed,
disturbed the perfect silence of the day or night.* [Snow covers the
ground at Yangma from December till April, and the falls are said to
be very heavy, at times amounting to 12 feet in depth.]

I had taken three days' food to Yangma, and stayed there as long as
it lasted: the rest of my provisions I had left below the first
moraine, where a lateral valley leads east over the Nango pass to the
Kambachen valley, which lay on the route back to Sikkim.

I was premature in complaining of my Wallanchoon tents, those
provided for me at Yangma being infinitely worse, mere rags, around
which I piled sods as a defence from the insidious piercing
night-wind that descended from the northern glaciers in calm, but
most keen, breezes. There was no food to be procured in the village,
except a little watery milk, and a few small watery potatos.
The latter have only very recently been introduced amongst the
Tibetans, from the English garden at the Nepalese capital, I believe,
and their culture has not spread in these regions further east than
Kinchinjunga, but they will very soon penetrate into Tibet from
Dorjiling, or eastward from Nepal. My private stock of provisions
--consisting chiefly of preserved meats from my kind friend
Mr. Hodgson--had fallen very low; and I here found to my dismay that
of four remaining two-pound cases, provided as meat, three contained
prunes, and one _"dindon aux truffes!"_ Never did luxuries come more
inopportunely; however the greasy French viand served for many a
future meal as sauce to help me to bolt my rice, and according to the
theory of chemists, to supply animal heat in these frigid regions.
As for my people, they were not accustomed to much animal food; two
pounds of rice, with ghee and chilis, forming their common diet under
cold and fatigue. The poorer Tibetans, especially, who undergo great
privation and toil, live almost wholly on barley-meal, with tea, and
a very little butter and salt: this is not only the case with those
amongst whom I mixed so much, but is also mentioned by MM. Huc and
Gabet, as having been observed by them in other parts of Tibet.

On the 1st of December I visited the village and terrace, and
proceeded to the head of the Yangma valley, in order to ascend the
Kanglachem pass as far as practicable. The houses are low, built of
stone, of no particular shape, and are clustered in groups against
the steep face of the terrace; filthy lanes wind amongst them, so
narrow, that if you are not too tall, you look into the slits of
windows on either hand, by turning your head, and feel the noisome
warm air in whiffs against your face. Glacial boulders lie scattered
throughout the village, around and beneath the clusters of houses,
from which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the native rock.
I entered one house by a narrow low door through walls four feet
thick, and found myself in an apartment full of wool, juniper-wood,
and dried dung for fuel: no one lived in the lower story, which was
quite dark, and as I stood in it my head was in the upper, to which I
ascended by a notched pole (like that in the picture of a Kamschatk
house in Cook's voyage), and went into a small low room. The inmates
looked half asleep, they were intolerably indolent and filthy, and
were employed in spinning wool and smoking. A hole in the wall of the
upper apartment led me on to the stone roof of the neighbouring
house, from which I passed to the top of a glacial boulder,
descending thence by rude steps to the narrow alley. Wishing to see
as much as I could, I was led on a winding course through, in and
out, and over the tops of the houses of the village, which
alternately reminded me of a stone quarry or gravel pit, and gipsies
living in old lime-kilns; and of all sorts of odd places that are
turned to account as human habitations.

From the village I ascended to the top of the terrace, which is a
perfectly level, sandy, triangular plain, pointing down the valley at
the fork of the latter, and abutting against the flank of a steep,
rocky, snow-topped mountain

Illustration--DIAGRAM OF THE GLACIAL TERRACES AT THE FORK OF THE
YANGA VALLEY.

to the northward. Its length is probably half a mile from north to
south, but it runs for two miles westward up the valley, gradually
contracting. The surface, though level, is very uneven, being worn
into hollows, and presenting ridges and hillocks of blown sand and
gravel, with small black tufts of rhododendron. Enormous boulders of
gneiss and granite were scattered over the surface; one of the
ordinary size, which I measured, was seventy feet in girth, and
fifteen feet above the ground, into which it had partly sunk.
From the southern pointed end I took sketches of the opposite flanks
of the valleys east and west. The river was about 400 feet below me,
and flowed in a little flat lake-bed; other terraces skirted it, cut
out, as it were, from the side of that I was on. On the opposite
flank of the valley were several superimposed terraces, of which the
highest appeared to tally with the level I occupied, and the lowest
was raised very little above the river; none were continuous for any
distance, but the upper one in particular, could be most
conspicuously traced up and down the main valley, whilst, on looking
across to the eastern valley, a much higher, but less distinctly
marked one appeared on it. The road to the pass lay west-north-west
up the north bank of the Yangma river, on the great terrace; for two
miles it was nearly level along the gradually narrowing shelf, at
times dipping into the steep gulleys formed by lateral torrents from
the mountains; and as the terrace disappeared, or melted, as it were,
into the rising floor of the valley, the path descended upon the
lower and smaller shelf.

We came suddenly upon a flock of gigantic wild sheep, feeding on
scanty tufts of dried sedge and grass; there were twenty-five of
these enormous animals, of whose dimensions the term sheep gives no
idea: they are very long-legged, stand as high as a calf, and have
immense horns, so large that the fox is said to take up his abode in
their hollows, when detached and bleaching, on the barren mountains
of Tibet. Though very wild, I am sure I could easily have killed a
couple had I had my gun, but I had found it necessary to reduce my
party so uncompromisingly, that I could not afford a man both for my
gun and instruments, and had sent the former back to Dorjiling, with
Mr. Hodgson's bird-stuffers, who had broken one of theirs. Travelling
without fire-arms sounds strange in India, but in these regions
animal life is very rare, game is only procured with much hunting and
trouble, and to come within shot of a flock of wild sheep was a
contingency I never contemplated. Considering how very short we were
of any food, and quite out of animal diet, I could not but bitterly
regret the want of a gun, but consoled myself by reflecting that the
instruments were still more urgently required to enable me to survey
this extremely interesting valley. As it was, the great beasts
trotted off, and turned to tantalise me by grazing within an easy
stalking distance. We saw several other flocks, of thirty to forty,
during the day, but never, either on this or any future occasion,
within shot. The _Ovis Ammon_ of Pallas stands from four to five feet
high, and measures seven feet from nose to tail; it is quite a
Tibetan animal, and is seldom seen below 14,000 feet, except when
driven lower by snow; and I have seen it as high as 18,000 feet.
The same animal, I believe, is found in Siberia, and is allied to the
Big-horn of North America.

Soon after descending to the bed of the valley, which is broad and
open, we came on a second dry lake-bed, a mile long, with shelving
banks all round, heavily snowed on the shaded side; the river was
divided into many arms, and meandered over it, and a fine
glacier-bound valley opened into it from the south. There were no
boulders on its surface, which was pebbly, with tufts of grass and
creeping tamarisk. On the banks I observed much granite, with large
mica crystals, hornstone, tourmaline, and stratified quartz, with
granite veins parallel to the foliation or lamination.

A rather steep ascent of a mile, through a contracted part of the
valley, led to another and smaller lake-bed, a quarter of a mile long
and 100 yards broad, covered with patches of snow, and having no
lateral valley opening into it: it faced the now stupendous masses of
snow and ice which filled the upper part of the Yangma valley.
This lake-bed (elevation, 15,186 feet) was strewed with enormous
boulders; a rude stone hut stood near it, where we halted for a few
minutes at 1 p.m., when the temperature was 42.2 degrees, while the
dew-point was only 20.7 degrees.* [This indicates a very dry state of
the air, the saturation-point being 0.133 degrees; whereas, at the
same hour at Calcutta it was 0.559 degrees.] At the same time, the
black bulb thermometer, fully exposed on the snow, rose 54 degrees
above the air, and the photometer gave 10.572. Though the sun's power
was so great, there was, however, no appearance of the snow melting,
evaporation proceeding with too great rapidity.

Illustration--KANGLACHEM PASS.

Enormous piles of gravel and sand had descended upon the upper end of
this lake-bed, forming shelves, terraces, and curving ridges,
apparently consolidated by ice, and covered in many places with snow.
Following the stream, we soon came to an immense moraine, which
blocked up the valley, formed of angular boulders, some of which were
fifty feet high. Respiration had been difficult for some time, and
the guide we had taken from the village said we were some hours from
the top of the pass, and could get but a little way further; we
however proceeded, plunging through the snow, till on cresting the
moraine a stupendous scene presented itself. A gulf of moraines, and
enormous ridges of debris, lay at our feet, girdled by an
amphitheatre of towering, snow-clad peaks, rising to 17,000 and
18,000 feet all around. Black scarped precipices rose on every side;
deep snow-beds and blue glaciers rolled down every gulley, converging
in the hollow below, and from each transporting its own materials,
there ensued a complication of moraines, that presented no order to
the eye. In spite of their mutual interference, however, each had
raised a ridge of debris or moraine parallel to itself.

We descended with great difficulty through the soft snow that covered
the moraine, to the bed of this gulf of snow and glaciers; and halted
by an enormous stone, above the bed of a little lake, which was
snowed all over, but surrounded by two superimposed level terraces,
with sharply defined edges. The moraine formed a barrier to its now
frozen waters, and it appeared to receive the drainage of many
glaciers, which filtered through their gravelly ridges and moraines.

We could make no further progress; the pass lay at the distance of
several hours' march, up a valley to the north, down which the
glacier must have rolled that had deposited this great moraine; the
pass had been closed since October, it being very lofty, and the head
of this valley was far more snowy than that at Wallanchoon. We halted
in the snow from 3 to 4 p.m., during which time I again took angles
and observations; the height of this spot, called Pabuk, is 16,038
feet, whence the pass is probably considerably over 17,000 feet, for
there was a steep ascent beyond our position. The sun sank at 3 p.m.,
and the thermometer immediately fell from 35 degrees to 30.75
degrees.* [At 4 o'clock, to 29.5 degrees, the average dew-point was
16.3 degrees, and dryness 0.55; weight of vapour in a cubic foot,
1.33 grains.]

After fixing in my note and sketch books the principal features of
this sublime scene, we returned down the valley: the distance to our
camp being fully eight miles, night overtook us before we got
half-way, but a two days' old moon guided us perfectly, a remarkable
instance of the clearness of the atmosphere at these great
elevations. Lassitude, giddiness, and headache came on as our
exertions increased, and took away the pleasure I should otherwise
have felt in contemplating by moonlight the varied phenomena, which
seemed to crowd upon the restless imagination, in the different forms
of mountain, glacier, moraine, lake, boulder and terrace. Happily I
had noted everything on my way up, and left nothing intentionally to
be done on returning. In making such excursions as this, it is above
all things desirable to seize and book every object worth noticing on
the way out: I always carried my note-book and pencil tied to my
jacket pocket, and generally walked with them in my hand. It is
impossible to begin observing too soon, or to observe too much: if
the excursion is long, little is ever done on the way home; the
bodily powers being mechanically exerted, the mind seeks repose, and
being fevered through over-exertion, it can endure no train of
thought, or be brought to bear on a subject.

During my stay at Yangma, the thermometer never rose to 50 degrees,
it fell to 14.75 degrees at night; the ground was frozen for several
inches below the surface, but at two feet depth its temperature was
37.5 degrees. The black bulb thermometer rose on one occasion 84
degrees above the surrounding air. Before leaving, I measured by
angles and a base-line the elevations of the great village-terrace
above the river, and that of a loftier one, on the west flank of the
main valley; the former was about 400 and the latter 700 feet.

Considering this latter as the upper terrace, and concluding that it
marks a water level, it is not very difficult to account for its
origin. There is every reason to suppose that the flanks of the
valley were once covered to the elevation of the upper terrace, with
an enormous accumulation of debris; though it does not follow that
the whole valley was filled by ice-action to the same depth; the
effect of glaciers being to deposit moraines between themselves and
the sides of the valley they fill; as also to push forward similar
accumulations. Glaciers from each valley, meeting at the fork, where
their depth would be 700 feet of ice, would both deposit the
necessary accumulation along the flanks of the great valley, and also
throw a barrier across it. The melting waters of such glaciers would
accumulate in lakes, confined by the frozen earth, between the
moraines and mountains. Such lakes, though on a small scale, are
found at the terminations and sides of existing glaciers, and are
surrounded by terraces of shingle and debris; these terraces being
laid bare by the sudden drainage of the lakes during seasons of
unusual warmth. To explain the phenomena of the Yangma valley, it may
be necessary to demand larger lakes and deeper accumulations of
debris than are now familiar to us, but the proofs of glaciers having
once descended to from 8000 to 10,000 feet in every Sikkim and east
Nepal valley communicating with mountains above 16,000 feet
elevation, are overwhelming, and the glaciers must, in some cases,
have been fully forty miles long, and 500 feet in depth. The absence
of any remains of a moraine, or of blocks of rock in the valley below
the fork, is I believe, the only apparent objection to this theory;
but, as I shall elsewhere have occasion to observe, the magnitude of
the moraines bears no fixed proportion to that of the glacier, and at
Pabuk, the steep ridges of debris, which were heaped up 200 feet
high, were far more striking than the more usual form of moraine.

On my way up to Yangma I had rudely plotted the valley, and selected
prominent positions for improving my plan on my return: these I now
made use of, taking bearings with the azimuth compass, and angles by
means of a pocket sextant. The result of my running-survey of the
whole valley, from 10,000 to 16,000 feet, I have given along with a
sketch-map of my routes in India, which accompanies this volume.

Illustration--SKULLS OF OVIS AMMON.



CHAPTER XI

Ascend to Nango mountain--Moraines--Glaciers--Vegetation--
_Rhododendron Hodgsoni_--Rocks--Honey-combed surface of snow--
Perpetual snow--Top of pass--View--Elevation--Geology--
Distance of sound--Plants--Temperature--Scenery--Cliffs of
granite and hurled boulders--Camp--Descent--Pheasants--Larch
--Himalayan pines--Distribution of Deodar, note on--
Tassichooding temples--Kambachen village--Cultivation--Moraines
in valley, distribution of--Picturesque lake-beds, and their
vegetation--Tibetan sheep and goats--_Cryptogramma crispa_--
Ascent to Choonjerma pass--View of Junnoo--Rocks of its summit--
Misty ocean--Nepal peaks--Top of pass--Temperature, and
observations--Gorgeous sunset--Descent to Yalloong valley--
Loose path--Night scenes--Musk deer.

We passed the night a few miles below the great moraine, in a
pine-wood (alt. 11,000 feet) opposite the gorge which leads to the
Kambachen or Nango pass, over the south shoulder of the mountain of
that name: it is situated on a ridge dividing the Yangma river from
that of Kambachen, which latter falls into the Tambur opposite Lelyp.

The road crosses the Yangma (which is about fifteen feet wide), and
immediately ascends steeply to the south-east, over a rocky moraine,
clothed with a dense thicket of rhododendrons, mountain-ash, maples,
pine, birch, juniper, etc. The ground was covered with silvery flakes
of birch bark, and that of _Rhododendron Hodgsoni,_ which is as
delicate as tissue-paper, and of a pale flesh-colour. I had never
before met with this species, and was astonished at the beauty of its
foliage, which was of a beautiful bright green, with leaves sixteen
inches long.

Beyond the region of trees and large shrubs the alpine rhododendrons
filled the broken surface of the valley, growing with _Potentilla,_
Honeysuckle, _Polygonum,_ and dwarf juniper. The peak of Nango seemed
to tower over the gorge, rising behind some black, splintered, rocky
cliffs, sprinkled with snow, narrow defiles opened up through these
cliffs to blue glaciers, and their mouths were invariably closed by
beds of shingly moraines, curving outwards from either, flank in
concentric ridges.

Towards the base of the peak, at about 14,000 feet, the scenery is
very grand; a great moraine rises suddenly to the north-west, under
the principal mass of snow and ice, and barren slopes of gravel
descend from it; on either side are rugged precipices; the ground is
bare and stony, with patches of brown grass: and, on looking back,
the valley appears very steep to the first shrubby vegetation, of
dark green rhododendrons, bristling with ugly stunted pines.

We followed a valley to the south-east, so as to turn the flank of
the peak; the path lying over beds of October snow at 14,000 feet,
and over plashy ground, from its melting. Sometimes our way lay close
to the black precipices on our right, under which the snow was deep;
and we dragged ourselves along, grasping every prominence of the rock
with our numbed fingers. Granite appeared in large veins in the
crumpled gneiss at a great elevation, in its most beautiful and
loosely-crystallised form, of pearly white prisms of felspar, glassy
quartz, and milk-white flat plates of mica, with occasionally large
crystals of tourmaline. Garnets were very frequent in the gneiss near
the granite veins. Small rushes, grasses, and sedges formed the
remaining vegetation, amongst which were the withered stalks of
gentians, _Sedum, Arenaria, Silene,_ and many Composite plants.

At a little below 15,000 feet, we reached enormous flat beds of snow,
which were said to be perpetual, but covered deeply with the October
fall. They were continuous, and like all the snow I saw at this
season, the surface was honeycombed into thin plates, dipping north
at a high angle; the intervening fissures were about six inches deep.
A thick mist here overtook us, and this, with the great difficulty
of picking our way, rendered the ascent very fatiguing.
Being sanguine about obtaining a good view, I found it almost
impossible to keep my temper under the aggravations of pain in the
forehead, lassitude, oppression of breathing, a dense drizzling fog,
a keen cold wind, a slippery footing, where I was stumbling at every
few steps, and icy-cold wet feet, hands, and eyelids; the latter, odd
as it sounds, I found a very disagreeable accompaniment of continued
raw cold wind.

After an hour and a half's toilsome ascent, during which we made but
little progress, we reached the crest, crossing a broad shelf of snow
between two rocky eminences; the ridge was unsnowed a little way down
the east flank; this was, in a great measure, due to the eastern
exposure being the more sunny, to the prevalence of the warm and
melting south-east winds that blow up the deep Kambachen valley, and
to the fact that the great snow-beds on the west side are drifted
accumulations.* [Such enormous beds of snow in depressions, or on
gentle slopes, are generally adopted as indicating the lower limit of
perpetual snow. They are, however, winter accumulations, due mainly
to eddies of wind, of far more snow than can be melted in the
following summer, being hence perennial in the ordinary sense of the
word. They pass into the state of glacier ice, and, obeying the laws
that govern the motions of a viscous fluid, so admirably elucidated
by Forbes ("Travels in the Alps"), they flow downwards. A careful
examination of those great beds of snow in the Alps, from whose
position the mean lower level of perpetual snow, in that latitude, is
deduced, has convinced me that these are mainly due to accumulations
of this kind, and that the true limit of perpetual snow, or that
point where all that falls melts, is much higher than it is usually
supposed to be.]  The mist cleared off, and I had a partial, though
limited, view. To the north the blue ice-clad peak of Nango was still
2000 feet above us, its snowy mantle falling in great sweeps and
curves into glacier-bound valleys, over which the ice streamed out of
sight, bounded by black aiguilles of gneiss. The Yangma valley was
quite hidden, but to the eastward the view across the stupendous
gorge of the Kambachen, 5000 feet below, to the waste of snow, ice,
and rock, piled in confusion along the top of the range of Junnoo and
Choonjerma, parallel to this but higher, was very grand indeed: this
we were to cross in two days, and its appearance was such, that our
guide doubted the possibility of our doing it. A third and fourth
mountain mass (unseen) lay beyond this, between us and Sikkim,
divided by valleys as deep as those of Yangma and Kambachen.

Having hung up my instruments, I ascended a few hundred feet to some
naked rocks, to the northward; they were of much-crumpled and
dislocated gneiss, thrown up at a very high angle, and striking
north-west. Chlorite, schist, and quartz, in thin beds, alternated
with the gneiss, and veins of granite and quartz, were injected
through them.

It fell calm; when the distance to which the voice was carried was
very remarkable; I could distinctly hear every word spoken 300 to 400
yards off, and did not raise my voice when I asked one of the men to
bring me a hammer.

The few plants about were generally small tufted _Arenarias_ and
woolly _Compositae,_ with a thick-rooted Umbellifer that spread its
short, fleshy leaves and branches flat on the ground; the root was
very aromatic, but wedged close in the rock. The temperature at
4 p.m. was 23 degrees, and bitterly cold; the elevation, 15,770 feet;
dew-point, 16 degrees. The air was not very dry; saturation-point,
0.670 degrees, whereas at Calcutta it was 0.498 degrees at the
same hour.

The descent was to a broad, open valley, into which the flank of
Nango dipped in tremendous precipices, which reared their heads in
splintered snowy peaks. At their bases were shoots of debris fully
700 feet high, sloping at a steep angle. Enormous masses of rock,
detached by the action of the frost and ice from the crags, were
scattered over the bottom of the valley; they had been precipitated
from above, and gaining impetus in their descent, bad been hurled to
almost inconceivable distances from the parent cliff. All were of a
very white, fine-grained crystallised granite, full of small veins of
the same rock still more finely crystallised. The weathered surface
of each block was black, and covered with moss and lichens; the
others beautifully white, with clean, sharp-fractured edges.
The material of which they were composed was so hard that I found it
difficult to detach a specimen.

Darkness had already come on, and the coolies being far behind, we
encamped by the light of the moon, shining through a thin fog, where
we first found dwarf-juniper for fuel, at 13,500 feet. A little sleet
fell during the night, which was tolerably fine, and not very cold;
the minimum thermometer indicating 14.5 degrees.

Having no tent-poles, I had some difficulty in getting my blankets
arranged as a shelter, which was done by making them slant from the
side of a boulder, on the top of which one end was kept by heavy
stones; under this roof I laid my bed, on a mass of rhododendron and
juniper-twigs. The men did the same against other boulders, and
lighting a huge fire opposite the mouth of my ground-nest, I sat
cross-legged on the bed to eat my supper; my face scorching, and my
back freezing. Rice, boiled with a few ounces of greasy _dindon aux
truffes_ was now my daily dinner, with chili-vinegar and tea, and I
used to relish it keenly: this finished, I smoked a cigar, and wrote
up my journal (in short intervals between warming myself) by the
light of the fire; took observations by means of a dark-lantern; and
when all this was accomplished, I went to roost.

_December_ 5.--On looking out this morning, it was with a feeling of
awe that I gazed at the stupendous ice-crowned precipices that shot
up to the summit of Nango, their flanks spotted white at the places
whence the gigantic masses with which I was surrounded had fallen;
thence my eye wandered down their black faces to the slope of debris
at the bottom, thus tracing the course which had probably been taken
by that rock under whose shelter I had passed the previous night.

Meepo, the Lepcha sent by the rajah, had snared a couple of beautiful
pheasants, one of which I skinned, and ate for breakfast; it is a
small bird, common above 12,000 feet, but very wild; the male has two
to five spurs on each of its legs, according to its age; the general
colour is greenish, with a broad scarlet patch surrounding the eye;
the Nepalese name is "Khalidge." The crop was distended with juniper
berries, of which the flesh tasted strongly, and it was the very
hardest, toughest bird I ever did eat.

We descended at first through rhododendron and juniper, then through
black silver-fir (_Abies Webbiana_), and below that, near the river,
we came to the Himalayan larch; a tree quite unknown, except from a
notice in the journals of Mr. Griffith, who found it in Bhotan. It is
a small tree, twenty to forty feet high, perfectly similar in general
characters to a European larch, but with larger cones, which are
erect upon the very long, pensile, whip-like branches; its
leaves,--now red--were falling, and covering the rocky ground on
which it grew, scattered amongst other trees. It is called "Saar" by
the Lepchas and Cis-himalayan Tibetans, and "Boarga-sella" by the
Nepalese, who say it is found as far west as the heads of the Cosi
river: it does not inhabit Central or West Nepal, nor the North-west
Himalaya. The distribution of the Himalayan pines is very remarkable.
The Deodar has not been seen east of Nepal, nor the _Pinus
Gerardiana, Cupressus torulosa,_ or _Juniperus communis._ On the
other hand, _Podocarpus_ is confined to the east of Katmandoo. _Abies
Brunoniana_ does not occur west of the Gogra, nor the larch west of
the Cosi, nor funereal cypress (an introduced plant, however) west of
the Teesta (in Sikkim). Of the twelve* [Juniper, 3; yew, _Abies
Webbiana, Brunoniana,_ and _Smithiana_: Larch, _Pinus excelsa,_ and
_longifolia,_ and _Podocarpus neriifolia._] Sikkim and Bhotan
_Coniferae_ (including yew, junipers, and _Podocarpus_) eight are
common to the North-west Himalaya (west of Nepal), and four* [Larch,
_Cupressus funebris, Podocarpus neriifolia, Abies Brunoniana._] are
not: of the thirteen natives of the north-west provinces, again, only
five* [A juniper (the European _communis_), Deodar (possibly only a
variety of the Cedar of Lebanon and of Mount Atlas), _Pinus
Gerardiana, P. excelsa,_ and _Crupressus torulosa._] are not found in
Sikkim, and I have given their names below, because they show how
European the absent ones are, either specifically or in affinity.
I have stated that the Deodar is possibly a variety of the Cedar of
Lebanon. This is now a prevalent opinion, which is strengthened by
the fact that so many more Himalayan plants are now ascertained to be
European than had been supposed before they were compared with
European specimens; such are the yew, _Juniperus communis, Berberis
vulgaris, Quercus Ballota, Populus alba_ and _Euphratica,_ etc.
The cones of the Deodar are identical with those of the Cedar of
Lebanon: the Deodar has, generally longer and more pale bluish leaves
and weeping branches,* [Since writing the above, I have seen, in the
magnificent Pinetum at Dropmore, noble cedars, with the length and
hue of leaf, and the pensile branches of the Deodar, and far more
beautiful than that is, and as unlike the common Lebanon Cedar as
possible. When it is considered from how very few wild trees (and
these said to be exactly alike) the many dissimilar varieties of the
_C. Libani_ have been derived; the probability of this, the Cedar of
Algiers, and of the Himalayas (Deodar) being all forms of one
species, is greatly increased. We cannot presume to judge from the
few cedars which still remain, what the habit and appearance of the
tree may have been, when it covered the slopes of Libanus, and seeing
how very variable _Coniferae_ are in habit, we may assume that its
surviving specimens give us no information on this head. Should all
three prove one, it will materially enlarge our ideas of the
distribution and variation of species. The botanist will insist that
the typical form of cedar is that which retains its characters best
over the greatest area, namely, the Deodar; in which case the
prejudice of the ignorant, and the preconceived ideas of the
naturalist, must yield to the fact that the old familiar Cedar of
Lebanon is an unusual variety of the Himalayan Deodar.] but these
characters seem to be unusually developed in our gardens; for several
gentlemen, well acquainted with the Deodar at Simla, when asked to
point it out in the Kew Gardens, have indicated the Cedar of Lebanon,
and when shown the Deodar, declare that they never saw that plant in
the Himalaya!

At the bottom of the valley we turned up the stream, and passing the
Tassichooding convents* [These were built by the Sikkim people, when
the eastern valleys of Nepal belonged to the Sikkim rajah.] and
temple, crossed the river--which was a furious torrent, about twelve
yards wide--to the village of Kambachen, on a flat terrace a few feet
above the stream. There were about a dozen houses of wood, plastered
with mud and dung, scattered over a grassy plain of a few acres,
fenced in, as were also a few fields, with stone dykes. The only
cultivation consists of radishes, potatos, and barley: no wheat is
grown, the climate being said to be too cold for it, by which is
probably meant that it is foggy,--the elevation (11,380 feet) being
2000 feet less than that of Yangma village, and the temperature
therefore 6 degrees to 7 degrees warmer; but of all the mountain
gorges I have ever visited, this is by far the wildest, grandest, and
most gloomy; and that man should hybernate here is indeed
extraordinary, for there is no route up the valley, and all
communication with Lelyp,* [Which I passed, on the Tambur, on the
21st Nov. See Chapter IX.] two marches down the river, is cut off in
winter, when the houses are buried in snow, and drifts fifteen feet
deep are said to be common. Standing on the little flat of Kambachen,
precipices, with inaccessible patches of pine wood, appeared to the
west, towering over head; while across the narrow valley wilder and
less wooded crags rose in broken ridges to the glaciers of Nango.
Up the valley, the view was cut off by bluff cliffs; whilst down it,
the scene was most remarkable: enormous black, round-backed moraines,
rose, tier above tier, from a flat lake-bed, apparently hemming in
the river between the lofty precipices on the east flank of the
valley. These had all been deposited at the mouth of a lateral
valley, opening just below the village, and descending from Junnoo, a
mountain of 25,312 feet elevation, and one of the grandest of the
Kinchinjunga group, whose top--though only five miles distant in a
straight line--rises 13,932 feet* [This is one of the most sudden
slopes in this part of the Himalaya, the angle between the top of
Junnoo and Kambachen being 2786 feet per mile, or 1 in 1.8. The slope
from the top of Mont Blanc to the Chamouni valley is 2464 feet per
mile, or 1 in 2.1. That from Monte Rosa top to Macugnaga greatly
exceeds either.] above the village. Few facts show more decidedly the
extraordinary steepness and depth of the Kambachen valley near the
village, which, though nearly 11,400 feet above the sea, lies between
two mountains only eight miles apart, the one 25,312 feet high, the
other (Nango), 19,000 feet.

The villagers received us very kindly, and furnished us with a guide
for the Choonjerma pass, leading to the Yalloong valley, the most
easterly in Nepal; but he recommended our not attempting any part of
the ascent till the morrow, as it was past 1 p.m., and we should find
no camping-ground for half the way up. The villagers gave us the leg
of a musk deer, and some red potatos, about as big as walnuts--all
they could spare from their winter-stock. With this scanty addition
to our stores we started down the valley, for a few miles alternately
along flat lake-beds and over moraines, till we crossed the stream
from the lateral valley, and ascending a little, camped on its bank,
at 11,400 feet elevation.

In the afternoon I botanized amongst the moraines, which were very
numerous, and had been thrown down at right-angles to the main
valley, which latter being here very narrow, and bounded by lofty
precipices, must have stopped the parent glaciers, and effected the
heaping of some of these moraines to at least 1000 feet above the
river. The general features were modifications of those seen in the
Yangma valley, but contracted into a much smaller space.

The moraines were all accumulated in a sort of delta, through which
the lateral river debouched into the Kambachen, and were all
deposited more or less parallel to the course of the lateral valley,
but curving outwards from its mouth. The village-flat, or terrace,
continued level to the first moraine, which had been thrown down on
the upper or north side of the lateral valley, on whose and curving
steep flanks it abutted, and curving outwards seemed to encircle the
village-flat on the south and west; where it dipped into the river.
This was crossed at the height of about 100 feet, by a stony path,
leading to the bed of the rapid torrent flowing through shingle and
boulders, beyond which was another moraine, 250 feet high, and
parallel to it a third gigantic one.

Ascending the great moraine at a place where it overhung the main
river, I had a good _coup-a'oeil_ of the whole. The view south-east
up the glacial valley--(represented in the accompanying cut)--to the
snowy peaks south of Junnoo, was particularly grand, and most
interesting from the precision with which one great distant existing
glacier was marked by two waving parallel lines of lateral moraines,
which formed, as it were, a vast raised gutter, or channel, ascending
from perhaps 16,000 feet elevation, till it was hidden behind a spur
in the valley. With a telescope I could descry many similar smaller
glaciers, with huge accumulations of shingle at their terminations;
but this great one was beautifully seen by the naked eye, and formed
a very curious feature in the landscape.

Illustration--ANCIENT MORAINES IN THE RAMBACHEN VALLEY.

 Between the moraines, near my tent, the soil was perfectly level,
and consisted of little lake-beds strewn with gigantic boulders, and
covered with hard turf of grass and sedge, and little bushes of dwarf
rhododendron and prostrate juniper, as trim as if they had been
clipped. Altogether these formed the most picturesque little nooks it
was possible to conceive; and they exhibited the withered remains of
so many kinds of primrose, gentian, anemone, potentilla, orchis,
saxifrage, parnassia, campanula, and pedicularis, that in summer they
must be perfect gardens of wild flowers. Around each plot of a few
acres was the grand ice-transported girdle of stupendous rocks, many
from 50 to 100 feet long, crested with black tabular-branched silver
firs, conical deep green tree-junipers, and feathery larches; whilst
amongst the blocks grew a profusion of round masses of evergreen
rhododendron bushes. Beyond were stupendous frowning cliffs, beneath
which the river roared like thunder; and looking up the glacial
valley, the setting sun was bathing the expanse of snow in the most
delicate changing tints, pink, amber, and gold.

The boulders forming the moraine were so enormous and angular, that I
had great difficulty in ascending it. I saw some pheasants feeding on
the black berries of the juniper, but where the large rhododendrons
grew amongst the rocks I found it impossible to penetrate.
The largest of the moraines is piled to upwards of 1000 feet against
the south flank of the lateral valley, and stretched far up it beyond
my camp, which was in a grove of silver firs. A large flock of sheep
and goats, laden with salt, overtook us here on their route from
Wallanchoon to Yalloong. The sheep I observed to feed on the
_Rhododendron Thomsoni_ and _campylocarpum._ On the roots of one of
the latter species a parasitical Broom-rape (_Orobanche_) grew
abundantly; and about the moraines were more mosses, lichens, etc.,
than I have elsewhere seen in the loftier Himalaya, encouraged no
doubt by the dampness of this grand mountain gorge, which is so
hemmed in that the sun never reaches it until four or five hours
after it has gilded the overhanging peaks.

_December_ 5.--The morning was bright and clear, and we left early
for the Choonjerma pass. I had hoped the route would be up the
magnificent glacier-girdled valley in which we had encamped; but it
lay up another, considerably south of it, and to which we crossed,
ascending the rocky moraine, in the clefts of which grew abundance of
a common Scotch fern, _Cryptogramma crispa_!

The clouds early commenced gathering, and it was curious to watch
their rapid formation in coalescing streaks, which became first
cirrhi, and then stratus, being apparently continually added to from
below by the moisture-bringing southerly wind. Ascending a lofty
spur, 1000 feet above the valley, against which the moraine was
banked, I found it to be a distinct anticlinal axis. The pass,
bearing north-west, and the valley we had descended on the previous
day, rose immediately over the curved strata of quartz, topped by the
glacier-crowned mountain of Nango, with four glaciers descending from
its perpetual snows. The stupendous cliffs on its flanks, under which
I had camped on the previous night, were very grand, but not more so
than those which dipped into the chasm of the Kambachen below.
Looking up the valley of the latter, was another wilderness of ice
full of enormous moraines, round the bases of which the river wound.

Ascending, we reached an open grassy valley, and overtook the
Tibetans who had preceded us, and who had halted here to feed their
sheep. A good-looking girl of the party came to ask me for medicine
for her husband's eyes, which had suffered from snow-blindness: she
brought me a present of snuff, and carried a little child, stark
naked, yet warm from the powerful rays of the sun, at nearly 14,000
feet elevation, in December! I prescribed for the man, and gave the
mother a bright farthing to hang round the child's neck, which
delighted the party. My watch was only wondered at; but a little
spring measuring-tape that rolled itself up, struck them dumb, and
when I threw it on the ground with the tape out, the mother shrieked
and ran away, while the little savage howled after her.

Above, the path up the ascent was blocked with snowbeds, and for
several miles we alternately scrambled among rocks and over slippery
slopes, to the top of the first ridge, there being two to cross.
The first consisted of a ridge of rocks running east and west from a
superb sweep of snowy mountains to the north-west, which presented a
chaotic scene of blue glacial ice and white snow, through which
splintered rocks and beetling crags thrust their black heads.
The view into the Kambachen gorge was magnificent, though it did not
reveal the very bottom of the valley and its moraines: the black
precipices of its opposite flank seemed to rise to the glaciers of
Nango, fore-shortened into snow-capped precipices 5000 feet high,
amongst which lay the Kambachen pass, bearing north-west by north.
Lower down the valley, appeared a broad flat, called Jubla, a
halting-place one stage below the village of Kambachen, on the road
to Lelyp on the Tambur: it must be a remarkable geological as well as
natural feature, for it appeared to jut abruptly and quite
horizontally from the black cliffs of the valley.

Looking north, the conical head of Junnoo was just scattering the
mists from its snowy shoulders, and standing forth to view, the most
magnificent spectacle I ever beheld. It was quite close to me,
bearing north-east by east, and subtending an angle of 12 degrees 23,
and is much the steepest and most conical of all the peaks of these
regions. From whichever side it is viewed, it rises 9000 feet above
the general mountain mass of 16,000 feet elevation, towering like a
blunt cone, with a short saddle on one side, that dips in a steep
cliff: it appeared as if uniformly snowed, from its rocks above
20,000 feet (like those of Kinchinjunga) being of white granite, and
not contrasting with the snow. Whether the top is stratified or not,
I cannot tell, but waving parallel lines are very conspicuous near
it, as shown in the accompanying view.* [The appearance of Mont
Cervin, from the Riffelberg, much reminded me of that of Junnoo, from
the Choonjerma pass, the former bearing the same relation to Monte
Rosa that the latter does to Kinchinjunga. Junnoo, though
incomparably the more stupendous mass, not only rising 10,000 feat
higher above the sea, but towering 4000 feet higher above the ridge
on which it is supported, is not nearly so remarkable in outline, so
sharp, or so peaked as is Mount Cervin: it is a very much grander,
but far less picturesque object. The whiteness of the sides of Junnoo
adds also greatly to its apparent altitude; while the strong relief
in which the black cliffs of Mont Cervin protrude through its snowy
mantle greatly diminish both its apparent height and distance.]

Illustration--JUNNOO 24,000 FT. FROM CHOONJERMA PASS 16,000 FT. EAST
NEPAL.

Looking south as evening drew on, another wonderful spectacle
presented itself, similar to that which I described at Sakkiazung,
but displayed here on an inconceivably grander scale, with all the
effects exaggerated. I saw a sea of mist floating 3000 feet beneath
me, just below the upper level of the black pines; the magnificent
spurs of the snowy range which I had crossed rising out of it in
rugged grandeur as promontories and peninsulas, between which the
misty ocean seemed to finger up like the fiords of Norway, or the
salt-water lochs of the west of Scotland; whilst islets tailed off
from the promontories, rising here and there out of the deceptive
elements. I was so high above this mist, that it had not the billowy
appearance I saw before, but was a calm unruffled ocean, boundless to
the south and west, where the horizon over-arched it. A little to the
north of west I discerned the most lofty group of mountains in Nepal*
[Called Tsungau by the Bhoteeas. Junnoo is called Kumbo-Kurma by the
Hill-men of Nepal.] (mentioned at Chapter VIII), beyond Kinchinjurga,
which I believe are on the west flank of the great valley through
which the Arun river enters Nepal from Tibet: they were very distant,
and subtended so small an angle, that I could not measure them with
the sextant and artificial horizon their height, judging from the
quantity of snow, must be prodigious.

From 4 to 5 p.m. the temperature was 24 degrees, with a very cold
wind; the elevation by the barometer was 15,260 feet, and the
dew-point 10.5 degrees, giving the humidity 0.610, and the amount of
vapour 1.09 grains in a cubic foot of air; the same elements at
Calcutta, at the same hour, being thermometer 66.5 degrees, dew-point
60.5 degrees, humidity 0.840, and weight of vapour 5.9 grains.

I waited for an hour, examining the rocks about the pass, till the
coolies should come up, but saw nothing worthy of remark, the natural
history and geology being identical with those of Kambachen pass: I
then bade adieu to the sublime and majestic peak of Junnoo. Thence we
continued at nearly the same level for about four miles, dipping into
the broad head of a snowy valley, and ascending to the second pass,
which lay to the south-east.

On the left I passed a very curious isolated pillar of rock, amongst
the wild crags to the north-east, whose bases we skirted: it
resembles the Capuchin on the shoulder of Mont Blanc, as seen from
the Jardin. Evening overtook us while still on the snow near the last
ascent. As the sun declined, the snow at our feet reflected the most
exquisitely delicate peach-bloom hue; and looking west from the top
of the pass, the scenery was gorgeous beyond description, for the sun
was just plunging into a sea of mist, amongst some cirrhi and
stratus, all in a blaze of the ruddiest coppery hue. As it sank, the
Nepal, peaks to the right assumed more definite, darker, and gigantic
forms, and floods of light shot across the misty ocean, bathing the
landscape around me in the most wonderful and indescribable changing
tints. As the luminary was vanishing, the whole horizon glowed like
copper run from a smelting furnace, and when it had quite
disappeared, the little inequalities of the ragged edges of the mist
were lighted up and shone like a row of volcanos in the far distance.
I have never before or since seen anything, which for sublimity,
beauty, and marvellous effects, could compare with what I gazed on
that evening from Choonjerma pass. In some of Turner's pictures I
have recognized similar effects, caught and fixed by a marvellous
effort of genius; such are the fleeting hues over the ice, in his
"Whalers," and the ruddy fire in his "Wind, Steam, and Rain," which
one almost fears to touch. Dissolving views give some idea of the
magic creation and dispersion of the effects, but any combination of
science and art can no more recall the scene, than it can the
feelings of awe that crept over me, during the hour I spent in
solitude amongst these stupendous mountains.

The moon guided us on our descent, which was to the south, obliquely
into the Yalloong valley. I was very uneasy about the coolies, who
were far behind, and some of them had been frost-bitten in crossing
the Kambachen pass. Still I thought the best thing was to push on,
and light large fires at the first juniper we should reach.
The change, on passing from off the snow to the dark earth and rock,
was so bewildering, that I had great difficulty in picking my way.
Suddenly we came on a flat with a small tarn, whose waters gleamed
illusively in the pale moonlight: the opposite flanks of the valley
were so well reflected on its gloomy surface, that we were at once
brought to a stand-still on its banks: it looked like a chasm, and
whether to jump across it, or go down it, or along it, was the
question, so deceptive was the spectral landscape. Its true nature
was, however, soon discovered, and we proceeded round it, descending.
Of course there was no path, and after some perplexity amongst rocks
and ravines, we reached the upper limit of wood, and halted by some
bleached juniper-trees, which were soon converted into blazing fires.

I wandered away from my party to listen for the voices of the men who
had lingered behind, about whom I was still more anxious, from the
very great difficulty they would encounter if, as we did, they should
get off the path. The moon was shining clearly in the black heavens;
and its bright light, with the pale glare of the surrounding snow,
obscured the milky way, and all the smaller stars; whilst the planets
appeared to glow with broader orbs than elsewhere, and the great
stars flashed steadily and periodically.

Deep black chasms seemed to yawn below, and cliffs rose on all sides,
except down the valley, where looking across the Yalloong river, a
steep range of mountains rose, seamed with torrents that were just
visible like threads of silver coursing down broad landslips. It was
a dead calm, and nothing broke the awful silence but the low hoarse
murmur of many torrents, whose mingled voices rose and fell as if
with the pulsations of the atmosphere; the undulations of which
appeared thus to be marked by the ear alone. Sometimes it was the
faintest possible murmur, and then it rose swelling and filling the
air with sound: the effect was that of being raised from the earth's
surface, and again lowered to it; or that of waters advancing and
retiring. In such scenes and with such accompaniments, the mind
wanders from the real to the ideal, the larger and brighter lamps of
heaven lead us to imagine that we have risen from the surface of our
globe and are floating through the regions of space, and that the
ceaseless murmur of the waters is the Music of the Spheres.

Contemplation amid such soothing sounds and impressive scenes is very
seductive, and withal very dangerous, for the temperature was at
freezing-point, my feet and legs were wet through, and it was well
that I was soon roused from my reveries by the monosyllabic
exclamations of my coolies. They were quite knocked up, and came
along grunting, and halting every minute to rest, by supporting their
loads, still hanging to their backs, on their stout staves. I had
still one bottle of brandy left, with which to splice the main brace.
It had been repeatedly begged for in vain, and being no longer
expected, was received with unfeigned joy. Fortunately with these
people a little spirits goes a long way, and I kept half for
future emergencies.

We camped at 13,290 feet, the air was calm and mild to the feeling,
though the temperature fell to 22.75 degrees. On the following
morning we saw two musk-deer,* [There are two species of musk-deer in
the Himalaya, besides the Tibetan kind, which appears identical with
the Siberian animal originally described by Pallas.] called
"Kosturah" by the mountaineers. The musk, which hangs in a pouch near
the navel of the male, is the well-known object of traffic with
Bengal. This creature ranges between 8000 and 13,000 feet, on the
Himalaya, often scenting the air for many hundred yards. It is a
pretty grey animal, the size of a roebuck, and something resembling
it, with coarse fur, short horns, and two projecting teeth from the
upper jaw, said to be used in rooting up the aromatic herbs from
which the Bhoteeas believe that it derives the odour of musk. This I
much doubt, because the animal never frequents those very lofty
regions where the herbs supposed to provide the scent are found, nor
have I ever seen signs of any having been so rooted up.
The _Delphinium glaciale_ smells strongly and disagreeably of musk,
but it is one of the most alpine plants in the world, growing at an
elevation of 17,000 feet, far above the limits of the Kosturah.
The female and young male are very good eating, much better than any
Indian venison I ever tasted, being sweet and tender. Mr. Hodgson
once kept a female alive, but it was very wild, and continued so as
long as I knew it. Two of my Lepchas gave chase to these animals, and
fired many arrows in vain after them: these people are fond of
carrying a bow, but are very poor shots.

We descended 3000 feet to the deep valley of the Yalloong river which
runs west-by-south to the Tambur, from between Junnoo and Kubra: the
path was very bad, over quartz, granite, and gneiss, which cut the
shoes and feet severely. The bottom of the valley, which is elevated
10,450 feet, was filled with an immense accumulation of angular
gravel and debris of the above rocks, forming on both sides of the
river a terrace 400 feet above the stream, which flowed in a furious
torrent. The path led over this deposit for a good many miles, and
varied exceedingly in height, in some places being evidently
increased by landslips, and at others apparently by moraines.

Illustration--TIBETAN CHARM-BOX.



CHAPTER XII.

Yalloong valley--Fiud Kanglanamo pass closed--Change route for
the southward--_Picrorhiza_--View of Kubra--_Rhododendron
Falconeri_--Yalloong river--Junction of gneiss and clay-slate--
Cross Yalloong range--View--Descent--Yew--Vegetation--Misty
weather--Tongdam village--Khabang--Tropical vegetation--
Sidingbah Mountain--View of Kinchinjunga--Yangyading village--
Slopes of hills, and courses of rivers--Khabili valley--Ghorkha
Havildar's bad conduct--Ascend Singalelah--Plague of ticks--
Short commons--Cross Islumbo pass--Boundary of Sikkim--Kulhait
valley--Lingeham--Reception by Kajee--Hear of Dr. Campbell's
going to meet Rajah--Views in valley--Leave for Teesta river--
Tipsy Kajee--Hospitality--Murwa beer--Temples--_Acorus
Calamus_--Long Mendong--Burning of dead--Superstitions--Cross
Great Rungeet--Boulders, origin of--Purchase of a dog--Marshes
--Lamas--Dismiss Ghorkhas--Bhoteea house--Murwa beer.

On arriving at the bottom we found a party who were travelling with
sheep laden with salt; they told us that the Yalloong village, which
lay up the valley on the route to the Kanglanamo pass (leading over
the south shoulder of Kubra into Sikkim) was deserted, the
inhabitants having retired after the October fall of snow to
Yankutang, two marches down; also that the Kanglanamo pass was
impracticable, being always blocked up by the October fall. I was,
therefore, reluctantly obliged to abandon the plan of pursuing that
route to Sikkim, and to go south, following the west flank of
Singalelah to the first of the many passes over it which I might
find open.

These people were very civil, and gave me a handful of the root of
one of the many bitter herbs called in Bengal "Teeta," and used as a
febrifuge: the present was that of _Picrorhiza,_ a plant allied to
Speedwell, which grows at from 12,000 to 15,000 feet elevation, and
is a powerful bitter, called "Hoonling" by the Tibetans. They had
with them above 100 sheep, of a tall, long-legged, Roman-nosed breed.
Each carried upwards of forty pounds of salt, done up in two leather
bags, slung on either side, and secured by a band going over the
chest, and another round the loins, so that they cannot slip off,
when going up or down hill. These sheep are very tame, patient
creatures, travelling twelve miles a day with great ease, and being
indifferent to rocky or steep ground.

Looking east I had a splendid view of the broad snowy mass of Kubra,
blocking up, as it were, the head of the valley with a white screen.
Descending to about 10,000 feet, the _Abies Brunoniana_ appeared,
with fine trees of _Rhododendron Falconeri_ forty feet high, and with
leaves nineteen inches long! while the upper part of the valley was
full of _Abies Webbiana._

At the elevation of 9000 feet, we crossed to the east bank, and
passed the junction of the gneiss and mica slate: the latter crossed
the river, striking north-west, and the stream cut a dark chasm-like
channel through it, foaming and dashing the spray over the splintered
ridges, and the broad water-worn hog-backed masses that projected
from its bed. Immense veins of granite permeated the rocks, which
were crumpled in the strangest manner: isolated angular blocks of
schist had been taken up by the granite in a fluid state, and
remained imbedded in it.

The road made great ascents to avoid landslips, and to surmount the
enormous piles of debris which encumber this valley more than any
other. We encamped at 10,050 feet, on a little flat 1000 feet above
the bed of the  river, and on its east flank. A _Hydrangea_ was the
common small wood, but _Abies Webbiana_ formed the forest, with great
Rhododendrons. The weather was foggy, whence I judged that we were in
the sea of mist I saw beneath me from the passes; the temperature,
considering the elevation, was mild, 37 degrees and 38 degrees, which
was partly due to the evolution of heat that accompanies the
condensation of these vapours, the atmosphere being loaded with
moisture. The thermometer fell to 28 degrees during the night, and in
the morning the ground was thickly covered with hoar-frost.

_December 7._--We ascended the Yalloong ridge to a saddle 11,000 feet
elevation, whence the road dips south to the gloomy gorges of the
eastern feeders of the Tambur. Here we bade adieu to the grand alpine
scenery, and for several days our course lay in Nepal in a southerly
direction, parallel to Singalelah, and crossing every spur and river
sent off by that mighty range. The latter flow towards the Tambur,
and their beds, for forty or fifty miles are elevated about 3000 or
4000 feet. Few of the spurs are ascended above 5000 feet, but all of
them rise to 12,000 or 14,000 feet to the westward, where they join
the Singalelah range.

I clambered to the top of a lofty hummock, through a dense thicket of
interwoven Rhododendron bushes, the clayey soil under which was
slippery from the quantity of dead leaves. I had hoped for a view of
the top of Kinchinjunga, which bore north-east, but it was enveloped
in clouds, as were all the snows in that direction; to the
north-west, however, I obtained bearings of the principal peaks,
etc., of the Yangma and Kambachen valleys. To the south and
south-east, lofty, rugged and pine-clad mountains rose in confused
masses, and white sheets of  mist came driving up, clinging to the
mountain-tops, and shrouding the landscape with extreme rapidity.
The remarkable mountain of Sidingbah bore south-south-east, raising
its rounded head above the clouds. I could, however, procure no
other good bearing.

The descent from the Yalloong ridge to the Khabili feeders of the
Tambur was very steep, and in some places almost precipitous, first
through dense woods of silver fir, with _Rhod. Falconeri_ and
_Hodgsoni,_ then through _Abies Brunoniana,_ with yew (now covered
with red berries) to the region of Magnolias and _Rhod. arboreum_ and
_barbatum._ One bush of the former was in flower, making a gorgeous
show. Here also appeared the great oak with lamellated acorns, which
I had not seen in the drier valleys to the westward; with many other
Dorjiling trees and shrubs. A heavy mist clung to the rank luxuriant
foliage, tantalizing from its obscuring all the view. Mica schist
replaced the gneiss, and a thick slippery stratum of clay rendered it
very difficult to keep one's footing. After so many days of bright
sunshine and dry weather, I found this quiet, damp, foggy atmosphere
to have a most depressing effect: there was little to interest in the
meteorology, the atmospheric fluctuations being far too small;
geographical discovery was at an end, and we groped our way along
devious paths in wooded valleys, or ascended spurs and ridges, always
clouded before noon, and clothed with heavy forest.

At 6000 feet we emerged from the mist, and found ourselves clambering
down a deep gully, hemmed in by frightful rocky steeps, which exposed
a fine and tolerably continuous section of schistose rocks, striking
north-west, and dipping north-east, at a very high angle.

At the bottom three furious torrents met: we descended  the course of
one of them, over slanting precipices, or trees lashed to the rocks,
and after a most winding course our path conducted us to the village
of Tarbu, high above a feeder of the Khabili river, which flows west,
joining the Tambur three days' march lower down. Having no food, we
had made a very long and difficult march to this place, but finding
none here, proceeded on to Tonghem village on the Khabili, descending
through thickets of _Rhod. arboreum_ to the elevation of 5,560.

This village, or spur, called "Tonghem" by the Limboos, and
"Yankutang" by the Bhoteeas, is the winter resort of the inhabitants
of the upper Yalloong valley: they received us very kindly, sold us
two fowls, and rice enough to last for one or two days, which was all
they could spare, and gave me a good deal of information. I found
that the Kanglanamo pass had been disused since the Nepal war, that
it was very lofty, and always closed in October.

The night was fine, clear, and warm, but the radiation so powerful
that the grass was coated with ice the following morning, though the
thermometer did not fall below 33 degrees. The next day the sun rose
with great power, and the vegetation reeked and steamed with the
heat. Crossing the river, we first made a considerable descent, and
then ascended a ridge to 5,750 feet, through a thick jungle of
_Camellia, Eurya,_ and small oak: from the top I obtained bearings of
Yalloong and Choonjerma pass, and had also glimpses of the Kinchin
range through a tantalizing jungle; after which a very winding and
fatiguing up-and-down march southwards brought us to the village of
Khabang, in the magnificent valley of the Tawa, about 800 feet above
the river, and 5,500 feet above the sea.

I halted here for a day, to refresh the people, and if possible to
obtain some food. I hoped, too, to find a pass  into Sikkim, east
over Singalelah, but was disappointed: if there had ever been one, it
had been closed since the Nepal war; and there was none, for several
marches further south, which would conduct us to the Iwa branch of
the Khabili.

Khabang is a village of Geroongs, or shepherds, who pasture their
flocks on the hills and higher valleys during summer, and bring them
down to this elevation in winter: the ground was consequently
infested with a tick, equal in size to that so common in the bushes,
and quite as troublesome, but of a different species.

The temperature rose to 72 degrees, and the black-bulb thermometer to
140 degrees. Magnolias and various almost tropical trees were common,
and the herbaceous vegetation was that of low elevations.
Large sugar-cane (_Saccharum_), palm (_Wallichia_), and wild
plantains grew near the river, and _Rhod. arboreum_ was very common
on dry slopes of mica-slate rocks, with the gorgeous and
sweet-scented _Luculia gratissima._

Up the valley of the Tawa the view was very grand of a magnificent
rocky mountain called Sidingbah, bearing south-east by south, on a
spur of the Singalelah range that runs westerly, and forms the south
flank of the Tawa, and the north of the Khabili valleys.
This mountain is fully 12,000 feet high, crested with rock and ragged
black forest, which, on the north flank, extends to its base: to the
eastward, the bare ridges of Singalelah were patched with snow, below
which they too were clothed with black pines.

From the opposite side of the Tawa to Khabang (alt. 6,020 feet), I
was, during our march southwards, most fortunate in obtaining a
splendid view of Kinchinjunga (bearing north-east by north), with its
associates, rising over the dark mass of Singalelah, its flanks
showing like tier above tier of green glaciers: its distance was
fully  twenty-five miles, and as only about 7000 feet or 8000 feet
from its summit were visible, and Kubra was foreshortened against it,
its appearance was not grand; added to which, its top was round and
hummocky, not broken into peaks, as when seen from the south and
east. Villages and cultivation became more frequent as we proceeded
southward, and our daily marches were up ridges, and down into deep
valleys, with feeders from the flanks of Sidingbah to the Tambur.
We passed through the village of Tchonboong, and camped at Yangyading
(4,100 feet), sighted Yamroop, a large village and military post to
the west of our route, crossed the Pangwa river, and reached the
valley of the Khabili. During this part of the journey, I did not
once see the Tambur river, though I was day after day marching only
seven to ten miles distant from it, so uneven is the country.
The mountains around Taptiatok, Mywa Guola, and Chingtam, were
pointed out to me, but they presented no recognizable feature.

I often looked for some slope, or strike of the slopes of the spurs,
in any one valley, or that should prevail through several, but could
seldom trace any, except on one or two occasions, at low elevations.
Looking here across the valleys, there was a tendency in the gentle
slopes of the spurs to have plane faces dipping north-east, and to be
bounded by a line of cliffs striking north-west, and facing the
south-east. In such arrangements, the upheaved cliffs may be supposed
to represent parallel lines of faults, dislocation, or rupture, but I
could never trace any secondary valleys at right angles to these.
There is no such uniformity of strike as to give to the rivers a
zig-zag course of any regularity, or one having any apparent
dependence on a prevailing arrangement of the rocks; for, though the
strike of the chlorite and clay-slate at elevations below 6000 feet
along its course, is certainly north-west, with a dip to north-east,
the flexures of the river, as projected on the map, deviate very
widely from these directions.

The valley of the Khabili is very grand, broad, open, and intersected
by many streams and cultivated spurs: the road from Yamroop to
Sikkim, once well frequented, runs up its north flank, and though it
was long closed we determined to follow and clear it.

On the 11th of December we camped near the village of Sablakoo (4,680
feet), and procured five days' food, to last us as far as the first
Sikkim village. Thence we proceeded eastward up the valley, but
descending to the Iwa, an affluent of the Khabili, through a tropical
vegetation of _Pinus longifolia, Phyllanthus Emblica,_ dwarf
date-palm, etc.

Gneiss was here the prevailing rock, uniformly dipping north-east 20
degrees, and striking north-west. The same rock no doubt forms the
mass Sidingbah, which reared its head 8000 feet above the Iwa river,
by whose bed we camped at 3,780 feet. Sand-flies abounded, and were
most troublesome: troops of large monkeys were skipping about, and
the whole scene was thoroughly tropical; still, the thermometer fell
to 38 degrees in the night, with heavy dew.

Though we passed numerous villages, I found unusual difficulty in
getting provision, and received none of the presents so uniformly
brought by the villagers to a stranger. I was not long in
discovering, to my great mortification, that these were appropriated
by the Ghorkha Havildar, who seemed to have profited by our many days
of short allowance, and diverted the current of hospitality from me
to himself. His coolies I saw groaning under heavy burdens, when
those of my people were light; and the truth only came out when he
had the impudence to attempt to impose a part of his coolies' loads
on mine, to enable the former to  carry more food, whilst he was
pretending that he used every exertion to procure me a scanty supply
of rice with my limited stock of money. I had treated this man and
his soldiers with the utmost kindness, even nursing them and clothing
them from my own stock of flannels, when sick and shivering amongst
the snows. Though a high caste Hindoo, and one who assumed Brahmin
rank, he had, I found, no objection to eat forbidden things in
secret; and now that we were travelling amongst Hindoos, his caste
obtained him everything, while money alone availed me. I took him
roundly to task for his treachery, which caused him secretly to throw
away a leg of mutton he had concealed; I also threatened to expose
the humbug of his pretension to caste, but it was then too late to
procure more food. Having hitherto much liked this man, and fully
trusted him, I was greatly pained by his conduct.

We proceeded east for three days, up the valley, through gloomy
forests of tropical trees below 5000 feet; and ascended to oaks and
magnolias at 6000 feet. The path was soon obstructed, and we had to
tear and cut our way, from 6000 to 10,000 feet, which took two days'
very hard work. Ticks swarmed in the small bamboo jungle, and my body
was covered with these loathsome insects, which got into my bed and
hair, and even attached themselves to my eyelids during the night,
when the constant annoyance and irritation completely banished sleep.
In the daytime they penetrated my trousers, piercing to my body in
many places, so that I repeatedly took off as many as twelve at one
time. It is indeed marvellous how so large an insect can painlessly
insert a stout barbed proboscis, which requires great force to
extract it, and causes severe smarting in the operation. What the
ticks feed upon in these humid forests is a perfect mystery to me,
for from  6000 to 9000 feet they literally swarmed, where there was
neither path nor animal life. They were, however, more tolerable than
a commoner species of parasite, which I found it impossible to escape
from, all classes of mountaineers being infested with it.

On the 14th, after an arduous ascent through the pathless jungle, we
camped at 9,300 feet on a narrow spur, in a dense forest, amongst
immense loose blocks of gneiss. The weather was foggy and rainy, and
the wind cold. I ate the last supply of animal food, a miserable
starved pullet, with rice and Chili vinegar; my tea, sugar, and all
other superfluities having been long before exhausted.

On the following morning, we crossed the Islumbo pass over Singalelah
into Sikkim, the elevation being 11,000 feet. Above our camp the
trees were few and stunted, and we quickly emerged from the forest on
a rocky and grassy ridge, covered with withered _Saxifrages,
Umbelliferae, Parnassia, Hypericum,_ etc. There were no pines on
either side of the pass; a very remarkable peculiarity of the damp
mountains of Sikkim, which I have elsewhere had occasion to notice:
we had left _Pinus longifolia_ (a far from common tree in these
valleys) at 3000 feet in the Tawa three days before, and ascended to
11,000 feet without passing a coniferous tree of any kind, except a
few yews, at 9000 feet, covered with red berries.

The top of the pass was broad, grassy, and bushy with dwarf Bamboo,
Rose, and Berberry, in great abundance, covered with mosses and
lichens: it had been raining hard all the morning, and the vegetation
was coated with ice: a dense fog obscured everything, and a violent
south-east wind blew over the pass in our teeth. I collected some
very curious and beautiful mosses, putting these frozen treasures
into my box, in the form of  exquisitely beautiful glass ornaments,
or mosses frosted with silver.

A few stones marked the boundary between Nepal and Sikkim, where I
halted for half an hour, and hung up my instruments: the temperature
was 32 degrees.

We descended rapidly, proceeding eastward down the broad valley of
the Kulhait river, an affluent of the Great Rungeet; and as it had
begun to sleet and snow hard, we continued until we reached 6,400
feet before camping.

On the following day we proceeded down the valley, and reached
habitations at 4000 feet: passing many villages and much cultivation,
we crossed the river, and ascended by 7 p.m., to the village of
Lingcham, just below the convent of Changachelling, very tired and
hungry. Bad weather had set in, and it was pitch dark and raining
hard when we arrived; but the Kajee, or head man, had sent out a
party with torches to conduct us, and he gave us a most hospitable
reception, honoured us with a salute of musketry, and brought
abundance of milk, eggs, fowls, plantains, and Murwa beer. Plenty of
news was awaiting me here, and a messenger with letters was three
marches further north, at Yoksun, waiting my expected return over the
Kanglanamo pass. Dr. Campbell, I was told, had left Dorjiling; and
was _en route_ to meet the Rajah at Bhomsong on the Teesta river,
where no European had ever yet been; and as the Sikkim authorities
had for sixteen years steadily rejected every overture for a friendly
interview, and even refused to allow the agent of the
Governor-General to enter their dominions, it was evident that grave
doings were pending. I knew that Dr. Campbell had long used every
exertion to bring the Sikkim Rajah to a friendly conference, without
having to force his way into the country for the purpose, but in
vain. It will hardly  be believed that though this chief's dominions
were redeemed by us from the Nepalese and given back to him; though
we had bound ourselves by a treaty to support him on his throne, and
to defend him against the Nepalese on the west, the Bhutan people on
the east, and the Tibetans on the north; and though the terms of the
treaty stipulated for free intercourse, mutual protection, and
friendship; the Sikkim authorities had hitherto been allowed to
obstruct all intercourse, and in every way to treat the
Governor-General's agent and the East India Company with contempt.
An affectation of timidity, mistrust, and ignorance was assumed for
the purpose of deception, and as a cloak for every insult and
resistance to the terms of our treaty, and it was quoted by the
Government in answer to every remonstrance on the part of their
resident agent at Dorjiling.

On the following morning the Kajee waited on me with a magnificent
present of a calf, a kid, fowls, eggs, rice, oranges, plantains,
egg-apples, Indian corn, yams, onions, tomatos, parsley, fennel,
turmeric, rancid butter, milk, and, lastly, a coolie-load of
fermenting millet-seeds, wherewith to make the favourite Murwa beer.
In the evening two lads arrived from Dorjiling, who had been sent a
week beforehand by my kind and thoughtful friend, Mr. Hodgson, with
provisions and money.

The valley of the Kulhait is one o£ the finest in Sikkim, and it is
accordingly the site of two of the oldest and richest conventual
establishments. Its length is sixteen miles, from the Islumbo pass to
the Great Rungeet, for ten of which it is inhabited, the villages
being invariably on long meridional spurs that project north and
south from either flank; they are about 2000 feet above the river,
and from 4,500 to 5000 feet above the sea. Except where these spurs
project, the flanks of the valley are very steep, the mountains
rising to 7000 or 8000 feet.

Looking from any spur, up or down the valley, five or six others
might be seen on each side of the river, at very nearly the same
average level, all presenting great uniformity of contour, namely, a
gentle slope towards the centre of the valley, and then an abrupt
descent to the river. They were about a quarter of a mile broad at
the widest, and often narrower, and a mile or so long; some parts of
their surfaces and sides were quite flat, and occasionally occupied
by marshes or ponds. Cultivation is almost confined to these spurs,
and is carried on both on their summits and steep flanks; between
every two is a very steep gulley and water-course. The timber has
long since been either wholly or partially cleared from the tops,
but, to a great extent, still clothes their flanks and the
intervening gorges. I have been particular in describing these spurs,
because it is impossible to survey them without ascribing their
comparative uniformity of level to the action of water. Similar ones
are characteristic features of the valleys of Sikkim between 2000 and
8000 feet, and are rendered conspicuous by being always sites for
villages and cultivation: the soil is a vegetable mould, over a deep
stratum of red clay.

I am far from supposing that any geologically recent action of the
sea has levelled these spurs; but as the great chain of the Himalaya
has risen from the ocean, and as every part of it has been subjected
to sea-action, it is quite conceivable that intervals of rest during
the periods of elevation or submergence would effect their levelling.
In a mountain mass so tumbled as is that of Sikkim, any level
surface, or approach to it, demands study; and when, as in the
Kulhait valley, we find several similar spurs with comparatively flat
tops, to occupy about the same level, it  is necessary to look for
some levelling cause. The action of denudation is still progressing
with astonishing rapidity, under an annual fall of from 100 to 150
inches of rain; but its tendency is to obliterate all such phenomena,
and to give sharp, rugged outlines to these spurs, in spite of the
conservative effects of vegetation.

The weather at Lingcham was gloomy, cold, and damp, with much rain
and fog, and the mean temperature (45.25 degrees) was cold for the
elevation (4,860 feet): 52.5 degrees was the highest temperature
observed, and 39 degrees the lowest.

A letter from Dr. Campbell reached me three days after my arrival,
begging me to cross the country to the Teesta river, and meet him at
Bhomsong, on its west bank, where he was awaiting my arrival.
I therefore left on the 20th of December, accompanied by my friend
the Kajee, who was going to pay his respects to the Rajah. He was
constantly followed by a lad, carrying a bamboo of Murwa beer slung
round his neck, with which he kept himself always groggy. His dress
was thoroughly Lepcha, and highly picturesque, consisting of a very
broad-brimmed round-crowned bamboo-platted hat, scarlet jacket, and
blue-striped cloth shirt, bare feet, long knife, bow and quiver,
rings and earrings, and a long pigtail. He spoke no Hindoostanee, but
was very communicative through my interpreters.

Leaving the Lingcham spur, we passed steep cliffs of mica and schist,
covered with brushwood and long grass, about 1000 feet above which
the Changachelling convent is perched. Crossing a torrent, we came to
the next village, on the spur of Kurziuk, where I was met by a
deputation of women, sent by the Lamas of Changachelling, bearing
enormous loads of oranges, rice, milk, butter, ghee, and the
everflowing Murwa beer.

The villagers had erected a shady bower for me to rest under, of
leaves and branches, and had fitted up a little bamboo stage, on
which to squat cross-legged as they do, or to hang my legs from, if I
preferred: after conducting me to this, the parties advanced and
piled their cumbrous presents on the ground, bowed, and retired; they
were succeeded by the beer-carrier, who plunged a clean drinking-tube
to the bottom of the steaming bamboo jug (described in Chapter VII),
and held it to my mouth, then placing it by my side, he bowed and
withdrew. Nothing can be more fascinating than the simple manners of
these kind people, who really love hospitality for its own sake, and
make the stranger feel himself welcome. Just now too, the Durbar had
ordered every attention to be paid me; and I hardly passed a village
however small, without receiving a present, or a cottage, where beer
was not offered. This I found a most grateful beverage; and of the
occasional rests under leafy screens during a hot day's march, and
sips at the bamboo jug, I shall ever retain a grateful remembrance.
Happily the liquor is very weak, and except by swilling, as my friend
the Kajee did, it would be impossible to get fuddled by it.

At Kurziuk I was met by a most respectable Lepcha, who, as a sort of
compliment, sent his son to escort us to the next village and spur of
Pemiongchi, to reach which we crossed another gorge, of which the
situation and features were quite similar to those of Kurziuk
and Lingcham.

The Pemiongchi and Changachelling convents and temples stand a few
miles apart, on the ridge forming the north flank of the Kulhait
valley; and as they will be described hereafter, I now only allude to
the village, which is fully 1000 feet below the convent, and large
and populous.

At Pemiongchi a superior Lama met me with another  overwhelming
present: he was a most jolly fat monk, shaven and girdled, and
dressed in a scarlet gown: my Lepchas kotowed to him, and he blessed
them by the laying on of hands.

Illustration--PEMIONGCHI GOOMPA AND CHAITS.

There is a marsh on this spur, full of the common English _Acorus
Calamus,_ or sweet-flag, whose roots being very aromatic, are used in
griping disorders of men and cattle. Hence we descended suddenly to
the Great Rungeet, which we reached at its junction with the Kulhait:
the path was very steep and slippery, owing to micaceous rocks, and
led along the side of an enormous Mendong,* [This remarkable
structure, called the Kaysing Mendong, is 200 yards long, 10 feet
high, and 6 or 8 feet broad: it is built of flat, slaty stones, and
both faces are covered with inscribed slates, of which there are
upwards of 700, and the inscriptions, chiefly "Om Mani," etc., are in
both the Uchen and Lencha Ranja characters of Tibet. A tall stone,
nine feet high, covered also with inscriptions, terminates it at the
lower end.] which ran  down the hill for several hundred yards, and
had a large chait at each end, with several smaller ones at
intervals. Throughout its length were innumerable inscriptions of "Om
Mani Padmi om," with well carved figures of Boodh in his many
incarnations, besides Lamas, etc. At the lower end was a great flat
area, on which are burnt the bodies of Sikkim people of consequence:
the poorer people are buried, the richer burned, and their ashes
scattered or interred, but not in graves proper, of which there are
none. Nor are there any signs of Lepcha interment throughout Sikkim;
though chaits are erected to the memory of the departed, they have no
necessary connection with the remains, and generally none at all.
Corpses in Sikkim are never cut to pieces and thrown into lakes, or
exposed on hills for the kites and crows to devour, as is the case
in Tibet.

We passed some curious masses of crumpled chlorite slate, presenting
deep canals or furrows, along which a demon once drained all the
water from the Pemiongchi spur, to the great annoyance of the
villagers: the Lamas, however, on choosing this as a site for their
temples, easily confounded the machinations of the evil spirit, who,
in the eyes of the simple Lepchas, was answerable for all
the mischief.

I crossed the Great Rungeet at 1840 feet above the sea, where its bed
was twenty yards in width; a rude bridge, composed of two culms of
bamboo and a handrail, conducted me to the other side, where we
camped (on the east bank) in a thick tropical jungle. In the evening
 I walked down the banks of the river, which flowed in a deep gorge,
cumbered with enormous boulders of granite, clay-slate, and
mica-slate; the rocks _in situ_ were all of the latter description,
highly inclined, and much dislocated. Some of the boulders were fully
ten feet in diameter, permeated and altered very much by granite
veins which had evidently been injected when molten, and had taken up
angular masses of the chlorite which remained, as it were, suspended
in the veins.

It is not so easy to account for the present position of these blocks
of granite, a rock not common at elevations below 10,000 feet.
They have been transported from a considerable distance in the
interior of the lofty valley to the north, and have descended not
less than 8000 feet, and travelled fully fifteen miles in a straight
line, or perhaps forty along the river bed. It may be supposed that
moraines have transported them to 8000 feet (the lowest limit of
apparent moraines), and the power of river water carried them
further; if so, the rivers must have been of much greater volume
formerly than they are now.

Our camp was on a gravel flat, like those of the Nepal valleys, about
sixty feet above the river; its temperature was 52 degrees, which
felt cool when bathing.

From the river we proceeded west, following a steep and clayey ascent
up the end of a very long spur, from the lofty mountain range called
Mungbreu, dividing the Great Rungeet from the Teesta. We ascended by
a narrow path, accomplishing 2,500 feet in an hour and a quarter,
walking slowly but steadily, without resting; this I always found a
heavy pull in a hot climate.

At about 4000 feet above the sea, the spur became more open and flat,
like those of the Kulhait valley, with alternate slopes and
comparative flats: from this elevation the  view north, south, and
west, was very fine; below us flowed the river, and a few miles up it
was the conical wooded hill of Tassiding, rising abruptly from a fork
of the deep river gorge, crowned with its curious temples and
mendongs, and bristling with chaits: on it is the oldest monastery in
Sikkim, occupying a singularly picturesque and prominent position.
North of this spur, and similar to it, lay that of Raklang, with the
temple and monastery of the same name, at about this elevation.
In front, looking west, across the Great Rungeet, were the
monasteries of Changachelling and Pemiongchi, perched aloft; and
south of these were the flat-topped spurs of the Kulhait valley, with
their villages, and the great mendong which I had passed on the
previous day, running like a white line down the spur. To the north,
beyond Tassiding, were two other monasteries, Doobdee and Sunnook,
both apparently placed on the lower wooded flanks of Kinchinjunga;
whilst close by was Dholing, the seventh religious establishment now
in sight.

We halted at a good wooden house to refresh ourselves with Murwa
beer, where I saw a woman with cancer in the face, an uncommon
complaint in this country. I here bought a little black puppy, to be
my future companion in Sikkim: he was of a breed between the famous
Tibet mastiff and the common Sikkim hunting-dog, which is a variety
of the sorry race called Pariah in the plains. Being only a few weeks
old, he looked a mere bundle of black fur; and I carried him off, for
he could not walk.

We camped at the village of Lingdam (alt. 5,550 feet), occupying a
flat, and surrounded by extensive pools of water (for this country)
containing _Acorus, Potamogeton,_ and duckweed. Such ponds I have
often met with on these terraces, and they are very remarkable, not
being dammed in by any conspicuous barrier, but simply occupying
depressions in the surface, from which, as I have repeatedly
observed, the land dips rapidly to the valleys below.

This being the high-road from Tumloong or Sikkim Durbar (the capital,
and Rajah's residence) to the numerous monasteries which I had seen,
we passed many Lamas and monks on their way home from Tumloong, where
they had gone to be present at the marriage of the Tupgain Lama, the
eldest son of the Rajah. A dispensation having previously been
procured from Lhassa, this marriage had been effected by the Lamas,
in order to counteract the efforts of the Dewan, who sought to
exercise an undue influence over the Rajah and his family.
The Tupgain Lama having only spiritual authority, and being bound to
celibacy, the temporal authority devolved on the second son, who was
heir apparent of Sikkim; he, however, having died, an illegitimate
son of the Rajah was favoured by the Dewan as heir apparent.
The bride was brought from Tibet, and the marriage party were feasted
for eighteen days at the Rajah's expense. All the Lamas whom I met
were clad in red robes, with girdles, and were shaven, with bare feet
and heads, or mitred; they wore rosaries of onyx, turquoise, quartz,
lapis lazuli, coral, glass, amber, or wood, especially yellow
berberry and sandal-wood: some had staves, and one a trident like an
eel-fork, on a long staff, an emblem of the Hindoo Trinity, called
Trisool Mahadeo, which represents Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, in
Hindoo; and Boodh, Dhurma, and Sunga, in Boodhist theology. All were
on foot, indeed ponies are seldom used in this country; the Lamas,
however, walked with becoming gravity and indifference to all
around them.

The Kajee waited upon me in the evening; full of importance, having
just received a letter from his Rajah, which he wished to communicate
to me in private; so I accompanied him to a house close by, where he
was a guest, when the  secret came out, that his highness was
dreadfully alarmed at my coming with the two Ghorka Sepoys, whom I
accordingly dismissed.

The house was of the usual Bhoteea form, of wood, well built on
posts, one-storied, containing a single apartment hung round with
bows, quivers, shields, baskets of rice, and cornucopias of Indian
corn, the handsomest and most generous looking of all the Cerealia.
The whole party were deep in a carouse on Murwa beer, and I saw the
operation of making it. The millet-seed is moistened, and ferments
for two days: sufficient for a day's allowance is then put into a
vessel of wicker-work, lined with India-rubber to make it
water-tight; and boiling water is poured on it with a ladle of gourd,
from a huge iron cauldron that stands all day over the fire.
The fluid, when quite fresh, tastes like negus of Cape sherry, rather
sour. At this season the whole population are swilling, whether at
home or travelling, and heaps of the red-brown husks are seen by the
side of all the paths.

Illustration--SIKKIM LAMAS WITH PRAYING CYLINDER AND DORJE; THE
LATERAL FIGURES ARE MONKS OR GYLONGS.



CHAPTER XIII.

Raklang pass--Uses of nettles--Edible plants--Lepcha war--
Do-mani stone--Neongong--Teesta valley--Pony, saddle, etc.--
Meet Campbell--Vegetation and scenery--Presents--Visit of Dewan
--Characters of Rajah and Dewan--Accounts of Tibet--Lhassa--
Siling--Tricks of Dewan--Walk up Teesta--Audience of Rajah--
Lamas--Kajees--Tchebu Lama, his character and position--Effects
of interview--Heir-apparent--Dewan's house--Guitar--Weather
--Fall of river--Tibet officers--Gigantic trees--Neongong lake
--Mainom, ascent of--Vegetation--Camp on snow--Silver fire--
View from top--Kinchin, etc.--Geology--Vapours--Sunset effect
--Elevation--Temperature, etc.--Lamas of Neongong--Temples--
Religious festival--Bamboo, flowering--Recross pass of Raklang--
Numerous temples, villages, etc.--Domestic animals--Descent to
Great Rungeet.

On the following morning, after receiving the usual presents from the
Lamas of Dholing, and from a large posse of women belonging to the
village of Barphiung, close by, we ascended the Raklang pass, which
crosses the range dividing the waters of the Teesta from those of the
Great Rungeet. The Kajee still kept beside me, and proved a lively
companion: seeing me continually plucking and noting plants, he gave
me much local information about them. He told me the uses made of the
fibres of the various nettles; some being twisted for bowstrings,
others as a thread for sewing and weaving; while many are eaten raw
and in soups, especially the numerous little succulent species.
The great yellow-flowered _Begonia_ was abundant, and he cut its
juicy stalks to make sauce (as we do apple-sauce) for some pork which
he expected to get at Bhomsong; the taste is acid and very pleasant.
The large succulent fern, called _Botrychium,_* [_Botrychium
Virginicum,_ Linn. This fern is eaten abundantly by the New
Zealanders: its distribution is most remarkable, being found very
rarely indeed in Europe, and in Norway only. It abounds in many parts
of the Southern United States, the Andes of Mexico, etc., in the
Himalaya mountains, Australia, and New Zealand.] grew here
plentifully; it is boiled and eaten, both here and in New Zealand.
Ferns are more commonly used for food than is supposed. In Calcutta
the Hindoos boil young tops of a _Polypodium_ with their shrimp
curries; and both in Sikkim and Nepal the watery tubers of an
_Aspidium_ are abundantly eaten. So also the pulp of one tree-fern
affords food, but only in times of scarcity, as does that of another
species in New Zealand (_Cyathea medullaris_): the pith of all is
composed of a coarse sago, that is to say, of cellular tissue with
starch granules.

A thick forest of Dorjiling vegetation covers the summit, which is
only 6,800 feet above the sea: it is a saddle, connecting the lofty
mountain of Mainom (alt. 11,000 feet) to the north, with Tendong
(alt. 8,663 feet) to the south. Both these mountains are on a range
which is continuous with Kinchinjunga, projecting from it down into
the very heart of Sikkim. A considerable stand was made here by the
Lepchas during the Nepal war in 1787; they defended the pass with
their arrows for some hours, and then retired towards the Teesta,
making a second stand lower down, at a place pointed out to me, where
rocks on either side gave them the same advantages. The Nepalese,
however, advanced to the Teesta, and then retired with little loss.

Unfortunately a thick mist and heavy rain cut off all view of the
Teesta valley, and the mountains of Chola to the eastward; which I
much regretted.

Descending by a very steep, slippery path, we came to a fine mass of
slaty gneiss, thirty feet long and thirteen feet high; not _in situ,_
but lying on the mountain side: on its sloping face was carved in
enormous characters, "Om Mani Padmi om"; of which letters the
top-strokes afford an uncertain footing to the enthusiast who is
willing to purchase a good metempsychosis by walking along the slope,
with his heels or toes in their cavities. A small inscription in one
corner is said to imply that this was the work of a pious monk of
Raklang; and the stone is called "Do-mani," literally, "stone of
prayer."

Illustration--DO-MANI STONE.

The rocks and peaks of Mainom are said to overhang the descent here
with grandeur; but the continued rain hid everything but a curious
shivered peak, apparently of chlorite schist, which was close by, and
reflected a green colour it is of course reported to be of turquoise,
and inaccessible. Descending, the rocks became more micaceous, with
broad seams of pipe-clay, originating in decomposed beds of
felspathic gneiss: the natives used this to whitewash and mortar
their temples.

I passed the monastery of Neongong, the monks of which were building
a new temple; and came to bring me a large present. Below it is a
pretty little lake, about 100 yards across, fringed with brushwood.
We camped at the village of Nampok, 4,370 feet above the sea; all
thoroughly sodden with rain.

During the night much snow had fallen at and above 9000 feet, but the
weather cleared on the following morning, and disclosed the top of
Mainom, rising close above my camp, in a series of rugged shivered
peaks, crested with pines, which looked like statues of snow: to all
other quarters this mountain presents a very gently sloping outline.
Up the Teesta valley there was a pretty peep of snowy mountains,
bearing north 35 degrees east, of no great height.

I was met by a messenger from Dr. Campbell who told me he was waiting
breakfast; so I left my party, and, accompanied by the Kajee and
Meepo, hurried down to the valley of the Rungoon (which flows east to
the Teesta), through a fine forest of tropical trees; passing the
villages of Broom* [On the top of the ridge above Broom, a tall stone
is erected by the side of the path, covered with private marks,
indicating the height of various individuals who are accustomed to
measure themselves thus; there was but one mark above 5 feet 7
inches, and that was 6 inches higher. It turned out to be Campbell's,
who had passed a few days before, and was thus proved to top the
natives of Sikkim by a long way.] and Lingo, to the spur of that
name; where I was met by a servant of the Sikkim Dewan's, with a pony
for my use. I stared at the animal, and felt inclined to ask what he
had to do here, where it was difficult enough to walk up and down
slippery slopes, amongst boulders of rock, heavy forest, and foaming
torrents; but I was little aware of what these beasts could
accomplish. The Tartar saddle was imported from Tibet, and certainly
a curiosity; once--but a long time ago--it must have been very
handsome; it was high-peaked, covered with shagreen and silvered
ornaments, wretchedly girthed, and with great stirrups attached to
short leathers. The bridle and head-gear were much too complicated
for description; there were good leather, raw hide, hair-rope, and
scarlet worsted all brought into use; the bit was the ordinary
Asiatic one, jointed, and with two rings. I mounted on one side, and
at once rolled over, saddle and all, to the other; the pony standing
quite still. I preferred walking; but Dr. Campbell had begged of me
to use the pony, as the Dewan had procured and sent it at great
trouble: I, however, had it led till I was close to Bhomsong, when I
was hoisted into the saddle and balanced on it, with my toes in the
stirrups and my knees up to my breast; twice, on the steep descent to
the river, my saddle and I were thrown on the pony's neck; in these
awkward emergencies I was assisted by a man on each side, who
supported my weight on my elbows: they seemed well accustomed to
easing mounted ponies down hill without giving the rider the trouble
of dismounting. Thus I entered Dr. Campbell's camp at Bhomsong, to
the pride and delight of my attendants; and received a hearty welcome
from my old friend, who covered me with congratulations on the
successful issue of a journey which, at this season, and under such
difficulties and discouragements, he had hardly thought feasible.

Dr. Campbell's tent was pitched in an orange-grove, occupying a flat
on the west bank of the Teesta, close to a small enclosure of
pine-apples, with a pomegranate tree in the middle. The valley is
very narrow, and the vegetation wholly tropical, consisting of two
species of oak, several palms, rattan-cane (screw-pine), _Pandanus,_
tall grasses, and all the natives of dense hot jungles. The river is
a grand feature, broad, rocky, deep, swift, and broken by enormous
boulders of rock; its waters were of a pale opal green, probably from
the materials of the soft micaceous rocks through which it flows.

A cane bridge crosses it,* [Whence the name of Bhomsong Samdong, the
latter word meaning bridge.] but had been cut away (in feigned
distrust of us), and the long canes were streaming from their
attachments on either shore down the stream, and a triangular raft
of bamboo was plying instead, drawn to and fro by means of a
strong cane.

Soon after arriving I received a present from the Rajah, consisting
of a brick of Tibet tea, eighty pounds of rancid yak butter, in large
squares, done up in yak-hair cloth, three loads of rice, and one of
Murwa for beer; rolls of bread,* [These rolls, or rather, sticks of
bread, are made in Tibet, of fine wheaten flour, and keep for a long
time: they are sweet and good, but very dirtily prepared.] fowls,
eggs, dried plums, apricots, jujubes, currants, and Sultana raisins,
the latter fruits purchased at Lhassa, but imported thither from
western Tibet; also some trays of coarse milk-white crystallised
salt, as dug in Tibet.

In the evening we were visited by the Dewan, the head and front of
all our Sikkim difficulties, whose influence was paramount with the
Rajah, owing to the age and infirmities of the latter, and his
devotion to religion, which absorbed all his time and thoughts.
The Dewan was a good-looking Tibetan, very robust, fair, muscular and
well fleshed; he had a very broad Tartar face, quite free of hair; a
small and beautifully formed mouth and chin, very broad cheekbones,
and a low, contracted forehead: his manners were courteous and
polite, but evidently affected, in assumption of better breeding than
he could in reality lay claim to. The Rajah himself was a Tibetan of
just respectable extraction, a native of the Sokpo province, north of
Lhassa: his Dewan was related to one of his wives, and I believe a
Lhassan by birth as well as extraction, having probably also Kashmir
blood in him.* [The Tibetans court promiscuous intercourse between
their families and the Kashmir merchants who traverse their country.]
Though minister, he was neither financier nor politician, but a mere
plunderer of Sikkim, introducing his relations, and those whom he
calls so, into the best estates in the country, and trading in great
and small wares, from a Tibet pony to a tobacco pipe, wholesale and
retail. Neither he nor the Rajah are considered worthy of notice by
the best Tibet families or priests, or by the Chinese commissioners
settled in Lhassa and Jigatzi. The latter regard Sikkim as virtually
English, and are contented with knowing that its ruler has no army,
and with believing that its protectors, the English, could not march
an army across the Himalaya if they would.

The Dewan, trading in wares which we could supply better and cheaper,
naturally regarded us with repugnance, and did everything in his
power to thwart Dr. Campbell's attempts to open a friendly
communication between the Sikkim and English governments. The Rajah
owed everything to us, and was, I believe, really grateful; but he
was a mere cipher in the hands of his minister. The priests again,
while rejoicing in our proximity, were apathetic, and dreaded the
more active Dewan; and the people had long given evidence of their
confidence in the English. Under these circumstances it was in the
hope of gaining the Rajah's own ear, and representing to him the
advantages of promoting an intercourse with us, and the danger of
continuing to violate the terms of our treaty, that Dr. Campbell had
been authorised by government to seek an interview with His Highness.
At present our relations were singularly infelicitous. There was no
agent on the Sikkim Rajah's part to conduct business at Dorjiling,
and the Dewan insisted on sending a creature of his own, who had
before been dismissed for insolence. Malefactors who escaped into
Sikkim were protected, and our police interrupted in the discharge of
their duties; slavery was practised; and government communications
were detained for weeks and months under false pretences.

In his interviews with us the Dewan appeared to advantage: he was
fond of horses and shooting, and prided himself on his hospitality.
We gained much information from many conversations with him, during
which politics were never touched upon. Our queries naturally
referred to Tibet and its geography, especially its great feature the
Yarou Tsampoo river; this he assured us was the Burrampooter of
Assam, and that no one doubted it in that country. Lhassa he
described as a city in the bottom of a flat-floored valley,
surrounded by lofty snowy mountains: neither grapes, tea, silk, or
cotton are produced near it, but in the Tartchi province of Tibet,
one month's journey east of Lhassa, rice, and a coarse kind of tea
are both grown. Two months' journey north-east of Lhassa is Siling,
the well-known great commercial entrepot* [The entrepot is now
removed to Tang-Keou-Eul.--See Huc and Gabet.] in west China; and
there coarse silk is produced. All Tibet he described as mountainous,
and an inconceivably poor country: there are no plains, save flats in
the bottoms of the valleys, and the paths lead over lofty mountains.
Sometimes, when the inhabitants are obliged from famine to change
their habitations in winter, the old and feeble are frozen to death,
standing and resting their chins on their staves; remaining as
pillars of ice, to fall only when the thaw of the ensuing
spring commences.

We remained several days at Bhomsong, awaiting an interview with the
Rajah, whose movements the Dewan kept shrouded in mystery. On Dr.
Campbell's arrival at this river a week before, he found messengers
waiting to inform him that the Rajah would meet him here; this being
half way between Dorjiling and Tumloong. Thenceforward every
subterfuge was resorted to by the Dewan to frustrate the meeting; and
even after the arrival of the Rajah on the east bank, the Dewan
communicated with Dr. Campbell by shooting across the river arrows to
which were attached letters, containing every possible argument to
induce him to return to Dorjiling; such as that the Rajah was sick at
Tumloong, that he was gone to Tibet, that he had a religious fast and
rites to perform, etc. etc.

One day we walked up the Teesta to the Rumphiup river, a torrent from
Mainom mountain to the west; the path led amongst thick jungle of
_Wallichia_ palm, prickly rattan canes, and the _Pandanus,_ or
screw-pine, called "Borr," which has a straight, often forked,
palm-like trunk, and an immense crown of grassy saw-edged leaves four
feet long: it bears clusters of uneatable fruit as large as a man's
fist, and their similarity to the pine-apple has suggested the name
of "Borr" for the latter fruit also, which has for many years been
cultivated in Sikkim, and yields indifferent produce. Beautiful pink
balsams covered the ground, but at this season few other showy plants
were in flower: the rocks were chlorite, very soft and silvery, and
so curiously crumpled and contorted as to appear as though formed of
scaled of mica crushed together, and confusedly arranged in layers:
the strike was north-west, and dip north-east from 60 degrees to
70 degrees.

Messengers from the Dewan overtook us at the river to announce that
the Rajah was prepared and waiting to give us a reception; so we
returned, and I borrowed a coat from Dr. Campbell instead of my
tattered shooting-jacket; and we crossed the river on the
bamboo-raft. As it is the custom on these occasions to exchange
presents, I was officially supplied with some red cloth and beads:
these, as well as Dr. Campbell's present, should only have been
delivered during or after the audience; but our wily friend the Dewan
here played us a very shabby trick; for he managed that our presents
should be stealthily brought in before our appearance, thus giving to
the by-standers the impression of our being tributaries to
his Highness!

The audience chamber was a mere roofed shed of neat bamboo wattle,
about twenty feet long: two Bhoteeas in scarlet. jackets, and with
bows in their hands, stood on each side of the door, and our own
chairs were carried before us for our accommodation. Within was a
square wicker throne, six feet high, covered with purple silk,
brocaded with dragons in white and gold, and overhung by a canopy of
tattered blue silk, with which material part of the walls also was
covered. An oblong box (containing papers) with gilded dragons on it,
was placed on the stage or throne, and behind it was perched
cross-legged, an odd, black, insignificant looking old man, with
twinkling upturned eyes: he was swathed in yellow silk, and wore on
his head a pink silk hat with a flat broad crown, from all sides of
which hung floss silk. This was the Rajah, a genuine Tibetan, about
seventy years old. On some steps close by, and ranged down the
apartment, were his relations, all in brocaded silk robes reaching
from the throat to the ground, and girded about the waist; and
wearing caps similar to that of the Rajah. Kajees, counsellors, and
shaven mitred Lamas were there, to the number of twenty, all planted
with their backs to the wall, mute and motionless as statues. A few
spectators were huddled together at the lower end of the room, and a
monk waved about an incense pot containing burning juniper and other
odoriferous plants. Altogether the scene was solemn and impressive:
as Campbell well expressed it, the genius of Lamaism reigned supreme.

We saluted, but received no complimentary return; our chairs were
then placed, and we seated ourselves, when the Dewan came in, clad in
a superb purple silk robe, worked with circular gold figures, and
formally presented us. The Dewan then stood; and as the Rajah did not
understand Hindoostanee, our conversation was carried on through the
medium of a little bare-headed rosy-cheeked Lama, named "Tchebu,"
clad in a scarlet gown, who acted as interpreter. The conversation
was short and constrained: Tchebu was known as a devoted servant of
the Rajah and of the heir apparent; and in common with all the Lamas
he hates the Dewan, and desires a friendly intercourse between Sikkim
and Dorjiling. He is, further, the only servant of the Rajah capable
of conversing both in Hindoo and Tibetan, and the uneasy distrustful
look of the Dewan, who understands the latter language only, was very
evident. He was as anxious to hurry over the interview, as Dr.
Campbell and Tchebu were to protract it; it was clear, therefore,
that nothing satisfactory could be done under such auspices.

As a signal for departure white silk scarfs were thrown over our
shoulders, according to the established custom in Tibet, Sikkim, and
Bhotan; and presents were made to us of China silks, bricks of tea,
woollen cloths, yaks, ponies, and salt, with worked silk purses and
fans for Mrs. Campbell; after which we left. The whole scene was
novel and very curious. We had had no previous idea of the extreme
poverty of the Rajah, of his utter ignorance of the usages of
Oriental life, and of his not having anyone near to instruct him.
The neglect of our salutation, and the conversion of our presents
into tribute, did not arise from any ill-will: it was owing to the
craft of the Dewan in taking advantage of the Rajah's ignorance of
his own position and of good manners. Miserably poor, without any
retinue, taking no interest in what passes in his own kingdom,
subsisting on the plainest and coarsest food, passing his time in
effectually abstracting his mind from the consideration of earthly
things, and wrapt in contemplation, the Sikkim Rajah has arrived at
great sanctity, and is all but prepared for that absorption into the
essence of Boodh, which is the end and aim of all good Boodhists.
The mute conduct of his Court, who looked like attendants at an
inquisition, and the profound veneration expressed in every word and
gesture of those who did move and speak, recalled a Pekin reception.
His attendants treated him as a being of a very different nature from
themselves; and well might they do so, since they believe that he
will never die, but retire from the world only to re-appear under
some equally sainted form.

Though productive of no immediate good, our interview had a very
favourable effect on the Lamas and people, who had long wished it;
and the congratulations we received thereon during the remainder of
our stay in Sikkim were many and sincere. The Lamas we found
universally in high spirits; they having just effected the marriage
of the heir apparent, himself a Lama, said to possess much ability
and prudence, and hence being very obnoxious to the Dewan, who
vehemently opposed the marriage. As, however, the minister had
established his influence over the youngest, and estranged the Rajah
from his eldest son, and was moreover in a fair way for ruling Sikkim
himself, the Church rose in a body, procured a dispensation from
Lhassa for the marriage of a priest, and thus hoped to undermine the
influence of the violent and greedy stranger.

In the evening, we paid a farewell visit to the Dewan, whom we found
in a bamboo wicker-work hut, neatly hung with bows, arrows, and round
Lepcha shields of cane, each with a scarlet tuft of yak-hair in the
middle; there were also muskets, Tibetan arms, and much horse gear;
and at one end was a little altar, with cups, bells, pastiles, and
images. He was robed in a fawn-coloured silk gown, lined with the
softest of wool, that taken from unborn lambs: like most Tibetans, he
extracts all his beard with tweezers; an operation he civilly
recommended to me, accompanying the advice with the present of a neat
pair of steel forceps. He aspires to be considered a man of taste,
and plays the Tibetan guitar, on which he performed some airs for our
amusement: the instrument is round-bodied and long-armed, with six
strings placed in pairs, and probably comes from Kashmir: the Tibetan
airs were simple and quite pretty, with the time well marked.

During our stay at Bhomsong, the weather was cool, considering the
low elevation (1,500 feet), and very steady; the mean temperature was
52.25 degrees, the maximum 71.25 degrees, the minimum 42.75 degrees.
The sun set behind the lofty mountains at 3 p.m., and in the morning
a thick, wet, white, dripping fog settled in the bottom of the
valley, and extended to 800 or 1000 feet above the river-bed; this
was probably caused by the descent of cold currents into the humid
gorge: it was dissipated soon after sunrise, but formed again at
sunset for a few minutes, giving place to clear starlight nights.

A thermometer sunk two feet seven inches, stood at 64 degrees.
The temperature of the water was pretty constant at 51 degrees: from
here to the plains of India the river has a nearly uniform fall of
1000 feet in sixty-nine miles, or sixteen feet to a mile: were its
course straight for the same distance, the fall would be 1000 feet in
forty miles, or twenty-five feet to a mile.

Dr. Campbell's object being accomplished, he was anxious to make the
best use of the few days that remained before his return to
Dorjiling, and we therefore arranged to ascend Mainom, and visit the
principal convents in Sikkim together, after which he was to return
south, whilst I should proceed north to explore the south flank of
Kinchinjunga. For the first day our route was that by which I had
arrived. We left on Christmas-day, accompanied by two of the Rajah's,
or rather Dewan's officers, of the ranks of Dingpun and Soupun,
answering to those of captain and lieutenant; the titles were,
however, nominal, the Rajah having no soldiers, and these men being
profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of war or drill. They were
splendid specimens of Sikkim Bhoteeas (i.e. Tibetans, born in Sikkim,
sometimes called Arrhats), tall, powerful, and well built, but
insolent and bullying: the Dingpun wore the Lepcha knife, ornamented
with turquoises, together with Chinese chopsticks. Near Bhomsong,
Campbell pointed out a hot bath to me, which he had seen employed: it
consisted of a hollowed prostrate tree trunk, the water in which was
heated by throwing in hot stones with bamboo tongs. The temperature
is thus raised to 114 degrees, to which the patient submits at
repeated intervals for several days, never leaving till wholly
exhausted. These baths are called "Sa-choo," literally "hot-water,"
in Tibetan.

We stopped to measure some splendid trees in the valley, and found
the trunk of one to be forty-five feet round the buttresses, and
thirty feet above them, a large size for the Himalaya: they were a
species of _Terminalia (Pentaptera),_ and called by the Lepchas
"Sillok-Kun," "Kun" meaning tree.

We slept at Nampok, and the following morning commenced the ascent.
On the way we passed the temple and lake of Neongong; the latter is
about 400 yards round, and has no outlet. It contained two English
plants, the common duckweed (_Lemna minor_), and _Potamogeton
natans_: some coots were swimming in it, and having flushed a
woodcock, I sent for my gun, but the Lamas implored us not to shoot,
it being contrary to their creed to take life wantonly.

We left a great part of our baggage at Neongong, as we intended to
return there; and took up with us bedding, food, etc., for two days.
A path hence up the mountain is frequented once a year by the Lamas,
who make a pilgrimage to the top for worship. The ascent was very
gradual for 4000 feet. We met with snow at the level of Dorjiling
(7000 feet), indicating a colder climate than at that station, where
none had fallen; the vegetation was, however, similar, but not so
rich, and at 8000 feet trees common also to the top of Sinchul
appeared, with _R. Hodgsoni,_ and the beautiful little
winter-flowering primrose, _P. petiolaris,_ whose stemless flowers
spread like broad purple stars on the deep green foliage. Above, the
path runs along the ridge of the precipices facing the south-east,
and here we caught a glimpse of the great valley of the Ryott, beyond
the Teesta, with Tumloong, the Rajah's residence, on its north flank,
and the superb snowy peak of Chola at its head.

One of our coolies, loaded with crockery and various indispensables,
had here a severe fall, and was much bruised; he however recovered
himself, but not our goods.

The rocks were all of chlorite slate, which is not usual at this
elevation; the strike was north-west, and dip north-east. At 9000
feet various shrubby rhododendrons prevailed, with mountain-ash,
birch, and dwarf-bamboo; also _R. Falconeri,_ which grew from forty
to fifty feet high. The snow was deep and troublesome, so we encamped
at 9,800 feet, or 800 feet below the top, in a wood of _Pyrus,
Magnolia, Rhododendron,_ and bamboo. As the ground was deeply covered
with snow, we laid our beds on a thick layer of rhododendron twigs,
bamboo, and masses of a pendent moss.

We passed a very cold night, chiefly owing to damp, the temperature
falling to 24 degrees. On the following morning we scrambled through
the snow, reaching the summit after an hour's very laborious ascent,
and took up our quarters in a large wooden barn-like temple
(_goompa_), built on a stone platform. The summit was very broad, but
the depth of the snow prevented our exploring much, and the silver
firs (_Abies Webbiana_) were so tall, that no view could be obtained,
except from the temple. The great peak of Kinchinjunga is in part
hidden by those of Pundim and Nursing, but the panorama of snowy
mountains is very grand indeed. The effect is quite deceptive; the
mountains assuming the appearance of a continued chain, the distant
snowy peaks being seemingly at little further distance than the
nearer ones. The whole range (about twenty-two miles nearer than at
Dorjiling) appeared to rise uniformly and steeply out of black pine
forests, which were succeeded by the russet-brown of the rhododendron
shrubs, and that again by tremendous precipices and gulleys, into
which descended mighty glaciers and perpetual snows. This excessive
steepness is however only apparent, being due to foreshortening.

The upper 10,000 feet of Kinchin, and the tops of Pundim, Kubra, and
Junnoo, are evidently of granite, and are rounded in outline: the
lower peaks again, as those of Nursing, etc., present rugged
pinnacles of black and red stratified rocks, in many cases resting on
white granite, to which they present a remarkable contrast. The
general appearance was as if Kinchin and the whole mass of mountains
clustered around it, had been up-heaved by white granite, which still
forms the loftiest summits, and has raised the black stratified rocks
in some places to 20,000 feet in numerous peaks and ridges. One range
presented on every summit a cap of black stratified rocks of uniform
inclination and dip, striking north-west, with precipitous faces to
the south-west: this was clear to the naked eye, and more evident
with the telescope, the range in question being only fifteen miles
distant, running between Pundim and Nursing. The fact of the granite
forming the greatest elevation must not be hastily attributed to that
igneous rock having burst through the stratified, and been protruded
beyond the latter: it is much more probable that the upheaval of the
granite took place at a vast depth, and beneath an enormous pressure
of stratified rocks and perhaps of the ocean; since which period the
elevation of the whole mountain chain, and the denudation of the
stratified rocks, has been slowly proceeding.

To what extent denudation has thus lowered the peaks we dare scarcely
form a conjecture; but considering the number and variety of the beds
which in some places overlie the gneiss and granite, we may
reasonably conclude that many thousand feet have been removed.

It is further assumable that the stratified rocks originally took the
forms of great domes, or arches. The prevailing north-west strike
throughout the Himalaya vaguely indicates a general primary
arrangement of the curves into waves, whose crests run north-west and
south-cast; an arrangement which no minor or posterior forces have
wholly disturbed, though they have produced endless dislocations, and
especially a want of uniformity in the amount and direction of the
dip. Whether the loftiest waves were the result of one great
convulsion, or of a long-continued succession of small ones, the
effect would be the same, namely, that the strata over those points
at which the granite penetrated the highest, would be the most
dislocated, and the most exposed to wear during denudation.

We enjoyed the view of this superb scenery till noon, when the clouds
which had obscured Dorjiling since morning were borne towards us by
the southerly wind, rapidly closing in the landscape on all sides.
At sunset they again broke, retreating from the northward, and rising
from Sinchul and Dorjiling last of all, whilst a line of vapour,
thrown by perspective into one narrow band, seemed to belt the
Singalelah range with a white girdle, darkened to black where it
crossed the snowy mountains; and it was difficult to believe that
this belt did not really hang upon the ranges from twenty to thirty
miles off, against which it was projected; or that its true position
was comparatively close to the mountain on which we were standing,
and was due to condensation around its cool, broad, flat summit.

As usual from such elevations, sunset produced many beautiful
effects. The zenith was a deep blue, darkening opposite the setting
sun, and paling over it into a peach colour, and that again near the
horizon passing into a glowing orange-red, crossed by coppery streaks
of cirrhus. Broad beams of pale light shot from the sun to the
meridian, crossing the moon and the planet Venus. Far south, through
gaps in the mountains, the position of the plains of India, 10,000
feet below us, was indicated by a deep leaden haze, fading upwards in
gradually paler bands (of which I counted fifteen) to the clear
yellow of the sunset sky. As darkness came on, the mists collected
around the top of Mainom, accumulating on the windward side, and
thrown off in ragged masses from the opposite.

The second night we passed here was fine, and not very cold (the mean
temperature being 27 degrees) and we kept ourselves quite warm by
pine-wood fires. On the following morning the sun tinged the sky of a
lurid yellow-red: to the south-west, over the plains, the belts of
leaden vapour were fewer (twelve being distinguishable) and much
lower than on the previous evening, appearing as if depressed on the
visible horizon. Heavy masses of clouds nestled into all the valleys,
and filled up the larger ones, the mountain tops rising above them
like islands.

The height of our position I calculated to be 10,613 feet. Colonel
Waugh had determined that of the summit by trigonometry to be 10,702
feet, which probably includes the trees which cover it, or some rocky
peaks on the broad and comparatively level surface.

The mean temperature of the twenty-four hours was 32.7 degrees (max.
41.5 degrees/min. 27.2 degrees), mean dew-point 29.7, and saturation
0.82. The mercury suddenly fell below the freezing point at sunset;
and from early morning the radiation was so powerful, that a
thermometer exposed on snow sank to 21.2 degrees, and stood at 25.5
degrees, at 10 a.m. The black bulb thermometer rose to 132 degrees,
at 9 a.m. on the 27th, or 94.2 degrees above the temperature of the
air in the shade. I did not then observe that of radiation from snow;
but if, as we may assume, it was not less than on the following
morning (21.2 degrees), we shall have a difference of 148.6 degrees
Fahr., in contiguous spots; the one exposed to the full effects of
the sun, the other to that of radiation through a rarefied medium to
a cloudless sky. On the 28th the black bulb thermometer, freely
suspended over the snow and exposed to the sun, rose to 108 degrees,
or 78 degrees above that of the air in the shade (32 degrees); the
radiating surface of the same snow in the shade being 21.2 degrees,
or 86.8 degrees colder.

Having taken a complete set of angles and panoramic sketches from the
top of Mainom, with seventeen hourly observations, and collected much
information from our guides, we returned on the 28th to our tents
pitched by the temples at Neongong; descending 7000 feet, a very
severe shake along Lepcha paths. In the evening the Lamas visited us,
with presents of rice, fowls, eggs, etc., and begged subscriptions
for their temple which was then building, reminding Dr. Campbell that
he and the Governor-General had an ample share of their prayers, and
benefited in proportion. As for me, they said, I was bound to give
alms, as I surely needed praying for, seeing how I exposed myself;
besides my having been the first Englishman who had visited the snows
of Kinchinjunga, the holiest spot in Sikkim.

On the following morning we visited the unfinished temple. The outer
walls were of slabs of stone neatly chiselled, but badly mortared
with felspathic clay and pounded slate, instead of lime; the
partition walls were of clay, shaped in moulds of wood; parallel
planks, four feet asunder, being placed in the intended position of
the walls, and left open above, the composition was placed in these
boxes, a little at a time, and rammed down by the feet of many men,
who walked round and round the narrow enclosure, singing, and also
using rammers of heavy wood. The outer work was of good hard timber,
of Magnolia ("Pendre-kun" of the Lepchas) land oak ("Sokka").
The common "Ban," or Lepcha knife, supplied the place of axe, saw,
adze, and plane; and the graving work was executed with small tools,
chiefly on Toon (_Cedrela_), a very soft wood (the "Simal-kun" of
the Lepchas).

This being a festival day, when the natives were bringing offerings
to the altar, we also visited the old temple, a small wooden
building. Besides more substantial offerings, there were little cones
of rice with a round wafer of butter at the top, ranged on the altar
in order.* [The worshippers, on entering, walk straight up to the
altar, and before, or after, having deposited their gifts, they lift
both hands to the forehead, fall on their knees, and touch the ground
three times with both head and hands, raising the body a little
between each prostration. They then advance to the head Lama, kotow
similarly to him, and he blesses them, laying both hands on their
heads and repeating a short formula. Sometimes the dorje is used in
blessing, as the cross is in Europe, and when a mass of people
request a benediction, the Lama pronounces it from the door of the
temple with outstretched arms, the people all being prostrate, with
their foreheads touching the ground.] Six Lamas were at prayer,
psalms, and contemplation, sitting cross-legged on two small benches
that ran down the building: one was reading, with his hand and
fore-finger elevated, whilst the others listened; anon they all sang
hymns, repeated sacred or silly precepts to the bystanders, or joined
in a chorus with boys, who struck brass cymbals, and blew straight
copper trumpets six feet long, and conch-shells mounted with broad
silver wings, elegantly carved with dragons. There were besides
manis, or praying-cylinders, drums, gongs, books, and trumpets made
of human thigh-bones, plain or mounted in silver.

Throughout Sikkim, we were roused each morning at daybreak by this
wild music, the convents being so numerous that we were always within
hearing of it. To me it was always deeply impressive, sounding so
foreign, and awakening me so effectually to the strangeness of the
wild land in which I was wandering, and of the many new and striking
objects it contained. After sleep, too, during which the mind has
either been at rest, or carried away to more familiar subjects, the
feelings of loneliness and sometimes even of despondency, conjured
up, by this solemn music, were often almost oppressive.

Ascending from Neongong, we reached that pass from the Teesta to the
Great Rungeet, which I had crossed on the 22nd; and this time we had
a splendid view, down both the valleys, of the rivers, and the many
spars from the ridge communicating between Tendong and Mainom, with
many scattered villages and patches of cultivation. Near the top I
found a plant of "Praong," (a small bamboo), in full seed; this sends
up many flowering branches from the root, and but few leaf-bearing
ones; and after maturing its seed, and giving off suckers from the
root, the parent plant dies. The fruit is a dark, long grain, like
rice; it is boiled and made into cakes, or into beer, like Murwa.

Looking west from the summit, no fewer than ten monastic
establishments with their temples, villages and cultivation, were at
once visible, in the valley of the Great Rungeet, and in those of its
tributaries; namely, Changachelling, Raklang, Dholi, Molli,
Catsuperri, Dhoobdi, Sunnook, Powhungri, Pemiongchi and Tassiding,
all of considerable size, and more or less remarkable in their sites,
being perched on spurs or peaks at elevations varying from 3000 to
7000 feet, and commanding splendid prospects.

We encamped at Lingcham, where I had halted on the 21st, and the
weather being fine, I took bearings of all the convents and mountains
around. There is much cultivation here, and many comparatively rich
villages, all occupying flat-shouldered spurs from Mainom. The houses
are large, and the yards are full of animals familiar to the eye but
not to the ear. The cows of Sikkim, though generally resembling the
English in stature, form, and colour, have humps, and grunt rather
than low; and the cocks wake the morning with a prolonged howling
screech, instead of the shrill crow of chanticleer.

Hence we descended north-west to the Great Rungeet, opposite
Tassiding; which is one of the oldest monastic establishments in
Sikkim, and one we were very anxious to visit. The descent lay
through a forest of tropical trees, where small palms, vines,
peppers, _Pandanus,_ wild plantain, and _Pothos,_ were interlaced in
an impenetrable jungle, and air-plants clothed the trees.

Illustration--IMPLEMENTS USED IN BOODHIST TEMPLES.
Praying cylinder in stand (see Chapter VII); another to be carried in
the hand; cymbals; bell; brass cup; three trumpets; conch; dorje.



CHAPTER XIV.

Tassiding, view of and from--Funereal cypress--Camp at Sunnook--
Hot vapours--Lama's house--Temples, decorations, altars, idols,
general effect--Chaits--Date of erection--Plundered by Ghorkas
--Cross Ratong--Ascend to Pemiongchi--Relation of river-beds to
strike of rocks--Slopes of ravines--Pemiongchi, view of--
Vegetation--Elevation--Temple, decorations, etc.--Former
capital of Sikkim--History of Sikkim--Nightingales--Campbell
departs--Tchonpong--Edgeworthia--Cross Rungbee and Ratong--
Hoar-frost on plantains--Yoksun--Walnuts--View--Funereal
cypresses--Doobdi--Gigantic cypresses--Temples--Snow-fall--
Sikkim, etc.--Toys.

Tassiding hill is the steep conical termination of a long spur from a
pine-clad shoulder of Kinchinjunga, called Powhungri: it divides the
Great Rungeet from its main feeder, the Ratong, which rises from the
south face of Kinchin. We crossed the former by a bridge formed of
two bamboo stems, slung by canes from two parallel arches of stout
branches lashed together.

The ascent for 2,800 feet was up a very steep, dry, zigzag path,
amongst mica slate rocks (strike north-east), on which grew many
tropical plants, especially the "Tukla," (_Rottlera tinctoria_), a
plant which yields a brown dye. The top was a flat, curving
north-west and south-east, covered with temples, chaits, and mendongs
of the most picturesque forms and in elegant groups, and fringed with
brushwood, wild plantains, small palms, and apple-trees. Here I saw
for the first time the funereal cypress, of which some very old trees
spread their weeping limbs and pensile  branchlets over the
buildings.* [I was not then aware of this tree having been introduced
into England by the intrepid Mr. Fortune from China; and as I was
unable to procure seeds, which are said not to ripen in Sikkim, it
was a great and unexpected pleasure, on my return home, to find it
alive and flourishing at Kew.] It is not wild in Sikkim, but imported
there and into Bhotan from Tibet: it does not thrive well above 6000
feet elevation. It is called "Tchenden" by the Lepchas, Bhoteeas,
and Tibetans, and its fragrant red wood is burnt in the temples.

Illustration--GROUP OF CHAITS AT PASSIDING.

The Lamas met us on the top of the hill, bringing a noble present of
fowls, vegetables and oranges, the latter most acceptable after our
long and hot march. The site is admirably chosen, in the very heart
of Sikkim, commanding a fine view, and having a considerable river on
either side,  with the power of retreating behind to the convents of
Sunnook and Powhungri, which are higher up on the same spur, and
surrounded by forest enough to conceal an army. Considering the
turbulent and warlike character of their neighbours, it is not
wonderful that the monks should have chosen commanding spots, and
good shelter for their indolent lives: for the same reason these
monasteries secured views of one another: thus from Tassiding the
great temple of Pemiongchi was seen towering 3000 feet over head,
whilst to the north-west, up the course of the river, the hill-sides
seemed sprinkled with monasteries.

We camped on a saddle near the village of Sunnook, at 4000 feet above
the sea; and on the last day of the year we visited this most
interesting monastic establishment: ascending from our camp along the
ridge by a narrow path, cut here and there into steps, and passing
many rocks covered with inscriptions, broken walls of mendongs, and
other remains of the _via sacra_ between the village and temple.
At one spot we found a fissure emitting hot vapour of the temperature
of 65.5 degrees, that of the air being about 50 degrees. It was
simply a hole amongst the rocks; and near the Rungeet a similar one
is said to occur, whose temperature fluctuates considerably with the
season. It is very remarkable that such an isolated spring should
exist on the top of a sharp ridge, 2,800 feet above the bottom of
this deep valley.

The general arrangement on the summit was, first the Lamas' houses
with small gardens, then three large temples raised on rudely paged
platforms, and beyond these, a square walled enclosure facing the
south, full of chaits and mendongs, looking like a crowded cemetery,
and planted with funereal cypress (_Cupressus funebris_).

The house of the principal Lama was an oblong square,  the lower
story of stone, and the upper of wood: we ascended a ladder to the
upper room, which was 24 feet by 8 wattled all round, with prettily
latticed windows opening upon a bamboo balcony used for drying grain,
under the eaves of the broad thatched roof. The ceiling (of neat
bamboo work) was hung with glorious bunches of maize, yellow, red,
and brown; an altar and closed wicker cage at one end of the room
held the Penates, and a few implements of worship. Chinese carpets
were laid on the floor for us, and the cans of Murwa brought round.

The Lama, though one of the red sect, was dressed in a yellow
flowered silk robe, but his mitre was red: he gave us much
information relative to the introduction of Boodhism into Sikkim.

The three temples stand about fifty yards apart, but are not parallel
to one another, although their general direction is east and west.*
[Timkowski, in his travels through Mongolia (i. p. 193), says,
"According to the rules of Tibetan architecture, temples should face
the south:" this is certainly not the rule in Sikkim, nor, so far as
I could learn, in Tibet either.] Each is oblong, and narrowed
upwards, with the door at one end; the middle (and smallest) faces
the west, the others the east: the doorways are all broad, low and
deep, protected by a projecting carved portico. The walls are
immensely thick, of well-masoned slaty stones; the outer surface of
each slopes upwards and inwards, the inner is perpendicular.
The roofs are low and thickly thatched, and project from eight to ten
feet all round, to keep off the rain, being sometimes supported by
long poles. There is a very low upper story, inhabited by the
attendant monks and servants, accessible by a ladder at one end of
the building. The main body of the temple is one large apartment,
entered through a small transverse vestibule, the breadth of the
temple, in which are tall cylindrical  praying-machines. The carving
round the doors is very beautiful, and they are gaudily painted
and gilded.

Illustration--DOORWAY.

The northern temple is quite plain: the middle one is simply painted
red, and encircled with a row of black heads, with goggle eyes and
numerous teeth, on a white ground; it is said to have been originally
dedicated to the evil spirits of the Lepcha creed. The southern,
which contains the library, is the largest and best, and is of an
irregular square shape. The inside walls and floors are plastered
with clay, and painted with allegorical representations of Boodh,
etc. From the vestibule the principal apartment is entered by broad
folding-doors, studded with circular copper bosses, and turning on
iron hinges. It is lighted by latticed windows, sometimes protected
outside by a bamboo screen. Owing to the great thickness of the walls
 (three to four feet), a very feeble light is admitted. In the
principal temple, called "Dugang," six hexagonal wooden columns,
narrowed above, with peculiar broad transverse capitals, exquisitely
gilded and painted, support the cross-beams of the roof, which are
likewise beautifully ornamented. Sometimes a curly-maned gilt lion is
placed over a column, and it is always furnished with a black bushy
tail: squares, diamonds, dragons, and groups of flowers, vermilion,
green, gold, azure, and white, are dispersed with great artistic
taste over all the beams; the heavier masses of colour being
separated by fine white lines.

Illustration--SOUTHERN TEMPLE.

The altars and idols are placed at the opposite end; and two long
parallel benches, like cathedral stalls, run down the centre of the
building: on these the monks sit at  prayer and contemplation, the
head Lama occupying a stall (often of very tasteful design) near
the altar.

Illustration--MIDDLE TEMPLE.

The principal Boodh, or image, is placed behind the altar under a
canopy, or behind a silk screen: lesser gods, and gaily dressed and
painted effigies of sainted male or female persons are ranged on
either side, or placed in niches around the apartment, sometimes with
separate altars before them; whilst the walls are more or less
covered with paintings of monks in prayer or contemplation.
The principal Boodh (Sakya Sing) sits cross-legged, with the left
heel up: his left-hand always rests on his thigh, and holds the padmi
or lotus and jewel, which is often a mere cup; the right-hand is
either raised, with the two forefingers up, or holds the dorje, or
rests on the  calf of the upturned leg. Sakya has generally curled
hair, Lamas have mitres, females various head-dresses; most wear
immense ear-rings, and some rosaries. All are placed on rude
pediments, so painted as to convey the idea of their rising out of
the petals of the pink, purple, or white lotus. None are in any way
disagreeable; on the contrary most have a calm and pleasing
expression, suggestive of contemplation.

Illustration--ALTAR AND IMAGES.
Central figure Akshobya, the first of the Pancha Boodha.

The great or south temple contained a side altar of very elegant
shape, placed before an image encircled by a glory. Flowers, juniper,
peacock's feathers, pastiles, and rows of brass cups of water were
the chief ornaments of the altars,  besides the instruments I have
elsewhere enumerated. In this temple was the library, containing
several hundred books, in pigeon-holes, placed in recesses.* [For a
particular account of the images and decorations of these temples,
sea Dr. Campbell's paper in "Bengal Asiatic Society's Trans.," May,
1849. The principal object of veneration amongst the Ningma or red
sect of Boodhists in Sikkim and Bhotan is Gorucknath, who is always
represented sitting cross-legged, holding the dorje in one hand,
which is raised; whilst the left rests in the lap and holds a cup
with a jewel in it. The left arm supports a trident, whose staff
pierces three sculls (a symbol of Shiva), a rosary hangs round his
neck, and he wears a red mitre with a lunar crescent and sun
in front.]

Illustration--PLAN OF THE SOUTH TEMPLE.
A. entrance; B. four praying cylinders; C. altar, with seven brass
cups of water; D. four columns; E. and F. images; G. library.

The effect on entering these cold and gloomy temples is very
impressive; the Dugang in particular is exquisitely ornamented and
painted, and the vista from the vestibule to the principal idol, of
carved and coloured pillars and beams, is very picturesque.
Within, the general arrangement of the colours and gilding is felt to
be harmonious and pleasing, especially from the introduction of
slender white streaks between the contrasting masses of colour,  as
adopted in the Great Exhibition building of 1851. It is also well
worthy of remark that the brightest colours are often used in broad
masses, and when so, are always arranged chromatically, in the
sequence of the rainbow's hues, and are hence never displeasing to
the eye. The hues, though bright, are subdued by the imperfect light:
the countenances of the images are all calm, and their expression
solemn. Whichever way you turn, the eye is met by some beautiful
specimen of colouring or carving, or some object of veneration.
The effect is much heightened by the incense of juniper and
sweet-smelling herbs which the priests burn on entering, by their
grave and decorous conduct, and by the feeling of respect that is
demanded by a religion which theoretically inculcates and adores
virtue in the abstract, and those only amongst men who practise
virtue. To the idol itself the Boodhist attaches no real importance;
it is an object of reverence, not of worship, and no virtue or
attribute belong to it _per se_; it is a symbol of the creed, and the
adoration is paid to the holy man whom it represents.

Beyond the temples are the chaits and mendongs, scattered without
much order; and I counted nearly twenty-five chaits of the same
form,* [In Sikkim the form of the cube alone is always strictly
preserved; that of the pyramid and hemisphere being often much
modified. The cube stands on a flight of usually three steps, and is
surmounted by a low pyramid of five steps; on this is placed a
swelling, urn-shaped body, which represents the hemisphere, and is
surmounted by another cube. On the latter is a slender, round or
angled spire (represented by a pyramid in Burma), crowned with a
crescent and disc, or sun, in moon. Generally, the whole is of stone,
with the exception of the spire, which is of wood, painted red.]
between eight and thirty feet high. The largest is consecrated to the
memory of the Rajah's eldest son, who, however, is not buried here.
A group of these structures is, as I have often remarked, extremely
picturesque, and those at Tassiding, from their  number, variety, and
size, their commanding and romantic position, and their being
interspersed with weeping cypresses, are particularly so.

The Tassiding temples and convents were founded upwards of 300 years
ago, by the Lamas who accompanied the first Rajah to Sikkim; and they
have been continuously served by Lamas of great sanctity, many of
whom have been educated at Lhassa. They were formerly very wealthy,
but during the Nepal war they were plundered of all their treasures,
their silver gongs and bells, their best idols, dorjes, and manis,
and stripped of their ornaments; since which time Pemiongchi has been
more popular. In proof of their antiquity, it was pointed out that
most of the symbols and decorations were those of pure Lama Boodhism,
as practised in Tibet.

Although the elevation is but 4,840 feet, the weather was cold and
raw, with rain at noon, followed by thunder and lightning.
These electrical disturbances are frequent about midsummer and
midwinter, prevailing over many parts of India.

_January 1st_, 1849.--The morning of the new year was bright and
beautiful, though much snow had fallen on the mountains; and we left
Sunnook for Pemiongchi, situated on the summit of a lofty spur on the
opposite side of the Ratong. We descended very steeply to the bed of
the river (alt. 2,480 feet) which joins the Great Rungeet below the
convents. The rocks were micaceous, dipping west and north-west 45
degrees, and striking north and north-east, which direction prevailed
for 1000 feet or so up the opposite spur. I had observed the same dip
and stroke on the east flank of the Tassiding spur; but both the
Ratong on its west side, and the Great Rungeet on the east, flow in
channels that show no relation to either the dip or strike.  I have
generally remarked in Sikkim that the channels of the rivers when
cutting through or flowing at the base of bluff cliffs, are neither
parallel to nor at right angles to the strike of the rocks forming
the cliffs. I do not hence conclude that there is no original
connection between the directions of the rivers, and the lines of
fracture; but whatever may have once subsisted between the direction
of the fissures and that of the strike, it is in the Sikkim Himalaya
now wholly masked by shiftings, which accompanied subsequent
elevations and depressions.

Mr. Hopkins has mathematically demonstrated that the continued
exertion of a force in raising superimposed strata would tend to
produce two classes of fractures in those strata; those of the first
order at right angles to the direction of the wave or ridge (or line
of strike); those of the second order parallel to the strike.
Supposing the force to be withdrawn after the formation of the two
fractures, the result would be a ridge, or mountain chain, with
diverging fissures from the summit, crossed by concentric fissures;
and the courses which the rivers would take in flowing down the
ridge, would successively be at right angles and parallel to the
strike of the strata. Now, in the Himalaya, a prevalent strike to the
north-west has been recognised in all parts of the chain, but it is
everywhere interfered with by mountains presenting every other
direction of strike, and by their dip never remaining constant either
in amount or direction. Consequently, as might be expected, the
directions of the river channels bear no apparent relation to the
general strike of the rocks.

We crossed the Ratong (twenty yards broad) by a cane bridge,
suspended between two rocks of green chlorite, full of veins of
granite. Ascending, we passed the village of Kameti on a spur, on the
face of which  were strewed some enormous detached blocks of white
and pink stratified quartz: the rocks _in situ_ were all
chlorite schist.

Looking across the valley to the flank of Mainom, the disposition of
the ridges and ravines on its sides was very evident; many of the
latter, throughout their westerly course, from their commencement at
10,000 feet, to their debouchure in the Great Rungeet at 2000, had a
bluff, cliffy, northern flank, and a sloping southern one. The dip of
the surfaces is, therefore, north-west, the exposure consequently of
the villages which occupy terraces on the south flanks of the lateral
valleys. The Tassiding spur presented exactly the same arrangement of
its ravines, and the dip of the rocks being north-west, it follows
that the planes of the sloping surfaces coincide in direction (though
not in amount of inclination) with that of the dip of the subjacent
strata, which is anything but a usual phenomenon in Sikkim.

The ascent to Pemiongchi continued very steep, through woods of oaks,
chesnuts, and magnolias, but no tree-fern, palms, _Pothos,_ or
plantain, which abound at this elevation on the moister outer ranges
of Sikkim. The temple (elev. 7,083 feet) is large, eighty feet long,
and in excellent order, built upon the lofty terminal point of the
great east and west spur that divides the Kulhait from the Ratong and
Rungbee rivers; and the great Changachelling temple and monastery
stand on another eminence of the same ridge, two miles further west.

The view of the snowy range from this temple is one of the finest in
Sikkim; the eye surveying at one glance the vegetation of the Tropics
and the Poles. Deep in the valleys the river-beds are but 3000 feet
above the sea, and are choked with fig-trees, plantains, and palms;
to  these succeed laurels and magnolias, and higher up still, oaks,
chesnuts, birches, etc.; there is, however, no marked line between
the limits of these two last forests, which form the prevailing
arboreous vegetation between 4000 and 10,000 feet, and give a lurid
line to the mountains. Pine forests succeed for 2000 feet higher,
when they give place to a skirting of rhododendron and berberry.
Among these appear black naked rocks, rising up in cliffs, between
which are gulleys, down which the snow now (on the 1st January)
descended to 12,000 feet. The mountain flanks are much more steep and
rocky than those at similar heights on the outer ranges, and
cataracts are very numerous, and of considerable height, though small
in volume.

Pemiongchi is at the same elevation as Dorjiling, and the contrast
between the shoulders of 8000 to 10,000 feet on Kinchinjunga, and
those of equal height on Tendong and Tonglo, is very remarkable:
looking at the latter mountains from Dorjiling, the observer sees no
rock, waterfall, or pine, throughout their whole height; whereas the
equally wooded flanks of these inner ranges are rocky, streaked with
thread-like waterfalls, and bristling with silver firs.

This temple, the most ancient in Sikkim, is said to be 400 years old;
it stands on a paved platform, and is of the same form and general
character as those of Tassiding. Inside, it is most beautifully
decorated, especially the beams, columns, capitals and architraves,
but the designs are coarser than those of Tassiding.* [Mr. Hodgson
informed me that many of the figures and emblems in this temple are
those of Tantrica Boodhism, including Shiva, Devi, and other deities
usually called Brahminical; Kakotak, or the snake king, a figure
terminating below in a snake, is also seen; with the tiger, elephant,
and curly-maned lion.] The square end of every beam in the roof is
ornamented either with a lotus flower or with a Tibetan character, in
endless diversity

Illustration--INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE AT PEMIONGCHI.


of colour and form, and the walls are completely covered with
allegorical paintings of Lamas and saints expounding or in
contemplation, with glories round their heads, mitred, and holding
the dole and jewel.

The principal image is a large and hideous figure of Sakya-thoba, in
a recess under a blue silk canopy, contrasting with a calm figure of
the late Rajah, wearing a cap and coronet.

Pemiongchi was once the capital of Sikkim, and called the Sikkim
Durbar: the Rajah's residence was on a curious flat to the south of
the temple, and a few hundred feet below it, where are the remains of
(for this country) extensive walls and buildings. During the Nepal
war, the Rajah was driven west across the Teesta, whilst the Ghorkas
plundered Tassiding, Pemiongchi, Changachelling, and all the temples
and convents to the east of that river. It was then that the famous
history of Sikkim,* [This remarkable and beautiful manuscript was
written on thick oblong sheets of Tibet paper, painted black to
resist decay, and the letters were yellow and gold. The Nepalese
soldiers wantonly employed the sheets to roof the sheds they erected,
as a protection from the weather.] compiled by the Lamas of
Pemiongchi, and kept at this temple, was destroyed, with the
exception of a few sheets, with one of which Dr. Campbell and myself
were each presented. We were told that the monks of Changachelling
and those of this establishment had copied what remained, and were
busy compiling from oral information, etc.: whatever value the
original may have possessed, however, is irretrievably lost.
A magnificent copy of the Boodhist Scriptures was destroyed at the
same time; it consisted of 400 volumes, each containing several
hundred sheets of Daphne paper.

The ground about the temple was snowed; and we descended a few
hundred feet, to encamp in a most picturesque grove, among chaits and
inscribed stones, with  a peep of the temples above. Nightingales
warbled deliciously night and morning, which rather surprised us, as
the minimum thermometer fell to 27.8 degrees, and the ground next day
was covered with hoar-frost; the elevation being 6,580 feet.
These birds migrate hither in October and November, lingering in the
Himalayan valleys till the cold of early spring drives them further
south, to the plains of India, whence they return north in March
and April.

On the 2nd of January I parted from my friend, who was obliged to
hurry to the great annual fair at Titalya. I regretted much being
unable to accompany Dr. Campbell to this scene of his disinterested
labours, especially as the Nawab of Moorshedabad was to be present,
one of the few wealthy native princes of Bengal who still keep a
court worth seeing; but I was more anxious to continue my
explorations northward till the latest moment: I however accompanied
him for a short distance on his way towards Dorjiling. We passed the
old Durbar, called Phieungoong ("Bamboo-hill," so named from the
abundance of a small bamboo, "Phieung.") The buildings, now in ruins,
occupy a little marshy flat, hemmed in by slate rocks, and covered
with brambles and _Andromeda_ bushes. A wall, a bastion, and an
arched gateway, are the only traces of fortifications; they are
clothed with mosses, lichens, and ferns.

A steep zigzag path, descending amongst long grass and scarlet
rhododendrons, leads to the Kaysing Mendong.* [Described at Chapter
XII.] Here I bade adieu to Dr. Campbell, and toiled up the hill,
feeling very lonely. The zest with which he had entered into all my
pursuits, and the aid he had afforded me, together with the charm
that always attends companionship with one who enjoys every incident
of travel, had so attracted me to him that I found it difficult to
recover my spirits.  It is quite impossible for anyone who cannot
from experience realise the solitary wandering life I had been
leading for months, to appreciate the desolate feeling that follows
the parting from one who has heightened every enjoyment, and taken
far more than his share of every annoyance and discomfort: the few
days we had spent together appeared then, and still, as months.

On my return to Pemiongchi I spent the remainder of the day sketching
in the great temple, gossiping with the Lamas, and drinking salted
and buttered tea-soup, which I had begun to like, when the butter was
not rancid.

My route hence was to be along the south flank of Kinchinjunga, north
to Jongri, which lay about four or five marches off, on the road to
the long deserted pass of Kanglanamo, by which I had intended
entering Sikkim from Nepal, when I found the route up the Yalloong
valley impracticable. The village and ruined convents of Yoksun lay
near the route, and the temples of Doobdi, Catsuperri and Molli, on
the Ratong river.

I descended to the village of Tchonpong (alt. 4,980 feet), where I
was detained a day to obtain rice, of which I required ten days'
supply for twenty-five people. On the way I passed groves of the
paper-yielding _Edgeworthia Gardneri_: it bears round heads of
fragrant, beautiful, yellow flowers, and would be a valuable
acquisition to an English conservatory.

From Tchonpong we descended to the bed of the Rungbee (alt. 3,160
feet), an affluent of the Ratong, flowing in a deep galley with
precipitous sides of mica schist full of garnets, dipping west and
north-west 45 degrees: it was spanned by a bridge of two loose bamboo
culms, about fifteen yards long, laid across without handrails; after
wet sand had been thrown on it the bare-footed coolies crossed
easily enough, but I, having shoes on, required a hand to steady me.
From this point we crossed a lofty spur to the Ratong (alt. 3000
feet), where we encamped, the coolies being unable to proceed further
on such very bad roads. This river descends from the snows of
Kinchin, and consequently retains the low temperature 42 degrees,
being fully 7 degrees colder than the Rungbee, which at an elevation
of but 3000 feet appears very remarkable: it must however be observed
that scarcely anywhere does the sun penetrate to the bottom of
its valley.

We encamped on a gravelly flat, fifty feet above the river, strewn
with water-worn boulders, and so densely covered with tall
_Artemisiae,_ gigantic grasses, bamboo, plantain, fern, and acacia,
that we had to clear a space in the jungle, which exhaled a rank
heavy smell.

Hoar-frost formed copiously in the night, and though above the sun's
rays were very powerful, they did not reach this spot till 7.30 a.m.,
the frost remaining in the shade till nearly 9 a.m.; and this on
plantains, and other inhabitants of hot-houses in England.

Hence I ascended to Yoksun, one of the most curious and picturesque
spots in Sikkim, and the last inhabited place towards Kinchinjunga.
The path was excessively steep and rocky for the first mile or two,
and then alternately steep and flat. Mixed with many tropical trees,
were walnuts of the common English variety; a tree, which, though
planted here, is wild near Dorjiling, where it bears a full-sized
fruit, as hard as a hickory-nut: those I gathered in this place were
similar, whereas in Bhotan the cultivated nut is larger,
thin-shelled, and the kernel is easily removed. We ascended one
slope, of an angle of 36 degrees 30 minutes, which was covered with
light black mould, and had been recently cleared by fire: we found
millet  now cultivated on it. From the top the view of the Ratong
valley was very fine: to the north lay Yoksun, appearing from this
height to occupy a flat, two miles long and one broad, girdled by
steep mountains to the north and east, dipping very suddenly 2,200
feet to the Ratong on the west. To the right was a lofty hill,
crowned with the large temple and convents of Doobdi, shadowed by
beautiful weeping cypresses, and backed by lofty pine-clad mountains.
Northward, the gorge of the Ratong opened as a gloomy defile, above
which rose partially snowed mountains, which shut out Kinchinjunga.
To the west, massive pine-clad mountains rose steeply; while the
little hamlet of Lathiang occupied a remarkable shelf overhanging the
river, appearing inaccessible except by ropes from above. South-west,
the long spurs of Molli and Catsuperri, each crowned with convents or
temples, descended from Singalelah; and parallel to them on the
south; but much longer and more lofty, was the great mountain range
north of the Kulbait, with the temples and convents of Pemiongchi,
and Changachelling, towering in the air. The latter range dips
suddenly to the Great Rungeet, where Tassiding, with its chaits and
cypresses, closed the view. The day was half cloud, half sunshine;
and the various effects of light and shade, now bringing out one or
other of the villages and temples, now casting the deep valleys into
darker gloom, was wonderfully fine.

Yoksun was the earliest civilised corner of Sikkim, and derived its
name (which signifies in Lepcha "three chiefs") from having been the
residence of three Lamas of great influence, who were the means of
introducing the first Tibetan sovereign into the country. At present
it boasts of but little cultivation, and a scattered population,
inhabiting a few hamlets, 5,500 feet above the sea: beautiful lanes
and paths wind everywhere over the gentle slopes, and through the
copsewood that has replaced the timber-trees of a former period.
Mendongs and chaits are very numerous, some of great size; and there
are also the ruins of two very large temples, near which are some
magnificent weeping cypresses, eighty feet high. These fine trees are
landmarks from all parts of the flat; they form irregular cones of
pale bright green, with naked gnarled tops, the branches weep
gracefully, but not like the picture in Macartney's Embassy to China,
whence originated the famous willow-pattern of our crockery.
The ultimate branchlets are very slender and pendulous; my Lepcha
boys used to make elegant chaplets of them, binding the withes with
scarlet worsted. The trunk is quite erect, smooth, cylindrical, and
pine-like; it harbours no moss, but air-plants, Orchids, and ferns,
nestle on the limbs, and pendulous lichens, like our beard-moss, wave
from the branches.

In the evening I ascended to Doobdi. The path was broad, and
skilfully conducted up a very steep slope covered with forest: the
top, which is 6,470 feet above the sea, and nearly 1000 above Yoksun,
is a broad partially paved platform, on which stand two temples,
surrounded by beautiful cypresses: one of these trees (perhaps the
oldest in Sikkim) measured sixteen and a half feet in girth, at five
feet from the ground, and was apparently ninety feet high: it was not
pyramidal, the top branches being dead and broken, and the lower
limbs spreading; they were loaded with masses of white-flowered
Coelogynes, and Vacciniums. The younger trees were pyramidal.

I was received by a monk of low degree, who made many apologies for
the absence of his superior, who had  been ordered an eight years'
penance and seclusion from the world, of which only three had passed.
On inquiry, I learnt the reason for this; the holy father having
found himself surrounded by a family, to which there would have been
no objection, had he previously obtained a dispensation. As, however,
he had omitted this preliminary, and was able to atone by prayer and
payment, he had been condemned to do penance; probably at his own
suggestion, as the seclusion will give him sanctity, and eventually
lead to his promotion, when his error shall have been forgotten.

Illustration--TEMPLE AND WEEPING CYPRESS.

Both temples are remarkable for their heavily ornamented, two-storied
porticos, which occupy nearly the whole of one end. The interior
decorations are in a ruinous  condition, and evidently very old; they
have no Hindoo emblems.

The head Lama sent me a present of dried peaches, with a bag of
walnuts, called "Koal-kun" by the Lepchas, and "Taga-sching" by the
Bhoteeas; the two terminations alike signifying "tree."

The view of Yoksun from this height was very singular: it had the
appearance of an enormous deposit banked up against a spur to the
south, and mountains to the east, and apparently levelled by the
action of water: this deposit seemed as though, having once
completely filled the valley of the Ratong, that river had cut a
gorge 2000 feet deep between it and the opposite mountain.

Although the elevation is so low, snow falls abundantly at Doobdi in
winter; I was assured that it has been known of the depth of five
feet, a statement I consider doubtful; the quantity is, however,
certainly greater than at equal heights about Dorjiling, no doubt
owing to its proximity to Kinchinjunga.

I was amused here by watching a child playing with a popgun, made of
bamboo, similar to that of quill, with which most English children
are familiar, which propels pellets by means of a spring-trigger made
of the upper part of the quill. It is easy to conclude such
resemblances between the familiar toys of different countries to be
accidental, but I question their being really so. On the plains of
India, men may often be seen for hours together, flying what with us
are children's kites; and I procured a jews'-harp from Tibet.
These are not the toys of savages, but the amusements of people more
than half-civilised, and with whom we have had indirect communication
from the earliest ages. The Lepchas play at quoits, using slate for
the purpose, and at the Highland  games of "putting the stone" and
"drawing the stone." Chess, dice, draughts, Punch, hockey, and
battledore and shuttlecock, are all Indo-Chinese or Tartarian; and no
one familiar with the wonderful instances of similarity between the
monasteries, ritual, ceremonies, attributes, vestments, and other
paraphernalia of the eastern and western churches, can fail to
acknowledge the importance of recording even the most trifling
analogies or similarities between the manners and customs of the
young as well as of the old.



CHAPTER XV

Leave Yoksun for Kinchinjunga--Ascend Ratong valley--
Salt-smuggling over Ratong--Landslips--Plants--Buckeem--
Blocks of gneiss--Mon Lepcha--View--Weather--View from Gubroo
--Kinchinjunga, tops of--Pundim cliff--Nursing--Vegetation of
Himalaya--Coup d'oeil of Jongri--Route to Yalloong--Arduous
route of salt-traders from Tibet--Kinchin, ascent of--Lichens--
Surfaces sculptured by snow and ice--Weather at Jongri--Snow--
Shades for eyes.

I left Yoksun on an expedition to Kinchinjunga on the 7th of January.
It was evident that at this season I could not attain any height; but
I was most anxious to reach the lower limit of that mass of perpetual
snow which descends in one continuous sweep from 28,000 to 15,000
feet, and radiates from the summit of Kinchin, along every spur and
shoulder for ten to fifteen miles, towards each point of the compass.

The route lay for the first mile over the Yoksun flat, and then wound
along the almost precipitous east flank of the Ratong, 1000 feet
above its bed, leading through thick forest. It was often difficult,
crossing torrents by calms of bamboo, and leading up precipices by
notched poles and roots of trees. I wondered what could have induced
the frequenting of such a route to Nepal, when there were so many
better ones over Singalelah, till I found from my guide that he had
habitually smuggled salt over this pass to avoid the oppressive duty
levelled by the Dewan on all imports from Tibet by the eastern
passes: he further told  me that it took five days to reach Yalloong
in Nepal front Yoksun, on the third of which the Kanglanamo pass is
crossed, which is open from April to November, but is always heavily
snowed. Owing to this duty, and the remoteness of the eastern passes,
the people on the west side of the Great Rungeet were compelled to
pay an enormous sum for salt; and the Lamas of Changachelling and
Pemiongchi petitioned Dr. Campbell to use his influence with the
Nepal Court to have the Kanglanamo pass re-opened, and the power of
trading with the Tibetans of Wallanchoon, Yangma, and Kambachen,
restored to them: the pass having been closed since the Nepalese war,
to prevent the Sikkim people from kidnapping children and slaves, as
was alleged to be their custom.* [An accusation in which there was
probably some truth; for the Sikkim Dingpun, who guided Dr. Campbell
and myself to Mainom, Tassiding, etc., since kidnapped, or caused to
be abducted, a girl of Brahmin parents, from the Mai valley of Nepal,
a transaction which cost him some 300 rupees. The Nepal Durbar was
naturally furious, the more so as the Dingpun had no caste, and was
therefore abhorred by all Brahmins. Restitution was demanded through
Dr. Campbell, who caused the incensed Dingpun to give up his paramour
and her jewels. He vowed vengeance against Dr. Campbell, and found
means to gratify it, as I shall hereafter show.]

We passed some immense landslips, which had swept the forest into the
torrent, and exposed white banks of angular detritus of gneiss and
granite: we crossed one 200 yards long, by a narrow treacherous path,
on a slope of 35 degrees: the subjacent gneiss was nearly vertical,
striking north-east. We camped at 6,670 feet, amongst a vegetation I
little expected to find so close to the snows of Kinchin; it
consisted of oak, maple, birch, laurel, rhododendron, white
_Daphne,_ jessamine, _Arum, Begonia, Cyrtandraceae,_ pepper,
fig, _Menispermum,_ wild cinnamon, _Scitamineae,_ several epiphytic
orchids, vines, and ferns in great abundance.

On the following day, I proceeded north-west up the Ratong river,
here a furious torrent; which we crossed,  and then ascended a very
steep mountain called "Mon Lepcha." Immense detached masses of
gneiss, full of coarse garnets, lay on the slope, some of which were
curiously marked with a series of deep holes, large enough to put
one's fist in, and said to be the footprints of the sacred cow.
They appeared to me to have been caused by the roots of trees, which
spread over the rocks in these humid regions, and wear channels in
the hardest material, especially when they follow the direction of
its lamination or stratification.

I encamped at a place called Buckeem (alt. 8,650 ft.), in a forest of
_Abies Brunoniana_ and _Webbiana,_ yew, oak, various rhododendrons,
and small bamboo. Snow lay in patches at 8000 feet, and the night was
cold and clear. On the following morning I continued the ascent,
alternately up steeps and along perfectly level shelves, on which
were occasionally frozen pools, surrounded with dwarf juniper and
rhododendrons. Across one I observed the track of a yak in the snow;
it presented two ridges, probably from the long hair of this animal,
which trails on the ground, sweeping the snow from the centre of its
path. At 11,000 feet the snow lay deep and soft in the woods of
silver fir, and the coolies waded through it with difficulty.

Enormous fractured boulders of gneiss were frequent over the whole of
Mon Lepcha, from 7000 to 11,000 feet: they were of the same material
as the rock _in situ,_ and as unaccountable in their origin as the
loose blocks on Dorjiling and Sinchul spurs at similar elevations,
often cresting narrow ridges. I measured one angular detached block,
forty feet high, resting on a steep narrow shoulder of the spur, in a
position to which it was impossible it could have rolled; and it is
equally difficult to suppose that glacial ice deposited it 4000 feet
above the bottom of the gorge,  except we conclude the valley to have
been filled with ice to that depth. A glance at the map will show
that Mon Lepcha is remarkably situated, opposite the face of
Kinchinjunga, and at the great bend of the Ratong. Had that valley
ever been filled with water during a glacial period, Mon Lepcha would
have formed a promontory, and many floating bergs from Kinchin would
have been stranded on its flank: but I nowhere observed these rocks
to be of so fine a granite as I believe the upper rocks of Kinchin to
be, and I consequently cannot advance even that far-fetched solution
with much plausibility.

