Himalayan Journals — Complete - Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.

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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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- Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc." ***

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Himalayan Journals

OR,
NOTES OF A NATURALIST

IN BENGAL, THE SIKKIM AND NEPAL HIMALAYAS,
THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS, &C.

by J.D. Hooker,

K.C.S.I., C.B., M.D., D.C.L., F.R.S.

1891

Contents

PREFACE

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
Dalhousiæ, 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’œil_ 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—_Araliaceæ_, 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.

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—_Chamærops_
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 _Nymphæa_—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
cœrulea_—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—_Phœnix paludosa_—Departure from
India.

APPENDIX

INDEX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LITHOGRAPHIC VIEWS

Plate I. The Dhak, _Butea frondosa,_ and _Cochlospermum gossypium,_ with the Kymore Hills in the background.
Plate II. View of Kinchinjunga from Mr. Hodgson’s bungalow at Dorjiling, from a sketch by W. Tayler, Esq., B.C.S.
Plate III. From Chingtam, looking up the Tambur Valley.
Plate IV. Nango mountain, from the summit of the great moraine in Yangma Valley, looking eastward.
Plate V. Junnoo mountain from the Choonjerma Pass.
Plate VI. View of Kinchinjunga from Singtam, looking north-westward.
Plate VII. Kinchinjunga from the Thlonok river, with rhododendrons in flower.
Plate VIII. Tibet and Cholamoo lake from the summit of the Donkia pass, looking north-west.
Plate 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.
Plate 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.
Plate XI. The Bhotan Himalaya, Assam valley, and Burrampooter river, from Nunklow, looking north.
Plate XII. Seetakoond hill.

WOOD ENGRAVINGS

Fig. 1. Old tamarind trees.
Fig. 2. Crossing the Soane River above Tura, with the Kymore Hills in the background.
Fig. 3. Equatorial sun-dial, Benares Observatory.
Fig. 4. Equinoctial sun-dial, Benares Observatory.
Fig. 5. Azimuth circle, Benares Observatory.
Fig. 6. Monghyr on the Ganges.
Fig. 7. Punkabaree, Sikkim Terai, and Balasun River. The trees in the foreground are _Araliaceæ_.
Fig. 8. Lepcha girl and Boodhist priest. From a sketch by Miss Colvile.
Fig. 9. _Pinus longifolia,_ in the great Rungeet Valley.
Fig. 10. Construction of a cane suspension-bridge.
Fig. 11. Lepcha boy carrying a bamboo water-vessel. From a sketch by Miss Colvile.
Fig. 12. Amulet usually worn by Lepchas.
Fig. 13. Trunk-like root of _Wightia gigantea,_ ascending a tree, which its stout rootlets clasp.
Fig. 14. Interior of Boodhist temple at Simonbong.
Fig. 15. Trumpet made of a human thigh-bone.
Fig. 16. Tibetan amulet set with turquoises.
Fig. 17. Head of Tibet Mastiff. From a sketch taken in the zoological gardens by C. Jenyns, Esq.
Fig. 18. View on the Tambur River, with _Ambies brunoniana_.
Fig. 19. Wallanchoon village, East Nepal.
Fig. 20. Head of a Tibetan demon. From a model in the possession of Captain H. Strachey.
Fig. 21. Ancient moraines surrounding the lower lake-bed in the Yangma valley (looking west).
Fig. 22. Second lake-bed in the Yangma valley, with Nango mountain, (looking east).
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.
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).
Fig. 25. Skulls of _Ovis ammon._ Sketched by J. E. Winterbottom, Esq.
Fig. 26. Ancient moraines, in which small lake-beds occur, in the Kambachen valley (elevation 11,400 feet).
Fig. 27. Brass box to contain amulets, from Tibet.
Fig. 28. Pemiongchi goompa (or temple) with Chaits in the foreground.
Fig. 29. Costumes of Sikkim lamas and monks, with the bell, mani, dobje, and trident.
Fig. 30. The Do-mani stone, with gigantic Tibetan characters.
Fig. 31. Implements of worship in the Sikkim temples.
Fig. 32. Chaits at Tassiding, with decayed funereal cypresses.
Fig. 33. Vestibule of temple at Tassiding.
Fig. 34. Southern temple, at Tassiding.
Fig. 35. Middle temple, at Tassiding, with mounted yaks.
Fig. 36. Chair, altar, and images in the great temple at Tassiding.
Fig. 37. Ground-plan of southern temple at Tassiding.
Fig. 38. Interior of temple at Pemiongchi, the walls covered with allegorical paintings.
Fig. 39. Doobdi temple, with young and old funereal cypress.
Fig. 40. Summit of Kinchinjunga, with Pundim on the right; its black cliff traversed by white granite veins.
Fig. 41. Image of Maitrya, the coming Boodh.
Fig. 42. Stone altar, and erection for burning juniper ashes.
Fig. 43. Facsimile of the vermilion seal of the Dhurma Rajah of Bhotan, head of the Dookpa sect of Boodhists.
Fig. 44. A Mech, native of the Sikkim Terai. Sketched by Miss Colvile.
Fig. 45. Mech pocket-comb (of wood).
Fig. 46. Pandanus in the Teesta valley.
Fig. 47. Cane-bridge over the Lachen-Lachoong river, below Choongtam. Tukcham mountain is brought into the view, as seen from a higher elevation.
Fig. 48. _Juniperus recurva,_ the weeping juniper.
Fig. 49. Lamteng village, with Tukcham in the distance.
Fig. 50. Black juniper and young larch.
Fig. 51. Tungu village, with yaks in the foreground.
Fig. 52. Women’s head-dresses—the two outer, Lepcha girls; the two inner, Tibetan women.
Fig. 53. Tibet marmot. Sketched by J. E. Winterbottom, Esq.
Fig. 54. Lachoong valley (looking south), larch tree in the foreground.
Fig. 55. Conical ancient moraines in the Lachoong valley, with _Abies brunoniana_ and _smithiana_.
Fig. 56. Head and legs of Tibet marmot. Sketched by J. E. Winterbottom, Esq.
Fig. 57. Block of gneiss with granite bands, on the Kinchinjhow glacier.
Fig. 58. Summit of forked Donkia mountain, with Goa antelopes in the foreground; from 17,500 feet elevation.
Fig. 59. 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.
Fig. 60. Head of Chiru antelope, the unicorn of Tibet. From a sketch by Lieut. H. Maxwell.
Fig. 61. A Phud, or Tibetan mendicant. Sketched at Dorjiling by Miss Colvile.
Fig. 62. Tea (brick of), tea-pot, wooden cup, etc.
Fig. 63. Portrait of Aden Tchebu Lama. Sketched by Lieut. H. Maxwell.
Fig. 64. Silver chain and hooks, ornamented with turquoises, used to fasten women’s cloaks.
Fig. 65. Horns of the Showa stag of Tibet (_Cervus wallichii_). Sketched by Lieut. H. Maxwell.
Fig. 66. 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.
Fig. 67. Tibetan tobacco-pipe and tinder-pouch, with steel attached.
Fig. 68. Lepcha sepoys, the right hand figures, and Tibetan ones on the left.
Fig. 69. Dr. Falconer’s residence, Calcutta Botanic Gardens; from Sir L. Peel’s grounds, looking across the Hoogly.
Fig. 70. View in the Jheels of Bengal, with Khasia mountains in the distance.
Fig. 71. Living bridge, formed of the aerial roots of figs.
Fig. 72. Dewan’s ear-ring of pearl and turquoises.
Fig. 73. Waterfalls at Mamloo, with fan-palms.
Fig. 74. Kollong rock.
Fig. 75. Chela, on the Boga-panee river.
Fig. 76. Nonkreem village, with boulders of denudation.
Fig. 77. Bellows of iron smelters in the Khasia mountains.
Fig. 78. Old bridge at Amwee.
Fig. 79. Stones at Nurtiung.
Fig. 80. _Dipterocarpus turbinatus,_ gurjun or wood-oil tree.