As I ascended, the rocks became more granitic, with large crystals of
mica. The summit was another broad bare flat, elevated 13,080 feet,
and fringed by a copse of rose, berberry, and very alpine
rhododendrons: the Himalayan heather (_Adromeda fastigiata_) grew
abundantly here, affording us good fuel.

The toilsome ascent through the soft snow and brushwood delayed the
coolies, who scarcely accomplished five miles in the day. Some of
them having come up by dark, I prepared to camp on the mountain-top,
strewing thick masses of _Andromeda_ and moss (which latter hung in
great tufts from the bushes) on the snow; my blankets bad not
arrived, but there was no prospect of a snow-storm.

The sun was powerful when I reached the summit, and I was so warm
that I walked about barefoot on the frozen snow without
inconvenience, preferring it to continuing in wet stockings: the
temperature at the time was 29.5 degrees, with a brisk south-east
moist wind, and the dew point 22.8 degrees.

The night was magnificent, brilliant starlight, with a pale mist over
the mountains: the thermometer fell to 15.5 degrees at 7.30 p.m., and
one laid upon wood with its bulb freely exposed, sank to 7.5 degrees:
the snow sparkled with broad  flakes of hoar-frost in the full moon,
which was so bright, that I recorded my observations by its light.
Owing to the extreme cold of radiation, I passed a very uncomfortable
night. The minimum thermometer fell to 1 degrees in shade.* [At
sunrise the temperature was 11.5 degrees; that of grass, cleared on
the previous day from snow, and exposed to the sky, 6.5 degrees; that
on wool, 2.2 degrees; and that on the surface of the snow, 0.7
degrees.]  The sky was clear; and every rock, leaf, twig, blade of
grass, and the snow itself, were covered with broad rhomboidal plates
of hoar-frost, nearly one-third of an inch across: while the metal
scale of the thermometer instantaneously blistered my tongue. As the
sun rose, the light reflected from these myriads of facets had a
splendid effect.

Before sunrise the atmosphere was still, and all but cloudless.
To the south-east were visible the plains of India, at least 140
miles distant; where, as usual, horizontal layers of leaden purple
vapour obscured the horizon: behind these the sun rose majestically,
instantly dispersing them, while a thin haze spread over all the
intervening mountains, from its slanting beams reaching me through
otherwise imperceptible vapours: these, as the sun mounted higher,
again became invisible, though still giving that transparency to the
atmosphere and brilliant definition of the distances, so
characteristic of a damp, yet clear day.

Mon Lepcha commands a most extensive view of Sikkim, southward to
Dorjiling. At my feet lay the great and profound valley of the
Ratong, a dark gulf of vegetation. Looking northward, the eye
followed that river to the summit of Kinchinjunga (distant eighteen
miles), which fronts the beholder as Mont Blanc does when seen from
the mountains on the opposite side of the valley of Chamouni. To the
east are the immense precipices and  glaciers of Pundim, and on the
west those of Kubra, forming great supporters to the stupendous
mountain between them. Mon Lepcha itself is a spur running south-east
from the Kubra shoulder: it is very open, and covered with rounded
hills for several miles further north, terminating in a conspicuous
conical black hummock* [This I have beau told is the true Kubra; and
the great snowy mountain behind it, which I here, in conformity with
the Dorjiling nomenclature, call Kubra, has no name, being considered
a part of Kinchin.] called Gubroo, of 15,000 feet elevation, which
presents a black cliff to the south.

Kinchinjunga rises in three heads, of nearly equal height,* [The
eastern and western tops, are respectively 27,826 and 28,177 feet
above the level of the sea.] which form a line running north-west.
It exposes many white or grey rocks, bare of snow, and disposed in
strata* [I am aware that the word strata is inappropriate here; the
appearance of stratification or bedding, if it indicate any structure
of the rock, being, I cannot doubt, due to that action which gives
parallel cleavage planes to granite in many parts of the world, and
to which the so-called lamination or foliation of slate and gneiss is
supposed by many geologists to be due. It is not usual to find this
structure so uniformly and conspicuously developed through large
masses of granite, as it appeared to me to be on the sides of
Kinchinjunga and on the top of Junnoo, as seen from the Choonjerma
pass (Chapter XI, plate); but it is sometimes very conspicuous, and
nowhere more than in the descent of the Grimsel towards Meyringen,
where the granite on the east flank of that magnificent gorge seems
cleft into parallel nearly vertical strata.] sloping to the west; the
colour of all which above 20,000 feet, and the rounded knobbed form
of the summit, suggest a granitic formation. Lofty snowed ridges
project from Kubra into the Ratong valley, presenting black
precipices of stratified rocks to the southward. Pundim has a very
grand appearance; being eight miles distant, and nearly 9000 feet
above Mon Lepcha, it subtends an angle of 12 degrees; while Kinchin
top, though 15,000 feet higher than Mon Lepcha, being eighteen miles
distant, rises only 9 degrees 30 minutes above the true horizon:
these angular heights are too small to give much grandeur and
apparent elevation to mountains, however lofty; nor would they do so
in this case, were it not that the Ratong valley which intervenes, is
seen to be several thousand feet lower, and many degrees below the
real horizon.

Illustration--KINCHINJUNGA AND PUNDIM FROM MON LEPCHA.

Pundim has a tremendous precipice to the south, which, to judge from
its bareness of snow, must be nearly perpendicular; and it presented
a superb geological section. The height of this precipice I found by
angles with a pocket sextant to be upwards of 3,400 feet, and that of
its top to be 21,300 above the sea, and consequently only 715 feet
less than that of the summit of Pundim itself (which is 22,015 feet).
This cliff is of black stratified rocks, sloping to the west, and
probably striking north-west; permeated from top to bottom by veins
of white granite, disposed in zigzag lines, which produce a
contortion of the gneiss, and give it a marbled appearance. The same
structure may be seen in miniature on the transported blocks which
abound in the Sikkim rivers; where veins of finely grained granite
are forced in  all directions through the gneiss, and form parallel
seams or beds between the laminae of that rock, united by transverse
seams, and crumpling up the gneiss itself, like the crushed leaves of
a book. The summit of Pundim itself is all of white rock, rounded in
shape, and forming a cap to the gneiss, which weathers into
precipices.

A succession of ridges, 14,000 to 18,000 feet high, presented a line
of precipices running south from Pundim for several miles: immense
granite veins are exposed on their surfaces, and they are capped by
stratified rocks, sloping to the east, and apparently striking to the
north-west, which, being black, contrast strongly with the white
granite beneath them: these ridges, instead of being round-topped,
are broken into splintered crags, behind which rises the beautiful
conical peak of Nursing, 19,139 feet above the sea, eight miles
distant, and subtending an angle of 8 degrees 30 minutes.

At the foot of these precipices was a very conspicuous series of
lofty moraines, round whose bases the Ratong wound; these appeared of
much the same height, rising several hundred feet above the valley:
they were comparatively level-topped, and had steep shelving
rounded sides.

I have been thus particular in describing the upper Ratong valley,
because it drains the south face of the loftiest mountain on the
globe; and I have introduced angular heights, and been precise in my
details, because the vagueness with which all terms are usually
applied to the apparent altitude and steepness of mountains and
precipices, is apt to give false impressions. It is essential to
attend to such points where scenery of real interest and importance
is to be described. It is customary to speak of peaks as towering in
the air, which yet subtend an angle of very few degrees; of almost
precipitous ascents,  which, when measured, are found to be slopes of
18 degrees or 20 degrees; and of cliffs as steep and stupendous,
which are inclined at a very moderate angle.

The effect of perspective is as often to deceive in details as to
give truth to general impressions; and those accessories are
sometimes wanting in nature, which, when supplied by art, give truth
to the landscape. Thus, a streak of clouds adds height to a peak
which should appear lofty, but which scarcely rises above the true
horizon; and a belt of mist will sunder two snowy mountains which,
though at very different distances, for want of a play of light and
shade on their dazzling surfaces, and from the extreme transparency
of the air in lofty regions, appear to be at the same distance from
the observer.

The view to the southward from Mon Lepcha, including the country
between the sea-like plains of India and the loftiest mountain on the
globe, is very grand, and neither wanting in variety nor in beauty.
From the deep valleys choked with tropical luxuriance to the scanty
yak pasturage on the heights above, seems but a step at the first
_coup-d'oceil,_ but resolves itself on a closer inspection into five
belts: 1, palm and plantain; 2, oak and laurel; 3, pine;
4, rhododendron and grass; and 5, rock and snow. From the bed of the
Ratong, in which grow palms with screw-pine and plantain, it is only
seven miles in a direct line to the perpetual ice. From the plains of
India, or outer Himalaya, one may behold snowy peaks rise in the
distance behind a foreground of tropical forest; here, on the
contrary, all the intermediate phases of vegetation are seen at a
glance. Except in the Himalaya this is no common phenomenon, and is
owing to the very remarkable depth of the river-beds. That part of
the valley of the Ratong where tropical vegetation ceases, is but
4000  feet above the sea, and though fully fifty miles as the crow
flies (and perhaps 200 by the windings of the river) from the plains
of India, is only eight in a straight line (and forty by the
windings) from the snows which feed that river. In other words, the
descent is so rapid, that in eight miles the Ratong waters every
variety of vegetation, from the lichen of the poles to the palm of
the tropics; whilst throughout the remainder of its mountain course,
it falls from 4000 to 300 feet, flowing amongst tropical scenery,
through a valley whose flanks rise from 5000 to 12,000 feet above
its bed.

From Mon Lepcha we proceeded north-west towards Jongri, along a very
open rounded bare mountain, covered with enormous boulders of gneiss,
of which the subjacent rock is also composed. The soil is a thick
clay full of angular stones, everywhere scooped out into little
depressions which are the dry beds of pools, and are often strewed
with a thin layer of pebbles. Black tufts of alpine aromatic
rhododendrons of two kinds (_R. anthopogon_ and _setosum_), with
dwarf juniper, comprised all the conspicuous vegetation at
this season.

After a two hours' walk, keeping at 13,000 feet elevation, we sighted
Jongri.* [I am assured by Capt. Sherwill, who, in 1852, proceeded
along and surveyed the Nepal frontier beyond this point to Gubroo,
that this is not Jongri, but Yangpoong. The difficulty of getting
precise information, especially as to the names of seldom-visited
spots, is very great. I was often deceived myself, undesignedly, I am
sure, on the part of my informants; but in this case I have Dr.
Campbell's assurance, who has kindly investigated the subject, that
there is no mistake on my part. Captain Sherwill has also kindly
communicated to me a map of the head waters of the Rungbee, Yungya,
and Yalloong rivers, of which, being more correct than my own, I have
gladly availed myself for my map. Gubroo, he informs me, is 15,000
feet in altitude, and dips in a precipice 1000 feet high, facing
Kubra, which prevented his exploring further north.] There were two
stone huts on the bleak face of the spur, scarcely distinguishable at
the distance of half a mile from the great blocks around them.
To the north Gubroo rose in dismal grandeur, backed by the dazzling
snows of Kubra, which now seemed quite near, its lofty top (alt.
24,005 feet) being only eight miles distant. Much snow lay on the
ground in patches, and there were few remains of herbaceous
vegetation; those I recognised were chiefly of poppy, _Potentilla,_
gentian, geranium, fritillary, _Umbelliferae,_ grass, and sedges.

On our arrival at the huts the weather was still fine, with a strong
north-west wind, which meeting the warm moist current from the Ratong
valley, caused much precipitation of vapour. As I hoped to be able to
visit the surrounding glaciers from this spot, I made arrangements
for a stay of some days: giving up the only habitable hut to my
people, I spread my blankets in a slope from its roof to the ground,
building a little stone dyke round the skirts of my dwelling, and a
fire-place in front.

Hence to Yalloong in Nepal, by the Kanglanamo pass, is two days'
march: the route crosses the Singalelah range at an elevation of
about 15,000 feet, south of Kubra, and north of a mountain that forms
a conspicuous feature south-west from Jongri, as a crest of black
fingered peaks, tipped with snow.

It is difficult to conceive the amount of labour expended upon every
pound of salt imported into this part of Sikkim from Tibet, and as an
enumeration of the chief features of the routes it must follow, will
give some idea of what the circuit of the loftiest mountain in the
globe involves, I shall briefly allude to them; premising that the
circuit of Mont Blanc may be easily accomplished in four days.
The shortest route to Yoksun (the first village south of Kinchin)
from the nearest Tibetan village north of that mountain, involves a
detour of one-third of the  circumference of Kinchin. It is evident
that the most direct way must be that nearest the mountain-top, and
therefore that which reaches the highest accessible elevation on its
shoulders, and which, at the same time, dips into the shallowest
valleys between those shoulders. The actual distance in a straight
line is about fifty miles, from Yoksun to the mart at or near
Tashirukpa.

The marches between them are as follows:--
   1. To Yalloong two days; crossing Kanglanamo pass, 15,000 feet high.
   3. To foot of Choonjerma pass, descending to 10,000 feet.
   4. Cross Choonjerma pass, 15,260 feet, and proceed to Kambachen,
       11,400 feet.
   5. Cross Nango pass, 15,770, and camp on Yangma river, 11,000 feet.
   6. Ascend to foot of Kanglachem pass, and camp at 15,000 feet.
   7. Cross Kanglachem pass, probably 16,500 feet; and
   8-10. It is said to be three marches hence to the Tibetan
custom-house, and that two more snowy passes are crossed.

This allows no day of rest, and gives only five miles--as the crow
flies--to be accomplished each day, but I assume fully fourteen of
road distance; the labour spent in which would accomplish fully
thirty over good roads. Four snowed passes at least are crossed, all
above 15,000 feet, and after the first day the path does not descend
below 10,000 feet. By this route about one-third of the circuit of
Kinchinjunga is accomplished. Supposing the circuit were to be
completed by the shortest practicable route, that is, keeping as near
the summit as possible, the average time required for a man with his
load would be upwards of a month.

To reach Tashirukpa by the eastern route from Yoksun, being a journey
of about twenty-five days, requires a long detour to the southward
and eastward, and afterwards the ascent of the Teesta valley, to
Kongra Lama, and so north to the Tibetan Arun.

My first operation after encamping and arranging my instruments, was
to sink the ground thermometer; but the earth being frozen for
sixteen inches, it took four men several hours' work with hammer and
chisel, to penetrate so deep. There was much vegetable matter for the
first eight or ten inches, and below that a fine red clay. I spent
the afternoon, which was fine, in botanising. When the sun shone, the
smell of the two rhododendrons was oppressive, especially as a little
exertion at this elevation brings on headache. There were few mosses;
but crustaceous lichens were numerous, and nearly all of them of
Scotch, Alpine, European, and Arctic kinds. The names of these, given
by the classical Linnaeus and Wahlenberg, tell in some cases of their
birth-places, in others of their hardihood, their lurid colours and
weather-beaten aspects; such as _tristis, gelida, glacialis, arctica,
alpina, saxatilis, polaris, frigida,_ and numerous others equally
familiar to the Scotch botanist. I recognised many as natives of the
wild mountains of Cape Horn, and the rocks of the stormy Antarctic
ocean; since visiting which regions I had not gathered them.
The lichen called _geographicus_ was most abundant, and is found to
indicate a certain degree of cold in every latitude; descending to
the level of the sea in latitude 52 degrees north, and 50 degrees
south, but in lower latitudes only to be seen on mountains.
It flourishes at 10,000 feet on the Himalaya, ascending thence to
18,000 feet. Its name, however, was not intended to indicate its wide
range, but the curious  maplike patterns which its yellow crust forms
on the rocks.

Of the blocks of gneiss scattered over the Jongri spur, many are
twenty feet in diameter. The ridge slopes gently south-west to the
Choroong river, and more steeply north-east to the Ratong, facing
Kinchin: it rises so very gradually to a peaked mountain between
Jongri and Kubra, that it is not possible to account for the
transport and deposit of these boulders by glaciers of the ordinary
form, viz., by a stream of ice following the course of a valley; and
we are forced to speculate upon the possibility of ice having capped
the whole spur, and moved downwards, transporting blocks from the
prominences on various parts of the spur.

The cutting up of the whole surface of this rounded mountain into
little pools, now dry, of all sizes, from ten to about one hundred
yards in circumference, is a very striking phenomenon. The streams
flow in shallow transverse valleys, each passing through a succession
of such pools, accompanying a step-like character of the general
surface. The beds are stony, becoming more so where they enter the
pools, upon several of the larger of which I observed curving ridges
of large stones, radiating outwards on to their beds from either
margin of the entering stream: more generally large stones were
deposited opposite every embouchure.

This superficial sculpturing must have been a very recent operation;
and the transport of the heavy stones opposite the entrance of the
streams has been effected by ice, and perhaps by snow; just as the
arctic ice strews the shores of the Polar ocean with rocks.

The weather had been threatening all day, northern and westerly
currents contending aloft with the south-east  trade-wind of Sikkim,
and meeting in strife over the great upper valley of the Ratong.
Stately masses of white cumuli wheeled round that gulf of glaciers,
partially dissipating in an occasional snow-storm, but on the whole
gradually accumulating.

On my arrival the thermometer was 32 degrees, with a powerful sun
shining, and it fell to 28 degrees at 4 p.m., when the north wind set
in. At sunset the moon rose through angry masses of woolly cirrus;
its broad full orb threw a flood of yellow light over the serried
tops south of Pundim; thence advancing obliquely towards Nursing, "it
stood tip-toe" for a few minutes on that beautiful pyramid of snow,
whence it seemed to take flight and mount majestically into mid-air,
illuminating Kinchin, Pundim, and Kubra.

I sat at the entrance of my gipsy-like hut, anxiously watching the
weather, and absorbed in admiration of the moonrise, from which my
thoughts were soon diverted by its fading light as it entered a dense
mass of mare's-tail cirrus. It was very cold, and the stillness was
oppressive. I had been urged not to attempt such an ascent in
January, my provisions were scanty, firewood only to be obtained from
some distance, the open undulating surface of Jongri was particularly
exposed to heavy snow-drifts, and the path was, at the best, a
scarcely perceptible track. I followed every change of the wind,
every fluctuation of the barometer and thermometer, each accession of
humidity, and the courses of the clouds aloft. At 7 p.m., the wind
suddenly shifted to the west, and the thermometer instantly rose from
20 degrees to 30 degrees. After 8 p.m., the temperature fell again,
and the wind drew round from west by south to north-east, when the
fog cleared off. The barometer rose no more than it usually does
towards 10 p.m., and though it clouded again, with the temperature at
17 degrees, the wind  seemed steady, and I went to bed with a
relieved mind.

_Jan._ 10.--During the night the temperature fell to 11.2 degrees,
and at 6 a.m. was 19.8 degrees, falling again to 17 degrees soon
after. Though clouds were rapidly coming up from the west and
south-west, the wind remained northerly till 8 a.m., when it shifted
to south-west, and the temperature rose to 25 degrees. As it
continued fine, with the barometer high, I ventured on a walk towards
Gubroo, carefully taking bearings of my position. I found a good many
plants in a rocky valley close to that mountain, which I in vain
attempted to ascend. The air was 30 degrees, with a strong and damp
south-west wind, and the cold was so piercing, that two lads who were
with me, although walking fast, became benumbed, and could not return
without assistance. At 11 a.m., a thick fog obliged us to retrace our
steps: it was followed by snow in soft round pellets like sago, that
swept across the hard ground. During the afternoon it snowed
unceasingly, the wind repeatedly veering round the compass, always
from west to east by south, and so by north to west again. The flakes
were large, soft, and moist with the south wind, and small, hard, and
dry with the north. Glimpses of blue sky were constantly seen to the
south, under the gloomy canopy above, but they augured no change.
As darkness came on, the temperature fell to 15 degrees, and it
snowed very hard; at 6 p.m., it was 11 degrees, but rose afterwards
to 18 degrees.

The night was very cold and wintry: I sat for some hours behind a
blanket screen (which had to be shifted every few minutes) at my
tent-door, keeping up a sulky fire, and peering through the snow for
signs of improvement, but in vain. The clouds were not dense, for the
moon's light was distinct, shining on the glittering snow-flakes
that fell relentlessly: my anxiety was great, and I could not help
censuring myself severely for exposing a party to so great danger at
such a season. I found comfort in the belief that no idle curiosity
had prompted me, and that with a good motive and a strong prestige of
success, one can surmount a host of difficulties. Still the snow
fell; and my heart sank, as my fire declined, and the flakes
sputtered on the blackening embers; my little puppy, who had
gambolled all day amongst the drifting white pellets, now whined, and
crouched under my thick woollen cloak; the inconstant searching wind
drifted the snow into the tent, whose roof so bagged in with the
accumulation that I had to support it with sticks, and dreaded being
smothered, if the weight should cause it to sink upon my bed during
my sleep. The increasing cold drove me, however, to my blankets, and
taking the precaution of stretching a tripod stand over my head, so
as to leave a breathing hole, by supporting the roof if it fell in, I
slept soundly, with my dog at my feet.

At sunrise the following morning the sky was clear, with a light
north wind; about two feet of snow had fallen, the drifts were deep,
and all trace of the path obliterated. The minimum thermometer had
fallen to 3.7 degrees, the temperature rose to 27 degrees at 9 a.m.,
after which the wind fell, and with it the thermometer to 18 degrees.
Soon, however, southerly breezes set in, bringing up heavy masses
of clouds.

My light-hearted companions cheerfully prepared to leave the ground;
they took their appointed loads without a murmur, and sought
protection for their eyes from the glare of the newly fallen snow,
some with as much of my crape veil as I could spare, others with
shades of brown paper, or of hair from the yaks' tails, whilst a few
had spectacle-shades of woven hair; and the Lepchas loosened their
pigtails, and combed their long hair over their eyes and faces. It is
from fresh-fallen snow alone that much inconvenience is felt; owing,
I suppose, to the light reflected from the myriads of facets which
the crystals of snow present. I have never suffered inconvenience in
crossing beds of old snow, or glaciers with weathered surfaces, which
absorb a great deal of light, and reflect comparatively little, and
that little coloured green or blue.

The descent was very laborious, especially through the several miles
of bush and rock which lie below the summit: so that, although we
started at 10 a.m., it was dark by the time we reached Buckeem, where
we found two lame coolies, whom we had left on our way up, and who
were keeping up a glorious fire for our reception.

Illustration--MAITRYA, THE SIXTH OR COMING BOODH.



CHAPTER XVI.

Ratong river below Mon Lepcha--Ferns--Vegetation of Yoksun,
tropical--_Araliaceae,_ fodder for cattle--Rice-paper plant--
Geology of Yoksun--Lake--Old temples--Funereal cypresses--
Gigantic chait--Altars--Songboom--Weather--Catsuperri--
Velocity of Ratong--Worship at Catsuperri lake--Scenery--Willow
--Lamas and ecclesiastical establishments of Sikkim--Tengling--
Changachelling temples and monks--Portrait of myself on walls--
Block of mica-schist--Lingcham Kajee asks for spectacles--
Hee-hill--Arrive at Little Rungeet--At Dorjiling--Its deserted
and wintry appearance.

On the following day we marched to Yoksun: the weather was fair,
though it was evidently snowing on the mountains above. I halted at
the Ratong river, at the foot of Mon Lepcha, where I found its
elevation to be 7,150 feet; its edges were frozen, and the
temperature of the water 36 degrees; it is here a furious torrent
flowing between gneiss rocks which dip south-south-east, and is
flanked by flat-topped beds of boulders, gravel and sand, twelve to
fourteen feet thick. Its vegetation resembles that of Dorjiling, but
is more alpine, owing no doubt to the proximity of Kinchinjunga.
The magnificent _Rhododendron argenteum_ was growing on its banks.
On the other hand, I was surprised to see a beautiful fern (a
_Trichomanes,_ very like the Irish one) which is not found at
Dorjiling. The same day, at about the same elevation, I gathered
sixty species of fern, many of very tropical forms.* [They consisted
of the above-mentioned _Trichomanes,_ three _Hymenophyllae, Vittaria,
Pleopeltis,_ and _Marattia,_ together with several _Selaginellas._]
No doubt the range of such genera is extended in proportion to the
extreme damp and equable climate, here, as about Dorjiling.
Tree-ferns are however absent, and neither plantains, epiphytical
_Orchideae,_ nor palms, are so abundant, or ascend so high as on the
outer ranges. About Yoksun itself, which occupies a very warm
sheltered flat, many tropical genera occur, such as tall bamboos of
two kinds, grasses allied to the sugar-cane, scarlet _Erythrina,_ and
various _Araliaceae,_ amongst which was one species whose pith was of
so curious a structure, that I had no hesitation in considering the
then unknown Chinese substance called rice-paper to belong to a
closely allied plant.* [The Chinese rice-paper has long been known to
be cut from cylinders of pith which has always a central hollow
chamber, divided into compartments by septa or excessively thin
plates. It is only within the last few months that my supposition has
been confirmed, by my father's receiving from China, after many years
of correspondence, specimens of the rice-paper plant itself, which
very closely resemble, in botanical characters, as well as in outward
appearance of size and habit, the Sikkim plant.]

The natives collect the leaves of many Aralias as fodder for cattle,
for which purpose they are of the greatest service in a country where
grass for pasture is so scarce; this is the more remarkable, since
they belong to the natural family of ivy, which is usually poisonous;
the use of this food, however, gives a peculiar taste to the butter.
In other parts of Sikkim, fig-leaves are used for the same purpose,
and branches of a bird-cherry (_Prunus_), a plant also of a very
poisonous family, abounding in prussic acid.

We were received with great kindness by the villagers of Yoksun, who
had awaited our return with some anxiety, and on hearing of our
approach had collected large supplies of food; amongst other things
were tares (called by the Lepchas "Kullai"), yams ("Book"), and a
bread made by bruising together damp maize and rice into tough thin
cakes ("Ketch-ung tapha"). The Lamas of Doobdi were especially civil,
having a favour to ask, which was that I would intercede with
Dr. Campbell to procure the permission of the Nepalese to reopen the
Kanglanamo pass, and thus give some occupation to their herds of
yaks, which were now wandering idly about.

I botanized for two days on the Yoksun flat, searching for evidence
of lacustrine strata or moraines, being more than ever convinced by
the views I had obtained of this place from Mon Lepcha, that its
uniformity of surface was due to water action. It is certainly the
most level area of its size that I know of in Sikkim, though situated
in one of the deepest valleys, and surrounded on almost all sides by
very steep mountains; and it is far above the flat gravel terraces of
the present river-beds. I searched the surface of the flat for gravel
beds in vain, for though it abounds in depressions that must have
formerly been lake-beds, and are now marshes in the rainy season,
these were all floored with clay. Along the western edge, where the
descent is very steep for 1800 feet to the Ratong, I found no traces
of stratified deposits, though the spurs which projected from it were
often flattened at top. The only existing lake has sloping clay
banks, covered with spongy vegetable mould; it has no permanent
affluent or outlet, its present drainage being subterranean, or more
probably by evaporation; but there is an old water-channel several
feet above its level. It is eighty to a hundred yards across, and
nearly circular; its depth three or four feet, increased to fifteen
or sixteen in the rains; like all similar pools in Sikkim, it
contains little or no animal life at this season, and I searched in
vain for shells, insects, or frogs. All around were great blocks of
gneiss, some fully twelve feet square.

The situation of this lake is very romantic, buried in a tall forest
of oaks and laurels, and fringed by wild camellia shrubs; the latter
are not the leafy, deep green, large-blossomed plants of our
greenhouses, but twiggy bushes with small scattered leaves, and
little yellowish flowers like those of the tea-plant. The massive
walls of a ruined temple rise close to the water, which looks like
the still moat of a castle: beside it are some grand old funereal
cypresses, with ragged scattered branches below, where they struggle
for light in the dense forest, but raising their heads aloft as
bright green pyramids.

Illustration--ALTAR AND SONG-BOOM AT YOKSUN.

After some difficulty I found the remains of a broad path that
divided into two; one of them led to a second ruined temple, fully a
mile off, and the other I followed to a grove, in which was a
gigantic chait; it was a beautiful lane throughout, bordered with
bamboo, brambles, gay-flowered _Melastomaceae_ like hedge-roses, and
scarlet _Erythrina_: there were many old mendongs and chaits on the
way, which I was always careful to leave on the right hand in
passing, such being the rule among Boodhists, the same which ordains
that the praying-cylinder or "Mani" be made to revolve in a direction
against the sun's motion.

This great chait is the largest in Sikkim; it is called "Nirbogong,"
and appears to be fully forty feet high; facing it is a stone altar
about fifteen feet long and four broad, and behind this again is a
very curious erection called "Song-boom," used for burning juniper as
incense; it resembles a small smelting furnace, and consists of an
elongated conical stone building eight feet high, raised on a single
block; it is hollow, and divided into three stories or chambers; in
the lower of which is a door, by which fuel is placed inside, and the
smoke ascending through holes in the upper slabs, escapes by lateral
openings from the top compartment. These structures are said to be
common in Tibet, but I saw no other in Sikkim.

During my stay at Yoksun, the weather was very cold, especially at
night, considering the elevation (5,600 feet): the mean temperature
was 39 degrees, the extremes being 19.2 degrees and 60 degrees; and
even at 8 a.m. the thermometer, laid on the frosty grass, stood at 20
degrees; temperatures which are rare at Dorjiling, 1500 feet higher.
I could not but regard with surprise such half tropical genera as
perennial-leaved vines, _Saccharum, Erythrina,_ large bamboos,
_Osbeckia_ and cultivated millet, resisting such low temperatures.*
[This is no doubt due to the temperature of the soil being always
high: I did not sink a thermometer at Yoksun, but from observations
taken at similar elevations, the temperature of the earth, at three
feet depth, may be assumed to be 55 degrees.]

On the 14th January I left Yoksun for the lake and temples of
Catsuperri, the former of which is by much the largest in Sikkim.
After a steep descent of 1800 feet, we reached the Ratong, where its
bed is only 3,790 feet above the sea; it is here a turbulent stream,
twelve yards across, with the usual features of gravel terraces, huge
boulders of gneiss and some of the same rock _in situ,_ striking
north-east. Some idea of its velocity may be formed from the descent
it makes from the foot of Mon Lepcha, where the elevation of its bed
was 7,150 feet, giving a fall of 3,350 feet in only ten miles.

Hence I ascended a very steep spur, through tropical vegetation, now
become so familiar to me that I used to count the number of species
belonging to the different large natural orders, as I went along.
I gathered only thirty-five ferns at these low elevations, in the
same space as produces from fifty to sixty in the more equable and
humid regions of 6000 feet; grasses on the other hand were much more
numerous. The view of the flat of Yoksun from Lungschung village,
opposite to it, and on about the same level, is curious; as is that
of the hamlet of Lathiang on the same side, which I have before
noticed as being placed on a very singular flat shelf above the
Ratong, and is overhung by rocks.

Ascending very steeply for several thousand feet, we reached a hollow
on the Catsuperri spur, beyond which the lake lies buried in a deep
forest. A Lama from the adjacent temple accompanied us, and I found
my people affecting great solemnity as they approached its sacred
bounds; they incessantly muttered "Om mani," etc., kotowed to trees
and stones, and hung bits of rag on the bushes. A pretence of
opposing our progress was made by the priest, who of course wanted
money; this I did not appear to notice, and after a steep descent, we
were soon on the shores of what is, for Sikkim, a grand sheet of
water, (6,040 feet above the sea), without any apparent outlet: it
may be from three to five hundred yards across in the rains, but was
much less now, and was bordered by a broad marsh of bog moss
(_Sphagnum_), in which were abundance of _Azolla,_ colouring the
waters red, and sedges. Along the banks were bushes of _Rhododendron
barbatum_ and _Berberis insignis,_* [This magnificent new species has
not been introduced into England; it forms a large bush, with
deep-green leaves seven inches long, and bunches of yellow flowers.]
but the mass of the vegetation was similar to that of Dorjiling.

We crossed the marsh to the edge of the lake by a rude paved way of
decaying logs, through which we often plunged up to our knees.
The Lama had come provided with a piece of bark, shaped like a boat,
some juniper incense and a match-box, with which he made a fire, and
put it in the boat, which he then launched on the lake as a votive
offering to the presiding deity. It was a dead calm, but the impetus
he gave to the bark shot it far across the lake, whose surface was
soon covered with a thick cloud of white smoke. Taking a rupee from
me, the priest then waved his arm aloft, and pretended to throw the
money into the water, singing snatches of prayers in Tibetan, and at
times shrieking at the top of his voice to the Dryad who claims these
woods and waters as his own. There was neither bird, beast, nor
insect to be seen, and the scenery was as impressive to me, as the
effect of the simple service was upon my people, who prayed with
redoubled fervour, and hung more rags on the bushes.

I need hardly say that this invocation of the gods of the woods and
waters forms no part of Lama worship; but the Lepchas are but half
Boodhists; in their hearts they dread the demons of the grove, the
lake, the snowy mountain and the torrent, and the crafty Lama takes
advantage of this, modifies his practices to suit their requirements,
and is content with the formal recognition of the spiritual supremacy
of the church. This is most remarkably shown in their acknowledgment
of the day on which offerings had been made from time immemorial by
the pagan Lepchas to the genius of Kinchinjunga, by holding it as a
festival of the church throughout Sikkim.* [On that occasion an
invocation to the mountain is chanted by priests and people in
chorus. Like the Lama's address to the genius of Catsuperri lake, its
meaning, if it ever had any, is not now apparent. It runs thus:--
            "Kanchin-jinga, Pemi Kadup
             Gnetche Tangla, Dursha tember
             Zu jinga Pemsum Serkiem
             Dischze Kubra Kanchin tong."
This was written for me by Dr. Campbell, who, like myself, has vainly
sought its solution; it is probably a mixture of Tibetan and Lepcha,
both as much corrupted as the celebrated "Om mani padmi boom," which
is universally pronounced by Lepchas "Menny pemmy boom." This reminds
me that I never got a solution of this sentence from a Lama, of
whatever rank or learning; and it was only after incessant inquiry,
during a residence of many years in Nepal, that Mr. Hodgson at last
procured the interpretation, or rather paraphrase: "Hail to him
(Sakya) of the lotus and the jewel," which is very much the same as
M. Klaproth and other authorities have given.]

The two Catsuperri temples occupy a spur 445 feet above the lake, and
6,485 feet above the sea; they are poor, and only remarkable for a
miserable weeping-willow tree planted near them, said to have been
brought from Lhassa. The monks were very civil to me, and offered
amongst other things a present of excellent honey. One was an
intelligent man, and gave me much information: he told me that there
were upwards of twenty religious establishments in Sikkim, containing
more than 1000 priests. These have various claims upon the devout:
thus, Tassiding, Doobdi, Changachelling, and Pemiongchi, are
celebrated for their antiquity, and the latter also for being the
residence of the head Lama; Catsuperri for its lake; Raklang for its
size, etc. All are under one spiritual head, who is the Tupgain Lama,
or eldest son of the Rajah; and who resides at the Phadong convent,
near Tumloong: the Lama of Pemiongchi is, however, the most highly
respected, on account of his age, position, and sanctity. Advancement
in the hierarchy is dependent chiefly on interest, but indirectly on
works also; pilgrimages to Lhassa and Teshoo Loombo are the highest
of these, and it is clearly the interest of the supreme pontiffs of
those ecclesiastical capitals to encourage such, and to intimate to
the Sikkim authorities, the claims those who perform them have for
preferment. Dispensations for petty offences are granted to Lamas of
low degree and monks, by those of higher station, but crimes against
the church are invariably referred to Tibet, and decided there.

The election to the Sikkim Lamaseries is generally conducted on the
principle of self-government, but Pemiongchi and some others are
often served by Lamas appointed from Tibet, or ordained there, at
some of the great convents. I never heard of an instance of any
Sikkim Lama arriving at such sanctity as to be considered immortal,
and to reappear after death in another individual, nor is there any
election of infants. All are of the Ningma, Dookpa, or Shammar sect,
and are distinguished by their red mitres; they were once dominant
throughout Tibet, but after many wars* [The following account of the
early war between the red and the yellow-mitred Lamas was given me by
Tchebu Lama:--For twenty-five generations the red-cape (Dookpa or
Ningma) prevailed in Tibet, when they split into two sects, who
contended for supreme power; the Lama of Phado, who headed the
dissenters, and adopted a yellow mitre, being favoured by the Emperor
of China, to whom reference was made. A persecution of the red Lamas
followed, who were caught by the yellow-caps, and their mitres
plunged into dyeing vats kept always ready at the Lamaseries.
The Dookpa, however, still held Teshoo Loombo, and applied to the
Sokpo (North Tibet) Lamas for aid, who bringing horses and camels,
easily prevailed over the Gelookpa or yellow sect, but afterwards
treacherously went over to them, and joined them in an attack on
Teshoo Loombo, which was plundered and occupied by the Gelookpas.
The Dookpa thereafter took refuge in Sikkim and Bhotan, whence the
Bhotan Rajah became their spiritual chief under the name of Dhurma
Rajah, and is now the representative of that creed. Goorucknath is
still the Dookpa's favourite spiritual deity of the older creed,
which is, however, no longer in the ascendant. The Dalai Lama of
Teshoo Loombo is a Gelookpa, as is the Rimbochay Lama, and the Potala
Lama of Lhassa, according to Tchebu Lama, but Turner ("Travels in
Tibet," p. 315) says the contrary; the Gelookpa consider Sakya Thoba
(or Tsongkaba) alias Mahamouni, as their great avatar.] with the
yellow-caps, they were driven from that country, and took refuge
principally in the Himalaya. The Bhotan or Dhurma* [Bhotan is
generally known as the Dhurma country. See note, Chapter V.] Rajah
became the spiritual head of this sect, and, as is well known,
disputes the temporal government also of his country with the Deva
Rajah, who is the hereditary temporal monarch, and never claims
spiritual jurisdiction. I am indebted to Dr. Campbell for a copy and
translation of the Dhurma Rajah's great seal, containing the
attributes of his spirituality, a copy of which I have appended to
the end of this chapter.

The internal organisation of the different monastic establishments is
very simple. The head or Teshoo Lama* [I have been informed by
letters from Dr. Campbell that the Pemiongchi Lama is about to remove
the religious capital of Sikkim to Dorjiling, and build there a grand
temple and monastery; this will be attractive to visitors, and afford
the means of extending our knowledge of East Tibet.] rules supreme;
then come the monks and various orders of priests, and then those who
are candidates for orders, and dependents, both lay-brothers and
slaves: there are a few nunneries in Sikkim, and the nuns are all
relatives or connections of the Rajah, his sister is amongst them.
During the greater part of the year, all lead a more or less idle
life; the dependents being the most occupied in carrying wood and
water, cultivating the land, etc.

The lay-brothers are often skilful workmen, and are sometimes lent or
hired out as labourers, especially as housebuilders and decorators.
No tax of any kind is levied on the church, which is frequently very
rich in land, flocks, and herds, and in contributions from the
people: land is sometimes granted by the Rajah, but is oftener
purchased by the priests, or willed, or given by the proprietor.
The services, to which I have already alluded, are very irregularly
performed; in most temples only on festival days, which correspond to
the Tibetan ones so admirably described in MM. Huc and Gabet's
narrative; in a few, however, service is performed daily, especially
in such as stand near frequented roads, and hence reap the
richest harvest.

Like all the natives of Tibet and Sikkim, the priests are intolerably
filthy; in some cases so far carrying out their doctrines as not even
to kill the vermin with which they swarm. All are nominally bound to
chastity, but exemptions in favour of Lamas of wealth, rank, or
power, are granted by the supreme pontiffs, both in Tibet and Sikkim.
I constantly found swarms of children about the Lamaseries, who were
invariably called nephews and nieces.

Descending from the Catsuperri temples, I encamped at the village of
Tengling (elevation 5,257 feet), where I was waited upon by a bevy of
forty women, Lepchas and Sikkim Bhoteeas, accompanied by their
children, and bringing presents of fowls, rice and vegetables, and
apologising for the absence of their male relatives, who were gone to
carry tribute to the Rajah. Thence I marched to Changachelling, first
descending to the Tengling river, which divides the Catsuperri from
the Molli ridge, and which I crossed.

Tree-ferns here advance further north than in any other part of
Sikkim. I did not visit the Molli temples, but crossed the spur of
that name, to the Rungbee river, whose bed is 3,300 feet above the
sea; thence I ascended upwards of 3,500 feet to the Changachelling
temples, passing Tchongpong village. The ridge on which both
Pemiongchi and Changachelling are built, is excessively narrow at
top; it is traversed by a "via Sacra," connecting these two
establishments; this is a pretty wooded walk, passing mendongs and
chaits hoary with lichens and mosses; to the north the snows of
Kinchinjunga are seen glimmering between the trunks of oaks, laurels,
and rhododendrons, while to the south the Sinchul and Dorjiling spurs
shut out the view of the plains of India.

Changachelling temples and chaits crown a beautiful rocky eminence on
the ridge, their roofs, cones and spires peeping through groves of
bamboo, rhododendrons, and arbutus; the ascent is by broad flights of
steps cut in the mica-slate rocks, up which shaven and girdled monks,
with rosaries and long red gowns, were dragging loads of bamboo
stems, that produced a curious rattling noise. At the summit there is
a fine temple, with the ruins of several others, and of many houses:
the greater part of the principal temple, which is two-storied and
divided into several compartments, is occupied by families. The monks
were busy repairing the part devoted to worship, which consists of a
large chamber and vestibule of the usual form: the outside walls are
daubed red, with a pigment of burnt felspathic clay, which is dug
hard by. Some were painting the vestibule with colours brought from
Lhassa, where they had been trained to the art. Amongst other figures
was one playing on a guitar, a very common symbol in the vestibules
of Sikkim temples: I also saw an angel playing on the flute, and a
snake-king offering fruit to a figure in the water, who was grasping
a serpent. Amongst the figures I was struck by that of an Englishman,
whom, to my amusement, and the limner's great delight, I recognised
as myself. I was depicted in a flowered silk coat instead of a tartan
shooting jacket, my shoes were turned up at the toes, and I had on
spectacles and a tartar cap, and was writing notes in a book. On one
side a snake-king was politely handing me fruit, and on the other a
horrible demon was writhing.

A crowd had collected to see whether I should recognise myself, and
when I did so, the merriment was extreme. They begged me to send them
a supply of vermilion, goldleaf, and brushes; our so called
camel's-hair pencils being much superior to theirs, which are made of
marmot's hair.

I was then conducted to a house, where I found salted and buttered
tea and Murwa beer smoking in hospitable preparation. As usual, the
house was of wood, and the inhabited apartments above the low
basement story were approached by an outside ladder, like a Swiss
cottage: within were two rooms floored with earth; the inner was
small, and opened on a verandah that faced Kinchinjunga, whence the
keen wind whistled through the apartment.

The head Lama, my jolly fat friend of the 20th of December, came to
breakfast with me, followed by several children, nephews and nieces
he said; but they were uncommonly like him for such a distant
relationship, and he seemed extremely fond of them, and much pleased
when I stuffed them with sugar.

Changachelling hill is remarkable for having on its summit an immense
tabular mass of chlorite slate, resting apparently horizontally on
variously inclined rocks of the same: it is quite flat-topped, ten to
twelve yards each way, and the sides are squared by art; the country
people attribute its presence here to a miracle.

The view of the Kinchin range from this spot being one of the finest
in Sikkim, and the place itself being visible from Dorjiling, I took
a very careful series of bearings, which, with those obtained at
Pemiongchi, were of the utmost use in improving my map, which was
gradually progressing. To my disappointment I found that neither
priest nor people knew the name of a single snowy mountain. I also
asked in vain for some interpretation of the lines I have quoted at
earlier; they said they were Lepcha worship, and that they only used
them for the gratification of the people, on the day of the great
festival of Kinchinjunga.

Hence I descended to the Kulhait river, on my route back to
Dorjiling, visiting my very hospitable tippling friend, the Kajee of
Lingcham, on the way down: he humbly begged me to get him a pair of
spectacles, for no other object than to look wise, as he had the eyes
of a hawk; he told me that mine drew down universal respect in
Sikkim, and that I had been drawn with them on, in the temple at
Changachelling; and that a pair would not only wonderfully become
him, but afford him the most pleasing recollections of myself.
Happily I had the means of gratifying him, and have since been told
that he wears them on state occasions.

I encamped by the river, 3,160 feet above the sea, amongst figs and
plantains, on a broad terrace of pebbles, boulders and sand, ten feet
above the stream; the rocks in the latter were covered with a red
conferva. The sand on the banks was disposed in layers, alternately
white and red, the white being quartz, and the red pulverised
garnets. The arranging of these sand-bands by the water must be due
to the different specific gravities of the garnet and quartz; the
former being lighter, is lifted by the current on to the surface of
the quartz, and left there when the waters retire.

On the next day I ascended Hee hill, crossed it at an elevation of
7,290 feet, and camped on the opposite side at 6,680 feet, in a dense
forest. The next march was still southward to the little Rungeet
guard-house, below Dorjiling spur, which I reached after a fatiguing
walk amidst torrents of rain. The banks of the little Rungeet river,
which is only 1,670 feet above the sea, are very flat and low, with
broad terraces of pebbles and shingle, upon which are huge gneiss
boulders, fully 200 feet above the stream.

On the 19th of January, I ascended the Tukvor spur to Dorjiling, and
received a most hospitable welcome from my friend Mr. Muller, now
almost the only European inhabitant of the place; Mr. Hodgson having
gone down on a shooting excursion in the Terai, and Dr. Campbell
being on duty on the Bhotan frontier. The place looked what it really
was--wholly deserted. The rain I had experienced in the valley, had
here been snow, and the appearance of the broad snowed patches clear
of trees, and of the many houses without smoke or inhabitant, and the
tall scattered trees with black bark and all but naked branches, was
dismal in the extreme. The effect was heightened by an occasional
Hindoo, who flitted here and there along the road, crouching and
shivering, with white cotton garments and bare legs.

The delight of my Lepcha attendants at finding themselves safely at
home again, knew no bounds; and their parents waited on me with
presents, and other tokens of their goodwill and gratitude. I had no
lack of volunteers for a similar excursion in the following season,
though with their usual fickleness, more than half failed me, long
before the time arrived for putting their zeal to the proof.

------------

I am indebted to Dr. Campbell for the accompanying impression and
description of the seal of the Dhurma Rajah, or sovereign pontiff of
Bhotan, and spiritual head of the whole sect of the Dookpa, or
red-mitred Lama Boodhists. The translations were made by Aden Tchehu
Lama, who accompanied us into Sikkim in 1849, and I believe they are
quite correct. The Tibetan characters run from left to right.

The seal of the Dhurma Rajah is divided into a centre portion and
sixteen rays. In the centre is the word Dookyin, which means "The
Dookpa Creed"; around the "Dookyin" are sixteen similar letters,
meaning "I," or "I am." The sixteen radial compartments contain his
titles and attributes, thus, commencing from the centre erect one,
and passing round from left to right:--

1. I am the Spiritual and Temporal Chief of the Realm.
2. The Defender of the Faith.
3. Equal to Saruswati in learning.
4. Chief of all the Boodhs.
5. Head expounder of the Shasters.
6. Caster out of devils.
7. The most learned in the Holy Laws.
8. An Avatar of God (or, by God's will).
9. Absolver of sins.
10. I am above all the Lamas of the Dookpa Creed.
11. I am of the best of all Religions--the Dookpa.
12. The punisher of unbelievers.
18. Unequalled in expounding the Shasters.
14. Unequalled in holiness and wisdom.
15. The head (or fountain) of all Religious Knowledge.
16. The Enemy of all false Avatars.



CHAPTER XVII.

EXCURSION TO TERAI.

Dispatch collections--Acorns--Heat--Punkabaree--Bees--
Vegetation--Haze--Titalya--Earthquake--Proceed to Nepal
frontier--Terai, geology of--Physical features of Himalayan
valleys--Elephants, purchase of, etc.--Riverbeds--Mechi river
--Return to Titalya--Leave for Teesta--Climate of plains--
Jeelpigoree--Cooches--Alteration in the appearance of country by
fires, etc.--Grasses--Bamboos--Cottages--Rajah of Cooch Behar
--Condition of people--Hooli festival--Ascend Teesta--Canoes
--Cranes--Forest--Baikant-pore--Rummai--Religion--Plants
at foot of mountains--Exit of Teesta--Canoe voyage down to
Rangamally--English genera of plants--Birds--Beautiful Scenery
--Botanizing on elephants--Willow--Siligoree--Cross Terai--
Geology--Iron--Lohar-ghur--Coal and sandstone beds--Mechi
fisherman--Hailstorm--Ascent to Khersiong--To Dorjiling--
Vegetation--Geology--Folded quartz-beds--Spheres of feldspar--
Lime deposits.

Having arranged the collections (amounting to eighty loads) made
during 1848, they were conveyed by coolies to the foot of the hills,
where carts were provided to carry them five days' journey to the
Mahanuddy river, which flows into the Ganges, whence they were
transported by water to Calcutta.

On the 27th of February, I left Dorjiling to join Mr. Hodgson, at
Titalya on the plains. The weather was raw, cold, and threatening:
snow lay here and there at 7000 feet, and all vegetation was very
backward, and wore a wintry garb. The laurels, maples, and
deciduous-leaved oaks, hydrangea and cherry, were leafless, but the
abundance of chesnuts and evergreen oaks, rhododendrons, _Aucuba,
Linonia,_ and other shrubs, kept the forest well clothed. The oaks
had borne a very unusual number of acorns during  the last season,
which were now falling, and strewing the road in some places so
abundantly, that it was hardly safe to ride down hill.

The plains of Bengal were all but obscured by a dense haze, partly
owing to a peculiar state of the atmosphere that prevails in the dry
months, and partly to the fires raging in the Terai forest, from
which white wreaths of smoke ascended, stretching obliquely for miles
to the eastward, and filling the air with black particles of
grass-stems, carried 4000 feet aloft by the heated ascending currents
that impinge against the flanks of the mountains.

In the tropical region the air was scented with the white blossoms of
the _Vitex Agnus-castus,_ which grew in profusion by the road-side;
but the forest, which had looked so gigantic on my arrival at the
mountains the previous year, appeared small after the far more lofty
and bulky oaks and pines of the upper regions of the Himalaya.

The evening was sultry and close, the heated surface of the earth
seemed to load the surrounding atmosphere with warm vapours, and the
sensation, as compared with the cool pure air of Dorjiling, was that
of entering a confined tropical harbour after a long sea-voyage.

I slept in the little bungalow of Punkabaree, and was wakened next
morning by sounds to which I had long been a stranger, the voices of
innumerable birds, and the humming of great bees that bore large
holes for their dwellings in the beams and rafters of houses: never
before had I been so forcibly struck with the absence of animal life
in the regions of the upper Himalaya.

Breakfasting early, I pursued my way in the so-called cool of the
morning, but this was neither bright nor fresh; the night having been
hazy, there had been no terrestrial radiation, and the earth was
dusty and parched; while the  sun rose through a murky yellowish
atmosphere with ill-defined orb. Thick clouds of smoke pressed upon
the plains, and the faint easterly wind wafted large flakes of grass
charcoal sluggishly through the air.

Vegetation was in great beauty, though past its winter prime. The
tropical forest of India has two flowering seasons; one in summer, of
the majority of plants; and the other in winter, of _Acanthaceae,
Bauhinia, Dillenia, Bombax,_ etc. Of these the former are abundant, and
render the jungle gay with large and delicate white, red, and purple
blossoms. Coarse, ill-favoured vultures wheeled through the air, languid
Bengalees had replaced the active mountaineers, jackal-like curs of low
degree teemed at every village, and ran howling away from the onslaught
of my mountain dog; and the tropics, with all their beauty of flower and
genial warmth, looked as forbidding and unwholesome as they felt
oppressive to a frame that had so long breathed the fresh mountain air.

Mounted on a stout pony, I enjoyed my scamper of sixteen miles over
the wooded plains and undulating gravelly slopes of the Terai,
intervening between the foot of the mountains and Siligoree bungalow,
where I rested for an hour. In the afternoon I rode on leisurely to
Titalya, sixteen miles further, along the banks of the Mahanuddy, the
atmosphere being so densely hazy, that objects a few miles off were
invisible, and the sun quite concealed, though its light was so
powerful that no part of the sky could be steadily gazed upon.
This state of the air is very curious, and has met with various
attempts at explanation,* [Dr. M'Lelland ("Calcutta Journal of
Natural History," vol. i, p. 52), attributes the haze of the
atmosphere during the north-west winds of this season, wholly to
suspended earthy particles. But the haze is present even in the
calmest weather, and extreme dryness is in all parts of the world
usually accompanied by an obscure horizon. Captain Campbell
("Calcutta Journal of Natural History," vol. ii, p. 44.) also objects
to Dr. M'Clelland's theory, citing those parts of Southern India
which are least likely to be visited by dust-storms, as possessing an
equally hazy atmosphere; and further denies its being influenced by
the hygrometric state of the atmosphere.]  all unsatisfactory to me:
it accompanies great heat, dryness, and elasticity of the suspended
vapours, and is not affected by wind. During the afternoon the latter
blew with violence, but being hot and dry, brought no relief to my
still unacclimated frame. My pony alone enjoyed the freedom of the
boundless plains, and the gallop or trot being fatiguing in the heat,
I tried in vain to keep him at a walk; his spirits did not last long,
however, for he flagged after a few days' tropical heat. My little
dog had run thirty miles the day before, exclusive of all the detours
he had made for his own enjoyment, and he flagged so much after
twenty more this day, that I had to take him on my saddle-bow, where,
after licking his hot swollen feet, he fell fast asleep, in spite of
the motion.

After leaving the wooded Terai at Siligoree, trees became scarce, and
clumps of bamboos were the prevalent features; these, with an
occasional banyan, peepul, or betel-nut palm near the villages, were
the only breaks on the distant horizon. A powerfully scented
_Clerodendron,_ and an _Osbeckia_ gay with blossoms like dog-roses,
were abundant; the former especially under trees, where the seeds are
dropped by birds.

At Titalya bungalow, I received a hearty welcome from Mr. Hodgson,
and congratulations on the success of my Nepal journey, which
afforded a theme for many conversations.

In the evening we had three sharp jerking shocks of an earthquake in
quick succession, at 9.8 p.m., appearing to come up from the
southward: they were accompanied by a hollow rumbling sound like that
of a waggon passing over a wooden bridge. The shock was felt strongly
at Dorjiling, and registered by Mr. Muller at 9.10 p.m.: we had
accurately adjusted our watches (chronometers) the previous morning,
and the motion may therefore fairly be assumed to have been
transmitted northwards through the intervening distance of forty
miles, in two minutes. Both Mr. Muller and Mr. Hodgson had noted a
much more severe shock at 6.10 p.m. the previous evening, which I,
who was walking down the mountain, did not experience; this caused a
good deal of damage at Dorjiling, in cracking well-built walls.
Earthquakes are frequent all along the Himalaya, and are felt far in
Tibet; they are, however, most common towards the eastern and western
extremities of India; owing in the former case to the proximity of
the volcanic forces in the bay of Bengal. Cutch and Scinde, as is
well known, have suffered severely on many occasions, and in several
of them the motion has been propagated through Affghanistan and
Little Tibet, to the heart of Central Asia.* [See "Wood's Travels to
the Oxus."]

On the morning of the 1st of March, Dr. Campbell arrived at the
bungalow, from his tour of inspection along the frontier of Bhotan
and the Rungpore district; and we accompanied him hence along the
British and Sikkim frontier, as far west as the Mechi river, which
bounds Nepal on the east.

Terai is a name loosely applied to a tract of country at the very
foot of the Himalaya: it is Persian, and signifies damp. Politically,
the Terai generally belongs to the hill-states beyond it;
geographically, it should appertain to the plains of India; and
geologically, it is a sort of neutral country, being composed neither
of the alluvium of the plains, nor of the rocks of the hills, but for
the most part of alternating beds of sand, gravel, and boulders
brought from the mountains. Botanically it is readily defined as the
region of forest-trees; amongst which the Sal, the most valuable
of Indian timber, is conspicuous in most parts, though not now in
Sikkim, where it has been destroyed. The Terai soil is generally
light, dry, and gravelly (such as the Sal always prefers), and varies
in breadth, from ten miles, along the Sikkim frontier, to thirty and
more on the Nepalese. In the latter country it is called the Morung,
and supplies Sal and Sissoo timber for the Calcutta market, the logs
being floated down the Konki and Cosi rivers to the Ganges.
The gravel-beds extend uninterruptedly upon the plains for fully
twenty miles south of the Sikkim mountains, the gravel becoming
smaller as the distance increases, and large blocks of stone not
being found beyond a few miles from the rocks of the Himalaya itself,
even in the beds of rivers, however large and rapid. Throughout its
breadth this formation is conspicuously cut into flat-topped
terraces, flanking the spurs of the mountains, at elevations varying
from 250 to nearly 1000 feet above the sea. These terraces are of
various breadth and length, the smallest lying uppermost, and the
broadest flanking the rivers below. The isolated hills beyond are
also flat-topped and terraced. This deposit contains no fossils; and
its general appearance and mineral constituents are the only evidence
of its origin, which is no doubt due to a retiring ocean that washed
the base of the Sikkim Himalaya, received the contents of its rivers,
and, wearing away its bluff spurs, spread a talus upwards of 1000
feet thick along its shores. It is not at first sight evident whether
the terracing is due to periodic retirements of the ocean, or to the
levelling effects of rivers that have cut channels through the
deposit. In many places, especially along the banks of the great
streams, the gravel is smaller, obscurely interstratified with sand,
and the flattened pebbles over-lap rudely, in a manner characteristic
of the effects of running water; but such is  not the case with the
main body of the deposit, which is unstratified, and much coarser.

The alluvium of the Gangetic valley is both interstratified with the
gravel, and passes into it, and was no doubt deposited in deep water,
whilst the coarser matter* [This, too, is non-fossiliferous, and is
of unknown depth, except at Calcutta, where the sand and clay beds
have been bored through, to the depth of 120 feet, below which the
first pebbles were met with. Whence these pebbles were derived is a
curious problem. The great Himalayan rivers convey pebbles but a very
few miles from the mountains on to the plains of India; and there is
no rock _in situ_ above the surface, within many miles of Calcutta,
in any direction.] was accumulating at the foot of the mountains.

This view is self-evident, and has occurred, I believe, to almost
every observer, at whatever part of the base of the Himalaya he may
have studied this deposit. Its position, above the sandstones of the
Sewalik range in the north-west Himalaya, and those of Sikkim, which
appear to be modern fossiliferous rocks, indicates its being
geologically of recent formation; but it still remains a subject of
the utmost importance to discover the extent and nature of the ocean
to whose agency it is referred. I have elsewhere remarked that the
alluvium of the Gangetic valley may to a great degree be the measure
of the denudation which the Himalaya has suffered along its Indian
watershed. It was, no doubt, during the gradual rise of that chain
from the ocean, that the gravel and alluvium were deposited; and in
the terraces and alternation of these, there is evidence that there
have been many subsidences and elevations of the coast-line, during
which the gravel has suffered greatly from denudation.

I have never looked at the Sikkim Himalaya from the plains without
comparing its bold spurs enclosing sinuous river gorges, to the
weather-beaten front of a mountainous coast; and in following any of
its great rivers, the scenery  of its deep valleys no less strikingly
resembles that of such narrow arms of the sea (or fiords) as
characterize every mountainous coast, of whatever geological
formation: such as the west coast of Scotland and Norway, of South
Chili and Fuegia, of New Zealand and Tasmania. There are too in these
Himalayan valleys, at all elevations below 600 feet, terraced
pebble-beds, rising in some cases eighty feet above the rivers, which
I believe could only have been deposited by them when they debouched
into deep water; and both these, and the beds of the rivers, are
strewed, down to 1000 feet, with masses of rock. Such accumulations
and transported blocks are seen on the raised beaches of our narrow
Scottish salt water lochs, exposed by the rising of the land, and
they are yet forming of immense thickness on many coasts by the joint
action of tides and streams.

I have described meeting with ancient moraines in every Himalayan
valley I ascended, at or about 7000 or 8000 feet elevation, proving,
that at one period, the glaciers descended fully so much below the
position they now occupy: this can only be explained by a change of
climate,* [Such a change of temperature, without any depression or
elevation of the mountains, has been thought by Capt. R. Strachey
("Journal of Geological Society"), an able Himalayan observer, to be
the necessary consequence of an ocean at the foot of these mountains;
for the amount of perpetual snow, and consequent descent of the
glaciers, increasing indirectly in proportion to the humidity of the
climate, and the snow-fall, he conjectured that the proximity of the
ocean would prodigiously increase such a deposition of snow.--To me,
this argument appears inconclusive; for the first effect of such a
vast body of water would be to raise the temperature of winter; and
as it is the rain, rather than the sun of summer, which removes the
Sikkim snow, so would an increase of this rain elevate, rather than
depress, the level of perpetual snow.] or by a depression of the
mountain mass equal to 8000 feet, since the formation of these
moraines.

The country about Titalya looks desert, from that want of trees and
cultivation, so characteristic of the upper level throughout this
part of the plains, which is covered with  short, poor pasture-grass.
The bungalow stands close to the Mahanuddy, on a low hill, cut into
an escarpment twenty feet high, which exposes a section of river-laid
sand and gravel, alternating with thick beds of rounded pebbles.

Shortly after Dr. Campbell's arrival, the meadows about the bungalow
presented a singular appearance, being dotted over with elephants,
brought for purchase by Government. It was curious to watch the
arrival of these enormous animals, which were visible nearly two
miles across the flat plains; nor less interesting was it to observe
the wonderful docility of these giants of the animal kingdom, often
only guided by naked boys, perched on their necks, scolding,
swearing, and enforcing their orders with the iron goad.
There appeared as many tricks in elephant-dealers as in
horse-jockeys, and of many animals brought, but few were purchased.
Government limits the price to about 75 pounds, and the height to the
shoulder must not be under seven feet, which, incredible as it
appears, may be estimated within a fraction as being three times the
circumference of the forefoot. The pedigree is closely inquired into,
the hoofs are examined for cracks, the teeth for age, and many other
points attended to.

The Sikkim frontier, from the Mahanuddy westward to the Mechi, is
marked out by a row of tall posts. The country is undulating; and
though fully 400 miles from the ocean, and not sixty from the top of
the loftiest mountain on the globe, its average level is not 300 feet
above that of the sea. The upper levels are gravelly, and loosely
covered with scattered thorny jujube bushes, occasionally tenanted by
the _Florican,_ which scours these downs like a bustard. Sometimes a
solitary fig, or a thorny acacia, breaks the horizon, and there are a
few gnarled trees of the scarlet _Butea frondosa._

On our route I had a good opportunity of examining the line of
junction between the alluvial plains that stretch south to the
Ganges, and the gravel deposit flanking the hills. The rivers always
cut broad channels with scarped terraced sides, and their low banks
are very fertile, from the mud annually spread by the ever-shifting
streams that meander within their limits; there are, however, few
shrubs and no trees. The houses, which are very few and scattered,
are built on the gravelly soil above, the lower level being
very malarious.

Thirty miles south of the mountains, numerous isolated flat-topped
hills, formed of stratified gravel and sand with large water-worn
pebbles, rise from 80 to 200 feet above the mean level, which is
about 250 feet above the sea; these, too, have always scarped sides,
and the channels of small streams completely encircle them.

At this season few insects but grasshoppers are to be seen, even
mosquitos being rare. Birds, however, abound, and we noticed the
common sparrow, hoopoe, water-wagtail, skylark, osprey, and
several egrets.

We arrived on the third day at the Mechi river, to the west of which
the Nepal Terai (or Morung) begins, whose belt of Sal forest loomed
on the horizon, so raised by refraction as to be visible as a dark
line, from the distance of many miles. It is, however, very poor, all
the large trees having been removed. We rode for several miles into
it, and found the soil dry and hard, but supporting a prodigious
undergrowth of gigantic harsh grasses that reached to our heads,
though we were mounted on elephants. Besides Sal there was abundance
of _Butea, Diospyros, Terminalia,_ and _Symplocos,_ with the dwarf
_Phoenix_ palm, and occasionally _Cycas._ Tigers, wild elephants, and
the rhinoceros, are said to be found here; but we saw none.

The old and new Mechi rivers are several miles apart, but flow in the
same depression, a low swamp many miles broad, which is grazed at
this season, and cultivated during the rains. The grass is very rich,
partly owing to the moisture of the climate, and partly to the
retiring waters of the rivers; both circumstances being the effects
of proximity to the Himalaya. Hence cattle (buffalos and the common
humped cow of India) are driven from the banks of the Ganges 300
miles to these feeding grounds, for the use of which a trifling tax
is levied on each animal. The cattle are very carelessly herded, and
many are carried off by tigers.

Having returned to Titalya, Mr. Hodgson and I set off in an eastern
direction for the Teesta river, whose embouchure from the mountains
to the plains I was anxious to visit. Though the weather is hot, and
oppressively so in the middle of the day, there are few climates more
delicious than that of these grassy savannahs from December to March.
We always started soon after daybreak on ponies, and enjoyed a twelve
to sixteen miles' gallop in the cool of the morning before breakfast,
which we found prepared on our arrival at a tent sent on ahead the
night before. The road led across an open country, or followed paths
through interminable rice-fields, now dry and dusty. On poor soil a
white-flowered _Leucas_ monopolized the space, like our charlock and
poppy: it was apparently a pest to the agriculturist, covering the
surface in some places like a sprinkling of snow. Sometimes the
river-beds exposed fourteen feet of pure stratified sand, with only
an inch of vegetable soil above.

At this season the mornings are very hazy, with the thermometer at
sunrise 60 degrees; one laid on grass during the night falling 7
degrees below that temperature: dew forms,  but never copiously: by
10 a.m. the temperature has risen to 75 degrees, and the faint
easterly morning breezes die away; the haze thickens, and covers the
sky with a white veil, the thermometer rising to 82 degrees at noon,
and the west wind succeeding in parching tornados and furious gusts,
increasing with the temperature, which attains its maximum in the
afternoon, and falling again with its decline at sunset. The evenings
are calm; but the earth is so heated, that the thermometer stands at
10 p.m. at 66 degrees, and the minimum at night is not below 55
degrees: great drought accompanies the heat at this season, but not
to such a degree as in North-west India, or other parts of this
meridian further removed from the hills. In the month of March, and
during the prevalence of west winds, the mean temperature was 79
degrees, and the dew-point 22 degrees lower, indicating great
drought. The temperature at Calcutta was 7 degrees warmer, and the
atmosphere very much damper.

On the second day we arrived at Jeelpigoree, a large straggling
village near the banks of the Teesta, a good way south of the forest:
here we were detained for several days, waiting for elephants with
which to proceed northwards. The natives are Cooches, a Mogul
(Mongolian) race, who inhabit the open country of this district,
replacing the Mechis of the Terai forest. They are a fine athletic
people, not very dark, and formed the once-powerful house of Cooch
Behar. Latterly the upper classes have adopted the religion of the
Brahmins, and have had caste conferred upon them; while the lower
orders have turned Mahomedans: these, chiefly agriculturists, are a
timid, oppressed class, who everywhere fled before us, and were with
difficulty prevailed upon even to direct us along our road. A rude
police is established by the British Government all over the country,
and to it the traveller applies  for guides and assistance; but the
Conches were so shy and difficult to deal with, that we were
generally left to our own resources.

Grass is the prevailing feature of the country, as there are few
shrubs, and still fewer trees. Goats and the common Indian cow are
plentiful; but it is not swampy enough for the buffalo; and sheep are
scarce, on account of the heat of the climate. This uniformity of
feature over so immense an area is, however, due to the agency of
man, and is of recent introduction; as all concur in affirming, that
within the last hundred years the face of the country was covered
with the same long jungle-grasses which abound in the Terai forest;
and the troops cantoned at Titalya (a central position in these
plains) from 1816 to 1828, confirm this statement as far as their
immediate neighbourhood is concerned.

These gigantic _Gramineae_ seem to be destroyed by fire with
remarkable facility at one season of the year; and it is well that
this is the case; for, whether as a retainer of miasma, a shelter for
wild beasts, both carnivorous and herbivorous, alike dangerous to
man, or from their liability to ignite, and spread destruction far
and wide, the grass-jungles are most serious obstacles to
civilization. Next to the rapidity with which it can be cleared, the
adaptation of a great part of the soil to irrigation during the
rains, has greatly aided the bringing of it under cultivation.

By far the greater proportion of this universal short turf grass is
formed of _Andropogon acicularis, Cynodon Dactylon,_* [Called "Dhob."
This is the best pasture grass in the plains of India, and the only
one to be found over many thousands of square miles.] and in sandy
places, _Imperata cylindrica_;  where the soil is wetter, _Ameletia
Indica_ is abundant, giving a heather-like colour to the turf, with
its pale purple flowers: wherever there is standing water, its
surface is reddened by the _Azolla,_ and _Salvinia_ is also common.

At Jeelpigoree we were waited upon by the Dewan, who governs the
district for the Rajah, a boy about ten years old, whose estates are
locked up during the trial of an interminable suit for the
succession, that has been instituted against him by a natural son of
the late Rajah: we found the Dewan to be a man of intelligence, who
promised us elephants as soon as the great Hooli festival, now
commenced, should be over.

The large village, at the time of our visit, was gay with holiday
dresses. It is surrounded by trees, chiefly of banyan, jack, mango,
peepul, and tamarind: interminable rice-fields extend on all sides,
and except bananas, slender betel-nut palms, and sometimes pawn, or
betel-pepper, there is little other extensive cultivation.
The rose-apple, orange, and pine-apple are rare, as are cocoa-nuts:
there are few date or fan-palms, and only occasionally poor crops of
castor-oil and sugar-cane. In the gardens I noticed jasmine,
_Justicia Adhatoda, Hibiscus,_ and others of the very commonest
Indian ornamental plants; while for food were cultivated
_Chenopodium,_ yams, sweet potatos, and more rarely peas, beans, and
gourds. Bamboos were planted round the little properties and smaller
clusters of houses, in oblong squares, the ridge on which the plants
grew being usually bounded by a shallow ditch. The species selected
was not the most graceful of its family; the stems, or culms, being
densely crowded, erect, as thick at the base as the arm, copiously
branching, and very feathery throughout their whole length of
sixty feet.

A gay-flowered _Osbeckia_ was common along the roadsides,  and, with
a _Clerodendron,_* [_Clerodendron_ leaves, bruised, are used to kill
vermin, fly-blows, etc., in cattle; and the twigs form toothpicks.
The flowers are presented to Mahadeo, as a god of peace; milk, honey,
flowers, fruit, amrit (ambrosia), etc., being offered to the pacific
gods, as Vishnu, Krishna, etc.; while Mudar (_Asclepias_), Bhang
(_Cannabis sativa_), _Datura,_ flesh, blood, and spirituous liquors,
are offered to Siva, Doorga, Kali, and other demoniacal deities.]
whose strong, sweet odour was borne far through the air, formed a low
undershrub beneath every tree, generally intermixed with three ferns
(a _Polypodium, Pteris,_ and _Goniopteris_).

The cottages are remarkable, and have a very neat appearance,
presenting nothing but a low white-washed platform of clay, and an
enormous high, narrow, black, neatly thatched roof, so arched along
the ridge, that its eaves nearly touch the ground at each gable; and
looking at a distance like a gigantic round-backed elephant.
The walls are of neatly-platted bamboo: each window (of which there
are two) is crossed by slips of bamboo, and wants only glass to make
it look European; they have besides shutters of wattle, that open
upwards, projecting during the day like the port-hatches of a ship,
and let down at night. Within, the rooms are airy and clean: one end
contains the machans (bedsteads), the others some raised clay
benches, the fire, frequently an enormous Hookah, round wattled
stools, and various implements. The inhabitants appeared more than
ordinarily well-dressed; the men in loose flowing robes of fine
cotton or muslin, the women in the usual garb of a simple thick
cotton cloth, drawn tight immediately above the breast, and thence
falling perpendicularly to the knee; the colour of this is a bright
blue in stripes, bordered above and below with red.

I anticipated some novelty from a visit to a Durbar (court) so
distant from European influence as that of the Rajah of Jeelpigoree.
All Eastern courts, subject to the Company, are, however, now shorn
of much of their glory;  and the condition of the upper classes is
greatly changed. Under the Mogul rule, the country was farmed out to
Zemindars, some of whom assumed the title of Rajah: they collected
the revenue for the Sovereign, retaining by law ten per cent. on all
that was realized: there was no intermediate class, the peasant
paying directly to the Zemindar, and he into the royal treasury.
Latterly the Zemindars have become farmers under the Company's rule;
and in the adjudication of their claims, Lord Cornwallis (then
Governor-General) made great sacrifices in their favour, levying only
a small tribute in proportion to their often great revenues, in the
hope that they would be induced to devote their energies, and some of
their means, to the improvement of the condition of the peasantry.
This expectation was not realized: the younger Zemindars especially,
subject to no restraint (except from aggressions on their
neighbours), fell into slothful habits, and the collecting of the
revenue became a trading speculation, entrusted to "middle men."
The Zemindar selects a number, who again are at liberty to collect
through the medium of several sub-renting classes. Hence the peasant
suffers, and except a generally futile appeal to the Rajah, he has no
redress. The law secures him tenure as long as he can pay his rent,
and to do this he has recourse to the usurer; borrowing in spring (at
50, and oftener 100 per cent.) the seed, plough, and bullocks: he
reaps in autumn, and what is then not required for his own use, is
sold to pay off part of his original debt, the rest standing over
till the next season; and thus it continues to accumulate, till,
overwhelmed with difficulties, he is ejected, or flees to a
neighbouring district. The Zemindar enjoys the same right of tenure
as the peasant: the amount of impost laid on his property  was fixed
for perpetuity; whatever his revenue be, he must pay so much to the
Company, or he forfeits his estates, and they are put up for auction.

One evening we visited the young Rajah at his residence, which has
rather a good appearance at a distance, its white walls gleaming
through a dark tope of mango, betel, and cocoa-nut. A short rude
avenue leads to the entrance gate, under the trees of which a large
bazaar was being held; stocked with cloths, simple utensils,
ornaments, sweetmeats, five species of fish from the Teesta, and the
betel-nut.

We entered through a guard-house, where were some of the Rajah's
Sepoys in the European costume, and a few of the Company's troops,
lent to the Rajah as a security against some of the turbulent
pretenders to his title. Within was a large court-yard, flanked by a
range of buildings, some of good stone-work, some of wattle, in all
stages of disrepair. A great crowd of people occupied one end of the
court, and at the other we were received by the Dewan, and seated on
chairs under a canopy supported by slender silvered columns.
Some slovenly Natch-girls were dancing before us, kicking up clouds
of dust, and singing or rather bawling through their noses, the usual
indelicate hymns in honour of the Hooli festival; there were also
fiddlers, cutting uncouth capers in rhythm with the dancers.
Anything more deplorable than the music, dancing, and accompaniments,
cannot well be imagined; yet the people seemed vastly pleased, and
extolled the performers.

The arrival of the Rajah and his brothers was announced by a crash of
tom-toms and trumpets, while over their heads were carried great gilt
canopies. With them came a troop of relations, of all ages; and
amongst them a poor little black girl, dressed in honour of us in an
old-fashioned  English chintz frock and muslin cap, in which she cut
the drollest figure imaginable; she was carried about for our
admiration, like a huge Dutch doll, crying lustily all the time.

The festivities of the evening commenced by handing round trays full
of pith-balls, the size of a nutmeg, filled with a mixture of flour,
sand, and red lac-powder; with these each pelted his neighbour, the
thin covering bursting as it struck any object, and powdering it
copiously with red dust. A more childish and disagreeable sport
cannot well be conceived; and when the balls were expended, the dust
itself was resorted to, not only fresh, but that which had already
been used was gathered up, with whatever dirt it might have become
mixed. One rude fellow, with his hand full, sought to entrap his
victims into talking, when he would stuff the nasty mixture into
their mouths.

At the end attar of roses was brought, into which little pieces of
cotton, fixed on slips of bamboo, were dipped, and given to each
person. The heat, dust, stench of the unwashed multitude, noise, and
increasing familiarity of the lower orders, warned us to retire, and
we effected our retreat with precipitancy.

The Rajah and his brother were very fine boys, lively, frank,
unaffected, and well disposed: they have evidently a good guide in
the old Dewan; but it is melancholy to think how surely, should they
grow up in possession of their present rank, they will lapse into
slothful habits, and take their place amongst the imbeciles who now
represent the once powerful Rajahs of Bengal.

We rode back to our tents by a bright moonlight, very dusty and
tired, and heartily glad to breathe the cool fresh air, after the
stifling ordeal we had undergone.

On the following evening the elephants were again in waiting to
conduct us to the Rajah. He and his relations  were assembled outside
the gates, mounted upon elephants, amid a vast concourse of people.
The children and Dewan were seated in a sort of cradle; the rest were
some in howdahs, and some astride on elephants' backs, six or eight
together. All the idols were paraded before them, and powdered with
red dust; the people howling, shouting, and sometimes quarrelling.
Our elephants took their places amongst those of the Rajah; and when
the mob had sufficiently pelted one another with balls and dirty red
powder, a torchlight procession was formed, the idols leading the
way, to a very large tank, bounded by a high rampart, within which
was a broad esplanade round the water.

The effect of the whole was very striking, the glittering cars and
barbaric gaud of the idols showing best by torchlight; while the
white robes and turbans of the undulating sea of people, and the
great black elephants picking their way with matchless care and
consideration, contrasted strongly with the quiet moonbeams sleeping
on the still broad waters of the tank.

Thence the procession moved to a field, where the idols were placed
on the ground, and all dismounted: the Dewan then took the children
by the hand, and each worshipped his tutelary deity in a short prayer
dictated by the attendant Brahmin, and threw a handful of red dust in
its face. After another ordeal of powder, singing, dancing, and
suffocation, our share in the Hooli ended; and having been promised
elephants for the following morning, we bade a cordial farewell to
our engaging little hosts and their staid old governor.

On the 10th of March we were awakened at an early hour by a heavy
thunder-storm from the south-west. The sunrise was very fine, through
an arch 10 degrees high of bright blue sky, above which the whole
firmament was mottled with cirrus. It continued cloudy, with light
winds,  throughout the day, but clear on the horizon. From this tinge
such storms became frequent, ushering in the equinox; and the less
hazy sky and rising hygrometer predicted an accession of moisture in
the atmosphere.

We left for Rangamally, a village eight miles distant in a northerly
direction, our course lying along the west bank of the Teesta.

The river is here navigated by canoes, thirty to forty feet long,
some being rudely cut out of a solid log of Sal, while others are
built, the planks, of which there are but few, being sewed together,
or clamped with iron, and the seams caulked with the fibres of the
root of Dhak (_Butea frondosa_), and afterwards smeared with the
gluten of _Diospyros embryopteris._ The bed of the river is here
threequarters of a mile across, of which the stream does not occupy
one-third; its banks are sand-cliffs, fourteen feet in height. A few
small fish and water-snakes swarm in the pools.

The whole country improved in fertility as we advanced towards the
mountains: the grass became greener, and more trees, shrubs, herbs,
and birds appeared. In front, the dark boundary-line of the Sal
forest loomed on the horizon, and to the east rose the low hills of
Bhotan, both backed by the outer ranges of the Himalaya.

Flocks of cranes were abundant over-head, flying in wedges, or
breaking up into "open order," preparing for their migration
northwards, which takes place in April, their return occurring in
October; a small quail was also common on the ground. Tamarisk
("Jhow") grew in the sandy bed of the river; its flexible young
branches are used in various parts of India for wattling and
basket-making.

In the evening we walked to the skirts of the Sal forest.  The great
trunks of the trees were often scored by tigers' claws, this animal
indulging in the cat-like propensity of rising and stretching itself
against such objects. Two species of _Dillenia_ were common in the
forest, with long grass, _Symplocos, Emblica,_ and _Cassia Fistula,_
now covered with long pods. Several parasitical air-plants grew on
the dry trees, as _Oberonia, Vanda,_ and _Aerides._

At Rangamally, the height of the sandy banks of the Teesta varies
from fifteen to twenty feet. The bed is a mile across, and all sand;*
[Now covered with _Anthistiria_ grass, fifteen feet high, a little
_Sissoo,_ and _Bombax._] the current much divided, and opaque green,
from the glacial origin of most of its head-streams. The west bank
was covered with a small Sal forest, mixed with _Acacia Catechu,_ and
brushwood, growing in a poor vegetable loam, over very dry sand.

The opposite (or Bhotan) bank is much lower, and always flooded
during the rains, which is not the case on the western side, where
the water rises to ten feet below the top of the bank, or from seven
to ten feet above its height in the dry season, and it then fills its
whole bed. This information we had from a police Jemadar, who has
resided many years on this unhealthy spot, and annually suffers from
fever. The Sal forest has been encroached upon from the south, for
many miles, within the memory of man, by clearing in patches, and by
indiscriminate felling.

About ten miles north of Rangamally, we came to an extensive flat,
occupying a recess in the high west bank, the site of the old capital
(Bai-kant-pore) of the Jeelpigoree Rajah. Hemmed in as it is on three
sides by a dense forest, and on all by many miles of malarious Terai,
it appears sufficiently secure from ordinary enemies, during a great
part of the year. The soil is sandy, overlying gravel,  and covered
with a thick stratum of fine mud or silt, which is only deposited on
these low flats; on it grew many naturalized plants, as hemp,
tobacco, jack, mango, plantain, and orange.

About eight miles on, we left the river-bed, and struck westerly
through a dense forest, to a swampy clearance occupied by the village
of Rummai, which appeared thoroughly malarious; and we pitched the
tent on a narrow, low ridge, above the level of the plain.

It was now cool and pleasant, partly due, no doubt, to a difference
in the vegetation, and the proximity of swamp and forest, and partly
also to a change in the weather, which was cloudy and threatening;
much rain, too, had fallen here on the preceding day.

Brahmins and priests of all kinds are few in this miserable country:
near the villages, and under the large trees, are, every here and
there, a few immature thatched cottages, four to six feet high, in
which the tutelary deities of the place are kept; they are idols of
the very rudest description, of Vishnu as an ascetic (Bai-kant Nath),
a wooden doll, gilt and painted, standing, with the hands raised as
if in exhortation, and one leg crossed over the other. Again, Kartik,
the god of war, is represented sitting astride on a peacock, with the
right hand elevated and holding a small flat cup.

Some fine muscular Cooches were here brought for Mr. Hodgson's
examination, but we found them unable or unwilling to converse, in
the Cooch tongue, which appears to be fast giving place to Bengalee.

We walked to a stream, which flows at the base of the retiring
sand-cliffs, and nourishes a dense and richly-varied jungle,
producing many plants, as beautiful _Acanthaceae,_ Indian
horse-chesnut, loaded with white racemes of flowers,  gay
_Convolvuli,_ laurels, terrestrial and parasitic _Orchideae,
Dillenia,_ casting its enormous flowers as big as two fists, pepper,
figs, and, in strange association with these, a hawthorn, and the
yellow-flowered Indian strawberry, which ascends 7,500 feet on the
mountains, and _Hodgsonia,_ a new _Cucurbitaceous_ genus, clinging in
profusion to the trees, and also found 5000 feet high on the
mountains.

In the evening we rode into the forest (which was dry and very
unproductive), and thence along the river-banks, through _Acacia
Catechu,_ belted by _Sissoo,_ which often fringes the stream, always
occupying the lowest flats. The foliage at this season is brilliantly
green; and as the evening advanced, a yellow convolvulus burst into
flower like magic, adorning the bushes over which it climbed.

It rained on the following morning; after which we left for the exit
of the Teesta, proceeding northwards, sometimes through a dense
forest of Sal timber, sometimes dipping into marshy depressions, or
riding through grassy savannahs, breast-high. The coolness of the
atmosphere was delicious, and the beauty of the jungle seemed to
increase the further we penetrated these primaeval forests.

Eight miles from Rummai we came on a small river from the mountains,
with a Cooch village close by, inhabited during the dry season by
timber-cutters from Jeelpigoree it is situated upon a very rich black
soil, covered with _Saccharum_ and various gigantic grasses, but no
bamboo. These long grasses replace the Sal, of which we did not see
one good tree.

We here mounted the elephants, and proceeded several miles through
the prairie, till we again struck upon the high Sal forest-bank,
continuous with that of Rummai and Rangamally, but much loftier: it
formed one of many terraces which stretch along the foot of the
hills, from  Punkabaree to the Teesta, but of which none are said to
occur for eight miles eastwards along the Bhotan Dooars: if true,
this is probably due in part to the alteration of the course of the
Teesta, which is gradually working to the westward, and cutting away
these lofty banks.

The elephant-drivers appeared to have taken us by mistake to the exit
of the Chawa, a small stream which joins the Teesta further to the
eastward. The descent to the bed of this rivulet, round the first
spur of rock we met with, was fully eighty feet, through a very
irregular depression, probably the old bed of the stream; it runs
southwards from the hills, and was covered from top to bottom with
slate-pebbles. We followed the river to its junction with the Teesta,
along a flat, broad gulley, bounded by densely-wooded, steep banks of
clay slate on the north, and the lofty bank on the south: between
these the bed was strewed with great boulders of gneiss and other
rocks, luxuriantly clothed with long grass, and trees of wild
plantain, _Erythrina_ and _Bauhinia,_ the latter gorgeously
in flower.

The Sal bank formed a very fine object: it was quite perpendicular,
and beautifully stratified with various coloured sands and gravel: it
tailed off abruptly at the junction of the rivers, and then trended
away south-west, forming the west bank of the Teesta. The latter
river is at its outlet a broad and rapid, but hardly impetuous
stream, now fifty yards across, gushing from between two low,
forest-clad spurs: it appeared about five feet deep, and was
beautifully fringed on both sides with green _Sissoo._

Some canoes were here waiting for us, formed of hollowed trunks of
trees, thirty feet long: two were lashed together with bamboos, and
the boatmen sat one at the head and one at the stern of each: we lay
along the  bottom of the vessels, and in a second we were darting
down the river, at the rate of at least ten or fifteen miles an hour,
the bright waters leaping up on all sides, and bounding in
_jets-d'eau_ between prows and sterns of the coupled vessels.
Sometimes we glided along without perceptible motion, and at others
jolted down bubbling rapids, the steersmen straining every nerve to
keep their bark's head to the current, as she impatiently swerved
from side to side in the eddies. To our jaded and parched frames,
after the hot forenoon's ride on the elephants, the effect was
delicious: the fresh breeze blew on our heated foreheads and down our
open throats and chests; we dipped our hands into the clear, cool
stream, and there was "music in the waters" to our ears.
Fresh verdure on the banks, clear pebbles, soft sand, long English
river-reaches, forest glades, and deep jungles, followed in rapid
succession; and as often as we rounded a bend or shot a rapid, the
scene changed from bright to brighter still; so continuing until
dusk, when we were slowly paddling along the then torpid current
opposite Rangamally.* [The following temperatures of the waters of
the Teesta were taken at intervals during our passage from its exit
to Rangamally, a distance of fifteen linear miles, and thirty miles
following the bends:--

                    Water.            Air.
Exit 2h. 30m. p.m.    62 degrees
     3                62.2 degrees     74 degrees
     3.30             63.2 degrees
     4                64 degrees
     4.30             65 degrees
     5                65.4 degrees     72.5 degrees opposite Rummai
     5.30             66 degrees
     6                66 degrees       71.7 degrees opposite Baikant]

The absence of large stones or boulders of rock in the bed of the
Teesta is very remarkable, considering the great volume and rapidity
of the current, and that it shoots directly from the rocky hills to
the gravelly plains. At the  _embouchure_ there are boulders as big
as the head, and in the stream, four miles below the exit, the
boatmen pointed out a stone as large as the body as quite a marvel.

They assured us that the average rise at the mouth of the river, in
the rains, was not more than five feet: the mean breadth of the
stream is from seventy to ninety yards. From the point where it
leaves the mountains, to its junction with the Megna, is at this
season thirteen days' voyage, the return occupying from twenty to
twenty-five days, with the boats unladen. The name "Teesta" signifies
"quiet," this river being so in comparison with other Himalayan
torrents further west, the Cosi, Konki, etc., which are devastators
of all that bounds their course.

We passed but two crossing-places: at one the river is divided by an
island, covered with the rude chaits and flags of the Boodhists.
We also saw some Cooch fishermen, who throw the net much as we do:
a fine "Mahaser" (a very large carp) was the best fish they had.
Of cultivation there was very little, and the only habitations were a
few grass-huts of the boatmen or buffalo herdsmen, a rare Cooch
village of Catechu and Sal cutters, or the shelter of
timber-floaters, who seem to pass the night in nests of long
dry grass.

Our servants not having returned with the elephants from Rummai, we
spent the following day at Rangamally shooting and botanizing.
I collected about 100 species in a couple of hours, and observed
perhaps twice that number: the more common I have repeatedly alluded
to, and excepting some small terrestrial _Orchids,_ I added nothing
of particular interest to my collection.* [The following is a list of
the principal genera, most of which are English:--_Polygonum,
Quercus, Sonchus, Gnaphalium, Cratagus, Lobelia, Lactuca,
Hydrocotyle, Saponaria, Campanula, Bidens, Rubus, Oxalis, Artemisia,
Fragaria, Clematis, Dioscorea, Potamogeton, Chara, Veronica,
Viola, Smilax._]

On the 14th of March we proceeded west to Siligoree, along the skirts
of the ragged Sal forest. Birds are certainly the most conspicuous
branch of the natural history of this country, and we saw many
species, interesting either from their habits, beauty, or extensive
distribution. We noticed no less than sixteen kinds of swimming
birds, several of which are migratory and English. The Shoveller,
white-eyed and common wild ducks; Merganser, Brahminee, and Indian
goose (_Anser Indica_); common and Gargany teal; two kinds of gull;
one of Shearwater (_Rhynchops ablacus_); three of tern, and one of
cormorant. Besides these there were three egrets, the large crane,
stork, green heron, and the demoiselle; the English sand-martin,
kingfisher, peregrine-falcon, sparrow-hawk, kestrel, and the European
vulture: the wild peacock, and jungle-fowl. There were at least 100
peculiarly Indian birds in addition, of which the more remarkable
were several kinds of mina, of starling, vulture, kingfisher, magpie,
quail, and lapwing.

The country gradually became quite beautiful, much undulated and
diversified by bright green meadows, sloping lawns, and deeply wooded
nullahs, which lead from the Sal forest and meander through this
varied landscape. More beautiful sites for fine mansions could not
well be, and it is difficult to suppose so lovely a country should be
so malarious as it is before and after the rains, excessive heat
probably diffusing widely the miasma from small stagnant surfaces.
We noticed a wild hog, absolutely the first wild beast of any size I
sawon the plains, except the hispid hare (_Lepus hispidus_) and the
barking deer (_Stylocerus ratna_). The hare we found to be the best
game of this part of India, except the teal. The pheasants of
Dorjiling are poor, the deer all but uneatable, and the florican,
however dressed, I considered a far from excellent bird.

A good many plants grow along the streams, the sandy beds of which
are everywhere covered with the marks of tigers' feet. The only safe
way of botanizing is by pushing through the jungle on elephants; an
uncomfortable method, from the quantity of ants and insects which
drop from the foliage above, and from the risk of disturbing
pendulous bees' and ants' nests.

A peculiar species of willow (_Salix tetrasperma_) is common here;
which is a singular fact, as the genus is characteristic of cold and
arctic latitudes; and no species is found below 5000 feet elevation
on the Sikkim mountain, where it grows on the inner Himalaya only,
some kinds ascending to 16,000 feet.

East of Siligoree the plains are unvaried by tree or shrub, and are
barren wastes of short turf or sterile sand, with the dwarf-palm
(_Phoenix acaulis_), a sure sign of a most hungry soil.

The latter part of the journey I performed on elephants during the
heat of the day, and a more uncomfortable mode of conveyance surely
never was adopted; the camel's pace is more fatiguing, but that of
the elephant is extremely trying after a few miles, and is so
injurious to the human frame that the Mahouts (drivers) never reach
an advanced age, and often succumb young to spine-diseases, brought
on by the incessant motion of the vertebral column. The broiling heat
of the elephant's black back, and the odour of its oily driver, are
disagreeable accompaniments, as are its habits of snorting water from
its trunk over its parched skin, and the consequences of the great
bulk of green food which it consumes.

From Siligoree I made a careful examination of the  gravel beds that
occur on the road north to the foot of the hills, and thence over the
tertiary sandstone to Punkabaree. At the Rukti river, which flows
south-west, the road suddenly rises, and crosses the first
considerable hill, about two miles south of any rock _in situ._
This river cuts a cliff from 60 to 100 feet high, composed of
stratified sand and water-worn gravel: further south, the spur
declines into the plains, its course marked by the Sal that thrives
on its gravelly soil. The road then runs north-west over a plain to
an isolated hill about 200 feet high, also formed of sand and gravel.
We ascended to the top of this, and found it covered with blocks of
gneiss, and much angular detritus. Hence the road gradually ascends,
and becomes clayey. Argillaceous rocks, and a little ochreous
sandstone appeared in highly-inclined strata, dipping north, and
covered with great water-worn blocks of gneiss. Above, a flat
terrace, flanked to the eastward by a low wooded hill, and another
rise of sandstone, lead on to the great Baisarbatti terrace.

_Bombax, Erythrina,_ and _Duabanga_ (_Lagaerstraemia grandiflora_),
were in full flower, and with the profusion of _Bauhinia,_ rendered
the tree-jungle gay: the two former are leafless when flowering.
The Duabanga is the pride of these forests. Its trunk, from eight to
fifteen feet in girth, is generally forked from the base, and the
long pendulous branches which clothe the trunk for 100 feet, are
thickly leafy, and terminated by racemes of immense white flowers,
which, especially when in bud, smell most disagreeably of
assafoetida. The magnificent Apocyneous climber, _Beaumontia,_ was in
full bloom, ascending the loftiest trees, and clothing their trunks
with its splendid foliage and festoons of enormous funnel-shaped
white flowers.

The report of a bed of iron-stone eight or ten miles west  of
Punkabaree determined our visiting the spot; and the locality being
in a dense jungle, the elephants were sent on ahead.

We descended to the terraces flanking the Balasun river, and struck
west along jungle-paths to a loosely-timbered flat. A sudden descent
of 150 feet landed us on a second terrace. Further on, a third dip of
about twenty feet (in some places obliterated) flanks the bed of the
Balasun; the river itself being split into many channels at this
season. The west bank, which is forty feet high, is of stratified
sand and gravel, with vast slightly-worn blocks of gneiss: from the
top of this we proceeded south-west for three miles to some Mechi
villages, the inhabitants of which flocked to meet us, bringing milk
and refreshments.

The Lohar-ghur, or "iron hill," lies in a dense dry forest.
Its plain-ward flanks are very steep, and covered with scattered
weather-worn masses of ochreous and black iron-stone, many of which
are several yards long: it fractures with faint metallic lustre, and
is very earthy in parts: it does not affect the compass. There are no
pebbles of iron-stone, nor water-worn rocks of any kind found
with it.

The sandstones, close by, cropped out in thick beds (dip north 70
degrees): they are very soft, and beds of laminated clay, and of a
slaty rock, are intercalated with them; also an excessively tough
conglomerate, formed of an indurated blue or grey paste, with nodules
of harder clay. There are no traces of metal in the rock, and the
lumps of ore are wholly superficial.

Below Punkabaree the Baisarbatti stream cuts through banks of gravel
overlying the sandstone (dip north 65 degrees). The sandstone is
gritty and micaceous, intercalated with beds of indurated shale and
clay; in which I found the shaft (apparently) of a bone; there were
also beds of the  same clay conglomerate which I had seen at
Lohar-ghur, and thin seams of brown lignite; with a rhomboidal
cleavage. In the bed of the stream were carbonaceous shales, with
obscure impressions of fern leaves, of _Trizygia,_ and _Vertebraria_:
both fossils characteristic of the Burdwan coal-fields (see Chapter
I), but too imperfect to justify any conclusion as to the relation
between these formations.* [These traces of fossils are not
sufficient to identify the formation with that of the sewalik hills
of North-west India; but its contents, together with its strike, dip,
and position relatively to the mountains, and its mineralogical
character, incline me to suppose it may be similar. Its appearance in
such small quantities in Sikkim (where it rises but a few hundred
feet above the level of the sea, whereas in Kumaon it reaches 4000
feet), may be attributed to the greater amount of wearing which it
must have undergone; the plains from which it rises being 1000 feet
lower than those of Kumaon, and the sea having consequently retired
later, exposing the Sikkim sandstone to the effects of denudation for
a much longer period. Hitherto no traces of this rock, or of any
belonging to a similar geological epoch, have been found in the
valleys of Sikkim; but when the narrowness of these is considered, it
will not appear strange that such may have been removed from their
surfaces: first, by the action of a tidal ocean; and afterwards, by
that of tropical rains.]

Ascending the stream, these shales are seen _in situ,_ overlain by
the metamorphic clay-slate of the mountains, and dipping inwards
(northwards) like them. This is at the foot of the Punkabaree spur,
and close to the bungalow, where a stream and land-slip expose good
sections. The carbonaceous beds dip north 60 degrees and 70 degrees,
and run east and west; much quartz rock is intercalated with them,
and soft white and pink micaceous sandstones. The coal-seams are few
in number, six to twelve inches thick, very confused and distorted,
and full of elliptic nodules, or spheroids of quartzy slate, covered
with concentric scaly layers of coal: they overlie the sandstones
mentioned above. These scanty notices of superposition being
collected in a country clothed with the densest tropical forest,
where a geologist pursues his fatiguing investigations under
disadvantages that can hardly be realized in England, will I fear
long remain unconfirmed.  I may mention, however, that the appearance
of inversion of the strata at the foot of great mountain-masses has
been observed in the Alleghany chain, and I believe in the Alps.*
[Dr. M'Lelland informs me that in the Curruckpore hills, south of the
Ganges, the clay-slates are overlain by beds of mica-slate, gneiss,
and granite, which pass into one another.]

Illustration--A MECH, NATIVE OF THE SIKKIM TERAI.

A poor Mech was fishing in the stream, with a basket curiously formed
of a cylinder of bamboo, cleft all round in innumerable strips, held
together by the joints above and below; these strips being stretched
out as a balloon in the  middle, and kept apart by a hoop: a small
hole is cut in the cage, and a mouse-trap entrance formed: the cage
is placed in the current with the open end upwards, where the fish
get in, and though little bigger than minnows, cannot find their
way out.

On the 20th we had a change in the weather: a violent storm from the
south-west occurred at noon, with hail of a strange form, the stones
being sections of hollow spheres, half an inch across and upwards,
formed of cones with truncated apices and convex bases; these cones
were aggregated together with their bases outwards. The large masses
were followed by a shower of the separate conical pieces, and that by
heavy rain. On the mountains this storm was most severe: the stones
lay at Dorjiling for seven days, congealed into masses of ice several
feet long and a foot thick in sheltered places: at Purneah, fifty
miles south, stones one and two inches across fell, probably as
whole spheres.

Ascending to Khersiong, I found the vegetation very backward by the
road-sides. The rain had cleared the atmosphere, and the view over
the plains was brilliant. On the top of the Khersiong spur a
tremendous gale set in with a cold west wind: the storm cleared off
at night, which at 10 p.m. was beautiful, with forked and sheet
lightning over the plains far below us. The equinoctial gales had now
fairly set in, with violent south-east gales, heavy thunder,
lightning, and rain.

Whilst at Khersiong I took advantage of the very fair section
afforded by the road from Punkabaree, to examine the structure of the
spur, which seems to be composed of very highly inclined contorted
beds (dip north) of metamorphic rocks, gneiss, mica-slate,
clay-slate, and quartz; the foliation of which beds is parallel to
the dip of the strata. Over all reposes a bed of clay, capped with a
layer of  vegetable mould, nowhere so thick and rich as in the more
humid regions of 7000 feet elevation. The rocks appeared in the
following succession in descending. Along the top are found great
blocks of very compact gneiss buried in clay. Half a mile lower the
same rock appears, dipping north-north-east 50 degrees. Below this,
beds of saccharine quartz, with seams of mica, dip north-north-west
20 degrees. Some of these quartz beds are folded on themselves, and
look like flattened trunks of trees, being composed of concentric
layers, each from two to four inches thick: we exposed twenty-seven
feet of one fold running along the side of the road, which was cut
parallel to the strike. Each layer of quartz was separated from its
fellows, by one of mica scales; and was broken up into cubical
fragments, whose surfaces are no doubt cleavage and jointing places.
I had previously seen, but not understood, such flexures produced by
metamorphic action on masses of quartz when in a pasty state, in the
Falkland Islands, where they have been perfectly well described by
Mr. Darwin;* [Journal of Geological Society for 1846, p. 267, and
"Voyage of the Beagle".] in whose views of the formation of these
rocks I entirely concur.

The flexures of the gneiss are incomparably more irregular and
confused than those of the quartz, and often contain flattened
spheres of highly crystalline felspar, that cleave perpendicularly to
the shorter axis. These spheres are disposed in layers parallel to
the foliation of the gneiss: and are the result of a metamorphic
action of great intensity, effecting a complete rearrangement and
crystallization of the quartz and mica in parallel planes, whilst the
felspar is aggregated in spheres; just as in the rearrangement of the
mineral constituents of mica-schists, the alumina is crystallized in
the garnets, and in the clay-slates the iron into pyrites.

The quartz below this dips north-north-west 45 degrees to 50 degrees,
and alternates with a very hard slaty schist, dipping north-west 45
degrees, and still lower is a blue-grey clay-slate, dipping
north-north-west 30 degrees. These rest on beds of slate, folded like
the quartz mentioned above, but with cleavage-planes, forming lines
radiating from the axis of each flexure, and running through all the
concentric folds. Below this are the plumbago and clay slates of
Punkabaree, which alternate with beds of mica-schist with garnets,
and appear to repose immediately upon the carboniferous strata and
sandstone; but there is much disturbance at the junction.

On re-ascending from Punkabaree, the rocks gradually appear more and
more dislocated, the clay-slate less so than the quartz and
mica-schist, and that again far less than the gneiss, which is so
shattered and bent, that it is impossible to say what is _in situ,_
and what not. Vast blocks lie superficially on the ridges; and the
tops of all the outer mountains, as of Khersiong spur, of Tonglo,
Sinchul, and Dorjiling, appear a pile of such masses. Injected veins
of quartz are rare in the lower beds of schist and clay-slate, whilst
the gneiss is often full of them; and on the inner and loftier
ranges, these quartz veins are replaced by granite with tourmaline.

Lime is only known as a stalactitic deposit from various streams, at
elevations from 1000 to 7000 feet; one such stream occurs above
Punkabaree, which I have not seen; another within the Sinchul range,
on the great Rungeet river, above the exit of the Rummai; a third
wholly in the great central Himalayan range, flowing into the Lachen
river. The total absence of any calcareous rock in Sikkim, and the
appearance of the deposit in isolated streams at such distant
localities, probably indicates a very remote origin of the
lime-charged waters.

From Khersiong to Dorjiling, gneiss is the only rock, and is often
decomposed into clay-beds, 20 feet deep, in which the narrow, often
zigzag folia of quartz remain quite entire and undisturbed, whilst
every trace of the foliation of the softer mineral is lost.

At Pacheem, Dorjiling weather, with fog and drizzle, commenced, and
continued for two days: we, reached Dorjiling on the 24th of March,
and found that the hail which had fallen on the 20th was still lying
in great masses of crumbling ice in sheltered spots. The fall had
done great damage to the gardens, and Dr. Campbell's tea-plants were
cut to pieces.

Illustration--POCKET-COMB USED BT THE MECH TRIBES.



END OF VOLUME I OF HIMALAYAN JOURNALS.



HIMALAYAN JOURNALS
or
NOTES OF A NATURALIST

IN BENGAL, THE SIKKIM AND NEPAL HIMALAYAS,
THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS, etc.

JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER, M.D., R.N., F.R.S.

Volume II

First published 1854
Reprinted 1999



CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Arrangements for second journey into Sikkim--Opposition of Dewan--
Lassoo Kajee--Tendong--Legend of flood--Lama of Silok-foke--
Namtchi--Tchebu Lama--Top of Tendong--Gigantic oak--Plants--
Teesta valley--Commencement of rains--Bhomsong--Ascent to
Lathiang--View--Bad road--Orchids--Gorh--Opposition of Lama
--Arrival of Meepo--Cross Teesta--Difficulties of travelling--
Lepchas swimming--Moxa for sprains--Singtam--Grandeur of view
of Kinchinjunga--Wild men--Singtam Soubah--Landslips--Bees'
nests and honey-seekers--Leeches, etc.--Chakoong--Vegetation--
Gravel terraces--Unpleasant effects of wormwood--Choongtam,
scenery and vegetation of--Inhabitants--Tibetan salute--Lamas
--Difficulty of procuring food--Contrast of vegetation of inner
and outer Himalaya--Rhododendrons--Yew--_Abies Brunoniana_--
Venomous snakes--Hornets and other insects--Choongtam temple--
Pictures of Lhassa--Minerals--Scenery.


CHAPTER XIX.

Routes from Choongtam to Tibet frontier--Choice of that by the
Lachen river--Arrival of supplies--Departure--Features of the
valley--Eatable _Polygonum_--Tumlong--Cross Taktoong river--
Pines, larches, and other trees--Chateng pool--Water-plants and
insects--Tukcham mountain--Lamteng village--Inhabitants--
Alpine monkey--Botany of temperate Himalaya--European and
American fauna--Japanese and Malayan genera--Superstitious
objections to shooting--Customs of people--Rain--Run short of
provisions--Altered position of Tibet frontier--Zemu Samdong--
Imposition--Vegetation--Uses of pines--Ascent to Thlonok river
--Balanophora wood for making cups--Snow-beds--Eatable mushrooms
and _Smilacina_--Asarabacca--View of Kinchinjunga--Arum-roots,
preparation of for food--Liklo mountain--Behaviour of my party--
Bridge constructed over Zemu--Cross river--Alarm of my party--
Camp on Zemu river.


CHAPTER XX.

Camp on Zemu river--Scenery--Falling rocks--Tukcham mountain--
Height of glaciers--Botany--Gigantic rhubarb--Insects--Storm
--Temperature of rivers--Behaviour of Lachen Phipun--Hostile
conduct of Bhoteeas--View from mountains above camp--Descend to
Zemu Samdong--Vegetation--Letters from Dorjiling--Arrival of
Singtam Soubah--Presents from Rajah--Parties collecting
arum-roots--Insects--Ascend Lachen river--Thakya-zong--Tallum
Samdong village--Cottages--Mountains--Plants--Entomology--
Weather--Halo--Diseases--Conduct of Singtam Soubah--His
character and illness--Agrees to take me to Kongra Lama--Tungu--
Appearance of country--Houses--Poisoning by aram-roots--Yaks
and calves--Tibet ponies--Journey to Kongra Lama--Tibetan tents
--Butter, curds, and churns--Hospitality--Kinchinjhow and
Chomiomo--Magnificent scenery--Reach Kongra Lama pass.


CHAPTER XXI.

Top of Kongra Lama--Tibet frontier--Elevation--View--
Vegetation--Descent to Tungu--Tungu-choo--Ponies--Kinchinjhow
and Chango-khang mountains--Palung plains--Tibetans--Dogs--
Dingcham province of Tibet--Inhabitants--Dresses--Women's
ornaments--Blackening faces--Coral--Tents--Elevation of
Palung--Lama--Shawl-wool goats--Shearing--Siberian plants--
Height of glaciers, and perpetual snow--Geology--Plants, and wild
animals--Marmots--Insects--Birds--Choongtam Lama--Religious
exercises--Tibetan hospitality--_Delphinium_--Perpetual snow--
Temperature at Tungu--Return to Tallum Samdong--To Lamteng--
Houses--Fall of barometer--Cicadas--Lime deposits--Landslips
--Arrival at Choongtam--Cobra--Rageu--Heat of climate--
Velocity and volume of rivers measured--Leave for Lachoong valley
--Keadom--General features of valley--Lachoong village--Tunkra
mountain--Moraines--Cultivation--Lachoong Phipun--Lama
ceremonies beside a sick-bed.


CHAPTER XXII.

Leave Lachoong for Tunkra pass--Moraines and their vegetation--
Pines of great dimensions--Wild currants--Glaciers--Summit of
pass--Elevation--Views--Plants--Winds--Choombi district--
Lacheepia rock--Extreme cold--Kinchinjunga--Himalayan grouse--
Meteorological observations--Return to Lachoong--Oaks--Ascend
to Yeumtong--Flats and debacles--Buried pine-trunks--Perpetual
snow--Hot springs--Behaviour of Singtam Soubah--Leave for Momay
Samdong--Upper limit of trees--Distribution of plants--Glacial
terraces, etc.--Forked Donkia--Moutonneed rocks--Ascent to
Donkia pass--Vegetation--Scenery--Lakes--Tibet--Bhomtso--
Arun river--Kiang-lah mountains--Yaru-Tsampu river--Appearance
of Tibet--Kambajong--Jigatzi--Kinchinjhow, and Kinchinjunga--
Chola range--Deceptive appearance of distant landscape--Perpetual
snow--Granite--Temperatures--Pulses--Plants--Tripe de roche
--Return to Momay--Dogs and yaks--Birds--Insects--Quadrupeds
--Hot springs--Marmots--Kinchinjhow glacier.


CHAPTER XXIII.

Donkia glaciers--Moraines--Dome of ice--Honey-combed surface--
Rocks of Donkia--Metamorphic action of granite veins--Accident to
instruments--Sebolah pass--Bees and May-flies--View--
Temperature--Pulses of party--Lamas and travellers at Momay--
Weather and climate--Dr. Campbell leaves Dorjiling for Sikkim--
Leave Momay--Yeumtong--Lachoong--Retardation of vegetation at
low elevations--Choongtam--Landslips and debacle--Meet Dr.
Campbell--Motives for his journey--Second visit to Lachen valley
--Autumnal tints--Red currants--Lachen Phipun--Tungu--
Scenery--Animals--Poisonous rhododendrons--Fire-wood--Palung
--Elevations--Sitong--Kongra Lama--Tibetans--Enter Tibet--
Desolate scenery--Plants--Animals--Geology--Cholamoo lakes--
Antelopes--Return to Yeumtso--Dr. Campbell lost--Extreme cold
--Headaches--Tibetan Dingpun and guard--Arms and accoutrements
--Temperature of Yeumtso--Migratory birds--Visit of Dingpun--
Yeumtso lakes.


CHAPTER XXIV.

Ascent of Bhomtso--View of snowy mountains--Chumulari--Arun
river--Kiang-lah mountains--Jigatzi--Lhassa--Dingcham
province of Tibet--Misapplication of term "Plain of Tibet"--
Sheep, flocks of--Crops--Probable elevation of Jigatzi--
Yaru-Tsampu river--Tame elephants--Wild horses--Dryness of air
--Sunset beams--Rocks of Kinchinjhow--Cholamoo lakes--
Limestone--Dip and strike of rocks--Effects of great elevation on
party--Ascent of Donkia--Moving piles of debris--Cross Donkia
pass--Second visit to Momay Samdong--Hot springs--Descent to
Yeumtong--Lachoong--Retardation of vegetation again noticed--
Jerked meat--Fish--Lose a thermometer--Lepcha lad sleeps in hot
spring--Keadom--_Bucklandia_--Arrive at Choongtam--Mendicant
--Meepo--Lachen-Lachoong river--Wild grape--View from Singtam
of Kinchinjunga--Virulent nettle.


CHAPTER XXV.

Journey to the Rajah's residence at Tumloong--Ryott valley--
Rajah's house--Tupgain Lama--Lagong nunnery--Phadong Goompa--
Phenzong ditto--Lepcha sepoys--Proceedings at Tumloong--Refused
admittance to Rajah--Women's dresses--Meepo's and Tchebu Lama's
families--Chapel--Leave for Chola pass--Ryott river--Rungpo,
view from--Deputation of Kajees, etc.--Conference--Laghep--
Eatable fruit of _Decaisnea--Cathcartia_--Rhododendrons--
Phieung-goong--Pines--Rutto river--Barfonchen--Curling of
rhododendron leaf--Woodcock--Chola pass--Small lakes--Tibet
guard and sepoys--Dingpun--Arrival of Sikkim sepoys--Their
conduct--Meet Singtam Soubah--Chumanako--We are seized by the
Soubah's party--Soubah's conduct--Dingpun Tinli--Treatment of
Dr. Campbell--Bound and guarded--Separated from Campbell--
Marched to Tumloong--Motives for such conduct--Arrive at Rungpo
--At Phadong--Presents from Rajah--Visits of Lama--Of Singtam
Soubah--I am cross-questioned by Amlah--Confined with Campbell--
Seizure of my Coolies--Threats of attacking Dorjiling.


CHAPTER XXVI.

Dr. Campbell is ordered to appear at Durbar--Lamas called to
council--Threats--Scarcity of food--Arrival of Dewan--Our
jailer, Thoba-sing--Temperature, etc., at Tumloong--Services of
Goompas--Lepcha girl--Jews'-harp--Terror of servants--
Ilam-sing's family--Interview with Dewan--Remonstrances--Dewan
feigns sickness--Lord Dalhousie's letter to Rajah--Treatment of
Indo-Chinese--Concourse of Lamas--Visit of Tchebu Lama--Close
confinement--Dr. Campbell's illness--Conference with Amlah--
Relaxation of confinement--Pemiongchi Lama's intercession--Escape
of Nimbo--Presents from Rajah, Ranee, and people--Protestations
of friendship--Mr. Lushington sent to Dorjiling--Leave Tumloong
--Cordial farewell--Dewan's merchandize--Gangtok Kajee--
Dewan's pomp--Governor-General's letter--Dikkeeling--Suspicion
of poison--Dinner and pills--Tobacco--Bhotanese colony--
Katong-ghat on Teesta--Wild lemons--Sepoys' insolence--Dewan
alarmed--View of Dorjiling--Threats of a rescue--Fears of our
escape--Tibet flutes--Negotiate our release--Arrival at
Dorjiling--Dr. Thomson joins me--Movement of troops at Dorjiling
--Seizure of Rajah's Terai property.


CHAPTER XXVII.

Leave Dorjiling for Calcutta--Jung Bahadoor--Dr. Falconer--
Improvements in Botanic Gardens--Palmetum--Victoria--
_Amherstia_--Orchids spread by seed--Banyan--_Cycas_--
Importation of American plants in ice--Return to Dorjiling--Leave
with Dr. Thomson for the Khasia mountains--Mahanuddy river--
Vegetation of banks--Maldah--Alligators--Rampore-Bauleah--
Climate of Ganges--Pubna--Jummul river--Altered course of
Burrampooter and Megna--Dacca--Conch shells--Saws--Cotton
muslins--Fruit--Vegetation--Elevation--Rose of Bengal--
Burrampooter--Delta of Soormah river--Jheels--Soil--
Vegetation--Navigation--Mosquitos--Atmospheric pressure--
Effects of geological changes--Imbedding of plants--Teelas or
islets--Chattuc--Salubrious climate--Rains--Canoes--Pundua
--Mr. Harry Inglis--Terrya Ghat--Ascent to Churra--Scenery and
vegetation at foot of mountains--Cascades.


CHAPTER XXVIII.

Churra, English station of--Khasia people--Garrow people--
Houses--Habits--Dress--Arms--Dialects--Marriages--Food--
Funerals--Superstitions--Flat of Churra--Scenery--Lime and
coal--Mamloo--Cliffs--Cascades--_Chamaerops_ palm--
Jasper-rocks--Flora of Churra--Orchids--Rhododendrons--Pine
--Climate--Extraordinaiy rain-fall--Its effects--Gardens of
Lieuts. Raban and Cave--Leave Churra to cross the mountain range--
Coal, shale, and under-clay--Kala-panee river--Lailangkot--
_Luculia Pinceana_--Conglomerate--Surureem wood--Boga-panee
river--View of Himalaya--Greenstone--Age of pine-cones--
Moflong plants--_Coix_--Chillong mountain--Extensive view--
Road to Syong--Broad valleys--Geology--Plants--Myrung--
Granite blocks--Kollong rock--Pine-woods--Features of country
--Orchids--Iron forges.


CHAPTER XXIX.

View of Himalaya from the Khasia--Great masses of snow--Chumulari
--Donkia--Grasses--Nunklow--Assam valley and Burrampooter--
Tropical forest--Bor-panee--Rhododendrons--Wild elephants--
Blocks of Syenite--Return to Churra--Coal--August temperature
--Leave for Chela--Jasper hill--Birds--_Arundina_--Habits of
leaf-insects--Curious village--Houses--Canoes--Boga-panee
river--Jheels--Chattuc--Churra--Leave for Jyntea hills--
Trading parties--Dried fish--Cherries--Cinnamon--Fraud--
Pea-violet--Nonkreem--Sandstone--Pines--Granite boulders--
Iron washing--Forges--Tanks--Siberian _Nymphaea_--Barren
country--Pomrang--_Podostemon_--Patchouli plant--Mooshye--
Enormous stone slabs--Pitcher-plant--Joowye--Cultivation and
vegetation--_Hydropeltis_--Sulky hostess--Nurtiung--
_Hamamelis chinensis_--Bor-panee river--Sacred grove and gigantic
stone structures--Altars--Pyramids, etc.--Origin of names--
_Yandaca coerulea_--Collections--November vegetation--Geology
of Khasia--Sandstone--Coal--Lime--Gneiss--Greenstone--
Tidal action--Strike of rocks--Comparison with Rajmahal hills and
the Himalaya.


CHAPTER XXX.

Best voyage to Silhet--River--Palms--Teelas--Botany--Fish
weirs--Forests of Cachar--Sandal-wood, etc.--Porpoises--
Alligators--Silchar--Tigers--Rice crops--Cookies--
Munniporees--Hockey--Varnish--Dance--Nagas--Excursion to
Munnipore frontier--Elephant bogged--Bamboos--_Cardiopteris_--
Climate, etc., of Cachar--Mosquitos--Fall of banks--Silhet--
Oaks--_Stylidium_--Tree-ferns--Chattuc--Megna--Meteorology
--Palms--Noa-colly--Salt-smuggling--Delta of Ganges and Megna
--Westward progress of Megna--Peat--Tide--Waves--Earthquakes
--Dangerous navigation--Moonlight scenes--Mud island--
Chittagong--Mug tribes--Views--Trees--Churs--Flagstaff hill
--Coffee--Pepper--Tea, etc.--Excursions from Chittagong--
_Dipterocarpi_ or Gurjun oil trees--Earthquake--Birds--Papaw--
Bleeding of stems--Poppy and Sun fields----Seetakoond--
Bungalow and hill--Perpetual flame--_Falconeria--Cycas_--
Climate--Leave for Calcutta--Hattiah island--Plants--
Sunderbunds--Steamer--Tides--_Nipa fruticans_--Fishing--
Otters--Crocodiles--_Phoenix paludosa_--Departure from India.

APPENDIX

=====================

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LITHOGRAPHIC VIEWS.

Fig. VI. View of Kinchinjunga from Singtam, looking north-westward.
p.14
Fig. VII. Kinchinjunga from the Thlonok river, with rhododendrons in
flower. Frontispiece
Fig. VIII. Tibet and Cholamoo lake from the summit of the Donkia
pass, looking north-west. p.124
Fig. IX. Kinchinjhow, Donkia, and Cholamoo lake, from the summit of
Bhomtso, looking south; the summit of Chumulari is introduced in the
extreme left of the view. p.166
Fig. X. The table-land and station of Churra, with the Jheels, course
of the Soormah river, and Tipperah hills in the extreme distance,
looking south. p.277
Fig. XI. The Bhotan Himalaya, Assam valley, and Burrampooter river,
from Nunklow, looking north. p.300
Fig. XII. Seetakoond hill. p.352

WOOD ENGRAVINGS.

Fig. 1. Pandanus in the Teesta valley. p.9
Fig. 2. Cane-bridge over the Lachen-Lachoong river, below Choongtam.
Tukcham mountain is brought into the view, as seen from a higher
elevation. p.21
Fig. 3. _Juniperus recurva,_ the weeping juniper. p.28
Fig. 4. Lamteng village, with Tukcham in the distance. p.35
Fig. 5. Black juniper and young larch. p.55
Fig. 6. Tungu village, with yaks in the foreground. p.73
Fig. 7. Women's head-dresses--the two outer, Lepcha girls; the two
inner, Tibetan women. p.86
Fig. 8. Tibet marmot. Sketched by J. E. Winterbottom, Esq. p.93
Fig. 9. Lachoong valley (looking south), larch tree in the
foreground. p.103
Fig. 10. Conical ancient moraines in the Lachoong valley, with _Abies
brunoniana_ and _smithiana_. p.104
Fig. 11. Head and legs of Tibet marmot. Sketched by J. E.
Winterbottom, Esq. p.106
Fig. 12. Block of gneiss with granite bands, on the Kinchinjhow
glacier. p.135
Fig. 13. Summit of forked Donkia mountain, with Goa antelopes in the
foreground; from 17,500 feet elevation. p.139
Fig. 14. View of the eastern top of Kinchinjhow, and Tibet in the
distance, with wild sheep in the foreground; from an elevation of
18,000 feet. p.140
Fig. 15. Head of Chiru antelope, the unicorn of Tibet. From a sketch
by Lieut. H. Maxwell. p.158
Fig. 16. A Phud, or Tibetan mendicant. Sketched at Dorjiling by Miss
Colvile. p.187
Fig. 17. Tea (brick of), tea-pot, wooden cup, etc. p.189
Fig. 18. Portrait of Aden Tchebu Lama. Sketched by Lieut. H. Maxwell.
p.193
Fig. 19. Silver chain and hooks, ornamented with turquoises, used to
fasten women's cloaks. p.195
Fig. 20. Horns of the Showa stag of Tibet (_Cervus wallichii_).
Sketched by Lieut. H. Maxwell. p.214
Fig. 21. Rajah's house at Tumloong, in the foreground the cottage in
which Dr. Campbell was confined, with the Dewan's retinue passing.
This is partly executed from memory. p.217
Fig. 22. Tibetan tobacco-pipe and tinder-pouch, with steel attached.
p.219
Fig. 23. Lepcha sepoys, the right hand figures, and Tibetan ones on
the left. p.235
Fig. 24. Dr. Falconer's residence, Calcutta Botanic Gardens; from Sir
L. Peel's grounds, looking across the Hoogly. p.243
Fig. 25. View in the Jheels of Bengal, with Khasia mountains in the
distance. p.261
Fig. 26. Living bridge, formed of the aerial roots of figs. p.269
Fig. 27. Dewan's ear-ring of pearl and turquoises. p.271
Fig. 28. Waterfalls at Mamloo, with fan-palms. p.279
Fig. 29. Kollong rock. p.295
Fig. 30. Chela, on the Boga-panee river. p.307
Fig. 31. Nonkreem village, with boulders of denudation. p.311
Fig. 32. Bellows of iron smelters in the Khasia mountains. p.312
Fig. 33. Old bridge at Amwee. p.315
Fig. 34. Stones at Nurtiung. p.320
Fig. 35. _Dipterocarpus turbinatus,_ gurjun or wood-oil tree. p.349


HIMALAYAN JOURNALS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Arrangements for second journey into Sikkim--Opposition of Dewan--
Lassoo Kajee--Tendong--Legend of flood--Lama of Sillok-foke--
Namtchi--Tchebu Lama--Top of Tendong--Gigantic oak--Plants--
Teesta valley--Commencement of rains--Bhomsong--Ascent to
Lathiang--View--Bad road--Orchids--Gorh--Opposition of Lama
--Arrival of Meepo--Cross Teesta--Difficulties of travelling--
Lepchas swimming--Moxa for sprains--Singtam--Grandeur of view
of Kinchinjunga--Wild men--Singtam Soubah--Landslips--
Bees'-nests and honey-seekers--Leeches, etc.--Chakoong--
Vegetation--Gravel terraces--Unpleasant effects of wormwood--
Choongtam, scenery and vegetation of--Inhabitants--Tibetan salute
--Lamas--Difficulty of procuring food--Contrast of vegetation of
inner and outer Himalaya--Rhododendrons--Yew--_Abies
Brunoniana_--Venomous snakes--Hornets and other insects--
Choongtam temple--Pictures of Lhassa--Minerals--Scenery.

After my return from the Terai, I was occupied during the month of
April in preparations for an expedition to the loftier parts of
Sikkim. The arrangements were the same as for my former journey,
except with regard to food, which it was necessary should be sent out
to me at intervals; for we had had ample proof that the resources of
the country were not equal to provisioning a party of from forty to
fifty men, even had the Dewan been favourable to my travelling, which
was clearly not the case.

Dr. Campbell communicated to the Rajah my intention of starting early
in May for the upper Teesta valley, and,  in the Governor-General's
name, requested that he would facilitate my visiting the frontier of
Sikkim, north-east of Kinchinjunga. The desired permission was, after
a little delay, received; which appeared to rouse the Dewan to
institute a series of obstructions to my progress, which caused so
many delays that my exploration of the country was not concluded till
October, and I was prevented returning to Dorjiling before the
following Christmas.

Since our visit to the Rajah in December, no Vakeel (agent) had been
sent by the Durbar to Dorjiling, and consequently we could only
communicate indirectly with his Highness, while we found it
impossible to ascertain the truth of various reports promulgated by
the Dewan, and meant to deter me from entering the country. In April,
the Lassoo Kajee was sent as Vakeel, but, having on a previous
occasion been dismissed for insolence and incapacity, and again
rejected when proposed by the Dewan at Bhomsong, he was refused an
audience; and he encamped at the bottom of the Great Rungeet valley,
where he lost some of his party through fever. He retired into
Sikkim, exasperated, pretending that he had orders to delay my
starting, in consequence of the death of the heir apparent; and that
he was prepared to use strong measures should I cross the frontier.

No notice was taken of these threats: the Rajah was again informed of
my intended departure, unless his own orders to the contrary were
received through a proper accredited agent, and I left Dorjiling on
the 3rd of May, accompanied by Dr. Campbell, who insisted on seeing
me fairly over the frontier at the Great Rungeet river.

Arrangements were made for supplies of rice following me by
instalments; our daily consumption being 80 lbs., a man's load.
After crossing into Sikkim, I mustered my  party at the Great Rungeet
river. I had forty-two in all, of whom the majority were young
Lepchas, or Sikkim-born people of Tibetan races: all were active and
cheerful looking follows; only one was goitred, and he had been a
salt-trader. I was accompanied by a guard of five Sepoys, and had a
Lepcha and Tibetan interpreter. I took but one personal servant, a
Portuguese half-caste (John Hoffman by name), who cooked for me: he
was a native of Calcutta, and though hardy, patient, and
long-suffering, and far better-tempered, was, in other respects, very
inferior to Clamanze, who had been my servant the previous year, and
who, having been bred to the sea, was as handy as he was clever; but
who, like all other natives of the plains, grew intolerably weary of
the hills, and left me.

The first part of my route lay over Tendong, a very fine mountain,
which rises 8,613 feet, and is a conspicuous feature from Dorjiling,
where it is known as Mount Ararat. The Lepchas have a curious legend
of a man and woman having saved themselves on its summit, during a
flood that once deluged Sikkim. The coincidence of this story with
the English name of Ararat suggests the probability of the legend
being fabulous; but I am positively assured that it is not so, but
that it was current amongst the Lepchas before its English name was
heard of, and that the latter was suggested from the peculiar form of
its summit resembling that given in children's books as the
resting-place of the ark.

The ascent from the Great Rungeet (alt. 818 feet) is through dry
woods of Sal and Pines (_P. longifolia_). I camped the first night at
the village of Mikk (alt. 3,900 feet), and on the following day
ascended to Namtc (alt. 5,600 feet).

On the route I was met by the Lama of Silokfoke Goompa. Though a
resident on the Lassoo Kajee's estates, he politely brought me a
present, at the same time apologising for not waiting till I had
encamped, owing to his excessive fat, which prevented his climbing.
I accepted his excuses, though well aware that his real reason was
that he wished to pay his respects, and show his good feeling, in
private. Besides his ordinary canonicals, he carried a tall
crozier-headed staff, and had a curious horn slung round his neck,
full of amulets; it was short, of a transparent red colour, and
beautifully carved, and was that of the small cow of Lhassa, which
resembles the English species, and is not a yak (it is
called "Tundro").

Namtchi was once a place of considerable importance; and still
possesses a mendong, with six rows of inscribed slabs; a temple, and
a Lama attached thereto: the latter waited on me soon after I had
encamped, but he brought no present, and I was not long kept in
suspense as to his motives. These people are poor dissemblers; if
they intend to obstruct, they do it clumsily and hesitatingly: in
this instance the Lama first made up to my people, and, being coolly
received, kept gradually edging up to my tent-door, where, after an
awkward salute, he delivered himself with a very bad grace of his
mission, which was from the Lassoo Kajee to stop my progress. I told
him I knew nothing of the Lassoo Kajee or his orders, and should
proceed on the following morning: he then urged the bad state of the
roads, and advised me to wait two days till he should receive orders
from the Rajah; upon which I dismissed him.

Soon afterwards, as I sat at my tent-door, looking along the narrow
bushy ridge that winds up the mountain, I saw twenty or thirty men
rapidly descending the rocky  path: they were Lepchas, with blue and
white striped garments, bows and quivers, and with their long knives
gleaming in the sun: they seemed to be following a figure in red Lama
costume, with a scarlet silk handkerchief wound round his head, its
ends streaming behind him. Though expecting this apparition to prove
the renowned Kajee and his myrmidons, coming to put a sudden
termination to my progress, I could not help admiring the exceeding
picturesqueness of the scenery and party. My fears were soon
dissipated by my men joyfully shouting, "The Tchebu Lama! the Tchebu
Lama!" and I soon recognised the rosy face and twinkling eyes of my
friend of Bhomsong, the only man of intelligence about the Rajah's
court, and the one whose services as Vakeel were particularly wanted
at Dorjiling.

He told me that the Lassoo Kajee had orders (from whom, he would not
say) to stop my progress, but that I should proceed nevertheless, and
that there was no objection to my doing so; and he despatched a
messenger to the Rajah, announcing my progress, and requesting him to
send me a guide, and to grant me every facility, asserting that he
had all along fully intended doing so.

On the following morning the Lama proceeded to Dorjiling, and I
continued the ascent of Tendong, sending my men round the shoulder to
Temi in the Teesta valley, where I proposed to pass the night.
The road rapidly ascends by a narrow winding path, covered with a
loose forest of oaks, rhododendrons, and various shrubs, not found at
equal elevations on the wetter Dorjiling ranges: amongst, them the
beautiful laburnum-like _Piptanthus Nepalensis,_ with golden
blossoms, was conspicuous. Enormous blocks of white and red
stratified quartz, and slate, some 20 and even 40 yards long, rest on
the narrow  ridge at 7000 feet elevation. The last ascent is up a
steep rounded cone with a broad flat top, covered with dwarf bamboo,
a few oaks, laurels, magnolias, and white-flowered rhododendron trees
(_R. argenteum_), which obstructed the view. I hung the barometers
near one of the many chaits on the summit, where there is also a rude
temple, in which worship is performed once a year. The elevation is
8,671 feet by my observations.* [8,663 by Col. Waugh's
trigonometrical observations.] The geological formation of Tendong in
some measure accounts for its peculiar form. On the conical summit
are hard quartzoze porphyries, which have apparently forced up the
gneiss and slates, which dip in all directions from the top, and are
full of injected veins of quartz. Below 7000 feet, mica-schist
prevails, always inclined at a very high angle; and I found jasper
near Namtchi, with other indications of Plutonic action.

The descent on the north side was steep, through a rank vegetation,
very different from that of the south face. The oaks are very grand,
and I measured one (whose trunk was decayed, and split into three,
however), which I found to be 49 feet in girth at 5 feet from the
ground. Near Temi (alt. 4,770 feet) I gathered the fruit of
_Kadsura,_ a climbing plant allied to Magnolia, bearing round heads
of large fleshy red drupes, which are pleasantly acid and much eaten;
the seeds are very aromatic.

From Temi the road descends to the Teesta, the course of which it
afterwards follows. The valley was fearfully hot, and infested with
mosquitos and peepsas. Many fine plants grew in it:* [Especially upon
the broad terraces of gravel, some of which are upwards of a mile
long, and 200 feet above the stream: they are covered with boulders
of rock, and are generally opposite feeders of the river.]
I especially noticed _Aristolochia saccata,_  which climbs the
loftiest trees, bearing its curious pitcher-shaped flowers near the
ground only; its leaves are said to be good food for cattle.
_Houttuynia,_ a curious herb allied to pepper, grew on the banks,
which, from the profusion of its white flowers, resembled
strawberry-beds; the leaves are eaten by the Lepchas. But the most
magnificent plant of these jungles is _Hodgsonia,_ (a genus I have
dedicated to my friend, Mr. Hodgson), a gigantic climber allied to
the gourd, bearing immense yellowish-white pendulous blossoms, whose
petals have a fringe of buff-coloured curling threads, several inches
long. The fruit is of a rich brown, like a small melon in form, and
contains six large nuts, whose kernels (called "Katior-pot" by the
Lepchas) are eaten. The stem, when cut, discharges water profusely
from whichever end is held downwards. The "Took" (_Hydnocarpus_) is a
beautiful evergreen tree, with tufts of yellow blossoms on the trunk:
its fruit is as large as an orange, and is used to poison fish, while
from the seeds an oil is expressed. Tropical oaks and Terminalias are
the giants of these low forests, the latter especially, having
buttressed trunks, appear truly gigantic; one, of a kind called
"Sung-lok," measured 47 feet in girth, at 5 feet, and 21 at 15 feet
from the ground, and was fully 200 feet high. I could only procure
the leaves by firing a ball into the crown. Some of their trunks lay
smouldering on the ground, emitting a curious smell from the mineral
matter in their ashes, of whose constituents an account will be found
in the Appendix.

Birds are very rare, as is all animal life but insects, and a small
fresh-water crab, _Thelphusa,_ ("Ti-hi" of the Lepchas). Shells, from
the absence of lime, are extremely scarce, and I scarcely picked up a
single specimen: the most common are species of _Cyclostoma._

The rains commenced on the 10th of May, greatly increasing the
discomforts of travelling, but moderating the heat by drenching
thunder-storms, which so soaked the men's loads, that I was obliged
to halt a day in the Teesta valley to have waterproof covers made of
platted bamboo-work, enclosing Phrynium leaves. I was delighted to
find that my little tent was impervious to water, though its
thickness was but of one layer of blanket: it was a single ridge with
two poles, 7 feet high, 8 feet long, and 8 feet broad at the base,
forming nearly an equilateral triangle in front.

Bhomsong was looking more beautiful than ever in its rich summer
clothing of tropical foliage. I halted during an hour of heavy rain
on the spot where I had spent the previous Christmas, and could not
help feeling doubly lonely in a place where every rock and tree
reminded me of that pleasant time. The isolation of my position, the
hostility of the Dewan, and consequent uncertainty of the success of
a journey that absorbed all my thoughts, the prevalence of fevers in
the valleys I was traversing, and the many difficulties that beset my
path, all crowded on the imagination when fevered by exertion and
depressed by gloomy weather, and my spirits involuntarily sank as I
counted the many miles and months intervening between me and my home.

The little flat on which I had formerly encamped was now covered with
a bright green crop of young rice. The house then occupied by the
Dewan was now empty and unroofed; but the suspension bridge had been
repaired, and its light framework of canes, spanning the boiling
flood of the Teesta, formed a graceful object in this most beautiful
landscape. The temperature of the river was 58 degrees, only 7
degrees above that of mid-winter, owing to the now melting snows.
I had rather expected to meet either with a guide, or with some
further obstruction here, but as none appeared, I proceeded onwards
as soon as the weather moderated.

Illustration--PANDANUS. SIKKIM SCREW-PINE.

Higher up, the scenery resembles that of Tchintam on the Tambur: the
banks are so steep as to allow of no road, and the path ascends from
the river, at 1000 feet, to Lathiang village, at 4,800 feet, up a
wild, rocky torrent that descends from Mainom to the Teesta.
The cliffs here are covered with wild plantains and screw-pines
(_Pandanus_),  50 feet high, that clasp the rocks with cable-like
roots, and bear one or two crowns of drooping leaves, 5 feet long:
two palms, Rattan (_Calamus_) and _Areca gracilis,_ penetrate thus
far up the Teesta valley, but are scarcely found further.

From the village the view was superb, embracing the tropical gulley
below, with the flat of Bhomsong deep down in the gorge, its bright
rice-fields gleaming like emeralds amid the dark vegetation that
surrounded it; the Teesta winding to the southward, the pine-clad
rocky top of Mainom, 10,613 feet high, to the south-west, the cone of
Mount Ararat far to the south, to the north black mountains tipped
with snow, and to the east the magnificent snowy range of Chola,
girdling the valley of the Ryott with a diadem of frosted silver.
The coolies, each carrying upwards of 80 lb. load, had walked twelve
hours that day, and besides descending 2000 feet, they had ascended
nearly 4000 feet, and gone over innumerable ups and downs besides.

Beyond Lathiang, a steep and dangerous path runs along the east flank
of Mainom, sometimes on narrow ledges of dry rock, covered with long
grass, sometimes dipping into wooded gullies, full of _Edgeworthia
Gardneri_ and small trees of Andromeda and rhododendron, covered with
orchids* [Especially some species of _Sunipia_ and _Cirrhopetalum,_
which have not yet been introduced into England.] of great beauty.

Descending to Gorh (4,100 feet), I was met by the Lama of that
district, a tall, disagreeable-looking fellow, who informed me that
the road ahead was impassable. The day being spent, I was obliged to
camp at any rate; after which he visited me in full canonicals,
bringing me a handsome present, but assuring me that he had no
authority to let me advance. I treated him with civility, and
regretted my objects being so imperative, and my orders so clear,
that I was obliged to proceed on the following morning: on which he
abruptly decamped, as I suspected, in order to damage the paths and
bridges. He came again at daylight, and expostulated further; but
finding it of no use, he volunteered to accompany me, officiously
offering me the choice of two roads. I asked for the coolest, knowing
full well that it was useless to try and out-wit him in such matters.
At the first stream the bridge was destroyed, but seeing the planks
peeping through the bushes in which they had been concealed, I
desired the Lama to repair it, which he did without hesitation. So it
was at every point: the path was cumbered with limbs of trees,
crossing-stones were removed from the streams, and all natural
difficulties were increased. I kept constantly telling the Lama that
as he had volunteered to show me the road, I felt sure he intended to
remove all obstacles, and accordingly I put him to all the trouble I
possibly could, which he took with a very indifferent grace. When I
arrived at the swinging bridge across the Teesta, I found that the
canes were loosened, and that slips of bamboo, so small as nearly to
escape observation, were ingeniously placed low down over the single
bamboo that formed the footing, intended to trip up the unwary
passenger, and overturn him into the river, which was deep, and with
a violent current. Whilst the Lama was cutting these, one of my party
found a charcoal writing on a tree, announcing the speedy arrival
from the Rajah of my old guide, Meepo; and he shortly afterwards
appeared, with instructions to proceed with me, though not to the
Tibetan frontier. The lateness of the season, the violence of the
rains, and the fears, on the Rajah's part, that I might  suffer from
fever or accident, were all urged to induce me to return, or at least
only to follow the west branch of the Teesta to Kinchinjunga.
These reasons failing, I was threatened with Chinese interference on
the frontier. All these objections I overruled, by refusing to
recognise any instructions that were not officially communicated to
the Superintendent of Dorjiling.

The Gorh Lama here took leave of me: he was a friend of the Dewan,
and was rather surprised to find that the Rajah had sent me a guide,
and now attempted to pass himself off as my friend, pompously
charging Meepo with the care of me, and bidding me a very polite
farewell. I could not help telling him civilly, but plainly, what I
thought of him; and so we parted.

Meepo was very glad to join my party again: he is a thorough Lepcha
in heart, a great friend of his Rajah and of Tchebu Lama, and one who
both fears and hates the Dewan. He assured me of the Rajah's good
wishes and intentions, but spoke with great doubt as to the
probability of a successful issue to my journey: he was himself
ignorant of the road, but had brought a guide, whose appearance,
however, was against him, and who turned out to be sent as a spy on
us both.

Instead of crossing the Teesta here, we kept on for two days up its
west bank, to a cane bridge at Lingo, where the bed of the river is
still only 2000 feet above the sea, though 45 miles distant from the
plains, and flowing in a valley bounded by mountains 12,000 to 16,000
feet high. The heat was oppressive, from the closeness of the
atmosphere, the great power of the sun, now high at noon-day, and the
reflection from the rocks. Leeches began to swarm as the damp
increased, and stinging flies of various kinds. My clothes were
drenched with perspiration during five  hours of every day, and the
crystallising salt irritated the skin. On sitting down to rest, I was
overcome with languor and sleep, and, but for the copious supply of
fresh water everywhere, travelling would have been intolerable.
The Coolies were all but naked, and were constantly plunging into the
pools of the rivers; for, though filthy in their persons, they revel
in cold water in summer. They are powerful swimmers, and will stem a
very strong current, striking out with each arm alternately. It is an
animated sight when twenty or thirty of these swarthy children of
nature are disporting their muscular figures in the water, diving
after large fish, and sometimes catching them by tickling them under
the stones.

Of plants I found few not common at similar elevations below
Dorjiling, except another kind of Tree-fern,* [_Alsophila spinulosa,_
the "Pugjik" of the Lepchas, who eat the soft watery pith: it is
abundant in East Bengal and the Peninsula of India. The other Sikkim
Tree-fern, _A. gigantea,_ is far more common from the level of the
plains to 6,500 elevation, and is found as far south as Java.] whose
pith is eaten in times of scarcity. The India-rubber fig penetrates
thus far amongst the mountains, but is of small size. A Gentian,
_Arenaria,_ and some sub-alpine plants are met with, though the
elevation is only 2000 feet, and the whole climate thoroughly
tropical: they were annuals usually found at 7000 to 10,000 feet
elevation, and were growing here on mossy rocks, cooled by the spray
of the river, whose temperature was only 56.3 degrees. My servant
having severely sprained his wrist by a fall, the Lepchas wanted to
apply a moxa, which they do by lighting a piece of puff-ball, or
Nepal paper that burns like tinder, laying it on the skin, and
blowing it till a large open sore is produced: they shook their heads
at my treatment, which consisted in transferring some of the leeches
from our persons to the inflamed part.

After crossing the Teesta by the cane bridge of Lingo, our route lay
over a steep and lofty spur, round which the river makes a great
sweep. On the ascent of this ridge we passed large villages on flats
cultivated with buckwheat. The saddle is 5,500 feet high, and thence
a rapid descent leads to the village of Singtam, which faces the
north, and is 300 feet lower, and 3000 feet above the river, which is
here no longer called the Teesta, but is known as the
Lachen-Lachoong, from its double origin in the rivers of these names,
which unite at Choongtam, twenty miles higher up. Of these, the
source of the Lachen is in the Cholamoo lakes in Tibet; while the
Lachoong rises on the south flank of Donkia mountain, both many
marches north of my present position. At Singtam the Lachen-Lachoong
runs westward, till joined by the Rihi from the north, and the
Rinoong from the west, after receiving which it assumes the name of
Teesta: of these affluents, the Rinoong is the largest, and drains
the south-east face of Kinchinjunga and Pundim, and the north of
Nursing: all which mountains are seen to the north-north-west of
Singtam. The Rinoong valley is cultivated for several miles up, and
has amongst others the village and Lamasery of Bah. Beyond this the
view of black, rugged precipices with snowy mountains towering above
them, is one of the finest in Sikkim. There is a pass in that
direction, from Bah over the Tckonglah to the Thlonok valley, and
thence to the province of Jigatzi in Tibet, but it is almost
impracticable.

Illustration--VIEW OF KINCHINJUNGA FROM SINGTAM, LOOKING
NORTH-WESTWARD.

A race of wild men, called "Harrum-mo," are said to inhabit the head
of the valley, living in the woods of a district called Mund-po,
beyond Bah; they shun habitations, speak an unintelligible tongue,
have more hair on the face than Lepchas, and do not plait that of
their heads, but  wear it in a knot; they use the bow and arrow, and
eat snakes and vermin, which the Lepchas will not touch. Such is the
account I have heard, and which is certainly believed in Sikkim:
similar stories are very current in half civilized countries; and if
this has any truth, it possibly refers to the Chepangs,* [Hodgson, in
"Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal" for 1848.] a very remarkable race,
of doubtful affinity and origin, inhabiting the Nepal forests.

At Singtam I was waited on by the Soubah of the district, a tall
portly Bhoteea, who was destined to prove a most active enemy to my
pursuits. He governs the country between Gorh and the Tibet frontier,
for the Maha-Raanee (wife of the Rajah), whose dowry it is; and she
being the Dewan's relative, I had little assistance to expect from
her agent. His conduct was very polite, and he brought me a handsome
offering for myself; but after delaying me a day on the pretext of
collecting food for my people, of which I was in want, I was obliged
to move on with no addition to my store, and trust to obtaining some
at the next village, or from Dorjiling. Owing, however, to the
increasing distance, and the destruction of the roads by the rains,
my supplies from that place were becoming irregular: I therefore
thought it prudent to reduce my party, by sending back my guard of
Sepoys, who could be of no further use.

From this point the upper portion of the course of the Teesta
(Lachen-Lachoong) is materially different from what it is lower down;
becoming a boisterous torrent, as suddenly as the Tambur does above
Mywa Guola. Its bed is narrower, large masses of rock impede its
course, nor is there any place where it is practicable for rafts at
any season; the only means of passing it being by cane bridges that
are thrown across, high above the stream.

The slope on either side of the valley is very steep; that on the
north, in particular, appearing too precipitous for any road, and
being only frequented by honey seekers, who scale the rocks by cane
ladders, and thus reach the pendulous bees'-nests, which are so large
as in some instances to be conspicuous features at the distance of a
mile. This pursuit appeared extremely perilous, the long thread-like
canes in many places affording the only footing, over many yards of
cliff: the procuring of this honey, however, is the only means by
which many of the idle poor raise the rent which they must pay to
the Rajah.

The most prominent effect of the steepness of the valleys is the
prevalence of land-slips, which sometimes descend for 3000 feet,
carrying devastation along their course: they are caused either by
the melting of the snow-beds on the mountains, or by the action of
the rains on the stratified rocks, and are much increased in effect
and violence by the heavy timber-trees which, swaying forwards,
loosen the earth at their roots, and give impetus to the mass.
This phenomenon is as frequent and destructive as in Switzerland,
where, however, more lives are lost; from the country being more
populous, and from the people recklessly building in places
particularly exposed to such accidents. A most destructive one had,
however, occurred here the previous year, by which a village was
destroyed, together with twelve of its inhabitants, and all the
cattle. The fragments of rock precipitated are sometimes of enormous
size, but being a soft mica-schist, are soon removed by weathering.
It is in the rainy season that landslips are most frequent, and
shortly after rain they are pretty sure to be heard far or near.
I crossed the debris of the great one alluded to, on the first march
beyond Singtam: the whole face of the mountain appeared more or less
torn up for fully  a mile, presenting a confused mass of white
micaceous clay, full of angular masses of rock. The path was very
difficult and dangerous, being carried along the steep slope, at an
angle, in some places, of 35 degrees; and it was constantly shifting,
from the continued downward sliding, and from the action of streams,
some of which are large, and cut deep channels. In one I had the
misfortune to lose my only sheep, which was carried away by the
torrent. These streams were crossed by means of sticks and ricketty
bamboos, and the steep sides (sometimes twenty or thirty feet high),
were ascended by notched poles.

The weather continued very hot for the elevation (4000 to 5000 feet),
the rain brought no coolness, and for the greater part of the three
marches between Singtam and Chakoong, we were either wading through
deep mud, or climbing over rocks. Leeches swarmed in incredible
profusion in the streams and damp grass, and among the bushes: they
got into my hair, hung on my eyelids, and crawled up my legs and down
my back. I repeatedly took upwards of a hundred from my legs, where
the small ones used to collect in clusters on the instep: the sores
which they produced were not healed for five months afterwards, and I
retain the scars to the present day. Snuff and tobacco leaves are the
best antidote, but when marching in the rain, it is impossible to
apply this simple remedy to any advantage. The best plan I found to
be rolling the leaves over the feet, inside the stockings, and
powdering the legs with snuff.

Another pest is a small midge, or sand-fly, which causes intolerable
itching, and subsequent irritation, and is in this respect the most
insufferable torment in Sikkim; the minutest rent in one's clothes is
detected by the acute senses of this insatiable bloodsucker, which is
itself so  small as to be barely visible without a microscope.
We daily arrived at our camping-ground, streaming with blood, and
mottled with the bites of peepsas, gnats, midges, and mosquitos,
besides being infested with ticks.

As the rains advanced, insects seemed to be called into existence in
countless swarms; large and small moths, cockchafers, glow-worms, and
cockroaches, made my tent a Noah's ark by night, when the candle was
burning; together with winged ants, May-flies, flying earwigs, and
many beetles, while a very large species of _Tipula_
(daddy-long-legs) swept its long legs across my face as I wrote my
journal, or plotted off my map. After retiring to rest and putting
out the light, they gradually departed, except a few which could not
find the way out, and remained to disturb my slumbers.

Chakoong is a remarkable spot in the bottom of the valley, at an
angle of the Lachen-Lachoong, which here receives an affluent from
Gnarem, a mountain 17,557 feet high, on the Chola range to the east.*
[This is called Black Rock in Col. Waugh's map. I doubt Gnarem being
a generally known name: the people hardly recognise the mountain as
sufficiently conspicuous to bear a name.] There is no village, but
some grass huts used by travellers, which are built close to the
river on a very broad flat, fringed with alder, hornbeam, and birch:
the elevation is 4,400 feet, and many European genera not found about
Dorjiling, and belonging to the temperate Himalaya, grow intermixed
with tropical plants that are found no further north. The birch,
willow, alder, and walnut grow side by side with wild plantain,
_Erythrina, Wallichia_ palm, and gigantic bamboos: the _Cedrela
Toona,_ figs, _Melastoma, Scitamineae,_ balsams, _Pothos,_ peppers,
and gigantic climbing vines, grow mixed with brambles, speedwell,
_Paris,_ forget-me-not, and nettles  that sting like poisoned arrows.
The wild English strawberry is common, but bears a tasteless fruit:
its inferiority is however counterbalanced by the abundance of a
grateful yellow raspberry. Parasitical Orchids (_Dendrobium nobile,_
and _densiflorum,_ etc.), cover the trunks of oaks, while
_Thalictrum_ and _Geranium_ grow under their shade. _Monotropa_ and
_Balanophora,_ both parasites on the roots of trees (the one a native
of north Europe and the other of a tropical climate), push their
leafless stems and heads of flowers through the soil together: and
lastly, tree-ferns grow associated with the _Pteris aquilina_ (brake)
and _Lycopodium clavatum_ of our British moors; and amongst mosses,
the superb Himalayan _Lyellia crispa,_* [This is one of the most
remarkable mosses in the Himalaya mountains, and derives additional
interest from having been named after the late Charles Lyell, Esq.,
of Kinnordy, the father of the most eminent geologist of the present
day.] with the English _Funaria hygrometrica._

The dense jungles of Chakoong completely cover the beautiful flat
terraces of stratified sand and gravel, which rise in three shelves
to 150 feet above the river, and whose edges appear as sharply cut as
if the latter had but lately retired from them. They are continuous
with a line of quartzy cliffs, covered with scarlet rhododendrons,
and in the holes of which a conglomerate of pebbles is found, 150
feet above the river. Everywhere immense boulders are scattered
about, some of which are sixty yards long: their surfaces are
water-worn into hollows, proving the river to have cut through nearly
300 feet of deposit, which once floored its valley. Lower down the
valley, and fully 2000 feet above the river, I had passed numerous
angular blocks resting on gentle slopes where no landslips could
possibly have deposited them; and which I therefore refer to ancient
glacial action: one of these,  near the village of Niong, was nearly
square, eighty feet long, and ten high.

It is a remarkable fact, that this hot, damp gorge is never
malarious; this is attributable to the coolness of the river, and to
the water on the flats not stagnating; for at Choongtam, a march
further north, and 1500 feet higher, fevers and ague prevail in
summer on similar flats, but which have been cleared of jungle, and
are therefore exposed to the sun.

I had had constant headache for several mornings on waking, which I
did not fail to attribute to coming fever, or to the unhealthiness of
the climate; till I accidentally found it to arise from the wormwood,
upon a thick couch of the cut branches of which I was accustomed to
sleep, and which in dry weather produced no such effects.* [This
wormwood (_Artemisia Indaca_) is one of the most common Sikkim plants
at 2000 to 6000 feet elevation, and grows twelve feet high: it is a
favourite food of goats.]

From Chakoong to Choongtam the route lay northwards, following the
course of the river, or crossing steep spurs of vertical strata of
mica-schist, that dip into the valley, and leave no space between
their perpendicular sides and the furious torrent. Immense landslips
seamed the steep mountain flanks; and we crossed with precipitation
one that extended fully 4000 feet (and perhaps much more) up a
mountain 12,000 feet high, on the east bank: it moves every year, and
the mud and rocks shot down by it were strewn with the green leaves
and twigs of shrubs, some of the flowers on which were yet fresh and
bright, while others were crushed: these were mixed with gigantic
trunks of pines, with ragged bark and scored timbers. The talus which
had lately been poured into the valley formed a gently sloping bank,
twenty feet high, over which the Lachen-Lachoong rolled, from a pool
above, caused by the damming up of its waters. On either side of the
pool were cultivated terraces of stratified sand and pebbles, fifty
feet high, whose alder-fringed banks, joined by an elegant cane
bridge, were reflected in the placid water; forming a little spot of
singular quiet and beauty, that contrasted with the savage grandeur
of the surrounding mountains, and the headstrong course of the
foaming torrent below, amid whose deafening roar it was impossible to
speak and be heard.

Illustration--CANE-BRIDGE AND TUKCHAM MOUNTAIN.

The mountain of Choongtam is about 10,000 feet high; it divides the
Lachen from the Lachoong river, and terminates a lofty range that
runs for twenty-two miles south from the lofty mountain of
Kinchinjhow. Its south exposed face is bare of trees, except clumps
of pines towards the top, and is  very steep, grassy, and rocky,
without water. It is hence quite unlike the forest-clad mountains
further south, and indicates a drier and more sunny climate. The
scenery much resembles that of Switzerland, and of the north-west
Himalaya, especially in the great contrast between the southern and
northern exposures, the latter being always clothed with a dense
vegetation. At the foot of this very steep mountain is a broad
triangular flat, 5,270 feet above the sea, and 300 feet above the
river, to which it descends by three level cultivated shelves.
The village, consisting of a temple and twenty houses, is placed on
the slope of the hill. I camped on the flat in May, before it became
very swampy, close to some great blocks of gneiss, of which many lie
on its surface: it was covered with tufts of sedge (like _Carex
stellulata_), and fringed with scarlet rhododendron, walnut,
_Andromeda, E1aeagnus_ (now bearing pleasant acid fruit), and small
trees of a _Photinia,_ a plant allied to hawthorn, of the leaves of
which the natives make tea (as they do of _Gualtheria, Andromeda,
Vaccinium,_ and other allied plants). Rice, cultivated* [Choongtam is
in position and products analogous to Lelyp, on the Tambur (vol. i,
Chapter IX). Rice cultivation advances thus high up each valley, and
at either place Bhoteeas replace the natives of the lower valleys.]
in pools surrounded by low banks, was just peeping above ground; and
scanty crops of millet, maize, and buckwheat flourished on the
slopes around.

The inhabitants of Choongtam are of Tibetan origin; few of them had
seen an Englishman before, and they flocked out, displaying the most
eager curiosity: the Lama and Phipun (or superior officer) of the
Lachoong valley came to pay their respects with a troop of followers,
and there was lolling out of tongues, and scratching of ears, at
every sentence spoken, and every object of admiration.  This
extraordinary Tibetan salute at first puzzled me excessively, nor was
it until reading MM. Huc and Gabet's travels on my return to England,
that I knew of its being the _ton_ at Lhassa, and in all civilised
parts of Tibet.

As the valley was under the Singtam Soubah's authority, I experienced
a good deal of opposition; and the Lama urged the wrath of the gods
against my proceeding. This argument, I said, had been disposed of
the previous year, and I was fortunate in recognising one of my
Changachelling friends, who set forth my kindly offices to the Lamas
of that convent, and the friendship borne me by its monks, and by
those of Pemiongchi. Many other modes of dissuading me were
attempted, but with Meepo's assistance I succeeded in gaining my
point. The difficulty and delays in remittance of food, caused by the
landslips having destroyed the road, had reduced our provisions to a
very low ebb; and it became not only impossible to proceed, but
necessary to replenish my stores on the spot. At first provisions
enough were brought to myself, for the Rajah had issued orders for my
being cared for, and having some practice among the villagers in
treating rheumatism and goitres, I had the power of supplying my own
larder; but I found it impossible to buy food for my people. At last,
the real state of the case came out; that the Rajah having gone to
Choombi, his usual summer-quarters in Tibet, the Dewan had issued
orders that no food should be sold or given to my people, and that no
roads were to be repaired during my stay in the country; thus cutting
off my supplies from Dorjiling, and, in short, attempting to starve
me out. At this juncture, Meepo received a letter from the Durbar
purporting to be from the Rajah, commanding my immediate return, on
the grounds that I had been long enough in the country for my
objects: it was not  addressed to me, and I refused to receive it as
an official communication; following up my refusal by telling Meepo
that if he thought his orders required it, he had better leave me and
return to the Rajah, as I should not stir without directions from Dr.
Campbell, except forwards. He remained, however, and said he had
written to the Rajah, urging him to issue stringent orders for my
party being provisioned.

We were reduced to a very short allowance before the long-expected
supplies came, by which time our necessities had almost conquered my
resolution not to take by force of the abundance I might see around,
however well I might afterwards pay. It is but fair to state that the
improvident villagers throughout Sikkim are extremely poor in
vegetable food at this season, when the winter store is consumed, and
the crops are still green. They are consequently obliged to purchase
rice from the lower valleys, which, owing to the difficulties of
transport, is very dear; and to obtain it they barter wool, blankets,
musk, and Tibetan produce of all kinds. Still they had cattle, which
they would willingly have sold to me, but for the Dewan's orders.

There is a great difference between the vegetation of Dorjiling and
that of similar elevations near Choongtam situated far within the
Himalaya: this is owing to the steepness and dryness of the latter
locality, where there is an absence of dense forest, which is
replaced by a number of social grasses clothing the mountain sides,
many new and beautiful kinds of rhododendrons, and a variety of
European genera,* [_Deutzia, Saxifraga caliata, Thalictrum,
Euphorbia,_ yellow violet, _Labiatae, Androsace, Leguminosae,
Coriaria, Delphinium,_ currant, _Umbelliferae,_ primrose, _Anemone,
Convallaria, Roscoea, Mitella, Herminium, Drosera.] which (as I have
elsewhere noticed) are either  wholly absent from the damper ranges
of Dorjiling, or found there several thousand feet higher up. On the
hill above Choongtam village, I gathered, at 5000 to 6000 feet,
_Rhododendron arboreum_ and _Dalhousiae,_ which do not generally grow
at Dorjiling below 7,500 feet.* [I collected here ten kinds of
rhododendron, which, however, are not the social plants that they
become at greater elevations. Still, in the delicacy and beauty of
their flowers, four of them, perhaps, excel any others; they are, _R.
Aucklandii,_ whose flowers are five inches and a half in diameter;
_R. Maddeni, R. Dalhousiae,_ and _R. Edgeworthii,_ all white-flowered
bushes, of which the two first rise to the height of small trees.]
The yew appears at 7000 feet, whilst, on the outer ranges (as on
Tonglo), it is only found at 9,500 to 10,000 feet; and whereas on
Tonglo it forms an immense tall tree, with long sparse branches and
slender drooping twigs, growing amongst gigantic magnolias and oaks,
at Choongtam it is small and rigid, and much resembling in appearance
our churchyard yew.* [The yew spreads east from Kashmir to the Assam
Himalaya and the Khasia mountains; and the Japan, Philippine Island,
Mexican, and other North American yews, belong to the same
widely-diffused species. In the Khasia (its most southern limit) it
is found as low as 5000 feet above the sea-level.] At 8000 feet the
_Abies Brunoniana_ is found; a tree quite unknown further south; but
neither the larch nor the _Albies Smithiana_ (Khutrow) accompanied
it, they being confined to still more northern regions.

I have seldom had occasion to allude to snakes, which are rare and
shy in most parts of the Himalaya; I, however, found an extremely
venomous one at Choongtam; a small black viper, a variety of the
cobra di capello,* [Dr. Gray, to whom I am indebted for the following
information, assures me that this reptile is not specifically
distinct from the common Cobra of India; though all the mountain
specimens of it which he has examined retain the same small size and
dark colour. Of the other Sikkim reptiles which I procured seven are
_Colubridae_ and innocuous; five _Crotalidae_ are venomous, three of
which are new species belonging to the genera _Parias_ and
_Trimesurus._ Lizards are not abundant, but I found at Choongtam a
highly curious one, _Plestiodon Sikkimensis,_ Gray; a kind of Skink,
whose only allies are two North American congeners; and a species of
_Agama_ (a chameleon-like lizard) which in many important points more
resembled an allied American genus than an Asiatic one. The common
immense earth-worm of Sikkim, _Ichthyophis glutinosus,_ is a native
of the Khasia mountains, Singapore, Ceylon and Java. It is a most
remarkable fact, that whereas seven out of the twelve Sikkim snakes
are poisonous, the sixteen species I procured in the Khasia mountains
are innocuous.]  which it replaces in the drier grassy parts of the
interior of Sikkim, the large cobra not inhabiting in the mountain
regions. Altogether I only collected about twelve species in Sikkim,
seven of which are venomous, and all are dreaded by the Lepchas.
An enormous hornet (_Vespa magnifica,_ Sm.), nearly two inches long,
was here brought to me alive in a cleft-stick, lolling out its great
thorn-like sting, from which drops of a milky poison distilled: its
sting is said to produce fatal fevers in men and cattle, which may
very well be the case, judging from that of a smaller kind, which
left great pain in my hand for two days, while a feeling of numbness
remained in the arm for several weeks. It is called Vok by the
Lepchas, a common name for any bee: its larvae are said to be
greedily eaten, as are those of various allied insects.

Choongtam boasts a profusion of beautiful insects, amongst which the
British swallow-tail butterfly (_Papilio Machaon_) disports itself in
company with magnificent black, gold, and scarlet-winged butterflies,
of the Trojan group, so typical of the Indian tropics. At night my
tent was filled with small water-beetles (_Berosi_) that quickly put
out the candle; and with lovely moths came huge cockchafers
(_Encerris Griffithii_), and enormous and foetid flying-bugs (of the
genus _Derecterix_), which bear great horns on the thorax.
The irritation of mosquito and midge bites, and the disgusting
insects that clung with spiny legs to the blankets of my tent and
bed, were often as effectual in banishing sleep, as were my anxious
thoughts regarding the future.

The temple at Choongtam is a poor wooden building, but contains some
interesting drawings of Lhassa, with its extensive Lamaseries and
temples; they convey the idea of a town, gleaming, like Moscow, with
gilded and copper roofs; but on a nearer aspect it is found to
consist of a mass of stone houses, and large religious edifices many
stories high, the walls of which are regularly pierced with small
square ornamented windows.* [MM. Huc and Gabet's account of Lhassa
is, I do not doubt, excellent as to particulars; but the trees which
they describe as magnificent, and girdling the city, have uniformly
been represented to me as poor stunted willows, apricots, poplars,
and walnuts, confined to the gardens of the rich. No doubt the
impression left by these objects on the minds of travellers from
tree-less Tartary, and of Sikkimites reared amidst stupendous
forests, must be widely different. The information concerning Lhassa
collected by Timkowski, "Travels of the Russian Mission to China" (in
1821) is greatly exaggerated, though containing much that is true and
curious. The dyke to protect the city from inundations I never heard
of; but there is a current story in Sikkim that Lhassa is built in a
lake-bed, which was dried up by a miracle of the Lamas, and that in
heavy rain the earth trembles, and the waters bubble through the
soil: a Dorjiling rain-fall, I have been assured, would wash away the
whole city. Ermann (Travels in Siberia, i., p. 186), mentions a town
(Klinchi, near Perm), thus built over subterraneous springs, and in
constant danger of being washed away. MM. Huc and Gabet allude to the
same tradition under another form. They say that the natives of the
banks of the Koko-nor affirm that the waters of that lake once
occupied a subterranean position beneath Lhassa, and that the waters
sapped the foundations of the temples as soon as they were built,
till withdrawn by supernatural agency.]

There is nothing remarkable in the geology of Choongtam: the base of
the hill consists of the clay and mica slates overlain by gneiss,
generally dipping to the eastward; in the latter are granite veins,
containing fine tourmalines. Actinolites are found in some highly
metamorphic gneisses, brought by landslips from the neighbouring
heights. The weather in May was cloudy and showery, but the rain
which fell was far less in amount than that at Dorjiling: during the
day the sun's power was great; but though it rose between five and
six a.m., it never appeared above the lofty peaked mountains that
girdle the valley till eight a.m.  Dark pines crest the heights
around, and landslips score their flanks with white seams below;
while streaks of snow remain throughout the month at 9000 feet above;
and everywhere silvery torrents leap down to the Lachen and Lachoong.

Illustration--JUNIPERUS RECURVA (height 30 feet).



CHAPTER XIX.

Routes from Choongtam to Tibet frontier--Choice of that by the
Lachen river--Arrival of Supplies--Departure--Features of the
valley--Eatable _Polygonum_--Tumlong--Cross Taktoong river--
Pines, larches, and other trees--Chateng pool--Water-plants and
insects--Tukcham mountain--Lamteng village--Inhabitants--
Alpine monkey--Botany of temperate Himalaya--European and
American fauna--Japanese and Malayan genera--Superstitious
objections to shooting--Customs of people--Rain--Run short of
provisions--Altered position of Tibet frontier--Zemu Samdong--
Imposition--Vegetation--Uses of pines--Ascent to Thlonok river
--Balanophora wood for making cups--Snow-beds--Eatable mushrooms
and _Smilacina_--Asarabacca--View of Kinchinjunga--Arum-roots,
preparation of for food--Liklo mountain--Bebaviour of my party--
Bridge constructed over Zemu--Cross river--Alarm of my party--
Camp on Zemu river.

From this place there were two routes to Tibet, each of about six
days' journey. One lay to the north-west up the Lachen valley to the
Kongra Lama pass, the other to the east up the Lachoong to the Donkia
pass. The latter river has its source in small lakes in Sikkim, south
of the Donkia mountain, a shoulder of which the pass crosses,
commanding a magnificent view into Tibet. The Lachen, on the other
hand (the principal source of the Teesta), rises beyond Sikkim in the
Cholamoo lakes. The frontier at Kongra Lama was described to me as
being a political, and not a natural boundary, marked out by cairns,
standing on a plain, and crossing the Lachen river. To both Donkia
and Kongra Lama I had every right to go, and was determined, if
possible, to reach them, in spite of Meepo's ignorance, our guide's
endeavours to frighten my party and mislead myself, and the country
people's dread of incurring the Dewan's displeasure.

The Lachen valley being pronounced impracticable in the height of the
rains, a month later, it behoved me to attempt it first, and it
possessed the attraction of leading to a frontier described as far to
the northward of the snowy Himalaya, on a lofty plateau, whose plants
and animals were different from anything I had previously seen.

After a week the coolies arrived with supplies: they had been delayed
by the state of the paths, and had consequently consumed a great part
of my stock, reducing it to eight days' allowance. I therefore
divided my party, leaving the greater number at Choongtam, with a
small tent, and instructions to forward all food to me as it arrived.
I started with about fifteen attendants, on the 25th of May, for
Lamteng, three marches up the Lachen.

Descending the step-formed terraces, I crossed the Lachen by a good
cane bridge. The river is a headstrong torrent, and turbid from the
vast amount of earthy matter which it bears along; and this character
of extreme impetuosity, unbroken by any still bend, or even swirling
pool, it maintains uninterruptedly at this season from 4000 to 10,000
feet. It is crossed three times, always by cane bridges, and I cannot
conceive any valley of its nature to be more impracticable at such a
season. On both sides the mountains rose, densely forest-clad, at an
average angle of 35 degrees to 40 degrees, to 10,000 and 15,000 feet.
Its extreme narrowness, and the grandeur of its scenery, were alike
recalled to my mind, on visiting the Sachs valley in the Valais of
Switzerland; from which, however, it differs in its luxuriant forest,
and in the slopes being more uniform and less broken up into those
imposing precipices so frequent in Switzerland, but which are wanting
in the temperate regions of the Sikkim Himalaya.

At times we scrambled over rocks 1000 feet above the river, or
descended into gorges, through whose tributary torrents we waded, or
crossed swampy terraced flats of unstratified shingle above the
stream; whilst it was sometimes necessary to round rocky promontories
in the river, stemming the foaming torrent that pressed heavily
against the chest as, one by one, we were dragged along by powerful
Lepchas. Our halting-places were on flats close to the river, covered
with large trees, and carpeted with a most luxuriant herbage, amongst
which a wild buckwheat (_Polygonum_*) [_Polygonum cymosum,_ Wall.
This is a common Himalayan plant, and is also found in the Khasia
mountains.] was abundant, which formed an excellent spinach: it is
called "Pullop-bi"; a name I shall hereafter have occasion to mention
with gratitude.

A few miles above Choongtam, we passed a few cottages on a very
extensive terrace at Tumlong; but between this and Lamteng, the
country is uninhabited, nor is it frequented during the rains.
We consequently found that the roads had suffered, the little bridges
and aids to climb precipices and cross landslips had been carried
away, and at one place we were all but turned back. This was at the
Taktoong river, a tributary on the east bank, which rushes down at an
angle of 15 degrees, in a sheet of silvery foam, eighteen yards
broad. It does not, where I crossed it, flow in a deep gulley, having
apparently raised its bed by an accumulation of enormous boulders;
and a plank bridge was thrown across it, against whose slippery and
narrow foot-boards the water dashed, loosening the supports on either
bank, and rushing between their foundation stones.

My unwilling guide had gone ahead with some of the coolies: I had
suspected him all along (perhaps unjustly) of avoiding the most
practicable routes; but when I found him waiting for me at this
bridge, to which he sarcastically pointed with his bow, I felt that
had he known of it, to have made difficulties before would have been
a work of supererogation. He seemed to think I should certainly turn
back, and assured me there was no other crossing (a statement I
afterwards found to be untrue); so, comforting myself with the hope
that if the danger were imminent, Meepo would forcibly stop me, I
took off my shoes, and walked steadily over: the tremor of the planks
was like that felt when standing on the paddle-box of a steamer, and
I was jerked up and down, as my weight pressed them into the boiling
flood, which shrouded me with spray. I looked neither to the right
nor to the left, lest the motion of the swift waters should turn my
head, but kept my eye on the white jets d'eau springing up between
the woodwork, and felt thankful when fairly on the opposite bank: my
loaded coolies followed, crossing one by one without fear or
hesitation. The bridge was swept into the Lachen very shortly
afterwards.

Towards Lamteng, the path left the river, and passed through a wood
of _Abies Smithiana._* [Also called _A. Khutrow_ and _Morinda._ I had
not before seen this tree in the Himalaya: it is a spruce fir, much
resembling the Norway spruce in general appearance, but with longer
pendulous branches. The wood is white, and considered indifferent,
though readily cleft into planks; it is called "Seh."] Larch appears
at 9000 feet, with _Abies Brunoniana._ An austere crab-apple, walnut,
and the willow of Babylon (the two latter perhaps cultivated), yellow
jessamine and ash, all scarce trees in Sikkim, are more or less
abundant in the valley, from 7000 to 8000 feet; as is an ivy, very
like the English, but with fewer and smaller yellow or reddish
berries; and many other plants,* [Wood-sorrel, a white-stemmed
bramble, birch, some maples, nut gigantic lily (_Lilium giganteum_),
_Euphorbia, Pedicularis, Spiraea, Philadelphus, Deutzia, Indigofera,_
and various other South Europe and North American genera.] not found
at equal elevations on the outer ranges of the Himalaya.

Chateng, a spur from the lofty peak of Tukcham,* ["Tuk" signifies
head in Lepcha, and "cheam" or "chaum," I believe, has reference to
the snow. The height of Tukcham has been re-calculated by Capt. R.
Strachey, with angles taken by myself, at Dorjiling and Jillapahar,
and is approximate only.] 19,472 feet high, rises 1000 feet above the
west bank of the river; and where crossed, commands one of the finest
alpine views in Sikkim. It was grassy, strewed with huge boulders of
gneiss, and adorned with clumps of park-like pines: on the summit was
a small pool, beautifully fringed with bushy trees of white rose, a
white-blossomed apple, a _Pyrus_ like _Aria,_ another like
mountain-ash, scarlet rhododendrons (_arboreum_ and _barbatum_),
holly, maples, and _Goughia,_* [This fine plant was named (Wight,
"Ic. Plant.") in honour of Capt. Gough, son of the late
commander-in-chief, and an officer to whom the botany of the
peninsula of India is greatly indebted. It is a large and handsome
evergreen, very similar in foliage to a fine rhododendron, and would
prove an invaluable ornament on our lawns, if its hardier varieties
were introduced into this country.] a curious evergreen laurel-like
tree: there were also Daphnes, purple magnolia, and a pink
sweet-blossomed _Sphaerostema._ Many English water-plants*
[_Sparganium, Typha, Potamogeton, Callitriche, Utricularia,_ sedges
and rushes.] grew in the water, but I found no shells; tadpoles,
however, swarmed, which later in the season become large frogs.
The "painted-lady" butterfly (_Cynthia Cardui_), and a pretty "blue"
were flitting over the flowers, together with some great tropical
kinds, that wander so far up these valleys, accompanying _Marlea,_
the only subtropical tree that ascends to 8,500 feet in the interior
of Sikkim.

The river runs close tinder the eastern side of the valley, which
slopes so steeply as to appear for many miles almost a continuous
landslip, 2000 feet high.

Lamteng village, where I arrived on the 27th of May, is quite
concealed by a moraine to the south, which, with a parallel ridge on
the north, forms a beautiful bay in the mountains, 8,900 feet above
the sea, and 1000 above the Lachen. The village stands on a grassy
and bushy flat, around which the pine-clad mountains rise steeply to
the snowy peaks and black cliffs which tower above. It contains about
forty houses, forming the winter-quarters of the inhabitants of the
valley, who, in summer, move with their flocks and herds to the
alpine pastures of the Tibet frontier. The dwellings are like those
described at Wallanchoon, but the elevation being lower, and the
situation more sheltered, they are more scattered; whilst on account
of the dampness of the climate, they are raised higher from the
ground, and the shingles with which they are tiled (made of _Abies
Webbiana_) decay in two or three years. Many are painted lilac, with
the gables in diamonds of red, black, and white: the roofs are either
of wood, or of the bark of _Abies Brunoniana,_ held down by large
stones: within they are airy and comfortable. They are surrounded by
a little cultivation of buck-wheat, radishes, turnips, and mustard.
The inhabitants, though paying rent to the Sikkim Rajah, consider
themselves as Tibetans, and are so in language, dress, features, and
origin: they seldom descend to Choongtam, but yearly travel to the
Tibetan towns of Jigatzi, Kambajong, Giantchi, and even to Lhassa,
having always commercial and pastoral transactions with the Tibetans,
whose flocks are pastured on the Sikkim mountains during summer, and
who trade with the plains of India through the medium of these
villagers.

Illustration--LAMTENG VILLAGE.

The snow having disappeared from elevations below 11,000 feet, the
yaks, sheep, and ponies had just been driven 2000 feet up the valley,
and the inhabitants were preparing to follow, with their tents and
goats, to summer quarters at Tallum and Tungu. Many had goitres and
rheumatism, for the cure of which they flocked to my tent;
dry-rubbing for the latter, and tincture of iodine for the former,
gained me some credit as a doctor: I could, however, procure no food
beyond trifling presents of eggs, meal, and more rarely, fowls.

On arriving, I saw a troop of large monkeys*  [_Macacus Pelops?_
Hodgson. This is a very different species from the tropical kind seen
in Nepal, and mentioned at vol. i, Chapter XII.] gambolling in a wood
of _Abies Brunoniana_: this surprised me, as I was not prepared to
find so tropical an animal associated with a vegetation typical of a
boreal climate. The only other quadrupeds seen here were some small
earless rats, and musk-deer; the young female of which latter
sometimes afforded me a dish of excellent venison; being, though
dark-coloured and lean, tender, sweet, and short-fibred. Birds were
scarce, with the exception of alpine pigeons (_Columba leuconota_),
red-legged crows (_Corvus graculus,_ L.), and the horned pheasant
(_Meleagris Satyra,_ L.). In this month insects are scarce, _Elater_
and a black earwig being the most frequent: two species of _Serica_
also flew into my tent, and at night moths, closely resembling
European ones, came from the fir-woods. The vegetation in the,
neighbourhood of Lamteng is European and North American; that is to
say, it unites the boreal and temperate floras of the east and west
hemispheres; presenting also a few features peculiar to Asia. This is
a subject of very great importance in physical geography; as a
country combining the botanical characters of several others, affords
materials for tracing the direction in which genera and species have
migrated, the causes that favour their migrations, and the laws that
determine the types or forms of one region, which represent those of
another. A glance at the map will show that Sikkim is,
geographically, peculiarly well situated for investigations of this
kind, being centrically placed, whether as regards south-eastern Asia
or the Himalayan chain. Again, the Lachen valley at this spot is
nearly equi-distant from the tropical forests of the Terai and the
sterile mountains of Tibet, for which reason representatives both of
the dry central Asiatic and Siberian, and of the humid Malayan floras
meet there.

The mean temperature of Lamteng (about 50 degrees) is that of the
isothermal which passes through Britain in lat. 52 degrees, and east
Europe in lat. 48 degrees, cutting the parallel of 45 degrees in
Siberia (due north of Lamteng itself), descending to lat. 42 degrees
on the east coast of Asia, ascending to lat. 48 degrees on the west
of America, and descending to that of New York in the United States.
This mean temperature is considerably increased by descending to the
bed of the Lachen at 8000 feet, and diminished by ascending Tukcham
to 14,000 feet, which gives a range of 6000 feet of elevation, and 20
degrees of mean temperature. But as the climate and vegetation become
arctic at 12,000 feet, it will be as well to confine my observations
to the flora of 7000 to 10,000 feet; of the mean temperature, namely,
between 53 degrees and 43 degrees, the isothermal lines corresponding
to which embrace, on the surface of the globe, at the level of the
sea, a space varying in different meridians from three to twelve
degrees of latitude.* [On the west coast of Europe, where the
distance between these isothermal lines is greatest, this belt
extends almost from Stockholm and the Shetlands to Paris.] At first
sight it appears incredible that such a limited area, buried in the
depths of the Himalaya, should present nearly all the types of the
flora of the north temperate zone; not only, however, is this the
case, but space is also found at Lamteng for the intercalation of
types of a Malayan flora, otherwise wholly foreign to the north
temperate region.

A few examples will show this. Amongst trees the Conifers are
conspicuous at Lamteng, and all are of genera typical both of Europe
and North America: namely, silver fir, spruce, larch, and juniper,
besides the yew: there are also species of birch, alder, ash, apple,
oak, willow, cherry, bird-cherry, mountain-ash, thorn, walnut, hazel,
maple, poplar, ivy, holly, Andromeda, _Rhamnus._ Of bushes; rose,
berberry, bramble, rhododendron, elder, cornel, willow, honeysuckle,
currant, _Spiraea, Viburnum, Cotoneaster, Hippophae._ Herbaceous
plants* [As an example, the ground about my tent was covered with
grasses and sedges, amongst which grew primroses, thistles,
speedwell, wild leeks, _Arum, Convallaria, Callitriche, Oxalis,
Ranunculus, Potentilla, Orchis, Chaerophyllum, Galium, Paris,_ and
_Anagallis_; besides cultivated weeds of shepherd's-purse, dock,
mustard, Mithridate cress, radish, turnip, _Thlaspi arvense,_ and
_Poa annua._] are far too numerous to be enumerated, as a list would
include most of the common genera of European and North American
plants.

Of North American genera, not found in Europe, were _Buddleia,
Podophyllum, Magnolia, Sassafras? Tetranthera, Hydrangea, Diclytra,
Aralia, Panax, Symplocos, Trillium,_ and _Clintonia._ The absence of
heaths is also equally a feature in the flora of North America.
Of European genera, not found in North America, the Lachen valley has
_Coriaria, Hypecoum,_ and various _Cruciferae._ The Japanese and
Chinese floras are represented in Sikkim by _Camellia, Deutzia,
Stachyurus, Aucuba, Helwingia, Stauntonia, Hydrangea, Skimmia, Eurya,
Anthogonium,_ and _Enkianthus._ The Malayan by Magnolias, _Talauma,_
many vacciniums and rhododendrons, _Kadsura, Goughia, Marlea,_ both
coriaceous and deciduous-leaved _Caelogyne, Oberonia, Cyrtosia,
Calanthe,_ and other orchids; _Ceropegia, Parochetus, Balanophora,_
and many _Scitamineae_; and amongst trees, by _Engelhardtia,
Goughia,_ and various laurels.

Shortly after my arrival at Lamteng, the villagers sent to request
that I would not shoot, as they said it brought on excessive rain,*
[In Griffith's narrative of "Pemberton's Mission to Bhotan"
("Posthumous Papers, Journal," p. 283), it is mentioned that the
Gylongs (Lamas) attributed a violent storm to the members of the
mission shooting birds.] and consequent damage to the crops.
My necessities did not admit of my complying with their wish unless I
could procure food by other means; and I at first paid no attention
to their request. The people, however, became urgent, and the
Choongtam Lama giving his high authority to the superstition, it
appeared impolitic to resist their earnest supplication; though I was
well aware that the story was trumped up by the Lama for the purpose
of forcing me to return. I yielded on the promise of provisions being
supplied from the village, which was done to a limited extent; and I
was enabled to hold out till more arrived from Dorjiling, now, owing
to the state of the roads, at the distance of twenty days' march.
The people were always civil and kind: there was no concealing the
fact that the orders were stringent, prohibiting my party being
supplied with food, but many of the villagers sought opportunities by
night of replenishing my stores. Superstitious and timorous, they
regard a doctor with great veneration; and when to that is added his
power of writing, drawing, and painting, their admiration knows no
bounds: they flocked round my tent all day, scratching their ears,
lolling out their tongues, making a clucking noise, smiling, and
timidly peeping over my shoulder, but flying in alarm when my little
dog resented their familiarity by snapping at their legs. The men
spend the whole day in loitering about, smoking and spinning wool:
the women in active duties; a few were engaged in drying the leaves
of a shrub (_Symplocos_) for the Tibet market, which are used as a
yellow dye; whilst, occasionally, a man might be seen cutting a spoon
or a yak-saddle out of rhododendron wood.

During my stay at Lamteng, the weather was all but uniformly cloudy
and misty, with drizzling rain, and a southerly, or up-valley wind,
during the day, which changed to an easterly one at night:
occasionally distant thunder was heard. My rain-gauges showed very
little rain compared with what fell at Dorjiling during the same
period; the clouds were thin, both sun and moon shining through them,
without, however, the former warming the soil: hence my tent was
constantly wet, nor did I once sleep in a dry bed till the 1st of
June, which ushered in the month with a brilliant sunny day. At night
it generally rained in torrents, and the roar of landslips and
avalanches was then all but uninterrupted for hour after hour:
sometimes it was a rumble, at others a harsh grating sound, and often
accompanied with the crashing of immense timber-trees, or the murmur
of the distant snowy avalanches. The amount of denudation by
atmospheric causes is here quite incalculable; and I feel satisfied
that the violence of the river at this particular part of its course
(where it traverses those parts of the valleys which are most snowy
and rainy), is proximately due to impediments thus accumulated in
its bed.

It was sometimes clear at sunrise, and I made many ascents of
Tukcham, hoping for a view of the mountains towards the passes; but I
was only successful on one occasion, when I saw the table top of
Kinchinjhow, the most remarkable, and one of the most distant peaks
of dazzling snow which is seen from Dorjiling, and which, I was told,
is far beyond Sikkim, in Tibet.* [Such, however, is not the case;
Kinchinjhow is on the frontier of Sikkim, though a considerable
distance behind the most snowy of the Sikkim mountains.] I kept up a
constant intercourse with Choongtam, sending my plants thither to be
dried, and gradually reducing my party as our necessities urged my so
doing; lastly, I sent back the shooters, who had procured very
little, and whose occupation was now gone.

On the 2nd of June, I received the bad news that a large party of
coolies had been sent from Dorjiling with rice, but that being unable
or afraid to pass the landslips, they had returned: we had now no
food except a kid, a few handfuls of flour, and some potatos, which
had been sent up from Choongtam. All my endeavours to gain
information respecting the distance and position of the frontier were
unavailing; probably, indeed, the Lama and Phipun (or chief man of
the village), were the only persons who knew; the villagers calling
all the lofty pastures a few marches beyond Lamteng "Bhote" or
"Cheen" (Tibet). Dr. Campbell had procured for me information by
which I might recognise the frontier were I once on it; but no
description could enable me to find my way in a country so rugged and
forest-clad, through tortuous and perpetually forking valleys, along
often obliterated paths, and under cloud and rain. To these
difficulties must be added the deception of the rulers, and the fact
(of which I was not then aware), that the Tibet frontier was formerly
at Choongtam; but from the Lepchas constantly harassing the Tibetans,
the latter, after the establishment of the Chinese rule over their
country, retreated first to Zemu Samdong, a few hours walk above
Lamteng, then to Tallum Samdong, 2000 feet higher; and, lastly, to
Kongra Lama, 16,000 feet up the west flank of Kinchinjhow.

On the third of June I took a small party, with my tent, and such
provisions as I had, to explore up the river. On hearing of my
intention, the Phipun volunteered to take me to the frontier, which
he said was only two hours distant, at Zemu Samdong, where the Lachen
receives the Zemu river from the westward: this I knew must be false,
but I accepted his services, and we started, accompanied by a large
body of villagers, who eagerly gathered plants for me along the road.

The scenery is very pretty; the path crosses extensive and dangerous
landslips, or runs through fine woods of spruce and _Abies
Brunoniana,_ and afterwards along the river-banks, which are fringed
with willow (called "Lama"), and _Hippophae._ The great red rose
(_Rosa macrophylla_), one of the most beautiful Himalayan plants,
whose single flowers are as large as the palm of the hand, was
blossoming, while golden _Potentillas_ and purple primroses flowered
by the stream, and _Pyrola_ in the fir-woods.

Just above the fork of the valley, a wooden bridge (Samdong) crosses
the Zemu, which was pointed out to me as the frontier, and I was
entreated to respect two sticks and a piece of worsted stretched
across it; this I thought too ridiculous, so as my followers halted
on one side, I went on the bridge, threw the sticks into the stream,
crossed, and asked the Phipun to follow; the people laughed, and came
over: he then told me that he had authority to permit of my
botanising there, but that I was in Cheen, and that he would show me
the guard-house to prove the truth of his statement. He accordingly
led me up a steep bank to an extensive broad flat, several hundred
feet above the river, and forming a triangular base to the great spur
which, rising steeply behind, divides the valley. This flat was
marshy and covered with grass; and buried in the jungle were several
ruined stone houses, with thick walls pierced with loopholes: these
had no doubt been occupied by Tibetans at the time when this was
the frontier.

The elevation which I had attained (that of the river being 8,970
feet) being excellent for botanising, I camped; and the villagers,
contented with the supposed success of their strategy, returned to
Lamteng.

My guide from the Durbar had staid behind at Lainteng, and though
Meepo and all my men well knew that this was not the frontier, they
were ignorant as to its true position, nor could we even ascertain
which of the rivers was the Lachen.* [The eastern afterwards proved
to be the Lachen.] The only routes I possessed indicated two paths
northwards from Lamteng, neither crossing a river: and I therefore
thought it best to remain at Zemu Samdong till provisions should
arrive. I accordingly halted for three days, collecting many new and
beautiful plants, and exploring the roads, of which five (paths or
yak-tracks) diverged from this point, one on either bank of each
river, and one leading up the fork.

On one occasion I ascended the steep hill at the fork; it was dry and
rocky, and crowned with stunted pines. Stacks of different sorts of
pine-wood were stored on the flat at its base, for export to Tibet,
all thatched with the bark of _Abies Brunoniana._ Of these the larch
(_Larix Griffithii,_ "Sah"), splits well, and is the most durable of
any; but the planks are small, soft, and white.* [I never saw this
wood to be red, close-grained, and hard, like that of the old Swiss
larch; nor does it ever reach so great a size.] The silver fir
(_Abies Webbiana,_ "Dunshing") also splits well; it is white, soft,
and highly prized for durability. The wood of _Abies Brunoniana_
("Semadoong") is like the others in appearance, but is not durable;
its bark is however very useful. The spruce (_Abies Smithiana,_
"Seh") has also white wood, which is employed for posts and beams.*
[These woods are all soft and loose in grain, compared with their
European allies.] These are the only pines whose woods are considered
very useful; and it is a curious circumstance that none produce any
quantity of resin, turpentine, or pitch; which may perhaps be
accounted for by the humidity of the climate.

_Pinus longifolia_ (called by the Lepchas "Gniet-koong," and by the
Bhoteeas "Teadong") only grows in low valleys, where better timber is
abundant. The weeping blue juniper (_Juniperus recurva,_ "Deschoo"),
and the arboreous black one (called "Tchokpo")* [This I have, vol. i.
Chapter XI, referred to the _J. excelsa_ of the north-west Himalaya,
a plant which under various names is found in many parts of Europe
and many parts of Europe and North America; but since then Dr.
Thomson and I have had occasion to compare my Sikkim conifers with
the north-west Himalayan ones and we have found that this Sikkim
species is probably new, and that _J. excelsa_ is not found east of
Nepal.] yield beautiful wood, like that of the pencil cedar,* [Also a
juniper, from Bermuda (_J. Bermudiana_).] but are comparatively
scarce, as is the yew (_Taxus baccata,_ "Tingschi"), whose timber is
red. The "Tchenden," or funereal cypress, again, is valued only for
the odour of its wood: _Pinus excelsa,_ "Tongschi," though common in
Bhotan, is, as I have elsewhere remarked, not found in east Nepal or
Sikkim; the wood is admirable, being durable, close-grained, and so
resinous as to be used for flambeaux and candles.

On the flat were flowering a beautiful magnolia with globular
sweet-scented flowers like snow-balls, several balsams, with species
of _Convallaria, Cotoneaster, Gentian, Spiraea, Euphorbia,
Pedicularis,_ and honeysuckle. On the hill-side were creeping
brambles, lovely yellow, purple, pink, and white primroses,
white-flowered _Thalictrum_ and _Anemone,_ berberry, _Podophyllum,_
white rose, fritillary, _Lloydia,_ etc. On the flanks of Tukcham, in
the bed of a torrent, I gathered many very alpine plants, at the
comparatively low elevation of 10,000 feet, as dwarf willows,
_Pinguicula,_ (a genus not previously found in the Himalaya),
_Oxyria, Adrosace, Tofieldia, Arenaria,_ saxifrages, and two dwarf
heath-like _Andromedas._* [Besides these, a month later, the
following flowered in profusion: scarlet _Buddleia?_ gigantic lily,
yellow jasmine, _Aster, Potentilla,_ several kinds of orchids,
willow-herb (_Epilobium_), purple _Roscoea, Neillia, Morina,_ many
grasses and _Umbelliferae._ These formed a rank and dense herbaceous,
mostly annual vegetation, six feet high, bound together with
_Cuscuta,_ climbing _Leguminosae,_ and _Ceropegia._ The great summer
heat and moisture here favour the ascent of various tropical genera,
of which I found in August several _Orchideae_ (_Calanthe,
Microstylis,_ and _Coelogyne_), also _Begonia, Bryonia, Cynanchum,
Aristolochia, Eurya, Procris, Acanthaceae,_ and _Cyrtandraseae._]
The rocks were all of gneiss, with granite veins, tourmaline, and
occasionally pieces of pure plumbago.

Our guide had remained at Lamteng, on the plea of a sore on his leg
from leech-bites: his real object, however, was to stop a party on
their way to Tibet with madder and canes, who, had they continued
their journey, would inevitably have pointed out the road to me.
The villagers themselves now wanted to proceed to the
pasturing-grounds on the frontier; so the Phipun sent me word that I
might proceed as far as I liked up the east bank of the Zemu. I had
explored the path, and finding it practicable, and likely to
intersect a less frequented route to the frontier (that crossing the
Tekonglah pass from Bah, see chapter XVIII), I determined to follow
it. A supply of food arrived from Dorjiling on the 5th of June,
reduced, however, to one bag of rice, but with encouraging letters,
and the assurance that more would follow at once. My men, of whom I
bad eight, behaved admirably, although our diet had for five days
chiefly consisted of _Polygonum_ ("Pullop-bi"), wild leeks
("Lagook"), nettles and _Procris_ (an allied, and more succulent
herb), eked out by eight pounds of Tibet meal ("Tsamba"), which I had
bought for ten shillings by stealth from the villagers.
What concerned me most was the destruction of my plants by constant
damp, and the want of sun to dry the papers; which reduced my
collections to a tithe of what they would otherwise have been.

From Zemu Samdong the valley runs north-west, for two marches, to the
junction of the Zemu with the Thlonok, which rises on the north-east
flank of Kinchinjunga: at this place I halted for several days, while
building a bridge over the Thlonok. The path runs first through a
small forest of birch, alder, and maple, on the latter of which I
found _Balanophora_* [A curious leafless parasite, mentioned at vol.
i, chapter v.] growing abundantly: this species produces the great
knots on the maple roots, from which the Tibetans form the cups
mentioned by MM. Huc and Gabet. I was so fortunate as to find a small
store of these knots, cleaned, and cut ready for the turner, and
hidden behind a stone by some poor Tibetan, who had never retained to
the spot: they had evidently been there a very long time.

In the ravines there were enormous accumulations of ice, the result
of avalanches; one of them crossed the river, forming a bridge thirty
feet thick, at an elevation of only 9,800 feet above the sea.
This ice-bridge was 100 yards broad, and flanked by heaps of
boulders, the effects of combined land and snowslips. These stony
places were covered with a rich herbage of rhubarb, primroses,
_Euphorbia, Sedum, Polygonum, Convallaria,_ and a purple _Dentaria_
("Kenroop-bi") a cruciferous plant much eaten as a pot-herb. In the
pinewoods a large mushroom ("Onglau,"* [_Cortinarius Emodensis_ of
the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, who has named and described it from my
specimens and drawings. It is also called "Yungla tchamo" by the
Tibetans, the latter word signifying a toadstool. Mr. Berkeley
informs me that the whole vast genus _Cortinarius_ scarcely possesses
a single other edible species; he adds that _C. violaceus_ and
_violaceo-cinereus_ are eaten in Austria and Italy, but not always
with safety.] Tibet.) was abundant, which also forms a favourite
article of food. Another pot-herb (to which I was afterwards more
indebted than any) was a beautiful _Smilacina,_ which grows from two
to five feet high, and has plaited leaves and crowded panicles of
white bell-shaped flowers, like those of its ally the lily of the
valley, which it also resembles in its mucilaginous properties. It is
called "Chokli-bi,"* [It is also found on the top of Sinchul, near
Dorjiling.] and its young flower-heads, sheathed in tender green
leaves, form an excellent vegetable. Nor must I forget to include
amongst the eatable plants of this hungry country, young shoots of
the mountain-bamboo, which are good either raw or boiled, and may be
obtained up to 12,000 feet in this valley. A species of _Asarum_
(Asarabacca) grows in the pine-woods; a genus not previously known to
be Himalayan. The root, like its English medicinal congener, has a
strong and peculiar smell. At 10,000 feet _Abies Webbiana_ commences,
with a close undergrowth of a small twiggy holly. This, and the dense
thicket of rhododendron* [Of which I had already gathered thirteen
kinds in this valley.] on the banks of the river and edges of the
wood, rendered the march very fatiguing, and swarms of midges kept up
a tormenting irritation.

The Zemu continued an impetuous muddy torrent, whose hoarse voice,
mingled with the deep grumbling noise* [The dull rumbling noise thus
produced is one of the most singular phenomena in these mountains,
and cannot fail to strike the observer. At night, especially, the
sound seems increased, the reason of which is not apparent, for in
these regions, so wanting in animal life, the night is no stiller
than the day, and the melting of snow being less, the volume of
waters must be somewhat, though not conspicuously, diminished.
The interference of sound by heated currents of different density is
the most obvious cause of the diminished reverberation during the
day, to which Humboldt adds the increased tension of vapour, and
possibly an echo from its particles.] of the boulders rolling along
its bed, was my lullaby for many nights. Its temperature at Zemu
Samdong was 45 degrees to 46 degrees in June. At its junction with
the Thlonok, it comes down a steep gulley from the north,
foreshortened into a cataract 1000 feet high, and appearing the
smaller stream of the two; whilst the Thlonok winds down from the
snowy face of Kinchinjunga, which is seen up the valley, bearing
W.S.W., about twenty miles distant. All around are lofty and rocky
mountains, sparingly wooded with pines and larch, chiefly on their
south flanks, which receive the warm, moist, up-valley winds; the
faces exposed to the north being colder and more barren: exactly the
reverse of what is the case at Choongtam, where the rocky and sunny
south-exposed flanks are the driest.

My tent was pitched on a broad terrace, opposite the junction of the
Zemu and Thlonok, and 10,850 feet above the sea. It was sheltered by
some enormous transported blocks of gneiss, fifteen feet high, and
surrounded by a luxuriant vegetation of most beautiful rhododendrons
in full flower, willow, white rose, white flowered cherry, thorn,
maple and birch. Some great tuberous-rooted _Arums_* [Two species of
_Arisaema,_ called "Tong" by the Tibetans, and "Sinkree" by the
Lepchas.] were very abundant; and the ground was covered with small
pits, in which were large wooden pestles: these are used in the
preparation of food from the arums, to which the miserable
inhabitants of the valley have recourse in spring, when their yaks
are calving. The roots are bruised with the pestles, and thrown into
these holes with water. Acetous fermentation commences in seven or
eight days, which is a sign that the acrid poisonous principle is
dissipated: the pulpy, sour, and fibrous mass is then boiled and
eaten; its nutriment being the starch, which exists in small
quantities, and which they have not the skill to separate by grating
and washing. This preparation only keeps a few days, and produces
bowel complaints, and loss of the skin and hair, especially when
insufficiently fermented. Besides this, the "chokli-bi," and many
other esculents, abounded here; and we had great need of them before
leaving this wild uninhabited region.

I repeatedly ascended the north flank of Tukcham along a watercourse,
by the side of which were immense slips of rocks and snow-beds; the
mountain-side being excessively steep. Some of the masses of gneiss
thus brought down were dangerously poised on slopes of soft shingle,
and daily moved a little downwards. All the rocks were gneiss and
granite, with radiating crystals of tourmaline as thick as the thumb.
Below 12,000 to 13,000 feet the mountain-sides were covered with a
dense scrub of rhododendron bushes, except where broken by rocks,
landslips, and torrents: above this the winter's snow lay deep, and
black rocks and small glaciers, over which avalanches were constantly
falling with a sullen roar, forbade all attempts to proceed.
My object in ascending was chiefly to obtain views and compass-
bearings, in which I was generally disappointed: once only I had a
magnificent prospect of Kinchinjunga, sweeping down in one unbroken
mass of glacier and ice, fully 14,000 feet high, to the head of the
Thlonok river, whose upper valley appeared a broad bay of ice;
doubtless forming one of the largest glaciers in the Himalaya, and
increased by lateral feeders that flow into it from either flank of
the valley. The south side of this (the Thlonok) valley is formed by
a range from Kinchinjunga, running east to Tukcham, where it
terminates: from it rises the beautiful mountain Liklo,* [D2 of the
peaks laid down in Colonel Waugh's "Trigonometrical Survey from
Dorjiling," I believe to be the "Liklo" of Dr. Campbell's itineraries
from Dorjiling to Lhassa, compiled from the information of the
traders (See "Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal" for 1848); the routes
in which proved of the utmost value to me.] 22,582 feet high, which,
from Dorjiling, appears as a sharp peak, but is here seen to be a
jagged crest running north and south. On the north flank of the
valley the mountains are more sloping and black, with patches of snow
above 15,000 feet, but little anywhere else, except on another
beautiful peak (alt. 19,240 feet) marked D3 on the map. This flank is
also continuous from Kinchin; it divides Sikkim from Tibet, and runs
north-east to the great mountain Chomiomo (which was not visible),
the streams from its north flank flowing into the Arun river (in
Tibet). A beautiful blue arch of sky spanned all this range,
indicating the dry Tibetan climate beyond.

I made two futile attempts to ascend the Thlonok river to the great
glaciers at the foot of Kinchinjunga, following the south bank, and
hoping to find a crossing-place, and so to proceed north to Tibet.
The fall of the river is not great at this part of its course, nor up
to 12,000 feet, which was the greatest height I could attain, and
about eight miles beyond my tents; above that point, at the base of
Liklo, the bed of the valley widens, and the rhododendron shrubbery
was quite impervious, while the sides of the mountain were
inaccessible. We crossed extensive snow-beds, by cutting holes in
their steep faces, and rounded rocks in the bed of the torrent,
dragging one another through the violent current, whose temperature
was below 40 degrees.

On these occasions, the energy of Meepo, Nimbo (the chief of the
coolies) and the Lepcha boys, was quite remarkable, and they were as
keenly anxious to reach the holy country of Tibet as I could possibly
be. It was sometimes dark before we got back to our tents, tired,
with torn clothes and cut feet and hands, returning to a miserable
dinner of boiled herbs; but never did any of them complain, or
express a wish to leave me. In the evenings and mornings they were
always busy, changing my plants, and drying the papers over a sulky
fire at my tent-door; and at night they slept, each wrapt in his own
blanket, huddled together under a rock, with another blanket thrown
over them all. Provisions reached us so seldom, and so reduced in
quantity, that I could never allow more than one pound of rice to
each man in a day, and frequently during this trying month they had
not even that; and I eked out our meagre supply with a few ounces of
preserved meats, occasionally "splicing the main brace" with weak rum
and water.

At the highest point of the valley which I reached, water boiled at
191.3, indicating an elevation of 11,903 feet. The temperature at 1
p.m. was nearly 70 degrees, and of the wet bulb 55 degrees,
indicating a dryness of 0.462, and dew point 47.0. Such phenomena of
heat and dryness are rare and transient in the wet valleys of Sikkim,
and show the influence here of the Tibetan climate.* [I gathered
here, amongst an abundance of alpine species, all of European and
arctic type, a curious trefoil, the _Parochetus communis,_ which
ranges through 9000 feet of elevation on the Himalaya, and is also
found in Java and Ceylon.]

After boiling my thermometer on these occasions, I generally made a
little tea for the party; a refreshment to which they looked forward
with child-like eagerness. The fairness with which these good-hearted
people used to divide the scanty allowance, and afterwards the
leaves, which are greatly relished, was an engaging trait in their
simple character: I have still vividly before me their sleek swarthy
faces and twinkling Tartar eyes, as they lay stretched on the ground
in the sun, or crouched in the sleet and snow beneath some sheltering
rock; each with his little polished wooden cup of tea, watching my
notes and instruments with curious wonder, asking, "How high are we?"
"How cold is it?" and comparing the results with those of other
stations, with much interest and intelligence.

On the 11th June, my active people completed a most ingenious bridge
of branches of trees, bound by withes of willow; by which I crossed
to the north bank, where I camped on an immense flat terrace at the
junction of the rivers, and about fifty feet above their bed.
The first step or ascent from the river is about five feet high, and
formed of water-worn boulders, pebbles, and sand, scarcely
stratified: the second, fully 1000 yards broad, is ten feet high, and
swampy. The uppermost is fifteen feet above the second, and is
covered with gigantic boulders, and vast rotting trunks of fallen
pines, buried in an impenetrable jungle of dwarf small-leaved holly
and rhododendrons. The surface was composed of a rich vegetable
mould, which, where clear of forest, supported a rank herbage, six to
eight feet high.* [This consisted of grasses, sedges, _Bupleurum,_
rhubarb, _Ranunculus, Convallaria, Smilacina,_ nettles, thistles,
_Arum,_ balsams, and the superb yellow _Meconopsis Nepalensis,_ whose
racemes of golden poppy-like flowers were as broad as the palm of the
hand; it grows three and even six feet high, and resembles a small
hollyhock; whilst a stately _Heracleum,_ ten feet high, towered over
all. Forests of silver fir, with junipers and larch, girdled these
flats and on their edges grew rhododendrons, scarlet _Spiraea,_
several honeysuckles, white _Clematis,_ and _Viburnum._ Ferns are
much scarcer in the pine-woods than elsewhere in the forest regions
of the Himalaya. In this valley (alt. 10,850 feet), I found only two
kinds; _Hymenophyllum, Lomaria, Cystopteris, Davallia,_ two
_Polypodia,_ and several _Aspidia_ and _Asplenia. Selaginella_
ascends to Zemu Samdong (9000 feet). The _Pteris aquilina_ (brake)
does not ascend above 10,000 feet.]

Our first discovery, after crossing, was of a good bridge across the
Zemu, above its junction, and of a path leading down to Zemu Samdong;
this was, however, scarcely traceable up either stream. My men were
better housed here in sheds: and I made several more ineffectual
attempts to ascend the valley to the glaciers. The path, gradually
vanishing, ran alternately through fir-woods, and over open grassy
spots, covered with vegetation, amongst which the gigantic arum was
plentiful, whose roots seemed to be the only attraction in this wet
and miserable valley.

On my return one day, I found my people in great alarm, the Phipun
having sent word that we were on the Tibet side of the rivers, and
that Tibetan troops were coming to plunder my goods, and carry my men
into slavery. I assured them he only wanted to frighten them; that
the Cheen soldiers were civil orderly people; and that as long as
Meepo was with us, there was no cause for fear. Fortunately a young
musk-deer soon afterwards broke cover close to the tent, and its
flesh wonderfully restored their courage: still I was constantly
harassed by threats; some of my people were suffering from cold and
bowel complaints, and I from rheumatism; while one fine lad, who came
from Dorjiling, was delirious with a violent fever, contracted in the
lower valleys, which sadly dispirited my party.

Having been successful in finding a path, I took my tent and a few
active lads 1000 feet up the Zemu, camping on a high rock above the
forest region, at 12,070 feet; hoping thence to penetrate northwards.
I left my collections in the interim at the junction of the rivers,
where the sheds and an abundance of firewood were great advantages
for preserving the specimens. At this elevation we were quite free
from midges and leeches (the latter had not appeared above 11,500
feet), but the weather continued so uniformly rainy and bad, that we
could make no progress. I repeatedly followed the river for several
miles, ascending to 13,300 feet; but though its valley widened, and
its current was less rapid, the rhododendron thickets below, and the
cliffs above, defeated all endeavours to reach the drier climate
beyond, of which I had abundant evidence in the arch of brilliant
blue that spanned the heavens to the north, beyond a black canopy of
clouds that hid everything around, and poured down rain without one
day's intermission, during the eight which I spent here.

Illustration--BLACH JUNIPER (height silty feet) AND YOUNG LARCH.


CHAPTER XX.

Camp on Zemu river--Scenery--Falling rocks--Tukcham mountain--
Height of glaciers--Botany--Gigantic rhubarb--Insects--Storm
--Temperature of rivers--Behaviour of Lachen Phipun--Hostile
conduct of Bhoteeas--View from mountains above camp--Descend to
Zemu Samdong--Vegetation--Letters from Dorjiling--Arrival of
Singtam Soubah--Presents from Rajah--Parties collecting
Arum-roots--Insects--Ascend Lachen river--Thakya-zong--Tallum
Samdong village--Cottages--Mountains--Plants--Entomology--
Weather--Halo--Diseases--Conduct of Singtam Soubah--His
character and illness--Agrees to take me to Kongra Lama--Tungu--
Appearance of country--Houses--Poisoning by arum-roots--Yaks
and calves--Tibet ponies--Journey to Kongra Lama--Tibetan tents
--Butter, curds, and churns--Hospitality--Kinchinjhow and
Chomiomo--Magnificent Scenery--Reach Kongra Lama Pass.

My little tent was pitched in a commanding situation, on a rock fifty
feet above the Zemu, overlooking the course of that river to its
junction with the Thlonok. The descent of the Zenlu in one thousand
feet is more precipitous than that of any other river of its size
with which I am acquainted in Sikkim, yet immediately above my camp
it was more tranquil than at any part of its course onwards to the
plains of India, whether as the Zemu, Lachen or Teesta. On the west
bank a fine mountain rose in steep ridges and shrubby banks to 15,000
feet; on the east a rugged cliff towered above the stream, and from
this, huge masses of rock were ever and anon precipitated into the
torrent, with a roar that repeatedly spread consternation amongst us.
During rains especially, and at night, when the chilled atmospheric
currents of air descend, and the sound is not dissipated as in the
day-time, the noise of these falls is sufficiently alarming. My tent
was pitched near the base of the cliff, and so high above the river,
that I had thought it beyond the reach of danger; but one morning I
found that a large fragment of granite had been hurled during the
night to my very door, my dog having had a very narrow escape.
To what depth the accumulation at the base of this cliff may reach, I
had no means of judging, but the rapid slope of the river-bed is
mainly due to this, and to old moraines at the mouth of the valley
below. I have seen few finer sights than the fall of these stupendous
blocks into the furious torrent, along which they are carried amid
feathery foam for many yards before settling to rest.

Across the Thlonok to the southwards, rose the magnificent mountain
of Tukcham, but I only once caught a glimpse of its summit, which
even then clouded over before I could get my instruments adjusted for
ascertaining its height. Its top is a sharp cone, surrounded by rocky
shoulders, that rise from a mass of snow. Its eastern slope of 8000
feet is very rapid (about 38 degrees) from its base at the Zemu river
to its summit.

Glaciers in the north-west Himalaya descend to 11,000 feet; but I
could not discover any in these valleys even so low as 14,000 feet,
though at this season extensive snowbeds remain unmelted at but
little above 10,000 feet. The foot of the stupendous glacier filling
the broad head of the Thlonok is certainly not below 14,000 feet;
though being continuous with the perpetual snow (or neve) of the
summit of Kinchinjunga, it must have 14,000 feet of ice, in
perpendicular height, to urge it forwards.

All my attempts to advance up the Zemu were fruitlesss and a snow
bridge by which I had hoped to cross to the opposite bank was carried
away by the daily swelling river, while the continued bad weather
prevented any excursions for days together. Botany was my only
resource, and as vegetation was advancing rapidly under the influence
of the southerly winds, I had a rich harvest: for though _Compositae,
Pedicularis,_ and a few more of the finer Himalayan plants flower
later, June is still the most glorious month for show.

Rhododendrons occupy the most prominent place, clothing the mountain
slopes with a deep green mantle glowing with bells of brilliant
colours; of the eight or ten species growing here, every bush was
loaded with as great a profusion of blossoms as are their northern
congeners in our English gardens. Primroses are next, both in beauty
and abundance; and they are accompanied by yellow cowslips, three
feet high, purple polyanthus, and pink large-flowered dwarf kinds
nestling in the rocks, and an exquisitely beautiful blue miniature
species, whose blossoms sparkle like sapphires on the turf. Gentians
begin to unfold their deep azure bells, aconites to rear their tall
blue spikes, and fritillaries and _Meconopsis_ burst into flower.
On the black rocks the gigantic rhubarb forms pale pyramidal towers a
yard high, of inflated reflexed bracts, that conceal the flowers, and
over-lapping one another like tiles, protect them from the wind and
rain: a whorl of broad green leaves edged with red spreads on the
ground at the base of the plant, contrasting in colour with the
transparent bracts, which are yellow, margined with pink. This is the
handsomest herbaceous plant in Sikkim: it is called "Tchuka," and the
acid stems are eaten both raw and boiled; they are hollow and full of
pure water: the root resembles that of the medicinal rhubarb, but it
is spongy and inert; it attains a length of four feet, and grows as
thick as the arm. The dried leaves afford a substitute for tobacco; a
smaller kind of rhubarb is however more commonly used in Tibet for
this purpose; it is called "Chula."

The elevation being 12,080 feet, I was above the limit of trees, and
the ground was covered with many kinds of small-flowered
honeysuckles, berberry, and white rose.* [Besides these I found a
prickly _Aralia,_ maple, two currants, eight or nine rhododendrons,
many _Sedums, Rhodiola,_ white _Clematis,_ red-flowered cherry,
birch, willow, _Viburnum,_ juniper, a few ferns, two _Andromedas,
Menziesia,_ and _Spircaea._ And in addition to the herbs mentioned
above, may be enumerated _Parnassia,_ many Saxifrages, _Soldanella,
Draba,_ and various other _Cruciferae, Nardostachys,_ (spikenard),
_Epilobium, Thalictrum,_ and very many other genera, almost all
typical of the Siberian, North European, and Arctic floras.]

I saw no birds, and of animals only an occasional muskdeer.
Insects were scarce, and quite different from what I had seen before;
chiefly consisting of _Phryganea_ (Mayfly) and some _Carabidae_ (an
order that is very scarce in the Himalaya); with various moths,
chiefly _Geometrae._

The last days of June (as is often the case) were marked by violent
storms, and for two days my tent proved no protection; similar
weather prevailed all over India, the barometer falling very low.
I took horary observations of the barometer in the height of the
storm on the 30th: the tide was very small indeed (.024 inch, between
9.50 a.m. and 4 p.m.), and the thermometer ranged between 47 degrees
and 57.8 degrees, between 7 a.m. and midnight. Snow fell abundantly as
low as 13,000 feet, and the rivers were much swollen, the size and
number of the stones they rolled along producing a deafening turmoil.
Only 3.7 inches of rain fell between the 23rd of June and the 2nd of
July; whilst 21 inches fell at Dorjiling, and 6.7 inches at Calcutta.
During the same period the mean temperature was 48 degrees; extremes,
62 degrees/36.5 degrees. The humidity was nearly at saturation-point,
the wind southerly, very raw and cold, and drizzling rain constantly
fell. A comparison of thirty observations with Dorjiling gave a
difference of 14 degrees temperature, which is at the rate of
1 degree for every 347 feet of ascent.* [Forty-seven observations,
comparative with Calcutta, gave 34.8 degrees difference, and if 5.5
degrees of temperature be deducted for northing in latitude, the
result is 1 degree for every 412 feet of ascent. My observations at
the junction of the rivers (alt. 10,850 feet), during the early part
of the mouth, gave 1 degree to 304 feet, as the result of twenty-four
observations with Dorjiling, and 1 degree to 394 feet, from
seventy-four observations with Calcutta.]

The temperature of these rivers varies extremely at different parts
of their course, depending on that of their affluents. The Teesta is
always cool in summer (where its bed is below 2000 feet), its
temperature being 20 degrees below that of the air; whereas in
mid-winter, when there is less cloud, and the snows are not melting,
it is only a few degrees colder than the air.* [During my sojourn at
Bhomsong in mid-winter of 1848 (see v. i. chapter xiii), the mean
temperature of the Teesta was 51 degrees, and of the air 52.3
degrees; at that elevation the river water rarely exceeds 60 degrees
at midsummer. Between 4000 feet and 300 (the plains) its mean
temperature varies about 10 degrees between January and July; at 6000
feet it varies from 55 degrees to 43 degrees during the same period;
and at 10,000 feet it freezes at the edges in winter and rises to 50
degrees in July.] At this season, in descending from 12,000 feet to
1000 feet, its temperature does not rise 10 degrees, though that of
the air rises 30 degrees or 40 degrees. It is a curious fact, that
the temperature of the northern feeders of the Teesta, in some parts
of their course, rises with the increasing elevation! Of this the
Zemu afforded a curious example: during my stay at its junction with
the Thlonok it was 46 degrees, or 6 degrees warmer than that river;
at 1100 feet higher it was 48 degrees, and at 1100 feet higher still
it was 49 degrees! These observations were repeated in different
weeks, and several times on the same day, both in ascending and
descending, and always with the same result: they told, as certainly
as if I had followed the river to its source, that it rose in a drier
and comparatively sunny climate, and flowed amongst little
snowed mountains.

Meanwhile, the Lachen Phipun continued to threaten us, and I had to
send back some of the more timorous of my party. On the 28th of June
fifty men arrived at the Thlonok, and turned my people out of the
shed at the junction of the rivers, together with the plants they
were preserving, my boards, papers, and utensils. The boys came to me
breathless, saying that there were Tibetan soldiers amongst them, who
declared that I was in Cheen, and that they were coming on the
following morning to make a clean sweep of my goods, and drive me
back to Dorjiling. I had little fear for myself, but was anxious with
respect to my collections: it was getting late in the day, and
raining, and I had no mind to go down and expose myself to the first
brunt of their insolence, which I felt sure a night of such weather
would materially wash away. Meepo was too frightened, but Nimbo, my
Bhotan coolie Sirdar, volunteered to go, with two stout fellows; and
he accordingly brought away my plants and papers, having held a
parley with the enemy, who, as I suspected, were not Tibetans.
The best news he brought was, that they were half clad and without
food; the worst, that they swaggered and bullied: he added, with some
pride, that he gave them as good as he got, which I could readily
believe, Nimbo being really a resolute fellow,* [In East Nepal he
drew his knife on a Ghorka sepoy; and in the following winter was
bold enough to make his escape in chains from Tumloong.] and
accomplished in Tibet slang.

On the following morning it rained harder than ever, and the wind was
piercingly cold. My timid Lepchas huddled behind my tent, which, from
its position, was only to be stormed in front. I dismantled my little
observatory, and packed up the instruments, tied my dog, Kinchin, to
one of the tent-pegs, placed a line of stones opposite the door, and
seated myself on my bed on the ground, with my gun beside me.

The dog gave tongue as twenty or thirty people defiled up the glen,
and gathered in front of my tent; they were ragged Bhoteeas, with
bare heads and legs, in scanty woollen garments sodden with rain,
which streamed off their shaggy hair, and furrowed their sooty faces:
their whole appearance recalled to my mind Dugald Dalgetty's friends,
the children of the mist.

They appeared nonplussed at seeing no one with me, and at my paying
no attention to them, whilst the valiant Kinchin effectually scared
them from the tent-door. When they requested a parley, I sent the
interpreter to say that I would receive three men, and that only
provided all the rest were sent down immediately; this, as I
anticipated, was acceded to at once, and there remained only the
Lachen Phipun and his brother. Without waiting to let him speak, I
rated him soundly, saying, that I was ready to leave the spot when he
could produce any proof of my being in Bhote (or Cheen), which he
knew well I was not; that, since my arrival at Lachen, he had told me
nothing but lies, and had contravened every order, both of the Rajah
and of Tchebu Lama. I added, that I had given him and his people
kindness and medicine, their return was bad, and he must go about his
business at once, having, as I knew, no food, and I having none for
him. He behaved very humbly throughout, and finally took himself off
much discomfited, and two days afterwards sent men to offer to assist
me in moving my things.

The first of July was such a day as I had long waited for to obtain a
view, and I ascended the mountain west of my camp, to a point where
water boiling at 185.7 degrees (air 42 degrees), gave an elevation of
14,914 feet. On the top of the range, about 1000 feet above this,
there was no snow on the eastern exposures, except in hollows, but on
the west slopes it lay in great fields twenty or thirty feet thick;
while to the north, the mountains all appeared destitute of snow,
with grassy flanks and rugged tops.

Drizzling mist, which had shrouded Tukcham all the morning, soon
gathered on this mountain, and prevented any prospect from the
highest point reached; but on the ascent I had an excellent view up
the Zemu, which opened into a broad grassy valley, where I saw with
the glass some wooden sheds, but no cattle or people. To reach these,
however, involved crossing the river, which was now impossible; and I
reluctantly made up my mind to return on the morrow to Zemu Samdong,
and thence try the other river.

On my descent to the Thlonok, I found that the herbaceous plants on
the terraces had grown fully two feet during the fortnight, and now
presented almost a tropical luxuriance and beauty. Thence I reached
Zemu Samdong in one day, and found the vegetation there even more gay
and beautiful: the gigantic lily was in full flower, and scenting the
air, with the lovely red rose, called "Chirring" by the Tibetans.
_Neillia_ was blossoming profusely at my old camping-ground, to which
I now returned after a month's absence.

Soon after my arrival I received letters from Dr. Campbell, who had
strongly and repeatedly represented to the Rajah his opinion of the
treatment I was receiving; and this finally brought an explicit
answer, to the effect that his orders had been full and peremptory
that I should be supplied with provisions, and safely conducted to
the frontier. With these came letters on the Rajah's part from Tchebu
Lama to the Lachen Phipun, ordering him to take me to the pass, but
not specifying its position; fortunately, however, Dr. Campbell sent
me a route, which stated the pass to be at Kongra Lama, several
marches beyond this, and in the barren country of Tibet.

On the 5th of July the Singtam Soubah arrived from Chola (the Rajah's
summer residence): he was charged to take me to the frontier, and
brought letters from his highness, as well as a handsome present,
consisting of Tibet cloth, and a dress of China silk brocaded with
gold: the Ranee also sent me a basket of Lhassa sweetmeats,
consisting of Sultana raisins from Bokhara, sliced and dried apricots
from Lhassa, and _Diospyros_ fruit from China (called "Gubroon" by
the Tibetans). The Soubah wanted to hurry me on to the frontier and
back at once, being no doubt instigated to do so by the Dewan's
party, and by his having no desire to spend much time in the dreary
lofty regions I wanted to explore. I positively refused, however, to
start until more supplies arrived, except he used his influence to
provide me with food; and as he insisted that the frontier was at
Tallum Samdong, only one march up the Lachen, I foresaw that this
move was to be but one step forward, though in the right direction.
He went forward to Tallum at once, leaving me to follow.

The Lamteng people had all migrated beyond that point to Tungu, where
they were pasturing their cattle: I sent thither for food, and
procured a little meal at a very high price, a few fowls and eggs;
the messenger brought back word that Tungu was in Tibet, and that the
villagers ignored Kongra Lama. A large piece of yak-flesh being
brought for sale, I purchased it; but it proved the toughest meat I
ever ate, being no doubt that of an animal that had succumbed to the
arduous duties of a salt-carrier over the passes: at this season,
however, when the calves are not a month old, it was in vain to
expect better.

Large parties of women and children were daily passing my tent from
Tungu, to collect arum-roots at the Thlonok, all with baskets at
their backs, down to rosy urchins of six years old: they returned
after several days, their baskets neatly lined with broad
rhododendron leaves, and full of a nauseous-looking yellow acid pulp,
which told forcibly of the extreme poverty of the people.
The children were very fair; indeed the young Tibetan is as fair as
an English brunette, before his perennial coat of smoke and dirt has
permanently stained his face, and it has become bronzed and wrinkled
by the scorching sun and rigorous climate of these inhospitable
countries. Children and women were alike decked with roses, and all
were good-humoured and pleasant, behaving with great kindness to one
another, and unaffected politeness to me.

During my ten days' stay at Zemu Samdong, I formed a large collection
of insects, which was in great part destroyed by damp: many were new,
beautiful, and particularly interesting, from belonging to types
whose geographical distribution is analogous to that of the
vegetation. The caterpillar of the swallow-tail butterfly (_Papilio
Machaon_), was common, feeding on umbelliferous plants, as in
England; and a _Sphynx_ (like _S. Euphorbiae_) was devouring the
euphorbias; the English _Cynthia Cardui_ (painted-lady butterfly) was
common, as were "sulphurs," "marbles," _Pontia_ (whites), "blues,"
and _Thecla,_ of British aspect but foreign species. Amongst these,
tropical forms were rare, except one fine black swallow-tail.
Of moths, _Noctuae_ and _Geometrae_ abounded, with many flies and
_Tipulae. Hymenoptera_ were scarce, except a yellow _Ophion,_ which
lays its eggs in the caterpillars above-mentioned. Beetles were most
rare, and (what is remarkable) the wood-borers (_longicorns_ and
_Curculio_) particularly so. A large _Telephora_ was very common, and
had the usual propensity of its congeners for blood; _lamellicorns_
were also abundant.

On the 11th of July five coolies arrived with rice: they had been
twenty days on the road, and had been obliged to make great detours,
the valley being in many places impassable. They brought me a parcel
of English letters; and I started up the Lachen on the following day,
with renewed spirits and high hopes. The road first crossed the Zemu
and the spur beyond, and then ascended the west bank of the Lachen, a
furious torrent for five or six miles, during which it descends 1000
feet, in a chasm from which rise lofty black pine-clad crags, topped
by snowy mountains, 14,000 to 16,000 feet high. One remarkable mass
of rock, on the east bank, is called "Sakya-zong" (or the abode of
Sakya, often pronounced Thakya, one of the Boodhist Trinity); at its
base a fine cascade falls into the river.

Above 11,000 feet the valley expands remarkably, the mountains
recede, become less wooded, and more grassy, while the stream is
suddenly less rapid, meandering in a broader bed, and bordered by
marshes, covered with _Carex, Blysmus,_ dwarf Tamarisk, and many
kinds of yellow and red _Pedicularis,_ both tall and beautiful.
There are far fewer rhododendrons here than in the damper Zemu valley
at equal elevations, and more Siberian, or dry country types of
vegetation, as _Astragali_ of several kinds, _Habenaria, Epipactis,_
dandelion, and a caraway, whose stems (called in Tibet "Gzira") are
much sought for as a condiment.* [_Umbelliferae_ abound here; with
sage, _Ranunculus, Anemone,_ Aconites, _Halenia,_ Gentians, _Panax,
Euphrasia,_ speedwell, _Prunella vulgaris,_ thistles, bistort,
_Parnassia,_ purple orchis, _Prenanthes,_ and _Lactuca._ The woody
plants of this region are willows, birch, _Cotoneaster,_ maple, three
species of _Viburnum,_ three of _Spiraea, Vaccinium, Aralia, Deutzia,
Philadelphus,_ rhododendrons, two junipers, silver fir, larch, three
honeysuckles, _Neillia,_ and a _Pieris,_ whose white blossoms are so
full of honey as to be sweet and palatable.] The Singtam Soubah and
Lachen Phipun received me at the bridge (Samdong), at Tallum, and led
me across the river (into Cheen they affirmed) to a pretty green
sward, near some gigantic gneiss boulders, where I camped, close by
the river, and 11,480 feet above the sea.

The village of Tallum consists of a few wretched stone huts, placed
in a broad part of the valley, which is swampy, and crossed by
several ancient moraines, which descend from the gulleys on the east
flank.* [I have elsewhere noticed that in Sikkim, the ancient
moraines above 9000 feet are almost invariably deposited from valleys
opening to the westward.] The cottages are from four to six feet
high, without windows, and consist of a single apartment, containing
neither table, chair, stool, nor bed; the inmates huddle together
amid smoke, filth, and darkness, and sleep on a plank; and their only
utensils are a bamboo churn, copper, bamboo, and earthenware vessels,
for milk, butter, etc.

Grassy or stony mountains slope upwards, at an angle of 20 degrees,*
[At Lamteng and up the Zemu the slopes are 40 degrees and 50 degrees,
giving a widely different aspect to the valleys.] from these flats to
15,000 feet, but no snow is visible, except on Kinchinjhow and
Chomiomo, about fifteen miles up the valley. Both these are
flat-topped, and dazzlingly white, rising into small peaks, and
precipitous on all sides; they are grand, bold, isolated masses,
quite unlike the ordinary snowy mountains in form, and far more
imposing even than Kinchinjunga, though not above 22,000 feet
in elevation.

Herbaceous plants are much more numerous here than in any other part
of Sikkim; and sitting at my tent-door, I could, without rising from
the ground, gather forty-three plants,* [In England thirty is, on the
average, the equivalent number of plants, which in favourable
localities I have gathered in an equal space. In both cases many are
seedlings of short-lived annuals, and in neither is the number a test
of the luxuriance of the vegetation; it but shows the power which the
different species exert in their struggle to obtain a place.] of
which all but two belonged to English genera. In the rich soil about
the cottages were crops of dock, shepherd's-purse, _Thlaspi arvense,
Cynoglossum_ of two kinds (one used as a pot-herb), balsams, nettle,
_Galeopsis,_ mustard, radish, and turnip. On the neighbouring hills,
which I explored up to 15,000 feet, I found many fine plants,
partaking more or less of the Siberian type, of which _Corydalis,
Leguminosae, Artemisia,_ and _Pedicularis,_ are familiar instances.
I gathered upwards of 200 species, nearly all belonging to north
European genera. Twenty-five were woody shrubs above three feet high,
and six were ferns;* [_Cryptogramma crispa, Davallia,_ two _Aspidia,_
and two _Polypodia._ I gathered ten at the same elevation, in the
damper Zemu valley (see chapter xix, note). I gathered in this valley
a new species of the remarkable European genus _Struthiopteris,_
which has not been found elsewhere in the Himalaya.] sedges were in
great profusion, amongst them three of British kinds: seven or eight
were _Orchideae,_ including a fine _Cypripedium._

The entomology of Tallum, like its botany, was Siberian, Arctic types
occurring at lower elevations than in the wetter parts of Sikkim.
Of beetles the honey-feeding ones prevailed, with European forms of
others that inhabit yak-droppings.* [As _Aphodius_ and _Geotrupes._
Predaceous genera were very rare, as _Carabus_ and _Staphylinus,_ so
typical of boreal regions. _Coccinella_ (lady-bird), which swarms at
Dorjiling, does not ascend so high, and a _Clytus_ was the only
longicorn. _Bupretis, Elater,_ and _Blaps_ were found but rarely.
Of butterflies, the _Machaon_ seldom reaches this elevation, but the
painted-lady, _Pontia, Colias, Hipparchia, Argynnis,_ and
_Polyommatus,_ are all found.] Bees were common, both _Bombus_ and
_Andraena,_ but there were no wasps, and but few ants. Grasshoppers
and other _Orthoptera_ were rare, as were _Hemiptera_; _Tipula_ was
the common dipterous insect, with a small sand-fly: there were
neither leeches, mosquitos, ticks, nor midges. Pigeons, red-legged
crows, and hawks were the common birds; with a few waders in
the marshes.

Being now fairly behind most of the great snow and rain-collecting
mountains, I experienced a considerable change in the climate, which
characterises all these rearward lofty valleys, where very little
rain falls, and that chiefly drizzle; but this is so constant that
the weather feels chilly, raw, and comfortless, and I never returned
dry from botanising. The early mornings were bright with views
northwards of blue sky and Kinchinjhow, while to the south the lofty
peak of Tukcham, though much nearer, was seldom seen, and black
cumuli and nimbi rolled up the steep valley of the Lachen to be
dissipated in mist over Tallum. The sun's rays were, however,
powerful at intervals during the forenoon, whence the mean maximum
temperature of July occurred at about 10 a.m. The temperature of the
river was always high, varying with the heat of the day from 47
degrees to 52 degrees; the mean being 50 degrees.

These streams do not partake of the diurnal rise and fall, so
characteristic of the Swiss rivers and those of the western Himalaya,
where a powerful sun melts the glaciers by day, and their
head-streams are frozen by night. Here the clouds alike prevent solar
and nocturnal radiation, the temperature is more uniform, and the
corroding power of the damp southerly wind that blows strongly
throughout the day is the great melting agent. One morning I saw a
vivid and very beautiful halo 20 degrees distant from the sun's disc;
it was no doubt caused by snow in the higher regions of the
atmosphere, as a sharp shower of rain fell immediately afterwards:
these are rare phenomena in mountainous countries.

The Singtam Soubah visited me daily, and we enjoyed long friendly
conversations: he still insisted that the Yangchoo (the name he gave
to the Lachen at this place) was the boundary, and that I must not go
any further. His first question was always "How long do you intend to
remain here? have you not got all the plants and stones you want? you
can see the sun much better with those brasses and glasses* [Alluding
to the sextant, etc.] lower down; it is very cold here, and there is
no food:"--to all which I had but one reply, that I should not return
till I had visited Kongra Lama. He was a portly man, and, I think, at
heart good-natured: I had no difficulty in drawing him on to talk
about Tibet, and the holy city of Teshoo Loombo, with its thousands
of gilt temples, nunneries, and convents, its holiest of all the holy
grand Lamas of Tibet, and all the wide Boodhist world besides. Had it
even been politic, I felt it would be unfair to be angry with a man
who was evidently in a false position between myself and his two
rulers, the Rajah and Dewan; who had a wife and family on the smiling
flanks of Singtam, and who longed to be soaking in the warm rain of
Sikkim, drinking Murwa beer (a luxury unknown amongst these Tibetans)
and gathering in his crops of rice, millet, and buckwheat. Though I
may owe him a grudge for his subsequent violence, I still recall with
pleasure the hours we spent together on the banks of the Lachen.
In all matters respecting the frontier, his lies were circumstantial;
and he further took the trouble of bringing country people to swear
that this was Cheen, and that there was no such place as Kongra Lama.
I had written to ask Dr. Campbell for a definite letter from Tchebu
Lama on this point, but unfortunately my despatches were lost; the
messenger who conveyed them missed his footing in crossing the
Lachen, and escaped narrowly with life, while the turban in which the
letters were placed was carried down the current.

Finally the Soubah tried to persuade my people that one so
incorrigibly obstinate must be mad, and that they had better leave
me. One day, after we had had a long discussion about the geography
of the frontier, he inflamed my curiosity by telling me that
Kinchinjhow was a very holy mountain; more so than its sister-peaks
of Chumulari and Kinchinjunga; and that both the Sikkim and Tibetan
Lamas, and Chinese soldiers, were ready to oppose my approach to it.
This led to my asking him for a sketch of the mountains; he called
for a large sheet of paper, and some charcoal, and wanted to form his
mountains of sand; I however ordered rice to be brought, and though
we had but little, scattered it about wastefully. This had its
effect: he stared at my wealth, for he had all along calculated on
starving me out, and retired, looking perplexed and crestfallen.
Nothing puzzled him so much as my being always occupied with such, to
him, unintelligible pursuits; a Tibetan "cui bono?" was always in his
mouth: "What good will it do _you_?" "Why should you spend weeks on
the coldest, hungriest, windiest, loftiest place on the earth,
without even inhabitants?" Drugs and idle curiosity he believed were
my motives, and possibly a reverence for the religion of Boodh,
Sakya, and Tsongkaba. Latterly he had made up his mind to starve me
out, and was dismayed when he found I could hold out better than
himself, and when I assured him that I should not retrace my steps
until his statements should be verified by a letter from Tchebu; that
I had written to him, and that it would be at least thirty days
before I could receive an answer.

On the 19th of July he proposed to take me to Tungu, at the foot of
Kinchinjhow, and back, upon ponies, provided I would leave my people
and tent, which I refused to do. After this I saw little of him for
several days, and began to fear he was offended, when one morning his
attendant came to me for medicine with a dismal countenance, and in
great alarm: he twisted his fingers together over his stomach to
symbolise the nature of the malady which produced a commotion in his
master's bowels, and which was simply the colic. I was aware that he
had been reduced to feed upon "Tong" (the arum-root) and herbs, and
had always given him half the pigeons I shot, which was almost the
only animal food I had myself. Now I sent him a powerful dose of
medicine; adding a few spoonfuls of China tea and sugar
for friendship.

On the 22nd, being convalescent, he visited me, looking wofully
yellow. After a long pause, during which he tried to ease himself of
some weighty matter, he offered to take me to Tungu with my tent and
people, and, thence to Kongra Lama, if I would promise to stay but
two nights. I asked whether Tungu was in Cheen or Sikkim; he replied
that after great enquiry he had heard that it was really in Sikkim;
"Then," said I, "we will both go to-morrow morning to Tungu, and I
will stay there as long as I please:" he laughed, and gave in with
apparent good grace.

After leaving Tallum, the valley contracts, passing over great
ancient moraines, and again expanding wider than before into broad
grassy flats. The vegetation rapidly diminishes in stature and
abundance, and though the ascent to Tungu is trifling, the change in
species is very great. The _Spiraea,_ maple, _Pieris,_ cherry, and
larch disappear, leaving only willow, juniper, stunted birch, silver
fir, white rose, _Aralia,_ berberry, currant, and more rhododendrons
than all these put together;* [_Cyananthus,_ a little blue flower
allied to _Campanula,_ and one of the most beautiful alpines I know,
covered the turfy ground, with _Orchis, Pedicularis, Gentian,
Potentilla, Geranium,_ purple and yellow _Meconopsis,_ and the
_Artemisia_ of Dorjiling, which ascends to 12,000 feet, and descends
to the plains, having a range of 11,500 feet in elevation. Of ferns,
_Hymenophyllum, Cistopteris,_ and _Cryptogramma crispa_ ascend thus
high.] while mushrooms and other English fungi* [One of great size,
growing in large clumps, is the English _Agaricus comans,_ Fr., and I
found it here at 12,500 feet, as also the beautiful genus
_Crucibulum,_ which is familiar to us in England, growing on rotten
sticks, and resembling a diminutive bird's nest with eggs in it.]
grew amongst the grass.

Illustration--TUNGU VILLAGE.

Tungu occupies a very broad valley, at the junction of the Tungu-choo
from the east, and the Lachen from the north. The hills slope gently
upwards to 16,000 feet, at an average angle of 15 degrees; they are
flat and grassy at the base, and no snow is anywhere to be seen.* [In
the wood-cut the summit of Chomiomo is introduced, as it appears from
a few hundred feet above the point of view.] A stupendous rock, about
fifty feet high, lay in the middle of the valley, broken in two: it
may have been detached from a cliff, or have been transported thither
as part of an ancient moraine which extends from the mouth of the
Tungu-choo valley across that of the Lachen. The appearance and
position of this great block, and of the smaller piece lying beside
it, rather suggest the idea of the whole mass having fallen
perpendicularly from a great height through a _crevasse_ in a glacier,
than of its having been hurled from so considerable a distance as
from the cliffs on the flanks of the valley: it is faithfully
represented in the accompanying woodcut. A few wooden houses were
collected near this rock, and several black tents were scattered
about. I encamped at an elevation of 12,750 feet, and was waited on
by the Lachen Phipun with presents of milk, butter, yak-flesh, and
curds; and we were not long before we drowned old enmity in buttered
and salted tea.

On my arrival I found the villagers in a meadow, all squatted
cross-legged in a circle, smoking their brass and iron pipes,
drinking tea, and listening to a letter from the Rajah, concerning
their treatment of me. Whilst my men were pitching my tent, I
gathered forty plants new to me, all of Tartarian types.* [More
Siberian plants appeared, as _Astragali, Chenopodium, Artemisia,_
some grasses, new kinds of _Pedicularis, Delphinium,_ and some small
Orchids. Three species of _Parnassia_ and six primroses made the turf
gay, mixed with saxifrages, _Androsace_ and _Campanula._ By the
cottages was abundance of shepherd's-purse, _Lepidium,_ and balsams,
with dock, _Galeopsis,_ and _Cuscuta._ Several low dwarf species of
honeysuckle formed stunted bushes like heather; and _Anisodus,_ a
curious plant allied to _Hyoscyamus,_ whose leaves are greedily eaten
by yaks, was very common.] Wheat or barley I was assured had been
cultivated at Tungu when it was possessed by Tibetans, and inhabited
by a frontier guard, but I saw no appearance of any cultivation.
The fact is an important one, as barley requires a mean summer
temperature of 48 degrees to come to maturity. According to my
observations, the mean temperature of Tungu in July is upwards of 50
degrees, and, by calculation, that of the three summer months, June,
July, and August, should be about 46.5 degrees. As, however, I do not
know whether these cerealia were grown as productive crops, much
stress cannot be laid upon the fact of their having been cultivated,
for in a great many parts of Tibet the barley is annually cut green
for fodder.

In the evening the sick came to me: their complaints, as usual, being
rheumatism, ophthalmia, goitres, cuts, bruises, and poisoning by Tong
(_Arum_), fungi, and other deleterious vegetables. At Tallum I
attended an old woman who dressed her ulcers with _Plantago_
(plantain) leaves, a very common Scotch remedy; the ribs being drawn
out from the leaf, which is applied fresh: it is rather a
strong application.

On the following morning I was awakened by the shrill cries of the
Tibetan maidens, calling the yaks to be milked, "Toosh--toosh--
toooosh," in a gradually higher key; to which Toosh seemed supremely
indifferent, till quickened in her movements by a stone or stick,
levelled with unerring aim at her ribs; these animals were changing
their long winter's wool for sleek hair, and the former hung about
them in ragged masses, like tow. Their calves gambolled by their
sides, the drollest of animals, like ass-colts in their antics,
kicking up their short hind-legs, whisking their bushy tails in the
air, rushing up and down the grassy slopes, and climbing like cats to
the top of the rocks.

The Soubah and Phipun came early to take me to Kongra Lama, bringing
ponies, genuine Tartars in bone and breed. Remembering the Dewan's
impracticable saddle at Bhomsong, I stipulated for a horse-cloth or
pad, upon which I had no sooner jumped than the beast threw back his
ears, seated himself on his haunches, and, to my consternation, slid
backwards down a turfy slope, pawing the earth with his fore-feet as
he went, and leaving me on the ground, amid shrieks of laughter from
my Lepchas. My steed being caught, I again mounted, and was being led
forward, when he took to shaking himself like a dog till the pad
slipped under his belly, and I was again unhorsed. Other ponies
displayed equal prejudices against my mode of riding, or having my
weight anywhere but well on their shoulders, being all-powerful in
their fore-quarters; and so I was compelled to adopt the high
demi-pique saddle with short stirrups, which forced me to sit with my
knees up to my nose, and to grip with the calves of my legs and
heels. All the gear was of yak or horse-hair, and the bit was a curb
and ring, or a powerful twisted snaffle..

The path ran N.N.W. for two miles, and then crossed the Lachen above
its junction with the Nunee* [I suspect there is a pass by the Nunee
to the sheds I saw up the Zemu valley on the 2nd of July, as I
observed yaks grazing high up the mountains: the distance cannot be
great, and there is little or no snow to interfere.] from the west:
the stream was rapid, and twelve yards in breadth; its temperature
was 48 degrees. About six miles above Tungu, the Lachen is joined by
the Chomio-choo, a large affluent from Chomiomo mountain. Above this
the Lachen meanders along a broad stony bed; and the path rises over
a great ancient moraine, whose level top is covered with pools, but
both that and its south face are bare, from exposure to the south
wind, which blows with fury through this contracted part of the
valley to the rarified atmosphere of the lofty, open, and dry country
beyond. Its north slope, on the contrary, is covered with small trees
and brushwood, rhododendron, birch, honeysuckle, and mountain-ash.
These are the most northern shrubs in Sikkim, and I regarded them
with deep interest, as being possibly the last of their kind to be
met with in this meridian, for many degrees further north: perhaps
even no similar shrubs occur between this and the Siberian Altai, a
distance of 1,500 miles. The magnificent yellow cowslip (_Primula
Sikkimensis_) gilded the marshes, and _Caltha,_* [This is the
_C. scaposa,_ n. sp. The common _Caltha palustris,_ or "marsh
marigold" of England, which is not found in Sikkim, is very abundant
in the north-west Himalaya.] _Trollius,_ Anemone, _Arenaria, Draba,_
Saxifrages, Potentillas, Ranunculus, and other very alpine
plants abounded.

At the foot of the moraine was a Tibetan camp of broad, black,
yak-hair tents, stretched out with a complicated system of ropes, and
looking at a distance--(to borrow M. Huc's graphic simile)--like
fat-bodied, long-legged spiders! Their general shape is hexagonal,
about twelve feet either way, and they are stretched over six short
posts, and encircled with a low stone wall, except in front. In one
of them I found a buxom girl, the image of good humour, making butter
and curd from yak-milk. The churns were of two kinds; one being an
oblong box of birch-bark, or close bamboo wicker-work, full of
branched rhododendron twigs, in which the cream is shaken: she
good-naturedly showed me the inside, which was frosted with
snow-white butter, and alive with maggots. The other churn was a
goat-skin, which was rolled about, and shaken by the four legs.
The butter is made into great squares, and packed in yak-hair cloths;
the curd is eaten either fresh, or dried and pulverised (when it is
called "Ts'cheuzip").

Except bamboo and copper milk-vessels, wooden ladles, tea-churn, and
pots, these tents contained no furniture but goat-skins and blankets,
to spread on the ground as a bed. The fire was made of sheep and
goats'-droppings, lighted with juniper-wood; above it hung tufts of
yaks'-hair, one for every animal lost during the season,* [The
Siberians hang tufts of horse-hair inside their houses from
superstitious motives (Ermann's "Siberia," i., 281).] by which means
a reckoning is kept. Although this girl had never before seen a
European, she seemed in no way discomposed at my visit, and gave me a
large slice of fresh curd.

Beyond this place (alt. 14,500 feet), the valley runs up north-east,
becoming very stony and desolate, with green patches only by the
watercourses: at this place, however, thick fogs came on, and
obscured all view. At 15,000 feet, I passed a small glacier on the
west side of the valley, the first I had met with that descended
nearly to the river, during the whole course of the Teesta.

Five miles further on we arrived at the tents of the Phipun, whose
wife was prepared to entertain us with Tartar hospitality:
magnificent tawny Tibet mastiffs were baying at the tent-door, and
some yaks and ponies were grazing close by. We mustered twelve in
number, and squatted cross-legged in a circle inside the tent, the
Soubah and myself being placed on a pretty Chinese rug. Salted and
buttered tea was immediately prepared in a tea-pot for us on the mat,
and in a great caldron for the rest of the party; parched rice and
wheat-flour, curd, and roasted maize* [Called "pop-corn" in America,
and prepared by roasting the maize in an iron vessel, when it splits
and turns partly inside out, exposing a snow-white spongy mass of
farina. It looks very handsome, and would make a beautiful dish for
dessert.] were offered us, and we each produced our wooden cup, which
was kept constantly full of scalding tea-soup, which, being made with
fresh butter, was very good. The flour was the favourite food, of
which each person dexterously formed little dough-balls in his cup,
an operation I could not well manage, and only succeeded in making a
nauseous paste, that stuck to my jaws and in my throat. Our hostess'
hospitality was too _exigeant_ for me, but the others seemed as if
they could not drink enough of the scalding tea.

We were suddenly startled from our repast by a noise like loud
thunder, crash following crash, and echoing through the valley.
The Phipun got up, and coolly said, "The rocks are falling, it is
time we were off, it will rain soon." The moist vapours had by this
time so accumulated, as to be condensed in rain on the cliffs of
Chomiomo and Kinchinjhow; which, being loosened, precipitated
avalanches of rocks and snow. We proceeded amidst dense fog, soon
followed by hard rain; the roar of falling rocks on either hand
increasing as these invisible giants spoke to one another in voices
of thunder through the clouds. The effect was indescribably grand:
and as the weather cleared, and I obtained transient peeps of their
precipices of blue ice and black rock towering 5000 feet above me on
either hand, the feeling of awe produced was almost overpowering.
Heavy banks of vapour still veiled the mountains, but the rising mist
exposed a broad stony track, along which the Lachen wandered, split
into innumerable channels, and enclosing little oases of green
vegetation, lighted up by occasional gleams of sunshine. Though all
around was enveloped in gloom, there was in front a high blue arc of
cloudless sky, between the beetling cliffs that formed the stern
portals of the Kongra Lama pass.



CHAPTER XXI.

Top of Kongra Lama--Tibet frontier--Elevation--View--
Vegetation--Descent to Tungu--Tungu-choo--Ponies--Kinchinjhow
and Changokhang mountains--Palung plains--Tibetans--Dogs--
Dingcbam province of Tibet--Inhabitants--Dresses--Women's
ornaments--Blackening faces--Coral--Tents--Elevation of
Palung--Lama--Shawl-wool goats--Shearing--Siberian plants--
Height of glaciers, and perpetual snow--Geology--Plants, and wild
animals--Marmots--Insects--Birds--Choongtam Lama--Religious
exercises--Tibetan hospitality--_Delphinium_--Perpetual snow--
Temperature at Tungu--Return to Tallum Samdong--To Lamteng--
Houses--Fall of Barometer--Cicadas--Lime deposit--Landslips
--Arrival at Choongtam--Cobra--Rageu--Heat of Climate--
Velocity and volume of rivers measured--Leave for Lachoong valley
--Keadom--General features of valley--Lachoong village--Tunkra
mountain--Moraines--Cultivation--Lachoong Phipun--Lama
ceremonies beside a sick-bed.

We reached the boundary between Sikkim and Tibet early in the
afternoon; it is drawn along Kongra Lama, which is a low flat spur
running east from Kinchinjhow towards Chomiomo, at a point where
these mountains are a few miles apart, thus crossing the Lachen
river:* [The upper valley of the Lachen in Tibet, which I ascended in
the following October, is very open, flat, barren, and stony; it is
bounded on the north by rounded spurs from Chomiomo, which are
continued east to Donkia, forming a watershed to the Lachen on the
south, and to the Arun on the north.] it is marked by cairns of
stone, some rudely fashioned into chaits, covered with votive rags on
wands of bamboo. I made the altitude by barometer 15,745 feet above
the sea, and by boiling water, 15,694 feet, the water boiling at
184.1 degrees; the temperature of the air between 2.40 and 4 p.m.
varied from 41.3 degrees to 42.5 degrees, the dew-point 39.8 degrees;
that of the Lachen was 47 degrees, which was remarkably high. We were
bitterly cold; as the previous rain had wetted us through, and a keen
wind was blowing up the valley. The continued mist and fog
intercepted all view, except of the flanks of the great mountains on
either hand, of the rugged snowy ones to the south, and of those
bounding the Lachen to the north. The latter were unsnowed, and
appeared lower than Kongra Lama, the ground apparently sloping away
in that direction; but when I ascended them, three months afterwards,
I found they were 3000 feet higher! a proof how utterly fallacious
are estimates of height, when formed by the eye alone. My informants
called them Peuka-t'hlo; "peu" signifies north in Tibetan, and
"t'hlo" a hill in Lepcha.

Isolated patches of vegetation appeared on the top of the pass, where
I gathered forty kinds of plants, most of them being of a tufted
habit characteristic of an extreme climate; some (as species of
_Caryophylleae_) forming hemi-spherical balls on the naked soil;
others* [The other plants found on the pass were; of smooth hairless
ones, _Ranunculus,_ Fumitory, several species of _Stellaria,
Arenaria, Cruciferae, Parnassia, Morina,_ saxifrages, _Sedum,_
primrose, _Herminium, Polygonum, Campanula, Umbelliferae,_ grasses
and _Carices_: of woolly or hairy once, _Anemone, Artemisia,
Myosotis, Draba, Potentilla,_ and several _Compositae,_ etc.] growing
in matted tufts level with the ground. The greater portion had no
woolly covering; nor did I find any of the cottony species of
_Saussurea,_ which are so common on the wetter mountains to the
southward. Some most delicate-flowered plants even defy the biting
winds of these exposed regions; such are a prickly _Meconopsis_ with
slender flower-stalks and four large blue poppy-like petals, a
_Cyananthus_ with a membranous bell-shaped corolla, and a fritillary.
Other curious plants were a little yellow saxifrage with long runners
(very like the arctic _S. flagellaris,_ of Spitzbergen and Melville
Island), and the strong-scented spikenard (_Nardostachys_).

The rocks were chiefly of reddish quartz, and so was the base of
Chomiomo. Kinchinjhow on the contrary was of gneiss, with granite
veins: the strike of both was north-west, and the dip north-east 20
degrees to 30 degrees.

We made a fire at the top with sheep's droppings, of which the Phipun
had brought up a bagfull, and with it a pair of goat-skin bellows,
which worked by a slit that was opened by the hand in the act of
raising; when inflated, the hole was closed, and the skin pressed
down, thus forcing the air through the bamboo nozzle: this is the
common form of bellows throughout Tibet and the Himalaya.

After two hours I was very stiff and cold, and suffering from
headache and giddiness, owing to the elevation; and having walked
about thirteen miles botanizing, I was glad to ride down. We reached
the Phipun's tents about 6 p.m., and had more tea before proceeding
to Tungu. The night was fortunately fine and calm, with a few stars
and a bright young moon, which, with the glare from the snows,
lighted up the valley, and revealed magnificent glimpses of the
majestic mountains. As the moon sank, and we descended the narrowing
valley, darkness came on, and with a boy to lead my sure-footed pony,
I was at liberty uninterruptedly to reflect on the events of a day,
on which I had attained the object of so many years' ambition.
Now that all obstacles were surmounted, and I was returning laden
with materials for extending the knowledge of a science which had
formed the pursuit of my life, will it be wondered at that I felt
proud, not less for my own sake, than for that of the many friends,
both in India and at home, who were interested in my success?

We arrived at Tungu at 9 p.m., my pony not having stumbled once,
though the path was rugged, and crossed by many rapid streams.
The Soubah's little shaggy steed had carried his portly frame (fully
fifteen stone weight) the whole way out and back, and when he
dismounted, it shook itself, snorted, and seemed quite ready
for supper.

On the following morning I was occupied in noting and arranging my
collections, which consisted of upwards of 200 plants; all gathered
above 14,000 feet elevation.* [Amongst them the most numerous Natural
orders and genera were, _Cruciferae_ 10; _Compositae_ 20;
_Ranunculaceae_ 10; _Alsineae_ 9; _Astragali_ 10; _Potentillae_ 8;
grasses 12; _Carices_ 15; _Pedicularis_ 7; _Boragineae_ 7.] Letters
arrived from Dorjiling with unusual speed, having been only seventeen
days on the road: they were full of valuable suggestions and
encouragement from my friends Hodgson, Campbell, and Tchebu Lama.

On the 26th of July the Phipun, who waited on me every morning with
milk and butter, and whose civility and attentions were now
unremitting, proposed that I should accompany him to an encampment of
Tibetans, at the foot of Kinchinjhow. We mounted ponies, and ascended
the Tunguchoo eastwards: it was a rapid river for the first thousand
feet, flowing in a narrow gorge, between sloping, grassy, and rocky
hills, on which large herds of yaks were feeding, tended by women and
children, whose black tents were scattered about. The yak-calves left
their mothers to run beside our ponies, which became unmanageable,
being almost callous to the bit; and the whole party was sometimes
careering over the slopes, chased by the grunting herds: in other
places, the path was narrow and dangerous, when the sagacious animals
proceeded with the utmost gravity and caution. Rounding one rocky
spur, my pony stumbled, and pitched me forward: fortunately I lighted
on the path.

The rocks were gneiss, with granite veins (strike north-east, dip
south-east): they were covered with _Ephedra,_* [A curious genus of
small shrubs allied to pines, that grows in the south of Europe.
This species is the European _E. vulgaris_; it inhabits the driest
parts of north-west India, and ascends to 17,000 feet in Tibet, but
is not found in the moist intervening countries.] an _Onosma_ which
yields a purple dye, _Orchis,_ and species of _Androsace_; while the
slopes were clothed with the spikenard and purple _Pedicularis,_ and
the moist grounds with yellow cowslip and long grass. A sudden bend
in the valley opened a superb view to the north, of the full front of
Kinchinjhow, extending for four or five miles east and west; its
perpendicular sides studded with the immense icicles, which are said
to have obtained for it the name of "jhow,"--the "bearded" Kinchin.
Eastward a jagged spur stretches south, rising into another splendid
mountain, called Chango-khang (the Eagle's crag), from whose flanks
descend great glaciers, the sources of the Tunguchoo.

We followed the course of an affluent, called the Chachoo, along
whose bed ancient moraines rose in successive ridges: on these I
found several other species of European genera.* [_Delphinium,
Hypecoum, Sagina, Gymnandra, Artemisia, Caltha, Dracocephalum,
Leontopodium._] Over one of these moraines, 500 feet high, the path
ascends to the plains of Palung, an elevated grassy expanse, two
miles long and four broad, extending southward from the base of
Kinchinjhow. Its surface, though very level for so mountainous a
country, is yet varied with open valleys and sloping hills, 500 to
700 feet high: it is bounded on the west by low rounded spurs from
Kinchinjhow, that form the flank of the Lachen valley; while on the
east it is separated from Chango-khang by the Chachoo, which cuts a
deep east and west trench along the base of Kinchinjhow, and then
turns south to the Tunguchoo. The course of the Chachoo, where it
turns south, is most curious: it meanders in sickle-shaped curves
along the marshy bottom of an old lake-bed, with steep shelving
sides, 500 to 600 feet deep, and covered with juniper bushes.*
[These, which grow on an eastern exposure, exist at a higher
elevation than any other bushes I have met with.] It is fed by the
glaciers of Kinchinjhow, and some little lakes to the east.

The mean height of Palung plains is 16,000 feet: they are covered
with transported blocks, and I have no doubt their surface has been
much modified by glacial action. I was forcibly reminded of them by
the slopes of the Wengern Alp, but those of Palung are far more
level. Kinchinjhow rises before the spectator, just as the Jungfrau,
Monch, and Eigher Alps do from that magnificent point of view.

On ascending a low hill, we came in sight of the Tibet camp at the
distance of a mile, when the great mastiffs that guarded it
immediately bayed; and our ponies starting off at full gallop, we
soon reached an enclosure of stone dykes, within which the black
tents were pitched. The dogs were of immense size, and ragged, like
the yaks, from their winter coat hanging to their flanks in great
masses; each was chained near a large stone, on and off which he
leapt as he gave tongue; they are very savage, but great cowards, and
not remarkable for intelligence.

Illustration--LEPCHA GIRLS (THE OUTER FIGURES), AND TIBETAN WOMEN.

The people were natives of Gearee and Kambajong, in the adjacent
province of Dingcham, which is the loftiest, coldest, most windy and
arid in Eastern Tibet; and in which are the sources of all the
streams that flow to Nepal; Sikkim, and Bhotan on the one side, and
into the Yaru-tsampu on the other. These families repair yearly to
Palung, with their flocks, herds, and tents, paying tribute to the
Sikkim Rajah for the privilege: they arrive in June and leave in
September. Both men and women were indescribably filthy; as they
never wash, their faces were perfectly black with smoke and exposure,
and the women's with a pigment of grease as a protection from the
wind. The men were dressed as usual, in the blanket-cloak, with brass
pipes, long knives, flint, steel, and amulets; the women wore
similar, but shorter cloaks, with silver and copper girdles,
trowsers, and flannel boots. Their head-dresses were very remarkable.
A circular band of plaited yak's hair was attached to the back hair,
and encircled the head like a saint's glory,* [I find in Ermann's
"Siberia" (i., p. 210), that the married women of Yekaterinberg wear
a head-dress like an ancient glory covered with jewels, whilst the
unmarried ones plait their tresses. The same distinguished traveller
mentions having seen a lad of six years old suckled, amongst the
Tungooze of East Siberia.] at some distance round it. A band crossed
the forehead, from which coins, corals, and turquoises, hung down to
the eyebrows, while lappets of these ornaments fell over the ears.
Their own hair was plaited in two tails, brought over the shoulders,
and fastened together in front; and a little yellow felt cap,
traversely elongated, so as not to interfere with the shape of the
glory, was perched on the head. Their countenances were pleasing, and
their manners timid.

The children crawled half-naked about the tent, or burrowed like
moles in an immense heap of goats' and sheep-droppings, piled up for
fuel, upon which the family lounged. An infant in arms was playing
with a "coral," ornamented much like ours, and was covered with
jewels and coins. This custom of decorating children is very common
amongst half-civilised people; and the coral is, perhaps, one of the
last relics of a barbarous age that is retained amongst ourselves.
One mother was nursing her baby, and churning at the same time, by
rolling the goat-skin of yak-milk about on the ground. Extreme
poverty induces the practice of nursing the children for years; and
in one tent I saw a lad upwards of four years of age unconcernedly
taking food from his aunt, and immediately afterwards chewing hard
dry grains of maize.

The tents were pitched in holes about two feet and a half deep; and
within them a wall of similar height was built all round: in the
middle was a long clay arched fire-place, with holes above, over
which the cauldrons were placed, the fire being underneath. Saddles,
horse-cloths, and the usual accoutrements and implements of a nomad
people, all of the rudest description, hung about: there was no bed
or stool, but Chinese rugs for sleeping on. I boiled water on the
fire-place; its temperature (184.5 degrees) with that of the air
(45.5 degrees) gave an elevation of 15,867 feet. Barometric
observations, taken in October, at a point considerably lower down
the stream, made the elevation 15,620 feet, or a few feet lower than
Kongra Lama pass.

A Lama accompanied this colony of Tibetans, a festival in honour of
Kinchinjhow being annually held at a large chait hard by, which is
painted red, ornamented with banners, and surmounted by an enormous
yak's skull, that faces the mountain. The Lama invited me into his
tent, where I found a wife and family. An extempore altar was at one
end, covered with wafers and other pretty ornaments, made of butter,
stamped or moulded with the fingers.* [The extensive use of these
ornaments throughout Tibet, on the occasion of religious festivals,
is alluded to by MM. Huc and Gabet.] The tents being insupportably
noisome, I preferred partaking of the buttered brick-tea in the open
air; after which, I went to see the shawl-wool goats sheared in a pen
close by. There are two varieties: one is a large animal, with great
horns, called "Rappoo;"* [This is the "Changra;" and the smaller the
"Chyapu" of Mr. Hodgson's catalogue. (See "British Museum
Catalogue.")] the other smaller, and with slender horns, is called
"Tsilloo." The latter yields the finest wool, but they are mixed for
ordinary purposes. I was assured that the sheep (of which large
flocks were grazing near) afford the finest wool of any. The animals
were caught by the tail, their legs tied, the long winter's hair
pulled out, and the remainder cut away with a broad flat knife, which
was sharpened with a scythe-stone. The operation was clumsily
performed, and the skin much cut.

Turnips are grown at Palung during the short stay of the people, and
this is the most alpine cultivation in Sikkim: the seed is sown early
in July, and the tubers are fit to be eaten in October, if the season
is favourable. They did not come to maturity this year, as I found on
again visiting this spot in October; but their tops had afforded the
poor Tibetans some good vegetables. The mean temperature of the three
summer months at Palung is probably about 40 degrees, an element of
comparatively little importance in regulating the growth and ripening
of vegetables at great elevations in Tibetan climates; where a warm
exposure, the amount of sunshine, and of radiated heat, have a much
greater influence.

During the winter, when these families repair to Kambajong, in Tibet,
the flocks and herds are all stall-fed, with long grass, cut on the
marshy banks of the Yaru. Snow is said to fall five feet deep at that
place, chiefly after January; and it melts in April.

After tea, I ascended the hills overhanging the Lachen valley, which
are very bare and stony; large flocks of sheep were feeding on them,
chiefly upon small tufted sedges, allied to the English _Carex
pilularis,_ which here forms the greatest part of the pasture: the
grass grows mixed with it in small tufts, and is the common Scotch
mountain pasture-grass (_Festuca ovina_).

On the top of these hills, which, for barrenness, reminded me of the
descriptions given of the Siberian steppes, I found, at 17,000 feet
elevation, several minute arctic plants, with _Rhododendron nivale,_
the most alpine of woody plants. On their sterile slopes grew a
curious plant allied to the _Cherleria_ of the Scotch Alps, forming
great hemispherical balls on the ground, eight to ten inches across,
altogether resembling in habit the curious Balsambog (_Bolax
glebaria_) of the Falkland Islands, which grows in very similar
scenes.* [_Arenaria rupifraga,_ Fenzl. This plant is mentioned by Dr.
Thomson ("Travels in Tibet," p. 426) as common in Tibet, as far north
as the Karakoram, at an elevation between 16,000 and 18,000 feet. In
Sikkim it is found at the same level. Specimens of it are exhibited
in the Kew Museum. As one instance illustrative of the chaotic state
of Indian botany, I may here mention that this little plant, a
denizen of such remote and inaccessible parts of the globe, and which
has only been known to science a dozen years, bears the burthen of no
less than six names in botanical works. This is the _Bryomorpha
rupifraga_ of Karelin and Kireloff (enumeration of Soongarian
plants), who first described it from specimens gathered in 1841, on
the Alatau mountains (east of Lake Aral). In Ledebour's "Flora
Rossica" (i. p. 780) it appears as _Arenaria_ (sub-genus
_Dicranilla_) _rupifraga,_ Fenzl, MS. In Decaisne and Cambessede's
Plants of Jacquemont's "Voyage aus Indes Orientales," it is described
as _Flourensia caespitosa,_ and in the plates of that work it appears
as _Periandra caespitosa_; and lastly, in Endlicher's "Genera
Plantarum," Fenzl proposes the long new generic name of
_Thylacospermum_ for it. I have carefully compared the Himalayan and
Alatau plants, and find no difference between them, except that the
flower of the Himalayan one has 4 petals and sepals, 8 stamens, and 2
styles, and that of the Alatau 5 petals and sepals, 10 stamens, and
2-3 styles, characters which are very variable in allied plants.
The flowers appear polygamous, as in the Scotch alpine _Cherleria,_
which it much resembles in habit, and to which it is very nearly
related in botanical characters.]

A few days afterwards, I again visited Palung, with the view of
ascertaining the height of perpetual snow on the south face of
Kinchinjhow; unfortunately, bad weather came on before I reached the
Tibetans, from whom I obtained a guide in consequence. From this
place a ride of about four miles brought me to the source of the
Chachoo, in a deep ravine, containing the terminations of several
short, abrupt glaciers,* [De Saussure's glaciers of the second order:
see "Forbes' Travels in the Alps," p. 79.] and into which were
precipitated avalanches of snow and ice. I found it impossible to
distinguish the glacial ice from perpetual snow; the larger beds of
snow where presenting a flat surface, being generally drifts
collected in hollows, or accumulations that have fallen from above:
when these accumulations rest on slopes they become converted into
ice, and obeying the laws of fluidity, flow downwards as glaciers.
I boiled water at the most advantageous position I could select, and
obtained an elevation of 16,522 feet.* [Temperature of boiling water,
183 degrees, air 35 degrees.] It was snowing heavily at this time,
and we crouched under a gigantic boulder, benumbed with cold. I had
fortunately brought a small phial of brandy, which, with hot water
from the boiling-apparatus kettle, refreshed us wonderfully.

The spur that divides these plains from the Lachen river, rises close
to Kinchinjhow, as a lofty cliff of quartzy gneiss, dipping
north-east 30 degrees: this I had noticed from the Kongra Lama side.
On this side the dip was also to the northward, and the whole cliff
was crossed by cleavage planes, dipping south, and apparently cutting
those of the foliation at an angle of about 60 degrees: it is the
only decided instance of the kind I met with in Sikkim. I regretted
not being able to examine it carefully, but I was prevented by the
avalanches of stones and snow which were continually being detached
from its surface.* [I extremely regret not having been at this time
acquainted with Mr. D. Sharpe's able essays on the foliation,
cleavage, etc., of slaty rocks, gneiss, etc., in the Geological
Society's Journal (ii. p. 74, and v. p. 111), and still more so with
his subsequent papers in the Philosophical Transactions: as I cannot
doubt that many of his observations, and in particular those which
refer to the great arches in which the folia (commonly called strata)
are disposed, would receive ample illustration from a study of the
Himalaya. At vol. i. chapter xiii, I have distantly alluded to such
an arrangement of the gneiss, etc., into arches, in Sikkim, to which
my attention was naturally drawn by the writings of Professor
Sedgwick ("Geolog. Soc. Trans.") and Mr. Darwin ("Geological
Observations in South America") on these obscure subjects. I may add
that wherever I met with the gneiss, mica, schists, and slates, in
Sikkim, very near one another, I invariably found that their cleavage
and foliation were conformable. This, for example, may be seen in the
bed of the great Rungeet, below Dorjiling, where the slates overlie
mica schists, and where the latter contain beds of conglomerate. In
these volumes I have often used the more familiar term of
stratification, for foliation. This arises from my own ideas of the
subject not having been clear when the notes were taken.]

The plants found close to the snow were minute primroses, _Parnassia,
Draba,_ tufted wormwoods (_Artemisia_), saxifrages, gentian, small
_Compositae,_ grasses, and sedges. Our ponies unconcernedly scraped
away the snow with their hoofs, and nibbled the scanty herbage.
When  I mounted mine, he took the bit between his teeth, and
scampered back to Palung, over rocks and hills, through bogs and
streams; and though the snow was so blinding that no object could be
distinguished, he brought me to the tents with unerring instinct, as
straight as an arrow.

Wild animals are few in kind and rare in individuals, at Tungu and
elsewhere on this frontier; though there is no lack of cover and
herbage. This must be owing to the moist cold atmosphere; and it
reminds me that a similar want of animal life is characteristic of
those climates at the level of the sea, which I have adduced as
bearing a great analogy to the Himalaya, in lacking certain natural
orders of plants. Thus, New Zealand and Fuegia possess, the former no
land animal but a rat, and the latter very few indeed, and none of
any size. Such is also the case in Scotland and Norway. Again, on the
damp west coast of Tasmania, quadrupeds are rare; whilst the dry
eastern half of the island once swarmed with opossums and kangaroos.
A few miles north of Tungu, the sterile and more lofty provinces of
Tibet abound in wild horses, antelopes, hares, foxes, marmots, and
numerous other quadrupeds; although their altitude, climate, and
scanty vegetation are apparently even more unsuited to support such
numbers of animals of so large a size than the karroos of South
Africa, and the steppes of Siberia and Arctic America, which
similarly abound in animal life. The laws which govern the
distribution of large quadrupeds seem to be intimately connected with
those of climate; and we should have regard to these considerations
in our geological speculations, and not draw hasty conclusions from
the absence of the remains of large herbivora in formations
disclosing a redundant vegetation.

Besides the wild sheep found on these mountains, a species of marmot*
[The _Lagopus Tibetanus_ of Hodgson. I procured one that displayed an
extraordinary tenacity of life: part of the skull was shot away, and
the brain protruded; still it showed the utmost terror at my dog.]
("Kardiepieu" of the Tibetans) sometimes migrates in swarms (like the
Lapland "Lemming") from Tibet as far as Tungu. There are few birds
but red-legged crows and common ravens. Most of the insects belonged
to arctic types, and they were numerous in individuals.* [As _Meloe,_
and some flower-feeding lamellicorns. Of butterflies I saw blues
(_Polyommatus_), marbled whites, _Pontia, Colias_ and _Argynnis._
A small _Curculio_ was frequent, and I found _Scolopendra,_ ants and
earthworms, on sunny exposures as high as 15,500 feet.]

Illustration--TIBET MARMOT.

The Choongtam Lama was at a small temple near Tungu during the whole
of my stay, but he would not come to visit me, pretending to be
absorbed in his devotions. Passing one day by the temple, I found him
catechising two young aspirants for holy orders. He is one of the
Dukpa sect, wore his mitre, and was seated cross-legged on the grass
with his scriptures on his knees: he put questions to the boys, when
he who answered best took the other some yards off, put him down on
his hands and knees, threw a cloth over his back, and mounted; then
kicking, spurring, and cuffing his steed, he was galloped back to the
Lama and kicked off; when the catechising recommenced.

I spent a week at Tungu most pleasantly, ascending the neighbouring
mountains, and mixing with the people, whom I found uniformly kind,
frank, and extremely hospitable; sending their children after me to
invite me to stop at their tents, smoke, and drink tea; often
refusing any remuneration, and giving my attendants curds and
yak-flesh. If on foot, I was entreated to take a pony; and when tired
I never scrupled to catch one, twist a yak-hair rope over its jaw as
a bridle, and throwing a goat-hair cloth upon its back (if no saddle
were at hand), ride away whither I would. Next morning a boy would be
sent for the steed, perhaps bringing an invitation to come and take
it again. So I became fond of brick-tea boiled with butter, salt, and
soda, and expert in the Tartar saddle; riding about perched on the
shoulders of a rough pony, with my feet nearly on a level with my
pockets, and my knees almost meeting in front.

On the 28th of July much snow fell on the hills around, as low as
14,000 feet, and half an inch of rain at Tungu;* [An inch and a half
fell at Dorjiling during the same period.] the former soon melted,
and I made an excursion to Chomiomo on the following day, hoping to
reach the lower line of perpetual snow. Ascending the valley of the
Chomiochoo, I struck north up a steep slope, that ended in a spur of
vast tabular masses of quartz and felspar, piled like slabs in a
stone quarry, dipping south-west 5 degrees to 10 degrees, and
striking north-west. These resulted from the decomposition of gneiss,
from which the layers of mica bad been washed away, when the rain and
frost splitting up the fragments, the dislocation is continued to a
great depth into the substance of the rock.

Large silky cushions of a forget-me-not grew amongst the rocks,
spangled with beautiful blue flowers, and looking like turquoises set
in silver: the _Delphininin glaciale_* [This new species has been
described for the "Flora Indica" of Dr. Thomson and myself: it is a
remarkable plant, very closely resembling, and as it were
representing, the _D. Brunonianum_ of the western Himalaya.
The latter plant smells powerfully of musk, but not so disagreeably
as this does.] was also abundant, exhaling a rank smell of musk.
It indicates a very great elevation in Sikkim, and on my ascent far
above it, therefore, I was not surprised to find water boil at 182.6
degrees (air 43 degrees), which gives an altitude of 16,754 feet.

A dense fog, with sleet, shut out all view; and I did not know in
what direction to proceed higher, beyond the top of the sharp, stony
ridge I had attained. Here there was no perpetual snow, which is to
be accounted for by the nature of the surface facilitating its
removal, the edges of the rocks which project through the snow,
becoming heated, and draining off the water as it melts.

During my stay at Tungu, from the 23rd to the 30th of July, no day
passed without much deposition of moisture, but generally in so light
a form that throughout the whole time but one inch was registered in
the rain-gauge; during the same time four inches and a half of rain
fell at Dorjiling, and three inches and a half at Calcutta. The mean
temperature was 50 degrees (max. 65 degrees, min. 40.7 degrees);
extremes, 65/38 degrees. The mean range (23.3 degrees) was thus much
greater than at Dorjiling, where it was only 8.9 degrees.
A thermometer, sunk three feet, varied only a few tenths from 57.6
degrees. By twenty-five comparative observations with Calcutta,
1 degree Fahr. is the equivalent of every 362 feet of ascent; and
twenty comparative observations with Dorjiling give 1 degree for
every 340 feet. The barometer rose and fell at the same hours as at
lower elevations; the tide amounting to 0.060 inch, between 9.50 a.m.
and 4 p.m.

I left Tungu on the 30th of July, and spent that night at Tallum;
where a large party of men had just arrived, with loads of madder,
rice, canes, bamboos, planks, etc., to be conveyed to Tibet on yaks
and ponies.* [About 300 loads of timber, each of six planks, are said
to be taken across the Kongra Lama pass annually; and about 250 of
rice, besides canes, madder, bamboos, cottons, cloths, and
_Symplocos_ leaves for dyeing. This is, no doubt, a considerably
exaggerated statement, and may refer to both the Kongra Lama and
Donkia passes.] On the following day I descended to Lamteng,
gathering a profusion of fine plants by the way.

The flat on which I had encamped at this place in May and June, being
now a marsh, I took up my abode for two days in one of the houses,
and paid the usual penalty of communication with these filthy people;
for which my only effectual remedy was boiling all my garments and
bedding. Yet the house was high, airy, and light; the walls composed
of bamboo, lath, and plaster.

Tropical Cicadas ascend to the pine-woods above Lamteng in this
month, and chirp shrilly in the heat of the day; and glow-worms fly
about at night. The common Bengal and Java toad, _Bufo scabra,_
abounded in the marshes, a remarkable instance of wide geographical
distribution, for a Batrachian which is common at the level of the
sea under the tropics.

On the 3rd of August I descended to Choongtam, which I reached on the
5th. The lakes on the Chateng flat (alt. 8,750 feet) were very full,
and contained many English water-plants;* [_Sparganium ramosum,
Eleocharis palustris, Scirpus triqueter,_ and _Callitriche verna?_
Some very tropical genera ascend thus high; as _Paspalum_ amongst
grasses, and _Scleria,_ a kind of sedge.]  the temperature of the
water was 92 degrees near the edges, where a water-insect
(_Notonecta_) was swimming about.

Below this I passed an extensive stalactitic deposit of lime, and a
second occurred lower down, on the opposite side of the valley. The
apparently total absence of limestone rocks in any part of Sikkim
(for which I made careful search), renders these deposits, which are
far from unfrequent, very curious. Can the limestone, which appears
in Tibet, underlie the gneiss of Sikkim? We cannot venture to assume
that these lime-charged streams, which in Sikkim burst from the steep
flanks of narrow mountain spurs, at elevations between 1000 and 7000
feet, have any very remote or deep origin. If the limestone be not
below the gneiss, it must either occur intercalated with it, or be
the remains of a formation now all but denuded in Sikkim.

Terrific landslips had taken place along the valley, carrying down
acres of rock, soil, and pine-forests, into the stream. I saw one
from Kampo Samdong, on the opposite flank of the valley, which swept
over 100 yards in breadth of forest. I looked in vain for any signs
of scratching or scoring, at all comparable to that produced by
glacial action. The bridge at the Tuktoong, mentioned at chapter xix,
being carried away, we had to ascend for 1000 feet (to a place where
the river could be crossed) by a very precipitous path, and descend
on the opposite side. In many places we had great difficulty in
proceeding, the track being obliterated by the rains, torrents, and
landslips. Along the flats, now covered with a dense rank vegetation,
we waded ankle, and often knee, deep in mud, swarming with leeches;
and instead of descending into the valley of the now too swollen
Lachen, we made long detours, rounding spurs by canes and bamboos
suspended from trees.

At Choongtam the rice-fields were flooded: and the whole flat was a
marsh, covered with tropical grasses and weeds, and alive with
insects, while the shrill cries of cicadas, frogs and birds, filled
the air. Sand-flies, mosquitos, cockroaches, and enormous
cockchafers,* [_Eucerris Griffithii,_ a magnificent species.
Three very splendid insects of the outer ranges of Sikkim never
occurred in the interior: these are a gigantic Curculio (_Calandra_)
a wood-borer; a species of Goliath-beetle, _Cheirotonus Macleaii,_
and a smaller species of the same rare family, _Trigonophorus
nepalensis_; of these the former is very scarce, the latter extremely
abundant, flying about at evenings; both are flower-feeders, eating
honey and pollen. In the summer of 1848, the months at Dorjiling were
well marked by the swarms of peculiar insects that appeared in
inconceivable numbers; thus, April was marked by a great black
_Passalus,_ a beetle one-and-a-half inch long, that flies in the face
and entangles itself in the hair; May, by stag-beetles and
longicorns; June, by _Coccinella_ (lady-birds), white moths, and
flying-bugs; July, by a _Dryptis?_ a long-necked carabideous insect;
August, by myriads of earwigs, cockroaches, Goliath-beetles, and
cicadas; September, by spiders.] _Mantis,_ great locusts,
grasshoppers, flying-bugs, crickets, ants, spiders, caterpillars, and
leeches, were but a few of the pests that swarmed in my tent and made
free with my bed. Great lazy butterflies floated through the air;
_Thecla_ and _Hesperides_ skipped about, and the great _Nymphalidae_
darted around like swallows. The venomous black cobra was common, and
we left the path with great caution, as it is a lazy reptile, and
lies basking in the sun; many beautiful and harmless green snakes,
four feet long, glided amongst the bushes. My dogs caught a "Rageu,"*
["Ragoah," according to Hodgson: but it is not the _Procapra
picticaudata_ of Tibet.] a very remarkable animal, half goat and half
deer; the flesh was good and tender, dark-coloured, and lean.

I remained here till the 15th of August,* [Though 5 degrees further
north, and 5,268 feet above the level of Calcutta, the mean
temperature at Choongtam this month was only 12.5 degrees cooler than
at Calcutta; forty observations giving 1 degree Fahr. as equal to 690
feet of elevation; whereas in May the mean of twenty-seven
observations gave 1 degree Fahr. as equal to 260 feet, the mean
difference of temperature being then 25 degrees. The mean maximum of
the day was 80 degrees, and was attained at 11 a.m., after which
clouds formed, and the thermometer fell to 66 degrees at sunset, and
56 degrees at night. In my blanket tent the heat rose to upwards of
100 degrees in calm weather. The afternoons were generally squally
and rainy.] arranging my Lachen valley collections previous to
starting for the Lachoong, whence I hoped to reach Tibet again by a
different route, crossing the Donkia pass, and thence exploring the
sources of the Teesta at the Cholamoo lakes.

Whilst here I ascertained the velocity of the currents of the Lachen
and Lachoong rivers. Both were torrents, than which none could be
more rapid, short of becoming cataracts: the rains were at their
height, and the melting of the snows at its maximum. I first measured
several hundred yards along the banks of each river above the
bridges, repeating this several times, as the rocks and jungle
rendered it very difficult to do it accurately: then, sitting on the
bridge, I timed floating masses of different materials and sizes that
were thrown in at the upper point. I was surprised to find the
velocity of the Lachen only nine miles per hour, for its waters
seemed to shoot past with the speed of an arrow, but the floats
showed the whole stream to be so troubled with local eddies and
backwaters, that it took from forty-three to forty-eight seconds for
each float to pass over 200 yards, as it was perpetually submerged by
under-currents. The breadth of the river averaged sixty-eight feet,
and the discharge was 4,420 cubic feet of water per second.
The temperature was 57 degrees.

At the Lachoong bridge the jungle was still denser, and the banks
quite inaccessible in many places. The mean velocity was eight miles
an hour, the breadth ninety-five feet, the depth about the same as
that of the Lachen, giving a discharge of 5,700 cubic feet of water
per second;* [Hence it appears that the Lachoong, being so much the
more copious stream, should in one sense be regarded as the
continuation of the Teesta, rather than the Lachen, which, however,
has by far the most distant source. Their united streams discharge
upwards of 10,000 cubic feet of water per second in the height of the
rains! which is, however, a mere fraction of the discharge of the
Teesta when that river leaves the Himalaya. The Ganges at Hurdwar
discharges 8000 feet per second during the dry season.] its
temperature was also 57 degrees. These streams retain an
extraordinary velocity, for many miles upwards; the Lachen to its
junction with the Zemu at 9000 feet, and the Zemu itself as far up as
the Thlonok, at 10,000 feet, and the Lachoong to the village of that
name, at 8000 feet: their united streams appear equally rapid till
they become the Teesta at Singtam.* [The slope of the bed of the
Lachen from below the confluence of the Zemu to the village of
Singtam is 174 feet per mile, or 1 foot in 30; that of the Lachoong
from the village of that name to Singtam is considerably less.]

On the 15th of August, having received supplies from Dorjiling, I
started up the north bank of the Lachoong, following the Singtam
Soubah, who accompanied me officially, and with a very bad grace;
poor fellow, he expected me to have returned with him to Singtam, and
thence gone back to Dorjiling, and many a sore struggle we had on
this point. At Choongtam he had been laid up with ulcerated legs from
the bites of leeches and sand-flies, which required my treatment.

The path was narrow, and ran through a jungle of mixed tropical and
temperate plants,* [As _Paris, Dipsacus, Circaea, Thalictrum,
Saxifraga ciliaris, Spiranthes, Malva, Hypoxis, Anthericum,
Passiflora, Drosera, Didymocarpus,_ poplar, _Calamagrostis,_ and
_Eupatorium._] many of which are not found at this elevation on the
damp outer ranges of Dorjiling. We crossed to the south bank by a
fine cane-bridge forty yards long, the river being twenty-eight
across and here I have to record the loss of my dog Kinchin; the
companion of all my late journeyings, and to whom I had become really
attached. He had a bad habit, of which I had vainly tried to cure
him, of running for a few yards on the round bamboos by which the
cane-bridges are crossed, and on which it was impossible for a dog to
retain his footing: in this situation he used to get thoroughly
frightened, and lie down on the bamboos with his legs hanging over
the water, and having no hold whatever. I had several times rescued
him from this perilous position, which was always rendered more
imminent from the shaking of the bridge as I approached him. On the
present occasion, I stopped at the foot of some rocks below the
bridge, botanizing, and Kinchin having scrambled up the rocks, ran on
to the bridge. I could not see him, and was not thinking about him,
when suddenly his shrill, short barks of terror rang above the
roaring torrent. I hastened to the bridge, but before I could get to
it, he had lost his footing, and had disappeared. Holding on by the
cane, I strained my eyes till the bridge seemed to be swimming up the
valley, and the swift waters to be standing still, but to no purpose;
he had been carried under at once, and swept away miles below.
For many days I missed him by my side on the mountain, and by my feet
in camp. He had become a very handsome dog, with glossy black hair,
pendent triangular ears, short muzzle, high forehead, jet-black eyes,
straight limbs, arched neck, and a most glorious tail curling over
his back.* [The woodcut at vol. i. chapter ix, gives the character of
the Tibet mastiff, to which breed his father belonged; but it is not
a portrait of himself, having been sketched from a dog of the pure
breed, in the Zoological Society's Gardens, by C. Jenyns, Esq.]

A very bad road led to the village of Keadom, situated on a flat
terrace several hundred feet above the river, and 6,609 feet above
the sea, where I spent the night. Here are cultivated plantains and
maize, although the elevation is equal to parts of Dorjiling, where
these plants do not ripen.

The river above Keadom is again crossed, by a plank bridge, at a
place where the contracted streams flow between banks forty feet
high, composed of obscurely stratified gravel, sand, and water-worn
boulders. Above this the path ascends lofty flat-topped spurs, which
overhang the river, and command some of the most beautiful scenery in
Sikkim. The south-east slopes are clothed with _Abies Brunoniana_ at
8000 feet elevation, and cleft by a deep ravine, from which projects
what appears to be an old moraine, fully 1500 or perhaps 2000 feet
high. Extensive landslips on its steep flank expose (through the
telescope) a mass of gravel and angular blocks, while streams cut
deep channels in it.

This valley is far more open and grassy than that of the Lachen, and
the vegetation also differs much.* [_Umbelliferae_ and _Compositae_
abound, and were then flowering; and an orchis (_Satyrium
Nepalense_), scented like our English _Gymnadenia,_ covered the
ground in some places, with tall green _Habenariae_ and a yellow
_Spathoglottis,_ a genus with pseudo-bulbs. Of shrubs, _Xanthoxylon,
Rhus, Prinsepia, Cotoneaster, Pyrus,_ poplar and oak, formed thickets
along the path; while there were as many as eight and nine kinds of
balsams, some eight feet high.] In the afternoon we reached Lachoong,
which is by far the most picturesque village in the temperate region
of Sikkim. Grassy flats of different levels, sprinkled with brushwood
and scattered clumps of pine and maple, occupy the valley; whose west
flanks rise in steep, rocky, and scantily wooded grassy slopes. About
five miles to the north the valley forks; two conspicuous domes of
snow rising from the intermediate mountains. The eastern valley leads
to lofty snowed regions, and is said to be impracticable; the
Lachoong flows down the western, which appeared rugged, and covered
with pine woods. On the east, Tunkra mountain* [This mountain is seen
from Dorjiling; its elevation is about 18,700 feet.] rises in a
superb unbroken sweep of dark pine-wood and cliffs, surmounted by
black rocks and white fingering peaks of snow. South of this, the
valley of the Tunkrachoo opens, backed by sharp snowed pinnacles,
which form the continuation of the Chola range; over which a pass
leads to the Phari district of Tibet, which intervenes between Sikkim
and Bhotan. Southwards the view is bounded by snowy mountains, and
the valley seems blocked up by the remarkable moraine-like spur which
I passed above Keadom.

Illustration--LACHOONG VALLEY AND VILLAGE, LOOKING SOUTH.

Stupendous moraines rise 1500 feet above the Lachoong in several
concentric series, curving downwards and outwards, so as to form a
bell-shaped mouth to the valley of the Tunkrachoo. Those on the upper
flank are much the largest; and the loftiest of them terminates in a
conical hill crowned with Boodhist flags, and its steep sides cut
into horizontal roads or terraces, one of which is so broad and flat
as to suggest the idea of its having been cleared by art.

Illustration--LOFTY ANCIENT MORAINES IN THE LACHOONG VALLEY, LOOKING
SOUTH-EAST.

On the south side of the Tunkrachoo river the moraines are also more
or less terraced, as is the, floor of the Lachoong valley, and its
east slopes, 1000 feet up.* [I have since been greatly struck with
the similarity between the features of this valley, and those of
Chamouni (though the latter is on a smaller scale) above the Lavanchi
moraine. The spectator standing in the expanded part below the
village of Argentiere, and looking upwards, sees the valley closed
above by the ancient moraine of the Argentiere glacier, and below by
that of Lavanchi; and an all sides the slopes are cut into terraces,
strewed with boulders. I found traces of stratified pebbles and sand
on the north flank of the Lavanchi moraine however, which I failed to
discover in those of Lachoong. The average slope of these pine-clad
Sikkim valleys much approximates to that of Chamouni, and never
approaches the precipitous character of the Bernese Alps' valleys,
Kandersteg, Lauterbrunnen, and Grindelwald.]

The river is fourteen yards broad, and neither deep nor rapid: the
village is on the east bank, and is large for Sikkim; it contains
fully 100 good wooden houses, raised on posts, and clustered together
without order. It was muddy and intolerably filthy, and intersected
by some small streams, whose beds formed the roads, and, at the same
time, the common sewers of the natives. There is some wretched
cultivation in fields,* [Full of such English weeds as shepherd's
purse, nettles, _Solanum nigrum,_ and dock; besides many Himalayan
ones, as balsams, thistles, a beautiful geranium, mallow, _Haloragis_
and Cucurbitaceous plants.] of wheat, barley, peas, radishes, and
turnips. Rice was once cultivated at this elevation (8000 feet), but
the crop was uncertain; some very tropical grasses grow wild here, as
_Eragrostis_ and _Panicum._ In gardens the hollyhock is seen: it is
said to be introduced through Tibet from China; also _Pinus excelsa_
from Bhotan, peaches, walnuts, and weeping willows. A tall poplar was
pointed out to me as a great wonder; it had two species of _Pyrus_
growing on its boughs, evidently from seed; one was a mountain ash,
the other like _Pyrus Aria._

Soon after camping, the Lachoong Phipun, a very tall, intelligent,
and agreeable looking man, waited on me with the usual presents, and
a request that I would visit his sick father. His house was lofty and
airy: in the inner room the sick man was stretched on a board,
covered with a blanket, and dying of pressure on the brain; he was
surrounded by a deputation of Lamas from Teshoo Loombo, sent for in
this emergency. The principal one was a fat fellow, who sat
cross-legged before a block-printed Tibetan book, plates of raw meat,
rice, and other offerings, and the bells, dorje, etc. of his
profession. Others sat around, reading or chanting services, and
filling the room with incense. At one end of the apartment was a good
library in a beautifully carved book-case.

Illustration--HEAD AND FEET OF TIBET MARMOT.


CHAPTER XXII.

Leave Lachoong for Tunkra pass--Moraines and their vegetation--
Pines of great dimensions--Wild currants--Glaciers--Summit of
pass--Elevation--Views--Plants--Winds--Choombi district--
Lacheepia rock--Extreme cold--Kinchinjunga--Himalayan grouse--
Meteorological observations--Return to Lachoong--Oaks--Ascent
to Yeumtong--Flats and debacles--Buried pine-trunks--Perpetual
snow--Hot springs--Behaviour of Singtam Soubah--Leave for Momay
Samdong--Upper limit of trees--Distribution of plants--Glacial
terraces, etc.--Forked Donkia--Moutonneed rocks--Ascent to
Donkia pass--Vegetation--Scenery--Lakes--Tibet--Bhomtso--
Arun river--Kiang-lah mountains--Yaru-Tsampu river--Appearance
of Tibet--Kambajong--Jigatzi--Kinchinjhow, and Kinchinjunga--
Chola range--Deceptive appearance of distant landscape--Perpetual
snow--Granite--Temperatures--Pulses--Plants--Tripe de roche
--Return to Momay--Dogs and yaks--Birds--Insects--Quadrupeds
--Hot springs--Marmots--Kinchinjhow glacier.

The Singtam Soubah being again laid up here from the consequences of
leech-bites, I took the opportunity of visiting the Tunkra-lah pass,
represented as the most snowy in Sikkim; which I found to be the
case. The route lay over the moraines on the north flank of the
Tunkrachoo, which are divided by narrow dry gullies,* [These ridges
of the moraine, separated by gullies, indicate the progressive
retirement of the ancient glacier, after periods of rest. The same
phenomena may be seen, on a diminutive scale, in the Swiss Alps, by
any one who carefully examines the lateral and often the terminal
moraines of any retiring or diminishing glacier, at whose base or
flanks are concentric ridges, which are successive deposits.] and
composed of enormous blocks disintegrating into a deep layer of clay.
All are clothed with luxuriant herbage and flowering shrubs,*
[_Ranunculus, Clematis, Thalictrum, Anemone, Aconitum variegatum_ of
Europe, a scandent species, Berberry, _Deutzia, Philadelphus,_ Rose,
Honeysuckle, Thistles, Orchis, _Habenaria, Fritillaria, Aster,
Calimeris, Verbascum thapsus, Pedicularis, Euphrasia, Senecio,
Eupatorium, Dipsacus, Euphorbia,_ Balsam, _Hypericum, Gentiana,
Halenia, Codonopsis, Polygonum._] besides small larches and pines,
rhododendrons and maples; with _Enkianthus, Pyrus,_ cherry, _Pieris,_
laurel, and _Goughia._ The musk-deer inhabits these woods, and at
this season I have never seen it higher. Large monkeys are also found
on the skirts of the pine-forests, and the _Ailurus ochraceus_
(Hodgs.), a curious long-tailed animal peculiar to the Himalaya,
something between a diminutive bear and a squirrel. In the dense and
gigantic forest of _Abies Brunoniana_ and silver fir, I measured one
of the former trees, and found it twenty-eight feet in girth, and
above 120 feet in height. The _Abies Webbiana_ attains thirty-five
feet in girth, with a trunk unbranched for forty feet.

The path was narrow and difficult in the wood, and especially along
the bed of the stream, where grew ugly trees of larch, eighty feet
high, and abundance of a new species of alpine strawberry with oblong
fruit. At 11,560 feet elevation, I arrived at an immense rock of
gneiss, buried in the forest. Here currant-bushes were plentiful,
generally growing on the pine-trunks, in strange association with a
small species of _Begonia,_ a hothouse tribe of plants in England.
Emerging from the forest, vast old moraines are crossed, in a shallow
mountain valley, several miles long and broad, 12,000 feet above the
sea, choked with rhododendron shrubs, and nearly encircled by snowy
mountains. Magnificent gentians grew here, also _Senecio, Corydalis,_
and the _Aconitum luridum_ (n. sp.), whose root is said to be as
virulent as _A. ferox_ and _A. Napellus._* [The result of Dr.
Thomson's and my examination of the Himplayan aconites (of which
there are seven species) is that the one generally known as
_A. ferox,_ and which supplies a great deal of the celebrated poison,
is the common _A. Napellus_ of Europe.] The plants were all fully a
month behind those of the Lachen valley at the same elevation.
Heavy rain fell in the afternoon, and we halted under some rocks: as
I had brought no tent, my bed was placed beneath the shelter of one,
near which the rest of the party burrowed. I supped off half a yak's
kidney, an enormous organ in this animal.

On the following morning we proceeded up the valley, towards a very
steep rocky barrier, through which the river cut a narrow gorge, and
beyond which rose lofty snowy mountains: the peak of Tunkra being to
our left hand (north). Saxifrages grew here in profuse tufts of
golden blossoms, and _Chrysosplenium,_ rushes, mountain-sorrel
(_Oxyria_), and the bladder-headed _Saussurea,_ whose flowers are
enclosed in inflated membranous bracts, and smell like putrid meat:
there were also splendid primroses, the spikenard valerian, and
golden Potentillas.

The ascent was steep and difficult, up a stony valley bounded by
precipices; in this the river flowed in a north-west direction, and
we were obliged to wade along it, though its waters were bitterly
cold, the temperature being 39 degrees. At 15,000 feet we passed from
great snowbeds to the surface of a glacier, partly an accumulation of
snow, increased by lateral glaciers: its slope was very gentle for
several miles; the surface was eroded by rain, and very rough, whilst
those of the lateral glaciers were ribboned, crevassed, and often
conspicuously marked with dirt-bands.

A gently sloping saddle, bare of snow, which succeeds the glacier,
forms the top of the Tunkra pass; it unites two snowy mountains, and
opens on the great valley of the Machoo, which flows in a part of
Tibet between Sikkim and Bhotan; its height is 16,083 feet above the
sea by barometer, and 16,137 feet by boiling-point. Nothing can
be more different than the two slopes of this pass; that by which I
had come presented a gentle snowy acclivity, bounded by precipitous
mountains; while that which opened before me was a steep, rocky,
broad, grassy valley, where not a particle of snow was to be seen,
and yaks were feeding near a small lake not 1000 feet down. Nor were
snowy mountains visible anywhere in this direction, except far to the
south-east, in Bhotan. This remarkable difference of climate is due
to the southerly wind which ascends the Tibetan or Machoo valley
being drained by intervening mountains before reaching this pass,
whilst the Sikkim current brings abundant vapours up the Teesta and
Lachoong valleys.

Chumulari lies to the E.N.E. of the Tunkra pass, and is only
twenty-six miles distant, but not seen; Phari is two marches off, in
an easterly direction, and Choombi one to the south-east. Choombi is
the general name given to a large Tibetan province that embraces the
head of the Machoo river, and includes Phari, Eusa, Choombi, and
about thirteen other villages, corresponding to as many districts,
that contain from under a dozen to 300 houses each, varying with the
season and state of trade. The latter is considerable, Phari being,
next to Dorjiling, the greatest Tibetan, Bhotan, Sikkim, and Indian
entrepot along the whole Himalaya east of Nepal. The general form of
Choombi valley is triangular, the broader end northwards: it is
bounded by the Chola range on the west from Donkia to Gipmoochi, and
by the Kamphee or Chakoong range to the east; which is, I believe,
continuous with Chumulari. These meridional ranges approximate to the
southward, so as to form a natural boundary to Choombi. The Machoo
river, rising from Chumulari, flows through the Choombi district, and
enters Bhotan at a large mart called Rinchingoong, whence it flows to
the plains of India, where it is called at Couch-Behar, the Torsha,
or, as some say, the Godadda, and falls into the Burrampooter.

The Choombi district is elevated, for the only cultivation is a
summer or alpine one, neither rice, maize, nor millet being grown
there: it is also dry, for the great height of the Bhotan mountains
and the form of the Machou valley cut off the rains, and there is no
dense forest. It is very mountainous, all carriage being on men's and
yaks' backs, and is populous for this part of the country, the
inhabitants being estimated at 3000, in the trading season, when many
families from Tibet and Bhotan erect booths at Phari.

A civil officer at Phari collects the revenue under the Lhassan
authorities, and there is also a Tibetan fort, an officer, and guard.
The inhabitants of this district more resemble the Bhotanese than
Tibetans, and are a thievish set, finding a refuge under the
Paro-Pilo of Bhotan,* [There was once a large monastery, called
Kazioo Goompa, at Choombi, with upwards of one hundred Lamas.
During a struggle between the Sikkim and Bhotan monks for superiority
in it, the abbot died. His avatar reappeared in two places at once!
in Bhotan as a relative of the Paro-Pilo himself, and in Sikkim as a
brother of the powerful Gangtok Kajee. Their disputes were referred
to the Dalai Lama, who pronounced for Sikkim. This was not to be
disputed by the Pilo, who, however, plundered the Goompa of its
silver, gold, and books, leaving nothing but the bare walls for the
successful Lama! The Lhassan authorities made no attempt to obtain
restitution, and the monastery has been consequently neglected.] who
taxes the refugees according to the estimate he forms of their
plunder. The Tibetans seldom pursue the culprits, as the Lhassan
government avoids all interference south of their own frontier.

From Choombi to Lhassa is fifteen days' long journeys for a man
mounted on a stout mule; all the rice passing through Phari is
monopolised there for the Chinese troops at Lhassa. The grazing for
yaks and small cattle is excellent in Choombi, and the _Pinus
excelsa_ is said to grow abundantly there, though unknown in Sikkim,
but I have not heard of any other peculiarity in its productions.

Very few plants grew amongst the stones at the top of the Tunkra
pass, and those few were mostly quite different from those of Palung
and Kongra Lama. A pink-flowered _Arenaria,_ two kinds of
_Corydalis,_ the cottony _Saussurea,_ and diminutive primroses, were
the most conspicuous.* [The only others were _Leontopodium, Sedum,_
Saxifrage, _Ramunculus hyperboreus, Ligularia,_ two species of
_Polygonum,_ a _Trichostomum, Stereocaulon,_ and _Lecidea
geographica,_ not one grass or sedge.] The wind was variable, blowing
alternately up both valleys, bringing much snow when it blew from the
Teesta, though deflected to a north-west breeze; when, on the
contrary, it blew from Tibet, it was, though southerly, dry.
Clouds obscured all distant view. The temperature varied between noon
and 1.30 p.m. from 39 degrees to 40.5 degrees, the air being
extremely damp.

Returning to the foot of the glacier, I took up my quarters for two
days under an enormous rock overlooking the broad flat valley in
which I had spent the previous night, and directly fronting Tunkra
mountain, which bore north about five miles distant. This rock was
sixty to eighty feet high, and 15,250 feet above the sea; it was of
gneiss, and was placed on the top of a bleak ridge, facing the north;
no shrub or bush being near it. The gentle slope outwards of the rock
afforded the only shelter, and a more utterly desolate place than
Lacheepia, as it is called, I never laid my unhoused head in.
It commanded an incomparable view due west across the Lachoong
and Lachen valleys, of the whole group of Kinchinjunga snows, from
Tibet southwards, and as such was a most valuable position for
geographical purposes.

The night was misty, and though the temperature was 35 degrees, I was
miserably cold; for my blankets being laid on the bare ground, the
chill seemed to strike from the rock to the very marrow of my bones.
In the morning the fog hung till sunrise, when it rose majestically
from all the mountain-tops; but the view obtained was transient, for
in less than an hour the dense woolly banks of fog which choked the
valleys ascended like a curtain to the warmed atmosphere above, and
slowly threw a veil over the landscape. I waited till the last streak
of snow was shut out from my view, when I descended, to breakfast on
Himalayan grouse (_Tetrao-perdix nivicola_), a small gregarious bird
which inhabits the loftiest stony mountains, and utters a short cry
of "Quiok, quiok;" in character and appearance it is intermediate
between grouse and partridge, and is good eating, though tough.

Hoping to obtain another view, which might enable me to correct the
bearings taken that morning, I was tempted to spend a second night in
the open air at Lacheepia, passing the day botanizing* [Scarcely a
grass, and no _Astragali,_ grow on these stony and snowy slopes: and
the smallest heath-like _Andromeda,_ a still smaller _Menziesia_ (an
erotic genus, previously unknown in the Himalaya) and a prostrate
willow, are the only woody-stemmed plants above 15,000 feet.] in the
vicinity, and taking observations of the barometer and wet-bulb:
I also boiled three thermometers by turns, noting the grave errors
likely to attend observations of this instrument for elevation.*
[These will be more particularly alluded to in the Appendix, where
will be found a comparison of elevations, deduced from boiling point
and from barometric observations. The height of Lacheepia is 14,912
feet by boiling-point, and 15,262 feet by barometer.] Little rain
fell during the day, but it was heavy at night, though there was
fortunately no wind; and I made a more comfortable bed with tufts of
juniper brought up from below. Our fire was principally of wet
rhododendron wood, with masses of the aromatic dwarf species, which,
being full of resinous glands, blazed with fury. Next day, after a
very transient glimpse of the Kinchinjunga snows, I descended to
Lachoong, where I remained for some days botanizing. During my stay I
was several times awakened by all the noises and accompaniments of a
night-attack or alarm; screaming voices, groans, shouts, and
ejaculations, the beating of drums and firing of guns, and flambeaux
of pine-wood gleaming amongst the trees, and flitting from house to
house. The cause, I was informed, was the, presence of a demon, who
required exorcisement, and who generally managed to make the
villagers remember his visit, by their missing various articles after
the turmoil made to drive him away. The custom of driving out demons
in the above manner is constantly practised by the Lamas in Tibet:
MM. Huc and Gabet give a graphic account of such an operation during
their stay at Kounboum.

On the 29th of August I left Lachoong and proceeded up the valley.
The road ran along a terrace, covered with long grass, and bounded by
lofty banks of unstratified gravel and sand, and passed through
beautiful groves of green pines, rich in plants. No oak nor chesnut
ascends above 9000 feet here or elsewhere in the interior of Sikkim,
where they are replaced by a species of hazel (_Corylus_); in the
North Himalaya, on the other hand, an oak (_Quercus semecarpifolia,_
see vol. i., chapter viii) is amongst the most alpine trees, and the
nut is a different species, more resembling the European. On the
outer Sikkim ranges oaks (_Q. annulata?_) ascend to 10,000 feet, and
there is no hazel. Above the fork, the valley contracts extremely,
and its bed is covered with moraines and landslips, which often bury
the larches and pines. Marshes occur here and there, full of the
sweet-scented Hierochloe grass, the Scotch _Thalictrum alpinum,_ and
an _Eriocaulon,_ which ascends to 10,000 feet. The old moraines were
very difficult to cross, and on one I found a barricade, which had
been erected to deceive me regarding the frontier, had I chosen this
route instead of the Lachen one, in May.

Broad flats clothed with rhododendron, alternate with others covered
with mud, boulders, and gravel, which had flowed down from the gorges
on the west, and which still contained trees, inclined in all
directions, and buried up to their branches; some of these debacles
were 400 yards across, and sloped at an angle of 2 degrees to 3
degrees, bearing on their surfaces blocks fifteen yards in diameter.*
[None were to be compared in size and extent with that at Bex, at the
mouth of the Rhone valley.] They seem to subside materially, as I
perceived they had left marks many feet higher on the tree-trunks.
Such debacles must often bury standing forests in a very favourable
material, climate, and position for becoming fossilized.

On the 30th of August I arrived at Yeumtong, a small summer
cattle-station, on a flat by the Lachoong, 11,920 feet above the sea;
the general features of which closely resemble those of the narrow
Swiss valleys. The west flank is lofty and precipitous, with narrow
gullies still retaining the winter's snow, at 12,500 feet; the east
gradually slopes up to the two snowy domes seen from Lachoong; the
bed of the valley is alternately a flat lake-bed, in which the river
meanders at the rate of three and a half miles an hour, and sudden
descents, cumbered with old moraines, over which it rushes in sheets
of Loam. Silver-firs ascend nearly to 13,000 feet, where they are
replaced by large junipers, sixty feet high: up the valley Chango
Khang is seen, with a superb glacier descending to about 14,000 feet
on its south
flank. Enormous masses of rock were continually precipitated from the
west side, close to the shed in which I had taken up my quarters,
keeping my people in constant alarm, and causing a great commotion
among the yaks, dogs, and ponies. On the opposite side of the river
is a deep gorge; in which an immense glacier descends lower than any
I have seen in Sikkim. I made several attempts to reach it by the
gully of its discharging stream, but was always foiled by the rocks
and dense jungle of pines, rhododendron, and dwarf holly.

The snow-banks on the face of the dome-shaped mountain appearing
favourable for ascertaining the position of the level of perpetual
snow, I ascended to them on the 6th of September, and found the mean
elevation along an even, continuous, and gradual slope, with a full
south-west exposure, to be 15,985 feet by barometer, and 15,816 feet
by boiling-point. These beds of snow, however broad and convex,
cannot nevertheless be distinguished from glaciers: they occupy, it
is true, mountain slopes, and do not fill hollows (like glaciers
commonly so called), but they display the ribboned structure of ice,
and being viscous fluids, descend at a rate and to a distance
depending on the slope, and on the amount of annual accumulation
behind. Their termination must therefore be far below that point at
which all the snow that falls melts, which is the theoretical line of
perpetual snow. Before returning I attempted to proceed northwards to
the great glacier, hoping to descend by its lateral moraine, but a
heavy snow-storm drove me down to Yeumtong.

Some hot-springs burst from the bank of the Lachen a mile or so below
the village: they are used as baths, the patient remaining three days
at a time in them, only retiring to eat in a little shed close by.
The discharge amounts to a few gallons per minute; the temperature at
the source is 112.6 degrees, and 106 degrees in the bath.* [This
water boiled at 191.6 degrees, the same at which snow-water and that
of the river did; giving an elevation of 11,730 feet. Observations on
the mineral constituents of the water will be found in the Appendix.]
The water has a slightly saline taste; it is colourless, but emits
bubbles of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, blackening silver. A cold
spring (temperature 42 degrees) emerged close by, and the Lachoong
not ten yards off, was 47 degrees to 50 degrees. A conferva grows in
the hot water, and the garnets are worn out of the gneiss rock
exposed to its action.

The Singtam Soubah had been very sulky since leaving Choongtam, and I
could scarcely get a drop of milk or a slice of curd here. I had to
take him to task severely for sanctioning the flogging of one of my
men; a huntsman, who had offered me his services at Choongtam, and
who was a civil, industrious fellow, though he had procured me little
besides a huge monkey, which had nearly bitten off the head of his
best dog. I had made a point of consulting the Soubah before hiring
him, for fear of accidents; but this did not screen him from the
jealousy of the Choongtam Lama, who twice flogged him in the Goompa
with rattans (with the Soubah's consent), alleging that he had
quitted his service for mine. My people knew of this, but were afraid
to tell me, which the poor fellow did himself.

The Lachoong Phipun visited me on the 7th of September: he had
officiously been in Tibet to hear what the Tibetan people would say
to my going to Donkia, and finding them supremely indifferent,
returned to be my guide. A month's provision for ten men having
arrived from Dorjiling, I left Yeumtong the following day for Momay
Samdong, the loftiest yak grazing station in Sikkim (Palung being too
cold for yaks), and within a day's journey of the Donkia pass.

The valley remains almost level for several miles, the road
continuing along the east bank of the Lachen. Shoots of stones
descend from the ravines, all of a white fine-grained granite,
stained red with a minute conferva, which has been taken by Himalayan
travellers for red snow;* [Red snow was never found in the Antarctic
regions during Sir James Ross's South Polar voyage; nor do I know any
authentic record of its having been seen in the Himalaya.] a
phenomenon I never saw in Sikkim.

At a fork of the valley several miles above Yeumtong, and below the
great glacier of Chango Khang, the ancient moraines are prodigious,
much exceeding any I have elsewhere seen, both in extent, in the size
of the boulders, and in the height to which the latter are piled on
one another. Many boulders I measured were twenty yards across, and
some even forty; and the chaotic scene they presented baffles all
description: they were scantily clothed with stunted silver firs.

Beyond this, the path crosses the river, and ascends rapidly over a
mile of steeply sloping landslip, composed of angular fragments of
granite, that are constantly falling from above, and are extremely
dangerous. At 14,000 feet, trees and shrubs cease, willow and
honeysuckle being the last; and thence onward the valley is bleak,
open, and stony, with lofty rocky mountains on either side. The south
wind brought a cold drizzling rain, which numbed us, and two of the
lads who had last come up from Dorjiling were seized with a remittent
fever, originally contracted in the hot valleys; luckily we found
some cattle-sheds, in which I left them, with two men to attend
on them.

Momay Samdong is situated in a broad part of the Lachoong valley,
where three streams meet; it is on the west of Chango Khang, and is
six miles south-east of Kinchinjhow, and seven south-west of Donkia:
it is in the same latitude as Palung, but scarcely so lofty. The mean
of fifty-six barometrical observations contemporaneous with Calcutta
makes it 15,362 feet above the sea; nearly the elevation of Lacheepia
(near the Tunkra pass), from which, however, its scenery and
vegetation entirely differ.

I pitched my tent close to a little shed, at the gently sloping base
of a mountain that divided the Lachoong river from a western
tributary. It was a wild and most exposed spot: long stony mountains,
grassy on the base near the river; distant snowy peaks, stupendous
precipices, moraines, glaciers, transported boulders, and rocks
rounded by glacial action, formed the dismal landscape which
everywhere met the view. There was not a bush six inches high, and
the only approach to woody plants were minute creeping willows and
dwarf rhododendrons, with a very few prostrate junipers
and _Ephedra._

The base of the spur was cut into broad flat terraces, composed of
unstratified sand, pebbles, and boulders; the remains, doubtless, of
an enormously thick glacial deposit. The terracing is as difficult to
be accounted for in this valley as in that of Yangma (East Nepal);
both valleys being far too broad, and descending too rapidly to admit
of the hypothesis of their having been blocked up in the lower part,
and the upper filled with large lakes.* [The formation of small
lakes, however, between moraines and the sides of the valleys they
occupy, or between two successively formed moraines (as I have
elsewhere mentioned), will account for very extensive terraced areas
of this kind; and it must be borne in mind that when the Momay valley
was filled with ice, the breadth of its glacier at this point must
have been twelve miles, and it must have extended east and west from
Chango Khang across the main valley, to beyond Donkia. Still the
great moraines are wanting at this particular point, and though
atmospheric action and the rivers have removed perhaps 200 feet of
glacial shingle, they can hardly have destroyed a moraine of rocks,
large enough to block up the valley.] Another tributary falls into
the Lachoong at Momay, which leads eastwards up to an enormous
glacier that descends from Donkia. Snowy mountains rise nearly all
round it: those on its south and east divide Sikkim from the Phari
province in Tibet; those on the north terminate in a forked or cleft
peak, which is a remarkable and conspicuous feature from Momay.
This, which I have called forked Donkia,* [Its elevation by my
observations is about 21,870 feet.] is the termination of a
magnificent amphitheatre of stupendous snow-clad precipices,
continuously upwards of 20,000 feet high, that forms the east flank
of the upper Lachoong. From Donkia top again, the mountains sweep
round to the westward, rising into fingered peaks of extraordinary
magnificence; and thence--still running west--dip to 18,500 feet,
forming the Donkia pass, and rise again as the great mural mass of
Kinchinjhow. This girdle of mountains encloses the head waters of the
Lachoong, which rises in countless streams from its perpetual snows,
glaciers, and small lakes: its north drainage is to the Cholamoo
lakes in Tibet; in which is the source of the Lachen, which flows
round the north base of Kinchinjhow to Kongra Lama.

The bottom of the Lachoong valley at Momay is broad, tolerably level,
grassy, and covered with isolated mounds and ridges that point down
the valley, and are the remains of glacial deposits. It dips suddenly
below this, and some gneiss rocks that rise in its centre are
remarkably _moutonneed_ or rounded, and have boulders perched on
their summits. Though manifestly rounded and grooved by ancient
glaciers, I failed to find scratches on these weather-worn rocks.* [I
have repeatedly, and equally in vain, sought for scratchings on many
of the most conspicuously moutonneed gneiss rocks of Switzerland.
The retention of such markings depends on other circumstances than
the mere hardness of the rock, or amount of aqueous action. What can
be more astonishing than to see these most delicate scratches
retained in all their sharpness on rocks clothed with seaweed and
shells, and exposed at every tide, in the bays of western Scotland!]

The Lachoong is here twelve or fifteen yards wide, and runs over a
pebbly bed, cutting a shallow channel through the deposits, down to
the subjacent rock, which is in some cases scooped out six or eight
feet deep by its waters. I do not doubt that the flatness of the
floor of the Momay valley is caused by the combined action of the
streams that drained the three glaciers which met here; for the
tendency of retiring glaciers is to level the floors of valleys, by
giving an ever-shifting direction to the rivers which drain them, and
which spread detritus in their course. Supposing these glaciers to
have had no terminal moraines, they might still have forced immense
beds of gravel into positions that would dam up lakes between the ice
and the flanks of the valleys, and thus produce much terracing on the
latter.* [We are still very ignorant of many details of ice action,
and especially of the origin of many enormous deposits which are not
true moraines. These, so conspicuous in the lofty Himalayan valleys,
are not less so in those of the Swiss Alps: witness that broad valley
in which Grindelwald village is situated, and which is covered to an
immense depth with angular detritus, moulded into hills and valleys;
also the whole broad open Upper Rhone valley, above the village of
Munster, and below that of Obergestelen. The action of broad glaciers
on gentle slopes is to raise their own beds by the accumulation of
gravel which their lower surface carries and pushes forward. I have
seen small glaciers thus raised 300 feet; leaving little doubt in my
mind that the upper Himalayan valleys were thus choked with deposit
1000 feet thick, of which indeed the proofs remain along the flanks
of the Yangma valley. The denuding and accumulating effects of ice
thus give a contour to mountain valleys, and sculpture their flanks
and floors far more rapidly than sea action, or the elements. After a
very extensive experience of ice in the Antarctic ocean, and in
mountainous countries, I cannot but conclude that very few of our
geologists appreciate the power of ice as a mechanical agent, which
can hardly be over-estimated, whether as glacier, iceberg, or pack
ice, heaping shingle along coasts.]

On our arrival, we found that a party of buxom, good-natured looking
girls who were tending yaks, were occupying the hut, which, however,
they cheerfully gave up to my people, spreading a black tent close by
for themselves; and next morning they set off with all their effects
packed upon the yaks. The ground was marshy, and covered with
cowslips, _Ranunculus,_ grasses and sedges, _Cyananthus,_ blue
asters, gentians, etc. The spot appearing highly favourable for
observations, I determined to remain here during the equinoctial
month, and put my people on "two-thirds allowance," _i.e.,_ four
pounds of rice daily for three men, allowing them to send down the
valley to cater for what more they could get. The Singtam Soubah was
intensely disgusted with my determination: he accompanied me next day
to the pass, and having exhausted his persuasions, threats, and
warnings about snow, wind, robbers, starvation, and Cheen sepoys,
departed on the 12th for Yeumtong, leaving me truly happy for the
first time since quitting Dorjiling. I had now a prospect of
uninterruptedly following up my pursuits at an elevation little below
that of the summit of Mont Blanc, surrounded by the loftiest
mountains, and perhaps the vastest glaciers on the globe; my
instruments were in perfect order, and I saw around me a curious and
varied flora.

The morning of the 9th of September promised fair, though billowy
clouds were rapidly ascending the valley. To the eastward my
attention was directed to a double rainbow; the upper was an arch of
the usual form, and the lower was the curved illuminated edge of a
bank of cumulus, with the orange hues below. We took the path to the
Donkia pass, fording the river, and ascending in a north-east
direction, along the foot of stony hills that rise at a gradual slope
of 12 degrees to broad unsnowed ridges, 18,000 to 19,000 feet high.
Shallow valleys, glacier-bound at their upper extremities, descend
from the still loftier rearward mountains; and in these occur lakes.
About five miles up, a broad opening on the west leads to Tomo Chamo,
as the eastern summit of Kinchinjhow is called.* [On one occasion I
ascended this valley, which is very broad, flat, and full of lakes at
different elevations; one, at about 17,000 feet elevation is
three-quarters of a mile long, but not deep: no water-plants grew in
it, but there were plenty of others round its margin. I collected, in
the dry bed of a stream near it, a curious white substance like thick
felt, formed of felspathic silt (no doubt the product of glacial
streams) and the siliceous cells of infusoriae. It much resembles the
fossil or meteoric paper of Germany, which is also formed of the
lowest tribes of fresh-water plants, though considered by Ehrenberg
as of animal origin. A vein of granite in the bottom of the valley
had completely altered the character of the gneiss, which contained
veins of jasper and masses of amorphous garnet. Much olivine is found
in the fissures of the gneiss: this feral is very rare in Sikkim, but
I have also seen it in the fissures of the White gneissy granite of
the surrounding heights.] Above this the valley expands very much,
and is stony and desert: stupendous mountains, upwards of 21,000 feet
high, rear themselves on all sides, and the desolation and grandeur
of the scene are unequalled in my experience. The path again crosses
the river (which is split into many channels), and proceeds
northwards, over gravelly terraces and rocks with patches of Scotch
alpine grasses (_Festuca ovina_ and _Poa laxa_), sedges, _Stipa,_
dandelion, _Allardia,_ gentians, _Saussurea,_ and _Astraga1us,_
varied with hard hemispherical mounds of the alsineous plant
mentioned at chapter xxi.

I passed several shallow lakes at 17,500 feet; their banks were green
and marshy, and supported thirty or forty kinds of plants. At the
head of the valley a steep rocky crest, 500 feet high, rises between
two precipitous snowy peaks, and a very fatiguing ascent (at this
elevation) leads to the sharp rocky summit of the Donkia pass, 18,466
feet above the sea by barometer, and 17,866 by boiling-point.
The view on this occasion was obscured by clouds and fogs, except
towards Tibet, in which direction it was magnificent; but as I
afterwards twice ascended this pass, and also crossed it, I shall
here bring together all the particulars I noted.

The Tibetan view, from its novelty, extent, and singularity, demands
the first notice: the Cholamoo lake lay 1500 feet below me, at the
bottom of a rapid and rocky descent; it was a blue sheet of water,
three or four miles from north to south, and one and a half broad,
hemmed in by rounded spurs from Kinchinjhow on one side, and from
Donkia on the other: the Lachen flowed from its northern extremity,
and turning westward, entered a broad barren valley, bounded on the
north by red stony mountains, called Bhomtso, which I saw from Kongra
Lama, and ascended with Dr. Campbell in the October following: though
18,000 to 19,000 feet high, these mountains were wholly unsnowed.
Beyond this range lay the broad valley of the Arun, and in the
extreme north-west distance, to the north of Nepal, were some immense
snowy mountains, reduced to mere specks on the horizon. The valley of
the Arun was bounded on the north by very precipitous black rocky
mountains, sprinkled with snow; beyond these again, from north to
north-west, snow-topped range rose over range in the clear purple
distance. The nearer of these was the Kiang-lah, which forms the axis
or water-shed of this meridian; its south drainage being to the Arun
river, and its north to the Yaru-tsampu: it appeared forty to fifty
miles off, and of great mean elevation (20,000 feet) the vast snowy
mountains that rose beyond it were, I was assured, beyond the Yaru,
in the salt lake country.* [This salt country was described to me as
enormously lofty, perfectly sterile, and fourteen days' march for
loaded men and sheep from Jigatzi: there is no pasture for yaks,
whose feet are cut by the rocks. The salt is dug (so they express it)
from the margin of lakes; as is the carbonate of soda, "Pleu" of the
Tibetans.] A spur from Chomiomo cut off the view to the southward of
north-west, and one from Donkia concealed all to the east of north.

Illustration--TIBET AND CHOLAMOO LAKE FROM THE SUMMIT OF THE DONKIA
PASS, LOOKING NORTH-WEST.

The most remarkable features of this landscape were its enormous
elevation, and its colours and contrast to the black, rugged, and
snowy Himalaya of Sikkim. All the mountains between Donkia pass and
the Arun were comparatively gently sloped, and of a yellow red
colour, rising and falling in long undulations like dunes, 2000 to
3000 feet above the mean level of the Arun valley, and perfectly bare
of perpetual snow or glaciers. Rocks everywhere broke out on their
flanks, and often along their tops, but the general contour of that
immense area was very open and undulating, like the great ranges of
Central Asia, described by MM. Huc and Gabet. Beyond this again, the
mountains were rugged, often rising into peaks which, from the angles
I took here, and subsequently at Bhomtso, cannot be below 24,000
feet, and are probably much higher. The most lofty mountains were on
the range north of Nepal, not less than 120 miles distant, and which,
though heavily snowed, were below the horizon of Donkia pass.

Cholamoo lake lay in a broad, scantily grassed, sandy and stony
valley; snow-beds, rocks, and glaciers dipped abruptly towards its
head, but on its west bank a lofty brick-red spur sloped upwards from
it, conspicuously cut into terraces for several hundred feet above
its waters.

Kambajong, the chief Tibetan village near this, after Phari and
Giantchi, is situated on the Arun (called in Tibet "Chomachoo"), on
the road from Sikkim to Jigatzi* [I have adopted the simplest mode of
spelling this name that I could find, and omitted the zong or jong,
which means fort, and generally terminates it. I think it would not
be difficult to enumerate fully a dozen ways of spelling the word, of
which Shigatzi, Digarchi, and Djigatzi are the most common.
The Tibetans tell me that they cross two passes after leaving Donkia,
or Kongra Lama, en route for Jigatzi, on both of which they suffer
from headaches and difficulty of breathing; one is over the Kambajong
range; the other, much loftier, is over that of Kiang-lah: as they do
not complain of Bhomtso, which is also crossed, and is 18,500 feet,
the others may be very lofty indeed. The distance from Donkia pass to
Jigatzi is said to be ten days' journey for loaded yaks. Now,
according to Turner's observations (evidently taken with great care)
that capital is in latitude 29 degrees 4 minutes 20 seconds north, or
only seventy miles north of Donkia; and as the yak travels at the
rate of sixteen miles a day, the country must be extraordinarily
rugged, or the valleys tortuous. Turner took eight or nine days on
his journey from Phari to Teshoo Loombo, a distance of only eighty
miles; yet he is quoted as an authority for the fact of Tibet being a
plain! he certainly crossed an undulating country, probably 16,000 to
17,000 feet high; a continuation eastwards of the Cholamoo features,
and part of the same mountain range that connects Chumulari and
Donkia: he had always lofty mountains in eight, and rugged ones on
either side, after he had entered the Painomchoo valley. It is a
remarkable and significant fact that Turner never appears to have
seen Chumulari after having passed it, nor Donkia, Kinchinjhow, or
Kinchinjunga at any time.] and Teshoo Loombo. I did not see it, but a
long, stony mountain range above the town is very conspicuous, its
sides presenting an interrupted line of cliffs, resembling the
port-holes of a ship: some fresh-fallen snow lay at the base, but
none at the top, which was probably 18,500 feet high. The banks of
the Arun are thence inhabited at intervals all the way to Tingre,
where it enters Nepal.

Donkia rises to the eastward of the pass, but its top is not visible.
I ascended (over loose rocks) to between 19,000 and 20,000 feet, and
reached vast masses of blue ribboned ice, capping the ridges, but
obtained no further prospect. To the west, the beetling east summit
of Kinchinjhow rises at two miles distance, 3000 to 4000 feet above
the pass. A little south of it, and north of Chango Khang, the view
extends through a gap in the Sebolah range, across the valley of the
Lachen, to Kinchinjunga, distant forty-two miles. The monarch of
mountains looked quite small and low from this point, and it was
difficult to believe it was 10,000 feet more lofty than my position.
I repeatedly looked from it to the high Tibetan mountains in the
extreme north-west distance, and was more than ever struck with the
apparently immense distance, and consequent altitude of the latter:
I put, however, no reliance on such estimates.

To the south the eye wandered down the valley of the Lachoong to the
mountains of the Chola range, which appear so lofty from Dorjiling,
but from here are sunk far below the horizon: on comparing these with
the northern landscape, the wonderful difference between their
respective snow-levels, amounting to fully 5000 feet, was very
apparent. South-east the stupendous snowy amphitheatre formed by the
flank of Donkia was a magnificent spectacle.

This wonderful view forcibly impressed me with the fact, that all
eye-estimates in mountainous countries are utterly fallacious, if not
corrected by study and experience. I had been led to believe that
from Donkia pass the whole country of Tibet sloped away in descending
steppes to the Tsampu, and was more or less of a plain; and could I
have trusted my eyes only, I should have confirmed this assertion so
far as the slope was concerned. When, however, the levelled
theodolite was directed to the distance, the reverse was found to be
the case. Unsnowed and apparently low mountains touched the horizon
line of the telescope; which proves that, if only 37 miles off, they
must, from the dip of the horizon, be at least 1000 feet higher than
the observer's position. The same infallible guide cuts off
mountain-tops and deeply snowed ridges, which to the unaided eye
appear far lower than the point from which they are viewed; but
which, from the quantity of snow on them, must be many thousand feet
higher, and, from the angle they subtend in the instrument, must be
at an immense distance. The want of refraction to lift the horizon,
the astonishing precision of the outlines, and the brilliancy of the
images of mountains reduced by distance to mere specks, are all
circumstances tending to depress them to appearance. The absence of
trees, houses, and familiar objects to assist the eye in the
appreciation of distance, throws back the whole landscape; which,
seen through the rarified atmosphere of 18,500 feet, looks as if
diminished by being surveyed through the wrong end of a telescope.

A few rude cairns were erected on the crest of the pass, covered with
wands, red banners, and votive offerings of rags. I found a fine slab
of slate, inscribed with the Tibetan characters, "Om Mani Padmi hom,"
which Meepo allowed me to take away, as the reward of my exertions.
The ridge is wholly formed of angular blocks of white gneissy
granite, split by frost.* [It was not a proper granite, but a highly
metamorphic felspathic gneiss, with very little mica; being, I
suspect, a gneiss which by metamorphic action was almost remolten
into granite: the lamination was obscure, and marked by faint
undulating lines of mica; it cleaves at all angles, but most
generally along fissures with highly polished undulated black
surfaces. The strike of the same rock near at hand was north-west,
and dip north-east, at various angles.] There was no snow on the pass
itself, but deep drifts and glaciers descended in hollows on the
north side, to 17,000 feet. The rounded northern red shoulder of
Kinchinjhow by Cholamoo lake, apparently 19,000 feet high, was quite
bare, and, as I have said, I ascended Donkia to upwards of 19,000
feet before I found the rocks crusted with ice,* [Snow, transformed
into ice throughout its whole mass: in short, glacial ice in all
physical characters.] and the ground wholly frozen. I assume,
therefore, that 19,000 feet at this spot is not below the mean level
at which all the snow melts that falls on a fair exposure to the
south: this probably coincides with a mean temperature of 20 degrees.
Forty miles further north (in Tibet) the same line is probably at
20,000 feet; for there much less snow falls, and much more melts in
proportion.* [Two secondary considerations materially affecting the
melting of snow, and hence exerting a material influence on the
elevation of the snow-line, appear to me never to have been
sufficiently dwelt upon. Both, however, bear directly upon the great
elevation of the snow-line in Tibet. From the imperfect transmission
of the heating rays of the sun through films of water, which transmit
perfectly the luminous rays, it follows that the direct effects of
the rays, in clear sunshine, are very different at equal elevations
of the moist outer and dry inner Himalaya. Secondly, naked rock and
soil absorb much more heat than surfaces covered with vegetation, and
this heat again radiated is infinitely more rapidly absorbed by snow
(or other white surfaces) than the direct heat of the sun's rays is.
Hence, at equal elevations the ground heats sooner, and the snow is
more exposed to the heat thus radiated in arid Tibet, than in the
wooded and grassed mountains of Sikkim.] From the elevation of about
19,300 feet, which I attained on Donkia, I saw a fine illustration of
that atmospheric phenomenon called the "spectre of the Brocken," my
own shadow being projected on a mass of thin mist that rose above the
tremendous precipices over which I hung. My head was surrounded with
a brilliant circular glory or rainbow.* [Probably caused by spiculae
of ice floating in the atmosphere, the lateral surfaces of which
would then have an uniform inclination of 60 degrees: this, according
to the observations of Mariotte, Venturi, and Fraunhoefer being the
angle necessary for the formation of halos.]

The temperature of the Donkia pass is much higher than might be
anticipated from its great elevation, and from the fact of its being
always bitterly cold to the feelings. This is no doubt due to the
warmth of the ascending currents, and to the heat evolved during the
condensation of their vapours. I took the following observations:--

Sept. 9, 1.30-3.30 p.m.: Temp. 41.8 degrees, D.P. 30.3 degrees,
Difference 11.5 degrees, Tension 0.1876, Humidity 0.665.
Sept. 27 1.15-3.15 p.m.: Temp. 49.2 degrees, D.P. 32.6 degrees,
Difference 16.6 degrees, Tension 0.2037, Humidity 0.560.
Oct. 19, 3.00-3.30 p.m.: Temp. 40.1 degrees, D.P. 25.0 degrees,
Difference 15.1 degrees, Tension 0.1551, Humidity 0.585.

The first and last of these temperatures were respectively 42.3
degrees and 46.4 degrees lower than Calcutta, which, with the proper
deduction for latitude, allows 508 and 460 feet as equivalent to 1
degree Fahr. I left a minimum thermometer on the summit on the 9th of
September, and removed it on the 27th, but it had been lifted and
turned over by the action of the frost and snow on the loose rocks
amongst which I had placed it; the latter appearing to have been
completely shifted. Fortunately, the instrument escaped unhurt, with
the index at 28 degrees.

A violent southerly wind, with a scud of mist, and sometimes snow,
always blew over the pass: but we found shelter on the north face,
where I twice kindled a fire, and boiled my thermometers.* [On the
9th of September the boiling-point was 181.3 degrees, and on the
27th, 181.2 degrees. In both observations, I believe the kettle
communicated a higher temperature to the thermometer than that of the
water, for the elevations deduced are far too low.] On one occasion I
felt the pulses of my party several times during two hours' repose
(without eating); the mean of eight persons was 105 degrees, the
extremes being 92 degrees and 120 degrees, and my own 108 degrees.

One flowering plant ascends to the summit; the alsinaceous one
mentioned at chapter xxi. The Fescue grass, a little fern
(_Woodsia_), and a _Saussurea_* [A pink-flowered woolly _Saussurea,_
and _Delphinium glaciale,_ are two of the most lofty plants; both
being commonly found from 17,500 to 18,000 feet.] ascend very near
the summit, and several lichens grow on the top, as _Cladonia
vermicularis,_ the yellow _Lecidea geographica,_ and the orange
_L. miniata_;* [This is one of the most Arctic, Antarctic, and
universally diffused plants. The other lichens were _Lecidea
atro-alba, oreina, elegans,_ and _chlorophana,_ all alpine European
and Arctic species. At 17,000 feet occur _Lecanora ventosa, physodes,
candelaria, sordida, atra,_ and the beautiful Swiss _L. chrysoleuca,_
also European species.] also some barren mosses. At 18,300 feet, I
found on one stone only a fine Scotch lichen, a species of
_Gyrophora,_ the _"tripe de roche"_ of Arctic voyagers, and the food
of the Canadian hunters; it is also abundant on the Scotch alps.

Before leaving, I took one more long look at the boundless prospect;
and, now that its important details were secured, I had leisure to
reflect on the impression it produced. There is no loftier country on
the globe than that embraced by this view, and no more howling
wilderness; well might the Singtam Soubah and every Tibetan describe
it as the loftiest, coldest, windiest, and most barren country in the
world. Were it buried in everlasting snows, or burnt by a tropical
sun, it might still be as utterly sterile; but with such sterility I
had long been familiar. Here the colourings are those of the fiery
desert or volcanic island, while the climate is that of the poles.
Never, in the course of all my wanderings, had my eye rested on a
scene so dreary and inhospitable. The "cities of the plain" lie sunk
in no more death-like sea than Cholamoo lake, nor are the tombs of
Petra hewn in more desolate cliffs than those which flank the valley
of the Tibetan Arun.

On our return my pony strained his shoulder amongst the rocks; as a
remedy, the Lachoong Phipun plunged a lancet into the muscle, and
giving me his own animal, rode mine down.* [These animals, called
Tanghan, are wonderfully strong and enduring; they are never shod,
and the hoof often cracks, and they become pigeon-toed: they are
frequently blind of one eye, when they are called "zemik" (blind
ones), but this is thought no great defect. They average 5 pounds to
10 pounds for a good animal in Tibet; and the best fetch 40 pounds to
50 pounds in the plains of India, where they become acclimated and
thrive well. Giantchi (Jhansi-jeung of Turner) is the best mart for
them in this part of Tibet, where some breeds fetch very high prices.
The Tibetans give the foals of value messes of pig's blood and raw
liver, which they devour greedily, and it is said to strengthen them
wonderfully; the custom is, I believe, general in central Asia.
Humboldt (Pens. Nar. iv. p. 320) describes the horses of Caraccas as
occasionally eating salt meat.] It drizzled and sleeted all the way,
and was dark before we arrived at the tent.

At night the Tibetan dogs are let loose, when they howl dismally: on
one occasion they robbed me of all my meat, a fine piece of yak's
flesh. The yaks are also troublesome, and bad sleepers; they used to
try to effect an entrance into my tent, pushing their muzzles under
the flaps at the bottom, and awakening me with a snort and moist hot
blast. Before the second night I built a turf wall round the tent;
and in future slept with a heavy tripod by my side, to poke
at intruders.

Birds flock to the grass about Momay; larks, finches, warblers,
abundance of sparrows, feeding on the yak-droppings, and occasionally
the hoopoe; waders, cormorants, and wild ducks were sometimes seen in
the streams, but most of them were migrating south. The yaks are
driven out to pasture at sunrise, and home at sunset, till the middle
of the month, when they return to Yeumtong. All their droppings are
removed from near the tents, and piled in heaps; as these animals,
unlike their masters, will not sleep amid such dirt. These heaps
swarm with the maggots of two large flies, a yellow and black,
affording abundant food to red-legged crows, ravens, and swallows.
Butterflies are rare; the few are mostly _Colias, Hipparchia,
Polyommatus,_ and _Melitaea_; these I have seen feeding at 17,000
feet; when found higher, they have generally been carried up by
currents. Of beetles, an _Aphodeus,_ in yak-droppings, and an
_Elaphrus,_ a predaceous genus inhabiting swamps, are almost the only
ones I saw. The wild quadrupeds are huge sheep, in flocks of fifty,
the _Ovis Ammon_ called "Gnow." I never shot one, not having time to
pursue them for they were very seldom seen, and always at great
elevations. The larger marmot is common, and I found the horns of the
"Tchiru" antelope. Neither the wild horse, fox, hare, nor tailless
rat, cross the Donkia pass. White clover, shepherd's purse, dock,
plantain, and chickweed, are imported here by yaks; but the common
_Prunella_ of Europe is wild, and so is a groundsel like _Senecio
Jacobaea, Ranunculus, Sibbaldia,_ and 200 other plants. The grasses
are numerous; they belong chiefly to _Poa, Festuca, Stipa,_ and other
European genera.

I repeatedly attempted to ascend both Kinchinjhow and Donkia from
Momay, and generally reached from 18,000 to 19,000 feet, but never
much higher.* [An elevation of 20,000 and perhaps 22,000 feet might,
I should think, easily be attained by practice, in Tibet, north of
Sikkim.] The observations taken on these excursions are sufficiently
illustrated by those of Donkia pass: they served chiefly to perfect
my map, measure the surrounding peaks, and determine the elevation
reached by plants; all of which were slow operations, the weather of
this month being so bad that I rarely returned dry to my tent; fog
and drizzle, if not sleet and snow, coming on during every day,
without exception.

I made frequent excursions to the great glacier of Kinchinjhow.
Its valley is about four miles long, broad and flat: Chango-khang*
[The elevation of this mountain is about 20,560 feet, by the mean of
several observations taken from surrounding localities.] rears its
blue and white cliffs 4,500 feet above its west flank, and throws
down avalanches of stones and snow into the valley. Hot springs*
[Supposing the mean temperature of the air at the elevation of the
Momay springs to be 26 degrees or 28 degrees, which may be
approximately assumed, and that, as some suppose, the heat of thermal
springs is due to the internal temperature of the globe; then
according to the law of increment of heat in descending (of 1 degree
for fifty feet) we should find the temperature of 110 degrees at a
depth of 4,100 feet, or at 11,900 feet above the level of the sea.
Direct experiment with internal heat has not, however, been carried
beyond 2000 feet below the surface, and as the ratio of increment
diminishes with the depth, that above assigned to the temperature of
110 degrees is no doubt much too little. The Momay springs more
probably owe their temperature to chemical decomposition of
sulphurets of metals. I found pyrites in Tibet on the north flank of
the mountain Kinchinjhow, in limestones associated with shales.]
burst from the ground near some granite rocks on its floor, about
16,000 feet above the sea, and only a mile below the glacier, and the
water collects in pools: its temperature is 110 degrees, and in
places 116 degrees, or 4 degrees hotter than that of the Yeumtong
hot-springs, though 4000 feet higher, and of precisely the same
character. A _Barbarea_ and some other plants make the neighbourhood
of the hot-springs a little oasis, and the large marmot is common,
uttering its sharp, chirping squeak.

The terminal moraine is about 500 feet high, quite barren, and thrown
obliquely across the valley, from north-east to south-west,
completely hiding the glacier. From its top successive smaller
parallel ridges (indicating the periodic retirements of the glacier)
lead down to the ice, which must have sunk several hundred feet. This
glacier descends from Kinchinjhow, the huge cliff of whose eastern
extremity dips into it. The surface, less than half a mile wide, is
exceedingly undulated, and covered with large pools of water, ninety
feet deep, and beds of snow, and is deeply corroded; gigantic blocks
are perched on pinnacles of ice on its surface, and the gravel cones*
[For a description of this curious phenomenon, which has been
illustrated by Agassiz, see "Forbes's Alps," p. 26 and 347.] are
often twenty feet high. The crevassing so conspicuous on the Swiss
glaciers is not so regular on this, and the surface appears more like
a troubled ocean; due, no doubt, to the copious rain and snow-falls
throughout the summer, and the corroding power of wet fogs.
The substance of the ice is ribboned, dirt-bands are seen from above
to form long loops on some parts, and the lateral moraines, like the
terminal, are high above the surface. These notes, made previous to
reading Professor Forbes's travels in the Alps, sufficiently show
that perpetual snow, whether as ice or glacier, obeys the same laws
in India as in Europe; and I have no remarks to offer on the
structure of glaciers, that are not well illustrated and explained in
the abovementioned admirable work.

Its average slope for a mile above the terminal moraines was less
than 5 degrees, and the height of its surface above the sea 16,500
feet by boiling-point; the thickness of its ice probably 400 feet.
Between the moraine and the west flank of the valley is a large lake,
with terraced banks, whose bottom (covered with fine felspathic silt)
is several hundred feet above that of the valley; it is half a mile
long, and a quarter broad, and fed partly by glaciers of the second
order on Chango-khang and Sebolah, and partly by filtration through
the lateral moraine.

Illustration--GNEISS-BLOCK WITH GRANITE BANDS, ON THE KINCHINJHOW
GLACIER.



CHAPTER XXIII.

Donkia glaciers--Moraines--Dome of ice--Honey-combed surface--
Rocks of Donkia--Metamorphic action of granite veins--Accident to
instruments--Sebolah pass--Bees, and May-flies--View--
Temperature--Pulses of party--Lamas and travellers at Momay--
Weather and climate--Dr. Campbell leaves Dorjiling for Sikkim--
Leave Momay--Yeumtong--Lachoong--Retardation of vegetation at
low elevations--Choongtam--Landslips and debacle--Meet Dr.
Campbell--Motives for his journey--Second visit to Lachen valley
--Autumnal tints--Red currants--Lachen Phipun--Tungu--
Scenery--Animals--Poisonous rhododendrons--Fire-wood--Palung
--Elevations--Sitong--Kongra Lama--Tibetans--Enter Tibet--
Desolate scenery--Plants--Animals--Geology--Cholamoo lakes--
Antelopes--Return to Yeumtso--Dr. Campbell lost--Extreme cold
--Headaches--Tibetan Dingpun and guard--Arms and accoutrements
--Temperature of Yeumtso--Migratory birds--Visit of Dingpun--
Yeumtso lakes.

On the 20th of September I ascended to the great Donkia glaciers,
east of Momay; the valley is much longer than that leading to the
Kinchinjhow glacier, and at 16,000 or 17,000 feet elevation,
containing four marshes or lakes, alternating with as many transverse
moraines that have dammed the river. These moraines seem in some
cases to have been deposited where rocks in the bed of the valley
obstructed the downward progress of the ancient glacier; hence, when
this latter finally retired, it rested at these obstructions, and
accumulated there great deposits, which do not cross the valley, but
project from each side obliquely into it. The rocks _in situ_ on the
floor of the valley are all _moutonneed_ and polished on the top,
sides, and face looking up the valley, but are rugged on that looking
down it: gigantic blocks are poised on some. The lowest of the
ancient moraines completely crosses the river, which finds, its way
between the boulders.

Under the red cliff of Forked Donkia the valley becomes very broad,
bare, and gravelly, with a confusion of moraines, and turns more
northwards. At the angle, the present terminal moraine rises like a
mountain (I assumed it to be about 800 feet high),* [This is the
largest and longest terminal moraine backed by an existing glacier
that I examined with care: I doubt its being so high as the moraine
of the Allalein glacier below the Mat-maark sea in the Sachs valley
(Valais, Switzerland); but it is impossible to compare such objects
from memory: the Donkia one was much the most uniform in height.] and
crosses the valley from N.N.E. to S.S.W. From the summit, which rises
above the level of the glacier, and from which I assume its present
retirement, a most striking scene opened. The ice filling an immense
basin, several miles broad and long, formed a low dome,* [This
convexity of the ice is particularly alluded to by Forbes ("Travels
in the Alps," p.386), as the "renflement" of Rendu and "surface
bombee" of Agassiz, and is attributed to the effects of hydrostatic
pressure tending to press the lower layers of ice upwards to the
surface. My own impression at the time was, that the convexity of the
surface of the Donkia glacier was due to a subjacent mountain spur
running south from Donkia itself. I know, however, far too little of
the topography of this glacier to advance such a conjecture with any
confidence. In this case, as in all similar ones, broad expanses
being covered to an enormous depth with ice, the surface of the
latter must in some degree be modified by the ridges and valleys it
conceals. The typical "surface bombee," which is conspicuous in the
Himalaya glaciers, I was wont (in my ignorance of the mechanical laws
of glaciers) to attribute to the more rapid melting of the edges of
the glacier by the radiated heat of its lateral moraines and of the
flanks of the valley that it occupies.] with Forked Donkia on the
west, and a serried range of rusty-red scarped mountains, 20,000 feet
high on the north and east, separating large tributary glaciers.
Other still loftier tops of Donkia appeared behind these, upwards of
22,000 feet high, but I could not recognise the true summit (23,176
feet). The surface was very rugged, and so deeply honey-combed that
the foot often sank from six to eight inches in crisp wet ice.
I proceeded a mile on it, with much more difficulty than on any Swiss
glacier: this was owing to the elevation, and the corrosion of the
surface into pits and pools of water; the crevasses being but few and
distant. I saw no dirt-bands on looking down upon it from a point I
attained under the red cliff of Forked Donkia, at an elevation of
18,307 feet by barometer, and 18,597 by boiling-point. The weather
was very cold, the thermometer fell from 41 degrees to 34 degrees,
and it snowed heavily after 3 p.m.

The strike of all the rocks (gneiss with granite veins) seemed to be
north-east, and dip north-west 30 degrees. Such also were the strike
and dip on another spur from Donkia, north of this, which I ascended
to 19,000 feet, on the 26th of September: it abutted on the scarped
precipices, 3000 feet high, of that mountain. I had been attracted to
the spot by its bright orange-red colour, which I found to be caused
by peroxide of iron. The highly crystalline nature of the rocks, at
these great elevations, is due to the action of veins of fine-grained
granite, which sometimes alter the gneiss to such an extent that it
appears as if fused into a fine granite, with distinct crystals of
quartz and felspar; the most quartzy layers are then roughly
crystallized into prisms, or their particles are aggregated into
spheres composed of concentric layers of radiating crystals, as is
often seen in agates. The rearrangement of the mineral constituents
by heat goes on here just as in trap, cavities filled with crystals
being formed in rocks exposed to great heat and pressure. Where mica
abounds, it becomes black and metallic; and the aluminous matter is
crystallised in the form of garnets.

Illustration--SUMMIT OF FORKED DONKIA, AND "GOA" ANTELOPES.

At these great heights the weather was never fine for more than an
hour at a time, and a driving sleet followed by thick snow drove me
down on both these occasions. Another time I ascended a third spur
from this great mountain, and was overtaken by a heavy gale and
thunderstorm, the latter is a rare phenomenon: it blew down my tripod
and instruments which I had thought securely Propped with stones, and
the thermometers were broken, but fortunately not the barometer.
On picking up the latter, which lay with its top down the hill, a
large bubble of air appeared, which I passed up and down the tube,
and then allowed to escape; when I heard a rattling of broken glass
in the cistern. Having another barometer* [This barometer (one of
Newman's portable instruments) I have now at Kew: it was compared
with the Royal Society's standard before leaving England; and varied
according to comparisons made with the Calcutta standard 0.012 during
its travels; on leaving Calcutta its error was 0; and on arriving in
England, by the standard of the Royal Society, +.004. I have given in
the Appendix some remarks on the use of these barometers, which
(though they have obvious defects), are less liable to derangement,
far more portable, and stand much heavier shocks than those of any
other construction with which I am familiar.] at my tent, I hastened
to ascertain by comparison whether the instrument which had travelled
with me from England, and taken so many thousand observations, was
seriously damaged: to my delight an error of 0.020 was all I could
detect at Momay and all other lower stations. On my return to
Dorjiling in December, I took it to pieces, and found the lower part
of the bulb of the attached thermometer broken off, and floating on
the mercury. Having quite expected this, I always checked the
observations of the attached thermometer by another, but--how, it is
not easy to say--the broken one invariably gave a correct
temperature.

Illustration--VIEW FROM AN ELEVATION OF 18,000 FEET OF THE EAST TOP
OF KINCHINJHOW, AND OF TIBET, OVER THE RIDGE THAT CONNECTS IT WITH
DONKIA. WILD SHEEP (_OVIS AMMON_) IN THE FOREGROUND.


The Kinchinjhow spurs are not accessible to so great an elevation as
those of Donkia, but they afford finer views over Tibet, across the
ridge connecting Kinchinjow with Donkia.

Broad summits here, as on the opposite side of the valley, are quite
bare of snow at 18,000 feet, though where they project as sloping
hog-backed spurs from the parent mountain, the snows of the latter
roll down on them and form glacial caps, the reverse of glaciers in
valleys, but which overflow, as it were, on all sides of the slopes,
and are ribboned* [The convexity of the curves, however, seems to be
upwards. Such reversed glaciers, ending abruptly on broad stony
shoulders quite free of snow, should on no account be taken as
indicating the lower limit of perpetual snow.] and crevassed.

On the 18th of September I ascended the range which divides the
Lachen from the Lachoong valley, to the Sebolah pass, a very sharp
ridge of gneiss, striking north-west and dipping north-east, which
runs south from Kinchinjhow to Chango-khang. A yak-track led across
the Kinchinjhow glacier, along the bank of the lake, and thence
westward up a very steep spur, on which was much glacial ice and
snow, but few plants above 16,000 feet. At nearly 17,000 feet I
passed two small lakes, on the banks of one of which I found bees, a
May-fly (_Ephemera_) and gnat; the two latter bred on stones in the
water, which (the day being fine) had a temperature of 53 degrees,
while that of the large lake at the glacier, 1000 feet lower, was
only 39 degrees.

The view from the summit commands the whole castellated front of
Kinchinjhow, the sweep of the Donkia cliffs to the east,
Chango-khang's blunt cone of ribbed snow* [This ridging or furrowing
of steep snow-beds is explained at vol. i, chapter x.] over head,
while to the west, across the grassy Palung dunes rise Chomiomo, the
Thlonok mountains, and Kinchinjunga in the distance.* [The latter
bore 241 degrees 30 minutes; it was distant about thirty-four miles,
and subtended an angle of 3 degrees 2 minutes 30 seconds. The rocks
on its north flanks were all black, while those forming the upper
10,000 feet of the south face were white: hence, the top is probably
granite, overlaid by the gneiss on the north.] The Palung plains, now
yellow with withered grass, were the most curious part of the view:
hemmed in by this range which rises 2000 feet above them, and by the
Lachen hills on the east, they appeared a dead level, from which
Kinchinjhow reared its head, like an island from the ocean.* [It is
impossible to contemplate the abrupt flanks of all these lofty
mountains, without contrasting them with the sloping outlines that
prevail in the southern parts of Sikkim. All such precipices are, I
have no doubt, the results of sea action; and all posterior influence
of sub-aerial action, aqueous or glacial, tends to wear these
precipices into slopes, to fill up valleys and to level mountains. Of
all such influences heavy rain-falls and a luxuriant vegetation are
probably the most active; and these features are characteristic of
the lower valleys of Sikkim, which are consequently exposed to very
different conditions of wear and tear from those which prevail on
these loftier rearward ranges.]  The black tents of the Tibetans were
still there, but the flocks were gone. The broad fosse-like valley of
the Chachoo was at my feet, with the river winding along its bottom,
and its flanks dotted with black juniper bushes.

The temperature at this elevation, between 1 and 3 p.m., varied from
38 degrees to 59 degrees; the mean being 46.5 degrees, with the
dew-point 34.6 degrees. The height I made 17,585 feet by barometer,
and 17,517 by boiling-point. I tried the pulses of eight, persons
after two hours' rest; they varied from 80 to 112, my own being 104.
As usual at these heights, all the party were suffering from
giddiness and headaches.

Throughout September various parties passed my tent at Momay,
generally Lamas or traders: the former, wrapped in blankets, wearing
scarlet and gilt mitres, usually rode grunting yaks, which were
sometimes led by a slave-boy or a mahogany-faced nun, with a broad
yellow sheep-skin cap with flaps over her ears, short petticoats, and
striped boots. The domestic utensils, pots, pans, and bamboos of
butter, tea-churn, bellows, stools, books, and sacred implements,
usually hung rattling on all sides of his holiness, and a sumpter yak
carried the tents and mats for sleeping. On several occasions large
parties of traders, with thirty or forty yaks* [About 600 loaded yaks
are said to cross the Donkia pass annually.] laden with planks,
passed, and occasionally a shepherd with Tibet sheep, goats, and
ponies. I questioned many of these travellers about the courses of
the Tibetan rivers; they all agreed* [One lad only, declared that the
Kambajong river flowed north-west to Dobtah and Sarrh, and thence
turned north to the Yaru; but all Campbell's itineraries, as well as
mine, make the Dobtah lake drain into the Chomachoo, north of
Wallanchoon; which latter river the Nepalese also affirm flows into
Nepal, as the Arun. The Lachen and Lachoong Phipuns both insisted on
this, naming to me the principal towns on the way south-west from
Kambajong along the river to Tingri Maidan, _via_ Tashirukpa Chait,
which is north of Wallanchoon pass.] in stating the Kambajong or
Chomachoo liver, north of the Lachen, to be the Arun of Nepal, and
that it rose near the Ramchoo lake (of Turner's route). The lake
itself discharges either into the Arun, or into the Painomchoo
(flowing to the Yaru); but this point I could never satisfactorily
ascertain.

The weather at Momay, during September, was generally bad after 11
a.m.: little snow or rain fell, but thin mists and drizzle prevailed;
less than one inch and a half of rain was collected, though upwards
of eleven fell at Calcutta, and rather more at Dorjiling.
The mornings were sometimes fine, cold, and sunny, with a north wind
which had blown down the valley all night, and till 9 a.m., when the
south-east wind, with fog, came on. Throughout the day a north
current blew above the southern; and when the mist was thin; the air
sparkled with spiculae of snow, caused by the cold dry upper current
condensing the vapours of the lower. This southern current passes
over the tops of the loftiest mountains, ascending to 24,000 feet,
and discharging frequent showers in Tibet, as far north as Jigatzi,
where, however, violent dry easterly gales are the most prevalent.

The equinoctial gales set in on the 21st, with a falling barometer,
and sleet at night; on the 23rd and 24th it snowed heavily, and being
unable to light a fire at the entrance of my tent, I spent two
wretched days, taking observations; on the 25th it cleared, and the
snow soon melted. Frosty nights succeeded, but the thermometer only
fell to 31 degrees once during the month, and the maximum once rose
to 62.5 degrees. The mean temperature from the 9th to the 30th
September was 41.6 degrees,* [The result of fifty-six comparative
observations between Calcutta and Momay, give 40.6 degrees
difference, which, after corrections, allows 1 degree Fahr. for every
438 feet of ascent.] which coincided with that of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.;
the mean maximum, 52.2 degrees, minimum, 34.7 degrees, and consequent
range, 17.5 degrees.* [At Dorjiling the September range is only 9.5
degrees; and at Calcutta 10 degrees.] On seven nights the radiating
thermometer fell much below the temperature of the air, the mean
being 10.5 degrees and maximum 14.2 degrees; and on seven mornings
the sun heated the black-bulb thermometer considerably, on the mean
to 62.6 degrees above the air; maximum 75.2 degrees, and minimum, 43
degrees. The greatest heat of the day occurred at noon: the most
rapid rise of temperature (5 degrees) between 8 and 9 a.m., and the
greatest fall (5.5 degrees), between 3 and 4 p.m. A sunk thermometer
fell from 52.5 degrees to 51.5 degrees between the 11th and 14th,
when I was obliged to remove the thermometer owing to the accident
mentioned above. The mercury in the barometer rose and fell
contemporaneously with that at Calcutta and Dorjiling, but the amount
of tide was considerably less, and, as is usual during the
equinoctial month, on some days it scarcely moved, whilst on others
it rose and fell rapidly. The tide amounted to 0.062 of an inch.

On the 28th of the month the Singtam Soubah came up from Yeumtong, to
request leave to depart for his home, on account of his wife's
illness; and to inform me that Dr. Campbell had left Dorjiling,
accompanied (in compliance with the Rajah's orders) by the Tchebu
Lama. I therefore left Momay on the 30th, to meet him at Choongtam,
arriving at Yeumtong the same night, amid heavy rain and sleet.

Autumnal tints reigned at Yeumtong, and the flowers had disappeared
from its heath-like flat; a small eatable cherry with a wrinkled
stone was ripe, and acceptable in a country so destitute of fruit.*
[The absence of _Vaccinia_ (whortleberries and cranberries) and
eatable _Rubi_ (brambles) in the alpine regions of the Himalaya is
very remarkable, and they are not replaced by any substitute.
With regard to Vaccinium, this is the more anomalous, as several
species grow in the temperate regions of Sikkim.] Thence I descended
to Lachoong, on the 1st of October, again through heavy rain, the
snow lying on the Tunkra mountain at 14,000 feet. The larch was
shedding its leaves, which turn red before they fall; but the annual
vegetation was much behind that at 14,000 feet, and so many late
flowerers, such as _Umbelliferae_ and _Compositae,_ had come into
blossom, that the place still looked gay and green: the blue climbing
gentian (_Crawfurdia_) now adorned the bushes; this plant would be a
great acquisition in English gardens. A _Polygonum_ still in flower
here, was in ripe fruit near Momay, 6000 feet higher up the valley.

On the following day I made a long and very fatiguing march to
Choongtam, but the coolies were not all able to accomplish it.
The backwardness of the flora in descending was even more conspicuous
than on the previous day: the jungles, at 7000 feet, being gay with a
handsome Cucurbitaceous plant. Crossing the Lachoong cane-bridge, I
paid the tribute of a sigh to the memory of my poor dog, and reached
my old camping-ground at Choongtam by 10 p.m., having been marching
rapidly for twelve hours. My bed and tent came up two hours later,
and not before the leeches and mosquitos had taxed me severely.
On the 4th of October I heard the nightingale for the first time
this season.

Expecting Dr. Campbell on the following morning, I proceeded down the
river to meet him: the whole valley was buried under a torrent or
debacle of mud, shingle, and boulders, and for half a mile the stream
was dammed up into a deep lake. Amongst the gneiss and granite
boulders brought down by this debacle, I collected some actinolites;
but all minerals are extremely rare in Sikkim and I never heard of a
gem or crystal of any size or beauty, or of an ore of any
consequence, being found in this country.

I met my friend on the other side of the mud torrent, and I was truly
rejoiced to see him, though he was looking much the worse for his
trying journey through the hot valleys at this season; in fact, I
know no greater trial of the constitution than the exposure and hard
exercise that is necessary in traversing these valleys, below 5000
feet, in the rainy season: delay is dangerous, and the heat, anxiety,
and bodily suffering from fatigue, insects, and bruises, banish
sleep, and urge the restless traveller onward to higher and more
healthy regions. Dr. Campbell had, I found, in addition to the
ordinary dangers of such a journey, met with an accident which might
have proved serious; his pony having been dashed to pieces by falling
over a precipice, a fate he barely escaped himself, by adroitly
slipping from the saddle when he felt the animal's foot giving way.

On our way back to Choongtam, he detailed to me the motives that had
led to his obtaining the authority of the Deputy-Governor of Bengal
(Lord Dalhousie being absent) for his visiting Sikkim. Foremost, was
his earnest desire to cultivate a better understanding with the Rajah
and his officers. He had always taken the Rajah's part, from a
conviction that he was not to blame for the misunderstandings which
the Sikkim officers pretended to exist between their country and
Dorjiling; he had, whilst urgently remonstrating with the Rajah,
insisted on forbearance on my part, and had long exercised it
himself. In detailing the treatment to which I was subjected, I had
not hesitated to express my opinion that the Rajah was more
compromised by it than his Dewan: Dr. Campbell, on the contrary, knew
that the Dewan was the head and front of the whole system of
annoyance. In one point of view it mattered little who was in the
right; but the transaction was a violation of good faith on the part
of the Sikkim government towards the British, for which the Rajah,
however helpless, was yet responsible. To act upon my representations
alone would have been unjust, and no course remained but for Dr.
Campbell to inquire personally into the matter. The authority to do
this gave him also the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the
country which we were bound to protect, as well by our interest as by
treaty, but from which we were so jealously excluded, that should any
contingency occur, we were ignorant of what steps to take for
defence, and, indeed, of what we should have to defend.

On the 6th of October we left Choongtam for my second visit to the
Kongra Lama pass, hoping to get round by the Cholamoo lakes and the
Donkia pass. As the country beyond the frontier was uninhabited, the
Tchebu Lama saw no difficulty in this, provided the Lachen Phipun and
the Tibetans did not object. Our great obstacle was the Singtam
Soubah, who (by the Rajah's order) accompanied us to clear the road,
and give us every facility, but who was very sulky, and undisguisedly
rude to Campbell; he was in fact extremely jealous of the Lama, who
held higher authority than he did, and who alone had the Rajah's
confidence.

Our first day's march was of about ten miles to one of the
river-flats, which was covered with wild apple-trees, whose fruit,
when stewed with sugar, we found palatable. The Lachen river, though
still swollen, was comparatively clear; the rains usually ceasing, or
at least moderating, in October: its water was about 5 degrees colder
than in the beginning of August.

During the second day's march we were stopped at the Taktoong river
by the want of a bridge, which the Singtam Soubah refused to exert
himself to have repaired; its waters were, however, so fallen, that
our now large party soon bridged it with admirable skill. We encamped
the second night on Chateng, and the following day made a long march,
crossing the Zemu, and ascending half-way to Tallum Samdong.
The alpine foliage was rapidly changing colour; and that of the
berberry turning scarlet, gave a warm glow to the mountain above the
forest. Lamteng village was deserted: turnips were maturing near the
houses, and buckwheat on the slope behind; the latter is a
winter-crop at lower elevations, and harvested in April. At Zemu
Samdong the willow-leaves were becoming sear and yellow, and the
rose-bushes bore enormous scarlet hips, two inches long, and covered
with bristles; they were sweet, and rather good eating. Near Tungu
(where we arrived on the 9th) the great Sikkim currant was in fruit;
its berries are much larger than the English, and of the same
beautiful red colour, but bitter and very acid; they are, however,
eaten by the Tibetans, who call them "Kewdemah."

Near the village I found Dr. Campbell remonstrating with the Lachen
Phipun on the delays and rude treatment I had received in June and
July: the man, of course, answered every question with falsehoods,
which is the custom of these people, and produced the Rajah's orders
for my being treated with every civility, as a proof that he must
have behaved as he ought! The Singtam Soubah, as was natural, hung
back, for it was owing to him alone that the orders had been
contravened, and the Phipun appealed to the bystanders for the truth
of this.

The Phipun (accompanied by his Larpun or subordinate officer) had
prepared for us a sumptuous refreshment of tea soup, which was
brewing by the road, and in which all animosities were soon washed
away. We took up our abode at Tungu in a wooden but under the great
rock, where we were detained for several days by bad weather. I was
assured that during all August and September the weather had been
uniformly gloomy, as at Momay, though little rain had fallen.

We had much difficulty in purchasing a sufficient number of blankets*
[These were made of goat's wool, teazed into a satiny surface by
little teazle-like brushes of bamboo.] for our people, and in
arranging for our journey, to which the Lachen Phipun was favourable,
promising us ponies for the expedition. The vegetation around was
wholly changed since my July visit: the rhododendron scrub was
verdigris-green from the young leaves which burst in autumn, and
expose at the end of each branchlet a flower-bud covered with
resinous scales, which are thrown off in the following spring.
The jungle was spotted yellow with the withered birch, maple and
mountain-ash, and scarlet with berberry bushes; while above, the
pastures were yellow-brown with the dead grass, and streaked
with snow.

Amongst other luxuries, we procured the flesh of yak calves, which is
excellent veal: we always returned the foot for the mother to lick
while being milked, without which she yields nothing. The yak goes
nine months with calf, and drops one every two years, bearing
altogether ten or twelve: the common Sikkim cow of lower elevations,
at Dorjiling invariably goes from nine and a half to ten months, and
calves annually: ponies go eleven months, and foal nearly every year.
In Tibet the sheep are annually sheared; the ewes drop their young in
spring and autumn, but the lambs born at the latter period often die
of cold and starvation, and double lambing is unknown; whereas, in
the plains of Bengal (where, however, sheep cannot be said to thrive
without pulse fodder) twins are constantly born. At Dorjiling the
sheep drop a lamb once in the season. The Tibetan mutton we generally
found dry and stringy.

In these regions many of my goats and kids had died foaming at the
mouth and grinding their teeth; and I here discovered the cause to
arise from their eating the leaves of _Rhododendron cinnabarinum_*
[The poisonous honey produced by other species is alluded to at
vol. i., chapter ix. An _Andromeda_ and a _Gualtheria,_ I have been
assured are equally deleterious.] ("Kema Kechoong," Lepcha: Kema
signifying Rhododendron): this species alone is said to be poisonous;
and when used as fuel, it causes the face to swell and the eyes to
inflame; of which I observed several instances. As the subject of
fire-wood is of every-day interest to the traveller in these regions,
I may here mention that the rhododendron woods afford poor fires;
juniper burns the brightest, and with least smoke. _Abies Webbiana,_
though emitting much smoke, gives a cheerful fire, far superior to
larch,* [The larch of northern Asia (_Larix Europoea_) is said to
produce a pungent smoke, which I never observed to be the case with
the Sikkim species.] spruce, or _Abies Brunoniana._ At Dorjiling, oak
is the common fuel; alder is also good. Chestnut is invariably used
for blacksmith's charcoal. Magnolia has a disagreeable odour, and
laurel burns very badly.

The phenomenon of phosphorescence is most conspicuous on stacks of
fire-wood. At Dorjiling, during the damp, warm, summer months (May to
October), at elevations of 5000 to 8000 feet, it may be witnessed
every night by penetrating a few yards into the forest--at least it
was so in 1848 and 1849; and during my stay there billets of decayed
wood were repeatedly sent to me by residents, with inquiries as to
the cause of their luminosity. It is no exaggeration to say that one
does not need to move from the fireside to see this phenomenon, for
if there is a partially decayed log amongst the fire-wood, it is
almost sure to glow with a pale phosphoric light. A stack of
fire-wood, collected near my host's (Mr. Hodgson) cottage, presented
a beautiful spectacle for two months (in July and August), and on
passing it at night, I had to quiet my pony, who was always alarmed
by it. The phenomenon invariably accompanies decay, and is common on
oak, laurel (_Tetranthera_), birch, and probably other timbers; it
equally appears on cut wood and on stumps, but is most frequent on
branches lying close to the ground in the wet forests. I have reason
to believe that it spreads with great rapidity from old surfaces to
freshly cut ones. That it is a vital phenomenon, and due to the
mycelium of a fungus, I do not in the least doubt, for I have
observed it occasionally circumscribed by those black lines which are
often seen to bound mycelia on dead wood, and to precede a more rapid
decay. I have often tried, but always in vain, to coax these mycelia
into developing some fungus, by placing them in damp rooms, etc.
When camping in the mountains, I frequently caused the natives to
bring  phosphorescent wood into my tent, for the pleasure of watching
its soft undulating light, which appears to pale and glow with every
motion of the atmosphere; but except in this difference of intensity,
it presents no change in appearance night after night. Alcohol, heat,
and dryness soon dissipate it; electricity I never tried. It has no
odour, and my dog, who had a fine sense of smell, paid no heed when
it was laid under his nose.* [As far as my observations go, this
phenomenon of light is confined to the lower orders of vegetable
life, to the fungi alone, and is not dependent on irritability.
I have never seen luminous flowers or roots, nor do I know of any
authenticated instance of such, which may not be explained by the
presence of mycelium or of animal life. In the animal kingdom,
luminosity is confined, I believe, to the Invertebrata, and is
especially common amongst the Radiata and Mollusca; it is also
frequent in the Entromostracous Crustacea, and in various genera of
most orders of insects. In all these, even in the Sertulariae, I have
invariably observed the light to be increased by irritation, in which
respect the luminosity of animal life differs from that of
vegetable.]

The weather continuing bad, and snow falling, the country people
began to leave for their winter-quarters at Lamteng. In the evenings
we enjoyed the company of the Phipun and Tchebu Lama, who relished a
cup of sugarless tea more than any other refreshment we could offer.
From them we collected much Tibetan information:--the former was an
inveterate smoker, using a pale, mild tobacco, mixed largely with
leaves of the small wild Tibetan Rhubarb, called "Chula." Snuff is
little used, and is principally procured from the plains of India.

We visited Palung twice, chiefly in hopes that Dr. Campbell might see
the magnificent prospect of Kinchinjhow from its plains: the first
time we gained little beyond a ducking, but on the second (October
the 15th) the view was superb; and I likewise caught a glimpse of
Kinchinjunga from the neighbouring heights, bearing south 60 degrees
west and distant forty miles. I also measured barometrically the
elevation at the great chait on the plains, and found it 15,620 feet,
and by carefully boiled thermometers, 15,283, on the 13th October,
and 15,566 on the 15th: the difference being due to the higher
temperature on the latter day, and to a rise of 0.3 degree on both
boiling-point thermometers above what the same instruments stood at
on the 13th. The elevation of Tungu from the October barometrical
observations was only seven feet higher than that given by those of
July; the respective heights being 12,766 feet in July, and 12,773 in
October.* [The elevation of Tungu by boiling-point was 12,650 feet by
a set of July observations, 12,818 by a set taken on the 11th of
October, and 12,544 by a set on the 14th of October: the
discrepancies were partly due to the temperature corrections, but
mainly to the readings of the thermometers, which were--
July 28, sunset 189.5, air 47.3 degrees, elev. 12,650
Oct. 11, noon   189.5, air 37.6 degrees, elev. 12,818
Oct. 14, sunset 190.1, air 45.3 degrees, elev. 12,544]
The mean temperature had fallen from 50 degrees in July to 41
degrees, and that of the sunk thermometer from 57 degrees to 51.4
degrees. The mean range in July was 23.3 degrees, and in October 13.8
degrees; the weather during the latter period being, however,
uniformly cold and misty, this was much below the mean monthly range,
which probably exceeds 30 degrees. Much more rain fell in October at
Tungu than at Dorjiling, which is the opposite to what occurs during
the rainy season.

_October 15th._ Having sent the coolies forward, with instructions to
halt and camp on this side of the Kongra Lama pass, we followed them,
taking the route by Palung, and thence over the hills to the Lachen,
to the east of which we descended, and further up its valley joined
the advanced party in a rocky glen, called Sitong, an advantageous
camping ground, from being sheltered by rocks which ward off the keen
blasts: its elevation is 15,370 feet above the sea, and the
magnificent west cliff of Kinchinjhow towers over it not a mile
distant, bearing due east, and subtending an angle of 24.3 degrees.
The afternoon was misty, but at 7 p.m. the south-east wind fell, and
was immediately succeeded by the biting north return current, which
dispelled the fog: hoar-frost sparkled on the ground, and the moon
shone full on the snowy head of Kinchinjhow, over which the milky-way
and the broad flashing orbs of the stars formed a jewelled diadem.
The night was very windy and cold, though the thermometer fell no
lower than 22 degrees, that placed in a polished parabolic reflector
to 20 degrees, and another laid on herbage to 17.5 degrees.

On the 16th we were up early. I felt very anxious about the prospect
of our getting round by Donkia pass and Cholamoo, which would enable
me to complete the few remaining miles of my long survey of the
Teesta river, and which promised immense results in the views I
should obtain of the country, and of the geology and botany of these
lofty snowless regions. Campbell, though extremely solicitous to
obtain permission from the Tibetan guard, (who were waiting for us on
the frontier), was nevertheless bound by his own official position to
yield at once to their wishes, should they refuse us a passage.

The sun rose on our camp at 7.30 a.m., when the north wind fell; and
within an hour afterwards the temperature had risen to 45 degrees.
Having had our sticks* [It was an invariable custom of our Lepcha and
Tibetan attendants, to warm the handles of our sticks in cold
weather, before starting on our daily marches. This is one of many
little instances I could adduce, of their thoughtfulness and
attention to the smallest comforts of the stranger and wanderer in
their lands.] warmed and handed to us, we started on ponies,
accompanied by the Lama only, to hold a parley with the Tibetans;
ordering the rest of the party to follow at their leisure. We had not
proceeded far when we were joined by two Tibetan Sepoys, who, on our
reaching the pass, bellowed lustily for their companions; when
Campbell and the Lama drew up at the chait of Kongra Lama, and
announced his wish to confer with their commandant.

My anxiety was now wound up to a pitch; I saw men with matchlocks
emerging from amongst the rocks under Chomiomo, and despairing of
permission being obtained, I goaded my pony with heels and stick, and
dashed on up the Lachen valley, resolved to make the best of a
splendid day, and not turn back till I had followed the river to the
Cholamoo lakes: The Sepoys followed me a few paces, but running being
difficult at 16,000 feet, they soon gave up the chase.

A few miles ride in a north-east direction over an open, undulating
country, brought me to the Lachen, flowing westwards in a broad,
open, stony valley, bounded by Kinchinjhow on the south, (its face
being as precipitous as that on the opposite side), and on the north
by the Peukathlo, a low range of rocky, sloping mountains, of which
the summits were 18,000 to 19,000 feet above the sea. Enormous
erratic blocks of gneiss strewed the ground, which was sandy or
gravelly, and cut into terraces along the shallow, winding river, the
green and sparkling waters of which rippled over pebbles, or expanded
into lagoons. The already scanty vegetation diminished rapidly: it
consisted chiefly of scattered bushes of a dwarf scrubby honeysuckle
and tufts of nettle, both so brittle as to be trodden into powder,
and the short leafless twiggy _Ephedra,_ a few inches higher.
The most alpine rhododendron (_R. nivale_) spread its small rigid
branches close to the ground; the hemispherical _Arenaria,_ another
type of sterility, rose here and there, and tufts of _Myosotis,
Artemisia, Astragali,_ and _Adrosace,_ formed flat cushions level
with the soil. Grass was very scarce, but a running wiry sedge
(_Carex Moorcroftii_) bound the sand, like the _Carex arenaria_ of
our English coasts.

A more dismally barren country cannot well be conceived, nor one more
strongly contrasting with the pastures of Palung at an equal
elevation. The long lofty wall of Kinchinjhow and Donkia presents an
effectual barrier to the transmission of moisture to the head of the
Lachen valley, which therefore becomes a type of such elevations in
Tibet. As I proceeded, the ground became still more sandy, chirping
under the pony's feet; and where harder, it was burrowed by
innumerable marmots, foxes, and the "Goomchen," or tail-less rat
(_Lagomys badius_), sounding hollow to the tread, and at last
becoming so dangerous that I was obliged to dismount and walk.

The geological features changed as rapidly as those of the climate
and vegetation, for the strike of the rocks being north-west, and the
dip north-east, I was rising over the strata that overlie the gneiss.
The upper part of Kinchinjhow is composed of bold ice-capped cliffs
of gneiss; but the long spurs that stretch northwards from it are of
quartz, conglomerates, slates, and earthy red clays, forming the
rounded terraced hills I had seen from Donkia pass. Between these
spurs were narrow valleys, at whose mouths stupendous blocks of
gneiss rest on rocks of a much later geological formation.

Opposite the most prominent of these spurs the river (16,800 feet
above the sea) runs west, forming marshes, which were full of
_Zannichellia palustris_ and _Ranunculus aquatilis,_ both English and
Siberian plants: the waters contained many shells, of a species of
_Lymnaea_;* [This is the most alpine living shell in the world; my
specimens being from nearly 17,000 feet elevation; it is the _Lymnaea
Hookeri,_ Reeve ("Proceedings of the Zoological Society," No. 204).]
and the soil near the edge, which was covered with tufts of short
grass, was whitened with effloresced carbonate of soda. Here were
some square stone enclosures two feet high, used as pens, and for
pitching tents in; within them I gathered some unripe barley.

Beyond this I recognised a hill of which I had taken bearings from
Donkia pass, and a few miles further, on rounding a great spur of
Kinchinjunga, I arrived in sight of Cholamoo lakes, with the Donkia
mountain rearing its stupendous precipices of rock and ice on the
east. My pony was knocked up, and I felt very giddy from the exertion
and elevation; I had broken his bridle, and so led him on by my plaid
for the last few miles to the banks of the lake; and there, with the
pleasant sound of the waters rippling at my feet, I yielded for a few
moments to those emotions of gratified ambition which, being
unalloyed by selfish considerations for the future; become springs of
happiness during the remainder of one's life.

The landscape about Cholamoo lakes was simple in its elements, stern
and solemn; and though my solitary situation rendered it doubly
impressive to me, I doubt whether the world contains any scene with
more sublime associations than this calm sheet of water, 17,000 feet
above the sea, with the shadows of mountains 22,000 to 24,000 feet
high, sleeping on its bosom.

There was much short grass about the lake, on which large antelopes,
"Chiru" (_Antilope Hodgsoni_),* [I found the horns of this animal on
the south side of the Donkia pass, but I never saw a live one except
in Tibet. The _Procapra_ is described by Mr. Hodgson, "Bengal As.
Soc. Jour., 1846, p. 388," and is introduced into the cut in this
chapter.] and deer, "Goa" (_Procapra picticaudata,_ Hodgson), were
feeding. There were also many slate-coloured hales with white rumps
(_Lepus oiostolus_), with marmots and tail-less rats. The abundance
of animal life was wonderful, compared with the want of it on the
south side of Donkia pass, not five miles distant in a straight line!
it is partly due to the profusion of carbonate of soda, of which all
ruminants are fond, and partly to the dryness of the climate, which
is favourable to all burrowing quadrupeds. A flock of common English
teal were swimming in the lake, the temperature of  which was
55 degrees.

Illustration--ANTELOPE'S HEAD.* [The accompanying figures of the
heads of the Chiru (_Antilope Hodgsoni_), were sketched by Lieut.
Maxwell (of the Bengal Artillery), from a pair brought to Dorjiling;
it is the so-called unicorn of Tibet, and of MM. Huc and Gabet's
narrative,--a name which the profile no doubt suggested.]

I had come about fifteen miles from the pass, and arrived at 1 p.m.,
remaining half an hour. I could not form an idea as to whether
Campbell had followed or not, and began to speculate on the
probability of passing the night in the open air, by the warm side of
my steed. Though the sun shone brightly, the wind was bitterly cold,
and I arrived at the stone dykes of Yeumtso at 3 p.m., quite
exhausted with fatigue and headache. I there found, to my great
relief, the Tchebu Lama and Lachen Phipun: they were in some alarm at
my absence, for they thought I was not aware of the extreme severity
of the temperature on the north side of the snows, or of the risk of
losing my way; they told me that after a long discourse with the
Dingpun (or commander) of the Tibetan Sepoys, the latter had allowed
all the party to pass; that the Sepoys had brought on the coolies,
who were close behind, but that they themselves had seen nothing of
Campbell; of whom the Lama then went in search.

The sun set behind Chomiomo at 5 p.m., and the wind at once dropped,
so local are these violent atmospheric currents, which are caused by
the heating of the upper extremities of these lofty valleys, and
consequent rarefaction of the air. Intense terrestrial radiation
immediately follows the withdrawal of the sun's rays, and the
temperature sinks rapidly.

Soon after sunset the Lama returned, bringing Campbell; who, having
mistaken some glacier-fed lakes at the back of Kinchinjhow for those
of Cholamoo, was looking for me. He too had speculated on having to
pass the night under a rock, with one plaid for himself and servant;
in which case I am sure they would both have been frozen to death,
having no pony to lie down beside. He told me that after I had
quitted Kongra Lama, leaving him with the Tchebu Lama and Phipun, the
Dingpun and twenty men came up, and very civilly but formally forbade
their crossing the frontier; but that upon explaining his motives,
and representing that it would save him ten days' journey, the
Dingpun had relented, and promised to conduct the whole party to the
Donkia pass.

We pitched our little tent in the corner of the cattle-pen, and our
coolies soon afterwards came up; mine were in capital health, though
suffering from headaches, but Campbell's were in a distressing state
of illness and fatigue, with swollen faces and rapid pulses, and some
were insensible from symptoms like pressure on the brain;* [I have
never experienced bleeding at the nose, ears, lips or eyelids, either
in my person or that of my companions, on these occasions; nor did I
ever meet with a recent traveller who has. Dr. Thomson has made the
same remark, and when in Switzerland together we were assured by
Auguste Balmat, Francois Coutet, and other experienced Mont Blanc
guides, that they never witnessed these symptoms nor the blackness of
the sky, so frequently insisted upon by alpine travellers.] these
were chiefly Ghorkas (Nepalese). The Tibetan Dingpun and his guard
arrived last of all, he was a droll little object, short, fat, deeply
marked with small-pox, swarthy, and greasy; he was robed in a green
woollen mantle, and was perched on the back of a yak, which also
carried his bedding, and cooking utensils, the latter rattling about
its flanks, horns, neck, and every point of support: two other yaks
bore the tents of the party. His followers were tall savage looking
fellows, with broad swarthy faces, and their hair in short pig-tails.
They wore the long-sleeved cloak, short trousers, and boots, all of
thick woollen, and felt caps on their heads. Each was armed with a
long matchlock slung over his back, with a moveable rest having two
prongs like a fork, and a hinge, so as to fold up along the barrel,
when the prongs project behind the shoulders like antelope horns,
giving the uncouth warrior a droll appearance. A dozen cartridges,
each in an iron case, were slung round the waist, and they also wore
the long knife, flint, steel, and iron tobacco-pipe, pouch, and
purse, suspended to a leathern girdle.

The night was fine, but intensely cold, and the vault of heaven was
very dark, and blazing with stars; the sir was electrical, and flash
lightning illumined the sky; this was the reflection of a storm that
was not felt at Dorjiling, but which raged on the plains of India,
beyond the Terai, fully 120 miles, and perhaps 150, south of our
position. No thunder was heard. The thermometer fell to 5 degrees,
and that in the reflector to 3.5 degrees; at sunrise it rose to 10
degrees, and soon after 8 a.m. to 33 degrees; till this hour the
humidity was great, and a thin mist hung over the frozen surface of
the rocky ground; when this dispersed, the air became very dry, and
the black-bulb thermometer in the sun rose 60 degrees above the
temperature in the shade. The light of the sun, though sometimes
intercepted by vapours aloft, was very brilliant.* [My black glass
photometer shut out the sun's disc at 10.509 inches, from the mean of
four sets of observations taken between 7 and 10 a.m.]

This being the migrating season, swallows flitted through the air;
finches, larches, and sparrows were hopping over the sterile soil,
seeking food, though it was difficult to say what. The geese* [An
enormous quantity of water-fowl breed in Tibet, including many Indian
species that migrate no further north. The natives collect their eggs
for the markets at Jigatzi, Giantchi, and Lhassa, along the banks of
the Yarn river, Ramchoo, and Yarbru and Dochen lakes. Amongst other
birds the Sara, or great crane of India (see "Turner's Tibet,"
p. 212), repairs to these enormous elevations to breed. The fact of
birds characteristic of the tropics dwelling for months in such
climates is a very instructive one, and should be borne in mind in
our speculations upon the climate supposed to be indicated by the
imbedded bones of birds.] which had roosted by the river, cackled;
the wild ducks quacked and plumed themselves; ouzels and waders
screamed or chirped; and all rejoiced as they prepared themselves for
the last flight of the year, to the valleys of the southern Himalaya,
to the Teesta, and other rivers of the Terai and plains of India.

The Dingpun paid his respects to us in the morning, wearing, besides
his green cloak, a white cap with a green glass button, denoting his
rank; he informed us that he had written to his superior officer at
Kambajong, explaining his motives for conducting us across the
frontier, and he drew from his breast a long letter, written on
_Daphne_* [Most of the paper used in Tibet is, as I have elsewhere
noticed, made from the bark of various species of _Daphneae,_ and
especially of _Edgeworthia Gardneri,_ and is imported from Nepal and
Bhotan; but the Tibetans, as MM. Huc and Gabet correctly state,
manufacture a paper from the root of a small shrub: this I have seen,
and it is of a much thicker texture and more durable than Daphne
paper. Dr. Thomson informs me that a species of _Astragalus_ is used
in western Tibet for this purpose, the whole shrub, which is dwarf,
being reduced to pulp.] paper, whose ends were tied with floss silk,
with a large red seal; this he pompously delivered, with whispered
orders, to an attendant, and sent him off. He admired our clothes
extremely,* [All Tibetans admire sad value English broad-cloth beyond
any of our products. Woollen articles are very familiar to them, and
warm clothing is one of the first requisites of life.] and then my
percussion gun, the first he had seen; but above all he admired rum
and water, which he drank with intense relish, leaving a mere sip for
his comrades at the bottom of his little wooden cup, which they
emptied, and afterwards licked clean, and replaced in his breast for
him. We made a large basin full of very weak grog for his party, who
were all friendly and polite; and having made us the unexpected offer
of allowing us to rest ourselves for the day at Yeumtso, he left us,
and practised his men at firing at a mark, but they were very
indifferent shots.

I ascended with Campbell to the lake he had visited on the previous
day, about 600 or 800 feet above Yeumtso, and 17,500 feet above the
sea: it is a mile and a half long, and occupies a large depression
between two rounded spurs, being fed by glaciers from Kinchinjhow.
The rocks of these spurs were all of red quartz and slates, cut into
broad terraces, covered with a thick glacial talus of gneiss and
granite in angular pebbles, and evidently spread over the surface
when the glacier, now occupying the upper end of the lake, extended
over the valley.

The ice on the cliffs and summit of Kinchinjhow was much greener and
clearer than that on the south face (opposite Palung); and rows of
immense icicles hung from the cliffs. A conferva grew in the waters
of the lake, and short, hard tufts of sedge on the banks, but no
other plants were to be seen. Brahminee geese, teal, and widgeon,
were swimming in the waters, and a beetle (_Elaphrus_) was coursing
over the wet banks; finches and other small birds were numerous,
eating the sedge-seeds, and picking up the insects. No view was
obtained to the north, owing to the height of the mountains on the
north flank of the Lachen.

At noon the temperature rose to 52.5 degrees, and the black-bulb to
104.5 degrees; whilst the north-west dusty wind was so dry, that the
dew-point fell to 24.2 degrees.


CHAPTER XXIV.

Ascent of Bhomtso--View of snowy mountains--Chumulari--Arun
river--Kiang-lah mountains--Jigatzi--Lhama--Dingcham province
of Tibet--Misapplication of term "Plain of Tibet"--Sheep, flocks
of--Crops--Probable elevation of Jigatzi--Yarn--Tsampu river
--Tame elephants--Wild horses--Dryness of air--Sunset beams--
Rocks of Kinchinjhow--Cholamoo lakes--Limestone--Dip and strike
of rocks--Effects of great elevation on party--Ascent of Donkia
--Moving piles of debris--Cross Donkia pass--Second Visit to
Momay Samdong--Hot springs--Descent to Yeumtong--Lachoong--
Retardation of vegetation again noticed--Jerked meat--Fish--
Lose a thermometer--Lepcha lad sleeps in hot spring--Keadom--
_Bucklandia_--Arrive at Choongtam--Mendicant--Meepo--
Lachen-Lachoong river--Wild grape--View from Singtam of
Kinchinjunga--Virulent nettle.

In the afternoon we crossed the valley, and ascended Bhomtso, fording
the river, whose temperature was 48 degrees. Some stupendous boulders
of gneiss from Kinchinjhow are deposited in a broad sandy track on
the north bank, by ancient glaciers, which once crossed this valley
from Kinchinjhow.

The ascent was alternately over steep rocky slopes, and broad
shelf-like flats; many more plants grew here than I had expected, in
inconspicuous scattered tufts.* [Besides those before mentioned,
there were Fescue-grass (_Festuca ovina_ of Scotland), a
strong-scented silky wormwood (_Artemisia_), and round tufts of
_Oxytropis chiliophylla,_ a kind of _Astralagus_ that inhabits
eastern and western Tibet; this alone was green: it formed great
circles on the ground, the centre decaying, and the annual shoots
growing outwards, and thus constantly enlarging the circle. A woolly
_Leontopodium, Androsace,_ and some other plants assumed nearly the
same mode of growth. The rest of the vegetation consisted of a
_Sedum, Nardostachys Jatamansi, Meconopsis horridula,_ a slender
_Androsace, Gnaphalium, Stipa, Salvia, Draba, Pedicularis,
Potentilla_ or _Sibbaldia, Gentiana_ and _Erigeron alpinus_ of
Scotland. All these grow nearly up to 18,000 feet.] The rocks were
nearly vertical strata of quartz, hornstone, and conglomerate,
striking north-west, and dipping south-west 80 degrees. The broad top
of the hill was also of quartz, but covered with angular pebbles of
the rocks transported from Kinchinjhow. Some clay-stone fragments
were stained red with oxide of iron, and covered with _Parmelia
miniata_;* [This minute lichen, mentioned at chapter xxxii, is the
most Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine in the world; often occurring so
abundantly as to colour the rocks of an orange red. This was the case
at Bhomtso, and is so also in Cockburn Island in the Antarctic ocean,
which it covers so profusely that the rocks look as if brightly
painted. See "Ross's Voyage," vol. ii. p. 339.] this, with _Borrera,_
another lichen, which forms stringy masses blown along by the wind,
were the only plants, and they are among the most alpine in
the world.

Bhomtso is 18,590 feet above the sea by barometer, and 18,305 by
boiling-point: it presented an infinitely more extensive prospect
than I had ventured to anticipate, commanding all the most important
Sikkim, North Bhotan, and Tibetan mountains, including Kinchinjunga
thirty-seven miles to the south-west, and Chumulari thirty-nine miles
south-east. Due south, across the sandy valley of the Lachen,
Kinchinjhow reared its long wall of glaciers and rugged precipices,
22,000 feet high, and under its cliffs lay the lake to which we had
walked in the morning: beyond Kongra Lama were the Thlonok mountains,
where I had spent the month of June, with Kinchinjunga in the
distance. Westward Chomiomo rose abruptly from the rounded hills we
were on, to 22,000 feet elevation, ten miles distant. To the east of
Kinchinjhow were the Cholamoo lakes, with the rugged mass of Donkia
stretching in cliffs of ice and snow continuously southwards to
forked Donkia, which overhung Momay Samdong.

A long sloping spur sweeps from the north of Donkia first north, and
then west to Bhomtso, rising to a height of more than 20,000 feet
without snow. Over this spur the celebrated Chumulari* [Some doubt
still hangs over the identity of this mountain, chiefly owing to
Turner's having neglected to observe his geographical positions.
I saw a much loftier mountain than this, bearing from Bhomtso north
87 degrees east, and it was called Chumulari by the Tibetan Sepoys;
but it does not answer to Turner's description of an isolated snowy
peak, such as he approached within three miles; and though in the
latitude he assigned to it, is fully sixty miles to the east of his
route. A peak, similar to the one he describes, is seen from Tonglo
and Sinchul (see vol. i., chapters v and viii); this is the one
alluded to above, and it is identified by both Tibetans and Lepchas
at Dorjiling as the true Chumulari, and was measured by Colonel
Waugh, who placed it in lat. 27 degrees 49 minutes north, long. 89
degrees 18 minutes east. The latter position, though fifteen miles
south of what Turner gives it, is probably correct; as Pemberton
found that Turner had put other places in Bhotan twenty miles too far
north. Moreover, in saying that it is visible from Purnea in the
plains of Bengal, Turner refers to Kinchinjunga, whose elevation was
then unknown. Dr. Campbell ("Bengal As. Soc. Jour.," 1848), describes
Chumulari from oral information, as an isolated mountain encircled by
twenty-one goompas, and perambulated by pilgrims in five days; the
Lachoong Phipun, on the other hand, who was a Lama, and well
acquainted with the country, affirmed that Chumulari has many tops,
and cannot be perambulated; but that detached peaks near it may be,
and that it is to a temple near one of these that pilgrims resort.
Again, the natives use these names very vaguely, and as that of
Kinchinjunga is often applied equally to all or any part of the group
of snows between the Lachen and Tambur rivers, so may the term
Chumulari have been used vaguely to Captain Turner or to me. I have
been told that an isolated, snow-topped, venerated mountain rises
about twenty miles south of the true Chumulari, and is called
"Sakya-khang" (Sakya's snowy mountain), which may be that seen from
Dorjiling; but I incline to consider Campbell's and Waugh's mountain
as the one alluded to by Turner, and it is to it that I here refer as
bearing north 115 degrees 30 minutes east from Bhomtso.] peeps,
bearing south-east, and from its isolated position and sharpness
looking low and small; it appeared quite near, though thirty-nine
miles distant.

North-east of Chumulari, and far beyond it, are several meridional
ranges of very much loftier snowy mountains, which terminated the
view of the snowy Himalaya; the distance embraced being fully 150
miles, and perhaps much more. Of one of these eastern masses*
[These are probably the Ghassa mountains of Turners narrative:
bearings which I took of one of the loftiest of them, from the Khasia
mountains, together with those from Bhomtso, would appear to place it
in latitude 28 degrees 10 minutes and longitude 90 degrees, and 200
miles from the former station, and 90 degrees east of the latter.
Its elevation from Bhomtso angles is 24,160 feet. I presume I also
saw Chumulari from the Khasia; the most western peak seen thence
being in the direction of that mountain. Captain R. Strachey has most
kindly paid close attention to these bearings and distances, and
recalculated the distances and heights: no confidence is, however, to
be placed in the results of such minute angles, taken from immense
distances. Owing in part no doubt to extraordinary refraction, the
angles of the Ghassa mountain taken from the Khasia give it an
elevation of 26,500 feet! which is very much over the truth; and make
that of Chumulari still higher: the distance from my position in the
Khasia being 210 miles from Chumulari! which is probably the utmost
limit at which the human eye has ever discerned a terrestrial
object.] I afterwards took bearings and angular heights from the
Khasia mountains, in Bengal, upwards of 200 miles south-east of
its position.

Turning to the northward, a singular contrast in the view was
presented: the broad sandy valley of the Arun lay a few miles off,
and perhaps 1,500 feet below me; low brown and red ridges, 18,000 to
19,000 feet high, of stony sloping mountains with rocky tops, divided
its feeders, which appeared to be dry, and to occupy flat sandy
valleys. For thirty miles north no mountain was above the level of
the theodolite, and not a particle of snow was to be seen beyond
that, rugged purple-flanked and snowy-topped mountains girdled
the horizon, appearing no nearer than they did from the Donkia pass,
and their angular heights and bearings being almost the same as from
that point of view. The nearer of these are said to form the
Kiang-lah chain, the furthest I was told by different authorities are
in the salt districts north of Jigatzi.

To the north-east was the lofty region traversed by Turner on his
route by the Ramchoo lakes to Teshoo Loombo; its elevation may be
17,000 feet* [It is somewhat remarkable that Turner nowhere alludes
to difficulty of breathing, and in one place only to head-ache
(p. 209) when at these great elevations. This is in a great measure
accounted for by his having been constantly mounted. I never suffered
either in my breathing, head, or stomach when riding, even when at
18,300 feet.] above the sea. Beyond it a gorge led through rugged
mountains, by which I was told the Painom river flows north-west to
the Yaru; and at an immense distance to the north-east were the
Khamba mountains, a long blue range, which it is said divides the
Lhassan or "U" from the "Tsang" (or Jigatzi) province of Tibet; it
appeared fully 100 miles off, and was probably much more; it bore
from N. 57 degrees E. to N. 70 degrees E., and though so lofty as to
be heavily snowed throughout, was much below the horizon-line of
Bhomtso; it is crossed on the route from Jigatzi, and from Sikkim to
Lhassa,* [Lhassa, which lies north-east, may be reached in ten days
from this, with relays of ponies; many mountains are crossed, where
the breath is affected, and few villages are passed after leaving
Giantchi, the "Jhansi jeung" of Turner's narrative. See Campbell's
"Routes from Dorjiling to Lhassa." ("Bengal As. Soc. Journal.")] and
is considered very lofty, from affecting the breathing. About twenty
miles to the north-east are some curious red conical mountains, said
to be on the west side of the Ramchoo lakes; they were unsnowed, and
bore N. 45 degrees 30 minutes E. and N. 60 degrees 30 minutes E.
A sparingly-snowed group bore N. 26 degrees 30 minutes E., and
another N. 79 degrees E., the latter being probably that mentioned by
Turner as seen by him from near Giantchi.

But the mountains which appeared both the highest and the most
distant on the northern landscape, were those I described when at
Donkia, as being north of Nepal and beyond the Arun river, and the
culminant peak of which bore N. 55 degrees. Both Dr. Campbell and I
made repeated estimates of its height and distance by the eye;
comparing its size and snow-level with those of the mountains near
us; and assuming 4000 to 5000 feet as the minimum height of its snowy
cap; this would give it an elevation of 23,000 to 25,000 feet.
An excellent telescope brought out no features on its flanks not
visible to the naked eye, and by the most careful levellings with the
theodolite, it was depressed more than 0 degrees 7 minutes below the
horizon of Bhomtso, whence the distance must be above 100 miles.

The transparency of the pale-blue atmosphere of these lofty regions
can hardly be described, nor the clearness and precision with which
the most distant objects are projected against the sky. From having
afterwards measured peaks 200 and 210 miles distant from the Khasia
mountains, I feel sure that I underrated the estimates made at
Bhomtso, and I have no hesitation in saying, that the mean elevation
of the sparingly-snowed* [Were the snow-level in Dingcham, as low as
it is in Sikkim, the whole of Tibet from Donkia almost to the
Yaru-Tsampu river would be everywhere intersected by glaciers and
other impassable barriers of snow and ice, for a breadth of fifty
miles, and the country would have no parallel for amount of snow
beyond the Polar circles. It is impossible to conjecture what would
have been the effects on the climate of northern India and central
Asia under these conditions. When, however, we reflect upon the
evidences of glacial phenomena that abound in all the Himalayan
valleys at and above 9000 feet elevation, it is difficult to avoid
the conclusion that such a state of things once existed, and that at
a comparatively very recent period.] watershed between the Yaru and
the Arun will be found to be greater than that of the snowy Himalaya
south of it, and to follow the chain running from Donkia, north of
the Arun, along the Kiang-lah mountains, towards the Nepal frontier,
at Tingri Maidan. No part of that watershed perhaps rises so high as
24,000 feet, but its lowest elevation is probably nowhere under
18,000 feet.

This broad belt of lofty country, north of the snowy Himalaya, is the
Dingcham province of Tibet, and runs along the frontier of Sikkim,
Bhotan, and Nepal. It gives rise to all the Himalayan rivers, and its
mean elevation is probably 15,000 to 15,500 feet: its general
appearance, as seen from greater heights, is that of a much less
mountainous country than the snowy and wet Himalayan regions; this is
because its mean elevation is so enormous, that ranges of 20,000 to
22,000 feet appear low and insignificant upon it. The absence of
forest and other obstructions to the view, the breadth and flatness
of the valleys, and the undulating character of the lower ranges that
traverse its surface, give it a comparatively level appearance, and
suggest the term "maidan" or "plains" to the Tibetan, when comparing
his country with the complicated ridges of the deep Sikkim valleys.
Here one may travel for many miles without rising or falling 3000
feet, yet never descending below 14,000 feet, partly because the flat
winding valleys are followed in preference to exhausting ascents, and
partly because the passes are seldom more than that elevation above
the valleys; whereas, in Sikkim, rises and descents of 6000, and even
9000 feet, are common in passing from valley to valley, sometimes in
one day's march.

The swarthy races of Dingcham have been elsewhere described; they are
an honest, hospitable, and very hardy people, differing from the
northern Tibetans chiefly in colour, and in invariably wearing the
pigtail, which MM. Huc and Gabet assure us is not usual in Lhassa.*
[Amongst Lhassan customs alluded to by these travellers, is that of
the women smearing their faces with a black pigment, the object of
which they affirm to be that they may render themselves odious to the
male sex, and thus avoid temptation. The custom is common enough, but
the real object is to preserve the skin, which the dry cold wind
peels from the face. The pigment is mutton-fat, blackened, according
to Tchebu Lama, with catechu and other ingredients; but I believe
more frequently by the dirt of the face itself. I fear I do not
slander the Tibetan damsels in saying that personal cleanliness and
chastity are both lightly esteemed amongst them; and as the Lama
naively remarked, when questioned on the subject, "the Tibetan women
are not so different from those of other countries as to wish to
conceal what charms they possess."] They are a pastoral race, and
Campbell saw a flock of 400 hornless sheep, grazing on short sedges
(_Carex_) and fescue-grass, in the middle of October, at 18,000 feet
above the sea. An enormous ram attended the flock, whose long hair
hung down to the ground; its back was painted red.

There is neither tree nor shrub in this country; and a very little
wheat (which seldom ripens), barley, turnips, and radishes are, I
believe, the only crops, except occasionally peas. Other legumes,
cabbages, etc., are cultivated in the sheltered valleys of the Yaru
feeders, where great heat is reflected from the rocks; and there also
stunted trees grow, as willows, walnuts, poplars, and perhaps ashes;
all of which, however, are said to be planted and scarce. Even at
Teshoo Loombo and Jigatzi* [Digarchi, Jigatzi, or Shigatzi jong (the
fort of Shigatzi) is the capital of the "Tsang" province, and Teshoo
Loombo is the neighbouring city of temples and monasteries, the
ecclesiastical capital of Tibet, and the abode of the grand (Teshoo)
Lama, or ever-living Boodh. Whether we estimate this man by the
number of his devotees, or the perfect sincerity of their worship, he
is without exception one of the most honoured beings living in the
world. I have assumed the elevation of Jigatzi to be 13-14,000 feet,
using as data Turner's October mean temperature of Teshoo Loombo, and
the decrement for elevation of 400 feet to 1 degree Fahr.; which my
own observations indicate as an approximation to the truth. Humboldt
("Asie Centrale," iii., p. 223) uses a much smaller multiplier, and
infers the elevation of Teshoo Loombo to be between 9,500 and 10,000
feet. Our data are far too imperfect to warrant any satisfactory
conclusions on this interesting subject; but the accounts I have
received of the vegetation of the Yaru valley at Jigatzi seem to
indicate an elevation of at least 13,000 feet for the bed of that
river. Of the elevation of Lhassa itself we have no idea: if MM. Huc
and Gabet's statement of the rivers not being frozen there in March
be correct, the climate must be very different from what we suppose.]
buckwheat is a rare crop, and only a prostrate very hardy kind is
grown. Clay teapots and pipkins are the most valuable exports to
Sikkim from the latter city, after salt and soda. Jewels and woollen
cloaks are also exported, the latter especially from Giantchi, which
is famous for its woollen fabrics and mart of ponies.

Of the Yaru river at Jigatzi, which all affirm becomes the
Burrampooter in Assam, I have little information to add to Turner's
description: it is sixty miles north of Bhomtso, and I assume its
elevation to be 13-14,000 feet;* [The Yaru, which approaches the
Nepal frontier west of Tingri, and beyond the great mountain
described at vol. i. chapter xi, makes a sweep to the northward, and
turns south to Jigatzi, whence it makes another and greater bend to
the north, and again turning south flows west of Lhassa, receiving
the Kechoo river from that holy city. From Jigatzi it is said to be
navigable to near Lhassa by skin and plank-built boats. Thence it
flows south-east to the Assam frontier, and while still in Tibet, is
said to enter a warm climate, where tea, silk, cotton, and rice, are
grown. Of its course after entering the Assam Himalaya little is
known, and in answer to my enquiries why it had not been followed, I
was always told that the country through which it flowed was
inhabited by tribes of savages, who live on snakes and vermin, and
are fierce and warlike. These are no doubt the Singpho, Bor and
Bor-abor tribes who inhabit the mountains of upper Assam.
A travelling mendicant was once sent to follow up the Dihong to the
Burrampooter, under the joint auspices of Mr. Hodgson and Major
Jenkins, the Commissioner of Assam; but the poor fellow was speared
on the frontier by these savages. The concurrent testimony of the
Assamese, that the Dihong is the Yaru, on its southern course to
become the Burrampooter, renders this point as conclusively settled
as any, resting on mere oral evidence, is likely to be.] it takes an
immense bend to the northward after passing Jigatzi, and again turns
south, flowing to the west of Lhassa, and at some distance from that
capital. Lhassa, as all agree, is at a much lower elevation than
Jigatzi; and apricots (whose ripe stones Dr. Campbell procured for
me) and walnuts are said to ripen there, and the Dama or Himalayan
furze (_Caragana_), is said to grow there. The Bactrian camel also
thrives and breeds at Lhassa, together with a small variety of cow
(not the yak), both signs of a much more temperate climate than
Jigatzi enjoys. It is, however, a remarkable fact that there are two
tame elephants near the latter city, kept by the Teshoo Lama.
They were taken to Jigatzi, through Bhotan, by Phari; and I have been
informed that they have become clothed with long hair, owing to the
cold of the climate; but Tchebu Lama contradicted this, adding, that
his countrymen were so credulous, that they would believe blankets
grew on the elephants' backs, if the Lamas told them so.

No village or house is seen throughout the extensive area over which
the eye roams from Bhomtso, and the general character of the desolate
landscape was similar to that which I have described as seen from
Donkia Pass (chapter xxii). The wild ass* [This, the _Equus Hemionus_
of Pallas, the untameable Kiang of Tibet, abounds in Dingcham, and we
saw several. It resembles the ass more than the horse, from its size,
heavy head, small limbs, thin tail, and the stripe over the shoulder.
The flesh is eaten and much liked. The Kiang-lah mountains are so
named from their being a great resort of this creature. It differs
widely from the wild ass of Persia, Sind, and Beloochistan, but is
undoubtedly the same as the Siberian animal.] grazing with its foal
on the sloping downs, the hare bounding over the stony soil, the
antelope scouring the sandy flats, and the fox stealing along to his
burrow, are all desert and Tartarian types of the animal creation.
The shrill whistle of the marmot alone breaks the silence of the
scene, recalling the snows of Lapland to the mind; the kite and raven
wheel through the air, 1000 feet over head, with as strong and steady
a pinion as if that atmosphere possessed the same power of resistance
that it does at the level of the sea. Still higher in the heavens,
long black V-shaped trains of wild geese cleave the air, shooting
over the glacier-crowned top of Kinchinjhow, and winging their flight
in one day, perhaps, from the Yaru to the Ganges, over 500 miles of
space, and through 22,000 feet of elevation. One plant alone, the
yellow lichen (_Borrera_), is found at this height, and only as a
visitor; for, Tartar-like, it emigrates over these lofty slopes and
ridges, blown about by the violent winds. I found a small beetle on
the very top,* [I observed a small red _Acarus_ (mite) at this
elevation, both on Donkia and Kinchinjhow, which reminds me that I
found a species of the same genus at Cockburn Island (in latitude 64
degrees south, longitude 64 degrees 49 minutes west). This genus
hence inhabits a higher southern latitude than any other land animal
attains.] probably blown up also, for it was a flower-feeder, and
seemed benumbed with cold.

Every night that we spent in Tibet, we enjoyed a magnificent display
of sunbeams converging to the east, and making a false sunset.
I detailed this phenomenon when seen from the Kymore mountains, and I
repeatedly saw it again in the Khasia, but never in the Sikkim
Himalaya, whence I assume that it is most frequent in mountain
plateaus. As the sun set, broad purple beams rose from a dark, low,
leaden bank on the eastern horizon, and spreading up to the zenith,
covered the intervening space: they lasted through the twilight, from
fifteen to twenty minutes, fading gradually into the blackness of
night. I looked in vain for the beautiful lancet beam of the zodiacal
light; its position was obscured by Chomiomo.

On the 18th of October we had another brilliant morning, after a cold
night, the temperature having fallen to 4 degrees. I took the
altitude of Yeumtso by carefully boiling two thermometers, and the
result was 16,279 feet, the barometrical observations giving 16,808
feet. I removed a thermometer sunk three feet in the gravelly soil,
which showed a temperature of 43 degrees,* [It had risen to 43.5
degrees during the previous day.] which is 12.7 degrees above the
mean temperature of the two days we camped here.

Our fires were made of dry yak droppings which soon burn out with a
fierce flame, and much black smoke; they give a disagreeable taste to
whatever is cooked with them.

Having sent the coolies forward to Cholamoo lake, we re-ascended
Bhomtso to verify my observations. As on the previous occasion a
violent dry north-west wind blew, peeling the skin from our faces,
loading the air with grains of sand, and rendering theodolite
observations very uncertain; besides injuring all my instruments, and
exposing them to great risk of breakage.

The Tibetan Sepoys did not at all understand our ascending Bhomtso a
second time; they ran after Campbell, who was ahead on a stout pony,
girding up their long garments, bracing their matchlocks tight over
their shoulders, and gasping for breath at every step, the long horns
of their muskets bobbing up and down as they toiled amongst the
rocks. When I reached the top I found Campbell seated behind a little
stone wall which he had raised to keep off the violent wind, and the
uncouth warriors in a circle round him, puzzled beyond measure at his
admiration of the view. My instruments perplexed them extremely, and
in crowding round me, they broke my azimuth compass. They left us to
ourselves when the fire I made to boil the thermometers went out, the
wind being intensely cold. I had given my barometer to one of
Campbell's men to carry, who not coming up, the latter kindly went to
search for him, and found him on the ground quite knocked up and
stupified by the cold, and there, if left alone, he would have lain
till overtaken by death.

The barometer on the summit of Bhomtso stood at 15.548 inches;* [The
elevation of Bhomtso, worked by Bessel's tables, and using corrected
observations of the Calcutta barometer for the lower station, is
18,590 feet. The corresponding dew-point 4.4 degrees (49.6 degrees
below that of the air at the time of observation). By Oltmann's
tables the elevation is 18,540 feet. The elevation by boiling water
is 18,305.] the temperature between 11.30 a.m. and 2.30 p.m.
fluctuated between 44 degrees and 56 degrees: this was very high for
so great an elevation, and no doubt due to the power of the sun on
the sterile soil, and consequent radiated heat. The tension of vapour
was .0763, and the dew-point was 5.8 degrees, or 43.5 degrees below
the temperature of the air. Such extraordinary dryness* [The weight
of vapour in a cubic foot of air was no more than .087 of a grain,
and the saturation-point .208.] and consequent evaporation, increased
by the violent wind, sufficiently accounts for the height of the snow
line; in further evidence of which, I may add that a piece of ice or
snow laid on the ground here, does not melt, but disappears
by evaporation.

The difference between the dry cold air of this elevation and that of
the heated plains of India, is very great. During the driest winds of
the Terai, in spring, the temperature is 80 degrees to 90 degrees,
the tension of vapour is .400 to .500, with a dew-point 22 degrees
below the temperature, and upwards of six grains of vapour are
suspended in the cubic foot of air; a thick haze obscures the
heavens, and clouds of dust rise high in the air; here on the other
hand (probably owing to the rarity of the atmosphere and the low
tension of its vapours), the drought is accompanied by perfect
transparency, and the atmosphere is too attenuated to support the
dust raised by the wind.

We descended in the afternoon, and on our way up the Lachen valley
examined a narrow gulley in a lofty red spur from Kinchinjhow, where
black shales were _in situ,_ striking north-east, and dipping
north-west 45 degrees. These shales were interposed between beds of
yellow quartz conglomerate, upon the latter of which rested a talus
of earthy rocks, angular fragments of which were strewed about
opposite this spur, but were not seen elsewhere.

It became dark before we reached the Cholamoo lake, where we lost our
way amongst glaciers, moraines, and marshes. We expected to have seen
the lights of the camp, but were disappointed, and as it was freezing
hard, we began to be anxious, and shouted till the echos of our
voices against the opposite bank were heard by Tchebu Lama, who met
us in great alarm for our safety. Our camp was pitched some way from
the shore, on a broad plain, 16,900 feet above the sea.* [This, which
is about the level of the lake, gives the Lachen river a fall of
about 1500 feet between its source and Kongra Lama, or sixty feet per
mile following its windings. From Kongra Lama to Tallum it is 140
feet per mile; from Tallum to Singtam 160 feet; and from Singtam to
the plains of India 50 feet per mile. The total fall from Cholamoo
lake to its exit on the plains of India is eighty-five feet per mile.
Its length, following its windings, is 195 miles, upwards of double
the direct distance.] A cold wind descended from Donkia; yet, though
more elevated than Yeumtso, the climate of Cholamoo, from being
damper and misty, was milder. The minimum thermometer fell to
14 degrees.

Before starting for Donkia pass on the following morning, we visited
some black rocks which rose from the flat to the east of the lake.
They proved to be of fossiliferous limestone, the strata of which
were much disturbed: the strike appeared in one part north-west, and
the dip north-east 45 degrees: a large fault passed east by north
through the cliff, and it was further cleft by joints running
northwards. The cliff was not 100 yards long, and was about 70 thick;
its surface was shivered by frost into cubical masses, and glacial
boulders of gneiss lay on the top. The limestone rock was chiefly a
blue pisolite conglomerate, with veins and crystals of white
carbonate of lime, seams of shale, and iron pyrites. A part was
compact and blue, very crystalline, and full of encrinitic fossils,
and probably nummulites, but all were too much altered for
determination.

This, from its mineral characters, appears to be the same limestone
formation which occurs throughout the Himalaya and Western Tibet; but
the fossils I collected are in too imperfect a state to warrant any
conclusions on this subject. Its occurrence immediately to the
northward of the snowy mountains, and in such very small quantities,
are very remarkable facts. The neighbouring rocks of Donkia were
gneiss with granite veins, also striking north-west and dipping
north-east 10 degrees, as if they overlay the limestone, but here as
in all similar situations there was great confusion of the strata,
and variation in direction and strike.

And here I may once for all confess that though I believe the general
strike of the rocks on this frontier to be north-west, and the dip
north-east, I am unable to affirm it positively; for though I took
every opportunity of studying the subject, and devoted many hours to
the careful measuring and recording of dips and strikes, on both
faces of Kinchinjhow, Donkia, Bhomtso, and Kongra Lama, I am unable
to reduce these to any intelligible system.* [North-west is the
prevalent strike in Kumaon, the north-west Himalaya generally, and
throughout Western Tibet, Kashmir, etc., according to Dr. Thomson.]

The coolies of Dr. Campbell's party were completely knocked up by the
rarified air; they had taken a whole day to march here from Yeumtso,
scarcely six miles, and could eat no food at night. A Lama of our
party offered up prayers* [All diseases are attributed by the
Tibetans to the four elements, who are propitiated accordingly in
cases of severe illness. The winds are invoked in cases of affections
of the breathing; fire in fevers and inflammations; water in dropsy,
and diseases whereby the fluids are affected; and the God of earth
when solid organs are diseased, as in liver-complaints, rheumatism,
etc. Propitiatory offerings are made to the deities of these
elements, but never sacrifices.] to Kinchinjhow for the recovery of a
stout Lepcha lad (called Nurko), who showed no signs of animation,
and had all the symptoms of serous apoplexy. The Lama perched a
saddle on a stone, and burning incense before it, scattered rice to
the winds, invoking Kinchin, Donkia, and all the neighbouring peaks.
A strong dose of calomel and jalap, which we poured down the sick
lad's throat, contributed materially to the success of these
incantations.

The Tibetan Sepoys were getting tired of our delays, which so much
favoured my operations; but though showing signs of impatience and
sulkiness, they behaved well to the last; taking the sick man to the
top of the pass on their yaks, and assisting all the party: nothing,
however, would induce them to cross into Sikkim, which they
considered as "Company's territory."

Before proceeding to the pass, I turned off to the east, and
re-ascended Donkia to upwards of 19,000 feet, vainly hoping to get a
more distant view, and other bearings of the Tibetan mountains.
The ascent was over enormous piles of loose rocks split by the frost,
and was extremely fatiguing. I reached a peak overhanging a steep
precipice, at whose base were small lakes and glaciers, from which
flowed several sources of the Lachen, afterwards swelled by the great
affluent from Cholamoo lake. A few rocks striking north-east and
dipping north-west, projected at the very summit, with frozen snow
amongst them, beyond which the ice and precipices rendered it
impossible to proceed: but though exposed to the north, there was no
perpetual snow in the ordinary acceptation of the term, and an arctic
European lichen (_Lecidea oreina_) grew on the top, so faintly
discolouring the rocks as hardly to be detected without a
magnifying-glass.

I descended obliquely, down a very steep slope of 35 degrees, over
upwards of a thousand feet of debris, the blocks on which were so
loosely poised on one another, that it was necessary to proceed with
the utmost circumspection, for I was alone, and a false step would
almost certainly have been followed by breaking a leg. The alternate
freezing and thawing of rain amongst these masses, must produce a
constant downward motion in the whole pile of debris (which was
upwards of 2000 feet high), and may account for the otherwise
unexplained phenomenon of continuous shoots of angular rocks reposing
on very gentle slopes in other places.* [May not the origin of the
streams of quartz blocks that fill gently sloping broad valleys
several miles long, in the Falkland Islands, be thus explained? (See
"Darwin's Journal," in Murray's Home and Col. Lib.) The extraordinary
shifting in the position of my thermometer left among the rocks of
the Donkia pass (see chapter xxii), and the mobile state of the
slopes I descended on this occasion, first suggested this explanation
to me. When in the Falkland Islands I was wholly unable to offer any
explanation of the phenomenon there, to which my attention had been
drawn by Mr. Darwin's narrative.]

The north ascent to the Donkia pass is by a path well selected
amongst immense angular masses of rock, and over vast piles of
debris: the strike on this, the north face, was again north-east, and
dip north-west: I arrived at the top at 3 p.m., throughly fatigued,
and found my faithful Lepcha lads (Cheytoong and Bassebo) nestling
under a rock with my theodolite and barometers, having been awaiting
my arrival in the biting wind for three hours. My pony stood there
too, the picture of patience, and laden with minerals.
After repeating my observations, I proceeded to Momay Samdong, where
I arrived after dusk. I left a small bottle of brandy and some
biscuits with the lads, and it was well I did so, for the pony
knocked up before reaching Momay, and rather than leave my bags of
stones, they passed the night by the warm flank of the beast, under a
rock at 18,000 feet elevation, without other food, fire, or shelter.

I found my companion encamped at Momay, on the spot I had occupied in
September; he had had the utmost difficulty in getting his coolies
on, as they threw down their light loads in despair, and lying with
their faces to the ground, had to be roused from a lethargy that
would soon have been followed by death.

We rested for a day at Momay, and on the 20th, attempted to ascend to
the Donkia glacier, but were driven back by a heavy snow-storm.
The scenery on arriving here, presented a wide difference to that we
had left; snow lying at 16,500 feet, whereas immediately to the north
of the same mountain there was none at 19,000 feet. Before leaving
Momay; I sealed two small glass flasks containing the air of this
elevation, by closing with a spirit lamp a very fine capillary tube,
which formed the opening to each; avoiding the possibility of heating
the contents by the hand or otherwise. The result of its analysis by
Mr. Muller (who sent me the prepared flasks), was that it contained
36.538 per cent. in volume of oxygen; whereas his repeated analysis
of the air of Calcutta gives 21 per cent. Such a result is too
anomalous to be considered satisfactory.

I again visited the Kinchinjhow glacier and hot springs; the water
had exactly the same temperature as in the previous month, though the
mean temperature of the air was 8 degrees or 9 degrees lower.
The minimum thermometer fell to 22 degrees, being 10 degrees lower
than it ever fell in September.

We descended to Yeumtong in a cold drizzle, arriving by sunset; we
remained through the following day, hoping to explore the lower
glacier on the opposite side of the valley: which, however, the
weather entirely prevented. I have before mentioned (chapter xxiii)
that in descending in autumn from the drier and more sunny rearward
Sikkim valleys, the vegetation is found to be most backward in the
lowest and dampest regions. On this occasion, I found asters,
grasses, polygonums, and other plants that were withered, brown, and
seeding at Momay (14,000 to 15,000 feet), at Yeumtong (12,000 feet)
green and unripe; and 2000 feet lower still, at Lachoong, the
contrast was even more marked. Thus the short backward spring and
summer of the Arctic zone is overtaken by an early and forward
seed-time and winter: so far as regards the effects of mean
temperature, the warmer station is in autumn more backward than the
colder. This is everywhere obvious in the prevalent plants of each,
and is especially recognisable in the rhododendrons; as the following
table shows:--
16,000 to 17,000 feet, _R. nivale_ flowers in July; fruits in
September=2 months.
13,000 to 14,000 feet, _R. anthopogon_ flowers in June; fruits in
Oct.=4 months.
11,000 to 12,000 feet, _R. campanulatum_ flowers in May; fruits in
Nov.=8 months.
8,000 to 9,000 feet, _R. argenteum_ flowers in April; fruits in
Dec.=8 months.

And so it is with many species of _Compositae_ and _Umbelliferae,_
and indeed of all natural orders, some of which I have on the same
day gathered in ripe fruit at 13,000 to 14,000 feet, and found still
in flower at 9000 to 10,000 feet. The brighter skies and more
powerful and frequent solar radiation at the greater elevations,
account for this apparent inversion of the order of nature.* [The
distribution of the seasons at different elevations in the Himalaya
gives rise to some anomalies that have puzzled naturalists. From the
middle of October to that of May, vegetation is torpid above 14,000
feet, and indeed almost uniformly covered with snow. From November
till the middle of April, vegetation is also torpid above 10,000
feet, except that a few trees and bushes do not ripen all their seeds
till December. The three winter months (December, January, and
February) are all but dead above 6000 feet, the earliest appearance
of spring at Dorjiling (7000 feet) being at the sudden accession of
heat in March. From May till August the vegetation at each elevation
is (in ascending order) a month behind that below it; 4000 feet being
about equal to a month of summer weather in one sense. I mean by
this, that the genera and natural orders (and sometimes the species)
which flower at 8000 feet in May, are not so forward at 12,000 feet
till June, nor at 16,000 feet till July. After August, however, the
reverse holds good; then the vegetation is as forward at 16,000 feet
as at 8000 feet. By the end of September most of the natural orders
and genera have ripened their fruit in the upper zone, though they
have flowered as late as July; whereas October is the fruiting month
at 12,000, and November below 10,000 feet. Dr. Thomson does not
consider that the more sunny climate of the loftier elevations
sufficiently accounts for this, and adds the stimulus of cold, which
must act by checking the vegetative organs and hastening maturation.]

I was disappointed at finding the rhododendron seeds still immature
at Yeumtong, for I was doubtful whether the same kinds might be met
with at the Chola pass, which I had yet to visit; besides which,
their tardy maturation threatened to delay me for an indefinite
period in the country. _Viburnum_ and _Lonicera,_ however, were ripe
and abundant; the fruits of both are considered poisonous in Europe,
but here the black berries of a species of the former (called
"Nalum") are eatable and agreeable; as are those of a _Gualtheria,_
which are pale blue, and called "Kalumbo." Except these, and the
cherry mentioned above, there are no other autumnal fruits above
10,000 feet: brambles, strange as it may appear, do not ascend beyond
that elevation in the Sikkim Himalaya, though so abundant below it,
both in species and individuals, and though so typical of
northern Europe.

At Lachoong we found all the yaks that had been grazing till the end
of September at the higher elevations, and the Phipun presented our
men with one of a gigantic size, and proportionally old and tough.
The Lepchas barbarously slaughtered it with arrows, and feasted on
the flesh and entrails, singed and fried the skin, and made soup of
the bones, leaving nothing but the horns and hoofs. Having a fine
day, they prepared some as jerked meat, cutting it into thin strips,
which they dried on the rocks. This (called "Schat-chew," dried meat)
is a very common and favourite food in Tibet, I found it palatable;
but on the other hand, the dried saddles of mutton, of which they
boast so much, taste so strongly of tallow, that I found it
impossible to swallow a morsel of them.* [Raw dried split fish are
abundantly cured (without salt) in Tibet; they are caught in the Yaru
and great lakes of Ramchoo, Dobtah, and Yarbru, and are chiefly carp,
and allied fish, which attain a large size. It is one of the most
remarkable facts in the zoology of Asia, that no trout or salmon
inhabits any of the rivers that debouche into the Indian Ocean (the
so-called Himalayan trout is a species of carp). This widely
distributed natural order of fish (_Salmonidae_) is however, found in
the Oxus, and in all the rivers of central Asia that flow north and
west, and the _Salmo orientalis,_ M'Clelland ("Calcutta Journ. Nat.
Hist." iii., p. 283), was caught by Mr. Griffith (Journals, p. 404)
in the Bamean river (north of the Hindo Koosh) which flows into the
Oxus, and whose waters are separated by one narrow mountain ridge
from those of the feeders of the Indus. The central Himalayan rivers
often rise in Tibet from lakes full of fish, but have none (at least
during the rains) in that rapid part of their course from 10,000 to
14,000 feet elevation: below that fish abound, but I believe
invariably of different species from those found at the sources of
the same rivers. The nature of the tropical ocean into which all the
Himalayan rivers debouche, is no doubt the proximate cause of the
absence of _Salmonidae._ Sir John Richardson (Fishes of China Seas,
etc., "in Brit. Ass. Rep. etc."), says that no species of the order
has been found in the Chinese or eastern Asiatic seas.]

We staid two days at Lachoong, two of my lads being again laid up
with fever; one of them had been similarly attacked at the same place
nearly two months before: the other lad had been repeatedly ill since
June, and at all elevations. Both cases were returns of a fever
caught in the low unhealthy valleys some months previously, and
excited by exposure and hardship.

The vegetation at Lachoong was still beautiful, and the weather mild,
though snow had descended to 14,000 feet on Tunkra. _Compositae_ were
abundantly in flower, apples in young fruit, bushes of _Cotoneaster_
covered with scarlet berries, and the brushwood silvery with the
feathery heads of _Clematis._

I here found that I had lost a thermometer for high temperatures,
owing to a hole in the bag in which Cheytoong carried those of my
instruments which were in constant use. It had been last used at the
hot springs of the Kinchinjhow glacier; and the poor lad was so
concerned at his mishap, that he came to me soon afterwards, with his
blanket on his back, and a few handfuls of rice in a bag, to make his
salaam before setting out to search for it. There was not now a
single inhabitant between Lachoong and that dreary spot, and strongly
against my wish he started, without a companion. Three days
afterwards he overtook us at Keadom, radiant with joy at having found
the instrument: he had gone up to the hot springs, and vainly sought
around them that evening; then rather than lose the chance of a
day-light search on his way back, he had spent the cold October night
in the hot water, without fire or shelter, at 16,000 feet above the
sea. Next morning his search was again fruitless; and he was
returning disconsolate, when he descried the brass case glistening
between two planks of the bridge crossing the river at Momay, over
which torrent the instrument was suspended. The Lepchas have
generally been considered timorous of evil spirits, and especially
averse to travelling at night, even in company. However little this
gallant lad may have been given to superstition, he was nevertheless
a Lepcha, born in a warm region, and had never faced the cold till he
became my servant; and it required a stout heart and an honest one,
to spend a night in so awful a solitude as that which reigns around
the foot of the Kinchinjhow glacier.* [The fondness of natives for
hot springs wherever they occur is very natural and has been noticed
by Humboldt, "Pers. Narr." iv. 195, who states that on Christianity
being introduced into Iceland, the natives refused to be baptised in
any but the water of the Geysers. I have mentioned at chapter xxii
the uses to which the Yeumtong hot springs are put; and the custom of
using artificial hot baths is noticed at vol. i., chapter xiii.]

The villagers at Keadom, where we slept on the 26th, were busy
cutting the crops of millet, maize, and _Amaranthus._ A girl who, on
my way down the previous month, had observed my curiosity about a
singular variety of the maize, had preserved the heads on their
ripening, and now brought them to me. The peaches were all gathered,
and though only half ripe, were better than Dorjiling produce.
A magnificent tree of _Bucklandia,_ one of the most beautiful
evergreens in Sikkim, grew near this village; it had a trunk
twenty-one feet seven inches in girth, at five feet from the ground,
and was unbranched for forty feet.* [This superb tree is a great
desideratum in our gardens; I believe it would thrive in the warm
west of England. Its wood is brown, and not valuable as timber, but
the thick, bright, glossy, evergreen foliage is particularly
handsome, and so is the form of the crown. It is also interesting in
a physiological point of view, from the woody fibre being studded
with those curious microscopic discs so characteristic of pines, and
which when occurring on fossil wood are considered conclusive as to
the natural family to which such woods belong. Geologists should bear
in mind that not only does the whole natural order to which
_Bucklandia_ belongs, possess this character, but also various
species of _Magnoliaceae_ found in India, Australia, Borneo, and
South America.] Ferns and the beautiful air-plant _Coelogyne
Wallichii_ grew on its branches, with other orchids, while _Clematis_
and _Stauntonia_ climbed the trunk. Such great names (Buckland,
Staunton, and Wallich) thus brought before the traveller's notice,
never failed to excite lively and pleasing emotions: it is the
ignorant and unfeeling alone who can ridicule the association of the
names of travellers and naturalists with those of animals and plants.

We arrived at Choongtam (for the fourth time) at noon, and took up
our quarters in a good house near the temple. The autumn and winter
flowering plants now prevailed here, such as _Labiatae,_ which are
generally late at this elevation; and grasses, which, though rare in
the damp forest regions, are so common on these slopes that I here
gathered twenty-six kinds. I spent a day here in order to collect
seeds of the superb rhododendrons* [These Rhododendrons are now all
flourishing at Kew and elsewhere: they are _R. Dalhousiae, arboreum,
Maddeni, Edgeworthii, Aucklandii_ and _virgatum._] which I had
discovered in May, growing on the hills behind. The ascent was now
difficult, from the length of the wiry grass, which rendered the
slopes so slippery that it was impossible to ascend without holding
on by the tussocks.

A ragged Tibetan mendicant (Phud) was amusing the people: he put on a
black mask with cowrie shells for eyes, and danced uncouth figures
with a kind of heel and toe shuffle, in excellent time, to rude
Tibetan songs of his own: for this he received ample alms, which a
little boy collected in a wallet. These vagrants live well upon
charity; they bless, curse, and transact little affairs of all kinds
up and down the valleys of Sikkim and Tibet; this one dealt in red
clay teapots, sheep and puppies.

We found Meepo at Choongtam: I had given him leave (when here last)
to go back to the Rajah, and to visit his wife; and he had returned
with instructions to conduct me to the Chola and Yakla passes, in
Eastern Sikkim. These passes, like that of Tunkra (chapter xxii),
lead over the Chola range to that part of Tibet which is interposed
between Sikkim and Bhotan. My road lay past the Rajah's residence,
which we considered very fortunate, as apparently affording Campbell
an opportunity of a conference with his highness, for which both he
and the Tchebu Lama were most anxious.

On the way down the Lachen-Lachoong, we found the valley still
flooded (as described at chapters xviii and xxiii), and the alders
standing with their trunks twelve feet under water; but the shingle
dam was now dry and hard: it would probably soften, and be carried
away by the first rains of the following year. I left here the
temperate flora of northern Sikkim, tropical forms commencing to
appear: of these the nettle tribe were most numerous in the woods.
A large grape, with beautiful clusters of round purple berries, was
very fair eating; it is not the common vine of Europe, which
nevertheless is probably an Himalayan plant, the _Vitis Indica._*
[The origin of the common grape being unknown, it becomes a curious
question to decide whether the Himalayan _Vitis Indica_ is the wild
state of that plant: an hypothesis strengthened by the fact of
Bacchus, etc., having come from the East.]

Illustration--TIBETAN PHUD.


At Chakoong the temperature of the river, which in May was 54
degrees, was now 51.5 degrees at 3 p.m. We did not halt here, but
proceeded to Namgah, a very long and fatiguing march. Thence a short
march took us to Singtam, which we reached on the 30th of October.
The road by which I had come up was for half the distance obliterated
in most parts by landslips,* [I took a number of dips and strikes of
the micaceous rocks: the strike of these was as often north-east as
north-west; it was ever varying, and the strata were so disturbed, as
materially to increase the number and vast dimensions of the
landslips.] but they were hard and dry, and the leeches were gone.

Bad weather, and Campbell's correspondence with the Durbar, who
prevented all communication with the Rajah, detained us here two
days, after which we crossed to the Teesta valley, and continued
along its east bank to Tucheam, 2000 feet above the river.
We obtained a magnificent view of the east face of Kinchinjunga, its
tops bearing respectively N. 62 degrees W., and N. 63 degrees W.: the
south slope of the snowed portion in profile was 34 degrees, and of
the north 40 degrees; but both appeared much steeper to the eye, when
unaided by an instrument.

The great shrubby nettle (_Urtica crenulata_) is common here: this
plant, called "Mealum-ma," attains fifteen feet in height; it has
broad glossy leaves, and though apparently without stings, is held in
so great dread,* [The stinging hairs are microscopic, and confined to
the young shoots, leaf and flower-stalks. Leschenault de la Tour
describes being stung by this nettle on three fingers of his hand
only at the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, and the subsequent sneezing
and running at the nose, followed by tetanic symptoms and two days'
suffering, nor did the effects disappear for nine days. It is a
remarkable fact that the plant stings violently only at this season.
I frequently gathered it with impunity on subsequent occasions, and
suspected some inaccuracy in my observations; but in Silhet both Dr.
Thomson and I experienced the same effects in autumn. Endlicher
("Lindley's Vegetable Kingdom") attributes the causticity of
nettle-juice to bicarbonate of ammonia, which Dr. Thomson and I
ascertained was certainly not present in this species.] that I had
difficulty in getting help to cut it down. I gathered many specimens
without allowing any part to touch my skin; still the scentless
effluvium was so powerful, that mucous matter poured from my eyes and
nose all the rest of the afternoon, in such abundance, that I had to
hold my head over a basin for an hour. The sting is very virulent,
producing inflammation; and to punish a child with "Mealum-ma" is the
severest Lepcha threat. Violent fevers and death have been said to
ensue from its sting; but this I very much doubt.

Illustration--TIBETAN IMPLEMENTS.
Tea-pot, cup, and brick of tea; knife, tobacco-pipe across
chop-sticks, pouch, and flint-and-steel.


CHAPTER XXV.

Journey to the Rajah's residence at Tumloong--Ryott valley--
Rajah's house--Tupgain Lama--Lagong nunnery--Phadong Goompa--
Phenzong ditto--Lepcha Sepoys--Proceedings at Tumloong--Refused
admittance to Rajah--Women's dresses--Meepo's and Tchebu Lama's
families--Chapel--Leave for Chola pass--Ryott river--Rungpo,
view from--Deputation of Kajees, etc.--Conference--Laghep--
Eatable fruit of _Decaisnia_--_Cathcartia_--Rhododendrons--
Phieung-goong--Pines--Rutto river--Barfonchen--Curling of
rhododendron leaf--Woodcock--Chola pass----Small lakes--
Tibet guard and sepoys--Dingpun--Arrival of Sikkim sepoys--
Their conduct--Meet Singtam Soubah--Chumanako--We are seized by
the Soubah's party--Soubah's conduct--Dingpun Tinli--Treatment
of Dr. Campbell--Bound and guarded--Separated from Campbell--
Marched to Tumloong--Motives for such conduct--Arrive at Rungpo
--At Phadong--Presents from Rajah--Visits of Lama--Of Singtam
Soubah--I am cross-questioned by Amlah--Confined with Campbell--
Seizure of my Coolies--Threats of attacking Dorjiling.

We started on the 3rd of November for Tumloong (or Sikkim Durbar),
Dr. Campbell sending Tchebu Lama forward with letters to announce his
approach. A steep ascent, through large trees of _Rhododendron
arboreum,_ led over a sharp spur of mica-schist (strike north-west
and dip north-east), beyond which the whole bay-like valley of the
Ryott opened before us, presenting one of the most lovely and fertile
landscapes in Sikkim. It is ten miles long, and three or four broad,
flanked by lofty mountains, and its head girt by the beautiful snowy
range of Chola, from which silvery rills descend through black
pine-woods, dividing innumerable converging cultivated spurs, and
uniting about 2000 feet below us, in a profound gorge. Everywhere
were scattered houses, purple crops of buckwheat, green fields of
young wheat, yellow millet, broad green plantains, and orange groves.

We crossed spur after spur, often under or over precipices about
fifteen hundred feet above the river, proceeding eastwards to the
village of Rangang, whence we caught sight of the Rajah's house.
It was an irregular low stone building of Tibetan architecture, with
slanting walls and small windows high up under the broad thatched
roof, above which, in the middle, was a Chinese-looking square
copper-gilt canopy, with projecting eaves and bells at the corners,
surmounted by a ball and square spire. On either gable of the roof
was a round-topped cylinder of gilded copper, something like a closed
umbrella; this is a very frequent and characteristic Boodhist
ornament, and is represented in Turner's plate of the mausoleum of
Teshoo Lama ("Tibet" plate xi.); indeed the Rajah's canopy at
Tumloong is probably a copy of the upper part of the building there
represented, having been built by architects from Teshoo Loombo.
It was surrounded by chaits, mendongs, poles with banners, and other
religious erections; and though beautifully situated on a flat
terrace overlooking the valley, we were much disappointed with its
size and appearance.

On the brow of the hill behind was the large red goompa of the
Tupgain Lama, the late heir-apparent to the temporal and spiritual
authority in Sikkim; and near it a nunnery called Lagong, the lady
abbess of which is a daughter of the Rajah, who, with the assistance
of sisters, keeps an enormous Mani, or praying-cylinder, revolving
perpetually to the prayer of "Om Mani Padmi hom." On this side was a
similar spur, on which the gilded pinnacles and copper canopy of the
Phadong* [Phadong means Royal, and this temple answers to a chapel
royal for the Rajah.] goompa gleamed through the trees. At a
considerable distance across the head of the valley was still a third
goompa, that of Phenzong.

We were met by a large party of armed Lepchas, dressed in blue and
white striped kirtles, broad loose scarlet jackets; and the little
bamboo wattle hat lined with talc, and surmounted by a peacock's
feather; they escorted us to the village, and then retired.

We encamped a few hundred feet below the Rajah's house, and close by
those of Meepo and the Tchebu Lama's family, who are among the oldest
and most respectable of Tibetan origin in Sikkim. The population on
this, the north side of the Ryott, consists principally of Sikkim
Bhoteeas and Tibetans, while the opposite is peopled by Lepchas.
Crowds came to see us, and many brought presents, with which we were
overwhelmed; but we could not help remarking that our cordial
greetings were wholly from the older families attached to the Rajah,
and from the Lamas; none proceeded from the Dewan's relatives or
friends, nor therefore any in the name of the Rajah himself, or of
the Sikkim government.

Tchebu Lama vainly used every endeavour to procure for us an audience
with his highness; who was surrounded by his councillors, or Amlah,
all of whom were adherents of the Dewan, who was in Tibet. My man
Meepo, and the Tchebu Lama; who were ordered to continue in official
attendance upon us, shrugged their shoulders, but could suggest no
remedy. On the following morning Campbell was visited by many
parties, amongst whom were the Lama's family, and that of the late
Dewan (Ilam Sing), who implored us to send again to announce our
presence, and not to dismiss at once the moonshie and his office,*
[It is usual in India for Government officers when about to transact
business, to travel with a staff (called office) of native
interpreters, clerks, etc., of whom the chief is commonly called
moonchie.] who had accompanied us for the purpose of a conference
with the Rajah. Their wishes were complied with, and we waited till
noon before proceeding.

Illustration--TCHEBU LAMA.

A gay and animated scene was produced by the concourse of women,
dressed in their pretty striped and crossed cloaks, who brought
tokens of good-will. Amongst them Meepo's wife appeared conspicuous
from the large necklaces* [The lumps of amber forming these (called
"Poshea") were larger than the fist: they are procured in East Tibet,
probably from Birmah.] and amulets, corals, and silver filagree work,
with which her neck and shoulders were loaded: she wore on her head a
red tiara ("Patuk") bedizened with seed pearls and large turquoises,
and a gold fillet of filagree bosses united by a web of slender
chains; her long tails were elaborately plaited, and woven with
beads, and her cloak hooked in front by a chain of broad silver links
studded with turquoises. White silk scarfs, the emblem of peace and
friendship, were thrown over our hands by each party; and rice, eggs,
fowls, kids, goats, and Murwa beer, poured in apace, to the great
delight of our servants.

We returned two visits of ceremony, one to Meepo's house, a poor
cottage, to which we carried presents of chintz dresses for his two
little girls, who were busy teazing their hair with cylindrical
combs, formed of a single slender joint of bamboo slit all round
half-way up into innumerable teeth. Our other visit was paid to the
Lama's family, who inhabited a large house not far from the Rajah's.
The lower story was an area enclosed by stone walls, into which the
cattle, etc., were driven. An outside stone stair led to the upper
story, where we were received by the head of the family, accompanied
by a great concourse of Lamas. He conducted us to a beautiful little
oratory at one end of the building, fitted up like a square temple,
and lighted with latticed windows, covered with brilliant and
tasteful paintings by Lhassan artists. The beams of the ceiling were
supported by octagonal columns painted red, with broad capitals.
Everywhere the lotus, the mani, and the chirki (or wheel with three
rays, emblematic of the Boodhist Trinity), were introduced; "Om Mani
Padmi hom" in gilt letters, adorned the projecting end of every
beam;* [A mythical animal with a dog's head and blood-red spot over
the forehead was not uncommon in this chapel, and is also seen in the
Sikkim temples and throughout Tibet. Ermann, in his Siberian Travels,
mentions it as occurring in the Khampa Lama's temple at Maimao chin;
he conjectures it to have been the Cyclops of the Greeks, which
according to the Homeric myth had a mark on the forehead, instead of
an eye. The glory surrounding the heads of Tibetan deities is also
alluded to by Ermann, who recognises in it the Nimbus of the
ancients, used to protect the heads of statues from the weather, and
from being soiled by birds; and adds that the glory of the ancient
masters in painting was no doubt introduced into the Byzantine school
from the Boodhists.] and the Chinese "cloud messenger," or winged
dragon, floated in azure and gold along the capitals and beams,
amongst scrolls and groups of flowers. At one end was a sitting
figure of Gorucknath in Lama robes, surrounded by a glory, with mitre
and beads; the right hand holding the Dorje, and the forefinger
raised in prayer. Around was a good library of books. More presents
were brought here, and tea served.

Illustration--CLASP OF A WOMAN'S CLOAK.

The route to Chola pass, which crosses the range of that name south
of the Chola peak (17,320 feet) at the head of this valley, is across
the Ryott, and then eastwards along a lofty ridge. Campbell started
at noon, and I waited behind with Meepo, who wished me to see the
Rajah's dwelling, to which we therefore ascended; but, to my guide's
chagrin, we were met and turned back by a scribe, or clerk, of the
Amlah. We were followed by a messenger, apologising and begging me to
return; but I had already descended 1000 feet, and felt no
inclination to reascend the hill, especially as there did not appear
to be anything worth seeing. Soon after I had overtaken Campbell, he
was accosted by an excessively dirty fellow, who desired him to
return for a conference with the Amlah; this was of course declined,
but, at the same time, Campbell expressed his readiness to receive
the Amlah at our halting place.

The Ryott flows in a very tropical gorge 2000 feet above the sea;
from the proximity of the snowy mountains, its temperature was only
64.3 degrees. Thence the ascent is very steep to Rungpo, where we
took up our quarters at a rest house at an height of 6008 feet.
This road is well kept, and hence onwards is traversed yearly by the
Rajah on his way to his summer residence of Choombi, two marches
beyond the Chola pass; whither he is taken to avoid the Sikkim rains,
which are peculiarly disagreeable to Tibetans. Rungpo commands a most
beautiful view northwards, across the valley, of the royal residence,
temples, goompas, hamlets, and cultivation, scattered over spurs that
emerge from the forest, studded below with tree-ferns and plantains,
and backed by black pine-woods and snowy mountains. In the evening
the Amlah arrived to confer with Campbell; at first there was a
proposal of turning us out of the house, in which there was plenty of
room besides, but as we declined to move, except by his Highness's
order, they put up in houses close by.

On the following morning they met us as we were departing for Chola
pass, bringing large presents in the name of the Rajah, and excuses
on their and his part for having paid us no respect at Tumloong,
saying, that it was not the custom to receive strangers till after
they had rested a day, that they were busy preparing a suitable
reception, etc.; this was all false, and contrary to etiquette, but
there was no use in telling them so. Campbell spoke firmly and kindly
to them, and pointed out their incivility and the unfriendly tone of
their whole conduct. They then desired Campbell to wait and discuss
business affairs with them; this was out of the question, and he
assured them that he was ever ready to do so with the Rajah, that he
was now (as he had informed his Highness) on his way with me to the
Chola and Yakla passes, and that we had, for want of coolies, left
some loads behind us, which, if they were really friendly, they would
forward. This they did, and so we parted; they (contrary to
expectation) making no objection to Campbell's proceeding with me.

A long march up a very steep, narrow ridge took us by a good road to
Laghep, a stone resting-house (alt. 10,475 feet) on a very narrow
flat. I had abundance of occupation in gathering rhododendron-seeds,
of which I procured twenty-four kinds* [These occurred in the
following order in ascending, commencing at 6000 feet.--1. _R.
Dalhousiae_; 2. _R. vaccinioides_; 3. _R. camelliaeflorwm_; 4. _R.
arboreum._ Above 8000 feet:--5. _R. argenteum_; 6. _R. Falconeri_;
7. _R. barbatum_; 8. _R. Campbelliae_; 9. _R. Edgeworthii_; 10. _R.
niveum_; 11. _R. Thomsoni_; 12. _R. cinnabarinum_; 13. _R. glaucum._
Above 10,500 feet:--14. _R. lanatum_; 15. _R. virgatum_; 16. _R.
campylocarpum_; 17. _R. ciliatum_; 18. _R. Hodgsoni_; 19. _R.
campanulatum._ Above 12,000 feet:--20. _R. lepidotum_; 21. _R.
fulgens_; 22. _R. Wightianum_; 23. _R. anthopogon_; 24. _R.
setosum._] on this and the following day.

A very remarkable plant, which I had seen in flower in the Lachen
valley, called "Loodoo-ma" by the Bhoteeas, and "Nomorchi" by
Lepchas, grew on the ridge at 7000 feet; it bears a yellow fruit like
short cucumbers, full of a soft, sweet, milky pulp, and large black
seeds; it belongs to a new genus,* [This genus, for which Dr. Thomson
and I, in our "Flora Indies," have proposed the name _Decaisnea_ (in
honour of my friend Professor J. Decaisne, the eminent French
botanist), has several straight, stick-like, erect branches from the
root, which bear spreading pinnated leaves, two feet long, standing
out horizontally. The flowers are uni-sexual, green, and in racemes,
and the fruits, of which two or three grow together, are about four
inches long, and one in diameter. All the other plants of the natural
order to which it belongs, are climbers.] allied to _Stauntonia,_ of
which two Himalayan kinds produce similar, but less agreeable edible
fruits ("Kole-pot," Lepcha). At Laghep, iris was abundant, and a
small bushy berberry (_B. concinna_) with oval eatable berries. The
north wall of the house (which was in a very exposed spot) was quite
bare, while the south was completely clothed with moss and weeds.

The rocks above Laghep were gneiss; below it, mica-schist, striking
north-west, and dipping north-east, at a high angle. A beautiful
yellow poppy-like plant grew in clefts at 10,000 feet; it has
flowered in England, from seeds which I sent home, and bears the name
of _Cathcartia._* [See "Botanical Magazine," for 1852. The name was
given in honour of the memory of my friend, the late J. F. Cathcart,
Esq., of the Bengal Civil Service. This gentleman was devoted to the
pursuit of botany, and caused a magnificent series of drawings of
Dorjiling plants to be made by native artists during his residence
there. This collection is now deposited at Kew, through the
liberality of his family, and it is proposed to publish a selection
from the plates, as a tribute to his memory. Mr. Cathcart, after the
expiration of his Indian service, returned to Europe, and died at
Lausanne on his way to England.]

We continued, on the following morning, in an easterly direction, up
the same narrow steep ridge, to a lofty eminence called Phieung-goong
(alt. 12,422 feet), from being covered with the Phieung, or small
bamboo. _Abies Webbiana_ begins here, and continues onwards, but, as
on Tonglo, Mainom, and the other outer wetter Sikkim ranges, there is
neither larch, _Pinus excelsa, Abies Smithiana,_ or _A. Brunoniana._

Hence we followed an oblique descent of 1,500 feet, to the bed of the
Rutto river, through thick woods of pines and _Rhododendron
Hodgsoni,_ which latter, on our again ascending, was succeeded by the
various alpine kinds. We halted at Barfonchen (alt. 11,233 feet), a
stone-but in the silver-fir forest. Some yaks were grazing in the
vicinity, and from their herdsman we learnt that the Dewan was at
Choombi, on the road to Yakla; he had kept wholly out of the way
during the summer, directing every unfriendly action to be pursued
towards myself and the government by the Amlah, consisting of his
brothers and relatives, whom he left at Tumloong.

The night was brilliant and starlight: the minimum thermometer fell
to 27 degrees, a strong north-east wind blew down the valley, and
there was a thick hoar-frost, with which the black yaks were drolly
powdered. The broad leaves of _R. Hodgsoni_ were curled, from the
expansion of the frozen fluid in the layer of cells on the upper
surface of the leaf, which is exposed to the greatest cold of
radiation. The sun restores them a little, but as winter advances,
they become irrecoverably cured, and droop at the ends of the
branches.

We left Barfonchen on the 7th November, and ascended the river, near
which we put up a woodcock. Emerging from the woods at Chumanako
(alt. 12,590 feet), where there is another stone hut, the mountains
become bleak, bare, and stony, and the rocks are all moutonneed by
ancient glaciers. At 13,000 feet the ground was covered with ice, and
all the streams were frozen. Crossing several rocky ledges, behind
which were small lakes, a gradual ascent led to the summit of the
Chola pass, a broad low depression, 14,925 feet above the sea, wholly
bare of snow.

Campbell had preceded me, and I found him conversing with some
Tibetans, who told him that there was no road hence to Yakla, and
that we should not be permitted to go to Choombi. As the Chinese
guard was posted in the neighbourhood, he accompanied one of the
Tibetans to see the commandant, whilst I remained taking
observations. The temperature was 33 degrees, with a violent, biting,
dry east wind. The rocks were gneiss, striking north-east, and
horizontal, or dipping north-west. The scanty vegetation consisted
chiefly of grass and _Sibbaldia._

In about an hour Meepo and some of my people came up and asked for
Campbell, for whom the Tchebu Lama was waiting below: the Lama had
remained at Rungpo, endeavouring to put matters on a better footing
with the Amlah. Wishing to see the Tibet guard myself, I accompanied
the two remaining Tibetans down a steep valley with cliffs on either
hand, for several hundred feet, when I was overtaken by some Sikkim
sepoys in red jackets, who wanted to turn me back forcibly: I was at
a loss to understand their conduct, and appealed to the Tibetan
sepoys, who caused them to desist. About 1000 feet down I found
Campbell, with a body of about ninety Tibetans, a few of whom were
armed with matchlocks, and the rest with bows and arrows. They were
commanded by a Dingpun, a short swarthy man, with a flat-crowned cap
with floss-silk hanging all round, and a green glass button in front;
he wore a loose scarlet jacket, broadly edged with black velvet, and
having great brass buttons of the Indian naval uniform; his subaltern
was similarly dressed, but his buttons were those of the 44th Bengal
Infantry. The commandant having heard of our wish to go round by
Choombi, told Campbell that he had come purposely to inform him that
there was no road that way to Yakla; he was very polite, ordering his
party to rise and salute me when I arrived, and doing the same when
we both left.

On our return we were accompanied by the Dingpun of the Tibetans and
a few of his people, and were soon met by more Sikkim sepoys, who
said they were sent from the Durbar, to bring Campbell back to
transact business; they behaved very rudely, and when still half a
mile from the Sikkim frontier, jostled him and feigned to draw their
knives, and one of them pointed a spear-headed bow to his breast.
Campbell defended himself with a stick, and remonstrated with them on
their rudeness; and I, who had nothing but a barometer in my hand,
called up the Tibetans. The Dingpun came instantly, and driving the
Sikkim people forward, escorted us to the frontier, where he took an
inscribed board from the chait, and showing us the great vermilion
seal of the Emperor of China (or more probably of the Lhassan
authorities) on one side, and two small brown ones of the Sikkim
Rajah on the other; and giving us to understand that here his
jurisdiction ceased, he again saluted and left us.

On descending, I was surprised to meet the Singtam Soubah, whom I had
not seen since leaving Tungu; he was seated on a rock, and I remarked
that he looked ashy pale and haggard, and that he salaamed to me
only, and not to Campbell; and that Tchebu Lama, who was with him,
seemed very uncomfortable. The Soubah wanted Campbell to stop for a
conference, which at such a time, and in such a wind, was impossible,
so he followed us to Chumanako, where we proposed to pass the night.

A great party of Sikkim Bhoteeas had assembled here, all strangers to
me: I certainly thought the concourse unusually large, and the
previous conduct to Campbell, strange, rude, and quite
unintelligible, especially before the Tibetans. But the Bhoteeas were
always a queer, and often insolent people,* [Captain Pemberton during
his mission to Bhotan was repeatedly treated with the utmost
insolence by the officials in that country (see Griffith's Journal).
My Sirdar, Nimbo, himself a native of Bhotan, saw a good deal of the
embassy when there, and told me many particulars as to the treatment
to which it had been subjected, and the consequent low estimation in
which both the ambassadors themselves and the Government whom they
represented were held in Bhotan.] whom I was long ago tired of trying
to understand, and they might have wanted to show off before their
neighbours; and such was the confidence with which my long travels
amongst them had inspired me, that the possibility of danger or
violence never entered my head.

We went into the hut, and were resting ourselves on a log at one end
of it, when, the evening being very cold, the people crowded in; on
which Campbell went out, saying, that we had better leave the hut to
them, and that he would see the tents pitched. He had scarcely left,
when I heard him calling loudly to me, "Hooker! Hooker! the savages
are murdering me!" I rushed to the door, and caught sight of him
striking out with his fists, and struggling violently; being tall and
powerful, he had already prostrated a few, but, a host of men bore
him down, and appeared to be trampling on him; at the same moment I
was myself seized by eight men, who forced me back into the hut, and
down on the log, where they held me in a sitting posture, pressing me
against the wall; here I spent a few moments of agony, as I heard my
friend's stifled cries grow fainter and fainter. I struggled but
little, and that only at first, for at least five-and-twenty men
crowded round and laid their hands upon me, rendering any effort to
move useless; they were, however, neither angry nor violent, and
signed to me to keep quiet. I retained my presence of mind, and felt
comfort in remembering that I saw no knives used by the party who
fell on Campbell, and that if their intentions had been murderous, an
arrow would have been the more sure and less troublesome weapon.
It was evident that the whole animus was directed against Campbell,
and though at first alarmed on my own account, all the inferences
which, with the rapidity of lightning my mind involuntarily drew,
were favourable.

After a few minutes, three persons came into the hut, and seated
themselves opposite to me: I only recognised two of them; namely, the
Singtam Soubah, pale, trembling like a leaf, and with great drops of
sweat trickling from his greasy brow; and the Tchebu Lama, stolid,
but evidently under restraint, and frightened. The former ordered the
men to leave hold of me, and to stand guard on either side, and, in a
violently agitated manner, he endeavoured to explain that Campbell
was a prisoner by the orders of the Rajah, who was dissatisfied with
his conduct as a government officer, during the past twelve years;
and that he was to be taken to the Durbar and confined till the
supreme government at Calcutta should confirm such articles as he
should be compelled to subscribe to; he also wanted to know from me
how Campbell would be likely to behave. I refused to answer any
questions till I should be informed why I was myself made prisoner;
on which he went away, leaving me still guarded. My own Sirdar then
explained that Campbell had been knocked down, tied hand and foot,
and taken to his tent, and that all his coolies were also bound, our
captors claiming them as Sikkimites, and subjects of the Rajah.

Shortly afterwards the three returned, the Soubah looking more
spectral than ever, and still more violently agitated, and I thought
I perceived that whatever were his plans, he had failed in them.
He asked me what view the Governor-General would take of this
proceeding? and receiving no answer, he went off with the Tchebu
Lama, and left me with the third individual. The latter looked
steadily at me for some time, and then asked if I did not know him.
I said I did not, when he gave his name as Dingpun Tinli, and I
recognised in him one of the men whom the Dewan had sent to conduct
us to the top of Mainom the previous year (see vol. i. chapter xiii).
This opened my eyes a good deal, for he was known to be a right-hand
man of the Dewan's, and had within a few months been convicted of
kidnapping two Brahmin girls from Nepal,* [This act as I have
mentioned at v. i. chapter xv, was not only a violation of the
British treaty, but an outrage on the religion of Nepal.
Jung Bahadoor demanded instant restitution, which Campbell effected;
thus incurring the Dingpun's wrath, who lost, besides his prize, a
good deal of money which the escapade cost him.] and had vowed
vengeance against Campbell for the duty he performed in bringing him
to punishment.

I was soon asked to go to my tent, which I found pitched close by;
they refused me permission to see my fellow-prisoner, or to be near
him, but allowed me to hang up my instruments, and arrange my
collections. My guards were frequently changed during the night,
Lepchas often taking a turn; they repeatedly assured me that there
was no complaint or ill-feeling against me, that the better classes
in Sikkim would be greatly ashamed of the whole affair, that Tchebu
Lama was equally a prisoner, and that the grievances against Campbell
were of a political nature, but what they were they did not know.

The night was very cold (thermometer 26 degrees), and two inches of
snow fell. I took as many of my party as I could into my tent, they
having no shelter fit for such an elevation (12,590 feet) at this
season. Through the connivance of some of the people, I managed to
correspond with Campbell, who afterwards gave me the following
account of the treatment he had received. He stated that on leaving
the hut, he had been met by Meepo, who told him the Soubah had
ordered his being turned out. A crowd of sepoys then fell on him and
brought him to the ground, knocked him on the head, trampled on him,
and pressed his neck down to his chest as he lay, as if endeavouring
to break it. His feet were tied, and his arms pinioned behind, the
wrist of the right hand being bound to the left arm above the elbow;
the cords were then doubled, and he was violently shaken. The Singtam
Soubah directed all this, which was performed chiefly by the Dingpun
Tinli and Jongpun Sangabadoo.* [This was the other man sent with us
to Mainom, by the Dewan, in the previous December.] After this the
Soubah came to me, as I have related; and returning, had Campbell
brought bound before him, and asked him, through Tchebu Lama, if he
would write from dictation. The Soubah was violent, excited, and
nervous; Tchebu Lama scared. Campbell answered, that if they
continued torturing him (which was done by twisting the cords round
his wrists by a bamboo-wrench), he might say or do anything, but that
his government would not confirm any acts thus extorted. The Soubah
became still more violent, shook his bow in Campbell's face, and
drawing his hand significantly across his throat, repeated his
questions, adding others, enquiring why he had refused to receive the
Lassoo Kajee as Vakeel, etc. (see chapter xviii).

The Soubah's people, meanwhile, gradually slunk away, seeing which he
left Campbell, who was taken to his tent.

Early next morning Meepo was sent by the Soubah, to ask whether I
would go to Yakla pass, or return to Dorjiling, and to say that the
Rajah's orders had been very strict that I was not to be molested,
and that I might proceed to whatever passes I wished to visit, whilst
Campbell was to be taken back to the Durbar, to transact business.
I was obliged to call upon the Soubah and Dingpun to explain their
conduct of the previous day, which they declared arose from no
ill-feeling, but simply from their fear of my interfering in
Campbell's behalf; they could not see what reason I had to complain,
so long as I was neither hurt nor bound. I tried in vain to explain
to them that they could not so play fast and loose with a British
subject, and insisted that if they really considered me free, they
should place me with Campbell, under whose protection I considered
myself, he being still the Governor-General's agent.

Much discussion followed this: Meepo urged me to go on to Yakla, and
leave these bad people; and the Soubah and Dingpun, who had exceeded
their orders in laying hands on me, both wished me away. My course
was, however, clear as to the propriety of keeping as close to
Campbell as I was allowed, so they reluctantly agreed to take me with
him to the Durbar.

Tchebu Lama came to me soon afterwards, looking as stolid as ever,
but with a gulping in his throat; he alone was glad I was going with
them, and implored me to counsel Campbell not to irritate the Amlah
by a refusal to accede to their dictates, in which case his life
might be the forfeit. As to himself, the opposite faction had now got
the mastery, there was nothing for it but to succumb, and his throat
would surely be cut. I endeavoured to comfort him with the assurance
that they dared not hurt Campbell, and that this conduct of a party
of ruffians, influenced by the Dewan and their own private pique, did
not represent his Rajah's feelings and wishes, as he himself knew;
but the poor fellow was utterly unnerved, and shaking hands warmly,
with his eyes full of tears, he took his leave.

We were summoned by the Dingpun to march at 10 a.m.: I demanded an
interview with Campbell first, which was refused; but I felt myself
pretty safe, and insisting upon it, he was brought to me. He was
sadly bruised about the head, arms, and wrists, walked very lame, and
had a black eye to boot, but was looking stout and confident.

I may here mention that seizing the representative of a neighbouring
power and confining him till he shall have become amenable to terms,
is a common practice along the Tibet, Sikkim, and Bhotan frontiers.
It had been resorted to in 1847, by the Bhotanese, under the
instructions of the Paro Pilo, who waylaid the Sikkim Rajah when
still in Tibet, on his return from Jigatzi, and beleagured him for
two months, endeavouring to bring him to their terms about some
border dispute; on this occasion the Rajah applied to the British
government for assistance, which was refused; and he was ultimately
rescued by a Tibetan force.

In the present case the Dewan issued orders that Campbell was to be
confined at Tumloong till he himself should arrive there; and the
Rajah was kept in ignorance of the affair. The Sepoys who met us on
our approach to Tumloong on the 3rd of November, were, I suspect,
originally sent for the purpose; and I think that the Amlah also had
followed us to Rungpo with the same object. Their own extreme
timidity, and the general good-feeling in the country towards
Campbell prevented its execution before, and, as a last resource,
they selected the Singtam Soubah and Dingpun Tinli for the office, as
being personally hostile to him. The Dewan meanwhile being in Tibet,
and knowing that we were about to visit the frontier, for which I had
full permission and escort, sent up the Tibetan guard, hoping to
embroil them in the affair; in this he failed, and it drew upon him
the anger of the Lhassan authorities.* [In the following summer
(1850), when the Rajah, Dewan, and Soubah, repaired to Choombi, the
Lhassan authorities sent a Commissioner to inquire into the affair,
understanding that the Dewan had attempted to embroil the Tibetans in
it. The commissioner asked the Rajah why he had committed such an
outrage on the representative of the British government, under whose
protection he was; thus losing his territory, and bringing English
troops so near the Tibet frontier. The Rajah answered that he never
did anything of the kind; that he was old and infirm, and unable to
transact all his affairs; that the mischief had arisen out of the
acts and ignorance of others, and finally begged the Commissioner to
investigate the whole affair, and satisfy himself about it.
During the inquiry that followed, the Dewan threw all the blame on
the Tibetans, who, he said were alone implicated: this assertion was
easily disproved, and on the conclusion of the inquiry the
Commissioner railed vehemently at the Dewan, saying:--"You tried to
put this business on the people of my country; it is an abominable
lie. You did it yourselves, and no one else. The Company is a great
monarchy; you insulted it, and it has taken its revenge. If you, or
any other Tibetan, ever again cause a rupture with the English, you
shall be taken with ropes round your necks to Pekin, there to undergo
the just punishment of your offence under the sentence of the mighty
Emperor."] The Soubah, in endeavouring to extort the new treaty by
force, and the Dingpun, who had his own revenge to gratify, exceeded
their instructions in using violence towards Campbell, whom the Dewan
ordered should be simply taken and confined; they were consequently
disgraced, long before we were released, and the failure of the
stratagem thrown upon their shoulders.

During the march down to Laghep, Campbell was treated by the
Dingpun's men with great rudeness: I kept as near as I was allowed,
quietly gathering rhododendron seeds by the way. At the
camping-ground we were again separated, at which I remonstrated with
the Dingpun, also complaining of his people's insolent behaviour
towards their prisoner, which he promised should be discontinued.

The next day we reached Rungpo, where we halted for further
instructions: our tents were placed apart, but we managed to
correspond by stealth. On the 10th of November we were conducted to
Tumloong: a pony was brought for me, but I refused it, on seeing that
Campbell was treated with great indignity, and obliged to follow at
the tail of the mule ridden by the Dingpun, who thus marched him in
triumph up to the village.

I was taken to a house at Phadong, and my fellow traveller was
confined in another at some distance to the eastward, a stone's throw
below the Rajah's; and thrust into a little cage-like room. I was
soon visited by an old Lama, who assured me that we were both
perfectly safe, but that there were many grievances against Campbell.
The Soubah arrived shortly after, bringing me compliments, nominally
in the Rajah's name, and a substantial present, consisting of a large
cow, sheep, fowls, a brick of tea, bags of rice, flour, butter, eggs,
and a profusion of vegetables. I refused to take them on the friendly
terms on which they were brought, and only accepted them as
provisions during my detention. I remonstrated again about our
separation, and warned the Soubah of the inevitable consequence of
this outrage upon the representative of a friendly power, travelling
under the authority of his own government, unarmed and without
escort: he was greatly perplexed, and assured me that Campbell's
detention was only temporary, because he had not given satisfaction
to the Rajah, and as the latter could not get answers to his demands
from Calcutta in less than a month, it was determined to keep him
till then; but to send me to Dorjiling. He returned in the evening to
tell me that Campbell's men (with the exception only of the Ghorkas*
[These people stood in far greater fear of the Nepalese than of the
English, and the reason is obvious: the former allow no infraction of
their rights to pass unnoticed, whereas we had permitted every
article of our treaty to be contravened.]) had been seized, because
they were runaway slaves from Sikkim; but that I need not alarm
myself, for mine should be untouched.

The hut being small, and intolerably dirty, I pitched my tent close
by, and lived in it for seven days: I was not guarded, but so closely
watched, that I could not go out for the most trifling purpose,
except under surveillance. They were evidently afraid of my escaping;
I was however treated with civility, but forbidden to communicate
either with Campbell or with Dorjiling.

The Soubah frequently visited me, always protesting I was no
prisoner, that Campbell's seizure was a very trifling affair, and the
violence employed all a mistake. He always brought presents, and
tried to sound me about the government at Calcutta. On the 12th he
paid his last visit, looking wofully dejected, being out of favour at
court, and dismissed to his home: he referred me to Meepo for all
future communications to the Rajah, and bade me a most cordial
farewell, which I regretted being unable to return with any show of
kind feeling. Poor fellow! he had staked his last, and lost it, when
he undertook to seize the agent of the most powerful government in
the east, and to reduce him to the condition of a tool of the Dewan.
Despite the many obstructions he had placed in my way, we had not
fallen out since July; we had been constant companions, and though at
issue, never at enmity. I had impeached him, and my grievances had
been forwarded to the Rajah with a demand for his punishment, but he
never seemed to owe me a grudge for that, knowing the Rajah's
impotence as compared with the power of the Dewan whom he served;
and, in common with all his party, presuming on the unwillingness of
the British government to punish.

On the 13th of November I was hurriedly summoned by Meepo to the
Phadong temple, where I was interrogated by the Amlah, as the Rajah's
councillors (in this instance the Dewan's adherents) are called.
I found four China mats placed on a stone bench, on one of which I
was requested to seat myself, the others being occupied by the
Dewan's elder brother, a younger brother of the Gangtok Kajee (a man
of some wealth), and an old Lama: the conference took place in the
open air and amongst an immense crowd of Lamas, men, women,
and children.

I took the initiative (as I made a point of doing on all such
occasions) and demanded proper interpreters, which were refused; and
the Amlah began a rambling interrogatory in Tibetan, through my
Lepcha Sirdar Pakshok, who spoke very little Tibetan or Hindostanee,
and my half-caste servant, who spoke as little English. The Dewan's
brother was very nervously counting his beads, and never raised his
eyes while I kept mine steadily upon him.

He suggested most of the queries, every one of which took several
minutes, as he was constantly interrupted by the Kajee, who was very fat
and stupid: the Lama scarcely spoke, and the bystanders never. My
connection with the Indian government was first enquired into; next they
came to political matters, upon which I declined entering; but I
gathered that their object was to oblige Campbell to accept the Lassoo
Kajee as Vakeel, to alter the slavery laws, to draw a new boundary line
with Nepal, to institute direct communication between themselves and the
Governor-General,* [They were prompted to demand this by an unfortunate
oversight that occurred at Calcutta some years before. Vakeels from the
Sikkim Durbar repaired to that capital, and though unaccredited by the
Governor-General's agent at Dorjiling, were (in the absence of the
Governor-General) received by the president of the council in open
Durbar. The effect was of course to reduce the Governor-General's agent
at Dorjiling to a cipher.] and to engage that there should be no trade
or communication between Sikkim and India, except through the Dewan: all
of these subjects related to the terms of the original treaty between
the Rajah and the Indian government. They told me they had sent these
proposals to the government through Dorjiling,* [These letters, which
concluded with a line stating that Campbell was detained at Tumloong
till favourable answers should be received, had arrived at Dorjiling;
but being written in Tibetan, and containing matters into which no one
but Campbell could enter, they were laid on one side till his return.
The interpreter did not read the last line, which stated that Dr.
Campbell was _detained_ till answers were received, and the fact of our
capture and imprisonment therefore remained unknown for several weeks.]
but had received no acknowledgment from the latter place, and they
wanted to know the probable result at Calcutta. As the only answer I
could give might irritate them, I again declined giving any. Lastly,
they assured me that no blame was imputed to myself, that on the
contrary I had been travelling under the Rajah's protection, who
rejoiced in my success, that I might have visited Yakla pass as I had
intended doing, but that preferring to accompany my friend, they had
allowed me to do so, and that I might now either join him, or continue
to live in my tent: of course I joyfully accepted the former proposal.
After being refused permission to send a letter to Dorjiling, except I
would write in a character which they could read, I asked if they had
anything more to say, and being answered in the negative, I was taken by
Meepo to Campbell, heartily glad to end a parley which had lasted for an
hour and a half.

I found my friend in good health and spirits, strictly guarded in a
small thatched hut, of bamboo wattle and clay: the situation was
pretty, and commanded a view of the Ryott valley and the snowy
mountains; there were some picturesque chaits hard by, and a
blacksmith's forge. Our walks were confined to a few steps in front
of the hut, and included a puddle and a spring of water. We had one
black room with a small window, and a fire in the middle on a stone;
we slept in the narrow apartment behind it, which was the cage in
which Campbell had been at first confined, and which exactly admitted
us both, lying on the floor. Two or three Sepoys occupied an
adjoining room, and had a peep-hole through the partition-wall.

My gratification at our being placed together was damped by the
seizure of all my faithful attendants except my own servant, and one
who was a Nepalese: the rest were bound, and placed in the stocks and
close confinement, charged with being Sikkim people who had no
authority to take service in Dorjiling. On the contrary they were all
registered as British subjects, and had during my travels been
recognised as such by the Rajah and all his authorities. Three times
the Soubah and others had voluntarily assured me that my person and
people were inviolate; nor was there any cause for this outrage but
the fear of their escaping with news to Dorjiling, and possibly a
feeling of irritation amongst the authorities at the failure of their
schemes. Meanwhile we were not allowed to write, and we heard that
the bag of letters which we had sent before our capture had been
seized and burnt. Campbell greatly feared that they would threaten
Dorjiling with a night attack,* [Threats of sacking Dorjiling had on
several previous occasions been made by the Dewan, to the too great
alarm of the inhabitants, who were ignorant of the timid and pacific
disposition of the Lepchas, and of the fact that there are not fifty
muskets in the country, nor twenty men able to use them. On this
occasion the threats were coupled with the report that we were
murdered, and that the Rajah had asked for 50,000 Tibetan soldiers,
who were being marched twenty-five days' journey over passes 16,000
feet high, and deep in snow, and were coming to drive the English out
of Sikkim! I need hardly observe that the Tibetans (who have
repeatedly refused to interfere on this side the snows) had no hand
in the matter, or that, supposing they could collect that number of
men in all Tibet, it would be impossible to feed them for a week,
there or in Sikkim. Such reports unfortunately spread a panic in
Dorjiling: the guards were called in from all the outposts, and the
ladies huddled into one house, whilst the males stood on the
defensive; to the great amusement of the Amlah at Tumloong, whose
insolence to us increased proportionally.] as we heard that the
Lassoo Kajee was stationed at Namtchi with a party for that purpose,
and all communication cut off, except through him.

Illustration--HORNS OF THE SHOWA STAG (_Cervus Wallichii_), A NATIVE
OF CHOOMBI IN TIBET.
Length of antler, 4 feet 6 in.



CHAPTER XXVI.

Dr. Campbell is ordered to appear at Durbar--Lamas called to
council--Threats--Searcity of food--Arrival of Dewan--Our
jailer, Thoba-sing--Temperature, etc., at Tumloong--Services of
Goompas--Lepcha girl--Jew's-harp--Terror of servants--
Ilam-sing's family--Interview with Dewan--Remonstrances--Dewan
feigns sickness--Lord Dalhousie's letter to Rajah--Treatment of
Indo-Chinese--Concourse of Lamas--Visit of Tchebu Lama--Close
confinement--Dr. Campbell's illness--Conference with Amlah--
Relaxation of confinement--Pemiongchi Lama's intercession--Escape
of Nimbo--Presents from Rajah, Ranee and people--Protestations of
friendship--Mr. Lushington sent to Dorjiling--Leave Tumloong--
Cordial farewell--Dewan's merchandise--Gangtok Kajee--Dewan's
pomp--Governor-General's letter--Dikkeeling--Suspicion of
poison--Dinner and pills--Tobacco--Bhotanese colony--
Katong-ghat on Teesta--Wild lemons--Sepoys' insolence--Dewan
alarmed--View of Dorjiling--Threats of a rescue--Fears of our
escape--Tibet flutes--Negotiate our release--Arrival at
Dorjiling--Dr. Thomson joins me--Movement of troops at Dorjiling
--Seizure of Rajah's Terai property.

Since his confinement, Dr. Campbell had been desired to attend the
Durbar for the purpose of transacting business, but had refused to
go, except by compulsion, considering that in the excited state of
the authorities, amongst whom there was not one person of
responsibility or judgment, his presence would not only be useless,
but he might be exposed to further insult or possibly violence.

On the 15th of November we were informed that the Dewan was on his
way from Tibet: of this we were glad, for knave as he was, we had
hitherto considered him to possess sense and understanding.
His agents were beginning to find out their mistake, and summoned to
council the principal Lamas and Kajees of the country, who, to a man,
repudiated the proceedings, and refused to attend. Our captors were
extremely anxious to induce us to write letters to Dorjiling, and
sent spies of all kinds to offer us facilities for secret
correspondence. The simplicity and clumsiness with which these
artifices were attempted would have been ludicrous under other
circumstances; while the threat of murdering Campbell only alarmed
us, inasmuch as it came from people too stupid to be trusted. We made
out that all Sikkim people were excluded from Dorjiling, and the
Amlah consequently could not conceal their anxiety to know what had
befallen their letters to government.

Meanwhile we were but scantily fed, and our imprisoned coolies got
nothing at all. Our guards, were supplied with a handful of rice or
meal as the day's allowance; they were consequently grumbling,* [The
Rajah has no standing army; not even a body-guard, and these men were
summoned to Tumloong before our arrival: they had no arms and
received no pay, but were fed when called out on duty. There is no
store for grain, no bazaar or market, in any part of the country,
each family growing little enough for its own wants and no more;
consequently Sikkim could not stand on the defensive for a week.
The Rajah receives his supply of grain in annual contributions from
the peasantry, who thus pay a rent in kind, which varies from little
to nothing, according to the year, etc. He had also property of his
own in the Terai, but the slender proceeds only enabled him to trade
with Tibet for tea, etc.] and were daily reduced in number.
The supplies of rice from the Terai, beyond Dorjiling, were cut off
by the interruption of communication, and the authorities evidently
could not hold us long at this rate: we sent up complaints, but of
course received no answer.

The Dewan arrived in the afternoon in great state; carried in an
English chair given him by Campbell some years before, habited in a
blue silk cloak lined with lambskin, and wearing an enormous straw
hat with a red tassel,  and black velvet butterflies on the flapping
brim. He was accompanied by a household of women, who were laden with
ornaments, and wore boots, and sat astride on ponies; many Lamas were
also with him, one of whom wore a broad Chinese-like hat covered with
polished copper foil. Half a dozen Sepoys with matchlocks preceded
him, and on approaching Tumloong, bawled out his titles, dignities,
etc., as was formerly the custom in England.

Illustration--RAJAH'S RESIDENCE, AND THE HUT ASSIGNED TO US. ARRIVAL
OF THE DEWAN.

At Dorjiling our seizure was still unknown: our letters were brought
to us, but we were not allowed to answer them. Now that the Dewan had
arrived, we hoped to come to a speedy explanation with him, but he
shammed sickness, and sent no answer to our messages; if indeed he
received them. Our guards were reduced to one Sepoy with a knife, who
was friendly; and a dirty, cross-eyed fellow named Thoba-sing, who,
with the exception of Tchebu Lama, was the only Bhoteea about the
Durbar who could speak Hindostanee, and who did it very imperfectly:
he was our attendant and spy, the most barefaced liar I ever met
with, even in the east; and as cringing and obsequious when alone
with us, as he was to his masters on other occasions, when he never
failed to show off his authority over us in an offensive manner.
Though he was the most disagreeable fellow we were ever thrown in
contact with, I do not think that he was therefore selected, but
solely from his possessing a few words of Hindostanee, and his
presumed capability of playing the spy.

The weather was generally drizzling or rainy, and we were getting
very tired of our captivity; but I beguiled the time by carefully
keeping my meteorological register,* [During the thirty days spent at
Tumloong, the temperature was mild and equable, with much cloud and
drizzle, but little hard rain; and we experienced violent
thunder-storms, followed by transient sunshine. Unlike 1848, the
rains did not cease this year before the middle of December; nor had
there been one fine month since April. The mean temperature, computed
from 150 observations, was 50.2 degrees, and from the maximum and
minimum thermometer 49.6 degrees, which is a fair approximation to
the theoretical temperature calculated for the elevation and month,
and allows a fall of 1 degree for 320 feet of ascent. The temperature
during the spring (from 50 observations) varied during the day from
2.4 degrees to 5.8 degrees higher than that of the air, the greatest
differences occurring morning and evening. The barometric tide
amounted to 0.091 between 9.50 a.m. and 4 p.m., which is less than at
the level of the plains of India, and more than at any greater
elevation than Tumloong. The air was always damp, nearly saturated at
night, and the mean amount of humidity for ninety-eight observations
taken during the day was only 0.850, corresponding to a dew-point of
49.6 degrees, or 5.2 degrees below that of the air.] and by reducing
many of my previous observations. Each morning we were awakened at
daybreak by the prolonged echos of the conchs, trumpets, and cymbals,
beaten by the priests before the many temples in the valley: wild and
pleasing sounds, often followed by  their choral chants. After dark
we sat over the fire, generally in company with a little Lepcha girl,
who was appointed to keep us in fire-wood, and who sat watching our
movements with childish curiosity. Dolly, as we christened her, was a
quick child and a kind one, intolerably dirty, but very entertaining
from her powers of mimicry. She was fond of hearing me whistle airs,
and procured me a Tibetan Jews'-harp,* [This instrument (which is
common in Tibet) is identical with the European, except that the
tongue is produced behind the bow, in a strong steel spike, by which
the instrument is held firmer to the mouth.] with which, and coarse
tobacco, which I smoked out of a Tibetan brass pipe, I wiled away the
dark evenings, whilst my cheerful companion amused himself with an
old harmonicon, to the enchantment of Dolly and our guards
and neighbours.

Illustration--TIBET PIPE, AND TINDER-POUCH WITH STEEL ATTACHED.

The messengers from Dorjiling were kept in utter ignorance of our
confinement till their arrival at Tumloong, when they were
cross-questioned, and finally sent to us. They gradually became too
numerous, there being only one apartment for ourselves, and such of
our servants as  were not imprisoned elsewhere. Some of them were
frightened out of their senses, and the state of abject fear and
trembling in which one Limboo arrived, and continued for nearly a
week, was quite distressing* [It amounted to a complete prostration
of bodily and mental powers: the man trembled and started when spoken
to, or at any noise, a cold sweat constantly bedewed his forehead,
and he continued in this state for eight days. No kindness on
Campbell's part could rouse him to give any intelligible account of
his fears or their cause. His companions said he had lost his goroo,
_i.e.,_ his charm, which the priest gives him while yet a child, and
which he renews or gets re-sanctified as occasion requires. To us the
circumstance was extremely painful.] to every one except Dolly, who
mimicked him in a manner that was irresistibly ludicrous. Whether he
had been beaten or threatened we could not make out, nor whether he
had heard of some dark fate impending over ourselves--a suspicion
which would force itself on our minds; especially as Thoba-sing had
coolly suggested to the Amlah the dispatching of Campbell, as the
shortest way of getting out of the scrape! We were also ignorant
whether any steps were being taken at Dorjiling for our release,
which we felt satisfied must follow any active measures against these
bullying cowards, though they themselves frequently warned us that we
should be thrown into the Teesta if any such were pursued.

So long as our money lasted, we bought food, for the Durbar had none
to give; and latterly my ever charitable companion fed our guards,
including Dolly and Thoba-sing, in pity to their pinched condition.
Several families sent us small presents, especially that of the late
estimable Dewan, Ilam-sing, whose widow and daughters lived close by,
and never failed to express in secret their sympathy and good feeling.

Tchebu Lama's and Meepo's families were equally forward in their
desire to serve us; but they were marked men, and could only
communicate by stealth.

Our coolies were released on the 18th, more than half starved, but
the Sirdars were still kept in chains or the stocks: some were sent
back to Dorjiling, and the British subjects billetted off amongst the
villagers, and variously employed by the Dewan: my lad, Cheytoong,
was set to collect the long leaves of a _Tupistra,_ called
"Purphiok," which yield a sweet juice, and were chopped up and mixed
with tobacco for the Dewan's hookah.

_November 20th._--The Dewan, we heard this day, ignored all the late
proceedings, professing to be enraged with his brother and the Amlah,
and refusing to meddle in the matter. This was no doubt a pretence:
we had sent repeatedly for an explanation with himself or the Rajah,
from which he excused himself on the plea of ill-health, till this
day, when he apprized us that he would meet Campbell, and a cotton
tent was pitched for the purpose.

We went about noon, and were received with great politeness and
shaking of hands by the Dewan, the young Gangtok Kajee, and the old
monk who had been present at my examination at Phadong. Tchebu Lama's
brother was also there, as a member of the Amlah, lately taken into
favour; while Tchebu himself acted as interpreter, the Dewan speaking
only Tibetan. They all sat cross-legged on a bamboo bench on one
side, and we on chairs opposite them: walnuts and sweetmeats were
brought us, and a small present in the Rajah's name, consisting of
rice, flour, and butter.

The Dewan opened the conversation both in this and another
conference, which took place on the 22nd, by requesting Campbell to
state his reasons for having desired these interviews. Neither he nor
the Amlah seemed to have the smallest idea of the nature and
consequences of the acts they had committed, and they therefore
anxiously  sought information as to the view that would be taken of
them by the British Government. They could not see why Campbell
should not transact business with them in his present condition, and
wanted him to be the medium of communication between themselves and
Calcutta. The latter confined himself to pointing out his own views
of the following subjects:--1. The seizing and imprisoning of the
agent of a friendly power, travelling unarmed and without escort,
under the formal protection of the Rajah, and with the authority of
his own government. 2. The aggravation of this act of the Amlah, by
our present detention under the Dewan's authority. 3. The chance of
collision, and the disastrous consequences of a war, for which they
had no preparation of any kind. 4. The impossibility of the supreme
government paying any attention to their letters so long as we were
illegally detained.

All this sank deep into the Dewan's heart: he answered, "You have
spoken truth, and I will submit it all to the Rajah;" but at the same
time he urged that there was nothing dishonourable in the
imprisonment, and that the original violence being all a mistake, it
should be overlooked by both parties. We parted on good terms, and
heard shortly after the second conference that our release was
promised and arranged: when a communication* [I need scarcely say
that every step was taken at Dorjiling for our release, that the most
anxious solicitude for our safety could suggest. But the first
communication to the Rajah, though it pointed out the heinous nature
of his offence, was, through a natural fear of exasperating our
captors, couched in very moderate language. The particulars of our
seizure, and the reasons for it, and for our further detention, were
unknown at Dorjiling, or a very different line of policy would have
been pursued.] from Dorjiling changed their plans, the Dewan
conveniently fell sick on the spot, and we were thrown back again.

In the meantime, however, we were allowed to write to our friends,
and to receive money and food, of which  we stood in great need.
I transmitted a private account of the whole affair to the
Governor-General, who was unfortunately at Bombay, but to whose
prompt and vigorous measures we were finally indebted for our
release. His lordship expedited a despatch to the Rajah, such as the
latter was accustomed to receive from Nepal, Bhotan, or Lhassa, and
such as alone commands attention from these half-civilized
Indo-Chinese, who measure power by the firmness of the tone adopted
towards them; and who, whether in Sikkim, Birmah, Siam, Bhotan, or
China, have too long been accustomed to see every article of our
treaties contravened, with no worse consequences than a protest or a
threat, which is never carried into execution till some fatal step
calls forth the dormant power of the British Government.* [We forget
that all our concessions to these people are interpreted into
weakness; that they who cannot live on an amicable equality with one
another, cannot be expected to do so with us; that all our talk of
power and resources are mere boasts to habitual bullies, so long as
we do not exert ourselves in the correction of premeditated insults.
No Government can be more tolerant, more sincerely desirous of peace,
and more anxious to confine its sway within its own limits than that
of India, but it can only continue at peace by demanding respect, and
the punctilious enforcement of even the most trifling terms in the
treaties it makes with Indo-Chinese.]

The end of the month arrived without bringing any prospect of our
release, whilst we were harassed by false reports of all kinds.
The Dewan went on the 25th to a hot bath, a few hundred feet down the
hill; he was led past our hut, his burly frame tottering as if in
great weakness, but a more transparent fraud could not have been
practised: he was, in fact, lying on his oars, pending further
negotiations. The Amlah proposed that Campbell should sign a bond,
granting immunity for all past offences on their part, whilst they
were to withdraw the letter of grievances against him. The Lamas cast
horoscopes for the  future, little presents continually arrived for
us, and the Ranee sent me some tobacco, and to Campbell brown sugar
and Murwa beer. The blacksmiths, who had been ostentatiously making
long knives at the forge hard by, were dismissed; troops were said to
be arriving at Dorjiling, and a letter sternly demanding our release
bad been received.

The Lamas of Pemiongchi, Changachelling, Tassiding, etc., and the
Dewan's enemies, and Tchebu Lama's friends, began to flock from all
quarters to Tumloong, demanding audience of the Rajah, and our
instant liberation. The Dewan's game was evidently up; but the
timidity of his opponents, his own craft, and the habitual
dilatoriness of all, contributed to cause endless delays. The young
Gangtok Kajee tried to curry favour with us, sending word that he was
urging our release, and adding that he had some capital ponies for us
to see on our way to Dorjiling! Many similar trifles showed that
these people had not a conception of the nature of their position, or
of that of an officer of the British Government.

The Tchebu Lama visited us only once, and then under surveillance; he
renewed his professions of good faith, and we had every reason to
know that he had suffered severely for his adherence to us, and
consistent repudiation of the Amlah's conduct; he was in great favour
with his brother Lamas, but was not allowed to see the Rajah, who was
said to trust to him alone of all his counsellors. He told us that
peremptory orders had arrived from Calcutta for our release, but that
the Amlah had replied that they would not acknowledge the despatch,
from its not bearing the Governor-General's great seal!
The country-people refusing to be saddled with the keep of our
coolies, they were sent to Dorjiling in small parties, charged to say
that we were free, and following them.

The weather continued rainy and bad, with occasionally a few hours of
sunshine, which, however, always rendered the ditch before our door
offensive: we were still prevented leaving the hot, but as a great
annual festival was going on, we were less disagreeably watched.
Campbell was very unwell, and we had no medicine; and as the Dewan,
accustomed to such duplicity himself, naturally took this for a
_ruse,_ and refused to allow us to send to Dorjiling for any, we were
more than ever convinced that his own sickness was simulated.

On the 2nd and 3rd December we had further conferences with the
Dewan, who said that we were to be taken to Dorjiling in six days,
with two Vakeels from the Rajah. The Pemiongchi Lama, as the oldest
and most venerated in Sikkim, attended, and addressed Campbell in a
speech of great feeling and truth. Having heard, he said, of these
unfortunate circumstances a few days ago, he had come on feeble
limbs, and though upwards of seventy winters old, as the
representative of his holy brotherhood, to tender advice to his
Rajah, which he hoped would be followed: Since Sikkim had been
connected with the British rule, it had experienced continued peace
and protection; whereas before they were in constant dread of their
lives and properties, which, as well as their most sacred temples,
were violated by the Nepalese and Bhotanese. He then dwelt upon
Campbell's invariable kindness and good feeling, and his exertions
for the benefit of their country, and for the cementing of
friendship, and hoped he would not let these untoward events induce
an opposite course in future but that he would continue to exert his
influence with the Governor-General in their favour.

The Dewan listened attentively; he was anxious and  perplexed, and
evidently losing his presence of mind: he talked to us of Lhassa and
its gaieties, dromedaries, Lamas, and everything Tibetan; offered to
sell us ponies cheap, and altogether behaved in a most, undignified
manner; ever and anon calling attention to his pretended sick leg,
which he nursed on his knee. He gave us the acceptable news that the
government at Calcutta had sent up an officer to carry on Campbell's
duties, which had alarmed him exceedingly. The Rajah, we were told,
was very angry at our seizure and detention; he had no fault to find
with the Governor-General's agent, and hoped he would be continued as
such. In fact, all the blame was thrown on the brothers of the Dewan,
and of the Gangtok Kajee, and more irresponsible stupid boors could
not have been found on whom to lay it, or who would have felt less
inclined to commit such folly if it had not been put on them by the
Dewan. On leaving, white silk scarfs were thrown over our shoulders,
and we went away, still doubtful, after so many disappointments,
whether we should really be set at liberty at the stated period.

Although there was so much talk about our leaving, our confinement
continued as rigorous as ever. The Dewan curried favour in every
other way, sending us Tibetan wares for purchase, with absurd prices
attached, he being an arrant pedlar. All the principal families
waited on us, desiring peace and friendship. The coolies who had not
been dismissed were allowed to run away, except my Bhotan Sirdar,
Nimbo, against whom the Dewan was inveterate;* [The Sikkim people are
always at issue with the Bhotanese. Nimbo was a runaway slave of the
latter country, who had been received into Sikkim, and retained there
until he took up his quarters at Dorjiling.] he, however, managed
soon afterwards to break a great chain with which his legs were
shackled, and  marching at night, eluded a hot pursuit, and proceeded
to the Teesta, swam the river, and reached Dorjiling in eight days;
arriving with a large iron ring on each leg, and a link of several
pounds weight attached to one.

Parting presents arrived from the Rajah on the 7th, consisting of
ponies, cloths, silks, woollens, immense squares of butter, tea, and
the usual et ceteras, to the utter impoverishment of his stores:
these he offered to the two Sahibs, "in token of his amity with the
British government, his desire for peace, and deprecation of angry
discussions." The Ranee sent silk purses, fans, and such Tibetan
paraphernalia, with an equally amicable message, that "she was most
anxious to avert the consequences of whatever complaints had gone
forth against Dr. Campbell, who might depend on her strenuous
exertions to persuade the Rajah to do whatever he wished!"
These friendly messages were probably evoked by the information that
an English regiment, with three guns, was on its way to Sikkim, and
that 300 of the Bhaugulpore Rangers had already arrived there.
The government of Bengal sending another agent* [Mr. Lushington, the
gentleman sent to conduct Sikkim affairs during Dr. Campbell's
detention: to whom I shall ever feel grateful for his activity in our
cause, and his unremitting attention to every little arrangement that
could alleviate the discomforts and anxieties of our position.] to
Dorjiling, was also a contingency they had not anticipated, having
fully expected to get rid of any such obstacle to direct
communication with the Governor-General.

A present from the whole population followed that of the Ranee,
coupled with earnest entreaties that Campbell would resume his
position at Dorjiling; and on the following day forty coolies
mustered to arrange the baggage. Before we left, the Ranee sent three
rupees to buy a  yard of chale and some gloves, accompanying them
with a present of white silk, etc., for Mrs. Campbell, to whom the
commission was intrusted: a singular instance of the _insouciant_
simplicity of these odd people.

The 9th of December was a splendid and hot day, one of the very few
we had had during our captivity. We left at noon, descending the hill
through an enormous crowd of people, who brought farewell presents,
all wishing us well. We were still under escort as prisoners of the
Dewan, who was coolly marching a troop of forty unloaded mules and
ponies, and double that number of men's loads of merchandize,
purchased during the summer in Tibet, to trade with at Dorjiling and
the Titalya fair! His impudence or stupidity was thus quite
inexplicable; treating us as prisoners, ignoring every demand of the
authorities at Dorjiling, of the Supreme Council of Calcutta, and of
the Governor-General himself; and at the same time acting as if he
were to enter the British territories on the most friendly and
advantageous footing for himself and his property, and incurring so
great an expense in all this as to prove that he was in earnest in
thinking so.

Tchebu Lama accompanied us, but we were not allowed to converse with
him. We halted at the bottom of the valley, where the Dewan invited
us to partake of tea; from this place he gave us mules* [The Tibet
mules are often as fine as the Spanish: I rode one which had
performed a journey from Choombi to Lhassa in fifteen days, with a
man and load.] or ponies to ride, and we ascended to Yankoong, a
village 3,867 feet above the sea. On the following day we crossed a
high ridge from the Ryott valley to that of the Rungmi; where we
camped at Tikbotang (alt. 3,763 feet), and, on the 11th at Gangtok
Sampoo, a few miles lower down the same valley.

We were now in the Soubahship of the Gangtok Kajee; a  member of the
oldest and most wealthy family in Sikkim; he had from the first
repudiated the late acts of the Amlah, in which his brother had taken
part, and had always been hostile to the Dewan. The latter conducted
himself with disagreeable familiarity towards us, and _hauteur_
towards the people; he was preceded by immense kettle-drums, carried
on men's backs, and great hand-bells, which were beaten and rung on
approaching villages; on which occasions he changed his dress of
sky-blue for yellow silk robes worked with Chinese dragons, to the
indignation of Tchebu Lama, an amber robe in polite Tibetan society
being sacred to royalty and the Lamas. We everywhere perceived
unequivocal symptoms of the dislike with which he was regarded.
Cattle were driven away, villages deserted, and no one came to pay
respects, or bring presents, except the Kajees, who were ordered to
attend, and his elder brother, for whom he had usurped an estate
near Gangtok.

On the 13th, he marched us a few miles, and then halted for a day at
Serriomsa (alt. 2,820 feet), at the bottom of a hot valley full of
irrigated rice-crops and plantain and orange-groves. Here the Gangtok
Kajee waited on us with a handsome present, and informed us privately
of his cordial hatred of the "upstart Dewan," and hopes for his
overthrow; a demonstration of which we took no notice.* [Nothing
would have been easier than for the Gangtok Kajee, or any other
respectable man in Sikkim, to have overthrown the Dewan and his
party; but these people are intolerably apathetic, and prefer being
tyrannized over to the trouble of shaking off the yoke.] The Dewan's
brother (one of the Amlah) also sent a large present, but was ashamed
to appear. Another letter reached the Dewan here, directed to the
Rajah; it was from the Governor-General at Bombay, and had been sent
across the country by special messengers:  it demanded our instant
release, or his Raj would be forfeited; and declared that if a hair
of our heads were touched, his life should be the penalty.

The Rajah was also incessantly urging the Dewan to hasten us onwards
as free men to Dorjiling, but the latter took all remonstrances with
assumed coolness, exercised his ponies, played at bow and arrow,
intruded on us at mealtimes to be invited to partake, and loitered on
the road, changing garments and hats, which he pestered us to buy.
Nevertheless, he was evidently becoming daily more nervous
and agitated.

From the Rungmi valley we crossed on the 14th southward to that of
Runniok, and descended to Dikkeeling, a large village of Dhurma
Bhoteeas (Bhotanese), which is much the most populous, industrious,
and at the same time turbulent, in Sikkim. It is 4,950 feet above the
sea, and occupies many broad cultivated spurs facing the south.
This district once belonged to Bhotan, and was ceded to the Sikkim
Rajah by the Paro Pilo,* [The temporal sovereign, in
contra-distinction to the Dhurma Rajah, or spiritual sovereign of
Bhotan.] in consideration of some military services, rendered by the
former in driving off the Tibetans, who had usurped it for the
authorities of Lhassa. Since then the Sikkim and Bhotan people have
repeatedly fallen out, and Dikkeeling has become a refuge for runaway
Bhotanese, and kidnapping is constantly practised on this frontier.

The Dewan halted us here for three days, for no assigned cause.
On the 16th, letters arrived, including a most kind and encouraging
one from Mr. Lushington, who had taken charge of Campbell's office at
Dorjiling. Immediately after arriving, the messenger was seized with
violent vomitings and gripings: we could not help suspecting poison,
especially as we were now amongst adherents of the Dewan, and the
Bhotanese are notorious for this crime. Only one means suggested
itself for proving this, and with Campbell's permission I sent my
compliments to the Dewan, with a request for one of his hunting dogs
to eat the vomit. It was sent at once, and performed its duty without
any ill effects. I must confess to having felt a malicious pleasure
in the opportunity thus afforded of showing our jailor how little we
trusted him; feeling indignant at the idea that he should suppose he
was making any way in our good opinion by his familiarities, which we
were not in circumstances to resist.

The crafty fellow, however, outwitted me by inviting us to dine with
him the same day, and putting our stomachs and noses to a severe
test. Our dinner was served in Chinese fashion, but most of the
luxuries, such as _beche-de-mer,_ were very old and bad. We ate,
sometimes with chop-sticks, and at others with Tibetan spoons,
knives, and two-pronged forks. After the usual amount of messes
served in oil and salt water, sweets were brought, and a strong
spirit. Thoba-sing, our filthy, cross-eyed spy, was waiter, and
brought in every little dish with both hands, and raised it to his
greasy forehead, making a sort of half bow previous to depositing it
before us. Sometimes he undertook to praise its contents, always
adding, that in Tibet none but very great men indeed partook of such
sumptuous fare. Thus he tried to please both us and the Dewan, who
conducted himself with pompous hospitality, showing off what he
considered his elegant manners and graces. Our blood boiled within us
at being so patronised by the squinting ruffian, whose insolence and
ill-will had sorely aggravated the discomforts of our imprisonment.

Not content with giving us what he considered a magnificent dinner
(and it had cost him some trouble), the  Dewan produced a little bag
from a double-locked escritoire, and took out three dinner-pills,
which he had received as a great favour from the Rimbochay Lama, and
which were a sovereign remedy for indigestion and all other ailments;
he handed one to each of us, reserving the third for himself.
Campbell refused his; but there appeared no help for me, after my
groundless suspicion of poison, and so I swallowed the pill with the
best grace I could. But in truth, it was not poison I dreaded in its
contents, so much as being compounded of some very questionable
materials, such as the Rimbochay Lama blesses and dispenses far and
wide. To swallow such is a sanctifying work, according to Boodhist
superstition, and I believe there was nothing in the world, save his
ponies, to which the Dewan attached a greater value.

To wind up the feast, we had pipes of excellent mild yellow Chinese
tobacco called "Tseang," made from _Nicotiana rustica,_ which is
cultivated in East Tibet, and in West China according to MM. Huc and
Gabet. It resembles in flavour the finest Syrian tobacco, and is most
agreeable when the smoke is passed through the nose. The common
tobacco of India (_Nicotiana Tabacum_) is much imported into Tibet,
where it is called "Tamma," (probably a corruption of the Persian
"Toombac,") and is said to fetch the enormous price of 30 shillings
per lb. at Lhassa, which is sixty times its value in India. Rice at
Lhassa, when cheap, sells at 2 shillings for 5 lbs.; it is, as I have
elsewhere said, all bought up for rations for the Chinese soldiery.

The Bhotanese are more industrious than the Lepchas, and better
husbandmen; besides having superior crops of all ordinary grains,
they grow cotton, hemp, and flax. The cotton is cleansed here as
elsewhere, with a simple gin. The Lepchas use no spinning wheel, but
a spindle and  distaff; their loom, which is Tibetan is a very
complicated one framed of bamboo; it is worked by hand, without beam
treddle, or shuttle.

On the 18th we were marched, three miles only, to Singdong (alt.
2,116 feet), and on the following day five miles farther, to Katong
Ghat (alt. 750 feet), on the Teesta river, which we crossed with
rafts, and camped on the opposite bank, a few miles above the
junction of this river with the Great Rungeet. The water, which is
sea-green in colour, had a temperature of 53.5 degrees at 4 p.m.,
and 51.7 degrees the following morning; its current was very
powerful. The rocks, since leaving Tunlloong, had been generally
micaceous, striking north-west, and dipping north-east. The climate
was hot, and the vegetation on the banks tropical; on the hills
around, lemon-bushes ("Kucheala," Lepcha) were abundant, growing
apparently wild.

The Dewan was now getting into a very nervous and depressed state; he
was determined to keep up appearances before his followers, but was
himself almost servile to us; he caused his men to make a parade of
their arms, as if to intimidate us, and in descending narrow gullies
we had several times the disagreeable surprise of finding some of his
men at a sudden turn, with drawn bows and arrows pointed towards us.
Others gesticulated with their long knives, and made fell swoops at
soft plantain-stems; but these artifices were all as shallow as they
were contemptible, and a smile at such demonstrations was generally
answered with another from the actors.

From Katong we ascended the steep east flank of Tendong or Mount
Ararat, through forests of Sal and long-leaved pine, to Namten (alt.
4,483 feet), where we again halted two days. The Dingpun Tinli lived
near and  waited on us with a present, which, with all others that
had been brought, Campbell received officially, and transferred to
the authorities at Dorjiling.

The Dewan was thoroughly alarmed at the news here brought in, that
the Rajah's present of yaks, ponies, etc., which had been sent
forward, had been refused at Dorjiling; and equally so at the
clamorous messages which reached him from all quarters, demanding our
liberation; and at the desertion of some of his followers, on hearing
that large bodies of troops were assembling at Dorjiling. Repudiated
by his Rajah and countrymen, and paralysed between his dignity and
his ponies, which he now perceived would not be welcomed at the
station, and which were daily losing flesh, looks, and value in these
hot valleys, where there is no grass pasture, he knew not what
olive-branch to hold out to our government, except ourselves, whom he
therefore clung to as hostages.

On the 22nd of December he marched us eight miles further, to
Cheadam, on a bold spur 4,653 feet high, overlooking the Great
Rungeet, and facing Dorjiling, from which it was only twenty miles
distant. The white bungalows of our friends gladdened our eyes, while
the new barracks erecting for the daily arriving troops struck terror
into the Dewan's heart. The six Sepoys* [These Sepoys, besides the
loose red jacket and striped Lepcha kirtle, wore a very curious
national black hat of felt, with broad flaps turned up all round:
this is represented in the right-hand figure. A somewhat similar bat
is worn by some classes of Nepal soldiery.] who had marched valiantly
beside us for twenty days, carrying the muskets given to the Rajah
the year before by the Governor-General, now lowered their arms, and
vowed that if a red coat crossed the Great Rungeet, they would throw
down their guns and run away. News arrived  that the Bhotan
inhabitants of Dorjiling headed by my bold Sirdar Nimbo, had arranged
a night attack for our release; an enterprise to which they were
quite equal, and in which they have had plenty of practice in their
own misgoverned country. Watch-fires gleamed amongst the bushes, we
were thrust into a doubly-guarded house, and bows and arrows were
ostentatiously levelled so as to rake the doorway, should we attempt
to escape. Some of the ponies were sent back to Dikkeeling, though
the Dewan still clung to his merchandise and the feeble hope of
traffic. The confusion increased daily, but though Tchebu Lama looked
brisk and confident, we were extremely anxious;  scouts were hourly
arriving from the road to the Great Rungeet, and if our troops had
advanced, the Dewan might have made away with us from pure fear.

Illustration--LEPCHA SEPOYS. TIBETAN SEPAYS IN THE BACK-GROUND.

In the forenoon he paid us a long visit, and brought some flutes, of
which he gave me two very common ones of apricot wood from Lhassa,
producing at the same time a beautiful one, which I believe he
intended for Campbell, but his avarice got the better, and he
commuted his gift into the offer of a tune, and pitching it in a high
key, he went through a Tibetan air that almost deafened us by its
screech. He tried bravely to maintain his equanimity, but as we
preserved a frigid civility and only spoke when addressed, the tears
would start from his eyes in the pauses of conversation. In the
evening he came again; he was excessively agitated and covered with
perspiration, and thrust himself unceremoniously between us on the
bench we occupied. As his familiarity increased, he put his arm round
my neck, and as he was armed with a small dagger, I felt rather
uneasy about his intentions, but he ended by forcing on my acceptance
a coin, value threepence, for he was in fact beside himself
with terror.

Next morning Campbell received a hint that this was a good
opportunity for a vigorous remonstrance. The Dewan came with Tchebu
Lama, his own younger brother (who was his pony driver), and the
Lassoo Kajee. The latter had for two months placed himself in an
attitude of hostility opposite Dorjiling, with a ragged company of
followers, but he now sought peace and friendship as much as the
Dewan; the latter told us he was waiting for a reply to a letter
addressed to Mr. Lushington, after which he would set us free.
Campbell said: "As you appear to have made up your mind, why not
dismiss us at once?" He  answered that we should go the next day at
all events: Here I came in, and on hearing from Campbell what had
passed, I added, that he had better for his own sake let us go at
once; that the next day was our great and only annual Poojah
(religious festival) of Christmas, when we all met; whereas he and
his countrymen had dozens in the year. As for me, he knew I had no
wife, nor children, nor any relation, within thousands of miles, and
it mattered little where I was, he was only bringing ruin on himself
by his conduct to me as the Governor-General's friend; but as
regarded Campbell, the case was different; his home was at Dorjiling,
which was swarming with English soldiers, all in a state of
exasperation, and if he did not let us depart before Christmas, he
would find Dorjiling too hot to hold him, let him offer what
reparation he might for the injuries he had done us. I added: "We are
all ready to go--dismiss us." The Dewan again turned to Campbell, who
said, "I am quite ready; order us ponies at once, and send our
luggage after us." He then ordered the ponies, and three men,
including Meepo, to attend us; whereupon we walked out, mounted, and
made off with all speed.

We arrived at the cane bridge over the Great Rungeet at 4 p.m., and
to our chagrin found it in the possession of a posse of ragged
Bhoteeas, though there were thirty armed Sepoys of our own at the
guard-house above. At Meepo's order they cut the network of fine
canes by which they had rendered the bridge impassable, and we
crossed. The Sepoys at the guard-house turned out with their clashing
arms and bright accoutrements, and saluted to the sound of bugles;
scaring our three companions, who ran back as fast as they could go.
We rode up that night to Dorjiling, and I arrived at 8 p.m. at
Hodgson's house,  where I was taken for a ghost, and received with
shouts of welcome by my kind friend and his guest Dr. Thomson, who
had been awaiting my arrival for upwards of a month.

Thus terminated our Sikkim captivity, and my last Himalayan exploring
journey, which in a geographical point of view had answered my
purposes beyond my most sanguine expectations, though my collections
had been in a great measure destroyed by so many untoward events.
It enabled me to survey the whole country, and to execute a map of
it, and Campbell had further gained that knowledge of its resources
which the British government should all along have possessed, as the
protector of the Rajah and his territories.

It remains to say a few words of the events that succeeded our
release, in so far as they relate to my connection with them.
The Dewan moved from Cheadam to Namtchi, immediately opposite
Dorjiling, where he remained throughout the winter. The supreme
government of Bengal demanded of the Rajah that he should deliver up
the most notorious offenders, and come himself to Dorjiling, on pain
of an army marching to Tumloong to enforce the demand; a step which
would have been easy, as there were neither troops, arms, ammunition,
nor other means of resistance, even had there been the inclination to
stop us, which was not the case. The Rajah would in all probability
have delivered himself up at Tumloong, throwing himself on our mercy,
and the army would have sought the culprits in vain, both the spirit
and the power to capture them being wanting on the part of the people
and their ruler.

The Rajah expressed his willingness, but pleaded his inability to
fulfil the demand, whereupon the threat was  repeated, and additional
reinforcements were moved on to Dorjiling. The general officer in
command at Dinapore was ordered to Dorjiling to conduct operations:
his skill and bravery had been proved during the progress of the
Nepal war so long ago as 1815. From the appearance of the country
about Dorjiling, he was led to consider Sikkim to be impracticable
for a British army. This was partly owing to the forest-clad
mountains, and partly to the fear of Tibetan troops coming to the
Rajah's aid, and the Nepalese* [Jung Bahadoor was at this time
planning his visit to England, and to his honour I must say, that on
hearing of our imprisonment he offered to the government at Calcutta
to release us with a handful of men. This he would no doubt have
easily effected, but his offer was wisely declined, for the Nepalese
(as I have elsewhere stated) want Sikkim and Bhotan too, and we had
undertaken the protection of the former country, mainly to keep the
Nepalese out of it.] taking the opportunity to attack us. With the
latter we were in profound peace, and we had a resident at their
court; and I have elsewhere shown the impossibility of a Tibet
invasion, even if the Chinese or Lhassan authorities were inclined to
interfere in the affairs of Sikkim, which they long ago formally
declined doing in the case of aggressions of the Nepalese and
Bhotanese, the Sikkim Rajah being under British protection.* [The
general officer considered that our troops would have been cut to
pieces if they entered the country; and the late General Sir Charles
Napier has since given evidence to the same effect. Having been
officially asked at the time whether I would guide a party into the
country, and having drawn up (at the request of the general officer)
plans for the purpose, and having given it as my opinion that it
would not only have been feasible but easy to have marched a force in
peace and safety to Tumloong, I feel it incumbent on me here to
remark, that I think General Napier, who never was in Sikkim, and
wrote from many hundred miles' distance, must have misapprehended the
state of the case. Whether an invasion of Sikkim was either advisable
or called for, was a matter in which I had no concern: nor do I offer
an opinion as to the impregnability of the country if it were
defended by natives otherwise a match for a British force, and having
the advantage of position. I was not consulted with reference to any
difference of opinion between the civil and military powers, such as
seems to have called for the expression of Sir Charles Napier's
opinion on this matter, and which appears to be considerably
overrated in his evidence.

The general officer honoured me with his friendship at Dorjiling, and
to Mr. Lushington, I am, as I have elsewhere stated, under great
obligations for his personal consideration and kindness, and vigorous
measures during my detention. On my release and return to Dorjiling,
any interference on my part would have been meddling with what was
not my concern. I never saw, nor wished to see, a public document
connected with the affair, and have only given as many of the leading
features of the case as I can vouch for, and as were accessible to
any other bystander.]

There were not wanting offers of leading a company of soldiers to
Tumloong, rather than that the threat should have twice been made,
and then withdrawn; but they were not accepted. A large body of
troops was however, marched from Dorjiling, and encamped on the north
bank of the Great Rungeet for some weeks: but after that period they
were recalled, without any further demonstration; the Dewan remaining
encamped the while on the Namtchi hill, not three hours' march above
them. The simple Lepchas daily brought our soldiers milk, fowls, and
eggs, and would have continued to do so had they proceeded to
Tumloong, for I believe both Rajah and people would have rejoiced at
our occupation of the country.

After the withdrawal of the troops, the threat was modified into a
seizure of the Terai lands, which the Rajah had originally received
as a free gift from the British, and which were the only lucrative or
fertile estates he possessed. This was effected by four policemen
taking possession of the treasury (which contained exactly twelve
shillings, I believe), and announcing to the villagers the
confiscation of the territory to the British government, in which
they gladly acquiesced. At the same time there was annexed to it the
whole southern part of Sikkim, between the Great Rungeet and the
plains of India, and from Nepal on the west to the Bhotan frontier
and the Teesta river on the east; thus confining the Rajah to his
mountains, and cutting off all access to the plains, except through
the British territories. To the inhabitants (about 5000 souls) this
was a matter of congratulation, for it only involved the payment of a
small fixed tax in money to the treasury at Dorjiling, instead of a
fluctuating one in kind, with service to the Rajah, besides exempting
them from further annoyance by the Dewan. At the present time the
revenues of the tract thus acquired have doubled, and will very soon
be quadrupled: every expense of our detention and of the moving of
troops, etc., has been already repaid by it, and for the future all
will be clear profit; and I am given to understand that this last
year it has realized upwards of 30,000 rupees (3000 pounds).

Dr. Campbell resumed his duties immediately afterwards, and the
newly-acquired districts were placed under his jurisdiction. The
Rajah still begs hard for the renewal of old friendship, and the
restoration of his Terai land, or the annual grant of 300 pounds a
year which he formerly received. He has forbidden the culprits his
court, but can do no more. The Dewan, disgraced and turned out of
office, is reduced to poverty, and is deterred from entering Tibet by
the threat of being dragged to Lhassa with a rope round his neck.
Considering, however, his energy, a rare quality in these countries,
I should not be surprised at his yet cutting a figure in Bhotan, if
not in Sikkim itself: especially if, at the Rajah's death, the
British government should refuse to take the country under its
protection. The Singtam Soubah and the other culprits live disgraced
at their homes. Tchebu Lama has received a handsome reward, and a
grant of land at Dorjiling, where he resides, and whence he sends me
his salaams by every opportunity.



CHAPTER XXVII.

Leave Dorjiling for Calcutta--Jung Bahadoor--Dr. Falconer--
Improvements in Botanic Gardens--Palmetum--Victoria--
_Amherstia_--Orchids spread by seed--Banyan--_Cycas_--
Importation of American plants in ice--Return to Dorjiling--Leave
with Dr. Thomson for the Khasia mountains--Mahanuddy river--
Vegetation of banks--Maldah--Alligators--Rampore-Bauleah--
Climate of Ganges--Pubna--Jummul river--Altered course of
Burrampooter and Megna--Dacca--Conch shells--Saws--Cotton
muslins--Fruit--Vegetation--Elevation--Rose of Bengal--
Burrampooter--Delta of Soormah river--Jheels--Soil--
Vegetation--Navigation--Mosquitos--Atmospheric pressure--
Effects of geological changes--Imbedding of plants--Teelas or
islets--Chattuc--Salubrious climate--Rains--Canoes--Pundua
--Mr. Harry Inglis--Terrya Ghat--Ascent to Churra--Scenery and
vegetation at foot of mountains--Cascades.

I was chiefly occupied during January and February of 1850, in
arranging and transmitting my collections to Calcutta, and completing
my manuscripts, maps, and surveys. My friend Dr. Thomson having
joined me here, for the purpose of our spending a year in travelling
and botanising together, it became necessary to decide on the best
field for our pursuits. Bhotan offered the most novelty, but it was
inaccessible to Europeans; and we therefore turned our thoughts to
Nepal, and failing that, to the Khasia mountains.

The better to expedite our arrangements, I made a trip to Calcutta in
March, where I expected to meet both Lord Dalhousie, on his return
from the Straits of Malacca, and Jung Bahadoor (the Nepalese
minister), who was then _en route_ as envoy to England. I staid at
Government House, where every assistance was afforded me towards
obtaining the Nepal Rajah's permission to proceed through the
Himalaya from Dorjiling to Katmandu. Jung Bahadoor received me with
much courtesy, and expressed his great desire to serve me; but begged
me to wait until his return from England, as he could not be
answerable for my personal safety when travelling during his absence;
and he referred to the permission he had formerly given me (and such
was never before accorded to any European) in earnest of his
disposition, which was unaltered. We therefore determined upon
spending the season of 1850 in the Khasia mountains in eastern
Bengal, at the head of the great delta of the Ganges and Burrampooter.

Illustration--DR. FALCONER'S RESIDENCE, CALCUTTA BOTANIC GARDENS,
FROM SIR L. PEEL'S GROUNDS.



I devoted a few days to the Calcutta Botanic Gardens, where I found
my kind friend Dr. Falconer established, and very busy.
The destruction of most of the palms, and of all the noble tropical
features of the gardens, during Dr. Griffith's incumbency, had
necessitated the replanting of the greater part of the grounds, the
obliteration of old walks, and the construction of new: it was also
necessary to fill up tanks whose waters, by injudicious cuttings,
were destroying some of the most valuable parts of the land, to drain
many acres, and to raise embankments to prevent the encroachments of
the Hoogly: the latter being a work attended with great expense, now
cripples the resources of the garden library, and other valuable
adjuncts; for the trees which were planted for the purpose having
been felled and sold, it became necessary to buy timber at an
exorbitant price.

The avenue of Cycas trees (_Cycas circinalis_), once the admiration
of all visitors, and which for beauty and singularity was unmatched
in any tropical garden, had been swept away by the same unsparing
hand which had destroyed the teak, mahogany, clove, nutmeg, and
cinnamon groves. In 1847, when I first visited the establishment,
nothing was to be seen of its former beauty and grandeur, but a few
noble trees or graceful palms rearing their heads over a low ragged
jungle, or spreading their broad leaves or naked limbs over the
forlorn hope of a botanical garden, that consisted of open clay beds,
disposed in concentric circles, and baking into brick under the
fervid heat of a Bengal sun.

The rapidity of growth is so great in this climate, that within eight
months from the commencement of the improvements, a great change had
already taken place. The grounds bore a park-like appearance; broad
shady walks had replaced the narrow winding paths that ran in
distorted lines over the ground, and a large Palmetum, or collection
of tall and graceful palms of various kinds, occupied several acres
at one side of the garden; whilst a still larger portion of ground
was being appropriated to a picturesque assemblage of certain closely
allied families of plants, whose association promised to form a novel
and attractive object of study to the botanist, painter, and
landscape gardener. This, which the learned Director called in
scientific language a Thamno-Endogenarium, consists of groups of all
kinds of bamboos, tufted growing palms, rattan canes (_Calami_),
_Dracaenae,_ plantains, screw-pines, (_Pandani_), and such genera of
tropical monocotyledonous plants. All are evergreens of most vivid
hue, some of which, having slender trailing stems, form magnificent
masses; others twine round one another, and present impenetrable
hillocks of green foliage; whilst still others shoot out broad long
wavy leaves from tufted roots; and a fourth class is supported by
aerial roots, diverging on all sides and from all heights on the
stems, every branch of which is crowned with an enormous plume of
grass-like leaves.* [Since I left India, these improvements have been
still further carried out, and now (in the spring of 1853) I read of
five splendid _Victoria_ plants flowering at once, with _Euryale
ferox,_ white, blue, and red water-lilies, and white, yellow and
scarlet lotus, rendering the tanks gorgeous, sunk as their waters are
in frames of green grass, ornamented with clumps of _Nipa fruticans_
and _Phoenix paludosa._]

The great _Amherstia_ tree had been nearly killed by injudicious
treatment, and the baking of the soil above its roots. This defect
was remedied by sinking bamboo pipes four feet and a half in the
earth, and watering through them--a plan first recommended by Major
M`Farlane of Tavoy. Some fine _Orchideae_ were in flower in the,
gardens, but few of them fruit; and those _Dendrobiums_ which bear
axillary viviparous buds never do. Some of the orchids appear to be
spread by birds amongst the trees; but the different species of
_Vanda_ are increasing so fast, that there seems no doubt that this
tribe of air-plants grows freely from seed in a wild state, though we
generally fail to rear them in England.

The great Banyan tree (_Ficus Indica_) is still the pride and
ornament of the garden. Dr. Falconer has ascertained satisfactorily
that it is only seventy-five years old: annual rings, size, etc.,
afford no evidence in such a case, but people were alive a few years
ago who remembered well its site being occupied in 1782 by a Kujoor
(Date-palm), out of whose crown the Banyan sprouted, and beneath
which a Fakir sat. It is a remarkable fact that the banyan hardly
ever vegetates on the ground; but its figs are eaten by birds, and
the seeds deposited in the crowns of palms, where they grow, sending
down roots that embrace and eventually kill the palm, which decays
away. This tree is now eighty feet high, and throws an area 300 feet*
[Had this tree been growing in 1849 over the great palm-stove at Kew,
only thirty feet of each end of that vast structure would have been
uncovered: its increase was proceeding so rapidly, that by this time
it could probably cover the whole. Larger banyans are common in
Bengal; but few are so symmetrical in shape and height. As the tree
gets old, it breaks up into separate masses, the original trunk
decaying, and the props becoming separate trunks of the different
portions.] in diameter into a dark, cool shade. The gigantic limbs
spread out about ten feet above the ground, and from neglect during
Dr. Wallich's absence, there were on Dr. Falconer's arrival no more
than eighty-nine descending roots or props; there are now several
hundreds, and the growth of this grand mass of vegetation is
proportionably stimulated and increased. The props are induced to
sprout by wet clay and moss tied to the branches, beneath which a
little pot of water is hung, and after they have made some progress,
they are inclosed in bamboo tubes, and so coaxed down to the ground.
They are mere slender whip-cords before reaching the earth, where
they root, remaining very lax for several months; but gradually, as
they grow and swell to the size of cables, they tighten, and
eventually become very tense. This is a curious phenomenon, and so
rapid, that it appears to be due to the rooting part mechanically
dragging down the aerial. The branch meanwhile continues to grow
outwards, and being supplied by its new support, thickens beyond it,
whence the props always slant outwards from the ground towards the
circumference of the tree.

_Cycas_ trees abound in the gardens, and, though generally having
only one, or rarely two crowns, they have sometimes sixteen, and
their stems are everywhere covered with leafy buds, which are
developed on any check being given to the growth of the plant, as by
the operation of transplantation, which will cause as many as 300
buds to appear in the course of a few years, on a trunk eight
feet high.

During my stay at the gardens, Dr. Falconer received a box of living
plants packed in moss, and transported in a frozen state by one of
the ice ships from North America:* [The ice from these ships is sold
in the Calcutta market for a penny a pound, to great profit; it has
already proved an invaluable remedy in cases of inflammation and
fever, and has diminished mortality to a very appreciable extent.]
they left in November, and arriving in March, I was present at the
opening of the boxes, and saw 391 plants (the whole contents) taken
out in the most perfect state. They were chiefly fruit-trees, apples,
pears, peaches, currants, and gooseberries, with beautiful plants of
the Venus' fly-trap (_Dionaea muscipula_). More perfect success never
attended an experiment: the plants were in vigorous bud, and the day
after being released from their icy bonds, the leaves sprouted and
unfolded, and they were packed in Ward's cases for immediate
transport to the Himalaya mountains.

My visit to Calcutta enabled me to compare my instruments with the
standards at the Observatory, in which I was assisted by my friend,
Capt. Thuillier, to whose kind offices on this and many other
occasions I am greatly indebted.

I returned to Dorjiling on the 17th of April, and Dr. Thomson and I
commenced our arrangements for proceeding to the Khasia mountains.
We started on the 1st of May, and I bade adieu to Dorjiling with no
light heart; for I was leaving the kindest and most disinterested
friends I had ever made in a foreign land, and a country whose
mountains, forests, productions, and people had all become endeared
to me by many ties and associations. The prospects of Dorjiling
itself are neither doubtful nor insignificant. Whether or not Sikkim
will fall again under the protection of Britain, the station must
prosper, and that very speedily. I had seen both its native
population and its European houses doubled in two years; its
salubrious climate, its scenery, and accessibility, ensure it so
rapid a further increase that it will become the most populous
hill-station in India. Strong prejudices against a damp climate, and
the complaints of loungers and idlers who only seek pleasure,
together with a groundless fear of the natives, have hitherto
retarded its progress; but its natural advantages will outweigh these
and all other obstacles.

I am aware that my opinion of the ultimate success of Dorjiling is
not shared by the general public of India, and must be pardoned for
considering their views in this matter short-sighted. With regard to
the disagreeables of its climate, I can sufficiently appreciate them,
and shall be considered by the residents to have over-estimated the
amount and constancy of mist, rain, and humidity, from the two
seasons I spent there being exceptional in these respects. Whilst on
the one hand I am willing to admit the probability of this,* [I am
informed that hardly a shower of rain has fallen this season, between
November 1852, and April 1853; and a very little snow in February
only.] I may be allowed on the other to say that I have never visited
any spot under the sun, where I was not told that the season was
exceptional, and generally for the worse; added to which there is no
better and equally salubrious climate east of Nepal, accessible
from Calcutta.

All climates are comparative, and fixed residents naturally praise
their own. I have visited many latitudes, and can truly say that I
have found no two climates resembling each other, and that all alike
are complained of. That of Dorjiling is above the average in point of
comfort, and for perfect salubrity rivals any; while in variety,
interest, and grandeur, the scenery is unequalled.

From Sikkim to the Khasia mountains our course was by boat down the
Mahanuddy to the upper Gangetic delta, whose many branches we
followed eastwards to the Megna; whence we ascended the Soormah to
the Silhet district. We arrived at Kishengunj, on the Mahanuddy, on
the 3rd of May, and were delayed two days for our boat, which should
have been waiting here to take us to Berhampore on the Ganges: we
were, however, hospitably received by Mr. Perry's family.

The approach of the rains was indicated by violent easterly storms of
thunder, lightning, and rain; the thermometer ranging from 70 degrees
 to 85 degrees. The country around Kishengunj is flat and very
barren; it is composed of a deep sandy soil, covered with a short
turf, now swarming with cockchafers. Water is found ten or twelve
feet below the surface, and may be supplied by underground streams
from the Himalaya, distant forty-five miles. The river, which at this
season is low, may be navigated up to Titalya during the rains; its
bed averages 60 yards in width, and is extremely tortuous; the
current is slight, and, though shallow, the water is opaque.
We slowly descended to Maldah, where we arrived on the 11th: the
temperature both of the water and of the air increased rapidly to
upwards of 90 degrees; the former was always a few degrees cooler
than the air by day, and warmer by night. The atmosphere became drier
as we receded from the mountains.

The boatmen always brought up by the shore at night; and our progress
was so slow, that we could keep up with the boat when walking along
the bank. So long as the soil and river-bed continued sandy, few
bushes or herbs were to be found, and it was difficult to collect a
hundred kinds of plants in a day: gradually, however, clumps of trees
appeared, with jujube bushes, _Trophis, Acacia,_ and _Buddleia,_ a
few fan-palms, bamboos, and Jack-trees. A shell (_Anodon_) was the
only one seen in the river, which harboured few water-plants or
birds, and neither alligators nor porpoises ascend so high.

On the 7th of May, about eighty miles in a straight line from the
foot of the Himalaya, we found the stratified sandy banks, which had
gradually risen to a height of thirteen feet, replaced by the hard
alluvial clay of the Gangetic valley, which underlies the sand: the
stream contracted, and the features of its banks were materially
improved by a jungle of tamarisk, wormwood (_Artemisia_), and white
rose-bushes (_Rosa involucrata_), whilst mango trees became common,
with tamarinds, banyan, and figs. Date and _Caryota_ palms, and
rattan canes, grew in the woods, and parasitic Orchids on the trees,
which were covered with a climbing fern (_Acrosticum scandens_), so
that we easily doubled our flora of the river banks before arriving
at Maldah.

This once populous town is, like Berhampore, now quite decayed, since
the decline of its silk and indigo trades: the staple product, called
"Maldy," a mixture of silk and cotton, very durable, and which washes
well, now forms its only trade, and is exported through Sikkim to the
north-west provinces and Tibet. It is still famous for the size and
excellence of its mangos, which ripen late in May; but this year the
crop had been destroyed by the damp heats of spring, the usual
north-west dry winds not having prevailed.

The ruins of the once famous city of Gour, a few miles distant, are
now covered with jungle, and the buildings are fast disappearing,
owing to the bricks being carried away to be used elsewhere.

Below Maldah the river gets broader, and willow becomes common.
We found specimens of a _Planorbis_ in the mud of the stream, and saw
apparently a boring shell in the alluvium, but could not land to
examine it. Chalky masses of alligators' droppings, like coprolites,
are very common, buried in the banks, which become twenty feet high
at the junction with the Ganges, where we arrived on the 14th.
The waters of this great river were nearly two degrees cooler than
those of the Mahanuddy.

Rampore-Bauleah is a large station on the north bank of the Ganges,
whose stream is at this season fully a mile wide, with a very slow
current; its banks are thirty feet above the water. We were most
kindly received by Mr. Bell, the collector of the district, to whom
we were greatly indebted for furthering us on our voyage: boats being
very difficult to procure, we were, however, detained here from the
16th to the 19th. I was fortunate in being able to compare my
barometers with a first-rate standard instrument, and in finding no
appreciable alteration since leaving Calcutta in the previous April.
The elevation of the station is 130 feet above the sea, that of
Kishengunj I made 131; so that the Gangetic valley is nearly a dead
level for fully a hundred miles north, beyond which it rises;
Titalya, 150 miles to the north, being 360 feet, and Siligoree, at
the margin of the Terai, rather higher. The river again falls more
considerably than the land; the Mahanuddy, at Kishengunj, being about
twenty feet below the level of the plains, or 110 above the sea;
whereas the Ganges, at Rampore, is probably not more than eighty
feet, even when the water is highest.

The climate of Rampore is marked by greater extremes than that of
Calcutta: during our stay the temperature rose above 106 degrees, and
fell to 78 degrees at night: the mean was 2.5 degrees higher than at
Calcutta, which is 126 miles further south. Being at the head of the
Gangetic delta, which points from the Sunderbunds obliquely to the
north-west, it is much damper than any locality further west, as is
evidenced by two kinds of _Calamus_ palm abounding, which do not
ascend the Ganges beyond Monghyr. Advancing eastwards, the dry
north-west wind of the Gangetic valley, which blows here in
occasional gusts, is hardly felt; and easterly winds, rising after
the sun (or, in other words, following the heating of the open dry
country), blow down the great valley of the Burrampooter, or
south-easterly ones come up from the Bay of Bengal. The western head
of the Gangetic delta is thus placed in what are called "the
variables" in naval phraseology; but only so far as its superficial
winds are concerned, for its great atmospheric current always blows
from the Bay of Bengal, and flows over all northern India, to the
lofty regions of Central Asia.

At Rampore I found the temperature of the ground, at three feet
depth, varied from 87.8 degrees to 89.8 degrees, being considerably
lower than that of the air (94.2 degrees), whilst that of a fine
ripening shaddock, into which I plunged a thermometer bulb, varied
little from 81 degrees, whether the sun shone on it or not. From this
place we made very slow progress south-eastwards, with a gentle
current, but against constant easterly winds, and often violent gales
and thunder-storms, which obliged us to bring up under shelter of
banks and islands of sand. Sometimes we sailed along the broad river,
whose opposite shores were rarely both visible at once, and at others
tracked the boat through narrow creeks that unite the many Himalayan
streams, and form a network soon after leaving their mountain valleys.

A few miles beyond Pubna we passed from a narrow canal at once into
the main stream of the Burrampooter at Jaffergunj: our maps had led
us to expect that it flowed fully seventy miles to the eastward in
this latitude; and we were surprised to hear that within the last
twenty years the main body of that river had shifted its course thus
far to the westward. This alteration was not effected by the gradual
working westwards of the main stream, but by the old eastern channel
so rapidly silting up as to be now unnavigable; while the Jummul,
which receives the Teesta, and which is laterally connected by
branches with the Burrampooter, became consequently wider and deeper,
and eventually the principal stream.

Nothing can be more dreary and uninteresting than the scenery of this
part of the delta. The water is clay-coloured and turbid, always
cooler than the air, which again was 4 degrees or 5 degrees below
that of Calcutta, with a damper atmosphere. The banks are of
stratified sand and mud, hardly raised above the mean level of the
country, and consequently unlike those bordering most annually
flooded rivers; for here the material is so unstable, that the
current yearly changes its course. A wiry grass sometimes feebly
binds the loose soil, on which there are neither houses nor
cultivation.

Ascending the Jummul (now the main channel of the Burrampooter) for a
few miles, we turned off into a narrower channel, sixty miles long,
which passes by Dacca, where we arrived on the 28th, and where we
were again detained for boats, the demand for which is rapidly
increasing with the extended cultivation of the Sunderbunds and
Delta. We stayed with Mr. Atherton, and botanised in the
neighbourhood of the town, which was once very extensive, and is
still large, though not flourishing. The population is mostly
Mahometan; the site, though beautiful and varied, is unhealthy for
Europeans. Ruins of great Moorish brick buildings still remain, and a
Greek style of ornamenting the houses prevails to a remarkable degree.

The manufacture of rings for the arms and ancles, from conch-shells
imported from the Malayan Archipelago, is still almost confined to
Dacca: the shells are sawn across for this purpose by semicircular
saws, the hands and toes being both actively employed in the
operation. The introduction of circular saws has been attempted by
some European gentlemen, but steadily resisted by the natives,
despite their obvious advantages. The Dacca muslin manufacture, which
once employed thousands of hands, is quite at an end, so that it was
with great difficulty that the specimens of these fabrics sent to the
Great Exhibition of 1851, were procured. The kind of cotton (which is
very short in the staple) employed, is now hardly grown, and scarcely
a loom exists which is fit for the finest fabrics. The jewellers
still excel in gold and silver filagree.

Pine-apples, plantains, mangos, and oranges, abound in the Dacca
market, betokening a better climate for tropical fruits than that of
Western Bengal; and we also saw the fruit of _Euryale ferox,_* [An
Indian water-lily with a small red flower, covered everywhere with
prickles, and so closely allied to _Victoria regia_ as to be scarcely
generically distinguishable from it. It grows in the eastern
Sunderbunds, and also in Kashmir. The discoverer of Victoria called
the latter "_Euryale Amazonica._" These interestiug plants are
growing side by side in the new Victoria house at Kew. The Chinese
species has been erroneously considered different from the Indian
one.] which is round, soft, pulpy, and the size of a small orange; it
contains from eight to fifteen round black seeds as large as peas,
which are full of flour, and are eaten roasted in India and China, in
which latter country the plant is said to have been in cultivation
for upwards of 3000 years.

The native vegetation is very similar to that of the Hoogly, except
that the white rose is frequent here. The fact of a plant of this
genus being as common on the plains of Bengal as a dog-rose is in
England, and associated with cocoa-nuts, palms, mangos, plantains,
and banyans, has never yet attracted the attention of botanists,
though the species was described by Roxburgh. As a geographical fact
it is of great importance, for the rose is usually considered a
northern genus, and no kind but this inhabits a damp hot tropical
climate. Even in mountainous countries situated near the equator, as
in the Himalaya and Andes, wild roses are very rare, and only found
at great elevations, whilst they are unknown in the southern
hemisphere. It is curious that this rose, which is also a native of
Birma and the Indian Peninsula, does not in this latitude grow west
of the meridian of 87 degrees; it is confined to the upper Gangetic
delta, and inhabits a climate in which it would least of all be
looked for.

I made the elevation of Dacca by barometer only seventy-two feet
above the sea; and the banks of the Dallisary being high, the level
of its waters at this season is scarcely above that of the Bay of
Bengal. The mean temperature of the air was 86.75 degrees during our
stay, or half a degree lower than Calcutta at the same period.

We pursued our voyage on the 30th of May, to the old bed of the
Burrampooter, an immense shallow sheet of water, of which the eastern
bank is for eighty miles occupied by the delta of the Soormah.
This river rises on the Munnipore frontier, and flows through Cachar,
Silhet, and the Jheels of east Bengal, receiving the waters of the
Cachar, Jyntea, Khasia, and Garrow mountains (which bound the Assam
valley to the south), and of the Tipperah hills, which stretch
parallel to them, and divide the Soormah valley from the Bay of
Bengal. The immense area thus drained by the Soormah is hardly raised
above the level of the sea, and covers about 10,000 square miles.
The anastomosing rivers that traverse it, flow very gently, and do
not materially alter their course; hence their banks gradually rise
above the mean level of the surrounding country, and on them the
small villages are built, surrounded by extensive rice-fields that
need no artificial irrigation. At this season the general surface of
the Jheels is marshy; but during the rains, which are excessive on
the neighbouring mountains, they resemble an inland sea, the water
rising gradually to within a few inches of the floor of the huts; as,
however, it subsides as slowly in autumn, it commits no devastation.
The communication is at all seasons by boats, in the management of
which the natives (chiefly Mahometans) are expert.

The want of trees and shrubs is the most remarkable feature of the
Jheels; in which respect they differ from the Sunderbunds, though the
other physical features of each are similar, the level being exactly
the same: for this difference there is no apparent cause, beyond the
influence of the tide and sea atmosphere. Long grasses of tropical
genera (_Saccharum, Donax, Andropogon,_ and _Rottboellia_) ten feet
high, form the bulk of the vegetation, with occasional low bushes
along the firmer banks of the natural canals that everywhere
intersect the country; amongst these the rattan cane (_Calamus_),
rose, a laurel, _Stravadium,_ and fig, are the most common; while
beautiful convolvuli throw their flowering shoots across the water.

The soil, which is sandy along the Burrampooter, is more muddy and
clayey in the centre of the Jheels, with immense spongy accumulations
of vegetable matter in the marshes, through which we poked the
boat-staves without finding bottom: they were for the most part
formed of decomposed grass roots, with occasionally leaves, but no
quantity of moss or woody plants. Along the courses of the greater
streams drift timber and various organic fragments are no doubt
imbedded, but as there is no current over the greater part of the
flooded surface, there can be little or no accumulation, except
perhaps of old canoes, or of such vegetables as grow on the spot.
The waters are dark-coloured, but clear and lucid, even at
their height.

We proceeded up the Burrampooter, crossing it obliquely; its banks
were on the average five miles apart, and formed of sand, without
clay, and very little silt or mud: the water was clear and brown,
like that of the Jheels, and very different from that of the Jummul.
We thence turned eastwards into the delta of the Soormah, which we
traversed in a north-easterly direction to the stream itself.
We often passed through very narrow channels, where the grasses
towered over the boats: the boatmen steered in and out of them as
they pleased, and we were utterly at a loss to know how they guided
themselves, as they had neither compass nor map, and there were few
villages or landmarks; and on climbing the mast we saw multitudes of
other masts and sails peeing over the grassy marshes, doing just the
same as we did. All that go up have the south-west wind in their
favour, and this helps them to their course, but beyond this they
have no other guide but that instinct which habit begets. Often we
had to retreat from channels that promised to prove short cuts, but
which turned out to be blind alleys. Sometimes we sailed up broader
streams of chesnut-brown water, accompanied by fleets of boats
repairing to the populous districts at the foot of the Khasia, for
rice, timber, lime, coal, bamboos, and long reeds for thatching, all
of which employ an inland navy throughout the year in their transport
to Calcutta.

Leeches and mosquitos were very troublesome, the latter appearing in
clouds at night; during the day they were rarer, but the species was
the same. A large cray-fish was common, but there were few birds and
no animals to be seen.

Fifty-four barometric observations, taken at the level of the water
on the voyage between Dacca and the Soormah, and compared with
Calcutta, showed a gradual rise of the mercury in proceeding
eastwards; for though the pressure at Calcutta was .055 of an inch
higher than at Dacca, it was .034 lower than on the Soormah: the mean
difference between all these observations and the contemporaneous ones
at Calcutta was + .003 in favour of Calcutta, and the temperature
half a degree lower; the dew-point and humidity were nearly the same
at both places. This being the driest season of the year, it is very
probable that the mean level of the water at this part of the delta
is not higher than that of the Bay of Bengal; but as we advanced
northwards towards the Khasia, and entered the Soormah itself, the
atmospheric pressure increased further, thus appearing to give the
bed of that stream a depression of thirty-five feet below the Bay of
Bengal, into which it flows! This was no doubt the result of unequal
atmospheric pressure at the two localities, caused by the disturbance
of the column of atmosphere by the Khasia mountains; for in December
of the same year, thirty-eight observations on the surface of the
Soormah made its bed forty-six feet _above_ the Bay of Bengal,
whilst, from twenty-three observations on the Megna, the pressure
only differed + 0.020 of an inch from that of the barometer at
Calcutta, which is eighteen feet above the sea-level.

These barometric levellings, though far from satisfactory as compared
with trigonometric, are extremely interesting in the absence of the
latter. In a scientific point of view nothing has been done towards
determining the levels of the land and waters of the great Gangetic
delta, since Rennell's time, yet no geodetical operation promises
more valuable results in geography and physical geology than running
three lines of level across its area; from Chittagong to Calcutta,
from Silhet to Rampore, and from Calcutta to Silhet. The foot of the
Sikkim Himalaya has, I believe, been connected with Calcutta by the
great trigonometrical survey, but I am given to understand that the
results are not published.

My own barometric levellings would make the bed of the Mahanuddy and
Ganges at the western extremity of the delta, considerably higher
than I should have expected, considering how gentle the current is,
and that the season was that of low water. If my observations are
correct, they probably indicate a diminished pressure, which is not
easily accounted for, the lower portion of the atmospheric column at
Rampore being considerably drier and therefore heavier than at
Calcutta. At the eastern extremity again, towards Silhet, the
atmosphere is much damper than at Calcutta, and the barometer should
therefore have stood lower, indicating a higher level of the waters
than is the case.

To the geologist the Jheels and Sunderbunds are a most instructive
region, as whatever may be the mean elevation of their waters, a
permanent depression of ten to fifteen feet would submerge an immense
tract, which the Ganges, Burrampooter, and Soormah would soon cover
with beds of silt and sand. There would be extremely few shells in
the beds thus formed, the southern and northern divisions of which
would present two very different floras and faunas, and would in all
probability be referred by future geologists to widely different
epochs. To the north, beds of peat would be formed by grasses, and in
other parts, temperate and tropical forms of plants and animals would
be preserved in such equally balanced proportions as to confound the
palaeontologist; with the bones of the long-snouted alligator,
Gangetic porpoise, Indian cow, buffalo, rhinoceros, elephant, tiger,
deer, boar; and a host of other animals, he would meet with acorns of
several species of oak, pine-cones and magnolia fruits, rose seeds,
and _Cycas_ nuts, with palm nuts, screw-pines, and other tropical
productions. On the other hand, the Sunderbunds portion, though
containing also the bones of the tiger, deer, and buffalo, would have
none of the Indian cow, rhinoceros, or elephant; there would be
different species of porpoise, alligator, and deer, and none of the
above mentioned plants (_Cycas,_ oak, pine, magnolia and rose), which
would be replaced by numerous others, all distinct from those of the
Jheels, and many of them indicative of the influence of salt water,
whose proximity (from the rarity of sea-shells) might not otherwise
be suspected.

Illustration--VIEW IN THE JHEELS.

On the 1st of June we entered the Soormah, a full and muddy stream
flowing west, a quarter of a mile broad, with banks of mud and clay
twelve or fifteen feet high, separating it from marshes, and covered
with betel-nut and cocoa-nut palms, figs, and banyans. Many small
villages were scattered along the banks, each with a swarm of boats,
and rude kilns for burning the lime brought from the Khasia
mountains, which is done with grass and bushes. We ascended to
Chattuc, against a gentle current, arriving on the 9th.

From this place the Khasia mountains are seen as a long table-topped
range running east and west, about 4000 to 5000 feet high, with steep
faces towards the Jheels, out of which they appear to rise abruptly.
Though twelve miles distant, large waterfalls are very clearly seen
precipitating themselves over the cliffs into a bright green mass of
foliage, that seems to creep half way up their flanks. The nearly
horizontal arrangement of the strata is as conspicuous here, as in
the sandstone of the Kymore hills in the Soane valley, which these
mountains a good deal resemble; but they are much higher, and the
climate is widely different. Large valleys enter the hills, and are
divided by hog-backed spurs, and it is far within these valleys that
the waterfalls and precipices occur; but the nearer and further
cliffs being thrown by perspective into one range, they seem to rise
out of the Jheels so abruptly as to remind one of some precipitous
island in the ocean.

Chattuc is mainly indebted for its existence to the late Mr. Inglis,
who resided there for upwards of sixty years, and opened a most
important trade between the Khasia and Calcutta in oranges, potatos,
coal, lime, and timber. We were kindly received by his son, whose
bungalow occupies a knoll, of which there are several, which
attracted our attention as being the only elevations fifty feet high
which we had ascended since leaving the foot of the Sikkim Himalaya.
They rise as islets (commonly called Teela, Beng.) out of the Jheels,
within twelve to twenty miles of the Khasia; they are chiefly formed
of stratified gravel and sand, and are always occupied by villages
and large trees. They seldom exceed sixty feet in height, and
increase in number and size as the hills are approached; they are
probably the remains of a deposit that was once spread uniformly
along the foot of the mountains, and they in all respects resemble
those I have described as rising abruptly from the plains near
Titalya (see vol. i. chapter xvii).

The climate of Chattuc is excessively damp and hot throughout the
year, but though sunk amid interminable swamps, the place is
perfectly healthy! Such indeed is the character of the climate
throughout the Jheels, where fevers and agues are rare; and though no
situations can appear more malarious to the common observer than
Silhet and Cachar, they are in fact eminently salubrious. These facts
admit of no explanation in the present state of our knowledge of
endemic diseases. Much may be attributed to the great amount and
purity of the water, the equability of the climate, the absence of
forests and of sudden changes from wet to dry; but such facts afford
no satisfactory explanation. The water, as I have above said, is of a
rich chesnut-brown in the narrow creeks of the Jheels, and is golden
yellow by transmitted light, owing no doubt, as in bog water and that
of dunghills, to a vegetable extractive and probably the presence of
carburetted hydrogen. Humboldt mentions this dark-coloured water as
prevailing in some of the swamps of the Cassiquares, at the junction
of the Orinoco and Amazon, and gives much curious information on its
accompanying features of animal and vegetable life.

The rains generally commence in May: they were unusually late this
year, though the almost daily gales and thunder-storms we
experienced, foretold their speedy arrival. From May till October
they are unremitting, and the country is under water, the Soormah
rising about fifty feet. North-easterly winds prevail, but they are a
local current reflected from the Khasia, against which the southerly
perennial trade-wind impinges. Westerly winds are very rare, but the
dry north-west blasts of India have been known to traverse the delta
and reach this meridian, in one or two short hot dry puffs during
March and April. Hoarfrost is unknown.* [It however forms further
south, at the very mouth of the Megna, and is the effect of intense
radiation when the thermometer in the shade falls to 45 degrees.]

China roses and tropical plants (_Bignoniae, Asclepiadeae,_ and
_Convolvuli_) rendered Mr. Inglis' bungalow gay, but little else will
grow in the gardens. Pine-apples are the best fruit, and oranges from
the foot of the Khasia: plantains ripen imperfectly, and the mango is
always acid, attacked by grubs, and having a flavour of turpentine.
The violent hailstorms of the vernal equinox cut both spring and cold
season flowers and vegetables, and the rains destroy all summer
products. The soil is a wet clay, in which some European vegetables
thrive well if planted in October or November. We were shown
marrowfat peas that had been grown for thirty years without
degenerating in size, but their flavour was poor.

Small long canoes, paddled rapidly by two men, were procured here,
whereby to ascend the narrow rivers that lead up to the foot of the
mountains: they each carry one passenger, who lies along the bottom,
protected by a bamboo platted arched roof. We started at night, and
early the next morning arrived at Pundua,* [Pundua, though an
insignificant village, surrounded by swamps, has enjoyed an undue
share of popularity as a botanical region. Before the geographical
features of the country north of Silhet were known, the plants
brought from those hills by native collectors were sent to the
Calcutta garden (and thence to Europe) as from Pundua. Hence Silhet
mountains and Pundua mountains, both very erroneous terms, are
constantly met with in botanical works, and generally refer to plants
growing in the Khasia mountains.] where there is a dilapidated
bungalow: the inhabitants are employed in the debarkation of lime,
coal, and potatos. Large fleets of boats crowded the narrow creeks,
some of the vessels being of several tons burden.

Elephants were kindly sent here for us by Mr. H. Inglis, to take us
to the foot of the mountains, about three miles distant, and relays
of mules and ponies to ascend to Churra, where we were received with
the greatest hospitality by that gentleman, who entertained us till
the end of June, and procured us servants and collectors. To his kind
offices we were also indebted throughout our travels in the Khasia,
for much information, and for facilities and necessaries of all
kinds: things in which the traveller is more dependent on his fellow
countrymen in India, than in any other part of the world.

We spent two days at Pundua, waiting for our great boats (which drew
several feet of water), and collecting in the vicinity. The old
bungalow, without windows and with the roof falling in, was a most
miserable shelter; and whichever way we turned from the door, a river
or a swamp lay before us. Birds, mosquitos, leeches, and large wasps
swarmed, also rats and sandflies. A more pestilential hole cannot be
conceived; and yet people traverse this district, and sleep here at
all seasons of the year with impunity. We did so ourselves in the
month of June, when the Sikkim and all other Terais are deadly: we
returned in September, traversing the Jheels and nullahs at the very
foot of the hills during a short break of fine weather in the middle
of the rains; and we again slept here in November,* [At the north
foot of the Khasia, in the heavily timbered dry Terai stretching for
sixty miles to the Burrampooter, it is almost inevitable death for a
European to sleep, any time between the end of April and of November.
Many have crossed that tract, but not one without taking fever:
Mr. H. Inglis was the only survivor of a party of five, and he was
ill from the effects for upwards of two years, after having been
brought to death's door by the first attack, which came on within
three weeks of his arrival at Churra, and by several relapses.]
always exposed in the heat of the day to wet and fatigue, and never
having even a _soupcon_ of fever, ague, or rheumatism. This immunity
does not, however, extend to the very foot of the hills, as it is
considered imprudent to sleep at this season in the bungalow of
Terrya, only three miles off.

The elevation of Pundua bungalow is about forty feet above the sea,
and that of the waters surrounding it, from ten to thirty, according
to the season. In June the mean of the barometer readings at the
bungalow was absolutely identical with that of the Calcutta
barometer, In September it was 0.016 inch lower, and in November
0.066 lower. The mean annual temperature throughout the Jheels is
less than 2 degrees below that of Calcutta.

Terrya bungalow lies at the very foot of the first rise of the
mountains; on the way we crossed many small streams upon the
elephants, and one large one by canoes: the water in all was cool*
[Temperature in September 77 degrees to 80 degrees; and in November
75.7 degrees.] and sparkling, running rapidly over boulders and
pebbles. Their banks of sandy clay were beautifully fringed with a
willow-like laurel, _Ehretia_ bushes, bamboos, palms, _Bauhinia,
Bombax,_ and _Erythrina,_ over which _Calamus_ palm (rattan) and
various flowering plants climbed. The rock at Terrya is a nummulitic
limestone, worn into extensive caverns. This formation is said to
extend along the southern flank of the Khasia, Garrow, and Jyntea
mountains, and to be associated with sandstone and coal: it is
extensively quarried in many places, several thousand tons being
annually shipped for Calcutta and Dacca. It is succeeded by a
horizontally stratified sandstone, which is continued up to 4000
feet, where it is overlain by coal-beds and then by limestone again.

The sub-tropical scenery of the lower and outer Sikkim Himalaya,
though on a much more gigantic scale, is not comparable in beauty and
luxuriance with the really tropical vegetation induced by the hot,
damp, and insular climate of these perennially humid mountains.
At the Himalaya forests of gigantic trees, many of them deciduous,
appear from a distance as masses of dark gray foliage, clothing
mountains 10,000 feet high: here the individual trees are smaller,
more varied in kind, of a brilliant green, and contrast with gray
limestone and red sandstone rocks and silvery cataracts. Palms are
more numerous here;* [There are upwards of twenty kinds of Palm in
this district, including _Chamaerops,_ three species of _Areca,_ two
of _Wallichia, Arenga, Caryota,_ three of _Phoenix, Plectocomia,
Licuala,_ and many species of _Calamus._ Besides these there are
several kinds of _Pandanus,_ and the _Cycas pectinata._] the
cultivated _Areca_ (betel-nut) especially, raising its graceful stem
and feathery crown, "like an arrow shot down from heaven," in
luxuriance and beauty above the verdant slopes. This difference is at
once expressed to the Indian botanist by defining the Khasia flora as
of Malayan character; by which is meant the prevalence of brilliant
glossy-leaved evergreen tribes of trees (as _Euphorbiaceae_ and
_Urticeae_), especially figs, which abound in the hot gulleys, where
the property of their roots, which inosculate and form natural
grafts, is taken advantage of in bridging streams, and in
constructing what are called living bridges, of the most picturesque
forms. _Combretaceae,_ oaks, oranges, _Garcinia_ (gamboge),
_Diospyros,_ figs, Jacks, plantains, and _Pandanus,_ are more
frequent here, together with pinnated leaved _Leguminosae,
Meliaceae,_ vines and peppers, and above all palms, both climbing
ones with pinnated shining leaves (as _Calamus_ and _Plectocomia_),
and erect ones with similar leaves (as cultivated cocoa-nut, _Areca_
and _Arenga_), and the broader-leaved wild betel-nut, and beautiful
_Caryota_ or wine-palm, whose immense decompound leaves are twelve
feet long. Laurels and wild nutmegs, with _Henslowia, Itea,_ etc.,
were frequent in the forest, with the usual prevalence of parasites,
mistleto, epiphytical _Orchideae, AEshynanthus,_ ferns, mosses, and
_Lycopodia_; and on the ground were _Rubiaceae, Scitamineae,_ ferns,
_Acanthaceae,_ beautiful balsams, and herbaceous and shrubby nettles.
Bamboos* [The natives enumerate about fourteen different kinds of
bamboo, of which we found five in flower, belonging to three very
distinct genera. Uspar, Uspet, Uspit, Usken, Uskong, Uktang, Usto,
Silee, Namlang, Tirra, and Battooba are some of the names of Bamboos
vouched for by Mr. Inglis as correctly spelt. Of other Khasia names
of plants, Wild Plantains are called Kairem, and the cultivated
Kakesh; the latter are considered so nourishing that they are given
to newborn infants. Senteo is a flower in Khas, So a fruit, Ading a
tree, and Te a leaf. _Pandanus_ is Kashelan. _Plectocomia,_ Usmole.
_Licuala,_ Kuslow. _Caryota,_ Kalai-katang. _Wallichia,_ Kalai-nili.
_Areca,_ Waisola. Various _Calami_ are Rhimet, Uriphin, Ureek hilla,
Tindrio, etc. This list will serve as a specimen; I might increase it
materially, but as I have elsewhere observed, the value attached to
the supposed definite application of native names to natural objects
is greatly over-rated, and too much reliance on them has introduced a
prodigious amount of confusion into scientific works and philological
inquiries.] of many kinds are very abundant, and these hills further
differ remarkably from those of Sikkim in the great number of species
of grasses.

The ascent was at first gradual, along the sides of a sandstone spur.
At 2000 feet the slope suddenly became steep and rocky, at 3000 feet
tree vegetation disappeared, and we opened a magnificent prospect of
the upper scarped flank of the valley of Moosmai, which we were
ascending, with four or five beautiful cascades rolling over the
table top of the hills, broken into silvery foam as they leapt from
ledge to ledge of the horizontally stratified precipice, and throwing
a veil of silver gauze over the gulf of emerald green vegetation,
2000 feet below. The views of the many cataracts of the first class
that are thus precipitated over the bare table-land on which Churra
stands, into the valleys on either side, surpass anything of the kind
that I have elsewhere seen, though in many respects vividly recalling
the scenery around Rio de Janeiro: nor do I know any spot in the
world more calculated to fascinate the naturalist who, while
appreciating the elements of which a landscape is composed, is also
keenly alive to the beauty and grandeur of tropical scenery.

Illustration--"LIVING BRIDGE" FORMED BY THE AERIAL ROOTS OF THE
INDIA-RUBBER AND OTHER KINDS OF FIGS.

At the point where this view opens, a bleak stony region commences,
bearing numberless plants of a temperate flora and of European
genera, at a comparatively low elevation; features which continue to
the top of the flat on which the station is built, 4000 feet above
the sea.

Illustration--DEWAN'S EAR-RING.


CHAPTER XXVIII.

Churra, English station of--Khasia people--Garrow people--
Houses--Habits--Dress--Arms--Dialects--Marriages--Food--
Funerals--Superstitions--Flat of Churra--Scenery--Lime and
coal--Mamloo--Cliffs--Cascades--_Chamaerops_ palm--
Jasper-rocks--Flora of Churra--Orchids--Rhododendrons--Pine
--Climate--Extraordinary rain-fall--Its effects--Gardens of
Lieuts. Raban and Cave--Leave Churra to cross the mountain range--
Coal, shale, and underclay--Kala-panee river--Lailangkot--
_Luculia Pinceana_--Conglomerate Surureem wood--Boga-panee river
--View of Himalaya--Green-stone--Age of Pine-cones--Moflong
plants--_Coix_--Chillong mountain--Extensive view--Road to
Syong--Broad valleys--Geology--Plants--Myrung--Granite
blocks--Kollong rock--Pine-woods--Features of country--
Orchids--Iron forges.

Churra Poonji is said to be so called from the number of streams in
the neighbourhood, and poonji, "a village" (Khas.): it was selected
for a European station, partly from the elevation and consequent
healthiness of the spot, and partly from its being on the high road
from Silhet to Gowahatty, on the Burrampooter, the capital of Assam,
which is otherwise only accessible by ascending that river, against
both its current and the perennial east wind. A rapid postal
communication is hereby secured: but the extreme unhealthiness of the
northern foot of the mountains effectually precludes all other
intercourse for nine months in the year.

On the first opening up of the country, the Europeans were brought
into sanguinary collision with the Khasias, who fought bravely with
bows and arrows, displaying a most blood-thirsty and cruel
disposition. This is indeed natural to them; and murders continued
very frequent as preludes to the most trifling robberies, until the
extreme penalty of our law was put in force. Even now, some of the
tributary Rajahs are far from quiet under our rule, and various parts
of the country are not safe to travel in. The Garrows, who occupy the
western extremity of this range, at the bend of the Burrampooter, are
still in a savage state. Human sacrifices and polyandry are said to
be frequent amongst them, and their orgies are detestable. Happily we
are hardly ever brought into collision with them, except by their
occasional depredations on the Assam and Khasia frontier: their
country is very unhealthy, and is said to contain abundance of coal,
iron, and lime.

We seldom employed fewer than twelve or fourteen of the natives as
collectors, and when travelling, from thirty to forty as coolies,
etc. They are averse to rising early, and are intolerably filthy in
their persons, though not so in their cottages, which are very poor,
with broad grass roofs reaching nearly to the ground, and usually
encircled by bamboo fences; the latter custom is not common in savage
communities, and perhaps indicates a dread of treachery. The beams
are of hewn wood (they do not use saws), often neatly carved, and the
doors turn on good wooden pivots. They have no windows, and the fire
is made on the floor: the utensils, etc. are placed on hanging
shelves and in baskets.

The Khasia people are of the Indo-Chinese race; they are short, very
stout, and muscular, with enormous calves and knees, rather narrow
eyes and little beard, broad, high cheekbones, flat noses, and open
nostrils. I believe that a few are tattooed. The hair is gathered
into a top-knot, and sometimes shaved off the forehead and temples.
A loose cotton shirt, often striped blue and red, without sleeves and
bordered with long thread fringes, is their principal garment; it is
gathered into a girdle of silver chains by people of rank. A cotton
robe is sometimes added, with a large cotton turban or small
skull-cap. The women wear a long cloth tied in a knot across the
breast. During festivals both men and women load themselves with silk
robes, fans, peacock's feathers, and gold and silver ornaments of
great value, procured from Assam, many of which are said to be
extremely curious, but I regret to say that I never saw any of them.
On these occasions spirits are drunk, and dancing kept up all night:
the dance is described as a slow ungraceful motion, the women being
tightly swathed in cloths.

All their materials are brought from Assam; the only articles in
constant use, of their own manufacture, being a rude sword or knife
with a wooden handle and a long, narrow, straight blade of iron, and
the baskets with head-straps, like those used by the Lepchas, but
much neater; also a netted bag of pine-apple fibre (said to come from
Silhet) which holds a clasp-knife, comb, flint, steel, and betel-nut
box. They are much addicted to chewing pawn (betel-nut, pepper
leaves, and lime) all day long, and their red saliva looks like blood
on the paths. Besides the sword I have described, they carry bows and
arrows, and rarely a lance, and a bamboo wicker-work shield.

We found the Khasias to be sulky intractable fellows, contrasting
unpleasantly with the Lepchas; wanting in quickness, frankness, and
desire to please, and obtrusively independent in manner; nevertheless
we had a head man who was very much the reverse of this, and whom we
had never any cause to blame. Their language is, I believe,
Indo-Chinese and monosyllabic: it is disagreeably nasal and guttural,
and there are several dialects and accents in contiguous villages.
All inflections are made by prefixing syllables, and when using the
Hindoo language, the future is invariably substituted for the past
tense. They count up to a hundred, and estimate distances by the
number of mouthfuls of pawn they eat on the road.

Education has been attempted by missionaries with partial success,
and the natives are said to have shown themselves apt scholars.
Marriage is a very loose tie amongst them, and hardly any ceremony
attends it. We were informed that the husband does not take his wife
home, but enters her father's household, and is entertained there.
Divorce and an exchange of wives is common, and attended with no
disgrace: thus the son often forgets his father's name and person
before he grows up, but becomes strongly attached to his mother.
The sister's son inherits both property and rank, and the
proprietors' or Rajahs' offspring are consequently often reared in
poverty and neglect. The usual toy of the children is the bow and
arrow, with which they are seldom expert; they are said also to spin
pegtops like the English, climb a greased pole, and run round with a
beam turning horizontally on an upright, to which it is attached by
a pivot.

The Khasias eat fowls, and all meat, especially pork, potatos and
vegetables, dried and half putrid fish in abundance, but they have an
aversion to milk, which is very remarkable, as a great proportion of
their country is admirably adapted for pasturage. In this respect,
however, they assimilate to the Chinese, and many Indo-Chinese
nations who are indifferent to milk, as are the Sikkim people.
The Bengalees, Hindoos, and Tibetans, on the other hand, consume
immense quantities of milk. They have no sheep, and few goats or
cattle, the latter of which are kept for slaughter; they have,
however, plenty  of pigs and fowls. Eggs are most abundant, but used
for omens only, and it is a common, but disgusting occurrence, to see
large groups employed for hours in breaking them upon stones,
shouting and quarrelling, surrounded by the mixture of yellow yolks
and their red pawn saliva.

The funeral ceremonies are the only ones of any importance, and are
often conducted with barbaric pomp and expense; and rude stones of
gigantic proportions are erected as monuments, singly or in rows,
circles, or supporting one another, like those of Stonehenge, which
they rival in dimensions and appearance. The body is burned, though
seldom during the rains, from the difficulty of obtaining a fire; it
is therefore preserved in honey (which is abundant and good) till the
dry season: a practice I have read of as prevailing among some tribes
in the Malay peninsula. Spirits are drunk on these occasions; but the
hill Khasia is not addicted to drunkenness, though some of the
natives of the low valleys are very much so. These ascend the rocky
faces of the mountains by ladders, to the Churra markets, and return
loaded at night, apparently all but too drunk to stand; yet they
never miss their footing in places which are most dangerous to
persons unaccustomed to such situations.

Illustration--THE TABLE-LAND AND STATION OF CHURRA, WITH THE JHEELS,
COURSE OF THE SOORMAH RIVER, AND TIPPERAH HILLS IN THE EXTREME
DISTANCE, LOOKING SOUTH.

The Khasias are superstitious, but have no religion; like the
Lepchas, they believe in a supreme being, and in deities of the
grove, cave, and stream. Altercations are often decided by holding
the disputants' heads under water, when the longest winded carries
his point. Fining is a common punishment, and death for grave
offences. The changes of the moon are accounted for by the theory
that this orb, who is a man, monthly falls in love with his wife's
mother, who throws ashes in his face. The sun is female; and Mr.
Yule* [I am indebted to Mr. Inglis for most of this information
relating to the Khasias, which I have since found, with much more
that is curious and interesting, in a paper by Lieut. Yule in Bengal
Asiat. Soc. Journal.] (who is my authority) says that the Pleiades
are called "the Hen-man" (as in Italy "the chickens"); also that they
have names for the twelve months; they do not divide their time by
weeks, but hold a market every four days. These people are
industrious, and good cultivators of rice, millet, and legumes of
many kinds. Potatoes were introduced amongst them about twenty years
ago by Mr. Inglis, and they have increased so rapidly that the
Calcutta market is now supplied by their produce. They keep bees in
rude hives of logs of wood.

The flat table-land on which Churra Poonji is placed, is three miles
long and two broad, dipping abruptly in front and on both sides, and
rising behind towards the main range, of which it is a spur.
The surface of this area is everywhere intersected by shallow, rocky
watercourses, which are the natural drains for the deluge that
annually visits it. The western part is undulated and hilly, the
southern rises in rocky ridges of limestone and coal, and the eastern
is very flat and stony, broken only by low isolated conical mounds.

The scenery varies extremely at different parts of the surface.
Towards the flat portion, where the English reside, the aspect is as
bleak and inhospitable as can be imagined: a thin stratum of marshy
or sandy soil covers a tabular mass of cold red sandstone; and there
is not a tree, and scarcely a shrub to be seen, except occasional
clumps of Pandanus. The low white bungalows are few in number, and
very scattered, some of them being a mile asunder, enclosed with
stone walls and shrubs; and a small white church, disused on account
of the damp, stands lonely in the centre of all.

The views from the margins of this plateau are magnificent: 4000 feet
below are bay-like valleys, carpetted as with green velvet, from
which rise tall palms, tree-ferns with spreading crowns, and rattans
shooting their pointed heads, surrounded with feathery foliage, as
with ostrich plumes, far above the great trees. Beyond are the
Jheels, looking like a broad shallow sea with the tide half out,
bounded in the blue distance by the low-hills of Tipperah. To the
right and left are the scarped red rocks and roaring waterfalls,
shooting far over the cliff's, and then arching their necks as they
expand in feathery foam, over which rainbows float, forming and
dissolving as the wind sways the curtains of spray from side to side.

To the south of Churra the lime and coal measures rise abruptly in
flat-topped craggy hills, covered with brushwood and small trees.
Similar hills are seen far westward across the intervening valleys in
the Garrow country, rising in a series of steep isolated ranges, 300
to 400 feet above the general level of the country, and always
skirting the south face of the mountains. Considerable caverns
penetrate the limestone, the broken surface of which rock presents
many picturesque and beautiful spots, like the same rocks in England.

Westward the plateau becomes very hilly, bare, and grassy, with the
streams broad and full, but superficial and rocky, precipitating
themselves in low cascades over tabular masses of sand-stone.
At Mamloo their beds are deeper, and full of brushwood, and a
splendid valley and amphitheatre of red cliffs and cascades,
rivalling those of Moosmai (chapter xxvii), bursts suddenly into
view. Mamloo is a large village, on the top of a spur, to the
westward: it is buried in a small forest, particularly rich in
plants, and is defended by a stone wall behind: the only road is
tunnelled through the sandstone rock, under the wall; and the spur on
either side dips precipitously, so that the place is almost
impregnable if properly defended. A sanguinary conflict took place
here between the British and the Khasias, which terminated in the
latter being driven over the precipices, beneath which many of them
were shot. The fan-palm, _Chamaerops Khasiana_ ("Pakha," Khas.),
grows on the cliff's near Mamloo: it may be seen on looking over the
edge of the plateau, its long curved trunk rising out of the naked
rocks, but its site is generally inaccessible;* [This species is very
closely allied to, if not identical with _P. Martiana_ of Nepal;
which ascends to 8000 feet in the western Himalaya, where it is
annually covered with snow: it is not found in Sikkim, but an allied
species occurs in Affghanistan, called _P. Ritcheana_: the dwarf palm
of southern Europe is a fourth species.] while near it grows the
_Saxifragis ciliaris_ of our English gardens, a common plant in the
north-west Himalaya, but extremely scarce in Sikkim and the
Khasia mountains.

Illustration--MAMLOO CASCADES.

The descent of the Mamloo spur is by steps, alternating with pebbly
flats, for 1500 feet, to a saddle which connects the Churra hills
with those of Lisouplang to the westward. The rise is along a very
steep narrow ridge to a broad long grassy hill, 3,500 feet high,
whence an extremely steep descent leads to the valley of the
Boga-panee, and the great mart of Chela, which is at the embouchure
of that river. The transverse valley thus formed by the Mamloo spur,
is full of orange groves, whose brilliant green is particularly
conspicuous from above. At the saddle below Mamloo are some jasper
rocks, which are the sandstone altered by basalt. Fossil shells are
recorded to have been found by Dr. M'Lelland* [See a paper on the
geology of the Khasia mountains by Dr. M'Lelland in the "Bengal
Asiatic Society's Journal."] on some of the flats, which he considers
to be raised beaches: but we sought in vain for any evidence of this
theory beyond the pebbles, whose rounding we attributed to the action
of superficial streams.

It is extremely difficult to give within the limits of this narrative
any idea of the Khasia flora, which is, in extent and number of fine
plants, the richest in India, and probably in all Asia. We collected
upwards of 2000 flowering plants within ten miles of the station of
Churra, besides 150 ferns, and a profusion of mosses, lichens, and
fungi. This extraordinary exuberance of species is not so much
attributable to the elevation, for the whole Sikkim Himalaya (three
times more elevated) does not contain 500 more flowering plants, and
far fewer ferns, etc.; but to the variety of exposures; namely,
1. the Jheels, 2. the tropical jungles, both in deep, hot, and wet
valleys, and on drier slopes; 3. the rocks; 4. the bleak table-lands
and stony soils; 5. the moor-like uplands, naked and exposed, where
many species and genera appear at 5000 to 6000 feet, which are not
found on the outer ranges of Sikkim under 10,000.* [As _Thalictrum,
Anemone,_ primrose, cowslip, _Tofieldia,_ Yew, Pine, Saxifrage,
_Delphinium, Pedicularis._] In fact, strange as it may appear, owing
to this last cause, the temperate flora descends fully 4000 feet
lower in the latitude of Khasia (25 degrees N.) than in that of
Sikkim (27 degrees N.), though the former is two degrees nearer
the equator.

The _Pandanus_ alone forms a conspicuous feature in the immediate
vicinity of Churra; while the small woods about Mamloo, Moosmai, and
the coal-pits, are composed of _Symplocos,_ laurels, brambles, and
jasmines, mixed with small oaks and _Photinia,_ and many tropical
genera of trees and shrubs.

_Orchideae_ are, perhaps, the largest natural order in the Khasia,
where fully 250 kinds grow, chiefly on trees and rocks, but many are
terrestrial, inhabiting damp woods and grassy slopes. I doubt whether
in any other part of the globe the species of orchids outnumber those
of any other natural order, or form so large a proportion of the
flora. Balsams are next in relative abundance (about twenty-five),
both tropical and temperate kinds, of great beauty and variety in
colour, form, and size of blossom. Palms amount to fourteen, of which
the _Chamaerops_ and _Arenga_ are the only genera not found in
Sikkim. Of bamboos there are also fifteen, and of other grasses 150,
which is an immense proportion, considering that the Indian flora
(including those of Ceylon, Kashmir, and all the Himalaya), hardly
contains 400. _Scitamineae_ also are abundant, and extremely
beautiful; we collected thirty-seven kinds.

No rhododendron grows at Churra, but several species occur a little
further north: there is but one pine (_P. Khasiana_) besides the yew,
(and two _Podocarpi_), and that is only found in the drier interior
regions. Singular to say, it is a species not seen in the Himalaya or
elsewhere, but very nearly allied to _Pinua longifolia,_*
[Cone-bearing pines with long leaves, like the common Scotch fir, are
found in Asia, and as far south as the Equator (in Borneo) and also
inhabit Arracan, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and South China. It is
a very remarkable fact that no Gymnospermous tree inhabits the
Peninsula of India; not even the genus _Podocarpus,_ which includes
most of the tropical Gymnosperms, and is technically coniferous, and
has glandular woody fibre; though like the yew it bears berries.
Two species of this genus are found in the Khasia, and one advances
as far west as Nepal. The absence of oaks and of the above genera
(_Podocarpus_ and _Pinus_) is one of the most characteristic
differences between the botany of the east and west shores of the Bay
of Bengal.] though more closely resembling the Scotch fir than that
tree does.

The natural orders whose rarity is most noticeable, are _Cruciferae,_
represented by only three kinds, and _Caryophylleae._ Of
_Ranunculaceae,_ there are six or seven species of _Clematis,_ two of
_Anemone,_ one _Delphinium,_ three of _Thalictrum,_ and two
_Ranunculi._ _Compsitae_ and _Leguminosae_ are far more numerous than
in Sikkim.

The climate of Khasia is remarkable for the excessive rain-fall.
Attention was first drawn to this by Mr. Yule, who stated, that in
the month of August, 1841, 264 inches fell, or twenty-two feet; and
that during five successive days, thirty inches fell in every
twenty-four hours! Dr. Thomson and I also recorded thirty inches in
one day and night, and during the seven months of our stay, upwards
of 500 inches fell, so that the total annual fall perhaps greatly
exceeded 600 inches, or fifty feet, which has been registered in
succeeding years! From April, 1849, to April, 1850, 502 inches
(forty-two feet) fell. This unparalleled amount is attributable to
the abruptness of the mountains which face the Bay of Bengal, from
which they are separated by 200 miles of Jheels and Sunderbunds.

This fall is very local: at Silhet, not thirty miles further south,
it is under 100 inches; at Gowahatty, north of the Khasia in Assam,
it is about 80; and even on the hills, twenty miles inland from
Churra itself, the fall is reduced to 200. At the Churra station, the
distribution of the rain is very local; my gauges, though registering
the same amount when placed beside a good one in the station; when
removed half a mile, received a widely different quantity, though the
different gauges gave nearly the same mean amount at the end of each
whole month.

The direct effect of this deluge is to raise the little streams about
Churra fourteen feet in as many hours, and to inundate the whole
flat; from which, however, the natural drainage is so complete, as to
render a tract, which in such a climate and latitude should be
clothed with exuberant forest, so sterile, that no tree finds
support, and there is no soil for cultivation of any kind whatsoever,
not even of rice. Owing, however, to the hardness of the horizontally
stratified sandstone, the streams have not cut deep channels, nor
have the cataracts worked far back into the cliffs. The limestone
alone seems to suffer, and the turbid streams from it prove how
rapidly it is becoming denuded. The great mounds of angular gravel on
the Churra flat, are perhaps the remains of an extensive deposit,
fifty feet thick, elsewhere washed away by these rains; and I have
remarked traces of the same over many slopes of the hills around.

The mean temperature of Churra (elev. 4000 feet) is about 66 degrees,
or 16 degrees below that of Calcutta; which, allowing for 22 degrees
of northing, gives 1 degree of temperature to every 290 to 300 feet
of ascent. In summer the thermometer often rises to 88 degrees and 90
degrees; and in the winter, owing to the intense radiation,
hoar-frost is frequent. Such a climate is no less inimical to the
cultivation of plants, than is the wretched soil: of this we saw
marked instances in the gardens of two of the resident officers,
Lieutenants Raban and Cave, to whom we were indebted for the greatest
kindness and hospitality. These gentlemen are indefatigable
horticulturists, and took a zealous interest in our pursuits,
accompanying us in our excursions, enriching our collections in many
ways, and keeping an eye to them and to our plant-driers during our
absence from the station. In their gardens the soil had to be brought
from a considerable distance, and dressed copiously with vegetable
matter. Bamboo clumps were planted for shelter within walls, and
native shrubs, rhododendrons, etc., introduced. Many _Orchideae_
throve well on the branches of the stunted trees which they had
planted, and some superb kinds of _Hedychium_ in the ground; but a
very few English garden plants throve in the flower-beds. Even in
pots and frames, geraniums, etc., would rot, from the rarity of
sunshine, which is as prejudicial as the damp and exposure.
Still many wild shrubs of great interest and beauty flourished, and
some European ones succeeded with skill and management; as geraniums,
_Salvia, Petunia,_ nasturtium, chrysanthemum, _Kennedya rubicunda,
Maurandya,_ and Fuchsia. The daisy seed sent from England as double,
came up very poor and single. Dahlias do not thrive, nor double
balsams. Now they have erected small but airy green-houses, and
sunlight is the only desideratum.

At the end of June, we started for the northern or Assam face of the
mountains. The road runs between the extensive and populous native
village, or poonji, on the left, and a deep valley on the right, and
commands a beautiful view of more waterfalls. Beyond this it ascends
steeply, and the sandstone on the road itself is curiously divided
into parallelograms, like hollow bricks,* [I have seen similar bricks
in the sandstones of the coal-districts of Yorkshire; they are very
puzzling, and are probably due to some very obscure crystalline
action analogous to jointing and cleavage.] enclosing irregularly
shaped nodules, while in other places it looks as if it had been run
or fused: spherical concretions of sand, coloured concentrically by
infiltration, are common in it, which have been regarded as seeds,
shells, etc.; it also contained spheres of iron pyrites. The general
appearance of much of this rock is as if it had been bored by
_Teredines_ (ship worms), but I never detected any trace of fossils.
It is often beautifully ripple-marked, and in some places much
honeycombed, and full of shales and narrow seams of coal, resting on
a white under-clay full of root-fibres, like those of _Stigmaria._

At about 5000 feet the country is very open and bare, the ridges
being so uniform and flat-topped, that the broad valleys they divide
are hidden till their precipitous edges are reached; and the eye
wanders far east and west over a desolate level grassy country,
unbroken, save by the curious flat-topped hills I have described as
belonging to the limestone formation, which lie to the south-west.
These features continue for eight miles, when a sudden descent of 600
or 700 feet, leads into the valley of the Kala-panee (Black water)
river, where there is a very dark and damp bungalow, which proved a
very great accommodation to us.* [It may be of use to the future
botanist in this country to mention a small wood on the right of this
road, near the village of Surureem, as an excellent botanical
station: the trees are chiefly _Rhododendron arboreum,_ figs, oaks,
laurels, magnolias, and chestnuts, on whose limbs are a profusion of
_Orchideae,_ and amongst which a Rattan palm occurs.

Lailang-kot is another village full of iron forges, from a height
near which a splendid view is obtained over the Churra flat. A few
old and very stunted shrubs of laurel and _Symplocos_ grow on its
bleak surface, and these are often sunk from one to three feet in a
well in the horizontally stratified sandstone. I could only account
for this by supposing it to arise from the drip from the trees, and
if so, it is a wonderful instance of the wearing effects of water,
and of the great age which small bushes sometimes attain.

The vegetation is more alpine at Kala-panee (elevation, 5,300 feet);
_Benthamia, Kadsura, Stauntonia, Illicium, Actinidia, Helwingia,
Corylopsis,_ and berberry--all Japan and Chinese, and most of them
Dorjiling genera--appear here, with the English yew, two
rhododendrons, and _Bucklandia._ There are no large trees, but a
bright green jungle of small ones and bushes, many of which are very
rare and curious. _Luculia Pinceana_ makes a gorgeous show here
in October.

The sandstone to the east of Kala-panee is capped by some beds, forty
feet thick, of conglomerate worn into cliffs; these are the remains
of a very extensive horizontally stratified formation, now all but
entirely denuded. In the valley itself, the sandstone alternates with
alum shales, which rest on a bed of quartz conglomerate, and the
latter on black greenstone. In the bed of the river, whose waters are
beautifully clear, are hornstone rocks, dipping north-east, and
striking north-west. Beyond the Kalapanee the road ascends about 600
feet, and is well quarried in hard greenstone; and passing through a
narrow gap of conglomerate rock,* [Formed of rolled masses of
greenstone and sandstone, united by a white and yellow cement.]
enters a shallow, wild, and beautiful valley, through which it runs
for several miles. The hills on either side are of greenstone capped
by tabular sandstone, immense masses of which have been precipitated
on the floor of the valley, producing a singularly wild and
picturesque scene. In the gloom of the evening it is not difficult
for a fertile imagination to fancy castles and cities cresting the
heights above.* [_Hydrangea_ grows here, with ivy, _Mussoenda,
Pyrua,_ willow, _Viburnum, Parnassia, Anemone, Leycesteria formosa,
Neillia, Rubus, Astilbe,_ rose, _Panax,_ apple, _Bucklandia, Daphne,_
pepper, _Scindapsus, Pierix,_ holly, _Lilium giganteum_ ("Kalang
tatti," Khas.), _Camellia, Elaeocarpus, Buddleia,_ etc. Large bees'
nests hang from the rocks.]

There is some cultivation here of potatoes, and of _Rhysicosia
vestita_ a beautiful purple-flowered leguminous plant, with small
tuberous roots. Beyond this, a high ridge is gained above the valley
of the Boga-panee, the largest river in the Khasia; from this the
Bhotan Himalaya may be seen in clear weather, at the astonishing
distance of from 160 to 200 miles! The vegetation here suddenly
assumes a different aspect, from the quantity of stunted fir-trees
clothing the north side of the valley, which rises very steeply 1000
feet above the river: quite unaccountably, however, not one grows on
the south face. A new oak also appears abundantly; it has leaves like
the English, whose gnarled habit it also assumes.

The descent is very steep, and carried down a slope of greenstone;*
[This greenstone decomposes into a thick bed of red clay; it is much
intersected by fissures or cleavage planes at all angles, whose
surfaces are covered with a shining polished superficial layer; like
the fissures in the cleavage planes of the gneiss granite of
Kinchinjhow, whose adjacent surfaces are coated with a glassy waved
layer of hornblende. This polishing of the surfaces is generally
attributed to their having been in contact and rubbed together, an
explanation which is wholly unsatisfactory to me; no such motion
could take place in cleavage planes which often intersect, and were
it to occur, it would not produce two polished surfaces of an
interposed layer of a softer mineral. It is more probably due to
metamorphic action.] the road then follows a clear affluent of the
Boga-panee, and afterwards winds along the margin of that river,
which is a rapid turbulent stream, very muddy, and hence contrasting
remarkably with the Kala-panee. It derives its mud from the
decomposition of granite, which is washed by the natives for iron,
and in which rock it rises to the eastward. Thick beds of slate crop
out by the roadside (strike north-east and dip north-west), and are
continued along the bed of the river, passing into conglomerates,
chert, purple slates, and crystalline sandstones, with pebbles, and
angular masses of schist. Many of these rocks are much crumpled,
others quite flat, and they are overlaid by soft, variegated gneiss,
which is continued alternately with the slates to the top of the
hills on the opposite side.

Small trees of hornbeam grow near the river, with _Rhus, Xanthoxylon,
Vaccinium, Gualtheria,_ and _Spiraea,_ while many beautiful ferns,
mosses, and orchids cover the rocks. An elegant iron suspension-
bridge is thrown across the stream, from a rock matted with tufts of
little parasitic _Orchideae._ Crossing it, we came on many
pine-trees; these had five-years' old cones on them, as well as those
of all succeeding years; they bear male flowers in autumn, which
impregnate the cones formed the previous year. Thus, the cones formed
in the spring of 1850 are fertilised in the following autumn, and do
not ripen their seeds till the second following autumn, that of 1852.

A very steep ascent leads to the bungalow of Moflong, on a broad,
bleak hill-top, near the axis of the range (alt. 6,062 feet). Here
there is a village, and some cultivation, surrounded by hedges of
_Erythrina, Pieris, Viburnum,_ _Pyres, Colquhounia,_ and
_Corylopsis,_ amongst which grew an autumn-flowering lark-spur, with
most foetid flowers.* [There is a wood a mile to the west of the
bungalow, worth visiting by the botanist: besides yew, oak, _Sabia_
and _Camellia,_ it contains _Olea, Euonymus,_ and _Sphaerocarya,_ a
small tree that bears a green pear-shaped sweet fruit, with a large
stone: it is pleasant, but leaves a disagreeable taste in the mouth.
On the grassy flats an _Astragalus_ occurs, and _Roscoea purpurea,
Tofieldia,_ and various other fine plants are common.] The rocks are
much contorted slates and gneiss (strike north-east and dip
south-east). In a deep gulley to the northward, greenstone appears,
with black basalt and jasper, the latter apparently altered gneiss:
beyond this the rocks strike the opposite way, but are much disturbed.

We passed the end of June here, and experienced the same violent
weather, thunder, lightning, gales, and rain, which prevailed during
every midsummer I spent in India. A great deal of _Coix_ (Job's
tears) is cultivated about Moflong: it is of a dull greenish purple,
and though planted in drills, and carefully hoed and weeded, is a
very ragged crop. The shell of the cultivated sort is soft, and the
kernel is sweet; whereas the wild _Coix_ is so hard that it cannot be
broken by the teeth. Each plant branches two or three times from the
base, and from seven to nine plants grow in each square yard of soil:
the produce is small, not above thirty or forty fold.

From a hill behind Moflong bungalow, on which are some stone altars,
a most superb view is obtained of the Bhotan Himalaya to the
northward, their snowy peaks stretching in a broken series from north
17 degrees east to north 35 degrees west; all are below the horizon
of the spectator, though from 17,000 to 20,000 feet above his level.
The finest view in the Khasia mountains, and perhaps a more extensive
one than has ever before been described, is that from Chillong hill,
the culminant point of the range, about six miles north-east from
Moflong bungalow. This hill, 6,660 feet above the sea, rises from an
undulating grassy country, covered with scattered trees and
occasional clumps of wood; the whole scenery about being park-like,
and as little like that of India at so low an elevation as it is
possible to be.

I visited Chillong in October with Lieutenant Cave; starting from
Churra, and reaching the bungalow, two miles from its top, the same
night, with two relays of ponies, which he had kindly provided.
We were unfortunate in not obtaining a brilliant view of the snowy
mountains, their tops being partially clouded; but the _coup d'oeil_
was superb. Northward, beyond the rolling Khasia hills, lay the whole
Assam valley, seventy miles broad, with the Burrampooter winding
through it, fifty miles distant, reduced to a thread. Beyond this,
banks of hazy vapour obscured all but the dark range of the Lower
Himalaya, crested by peaks of frosted silver, at the immense distance
of from 100 to 220 miles from Chillong. All are below the horizon of
the observer; yet so false is perspective, that they seem high in the
air. The mountains occupy sixty degrees of the horizon, and stretch
over upwards of 250 miles, comprising the greatest extent of snow
visible from any point with which I am acquainted.

Westward from Chillong the most distant Garrow hills visible are
about forty miles off; and eastward those of Cachar, which are
loftier, are about seventy miles. To the south the view is limited by
the Tipperah hills, which, where nearest, are 100 miles distant;
while to the south-west lies the sea-like Gangetic delta, whose
horizon, lifted by refraction, must be fully 120. The extent of this
view is therefore upwards of 340 miles in one direction, and the
visible horizon of the observer encircles an area of fully thirty
thousand square miles, which is greater than that of Ireland!

Scarlet-flowered rhododendron bushes cover the north side of
Chillong,* [These skirt a wood of prickly bamboo, in which occur fig,
laurel, _Aralia, Boemeria, Smilax, Toddalia,_ wild cinnamon, and
three kinds of oak.] whilst the south is grassy and quite bare; and
except some good _Orchideae_ on the trees, there is little to reward
the botanist. The rocks appeared to be sandstone at the summit, but
micaceous gneiss all around.

Continuing northward from Moflong, the road, after five miles, dips
into a very broad and shallow flat-floored valley, fully a mile
across, which resembles a lake-bed: it is bounded by low hills, and
is called "Lanten-tannia," and is bare of aught but long grass and
herbs; amongst these are the large groundsel (_Senecio_), _Dipsacus,
Ophelia,_ and _Campanula._ On its south flank the micaceous slates
strike north-east, and dip north-west, and on the top repose beds, a
foot in thickness, of angular water-worn gravel, indicating an
ancient water-level, 400 feet above the floor of the valley.
Other smaller lake-beds, in the lateral valleys, are equally evident.

A beautiful blue-flowered _Clitoria_ creeps over the path, with the
ground-raspberry of Dorjiling. From the top a sudden descent of 400
feet leads to another broad flat valley, called "Syong" (elevation,
5,725 feet), in which is a good bungalow, surrounded by hedges of
_Prinsepia utilis,_ a common north-west Himalayan plant, only found
at 8000 feet in Sikkim. The valley is grassy, but otherwise bare.
Beyond this the road passes over low rocky hills, wooded on their
north or sheltered flanks only, dividing flat-floored valleys: a red
sandy gneiss is the prevalent rock, but boulders of syenite are
scattered about. Extensive moors (elevation, 6000 feet) succeed,
covered with stunted pines, brake, and tufts of harsh grasses.*
[These are principally _Andropogon_ and _Brachypodium,_ amongst which
grow yellow _Corydalis, Thalictrum, Anemone, Parnassia, Prunella,_
strawberry, _Eupatorium, Hypericum,_ willow, a _Polygonum_ like
_Bistorta, Osmunda regalis_ and another species _Lycopodium alpinum,_
a _Senecio_ like _Jacobaea,_ thistles, _Gnaphalium,_ Gentians, _Iris,
Paris, Sanguisorba_ and _Agrimonia._]

Near the Dengship-oong (river), which flows in a narrow valley, is a
low dome of gneiss altered by syenite. The prevalent dip is uniformly
south-east, and the strike north-east; and detached boulders of
syenite become more frequent, resting on a red gneiss, full of black
garnets, till the descent to the valley of Myrung, one of the most
beautiful spots in the Khasia, and a favourite resort, having an
excellent bungalow which commands a superb view of the Himalaya:
it is 5,650 feet above the sea, and is placed on the north flank of a
very shallow marshy valley, two miles broad, and full of rice
cultivation, as are the flat heads of all the little valleys that
lead into it. There is a guard here of light infantry, and a little
garden, boasting a gardener and some tea-plants, so that we had
vegetables during our four visits to the place, on two of which
occasions we stayed some days.

From Kala-panee to Myrung, a distance of thirty-two miles, the road
does not vary 500 feet above or below the mean level of 5,700 feet,
and the physical features are the same throughout, of broad
flat-floored, steep-sided valleys, divided by bleak, grassy,
tolerably level-topped bills. Beyond Myrung the Khasia mountains
slope to the southward in rolling loosely-wooded hills, but the spurs
do not dip suddenly till beyond Nunklow, eight miles further north.

On the south side of the Myrung valley is Nungbree wood, a dense
jungle, occupying, like all the other woods, the steep north exposure
of the hill; many good plants grow in it, including some gigantic
_Balanophorae, Pyrola,_ and _Monotropa._ The bungalow stands on soft,
contorted, decomposing gneiss, which is still the prevalent rock,
striking north-east. On the hills to the east of it, enormous hard
blocks lie fully exposed, and are piled on one another, as if so
disposed by glacial action; and it is difficult to account for them
by denudation, though their surface scales, and similar blocks are
scattered around Myrung exactly similar to the syenite blocks of
Nunklow, and the granite ones of Nonkreem, to be described hereafter,
and which are undoubtedly due to the process of weathering. A great
mass of flesh-coloured crystalline granite rises in the centre of the
valley, to the east of the road: it is fissured in various
directions, and the surface scales concentrically; it is obscurely
stratified in some parts, and appears to be half granite and half
gneiss in mineralogical character.

We twice visited a very remarkable hill, called Kollong, which rises
as a dome of granite 5,400 feet high, ten or twelve miles south-west
of Myrung, and conspicuous from all directions. The path to it turns
off from that to Nunklow, and strikes westerly along the shallow
valley of Monai, in which is a village, and much rice and other
cultivation. Near this there is a large square stockade, formed of
tall bamboos placed close together, very like a New Zealand "Pa;"
indeed, the whole country hereabouts much recalls the grassy clay
hills, marshy valleys, and bushy ridges of the Bay of Islands.
The hills on either side are sometimes dotted with pinewoods,
sometimes conical and bare, with small clumps of pines on the summit
only; while in other places are broad tracts containing nothing but
young trees, resembling plantations, but which, I am assured, are not
planted; on the other hand, however, Mr. Yule states, that the
natives do plant fir-trees, especially near the iron forges, which
give employment to all the people of Monai.

All the streams rise in flat marshy depressions amongst the hills
with which the whole country is covered; and both these features,
together with the flat clay marshes into which the rivers expand, are
very suggestive of tidal action. Rock is hardly anywhere seen, except
in the immediate vicinity of Kollong, where are many scattered
boulders of fine-grained gneiss, of which are made the broad stone
slabs, placed as seats, and the other erections of this singular
people. We repeatedly remarked cones of earth, clay, and pebbles,
about twelve feet high, upon the hills, which appeared to be
artificial, but of which the natives could give no explanation.
Wild apple and birch are common trees, but there is little jungle,
except in the hollows, and on the north slopes of the higher hills.
Coarse long grass, with bushes of Labiate and Composite plants, are
the prevalent features.

Kollong rock is a steep dome of red granite,* [This granite is highly
crystalline, and does not scale or flake, nor is its surface
polished.] accessible from the north and east, but almost
perpendicular to the southward, where the slope is 80 degrees for 600
feet. The elevation is 400 feet above the mean level of the
surrounding ridges, and 700 above the bottom of the valleys.
The south or steepest side is encumbered with enormous detached
blocks, while the north is clothed with a dense forest, containing
red tree-rhododendrons and oaks; on its skirts grew a white bushy
rhododendron, which we found nowhere else. The hard granite of the
top was covered with matted mosses, lichens, Lycopodiums, and ferns,
amongst which were many curious and beautiful airplants.* [_Eria,
Coelogyne_ (_Wallichii, maculata,_ and _elata_), _Cymbidium,
Dendrobium, Sunipia_ some of them flowering profusely; and though
freely exposed to the sun and wind, dews and frosts, rain and
droughts, they were all fresh, bright, green and strong, under very
different treatment from that to which they are exposed in the damp,
unhealthy, steamy orchid-houses of our English gardens. A wild onion
was most abundant all over the top of the hill, with _Hymenopogon,
Vaccinium, Ophiopogon, Anisadenia, Commelyna, Didymocarpus,
Remusatia, Hedychium,_ grass and small bamboos, and a good many other
plants. Many of the lichens were of European kinds; but the mosses
(except _Bryum argenteum_) and ferns were different. A small
_Staphylinus,_ which swarmed under the sods, was the only insect
I remarked.]

Illustration--KOLLONG ROCK.

The view from the top is very extensive to the northward, but not
elsewhere: it commands the Assam valley and the Himalaya, and the
billowy range of undulating grassy Khasia mountains. Few houses were
visible, but the curling smoke from the valleys betrayed their
lurking-places, whilst the tinkling sound of the hammers from the
distant forges on all sides was singularly musical and pleasing; they
fell on the ear like "bells upon the wind," each ring being
exquisitely melodious, and chiming harmoniously with the others.
The solitude and beauty of the scenery, and the emotions excited by
the music of chimes, tended to tranquillise our minds, wearied by the
fatigues of travel, and the excitement of pursuits that required
unremitting attention; and we rested for some time, our imaginations
wandering to far-distant scenes, brought vividly to our minds by
these familiar sounds.



CHAPTER XXIX.

View of Himalaya from the Khasia--Great masses of snow--Chumulari
--Donkia--Grasses--Nunklow--Assam valley and Burrampooter--
Tropical forest--Borpanee--Rhododendrons--Wild elephants--
Blocks of Syenite--Return to Churra--Coal--August temperature
--Leave for Chela--Jasper hill--Birds--_Arundina_--Habits of
leaf-insects--Curious village--Houses--Canoes--Boga-panee
river--Jheels--Chattuc--Churra--Leave for Jyntea hills--
Trading parties--Dried fish--Cherries--Cinnamon--Fraud--
Pea-violet--Nonkreem--Sandstone--Pines--Granite boulders--
Iron washing--Forges--Tanks--Siberian _Nymphaea_--Barren
country--Pomrang--_Podostemon_--Patchouli plant--Mooshye--
Enormous stone slabs--Pitcher-plant--Joowye cultivation and
vegetation--_Hydropeltis_--Sulky hostess--Nurtiung--
_Hamamelis chinensis_--Bor-panee river--Sacred grove and gigantic
stone structures--Altars--Pyramids, etc.--Origin of names--
_Vanda coerulea_--Collections--November vegetation--Geology of
Khasia--Sandstone--Coal--Lime--Gneiss--Greenstone--Tidal
action--Strike of rocks--Comparison with Rajmahal hills and the
Himalaya.

The snowy Himalaya was not visible during our first stay at Myrung,
from the 5th to the 10th of July; but on three subsequent occasions,
viz., 27th and 28th of July, 13th to 17th October, and 22nd to 25th
October, we saw these magnificent mountains, and repeatedly took
angular heights and bearings of the principal peaks. The range, as
seen from the Khasia, does not form a continuous line of snowy
mountains, but the loftiest eminences are conspicuously grouped into
masses, whose position is probably between the great rivers which
rise far beyond them and flow through Bhotan. This arrangement
indicates that relation of the rivers to the masses of snow, which I
have dwelt upon in the Appendix;  and further tends to prove that the
snowy mountains, seen from the southward, are not on the axis of a
mountain chain, and do not even indicate its position; but that they
are lofty meridional spurs which, projecting southward, catch the
moist vapours, become more deeply snowed, and protect the dry loftier
regions behind.

The most conspicuous group of snows seen from the Khasia bears N.N.E.
from Myrung, and consists of three beautiful mountains with
wide-spreading snowy shoulders. These are distant (reckoning from
west to east) respectively 164, 170, and 172 miles from Myrung, and
subtend angles of + 0 degrees 4 minutes 0 seconds,-0 degrees 1
minute 30 seconds, and-0 degrees 2 minutes 28 seconds.* [These
angles were taken both at sunrise and sunset, and with an excellent
theodolite, and were repeated after two considerable intervals.
The telescopes were reversed after each observation, and every
precaution used to insure accuracy; nevertheless the mean of one set
of observations of angular height often varied 1 degree from that of
another set. This is probably much due to atmospheric refraction,
whose effect and amount it is impossible to estimate accurately in
such cases. Here the objects are not only viewed through 160 miles of
atmosphere, but through belts from between 6000 to 20,000 feet of
vertical height, varying in humidity and transparency at different
parts of the interval. If we divide this column of atmosphere into
sections parallel to those of latitude, we have first a belt fifteen
miles broad, hanging over the Khasia, 2000 to 4000 feet above the
sea; beyond it, a second belt, seventy miles broad, hangs over the
Assam valley, which is hardly 300 feet above the level of the sea;
and thirdly, the northern part of the column, which reposes on 60 to
100 miles of the Bhotan lower Himalaya: each of these belts has
probably a different refractive power.] From Nunklow (940 feet lower
than Myrung) they appear higher, the western peak rising 14 degrees
35 minutes above the horizon; whilst from Moflong (32 miles further
south, and elevation 6,062 feet) the same is sunk 2 degrees below the
horizon. My computations make this western mountain upwards of 24,000
feet high; but according to Col. Wilcox's angles, taken from the
Assam valley, it is only 21,600, the others being respectively 20,720
and 21,475. Captain Thuillier (the Deputy Surveyor General) agrees
with me in considering that Colonel Wilcox's altitudes are probably
much  under-estimated, as those of other Himalayan peaks to the
westward were by the old surveyors. It is further evident that these
mountains have (as far as can be estimated by angles) fully 6-8000
feet of snow on them, which would not be the case were the loftiest
only 21,600 feet high.

It is singular, that to the eastward of this group, no snowy
mountains are seen, and the lower Himalaya also dip suddenly.
This depression is no doubt partly due to perspective; but as there
is no such sudden disappearance of the chain to the westward, where
peaks are seen 35 degrees to the west of north, it is far more
probable that the valley of the Soobansiri river, which rises in
Tibet far behind these peaks, is broad and open; as is that of the
Dihong, still farther east, which we have every reason to believe is
the Tibetan Yaru or Burrampooter.

Supposing then the eastern group to indicate the mountain mass
separating the Soobansiri from the Monass river, no other mountains
conspicuous for altitude or dimension rise between N.N.E. and north,
where there is another immense group. This, though within 120 miles
of Myrung, is below its horizon, and scarcely above that of Nunklow
(which is still nearer to it), and cannot therefore attain any
great elevation.

Far to the westward again, is a very lofty peaked mountain bearing
N.N.W., which subtends an angle of-3 minutes 30 seconds from Myrung,
and +6 minutes 0 seconds from Nunklow. The angles of this seem to
indicate its being either Chumulari, or that great peak which I saw
due east from Bbomtso top, and which I then estimated at ninety miles
off and 23,500 feet high. From the Khasia angles, its latitude and
longitude are 28 degrees 6 minutes and 89 degrees 30 minutes, its
elevation 27,000 feet, and its distance from Myrung 200 miles. I need
hardly add  that neither the position nor the elevation computed from
such data is worthy of confidence.

Further still, to the extreme west, is an immense low hog-backed mass
of snow, with a small peak on it; this bears north-west, both from
Myrung and Nunklow, subtending an angle of-25 minutes from the
former, and-17 minutes from the latter station. It is in all
probability Chumulari, 210 miles distant from Nunklow. Donkia, if
seen, would be distant 230 miles from the same spot in the Khasia,
and Kinchinjunga 260; possibly they are visible (by refraction) from
Chillong, though even further from it.

The distance from Myrung to Nunklow is ten miles, along an excellent
road. The descent is at first sudden, beyond which the country is
undulating, interspersed with jungle (of low trees, chiefly oaks) and
marshes, with much rice cultivation. Grasses are exceedingly
numerous; we gathered fifty kinds, besides twenty _Cyperaceae_: four
were cultivated, namely sugar-cane, rice, _Coix,_ and maize. Most of
the others were not so well suited to pasturage as those of higher
localities. Dwarf Phoenix palm occurs by the roadside at 5000 feet
elevation.

Gneiss (with garnets) highly inclined, was the prevalent rock
(striking north-east), and scattered boulders of syenite became very
frequent. In one place the latter rock is seen bursting through the
gneiss, which is slaty and very crystalline at the junction.

Nunklow is placed at the northern extremity of a broad spur that
over-hangs the valley of the Burrampooter river, thirty miles
distant. The descent from it is very rapid, and beyond it none of the
many spurs thrown out by the Khasia attain more than 1000 feet
elevation; hence, though the range does not present so abrupt a  face
to the Burrampooter as it does to the Jheels, Nunklow is considered
as on the brink of its north slope. The elevation of the bungalow is
4,688 feet, and the climate being hot, it swarms with mosquitos,
fleas, and rats. It commands a superb view to the north, of the
Himalayan snows, of the Burrampooter, and intervening malarious Terai
forest; and to the south, of the undulating Khasia, with Kollong rock
bearing south-west. All the hills between this and Myrung look from
Nunklow better wooded than they do from Myrung, in consequence of the
slopes exposed to the south being bare of forest.

A thousand feet below the bungalow, a tropical forest begins, of
figs, birch, horse-chestnut, oak, nutmeg. _Cedrela, Engelhardtia,
Artocarpeae,_ and _Elaeocarpus,_ in the gullies, and tall pines on
the dry slopes, which are continued down to the very bottom of the
valley in which flows the Bor-panee, a broad and rapid river that
descends from Chillong, and winds round the base of the Nunklow spur.
Many of the pines are eighty feet high, and three or four in
diameter, but none form gigantic trees. The quantity of balsams in
the wet ravines is very great, and tree-ferns of several kinds are
common.

The Bor-panee is about forty yards wide, and is spanned by an elegant
iron suspension-bridge, that is clamped to the gneiss rock (strike
north-east, dip north-west) on either bank; beneath is a series of
cascades, none high, but all of great beauty from the broken masses
of rocks and picturesque scenery on either side. We frequently
botanised up and down the river with great success: many curious
plants grow on its stony and rocky banks; and amongst them
_Rhododendron formosum_ at the low elevation of 2000 feet. A most
splendid fern, _Dipteris Wallichii,_ is abundant, with the dwarf
Phoenix palm and _Cycas pectinata._

Wild animals are very abundant here, though extremely rare on the
higher part of the Khasia range; tigers, however, and bears, ascend
to Nunklow. We saw troops of wild dogs ("Kuleam," Khas.), deer, and
immense quantities of the droppings of the wild elephant; an animal
considered in Assam dangerous to meet, whereas in other parts of
India it is not dreaded till provoked. There is, however, no
quadruped that varies more in its native state than this: the Ceylon
kind differs from the Indian in the larger size and short tusks, and
an experienced judge at Calcutta will tell at once whether the newly
caught elephant is from Assam, Silhet, Cuttack, Nepal, or Chittagong.
Some of the differences, in size, roundness of shoulders and back,
quantity of hair, length of limb, and shape of head, are very marked;
and their dispositions are equally various.

The lowest rocks seen are at a considerable distance down the
Bor-panee; they are friable sandstones that strike uniformly with the
gneiss. From the bridge upwards the rocks are all gneiss, alternating
with chert and quartz. The Nunklow spur is covered with enormous
rounded blocks of syenite, reposing on clay or on one another.
These do not descend the hill, and are the remains of an extensive
formation which we could only find _in situ_ at one spot on the road
to Myrung (see earlier), but which must have been of immense
thickness.* [The tendency of many volcanic rocks to decompose in
spheres is very well known: it is conspicuous in the black basalts
north of Edinburgh, but I do not know any instance equal to this of
Nunklow, for the extent of decomposition and dimensions of the
resulting spheres.] One block within ten yards of the bungalow door
was fifteen feet long, six high, and eight broad; it appeared half
buried, and was rapidly decomposing from the action of the rain.
Close by, to the westward, in walking amongst the masses we  were
reminded of a moraine of most gigantic sized blocks; one which I
measured was forty feet long and eleven above the ground; its edges
were rounded, and its surface flaked off in pieces a foot broad and a
quarter of an inch thick. Trees and brushwood often conceal the
spaces between these fragments, and afford dens for bears and
leopards, into which man cannot follow them.

Sitting in the cool evenings on one of these great blocks, and
watching the Himalayan glaciers glowing with the rays of sunset,
appearing to change in form and dimensions with the falling shadows,
it was impossible to refrain from speculating on the possibility of
these great boulders heaped on the Himalayan-ward face of the Khasia
range, having been transported hither by ice at some former period;
especially as the Mont Blanc granite, in crossing the lake of Geneva
to the Jura, must have performed a hardly less wonderful ice journey:
but this hypothesis is clearly untenable; and unparalleled in our
experience as the results appear, if attributed to denudation and
weathering alone, we are yet compelled to refer them to these causes.
The further we travel, and the longer we study, the more positive
becomes the conviction that the part played by these great agents in
sculpturing the surface of our planet, is as yet but half recognised.

We returned on the 7th of August to Churra, where we employed
ourselves during the rest of the month in collecting and studying the
plants of the neighbourhood. We hired a large and good bungalow, in
which three immense coal fires* [This coal is excellent for many
purposes. We found it generally used by the Assam steamers, and were
informed on board that in which we traversed the Sunderbunds, some
months afterwards, that her furnaces consumed 729 lbs. per hour;
whereas the consumption of English coal was 800 lbs., of Burdwan coal
8401bs., and of Assam 900 lbs.] were kept up for drying plants and
papers, and fifteen men were always employed, some in changing, and
some in collecting, from morning till night. The coal was procured
within a mile of our door, and cost about six shillings a month; it
was of the finest quality, and gave great heat and few ashes.
Torrents of rain descended almost daily, twelve inches in as many
hours being frequently registered; and we remarked that it was
impossible to judge of the quantity by estimation, an apparent deluge
sometimes proving much less in amount than much lighter but steadier
falls; hence the greatest fall is probably that in which the drops
are moderately large; very close together, and which pass through a
saturated atmosphere. The temperature of the rain here and elsewhere
in India was always a degree or two below that of the air.

Though the temperature in August rose to 75 degrees, we never felt a
fire oppressive, owing to the constant damp, and absence of sun.
The latter, when it broke through the clouds, shone powerfully,
raising the thermometer 20 degrees and 30 degrees in as many minutes.
On such occasions, hot blasts of damp wind ascend the valleys, and
impinge suddenly against different houses on the flat, giving rise to
extraordinary differences between the mean daily temperatures of
places not half a mile apart.

On the 4th of September we started for the village of Chela, which
lies west from Churra, at the embouchure of the Boga-panee on the
Jheels. The path runs by Mamloo, and down the spur to the Jasper hill
(see chapter xxviii): the vegetation all along is very tropical, and
pepper, ginger, maize, and Betel palm, are cultivated around small
cottages, which are only distinguishable in the forest by their
yellow thatch of dry _Calamus_ (Rattan) leaves. From Jasper hill a
very steep ridge leads to another, called Lisouplang, which is
hardly so high as Mamloo; the rocks are the same sandstone, with
fragments of coal, and remains of the limestone formation capping it.

Hot gusts of wind blow up the valleys, alternating with clouds and
mists, and it is curious to watch the effects of the latter in
stilling the voices of insects (Cicadas) and birds. Common crows and
vultures haunt the villages, but these, and all other large birds,
are very rare in the Khasia. A very few hawks are occasionally seen,
also sparrows and kingfishers, and I once heard a cuckoo; pheasants
are sometimes shot, but we never saw any. Kites become numerous after
the rains, and are regarded as a sign of their cessation.
More remarkable than the rarity of birds is the absence of all
animals except domestic rats, as a more suitable country for hares
and rabbits could not be found. Reptiles, and especially Colubridae,
are very common in the Khasia mountains, and I procured sixteen
species and many specimens. The natives repeatedly assured us that
these were all harmless, and Dr. Gray, who has kindly examined all my
snakes, informs me of the remarkable fact (alluded to in a note in
chapter xviii), that whereas none of these are poisonous, four out of
the eleven species which I found in Sikkim are so. One of the Khasia
blind-worms (a new species) belongs to a truly American genus
(_Ophisaurus_), a fact as important as is that of the Sikkim skink
and _Agama_ being also American forms.

_Arundina,_ a beautiful purple grassy-leaved orchid, was abundantly
in flower on the hill-top, and the great white swallow-tailed moth
(_Saturnia Atlas_) was extremely common, with tropical butterflies
and other insects. The curious leaf-insect (_Mantis_) was very
abundant on the orange trees, on the leaves of which the natives
believe  it to feed; nor indeed could we persuade some of our friends
that its thin sharp jaws are unsuited for masticating leaves, and
that these and its prehensile feet indicate its predacious nature:
added to which, its singular resemblance to a leaf is no less a
provision against its being discovered by its enemies, than an aid in
deceiving its prey.

We descended rapidly for many miles through beautiful rocky woods,
with villages nestling amongst groves of banana and trellised
climbers; and from the brow of a hill looked down upon a slope
covered with vegetation and huts, which formed the mart of Chela, and
below which the Boga-panee flowed in a deep gorge. The view was a
very striking one: owing to the steepness of the valley below our
feet, the roofs alone of the cottages were visible, from which
ascended the sounds and smells of a dense native population, and to
which there appeared to be no way of descending. The opposite side
rose precipitously in lofty table-topped mountains, and the river was
studded with canoes.

The descent was fully 800 feet, on a slope averaging 25 degrees to 35
degrees. The cottages were placed close together, each within a
little bamboo enclosure, eight to ten yards deep; and no two were on
the same level. Each was built against a perpendicular wall which
supported a cutting in the bank behind; and a similar wall descended
in front of it, forming the back of the compartment in which the
cottage next below it was erected. The houses were often raised on
platforms, and some had balconies in front, which overhung the
cottage below. All were mere hovels of wattle or mud, with very
high-pitched roofs: stone tanks resembling fonts, urns, coffins, and
sarcophagi, were placed near the better houses, and blocks of stone
were scattered everywhere.

We descended from hovel to hovel, alternately along the gravelled
flat of each enclosure, and perpendicularly down steps cut in the
sandstone or let into the walls. I counted 800 houses from the river,
and there must be many more: the inhabitants are Bengalees and
Khasias, and perhaps amount to 3000 or 4000; but this is a very
vague estimate.

Illustration--CHELA VILLAGE.

We lodged in a curious house, consisting of one apartment, twenty
feet long, and five high, raised thirty feet upon bamboos: the walls
were of platted bamboo matting, fastened to strong wooden beams, and
one side opened on a balcony that overhung the river. The entrance
was an oval aperture reached by a ladder, and closed by folding-doors
that turned on wooden pivots.  The roof was supported by tressels of
great thickness, and like the rest of the woodwork, was morticed, no
nails being used throughout the building. The floor was of split
bamboos laid side by side.

We ascended the Boga-panee in canoes, each formed of a hollowed trunk
fifty feet long and four broad; we could not, however, proceed far,
on account of the rapids. The rocks in its bed are limestone, but a
great bluff cliff of sandy conglomerate (strike east-south-east and
dip south-south-west 70 degrees), several hundred feet high, rises on
the east bank close above the village, above which occurs
amygdaloidal basalt. The pebbles in the river (which was seventy
yards broad, and turbid) were of slate, basalt, sandstone, and
syenite: on the opposite bank were sandstones over-lain by limestone,
both dipping to the southward.

Beautiful palms, especially _Caryota urens_ (by far the handsomest in
India), and groves of betel-nut bordered the river, with oranges,
lemons, and citrons; intermixed with feathery bamboos,
horizontally-branched acacias, oaks, with pale red young leaves, and
deep green foliaged figs. Prickly rattans and _Plectocomia_ climbed
amongst these, their enormous plumes of foliage upborne by the matted
branches of the trees, and their arrowy tops shooting high above the
forest.

After staying three days at Chela, we descended the stream in canoes,
shooting over pebbly rapids, and amongst rocks of limestone,
water-worn into fantastic shapes, till we at last found ourselves
gliding gently along the still canals of the Jheels. Many of these
rapids are so far artificial, that they are enclosed by gravel banks,
six feet high, which, by confining the waters, give them depth; but,
Chela being hardly above the level of the sea, their fall is  very
trifling. We proceeded across the Jheels* [The common water-plants of
the Jheels are _Vallisneria serrata, Damasonium,_ 2 _Myriophylla,_ 2
_Villarsiae, Trapa,_ blue, white, purple and scarlet water-lilies,
_Hydrilla, Utricularia, Limnophila, Azolla, Salvinia, Ceratopteris,_
and floating grasses.] to Chattuc, and then north again to Pundua,
and so to Churra.

Having pretty well exhausted the botany of Churra, Dr. Thomson and I
started on the 13th of September for the eastern part of the Khasia
and Jyntea mountains. On the Kala-panee road,* [The Pea-violet
(_Crotalaria occulta_) was very common by the road-side, and
smelt deliciously of violets: the English name suggests the
appearance of the flower, for which and for its fragrance it is well
worth cultivation.] which we followed, we passed crowds of market
people, laden with dried fish in a half-putrid state, which scented
the air for many yards: they were chiefly carp, caught and dried at
the foot of the hills. Large parties were bringing down baskets of
bird-cherries, cinnamon-bark, iron, pine planks, fire-wood, and
potatoes. Of these, the bird-cherries (like damsons) are made into an
excellent preserve by the English residents, who also make capital
cherry-brandy of them: the trade in cinnamon is of recent
introduction, and is much encouraged by the Inglis family, to whose
exertions these people are so greatly indebted; the cinnamon is the
peeled bark of a small species of _Cinnamomum_ allied to that of
Ceylon, and though inferior in flavour and mucilaginous (like
cassia), finds a ready market at Calcutta. It has been used to
adulterate the Ceylon cinnamon; and an extensive fraud was attempted
by some Europeans at Calcutta, who sent boxes of this, with a top
layer of the genuine, to England. The smell of the cinnamon loads was
as fragrant as that of the fish was offensive.

The road from Kala-panee bungalow strikes off north-easterly, and
rounds the head of the deep valley to the east of Churra; it then
crosses the head-waters of the  Kala-panee river, still a clear
stream, the bed of which is comparatively superficial: the rocks
consist of a little basalt and much sandstone, striking east by
north, and dipping north by west. The Boga-panee is next reached,
flowing in a shallow valley, about 200 feet below the general level
of the hills, which are grassy and treeless. The river* [The fall of
this river, between this elevation (which may be considered that of
its source) and Chela, is about 5,500 feet.] is thirty yards across,
shallow and turbid; its bed is granite, and beyond it scattered
stunted pines are met with; a tree which seems to avoid the
sandstone. In the evening we arrived at Nonkreem, a large village in
a broad marshy valley, where we procured accommodation with some
difficulty, the people being by no means civil, and the Rajah, Sing
Manuk, holding himself independent of the British Government.

Atmospheric denudation and weathering have produced remarkable
effects on the lower part of the Nonkreem valley, which is blocked up
by a pine-crested hill, 200 feet high, entirely formed of round
blocks of granite, heaped up so as to resemble an old moraine; but
like the Nunklow boulders, these are not arranged as if by glacial
action. The granite is micaceous, and usually very soft, decomposing
into a coarse reddish sand, that colours the Boga-panee. To procure
the iron-sand, which is disseminated through it, the natives conduct
water over the beds of granite sand, and as the lighter particles are
washed away, the remainder is removed to troughs, where the
separation of the ore is completed. The smelting is very rudely
carried on in charcoal fires, blown by enormous double-action
bellows, worked by two persons, who stand on the machine, raising the
flaps with their hands, and expanding them with their feet, as shown
in the cut further on.  There is neither furnace nor flux used in the
reduction. The fire is kindled on one aide of an upright stone (like
the head-stone of a grave), with a small arched hole close to the
ground: near this hole the bellows are suspended; and a bamboo tube
from each of its compartments, meets in a larger one, by which the
draught is directed under the hole in the stone to the fire. The ore
is run into lumps as large as two fists, with a rugged surface: these
lumps are afterwards cleft nearly in two, to show their purity.

Illustration--NONKREEM VILLAGE.

The scenery about Nonkreem village is extremely picturesque, and we
procured many good plants on the rocks, which were covered with the
purple-flowered Orchid, _Coelogyne Wallichii._ The country is
everywhere intersected  with trenches for iron-washing, and some
large marshes were dammed up for the same purpose: in these we found
some beautiful balsams, _Hypericum_ and _Parnassia_; also a
diminutive water-lily, the flower of which is no larger than a
half-crown; it proves to be the _Nymphaea pygmaea_ of China and
Siberia--a remarkable fact in the geographical distribution
of plants.

Illustration--BELLOWS.

From Nonkreem we proceeded easterly to Pomrang, leaving Chillong hill
on the north, and again crossing the Bega-panee, beyond which the
sandstone appeared (strike  north-east and dip north-west 60
degrees); the soil was poor in the extreme; not an inhabitant or tree
was to be seen throughout the grassy landscape, and hardly a bush,
save an occasional rhododendron, dwarf oak, or _Pieris,_ barely a few
inches high.

At Pomrang we took up our quarters in an excellent empty bungalow,
built by Mr. Stainforth (Judge of Silhet), who kindly allowed us the
use of it. Its elevation was 5,143 feet, and it occupied the eastern
extremity of a lofty spur that overhangs the deep fir-clad valley of
the Oongkot, dividing Khasia from Jyntea. The climate of Pomrang is
so much cooler and less rainy than at Churra, that this place is more
eligible for a station; but the soil is quite impracticable, there is
an occasional scarcity of water, the pasture is wholly unsuited for
cattle or sheep, and the distance from the plains is too great.

A beautiful view extends eastwards to the low Jyntea hills, backed by
the blue mountains of Cachar, over the deep valley in front; to the
northward, a few peaks of the Himalaya are seen, and westward is
Chillong. We staid here till the 23rd September, and then proceeded
south-eastward to Mooshye. The path descends into the valley of the
Oongkot, passing the village of Pomrang, and then through woods of
pine, _Gordonia,_ and oak, the latter closely resembling the English,
and infested with galls. The slopes are extensively cultivated with
black awnless unirrigated rice, and poor crops of _Coix,_ protected
from the birds by scarecrows of lines stretched across the fields,
bearing tassels and tufts of fern, shaken by boys. This fern proved
to be a very curious and interesting genus, which is only known to
occur elsewhere at Hong-Kong in China, and has been called
_Bowringia,_ after the eminent Dr. Bowring.

We crossed the river* [_Podostemom_ grew on the stones at the bottom:
it is a remarkable waterplant, resembling a liver-wort in its mode of
growth. Several species occur at different elevations in the Khasia,
and appear only in autumn, when they often carpet the bottom of the
streams with green. In spring and summer no traces of them are seen;
and it is difficult to conceive what becomes of the seeds in the
interval, and how these, which are well known, and have no apparent
provision for the purpose, attach themselves to the smooth rocks at
the bottom of the torrents. All the kinds flower and ripen their
seeds under water; the stamens and pistil being protected by the
closed flower from the wet. This genus does not inhabit the Sikkim
rivers, probably owing to the great changes of temperature to which
these are subject.] twice, proceeding south-west to Mooshye, a
village placed on an isolated, flat-topped, and very steep-sided
hill, 4,863 feet above the sea, and perhaps 3,500 above the Oongkot,
which winds round its base. A very steep path led up slate rocks to
the top (which was of sandstone), where there is a stockaded
guard-house, once occupied by British troops, of which we took
possession. A Labiate plant (_Mesona Wallichiana_) grew on the
ascent, whose bruised leaves smelt as strongly of patchouli, as do
those of the plant producing that perfume, to which it is closely
allied. The _Pogostemon Patchouli_ has been said to occur in these
parts of India, but we never met with it, and doubt the accuracy of
the statement. It is a native of the Malay peninsula, whence the
leaves are imported into Bengal, and so to Europe.

The summit commands a fine view northward of some Himalayan peaks,
and southwards of the broad valley of the Oongkot, which is level,
and bounded by steep and precipitous hills, with flat tops. On the
25th we left Mooshye for Amwee in Jyntea, which lies to the
south-east. We descended by steps cut in the sandstone, and fording
the Oongkot, climbed the hills on its east side, along the grassy
tops of which we continued, at an elevation of 4000 feet. Marshy
flats intersect the hills, to which wild elephants sometimes ascend,
doing much damage to the rice  crops. We crossed a stream by a bridge
formed of one gigantic block of sandstone, 20 feet long, close to the
village, which is a wretched one, and is considered unhealthy: it
stands on the high road from Jynteapore (at the foot of the hills to
the southward) to Assam: the only road that crosses the mountains
east of that from Churra to Nunklow.

Illustration--OLD BRIDGE AT AMWEE.

Though so much lower, this country, from the barrenness of the soil,
is more thinly inhabited than the Khasia. The pitcher-plant
(_Nepenthes_) grows on stony and grassy hills about Amwee, and crawls
along the ground; its pitchers seldom contain insects in the wild
state, nor can we suggest any special function for the wonderful
organ it possesses.

About eight miles south of the village is a stream, crossed by a
bridge, half of which is formed of slabs of stone (of which one is
twenty-one feet long, seven broad, and two feet three and a half
inches thick), supported on piers, and the rest is a well turned
arch, such as I have not  seen elsewhere among the hill tribes of
India. It is fast crumbling away, and is covered with tropical
plants, and a beautiful white-flowered orchis* [_Diplomeris;
Apostasia_ also grew in this gulley, with a small _Arundina,_ some
beautiful species of _Sonerila,_ and _Argostemma._ The neighbourhood
was very rich in plants.] grew in the mossy crevices of its stones.

From Amwee our route lay north-east across the Jyntea hills to
Joowye, the hill-capital of the district. The path gradually
ascended, dipping into valleys scooped out in the horizontal
sandstone down to the basalt; and boulders of the same rock were
scattered about. Fields of rice occupy the bottoms of these valleys,
in which were placed gigantic images of men, dressed in rags, and
armed with bows and arrows, to scare away the wild elephants! Slate
rocks succeed the sandstone (strike north-east, dip north-west), and
with them pines and birch appear, clothing the deep flanks of the
Mintadoong valley, which we crossed.

The situation of Joowye is extremely beautiful: it occupies the
broken wooded slope of a large open flat valley, dotted with pines;
and consists of an immense number of low thatched cottages, scattered
amongst groves of bamboo, and fields of plantain, tobacco, yams,
sugar-cane, maize, and rice, surrounded by hedges of bamboo,
_Colquhounia,_ and _Erythrina._ Narrow steep lanes lead amongst
these, shaded with oak, birch, _Podocarpus,_ Camellia, and
_Araliaceae_; the larger trees being covered with orchids, climbing
palms, _Pothos, Scindapsus,_ pepper, and _Gnetum_; while masses of
beautiful red and violet balsams grew under every hedge and rock.
The latter was of sandstone, overlying highly inclined schists, and
afforded magnificent blocks for the natives to rear on end, or make
seats of. Some erect stones  on a hill at the entrance are immensely
large, and surround a clump of fine fig and banyan trees.* [In some
tanks we found _Hydropeltis,_ an American and Australian plant allied
to _Nymphaea._ Mr. Griffith first detected it here, and afterwards in
Bhotan, these being the only known habitats for it in the Old World.
It grows with _Typha, Acorus Calamus_ (sweet flag), _Vallisneria,
Potamogeton, Sparganium,_ and other European water-plants.]

We procured a good house after many delays, for the people were far
from obliging; it was a clean, very long cottage, with low thatched
eaves almost touching the ground, and was surrounded by a high bamboo
paling that enclosed out-houses built on a well-swept floor of beaten
earth. Within, the woodwork was carved in curious patterns, and was
particularly well fitted. The old lady to whom it belonged got tired
of us before two days were over, and first tried to smoke us out by a
large fire of green wood at that end of the cottage which she
retained; and afterwards by inviting guests to a supper, with whom
she kept up a racket all night. Her son, a tall, sulky fellow, came
to receive the usual gratuity on our departure, which we made large
to show we bore no ill-will: he, however, behaved so scornfully,
pretending to despise it, that I had no choice but to pocket it
again; a proceeding which was received with shouts of laughter, at
his expense, from a large crowd of bystanders.

On the 30th of September we proceeded north-east from Joowye to
Nurtiung, crossing the watershed of the Jyntea range, which is
granitic, and scarcely raised above the mean level of the hills; it
is about 4,500 feet elevation. To the north the descent is at first
rather abrupt for 500 feet, to a considerable stream, beyond which is
the village of Nurtiung. The country gradually declines hence to the
north-east, in grassy hills;  which to the east become higher and
more wooded: to the west the Khasia are seen, and several Himalayan
peaks to the north.

The ascent to the village from the river is by steps cut in a narrow
cleft of the schist rocks, to a flat, elevated 4,178 feet above the
sea: we here procured a cottage, and found the people remarkably
civil. The general appearance is the same as at Joowye, but there are
here extensive and very unhealthy marshes, whose evil effects we
experienced, in having the misfortune to lose one of our servants by
fever. Except pines, there are few large trees; but the quantity of
species of perennial woody plants contributing to form the jungles is
quite extraordinary: I enumerated 140, of which 60 were trees or
large shrubs above twenty feet high. One of these was the _Hamamelis
chinensis,_ a plant hitherto only known as a native of China.
This, the _Bowringia,_ and the little _Nymphaea,_ are three out of
many remarkable instances of our approach to the eastern
Asiatic flora.

From Nurtiung we walked to the Bor-panee river, sixteen or twenty
miles to the north-east (not the river of that name below Nunklow),
returning the same night; a most fatiguing journey in so hot and damp
a climate. The path lay for the greatest part of the way over grassy
hills of mica-schist, with boulders of granite, and afterwards of
syenite, like those of Nunklow. The descent to the river is through
noble woods of spreading oaks,* [We collected upwards of fifteen
kinds of oak and chesnut in these and the Khasia mountains; many are
magnificent trees, with excellent wood, while others are inferior as
timber.] chesnuts, magnolias, and tall pines: the vegetation is very
tropical, and with the exception of there being no sal, it resembles
that of the dry hills of the Sikkim Terai. The Bor-panee is  forty
yards broad, and turbid; its bed, which is of basalt, is 2,454 feet
above the sea: it is crossed by a raft pulled to and fro by canes.

Nurtiung contains a most remarkable collection of those sepulchral
and other monuments, which form so curious a feature in the scenery
of these mountains and in the habits of their savage population.
They are all placed in a fine grove of trees, occupying a hollow;
where several acres are covered with gigantic, generally circular,
slabs of stone, from ten to twenty-five feet broad, supported five
feet above the ground upon other blocks. For the most part they are
buried in brushwood of nettles and shrubs, but in one place there is
an open area of fifty yards encircled by them, each with a gigantic
headstone behind it. Of the latter the tallest was nearly thirty feet
high, six broad, and two feet eight inches in thickness, and must
have been sunk at least five feet, and perhaps much more, in the
ground. The flat slabs were generally of slate or hornstone; but many
of them, and all the larger ones, were of syenitic granite, split by
heat and cold water with great art. They are erected by dint of sheer
brute strength, the lever being the only aid. Large blocks of syenite
were scattered amongst these wonderful erections.

Splendid trees of _Bombax,_ fig and banyan, overshadowed them: the
largest banyan had a trunk five feet in diameter, clear of the
buttresses, and numerous small trees of _Celtic_ grew out of it, and
an immense flowering tuft of _Vanda caerulea_ (the rarest and most
beautiful of Indian orchids) flourished on one of its limbs. A small
plantain with austere woolly scarlet fruit, bearing ripe seeds, was
planted in this sacred grove, where trees of the most tropical genera
grew mixed with the pine, birch, _Myrica,_ and _Viburnum._

The Nurtiung Stonehenge is no doubt in part religious, as the grove
suggests, and also designed for cremation, the bodies being burnt on
the altars. In the Khasia these upright stones are generally raised
simply as memorials of great events, or of men whose ashes are not
necessarily, though frequently, buried or deposited in hollow stone
sarcophagi near them, and sometimes in an urn placed inside a
sarcophagus, or under horizontal slabs.

Illustration--STONES AT NURTIUNG.

The usual arrangement is a row of five, seven, or more erect oblong
blocks with round heads (the highest being placed in the middle), on
which are often wooden discs and cones: more rarely pyramids are
built. Broad slabs for seats are also common by the wayside.
Mr. Yule, who first drew attention to these monuments, mentions one
thirty-two feet by fifteen, and two in thickness; and states that the
sarcophagi (which, however, are rare) formed of four slabs, resemble
a drawing in Bell's Circassia, and descriptions in Irby and Mangles'
Travels in Syria. He adds that many villages derive their names from
these stones, "mau" signifying "stone:" thus "Mausmai" is "the stone
of oath," because, as his native informant said, "there was war
between Churra and Mausmai, and when they made peace, they swore to
it, and placed a stone as a witness;" forcibly recalling the stone
Jacob set up for a pillar, and other passages in the old Testament:
"Mamloo" is "the stone of salt," eating salt from a sword's point
being the Khasia form of oath: "Mauflong" is "the grassy stone,"
etc.* [Notes on the Khasia mountains and people; by Lieutenant H.
Yule, Bengal Engineers. Analogous combinations occur in the south of
England and in Brittany, etc., where similar structures are found.
Thus _maen, man,_ or _men_ is the so-called Druidical name for a
stony, whence _Pen-maen-mawr,_ for "the hill of the big stone,"
_Maen-hayr,_ for the standing stones of Brittany, and _Dol-men,_ °the
table-stone," for a cromlech.] Returning from this grove, we crossed
a stream by a single squared block, twenty-eight feet long, five
broad, and two thick, of gray syenitic granite with large crystals
of felspar.

We left Nurtiung on the 4th of October, and walked to Pomrang, a very
long and fatiguing day's work. The route descends north-west of the
village, and turns due east along bare grassy hills of mica-schist
and slate (strike east and west, and dip north). Near the village of
Lernai oak woods are passed, in which _Vanda coerulea_ grows in
profusion, waving its panicles of azure flowers in the wind. As this
beautiful orchid is at present attracting great attention, from its
high price, beauty, and difficulty of culture, I shall point out how
totally at variance with its native habits, is the cultivation
thought necessary for it in England.* [We collected seven men's loads
of this superb plant for the Royal Gardens at Kew; but owing to
unavoidable accidents and difficulties, few specimens reached England
alive. A gentleman who sent his gardener with us to be shown the
locality, was more successful: he sent one man's load to England on
commission, and though it arrived in a very poor state, it sold for
300 pounds, the individual plants fetching prices varying from 3
pounds to 10 pounds. Had all arrived alive, they would have cleared
1000 pounds. An active collector, with the facilities I possessed,
might easily clear from 2000 pounds to 3000 pounds, in one season, by
the sale of Khasia orchids.] The  dry grassy hills which it inhabits
are elevated 3000 to 4000 feet: the trees are small, gnarled, and
very sparingly leafy, so that the Vanda which grows on their limbs is
fully exposed to sun, rain, and wind. There is no moss or lichen on
the branches with the Vanda, whose roots sprawl over the dry rough
bark. The atmosphere is on the whole humid, and extremely so during
the rains; but there is no damp heat, or stagnation of the air, and
at the flowering season the temperature ranges between 60 degrees and
80 degrees, there is much sunshine, and both air and bark are dry
during the day: in July and August, during the rains, the temperature
is a little higher than above, but in winter it falls much lower, and
hoar-frost forms on the ground. Now this winter's cold, summer's
heat, and autumn's drought, and above all, this constant free
exposure to fresh air and the winds of heaven, are what of all things
we avoid exposing our orchids to in England. It is under these
conditions, however, that all the finer Indian _Orchideae,_ grow, of
which we found _Dendrobium Farmeri, Dalhousianum, Devonianum,_ etc.,
with _Vanda coerulea_; whilst the most beautiful species of
_Coelogyne, Cymbidium, Bolbophyllum,_ and _Cypripedium,_ inhabit cool
climates at elevations above 4000 feet in Khasia, and as high as 6000
to 7000 in Sikkim.

On the following day we turned out our Vanda to dress the specimens
for travelling, and preserve the flowers for botanical purposes.
Of the latter we had 360 panicles, each composed of from six to
twenty-one broad pale-blue  tesselated flowers, three and a half to
four inches across and they formed three piles on the floor of the
verandah, each a yard high: what would we not have given to have been
able to transport a single panicle to a Chiswick fete!

On the 10th of October we sent twenty-four strong mountaineers to
Churra, laden with the collections of the previous month; whilst we
returned to Nonkreem, and crossing the shoulder of Chillong, passed
through the village of Moleem in a north-west direction to the Syong
bungalow. From this we again crossed the range to Nunklow and the
Bor-panee, and returned by Moflong and the Kala-panee to Churra
during the latter part of the month.

In November the vegetation above 4000 feet turns wintry and brown,
the weather becomes chilly, and though the cold is never great,
hoar-frost forms at Churra, and water freezes at Moflong. We prepared
to leave as these signs of winter advanced: we had collected upwards
of 2,500 species, and for the last few weeks all our diligence, and
that of our collectors, had failed to be rewarded by a single
novelty. We however procured many species in fruit, and made a
collection of upwards of 300 kinds of woods, many of very curious
structure. As, however, we projected a trip to Cachar before quitting
the neighbourhood, we retained our collectors, giving orders for them
to meet us at Chattuc, on our way down the Soormah in December, with
their collections, which amounted to 200 men's loads, and for the
conveyance of which to Calcutta, Mr. Inglis procured us boats.

Before dismissing the subject of the Khasia mountains, it will be
well to give a slight sketch of their prominent geographical
features, in connection with their geology. The general geological
characters of the chain may be summed up in a few words. The nucleus
or axis is of  highly inclined stratified metamorphic rocks, through
which the granite has been protruded, and the basalt and syenite
afterwards injected. After extensive denudations of these, the
sandstone, coal, and limestone were successively deposited. These are
altered and displaced along the southern edge of the range, by black
amygdaloidal trap, and have in their turn been extensively denuded;
and it is this last operation that has sculptured the range, and
given the mountains their present aspect; for the same gneisses,
slates, and basalts in other countries, present rugged peaks, domes,
or cones, and there is nothing in their composition or arrangement
here that explains the tabular or rounded outline they assume, or the
uniform level of the spurs into which they rise, or the curious steep
sides and flat floors of the valleys which drain them.

All these peculiarities of outline are the result of denudation, of
the specific action of which agent we are very ignorant.
The remarkable difference between the steep cliffs on the south face
of the range, and the rounded outline of the hills on the northern
slopes, may be explained on the supposition that when the Khasia was
partially submerged, the Assam valley was a broad bay or gulf; and
that while the Churra cliffs were exposed to the full sweep of the
ocean, the Nunklow shore was washed by a more tranquil sea.

The broad flat marshy heads of all the streams in the central and
northern parts of the chain, and the rounded hills that separate
them, indicate the levelling action of a tidal sea, acting on a low
flat shore;* [Since our return to England, we have been much struck
with the similarity in contour of the Essex and Suffolk coasts, and
with the fact that the tidal coast sculpturing of this surface is
preserved in the very centre of High Suffolk, twenty to thirty miles
distant from the sea, in rounded outlines and broad flat marshy
valleys.]whilst the steep flat-floored valleys of the southern
watershed may be attributed to the scouring action of higher tides on
a boisterous rocky coast. These views are confirmed by an examination
of the east shores of the Bay of Bengal, and particularly by a
comparison of the features of the country about Silhet, now nearly
280 miles distant from the sea, with those of the Chittagong coast,
with which they are identical.

The geological features of the Khasia are in many respects so similar
to those of the Vindhya, Kymore, Behar, and Rajmahal mountains, that
they have been considered by some observers as an eastern
prolongation of that great chain, from which they are geographically
separated by the delta of the Ganges and Burrampooter. The general
contour of the mountains, and of their sandstone cliffs, is the same,
and the association of this rock with coal and lime is a marked point
of similarity; there is, however, this difference between them, that
the coal-shales of Khasia and limestone of Behar are
non-fossiliferous, while the lime of Khasia and the coal-shales of
Behar contain fossils.

The prevalent north-east strike of the gneiss is the same in both,
differing from the Himalaya, where the stratified rocks generally
strike north-west. The nummulites of the limestone are the only known
means we have of forming an approximate estimate of the age of the
Khasia coal, which is the most interesting feature in the geology of
the range: these fossils have been examined by MM. Archiac and Jules
Haines,* ["Description des Animaux Fossiles des Indes Orientales;"
p. 178. These species are _Nummulites scabra,_ Lamarck, _N. obtusa,_
Sowerby, _N. Lucasana,_ Deshayes, and _N. Beaumonti,_ d'Arch. and
Haines.] who have pronounced the species collected by Dr. Thomson and
myself to be the same as those found in the nummulite rocks of
north-west India, Scinde, and Arabia.



CHAPTER XXX.

Boat voyage to Silhet--River--Palms--Teelas--Botany--Fish
weirs--Forests of Cachar--Sandal-wood, etc.--Porpoises--
Alligators--Silchar--Tigers--Rice crops--Cookies--
Munniporees--Hockey--Varnish--Dance--Nagas--Excursion to
Munnipore frontier--Elephant bogged--Bamboos--_Cardiopteris_--
Climate, etc., of Cachar--Mosquitos--Fall of banks--Silhet--
Oaks--_Stylidium_--Tree-ferns--Chattuc--Megna--Meteorology
--Palms--Noacolly--Salt-smuggling--Delta of Ganges and Megna
--Westward progress of Megna--Peat--Tide--Waves--Earthquakes
--Dangerous navigation--Moonlight scenes--Mud island--
Chittagong--Mug tribes--Views--Trees--Churs--Flagstaff
hill--Coffee--Pepper--Tea, etc.--Excursions from Chittagong
--_Dipterocarpi_ or Gurjun oil trees--Earthquake--Birds--Papaw
--Bleeding of stems--Poppy  and Sun fields--Seetakoond--
Bungalow and hill--Perpetual flame--_Falconeria--Cycas_--
Climate--Leave for Calcutta--Hattiah island--Plants--
Sunderbunds--Steamer--Tides--_Nipa fruticans_--Fishing--
Otters--Crocodiles--_Phoenix paludosa_--Departure from India.

We left Churra on the 17th of November, and taking boats at Pundua,
crossed the Jheels to the Soormah, which we ascended to Silhet.
Thence we continued our voyage 120 miles up the river in canoes, to
Silchar, the capital of the district of Cachar: the boats were such
as I described at Chattuc, and though it was impossible to sit
upright in them, they were paddled with great swiftness. The river at
Silhet is 200 yards broad; it is muddy, and flows with a gentle
current of two to three miles an hour, between banks six to twelve
feet high. As we glided up its stream, villages became rarer, and
eminences more frequent in the Jheels. The people are a tall, bold,
athletic Mahometan race, who live much on the water, and cultivate
rice, sesamum, and radishes, with betel-pepper in thatched enclosures
as in Sikkim: maize and sugar are rarer, bamboos abound, and four
palms (_Borassus, Areca,_ cocoa-nut, and _Caryota_) are planted, but
there are no date-palms.

The Teelas (or hillocks) are the haunts of wild boars, tigers, and
elephants, but not of the rhinoceros; they are 80 to 200 feet high,
of horizontally stratified gravel and sand, slates, and clay
conglomerates, with a slag-like honey-combed sandstone; they are
covered with oaks, figs, _Heretiera,_ and bamboos, and besides a
multitude of common Bengal plants, there are some which, though
generally considered mountain or cold country genera, here descend to
the level of the sea; such are _Kadsura, Rubus, Camellia,_ and
_Sabia_; _Aerides_ and _Saccolabia_ are the common orchids, and
rattan-canes and _Pandani_ render the jungles impenetrable.

A very long sedge (_Scleria_) grows by the water, and is used for
thatching: boatloads of it are collected for the Calcutta market, for
which also were destined many immense rafts of bamboo, 100 feet long.
The people fish much, using square and triangular drop-nets stretched
upon bamboos, and rude basket-work weirs, that retain the fish as the
river falls. Near the villages we saw fragments of pottery three feet
below the surface of the ground, shewing that the bank, which is
higher than the surrounding country, increases from the
annual overflow.

About seventy miles up the river, the mountains on the north, which
are east of Jyntea, rise 4000 feet high in forest-clad ranges like
those of Sikkim. Swamps extend from the river to their base, and
penetrate their valleys, which are extremely malarious: these forests
are frequented by timber-cutters, who fell jarool (_Lagerstroemia
Reginae_), a magnificent tree with red wood, which, though soft, is
durable under water, and therefore in universal use for
boat-building. The toon is also cut, with red sandal-wood
(_Adenanthera pavonina_); also Nageesa,* [There is much dispute
amongst oriental scholars about the word Nageesa; the Bombay
philologists refer it to a species of _Garcinia,_ whilst the pundits
on the Calcutta side of India consider it to be _Mesua ferrea._
Throughout our travels in India, we were struck with the undue
reliance placed on native names of plants, and information of all
kinds; and the pertinacity with which each linguist adhered to his
own crotchet as to the application of terms to natural objects, and
their pronunciation. It is a very prevalent, but erroneous,
impression, that savage and half-civilised people have an accurate
knowledge of objects of natural history, and a uniform nomenclature
for them.] _Mesua ferrea,_ which is highly valued for its weight,
strength, and durability: _Aquilaria agallocha,_ the eagle-wood, a
tree yielding uggur oil, is also much sought for its fragrant wood,
which is carried to Silhet and Azmerigunj, where it is broken up and
distilled. Neither teak, sissoo, sal, nor other _Dipterocarpi,_ are
found in these forests.

Porpoises, and both the long and the short-nosed alligator, ascend
the Soormah for 120 miles, being found beyond Silchar, which place we
reached on the 22nd, and were most hospitably received by Colonel
Lister, the political agent commanding the Silhet Light Infantry, who
was inspecting the Cookie levy, a corps of hill-natives which had
lately been enrolled.

The station is a small one, and stands about forty feet above the
river, which however rises half that height in the rains. Long low
spurs of tertiary rocks stretch from the Tipperah hills for many
miles north, through the swampy Jheels to the river; and there are
also hills on the opposite or north side, but detached from the
Cookie hills, as the lofty blue range twelve miles north of the
Soormah is called. All these mountains swarm with tigers, wild
buffalos, and boars, which also infest the long grass of the Jheels.

The elevation of the house we occupied at Silchar was 116 feet above
the sea. The bank it stood on was of clay, with soft rocks of
conglomerate, which often assume the appearance of a brown
sandy slag.

During the first Birmese war, Colonel Lister was sent with a force up
to this remote corner of Bengal, when the country was an uninhabited
jungle, so full of tigers that not a day passed without one or more
of his grass or wood-cutters being carried off. Now, thousands of
acres are cultivated with rice, and during our stay we did not see a
tiger. The quantity of land brought into cultivation in this part of
Bengal, and indeed throughout the Gangetic delta, has probably been
doubled during the last twenty years, and speaks volumes for the
state of the peasant under the Indian Company's sway, as compared
with his former condition. The Silchar rice is of admirable quality,
and much is imported to Silhet, the Jheels not producing grain enough
for the consumption of the people. Though Silchar grows enough for
ten times its population, there was actually a famine six weeks
before our arrival, the demand from Silhet being so great.

The villages of Cachar are peopled by Mahometans, Munniporees, Nagas,
and Cookies; the Cacharies themselves being a poor and peaceful
jungle tribe, confined to the mountains north of the Soormah.
The Munniporees* [The Munnipore valley has never been explored by any
naturalist, its mountains are said to be pine-clad, and to rise 8000
feet above the level of the sea. The Rajah is much harassed by the
Birmese, and is a dependant of the British, who are in the very
frequent dilemma of supporting on the throne a sovereign opposed by a
strong faction of his countrymen, and who has very dubious claims to
his position. During our stay at Silchar, the supposed rightful Rajah
was prevailing over the usurper; a battle had been fought on the
hills on the frontier, and two bodies floated past our bungalow,
pierced with arrows.] are emigrants from the kingdom of that name,
which lies beyond the British possessions, and borders on Assam and
Birmah. Low ranges of forest-clad mountains at the head of the
Soormah, separate it from Silchar, with which it is coterminous; the
two chief towns being seven marches apart. To the south-east of
Silchar are interminable jungles, peopled by the Cookies, a wild
Indo-Chinese tribe, who live in a state of constant warfare, and
possess the whole hill-country from this, southward to beyond
Chittagong. Two years ago they invaded and ravaged Cachar, carrying
many of the inhabitants into slavery, and so frightening the people,
that land previously worth six rupees a biggah, is now reduced to one
and a half. Colonel Lister was sent with a strong party to rescue the
captives, and marched for many days through their country without
disturbing man or beast; penetrating deep forests of gigantic trees
and tall bamboos, never seeing the sun above, or aught to the right
and left, save an occasional clearance and a deserted village.
The incursion, however, had its effects, and the better inclined near
the frontier have since come forward, and been enrolled as the
Cookie levy.

The Munnipore emigrants are industrious settlers for a time, but
never remain long in one place: their religion is Hindoo, and they
keep up a considerable trade with their own country, whence they
import a large breed of buffalos, ponies, silks, and cotton cloths
dyed with arnotto (_Bixa_), and universally used for turbans.
They use bamboo blowing-tubes and arrows for shooting birds, make
excellent shields of rhinoceros hide (imported from Assam), and play
at hockey on horseback like the Western Tibetans. A fine black
varnish from the fruit of _Holigarna longifolia,_ is imported from
Munnipore, as is another made from _Sesuvium Anacardium_
(marking-nut), and a remarkable black pigment resembling that from
_Melanorhoea usitatissima,_ which is white when fresh, and requires
to be kept under water.* [This turns of a beautiful black colour when
applied to a surface, owing, according to Sir D. Brewster, to the
fresh varnish consisting of a congeries of minute organised
particles, which disperse the rays of light in all directions; the
organic structure is destroyed when the varnish dries and the rays of
light are consequently transmitted.]

One fine moonlight night we went to see a Munnipore dance. A large
circular area was thatched with plantain leaves, growing on their
trunks, which were stuck in the ground; and round the enclosure was a
border neatly cut from the white leaf-sheaths of the same tree.
A double enclosure of bamboo, similarly ornamented, left an inner
circle for the performers, and an outer for the spectators: the whole
was lighted with oil lamps and Chinese paper lanterns. The musicians
sat on one side, with cymbals, tomtoms, and flutes, and sang choruses.

The performances began by a copper-coloured Cupid entering and
calling the virgins with a flute; these appeared from a green-room,
to the number of thirty or forty, of all ages and sizes. Each had her
hair dressed in a topknot, and her head covered with a veil; a
scarlet petticoat loaded with tinsel concealed her naked feet, and
over this was a short red kirtle, and an enormous white shawl was
swathed round the body from the armpits to the waist. A broad belt
passed over the right shoulder and under the left arm, to which hung
gold and silver chains, corals, etc., with tinsel and small mirrors
sewed on everywhere: the arms and hands were bare, and decorated with
bangles and rings.

Many of the women were extremely tall, great stature being common
amongst the Munniporees. They commenced with a prostration to Cupid,
around whom they danced very slowly, with the arms stretched out, and
the hands in motion; at each step the free foot was swung backwards
and forwards. Cupid then chose a partner, and standing in the middle
went through the same motions, a compliment the women acknowledged by
curtseying and whirling round, making a sort of cheese with their
petticoats, which, however, were too heavy to inflate properly.

The Nagas are another people found on this frontier, chiefly on the
hills to the north: they are a wild, copper-coloured, uncouth jungle
tribe, who have proved troublesome on the Assam frontier.
Their features are more Tartar than those of the Munniporees,
especially amongst the old men. They bury their dead under the
threshold of their cottages. The men are all but naked, and stick
plumes of hornbills' feathers in their hair, which is bound with
strips of bamboo: tufts of small feathers are passed through their
ears, and worn as shoulder lappets. A short blue cotton cloth, with a
fringe of tinsel and tufts of goat's hair dyed red, is passed over
the loins in front only: they also wear brass armlets, and necklaces
of cowries, coral, amber, ivory, and boar's teeth. The women draw a
fringed blue cloth tightly across the breast, and wear a checked or
striped petticoat. They are less ornamented than the men, and are
pleasing looking; their hair is straight, and cut short over
the eyebrows.

The Naga dances are very different from those of the Munniporees;
being quick, and performed in excellent time to harmonious music.
The figures are regular, like quadrilles and country-dances: the men
hold their knives erect during the performance, the women extend
their arms only when turning partners, and then their hands are not
given, but the palms are held opposite. The step is a sort of polka
and balancez, very graceful and lively. A bar of music is always
played first, and at the end the spectators applaud with two short
shouts. Their ear for music, and the nature of their dance, are as
Tibetan as their countenances, and different from those of the
Indo-Chinese tribes of the frontier.

We had the pleasure of meeting Lieutenant Raban at Silchar, and of
making several excursions in the neighbourhood with him; for which
Colonel Lister here, as at Churra, afforded us every facility of
elephants and men. Had we had time, it was our intention to have
visited Munnipore, but we were anxious to proceed to Chittagong.
I however made a three days' excursion to the frontier, about thirty
miles distant, proceeding along the north bank of the Soormah. On the
way my elephant got bogged in crossing a deep muddy stream: this is
sometimes an alarming position, as should the animal become
terrified, he will seize his rider, or pad, or any other object
(except his driver), to place under his knees to prevent his sinking.
In this instance the driver in great alarm ordered me off, and I had
to flounder out through the black mud. The elephant remained fast all
night, and was released next morning by men with ropes.

The country continued a grassy level, with marshes and rice
cultivation, to the first range of hills, beyond which the river is
unnavigable; there also a forest commences, of oaks, figs, and the
common trees of east Bengal. The road hence was a good one, cut by
Sepoys across the dividing ranges, the first of which is not 500 feet
high. On the ascent bamboos abound, of the kind called Tuldah or
Dulloah, which has long very thin-walled joints; it attains no great
size, but is remarkably gregarious. On the east side of the range,
the road runs through soft shales and beds of clay, and
conglomerates, descending to a broad valley covered with gigantic
scattered timber-trees of jarool, acacia, _Diospyros, Urticeae,_ and
_Bauhiniae,_ rearing their enormous trunks above the bamboo jungle:
immense rattan-canes wound through the forest, and in the gullies
were groves of two kinds of tree-fern, two of _Areca, Wallichia_
palm, screw-pine, and _Dracaena._ Wild rice grew abundantly in the
marshes, with tall grasses; and _Cardiopteris_* [A remarkable plant
of unknown affinity; see Brown and Bennett, "Flora Java:" it is found
in the Assam valley and Chittagong.] covered the trees for upwards of
sixty feet, like hops, with a mass of pale-green foliage, and dry
white glistening seed-vessels. This forest differed from those of the
Silhet and Khasia mountains, especially in the abundance of bamboo
jungle, which is, I believe, the prevalent feature of the low hills
in Birmah, Ava, and Munnipore; also in the gigantic size of the
rattans, larger palms, and different forest trees, and in the scanty
undergrowth of herbs and bushes. I only saw, however, the skirts of
the forest; the mountains further east, which I am told rise several
thousand feet in limestone cliffs, are doubtless richer in
herbaceous plants.

The climate of Cachar partakes of that of the Jheels in its damp
equable character: during our stay the weather was fine, and dense
fogs formed in the morning: the mean maximum was 80 degrees, minimum
58.4 degrees.* [The temperature does not rise above 90 degrees in
summer, nor sink below 45 degrees or 50 degrees in January:
forty-seven comparative observations with Calcutta showed the mean
temperature to be 1.8 degrees lower at Silchar, and the air damper,
the saturation point being, at Calcutta 0.3791, at Silchar 0.4379.]

The annual rain-fall in 1850 was 111.60 inches, according to a
register kindly given me by Captain Verner. There are few mosquitos,
which is one of the most curious facts in the geographical
distribution of these capricious bloodsuckers; for the locality is
surrounded by swamps, and they swarm at Silhet, and on the river
lower down. Both on the passage up and down, we were tormented in our
canoes by them for eighty or ninety miles above Silhet, and thence
onwards to Cachar we were free.

On the 30th of November, we were preparing for our return to Silhet,
and our canoes were loading, when we were surprised by a loud rushing
noise, and saw a high wave coming down the river, swamping every boat
that remained on its banks, whilst most of those that pushed out into
the stream, escaped with a violent rocking. It was caused by a slip
of the bank three quarters of a mile up the stream, of no great size,
but which propagated a high wave. This appeared to move on at about
the rate of a mile in three or four minutes, giving plenty of time
for our boatmen to push out from the land on hearing the shouts of
those first overtaken by the calamity; but they were too timid, and
consequently one of our canoes, full of papers, instruments, and
clothes, was swamped. Happily our dried collections were not
embarked, and the hot sun repaired much of the damage.

We left in the evening of the 2nd of December, and proceeded to
Silhet, where we were kindly received by Mr. Stainforth, the district
judge. Silhet, the capital of the district of the same name, is a
large Mahometan town, occupying a slightly raised part of the Jheels,
where many of the Teelas seem joined together by beds of gravel and
sand. In the rains it, is surrounded by water, and all communication
with other parts is by boats: in winter, Jynteapore and Pundua may be
reached by land, crossing creeks innumerable on the way.
Mr. Stainforth's house, like those of most of the other Europeans,
occupies the top of one of the Teelas, 150 feet high, and is
surrounded by fine spreading oaks,* [It is not generally known that
oaks are often very tropical plants; not only abounding at low
elevations in the mountains, but descending in abundance to the level
of the sea. Though unknown in Ceylon, the Peninsula of India,
tropical Africa, or South America, they abound in the hot valleys of
the Eastern Himalaya, East Bengal, Malay Peninsula, and Indian
islands; where perhaps more species grow than in any other part of
the world. Such facts as this disturb our preconceived notions of the
geographical distribution of the most familiar tribes of plants, and
throw great doubt on the conclusions which fossil plants are supposed
to indicate.] _Garcinia,_ and _Diospyros_ trees. The rock of which
the hill is composed, is a slag-like ochreous sandstone, covered in
most places with a shrubbery of rose-flowered _Melastoma,_ and some
peculiar plants.* [_Gelonium, Adelia, Moacurra, Linostoma, Justicia,
Trophis, Connarus, Ixora, Congea, Dalhousiea, Grewia, Myrsine,
Buttneria_; and on the shady exposures a _Calamus, Briedelia,_ and
various ferns.]

Broad flat valleys divide the hills, and are beautifully clothed with
a bright green jungle of small palms, and many kinds of ferns.
In sandy places, blue-flowered _Burmannia, Hypoxis,_ and other pretty
tropical annuals, expand their blossoms, with an inconspicuous
_Stylidium,_ a plant belonging to a small natural family, whose
limits are so confined to New Holland, that this is almost the only
kind that does not grow in that continent. Where the ground is
swampy, dwarf _Pandanus_ abounds, with the gigantic nettle, _Urtica
crenulata_ ("Mealum-ma" of Sikkim, see chapter xxiv).

The most interesting botanical ramble about Silhet is to the
tree-fern groves on the path to Jynteapore, following the bottoms of
shallow valleys between the Teelas, and along clear streams, up whose
beds we waded for some miles, under an arching canopy of tropical
shrubs, trees, and climbers, tall grasses, screw-pines, and
_Aroideae._ In the narrower parts of the valleys the tree-ferns are
numerous on the slopes, rearing their slender brown trunks forty feet
high, with feathery crowns of foliage, through which the sun-beams
trembled on the broad shining foliage of the tropical herbage below.

Silhet, though hot and damp, is remarkably healthy, and does not
differ materially in temperature from Silchar, though it is more
equable and humid.* [During our stay of five days the mean maximum
temperature was 74 degrees, minimum 64.8 degrees: that of thirty-two
observations compared with Calcutta show that Silhet is only 1.7
degrees cooler, though Mr. Stainforth's house is upwards of 2 degrees
further north, and 160 feet more elevated. A thermometer sunk two
feet seven inches, stood at 73.5 degrees. The relative
saturation-points were, Calcutta .633, Silhet .821.] It derives some
interest from having been first brought into notice by the enterprise
of one of the Lindsays of Balcarres, at a time when the pioneers of
commerce in India encountered great hardships and much personal
danger. Mr. Lindsay, a writer in the service of the East India
Company, established a factory at Silhet, and commenced the lime
trade with Calcutta,* [For an account of the early settlement of
Silhet, see "Lives of the Lindsays," by Lord Lindsay.] reaping an
enormous fortune himself, and laying the foundation of that
prosperity amongst the people which has been much advanced by the
exertions of the Inglis family, and has steadily progressed under the
protecting rule of the Indian government.

From Silhet we took large boats to navigate the Burrampooter and
Megna, to their embouchure in the Bay of Bengal at Noacolly, a
distance of 250 miles, whence we were to proceed across the head of
the bay to Chittagong, about 100 miles farther. We left on the 7th of
December, and arrived at Chattuc on the 9th, where we met our Khasia
collectors with large loads of plants, and paid them off. The river
was now low, and presented a busy scene, from the numerous trading
boats being confined to its fewer and deeper channels. Long grasses
and sedges (_Arundo, Saccharum_ and _Scleria_), were cut, and stacked
along the water's edge, in huge brown piles, for export
and thatching.

On the 13th December, we entered the broad stream of the Megna.
Rice is cultivated along the mud flats left by the annual floods, and
the banks are lower and less defined than in the Soormah, and support
no long grasses or bushes. Enormous islets of living water-grasses
(_Oplismenus stagninus_) and other plants, floated past, and birds
became more numerous, especially martins and egrets. The sun was hot,
but the weather otherwise cool and pleasant: the mean temperature was
nearly that of Calcutta, 69.7 degrees, but the atmosphere was more
humid.* [The river-water was greenish, and a little cooler (73.8
degrees) than that of the Soormah (74.3 degrees), which was brown and
muddy. The barometer on the Soormah stood 0.028 inch higher than that
of Calcutta (on the mean of thirty-eight observations), whereas on
the Megna the pressure was 0.010 higher. As Calcutta is eighteen feet
above the level of the Bay of Bengal, this shows that the Megna
(which has no perceptible current) is at the level of the sea, and
that either the Soormah is upwards of thirty feet above that level,
or that the atmospheric pressure there, and at this season, is less
than at Calcutta, which, as I have hinted at chapter xxvii, is
probably the case.]

On the 14th we passed the Dacca river; below which the Megna is
several miles wide, and there is an appearance of tide, from masses
of purple _Salvinia_ (a floating plant, allied to ferns), being
thrown up on the beach like sea-weed. Still lower down, the
vegetation of the Sunderbunds commences; there is a narrow beach, and
behind it a mud bank several feet high, supporting a luxuriant green
jungle of palms (_Borassus_ and _Phoenix_), immense fig-trees,
covered with _Calami,_ and tall betel-palms, clothed with the most
elegant drapery of _Arostichum scandens,_ a climbing fern with
pendulous fronds.

Towards the embouchure, the banks rise ten feet high, the river
expands into a muddy sea, and a long swell rolls in, to the disquiet
of our fresh-water boatmen. Low islands of sand and mud stretch along
the horizon: which, together with the ships, distorted by
extraordinary refraction, flicker as if seen through smoke. Mud is
the all prevalent feature; and though the water is not salt, we do
not observe in these broad deltas that amount of animal life (birds,
fish, alligators, and porpoises), that teems in the narrow creeks of
the western Sunderbunds.

We landed in a canal-like creek at Tuktacolly,* ["Colly" signifies a
muddy creek, such as intersect the delta.] on the 17th, and walked to
Noacolly, over a flat of hard mud or dried silt, covered with turf of
_Cynodon Dactylon._ We were hospitably received by Dr. Baker, a
gentleman who has resided here for twenty-three years; and who
communicated to us much interesting information respecting the
features of the Gangetic delta.

Noacolly is a station for collecting the revenue and preventing the
manufacture of salt, which, with opium, are the only monopolies now
in the hands of the East India Company. The salt itself is imported
from Arracan, Ceylon, and even Europe, and is stored in great wooden
buildings here and elsewhere. The ground being impregnated with salt,
the illicit manufacture by evaporation is not easily checked; but
whereas the average number of cases brought to justice used to be
twenty and thirty in a week, they are now reduced to two or three.
It is remarkable, that though the soil yields such an abundance of
this mineral, the water of the Megna at Noacolly is only brackish,
and it is therefore to repeated inundations and surface evaporations
that the salt is due. Fresh water is found at a very few feet depth
everywhere, but it is not good.

When it is considered how comparatively narrow the sea-board of the
delta is, the amount of difference in the physical features of the
several parts, will appear most extraordinary. I have stated that the
difference between the northern and southern halves of the delta is
so great, that, were all depressed and their contents fossilised, the
geologist who examined each by itself, would hardly recognise the two
parts as belonging to one epoch; and the difference between the east
and west halves of the lower delta is equally remarkable.

The total breadth of the delta is 260 miles, from Chittagong to the
mouth of the Hoogly, divided longitudinally by the Megna: all to the
west of that river presents a luxuriant vegetation, while to the east
is a bare muddy expanse, with no trees or shrubs but what are planted
On the west coast the tides rise twelve or thirteen feet, on the
east, from forty to eighty. On the west, the water is salt enough for
mangroves to grow for fifty miles up the Hoogly; on the east, the sea
coast is too fresh for that plant for ten miles south of Chittagong.
On the west, fifty inches is the Cuttack fall of rain; on the east,
90 to 120 at Noacolly and Chittagong, and 200 at Arracan. The east
coast is annually visited by earthquakes, which are rare on the west;
and lastly, the majority of the great trees and shrubs carried down
from the Cuttack and Orissa forests, and deposited on the west coast
of the delta, are not only different in species, but in natural
order, from those that the Fenny and Chittagong rivers bring down
from the jungles.* [The Cuttack forests are composed of teak, Sal,
Sissoo, ebony, _Pentaptera, Buchanania,_ and other trees of a dry
soil, and that require a dry season alternating with a wet one.
These are unknown in the Chittagong forests, which have Jarool
(_Lagerstroemia_) _Mesua, Dipterocarpi,_ nutmegs, oaks of several
kinds, and many other trees not known in the Cuttack forests, and all
typical of a perennially humid atmosphere.]

We were glad to find at Noacolly that our observations on the
progression westwards of the Burrampooter (see chapter xxvii) were
confirmed by the fact that the Megna also is gradually moving in that
direction, leaving much dry land on the Noacolly side, and forming
islands opposite that coast; whilst it encroaches on the Sunderbunds,
and is cutting away the islands in that direction. This advance of
the fresh waters amongst the Sunderbunds is destructive to the
vegetation of the latter, which requires salt; and if the Megna
continues its slow course westwards, the obliteration of thousands of
square miles of a very peculiar flora, and the extinction of many
species of plants and animals that exist nowhere else, may ensue.
In ordinary cases these plants, etc., would take up their abode on
the east coast, as they were driven from the west; but such might not
be the case in this delta; for the sweeping tides of the east coast
prevent any such vegetation establishing itself there, and the mud
which the eastern rivers carry down, becomes a caking dry soil,
unsuited to the germination of seeds.

On our arrival at Calcutta in the following February, Dr. Falconer
showed us specimens of very modern peat, dug out of the banks of the
Hoogly a few feet below the surface of the soil, in which were seeds
of the _Euryale ferox_:* [This peat Dr. Falconer also found to
contain bones of birds and fish, seeds of _Cucumis Madraspatana_ and
another Cucurbitaceous plant, leaves of _Saccharum Sara_ and _Ficus
cordifolia._ Specks of some glistening substance were scattered
through the mass, apparently incipient carbonisation of the peat.]
this plant is not now known to be found nearer than Dacca (sixty
miles north-east, see chapter xxvii), and indicates a very different
state of the surface at Calcutta at the date of its deposition than
that which exists now, and also shows that the estuary was then
much fresher.

The main land of Noacolly is gradually extending seawards, and has
advanced four miles within twenty-three years: this seems
sufficiently accounted for by the recession of the Megna. The
elevation of the surface of the land is caused by the overwhelming
tides and south-west hurricanes in May and October: these extend
thirty miles north and south of Chittagong, and carry the waters of
the Megna and Fenny back over the land, in a series of tremendous
waves, that cover islands of many hundred acres, and roll three miles
on to the main land. On these occasions, the average earthy deposit
of silt, separated by micaceous sand, is an eighth of an inch for
every tide; but in October, 1848, these tides covered Sundeep island,
deposited six inches on its level surface, and filled ditches several
feet deep. These deposits become baked by a tropical sun, and resist
to a considerable degree denudation by rain. Whether any further rise
is caused by elevation from below is doubtful; there is no direct
evidence of it, though slight earthquakes annually occur; and even
when they have not been felt, the water of tanks has been seen to
oscillate for three-quarters of an hour without intermission, from no
discernible cause.* [The natives are familiar with this phenomenon,
of which Dr. Baker remembers two instances, one in the cold season of
1834-5, the other in that of 1830-1. The earthquakes do not affect
any particular month, nor are they accompanied by any meteorological
phenomena.]

Noacolly is considered a healthy spot, which is not the case with the
Sunderbund stations west of the Megna. The climate is uniformly hot,
but the thermometer never rises above 90 degrees, nor sinks below 45
degrees; at this temperature hoar-frost will form on straw, and ice
on water placed in porous pans, indicating a powerful radiation.*
[The winds are north-west and north in the cold season (from November
to March), drawing round to west in the afternoons. North-west winds
and heavy hailstorms are frequent from March to May, when violent
gales set in from the southward. The rains commence in June, with
easterly and southerly winds, and the temperature from 82 degrees to
84 degrees; May and October are the hottest months. The rains cease
in the end of October (on the 8th of November in 1849, and 12th of
November in 1850, the latest epoch ever remembered): there is no land
or sea breeze along any part of the coast. During our stay we found
the mean temperature for twelve observations to be precisely that of
Calcutta, but the humidity was more, and the pressure 0.040 lower.]
We left Noacolly on the 19th for Chittagong; the state of the tide
obliging us to go on board in the night. The distance is only 100
miles, but the passage is considered dangerous at this time (during
the spring-tides) and we were therefore provided with a large vessel
and an experienced crew. The great object in this navigation is to
keep afloat and to make progress towards the top of the tide and
during its flood, and to ground during the ebb in creeks where the
bore (tidal wave) is not violent; for where the channels are broad
and open, the height and force of this wave rolls the largest
coasting craft over and swamps them.

Our boatmen pushed out at 3 in the morning, and brought up at 5, in a
narrow muddy creek on the island of Sidhee. The waters retired along
channels scooped several fathoms deep in black mud, leaving our
vessel aground six or seven feet below the top of the bank, and soon
afterwards there was no water to be seen; as far as the eye could
reach, all was a glistening oozy mud, except the bleak level surfaces
of the islands, on which neither shrub nor tree grew. Soon after 2
p.m. a white line was seen on the low black horizon, which was the
tide-wave, advancing at the rate of five miles an hour, with a hollow
roar; it bore back the mud that was gradually slipping along the
gentle slope, and we were afloat an hour after: at night we grounded
again, opposite the mouth of the Fenny.

By moonlight the scene was oppressively solemn: on all sides the
gurgling waters kept up a peculiar sound that filled the air with
sullen murmurs; the moonbeams slept upon the slimy surface of the
mud, and made the dismal landscape more ghastly still. Silence
followed the ebb, broken occasionally by the wild whistle of a bird
like the curlew, of which a few wheeled through the air: till the
harsh roar of the bore was heard, to which the sailors seemed to
waken by instinct. The waters then closed in on every side, and the
far end of the reflected moonbeam was broken into flashing light,
that approached and soon danced beside the boat.

We much regretted not being able to obtain any more accurate data
than I have given, as to the height of the tide at the mouth of the
Fenny; but where the ebb sometimes retires twenty miles from
high-water mark, it is obviously impossible to plant any tide-gauge.

On the 21st we were ashore at daylight on the Chittagong coast far
north of the station, and were greeted by the sight of hills on the
horizon: we were lying fully twenty feet below high-water mark, and
the tide was out for several miles to the westward. The bank was
covered with flocks of white geese feeding on short grass, upon what
appeared to be detached islets on the surface of the mud.
These islets, which are often an acre in extent, are composed of
stratified mud; they have perpendicular sides several feet high, and
convex surfaces, owing to the tide washing away the earth from under
their sides; and they were further slipping seawards, along the
gently sloping mud-beach. Few or no shells or seaweed were to be
seen, nor is it possible to imagine a more lifeless sea than these
muddy coasts present.

We were three days and nights on this short voyage, without losing
sight of mud or land. I observed the barometer whenever the boat was
on the shore, and found the mean of six readings (all reduced to the
same level) to be identical with that at Calcutta. These being all
taken at elevations lower than that of the Calcutta observatory, show
either a diminished atmospheric pressure, or that the mean level of
high-water is not the same on the east and west coasts of the Bay of
Bengal: this is quite possible, considering the widely different
direction of the tides and currents on each, and that the waters may
be banked up, as it were, in the narrow channels of the western
Sunderbunds. The temperature of the air was the same as at Calcutta,
but the atmosphere was damper. The water was always a degree warmer
than the air.

We arrived at Chittagong on the 23rd of December, and became the
guests of Mr. Sconce, Judge of the district, and of Mr. Lautour; to
both of whom we were greatly indebted for their hospitality and
generous assistance in every way.

Chittagong is a large town of Mahometans and Mugs, a Birmese tribe
who inhabit many parts of the Malay peninsula, and the coast to the
northward of it. The town stands on the north shore of an extensive
delta, formed by rivers from the lofty mountains separating this
district from Birma. These mountains are fine objects on the horizon,
rising 4000 to 8000 feet; they are forest-clad, and inhabited by
turbulent races, who are coterminous with the Cookies of the Cachar
and Tipperah forests; if indeed they be not the same people.
The mountains abound with the splendid timber-trees of the Cachar
forests, but like these are said to want teak, Sal, and Sissoo; they
have, besides many others,, magnificent Gurjun trees
(_Dipterocarpi_), the monarchs of the forests of these coasts.

The natives of Chittagong are excellent shipbuilders and active
traders, and export much rice and timber to Madras and Calcutta.
The town is large and beautifully situated, interspersed with trees
and tanks; the hills resemble those of Silhet, and are covered with a
similar vegetation: on these the European houses are built.
The climate is very healthy, which is not remarkable, considering how
closely it approximates in character to that of Silhet and other
places in Eastern Bengal, but very extraordinary, if it be compared
with Arracan, only 200 miles further south, which is extremely
unhealthy. The prominent difference between the physical features of
Chittagong and Arracan, is the presence of mangrove swamps at the
latter place, for which the water is too fresh at the former.

The hills about the station are not more than 150 or 200 feet high,
and are formed of stratified gravel, sand, and clay, that often
becomes nodular, and is interstratified with slag-like iron clay.
Fossil wood is found; and some of the old buildings about Chittagong
contain nummulitic limestone, probably imported from Silhet or the
peninsula of India, with which countries there is no such trade now.
The views are beautiful, of the blue mountains forty to fifty miles
distant, and the many-armed river, covered with sails, winding
amongst groves of cocoa-nuts, Areca palm, and yellow rice fields.
Good European houses surmount all the eminences, surrounded by trees
of _Acacia_ and _Caesalpinia._ In the hollows are native huts amidst
vegetation of every hue, glossy green _Garciniae_ and figs, broad
plantains, feathery _Cassia_ and Acacias, dark _Mesua_, red-purple
_Terminalia,_ leafless scarlet-flowered _Bombax,_ and grey
_Casuarina._* [This, which is almost exclusively an Australian genus,
is not indigenous at Chittagong: to it belongs an extra-Australian
species common in the Malay islands, and found wild as far north as
Arracan.] Seaward the tide leaves immense flats, called churs, which
stretch for many miles on either side the offing.

We accompanied Mr. Sconce to a bungalow which he has built at the
telegraph station at the south head of the harbour: its situation, on
a hill 100 feet above the sea, is exposed, and at this season the
sea-breeze was invigorating, and even cold, as it blew through the
mat-walls of the bungalow.* [The mean temperature of the two days
(29th and 30th) we spent at this bungalow was 66.5 degrees, that of
Calcutta being 67.6 degrees; the air was damp, and the barometer
0.144 lower at the flagstaff hill, but it fell and rose with the
Calcutta instrument.] To the south, undulating dunes stretch along
the coast, covered with low bushes, of which a red-flowered
_Melastoma_ is the most prevalent,* [_Melastoma,_ jasmine, _Calamus,
AEgle Marmelos, Adelia, Memecylon, Ixora, Limostoma, Congea,_
climbing _Coesalpinia,_ and many other plants; and along their bases
large trees of _Amoora, Gaurea,_ figs, _Mesua,_ and _Micromelon._]
and is considered a species of _Rhododendron_ by many of the
residents! The flats along the beach are several miles broad,
intersected with tidal creeks, and covered with short grass, while
below high-water mark all is mud, coated with green _Conferva._
There are no leafy seaweeds or mangroves, nor any seaside shrub but
_Dilivaria ilicifolia._ Animal life is extremely rare; and a
_Cardium_-like shell and small crab are found sparingly.

Coffee has been cultivated at Chittagong with great success; it is
said to have been introduced by Sir W. Jones, and Mr. Sconce has a
small plantation, from which his table is well supplied. Both Assam
and Chinese teas flourish, but Chinamen are wanted to cure the
leaves. Black pepper succeeds admirably, as do cinnamon, arrowroot,
and ginger.

Early in January we accompanied Mr. Lautour on an excursion to the
north, following a valley separated from the coast by a range of
wooded hills, 1000 feet high. For several marches the bottom of this
valley was broad, flat, and full of villages. At Sidhee, about
twenty-five miles from Chittagong, it contracts, and spurs from the
hills on either flank project into the middle: they are 200 to 300
feet high, formed of red clay, and covered with brushwood. At
Kajee-ke-hath, the most northern point we reached, we were quite
amongst these hills, and in an extremely picturesque country,
intersected by long winding flat valleys, that join one another: some
are full of copsewood, while others present the most beautiful
park-like scenery, and a third class expand into grassy marshes or
lake-beds, with wooded islets rising out of them. The hillsides are
clothed with low jungle, above which tower magnificent Gurjun trees
(wood-oil). The whole contour of this country is that of a low bay,
whose coast is raised above the sea, and over which a high tide once
swept for ages.

The elevation of Hazari-ke-hath is not 100 feet above the level of
the sea. It is about ten miles west of the mouth of the Fenny, from
which it is separated by hills 1000 feet high; its river falls into
that at Chittagong, thirty miles south. Large myrtaceous trees
(_Eugenia_) are common, and show a tendency to the Malayan flora,
which is further demonstrated by the abundance of Gurjun
(_Dipterocarpus turbinatus_). This is the most superb tree we met
with in the Indian forests: we saw several species, but this is the
only common one here; it is conspicuous for its gigantic size, and
for the straightness and graceful form of its tall unbranched pale
grey trunk, and small symmetrical crown: many individuals were
upwards of 200 feet high, and fifteen in girth. Its leaves are broad,
glossy, and beautiful; the flowers (then falling) are not
conspicuous; the wood is hard, close-grained, and durable, and a
fragrant oil exudes from the trunk, which is extremely valuable as
pitch and varnish, etc., besides being a good medicine. The natives
procure it by cutting transverse holes in the trunk, pointing
downwards, and lighting fires in them, which causes the oil to flow.*
[The other trees of these dry forests are many oaks, _Henslowia,
Gordonia, Engelhardtia, Duabanga, Adelia, Byttneria, Bradleia,_ and
large trees of _Pongamia,_ whose seeds yield a useful oil.]

Illustration--GURJUN TREE.

On the 8th of January we experienced a sharp earthquake, preceded by
a dull thumping sound; it lasted about twenty seconds, and seemed to
come up from the southward; the water of a tank by which we were
seated was smartly agitated. The same shock was felt at Mymensing and
at Dacca, 110 miles north-west of this.* [Earthquakes are extremely
common, and sometimes violent, at Chittagong, and doubtless belong to
the volcanic forces of the Malayan peninsula.]

We crossed the dividing ridge of the littoral range on the 9th, and
descended to Seetakoond bungalow, on the high road from Chittagong to
Comilla. The forests at the foot of the range were very extensive,
and swarmed with large red ants that proved very irritating: they
build immense pendulous nests of dead and living leaves at the ends
of the branches of trees, and mat them with a white web. Tigers,
leopards, wild dogs, and boars, are numerous; as are snipes,
pheasants, peacocks, and jungle-fowl, the latter waking the morn with
their shrill crows; and in strange association with them, common
English woodcock, is occasionally found.

The trees are of little value, except the Gurjun, and "Kistooma," a
species of _Bradleia,_ which was stacked extensively, being used for
building purposes. The papaw* [The Papaw tree is said to have the
curious property of rendering tough meat tender, when hung under its
leaves, or touched with the juice; this hastening the process of
decay. With this fact, well-known in the West Indies, I never found a
person in the East acquainted.] is abundantly cultivated, and its
great gourd-like fruit is eaten (called "Papita" or "Chinaman"); the
flavour is that of a bad melon, and a white juice exudes from the
rind. The _Hodgsonia heteroclita_ (_Trichosanthes_ of Roxburgh), a
magnificent Cucurbitaceous climber, grows in these forests; it is the
same species as the Sikkim one (see chapter xviii). The long stem
bleeds copiously when cut, and like almost all woody climbers, is
full of large vessels; the juice does not, however, exude from these
great tubes, which hold air, but from the close woody fibres.
A climbing _Apocyneous_ plant grows in these forests, the milk of
which flows in a continuous stream, resembling caoutchouc (it is
probably the _Urceola elastica,_ which yields Indian-rubber).

The subject of bleeding is involved in great obscurity, and the
systematic examination of the motions in the juices of tropical
climbers by resident observers, offers a fertile field to the
naturalist. I have often remarked that if a climbing stem, in which
the circulation is vigorous, be cut across, it bleeds freely from
both ends, and most copiously from the lower, if it be turned
downwards; but that if a truncheon be severed, there will be no flow
from either of its extremities. This is the case with all the Indian
watery-juiced climbers, at whatever season they may be cut.
When, however, the circulation in the plant is feeble, neither end of
a simple cut will bleed much, but if a truncheon be taken from it,
both the extremities will.

The ascent of the hills, which are densely wooded, was along spurs,
and over knolls of clay; the rocks were sandy and slaty ?dip
north-east 60 degrees. The road was good, but always through bamboo
jungle, and it wound amongst the low spurs, so that there was no
defined crest or top of the pass, which is about 800 feet high.
There were no tall palms, tree-ferns, or plantains, no _Hymenophylla_
or _Lycopodia,_ and altogether the forest was smaller and poorer in
plants than we had expected. The only palms (except a few rattans)
were two kinds of _Wallichia._

From the summit we obtained a very extensive and singular view.
At our feet was a broad, low, grassy, alluvial plain, intersected by
creeks, bounding a black expanse of mud which (the tide being out)
appeared to stretch almost continuously to Sundeep Island, thirty
miles distant; while beyond, the blue hills of Tipperah rose on the
north-west horizon. The rocks yielded a dry poor soil, on which grew
dwarf _Phoenix_ and cycas-palm (_Cycas circinalis_ or _pectinata_).

Descending, we rode several miles along an excellent road, that runs
to Tipperah, and stopped at the bungalow of Seetakoond, twenty-five
miles north of Chittagong. The west flank of the range which we had
crossed is much steeper than the east, often precipitous, and
presents the appearance of a sea-worn cliff towards the Bay of
Bengal. Near Seetakoond (which is on the plain) a hill on the range,
bearing the same name, rises 1,136 feet high, and being damper and
more luxuriantly wooded, we were anxious to explore it, and therefore
spent some days at the bungalow. Fields of poppy and sun (_Crotalaria
juncea_), formed most beautiful crops; the latter grows from four to
six feet high, and bears masses of laburnum-like flowers, while the
poppy fields resembled a carpet of dark-green velvet, sprinkled with
white stars; or, as I have elsewhere remarked, a green lake studded
with water-lilies.

The road to the top of Seetakoond leads along a most beautiful
valley, and then winds up a cliff that is in many places almost
precipitous, the ascent being partly by steps cut in the rock, of
which there are 560. The mountain is very sacred, and there is a
large Brahmin temple on its flank; and near the base a perpetual
flame bursts out of the rock. This we were anxious to examine, and
were extremely disappointed to find it a small vertical hole in a
slaty rock, with a lateral one below for a draught; and that it is
daily supplied by pious pilgrims and Brahmins with such enormous
quantities of ghee (liquid butter), that it is to all intents and
purposes an artificial lamp; no trace of natural phenomena being
discoverable.

Illustration--SEETAKUND HILL.

On the dry but wooded west face of the mountain, grows _Falconeria,_
a curious Euphorbiaceous tree, with an acrid milky juice that affects
the eyes when the wood is cut. Beautiful _Cycas_ palms are also
common, with _Terminalia, Bignonia, Sterculia,_ dwarf _Phoenix_ palm,
and Gurjun trees. The east slope of the mountain is damper, and much
more densely wooded; we there found two wild species of nutmeg trees,
whose wood is full of a brown acrid oil, seven palms, tree-ferns, and
many other kinds of ferns, several kinds of oak, _Dracaena,_ and
figs. The top is 1,136 feet above the sea, and commands an extensive
view to all points of the compass; but the forests, in which the ashy
bark of the Gurjun trees is conspicuous, and the beautiful valley on
the west, are the only attractive features.

The weather on the east side of the range differs at this season
remarkably from that on the west, where the vicinity of the sea keeps
the atmosphere more humid and warm, and at the same time prevents the
formation of the dense fogs that hang over the valleys to the
eastward every morning at sunrise. We found the mean temperature at
the bungalow, from January 9th till the 13th, to be 70.2 degrees.

We embarked again at Chittagong on the 16th of January, at 10 p.m.,
for Calcutta, in a very large vessel, rowed by twelve men: we made
wretchedly slow progress, for the reasons mentioned earlier, being
for four days within sight of Chittagong! On the 20th we only reached
Sidhee, and thence made a stretch to Hattiah, an island which may be
said to be moving bodily to the westward, the Megna annually cutting
many acres from the east side; and the tide-wave depositing mud on
the west. The surface is flat, and raised four feet above mean
high-water level; the tide rises about 14 feet up the bank, and then
retires for miles; the total rise and fall is, however, much less
here than in the Fenny, higher up the gulf. The turf is composed of
_Cynodon_ and a _Fimbristylis_; and the earth being impregnated with
salt, supports different kinds of _Chenopodium._ Two kinds of
tamarisk, and a thorny _Cassia_ and _Exoecaria,_ are the only shrubs
on the eastern islands; on the central ones a few dwarf mangroves
appear, with the holly-leaved _Dilivaria,_ dwarf screw-pine
(_Pandanus_), a shrub of _Compositae,_ and a curious fern, a variety
of _Aristichum aureum._ Towards the northern end of Hattiah, Talipot,
cocoa-nut and date-palms appear.

On the 22nd we entered the Sunderbunds, rowing amongst narrow
channels, where the tide rises but a few feet. The banks were covered
with a luxuriant vegetation, chiefly of small trees, above which rose
stately palms. On the 25th, we were overtaken by a steamer from
Assam, a novel sight to us, and a very strange one in these creeks,
which in some places seemed hardly broad enough for it to pass
through. We jumped on board in haste, leaving our boat and luggage to
follow us. She had left Dacca two days before, and this being the dry
season, the route to Calcutta, which is but sixty miles in a straight
line, involved a detour of three hundred.

From the masts of the steamer we obtained an excellent _coup-d'oeil_
of the Sunderbunds; its swamps clothed with verdure, and intersected
by innumerable inosculating channels, with banks a foot or so high.
The amount of tide, which never exceeds ten feet, diminishes in
proceeding westwards into the heart of these swamps, and the epoch,
direction, and duration of the ebb and flow vary so much in every
canal, that at times, after stemming a powerful current, we found
ourselves, without materially changing our course, suddenly swept
along with a favouring stream. This is owing to the complex
ramifications of the creeks, the flow of whose waters is materially
influenced by the most trifling accidents of direction.

Receding from the Megna, the water became saltier, and _Nipa
fruticans_ appeared, throwing up pale yellow-green tufts of feathery
leaves, from a short thick creeping stem, and bearing at the base of
the leaves its great head of nuts, of which millions were floating on
the waters, and vegetating in the mud. Marks of tigers were very
frequent, and the footprints of deer, wild boars, and enormous
crocodiles: these reptiles were extremely common, and glided down the
mud banks on the approach of the steamer, leaving between the
footmarks a deep groove in the mud made by their tail. The _Phoenix
paludosa,_ a dwarf slender-stemmed date-palm, from six to eight feet
high, is the all-prevalent feature, covering the whole landscape with
a carpet of feathery fronds of the liveliest green. The species is
eminently gregarious, more so than any other Indian palm, and
presents so dense a mass of foliage, that when seen from above, the
stems are wholly hidden.* [_Sonneratia, Heritiera littoralis,_ and
_Careya,_ form small gnarled trees on the banks, with deep shining
green-leaved species of _Carallia Rhizophora,_ and other Mangroves.
Occasionally the gigantic reed-mace (_Typha elephantina_) is seen,
and tufts of tall reeds (_Arundo_).]

The water is very turbid, and only ten to twenty feet deep, which, we
were assured by the captain, was not increased during the rains: it
is loaded with vegetable matter, but the banks are always muddy, and
we never saw any peat. Dense fogs prevented our progress in the
morning, and we always anchored at dusk. We did not see a village or
house in the heart of the Sunderbunds (though such do occur), but we
saw canoes, with fishermen, who use the tame otter in fishing; and
the banks were covered with piles of firewood, stacked for the
Calcutta market. As we approached the Hoogly, the water became very
salt and clear; the Nipa fruits were still most abundant, floating
out to sea, but no more of the plant itself was seen. As the channels
became broader, sand-flats appeared, with old salt factories, and
clumps of planted _Casuarina._

On the 28th of January we passed Saugor island, and entered the
Hoogly, steamed past Diamond Harbour, and landed at the Botanic
Garden Ghat, where we received a hearty welcome from Dr. Falconer.
Ten days later we bade farewell to India, reaching England on the
25th of March, 1851.

 APPENDIX. A.

METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN BEHAR, AND IN THE VALLEYS OF THE SOANE
AND GANGES.

Most of the instruments which I employed were constructed by Mr.
Newman, and with considerable care: they were in general accurate,
and always extremely well guarded, and put up in the most portable
form, and that least likely to incur damage; they were further
frequently carefully compared by myself. These are points to which
too little attention is paid by makers and by travellers in selecting
instruments and their cases. This remark applies particularly to
portable barometers, of which I had five at various times. Although
there are obvious defects in the system of adjustment, and in the
method of obtaining the temperature of the mercury, I found that
these instruments invariably worked well, and were less liable to
derangement and fracture than any I ever used; the best proof I can
give of this is that I preserved three uninjured during nearly all my
excursions, left two in India, and brought a third home myself that
had accompanied me almost throughout my journey.

In very dry climates these and all other barometers are apt to leak,
from the contraction of the box-wood plug through which the tube
passes into the cistern. This must, in portable barometers, in very
dry weather, be kept moist with a sponge. A small iron bottle of pure
mercury to supply leakage should be supplied with every barometer, as
also a turnscrew. The vernier plate and scale should be screwed, not
soldered on the metal sheath, as if an escape occurs in the
barometer-case the solder is acted upon at once. A table of
corrections for capacity and capillarity should accompany every
instrument, and simple directions, etc., in cases of trifling
derangement, and alteration of neutral point.

The observations for temperature were taken with every precaution to
avoid radiation, and the thermometers were constantly compared with a
standard, and the errors allowed for. The maximum thermometer with a
steel index, I found to be extremely liable to derangement and very
difficult to re-adjust. Negretti's maximum thermometer was not known
to me during my journey. The spirit minimum thermometers again, are
easily set to rights when out of order, but in every one (of six or
seven) which I took to India, by several makers, the zero point
receded, the error in some increasing annually, even to-6 degrees in
two years. This seems due to a vaporisation of the spirit within the
tube. I have seen a thermometer of this description in India, of
which the spirit seemed to have retired wholly into the bulb, and
which I was assured had never been injured. In wet-bulb observations,
distilled water or rain, or snow water was used, but I never found
the result to differ from that obtained by any running fresh water,
except such as was polluted to the taste and eye.

The hours of observation selected were at first sunrise, 9 a.m.,
3 p.m., sunset, and 9 p.m., according to the instructions issued to
the Antarctic expedition by the Royal Society. In Sikkim, however,
I generally adopted the hours appointed at the Surveyor General's
office, Calcutta; viz., sunrise, 9h. 50m. a.m., noon, 2h. 40m. p.m.,
4 p.m., and sunset, to which I added a 10 p.m. observation, besides
many at intermediate hours as often as possible. Of these the 9h.
50m. a.m. and 4 p.m. have been experimentally proved to be those of
the maximum and minimum of atmospheric pressure at the level of the
sea in India, and I did not find any great or marked deviation from
this at any height to which I attained, though at 15,000 or 16,000
feet the morning maximum may occur rather earlier.

The observations for nocturnal (terrestrial) radiation were made by
freely suspending thermometers with naked bulbs, or by laying them on
white cotton, wool, or flannel; also by means of a thermometer placed
in the focus of a silvered parabolic reflector. I did not find that
the reflector possessed any decided advantage over the white
cotton: the means of a number of observations taken by each
approximated closely, but the difference between individual
observations often amounted to 2 degrees.

Observations again indicative of the radiation from grass, whether
dewed or dry, are not strictly comparable; not only does the power of
radiation vary with the species, but much more with the luxuriance
and length of the blades, with the situation, whether on a plane
surface or raised, and with the subjacent soil. Of the great effect
of the soil I had frequent instances; similar tufts of the same
species of grass radiating more powerfully on the dry sandy bed of
the Soane, than on the alluvium on its banks; the exposure being
equal in both instances. Experiments for the surface-temperature of
the soil itself, are least satisfactory of any:--adjoining localities
being no less affected by the nature, than by the state of
disintegration of the surface, and by the amount of vegetation in
proximity to the instrument.

The power of the sun's rays in India is so considerable, and
protracted through so long a period of the day, that I did not find
the temperature of springs, or of running water, even of large deep
rivers, so constant as was to be expected.

The temperature of the earth was taken by sinking a brass tube a yard
long in the soil.

A thermometer with the bulb blackened affords the only means the
traveller can generally compass, of measuring the power of the sun's
rays. It should be screened or put in a blackened box, or laid on
black wool.

A good Photometer being still a desideratum, I had recourse to the
old wedge of coloured glass, of an uniform neutral tint, the distance
between whose extremes, or between transparency and total opacity,
was one foot. A moveable arm carrying a brass plate with a slit and a
vernier, enables the observer to read off at the vanishing point of
the sun's limb, to one five-hundredth of an inch. I generally took
the mean of five readings as one, and the mean of five of these again
I regarded as one observation; but I place little dependence upon the
results. The causes of error are quite obvious. As far as the effects
of the sun's light on vegetation are concerned, I am inclined to
think that it is of more importance to register the number of
hours or rather of parts of each hour, that the sun shines, and its
clearness during the time. To secure valuable results this should be
done repeatedly, and the strength of the rays by the black-bulb
thermometer registered at each hour. The few actinometer observations
will be found in another part of the Appendix.

The dew-point has been calculated from the wet-bulb, by Dr. Apjohn's
formula, or, where the depression of the barometer is considerable,
by that as modified by Colonel Boileau.* [Journal of Asiatic Society,
No. 147 (1844), p.135.] The saturation-point was obtained by dividing
the tension at the dew-point by that at the ordinary temperature, and
the weight of vapour, by Daniell's formula.

The following summary of meteorological observations is alluded to at
vol. i., chapter i.


I.--_Table-land of Birbhoom and Behar, from Taldanga to Dunwah.
Average elevation 1,135 feet._

It is evident from these observations, that compared with Calcutta,
the dryness of the atmosphere is the most remarkable feature of this
table-land, the temperature not being high; and to this, combined
with the sterility of the soil over a great part of the surface, must
be attributed the want of a vigorous vegetation. Though so favourably
exposed to the influence of nocturnal radiation, the amount of the
latter is small. The maximum depression of a thermometer laid on
grass never exceeded 10 degrees, and averaged 7 degrees; whereas the
average depression of the dew-point at the same hour amounted to 25
degrees in the morning. Of course no dew was deposited even in the
clearest star-light night.


                                   February 1848.

Hour                               Sunrise  9 a.m.  3 p.m.  9 p.m.
TEMPERATURE
  Mean                             56.6     70.1    75.5    61.7
  Max.                             65.2     77.0    81.7    66.2
  Min.                             46.3     61.2    65.2    55.5
  Range                            18.9     15.8    16.5    10.7
WET-BULB
  Mean                             48.2     53.7    55.3    49.3
  Max. Depression                  12.5     19.3    22.5    20.5
  Min. Depression                   6.0     14.3    16.7     9.0

Elasticity of Vapour               .276     .264    .248    .248

DEW-POINT
  Mean                             39.5     37.9    36.0    36.1
  Max.                             52.0     52.7    46.8    50.0
  Min.                             23.3     24.5    24.3    *9.1
  Max. Depression                  31.7     39.2    48.4    56.9
  Min. Depression                  10.4     24.3    34.9    16.2

Weight of Vapour in cubic feet     3.088    2.875   2.674   2.745

SATURATION
  Mean                             .550     .330    .260    .410
  Max.                             .680     .450    .320    .590
  Min.                             .330     .260    .190    .140

Number of observations             7        7       7       10

Extreme variations of Temperature             35.4 degrees
Extreme variations of relative humidity       .540
Extreme diff. Solar and Nocturnal Radiation   96.5 degrees

*Taken during a violent N.W. dust-storm.


SOLAR RADIATION

MORNING
Hour             Th.    Black Bulb   Diff.   Phot.
9.30 a.m.        77.0   130          53.0    ...
10 a.m.          69.5   124          54.5    10.320
10 a.m.          77.0   137          60.0    ...
9 a.m.           63.5    94          30.5    10.230
9 a.m.           61.2   106          44.8    ...
9 a.m.           67.0   114          47.0    10.350
---------------------------------------------------
Mean             69.2   117.5        48.1    10.300

AFTERNOON
Hour             Th.    Black Bulb   Diff.   Phot.
3.30 p.m.        81.7   109          27.3    ...
3 p.m.           80.5   120          39.5    10.320
3 p.m.           81.5   127          45.5    10.330
3.30 p.m.        72.7   105          32.3    10.230
3 p.m.           72.5   110          37.5    10.390
---------------------------------------------------
Mean             77.8   114.2        36.4    10.318


NOCTURNAL RADIATION

SUNRISE
                           Exposed Th.   On Earth   On Grass
Temperature                51.1          48.3       46.6
Mean Diff. from Air         4.0           2.5        6.2
Max. Diff. from Air         9.0           3.7        9.0
Number of Observations      6             3          5

NINE P.M.
                           Exposed Th.   On Earth   On Grass
Temperature                56.4          53.8       54.4
Mean Diff. from Air         5.3           4.9        7.2
Max. Diff. from Air         7.5           5.5       10.0
Number of Observations      7             6          7


On one occasion, and that at night, the dew-point was as low as 11.5
degrees, with a temperature of 66 degrees, a depression rarely
equalled at so low a temperature: this phenomenon was transient, and
caused by the passage of a current of air loaded with dust, whose
particles possibly absorbed the atmospheric humidity. From a
comparison of the night and morning observations of thermometers laid
on grass, the earth, and freely exposed, it appears that the grass
parts with its heat much more rapidly than the earth, but that still
the effect of radiation is slight, lowering its temperature but 2
degrees below that of the freely exposed thermometer.

As compared with the climate of Calcutta, these hills present a
remarkable contrast, considering their proximity in position and
moderate elevation.

The difference of temperature between Calcutta and Birbhoom,
deduced from the sunrise, morning and afternoon observations, amounts
to 4 degrees, which, if the mean height of the hills where crossed by
the road, be called 1,135 feet, will be equal to a fall of one degree
for every 288 feet.

In the dampness of its atmosphere, Calcutta contrasts very remarkably
with these hills; the dew-point on the Hoogly averaging 51.3 degrees,
and on these hills 38 degrees, the corresponding saturation-points
being 0.559 and 0.380.

The difference between sunrise, forenoon and afternoon dew-points at
Calcutta and on the hills, is 13.6 degrees at each observation; but
the atmosphere at Calcutta is relatively drier in the afternoon than
that of the hills; the difference between the Calcutta sunrise and
afternoon saturation-point being 0.449, and that between the hill
sunrise and afternoon, 0.190. The march of the dew-point is thus the
same in both instances, but owing to the much higher temperature of
Calcutta, and the greatly increased tension of the vapour there, the
relative humidity varies greatly during the day.

In other words, the atmosphere of Calcutta is loaded with moisture in
the early morning of this season, and is relatively dry in the
afternoon: in the hills again, it is scarcely more humid at sunrise
than at 3 p.m. That this dryness of the hills is partly due to
elevation, appears from the disproportionately moister state of the
atmosphere below the Dunwah pass.



II. _Abstract of the Meteorological observations taken in the Soane
Valley (mean elevation 422 feet)._

The difference in mean temperature (partly owing to the sun's more
northerly declination) amounts to 2.5 degrees of increase in the
Soane valley, above that of the hills. The range of the thermometer
from day to day was considerably greater on the hills (though fewer
observations were there recorded): it amounted to 17.2 degrees on the
hills, and only 12.8 degrees in the valley. The range from the
maximum to the minimum of each day amounts to the same in both, above
20 degrees. The extreme variations in temperature too coincide within
1.4 degrees.

The hygrometric state of the atmosphere of the valley differs most
decidedly from that of the hills. In the valley dew is constantly
formed, which is owing to the amount of moisture in the air, for
nocturnal radiation is more powerful on the hills. The sunrise and
9 p.m. observations in the valley, give a mean depression of the
dew-point below the air of 12.3 degrees, and those at the upper level
of 21.2 degrees, with no dew on the hills and a copious deposit in
the valley. The corresponding state of the atmosphere as to
saturation is 0.480 on the hills and 0.626 in the valley.

The vegetation of the Soane valley is exposed to a less extreme
temperature than that of the hills; the difference between solar and
nocturnal radiation amounting here only to 80.5 degrees, and on the
hills to 96.5 degrees. There is no material difference in the power
of the sun's rays at the upper and lower levels, as expressed by the
blackbulb thermometer, the average rise of which above one placed in
the shade, amounted to 48 degrees in both cases, and the maximum
occurred about 11 a.m. The decrease of the power of the sun's rays in
the afternoon is much the most rapid in the valley, coinciding with a
greater reduction of the elasticity of vapour and of humidity in the
atmosphere.

The photometer observations show a greater degree of sun's light on
the hills than below, but there is not at either station a decided
relation between the indications of this instrument and the
black-bulb thermometer. From observations taken elsewhere, I am
inclined to attribute the excess of solar light on the hills to their
elevation; for at a far greater elevation I have met with much
stronger solar light, in a very damp atmosphere, than I ever
experienced in the drier plains of India. In a damp climate the
greatest intensity may be expected in the forenoon, when the vapour
is diffused near the earth's surface; in the afternoon the lower
strata of atmosphere are drier, but the vapour is condensed into
clouds aloft which more effectually obstruct the sun's rays. On the
Birbhoom and Behar hills, where the amount of vapour is so small that
the afternoon is but little drier than the forenoon, there is little
difference between the solar light at each time. In the Soane valley
again, where a great deal of humidity is removed from the earth's
surface and suspended aloft, the obstruction of the sun's light is
very marked.


DUNWAH TO SOANE RIVER, AND UP SOANE TO TURA, FEBRUARY 10-19TH.

Hour                               Sunrise  9 a.m.  3 p.m.  9 p.m.
TEMPERATURE
  Mean                             57.6     74.0    77.6    64.5
  Max.                             62.0     81.0    87.5    68.7
  Min.                             53.5     63.5    71.0    60.0
  Range                             8.5     17.5    16.5     8.7
WET-BULB
  Mean                             51.7     59.5    59.9    55.5
  Max. Depression                   8.5     18.5    26.0    12.5
  Min. Depression                   3.8      4.0     6.8     2.5

Elasticity of Vapour               .352     .382    .357    .370

DEW-POINT
  Mean                             46.1     48.5    46.4    47.5
  Max.                             53.6     56.7    60.0    55.6
  Min.                             40.6     38.0    36.0    41.0
  Max. Depression                  16.9     33.5    44.2    24.1
  Min. Depression                   7.0      6.8    11.0     4.4

Weight of Vapour in cubic feet     3.930    4.066   3.658   4.014

SATURATION
  Mean                             .680     .460    .352    .572
  Max.                             .787     .818    .703    .860
  Min.                             .566     .338    .237    .452

Number of observations             10        8       9       10

Extreme variations of Temperature             34.0 degrees
Extreme variations of relative humidity       .623
Extreme diff. Solar and Nocturnal Radiation   80.5 degrees


NOCTURNAL RADIATION

SUNRISE
                           Exposed Th.   On Earth   On Grass
Temperature                53.2          54.0       51.5
Mean Diff. from Air         4.5           3.7        6.2
Max. Diff. from Air         8.5           9.0        7.5
Number of Observations      9             9          8

NINE P.M.
                           Exposed Th.   On Earth   On Grass
Temperature                59.9          60.7       56.4
Mean Diff. from Air         4.6           3.8        8.1
Max. Diff. from Air        11.5          10.5       13.5
Number of Observations     10            10         10


SOLAR RADIATION

MORNING
Time             Temp.   Black Bulb   Diff.   Phot.
9 a.m.           70.0    125          55.0    10.300
11 a.m.          81.0    119          38.0    10.230
10.30 a.m.       71.5    126          54.5    10.300
10 a.m.          72.0    117          45.0    10.220
10 a.m.          80.0    122          42.0    ...
10.30 a.m.       78.0    128          50.0    ...
----------------------------------------------------
Mean             75.4    122.8        47.4    10.262

AFTERNOON
Time             Temp.   Black Bulb   Diff.   Phot.
4 p.m.           76.5     90          13.5    ...
3 p.m.           80.0    105          25.0    10.210
3 p.m.           76.0    102          26.0    10.170
3 p.m.           87.5    126          38.5    ...
----------------------------------------------------
Mean             80.0    105.7        25.7    10.190


NOCTURNAL RADIATION FROM PLANTS

SUNRISE
Air Temp.       59.5    55.0
Calotropis      ...     49.5
Diff.           ...      5.5
Argemone        57.0    47.0
Diff.            2.5     8.0

NINE P.M.
Temp.           67.5    67.0    64.3
Calotropis      ...     ...     58.5
Diff.           ...     ...      5.8
Argemone        53.0    56.0    57.0
Diff.           14.0    11.0     7.3


III. VALLEY OF SOANE RIVER, TURA TO SULKUN (MEAN ELEV. 517 FEET),
     FEBRUARY 20TH TO MARCH 3RD.

Hour                               Sunrise  9 a.m.  3 p.m.  9 p.m.
TEMPERATURE
  Mean                             56.8     82.0    88.6    68.0
  Max.                             70.0     89.0    94.7    74.0
  Min.                             50.0     69.0    81.5    61.0
  Range                            20.0     20.0    43.2    13.0
WET-BULB
  Mean                             52.5     61.2    62.4    56.8
  Max. Depression                  10.0     24.3    30.2    15.0
  Min. Depression                   1.5     12.0    14.5     6.0

Elasticity of Vapour               .380     .385    .289    .369

DEW-POINT
  Mean                             48.3     48.7    40.8    47.4
  Max.                             53.1     60.2    50.9    51.8
  Min.                             41.1     40.3    32.3    42.6
  Max. Depression                  17.3     45.2    57.2    27.1
  Min. Depression                   5.4     22.0    25.1    10.2

Weight of Vapour in cubic feet     4.240    4.097   2.975   3.933

SATURATION
  Mean                             .754     .342    .211    .511
  Max.                             .831     .488    .598    .703
  Min.                             .570     .226    .154    .415

Number of observations             12        11      11      11

Extreme variations of Temperature             44.7 degrees
Extreme variations of relative humidity       .677
Extreme diff. Solar and Nocturnal Radiation   100  degrees


NOCTURNAL RADIATION

SUNRISE
                           Exposed Th.   On Earth   On Grass
Temperature                51.7          52.4       48.8
Mean Diff. from Air         4.1           3.4        7.0
Max. Diff. from Air         8.0           7.0       11.5
Number of Observations      9             9          9

NINE P.M.
                           Exposed Th.   On Earth   On Grass
Temperature                61.2          64.3       55.8
Mean Diff. from Air         6.8           4.6       11.8
Max. Diff. from Air        10.5           8.5       17.0
Number of Observations     10             9          9


SOLAR RADIATION

MORNING
Time             Temp.   Black Bulb   Diff.   Phot.
11.30 a.m.       85.5    129          44.5    ...
10.30 a.m.       89.0    132          43.0    ...
Noon             90.0    132          42.0    10.140
Noon             85.0    130          45.0    ...
Noon             86.0    138          52.0    ...
Noon             90.0    138          48.0    ...
----------------------------------------------------
Mean             87.6    133          45.8    10.140

AFTERNOON
Time             Temp.   Black Bulb   Diff.   Phot.
3 p.m.           85.5    116          30.5    ...
3 p.m.           92.5    128          35.5    ...
3 p.m.           92.0    120          28.0    ...
3 p.m.           89.5    128          38.5    ...
3 p.m.           93.5    144          50.5    ...
----------------------------------------------------
Mean             90.6    127          36.6    ...


NOCTURNAL RADIATION FROM PLANTS

SUNRISE                                                     Mean
Air Temp.   61.0  57.0  57.0  58.5  57.0  50.0  50.5  56.0  55.9
Barley      56    46    52    52    52    45    43    ...   49.4
Diff.        5.0  11.0   5.0   6.5   5.0   5.0   7.5  ...    6.4
Calotropis  56.5  48.0  ...   ...   ...   45.5  ...   ...   50.0
Diff.        4.5   9.0  ...   ...   ...    4.5  ...   ...    6.0
Argemone    57.0  50.0  50.0  ...   ...   ...   ...   49.0  51.5
Diff.        4.0   7.0   7.0  ...   ...   ...   ...    7.0   6.2

NINE P.M.                                                   Mean
Air Temp.   68.5  70.0  69.0  74.0  62.5  67.5  61.0  ...   67.5
Barley      ...   ...   ...   ...   51.5  67.5  50.0  ...   56.3
Diff.       ...   ...   ...   ...   11.0  10.0  11.0  ...   10.7
Calotropis  ...   65.0  57.0  59.0  ...   62.5  ...   ...   60.9
Diff.       ...    5.0  12.0  15.0  ...    5.0  ...   ...    9.3
Argemone    56.0  67.0  57.0  ...   ...   ...   ...   ...   60.0
Diff.       12.5   3.0  12.0  ...   ...   ...   ...   ...    9.2


The upper course of the Soane being in some places confined, and
exposed to furious gusts from the gullies of the Kymore hills, and at
others expanding into a broad and flat valley, presents many
fluctuations of temperature. The mean temperature is much above that
of the lower parts of the same valley (below Tura), the excess
amounting to 5.4 degrees. The nights and mornings are cooler, by 1.2
degrees, the days hotter by 10 degrees. There were also 10 degrees
increase of range during the thirteen days spent there; and the mean
range from day to day was nearly as great as it was on the hills
of Bengal.

There being much exposed rock, and the valley being swept by violent
dust-storms, the atmosphere is drier, the mean saturation point being
.454, whereas in the lower part of the Soane's course it was .516.

A remarkable uniformity prevails in the depression of thermometers
exposed to nocturnal radiation, whether laid on the earth, grass, or
freely exposed; both the mean and maximum indication coincide very
nearly with those of the lower Soane valley and of the hills.
The temperature of tufts of green barley laid on the ground is one
degree higher than that of short grass; _Argemone_ and _Calotropis_
leaves maintain a still warmer temperature; from the previous
experiments the _Argemone_ appeared to be considerably the cooler,
which I was inclined to attribute to the smoother and more shining
surface of its leaf, but from these there would seem to be no
sensible difference between the radiating powers of the two plants.


IV. TABLE-LAND OF KYMORE HILLS (MEAN ELEV. 979 FEET), MARCH 3RD TO 8TH, 1848.

Hour                               Sunrise  9 a.m.  3 p.m.  9 p.m.
TEMPERATURE
  Mean                             65.3     81.6    88.1    71.1
  Max.                             69.0     82.5    90.0    76.0
  Min.                             57.5     79.5    84.5    68.0
  Range                            11.5      4.0     5.5     8.0
WET-BULB
  Mean                             57.7     65.3    63.3    60.3
  Max. Depression                   8.0     19.0    26.5    13.0
  Min. Depression                   6.0     14.0    21.5     8.3

Elasticity of Vapour               .428     .468    .324    .433

DEW-POINT
  Mean                             52.0     54.5    43.7    52.3
  Max.                             55.5     57.9    47.8    56.7
  Min.                             45.9     49.0    37.9    46.8
  Max. Depression                  14.1     33.0    46.6    21.9
  Min. Depression                  11.6     12.9    42.2    13.8

Weight of Vapour in cubic feet     4.710    5.000   3.417   4.707

SATURATION
  Mean                             .647     .421    .240    .542
  Max.                             .741     .479    .295    .643
  Min.                             .648     .344    .214    .491

Number of observations              4         3       3       4

Extreme variations of Temperature              32.5 degrees
Extreme variations of relative humidity        .527
Extreme diff. Solar and Nocturnal Radiation   110.5  degrees


NOCTURNAL RADIATION

SUNRISE
                           Exposed Th.   On Earth   On Grass
Temperature                59.5          56.0       54.7
Mean Diff. from Air         3.5           1.5        8.2
Max. Diff. from Air         3.5           1.5        8.5
Number of Observations      2             1          2

NINE P.M.
                           Exposed Th.   On Earth   On Grass
Temperature                71.5          62.5       61.0
Mean Diff. from Air         3.3           5.5        8.2
Max. Diff. from Air         7.0           5.5       11.0
Number of Observations      3             1          2



The rapid drying of the lower strata of the atmosphere during the
day, as indicated by the great decrease in the tension of the vapour
from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., is the effect of the great violence of the
north-west winds.

From the few days' observations taken on the Kymore hills, the
temperature of their flat tops appeared 5 degrees higher than that of
the Soane valley, which is 500 feet below their mean level. I can
account for this anomaly only on the supposition that the thick bed
of alluvium, freely exposed to the sun (not clothed with jungle),
absorbs the sun's rays and parts with its heat slowly. This is
indicated by the increase of temperature being due to the night and
morning observations, which are 3.1 degrees and 8.5 degrees higher
here than below, whilst the 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. temperatures are half a
degree lower.

The variations of temperature too are all much less in amount, as are
those of the state of the atmosphere as to moisture, though the
climate is rather damper.

On the subject of terrestrial radiation the paucity of the
observations precludes my dwelling. Between 9 p.m. and sunrise the
following morning I found the earth to have lost but 6.5 degrees of
heat, whereas a mean of nine observations at the same hours in the
valley below indicated a loss of 12 degrees.

Though the mean temperature deduced from the few days I spent on this
part of the Kymore is so much above that of the upper Soane valley,
which it bounds, I do not suppose that the whole hilly range
partakes of this increase. When the alluvium does not cover the rock,
as at Rotas and many other places, especially along the southern and
eastern ridges of the ghats, the nights are considerably cooler than
on the banks of the Soane; and at Rotas itself, which rises almost
perpendicularly from the river, and is exposed to no such radiation
of heat from a heated soil as Shahgunj is, I found the temperature
considerably below that of Akbarpore on the Soane, which however is
much sheltered by an amphitheatre of rocks.


V. _Mirzapore on the Ganges._

During the few days spent at Mirzapore, I was surprised to find the
temperature of the day cooler by nearly 4 degrees than that of the
hills above, or of the upper part of the Soane valley, while the
nights on the other hand were decidedly warmer. The dew-point was
even lower in proportion, 7.6 degrees, and the climate consequently
drier. The following is an abstract of the observations taken at Mr.
Hamilton's house on the banks of the Ganges (below).

It is remarkable that nocturnal radiation as registered at sunrise is
much more powerful at Mirzapore than on the more exposed Kymore
plateau; the depression of the thermometer freely exposed being 3
degrees greater, that laid on bare earth 6 degrees, and that on the
grass 1.4 degrees greater, on the banks of the Ganges.

During my passage down the Ganges the rise of the dew-point was very
steady, the maximum occurring at the lowest point on the river,
Bhaugulpore, which, as compared with Mirzapore, showed an increase of
8 degrees in temperature, and of 30.6 degrees in the rise of the
dew-point. The saturation-point at Mirzakore was .331, and at the
corresponding hours at Bhaugulpore .742.

MIRZAPORE (ELEV. 362 FEET), MARCH 9TH TO 13TH, 1848.

Hour                               Sunrise  9 a.m.  3 p.m.  9 p.m.
TEMPERATURE
  Mean                             61.1     76.1    86.0    76.0
  Max.                             63.0     83.0    ...     ...
  Min.                             58.0     71.0    ...     ...
  Range                             5.0     12.0    ...     ...
WET-BULB
  Mean                             48.8     58.5    61.7    63.5
  Max. Difference                  51.5     56.5    24.3    12.5
  Min. Difference                  47.0     51.7    ...     ...

Elasticity of Vapour               .236     .302    .295    .480

DEW-POINT
  Mean                             34.3     41.9    41.3    55.2
  Max.                             39.7     ...     ...     ...
  Min.                             29.7     ...     ...     ...
  Max. Difference                  32.8     52.3    44.7    20.8
  Min. Difference                  23.8     15.7    ...     ...

Weight of Vapour in cubic feet     2.574    3.271   3.089   5.127

SATURATION
  Mean                             .405     .324    .264    .511
  Max.                             .450     .603    ...     ...
  Min.                             .327     .176    ...     ...

Number of observations              3         3       1       1


TERRESTRIAL RADIATION.
                                                         Mean
Air in Shade. Sunrise        60.0   62.5   63.0   58.0   60.9
Exposed Th.                  55.0   54.5   55.5   53.0   54.6
Difference                    5.0    8.0    7.5    5.0    6.4
Exposed on earth             ...    56.0   50.5   54.0   53.5
Difference                   ...     6.5   12.5    4.0    7.7
Exposed on grass             52.0   52.5   50.5   50.0   51.3
Difference                    8.0   10.0   12.5    8.0    9.6


APPENDIX B.

ON THE MINERAL CONSTITUENTS AND ALGAE OF THE HOT-SPRINGS OF BEHAR,
THE HIMALAYA, AND OTHER PARTS OF INDIA, ETC., INCLUDING NOTES ON THE
FUNGI OF THE HIMALAYA.

(By Dr. R. D. Thomson and the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, M.A., F.L.S.)

The following remarks, for which I am indebted to the kindness of the
able chemist and naturalist mentioned above, will be highly valued,
both by those who are interested in the many curious physiological
questions involved in the association of the most obscure forms of
vegetable life with the remarkable phenomena of mineral springs; or
in the exquisitely beautiful microscopic structure of the lower
Algae, which has thrown so much light upon a branch of natural
history, whose domain, like that of astronomy, lies to a great extent
beyond the reach of the unassisted eye.--J.D.H.

1. Mineral water, Soorujkoond, Behar (vol. i., chap. ii), contains
chloride of sodium and sulphate of soda.

2. Mineral water, hot springs, Yeumtong, altitude 11,730 feet (see
vol. ii., chap. xxii). Disengages sulphuretted hydrogen when
fresh.--This water was inodorous when the bottle was opened.
The saline matter in solution was considerably less than in the
Soorujkoond water, but like that consisted of chloride of sodium and
sulphate of soda. Its alkaline character suggests the probability of
its containing carbonate of soda, but none was detected.

The rocks decomposed by the waters of the spring consist of granite
impregnated with sulphate of alumina. It appears that in this case
the sulphurous waters of Yeumtong became impregnated in the air with
sulphuric acid, which decomposed the felspar,* [I have, in my
journal, particularly alluded to the garnets (an aluminous mineral)
being thus entirely decomposed.-J.D.H.] and united with its alumina.
I found traces only of potash in the salt.

Sulphuretted hydrogen waters appear to give origin to sulphuric acid,
when the water impregnated with the gas reaches the surface; and I
have fine fibrous specimens of sulphate of lime accompanied with
sulphur, from the hot springs of Pugha in west Tibet, brought by
Dr. T. Thomson.

3. Mineral water, Momay hot springs, (vol. ii., chap. xxii).--When
the bottle was uncorked, a strong smell of sulphuretted hydrogen was
perceived. The water contains about twenty-five grains per imp.
gallon, of chloride of sodium, sulphate and carbonate of soda; the
reaction being strongly alkaline when the solution was concentrated.

4. Effloresced earth from Behar (vol. i., chap. i), consists of
granite sand, mixed with sesquicarbonate of soda.


_On the Indian Algae which occur principally in different parts of
the Himalayan Range, in the hot-springs of Soorujkoond in Bengal,
Pugha in Tibet, and Momay in Sikkim; and on the Fungi of the
Himalayas. By the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, M.A.

It is not my intention in the present appendix to give specific
characters or even accurately determined specific names to the
different objects within its scope, which have come under
investigation, as collected by Dr. Hooker and Dr. Thomson. To do so
would require far more time than I have at present been able to
devote to the subject, for though every species has been examined
microscopically, either by myself or Mr. Broome, and working
sketches secured at the same time, the specific determination of
fresh water Algae from Herbarium specimens is a matter which
requires a very long and accurate comparison of samples from every
available locality, and in the case of such genera as _Zygnema,
Tyndaridea,_ and _Conferva,_ is, after all, not a very satisfactory
process.

The object in view is merely to give some general notion of the forms
which presented themselves in the vast districts visited by the
above-mentioned botanists, comprising localities of the greatest
possible difference as regards both temperature and elevation; but
more especially in the hot-springs which occur in two distant parts
of the Himalayas and in Behar, and these again under very different
degrees of elevation and of extrinsic temperature.

The Algae from lower localities are but few in number, and some of
these of very common forms. We have for instance from the Ganges,
opposite Bijnour, a _Batrachospermum_ and _Conferva crispata,_ the
former purple below, with specimens of _Chantransia,_ exactly as they
might occur in the Thames. The _Conferva,_ or more properly
_Cladophora,_ which occurs also under various forms, at higher
elevations, as in the neighbourhood of Simla and Iskardo, swarms with
little parasites, but of common or uninteresting species. In the
Bijnour specimens, these consist of common forms of _Synedra,
Meridion circulare,_ and a _Cymbella,_ on others from Dacca, there
are about three species of _Synedra,_* {Two of these appear to be _S.
Vaucheriae_ and _S. inaequalis._] a minute _Navicula_ and _Gomphonema
curvatum._ Nothing, in fact, can well be more European. One splendid
Alga, however, occurs at Fitcoree, in Behar, on the banks of nullahs,
which are dry in hot weather, forming a purple fleece of coarse
woolly hairs, which are singularly compressed, and of extreme beauty
under the microscope, from the crystalline green of the articulated
string which threads the bright red investing sheath. This curious
Alga calls to mind in its colouring _Caenocoleus Smithii,_ figured in
English Botany, t. 2940, but it has not the common sheath of that
Alga, and is on a far larger scale. One or two other allied forms, or
species, occur in East Nepal, to which I purpose giving, together
with the Behar plant, the generic name of _Erythronema._ From the
Soane River, also, is an interesting Alga, belonging to the curious
genus _Thwaitesia,_ in which the division of the endochrome in the
fertile cells into four distinct masses, sometimes entirely free, is
beautifully marked. In some cases, indeed, instead of the ordinary
spores, the whole moss is broken up into numerous bodies, as in the
fertile joints of _Ulothrix,_ and probably, as in that case, the
resultant corpuscles are endowed with active motion. In Silhet,
again, is a magnificent _Zygnema,_ allied to _Z. nitidum,_ with large
oval spores, about 1/285 part of an inch long, and a dark golden
brown colour, and containing a spiral green endochrome.

Leaving, however, the lower parts of India, I shall first take the
species which occur in Khasia, Sikkim, Eastern Nepal, and the
adjoining parts of Tibet.

In the hot valleys of the Gtreat Rungeet, at an elevation of about
2000 feet, we have the _Erythronema,_ but under a slightly different
form; at Nunklow, at about the same height; in Khasia, again, at
twice that elevation; in Eastern Nepal, at 12,000; and, finally, at
Momay, reaching up to 16,000 feet. In water, highly impregnated with
oxide of iron, at 4000 feet in Sikkim, a _Leptothrix_ occurred in
great abundance, coloured with the oxide, exactly as is the case with
Algae which grow in iron springs in Europe. At elevations between
5000 and 7000 feet, several European forms occur, consisting of
_Ulothrix, Zygnema, Oscillatoria, Lyngbya, Sphaerozyga, Scytonema,
Conferva,_ and _Cladophora._ The species may indeed not be identical
with European species, but they are all more or less closely allied
to well-known Hydrophytes. One very interesting form, however, either
belonging to the genus _Zygnema,_ or possibly constituting a distinct
genus, occurs in streams at 5000 feet in Sikkim, consisting of highly
gelatinous threads of the normal structure of the _Zygnema,_ but
forming a reticulated mass. The threads adhere to each other
laterally, containing only a single spiral endochrome, and the
articulations are very long. Amongst the threads are mixed those of
some species of _Tyndaridea._ There is also a curious _Hormosiphon,_
at a height of 7000 feet; forming anastomosing gelatinous masses.
A fine new species of _Lyngbya_ extends up as high as 11,000 feet.
At 13,000 feet occurs either some simple _Conferva_ or _Zygnema,_ it
is doubtful which from the condition of the specimens; and at the
same elevation, in the nearly dry bed of the stream which flows from
the larger lake at Momay, amongst flat cakes, consisting of
felspathic silt from the glaciers above, and the debris of Algae, and
abounding in Diatomaceae, some threads of a _Zygnema._ At 17,000
feet, an _Oscillatoria,_ attached or adherent to _Zannichellia_; and,
finally, on the bare ground, at 18,000 feet, on the Donkia mountains,
an obscure species of _Caenocoleus._ On the surface of the glaciers
at Kinchinjhow, on silt, there is a curious _Palmella,_ apparently
quite distinct from any European form.

Amongst the greater part of the Algae, from 4000 feet to 18,000 feet,
various Diatomaceae occur, which will be best noticed in a tabular
form, as follows; the specific name, within brackets, merely
indicating the species to which they bear most resemblance:--

Himantidium (_Soleirolii_)           4000 to 7000 ft.  Sikkim
Odontidium (_hiemale,_ forma minor)  5000 to 7000 ft.  Sikkim
Epithemia, _n. sp._                  7000 ft.          Sikkim
Cymbella                                               Sikkim
Navicula, _n. sp._                                     Sikkim
Tabillaria (_flocculosa_)            6000 to 7000 ft.  Sikkim
Odontidium (_hiemale_)             11,000 ft.          Sikkim
Himantidium                        16,000 ft.          Momay
Odontidium (_turgidulum_)          17,000 ft.          Momay
Epithemia (_ocellata_)                                 Tibet
Fragillaria                        18,000 ft.          Momay
Odontidium (_turgidulum_)                              Momay
Dictyocha (_gracilis_)                                 Momay
Odontidium (_hiemale_)                                 Kinchinjhow


We now turn to those portions of Tibet or the neighbouring regions,
explored by Dr. Thomson and Captain Strachey. The principal feature
in the Algology is the great prevalence of species of _Zygnema_ and
_Tyndaridea,_ which occur under a variety of forms, sometimes with
very thick gelatinous coats. In not a single instance, however, is
there the slightest tendency to produce fructification. _Conferva
crispata_ again, as mentioned above, occurs in several localities;
and in one locality a beautiful unbranched _Conferva,_ with torulose
articulations. At Iskardo, Dr. Thomson gathered a very gelatinous
species of _Draparnaldia,_ or more properly, a _Stygeoclonium,_ if we
may judge from a little conglomeration of cells which appeared
amongst the threads. A _Tetraspora_ in Piti, an obscure
_Tolypothrix,_ and one or two _Oscillatoriae,_ remarkable for their
interrupted mode of growth, complete the list of Algae, with the
exception of one, to be mentioned presently; as also of
_Diatomaceae,_ and of the species of _Nostoc_ and _Hormosiphon,_
which occurred in great profusion, and under several forms, sometimes
attaining a very large size (several inches across), especially in
the districts of Le and Piti, and where the soil or waters were
impregnated with saline matters. It is well known that some species
of _Nostoc_ form an article of food in China, and one was used for
that purpose in a late Arctic expedition, as reported by Dr.
Sutherland; but it does not seem that any use is made of them in
Tibet, though probably all the large species would form tolerable
articles of food, and certainly, from their chemical composition,
prove very nutritious. One species is mentioned by Dr. Thomson as
floating, without any attachment, in the shallow water of the pools
scattered over the plains, on the Parang River, separated only by a
ridge of mountains from Piti, broad and foliaceous, and scarcely
different from the common _Nostoc,_ which occurs in all parts of the
globe. I must not, however, neglect to record a very singular new
genus, in which the young threads have the characters of
_Tyndaridea,_ but, after a time, little swellings occur on their
sides, in which a distinct endochrome is formed, extending backwards
into the parent endochrome, separated from it by a well defined
membrane, and producing, either by repeated pullulation, a compound
mass like that of _Calothrix,_ or simply giving rise to a forked
thread. In the latter case, however, there is no external swelling,
but a lateral endochrome is formed, which, as it grows, makes its way
through an aperture, whose sides are regularly inflected. I have
given to this curious production the name of _Cladozygia Thomsoni._

The whole of the above Algae occurred at heights varying from 10,000
to 15,500 feet. As in the Southern Himalayan Algae, the specimens
were infested with many Diatomaceae, amongst which the moat
conspicuous were various _Cymbellae_ and _Epithemiae.
The following is a list of the species observed.

    Cymbella (_gastroides_).
     --  (_gracilis_).
     --  (_Ehrenbergii_)
                   and three others.
    Odontidium (_hiemale_).
      --   (_mesodon_).
      --   _n. sp._
    Epithemia  _n. sp._
    Synedra (_arcus_).
     -- (_tenuis_).
     -- (_aequalis_).
    Denticula (_obtusa_).
    Gomphonema (_abbreviatum_).
    Meridion circulare.

There is very little identity between this list and that before given
from the Southern Himalayas, as is the case also with the other
Algae. Till the species, however, have been more completely studied,
a very accurate comparison cannot be made.

In both instances the species which grow in hot springs have been
reserved in order to make their comparison more easy. I shall begin
in an inverse order, with those of the springs of Pugha in Tibet,
which attain a temperature of 174 degrees. Two _Confervae_ only occur
in the specimens which have been preserved, viz., an _Oscillatoria_
allied to that which I have called _O. interrupta,_ and a true
_Conferva_ extremely delicate with very long articulations,
singularly swollen at the commissures. The _Diatomaceae_ are:--

    Odontidium (_hiemale_).
      --   (_mesodon_).
      --   _n. sp.,_ same as at Piti on _Conferva._
    Denticula (_obtusa_).
    Navicula.
    Cymbella, three species.
    Epithemia.

Scarcely any one of these except the _Navicula_ is peculiar to the
locality. A fragment apparently of some _Closterium,_ the only one
which I have met with in the collection, accompanies one of the
specimens.

The hot springs of Momay, (temp. 110 degrees) at 16,000 feet, produce
a golden brown _Caenocoleus_ representing a small form of _C.
cirrhosus,_ and a very delicate _Sphaerozyga,_ an _Anabaina,_ and
_Tolypothrix_; and at 17,000 feet, a delicate green _Conferva_ with
long even articulations. With the latter is an _Odontidium_ allied
to, or identical with _O. turgidulum,_ and with the former a fine
species of _Epithemia_ resembling in form, but not in marking, _E.
Faba, E. (Zebra)_ a fine _Navicula,_ perhaps the same with _N. major_
and _Fragilaria (virescens)._* [Mr. Thomas Brightwell finds in a
portion of the same specimen _Epithemia alpestris, Surirella
splendida, S. linearis,_ Smith, _Pinnularia viridis,_ Smith,
_Navicula (lanceolata)_ and _Himantidium (arcus)._] In mud from one
of the Momay springs (_a_), I detected _Epithemia (Broomeii n.s.),_
and two small _Naviculae,_ and in the spring (_c_) two species of
_Epithemia_ somewhat like _E. Faba,_ but different from that
mentioned above.

The hot springs of Soorujkoond, of the vegetation of which very
numerous specimens have been preserved, are extremely poor in
species. In the springs themselves and on their banks, at
temperatures varying from 80 degrees to 158 degrees, at which point
vegetation entirely ceases, a minute _Leptothrix_ abounds everywhere,
varying a little in the regularity of the threads in different
specimens, but scarcely presenting two species. Between 84 degrees
and 112 degrees there is an imperfect _Zygnema_ with very long
articulations, and where the green scum passes into brown, there is
sometimes an _Oscillatoria,_ of a very minute stellate _Scytonema,_
probably in an imperfect state. _Epithemia ocellata_ also contributes
often to produce the tint. An _Anabaina_ occurs at a temperature of
125 degrees, but the same species was found also in the stream from
the springs where the water had become cold, as was also the case
with the _Zygnema._

The Diatomaceae consisted of:--

    Epithemia Broomeii, _n. s._
        --  thermalis, _n. sp._
    Epithemia inaequalis, _n. sp._
    Navicula Beharensis, _n. sp._

The vegetation in the three sets of springs was very different.
As regards the _Confervae,_ taking the word in its older sense, the
species in the three are quite different, and even in respect of
genera there is little identity, but amongst the _Diatomaceae_ there
is no striking difference, except in those of the Behar springs where
three out of the four did not occur elsewhere. In the Pugha and Momay
springs, the species were either identical with, or nearly allied to
those found in neighbouring localities, where the water did not
exceed the ordinary temperature. A longer examination will doubtless
detect more numerous forms, but those which appear on a first
examination are sure to give a pretty correct general notion of the
vegetation. The species are certainly less numerous than I had
expected, or than might be supposed from the vegetation of those
European hot springs which have been most investigated.

In conclusion, I shall beg to add a few words on the Fungi of the
Himalayas, so far as they have at present been investigated.
As regards these there is a marked difference, as might be
anticipated from the nature of the climates between those parts of
Tibet investigated by Dr. Thomson, and the more southern regions.
The fungi found by Dr. Thomson were but few in number, and for the
most part of very ordinary forms, differing but little from the
produce of an European wood. Some, however, grow to a very large
size, as for instance, _Polyporus fomentarius_ on poplars near
Iskardo, exceeding in dimensions anything which this species exhibits
in Europe. A very fine _AEcidium_ also infests the fir trees (_Abies
Smithiana_), a figure of which has been given in the "Gardeners'
Chronicle," 1852, p. 627, under the name of _AEcidium Thomsoni._
This is allied to the Hexenbesen of the German forests, but is a
finer species and quite distinct. _Polyporus oblectans, Geaster
limbatus, Geaster mammosus, Erysiphe taurica,_ a _Boletus_ infested
with _Sepedonium mycophilum, Scleroderma verrucosum,_ an _AEcidium,_
and a _Uromyces,_ both on _Mulgedium Tataricum,_ about half-a-dozen
Agarics, one at an altitude of 16,000 feet above the Nubra river, a
_Lycoperdon,_ and _Morchella semilibera,_ which is eaten in Kashmir,
and exported when dry to the plains of India, make up the list
of fungi.

The region of Sikkim is perhaps the most productive in fleshy fungi
of any in the world, both as regards numbers and species, and Eastern
Nepal and Khasia yield also an abundant harvest. The forms are for
the most part European, though the species are scarcely ever quite
identical. The dimensions of many are truly gigantic, and many
species afford abundant food to the natives. Mixed with European
forms a few more decidedly tropical occur, and amongst those of East
Nepal is a _Lentinus_ which has the curious property of staining
every thing which touches it of a deep rhubarb yellow, and is not
exceeded in magnificence by any tropical species. The _Polypori_ are
often identical with those of Java, Ceylon, and the Philippine Isles,
and the curious _Trichocoma paradoxum_ which was first found by
Junghuhn in Java, and very recently by Dr. Harvey in Ceylon, occurs
abundantly on the decayed trunks of laurels, as it does in South
Carolina. The curious genus _Mitremyces_ also is scattered here and
there, though not under the American form, but that which occurs in
Java. Though _Hymenomycetes_ are so abundant, the _Discomycetes_ and
_Ascomycetes_ are comparatively rare, and very few species indeed of
_Sphoeria_ were gathered. One curious matter is, that amongst the
very extensive collections which have been made there is scarcely a
single new genus. The species moreover in Sikkim are quite different,
except in the case of some more or less cosmopolite species from
those of Eastern Nepal and Khasia: scarcely a single _Lactarius_ or
_Cortinarius_ for instance occurs in Sikkim, though there are several
in Khasia. The genus _Boletus_ through the whole district assumes the
most magnificent forms, which are generally very different from
anything in Europe.



APPENDIX C.* [The tables referred to, at v. i. chapter ii,
as under Appendix C., will be found under Appendix A.]

ON THE SOILS OF SIKKIM.

There is little variety in the soil throughout Sikkim, and, as far as
vegetation is concerned, it may be divided into vegetable mould and
stiff clay--each, as they usually occur, remarkably characteristic in
composition of such soils. Bog-earth is very rare, nor did I find
peat at any elevation.

The clay is uniformly of great tenacity, and is, I believe, wholly
due to the effect of the atmosphere on crumbling gneiss and other
rocks. It makes excellent bricks, is tenacious, seldom friable, and
sometimes accumulated in beds fourteen feet thick, although more
generally only about two feet. In certain localities, beds or narrow
seams of pure felspathic clay and layers of vegetable matter occur in
it, probably wholly due to local causes. An analysis of that near
Dorjiling gives about 30 per cent. of alumina, the rest being silica,
and a fraction of oxide of iron. Lime is wholly unknown as a
constituent of the soil, and only occasionally seen as a stalactitic
deposit from a few springs.

A layer of vegetable earth almost invariably covers the clay to the
depth of from three to twelve or fourteen inches. It is a very rich
black mould, held in its position on the slopes of the hills by the
dense vegetation, and accumulated on the banks of small streams to a
depth at times of three and four feet. The following is an analysis
of an average specimen of the surface-soil of Dorjiling, made for me
by my friend C. J. Muller, Esq., of that place:--

_a._--DRY EARTH.

Anhydrous        83.84
Water            16.16
              ------
                100.00

_b._--ANHYDROUS EARTH.

Humic acid                                                3.89
Humine                                                    4.61
Undecomposed vegetable matter                            20.98
Peroxide of iron and manganese                            7.05
Alumina                                                   8.95
Siliceous matter, insoluble in dilute hydrochloric acid  54.52
Traces of soda and muriatic acid                         --
                                                      ------
                                                        100.00

_c._--Soluble in water, gr. 1.26 per cent., consisting of soda,
muriatic acid, organic matter, and silica.

The soil from which this example was taken was twelve inches deep; it
abounded to the eye in vegetable matter, and was siliceous to the
touch. There were no traces of phosphates or of animal matter, and
doubtful traces of lime and potash. The subsoil of clay gave only 5.7
per cent. of water, and 5.55 of organic matter. The above analysis
was conducted during the rainy month of September, and the sample is
an average one of the surface-soil at 6000 to 10,000 feet. There is,
I think, little difference anywhere in the soils at this elevation,
except where the rock is remarkably micaceous, or where veins of
felspathic granite, by their decomposition, give rise to small beds
of kaolin.



APPENDIX D.

(Vol. i., chapter ii.)

AN AURORA SEEN FROM BAROON ON THE EAST BANK OF THE SOANE RIVER.

Lat. 24 degrees 52 minutes N.; Long. 84 degrees 22 minutes E.;
Alt. 345 feet.

The following appearances are as noted in my journal at the time.
They so entirely resembled auroral beams, that I had no hesitation in
pronouncing them at the time to be such. This opinion has, however,
been dissented from by some meteorologists, who consider that certain
facts connected with the geographical distribution of auroras (if I
may use the term), are opposed to it. I am well aware of the force of
these arguments, which I shall not attempt to controvert; but for the
information of those who may be interested in the matter, I may
remark, that I am very familiar with the Aurora borealis in the
northern temperate zone, and during the Antarctic expedition was in
the habit of recording in the log-book the appearance presented by
the Aurora australis. The late Mr. Williams, Mr. Haddon, and Mr.
Theobald, who were also witnesses of the appearances on this
occasion, considered it a brilliant display of the aurora.

_Feb. 14th,_ 9 p.m.--Bax. Corr. 29.751; temp. 62 degrees;
D.P. 41.0 degrees; calm, sky clear; moon three-quarters full,
and bright.

Observed about thirty lancet beams rising in the north-west from a
low luminous arch, whose extremes bore W. 20 degrees S., and N. 50
degrees E.; altitude of upper limb of arch 20 degrees, of the lower
8 degrees. The beams crossed the zenith, and converged towards S. 15
degrees E. The extremity of the largest was forked, and extended to
25 degrees above the horizon in the S.E. by S. quarter. The extremity
of the centre one bore S. 50 degrees E., and was 45 degrees above the
horizon. The western beams approached nearest the southern horizon.
All the beams moved and flashed slowly, occasionally splitting and
forking, fading and brightening; they were brightly defined, though
the milky way and zodiacal light could not be discerned, and the
stars and planets, though clearly discernible, were very pale.

At 10 p.m., the luminous appearance was more diffused; upper limb of
the arch less defined; no beams crossed the zenith; but occasionally
beams appeared there and faded away.

Between 10 and 11, the beams continued to move and replace one
another, as usual in auroras, but disappeared from the south-east
quarter, and became broader in the northern hemisphere; the longest
beams were near the north and north-east horizon.

At half-past 10, a dark belt, 4 degrees broad, appeared in the
luminous arch, bearing from N. 55 degrees W. to N. 10 degrees W.; its
upper limb was 10 degrees above the horizon: it then gradually
dilated, and thus appeared to break up the arch. This appeared to be
the commencement of the dispersion of the phenomenon.

At 10.50 p.m. the dark band had increased so much in breadth that the
arch was broken up in the north-west, and no beams appeared there.
Eighteen linear beams rose from the eastern part of the arch, and
bore from north to N. 20 degrees E.

Towards 11 p.m., the dark band appeared to have replaced the luminous
arch; the beams were all but gone, a few fragments appearing in the
N.E. A southerly wind sprang up, and a diffused light extended along
the horizon.

At midnight, I saw two faint beams to the north-east, and two well
defined parallel ones in the south-west.


APPENDIX E.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SIKKIM HIMALAYA, EAST NEPAL,
AND ADJACENT PROVINCES OF TIBET.

Sikkim is included in a section of the Himalaya, about sixty miles
broad from east to west, where it is bounded respectively by the
mountain states of Bhotan and Nepal. Its southern limits are easily
defined, for the mountains rise abruptly from the plains of Bengal,
as spurs of 6000 to 10,000 feet high, densely clothed with forest to
their summits. The northern and north-eastern frontier of Sikkim is
beyond the region of much rain, and is not a natural, but a political
line, drawn between that country and Tibet. Sikkim lies nearly due
north of Calcutta, and only four hundred miles from the Bay of
Bengal; its latitude being 26 degrees 40 minutes to 28 degrees N.,
and longitude 88 degrees to 89 degrees E.

The main features of Sikkim are Kinchinjunga, the loftiest hitherto
measured mountain, which lies to its north-west, and rises 28,178
feet above the level of the sea; and the Teesta river, which flows
throughout the length of the country, and has a course of upwards of
ninety miles in a straight line. Almost all the sources of the Teesta
are included in Sikkim; and except some comparatively insignificant
streams draining the outermost ranges, there are no rivers in this
country but itself and its feeders, which occupy the largest of the
Himalayan valleys between the Tambur in East Nepal, and the Machoo in
Western Bhotan.

An immense spur, sixty miles long, stretches south from Kinchin to
the plains of India; it is called Singalelah, and separates Sikkim
from East Nepal; the waters from its west flank flow into the Tambur,
and those from the east into the Great Rungeet, a feeder of the
Teesta. Between these two latter rivers is a second spur from
Kinchinjunga, terminating in Tendong.

The eastern boundary of Sikkim, separating it from Bhotan, is formed
for the greater part by the Chola range, which stretches south from
the immense mountain of Donkia, 23,176 feet high, situated fifty
miles E.N.E. of Kinchinjunga: where the frontier approaches the
plains of India, the boundary line follows the course of the Teesta,
and of the Rinkpo, one of its feeders, flowing from the Chola range.
This range is much more lofty than that of Singalelah, and the
drainage from its eastern flank is into the Machoo river, the upper
part of whose course is in Tibet, and the lower in Bhotan.

The Donkia mountain, though 4000 feet lower than Kinchin, is the
culminant point of a much more extensive and elevated mountain mass.
It throws off an immense spur from its north-west face, which runs
west, and then south-west, to Kinchin, forming the watershed of all
the remote sources of the Teesta. This spur has a mean elevation of
18,000 to 19,000 feet, and several of its peaks (of which Chomiomo is
one) rise much higher. The northern boundary of Sikkim is not drawn
along this, but runs due west from Donkia, following a shorter, but
stupendous spur, called Kinchinjhow; whence it crosses the Teesta to
Chomiomo, and is continued onwards to Kinchinjunga.

Though the great spur connecting Donkia with Kinchin is in Tibet, and
bounds the waters that flow directly south into the Teesta, it is far
from the true Himalayan axis, for the rivers that rise on its
northern slope do not run into the valley of the Tsampu, or Tibetan
Burrampooter, but into the Arun of Nepal, which rises to the north of
Donkia, and flows south-west for many miles in Tibet, before entering
Nepal and flowing south to the Ganges.

Sikkim, thus circumscribed, consists of a mass of mountainous spurs,
forest-clad up to 12,000 feet; there are no flat valleys or plains in
the whole country, no lakes or precipices of any consequence below
that elevation, and few or no bare slopes, though the latter are
uniformly steep. The aspect of Sikkim can only be understood by a
reference to its climate and vegetation, and I shall therefore take
these together, and endeavour, by connecting these phenomena, to give
an intelligible view of the main features of the whole country.*
[This I did with reference especially to the cultivation of
Rhododendrons, in a paper which the Horticultural Society of London
did me the honour of printing. Quarterly Journ. of Hort. Soc., vol.
vii., p. 82.]

The greater part of the country between Sikkim and the sea is a dead
level, occupied by the delta of the Ganges and Burrampooter, above
which the slope is so gradual to the base of the mountains, that the
surface of the plain from which the Himalayas immediately rise is
only 300 feet above the sea. The most obvious effect of this position
is, that the prevailing southerly wind reaches the first range of
hills, loaded with vapour. The same current, when deflected easterly
to Bhotan, or westerly to Nepal and the north-west Himalaya, is
intercepted and drained of much moisture, by the Khasia and Garrow
mountains (south of Assam and the Burrampooter) in the former case,
and the Rajmahal hills (south of the Ganges) in the latter. Sikkim is
hence the dampest region of the whole Himalaya.

Viewed from a distance on the plains of India, Sikkim presents the
appearance--common to all mountainous countries--of consecutive
parallel ridges, running east and west: these are all wooded, and
backed by a beautiful range of snowy peaks, with occasional breaks in
the foremost ranges, through which the rivers debouch. Any view of
the Himalaya, especially at a sufficient distance for the remote
snowy peaks to be seen overtopping the outer ridges, is, however,
rare, from the constant deposition of vapours over the forest-clad
ranges during the greater part of the year, and the haziness of the
dry atmosphere of the plains in the winter months. At the end of the
rains, when the south-east monsoon has ceased to blow with constancy,
views are obtained, sometimes from a distance of nearly two hundred
miles. From the plains, the highest peaks subtend so small an angle,
that they appear like white specks very low on the horizon, tipping
the black lower and outer wooded ranges, which always rise out of a
belt of haze, and from the density, probably, of the lower strata of
atmosphere, are never seen to rest on the visible horizon.
The remarkable lowness on the horizon of the whole stupendous mass is
always a disappointing feature to the new comer, who expects to see
dazzling peaks towering in the air. Approaching nearer, the snowy
mountains sink behind the wooded ones, long before the latter have
assumed gigantic proportions; and when they do so, they appear a
sombre, lurid grey-green mass of vegetation, with no brightness or
variation of colour. There is no break in this forest caused by rock,
precipices, or cultivation; some spurs project nearer, and some
valleys appear to retire further into the heart of the foremost great
chain that shuts out all the country beyond.

From Dorjiling the appearance of parallel ridges is found to be
deceptive, and due to the inosculating spurs of long tortuous ranges
that ran north and south throughout the whole length of Sikkim,
dividing deep wooded valleys, which form the beds of large rivers.
The snowy peaks here look like a long east and west range of
mountains, at an average distance of thirty or forty miles.
Advancing into the country, this appearance proves equally deceptive,
and the snowy range is resolved into isolated peaks, situated on the
meridional ridges; their snow-clad spurs, projecting east and west,
cross one another, and being uniformly white, appear to connect the
peaks into one grand unbroken range. The rivers, instead of having
their origin in the snowy mountains, rise far beyond them; many of
their sources are upwards of one hundred miles in a straight line
from the plains, in a very curious country, loftier by far in mean
elevation than the meridional ridges which run south from it, yet
comparatively bare of snow. This rearward part of the mountain region
is Tibet, where all the Sikkim, Nepal, and Bhotan rivers rise as
small streams, increasing in size as they receive the drainage from
the snowed parts of the ridges that bound them in their courses.
Their banks, between 8000 and 14,000 feet, are generally clothed with
rhododendrons, sometimes to the almost total exclusion of other woody
vegetation, especially near the snowy mountains--a cool temperature
and great humidity being the most favourable conditions for the
luxuriant growth of this genus.

The source of this humidity is the southerly or sea wind which blows
steadily from May till October in Sikkim, and prevails throughout the
rest of the year, if not as the monsoon properly so called, as a
current from the moist atmosphere above the Gangetic delta.
This rushes north to the rarefied regions of Sikkim, up the great
valleys, and does not appear materially disturbed by the north-
west wind, which blows during the afternoons of the winter months
over the plains, and along the flanks of the outer range, and is a
dry surface current, due to the diurnal heating of the soil. When it
is considered that this wind, after passing lofty mountains on the
outer range, has to traverse eighty or one hundred miles of alps
before it has watered all the forest region, it will be evident that
its moisture must be expended before it reaches Tibet.

Let the figures in the accompanying woodcut, the one on the true
scale, the other with the heights exaggerated, represent two of these
long meridional ridges, from the watershed to the plains of India,
following in this instance the course of the Teesta river, from its
source at 19,000 feet to where it debouches from the Himalaya at 300.
The lower rugged outline represents one meridional ridge, with all
its most prominent peaks (whether exactly or not on the line of
section); the upper represents the parallel ridge of Singalelah
(D.E.P.), of greater mean elevation, further west, introduced to show
the maximum elevation of the Sikkim mountains, Kinchinjunga (28,178
feet), being represented on it. A deep valley is interposed between
these two ridges, with a feeder of the Teesta in it (the Great
Rungeet), which runs south from Kinchin, and turning west enters the
Teesta at R. The position of the bed of the Teesta river is indicated
by a dotted line from its source at T to the plains at S; of
Dorjiling, on the north flank of the outer range, by _d_; of the
first point where perpetual snow is met with, by P; and of the first
indications of a Tibetan climate, by C.

Illustration--SECTION OF THE SIKKIM HIMALAYA ALONG THE COURSE OF THE
TEESTA RIVER.

A warm current of Air, loaded with vapour, will deposit the bulk of
its moisture on the ridge of Sinchul, which rises above Dorjiling
(_d_), and is 8,500 feet high. Passing on, little will be
precipitated on _e_ whose elevation is the same as that of Sinchul;
but much at _f_ (11,000 feet), where the current, being further
cooled, has less capacity for holding vapour, and is further
exhausted. When it ascends to P (15,000 feet) it is sufficiently
cooled to deposit snow in the winter and spring months, more of which
falling than can be melted during the summer, it becomes perennial.
At the top of ginchin very little falls, and it is doubtful if the
southerly current ever reaches that prodigiously elevated isolated
summit. The amount of surface above 20,000 feet is, however, too
limited and broken into isolated peaks to drain the already nearly,
exhausted current, whose condensed vapours roll along in fog beyond
the parallel of Kinchin, are dissipated during the day over the arid
mountains of Tibet, and deposited at night on the cooled surface of
the earth.

Other phenomena of no less importance than the distribution of
vapour, and more or less depending on it, are the duration and amount
of solar and terrestrial radiation. Towards D the sun is rarely seen
during the rainy season, as well from the constant presence of nimbi
aloft, as from fog on the surface of the ground. An absence of both
light and heat is the result south of the parallel of Kinchin; and at
C low fogs prevail at the same season, but do not intercept either
the same amount of light or heat; whilst at T there is much sunshine
and bright light. During the night, again, there is no terrestrial
radiation between S and P; the rain either continues to pour--in some
months with increased violence--or the saturated atmosphere is
condensed into a thick white mist, which hangs over the redundant
vegetation. A bright starlight night is almost unknown in the summer
months at 6000 to 10,000 feet, but is frequent in December and
January, and at intervals between October and May, when, however,
vegetation is little affected by the cold of nocturnal radiation.
In the regions north of Kinchin, starlight nights are more frequent,
and the cold produced by radiation, at 14,000 feet, is often severe
towards the end of the rains in September. Still the amount of clear
weather during the night is small; the fog clears off for an hour or
two at sunset as the wind falls, but the returning cold north current
again chills the air soon afterwards, and rolling masses of vapour
are hence flying overhead, or sweeping the surface of the earth,
throughout the summer nights. In the Tibetan regions, on the other
hand, bright nights and even sharp frosts prevail throughout the
warmest months.

Referring again to the cut, it must be borne in mind that neither of
the two meridional ridges runs in a straight line, but that they wind
or zigzag as all mountain ranges do; that spurs from each ridge are
given off from either flank alternately, and that the origin of a
spur on one side answers to the source of a river (_i.e.,_ the head
of a valley) on the other. These rivers are feeders of the main
stream, the Teesta, and run at more or less of an angle to the
latter. The spurs from the east flank of one ridge cross, at their
ends, those from the west flank of another; and thus transverse
valleys are formed, presenting many modifications of climate with
regard to exposure, temperature, and humidity.

The roads from the plains of India to the watershed in Tibet always
cross these lateral spurs. The main ridge is too winding and rugged,
and too lofty for habitation throughout the greater part of its
length, while the river-channel is always very winding, unhealthy for
the greater part of the year below 4000 feet, and often narrow,
gorge-like, and rocky. The villages are always placed above the
unhealthy regions, on the lateral spurs, which the traveller
repeatedly crosses throughout every day's march; for these spurs give
off lesser ones, and these again others of a third degree, whence the
country is cut up into as many spurs, ridges, and ranges, as there
are rills, streams, and rivers amongst the mountains.

Though the direction of the main atmospheric current is to the north,
it is in reality seldom felt to be so, except the observer be on the
very exposed mountain tops, or watch the motions of the upper strata
of atmosphere. Lower currents of air rush up both the main and
lateral valleys, throughout the day; and from the sinuosities in the
beds of the rivers, and the generally transverse directions of their
feeders, the current often becomes an east or west one. In the branch
valleys draining to the north the wind still ascends; it is, in
short, an ascending warm, moist current, whatever course be pursued
by the valleys it follows.

The sides of each valley are hence equally supplied with moisture,
though local circumstances render the soil on one or the other flank
more or less humid and favourable to a luxuriant vegetation: such
differences are a drier soil on the north side, with a too free
exposure to the sun at low elevations, where its rays, however
transient, rapidly dry the ground, and where the rains, though very
heavy, are of shorter duration, and where, owing to the capacity of
the heated air for retaining moisture, day fogs are comparatively
rare. In the northern parts of Sikkim, again, some of the lateral
valleys are so placed that the moist wind strikes the side facing the
south, and keeps it very humid, whilst the returning cold current
from the neighbouring Tibetan mountains impinges against the side
facing the north, which is hence more bare of vegetation. An infinite
number of local peculiarities will suggest themselves to any one
conversant with physical geography, as causing unequal local
distribution of light, heat, and moisture in the different valleys of
so irregular a country; namely, the amount of slope, and its power of
retaining moisture and soil; the composition and hardness of the
rocks; their dip and strike; the protection of some valleys by lofty
snowed ridges; and the free southern exposures of others at
great elevations.

The position and elevation of the perpetual snow* [It appears to me,
as I have asserted in the pages of my Journal, that the limit of
perpetual snow is laid down too low in all mountain regions, and that
accumulations in hollows, and the descent of glacial ice, mask the
phenomenon more effectually than is generally allowed. In this work I
define the limit, as is customary, in general terms only, as being
that where the accumulations are very great, and whence they are
continuous upwards, on gentle slopes. All perpetual snow, however,
becomes ice, and, as such, obeys the laws of glacial motion, moving
as a viscous fluid; whence it follows that the lower edge of a
snow-bed placed on a slope is, in one sense, the termination of a
glacier, and indicates a position below that where all the snow that
falls melts. I am well aware that it is impossible to define the
limit required with any approach to accuracy. Steep and broken
surfaces, with favourable exposures to the sun or moist winds, are
bare much above places where snow lies throughout the year; but the
occurrence of a gentle slope, free of snow, and covered with plants,
cannot but indicate a point below that of perpetual snow. Such is the
case with the "Jardin" on the Mer de Glace, whose elevation is 9,500
feet, whereas that of perpetual snow is considered by Professor J.
Forbes, our best authority, to be 8,500 feet. Though limited in area,
girdled by glaciers, presenting a very gentle slope to the east, and
screened by surrounding mountains from a considerable proportion of
the sun's rays, the Jardin is clear, for fully three months of the
year, of all but sporadic falls of snow, that never lie long; and so
are similar spots placed higher on the neighbouring slopes; which
facts are quite at variance with the supposition that the perpetual
snow-line is below that point in the Mont Blanc Alps. On the Monte
Rosa Alps, again, Dr. Thomson and I gathered plants in flower, above
12,000 feet on the steep face of the Weiss-thor Pass, and at 10,938
feet on the top of St. Theodule; but in the former case the rocks are
too steep for any snow to lie, they are exposed to the south-east,
and overhang a gorge 8000 feet deep, up which no doubt warm currents
ascend; while at St. Theodule the plants were growing on a slope
which, though gentle, is black and stony, and exposed to warm
ascending currents, as on the Weiss-thor; and I do not consider
either of these as evidences of the limit of perpetual snow being
higher than their position.] vary with those of the individual
ranges, and their exposure to the south wind. The expression that the
perpetual snow lies lower and deeper on the southern slopes of the
Himalayan mountains than on the northern, conveys a false impression.
It is better to say that the snow lies deeper and lower on the
southern faces of the individual mountains and spurs that form the
snowy Himalaya. The axis itself of the chain is generally far north
of the position of the spurs that catch all the snow, and has
comparatively very little snow on it, most of what there is lying
upon north exposures.

A reference to the woodcut will show that the same circumstances
which affect the distribution of moisture and vegetation, determine
the position, amount, and duration of the snow. The principal fall
will occur, as before shown, where the meridional range first attains
a sufficiently great elevation, and the air becomes consequently
cooled below 32 degrees; this is at a little above 14,000 feet,
sporadic falls occurring even in summer at that elevation: these,
however, melt immediately, and the copious winter falls also are
dissipated before June. As the depth of rain-fall diminishes in
advancing north to the higher parts of the meridional ranges, so does
that of the snow-fall. The permanence of the snow, again, depends
on--1. The depth of the accumulation; 2. The mean temperature of the
spot; 3. The melting power of the sun's rays; 4. The prevalence and
strength of evaporating winds. Now at 14,000 feet, though the
accumulation is immense, the amount melted by the sun's rays is
trifling, and there are no evaporating winds; but the mean
temperature is so high, and the corroding powers of the rain (which
falls abundantly throughout summer) and of the warm and humid
ascending currents are so great, that the snow is not perennial.
At 15,500 feet, again, it becomes perennial, and its permanence at
this low elevation (at P) is much favoured by the accumulation and
detention of fogs over the rank vegetation which prevails from S
nearly to P; and by the lofty mountains beyond it, which shield it
from the returning dry currents from the north. In proceeding north
all the circumstances that tend to the dispersion of the snow
increase, whilst the fall diminishes. At P the deposition is enormous
and the snow-line low--16,000 feet; whilst at T little falls, and the
limit of perpetual snow is 19,000 and 20,000 feet. Hence the anomaly,
that the snow-line ascends in advancing north to the coldest
Himalayan regions. The position of the greatest peaks and of the
greatest mass of perpetual snow being generally assumed as indicating
a ridge and watershed, travellers, arguing from single mountains
alone, on the meridional ridges, have at one time supported and at
another denied the assertion, that the snow lies longer and deeper on
the north than on the south slope of the Himalayan ridge.

The great accumulation of snow at 15,000 feet, in the parallel of P,
exercises a decided influence on the vegetation. The alpine
rhododendrons hardly reach 14,000 feet in the broad valleys and
round-headed spurs of the mountains of the Tunkra and Chola passes;
whilst the same species ascend to 16,000, and one to 17,000 feet, at
T. Beyond the latter point, again, the great aridity of the climate
prevents their growth, and in Tibet there are generally none even as
low as 12,000 and 14,000 feet. Glaciers, again, descend to 15,000
feet in the tortuous gorges which immediately debouch from the snows
of Kinchinjunga, but no plants grow on the debris they carry down,
nor is there any sward of grass or herbage at their base, the
atmosphere immediately around being chilled by enormous accumulations
of snow, and the summer sun rarely warming the soil. At T, again, the
glaciers do not descend below 16,000 feet, but a greensward of
vegetation creeps up to their bases, dwarf rhododendrons cover the
moraines, and herbs grow on the patches of earth carried down by the
latter, which are thawed by the more frequent sunshine, and by the
radiation of heat from the unsnowed flanks of the valleys down which
these ice-streams pour.

Looking eastward or westward on the map of India, we perceive that
the phenomenon of perpetual snow is regulated by the same laws.
From the longitude of Upper Assam in 95 degrees E to that of Kashmir
in 75 degrees E, the lowest limit of perpetual snow is 15,500 to
16,000 feet, and a shrubby vegetation affects the most humid
localities near it, at 12,000 to 14,000 feet. Receding from the
plains of India and penetrating the mountains, the climate becomes
drier, the snowline rises, and vegetation diminishes, whether the
elevation of the land increases or decreases; plants reaching 17,000
and 18,000 feet, and the snow-line, 20,000 feet. To mention extreme
cases; the snow-level of Sikkim in 27 degrees 30 minutes is at 16,000
feet, whereas in latitude 35 degrees 30 minutes Dr. Thomson found the
snow line 20,000 feet on the mountains near the Karakoram Pass, and
vegetation up to 18,500 feet--features I found to be common also to
Sikkim in latitude 28 degrees.

The Himalaya, north of Nepal, and thence eastward to the bend of the
Yaru-Tsampu (or Tibetan Burrampooter) has for its geographical limits
the plains of India to the south, and the bed of the Yaru to the
north. All between these limits is a mountain mass, to which Tibet
(though so often erroneously called a plain)* [The only true account
of the general features of eastern Tibet is to be found in MM. Huc
and Gabet's travels. Their description agrees with Dr. Thomson's
account of western Tibet, and with my experience of the parts to the
north of Sikkim, and the information I everywhere obtained.
The so-called _plains_ are the flat floors of the valleys, and the
terraces on the margins of the rivers, which all flow between
stupendous mountains. The term "maidan," so often applied to Tibet by
the natives, implies, not a plain like that of India, but simply an
open, dry, treeless country, in contrast to the densely wooded wet
regions of the snowy Himalaya, south of Tibet.] forms no exception.
The waters from the north side of this chain flow into the Tsampu,
and those from the south side into the Burrampooter of Assam, and the
Ganges. The line, however tortuous, dividing the heads of these
waters, is the watershed, and the only guide we have to the axis of
the Himalaya. This has never been crossed by Europeans, except by
Captain Turner's embassy in 1798, and Captain Bogle's in 1779, both
of which reached the Yaru river. In the account published by Captain
Turner, the summit of the watershed is not rigorously defined, and
the boundary, of Tibet and Bhotan is sometimes erroneously taken for
it; the boundary being at that point a southern spur of Chumulari.*
[Between Donkia and Chumulari lies a portion of Tibet (including the
upper part of the course of the Machoo river) bounded on the east by
Bhotan, and on the west by Sikkim (see chapter xxii). Turner, when
crossing the Simonang Pass, descended westwards into the valley of
the Machoo, and was still on the Indian watershed.] Eastwards from
the sources of the Tsampu, the watershed of the Himalaya seems to
follow a very winding course, and to be everywhere to the north of
the snowy peaks seen from the plains of India. It is by a line
through these snowy peaks that the axis of the Himalaya is
represented in all our maps; because they _seem_ from the plains to
be situated on an east and west ridge, instead of being placed on
subsidiary meridional ridges, as explained above. It is also across
or along the subsidiary ridges that the boundary line between the
Tibetan provinces and those of Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhotan, is usually
drawn; because the enormous accumulations of snow form a more
efficient natural barrier than the greater height of the less snowed
central part of the chain beyond them.

Though, however, our maps draw the axis through the snowy peaks,
they also make the rivers to rise beyond the latter, on the northern
slopes as it were, and to flow southwards through gaps in the axis.
Such a feature is only reconcilable with the hypothesis of the chain
being double, as the Cordillera of Peru and Chili is said to be,
geographically, and which in a geological sense it no doubt is: but
to the Cordillera the Himalaya offers no parallel. The results of
Dr. Thomson's study of the north-west Himalaya and Tibet, and
my own of the north-east extreme of Sikkim and Tibet, first gave
me an insight into the true structure of this chain. Donkia mountain
is the culminant point of an immensely elevated mass of mountains, of
greater mean height than a similarly extensive area around Kinchin
junga. It comprises Chumulari, and many other mountains much
above 20,000 feet, though none equalling Kinchinjunga, Junnoo, and
Kubra. The great lakes of Ramchoo and Cholamoo are placed on it; and
the rivers rising on it flow in various directions; the Painomchoo
north-west into the Yaru; the Arun west to Nepal; the Teesta south-
west through Sikkim; the Machoo south, and the Pachoo south-east,
through Bhotan. All these rivers have their sources far beyond the
great snowed mountains, the Arun most conspicuously of all, flowing
completely at the back or north of Kinchinjunga. Those that flow
southwards, break through no chain, nor do they meet any contraction
as they pass the snowy parts of the mountains which bound the valleys
in which they flow, but are bound by uniform ranges of lofty
mountains, which become more snowy as they approach the plains of
India. These valleys, however, gradually contract as they descend,
being less open in Sikkim and Nepal than in Tibet, though there
bounded by rugged mountains, which from being so bare of snow and of
vegetation, do not give the same impression of height as the isolated
sharper peaks which rise out of a dense forest, and on which the snow
limit is 4,000 or 5,000 feet lower.

The fact of the bottom of the river valleys being flatter towards the
watershed, is connected with that of their fall being less rapid at
that part of their course; this is the consequence of the great
extent in breadth of the most elevated portion of the chain. If we
select the Teesta as an example, and measure its fall at three points
of its course, we shall find the results very different. From its
principal source at Lake Cholamoo, it descends from 17,000 to 15,000
feet, with a fall of 60 feet to the mile; from 15,000 to 12,000 feet,
the fall is 140 feet to the mile; in the third part of its course it
descends from 12,000 to 5000 feet, with a fall of 160 feet to the
mile; and in the lower part the descent is from 5000 feet to the
plains of India at 300 feet, giving a fall of 50 feet to the mile.
There is, however, no marked limit to these divisions; its valley.
gradually contracts, and its course gradually becomes more rapid.
It is worthy of notice that the fall is at its maximum through that
part of its valley of which the flanks are the most loaded with snow;
where the old moraines are very conspicuous, and where the present
accumulations from landslips, etc., are the most extensive.* [It is
not my intention to discuss here the geological bearings of this
curious question; but I may state that as the humidity of the climate
of the middle region of the river-course tends to increase the fall
in a given space, so I believe the dryness of the climate of the
loftier country has the opposite effect, by preserving those
accumulations which have raised the floors of the valleys and
rendered them level.]

With reference to Kinchinjunga, these facts are of importance, as
showing that mere elevation is in physical geography of secondary
importance. That lofty mountain rises from a spur of the great range
of Donkia, and is quite removed from the watershed or axis of the
Himalaya, the rivers which drain its northern and southern flanks
alike flowing to the Ganges. Were the Himalaya to be depressed 18,000
feet, Kubra, Junnoo, Pundim, etc., would form a small cluster of
rocky islands 1000 to 7000 feet high, grouped near Kinchinjunga,
itself a cape 10,000 feet high, which would be connected by a low,
marrow neck, with an extensive and mountainous tract of land to its
north-east; the latter being represented by Donkia. To the north of
Kinchin a deep bay or inlet would occupy the present valley of the
Arun, and would be bounded on the north by the axis of the Himalaya,
which would form a continuous tract of land beyond it. Since writing
the above, I have seen Professor J. Forbes's beautiful work on the
glaciers of Norway: it fully justifies a comparison of the Himalaya
to Norway, which has long been a familiar subject of theoretical
enquiry with Dr. Thomson and myself. The deep narrow valleys of
Sikkim admirably represent the Norwegian fiords; the lofty, rugged,
snowy mountains, those more or less submerged islands of the
Norwegian coast; the broad rearward watershed, or axis of the chain,
with its lakes, is the same in both, and the Yaru-tsampu occupies the
relative position of the Baltic.

Along the whole chain of the Himalaya east of Kumaon there are, I
have no doubt, a succession of such lofty masses as Donkia, giving
off stupendous spurs such as that on which Kinchin forms so
conspicuous a feature. In support of this view we find every river
rising far beyond the snowy peaks, which are separated by
continuously unsnowed ranges placed between the great white masses
that these spurs present to the observer from the south.* [At vol. i.
chapter viii, I have particularly called attention to the fact, that
west of Kinchinjunga there is no continuation of a snowy Himalaya, as
it is commonly called. So between Donkia and Chumulari there is no
perpetual snow, and the valley of the Machoo is very broad, open, and
comparatively flat.] From the Khasia mountains (south-east of Sikkim)
many of these groups or spurs were seen by Dr. Thomson and myself, at
various distances (80 to 210 miles); and these groups were between
the courses of the great rivers the Soobansiri, Monass, and Pachoo,
all east of Sikkim. Other masses seen from the Gangetic valley
probably thus mark the relative positions of the Arun, Cosi, Gunduk,
and Gogra rivers.

Another mass like that of Chumulari and Donkia, is that around the
Mansarowar lakes, so ably surveyed by the brothers Captains R. and H.
Strachey, which is evidently the centre of the Himalaya. From it the
Gogra, Sutlej, Indus, and Yaru rivers all flow to the Indian side of
Asia; and from it spring four chains, two of which are better known
than the others. These are:--1. The eastern Himalaya, whose axis runs
north of Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhotan, to the bend of the Yaru, the
valley of which it divides from the plains of India. 2. The
north-west Himalaya, which separates the valley of the Indus from the
plains of India. Behind these, and probably parallel to them, lie two
other chains. 3. The Kouenlun or Karakoram chain, dividing the Indus
from the Yarkand river. 4. The chain north of the Yaru, of which
nothing is known. All the waters from the two first of these chains,
flow into the Indian Ocean, as do those from the south faces of the
third and fourth; those from the north side of the Kouenlun, and of
the chain north of the Yaru, flow into the great valley of Lake Lhop,
which may once have been continuous with the Amoor river.* [The
Chinese assert that Lake Lhop once drained into the Hoang-ho; the
statement is curious, and capable of confirmation when central Asia
shall have been explored.]

For this view of the physical geography of the western Himalaya and
central Asia, I am indebted to Dr. Thomson. It is more consonant with
nature, and with what we know of the geography of the country and of
the nature of mountain chains, than that of the illustrious Humboldt,
who divides central Asia by four parallel chains, united by two
meridional ones; one at each extremity of the mountain district.
It follows in continuation and conclusion of our view that the
mountain mass of Pamir or Bolor, between the sources of the Oxus and
those of the Yarkand river, may be regarded as a centre from which
spring the three greatest mountain systems of Asia. These are:--1. A
great chain, which runs in a north-easterly direction as far as
Behring's Straits, separating all the rivers of Siberia from those
which flow into the Pacific Ocean. 2. The Hindoo Koosh, continued
through Persia, and Armenia into Taurus. And, 3. The Muztagh or
Karakorum, which probably extends due east into China, south of the
Hoang-ho, but which is broken up north of Mansarowar into the chains
which have been already enumerated.



APPENDIX F.

ON THE CLIMATE OF SIKKIM.

The meteorology of Sikkim, as of every part of the Himalayan range,
is a subject of growing interest and importance; as it becomes yearly
more necessary for the Government to afford increased facilities for
a residence in the mountains to Europeans in search of health, or of
a salubrious climate for their families, or for themselves on
retirement from the exhausting service of the plains. I was therefore
surprised to find no further register of the weather at Dorjiling,
than an insufficient one of the rain-fall, kept by the medical
officer in charge of the station; who, in this, as in all similar
cases,* [The government of India has gone to an immense expense, and
entailed a heavy duty upon its stationary medical officers, in
supplying them with sometimes admirable, but more often very
inaccurate, meteorological instruments, and requiring that daily
registers be made, and transmitted to Calcutta. In no case have I
found it to be in the officer's power to carry out this object; he
has never time, seldom the necessary knowledge and experience, and
far too often no inclination. The majority of the observations are in
most cases left to personal native or other servants, and the
laborious results I have examined are too frequently worthless.] has
neither the time nor the opportunity to give even the minimum of
required attention to the subject of meteorology. This defect has
been in a measure remedied by Dr. Chapman, who kept a twelve-months'
register in 1837, with instruments carefully compared with Calcutta
standards by the late James Prinsep, Esq., one of the most
accomplished men in literature and science that India ever saw.

The annual means of temperature, rain-fall, etc., vary greatly in the
Himalaya; and apparently slight local causes produce such great
differences of temperature and humidity, that one year's observations
taken at one spot, however full and accurate they may be, are
insufficient: this is remarkably the case in Sikkim, where the
rainfall is great, and where the difference between those of two
consecutive years is often greater than the whole annual London fall.
My own meteorological observations necessarily form but a broken
series, but they were made with the best instruments, and with a view
to obtaining results that should be comparable _inter se,_ and with
those of Calcutta; when away from Dorjiling too, in the interior of
Sikkim, I had the advantage of Mr. Muller's services in taking
observations at hours agreed upon previous to my leaving, and these
were of the greatest importance, both for calculating elevations, and
for ascertaining the differences of temperature, humidity, diurnal
atmospheric tide, and rain-fall; all of which vary with the
elevation, and the distance from the plains of India.

Mr. Hodgson's house proved a most favourable spot for an observatory,
being placed on the top of the Dorjiling spur, with its broad
verandah facing the north, in which I protected the instruments from
radiation* [This is a most important point, generally wholly
neglected in India, where I have usually seen the thermometer hung in
good shade, but exposed to reflected heat from walls, gravel walks,
or dry earth. I am accustomed from experience to view all extreme
temperatures with great suspicion, on this and other accounts. It is
very seldom that the temperature of the free shaded air rises much
above 100 degrees, except during hot winds, when the lower stratum
only of atmosphere (often loaded with hot particles of sand), sweeps
over the surface of a soil scorched by the direct rays of the sun.]
and wind. Broad grass-plots and a gravel walk surrounded the house,
and large trees were scattered about; on three sides the ground
sloped away, while to the north the spur gently rose behind.

Throughout the greater part of the year the prevailing wind is from
the south-east, and comes laden with moisture from the Bay of Bengal:
it rises at sunrise, and its vapours are early condensed on the
forests of Sinchul; billowy clouds rapidly succeed small patches of
vapour, which rolling over to the north side of the mountain, are
carried north-west, over a broad intervening valley, to Dorjiling.
There they bank on the east side of the spur, and this being
partially clear of wood, the accumulation is slow, and always first
upon the clumps of trees. Very generally by 9 a.m., the whole eastern
sky, from the top of Dorjiling ridge, is enveloped in a dense fog,
while the whole western exposure enjoys sunshine for an hour or two
later. At 7 or 8 a.m., very small patches are seen to collect on
Tonglo, which gradually dilate and coalesce, but do not shroud the
mountain for some hours, generally not before 11 a.m. or noon.
Before that time, however, masses of mist have been rolling over
Dorjiling ridge to the westward, and gradually filling up the
valleys, so that by noon, or 1 p.m., every object is in cloud.
Towards sunset it falls calm, when the mist rises, first from
Sinchul, or if a south-east wind sets in, from Tonglo first.

The temperature is more uniform at Mr. Hodgson's bungalow, which is
on the top of the Dorjiling ridge, than on either of its flanks; this
is very much because a good deal of wood is left upon it, whose cool
foliage attracts and condenses the mists. Its mean temperature is
lower by nearly 2.5 degrees than that of Mr. Muller's and Dr.
Campbell's houses, both situated on the slopes, 400 feet below.
This I ascertained by numerous comparative observations of the
temperature of the air, and by burying thermometers in the earth: it
is chiefly to be accounted for by the more frequent sunshine at the
lower stations, the power of the sun often raising the thermometer in
shade to 80 degrees, at Mr. Muller's; whereas during the summer I
spent at Mr. Hodgson's it never rose much above 70 degrees, attaining
that height very seldom and for a very short period only. The nights,
again, are uniformly and equally cloudy at both stations, so that
there is no corresponding cold of nocturnal radiation to reduce
the temperature.

The mean decrease of temperature due to elevation, I have stated
(Appendix I.) to be about 1 degree for every 300 feet of ascent;
according to which law Mr. Hodgson's should not be more than 1.5
degrees° colder than Mr. Muller's. These facts prove how difficult it
is to choose unexceptionable sites for meteorological observatories
in mountainous countries; discrepancies of so great an amount being
due to local causes, which, as in this case, are perhaps transient;
for should the top of the spur be wholly cleared of timber, its
temperature would be materially raised; at the expense, probably, of
a deficiency of water at certain seasons. Great inequalities of
temperature are also produced by ascending currents of heated air
from the Great Rungeet valley, which affect certain parts of the
station only; and these raise the thermometer 10 degrees (even when
the sun is clouded) above what it indicates at other places of
equal elevation.

The mean temperature of Dorjiling (elev. 7,430 feet) is very nearly
50 degrees, or 2 degrees higher than that of London, and 26 degrees
below that of Calcutta (78 degrees,* [Prinsep, in As. Soc. Journ.,
Jan. 1832, p. 30.] or 78.5 degrees in the latest published tables*
[Daniell's Met. Essays, vol. ii. p. 341.]); which, allowing 1 degree
of diminution of temperature for every degree of latitude leaves
1 degree due to every 300 feet of ascent above Calcutta to the height
of Dorjiling, agreeably to my own observations. This diminution is
not the same for greater heights, as I shall have occasion to show in
a separate chapter of this Appendix, on the decrement of heat
with elevation.

A remarkable uniformity of temperature prevails throughout the year
at Dorjiling, there being only 22 degrees difference between the mean
temperatures of the hottest and coldest months; whilst in London,
with a lower mean temperature, the equivalent difference is 27
degrees. At 11,000 feet this difference is equal to that of London.
In more elevated regions, it is still greater, the climate becoming
excessive at 15,000 feet, where the difference amounts to 30 degrees
at least.* [This is contrary to the conclusions of all meteorologists
who have studied the climate of the Alps, and is entirely due to the
local disturbances which I have so often dwelt upon, and principally
to the unequal distribution of moisture in the loftier rearward
regions, and the aridity of Tibet. Professor James Forbes states (Ed.
Phil. Trans., v. xiv. p. 489):--1. That the decrement of temperature
with altitude is most rapid in summer: this (as I shall hereafter
show) is not the case in the Himalaya, chiefly because the warm south
moist wind then prevails. 2. That the annual range of temperature
diminishes with the elevation: this, too, is not the case in Sikkim,
because of the barer surface and more cloudless skies of the rearward
loftier regions. 3. That the diurnal range of temperature diminishes
with the height: that this is not the cane follows from the same
cause. 4. That radiation is least in winter: this is negatived by the
influence of the summer rains.] The accompanying table is the result
of an attempt to approximate to the mean temperatures and ranges of
the thermometer at various elevations.

Altitude             11,000 feet   15,000 feet   19,000 feet
Mean shade             40.9          29.8          19.8
Mean warmest month     50.0          40.0          32.0
Mean coldest month     24.0          11.0           0.0
Mean daily range
  of temperature       20.0          27.0          35.0
Rain-fall in inches    40.0          20.0          10.0
1 degree equals         320 feet      350 feet      400 feet

Supposing the same formula to apply (which I exceedingly doubt) to
heights above 19,000 feet, 2 degrees would be the mean annual
temperature of the summit of Kinchinjunga, altitude 28,178 feet, the
loftiest known spot on the globe: this is a degree or two higher than
the temperature of the poles of greatest cold on the earth's surface,
and about the temperature of Spitzbergen and Melville island.

The upper limit of phenogamic vegetation coincides with a mean
temperature of 30 degrees on the south flank of Kinchinjunga, and of
22 degrees in Tibet; in both cases annuals and perennial-rooted
herbaceous plants are to be found at elevations corresponding to
these mean temperatures, and often at higher elevations in sheltered
localities. I have assumed the decrease of temperature for a
corresponding amount of elevation to be gradually less in ascending
(1 degree=320 feet at 6000 to 10,000 feet, 1 degree=400 feet at
14,000 to 18,000 feet). My observations appear to prove this, but I
do not regard them as conclusive; supposing them to be so, I
attribute it to a combination of various causes, especially to the
increased elevation and yet unsnowed condition of the mass of land
elevated above 16,000 feet, and consequent radiation of heat; also to
the greater amount of sunshine there; and to the less dense mists
which obstruct the sun's rays at all elevations. In corroboration of
this I may mention that the decrease of temperature with elevation is
much less in summer than in winter, 1 degree of Fahr. being
equivalent to only 250 feet in January between 7000 and 13,000 feet,
and to upwards of 400 feet in July. Again, at Dorjiling (7,430 feet)
the temperature hardly ever rises above 70 degrees in the summer
months, yet it often rises even higher in Tibet at 12,000 to 14,000
feet. On the other hand, the winters, and the winter nights
especially, are disproportionately cold at great heights, the
thermometer falling upwards of 40 degrees below the Dorjiling
temperature at an elevation only 6000 feet higher.

The diurnal distribution of temperature is equally and similarly
affected by the presence of vapour at different altitudes. The lower
and outer ranges of 6000 to 10,000 feet, first receive the diurnal
charge of vapour-loaded southerly winds; those beyond them get more
of the sun's rays, and the rearward ones more still. Though the
summer days of the northern localities are warmer than their
elevation would indicate, the nights are not proportionally cold; for
the light mist of 14,000 feet, which replaces the dense fog of 7000
feet, effectually obstructs nocturnal radiation, though it is less an
obstacle to solar radiation. Clear nights, be it observed, are as
rare at Momay (15,300 feet) as at Dorjiling, the nights if windy
being rainy; or, if calm, cold currents descend from the mountains,
condensing the moist vapours of the valleys, whose narrow floors are
at sunrise bathed in mist at all elevations in Sikkim. The rise and
dispersion of these dense mists, and their collection and
recondensation on the mountains in the morning, is one of the most
magnificent phenomena of the Himalaya, when viewed from a proper
elevation; it commences as soon as the sun appears on the horizon.

The mean daily range of the thermometer at 7000 feet is 13 degrees in
cleared spots, but considerably less in wooded, and certainly
one-third less in the forest itself. At Calcutta, which has almost an
insular climate, it amounts to 17 degrees; at Delhi, which has a
continental one, to 24.6 degrees; and in London to 17.5 degrees.
At 11,000 feet it amounts to about 20 degrees, and at 15,000 feet to
27 degrees. These values vary widely in the different months, being
much less in the summer or rainy months. The following is probably a
fair approximation:--

At 7,000 feet it amounts to 8-9 degrees in Aug. and Sept., and 17
degrees in Dec. At 11,000 feet it amounts to 12 degrees in Aug. and
Sept., and 30 degrees in Dec. At 15,000 feet it amounts to 15 degrees
in Aug. and Sept., and 40 degrees in Dec. At London it amounts to 20
degrees in Aug. and Sept., and 10 degrees in Dec.

The distribution of temperature throughout the day and year varies
less at Dorjiling than in most mountainous countries, owing to the
prevailing moisture, the effect of which is analogous to that of a
circumambient ocean to an island: the difference being, that in the
case of the island the bulk of water maintains an uniform
temperature; in that of Dorjiling the quantity of vapour acts
directly by interfering with terrestrial and solar-radiation, and
indirectly by nurturing a luxuriant vegetation. The result in the
latter case is a climate remarkable for its equability, and similar
in many features to that of New Zealand, South-west Chili, Fuegia,
and the damp west coasts of Scotland and Ireland, and other countries
exposed to moist sea winds.

The mean temperature of the year at Dorjiling, as taken by maxima and
minima thermometers* [The mean of several of the months, thus
deduced, often varies a good deal from the truth, owing to the
unequal diurnal distribution of heat; a very few minutes' sunshine
raises the temperature l0 degrees or 15 degrees above the mean of the
day; which excessive heat (usually transient) the maximum thermometer
registers, and consequently gives too high a mean.] by Dr. Chapman,
is nearly the same as that of March and October: January, the coldest
month, is more than 13.4 degrees colder than the mean of the year;
but the hottest month is only 8.3 degrees warmer than the same mean:
at Calcutta the months vary less from the mean; at Delhi more; and in
London the distribution is wholly different; there being no rains to
modify the summer heat, July is 13 degrees hotter, and January 14
degrees colder than the mean of the year.

This distribution of the seasons has a most important effect upon
vegetation, to which sufficient attention has not been paid by
cultivators of alpine Indian plants; in the first place, though
English winters are cold enough for such, the summers are too hot and
dry; and, in the second place, the great accession of temperature,
causing the buds to burst in spring, occurs in the Himalaya in March,
when the temperature at 7000 feet rises 8 degrees above that of
February, raising the radiating thermometer always above the freezing
point, whence the young leaves are never injured by night frost: in
England the corresponding rise is only 3 degrees, and there is no
such accession of temperature till May, which is 8 degrees warmer
than April; hence, the young foliage of many Himalayan plants is cut
off by night frosts in English gardens early in the season, of which
_Abies Webbiana_ is a conspicuous example.

The greatest heat of the day occurs at Dorjiling about noon, owing to
the prevalent cloud, especially during the rainy months, when the sun
shines only in the mornings, if at all, and the clouds accumulate as
the day advances. According to hourly observations of my own, it
occurred in July at noon, in August at 1 p.m., and in September (the
most rainy month) there was only four-tenths of a degree difference
between the means of noon, 1 p.m., and 2 p.m., but I must refer to
the abstracts at the end of this chapter for evidence of this, and of
the wonderful uniformity of temperature during the rainy months.
In the drier season again, after September, the greatest heat occurs
between 2 and 3 p.m.; in Calcutta the hottest hour is about 2.45
p.m., throughout the year; and in England also about 3 p.m.

The hour whose temperature coincides with the mean of the day
necessarily varies with the distribution of cloud and sunshine; it is
usually about 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.; whereas in Calcutta the same
coincidence occurs at a little before 10 a.m., and in England at
about 8 a.m.

Next to the temperature of the air, observations on that of the earth
are perhaps of the greatest value; both from their application to
horticulture, and from the approximation they afford to the mean
temperature of the week or month in which they are taken. These form
the subject of a separate chapter.

Nocturnal and solar radiation, the one causing the formation of dew
and hoar-frost when the air in the shade is above freezing, end
killing plants by the rapid abstraction of heat from all their
surfaces which are exposed to the clear sky, and the other scorching
the skin and tender plants during the day, are now familiar
phenomena, and particularly engaged my attention during my whole
Indian journey. Two phenomena particularly obstruct radiation in
Sikkim--the clouds and fog from the end of May till October, and the
haze from February till May. Two months alone are usually clear; one
before and one after the rains, when the air, though still humid, is
transparent. The haze has never been fully explained, though a
well-known phenomenon. On the plains of India, at the foot of the
hills, it begins generally in the forenoon of the cold season, with
the rise of the west wind; and, in February especially, obscures the
sun's disc by noon; frequently it lasts throughout the twenty-four
hours, and is usually accompanied by great dryness of the atmosphere.
It gradually diminishes in ascending, and have never experienced it
at 10,000 feet; at 7000, however, it very often, in April, obscures
the snowy ranges 30 miles off, which are bright and defined at
sunrise, and either pale away, or become of a lurid yellow-red,
according to the density of this haze, till they disappear at 10 a.m.
I believe it always accompanies a south-west wind (which is a
deflected current of the north-west) and dry atmosphere in Sikkim.

The observations for solar radiation were taken with a black-bulb
thermometer, and also with actinometers, but the value of the data
afforded by the latter not being fixed or comparative, I shall give
the results in a separate section. (See Appendix K.) From a multitude
of desultory observations, I conclude that at 7,400 feet, 125.7
degrees, or + 67 degrees above the temperature of the air, is the
average maximum effect of the sun's rays on a black-bulb thermometer*
[From the mean of very many observations, I find that 10 degrees is
the average difference at the level of the sea, in India, between two
similar thermometers, with spherical bulbs (half-inch diam.), the one
of black, and the other of plain glass, and both being equally
exposed to the sun's rays.] throughout the year, amounting rarely to
+ 70 degrees and + 80 degrees in the summer months, but more
frequently in the winter or spring. These results, though greatly
above what are obtained at Calcutta, are not much, if at all, above
what may be observed on the plains of India. This effect is much
increased with the elevation. At 10,000 feet in December, at 9 a.m.,
I saw the mercury mount to 132 degrees with a difl: of + 94 degrees,
whilst the temperature of shaded snow hard by was 22 degrees; at
13,100 feet, in January, at 9 a.m., it has stood at 98 degrees, diff.
+ 68.2 degrees; and at 10 a.m., at 114 degrees, diff. + 81.4 degrees,
whilst the radiating thermometer on the snow had fallen at sunrise to
0.7 degree. In December, at 13,500 feet, I have seen it 110 degrees,
diff. + 84 degrees; at 11 a.m., 11,500 feet; 122 degrees, diff: + 82
degrees. This is but a small selection from many instances of the
extraordinary power of solar radiation in the coldest months, at
great elevations.

Nocturnal and terrestrial radiation are even more difficult phenomena
for the traveller to estimate than solar radiation, the danger of
exposing instruments at night being always great in wild countries.
I most frequently used a thermometer graduated on the glass, and
placed in the focus of a parabolic reflector, and a similar one laid
upon white cotton,* [Snow radiates the most powerfully of any
substance I have tried; in one instance, at 13,000 feet, in January,
the thermometer on snow fell to 0.2 degree, which was 10.8 degrees
below the temperature at the time, the grass showing 6.7 degrees; and
on another occasion to l.2 degrees, when the air at the time (before
sunrise) was 21.2 degrees; the difference therefore being 20 degrees.
I have frequently made this observation, and always with a similar
result; it may account for the great injury plants sustain from a
thin covering of ice on their foliage, even when the temperature is
but little below the freezing-point.] and found no material
difference in the mean of many observations of each, though often 1
degree to 2 degrees in individual ones. Avoiding radiation from
surrounding objects is very difficult, especially in wooded
countries. I have also tried the radiating power of grass and the
earth; the temperature of the latter is generally less, and that of
the former greater, than the thermometer exposed on cotton or in the
reflector, but much depends on the surface of the herbage and soil.

The power of terrestrial, like that of solar radiation, increases
with the elevation, but not in an equal proportion. At 7,400 feet,
the mean of all my observations shows a temperature of 35.4 degrees.
During the rains, 3 degrees to 4 degrees is the mean maximum, but the
nights being almost invariably cloudy, it is scarcely on one night
out of six that there is any radiation. From October to December the
amount is greater = 10 degrees to 12, and from January till May
greater still, being as much as 15 degrees. During the winter months
the effect of radiation is often felt throughout the clear days, dew
forming abundantly at 4000 to 8000 feet in the shaded bottoms of
narrow valleys, into which the sun does not penetrate till 10 a.m.,
and from which it disappears at 3 p.m. I have seen the thermometer in
the reflector fall 12 degrees at 10 a.m. in a shaded valley.
This often produces an anomalous effect, causing the temperature in
the shade to fall after sunrise; for the mists which condense in the
bottom of the valleys after midnight disperse after sunrise, but long
before reached by the sun, and powerful radiation ensues, lowering
the surrounding temperature: a fall of 1 degree to  2 degrees after
sunrise of air in the shade is hence common in valleys in November
and December.* [Such is the explanation which I have offered of this
phenomenon in the Hort. Soc. Journal. On thinking over the matter
since, I have speculated upon the probability of this fall of
temperature being due to the absorption of heat that must become
latent on the dispersion of the dense masses of white fog that choke
the valleys at sunrise.] The excessive radiation of the winter months
often gives rise to a curious phenomenon; it causes the formation of
copious dew on the blanket of the traveller's bed, which radiates
heat to the tent roof, and this inside either an open or a closed
tent. I have experienced this at various elevations, from 6000 to
16,000 feet. Whether the minimum temperature be as high as 50
degrees, or but little above zero, the effect is the same, except
that hoar-frost or ice forms in the latter case. Another remarkable
effect of nocturnal radiation is the curl of the alpine rhododendron
leaves in November, which is probably due to the freezing and
consequent expansion of the water in the upper strata of cells
exposed to the sky. The first curl is generally repaired by the
ensuing day's sun, but after two or three nights the leaves become
permanently curled, and remain so till they fall in the following
spring.

I have said that the nocturnal radiation in the English spring months
is the great obstacle to the cultivation of many Himalayan plants;
but it is not therefore to be inferred that there is no similar
amount of radiation in the Himalaya; for, on the contrary, in April
its amount is much greater than in England, frequently equalling 13
degrees of difference; and I have seen 16 degrees at 7,500 feet; but
the minimum temperature at the time is 51 degrees, and the absolute
amount of cold therefore immaterial. The mean minimum of London is 38
degrees, and, when lowered 5.5 degrees by radiation, the consequent
cold is very considerable. Mr. Daniell, in his admirable essay on the
climate of London, mentions 17 degrees as the maximum effect of
nocturnal radiation ever observed by him. I have registered 16
degrees in April at Dorjiling; nearly as much at 6000 feet in
February; twice 13 degrees, and once 14.2 degrees in September at
15,500 feet; and 10 degrees in October at 16,800 feet; nearly 13
degrees in January at 7000 feet; 14.5 degrees in February at that
elevation, and, on several occasions, 14.7 degrees at 10,000 feet in
November.

The annual rain-fall at Dorjiling averages 120 inches (or 10 feet),
but varies from 100 to 130 in different years; this is fully three
times the amount of the average English fall,* [The general ideas on
the subject of the English rain-fall are so very vague, that I may be
pardoned for reminding my readers that in 1852, the year of
extraordinary rain, the amounts varied from 28.5 inches in Essex, to
50 inches at Cirencester, and 67.5 (average of five years) at
Plympton St. Mary's, and 102.5 at Holme, on the Dart.] and yet not
one-fourth of what is experienced on the Khasia hills in Eastern
Bengal, where fifty feet of rain falls. The greater proportion
descends between June and September, as much as thirty inches
sometimes falling in one month. From November to February inclusive,
the months are comparatively dry; March and October are characterised
by violent storms at the equinoxes, with thunder, destructive
lightning, and hail.

The rain-gauge takes no account of the enormous deposition from mists
and fogs: these keep the atmosphere in a state of moisture, the
amount of which I have estimated at 0.88 as the saturation-point at
Dorjiling, 0.83 being that of London. In July, the dampest month, the
saturation-point is 0.97; and in December, owing to the dryness of
the air on the neighbouring plains of India, whence dry blasts pass
over Sikkim, the mean saturation-point of the month sometimes falls
as low as 0.69.

The dew-point is on the average of the year 49.3 degrees, or 3
degrees below the mean temperature of the air. In the dampest month
(July) the mean dew-point is only eight-tenths of a degree below the
temperature, whilst in December it sinks 10 degrees below it.
In London the dew-point is on the average 5.6 degrees below the
temperature; none of the English months are so wet as those of
Sikkim, but none are so dry as the Sikkim December sometimes is.


_On the weight of the atmosphere in Sikkim; and its effects on the
human frame._

Of all the phenomena of climate, the weight of the atmosphere is the
most remarkable for its elusion of direct observation, when unaided
by instruments. At the level of the sea, a man of ordinary bulk and
stature is pressed upon by a superincumbent weight of 30,000 pounds
or 13.5 tons. An inch fall or rise in the barometer shows that this
load is lightened or increased, sometimes in a few hours, by nearly
1,000 pounds; and no notice is taken of it, except by the
meteorologist, or by the speculative physician, seeking the subtle
causes of epidemic and endemic complaints. At Dorjiling (7,400 feet),
this load is reduced to less than 2,500 pounds, with no appreciable
result whatever on the frame, however suddenly it be transported to
that elevation. And the observation of my own habits convinced me
that I took the same amount of meat, drink, sleep, exercise and work,
not only without inconvenience, but without the slightest perception
of my altered circumstances. On ascending to 14,000 feet, owing to
the diminished supply of oxygen, exercise brings on vertigo and
headache; ascending higher still, lassitude and tension across the
forehead ensue, with retching, and a sense of weight dragging down
the stomach, probably due to dilatation of the air contained in that
organ. Such are the all but invariable effects of high elevations;
varying with most persons according to the suddenness and steepness
of the ascent, the amount and duration of exertion, and the length of
time previously passed at great heights. After having lived for some
weeks at 15,300 feet, I have thence ascended several times to 18,500,
and once above 19,000 feet, without any sensations but lassitude and
quickness of pulse;* [I have in a note to vol. ii. chapter xxiii,
stated that I never experienced in my own person, nor saw in others,
bleeding at the ears, nose, lips, or eyelids.] but in these instances
it required great caution to avoid painful symptoms. Residing at
15,300 feet, however, my functions were wholly undisturbed; nor could
I detect any quickness of pulse or of respiration when the body was
at rest, below 17,000 feet. At that elevation, after resting a party
of eight men for an hour, the average of their and my pulses was
above 100 degrees, both before and after eating; in one case it was
120 degrees, in none below 80 degrees.

Not only is the frame of a transient visitor unaffected (when at
rest) by the pressure being reduced from 30,000 to 13,000 pounds, but
the Tibetan, born and constantly residing at upwards of 14,000 feet,
differs in no respect that can be attributed to diminished pressure,
from the native of the level of the sea. The averaged duration of
life, and the amount of food and exercise is the same; eighty years
are rarely reached by either. The Tibetan too, however inured to cold
and great elevations, still suffers when he crosses passes 18,000 or
19,000 feet high, and apparently neither more nor less than I did.

Liebig remarks (in his "Animal Chemistry") that in an equal number of
respirations,* [For the following note I am indebted to my friend, C.
Muller, Esq., of Patna.--

According to Sir H. Davy, a man consumes 45,504 cubic inches of
oxygen in twenty-four hours, necessitating the inspiration of 147,520
cubic inches of atmospheric air.--At pressure 23 inches, and temp. 60
degrees this volume of atmospheric air (dry) would weigh 35,138•75
grains.-At pressure 30 in., temp. 80°, it would weigh 43,997.63 gr.

The amount of oxygen in atmospheric air is 23.32 per cent. by weight.
The oxygen, then, in 147,520 cubic inches of dry air, at pressure 23
in., temp. 80 degrees, weighs 8,194.35 gr.; and at pressure 30 in.,
temp. 80 degrees, it weighs 10,260.25 gr.

Hence the absolute quantity of oxygen in a given volume of
atmospheric air, when the pressure is 23 in., and the temp. 60
degrees, is 20.14 per cent. less than when the pressure is 30 in. and
the temp. 80 degrees.

When the air at pressure 23 in:, temp. 60 degrees, is saturated with
moisture, the proportion of dry air and aqueous vapour in 100 cubic
inches is as follows:--
    Dry air    97.173
    Vapour  	2.827

At pressure 30 in., temp. 80 degrees, the proportions are:--
    Dry air    96.133
    Vapour      3.867

The effect of aqueous vapour in the air on the amount of oxygen
available for consumption, is very trifling; and it must not be
forgotten that aqueous vapour supplies oxygen to the system as well
as atmospheric air.] we consume a larger amount of oxygen at the
level of the sea than on a mountain; and it can be shown that under
ordinary circumstances at Dorjiling, 20.14 per cent. less is inhaled
than on the plains of India. Yet the chest cannot expand so as to
inspire more at once, nor is the respiration appreciably quickened;
by either of which means nature would be enabled to make up the
deficiency. It is true that it is difficult to count one's own
respirations, but the average is considered in a healthy man to be
eighteen in a minute; in my own case it is sixteen, an acceleration
of which by three or four could not have been overlooked, in the
repeated trials I made at Dorjiling, and still less the eight
additional inhalations required at 15,000 feet to make up for the
deficiency of oxygen in the air of that elevation.

It has long been surmised that an alpine vegetation may owe some of
its peculiarities to the diminished atmospheric pressure; and that
the latter being a condition which the gardener cannot supply, he can
never successfully cultivate such plants in general. I know of no
foundation for this hypothesis; many plants, natives of the level of
the sea in other parts of the world, and some even of the hot plains
of Bengal, ascend to 12,000 and even 15,000 feet on the Himalaya,
unaffected by the diminished pressure. Any number of species from low
countries may be cultivated, and some have been for ages, at 10,000
to 14,000 feet without change. It is the same with the lower animals;
innumerable instances may with ease be adduced of pressure alone
inducing no appreciable change, whilst there is absence of proof to
the contrary. The phenomena that accompany diminished pressure are
the real obstacles to the cultivation of alpine plants, of which cold
and the excessive climate are perhaps the most formidable.
Plants that grow in localities marked by sudden extremes of heat and
cold, are always very variable in stature, habit, and foliage. In a
state of nature we say the plants "accommodate themselves" to these
changes, and so they do within certain limits; but for one that
survives of all the seeds that germinate in these inhospitable
localities, thousands die. In our gardens we can neither imitate the
conditions of an alpine climate, nor offer others suited to the
plants of such climates.

The mean height of the barometer at Mr. Hodgson's was 23.010, but
varied 0.161 between July, when it was lowest, and October, when it
was highest; following the monthly rise and fall of Calcutta as to
period, but not as to amount (or amplitude); for the mercury at
Calcutta stands in July upwards of half an inch (0.555 Prinsep) lower
than it does in December.

The diurnal tide of atmosphere is as constant as to the time of its
ebb and flow at Dorjiling as at Calcutta; and a number of very
careful observations (made with special reference to this object)
between the level of the plains of India, and 17,000 feet, would
indicate that there is no very material deviation from this at any
elevation in Sikkim. These times are very nearly 9.50 a.m. and about
10 p.m. for the maxima, the 9.50 a.m. very constantly, and the 10
p.m. with more uncertainty; and 4 a.m. and 4 p.m. for the minima, the
afternoon ebb being most true to its time, except during the rains.

At 9.50 a.m. the barometer is at its highest, and falls till 4 p.m.,
when it stands on the average of the year 0.074 of an inch lower;
during the same period the Calcutta fall is upwards of one-tenth of
an inch (0.121 Prinsep).

It has been proved that at considerable elevations in Europe, the
hours of periodic ebb and flow differ materially from those which
prevail at the level of the sea; but this is certainly not the case
in the Sikkim Himalaya.

The amplitude decreases in amount from 0.100 at the foot of the
hills, to 0.074 at 7,000 feet; and the mean of 132 selected
unexceptionable observations, taken at nine stations between 8000 and
15,500 feet, at 9.50 a.m. and 4 p.m., gives an average fall of 0.056
of an inch; a result which is confirmed by interpolation from
numerous horary observations at these and many other elevations,
where I could observe at the critical hours.

That the Calcutta amplitude is not exceptionally great, is shewn by
the register kept at different places in the Gangetic valley and
plains of India, between Saharunpore and the Bay of Bengal. I have
seen apparently trustworthy records of seven* [Calcutta, Berampore,
Benares, Nagpore, Moozufferpore, Delhi, and Saharunpore.] such, and
find that in all it amounts to between 0.084 and 0.120 inch, the mean
of the whole being 0.101 of an inch.

The amplitude is greatest (0.088) in the spring months (March, April,
and May), both at Dorjiling and Calcutta: it is least at both in June
and July, (0.027 at Dorjiling), and rises again in autumn (to .082 in
September).

The horary oscillations also are as remarkably uniform at all
elevations, as the period of ebb and flow: the mercury falls slowly
from 9.50 a.m. (when it is at its highest) till noon, then rapidly
till 3 p.m., and slowly again till 4 p.m.; after which there is
little change until sunset; it rises rapidly between 7 and 9 p.m.,
and a little more till 10 p.m.; thence till 4 a.m. the fall is
inconsiderable, and the great rise occurs between 7 and 9 a.m.

It is well known that these fluctuations of the barometer are due to
the expansion and contraction by heat and moisture of the column of
atmosphere that presses on the mercury, in the cistern of the
instrument: were the air dry, the effect would be a single rise and
fall;* [This law, for which we are indebted to Professor Dove, has
been clearly explained by Colonel Sabine in the appendix to his
translation of Humboldt's "Cosmos," vol. i. p. 457.] the barometer
would stand highest at the hottest of the twenty-four hours, and
lowest at the coldest; and such is the case in arid continental
regions which are perennially dry. That such would also be the case
at Calcutta and throughout the Himalaya of Sikkim, is theoretically
self-evident, and proved by my horary observations taken during the
rainy months of 1848. An inspection of these at the end of this
section (where a column contains the pressure of dry air) shows but
one maximum of pressure, which occurs at the coldest time of the
twenty-four hours (early in the morning), and one minimum in the
afternoon. In the table of mean temperatures of the months, also
appended to this section, will also be found a column allowing the
pressure of dry air, whence it will be seen that there is but one
maximum of the pressure of dry air, occurring at the coldest season
in December, and one minimum, in July. The effect of the vapour is
the same on the annual as upon the diurnal march of the pressure,
producing a double maximum and minimum in the year in one case, and
in the twenty-four hours in the other.

I append a meteorological register of the separate months, but at the
same time must remind the reader that it does not pretend to strict
accuracy. It is founded upon observations made at Dorjiling by Dr.
Chapman in the year 1837, for pressure temperature and wet-bulb only;
the other data and some modifications of the above are supplied from
observations of my own. Those for terrestrial and nocturnal radiation
are accurate as far as they go, that is to say, they are absolute
temperatures taken by myself, which may, I believe, be recorded in
any year, but much higher are no doubt often to be obtained.
The dew-points and saturations are generally calculated from the mean
of two day observations (10 a.m. and 4 p.m.) of the wet-bulb
thermometer, together with the minimum, or are taken from
observations of Daniell's hygrometer; and as I find the mean of the
temperature of 10 a.m., 4 p.m., and the minimum, to coincide within a
few tenths with the mean temperature of the whole day, I assume that
the mean of the wet-bulb observations of the same hours will give a
near approach to that of the twenty-four hours. The climate of
Dorjiling station has been in some degree altered by extensive
clearances of forest, which render it more variable, more exposed to
night frosts and strong sun-heat, and to drought, the drying up of
small streams being one direct consequence. My own observations were
taken at Mr. Hodgson's house, elevated 7,430 feet, the position of
which I have indicated at the commencement of this section, where the
differences of climate due to local causes are sufficiently indicated
to show that in no two spots could similar meteorological results be
obtained. At Mr. Hodgson's, for instance, the uniformity of
temperature and humidity is infinitely more remarkable than at Dr.
Chapman's, possibly from my guarding more effectually against
radiation, and from the greater forests about Mr. Hodgson's house.
I have not, however, ventured to interfere with the temperature
columns on this account.

DORJILING METEOROLOGICAL REGISTER.

                            Jan.   Feb.   Mar.   Apr.    May   June
Pressure of Atmosphere*   23.307   .305   .307   .280   .259   .207
Range of Pressure           .072   .061   .083   .085   .088   .067
Mean Shade                  40.0   42.1   50.7   55.9   57.6   61.2
Max. Shade                  56.0   57.0   66.5   68.5   69.0   71.0
Max. Sun                   119.0  124.0  120.0  125.0  125.0  126.2
Greatest Diff.              72.0   78.0   60.0   66.0   65.0   62.2
Mean Max. Shade             47.2   50.0   58.4   63.7   65.3   66.7
Minim. Shade                29.0   25.5   37.0   38.0   38.0   51.5
Minim. Rad.                 16.0   23.0   27.8   33.0   40.0   47.0
Greatest Diff.              12.7   15.3    8.7   16.0   10.0    4.8
Mean Minim. Shade           32.8   34.2   43.1   48.1   50.0   55.8
Mean Daily Range of Temp.   14.4   15.8   15.3   15.6   15.3   10.9
Sunk Therm.                 46.0   48.0   50.0   58.0   61.0   62.0
Mean Dew-Point              34.3   37.2   45.8   49.8   54.4   59.5
Mean Dryness                 5.1    3.9    5.8    6.6    2.7    2.0
Force of Vapour             .216   .239   .323   .371   .434   .515
Pressure of Dry Air       23.091   .066   .084 22.909   .825   .692
Mean Saturation              .84    .87    .82    .80    .91    .93
Rain in Inches              1.72   0.92   1.12   2.52   9.25  26.96

                            July   Aug.   Sep.   Oct.   Nov.   Dec.   Mean
Pressure of Atmosphere*   23.203   .230   .300   .372   .330   .365 23.289
Range of Pressure           .062   .070   .082   .075   .078   .062   .074
Mean Shade                  61.4   61.7   59.9   58.0   50.0   43.0   53.5
Max. Shade                  69.5   70.0   70.0   68.0   63.0   56.0   65.4
Max. Sun                   130.0  133.0  142.0  133.0  123.0  108.0  125.7
Greatest Diff.              62.0   62.0   70.0   65.0   68.0   77.2   67.3
Mean Max. Shade             65.5   66.1   64.7   66.5   56.5   51.6   60.2
Minim. Shade                56.0   54.5   51.5   43.5   38.0   32.5   41.3
Minim. Rad.                 52.0   50.0   47.5   32.0   30.0   26.0   35.4
Greatest Diff.               3.5    3.5   10.0   12.0   12.0   10.0    9.9
Mean Minim. Shade           57.3   57.4   55.2   49.5   43.5   34.9   46.8
Mean Daily Range of Temp.    8.2    8.7    9.5   17.0   13.0   16.7   13.4
Sunk Therm.                 62.2   62.0   61.0   60.0   55.0   49.0   56.2
Mean Dew-Point              60.7   60.4   58.5   52.5   46.5   31.8   49.4
Mean Dryness                 0.8    1.1    1.4    4.2    3.2   10.6    4.0
Force of Vapour             .535   .530   .498   .407   .331   .198   .383
Pressure of Dry Air       22.668   .700   .802   .865   .999 23.165 22.906
Mean Saturation              .97    .96    .95    .86    .90    .69    .88
Rain in Inches             25.34  29.45  15.76   8.66   0.11   0.45    Sum
                                                                    122.26

*These are taken from Dr. Chapman's Table; and present a greater
annual range (=0.169) than my observations in 1848-9, taken at Mr.
Hodgson's, which is higher than Dr. Chapman's; or Mr. Muller's, which
is a little lower, and very near.


_Horary Observations at Jillapahar, Dorjiling, Alt. 7,430 feet._

JULY, 1848

No. of
  Observations      7    23    27    22    20    26    12    11    25
Hour            1 a.m.    8     9    10    11  Noon  1 p.m.   2     3
Barom.
  corrected    22.877  .882  .884 +.899  .899  .884  .876  .866  .852
Temp. Air        59.6  62.1  62.6  63.5  64.1  65.0  64.1  64.4  64.8
D.P.             58.9  60.6  61.3  61.7  62.3  63.1  61.7  61.0  62.6
Diff.             0.7   1.5   1.3   1.8   1.8   1.9   2.4   3.4   2.2
Tens. of
  Vapour         .504  .534  .546  .554  .565  .580  .566  .541  .571
Weight of
  Vapour         5.65  6.03  6.10  6.12  6.27  6.44  6.13  6.00  6.32
Humidity         .988  .950  .960  .945  .945  .940  .923  .892  .930
Press. of
  Dry Air      22.373  .348  .338  .345  .334  .304  .310  .325  .281

No. of
  Observations     23    13    10     6     6    22     6     6    19
Hour            4 p.m.    5     6     7     8     9    10    11   M.n.
Barom.
  corrected    22.846-.840  .845  .853  .867  .878  .885 +.887  .887
Temp. Air        64.1  64.7  63.7  62.7  61.0  60.7  60.5  60.2  59.8
D.P.             61.7  64.0  61.5  61.1  59.5  59.4  59.5  59.2  59.1
Diff.             2.4   0.7   2.2   1.6   1.5   1.3   1.0   1.0   0.7
Tens. of
  Vapour         .554  .597  .549  .542  .515  .512  .514  .508  .507
Weight of
  Vapour         6.13  6.62  6.12  6.03  5.74  5.72  5.75  5.70  5.68
Humidity         .924  .978  .928  .948  .952  .960  .968  .965  .975
Press. of
  Dry Air      22.292-.243  .296  .311  .352  .366  .371  .379 +.382


AUGUST

No. of
  Observations     15    26    28    28    24    23    21    21    21
Hour            1 a.m.    8     9    10    11  Noon  1 p.m.   2     3
Barom.
  corrected    22.909  .904  .915 +.917  .915  .905  .898  .884  .873
Temp. Air        59.8  62.1  63.1  64.3  64.7  64.7  65.3  65.0  64.8
D.P.             59.5  61.5  61.9  62.7  63.1  63.4  63.3  63.4  63.1
Diff.             0.3   0.6   1.2   1.6   1.6   1.3   2.0   1.6   1.7
Tens. of
  Vapour         .514  .549  .558  .572  .580  .586  .584  .586  .579
Weight of
  Vapour         5.70  6.13  6.20  6.35  6.42  6.50  6.48  6.50  6.43
Humidity         .992  .980  .962  .950  .948  .958  .940  .950  .943
Press. of
  Dry Air     +22.395  .355  .357  .345  .335  .319  .314  .298  .294

No. of
  Observations     19    19    19    19    19    19    19    19    19
Hour            4 p.m.    5     6     7     8     9    10    11   M.n.
Barom.
  corrected    22.855-.853  .863  .865  .878  .890 +.823  .892  .889
Temp. Air        63.9  63.2  62.3  61.6  61.1  60.7  60.3  60.1  60.0
D.P.             62.4  61.7  60.8  60.4  60.2  60.0  59.7  59.7  59.4
Diff.             1.5   1.5   1.5   1.2   0.9   0.7   0.6   0.4   0.6
Tens. of
  Vapour         .568  .554  .538  .531  .527  .523  .518  .517  .513
Weight of
  Vapour         6.30  6.15  6.00  5.92  5.88  5.85  5.78  5.79  5.73
Humidity         .952  .952  .952  .952  .970  .976  .980  .988  .980
Press. of
  Dry Air     -.287  .299  .325  .334  .351  .367  .375  .375  .376


DECEMBER

No. of
  Observations     28    29    28    24     23    23    23    23    23
Hour            8 a.m.    9    10    11   Noon  1 p.m.   2     3     4
Barom.
  corrected    23.000  .013 +.018  .009 22.995  .980  .962  .947-.944
Temp. Air        59.2  60.1  60.8  61.6   62.4  62.7  62.8  62.3  61.8
D.P.             58.1  58.5  59.5  60.0   60.5  60.5  60.4  60.0  59.9
Diff.             1.1   1.6   1.3   1.6    1.9   2.2   2.4   2.3   1.9
Tens. of
  Vapour         .492  .497  .514  .523   .533  .532  .531  .522  .521
Weight of
  Vapour         5.50  5.57  5.77  5.83   5.93  5.92  5.90  5.83  5.82
Humidity         .968  .945  .958  .950   .942  .942  .925  .924  .940
Press. of
  Dry Air      22.508  .516  .504  .506   .462  .448  .431  .425-.423

No. of
  Observations     19    19    20    21    22    24    24    23
Hour            5 p.m.    6     7     8     9    10    11   M.n.
Barom.
  corrected    22.944  .948  .958  .975  .986 +.991  .989  .994
Temp. Air        60.3  59.4  58.7  58.2  57.8  57.4  57.0  56.7
D.P.             58.6  58.4  57.4  57.0  56.6  56.4  55.9  55.4
Diff.             1.7   1.0   1.3   1.2   1.2   1.0   1.1   1.3
Tens. of
  Vapour         .498  .496  .479  .473  .467  .463  .456  .449
Weight of
  Vapour         5.58  5.58  5.60  5.33  5.25  5.23  5.15  5.07
Humidity         .940  .968  .960  .962  .960  .968  .962  .927
Press. of
  Dry Air        .446  .452  .479  .502  .519  .528  .533 +.545


OCTOBER (22 days)

No. of
  Observations     11    19    20    20    19    13    15    13    13    14
Hour       6-6.30 a.m.    7     8     9    10    11  Noon  1 p.m.   2     3
Barom.
  corrected    23.066  .072  .086  .099 +.100  .079  .072  .055  .033  .027
Temp. Air        54.4  54.3  55.2  56.3  57.1  57.6  57.9  58.0  57.7  57.9
D.P.             52.7  52.3  53.7  54.4  55.5  55.6  56.1  56.4  56.6  56.2
Diff.             1.7   2.0   1.5   1.9   1.6   2.0   1.8   1.6   1.1   1.7
Tens. of
  Vapour         .4.9  .403  .423  .434  .450  .451  .459  .463  .466  .460
Weight of
  Vapour         4.65  4.58  4.78  4.90  5.07  5.08  5.15  5.17  5.25  5.16
Humidity         .943  .925  .950  .935  .942  .935  .940  .950  .962  .940
Press. of
  Dry Air     +22.657 +.669  .663  .665  .650  .628  .613  .592  .567  .567

No. of
  Observations     16    13     6     7     3     7    14    18    14
Hour            4 p.m.    5     6     7     8     9    10    11   M.n.
Barom.
  corrected    23.024-.022  .033  .045  .038  .061 +.072  .067  .068
Temp. Air        57.9  56.6  55.9  55.4  53.7  55.1  54.6  54.5  54.1
D.P.             56.1  54.8  54.4  53.8  53.3  54.1  53.0  53.0  52.8
Diff.             1.8   1.8   1.5   1.6   0.4   1.0   1.6   1.5   1.3
Tens. of
  Vapour         .458  .439  .433  .424  .417  .429  .413  .413  .411
Weight of
  Vapour         5.15  4.98  4.90  4.80  4.75  4.83  4.82  4.82  4.65
Humidity         .940  .948  .950  .950  .990  .965  .949  .950  .962
Press. of
  Dry Air     -.566  .583  .600  .621  .621  .632  .659  .654  .657


 APPENDIX G.

ON THE RELATIVE HUMIDITY, AND ABSOLUTE AMOUNT OF VAPOUR
CONTAINED IN THE ATMOSPHERE AT DIFFERENT ELEVATIONS IN
THE SIKKIM HIMALAYA.

My observations for temperature and wet-bulb being for the most part
desultory, taken at different dates, and under very different
conditions of exposure, etc., it is obvious that those at one station
are hardly, if at all, comparative with those of another, and I have
therefore selected only such as were taken at the same date and hour
with others taken at the Calcutta Observatory, or as can easily be
reduced; which thus afford a standard (however defective in many
respects) for a comparison. I need hardly remind my reader that the
vapour-charged wind of Sikkim is the southerly one, which blows over
Calcutta; that in its passage northwards to Sikkim in the summer
months, it traverses the heated plains at the foot of the Himalaya,
and ascending that range, it discharges the greater part of its
moisture (120 to 140 inches annually) over the outer Himalayan
ranges, at elevations of 4000 to 8000 feet. The cooling effect of the
uniform covering of forest on the Sikkim ranges is particularly
favourable to this deposition, but the slope of the mountains being
gradual, the ascending currents are not arrested and cooled so
suddenly as in the Khasia mountains, where the discharge is
consequently much greater. The heating of the atmosphere, too, over
the dry plains at the foot of the outer range, increases farther its
capacity for the retention of vapour, and also tends to render the
rain-fall less sudden and violent than on the Khasia, where the south
wind blows over the cool expanse of the Jheels. It will be seen from
the following observations, that in Sikkim the relative humidity of
the atmosphere remains pretty constantly very high in the summer
months, and at all elevations, except in the rearward valleys; and
even there a humid atmosphere prevails up to 14,000 feet, everywhere
within the influence of the snowy mountains. The uniformly high
temperature which prevails throughout the summer, even at elevations
of 17,000 and 18,000 feet, is no doubt proximately due to the
evolution of heat during the condensation of these vapours. It will
be seen by the pages of my journal, that continued sunshine, and the
consequent heating of the soil, is almost unknown during the summer,
at any elevation on the outer or southward ranges of Dorjiling: but
the sunk thermometer proves that in advancing northward into the
heart of the mountains and ascending, the sun's effect is increased,
the temperature of the earth becoming in summer considerably higher
than that of the air. With regard to the observations themselves,
they may be depended upon as comparable with those of Calcutta, the
instruments having been carefully compared, and the cases of
interpolation being few. The number of observations taken at each
station is recorded in a separate column; where only one is thus
recorded, it is not to be regarded as a single reading, but the mean,
of several taken during an hour or longer period. I have rejected all
solitary observations, even when accompanied by others at Calcutta;
and sundry that were, for obvious reasons, likely to mislead. Where
many observations were taken at one place, I have divided them into
sets, corresponding to the hours at which alone the Calcutta
temperature and wet-bulb thermometer are recorded,* [Sunrise; 9.50
a.m.; noon; 2.40 p.m.; 4 p.m., and sunset.] in order that
meteorologists may apply them to the solution of other questions
relating to the distribution of heat and moisture. The Dorjiling
observations, and those in the immediate neighbourhood of that
station, appeared to me sufficiently numerous to render it worth
while classing them in months, and keeping them in a series by
themselves. The tensions of vapour are worked from the wet-bulb
readings by Apjohn's formula and tables, corrected for the height of
the barometer at the time. The observations, except where otherwise
noted, are taken by myself.


SERIES I. _Observations made at or near Dorjiling._

JANUARY, 1849

                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
15      The Dale*       6956 ft.  9.50 a.m.  42.9  32.4  10.5   .202
15      Mr. Muller's    ...       Noon       45.8  33.8  12.0   .212
10      ...             ...       2.40 p.m.  48.3  37.4  10.9   .241
 8      ...             ...       4 p.m.     48.6  37.8  10.8   .244
 9      ...             ...       Sunset     46.5  37.1   9.4   .238
---------------------------------------------------------------------
57      ...             ...          Mean    46.4  35.7  10.7   .227
---------------------------------------------------------------------


                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
15      The Dale*       6956 ft.  9.50 a.m.  67.5  55.3  12.2   .446
15      Mr. Muller's    ...       Noon       72.9  55.7  17.2   .455
10      ...             ...       2.40 p.m.  76.1  55.1  21.0   .444
 8      ...             ...       4 p.m.     75.1  54.8  20.3   .440
 9      ...             ...       Sunset     71.8  54.9  16.9   .441
---------------------------------------------------------------------
57      ...             ...          Mean    72.7  55.2  17.5   .445
---------------------------------------------------------------------

*Observations to which the asterisk is affixed were taken by
Mr. Muller.

Dorjiling.--Humidity         0.700           Calcutta   0.562
    ,,      Vapour in cubic foot
              of atmosphere  2.63 gr.           ,,      4.86 gr.



JANUARY, 1850
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  Sunrise    32.8  30.1   2.7   .186
 6      Mr. Hodgson's   ...       9.50 a.m.  39.5  34.7   4.8   .219
 3      ...             ...       Noon       42.4  38.0   4.4   .246
 5      ...             ...       2.40 p.m.  41.9  37.8   4.1   .244
 5      ...             ...       4 p.m.     41.1  38.5   2.6   .250
 5      ...             ...       Sunset     38.7  35.6   3.1   .226
13      ...             ...       Miscel.    41.9  39.9   2.0   .263
 4      Saddle of road  7412 ft.  Do.        41.1  36.4   4.7   .233
         at Sinchul.
 1      Pacheem.        7258 ft.  Do.        39.8  38.7   1.1   .252
---------------------------------------------------------------------
45      ...             ...          Mean    39.9  36.6   3.3   .235
---------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  Sunrise    51.5  48.5   3.0   .354
 6      Mr. Hodgson's   ...       9.50 a.m.  66.9  55.1  11.8   .444
 3      ...             ...       Noon       74.1  51.7  22.4   .395
 5      ...             ...       2.40 p.m.  78.3  51.4  26.9   .391
 5      ...             ...       4 p.m.     77.4  59.5  17.9   .514
 5      ...             ...       Sunset     72.4  54.7  17.7   .438
13      ...             ...       Miscel.    77.9  60.1  17.8   .525
 4      Saddle of road  7412 ft.  Do.        67.7  57.2  10.5   .476
         at Sinchul.
 1      Pacheem.        7258 ft.  Do.        71.6  50.5  21.2   .379
---------------------------------------------------------------------
45      ...             ...          Mean    70.9  54.3  16.6   .435
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.890          Calcutta   0.580
    ,,      Weight of vapour  2.75 gr.          ,,      4.86 gr.

FEBRUARY
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  Sunrise    36.9  34.7   2.2   .219
18        1850          ...       9.50 a.m.  42.9  38.6   4.3   .251
12        ...           ...       Noon       44.8  41.3   3.5   .276
12        ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  44.8  37.4   7.4   .241
17        ...           ...       4 p.m.     44.0  35.6   8.4   .226
19        ...           ...       Sunset     42.4  35.8   6.6   .228
13      The Dale*       6956 ft.  Miscel.    40.8  35.1   5.7   .222
---------------------------------------------------------------------
97        ...           ...          Mean    42.4  36.9   5.4   .238
---------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  Sunrise    60.0  54.2   5.8   .431
18        1850          ...       9.50 a.m.  72.8  58.8  14.0   .503
12        ...           ...       Noon       79.8  58.7  21.2   .501
12        ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  82.4  57.9  24.5   .487
17        ...           ...       4 p.m.     81.1  58.1  23.0   .492
19        ...           ...       Sunset     76.3  60.7  15.6   .536
13      The Dale*       6956 ft.  Miscel.    69.9  59.8  10.1   .518
---------------------------------------------------------------------
97        ...           ...          Mean    74.6  58.3  16.3   .495
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.828          Calcutta   0.590
    ,,      Weight of vapour  2.75 gr.          ,,      5.40 gr.


MARCH
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
10      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  44.2  42.7   1.5   .290
 8        1850          ...       Noon       45.5  43.0   2.5   .293
 5        ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  46.4  44.0   2.4   .303
 8        ...           ...       4 p.m.     45.5  43.4   2.1   .297
 6        ...           ...       Sunset     43.1  41.5   1.6   .278
 3      Pacheem.        7258 ft.  Misc.      44.8  44.6   0.2   .310
---------------------------------------------------------------------
40        ...           ...          Mean    44.9  43.2   1.7   .295
---------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
10      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  81.6  64.1  17.5   .602
 8        1850          ...       Noon       88.2  57.0  31.2   .472
 5        ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  91.3  53.2  38.1   .416
 8        ...           ...       4 p.m.     90.1  52.0  38.1   .399
 6        ...           ...       Sunset     82.9  63.7  19.2   .590
 3      Pacheem.        7258 ft.  Misc.      85.0  74.8  10.2   .848
---------------------------------------------------------------------
40        ...           ...          Mean    86.5  60.8  25.7   .555
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.940          Calcutta   0.438
    ,,      Weight of vapour  3.42 gr.          ,,      5.72 gr.


APRIL
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  57.0  40.2  16.8   .266
 3        1849          ...       Noon       59.8  44.1  15.7   .305
 1        ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  60.2  44.4  15.8   .308
 7      Dr. Campbell's  6932 ft.  9.50 a.m.  61.8  53.3   8.5   .417
 2        1850          ...       Noon       65.4  52.8  12.6   .411
 4        ...           ...       4 p.m.     57.5  53.7  13.8   .423
 3        ...           ...       Sunset     56.9  51.4   5.5   .392
---------------------------------------------------------------------
23        ...           ...          Mean    59.8  48.6  11.3   .360
---------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  90.3  71.3  19.0   .758
 3        1849          ...       Noon       97.0  64.5  32.5   .607
 1        ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  97.7  73.4  24.3   .812
 7      Dr. Campbell's  6932 ft.  9.50 a.m.  86.7  66.3  20.4   .644
 2        1850          ...       Noon       91.3  68.8  22.5   .699
 4        ...           ...       4 p.m.     88.6  72.1  16.5   .778
 3        ...           ...       Sunset     82.8  73.0   9.8   .800
---------------------------------------------------------------------
23        ...           ...          Mean    90.6  69.9  20.7   .728
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.684          Calcutta   0.523
    ,,      Weight of vapour  3.98 gr.          ,,      7.65 gr.


MAY
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Smith's Hotel,  6863 ft.  Misc.      57.2  55.0   2.2   .443
          1848
45      Colinton,*      7179 ft.  Misc.      60.4  57.9  12.5   .466
          1849
---------------------------------------------------------------------
48        ...           ...          Mean    58.8  56.5  12.4   .455
---------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Smith's Hotel,  6863 ft.  Misc.      88.6  78.4  10.2   .951
          1848
45      Colinton,*      7179 ft.  Misc.      90.0  77.2  12.8   .917
          1849
---------------------------------------------------------------------
48        ...           ...          Mean    89.3  77.8  11.5   .934
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.926          Calcutta   0.698
    ,,      Weight of vapour  5.22 gr.          ,,      9.90 gr.


JUNE
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
40      Colinton*       7179 ft.  Misc.      60.9  57.6  13.3   .483
---------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
40      Colinton*       7179 ft.  Misc.      85.5  78.4   7.1   .952
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.895          Calcutta   0.800
    ,,      Weight of vapour  5.39 gr.          ,,     10.17 gr.


JULY
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 18     Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  63.2  61.4   1.8   .548
 25       1848          ...       Noon       65.0  62.6   2.4   .570
 24       ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  64.7  62.3   2.4   .565
 16       ...           ...       4 p.m.     63.8  61.5   2.3   .550
 31     The Dale,*      6952 ft.  6 a.m.     60.2  58.7   1.5   .537
 31       1848          ...       2 p.m.     66.3  63.3   3.0   .621
 31       ...           ...       6 p.m.     63.0  60.9   2.1   .575
---------------------------------------------------------------------
176       ...           ...          Mean    63.7  61.5   2.2   .567
---------------------------------------------------------------------


                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 18     Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  87.0  79.4   7.6   .983
 25       1848          ...       Noon       89.0  80.0   9.0  1.001
 24       ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  88.1  79.4   8.7   .983
 16       ...           ...       4 p.m.     87.2  79.5   7.7   .985
 31     The Dale,*      6952 ft.  6 a.m.     81.3  79.0   2.3   .969
 31       1848          ...       2 p.m.     88.0  79.6   8.4   .989
 31       ...           ...       6 p.m.     84.8  79.2   5.6   .977
---------------------------------------------------------------------
176       ...           ...          Mean    86.5  79.4   7.0   .984
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.929          Calcutta   0.800
    ,,      Weight of vapour  6.06 gr.          ,,     10.45 gr.


AUGUST
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 23     Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  64.2  62.4   1.8   .567
 21       1848          ...       Noon       64.7  63.3   1.4   .584
 17       ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  64.7  62.8   1.9   .574
 13       ...           ...       4 p.m.     63.9  62.5   1.4   .568
 31     The Dale,*      6952 ft.  6 a.m.     60.5  59.5   1.0   .551
 31       1848          ...       2 p.m.     65.3  63.6   1.7   .628
 31       ...           ...       6 p.m.     62.8  61.8   1.0   .591
---------------------------------------------------------------------
167       ...           ...          Mean    63.7  62.3   1.5   .580
---------------------------------------------------------------------


                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 23     Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  85.8  79.1   6.7   .973
 21       1848          ...       Noon       87.2  79.2   8.0   .976
 17       ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  87.4  79.3   8.1   .979
 13       ...           ...       4 p.m.     86.5  79.5   7.0   .984
 31     The Dale,*      6952 ft.  6 a.m.     80.8  78.8   2.0   .962
 31       1848          ...       2 p.m.     87.2  79.2   8.0   .976
 31       ...           ...       6 p.m.     83.7  78.7   5.0   .959
---------------------------------------------------------------------
167       ...           ...          Mean    85.5  79.1   6.4   .973
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.955          Calcutta   0.818
    ,,      Weight of vapour  6.25 gr.          ,,     10.35 gr.


SEPTEMBER
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 28     Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  60.8  59.3   1.5   .511
 23       1848          ...       Noon       62.4  60.3   2.1   .528
 23       ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  62.4  59.6   2.8   .516
 21       ...           ...       4 p.m.     62.0  59.6   2.4   .516
 30     The Dale,*      6952 ft.  6 a.m.     57.4  56.2   1.2   .495
 30       1848          ...       2 p.m.     64.9  60.8   4.1   .573
 30       ...           ...       6 p.m.     60.8  59.0   1.8   .543
---------------------------------------------------------------------
185       ...           ...          Mean    61.5  59.3   2.3   .526
---------------------------------------------------------------------


                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 28     Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  9.50 a.m.  87.0  78.4   8.6   .952
 23       1848          ...       Noon       88.5  78.1  10.4   .943
 23       ...           ...       2.40 p.m.  88.1  77.4  10.7   .922
 21       ...           ...       4 p.m.     86.9  77.1   9.8   .914
 30     The Dale,*      6952 ft.  6 a.m.     80.9  78.3   2.6   .948
 30       1848          ...       2 p.m.     88.8  77.4  11.4   .923
 30       ...           ...       6 p.m.     84.7  76.6   8.1   .899
---------------------------------------------------------------------
185       ...           ...          Mean    86.4  77.6   8.8   .929
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.932          Calcutta   0.760
    ,,      Weight of vapour  5.72 gr.          ,,      9.88 gr.


OCTOBER
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 6      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  Noon       55.9  55.3   0.6   .446
 6        1848          ...       2.40 p.m.  55.7  54.9   0.8   .440
 6        ...           ...       4 p.m.     55.6  54.9   0.7   .441
 4      Goong.          7436 ft.  Misc.      48.3  48.3   0.0   .352
 8      ditto           7441 ft.  ditto      51.2  50.2   1.0   .376
 8      The Dale*       6952 ft.  6 a.m.     55.2  52.7   2.5   .439
17        ...           ...       2 p.m.     61.4  56.3   5.1   .497
19        ...           ...       6 p.m.     56.9  54.2   2.7   .463
---------------------------------------------------------------------
74        ...           ...          Mean    55.0  53.4   1.7   .432
---------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 6      Jillapahar,     7430 ft.  Noon       84.4  75.3   9.1   .863
 6        1848          ...       2.40 p.m.  86.0  73.3  12.7   .808
 6        ...           ...       4 p.m.     85.2  74.4  10.8   .837
 4      Goong.          7436 ft.  Misc.      81.2  73.7   7.5   .819
 8      ditto           7441 ft.  ditto      80.7  66.9  13.8   .657
 8      The Dale*       6952 ft.  6 a.m.     76.1  74.2   1.9   .834
17        ...           ...       2 p.m.     87.0  71.2  15.8   .756
19        ...           ...       6 p.m.     82.8  73.9   8.9   .824
---------------------------------------------------------------------
74        ...           ...          Mean    82.9  72.9  10.1   .800
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.950          Calcutta   0.658
    ,,      Weight of vapour  4.74 gr.          ,,      8.55 gr.


NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER
                                             DORJILING
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 4      The Dale,*      6952 ft.  6 a.m.     45.6  41.4   4.2   .277
 8      Nov. & Dec.     ...       2 p.m.     60.0  48.3  11.7   .355
 6        1848          ...       6 p.m.     50.6  44.7   5.9   .311
 9      December,       ...       2 p.m.     49.7  41.7   8.0   .280
19        1848          ...       6 p.m.     44.0  40.5   3.5   .269
---------------------------------------------------------------------
46        ...           ...          Mean    49.9  43.3   6.7   .298
---------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             CALCUTTA
No. of
Obs.    Place           Elev.     Hour       Tp.   D.P.  Diff.  Tens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 4      The Dale,*      6952 ft.  6 a.m.     67.9  64.7   3.2   .610
 8      Nov. & Dec.     ...       2 p.m.     83.3  65.2  18.1   .621
 6        1848          ...       6 p.m.     77.3  63.1  14.2   .579
 9      December,       ...       2 p.m.     79.3  59.0  20.3   .505
19        1848          ...       6 p.m.     75.8  62.6  13.2   .569
---------------------------------------------------------------------
46        ...           ...          Mean    76.7  62.9  13.8   .577
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorjiling.--Humidity          0.798          Calcutta   0.640
    ,,      Weight of vapour  3.40 gr.          ,,      6.27 gr.


_Comparison of Dorjiling and Calcutta._

HUMIDITY

No. of                                           Diff.
Obs.      Month         Dorjiling    Calcutta    Dorjiling
---------------------------------------------------------
102       January     -.795         .571       +.224
 97       February       .828         .590       +.238
 40       March          .940      -.438       +.502
 23       April          .684         .523       +.161
 48       May            .926         .698       +.228
 40       June           .895         .800       +.095
176       July           .929         .800       +.129
167       August        +.955        +.818       +.136
185       September      .932         .760       +.172
 74       October        .950         .658       +.292
 46       Nov. and Dec.  .798         .640       +.158
----------------------------------------------------------
998               Mean  0.876        0.663       +.212


WEIGHT OF VAPOUR IN CUBIC FOOT OF AIR

No. of                                           Diff.
Obs.      Month         Dorjiling    Calcutta    Calcutta
--------------------------------------------------------
102       January     -2.68      -4.80       +2.12
 97       February       2.75         5.40       +2.65
 40       March          3.42         5.72       +2.30
 23       April          3.98         7.65       +3.67
 48       May            5.22         9.90       +4.62
 40       June           5.39        10.17       +4.78
176       July           6.06        10.05       +3.99
167       August        +6.25       +10.35       +4.10
185       September      5.72         9.88       +4.16
 74       October        4.74         8.55       +3.81
 46       Nov. and Dec.  3.40         6.27       +2.87
--------------------------------------------------------
998               Mean   4.51         8.07       +3.55


It is hence evident, from nearly 1,000 comparative observations, that
the atmosphere is relatively more humid at Dorjiling than at
Calcutta, throughout the year. As the southerly current, to which
alone is due all the moisture of Sikkim, traverses 200 miles of land,
and discharges from sixty to eighty inches of rain before arriving at
Dorjiling, it follows that the whole atmospheric column is relatively
drier over the Himalaya than over Calcutta; that the absolute amount
of vapour, in short, is less than it would otherwise be at the
elevation of Dorjiling, though the relative humidity is so great.
A glance at the table at the end of this section appears to confirm
this; for it is there shown that, at the base of the Himalaya, at an
elevation of only 250 feet higher than Calcutta, the absolute amount
of vapour is less, and of relative humidity greater, than
at Calcutta.


SERIES II.--_Observations at various Stations and Elevations in
the Himalaya of East Nepal and Sikkim._

ELEVATION 735 TO 2000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3     Katong Ghat.              735   Dec.   60.2  55.3   4.9   .447
        Teesta river
 2     Great Rungeet, at bridge  818   April  82.8  63.5  19.3   .588
 1      Ditto                    818   May    77.8  60.3  17.5   .528
 3     Tambur river, E. Nepal   1388   Nov.   60.6  57.0   3.6   .473
 1      Ditto                   1457   Nov.   64.2  59.1   5.1   .507
 6     Bhomsong, Teesta river   1596   Dec.   58.6  52.0   6.6   .399
 1      Ditto                   1596   May    68.2  66.4   1.8   .647
 5     Little Rungeet           1672   Jan.   51.0  50.2   0.8   .377
 5     Pemiongchi,
        Great Rungeet           1840   Dec.   54.6  53.7   0.9   .424
11     Punkabaree               1850   March  70.1  55.6  14.5   .472
        Ditto                   1850   May    73.5  68.3   5.2   .687
10     Guard house              1864   April  73.7  63.8   9.9   .592
        (Gt. Rungeet)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
48                                      Mean  66.3  58.8   7.5   .512

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3     Katong Ghat.              735   Dec.   73.2  56.7  16.5   .468
        Teesta river
 2     Great Rungeet, at bridge  818   April  95.8  61.9  33.9   .557
 1      Ditto                    818   May    91.7  78.3  13.4   .947
 3     Tambur river, E. Nepal   1388   Nov.   73.3  62.7  10.6   .571
 1      Ditto                   1457   Nov.   77.3  63.4  13.9   .585
 6     Bhomsong, Teesta river   1596   Dec.   71.6  57.0  14.6   .474
 1      Ditto                   1596   May    82.6  77.4   5.2   .923
 5     Little Rungeet           1672   Jan.   58.5  58.0   0.5   .489
 5     Pemiongchi,
        Great Rungeet           1840   Dec.   73.5  66.2   7.3   .642
11     Punkabaree               1850   March  79.2  62.6  16.6   .570
        Ditto                   1850   May    83.7  77.9   5.8   .938
10     Guard house              1864   April  92.4  67.0  25.4   .660
        (Gt. Rungeet)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
48                                      Mean  79.4  65.8  13.6   .652

Humidity          0.717          Calcutta   0.663
Weight of vapour  5.57 gr.          ,,      6.88 gr.


ELEVATION 2000 TO 3000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 2     Singdong                 2116   Dec.   60.5  53.4   7.1   .419
 8     Mywa Guola, E. Nepal     2132   Nov.   66.2  57.5   8.7   .481
 3     Pemmi river, E. Nepal    2256   Nov.   55.6  53.9   1.7   .426
 3     Tambur river, E. Nepal   2545   Nov.   57.3  51.6   5.7   .394
 2     Blingbong (Teesta)       2684   May    72.6  64.0   8.6   .597
 8     Lingo (Teesta)           2782   May    75.8  67.3   8.5   .666
12     Serriomsa (Teesta)       2820   Dec.   64.1  56.8   7.3   .469
 8     Lingmo (Teesta)          2849   May    68.6  64.6   4.0   .610
 3      Ditto                   2952   Dec.   56.4  53.5   2.9   .420
---------------------------------------------------------------------
49                                      Mean  64.1  58.1   6.1   .498

ELEVATION 2000 TO 3000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 2     Singdong                 2116   Dec.   72.1  52.9  19.2   .411
 8     Mywa Guola, E. Nepal     2132   Nov.   75.7  68.7   7.0   .697
 3     Pemmi river, E. Nepal    2256   Nov.   62.9  62.3   0.6   .566
 3     Tambur river, E. Nepal   2545   Nov.   75.0  63.7  11.3   .591
 2     Blingbong (Teesta)       2684   May    81.7  73.6   8.1   .817
 8     Lingo (Teesta)           2782   May    90.7  77.7  13.0   .932
12     Serriomsa (Teesta)       2820   Dec.   70.8  62.4   8.4   .567
 8     Lingmo (Teesta)          2849   May    87.9  74.9  13.0   .851
 3      Ditto                   2952   Dec.   69.5  66.5   3.0   .647
---------------------------------------------------------------------
49                                      Mean  76.3  67.0   9.3   .675

Humidity          0.820          Calcutta   0.740
Weight of vapour  5.45 gr.          ,,      7.13 gr.


ELEVATION 3000 TO 4000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 5     Kulhait river            3159   Jan.   49.8  47.0   2.8   .337
 9     Ratong river             3171   Jan.   44.2  43.0   1.2   .294
 3     Tambur river             3201   Nov.   53.0  50.0   3.0   .373
 2     Chingtam                 3404   Nov.   54.8  49.0   5.8   .360
 2     Tikbotang                3763   Dec.   56.5  53.4   3.1   .419
 7     Myong Valley             3782   Oct.   61.4  58.4   3.0   .496
 7     Iwa river                3783   Dec.   47.5  45.6   1.9   .321
 1     Ratong river             3790   Jan.   56.2  41.1  15.1   .275
 3     Tukcham                  3849   Nov.   68.8  65.4   3.4   .625
 1     Pacheem village          3855   Jan.   54.5  46.3   8.2   .329
 1     Yankoon                  3867   Dec.   50.0  43.6   6.4   .299
 2     Mikk                     3912   May    66.1  63.9   2.2   .595
 5     Sunnook                  3986   Dec.   47.9  45.5   2.4   .320
---------------------------------------------------------------------
48                                      Mean  54.7  50.2   4.5   .388

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 5     Kulhait river            3159   Jan.   65.8  57.3   8.5   .477
 9     Ratong river             3171   Jan.   69.9  56.6  13.3   .466
 3     Tambur river             3201   Nov.   72.9  63.2   9.7   .582
 2     Chingtam                 3404   Nov.   74.9  73.0   1.9   .302
 2     Tikbotang                3763   Dec.   68.0  61.8   6.2   .555
 7     Myong Valley             3782   Oct.   80.7  71.2   9.5   .755
 7     Iwa river                3783   Dec.   73.3  64.7   8.6   .611
 1     Ratong river             3790   Jan.   75.8  53.0  22.8   .414
 3     Tukcham                  3849   Nov.   83.7  76.8   6.9   .904
 1     Pacheem village          3855   Jan.   73.6  59.4  14.2   .513
 1     Yankoon                  3867   Dec.   69.1  63.8   5.3   .593
 2     Mikk                     3912   May    84.3  75.1   9.2   .856
 5     Sunnook                  3986   Dec.   69.4  61.1   8.3   .542
---------------------------------------------------------------------
48                                      Mean  74.0  64.4   9.6   .621

Humidity          0.858          Calcutta   0.732
Weight of vapour  4.23 gr.          ,,      6.60 gr.


ELEVATION 4000 TO 5000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3     Yangyading               4111   Dec.   52.0  43.6   8.4   .300
 4     Gorh                     4128   May.   66.4  59.0   7.4   .506
 2     Namgah                   4229   Oct.   57.2  54.1   3.1   .429
 3     Taptiatok (Tambur)       4283   Nov.   51.3  45.8   5.5   .323
 7     Myong Valley             4345   Oct.   59.1  57.8   1.3   .487
 3     Jummanoo                 4362   Nov.   60.4  50.0  10.4   .374
 6     Nampok                   4377   Dec.   49.6  49.1   0.5   .362
 7     Chakoong                 4407   May    57.8  57.6   0.2   .483
10     Singtam                  4426   May    62.4  61.7   0.7   .553
 5     Namten                   4483   Dec.   44.7  44.3   0.4   .307
 5     Purmiokshong             4521   Nov.   60.5  56.5   4.0   .466
 2     Rungniok                 4565   Jan.   54.7  44.3  10.4   .307
16     Singtam                  4575   O.&N.  63.8  60.1   3.7   .525
 6     Cheadam                  4653   Dec.   51.4  46.6   4.8   .332
 4     Sablakoo                 4676   Dec.   50.0  44.9   5.2   .314
 4     Bheti                    4683   Nov.   59.0  52.3   6.7   .405
 2     Temi                     4771   May    59.8  50.1   9.7   .374
 4     Lingtam                  4805   May    60.4  56.6   3.8   .467
 7     Khersiong                4813   Jan.   51.0  45.2   5.8   .316
 6      Ditto                   4813   March  53.6  45.5   8.1   .320
 3     Tassiding                4840   Dec.   52.0  46.6   5.4   .333
 6     Lingcham                 4870   Dec.   48.5  46.1   2.4   .327
11     Dikkeeling               4952   Dec.   62.0  55.3   6.7   .447
 9     Tehonpong                4978   Jan.   49.4  34.7  14.7   .219
---------------------------------------------------------------------
137                                     Mean  55.7  50.4   5.4   .387

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3     Yangyading               4111   Dec.   71.1  67.2   3.9   .663
 4     Gorh                     4128   May.   85.5  74.2  11.3   .834
 2     Namgah                   4229   Oct.   80.8  73.7   7.1   .819
 3     Taptiatok (Tambur)       4283   Nov.   73.3  64.8   8.5   .614
 7     Myong Valley             4345   Oct.   81.7  72.9   8.8   .797
 3     Jummanoo                 4362   Nov.   77.4  70.2  17.2   .731
 6     Nampok                   4377   Dec.   64.1  56.3   7.8   .462
 7     Chakoong                 4407   May    83.9  76.2   7.7   .889
10     Singtam                  4426   May    88.6  79.0   9.6   .969
 5     Namten                   4483   Dec.   64.8  58.3   6.5   .495
 5     Purmiokshong             4521   Nov.   79.2  69.5   9.7   .715
 2     Rungniok                 4565   Jan.   66.5  59.7  16.8   .517
16     Singtam                  4575   O.&N.  82.5  76.7   5.8   .901
 6     Cheadam                  4653   Dec.   70.2  55.0  15.2   .442
 4     Sablakoo                 4676   Dec.   72.9  65.7   7.2   .632
 4     Bheti                    4683   Nov.   78.3  66.1  12.2   .639
 2     Temi                     4771   May    81.2  74.1   7.1   .834
 4     Lingtam                  4805   May    80.0  73.8   6.2   .820
 7     Khersiong                4813   Jan.   67.0  49.8  17.2   .370
 6      Ditto                   4813   March  77.1  70.5   6.6   .738
 3     Tassiding                4840   Dec.   79.7  60.8  18.9   .538
 6     Lingcham                 4870   Dec.   78.5  71.8   6.7   .771
11     Dikkeeling               4952   Dec.   80.8  62.0  18.8   .559
 9     Tehonpong                4978   Jan.   71.0  54.7  16.3   .439
---------------------------------------------------------------------
137                                     Mean  76.5  66.8   9.7   .675

Humidity          0.837          Calcutta   0.730
Weight of vapour  4.33 gr.          ,,      7.12 gr.


ELEVATION 5000 TO 6000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  4    Nampok                   5075   May    65.8  60.8   5.0   .537
  4    Tengling                 5257   Jan.   44.7  39.1   5.6   .257
  2    Choongtam, sunrise       5368   May    54.9  54.7   0.2   .438
  7        ,,     9.50 a.m.      ,,    May    71.5  58.9  12.6   .504
  5        ,,     noon           ,,    May    71.0  59.4  11.6   .513
  3        ,,     2.45 p.m.      ,,    May    66.4  59.4   7.0   .513
  4        ,,     4 p.m.         ,,    May    63.5  59.2   4.3   .510
  6        ,,     sunset         ,,    May    61.4  60.5   0.9   .532
  8        ,,     9.50 a.m.      ,,    Aug.   76.3  66.1  10.2   .640
  8        ,,     noon           ,,    Aug.   78.8  67.8  11.0   .677
  7        ,,     2.40 p.m.      ,,    Aug.   72.9  66.5   6.4   .649
  6        ,,     4 p.m.         ,,    Aug.   69.5  66.8   2.7   .655
  8        ,,     sunset         ,,    Aug.   66.9  65.4   1.5   .627
  5    Salloobong               5277   Nov.   57.6  51.2   6.4   .390
  6    Lingdam                  5375   Dec.   44.3  43.0   1.3   .293
  3    Makaroumbi               5485   Nov.   52.1  48.1   4.0   .350
  8    Khabang                  5505   Dec.   55.1  47.3   7.8   .340
  6    Lingdam                  5554   Dec.   45.0  43.7   1.3   .301
  3    Yankutang                5564   Dec.   43.6  41.7   1.9   .280
  4    Namtchi                  5608   May    67.1  61.2   5.9   .544
  6    Yoksun                   5619   Jan.   42.7  34.0   8.7   .214
 16     Ditto                    ,,    Jan.   43.0  33.9   9.1   .213
  2    Loongtoong               5677   Nov.   45.3  42.8   2.5   .292
  4    Sakkiazong               5625   Nov.   54.1  50.9   3.2   .358
  3    Phadong  8 a.m.          5946   Nov.   51.9  50.8   1.1   .383
  3       ,,    9.50 a.m.        ,,    Nov.   55.9  53.0   2.9   .413
  3       ,,    noon             ,,    Nov.   60.7  56.5   4.2   .465
  3       ,,    2.40 p.m.        ,,    Nov.   57.4  54.7   2.7   .438
  2       ,,    4 p.m.           ,,    Nov.   55.5  52.8   2.7   .410
  3       ,,    sunset           ,,    Nov.   53.7  52.6   1.1   .408
  3    Tumloong                 5368   Nov.   64.2  62.6   1.6   .570
 22       ,,    9.50 a.m.       5976)         54.1  50.0   4.1   .375
 21       ,,    noon             ,, )  Nov.   57.3  51.7   5.6   .396
 20       ,,    2.40 p.m.        ,, _  and    57.3  51.4   5.9   .391
 21       ,,    4 p.m.           ,, )  Dec.   54.7  50.5   4.2   .380
 21       ,,    sunset           ,, )         51.8  48.5   3.3   .355
---------------------------------------------------------------------
260                                     Mean  57.7  53.3   4.5   .438

ELEVATION 5000 TO 6000 FEET.
                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  4    Nampok                   5075   May    83.1  74.7   8.4   .845
  4    Tengling                 5257   Jan.   65.4  38.1  27.3   .247
  2    Choongtam, sunrise       5368   May    78.2  73.9   4.3   .826
  7        ,,     9.50 a.m.      ,,    May    89.8  80.0  19.8  1.000
  5        ,,     noon           ,,    May    92.7  79.9  12.8   .999
  3        ,,     2.45 p.m.      ,,    May    95.4  78.7  16.7   .959
  4        ,,     4 p.m.         ,,    May    93.6  79.0  14.6   .971
  6        ,,     sunset         ,,    May    89.1  77.1  12.0   .915
  8        ,,     9.50 a.m.      ,,    Aug.   85.3  78.9  16.4   .967
  8        ,,     noon           ,,    Aug.   86.6  78.8  17.8   .965
  7        ,,     2.40 p.m.      ,,    Aug.   86.4  78.8   7.6   .963
  6        ,,     4 p.m.         ,,    Aug.   85.3  79.3   6.0   .980
  8        ,,     sunset         ,,    Aug.   83.6  78.5   5.1   .956
  5    Salloobong               5277   Nov.   79.4  65.8  13.6   .634
  6    Lingdam                  5375   Dec.   68.8  59.9   8.9   .521
  3    Makaroumbi               5485   Nov.   72.5  60.5  12.0   .532
  8    Khabang                  5505   Dec.   75.0  64.7  10.3   .611
  6    Lingdam                  5554   Dec.   71.0  56.5  14.5   .466
  3    Yankutang                5564   Dec.   69.5  63.1   6.4   .579
  4    Namtchi                  5608   May    87.8  74.9  12.8   .850
  6    Yoksun                   5619   Jan.   68.2  58.1  10.1   .492
 16     Ditto                    ,,    Jan.   66.2  51.9  14.3   .399
  2    Loongtoong               5677   Nov.   72.1  63.8   8.3   .595
  4    Sakkiazong               5625   Nov.   78.3  66.1  12.2   .639
  3    Phadong  8 a.m.          5946   Nov.   75.0  67.5   7.5   .670
  3       ,,    9.50 a.m.        ,,    Nov.   80.9  67.9  13.0   .678
  3       ,,    noon             ,,    Nov.   85.6  64.8  20.8   .613
  3       ,,    2.40 p.m.        ,,    Nov.   86.6  62.2  24.4   .562
  2       ,,    4 p.m.           ,,    Nov.   85.5  61.9  23.6   .557
  3       ,,    sunset           ,,    Nov.   80.6  67.4  13.2   .667
  3    Tumloong                 5368   Nov.   83.8  77.5   6.3   .924
 22       ,,    9.50 a.m.       5976)         75.1  61.9  13.2   .557
 21       ,,    noon             ,, )  Nov.   79.7  60.1  19.6   .524
 20       ,,    2.40 p.m.        ,, _  and    81.3  58.0  23.3   .489
 21       ,,    4 p.m.           ,, )  Dec.   80.2  58.6  21.6   .499
 21       ,,    sunset           ,, )         76.7  61.2  15.5   .545
---------------------------------------------------------------------
260                                     Mean  77.6  67.8   9.8   .700

Humidity          0.865          Calcutta   0.730
Weight of vapour  4.70 gr.          ,,      7.34 gr.


ELEVATION 6000 TO 7000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 5     Runkpo                   6008   Nov.   57.5  54.8   2.7   .440
11     Leebong                  6021   Feb.   47.8  43.7   4.1   .300
11      Ditto                    ,,    Jan.   47.8  43.4   4.4   .297
 4     Dholep                   6133   May    60.5  59.9   0.6   .520
 2     Iwa River                6159   Dec.   41.2  40.5   0.7   .269
 4     Dengha                   6368   Aug.   66.7  64.0   2.7   .597
 4     Kulhait River            6390   Dec.   41.9  41.9   0.0   .283
 3     Latong                   6391   Oct.   54.0  53.2   0.8   .416
 1     Doobdi                   6472   Jan.   46.6  36.2  10.4   .231
10     Pemiongchi               6584   Jan.   40.7  35.8   4.9   .228
 4     Keadom                   6609   Aug.   63.5  60.0   3.5   .523
 6     Hee-hill                 6677   Jan.   40.8  34.1   6.7   .215
 7     Dumpook                  6678   Jan.   40.2  31.8   8.4   .198
 4     Changachelling           6828   Jan.   50.6  31.8  18.8   .198
---------------------------------------------------------------------
76                                      Mean  50.0  45.1   4.9   .337

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 5     Runkpo                   6008   Nov.   79.5  73.4   6.1   .810
11     Leebong                  6021   Feb.   74.9  59.7  15.2   .517
11      Ditto                    ,,    Jan.   66.9  56.2  10.7   .460
 4     Dholep                   6133   May    89.4  81.4   8.0   .046
 2     Iwa River                6159   Dec.   69.6  60.2   9.4   .527
 4     Dengha                   6368   Aug.   86.1  78.8   7.3   .962
 4     Kulhait River            6390   Dec.   71.3  60.9  10.4   .539
 3     Latong                   6391   Oct.   55.5  44.1  11.4   .305
 1     Doobdi                   6472   Jan.   78.7  58.0  20.7   .490
10     Pemiongchi               6584   Jan.   66.3  54.4  11.9   .434
 4     Keadom                   6609   Aug.   79.7  77.5   2.2   .925
 6     Hee-hill                 6677   Jan.   64.0  58.0   6.0   .489
 7     Dumpook                  6678   Jan.   68.5  53.8  14.7   .426
 4     Changachelling           6828   Jan.   68.3  53.6  14.8   .423
---------------------------------------------------------------------
76                                      Mean  72.8  62.1  10.6   .597

Humidity          0.845          Calcutta   0.701
Weight of vapour  3.60 gr.          ,,      6.11 gr.


ELEVATION 7000 TO 8000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 1     Pemiongchi               7083   Jan.   46.2  33.5  12.7   .210
 2     Goong                    7216   Nov.   49.0  48.5   0.5   .355
 8     Kampo-Samdong            7329   May/   59.1  58.2   0.9   .493
                                       Aug.
 1     Hee-hill                 7289   Jan.   51.3  26.4  24.9   .163
 1     Ratong river             7143   Jan.   36.5  25.3  11.2   .157
 4     Source of Balasun        7436   Oct.   48.3  48.3   0.0   .352
 8     Goong ridge              7441   Oct.   51.2  50.2   1.0   .376
---------------------------------------------------------------------
25                  Dorjiling           Mean  48.8  41.5   7.3   .301

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 1     Pemiongchi               7083   Jan.   76.8  51.8  25.0   .396
 2     Goong                    7216   Nov.   79.7  69.1  10.6   .705
 8     Kampo-Samdong            7329   May/   83.6  77.4   6.2   .922
                                       Aug.
 1     Hee-hill                 7289   Jan.   72.8  56.6  16.2   .466
 1     Ratong river             7143   Jan.   60.0  52.9  17.1   .412
 4     Source of Balasun        7436   Oct.   81.2  73.7   7.5   .819
 8     Goong ridge              7441   Oct.   80.7  66.9  13.8   .657
---------------------------------------------------------------------
25                  Dorjiling           Mean  76.4  64.1  12.3   .625

From mean of above and Dorjiling:
Humidity          0.826          Calcutta   0.668
Weight of vapour  3.85 gr.          ,,      7.28 gr.


ELEVATION 8000 TO 9000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  4    Sinchul                  8607   Jan.   41.7  34.3   7.4   .216
  2     Ditto                    ,,    April  66.8  44.6  22.2   .310
  1    Ascent of Tonglo         8148   May    56.2  54.4   1.8   .434
  2    Tambur river             8081   Nov.   38.0  33.9   4.1   .213
  3    Sakkiazong               8353   Nov.   49.7  37.4  12.3   .241
  4    Chateng                  8418   Oct.   43.8  43.2   0.6   .299
  6    Buckim                   8659   Jan.   30.2  22.8   7.4   .143
  9     Ditto                    ,,    Jan.   33.9  33.1   0.8   .207
  1    Chateng                  8752   May    67.2  60.7   6.5   .536
 11    Lachoong  7 a.m.         8777)         53.3  51.1   2.2   .388
 12       ,,     9.50 a.m.       ,, )         60.2  55.3   4.9   .447
  7       ,,     noon            ,, )  Aug.   61.6  57.1   4.5   .475
  4       ,,     2.40 p.m.       ,, _  and    58.1  56.4   1.7   .464
  7       ,,     4 p.m.          ,, )  Oct.   58.6  53.8   4.8   .424
 10       ,,     sunset          ,, )         55.5  54.3   1.2   .432
 12       ,,     Miscellaneous   ,, )         55.9  49.6   6.3   .368
 10    Lamteng   6 a.m.         8884)  May    53.9  52.0   1.9   .400
 10       ,,     9.50 a.m.       ,, )  June   62.8  56.2   6.6   .461
  4       ,,     noon            ,, _  July   62.8  56.2   6.6   .461
  5       ,,     2.40 p.m.       ,, )  and    58.3  54.5   3.9   .435
  6       ,,     4 p.m.          ,, )  Aug.   56.2  54.7   1.5   .438
  8       ,,     sunset          ,, )         53.3  52.5   0.8   .407
 11    Zemu Sundong  7 a.m.     8976)         55.7  55.3   0.4   .448
 11         ,,       9.50 a.m.   ,, )  June   59.7  52.8   6.9   .412
  7         ,,       noon        ,, )  and    63.1  57.1   6.0   .473
  6         ,,       2.40 p.m.   ,, _  July   61.0  58.6   2.4   .500
  8         ,,       sunset      ,, )         57.9  56.1   1.8   .459
 10         ,,       4 p.m.      ,, )         53.8  52.6   1.2   .407
  1    Goong                    8999   Nov.   49.0  48.5   0.5   .355
  1    Tendong (top)            8663   May    55.5  50.0   5.5   .373
---------------------------------------------------------------------
193                                     Mean  54.5  50.0   4.5   .388

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  4    Sinchul                  8607   Jan.   66.3  56.9   9.4   .472
  2     Ditto                    ,,    April  96.9  75.4  21.5   .866
  1    Ascent of Tonglo         8148   May    86.8  78.9   7.9   .967
  2    Tambur river             8081   Nov.   71.7  64.1   7.6   .599
  3    Sakkiazong               8353   Nov.   74.0  62.4  11.6   .566
  4    Chateng                  8418   Oct.   79.2  77.5   1.7   .926
  6    Buckim                   8659   Jan.   68.6  49.4  19.2   .366
  9     Ditto                    ,,    Jan.   69.8  52.2  17.6   .403
  1    Chateng                  8752   May    89.7  76.8  12.9   .904
 11    Lachoong  7 a.m.         8777)         83.0  78.9   4.1   .967
 12       ,,     9.50 a.m.       ,, )         87.1  79.9   7.2   .999
  7       ,,     noon            ,, )  Aug.   90.1  79.4  10.7   .983
  4       ,,     2.40 p.m.       ,, _  and    88.0  80.0   8.0  1.007
  7       ,,     4 p.m.          ,, )  Oct.   87.5  79.4   8.1   .981
 10       ,,     sunset          ,, )         84.5  78.7   5.8   .959
 12       ,,     Miscellaneous   ,, )         85.9  75.2  10.7   .858
 10    Lamteng   6 a.m.         8884)  May    59.5  56.4   3.1   .464
 10       ,,     9.50 a.m.       ,, )  June   88.3  78.7   9.6   .959
  4       ,,     noon            ,, )  July   92.0  78.0  14.0   .939
  5       ,,     2.40 p.m.       ,, _  and    92.2  78.4  13.8   .950
  6       ,,     4 p.m.          ,, )  Aug.   92.3  77.1  15.2   .914
  8       ,,     sunset          ,, )         88.1  77.4  10.7   .922
 11    Zemu Sundong  7 a.m.     8976)         80.4  79.8   0.6   .997
 11         ,,       9.50 a.m.   ,, )  June   86.3  79.0   7.3   .969
  7         ,,       noon        ,, _  and    88.0  79.8   8.2   .994
  6         ,,       2.40 p.m.   ,, )  July   89.6  78.2  11.4   .944
  8         ,,       sunset      ,, )         89.3  79.0  10.3   .970
 10         ,,       4 p.m.      ,, )         82.7  77.3   5.4   .920
  1    Goong                    8999   Nov.   79.7  69.1  10.6   .705
  1    Tendong (top)            8663   May    88.6  78.1  10.5   .943
---------------------------------------------------------------------
193                                     Mean  83.7  73.7   9.8   .847

Humidity          0.858          Calcutta   0.730
Weight of vapour  4.23 gr.          ,,      8.75 gr.


ELEVATION 9000 TO 10,000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 4     Yangma Guola             9279   Nov.   37.8  33.1   4.7   .207
 8     Nanki                    9320   Nov.   42.3  38.2   4.0   .249
 4     Singalelah               9295   Dec.   36.2  35.7   0.5   .227
 1     Sakkiazong               9322   Nov.   53.5  33.3  20.2   .209
 1     Zemu river               9828   June   60.0  47.6  12.4   .343
---------------------------------------------------------------------
18                                      Mean  46.0  37.6   8.4   .247

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                 Elev.  Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 4     Yangma Guola             9279   Nov.   72.7  61.4  11.3   .549
 8     Nanki                    9320   Nov.   52.2  48.3   3.9   .352
 4     Singalelah               9295   Dec.   70.9  62.1   8.8   .560
 1     Sakkiazong               9322   Nov.   80.0  57.3  22.7   .478
 1     Zemu river               9828   June   93.3  81.9  11.4  1.062
---------------------------------------------------------------------
18                                      Mean  73.8  62.2  11.6   .600

Humidity          0.860          Calcutta   0.760
Weight of vapour  3.46 gr.          ,,      9.00 gr.


ELEVATION 10,000 TO 11,000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 13    Tonglo                  10,008  May    51.5  50.2   1.3   .376
  3    Nanki                   10,024  Nov.   42.8  35.5   7.3   .225
  4    Yalloong river          10,058  Dec.   37.7  29.6   8.1   .183
  2    Tonglo top              10,079  May    49.9  47.9   2.0   .348
  2    Yeunga                  10,196  Oct.   45.9  44.7   1.2   .311
  4    Zemu river              10,247  June   45.4  44.2   1.2   .306
 10    Wallanchoon             10,348  Nov.   37.9  30.2   7.7   .187
  4    Laghep                  10,423  Nov.   46.0  42.4   3.6   .287
  3     Ditto                    ,,    Nov.   37.6  37.0   0.6   .238
 16    Thlonok river 7 a.m.    10,846  June   48.5  47.2   1.3   .339
 17         ,,       9.50 a.m.   ,,    June   57.6  51.4   6.2   .392
  9         ,,       noon        ,,    June   56.1  50.6   5.5   .382
  8         ,,       2.40 p.m.   ,,    June   54.8  50.6   4.2   .381
  9         ,,       4 p.m.      ,,    June   53.4  50.6   2.8   .381
 15         ,,       sunset      ,,    June   49.8  48.9   0.9   .359
  4    Yangma Valley           10,999  Dec.   31.6  24.3   7.3   .149
---------------------------------------------------------------------
123                                     Mean  46.7  42.8   3.8   .303

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 13    Tonglo                  10,008  May    88.8  80.8   8.0  1.030
  3    Nanki                   10,024  Nov.   79.5  65.8  13.7   .633
  4    Yalloong river          10,058  Dec.   77.7  62.1  15.6   .560
  2    Tonglo top              10,079  May    89.4  80.5   8.9  1.018
  2    Yeunga                  10,196  Oct.   79.5  77.1   2.4   .915
  4    Zemu river              10,247  June   84.6  75.1   9.5   .856
 10    Wallanchoon             10,348  Nov.   76.5  61.9  14.6   .558
  4    Laghep                  10,423  Nov.   80.9  68.0  12.9   .681
  3     Ditto                    ,,    Nov.   75.3  69.4   5.9   .712
 16    Thlonok river 7 a.m.    10,846  June   79.0  75.1   3.9   .856
 17         ,,       9.50 a.m.   ,,    June   87.4  78.8   8.6   .965
  9         ,,       noon        ,,    June   90.0  79.3  10.7   .979
  8         ,,       2.40 p.m.   ,,    June   88.5  79.7   8.8   .991
  9         ,,       4 p.m.      ,,    June   88.7  78.7  10.0   .962
 15         ,,       sunset      ,,    June   85.5  78.0   7.5   .938
  4    Yangma Valley           10,999  Dec.   74.4  61.9  12.3   .558
---------------------------------------------------------------------
123                                     Mean  82.8  73.3   9.5   .826

Humidity          0.878          Calcutta   0.740
Weight of vapour  3.35 gr.          ,,      8.70 gr.


ELEVATION 11,000 TO 12,000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  3    Barfonchen              11,233  Nov.   36.8  31.9   4.9   .198
  3    Punying                 11,299  Aug.   50.2  49.5   0.7   .367
  1    Kambachen village       11,378  Dec.   43.3  32.5  10.8   .203
 12    Tallum  7 a.m.          11,482  July   50.4  47.8   2.6   .347
  6      ,,    9.50 a.m.         ,,    July   58.1  50.5   7.6   .380
  8      ,,    noon              ,,    July   57.9  50.8   7.1   .384
  5      ,,    2.40 p.m.         ,,    July   55.7  50.2   5.5   .377
  6      ,,    4 p.m.            ,,    July   54.3  50.1   4.2   .375
  6      ,,    sunset            ,,    July   48.8  47.3   1.5   .340
  2    Kambachen valley        11,484  Dec.   30.4  26.0   4.4   .161
 10    Yeumtong  7 a.m.        11,887)        44.4  43.8   0.6   .302
  9       ,,     9.50 a.m.       ,,  ) Aug.   53.6  48.9   4.7   .360
  5       ,,     noon            ,,  ) Sep.   54.5  48.3   6.2   .353
  7       ,,     2.40 p.m.       ,,  _ and    48.8  47.4   1.4   .342
  4       ,,     4 p.m.          ,,  ) Oct.   48.4  47.1   1.3   .338
 10       ,,     sunset          ,,  )        42.0  35.9   6.1   .229
  7       ,,     Miscellaneous   ,,    Oct.   43.5  37.1   6.4   .239
---------------------------------------------------------------------
104                                     Mean  48.3  43.8   4.5   .311

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  3    Barfonchen              11,233  Nov.   76.3  69.6   6.7   .719
  3    Punying                 11,299  Aug.   84.5  78.8   5.7   .963
  1    Kambachen village       11,378  Dec.   80.0  61.2  18.8   .544
 12    Tallum  7 a.m.          11,482  July   85.0  80.3   4.7  1.010
  6      ,,    9.50 a.m.         ,,    July   88.1  79.7   8.4   .993
  8      ,,    noon              ,,    July   89.7  81.3   8.4  1.043
  5      ,,    2.40 p.m.         ,,    July   89.3  80.6   8.7  1.020
  6      ,,    4 p.m.            ,,    July   90.3  79.4  10.9   .981
  6      ,,    sunset            ,,    July   86.6  80.0   6.6  1.001
  2    Kambachen valley        11,484  Dec.   69.9  59.5  10.4   .515
 10    Yeumtong  7 a.m.        11,887)        83.0  78.9   4.1   .967
  9       ,,     9.50 a.m.       ,,  ) Aug.   87.5  78.7   8.8   .959
  5       ,,     noon            ,,  ) Sep.   89.7  77.2  12.5   .917
  7       ,,     2.40 p.m.       ,,  _ and    87.2  77.2  10.0   .915
  4       ,,     4 p.m.          ,,  ) Oct.   85.2  77.8   7.4   .934
 10       ,,     sunset          ,,  )        60.6  58.5   2.1   .497
  7       ,,     Miscellaneous   ,,    Oct.   83.7  69.7  14.0   .720
---------------------------------------------------------------------
104                                     Mean  83.3  74.6   8.7   .865

Humidity          0.860          Calcutta   0.760
Weight of vapour  3.46 gr.          ,,      9.00 gr.


ELEVATION 12,000 TO 13,000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  9    Zemu river  7 a.m.      12,070)        46.6  45.6   1.0   .321
  9        ,,      9.50 a.m.     ,,  ) June   51.1  49.0   2.1   .362
  7        ,,      noon          ,,  _ and    51.1  50.2   0.9   .376
  7        ,,      2.40 p.m.     ,,  ) July   51.2  50.3   0.9   .377
  7        ,,      4 p.m.        ,,  )        49.7  48.9   0.8   .360
  8        ,,      sunset        ,,  )        48.1  47.6   0.5   .344
  2    Yangma Valley           12,129  Nov.   34.8  22.7  12.1   .143
  1    Zemu river              12,422  June   49.0  46.6   2.4   .332
  3    Chumanako               12,590  Nov.   37.3  28.3   9.0   .174
  7    Tungu  7 a.m.           12,751  July   45.1  44.1   1.0   .305
  5      ,,   9.50 a.m.          ,,    July   53.1  48.6   4.5   .355
  1      ,,   noon               ,,    July   62.3  52.7   9.6   .409
  1      ,,   2.40 p.m.          ,,    July   60.0  53.8   6.2   .425
  6      ,,   sunset             ,,    July   46.4  45.3   1.1   .317
  3      ,,   sunrise            ,,    Oct.   38.2  35.0   3.2   .222
  4      ,,   9.50 a.m.          ,,    Oct.   46.5  42.8   3.7   .292
  4      ,,   noon               ,,    Oct.   46.1  42.0   4.1   .284
  4      ,,   2.40 p.m.          ,,    Oct.   43.8  42.1   1.7   .285
  4      ,,   4 p.m.             ,,    Oct.   42.3  40.8   1.5   .271
  6      ,,   sunset             ,,    Oct.   41.0  38.7   2.3   .253
 23      ,,   Miscellaneous      ,,    Oct.   43.2  40.8   2.4   .272
 13      ,,    Ditto             ,,    July   51.3  47.4   3.6   .345
  6    Tuquoroma               12,944  Nov.   26.0  23.4   2.6   .146
---------------------------------------------------------------------
140                                     Mean  46.3  42.9   3.4   .303

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  9    Zemu river  7 a.m.      12,070)        80.6  77.7   2.9   .931
  9        ,,      9.50 a.m.     ,,  ) June   84.5  75.1   9.4   .972
  7        ,,      noon          ,,  _ and    87.0  82.2   4.8  1.074
  7        ,,      2.40 p.m.     ,,  ) July   86.3  80.0   6.3  1.000
  7        ,,      4 p.m.        ,,  )        86.5  80.2   6.3  1.006
  8        ,,      sunset        ,,  )        81.4  77.5   3.9   .926
  2    Yangma Valley           12,129  Nov.   70.6  63.7  16.9   .592
  1    Zemu river              12,422  June   93.2  79.6  13.6   .989
  3    Chumanako               12,590  Nov.   75.1  73.8   1.3   .822
  7    Tungu  7 a.m.           12,751  July   80.5  78.3   2.2   .949
  5      ,,   9.50 a.m.          ,,    July   87.1  79.4   7.7   .982
  1      ,,   noon               ,,    July   88.9  77.8  11.1   .935
  1      ,,   2.40 p.m.          ,,    July   85.3  79.5   5.8   .985
  6      ,,   sunset             ,,    July   84.7  79.1   5.6   .974
  3      ,,   sunrise            ,,    Oct.   79.4  77.8   1.6   .932
  4      ,,   9.50 a.m.          ,,    Oct.   85.0  78.6   6.4   .957
  4      ,,   noon               ,,    Oct.   85.0  78.2   6.8   .944
  4      ,,   2.40 p.m.          ,,    Oct.   86.4  78.8   7.6   .963
  4      ,,   4 p.m.             ,,    Oct.   85.9  78.5   7.4   .956
  6      ,,   sunset             ,,    Oct.   83.3  78.2   5.1   .947
 23      ,,   Miscellaneous      ,,    Oct.   84.5  78.4   6.1   .950
 13      ,,    Ditto             ,,    July   85.7  79.0   6.7   .971
  6    Tuquoroma               12,944  Nov.   75.1  60.8  14.3   .537
---------------------------------------------------------------------
140                                     Mean  83.6  77.1   6.5   .926

Humidity          0.890          Calcutta   0.815
Weight of vapour  3.37 gr.          ,,      9.75 gr.


ELEVATION 13,000 TO 14,000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 7     Mon Lepcha              13,090  Jan.   27.1  18.5   8.6   .122
 4      Ditto                  13,073  Jan.   25.6  16.4   9.2   .113
 2     Tunkra valley           13,111  Aug.   45.0  43.5   1.5   .298
21     Jongri                  13,194  Jan.   22.7  10.5  12.2   .091
 1     Zemu river              13,281  June   46.7  46.7   0.0   .334
 4     Choonjerma              13,288  Dec.   39.0  11.1  27.9   .093
10     Yangma village          13,502  Nov./  33.8  18.6  15.2   .123
                                       Dec.
 1     Wallanchoon road        13,505  Nov.   28.0   9.5  18.5   .088
 3     Kambachen, below pass   13,600  Dec.   40.0  18.6  21.4   .123
---------------------------------------------------------------------
53                                      Mean  34.2  21.5  12.6   .154

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 7     Mon Lepcha              13,090  Jan.   70.0  50.8  19.2   .527
 4      Ditto                  13,073  Jan.   71.7  49.9  21.8   .373
 2     Tunkra valley           13,111  Aug.   81.2  78.7   2.5   .962
21     Jongri                  13,194  Jan.   70.6  53.2  17.4   .417
 1     Zemu river              13,281  June   92.9  86.6   6.2  1.230
 4     Choonjerma              13,288  Dec.   69.8  61.8  28.0   .555
10     Yangma village          13,502  Nov./  78.9  62.1  16.8   .561
                                       Dec.
 1     Wallanchoon road        13,505  Nov.   66.4  61.8  14.6   .555
 3     Kambachen, below pass   13,600  Dec.   72.9  62.2  10.7   .563
---------------------------------------------------------------------
53                                      Mean  74.9  63.0  11.9   .636

Humidity          0.634          Calcutta   0.678
Weight of vapour  1.61 gr.                  6.28 gr.


ELEVATION 15,000 TO 16,000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 1     Yangma valley           15,186  Dec.   42.2  20.7  21.5   .133
 1     Choonjerma pass         15,259  Dec.   34.3  10.5  23.8   .091
 8     Lachee-pia              15,262  Aug.   42.0  41.6   0.4   .279
12     Momay,  7 a.m.            ,,    Sept.  39.4  34.7   4.7   .219
 6       ,,    9.50 a.m.         ,,    Sept.  50.9  41.7   9.2   .280
 4       ,,    noon              ,,    Sept.  51.7  43.6   8.1   .299
 8       ,,    2.40 p.m.         ,,    Sept.  49.7  41.9   7.8   .283
10       ,,    4 p.m.            ,,    Sept.  44.4  41.3   3.1   .276
16       ,,    sunset            ,,    Sept.  41.5  38.6   2.9   .252
 8       ,,    Miscellaneous     ,,    Sept.  47.6  41.4   6.2   .277
 6       ,,         ,,           ,,    Oct.   40.9  36.5   4.4   .234
 3     Sittong                 15,372  Oct.   38.6  29.8   8.8   .184
 2     Palung                  15,676  Oct.   44.6  39.8   4.8   .262
 1     Kambachen pass          15,770  Dec.   26.5  15.9  10.6   .111
 1     Yeumtong                15,985  Sept.  44.6  43.7   0.9   .300
---------------------------------------------------------------------
87                                      Mean  42.6  34.8   7.8   .232

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 1     Yangma valley           15,186  Dec.   80.8  62.0  18.8   .559
 1     Choonjerma pass         15,259  Dec.   77.9  60.6  17.3   .534
 8     Lachee-pia              15,262  Aug.   85.5  79.4   6.1   .982
12     Momay,  7 a.m.            ,,    Sept.  80.5  78.8   1.7   .966
 6       ,,    9.50 a.m.         ,,    Sept.  87.6  78.8   8.8   .963
 4       ,,    noon              ,,    Sept.  89.5  79.7   9.8   .990
 8       ,,    2.40 p.m.         ,,    Sept.  90.0  78.3  11.7   .949
10       ,,    4 p.m.            ,,    Sept.  88.7  77.6  11.1   .928
16       ,,    sunset            ,,    Sept.  84.2  78.4   5.8   .952
 8       ,,    Miscellaneous     ,,    Sept.  87.4  78.6   8.8   .956
 6       ,,         ,,           ,,    Oct.   83.9  69.3  14.6   .710
 3     Sittong                 15,372  Oct.   84.0  77.5   6.5   .926
 2     Palung                  15,676  Oct.   86.8  78.5   8.3   .954
 1     Kambachen pass          15,770  Dec.   78.0  58.5  19.5   .498
 1     Yeumtong                15,985  Sept.  88.8  80.5   8.3  1.016
---------------------------------------------------------------------
87                                      Mean  84.9  74.4  10.5   .859

Humidity          0.763          Calcutta   0.719
Weight of vapour  2.55 gr.                  8.95 gr.


ELEVATION 16,000 TO 17,000 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 1     Kanglachem pass        16,038  Dec.   32.8  16.3  16.5   .110
 3     Tunkra pass             16,038  Aug.   39.8  38.7   1.1   .252
 1     Wallanchoon pass        16,756  Nov.   18.0-6.0  24.0   .046
 5     Teumtso                 16,808  Oct.   32.4  25.1   7.3   .156
 6     Cholamoo lake           16,900  Oct.   31.4  20.2  11.2   .130
 1     Donkia mountain         16,978  Sept.  40.2  25.9  14.3   .160
---------------------------------------------------------------------
17                                      Mean  32.4  20.0  12.4   .142

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 1     Kanglachem pass         16,038  Dec.   80.7  61.1  19.6   .543
 3     Tunkra pass             16,038  Aug.   86.0  78.7   7.3   .959
 1     Wallanchoon pass        16,756  Nov.   79.9  57.6  22.3   .483
 5     Teumtso                 16,808  Oct.   85.0  75.7   9.3   .872
 6     Cholamoo lake           16,900  Oct.   79.8  68.4  11.4   .690
 1     Donkia mountain         16,978  Sept.  87.6  78.8  18.8   .963
---------------------------------------------------------------------
17                                      Mean  83.2  70.1  13.3   .752

Humidity          0.640          Calcutta   0.658
Weight of vapour  1.53 gr.                  7.80 gr.


ELEVATION 17,000 TO 18,500 FEET.
                                EASTERN NEPAL AND SIKKIM.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 1     Kinchinjhow             17,624  Sept.  47.5  30.9  16.6   .191
 1     Sebolah pass            17,585  Sept.  46.5  34.6  11.9   .218
 1     Donkin mountain         18,307  Sept.  38.8  35.3   3.5   .224
 3     Bhomtso                 18,450  Oct.   54.0   4.4  49.6   .072
 2     Donkia pass             18,466  Sept.  41.8  30.3  11.5   .188
 2      Ditto                  18,466  Oct.   40.1  25.0  15.1   .155
---------------------------------------------------------------------
10                                      Mean  44.8  26.8  18.0   .175

                                CALCUTTA.
No. of
Obs.   Locality                Elev.   Month  Tem.  D.P.  Diff.  Tens
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 1     Kinchinjhow             17,624  Sept.  85.7  79.7  16.0   .991
 1     Sebolah pass            17,585  Sept.  88.8  80.0  18.8  1.002
 1     Donkin mountain         18,307  Sept.  90.7  79.3  11.4   .981
 3     Bhomtso                 18,450  Oct.   91.1  61.1  20.0   .543
 2     Donkia pass             18,466  Sept.  84.1  78.4  15.7   .950
 2      Ditto                  18,466  Oct.   86.5  65.5  21.0   .627
---------------------------------------------------------------------
10                                      Mean  87.8  74.0  12.2   .849

Humidity          0.532          Calcutta   0.648
Weight of vapour  1.90 gr.                  8.78 gr.


SUMMARY.

HUMIDITY                                            WEIGHT OF VAPOUR
No. of  Elevations      Sta- Sik-Cal- Diff.   Sik-Cal-Diff.
Obs.    in Feet         tions  kim   cutta  Sikkim  kim   cutta Sikkim
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  48      735 to   2000   9    .717  .663   +.054   5.57  6.88-1.31
  49     2000 to   3000   9    .820  .740    .080   5.45  7.13   1.68
  48     3000 to   4000  13    .858  .732    .116   4.23  6.60   2.37
 137     4000 to   5000  23    .837  .730    .107   4.33  7.12   2.79
 260     5000 to   6000  15    .865  .730    .135   4.70  7.34   2.64
  76     6000 to   7000  13    .845  .701    .144   3.60  6.71   3.11
1023     7000 to   8000  14    .826  .668    .158   3.85  7.28   3.43
 193     8000 to   9000  13    .858  .730    .128   4.23  8.75   4.52
  18     9000 to 10,000   5    .747  .724    .023   2.80  6.28   3.48
 123   10,000 to 11,000  10    .878  .740    .138   3.35  8.70   4.35
 104   11,000 to 12,000   6    .860  .760    .100   3.46  9.00   5.54
 140   12,000 to 13,000   6    .890  .815    .075   3.37  9.75   6.38
  53   13,000 to 14,000   9    .634  .678 -.044   1.61  6.28   4.67
  87   15,000 to 16,000   8    .763  .719   +.044   2.55  8.95   6.40
  17   16,000 to 17,000   6    .640  .658    .018   1.53  7.80   6.27
  10   17,000 to 18,500   5    .532  .648 -.116   1.90  8.78   6.88
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2386                    154


Considering how desultory the observations in Sikkim are, and how
much affected by local circumstances, the above results must be
considered highly satisfactory: they prove that the relative humidity
of the atmospheric column remains pretty constant throughout all
elevations, except when these are in a Tibetan climate; and when
above 18,000 feet, elevations which I attained in fine weather only.
Up to 12,000 feet this constant humidity is very marked; the
observations made at greater elevations were almost invariably to the
north, or leeward of the great snowy peaks, and consequently in a
drier climate; and there it will be seen that these proportions are
occasionally inverted; and in Tibet itself a degree of relative
dryness is encountered, such as is never equalled on the plains of
Eastern Bengal or the Gangetic delta. Whether an isolated peak rising
near Calcutta, to the elevation of 19,000 feet, would present similar
results to the above, is not proven by these observations, but as the
relative humidity is the same at all elevations on the outermost
ranges of Sikkim, which attain 10,000 feet, and as these rise from
the plains like steep islands out of the ocean, it may be presumed
that the effects of elevation would be the same in both cases.

The first effect of this humid wind is to clothe Sikkim with forests,
that make it moister still; and however difficult it is to separate
cause from effect in such cases as those of the reciprocal action of
humidity on vegetation, and vegetation on humidity, it is necessary
for the observer to consider the one as the effect of the other.
There is no doubt that but for the humidity of the region, the Sikkim
Himalaya would not present the uniform clothing of forest that it
does; and, on the other hand, that but for this vegetation, the
relative humidity would not be so great.* [Balloon ascents and
observations on small mountainous islands, therefore, offer the best
means of solving such questions: of these, the results of ballooning,
under Mr. Welsh's intrepid and skilful pioneering (see Phil. Trans.
for 1853), have proved most satisfactory; though, from the time for
observation being short, and from the interference of belts of
vapour, some anomalies have not been eliminated. Islands again are
still more exposed to local influences, which may be easily
eliminated in a long series of observations. I think that were two
islands, as different in their physical characters as St. Helena and
Ascension, selected for comparative observations, at various
elevations, the laws that regulate the distribution of humidity in
the upper regions might be deduced without difficulty. They are
advantageous sites, from differing remarkably in their humidity.
Owing partly to the indestructible nature of its component rock (a
glassy basalt), the lower parts of Ascension have never yielded to
the corroding effects of the moist sea air which surrounds it; which
has decomposed the upper part into a deep bed of clay. Hence
Ascension does not support a native tree, or even shrub, two feet
high. St. Helena, on the other hand, which can hardly be considered
more favourably situated for humidity, was clothed with a redundant
vegetation when discovered, and trees and tree-ferns (types of
humidity) still spread over its loftiest summits. Here the humidity,
vegetation, and mineral and mechanical composition reciprocate their
influences.]

The great amount of relative humidity registered at 6000 to 8000
feet, arises from most of the observations having been made on the
outer range, where the atmosphere is surcharged. The majority of
those at 10,000 to 12,000 feet, which also give a disproportionate
amount of humidity, were registered at the Zemu and Thlonok rivers,
where the narrowness of the valleys, the proximity of great snowy
peaks, and the rank luxuriance of the vegetation, all favour a
humid atmosphere.

I would have added the relative rain-fall to the above, but this is
so very local a phenomenon, and my observations were so repeatedly
deranged by having to camp in forests, and by local obstacles of all
kinds, that I have suppressed them; their general results I have
given in Appendix F.

I here add a few observations, taken on the plains at the foot of the
Sikkim Himalaya during the spring months.


_Comparison between Temperature and Humidity of the Sikkim Terai
and Calcutta, in March and April, 1849._

                 Elev.
No.              above TEMP.       D.P.        TENSION     SAT.
of               sea.
Obs. Locality    Feet  C.    T.    C.    T.    C.    T.    C.    T.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 4   Rummai      293   82.2  70.6  61.7  60.5  .553  .532  .517  .717
 4   Belakoba    368   92.8  85.5  62.6  63.0  .570  .578  .382  .485
 3   Rangamally  275   84.2  75.0  68.7  62.5  .695  .568  .605  .665
 3   Bhojepore   404   90.1  81.2  54.1  44.3  .429  .308  .313  .295
 4   Thakyagunj  284   84.9  77.1  61.3  60.8  .547  .537  .466  .588
 3   Bhatgong    225   87.4  74.9  64.7  54.6  .611  .436  .480  .512
 2   Sahigunj    231   80.2  68.0  66.2  53.1  .642  .414  .635  .409
 8   Titalya     362   85.5  80.0  55.4  56.1  .448  .459  .376  .459
---------------------------------------------------------------------
31      Means    305   85.9  79.0  61.8  56.9  .562  .479  .472  .516
     May, 1850 ) 131   89.7 K78.6  76.7 K71.4  .904 K.759  .665 K.793
     Kishengunj)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Vapour in a cubic foot--Kishengunj 8.20   Terai    5.08
                        Calcutta   9.52   Calcutta 5.90
Mean difference of temperature between Terai and Calcutta, from
  31 observations in March, as above,
  excluding minima                            Terai--6.9
Mean difference from 26 observations in March,
  including minima                            Terai--9.7
Mean difference of temperature at Siligore on May 1, 1850-- 10.9
Mean difference of temperature at Kishengunj on May 1, 1850--11.1


From the above, it appears that during the spring months, and before
the rains commence, the belt of sandy and grassy land along the
Himalaya, though only 3.5 degrees north of Calcutta, is at least 6
degrees or 7 degrees colder, and always more humid relatively, though
there is absolutely less moisture suspended in the air. After the
rains commence; I believe that this is in a great measure inverted,
the plains becoming excessively heated, and the temperature being
higher than at Calcutta. This indeed follows from the well known fact
that the summer heat increases greatly in advancing north-west from
the Bay of Bengal to the trans-Sutledge regions; it is admirably
expressed in the maps of Dove's great work "On the Distribution of
Heat on the Surface of the Globe."


APPENDIX H.

ON THE TEMPERATURE OF THE SOIL AT VARIOUS ELEVATIONS.

These observations were taken by burying a brass tube two feet six
inches to three feet deep, in exposed soil, and sinking in it, by a
string or tied to a slip of wood, a thermometer whose bulb was well
padded with wool: this, after a few hours' rest, indicates the
temperature of the soil. Such a tube and thermometer I usually caused
to be sunk wherever I halted, if even for one night, except during
the height of the rains, which are so heavy that they communicate to
the earth a temperature considerably above that of the air.

The results proved that the temperature of the soil at Dorjiling
varies with that of the month, from 46 degrees to 62.2 degrees, but
is hardly affected by the diurnal variation, except in extreme cases.
In summer, throughout the rains, May to October, the temperature is
that of the month, which is imparted by the rain to the depth of
eleven feet during heavy continued falls (of six to twelve inches a
day), on which occasions I have seen the buried thermometer
indicating a temperature above the mean of the month. Again, in the
winter months, December and January, it stands 5 degrees above the
monthly mean; in November and February 4 degrees to 5 degrees; in
March a few degrees below the mean temperature of the month, and in
October above it; April and May being sunny, it stands above their
mean; June to September a little below the mean temperature of
each respectively.

The temperature of the soil is affected by:--1. The exposure of the
surface; 2. The nature of the soil; 3. Its permeability by rain, and
the presence of underground springs; 4. The sun's declination;
5. The elevation above the sea, and consequently the heating power of
the sun's rays: and 6, The amount of cloud and sunshine.

The appended observations, though taken at sixty-seven places, are
far from being sufficient to supply data for the exact estimation of
the effects of the sun on the soil at any elevation or locality;
they, however, indicate with tolerable certainty the main features of
this phenomenon, and these are in entire conformity with more ample
series obtained elsewhere. The result, which at first sight appears
the most anomalous, is, that the mean temperature of the soil, at two
or three feet depth, is almost throughout the year in India above
that of the surrounding atmosphere. This has been also ascertained to
be the case in England by several observers, and the carefully
conducted observations of Mr. Robert Thompson at the Horticultural
Society's Gardens at Chiswick, show that the temperature of the soil
at that place is, on the mean of six years, at the depth of one foot,
1 degree above that of the air, and at two feet 1.5 degrees. During
the winter months the soil is considerably (l degree to 3 degrees)
warmer than the air, and during summer the soil is a fraction of a
degree cooler than the air.

In India, the sun's declination being greater, these effects are much
exaggerated, the soil on the plains being in winter sometimes 9
degrees hotter than the air; and at considerable elevations in the
Himalaya very much more than that; in summer also, the temperature of
the soil seldom falls below that of the air, except where copious
rain-falls communicate a low temperature, or where forests interfere
with the sun's rays.

At considerable elevations these effects are so greatly increased,
that it is extremely probable that at certain localities the mean
temperature of the soil may be even 10 degrees warmer than that of
the air; thus, at Jongri, elevation 13,194 feet, the soil in January
was 34.5 degrees, or 19.2 degrees above the mean temperature of the
month, immediately before the ground became covered with snow for the
remainder of the winter; during the three succeeding months,
therefore, the temperature of the soil probably does not fall below
that of the snow, whilst the mean temperature of the air in January
may be estimated at about 20 degrees, February 22 degrees, March 30
degrees, and April 35 degrees. If, again, we assume the temperature
of the soil of Jongri to be that of other Sikkim localities between
10,000 and 14,000 feet, we may assume the soil to be warmer by 10
degrees in July (see Tungu observations), by 8 degrees or 9 degrees
in September (see Yeumtong); by l0 degrees in October (see Tungu);
and by 7 degrees to l0 degrees in November (see Wallanchoon and
Nanki). These temperatures, however, vary extremely according to
exposure and amount of sunshine; and I should expect that the
greatest differences would be found in the sunny climate of Tibet,
where the sun's heat is most powerful. Were nocturnal or terrestrial
radiation as constant and powerful as solar, the effects of the
latter would be neutralised; but such is not the case at any
elevation in Sikkim.

This accumulated heat in the upper strata of soil must have a very
powerful effect upon vegetation, preventing the delicate rootlets of
shrubs from becoming frozen, and preserving vitality in the more
fleshy, roots, such as those of the large rhubarbs and small orchids,
whose spongy cellular tissues would no doubt be ruptured by severe
frosts. To the burrowing rodents, the hares, marmots, and rats, which
abound at 15,000 to 17,000 feet in Tibet, this phenomenon is even
more conspicuously important; for were the soil in winter to acquire
the mean temperature of the air, it would take very long to heat
after the melting of the snow, and indeed the latter phenomenon would
be greatly retarded. The rapid development of vegetation after the
disappearance of the snow, is no doubt also proximately due to the
heat of the soil, quite as much as to the increased strength of the
sun's direct rays in lofty regions.

I have given in the column following that containing the temperature
of the sunk thermometer, first the extreme temperatures of the air
recorded during the time the instrument was sunk; and in the next
following, the mean temperature of the air during the same period, so
far as I could ascertain it from my own observations.

SERIES I.--_Soane Valley_
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Muddunpore
Date                                   Feb. 11 to 12
Elevation                              440 feet
Depth                                  3 ft. 4 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   71.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    62.0 to 77.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  67.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +4.5
-----------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Nourunga
Date                                   Feb. 12 to 13
Elevation                              340 feet
Depth                                  3 ft. 8 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   71.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    57.0 to 71.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  67.3
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      3.4
-----------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Baroon
Date                                   Feb. 13 to 14
Elevation                              345 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 4 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   68.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    53.5 to 76.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  67.6
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      1.9
-----------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Tilotho
Date                                   Feb. 15 to 16
Elevation                              395 feet
Depth                                  4 ft. 6 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   76.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    58.5 to 80.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  67.8
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      8.7
-----------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Akbarpore
Date                                   Feb. 17 to 19
Elevation                              400 feet
Depth                     (2 therm.)   4 ft. 6 in.
                                       5 ft. 6 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   76.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    56.9 to 79.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  68.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      8.0
-----------------------------------------------------


SERIES II.--_Himalaya of East Nepal and Sikkim._
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Base of Tonglo
Date                                   May 19
Elevation                              3,000 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   78.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    67.5 to 67.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Simsibong
Date                                   May 20
Elevation                              7,000 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   61.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    59.0 to 59.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Tonglo saddle
Date                                   May 21 to 22
Elevation                              10,008 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 6 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   50.7*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    47.5 to 57.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  52.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -1.8
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Tonglo summit
Date                                   May 23
Elevation                              10,079 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 6 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   49.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    47.5 to 53.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  52.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -1.8
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Simonbong
Date                                   May 24
Elevation                              5,000 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 6 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   69.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    51.2 to 55.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  52.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -1.8
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Nanki
Date                                   Nov. 4 to 5
Elevation                              9,300 feet
Depth                                  3 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   51.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    33.0 to 50.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  41.2
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +9.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Sakkiazong
Date                                   Nov. 9 to 10
Elevation                              8,353 feet
Depth                                  3 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   53.2
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    37.8 to 55.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  46.1
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +7.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Mywa guola
Date                                   Nov. 17 to 18
Elevation                              2,132 feet
Depth                                  3 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   73.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    41.0 to 85.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  63.4
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +9.6
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Banks of Tambur
Date                                   Nov. 18 to 19
Elevation                              2,545 feet
Depth                                  3 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   71.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    48.0 to 65.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  55.6
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +15.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Banks of Tambur
                                        higher up river
Date                                   Nov. 19 to 20
Elevation                              3,201 feet
Depth                                  3 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   64.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    44.3 to 60.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  51.6
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +12.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Wallanchoon
Date                                   Nov. 23 to 25
Elevation                              10,386 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   43.5 to 45.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    25.0 to 49.7
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  37.4
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +7.6
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Yangma village
Date                                   Nov. 30, Dec. 3
Elevation                              13,502 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   37.3 to 38.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    20.0 to 46.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  33.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +4.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Yangma river
Date                                   Dec. 2 to 3
Elevation                              10,999 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   41.4 to 42.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    23.0 to 40.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  27.9
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +3.6
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Bhomsong
Date                                   Dec. 24 to 25
Elevation                              1,596 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   64.5 to 65.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    42.8 to 71.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  57.1
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +6.6
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Tchonpong
Date                                   Jan. 4
Elevation                              4,978 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   55.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    33.0 to 54.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  43.9
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +11.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jongri
Date                                   Jan. 10 to 11
Elevation                              13,194 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   34.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    3.7 to 34.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  15.3
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +19.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Buckeem
Date                                   Jan. 12
Elevation                              8,665 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   43.2
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    40.0 to 29.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  32.4
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +10.8
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Choongtam
Date                                   May 19 to 25
Elevation                              5,268 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   62.5 to 62.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    48.0 to 78.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  63.2
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -0.6
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Junction of Thlonok and Zemu
Date                                   June 13 to 16
Elevation                              10,846 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   51.2
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    38.2 to 57.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  49.8
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +1.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Tungu
Date                                   July 26 to 30
Elevation                              12,751 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 5 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   59.0 to 56.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    38.0 to 62.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  50.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +7.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Tungu
Date                                   Oct. 10 to 15
Elevation                              12,751 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   50.8 to 52.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    34.5 to 53.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  41.1
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +10.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Lamteng
Date                                   Aug. 1 to 3
Elevation                              8,884 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   62.2 to 62.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    47.5 to 78.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  57.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +5.3
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Choongtam
Date                                   Aug. 13 to 15
Elevation                              5,268 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   72.1
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    54.8 to 82.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  72.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +0.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Lachoong
Date                                   Aug. 17 to 19
Elevation                              8,712 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   66.3 to 66.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    43.5 to 68.7
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  57.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +9.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Yeumtong
Date                                   Sept. 2 to 8
Elevation                              11,919 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   55.5 to 56.1
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    39.5 to 59.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  47.2
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +8.6
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Momay
Date                                   Sept. 10 to 14
Elevation                              15,362 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   52.5 to 51.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    31.0 to 62.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  4106
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +10.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Yeumtso
Date                                   Oct. 16 to 18
Elevation                              16,8.8 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   43.5 to 43.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    4.0 to 52.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  30.6
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +12.6
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Lachoong
Date                                   Oct. 24 to 25
Elevation                              8,712 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   60.2
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    39.0 to 62.6
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  52.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +8.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Great Rungeet
Date                                   Feb. 11 to 13
Elevation                              818 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   65.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    56.0 to 71.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  63.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +1.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Leebong
Date                                   Feb. 14 to 15
Elevation                              6,000 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   50.8 to 52.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    41.5 to 56.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  46.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +5.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Kursiong
Date                                   Apr. 16
Elevation                              4,813 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   64.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    63.0 to 60.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  63.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +1.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Leebong
Date                                   Apr. 22
Elevation                              6,000 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   61.8 to 62.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    54.0 to 67.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  60.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +1.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Punkabaree
Date                                   May 1
Elevation                              1,850 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   80.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    68.2 to 78.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  76.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +4.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   Aug. 15 to 16
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  5 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   62.0 to 62.8
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    58.0 to 66.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  61.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +0.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   Aug. 15 to 16
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  7 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   61.5 to 62.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    58.0 to 66.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  61.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +0.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   Aug. 20 to 22
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  5 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   61.6 to 61.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    58.7 to 67.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  61.7
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -0.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   Aug. 20 to 22
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  7 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   60.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    58.7 to 67.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  61.7
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -1.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   Sept. 9
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  5 ft. 0 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   60.2
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    56.2 to 65.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  60.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +0.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   Sept. 9
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  7 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   60.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    56.2 to 65.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  60.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +0.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   Oct. 6
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  7 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   60.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    52.0 to 61.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  58.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +1.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   Oct. 20
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  7 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   58.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    49.7 to 55.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  56.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +2.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   Feb. 18 to 28
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   46.0 to 46.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    36.0 to 52.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  43.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +6.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   March 1 to 13
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   46.3 to 48.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    34.5 to 53.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  46.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +1.3
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   April 18 to 20
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   55.3 to 56.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    46.0 to 61.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  54.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +1.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's)
Date                                   April 30
Elevation                              7,430 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   57.4
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    46.0 to 61.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  55.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +2.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Superintendent's house
Date                                   April 21 to 30
Elevation                              6,932 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   58.8 to 60.2
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    48.5 to 65.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  58.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +1.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
*Sheltered by trees, ground spongy and wet.


SERIES III.--_Plains of Bengal_
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Kishengunj
Date                                   May 3 to 4
Elevation                              131 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   82.8 to 83.0 (Dry sand)
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    70.0 to 85.7 (Dry sand)
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  82.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +0.8
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Dulalgunj
Date                                   May 7
Elevation                              130 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   81.3 to 83.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    74.3 to 90.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  82.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -0.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Banks of Mahanuddy river
Date                                   May 8
Elevation                              100 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   79.3 to 83.0*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    75.0 to 91.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  83.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -3.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Banks of Mahanuddy river
Date                                   May 9
Elevation                              100 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   87.5 to 83.0*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    77.8 to 92.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  83.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -4.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Banks of Mahanuddy river
                                       May 10
Elevation                              100 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   88.0 to 83.0*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    78.5 to 91.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  82.3
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -5.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Maldah
Date                                   May 11
Elevation                              100 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   88.8 to 83.0*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    75.3 to 91.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  82.3
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -6.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Mahanuddy river
Date                                   May 14
Elevation                              100 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   87.8 to 83.0*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    71.0 to 91.7
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  82.3
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -4.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Ganges
Date                                   May 15
Elevation                              100 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   88.0 to 83.0*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    73.0 to 87.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  82.3
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -5.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Bauleah
Date                                   May 16 to 18
Elevation                              130 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   87.8 to 89.8
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    78.0 to 106.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  80.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +7.3
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Dacca
Date                                   May 28 to 30
Elevation                              72 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   84.9 to 84.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    75.3 to 95.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  83.3
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +0.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Soil, a moist sand.


SERIES IV.--_Khasia Mountains._

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Churra
Date                                   June 23 to 25
Elevation                              4,226 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   71.8 to 72.3*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    64.8 to 72.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  69.9
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +2.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Churra
Date                                   Oct. 29 to Nov. 16
Elevation                              4,226 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   68.3 to 64.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    70.7 to 49.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  61.7
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +4.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Kala-panee
Date                                   June 28 to 29
Elevation                              5,302 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   69.2
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    64.2 to 71.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  67.2
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +2.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Kala-panee
Date                                   Aug. 5 to 7
Elevation                              5,302 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   70.0 to 70.4
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    72.2 to 61.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  64.9
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +5.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Kala-panee
Date                                   Sept. 13 to 14
Elevation                              5,302 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   70.2*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    65.5 to 69.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  66.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +4.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Kala-panee
Date                                   Oct. 27 to 28
Elevation                              5,302 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   66.3*
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    64.0 to 56.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  60.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +6.3
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Moflong
Date                                   June 30 to July 4
Elevation                              6,062 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   65.0 to 67.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    61.0 to 68.3
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  64.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +2.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Moflong
Date                                   July 30 to Aug. 4
Elevation                              6,062 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   67.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    64.0 to 75.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  68.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -1.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Moflong
Date                                   Oct. 25 to 27
Elevation                              6,062 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   63.2
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    63.7 to 55.7
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  64.1
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -0.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Syong
Date                                   July 29 to 30
Elevation                              5,725 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   69.2 to 69.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    60.0 to 78.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  69.2
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +0.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Syong
Date                                   Oct. 11 to 12
Elevation                              5,725 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   67.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    65.7 to 55.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  62.8
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +4.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Myrung
Date                                   July 9 to 10
Elevation                              5,647 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   66.2 to 66.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    60.0 to 73.8
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  67.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -1.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Myrung
Date                                   July 26 to 29
Elevation                              5,647 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   68.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    78.0 to 64.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  71.1
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -2.8
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Myrung
Date                                   Oct. 12 to 17
Elevation                              5,647 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   66.0 to 64.8
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    70.0 to 55.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  63.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +2.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Myrung
Date                                   Oct. 21 to 25
Elevation                              5,647 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   64.8 to 64.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    66.0 to 53.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  60.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +3.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Nunklow
Date                                   July 11 to 26
Elevation                              4,688 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   70.5 to 71.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    65.5 to 81.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  71.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.    -0.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Nunklow
Date                                   Oct. 17 to 21
Elevation                              4,688 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   68.8 to 68.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    75.7 to 58.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  6601
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +2.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Pomrang
Date                                   Sept. 15 to 23
Elevation                              5,143 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   70.3 to 68.5
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    73.0 to 57.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  65.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +3.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Pomrang
Date                                   Oct. 6 to 10
Elevation                              5,143 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   68.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    73.7 to 58.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  65.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +3.3
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Hole full of rain-water.


SERIES V.--_Jheels, Gangetic Delta, and Chittagong._
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Silchar
Date                                   Nov.27 to 30
Elevation                              116 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   77.7 to 75.8
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    55.0 to 81.7
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  69.1
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +7.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Silhet
Date                                   Dec. 3 to 7
Elevation                              133 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   73.5 to 73.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    63.0 to 74.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  69.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +3.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Noacolly
Date                                   Dec. 18 to 19
Elevation                              20 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   73.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    58.5 to 76.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  69.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +3.8
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Chittagong
Date                                   Dec. 23 to 31
Elevation                              191 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   72.5 to 73.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    53.2 to 75.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  63.8
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +9.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Chittagong
Date                                   Jan. 14 to 16
Elevation                              116 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   73.3 to 73.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    61.3 to 78.7
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  65.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +8.3
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Chittagong flagstaf hill
Date                                   Dec. 28 to 30
Elevation                              151 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   72.0 to 71.8
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    55.2 to 74.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  65.3
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +6.6
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Hat-hazaree
Date                                   Jan.4 to 5
Elevation                              20 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   71.3
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    50.5 to 62.0
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  65.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +6.3
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Sidhee
Date                                   Jan.5 to 6
Elevation                              20 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   71.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    52.7 to 70.2
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  65.0
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +6.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Hattiah
Date                                   Jan.6 to 9
Elevation                              20 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   67.7 (shaded by trees)
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    50.2 to 77.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  64.5
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +3.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Seetakoond
Date                                   Jan. 9 to 14
Elevation                              20 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   73.3 to 73.7
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    55.2 to 79.5
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  70.2
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +3.3
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Locality                               Calcutta*
Date                                   Jan. 16 to Feb. 5
Elevation                              18 feet
Depth                                  2 ft. 7 in.
Temp. of sunk Therm.                   76.0 to 77.0
Extreme Temperature of Air observed    56.5 to 82.0**
Approximate Mean Temp. of Air deduced  69.3
Diff. between Air and sunk Therm.      +7.2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Observations at the Mint, etc., by Mr. Muller.
** Observations for temperature of air, taken at the Observatory.



APPENDIX I.

ON THE DECREMENT OF TEMPERATURE IN ASCENDING THE SIKKIM
HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS AND KHASIA MOUNTAINS.

I have selected as many of my observations for temperature of the sir
as appeared to be trustworthy, and which, also, were taken
contemporaneously with others at Calcutta, and I have compared them
with the Calcutta observations, in order to find the ratio of
decrement of heat to an increase of elevation. The results of several
sets of observations are grouped together, but show so great an
amount of discrepancy, that it is evident that a long series of
months and the selection of several stations are necessary in a
mountain country to arrive at any accurate results. Even at the
stations where the most numerous and the most trustworthy
observations were recorded, the results of different months differ
extremely; and with regard to the other stations, where few
observations were taken, each one is affected differently from
another at the same level with it, by the presence or proximity of
forest, by exposure to the east or west, to ascending or descending
currents in the valleys, and to cloud or sunshine. Other and still
more important modifying influences are to be traced to the monthly
variations in the amount of humidity in the air and the strength of
its currents, to radiation, and to the evolution of heat which
accompanies condensation raising the temperature of elevated regions
during the rainy season. The proximity of large masses of snow has
not the influence I should have expected in lowering the temperature
of the surrounding atmosphere, partly no doubt because of the more
rapid condensation of vapours which it effects, and partly because of
the free circulation of the currents around it. The difference
between the temperatures of adjacent grassy and naked or rocky spots,
on the other hand, is very great indeed, the former soon becoming
powerfully heated in lofty regions where the sun's rays pass through
a rarefied atmosphere, and the rocks especially radiating much of the
heat thus accumulated, for long after sunset. In various parts of my
journals I have alluded to other disturbing causes, which being all
more or leas familiar to meteorologists, I need not recapitulate
here. Their combined effects raise all the summer temperatures above
what they should theoretically be.

In taking Calcutta as a standard of comparison, I have been guided by
two circumstances; first, the necessity of selecting a spot where
observations were regularly and accurately made; and secondly, the
being able to satisfy myself by a comparison of my instruments that
the results should be so far strictly comparable.

I have allowed 1 degree Fahr. for every degree in latitude
intervening between Sikkim and Calcutta, as the probable ratio of
diminution of temperature. So far as my observations made in east
Bengal and in various parts of the Gangetic delta afford a means of
solving this question, this is a near approximation to the truth. The
spring observations however which I have made at the foot of the
Sikkim Himalaya would indicate a much more rapid decrement; the mean
temperature of Titalya and other parts of the plains south of the
forests, between March and May being certainly 6 degrees-9 degrees
lower than Calcutta: this period however is marked by north-west and
north-east winds, and by a strong haze which prevents the sun's rays
from impinging on the soil with any effect. During the southerly
winds, the same region is probably hotter than Calcutta, there being
but scanty vegetation, and the rain-fall being moderate.

In the following observations solitary readings are always rejected.

I.--_Summer or Rainy Season observations at Dorjiling._

Observations taken during the rainy season of 1848, at Mr. Hodgson's
(Jillapahar, Dorjiling) alt. 7,430 feet, exposure free to the north
east and west, the slopes all round covered with heavy timber; much
mist hence hangs over the station. The mean temperatures of the month
at Jillapahar are deduced from horary observations, and those of
Calcutta from the mean of the daily maximum and minimum.


             No. of Obs.              Temp.        Equiv. of
Month        at Jillapahar   Temp.    Calcutta     1 degree F.
-------------------------------------------------------------
July         284             61.7     86.6         364 feet
August       378             61.7     85.7         346 feet
September    407             58.9     84.7         348 feet
October      255             55.3     83.3         316 feet
-------------------------------------------------------------
           1,324                         Mean      344 feet


IL--_Winter or dry season observatians at Dorjiling._

1. Observations taken at Mr. J. Muller's, and chiefly
   by himself, at "the Dale;" elev. 6,956 feet; a
   sheltered spot, with no forest near, and a free
   west exposure. 103 observations. Months: November,
   December, January, and February                  1 degree=313 ft.
2. Observations at Dr. Campbell's (Superintendent's)
   house in April; elev. 6,950 feet; similar exposure
   to the last. 13 observations in April            1 degree=308 ft.
3. Observations by Mr. Muller at Colinton; elev. 7,179
   feet; free exposure to north-west; much forest about
   the station, and a high ridge to east and south.
   38 observations in winter months                 1 degree=290 ft.
4. Miscellaneous (11) observations at Leebong;
   elev. 6000 feet; in February; free exposure all
   round                                            1 degree=266 ft.
5. Miscellaneous observations at "Smith's Hotel;"
   Dorjiling, on a cleared ridge; exposed all round;
   elev. 6,863 feet. April and May                  1 degree=252 ft.
                                                 -----------------
                      Mean of winter observations   1 degree=286 ft.
                      Mean of summer observations   1 degree=344 ft.
                                                 -----------------
                                            Mean             310 ft.


III.--_Miscellaneous observations taken at different places in
Dorjiling, elevations 6,900 to 7,400 feet, with the differences of
temperature between Calcutta and Dorjiling._

                    Number      Difference       Equivalent
Month               of Observ.  of Temperature   1 degree F.=
-------------------------------------------------------------
January             27          30.4             287 ft.
February            84          32.8             265
March               37          41.9             196
April                7          36.0             236
March and April     29          37.3             224
July                83          23.6             389
August              74          22.4             415
September           95          25.7             350
October             18          29.5             297
-------------------------------------------------------------
               Sum 454     Mean 31.1        Mean 296 ft.


These, it will be seen, give a result which approximates to that of
the sets I and II. Being deduced from observations at different
exposures, the effects of these may be supposed to be eliminated.
It is to be observed that the probable results of the addition of
November and December's observations, would be balanced by those of
May and June, which are hot moist months.


IV.--_Miscellaneous cold weather observations made at various
elevations between 1000 and 17,000 feet, during my journey into east
Nepal and Sikkim, in November to January 1848 and 1849.
The equivalent to 1 degree Fahr. was deduced from the mean of all
the observations at each station, and these being arranged in sets
corresponding to their elevations, gave the following results._

                       Number of  Number of      Equivalent
Elevation              Stations   Observations   1 degree F.=
---------------------------------------------------------------
 1,000 to  4,000 ft.   27         111            215 ft.
 4,000 to  8,000 ft.   52         197            315
 8,000 to 12,000 ft.   20          84            327
12,000 to 17,000 ft.   14          54            377
---------------------------------------------------------------
                  Sum 113     Sum 446       Mean 308 ft.

The total number of comparative observations taken during that
journey, amounted to 563, and the mean equivalent was 1 degree=303
feet, but I rejected many of the observations that were obviously
unworthy of confidence.

V.--_Miscellaneous observations (chiefly during the rainy season)
taken during my journey into Sikkim and the frontier of Tibet,
between May 2nd and December 25th, 1848. The observations were
reduced as in the previous instance. The rains on this occasion were
unusually protracted, and cannot be said to have ceased till
mid-winter, which partly accounts for the very high temperatures._

                       Number of  Number of      Equivalent
Elevation              Stations   Observations   1 degree F.=
---------------------------------------------------------------
 1,000 to  4,000 ft.   10          45            422 ft.
 4,000 to  8,000 ft.   21         283            336
 8,000 to 12,000 ft.   18         343            355
12,000 to 17,000 ft.   29         219            417
---------------------------------------------------------------
                   Sum 78     Sum 890       Mean 383 ft.


The great elevation of the temperature in the lowest elevations is
accounted for by the heating of the valleys wherein these
observations were taken, and especially of the rocks on their floors.
The increase with the elevation, of the three succeeding sets, arises
from the fact that the loftier regions are far within the mountain
region, and are less forest clad and more sunny than the
outer Himalaya.

A considerable number of observations were taken during this journey
at night, when none are recorded at Calcutta, but which are
comparable with contemporaneous observations taken by Mr. Muller at
Dorjiling. These being all taken during the three most rainy months,
when the temperature varies but very little during the whole
twenty-four hours, I expected satisfactory results, but they proved
very irregular and anomalous.

The means were--

At 21 stations of greater elevation than Dorjiling  1 degree=348 ft.
At 17 stations lower in elevation                   1 degree=447 ft.


VI.--_Sixty-four contemporaneous observations at Jillapahar, 7,430 feet,
and the bed of the Great Rungeet river, 818 feet; taken in
January and February, give                        1 degree=322 feet.


VII.--_Observations taken by burying a thermometer two and a half to
three feet deep, in a brass tube, at Dorjiling and at various
elevations near that station._

Month            February and March
Upper Stations   Jillapahar, 7,430 feet
Lower Stations   Leebong, 6000 feet
1 degree=        269 feet

Month            February
Upper Stations   Jillapahar, 7,430 feet
Lower Stations   Guard-house, Great Rungeet, 1,864 feet
1 degree=        298 feet

Month            April
Upper Stations   Leebong, 6000 feet
Lower Stations   Guard-house, Great Rungeet, 1,864 feet
1 degree=        297 feet

Month            April
Upper Stations   Jillapahar, 7,430 feet
Lower Stations   Khersiong, 4,813 feet
1 degree=        297 feet

Month            March and April
Upper Stations   Khersiong, 4,813 feet
Lower Stations   Punkabaree, 1,850 feet
1 degree=        223 feet

Month            March, April, May
Upper Stations   Jillapahar, 7,430 feet
Lower Stations   Punkabaree, 1,850 feet
1 degree=        253 feet

Mean             1 degree=273 feet

The above results would seem to indicate that up to an elevation
of 7,500 feet, the temperature diminishes rather more than 1 degree
Fahr. for every 300 feet of ascent or thereabouts; that this
decrement is much leas in the summer than in the winter months; and I
may add that it is less by day than by night. There is much
discrepancy between the results obtained at greater or less
elevations than 7000 feet; but a careful study of these, which I have
arranged in every possible way, leads me to the conclusion that the
proportion map be roughly indicated thus:--

1 degree=300 feet, for elevations from   1000 to   8000 feet.
1 degree=320 feet, for elevations from   8000 to 10,000 feet.
1 degree=350 feet, for elevations from 10,000 to 14,000 feet.
1 degree=400 feet, for elevations from 14,000 to 18,000 feet.


VIII.--_Khasia mountain observations._

Churra Poonji
Date                         June 13 to 26
Calcutta Observations        86.3 degrees
Number of Observations       63
Churra Observations          70.1 degrees
Number of Observations       67
1 degree=                    300 feet
Altitude above the Sea       4,069 feet

Date                         August 7 to September 4
Calcutta Observations        84.6 degrees
Number of Observations       196
Churra Observations          69.2 degrees
Number of Observations       214
1 degree=                    331 feet
Altitude above the Sea       4,225 feet

Date                         October 29 to November 16
Calcutta Observations        80.7 degrees
Number of Observations       85
Churra Observations          63.1 degrees
Number of Observations       133
1 degree=                    282 feet
Altitude above the Sea       4,225 feet

Total Calcutta Observations  354
Total Churra Observations    414
Mean 1 degree=               304 feet

Kala-panee
Date                         June, Aug., Sept.
Calcutta Observations        85.5 degrees
Number of Observations       35
Khasia Observations          67.4 degrees
Number of Observations       35
1 degree=                    345 feet
Altitude above the Sea       5,302 feet

Moflong
Date                         June, July, Aug., Oct.
Calcutta Observations        85.9 degrees
Number of Observations       73
Khasia Observations          68.8 degrees
Number of Observations       74
1 degree=                    373 feet
Altitude above the Sea       6,062 feet

Syong
Date
Calcutta Observations        85.1 degrees
Number of Observations       4
Khasia Observations          65.0 degrees
Number of Observations       6
1 degree=                    332 feet
Altitude above the Sea       5,734 feet

Myrung
Date                         August
Calcutta Observations        89.1 degrees
Number of Observations       42
Khasia Observations          69.7 degrees
Number of Observations       41
1 degree=                    343 feet
Altitude above the Sea       5,632 feet

Myrung
Date                         October
Calcutta Observations        82.9 degrees
Number of Observations       21
Khasia Observations          63.2 degrees
Number of Observations       58
1 degree=                    336 feet
Altitude above the Sea       5,632 feet

Nunklow
Calcutta Observations        86.4 degrees
Number of Observations       139
Khasia Observations          70.9 degrees
Number of Observations       139
1 degree=                    372 feet
Altitude above the Sea       4,688 feet

Mooshye
Date                         September 23
Calcutta Observations        78.5 degrees
Number of Observations       9
Khasia Observations          66.3 degrees
Number of Observations       12
1 degree=                    499 feet
Altitude above the Sea       4,863 feet

Pomrang
Date                         September 23
Calcutta Observations        82.7 degrees
Number of Observations       51
Khasia Observations          65.8 degrees
Number of Observations       51
1 degree=                    369 feet
Altitude above the Sea       5,143 feet

Amwee
Date                         September 23
Calcutta Observations        79.9 degrees
Number of Observations       15
Khasia Observations          67.1 degrees
Number of Observations       11
1 degree=                    396 feet
Altitude above the Sea       4,105 feet

Joowy
Date                         September 23
Calcutta Observations        79.5 degrees
Number of Observations       11
Khasia Observations          69.0 degrees
Number of Observations       7
1 degree=                    567 feet
Altitude above the Sea       4,387 feet

Total Calcutta Observations  400
Total Khasia Observations    434
Mean 1 degree=               385 feet


The equivalent thus deduced is far greater than that brought out by
the Sikkim observations. It indicates a considerably higher
temperature of the atmosphere, and is probably attributable to the
evolution of heat during extraordinary rain-fall, and to the
formation of the surface, which is a very undulating table-land, and
everywhere traversed by broad deep valleys, with very steep, often
precipitous flanks; these get heated by the powerful sun, and from
them, powerful currents ascend. The scanty covering of herbage too
over a great amount of the surface, and the consequent radiation of
heat from the earth, must have a sensible influence on the mean
temperature of the summer months.


APPENDIX J.

ON THE MEASUREMENT OF ALTITUDES BY THE BOILING-POINT THERMOMETER.

The use of the boiling-point thermometer for the determination of
elevations in mountainous countries appearing to me to be much
underrated, I have collected the observations which I was enabled to
take, and compared their results with barometrical ones.

I had always three boiling-point thermometers in use, and for several
months five; the instruments were constructed by Newman, Dollond,
Troughton, and Simms, and Jones, and though all in one sense good
instruments, differed much from one another, and from the truth.
Mr. Welsh has had the kindness to compare the three best instruments
with the standards at the Kew Observatory at various temperatures
between 180 degrees and the boiling-point; from which comparison it
appears, that an error of l.5 degrees may be found at some parts of
the scale of instruments most confidently vouched for by admirable
makers. Dollond's thermometer, which Dr. Thomson had used throughout
his extensive west Tibetan journeys, deviated but little from the
truth at all ordinary temperatures. All were so far good, that the
errors, which were almost entirely attributable to carelessness in
the adjustments, were constant, or increased at a constant ratio
throughout all parts of the scale; so that the results of the
different instruments have, after correction, proved strictly
comparable.

The kettle used was a copper one, supplied by Newman, with free
escape for the steam; it answered perfectly for all but very high
elevations indeed, where, from the water boiling at very low
temperatures, the metal of the kettle, and consequently of the
thermometer, often got heated above the temperature of the
boiling water.

I found that no confidence could be placed in observations taken at
great elevations, by plunging the thermometer in open vessels of
boiling water, however large or deep, the abstraction of heat from
the surface being so rapid, that the water, though boiling below, and
hence bubbling above, is not uniformly of the same temperature
throughout.

In the Himalaya I invariably used distilled, or snow or rain-water;
but often as I have tried common river-water for comparison, I never
found that it made any difference in the temperature of the
boiling-point. Even the mineral-spring water at Yeumtong, and the
detritus-charged glacial streams, gave no difference, and I am hence
satisfied that no objection can be urged against river waters of
ordinary purity.

On several occasions I found anomalous rises and falls in the column
of mercury, for which I could not account, except theoretically, by
assuming breaks in the column, which I failed to detect on lifting
the instrument out of the water; at other times, I observed that the
column remained for several minutes stationary, below the true
temperature of the boiling water, and then suddenly rose to it.
These are no doubt instrumental defects, which I only mention as
being sources of error against which the observer must be on the
watch: they can only be guarded against by the use of two
instruments.

With regard to the formula employed for deducing the altitude from a
boiling-point observation, the same corrections are to a great extent
necessary as with barometric observations: if no account is taken of
the probable state of atmospheric pressure at the level of the sea at
or near the place of observation, for the hour of the day and month
of the year, or for the latitude, it is obvious that errors of 600 to
1000 feet may be accumulated. I have elsewhere stated that the
pressure at Calcutta varies nearly one inch (1000 feet), between July
and January; that the daily tide amounts to one-tenth of an inch
(=100 feet); that the multiplier for temperature is too great in the
hot season and too small in the cold; and I have experimentally
proved that more accuracy is to be obtained in measuring heights in
Sikkim, by assuming the observed Calcutta pressure and temperature to
accord with that of the level of the sea in the latitude of Sikkim,
than by employing a theoretical pressure and temperature for the
lower station.

In the following observations, the tables I used were those printed
by Lieutenant-Colonel Boileau for the East India Company's Magnetic
Observatory at Simla, which are based upon Regnault's Table of the
'Elastic Force of Vapour.' The mean height of the barometrical column
is assumed (from Bessel's formula) to be 29.924 at temp. 32 degrees,
in lat. 45 degrees, which, differing only .002 from the barometric
height corresponding to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, as determined
experimentally by Regnault, gives 29.921 as the pressure
corresponding to 212 degrees at the level of the sea.

The approximate height in feet corresponding to each degree of the
boiling-point, is derived from Oltmann's tables. The multipliers for
the mean temperature of the strata of atmosphere passed through, are
computed for every degree Fahrenheit, by the formula for expansion
usually employed, and given in Baily's Astronomical Tables and Biot's
Astronomie Physique.

For practical purposes it may be assumed that the traveller, in
countries where boiling-point observations are most desired, has
never the advantage of a contemporaneous boiling-point observation at
a lower station. The approximate difference in height is hence, in
most cases, deduced from the assumption, that the boiling-point
temperature at the level of the sea, at the place of observation, is
212 degrees, and that the corresponding temperature of the air at the
level of the sea is hotter by one degree for every 330 feet of
difference in elevation. As, however, the temperature of boiling
water at the level of the sea varies at Calcutta between July and
January almost from 210.7 degrees to 212.6 degrees, I always took the
Calcutta barometer observation at the day and hour of my
boiling-point observation, and corrected my approximate height by as
many feet as correspond to the difference between the observed height
of the barometer at Calcutta and 29.921; this correction was almost
invariably (always normally) subtractive in the summer, often
amounting to upwards of 400 feet: it was additive in winter, and
towards the equinoxes it was very trifling.

For practical purposes I found it sufficient to assume the Calcutta
temperature of the air at the day and hour of observation to be that
of the level of the sea at the place of observation, and to take out
the multiplier, from the mean of this and of the temperature at the
upper station. As, however, 330 feet is a near approach to what I
have shown (Appendix I.) to be the mean equivalent of 1 degree for
all elevations between 6000 and 18,000 feet; and as the majority of
my observations were taken between these elevations, it results that
the mean of all the multipliers employed in Sikkim for forty-four
observations amounts to 65.1 degrees Fahrenheit, using the Calcutta
and upper station observations, and 65.3 degrees on the assumption of
a fall of 1 degree for every 330 feet. To show, however, how great an
error may accrue in individual cases from using the formula of
1 degree to 330, I may mention that on one occasion, being at an
elevation of 12,000 feet, with a temperature of the air of 70
degrees, the error amounted to upwards of 220 feet, and as the same
temperature may be recorded at much greater elevations, it follows
that in such cases the formula should not be employed without
modification.

A multitude of smaller errors, arising from anomalies in the
distribution of temperature, will be apparent on consulting my
observations on the temperature at various elevations in Sikkim;
practically these are unavoidable. I have also calculated all my
observations according to Professor J. Forbes's formula of 1 degree
difference of temperature of boiling-water, being the equivalent of
550 feet at all elevations. (See Ed. Phil. Trans., vol xv. p. 405.)
The formula is certainly not applicable to the Sikkim Himalaya; on
the contrary, my observations show that the formula employed for
Boileau's tables gives at all ordinary elevations so very close an
approach to accuracy on the mean of many observations, that no
material improvement in its construction is to be anticipated.

At elevations below 4000 feet, elevations calculated from the
boiling-point are not to be depended on; and Dr. Thomson remarked the
same in north-west India: above 17,000 feet also the observations are
hazardous, except good shelter and a very steady fire is obtainable,
owing to the heating of the metal above that of the water. At all
other elevations a mean error of 100 feet is on the average what is
to be expected in ordinary cases. For the elevation of great mountain
masses, and continuously elevated areas, I conceive that the results
are as good as barometrical ones; for the general purposes of
botanical geography, the boiling-point thermometer supersedes the
barometer in point of practical utility, for under every advantage,
the transport of a glass tube full of mercury, nearly three feet
long, and cased in metal, is a great drawback to the unrestrained
motion of the traveller.

In the Khasia mountains I found, from the mean of twelve stations and
twenty-three observations, the multiplier as derived from the mean of
the temperature at the upper station and at Calcutta, to be 75.2
degrees, and as deduced from the formula to be 73.1 degrees.
Here, however, the equivalent in feet for 1 degree temp. is in summer
very high, being 1 degree=385 feet. (See Appendix I.) The mean of all
the elevations worked by the boiling-point is upwards of 140 feet
below those worked by the barometer.

The following observations are selected as having at the time been
considered trustworthy, owing to the care with which they were taken,
their repetition in several cases, and the presumed accuracy of the
barometrical or trigonometrical elevation with which they are
compared. A small correction for the humidity of the air might have
been introduced with advantage, but as in most barometrical
observations, the calculations proceed on the assumption that the
column of air is in a mean state of saturation; as the climate of the
upper station was always very moist, and as most of the observations
were taken during the rains, this correction would be always
additive, and would never exceed sixty feet.

It must be borne in mind that the comparative results given below
afford by no means a fair idea of the accuracy to be obtained by the
boiling-point. Some of the differences in elevation are probably due
to the barometer. In other cases I may have read off the scale wrong,
for however simple it seems to read off an instrument, those
practically acquainted with their use know well how some errors
almost become chronic, how with a certain familiar instrument the
chance of error is very great at one particular part of the scale,
and how confusing it is to read off through steam alternately from
several instruments whose scales are of different dimensions, are
differently divided, and differently lettered; such causes of error
are constitutional in individual observers. Again, these observations
are selected without any reference to other considerations but what I
have stated above; the worst have been put in with the best. Had I
been dependent on the boiling-point for determining my elevations, I
should have observed it oftener, or at stated periods whenever in
camp, worked the greater elevations from the intermediate ones, as
well as from Calcutta, and resorted to every system of interpolation.
Even the following observations would be amended considerably were I
to have deduced the elevation by observations of the boiling-point at
my camp, and added the height of my camp, either from the
boiling-point observations there, or by barometer, but I thought it
better to select the most independent method of observation, and to
make the level of the sea at Calcutta the only datum for a lower
station.

SERIES I.--_Sikkim Observations._


                                  Elev. by
                                  Barom. or   Temp.        Elev.
Place.                    Month.  Trigonom.   B.P.   Air   by B.P.  Error
                                  (feet)                  (feet)   (feet)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Great Rungeet river       Feb.    B     818   210.7  56.3     904   + 86
Bhomsong                  Dec.        1,544   210.2  58.0   1,321 -223
Guard House, Gt Rungeet   April       1,864   208.1  72.7   2,049   +185
Choongtam                 Aug.        5,268   202.6  65.0   5,175 -93
Dengha                    Aug.        6,368   200.6  68.0   6,246 -122
Mr. Muller's (Dorjiling)  Feb.    Tr  6,925   199.4  41.3   7,122   +197
Dr. Campbell's (do.)      April       6,932   200.1  59.5   6,745 -187
Mr. Hodgson's  (do.)      Feb.    B   7,429   199.4  47.6   7,318 -111
Sinchul                   Jan.    Tr  8,607   197.0  41.7   8,529 -78
Lachoong                  Aug.    B   8,712   196.4  54.6   8,777   + 65
Lamteng                   Aug.        8,884   196.3  77.0   8,937   + 53
Zemu Samdong              July        8,976   196.1  58.6   8,916 -60
Mainom                    Dec.    Tr 10,702   193.4  38.0  10,516 -186
Junct. of Zemu & Thlonok  July    B  10,846   193.6  52.0  10,872   + 26
Tallum                    July       11,482   191.8  54.6  11,451 -31
Yeumtong                  Sept.      11,919   191.3  52.2  11,887 -32
Zemu river                June       12,070   190.4  48.5  12,139   + 69
Tungu                     July &     12,751   189.7  43.4  12,696 -55
                          Oct.
Jongri                    Jan.       13,194   188.8  26.0  13,151 -43
Zemu river                June       13,281   188.5  47.0  13,360   + 79
Lachee-pia                Aug.       15,262   186.0  42.8  14,912 -350
Momay                     Sept.      15,362   186.1  48.6  14,960 -402
Palung                    Oct.       15,620   185.4  45.8  15,437 -183
Kongra Lama               July       15,694   184.1  41.5  16,041   +347
Snow-bed above Yeumtong   Sept.      15,985   184.6  44.5  15,816 -169
Tunkra pass               Aug.       16,083   164.1  39.0  16,137   + 54
Yeumtso                   Oct.       16,808   183.1  15.0  16,279 -529
Donkia                    Sept.      16,978   182.4  41.0  17,049   + 71
Mountain above Momay      Sept.      17,394   181.9  47.8  17,470   + 76
Sebolah pass              Sept.      17,585   181.9  46.5  17,517 -68
Kinchinjhow               Sept.      17,624   181.0  47.5  18,026   +402
Donkia Mountain           Sept.      18,510   180.6  37.1  18,143 -367
  Ditto                   Sept.      18,307   179.9  38.8  18,597   +290
Bhomtso                   Oct.       18,450   181.2  52.0  18,305 -145
Donkia pass               Sept.      18,466   181.2  45.5  17,866 -600
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             Mean                                 -58

SERIES II.--_Khasia Mountains._

                            Elev.                     Elev.
Place          Month        Bar.     B.P.    Tm. Air  by B.P.  Diff.
                            (feet)                    (feet)   (feet)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Churra         June         4,069    204.4   70.3     4,036   -33
Amwee          Sept.        4,105    205.1   67.7     4,041   -64
Nurtiung       Oct.         4,178    205.0   70.0     4,071   -107
Nunklow        July         4,688    203.9   69.8     4,333   -355
Kala-panee     June, July,  5,302    202.2   65.8     5,202   -100
               Sept., Oct.
Myrung         July         5,647    201.9   69.4     5,559   -88
Syong          July         5,725    201.8   70.8     5,632   -93
Moflong        July, Aug.,  6,062    201.4   64.8     5,973   -89
               Oct., Nov.
Chillong       Nov.         6,662    201.2   62.8     6,308   -354
----------------------------------------------------------------------
                      Mean  5,160                     5,016   -143



APPENDIX K.

ACTINOMETER OBSERVATIONS.

The few actinometer observations which I was enabled to record, were
made with two of these instruments constructed by Barrow, and had the
bulbs of their thermometers plunged into the fluid of the chamber.
They were taken with the greatest care, in conformity with all the
rules laid down in the "Admiralty Guide," and may, I think, be
depended upon. In the Sikkim Himalaya, a cloudless day, and one
admitting of more than a few hours' consecutive observations, never
occurs--a day fit for any observation at all is very, rare indeed.
I may mention here that a small stock of ammonia-sulphate of copper
in crystals should be supplied with this instrument, also a wire and
brush for cleaning, and a bottle with liquid ammonia: all of which
might be packed in the box.

Active 6.568. Time always mean.

_Jillapahar, Dorjiling, Elev. 7430 feet,
Lat. 27 degrees 3 minutes N., Long. 88 degrees 13 minutes E._

A.--APRIL 19th, 1850.
_Watch slow 1 minute 15 seconds mean time._

                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  8.0  to  8.13   11.1   65.5    0.9900   22.960   53.5
      8.15 to  8.28   15.0   69.5   12.2645
      9.0  to  9.13   17.7   71.5   14.5140   22.948   56.0
     10.0  to 10.13   19.1   72.5   15.4710   22.947   57.0
     11.0  to 11.13   19.0   75.0   14.9150   22.946   58.5
p.m.  0.0  to  0.13   18.8   75.0   12.7600   22.944   60.3
      1.0  to  1.13   17.2   73.3   13.8976   22.939   59.4
      2.0  to  2.13   17.4   74.0   13.8330   22.914   60.3
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  8.0  to  8.13   33.8  19.7   .505   88.0  Day unexceptional,
      8.15 to  8.28                      111.5  wind S.W., after
      9.0  to  9.13   37.2  18.8   .153  110.0  10 a.m. squally.
     10.0  to 10.13   39.7  17.3   .550  121.0
     11.0  to 11.13   38.2  20.3   .500  125.0
p.m.  0.0  to  0.13   44.8  15.5   .592  120.0
      1.0  to  1.13   40.7  18.7   .546  122.0  Dense haze over
      2.0  to  2.13   44.1  16.2   .577  108.0  snowy Mts.
------------------------------------------------------------------

B.--APRIL 20th
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  8.0  to  8.13   11.8   64.0   10.9150   22.969   43.4
      9.0  to  9.13   17.8   73.3   14.2750   22.974   36.2
     10.0  to 10.13   18.8   65.0   14.7580   22.985   57.0
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  8.0  to  8.13   43.4  10.8   .691   74.0  Dense haze,
      9.0  to  9.13   44.1  12.1   .662   92.0  S.E. wind,
     10.0  to 10.13   42.5  14.5   .609   92.0  cloudless sky.
------------------------------------------------------------------


_Superintendent's House, Dorjiling. Elev. 6932 feet._
C.--APRIL 21st.
_Watch slow 1 minute mean time._
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  8.35 to  8.48   17.3   65.0   15.7084            56.4
      9.07 to  9.20   20.9   72.7   16.8872   23.447   63.8
     10.0  to 10.13   23.9   77.3   18.3791            60.8
     11.0  to 11.13   24.4   81.0   17.8864
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  8.35 to  8.48   47.6   8.8   .741   97.0  Day very fine,
      9.07 to  9.20   49.9  13.9   .628  100.0  snowy Mts. in
     10.0  to 10.13   49.2  11.6   .677  109.0  dull red haze,
     11.0  to 11.13                      107.5  wind S.E. faint.
------------------------------------------------------------------

_Rampore Bauleah (Ganges). Elev. 130 feet.
Lat. 22 degrees 24 minutes N., Long. 88 degrees 40 minutes E._

MAY 17th, 1850.
_Watch slow 15 seconds mean time._
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  7.51 to  8.13   13.0   88.0    8.8790   29.698   87.5
      9.03 to  9.16   19.5   96.0   12.5190            92.0
      9.20 to  9.33   21.2  107.0   12.7836   29.615   92.3
     11.15 to 11.28   21.1  105.0   12.8499            98.5
     11.32 to 11.45   16.5  108.7    9.8770   29.620   98.3
p.m.  1.20 to  1.33   21.6  108.5   12.9348           104.5
      1.40 to  1.53   21.4  113.7   12.4976           105.8
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  7.51 to  8.13   80.1   7.4   .793   91.0  S.E. wind, very
      9.03 to  9.16   81.2  10.8   .715   83.8  hazy to west, sky
      9.20 to  9.33   80.2  12.1   .687  132.0  pale blue.
     11.15 to 11.28   74.8  23.7   .478   98.5  Wind west, rising.
     11.32 to 11.45   74.3  24.0   .475  142.0
p.m.  1.20 to  1.33   76.7  27.8   .425  144.0
      1.40 to  1.53   72.2  33.6   .355  134.0
------------------------------------------------------------------

_Churra, Khasia Mountains. Elev. 4225 feet,
Lat. 25 degrees 15 minutes N., Long. 91 degrees 47 minutes E._
A--NOVEMBER 4th, 1850.
_Watch slow 7 minutes mean time._
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  6.20 to  6.30    5.0   63.7    4.6400   25.781   57.8
      6.32 to  6.42    7.4   65.4    6.6896            59.0
      7.55 to  8.05   20.0   77.5   15.2400            63.5
      8.08 to  8.18   21.0   82.0   15.2040            64.4
      8.20 to  8.30   24.2   85.8   10.8432            64.8
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  6.20 to  6.30   53.1   4.7   .850   75.0  Sky faint blue,
      6.32 to  6.42   54.8   4.2   .870   83.0  cloudless,
      7.55 to  8.05   56.9   6.6   .806  108.0  wind S.W.,
      8.08 to  8.18   57.3   7.1   .790  106.5  clouding.
      8.20 to  8.30   59.5   5.3   .837  113.5
------------------------------------------------------------------

B.--NOVEMBER 5th.
_Watch slow 7 minutes mean time._
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced     Air
-----------------------------------------------------
a.m.  6.39 to  6.49   11.2   70.2    9.3408     59.4
      6.51 to  7.01   13.4   72.8   10.8138     60.5
      7.56 to  8.06   18.4   73.2   15.0161     61.7
      8.08 to  8.21   20.4   77.7   15.4836     63.3
      9.26 to  9.36   23.8   79.5   17.8072
      9.37 to  9.47   25.1   84.0   17.7959
     10.57 to 11.07   29.0   89.5   19.5460     66.7
-----------------------------------------------------

                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  6.39 to  6.49   57.6   1.8   .940         Wind S.W.,
      6.51 to  7.01   57.8   2.7   .918         clouds rise and
      7.56 to  8.06   57.7   4.0   .875         disperse.
      8.08 to  8.21   58.7   4.6   .860         Sky pale.
      9.26 to  9.36
      9.37 to  9.47
     10.57 to 11.07   60.8   5.9   8.28  126.0
------------------------------------------------------------------

C.--NOVEMBER 6th.
_Watch slow 7 minutes mean time._
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  6.05 to  6.18    2.6   62.0    2.4986   25.781   56.5
      6.22 to  6.35    6.5   63.5    6.0710            57.0
      6.38 to  6.51    9.6   66.7    8.5152            61.0
      8.27 to  8.37   21.7   78.8   16.2750            64.2
      8.39 to  8.52   23.0   81.7   19.4750            64.5
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  6.05 to  6.18   54.5   2.0   .935         Sunrise, 6, pale
      6.22 to  6.35   55.1   1.9   .935         yellow red,
      6.38 to  6.51   57.4   3.6   .888         cloudless.
      8.27 to  8.37   59.3   4.9   .855  100.0  Cirrhus below.
      8.39 to  8.52   59.4   5.1   .847  105.0
------------------------------------------------------------------


D.--NOVEMBER 14th.
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  6.12 to  6.22    2.9   60.6    3.5988   25.783   51.5
      6.24 to  6.37    6.1   66.0    5.4472            52.7
      7.13 to  7.23   12.4   70.8   10.2672            56.5
      7.24 to  7.34   14.7   76.0   11.4025            57.8
      8.34 to  8.44   19.9   82.8   14.2653            59.8
      8.47 to  9.00   21.7   88.8   14.7343            60.5
      9.53 to 10.03   23.5   86.6   16.2620   25.832   67.2
     10.04 to 10.17   25.3   89.5   17.0775            67.0
     11.24 to 11.31   33.3  111.5   20.7014   25.819   64.6
------------------------------------------------------------------

                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  6.12 to  6.22   49.4   2.1   .930
      6.24 to  6.37   50.3   2.4   .925
      7.13 to  7.23   52.3   4.2   .900   98.0  Thick cumulus low
      7.24 to  7.34   53.1   4.7   .855  104.0  on plains.
      8.34 to  8.44   50.8   9.0   .742  117.0  Sunrise yellow
      8.47 to  9.00   51.6   8.9   .730  121.0  red.
      9.53 to 10.03   61.6   5.6   .832  127.0  Cloudless.
     10.04 to 10.17   58.8   8.2   .778  133.0
     11.24 to 11.31   59.0   5.6   .832  130.0  Clouds rise.
------------------------------------------------------------------

E.--NOVEMBER 15th.
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  9.53 to 10.06   25.8   78.0   17.5306   25.854   63.0
     10.50 to 11.03   26.1   80.5   19.1835            64.0
     11.31 to 11.44   28.5   84.0   20.2065            65.3
p.m.  0.33 to  0.46   30.9   91.5   20.4267   25.844   65.8
      1.07 to  1.21   29.1   90.5   20.4388            67.0
      2.47 to  3.00   21.1   75.0   16.5653   25.808   67.2
      3.48 to  4.00   16.7   73.0   13.4435            62.0
      4.03 to  4.16   16.2   75.0   12.7170   25.803   61.5
------------------------------------------------------------------


Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.
-------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  9.53 to 10.06   55.3   8.7   .772    Sky cloudless.
     10.50 to 11.03   52.8  11.2   .690    Wind N.E.
     11.31 to 11.44   51.9  13.4   .638
p.m.  0.33 to  0.46   51.2  14.6   .620
      1.07 to  1.21   49.6  17.4   .560
      2.47 to  3.00   56.6  10.6   .708
      3.48 to  4.00   50.8  11.2   .690
      4.03 to  4.16   50.5  11.0   .692
-------------------------------------------------------------


_Silchar (Cachar), Elev. 116 feet,
Lat. 24 degrees 30 minutes N., Long. 93 degrees E. (approximate)._

NOVEMBER 26th, 1850
_Watch slow 13 minutes 39 seconds mean time._

                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  9.11 to  9.24   19.4   69.0   16.4706            66.3
      9.34 to  9.41   22.7   81.0   16.5937
      9.50 to  9.57   25.3   87.5   17.3558   29.999   68.7
     10.07 to 10.14   26.5   91.5   17.5695            70.3
     11.03 to 11.16   26.3   89.0   17.5251            73.2
p.m.  0.00 to  0.13   26.4   90.0   17.8144   29.967   74.5
      0.58 to  1.11   27.6   94.0   17.9676            76.8
      2.51 to  3.04   23.0   93.0   15.0880   29.892   78.5
      3.55 to  4.08   17.6   91.5   11.6688            79.5
      4.09 to  4.22   15.5   93.5   11.0215   29.881   79.4
      4.23 to  4.36   12.0   93.7    7.8360            78.5
------------------------------------------------------------------


Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.
-------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  9.11 to  9.24   63.5   2.8   .860    Dense fog till
      9.34 to  9.41                        7.30 p.m.
      9.50 to  9.57   61.5   7.2   .788    Wind north. Clear.
     10.07 to 10.14   62.7   7.6   .780
     11.03 to 11.16   60.3  12.9   .657    Wind. N.E. Light
p.m.  0.00 to  0.13   61.7  12.8   .658    cirrhus low.
      0.58 to  1.11   60.3  16.5   .586
      2.51 to  3.04   62.1  16.4   .588    Streaks of cirrhus
      3.55 to  4.08   57.0  22.5   .480    aloft.
      4.09 to  4.22   62.1  17.3   .570
      4.23 to  4.36   62.1  16.4   .588    Sun sets in hazy
                                           cirrhus.
-------------------------------------------------------------


_Chittagong, Elev. 200 feet,
Lat. 22 degrees 20 minutes N., Long. 91 degrees 55 minutes E._

A.--DECEMBER 31st, 1850.
_Watch slow 3 minutes 45 seconds mean time._
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  7.39 to  7.52   10.0   70.0    8.3700            57.0
      8.40 to  8.53   21.3   91.5   14.1219   29.874   59.5
      9.04 to  9.08   23.2   89.5   15.6163            63.3
      9.52 to  9.56   24.3   87.3   16.7341   29.923   64.5
     10.02 to 10.06   25.1   90.5   16.7668            65.7
     11.16 to 11.29   24.3   84.5   17.1558            68.5
     11.52 to 11.56   26.6   92.6   17.5028   29.892   69.5
p.m.  1.38 to  1.41   24.7   84.0   17.5123            71.7
      1.47 to  1.51   25.4   90.7   16.8418
      3.10 to  3.17   21.1   86.0   14.6645   29.831   71.0
      3.18 to  3.25   19.3   89.3   13.0468
------------------------------------------------------------------

                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  7.39 to  7.52   55.7   1.3   .960         Cloudless.
      8.40 to  8.53   57.2   2.3   .920  127.0  Mountains clear.
      9.04 to  9.08   59.7   3.6   .890         Wind E.N.E. Cool.
      9.52 to  9.56   61.3   3.2   .900  142.0
     10.02 to 10.06   60.4   5.3   .840  148.0  Wind N.W.
     11.16 to 11.29   58.6   9.9   .722  150.0
     11.52 to 11.56   59.2  10.3   .710         Wind S.W.
p.m.  1.38 to  1.41   61.8   9.9   .720
      1.47 to  1.51
      3.10 to  3.17   60.5  10.5   .710         Clouds about in
      3.18 to  3.25                             patches.
------------------------------------------------------------------


B.--JANUARY 1, 1851.
_Watch slow 3 minutes 45 seconds mean time._
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  7.34 to  7.41   10.0   69.4    8.4200   29.948   55.4
      8.38 to  8.45   16.0   70.0   13.3920            58.9
      9.44 to  9.51   19.5   74.7   15.3660   29.891   63.2
     10.46 to 10.53   21.0   78.2   15.8550            66.7
     11.50 to 11.57   21.5   81.2   15.6950            69.8
p.m.  0.06 to  0.13   24.1   88.0   16.4603   29.850   70.3
      0.58 to  1.02   23.9   87.2   16.4432            71.0
      1.45 to  1.52   21.4   84.5   15.0870            71.3
      3.15 to  3.22   18.1   82.5   13.0320   29.798   71.3
      4.27 to  4.34   10.2   82.0    7.3746            70.0
      4.36 to  4.43    9.8   84.0    6.9482
      4.45 to  4.52    8.5   85.0    5.9670
      4.56 to  5.09    5.6   85.0    3.9312            67.5
      5.12 to  5.18    3.8   84.0    2.6942   29.778   68.7
------------------------------------------------------------------

                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m.  7.34 to  7.41   54.0   1.4   .953         Mist rises and
      8.38 to  8.45   57.7   1.2   .970  104.5  drifts westward
      9.44 to  9.51   61.7   1.5   .960  115.0  till 7.30 a.m.
     10.46 to 10.53   62.4   4.3   .870  129.0
     11.50 to 11.57   58.3  11.5   .688  117.0  Wind N.W., clouds
p.m.  0.06 to  0.13   56.0  14.3   .625  122.5  rise.
      0.58 to  1.02   56.7  14.3   .625
      1.45 to  1.52   57.5  13.8   .633  117.0
      3.15 to  3.22   57.1  14.2   .625
      4.27 to  4.34   59.5  10.5   .708
      4.36 to  4.43
      4.45 to  4.52
      4.56 to  5.09   62.7   4.8   .855         Sunset cloudless.
      5.12 to  5.18   62.2   6.5   .810
------------------------------------------------------------------


C.--JANUARY 2, 1851.
_Watch slow 3 minutes mean time._
                             Tem.   Act.
Hour                  Act.   Act.   Reduced   Barom.   Air
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m. 10.02 to 10.09   19.2   71.0   15.8592            64.5
     10.20 to 10.24   22.6   79.0   16.9048   29.861   65.6
p.m.  0.03 to  0.10   24.7   89.2   16.6972   29.858   69.0
      0.22 to  0.25   25.9   95.5   18.6796            70.7
      2.04 to  2.08   23.3   91.5   15.4479            71.2
      2.10 to  2.14   23.8   93.0   15.6128
------------------------------------------------------------------

                                         Black
Hour                  D.P.  Diff.  Sat.  Bulb
------------------------------------------------------------------
a.m. 10.02 to 10.09   60.6   3.9   .878  116.0  Low, dense fog at
     10.20 to 10.24   61.4   4.2   .872         sunrise, clear at
p.m.  0.03 to  0.10   59.3   9.7   .728  119.0  9 a.m.
      0.22 to  0.25   57.5   3.2   .650         Hills hazy and
      2.04 to  2.08   61.0  10.2   .718  112.0  horizon grey.
      2.10 to  2.14
------------------------------------------------------------------


APPENDIX L.

TABLE OF ELEVATIONS.

In the following tables I have given the elevations of 300 places,
chiefly computed from barometric data. For the computations such
observations alone were selected as were comparable with
contemporaneous ones taken at the Calcutta Observatory, or as could,
by interpolation, be reduced to these, with considerable accuracy:
the Calcutta temperatures have been assumed as those of the level of
the sea, and eighteen feet have been added for the height of the
Calcutta Observatory above the sea. I have introduced two standards
of comparison where attainable; namely, 1. A few trigonometrical
data, chiefly of positions around Dorjiling, measured by
Lieutenant-Colonel Waugh, the Surveyor-General, also a few measured
by Mr. Muller and myself, in which we can put full confidence: and,
2. A number of elevations in Sikkim and East Nepal, computed by
simultaneous barometer observations, taken by Mr. Muller at
Dorjiling. As the Dorjiling barometer was in bad repair, I do not
place so much confidence in these comparisons as in those with
Calcutta. The coincidence, however, between the mean of all the
elevations computed by each method is very remarkable; the difference
amounting to only thirty feet in ninety-three elevations; the excess
being in favour of those worked by Dorjiling. As the Dorjiling
observations were generally taken at night, or early in the morning,
when the temperature is below the mean of the day, this excess in the
resulting elevations would appear to prove, that the temperature
correction derived from assuming the Calcutta observations to
correspond with eighteen feet above the level of the sea at Sikkim,
has not practically given rise to much error.

I have not added the boiling-point observations, which afford a
further means of testing the accuracy of the barometric computations;
and which will be found in section J of this Appendix.

The elevation of Jillapahar is given as computed by observations
taken in different months, and at different hours of the day; from
which there will be seen, that owing to the low temperature of
sunrise in the one case, and of January and October in the others,
the result for these times is always lowest.

Moat of the computations have been made by means of Oltmann's tables,
as drawn up by Lieutenant-Colonel Boileau, and printed at the
Magnetic Observatory, Simla; very many were worked also by Bessell's
tables in Taylor's "Scientific Memoirs," which, however, I found to
give rather too high a result on the averages; and I have therefore
rejected most of them, except in cases of great elevation and of
remarkable humidity or dryness, when the mean saturation point is an
element that should not be disregarded in the computation. To these
the letter B is prefixed. By far the majority of these elevations are
not capable of verification within a few feet; many of them being of
villages, which occupy several hundred feet of a hill slope: in such
cases the introduction of the refinement of the humidity correction
was not worth the while.

SERIES I.--_Elevations on the Grand Trunk-road. February, 1848._

No. of                                                     Elevation
Obs.    Name of Locality                                   Feet
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 1      Burdwan                                                 93
 2      Gyra                                                   630
 3      Fitcoree                                               860
 2      Tofe Choney                                            912
 4      Maddaobund                                            1230
 1      Paras-nath saddle                                   B.4231
 2          ,,     cast peak                                  4215
 1          ,,     flagstaff                                  4428
 1          ,,     lower limit of _Clematis_ and _Berberis_   3162
 1      Doomree                                                996
 1      Highest point on grand trunk-road                     1446
 4      Belcuppee                                             1219
 1      Hill 236th mile-stone                                 1361
 3      Burree                                                1169
 1      Hill 243rd mile-stone                                 1339
 3      Chorparun                                             1322
 3      Dunwah                                                 625
 1      Bahra                                                  479
 1      284th mile-stone                                       474
 2      Sheergotty                                             460
 4      Muddunpore                                             402
 1      312th mile-stone                                       365
 3      Naurungabad                                            337
 4      Baroon (on Soane)                                      344
 4      Dearse                                                 332
---------------------------------------------------------------------

SERIES II.--_Elevations in the Soane Valley. March, 1848._

No. of                                                     Elevation
Obs.    Name of Locality                                   Feet
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Tilotho                                                 395
 6      Akbarpore                                               403
 2      Rotas palace                                           1489
 4      Tura                                                    453
 3      Soane-pore                                              462
 6      Kosdera                                                 445
 4      Panchadurma                                             492
 1      Bed of Soane above Panchadurma                          482
 3      Pepura                                                  587
 1      Bed of Soane river                                      400
 9      Chahuchee                                               490
 4      Hirrah                                                  531
 4      Kotah                                                   541
 4      Kunch                                                   561
 7      Sulkun                                                  684
---------------------------------------------------------------------


SERIES III.--_Elevations on the Kymore Hills. March, 1848._

No. of                                                     Elevation
Obs.    Name of Locality                                   Feet
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 2      Roump                                                  1090
 9      Shahgunj                                               1102
 1      Amoee                                                   818
 1      Goorawul                                                905
 9      Mirzapore (on the Ganges)                               362
---------------------------------------------------------------------


SERIES IV.--_Elevations near Dorjiling. 1848 to 1850._

No. of                                                     Elevation
Obs.      Name of Locality                                 Feet
---------------------------------------------------------------------
          Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson's house)
      9                  ,,                sunrise            7301
    110                  ,,                9.50 p.m.          7443
    104                  ,,                noon               7457
     99                  ,,                2.40 p.m.          7477
     93                  ,,                4 p.m.             7447
     37                  ,,                sunset             7447
-------                                                  -------
Sum 452                                                Mean   7429
=======         _Ditto by Monthly observations._             =======
     27   January                                             7400
     84   February                                            7445
     37   March                                               7517
      7   April                                               7582
     83   July                                                7412
     74   August                                              7421
     95   September                                           7454
     18   October                                             7351
-------                                                  -------
Sum 434                                                Mean   7448
=======                                                      =======
    103   The Dale (Mr. Muller's)                           B.6957
              ,,      by trigonometry                         6952
     16   Superintendent's house                            B.6932
              ,,      by trigonometry                         6932
     38   Colinton (Mr. Muller's)                           B.7179
     25   Leebong                                           B.5993
            ,,        by trigonometry                         6021*
      2   Summit of Jillapahar                              B.7896
      2   Smith's hotel                                       6872
      7   Monastery hill below the Dale                     B. 214.1
          The Dale by barometer                               6952
                                                           -------
                                                              7166
          Monastery hill by trigonometry                      7165.3
                                                             =======
      1   Ging (measured from Dale)                         B.5156
     12   Guard-house at Great Rungeet                      B.1864
      2   Bed of Great Rungeet at cane-bridge                  818
      5   Guard-house at Little Rungeet                       1672
      8   Sinchul top                                         8655
              ,,       by trigonometry                        8607
      4   Saddle of road over shoulder of Sinchul             7412
      4   Senadah (Pacheem) bungalow                          7258
      1   Pacheem village                                     3855
     13   Kursiong bungalow                                 B.4813
     13   Punkabaree                                          1815
      2   Rungniok village                                  B.4565
      2   Tonglo, summit                                    B.10.078
            ,,      ,,   by trigonometry                    10.079.4
     13     ,,    Saddle below summit                       B.10.008
      1     ,,    Rocks on ascent of                        B.8148
      4   Source of Balasun                                   7436
                 ,,         by Dorjiling                      7451
      8   Goong ridge                                         7441
--------------------------------------------------------------------
* To summit of chimney, which may be assumed to be 30 feet above
where the barometer was hung.


SERIES V.--_Elevations in East Nepal, October to December, 1848._

No.                                             By         By
of                                              Calcutta   Dorjiling
Obs.  Name of Locality                          Barometer  Barometer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                Feet       Feet
 1    Source of Myong river                      4,798
 7    Myong valley, camp in                      4,345      4,345
 7    Myong valley                               3,801      3,763
 5    Purmiokzong                                4,507      4,535
 2    Shoulder of Nanki                          7,216
 1           ,,         Shepherds' hut on do.    8,999
 3    Summit of Nanki                            9,994     10,045
 8          ,,        Camp on Nanki              9,315      9,324
 3    Jummanoo                                   4,320      4,404
 5    Sulloobong                                 5,244      5,311
 4    Bheti village                              4,683
 4    Sakkiazong village                         5,804      5,847
 3    Camp on ridge of mountain                  8,315      8,391
 1    Peak on Sakkiazong                         9,356      9,289
 3    Makarumbi                                  5,444      5,525
 3    Pemmi river                                2,149      2,262
 3    Tambur river at junction with Pemmi        1,289      1,487
 1    Camp on Tambur, Nov. 13                    1,418      1,496
 3          ,,        Nov. 14                    1,600
 2    Chintam village                            3,404
 8    Mywa Guola                                 2,079      2,185
 3    Tambur river, Nov. 18                      2,515      2,574
 3          ,,      Nov. 19                      3,113      3,289
 3    Taptiatok village                          4,207      4,359
 2    Loontoong village                          5,615      5,738
 2    Tambur river, Nov. 23                      8,066      8,096
10    Wallanchoon village                       10,384     10,389
 6    Tuquoroma                                 12,889     12,999
 1    Wallanchoon pass                        B.16,764     16,748
 1    Foot of pass-road                         13,501     13,518
 4    Yangma Guola                               9,236      9,322
 2    Base of great moraine                     12,098     12,199
 2    Top of moraine above ditto              B.   679
 9    Yangma village camp                     B.13,516     13,488
 1    Lake bed in valley                        15,186
 1    Upper ditto (Pabuk)                     B.16,038
 4    Yangma valley camp, Dec. 2                10,997     11,001
 1    Kambachen pass                          B.15,770
 3    Camp below ditto                          11,643     11,611
 1    Kambachen village                         11,378
 2    Camp in valley                            11,454     11,514
 1    Choonjerma pass                         B.15,259
 4    Camp below ditto                          13,289     13,287
 1    Yalloong river-terrace                    10,449
 4    Camp side of valley                       10,080     10,035
 3    Yankatang village                          5,530      5,598
 1    Saddle on road south of Khabili            5,746
 8    Khabang village                            5,495      5,515
 1    Spur of Sidingbah, crossed Nov. 19         6,057      5,980
 3    Yangyading village                         4,082      4,145
 4    Sablakoo                                   4,635      4,718
 7    Iwa river, Dec. 12                         3,747      3,818
 2        ,,     Dec. 13                         6,134      6,184
 4    Singalelah, camp on                        9,263      9,328
 1    Islumbo pass                              10,388
--------------------------------------------------------------------


SERIES VI.--_Elevations in Sikkim, December, 1848,
and January, 1849._

No.                                             By         By
of                                              Calcutta   Dorjiling
Obs.  Name of Locality                          Barometer  Barometer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                Feet       Feet
 4    Kulhait valley, camp in                    6,406       6,374
 6    Lingcham village                           4,892       4,848
 5    Bed of Great Rungeet, December 20          1,805       1,874
 6    Lingdam village, December 21               5,552       5,556
 6    Nampok village                             4,354       4,501
 7    Bhomsong                                   1,556       1,533
 8    Mainom top                             Tr.10,702    B.10,613
 1    Neon-gong Goompa                           5,225
 1    Pass from Teesta to Rungeet                6,824
 6    Lingdam village                            5,349       5,401
 1    Great Rungeet below Tassiding              2,030
      Tassiding tamples                          4,840
 5    Sunnook, camp on                           3,955       4,018
 1    Bed of Ratong                              2,481
 1    Pemiongchi temple                          7,083
10    Camp at Pemiongchi village                 6,551       6,616
 9    Tchonpong village                          4,952       5,003
 1    Bed of Rungbi river                        3,165
 9    Camp on Ratong river                       3,100       3,242
 1    Doobdi Goompa                              6,493       6,451
22    Yoksun                                     5,600       5,635
 7    Dumpook                                    6,646       6,710
15    Buckim                                     8,625       8,693
 7    Mon Lepcha top                            13,090      13,045
21    Jongri                                  B.13,170      13,184
 1    Ratong below Mon Lepcha                    7,069       7,217
 1      ,,   below Yoksun                        3,729       3,851
 1    Catsuperri lake                            6,068       6,009
 1        ,,     temple                          6,493       6,476
 4    Tengling village                           5,295       5,219
 5    Rungbee river bed                          3,230       3,350
 5    Changachelling temple                      6,805       6,850
 5    Kulhait river                              3,075       3,243
 1    Saddle of Hee hill                         7,289
 6    Camp on Hee hill                           6,609       6,744
--------------------------------------------------------------------


SERIES VII.--_Elevations in the Sikkim Terai and Plains of India,
Gangetic Delta and Jheels._

No. of                                                     Elevation
Obs.    Name of Locality                                   Feet
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 3      Siligoree Bungalow                                  302
12      Titalya                                             326
 3      Sahibgunj (west of Titalya)                         231
 4      Bhatgong                                            225
 4      Thakya-gunj                                         284
 4      Bhojepore                                           404
 5      Rummai                                              293
 5      Rangamally                                          262
 5      Belakoba                                            368
 1      Mela-meli                                           337
 6      Kishengunj                                          131
43      Mahanuddy river between Kishengunj and Maldah       153
24             ,,          ,,   Maldah and Rampore Bauleah   98
12      Rampore (Mr. Bell's)                                130
13      Dacca (Mr. Atherton's)                               72
54      Jheels, Dacca and Pundua                         *-.003
33      Megna river (June 1st-6th)                        +.008
13      Soormah (June 9th)                                +.048
 4      Pundua (June 10th and 11th)                       +.018
 3        ,,   (Sept. 7th)                              -.016
 5        ,,   (Nov. 16th and 17th)                     -0.66
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* The observations marked thus * are the differences in inches
between the readings of my barometer at the station, and that at
the Calcutta observatory, which is 18 feet above the sea-level.


SERIES VII--_Elevations in Sikkim, May to December, 1849._

No.                                             By         By
of                                              Calcutta   Dorjiling
Obs.  Name of Locality                          Barometer  Barometer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                 Feet       Feet
 2    Mik, on Tendong                              3,912
 4    Namtchi, camp on spur                        5,608
 1    Tendong summit                             B.8,671
 2    Temi, Teesta valley                          4,771   Tr.8,663
 4    Nampok, Teesta valley                      B.5,138
 8    Lingmo, Teesta Valley                      B.2,861      5,033
 4    Lingtam spur, Teesta valley                B.4,743      2,838
 4    Gorh,              ,,                      B.4,061      4,867
 2    Bling-bong,        ,,                      B.2,657      4,195
 8    Linga village,     ,,                      B.2,724      2,711
10    Singtam, May 14 to 16                      B.4,435      2,839
16    Singtam (higher on hill) Oct. 30 to Nov. 2 B.4,575
 5    Niong                                                   3,954
 2    Namgah                                       4,229
 7    Chakoong                                     4,371      4,443
27    Choongtam, May                               5,245      5,284
37    Choongtam, August                            5,247      5,297
 4    Dholep, Lachen                               6,120      6,145
 4    Dengha, Lachen                               6,337      6,399
 3    Latong, Lachen                               6,471      6,310
 8    Kampo Samdong                                7,315      7,344
 1    Chateng                                      8,819      8,695
 1    Chateng, lower on spur                       8,493      8,343
33    Lamteng village                              8,900      8,867
53    Zemu Samdong                                 9,026      8,926
 1    Snow bed across Zemu river                   9,828
 4    Camp on banks of Zemu                       10,223     10,271
74    Junction on Thlonok and Zemu                10,864     10,828
47    Camp on banks of Zemu river                 12,064     12,074
 1    Zemu river, June 13                         12,422
 1    Zemu river, higher up, June 13              13,281
 2    Yeunga (Lachen valley)                      10,196
43    Tallum Samdong                              11,540     11,424
20    Tungu, July                                 12,779     12,723
30    Tungu, October                              12,799     12,747
 1    Palung plains                               15,697
 3    Sitong                                      15,372
 2    Kongra Lama pass                            15,745     15,642
 5    Yeumtso (in Tibet)                          16,808
 2    Bhomtso (in Tibet)                          18,590
 6    Cholamoo lakes (in Tibet)                   16,900
 2    Donkia pass, October                        18,589
 2    Donkia pass, September                      18,387
56    Momay Samdong                               15,362     15,069
                                                           Measured
                                                           from
                                                           Momay
 1    Donkia, September 13                        16,876     17,079
 1    Kinchinjhow, September 14                   17,495     17,656
 1    Sebolah pass                                17,604     17,567
 1    South shoulder of Donkia, September 20      18,257     18,357
 1    Mountain north of Momay, September 17                B.17,394
 1    West shoulder of Donkia mountain, Sept. 26           B.18,510

      _The following were measured trigonometrically._
      Forked Donkia mountain                              Tr.20,870
      Kinchinjhow mountain                                Tr.22,750
      Tomo-chamo, east top of Kinchinjhow                 Tr.21,000
      Thlonok mount, Peak on                              Tr.20,000
      Chango-khang mountain                               Tr.20,600
      Tukcham mountain, from Dorjiling                    Tr.19,472
      Chomiomo mountain                                   Tr.22,700
      Summit of Donkia (from Donkia pass and Bhomtso)     Tr.22,650
      Tunkra Mountain, from Dorjiling                     Tr.18,250
                                                          By
                                                          Dorjiling
                                                          Barometer
48    Yeumtong                                    11,933     11,839
 7    Yeumtong, October                           11,951
                                                          By
                                                          Yeumtong
                                                          Barometer
 2    Snow bed above Yeumtong                   B.15,971     16,000
 3    Punying                                   B.11,299
                                                          By
                                                          Dorjiling
                                                          Barometer
 51   Lachoong village, August                  B. 8,712      8,474
 12   Lachoong village, October                 B. 8,705
  8   Lacheepia                                 B.15,293     15,231
  2   Tunkra pass                               B.16,083
  3   Rock on ascent to ditto                   B.13,078     13,144
  4   Keadom                                    B. 6,609
  3   Tukcham village                           B. 3,849
  5   Rinkpo village                            B. 6,008
  7   Laghep                                    B.10,423
  1   Phieungoong                               B.12,422
  3   Barfonchen                                B.11,233
  1   Chola pass                                B.14,925
  3   Chumanako                                 B.12,590
 17   Phadong                                   B. 5,946
  3   Tumloong, Nov. 3rd and 4th                B. 5,368
105   Higher on hill, Nov. 16th to Dec. 9th     B. 5,976
  1   Yankoong                                  B. 3,867
  2   Tikbotang                                 B. 3,763
  3   Camp, Dec. 11th                           B. 2,952
 12   Serriomsa                                 B. 2,820
 11   Dikkeeling                                B. 4,952
  2   Singdong                                  B. 2,116
  3   Katong ghat, Teesta                       B.   735
  5   Namten                                    B. 4,483
  6   Cheadam                                   B. 4,653
-------------------------------------------------------------------


SERIES IX.--_Khasia Mountains, June to November, 1850._

No. of                                                    Elevation
Obs.    Name of Locality                                  Feet
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 36     Churra (Mr. Inglis's)                              4,069
167     Churra bungalow opposite church, August            4,193
102     Churra bungalow opposite church, Oct., Nov.        4,258
 25     Kala-panee bungalow                                5,302
 63     Moflong                                            6,062
  1     Chillong hill                                      6,662
  9     Syong bungalow                                     5,725
  1     Hill south of ditto                                6,050
 32     Myrung bungalow, July                              5,647
  6     Myrung bungalow, Sept.                             5,709
  9     Chela                                                 80
 63     Nunklow                                            4,688
  6     Noukreem                                           5,601
 10     Mooshye                                            4,863
 35     Pomrang                                            5,143
 12     Amwee                                              4,105
  9     Joowye                                             4,387
  3     Nurtiung                                           4,178
-------------------------------------------------------------------

SERIES X.--_Soormah, Silhet, Megna, Chittagong, etc._

No. of                                                    Elevation
Obs.    Name of Locality                                  Feet
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 27     Silhet (Mr. Stainforth's)                            133
 38     Soormah river, between Silhet and Megna               46
 36     Silchar                                              116
 24     Megna river                                        +.020*
 12     Noacolly (Dr. Baker's)                           -.039
 10     Noacolly on voyage to Chittagong                    .000**
 72     Chittagong (Mr. Sconce's)                            191
  8     Chittagong flagstaff-hill at south head of harbour   151
  2     Seetakoond hill                                    1,136
 16     Seetakoond bungalow                              -.069*
  3     Hat-Hazaree                                      -.039
 12     Hattiah                                          -.049
  4     Sidhee                                           -.039
 17     Chittagong to Megna                              -.014**
 10     Eastern Sunderbunds                                +.002
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Difference between barometer at station and Calcutta barometer.
** The observations were taken only when the boat was high and dry,
and above the mean level of the waters.


INDEX.
A
_Abies, Brunoniana,_ i. 206, 209, 272, 274, 342; ii. 25, 32, 44, 108;
_Smithiana,_ ii. 25, 32, 45; _Webbiana,_ i. 191, 272, 307, 342; ii. 44,
108.
_Abrus precatorius_ (note), i. 16.
_Acacia Arabica,_ i. 60, 80; _Catechu,_ i. 31, 52, 393, 395; _Serissa,_
i. 193.
_Acarus,_ ii. 173.
_Aconitum,_ Himalayan, ii. 108; _palmatum,_ i. 168; _Napellus,_ i. 168;
_variegatum_ (note), ii. 107.
Acorns, abundance of, i. 373.
_Acorus Calamusa,_ i. 286.
Actinolites, ii. 146.
_Adamia cyanea,_ i. 112.
_Adenanthera pavonina,_ ii. 328.
_AEgle Marmelos,_ i. 25, 50, (note) i. 16.
Agates, i. 33, 91.
_Ailurua ochraceus,_ ii. 108.
Akshobya, image of, i. 322.
Alligator, i. 51, 54; droppings of in river banks, ii. 251.
Alluvium, Gangetic, i. 88, 379.
_Alsophila gigantea,_ i. 110, 142; (note), ii. 13. _spinulosa_ (note),
ii. 13.
Amber used in Sikkim, ii. 194.
_Ameletia Indica,_ i. 386.
American plants in Himalaya, ii. 39.
_Amherstia,_ ii. 245.
Amlah, Sikkim, ii. 192; examination by, ii. 211.
Amulet, Tibetan, i. 166.
Amwee, ii. 315.
_Andromeda,_ ii. 22, 39; _fastigiata,_ i. 343. _Andropogon acicularis,_
i. 385; _muricatus,_ i. 42.
Animals at Tungu, ii. 92.
Antelope, ii. 132.
_Antilope Hodgsoni,_ ii. 157.
Ants' hills, white, i. 20.
_Aponogeton,_ i. 62.
Apoplexy, symptoms of at great elevations, ii. 178.
Apple, crab, ii. 32; wild, i. 205; ii. 148.
_Aquilaria Agallocha,_ ii. 328.
_Aralia_ used for fodder, i. 359; pith yielding rice-paper, i. 359.
Ararat, Mount, ii. 3.
_Areca gracilis,_ ii. 10 (note), i. 143.
_Arenaria rupifraga,_ ii. 89.
_Argemone Mexicana,_ i. 30.
_Arisoema,_ i. 49.
_Aristolochia saccata,_ ii. 6.
Arrat, name of Lepchas, i. 127.
Arrow-root, i. 93.
_Artemisia,_ headache produced by, ii. 20; _Indica_ (note), ii. 20.
Arums, food prepared from, ii. 49; poisoning by, ii. 75.
Arun river, i. 224; ii. 124, 143; sources of, ii. 167.
_Asarum,_ ii. 48.
Assam valley, view of, ii. 290.
Ass, wild, ii. 172. (See _Equus Hemionus_ and Kiang).
_Astragalus,_ used for making paper, ii. 162; Tibetan (note), ii. 165.
Atmosphere, dry, i. 65; transparency of, ii. 127, 169.
Atmospheric vapours, strata of, i. 188, 310.
Attar of roses, i. 78.
_Aucuba,_ i. 126; ii. 39.
Aurora Borealis, i. 37; Appendix, p. 384.
B
Baghoda, i. 26.
Baikant-pore, i. 393.
Bails, or Thuggee stations, i. 68.
Baisarbatti terrace, i. 401.
Baker, Dr., ii. 339.
Balanites, i. 25.
_Balanophora,_ ii. 19, 47; cups made from, i. 132; knots caused by, i.
133.
Balasun river, i. 110, 402.
Bamboo, dwarf, i. 126; eatable grain of, i. 313; flowering of, i. 155,
158; kinds of in Khasia, ii. 268; kinds and uses of in Sikkim, i. 155,
158; planted, i. 386.
_Bambusa stricta,_ i 30.
Bananas, wild, i. 20, 143; scarlet-fruited, ii. 319.
Ban, or Lepcha knife, i. 130.
Banyan tree, i. 18; of Calcutta gardens, ii. 246.
Barnes, Mr., i. 95; Mr. Charles, i. 114.
Barometer, accident to, ii. 139; observations on Jheela, ii, 258.
Baroon on Soane river, i. 35.
_Bassia butyracea,_ i. 151; _latifolia,_ i. 16.
Bath, hot, at Bhomsong, i. 305; at Momay, ii. 133; at Yeumtong, ii. 117.
Beadle, Lieut., i. 26.
_Beaumontia,_ i. 401.
Bee, alpine, ii. 68; boring, i. 374; leaf-cutting, i. 46.
Beejaghur, i. 56.
Bees'-nests, i. 201; ii. 16.
_Begonia,_ alpine, ii. 108.
Behar, hills of, i. 32.
Belcuppee, i. 28.
Bellows, Himalayan, ii 82; of Khasia, ii. 310; of leaves, i. 53.
Benares, i. 71; observatory at, i. 74.
_Berberis Asiatica_ (note), i. 24; _concinna,_ ii. 198; _insignis,_ i.
364.
Betel-pepper, i. 99; ii. 327.
Bhaugulpore, i. 90; gardens at, i. 91.
Bhel fruit, i. 50.
Bhomsong, i. 297; ii. 8; temperature of soil at, i. 305.
Bhomtso, ii. 124, 164, 174; elevation, temperature etc., at, ii. 175.
Bhotan, called Dhurma country (note), i. 136; 366 (note).
Bhotanese (note), i. 136; ii. 232.
Bhotan Himalaya, i. 153; ii. 165, 298.
Bhoteeas, i. 205, 215.
Bhote (note), i. 136.
_Bignonia Indicta,_ i. 16.
Bijooas, or Lepcha priests, i. 135.
Bikh poison, i. 168; ii. 108.
Bind hills, i. 64.
Birds at Momay, ii. 131; of Khasia, ii. 305; of Terai, i. 399.
Black-rock of Colonel Waugh (note), ii. 18.
Blocks, granite, ii. 293, 310; split, i. 201; syenite, ii. 303.
Boat on Ganges, i. 70.
Boga-panee, ii. 287, 308.
Bombax, i. 26.
Boodhist banners, i. 144; monuments, i. 147; temple, i. 77; worship, i.
174, 324; worship introduced into Sikkim, i. 127.
_Borassus,_ i. 39.
Bore, or tidal-wave, ii. 343.
Bor-panee, ii. 301, 318.
_Borrera,_ ii. 165, 173.
Borr (_Pandanus),_ i. 300; ii. 9.
_Boswellia thurifera,_ i. 29, 39.
_Botrichium Virginicum,_ i. 293.
Boulders in river-beds, i. 288; of gneiss on Jongri, i. 353; on Mon
Lepcha, i. 342.
_Bowringia,_ ii. 313.
Bread, Tibetan, i. 297.
Breccia, modern formation of, i. 200.
Bridge, at Amwee, ii. 315; living, ii. 268; of canes, i. 149; ii. 21.
_Buceros,_ i. 187.
_Buchanania,_ i. 26.
_Bucklandia,_ ii. 185.
Buckwheat, cultivated at Jigatzi, ii. 171; wild, ii. 31.
_Bufo scabra,_ ii. 96.
Bugs, flying, i. 81.
Burdwan, i. 6; coal-fields, i. 8.
Burkutta river, i. 28.
Burrampooter, altered course of, ii. 253, 346; old bed of, ii. 256;
Tibetan, _see_ Yaru-tsampu; view of from Khasia, ii. 300, 301.
_Butea frondosa,_ i. 9, 52, 381, 392.
Butter, churning, ii. 77, 87; ornaments made of, ii. 88.
Butterflies, painted lady, ii. 33; at various elevations, ii. 26, 65, 98,
132; tropical, i. 152.
C
Cachar, ii. 326; rain-fall at, ii. 334.
_Coesalpinia paniculata,_ i. 25.
Cajana, i. 13.
_Calami,_ species of in Himalaya, i. 143.
_Calamus,_ ii. 10.
Calcutta, journey to, ii. 242.
_Callitriche verna?_ (note), ii. 96.
_Calotropis,_ i. 30, 86; _C. arborea,_ i. 72; temperature of, i. 36.
_Caltha palustris_ (note), ii. 77; _scaposa_ (note), ii. 77.
Camels, i. 61; at Lhassa, ii. 172.
Campbell, Dr., joins me in Terai, i. 376; meet at Bhomsong, i. 297; at
Choongtam, ii. 146; seizure of, ii. 202; sent as Superintendent of
Dorjiling, i. 117; treatment of as prisoner, ii. 205.
Cane bridge at Choongtam, ii. 21; at Lachoong, ii 101; over Great
Rungeet, i. 149.
Canoes of Teesta, i. 392, 396; of Tambur, i. 194; swamped, ii. 335.
_Capparis acuminata,_ i. 38.
_Cardamine hirsuta,_ i. 230.
_Cardiopteris,_ ii. 334.
_Carex Moorcroftii,_ ii. 155.
_Carissa carandas,_ i. 14, 31.
Carroway, ii. 66.
_Carthancus,_ i. 80.
_Caryota urens,_ i. 143.
Cascades of Khasia, ii. 270; of Mamloo, ii. 278.
_Cassia fistula,_ i. 393.
_Casuarina_ (note), ii. 346.
Catechu, collecting, i. 52.
_Cathcartia,_ ii. 198.
Catsuperri, i. 362; lake, i. 363; temples, i. 365.
Cave, Lieut., garden at Churra, ii. 284.
_Cedrela Toona,_ i. 144, 193; ii. 18.
_Cedrus Libami_ (note), i. 257.
Central India, hills of, i. 32.
_Cervus Wallichii,_ antlers of, ii. 214.
Chachoo river, ii. 84.
Chahuchee, i. 51.
Chait, description of, i. 324; (note), i. 158.
Chakoong, ii. 18, 188.
_Chamaerops Khasiana,_ ii. 279.
Chameleon, i. 205.
Changachelling, i. 368.
Chango-khang, ii. 84, 133, 141.
Chattuc, ii. 262, 309, 337.
Chaulmoogra (_See_ Took), i. 151.
Cheadam, ii. 234.
Cheer-pine, i. 182.
Chela, ii. 306.
Chepanga, ii. 15.
Cherry, alpine wild, ii. 145.
Cheytoong, Lepcha boy, ii. 184.
Chillong hill, ii. 290.
Chinese plants in Khasia, ii. 318; in Sikkim, i. 126; ii. 39.
Chingtam, i. 196.
Chirring (red rose), ii. 63.
Chiru. _See_ Tchiru, ii. 157.
Chittagong, ii. 345; leave, ii. 353.
Chokli-bi (_Smilacina_), ii. 48.
Chola, i. 123; summit of pass, ii. 199; view of from Donkia, ii. 127.
Cholamoo lake, ii. 124, 157, 176.
Chomachoo river, i. 225; ii. 125.
Chomiomo, ii. 80, 94, 165.
Choombi, ii. 110.
Choongtam, ii. 21, 98, 145, 185; insects at, ii. 98; vegetation of, ii.
24.
Choonjerma pass, i. 264.
Chumulari, i. 125, 185; ii. 110; discussion on, ii. 166; view of from
Khasia, ii. 300.
Chunar, i. 71.
Chung (Limboos), i. 187.
Churra-poonji, ii. 272; rain-fall at, ii. 282; table-land of, ii. 277;
temperature of, ii. 284.
_Cicada,_ i. 107, 127; ii. 305; upper limit of, ii. 96.
_Cicer arietinum,_ i. 80.
_Cinnamomum,_ i. 162.
Cinnamon of Khasia, ii. 309.
_Cirrhopetalum_ (note), ii. 10.
Clay of Sikkim, i. 155; Appendix, 383.
_Clematis nutans_ (note), i. 24.
_Clerodendron,_ i. 387.
Climbers, bleeding of, ii. 350; of Sikkim, i. 163.
Coal, of Burdwan, i. 8; Churra, ii. 278, 285, 303; Terai, i. 403.
Cobra, mountain, ii. 20.
_Cochlospermum,_ i. 53.
Cocks, Sikkim, i. 314.
_Coelogyne,_ i. 110; _Wallichii,_ i. 166; ii. 311.
Coffee, cultivation of, at Chittagong, ii. 347; at Bhaugulpore, i. 93.
_Coix,_ cultivation of, ii. 289.
Coles, i. 55, 91.
Colgong, i. 94.
Colvile, Sir J., i. 5.
Comb of Lepchas, ii. 194; of Mechis, i. 408.
Conch shells, in Boodhist temples, i. 174, 312; cut at Dacca, ii. 254.
Conduits of bamboo, i. 144.
_Confervae_ of hot springs, i. 28; Appendix, 375.
Conglomerate, ii. 19, 165, 176, 177, 402, 403.
_Coniferae,_ Himalayan, i. 256.
_Conocarpus latifolius_ (note), i. 16.
Cooch-Behar, i. 384.
Cooches, i. 384.
Cookies, ii. 330.
Corbett, Dr., i. 82.
Cornelians, i. 33.
Cornwallis, Lord, mausoleum of, i. 78.
Corpses, disposal of in Sikkim and Tibet, i. 287.
Cosi river, i. 96.
Cowage plant, i. 12.
Cows, Sikkim, i. 314; ii. 150.
Crab, fresh-water, ii. 7.
Cranes, i. 392; (note) ii. 161.
_Crawfurdia,_ ii. 145.
Crows, red-legged, ii. 37.
_Cruciferae,_ rarity of in Himalaya, i. 113.
_Cryptogramma crispa,_ i. 262; ii. 68, 72.
Crystals in gneiss, ii. 138.
_Cupressus funebris,_ i. 315, 317, 336.
Cups, Tibetan, i. 132.
Currants, wild, i. 148.
Currents, ascending, i. 374.
Curruckpore hills, i. 87.
Cuttack forests, ii. 340.
_Cycas pectinata,_ i. 151, 382; ii. 30; (note), i. 143; trees in Calcutta
Garden, ii. 247.
Cyclops, figure resembling (note), ii. 195.
_Cynodon Dactylon,_ i. 385.
Cypress funereal, i. 315, 317, 336.
_Cypripedium,_ ii. 68, 322.
D
Dacca, ii. 254.
Dacoits, i. 65.
_Dalbergia Sissoo,_ i. 101.
Dallisary river, ii. 256.
Damooda valley, i. 7.
Dandelion, ii. 66.
_Daphne,_ paper from, ii. 162. _See_ Paper.
Date-palm, i. 34, 88; dwarf, ii. 300.
Datura seed, poisoning by, i. 65.
Davis, Mr. C. E., i. 41.
_Decaisnea,_ new edible fruit, ii. 198.
Deer, barking, i. 399.
_Delphinium glaciale,_ i. 269; ii. 95.
Demons, exorcisement of, ii. 114.
_Dendrobium densiflorum,_ ii. 19; _Farmeri,_ etc., ii. 323; _nobile,_ ii.
19; _Pierardi,_ i. 103.
_Dentaria_ (a pot-herb), ii. 47.
Denudation of Himalaya, i. 308; of Khasia, ii. 324.
Deodar (note), i. 256.
Dewan, Sikkim, i. 117; ii. 97; arrival at Tumloong, ii. 217; conferences
with, ii. 221, 225; dinner with, ii. 231; disgrace of, ii. 241; hostility
to British, i. 117; house of, i. 304.
Dhal, i. 13.
Dhamersala, i. 222.
Dhob grass, i. 385.
Dhurma country, name for Bhotan, (note), i. 366; people (note), i. 136;
rajah, i. 136; seal of, i. 372.
Digarchi, ii. 125. _See_ Jigatzi.
Dijong (name of Sikkim), i. 127.
_Dilivaria ilicifolia,_ ii. 347.
_Dillenia,_ i. 393, 395.
Dinapore, i. 82.
Dingcham, ii. 87, 169.
Dingpun, at Chola, ii. 200, 201; Tibetan, ii. 160; Tinli, ii. 204.
_Diospyros embryopteris,_ i. 392; fruit, ii. 64.
_Dipterocarpi,_ ii. 345; _D. turbinatus,_ ii. 348.
Diseases attributed in Tibet to elements, ii. 178.
Djigatzi, ii. 125. _See_ Jigatzi.
Dog, loss of, ii. 100; Tibetan, i. 204; wild, i. 43.
Do-mani stone, i. 294.
Donkia, i. 123; ii. 126; ascent of, ii. 178; forked, ii. 120; pass, ii.
123, 179; temperature of, ii. 129; tops of, ii. 137.
Doobdi temples, i. 336.
Dookpa, Boodhist sect (note), i. 366.
Doomree, i. 25.
Dorje, i. 173.
Dorjiling, i. 113; ceded to British, i. 116; climate, i. 119, 120;
elevation of, i. 115; leave, ii. 248; origin of, i. 115; prospects of,
ii. 248; threat of sacking, ii. 214; trade at, i. 118.
_Duabanga grandiflora,_ i. 401.
Dunkotah (East Nepal), i. 190.
Dunwah pass, i. 30.
Dust-storm, i. 51, 81.
Dye, yellow, ii. 41.
E
Eagle-wood, ii. 328.
Earthquake, Chittagong, ii. 349; Noacolly, ii. 342; Titalya, i. 376.
_Edgeworthia Gardneri,_ i. 205, 333; ii. 10, 162.
Efflorescence of nitrate of lime, i. 43; of soda, i. 13.
Eggs of water-fowl in Tibet, ii. 161.
Ek-powa Ghat, i. 59.
_Elaeagnus,_ i. 205.
_Eleocharis palustris_ (note), ii. 96.
Elephants, at Teshoo Loombo, ii. 172; bogged, ii. 333; discomforts of
riding, i. 400; geologising with, i. 10; path of, i. 108; purchase of, i.
381; wild, ii. 302.
_Eleusine coracana,_ i. 133.
_Enkianthus,_ i. 108.
_Ephedra,_ ii. 84, 155.
_Ephemera_ at 17,000 feet, ii. 141.
_Epipactis,_ ii. 66.
Equinoctial gales, ii. 144.
_Equus Hemionus,_ ii. 172.
_Eranoboas_ (note) i. 36, 90.
_Erigeron alpinus_ (note), ii. 164.
_Ervum lens,_ i. 13.
_Erythrina,_ ii. 18.
_Euphorbia ligulata,_ i. 46; _pentagona,_ i. 82; _neriifolia,_ i. 46, 82;
_tereticaulis,_ i. 46.
European plants in Himalaya, ii. 38.
_Euryale ferox,_ ii. 255; seeds of, in peat, ii. 341.
F
Fair, 161; at Titalya, i. 118.
Falconer, Dr., house of, ii. 243.
_Falconeria,_ ii. 353.
Falkland Islands, quartz blocks of, (note), ii. 179.
Fan-Palm, ii. 279.
Fear, distressing symptoms of, ii. 220.
Felle, Mr., i. 55.
Felspar, concretions of, i. 406.
Fenny river, mouth of, ii. 343.
Ferns, eatable, i. 293; European, ii. 68, 72.
_Feronia elephantum,_ i. 25, 50, (note), i. 16.
_Festuca ovina,_ ii. 123, (note) ii. 164.
Fever, recurrence of at elevations, ii. 183.
_Ficus elastica,_ i. 102; _infectoria,_ i. 26.
Figs, i. 157.
Fire, grasses destroyed by, i. 385; in forests, i. 146.
Fire-wood, Sikkim, ii. 151.
Fish, dried, ii. 309; Tibet (note), ii. 183.
Fishing basket of Mechis, i. 404.
Flame, perpetual, ii. 352.
Flood, tradition of, i. 127; ii. 3.
Florican, i. 55, 381.
Forests of Sikkim, i. 165.
Fossil plants of coal, i. 8; of Khasia, ii. 325; of Terai, i. 403.
Frogs, Sikkim, i. 165.
Fruits of Sikkim, i. 159; ii. 182.
_Funaria hygrometrica,_ ii. 19.
Fungi, European, ii. 73.
G
Ganges, fall of, i. 71; scenery of, i. 79.
Gangetic delta, ii. 340; head of, ii. 252.
Gangtok Kajee, ii. 229.
Gardeners, native, i. 93.
Gardens, Bhaugulpore, i. 91; Burdwan, i. 6; Calcutta Botanic, i. 3, ii.
244; Lieutenants Raban and Cave's, ii. 284; Sir Lawrence Peel's, i. 2.
Garnets, amorphous, (note) ii. 123; sand of, i. 80, 371.
Garrows, ii. 272.
_Gaultheria,_ ii. 22, 182.
Gelookpa, Boodhist sect. (note) i. 366.
Geology of Choongtam, ii. 27; Khasia mountains, ii. 323; outer Himalaya,
i. 406, Paras-nath, i. 32.
_Geranium,_ ii. 19.
Ghassa mountains, (note) ii. 166.
Ghazeepore, i. 78.
Giantchi, ii. 168, (note) ii. 131.
Glaciers of Chango-khang, ii. 115; Donkia, ii. 136; Himalaya, ii. 57;
Kambachen, i. 260; Kinchinjhow, ii. 134, 180; Lachen Valley, ii. 78;
Yangma Valley, i. 246.
Glory, ornament resembling, ii. 86; round deities' heads, ii. 195.
_Gnaphalium luteo-album,_ i. 80.
Gnarem Mountain, ii. 18.
Gneiss, characters of, (note) ii. 128; cleavage of, ii. 91; flexures of,
i. 406.
Gnow, (wild sheep), ii. 132.
Goa, (antelope), ii. 157.
Goats, poisoned by Rhododendrons, ii. 150; shawl-wool, ii. 88.
Godowns, opium, i. 83.
Goitre, i. 134.
Goliath beetles, ii. 98.
Goomchen, (tail-less rat), ii. 156.
Goong ridge, i. 180.
_Gordonia Wallichii,_ i. 102, 157.
Gorh, ii. 10; Lama of, ii. 11.
Goruck-nath, figure of, ii. 195, (note) i. 323.
Gossamer spiders, i. 81,
_Goughia,_ ii. 33.
Gram, i. 13.
Grand trunk-road, i. 10, 11.
Granite, blocks of, ii. 310; cleavage planes of (note), i. 345; of
Kinechinjhow (note), ii. 287, (note), ii. 128; phenomena of, i. 308.
Grant, Dr., i. 90; Mr. J. W., report on Dorjiling, i. 116,
Grapes, cultivation of, i. 92; wild in Sikkim, ii. 187.
Grasses, absence of on outer Himalaya, i. 113; gigantic, i. 385.
Gravel terraces and beds in Terai, i. 378, 380, 382, 401.
Great Rungeet river, cross, i. 287; excursion to, i. 142.
Greenstone of Khasia, ii. 287.
Griffith, Dr., i. 3; (note) ii. 40, 244.
_Grislea tomentosa,_ (note) i. 16.
Grouse, Himalayan, ii. 113.
Grove, sacred in Khasia, ii. 319.
_Guatteria longifolia,_ i. 82.
Gubroo, i. 345.
Guitar, Tibetan, i. 304.
Gum arabic, i. 60; of _Cochlospermum,_ i. 53; of _Olibanum,_ i. 29.
Gunpowder, manufacture of, i. 9.
Guobah of Wallanchoon, i. 217, 230.
Gurjun trees, ii. 345, 348.
_Gyrophora,_ ii. 130.
H
Hailstorm, i. 405.
Halo, i. 69; seen from Donkia, ii. 129.
_Hamamelis chinensis,_ ii. 318.
Hamilton, Mr. C., i. 65.
_Hardwickia binata,_ i. 50, 54.
Hares, Terai, i. 399; Tibetan, ii. 157.
Harrum-mo, (wild tribe), ii. 14.
Hattiah island, removal of land from, ii. 353.
Haze on plains, i. 374, 375.
Hee hill, i. 371.
_Helicteres Asoca_ (note), i. 16.
_Helwingia,_ i. 126.
Herbert, Major, report on Dorjiling, i. 116.
_Hierochloe,_ ii. 115.
Himalaya, distant view of, i. 96; vegetation and scenery of outer, i.
108; view of from Khasia, ii. 287, 289, 297.
_Hippophae,_ ii. 43.
_Hodgsonia,_ i. 395; ii. 7; _heteroclita,_ ii. 350.
Hodgson, Mr., i. 122; join in Terai, i. 376; view from house, i, 123.
_Holigarna,_ varnish from, ii. 330.
Hollyhock, ii. 105.
Honey poisoned by Rhododendron flowers, i. 201; preservation of bodies
in, ii. 276; seekers, ii. 16.
Hooli festival, i. 73, 389.
Hopkins, Mr., on elevation of mountains, i. 326.
Hornbills, i. 187.
Hornets, ii. 26.
Horse-chestnut, Indian, i. 394.
Horse, wild, ii. 172.
Hot-springs, boy passes night in, ii. 184; of Momay, ii. 133, 180;
Seetakoond, i. 88; Soorujkoond, i. 27; Yeumtong, ii. 116.
House, Lama's, i. 317; Tibetan, at Yangma, i. 242; Wallanchoon, i.   211.
_Houttynia,_ ii. 7.
_Hydnocarpus,_ ii. 7.
_Hydropeltis_ (note), ii. 318.
I
Ice, accumulation of, ii. 47; action of, i. 353 (note), ii. 121;
transport of plants in, ii. 247.
_Imperata cylindrica,_ i. 385.
India-rubber tree, i. 102; ii. 13.
Indo-Chinese races, i. 140.
_Infusoria_ at 17,000 feet, ii. 123.
Inglis, Mr. H., ii. 265.
Insects at 4000 feet, ii. 18; Choongtam (5000 feet), ii. 26; Dorjiling
(note), ii. 98; Lamteng (8000 feet), ii. 37; Momay (15,300 feet), ii.
132; Tallum (12,000 feet), ii. 68; Tunga (13,000 feet), ii. 93; Zemu
river (12,000 feet) ii. 59; Zemu Samdong (9000 feet), ii. 65.
Iron forges, chime of hammers, ii. 296; sand, ii. 310; smelting of, in
Khasia, ii. 310; stone, i. 401.
Irvine, Dr., i. 82.
Islumbo pass, i. 280.
Ivy, ii. 32.
J
Jaws, i. 18, 90.
Japanese plants in Sikkim, i. 126; ii. 39.
Jarool (_Lagerstroemia_), ii. 327.
Jasper rocks, i. 50.
Jatamansi, i. 217.
Jeelpigoree, i. 384; rajah of, i. 389.
Jerked meat, i. 214; ii. 183.
Jews' harp, Tibetan, i. 338; ii. 219.
Jhansi-jeung, _see_ Giantchi, ii. 168.
Jheels, ii. 256, 309; brown waters of, ii. 263.
Jigatzi (note), ii. 125, 171; temperature of, ii. 171.
Job's tears, cultivation of, ii. 289.
Jongri, i. 349.
Joowye, ii. 316.
Jos, image of, at Yangma, i. 236.
Jummul river, ii. 253.
_Juncus bufonius,_ i. 80, 230.
Jung Bahadoor, ii. 239, 243.
Juniper, black, sketch of, ii. 55.
_Juniperus recurva,_ ii. 28, 45.
Junnoo mountain, i. 123, 258, 264.
Jyntea hills, ii. 314.
K
_Kadsura,_ ii. 6.
Kajee, i. 182.
Kala-panee, ii. 285.
Kambachen, or Nango pass, i. 250; top of, i. 253; village, i. 257.
Kambajong, ii. 125.
Kanglachem pass, i. 246.
Kanglanamo pass, i. 271, 341, 350.
Katior-pot (_Hodgsonia_), ii. 7.
Katong-ghat, ii. 233.
Kaysing Mendong (note), i. 286, 332.
Keadom, ii. 101.
Kenroop-bi (_Dentaria_), ii. 47.
Khabili valley, i. 278.
Khamba mountains, ii. 167.
Khasia, climate of, ii. 282; geology of, ii. 323; leave, ii. 323; people
of, ii. 273.
Khawa river, i. 193.
Khutrow (_Abies Smithiana_), ii. 25.
Kiang, ii. 172.
Kiang-lah mountains, ii. 124, 167.
Kidnapping, i. 341.
Kinchinjhow, ii. 41, 80, 84, 140; glacier of, ii. 134, 180.
Kinchinjunga, i. 344; circuit of, i. 381; view of from Bhomtso, ii. 165;
from Choongtam, ii. 14, 188; from Donkia pass, ii. 126; from Dorjiling,
i. 123; from Sebolah, ii. 142; from Thlonok, ii. 50.
Kishengunj, i. 98; ii. 249.
Kollong rock, ii. 293.
Kongra Lama, ii. 155; pass, ii. 80.
Kosturah (musk-deer), i. 269.
Kubra, i. 123, 272.
Kulhait river, i. 281, 370; valley, i. 282.
Kumpa Lepchas i. 137; Rong, i. 137.
Kunker, i. 12, 29, 50, 89, 94:
Kursiong, i. 109, 110, 405.
Kurziuk, i. 284.
Kuskus, i. 42.
Kymore hills, geology of, i. 32; sandstone of, i. 39.
L
Lac, i. 9.
Lacheepia, ii. 112.
Lachen-Lachoong river, ii. 14, 186.
Lachen Phipun, ii. 22, 43, 149; conduct of, ii. 61; tent of, ii. 78.
Lachen river, ii. 30; length of, and inclination of bed, ii. 176.
Lachoong Phipun, ii. 105; valley, headstreams of, ii. 120; village, ii.
103; revisited, ii. 183.
_Lagerstroemia grandiflora,_ i. 401. _Reginae,_ ii. 327.
Laghep, ii. 197.
_Lagomys badius,_ ii. 156.
_Lagopus Tibetanus,_ i. 93.
Lailang-kot, ii. 286.
Lake-beds in Yangma valley, i. 232, 234, 238, 244.
Lakes caused by moraines, ii. 119.
Lamas, arrival of at Tumloong, ii. 224; dance of, i. 228; music of, i.
313; ii. 218; Pemiongchi, ii. 225; of Sikkim, i. 290; of Simonbong, i.
174; worship of, i. 365; ii. 178.
Lamteng, ii. 34, 96, 148.
Landslips, ii. 16, 20, 97, 115.
Larch Himalayan, i. 255; sketch of, ii. 55.
_Larix Griffithii,_ i. 255; ii. 44.
Lassoo Kajee, ii. 2.
Laurels, i. 162.
Lautour, Mr., ii. 345.
Leaf-insect, ii. 305.
Lebanon, Cedar of, i. 256.
_Lecidea geographica,_ i. 221, 352; ii. 130; _oreina,_ ii. 179.
Leebong, i. 143.
Leeches, i. 107, 167; ii. 17; upper limit of, ii. 54.
_Leguminosae,_ absence of in Himalaya, i. 112.
Lelyp, i. 205.
_Lemma minor,_ i. 306.
Lemon-bushes, wild, ii. 233.
Lepchas, i. 127; diseases of, i. 134; dress and ornaments of, i. 130; ii.
194; food of, i. 132; music of, i. 133; peaceable character of, i. 128,
136.
_Lepus hispidus,_ i. 399; _oiostolus,_ ii. 158.
_Leucas,_ a weed in fields, i. 383.
_Leuculia gratissima,_ i. 193, 276; _Pinceana,_ ii. 286.
_Leycesteria,_ i. 206.
Lhassa (note), ii. 168; notices of, i. 299; ii. 27, 172.
Lichens, Arctic, i. 352; ii. 130, 165, 179.
_Licuala peltata_ (note), i. 143.
Lignite, i. 403.
Liklo mountain, ii. 50.
_Lilium giganteum_ (note), ii. 33.
Little Rungeet, cross, i. 157, 175; guardhouse at, i. 371; source of, i.
181.
Limboos, i. 137; language of, i. 138.
Lime, deposit of, i. 407; ii. 97; nitrate of, i. 43.
Limestone, at Rotas, i. 40; nummulite, ii. 266, 346; of Churra, ii. 278;
spheres of, i. 55; Tibetan, ii. 177.
Lime-tuff, impression of leaves on, i. 44.
_Limosella aquatica,_ i. 230.
_Linaria ramosissima,_ i. 42.
Lingcham, i. 281, 313; Kajee of, i. 282, 284, 371.
Lingo cane-bridge, ii. 12.
_Linum trigynum_ (note), i. 16.
Lister, Colonel, ii. 329.
Lizard, i 37; ticks on, i. 37.
Lohar-ghur, i. 402.
Luminous wood, ii. 151.
Lushington, Mr., sent to Dorjiling, ii. 227.
_Lycopodium clavatum,_ ii. 19.
_Lyellia crispa,_ ii. 19.
_Lymnaea Hookeri,_ ii. 156.
M
Machoo valley, ii. 109.
Maddaobund, i. 18.
_Magnolia, Campbellii,_ i. 125, 166; _excelsa,_ i. 125; distribution of
(note), i. 166.
Magras, aborigines of Sikkim, i. 139.
Mahaldaram, i. 111.
Mahanuddy river, i. 98, 375; ii. 250.
Mahaser, a kind of carp, i. 398.
Mahowa, i. 16, 63.
Maidan (term as applied to Tibet), ii. 170.
Mainom mountain camp on, i. 307; summit of, i. 310.
Maitrya, the coming Boodh, i. 357.
Maize, hermaphrodite, i. 157; roasted, ii. 78.
Malayan plants in Himalaya, ii. 39.
Maldah, ii. 250.
Mamloo, village and waterfalls of, ii. 278.
Mango, blossoming, i. 61.
Mani, or praying-cylinder, i. 135, 172, 211; turned by water, i. 206.
_Mantis_ of Khasia, ii. 305.
_Marlea,_ ii. 33.
Marmot, i. 93; head and feet of, ii. 106.
Martins' nest, spiders in, i. 46.
May-fly at 17,000 feet, ii. 141.
M'Lelland, Dr., i. 3.
Mealum-ma (nettle), ii. 189, 336.
Mechi fisherman, i. 404; river, i. 383; tribe, i.101, 140.
_Meconopsis,_ i. 81; ii. 281; _Nepalensis,_ ii. 53.
Meepo, i. 198; house of, ii. 194; joined by, ii. 11; wife of, ii. 193.
Megna, altered course of, ii. 341; navigation of, ii. 338.
_Melastoma,_ ii. 18.
Mendicant, Tibetan, ii. 189.
Mendong, i. 211, 332; Kaysing (note), i. 286.
_Menziesia,_ ii. 113.
_Mesua ferrea,_ ii. 328.
Midsummer, weather at, ii. 59.
Mirzapore, i. 64.
Moflong, ii. 288.
Momay Samdong, arrival at, ii. 118; climate of, ii. 143; second visit to,
ii. 180.
Monastic establishments of Sikkim, i. 367.
Monghyr, i. 87.
Monkeys, i. 278; ii. 37.
Mon Lepcha, i. 342.
_Monotropa,_ ii. 19.
Monuments of Khasia, ii. 319.
Moormis, i. 139.
Mooshye, ii. 314.
Moosmai, ii. 268.
Moraines, ancient, at Lachoong, ii. 104; at Tallum, ii. 67; at Yangma, i.
231, 246; extensive, ii. 118; indicating changes of climate, i. 380.
Morung of Nepal, i. 378, 382.
Mountains, deceptive appearance of, ii. 127.
Moss of puff-ball, ii. 13.
Mudar (_Calotropis_), i. 86.
Muddunpore, i. 35.
Mugs at Chittagong, ii. 345.
Mulberry, wild, i. 151.
Mules, Tibetan (note), ii. 228.
Mungeesa Peak, i. 55.
Munnipore dance, ii. 331; frontier, ii. 334; (note), ii. 329.
_Murraya exotica,_ i. 44.
Murwa beer, i. 133, 175, 285, 291; grain, i. 133.
Mushroom, eatable, ii. 47.
Musk-deer, i. 209; ii. 37.
Muslin, Dacca, ii. 254.
Mutton, dried saddles of, ii. 183.
Myong valley (East Nepal), i. 181.
Myrung, ii. 292.
Mywa Guola, i. 137; sunk thermometer at, i. 198.
N
Nagas, ii. 332.
Nageesa (_Mesua ferrea_), ii. 320.
Namten, ii. 223.
Nango mountain i. 236; or Kambachen pass, i. 250.
Nanki mountain, i. 183.
Napleton Major, i. 92.
_Nardostachys Jatamansi,_ i. 217; (note), ii. 164.
_Nauclea cordifolia,_ i. 26; _parvifolia,_ i. 26.
Neongong temple, i. 311.
Nepal, East, journey to, i. 178.
Nepalese Himalaya, i. 125,
Nepenthes, ii. 315.
Nettles, i. 157; gigantic, i. 182; ii. 188.
Nightingales, i. 332.
Nimbus of the ancients (note), ii. 195.
Ningma, Boodhist sect (note), i. 366.
_Nipa fruticans,_ i. 1; ii. 355.
Nishung, or Moormis, i. 139.
Noacolly, ii. 339; extension of land at, ii. 341.
Nonkreem, ii. 310.
Nummulites of Khaaia limestone, ii. 325.
Nunklow, ii. 300.
Nunnery at Tumloong, ii. 191.
Nursing, i. 124, 347.
Nurtiung, ii. 318.
Nut, Himalayan, ii. 114.
Nutmegs, wild, ii. 353.
_Nymphaea pygmaea,_ ii. 312.
0
Oaks, i. 109; distribution of in India (note), ii. 336; Sikkim, i. 157;
upper limit of, ii. 114.
Observatory at Benares, i. 74.
Oil of _Bassia butyracea,_ i. 151; of _B. latifolia,_ i. 16; Kuskus, i.
42; mustard, linseed, and rape, i. 13; uggur, ii. 328; wood, ii. 348.
_Olax scandens,_ i. 31.
_Olibanum,_ Indian, i. 29.
Olivine (note), ii. 123.
Omerkuntuk, i. 32.
Onglau (mushroom), ii. 47.
Opium, East Indian, cultivation and manufacture of, i. 83; quality of, i.
85.
_Opuntia,_ i. 205.
_Orchideae,_ growth of in Khasia, ii. 321; of Khasia, ii. 281.
_Orobanche,_ Himalayan, i. 262; _Indica,_ i. 16.
Ortolan, i. 98.
Otters, i. 198.
_Ovis Ammon,_ i. 244; ii. 132; skulls of, i. 249.
_Oxalis sensitiva,_ i. 102.
_Oxytropis Chiliophylla_ (note), ii. 164.
P
Pacheem, i. 111; vegetation of, 112.
Painom river, ii. 167.
Palibothra, i. 90.
Palms, distribution of in Sikkim, i. 143; fan, i. 29; of Khasia, ii. 267.
Palung plains, ii. 84, 152; view of from Sebolah, ii. 142.
_Pandanus,_ i. 300; ii. 9.
Papaw, ii. 350.
Paper, manufactory at Dunkotah, i. 190; of _Astragalus,_ ii. 162; of
_Daphne_ and _Edgeworthia,_ i. 205, 303; ii. 162; of Tibet, ii. 162.
_Papilio Machaon,_ ii. 65; (note), ii. 68.
Paras-nath, i. 12, 32; geology of, i. 32; summit of, i. 21.
_Paris,_ ii. 18.
_Parochetus communis,_ ii. 50.
Patchouli plant, ii. 314.
Patna, i. 82.
Pawn, i. 99.
Peaches, Sikkim, i. 158; cultivation of, ii. 185.
Peacock wild, i. 30.
Peat at Calcutta, ii. 341.
Pea-violet, ii. 309.
Peel, Sir L., garden of, i. 2.
Peepsa, i. 157.
Pelicans, mode of feeding, i. 80.
Pemberton, Capt., treatment of his embassy in Bhotan (note), ii. 202.
Pemiongchi temple, i. 327.
Pemmi river (East Nepal), i. 192.
Pepper, Betel, i. 99.
Perry Mr., i. 98.
Peuka-thlo, ii. 81.
Phadong Goompa, ii. 192; confinement at, ii. 209.
Phari, ii. 110.
Pheasant (Kalidge), i. 255; horned, ii. 37.
Phedangbos (Limboo priests), i. 138.
Phenzong Goompa, ii. 192.
Phieungoong, i. 332; ii. 198.
Phipun, Lachen, ii. 22, 149; of Lachoong, ii. 105.
_Phoenix acaulis,_ i. 145; (note), i. 143, 400; dwarf, i. 22, 382;
_paludosa,_ i. 1; ii. 355; _sylvestris,_ i. 88.
Phosphorescent wood, ii. 151.
_Photinia,_ ii. 22.
Phud (Tibet mendicant), ii. 186.
_Phyllanthus emblica,_ i. 273; (note), i. 16.
_Picrorhiza,_ i. 272.
Pigeons, ii. 37.
Pines, gigantic, ii. 108; Himalayan, i. 256; ii. 44, 198; rarity of in
Sikkim, i. 169.
_Pinguicula,_ ii. 40.
_Pinus excelsa,_ ii. 45, 105; _Khasiana,_ ii. 282, 288, 301;
_longifolia,_ i. 145, 182, 278, 280; ii. 3, 45.
_Piptanthus Nepalensis,_ ii. 5.
Pitcher-plant, ii. 315.
_Plantago_ leaves, used to dress wounds, ii. 75.
Plantain, scarlet-fruited, ii. 309; wild, i. 143.
Plants, English, on Soane river, i. 45; English, on Ganges, i. 80;
temperature of, i. 36; of English genera in Terai (note), i. 398.
_Plectocomia,_ i. 143.
Plumbago, i. 407; ii. 46.
_Poa annua,_ i. 118, 221; _laxa,_ ii. 123
Poa (fibre of _Boemeria_), i. 157.
_Podocarpus neriifolia_ (note), i. 256.
_Podostemon_ (note), ii. 314.
Poisoners, i. 65.
Poisoning of goats by rhododendrons, ii. 150; of Bhoteeas by arum-roots,
ii. 75.
_Polygonum cymosum,_ ii. 31.
_Polypodium proliferum,_ i. 50.
Pomrang, ii. 313.
Pony, Tibetan, i. 118; ii. 75; (note), ii. 131.
Poppy, cultivation of, i. 31; ii. 352.
Porcupine, i. 205.
_Potamogeton natans,_ i. 306.
Potatos, culture of in East Nepal, i. 259; Khasia, ii. 277; Sikkim, i.
158.
_Pothos,_ ii. 18.
Praong (bamboo), i. 158, 313.
_Primula petiolaris,_ i. 306; _Sikkimensis,_ ii. 77.
_Prinsepia_ (note), ii. 102, 291.
_Procapra picticaudata,_ ii. 157.
_Prunella,_ ii. 132; _vulgaris,_ ii. 66.
_Prunus,_ used for fodder, i. 359.
_Pteris aquilina,_ ii. 19; (note), ii. 53.
Pullop-bi (_Polygonum_), ii. 31.
Pulse accelerated at great elevations, ii. 131, 142.
Pundim mountain, i. 345; cliff of, i. 346.
Pundua, ii. 264.
Punkabaree, i. 102, 374, 403.
Purnea, i. 97.
_Pyrola,_ ii. 43.
Q
Quartz-beds folded, i. 406; blocks in Falkland Islands (note), ii. 179.
_Quercus semecarpifolia,_ i. 187.
Quoits, i. 338.
R
Raban, Lieut., ii 333; garden of at Churra, ii. 84.
Radiation, powerful in valleys, i. 209.
Rageu (deer), ii. 98.
Rain-fall at Churra, ii. 282; at Noacolly, ii. 340; diminution of at
Rotas, i. 43; in Sikkim (Appendix), 412; Silchar, ii. 334.
Rajah, Sikkim, audience of, i. 302; poverty of, i. 303; (note), ii. 216;
presents from, ii. 64; punishment of, ii. 246; residence of, ii. 191,
217.
Raj-ghat i. 44.
Rajmahal hills, i. 95.
Raklang pass, i. 292.
Ramchoo lake (of Turner), ii. 143, 167.
Rampore Bauleah, ii. 251.
Ranee of Sikkim, presents from, ii. 227.
Rangamally, i. 393.
_Ranunculus aquatilis,_ ii. 156; _hyperboreus_ (note), ii. 112;
_sceleratus,_ i. 45, 80.
Ratong river, i. 358.
Rat, tail-less, ii. 156.
Red snow, absence of in Himalaya, ii. 117.
Release from confinement, ii. 237.
Reptiles of Khasia, ii. 305; of Sikkim, ii. 25.
_Rhododendrons,_ i. 166, 167; alpine, i. 220; ii. 58; _anthopogon,_ i.
220, 349; _arboreum,_ i. 126, 200, 274, 275, 276; ii. 125; _argenteum,_
i. 116, 358; ii. 6; _Aucklandii,_ ii. 25; _barbatum,_ i. 166, 274;
_campylocarpum,_ i. 261; _Dalhousiae,_ i. 126, 162; ii. 25; distribution
of at Chola (note), ii. 197; _Edgeworthii,_ ii. 25; _Falconeri,_ i. 272,
274, 307; flowering of at different elevations, ii. 181; _formosum,_ ii.
301; _Hodgsoni,_ i. 250, 274; leaves curled by cold, ii. 199; _nivale,_
ii. 89, 155; of Churra, ii. 282; poisoning of goats by, ii. 150;
_setosum,_ i. 220, 349; superb at Choongtam, ii. 186.
Rhubarb, gigantic, ii. 58; used as tobacco, ii. 152.
Rice-paper plant (note), i. 359.
Rice, Sikkim, i. 155; upper limit of cultivation, ii. 105.
Ringpo, ii. 196.
Ripple-mark on sandstone, i. 43, 63.
Rivers, diurnal rise and fall of, ii. 69; of West Bengal, i. 33;
temperature of, ii. 60; velocity of, ii. 99.
Rocks, absence of scratched in Sikkim, ii. 120; falling, ii. 57;
moutonneed, ii. 136; moved by frosts, etc., ii. 179; retention of heat
by, i. 222; strike of in Tibet, ii. 177.
Rong (name of Lepchas), i. 127.
_Rosa involucrata,_ ii. 250; _macrophylla,_ ii. 43; _sericea,_ i. 168.
Rose Gangetic, (_Rosa involucrata_), ii. 255; gardens, i. 78;
large-flowered, ii. 43.
Rotas-ghur, i. 40; palace, i. 42.
_Rottlera tinctoria,_ i. 315.
Rummai, i. 394.
Ryott valley, ii. 190.
S
Saddle, Tibetan, i. 296.
Sakkya, invocation of, i. 229; Sing, i. 321; Thoba, i. 331.
Sakkyazong, i. 186, ii. 66.
Sal, i. 21.
_Salix tetrasperma,_ i. 400; _Babylonica,_ ii. 32.
_Salmonidae,_ distribution of in Asia, (note) ii. 183.
Salt, country in Tibet, ii. 124; monopoly of by Indian Government, ii.
339.
_Salvinia,_ ii. 338.
Sandal-wood, red, ii. 328.
Sandstone of Kala-panee, ii. 286; of Khasia, ii. 267; of Kymore hills, i.
39; of Terai, i. 379, 402; slabs of, i. 60.
Sara (crane) breeding in Tibet (note), ii. 161.
Sar-nath, i. 77.
Satpura range, i. 32.
_Satyrium Nepalense_ (note), ii. 102.
_Saussurea,_ bladder-headed, ii. 109; _gossypina,_ i. 225.
_Saxifraga,_ arctic, i. 81; _ciliaris,_ ii. 280; (note) ii. 100.
_Scirpus triquetra_ (note), ii. 96.
_Scitamineae,_ ii. 18.
Sconce, Mr., ii. 345.
Scorpions, i. 53.
Scratched rocks, absence of in Sikkim, ii. 120.
Seal of Bhotan Rajah, i. 372.
Seasons of vegetation in Sikkim, ii. 182.
Sebolah pass, ii. 141.
Seetakoond bungalow and hill, ii. 352; hot springs of, i. 88; perpetual
flame at, ii. 352.
Sepoys, Lepcha and Tibetan, ii. 235.
Shahgunj, i. 60.
Shales, carbonaceous in Terai, i. 403.
Sheep, breeding of, ii. 150; feeding on rhododendron leaves, i. 261;
grazed at 16,000 feet, ii. 89; at 18,000 feet, ii. 170; Tibetan, i. 272;
wild, i. 243, ii. 132.
Sheergotty, i. 31.
Shell-lac, i. 9.
Shells, ii. 7; alpine, ii. 156.
Shepherd's purse, i. 221.
Shigatzi (_see_ Jigatzi).
Shooting, prejudice against, ii. 40.
Showa (stag) antlers of, ii. 214.
Shrubs, northern limits of, ii. 118.
Siberian plants in Himalaya, ii, 38, 66, 63, 74.
Sidingbah (note), i. 274, 276.
Sikkim, climate of, i. 160; Rajah, i. 116, 298; vegetation, i. 168;
Dewan, i. 298.
Silchar, ii. 328.
Silhet, ii. 326, 335; leave, ii. 337.
Siligoree, i. 375, 399.
Silok-foke, Lama of, ii. 4.
Simonbong temple, i. 172.
_Simulium,_ i. 157.
Sinchul, ascent of, i. 124, 125; plants of, i. 125.
Singdong, ii. 223.
Singtam Soubah, ii. 15; at Chola, ii. 201; dismissal of, ii. 210; illness
of, ii. 72; joined by, ii. 64.
Singtam village, ii. 14.
Sissoo, i. 395.
Sitong, ii. 153.
_Skimmia,_ i. 126; _laureola,_ i. 167.
Sleeman, Major, reports on Thuggee, i. 67.
Slopes, inclination of in Sikkim, i. 327.
_Smilacina_ (a pot-herb), ii. 48.
Snake-king, image of, i. 369, (note) i. 328.
Snakes, ii. 25, 305.
Snow, perpetual ii. 116, 128, 169; phenomena of (note), i. 252; shades,
i. 357; storms, i. 355.
Snowy Himalaya, views of from Tonglo i. 184; very deceptive appearance
of, i. 124.
Soane, i. 35; cross, i. 38, 45, 53; elevation of bed, i. 46; mouth of, i.
82; pebbles, i. 33, 91; plants in bed of, i 45.
Soda, sesqui-carbonate of, i. 13; effloresced, ii. 157.
Soil, temperature of, i. 35, 36, 45, 158, 170, 186, 219, 247; at
Bhomsong, i. 305.
Songboom, i. 361.
Soormah river, ii. 261; basin of, ii. 256.
Soorujkoond, hot-springs of, i. 27.
Sound, produced by boulders in rivers, ii. 48; transmission of, i. 253.
_Sparganium ramosum_ (note), ii. 96.
_Sphaerostema,_ ii. 33.
_Sphynx atropos,_ i. 46.
Spiders in martins' nests, i. 46,
_Spondias mangifera,_ i. 82.
Squirrels, i. 46.
Stainforth, Mr., house at Pomrang, ii. 313; at Silhet, ii. 335.
_Sterculia foetida,_ i. 39.
Stick lac, i. 9.
Sticks, warming (note), ii. 154.
_Stipa,_ ii. 132.
_Stauntonia,_ i. 112.
Strawberry of the plains, i. 395; alpine, ii. 108.
_Struthiopteris,_ ii. 68.
_Strychnos potatorum,_ i. 50.
_Stylidium,_ ii. 336.
_Styloceras ratna,_ i. 399.
Sulkun, i. 56.
Sultangunj, rocks of, i. 90.
Sundeep island, deposit of silt on, ii. 342.
Sunderbunds, ii. 354; compared with Jheels, ii. 260; vegetation of, ii.
340.
_Sunipia_ (note), ii. 10.
Sunnook, i. 317.
Sunrise, false, i. 63.
Sunset, false, i. 63; in Tibet, ii. 173.
Suspension bridge, iron, i. 199.
Syenite, blocks of, ii. 302.
_Symplocos,_ dye from, ii. 41.
Syong, ii. 291.
T
Taktoong river, ii. 32.
_Talauma Hodgsoni,_ i. 162.
Taldangah, i. 12.
Tallum Samdong, ii. 67, 96.
Tamarind tree, i. 17.
Tamarisk, i. 392.
Tambur river, i. 194; elevation and slope of bed, i. 200.
Tanks, plants in, i. 62; movements of water in, ii. 342.
Taptiatok (E. Nepal), i. 204.
Tassichooding temples, i. 257.
Tassiding, i. 289, 315; temples, i. 319; foundation, i, 325.
Tchebu Lama, i. 302; ii. 5, 193; house and chapel of, ii. 194.
Tchiru (antelope), ii. 157.
Tchuka (rhubarb), ii. 58.
Tea, buttered, ii. 78; brick, i. 297; made of _Photinia,_ etc., ii. 22;
Tibetan, ii. 78.
Teal, English, ii. 158.
Tea-plants, i. 5; cultivation of in Sikkim, i. 144; cut by hail at
Dorjiling, i. 408; at Myrung, ii. 92; Chittagong, ii. 347.
Teelas, ii. 262, 327.
Teesta river, at Bhomsong, i. 297; exit from mountains, i. 396; in
plains, i. 392; junction with Great Rungeet, i. 154; signification of, i.
398; temperature of, i. 397; ii. 60.
Teeta (febrifuge), i. 272.
Temples of Catsuperri, i. 365; Changachelling, i. 368; Choongtam, ii. 21;
Doobdi, i. 366; Neongong, i. 311; Pemiongchi, i. 327; Phadong, ii. 192;
Simonbong, i. 172; Tassichooding, i. 257; Tassiding, i. 319; Wallanchoon,
i. 228; Yangma, i. 235; various, i. 313; mode of building, i. 311;
worship in, i. 312, 365; ii. 178.
Tendong, i. 127; ii. 3.; summit of, ii. 6.
Terai, i. 100, 104; definition of, i. 377; excursion to, i. 373;
meteorology of, i. 384; of Khasia, ii. 266; seizure of, ii. 240;
vegetation of, i. 101.
Terraces, at Baisarbatti, i. 401; junction of Zemu and Thlonok, ii. 53;
Momay, ii. 119; Yalloong, i. 270; Yangma, i. 234, 242.
Terya, ii. 226.
Teshoo Loombo (note), ii. 171.
_Tetrao-perdrix nivicola,_ ii. 113.
_Thalictrum,_ i. 19; _alpinum,_ ii. 115; _glyphocarpum_ (note), i. 24.
Thermometer, black bulb, i. 15; boiling-point, ii. 113, 153, Appendix,
453; lost, ii. 184; minimum left on Donkia pass, ii. 129; sunk, i. 198;
Appendix, 441, 451.
Thigh-bone, trumpet of, i. 173, 314.
_Thlaspi arvense,_ ii. 68.
Thlonok river, ii. 47.
Thomson, Dr., joined by, ii. 238.
Thugs, river, i. 67; suppression of, i. 65.
Tibet, animals of, ii. 93, 157, 173; enter, ii. 155; inhospitality of
climate, i. 299; snow-line, elevation of in, ii. 128, 175.
Tibetans, i. 262; blackening faces of women, ii. 172; camp of, ii. 85;
charm-box, i. 270; child's coral, ii. 87; churns, ii. 77; cups, i. 212;
diet, i. 212; Dingpun, ii. 160; dogs, i. 204; drunk, i. 230; guitar, i.
304; headdresses, ii. 86; hospitality, ii. 94; household, i. 212; houses,
ii. 67; pipe, i. 212; salute, i. 203; sepoys, ii. 160, 200, 235; tea, i.
212; ii. 78; tents, ii. 77.
Ticks, i. 166, 279; ii. 79.
Tidal-wave, ii. 343.
Tide in Bay of Bengal, ii. 340; in Sunderbunds, ii. 354.
Tiger hunt, i. 56.
Tikbotang, ii. 228.
Tingri, ii. 169.
Titalya, i. 100, 376.
Toad, Javanese, ii. 96.
Tobacco, Chinese, ii. 232; made from rhubarb, ii. 152.
Toddy-palm, i. 34, 39, 88.
Tofe Choney, i. 16.
Tomo-chamo mountain, ii. 122.
Tong (arum-roots prepared for food), ii. 49; collection and preparation
of, ii. 65.
Tonglo, i. 158; camp on, i. 183; elevation of, i. 171; excursion to, i.
155; summit of, i. 167; temperature of, i. 170; vegetation of, i. 167.
Took (_Hydnocarpus_), ii. 7. (_See_ Chaulmoogra).
Toon (_Cedrela_), i. 193, 312.
Tourmalines, i. 224; ii. 27.
Toys, children's in Sikkim, i. 338.
Travelling equipment, i. 179.
Tree-fern, i. 110; ii. 13; in Silhek, ii. 336.

END OF VOLUME II OF HIMALAYAN JOURNALS.





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