[Illustration: Dhurma Rajah’s Seal]

To CHARLES DARWIN, F.R.S., etc.

This volume is dedicated,
by his affectionate friend,

J. D. HOOKER

Kew, _Jan_. 12_th_, 1854

PREFACE

Having accompanied Sir James Ross 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[1] was dead; the interest in Borneo had
in a great measure subsided; H.M.S. “Mæander,” 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.

[1] 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.

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,[2] 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.

[2] 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.

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,[3] 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.

[3] 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.

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 _douce violence_ 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[4] 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.

[4] 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.

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.

[Illustration: View of Kinchinjunga from Singtam, looking
north-westward]

Chapter I

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 (_Phœnix 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.[5]

[5] 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,[6] 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.

[6] Dr. Falconer’s _locum tenens,_ then in temporary charge of the
establishment.

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.[7] 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.[8] 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.

[7] 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.

[8] 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.

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, be 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[9] 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 _Cycadeæ,_
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
_Cycadeæ_ now living in the former countries shall be fossilised.

[9] Reports of the Geological Survey of India. Calcutta, 1850.

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 eharacters, 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.[10] 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.

[10] Often occurring in strata, like flints.

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 _Acanthaceæ_; a few _Asclepiadeæ_ 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°, with no dew, the grass only 61°. 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.[11] Jujubes (_Zizyphus_)
prevailed, with the _Carissa carandas_ (in fruit), a shrub belonging to
the usually poisonous family of Dog-banes (_Apocyneæ_); its berries
make good tarts, and the plant itself forms tolerable hedges.

[11] 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.

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°; at 3 p.m. 82° and at 10 p.m., 68°,
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° this indicated a dew-point of
11·5°, or 54·5° 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°. 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°), 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.[12]

[12] 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. _Acanthaceæ_ is the prevalent natural order, consisting of
gay-flowered _Eranthemums, Ruellias, Barlerias,_ and such hothouse
favourites.[13]

[13] Other plants gathered here, and very typical of the Flora of this
dry region, were _Linum trigynum, Feronia elephantum, Ægle marmelos,
Helicteres Asoca, Abrus precatorius, Flemingia_; various _Desmodia,
Rhynchosiæ, Glycine,_ and _Grislea tomentosa_ very abundant,
_Conocarpus latifoliusa, Loranthus lonjpglorus,_ and another species;
_Phyllanthus Emblica,_ various _Convolvuli, Cuscuta,_ and several
herbaceous _Compositæ._

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 1,230 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°, though the day was fine, a strong haze obstructing the sun’s
rays; at 6 p.m., 58°; at 9 p.m., 56°, and the grass cooled to 49°.
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 _Urticeæ._ 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 _Verbenaceæ_ and _Compositæ._ The
white ant apparently does not enter this cooler region. At 3,500 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. 4,230 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°. 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 (_Phœnix_) 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°, 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;[14] 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.

[14] Of plants eminently typical of a moister atmosphere, I may
mention the genera _Bolbophyllum, Begonia, Æginetia, 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, _Phœnix._ 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, _Guttiferæ,_ vines, or
laurels.

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 _Cæsalpinia 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 _Ægle
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 1,446
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°,
and the black-bulb thermometer 137°. 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.
1,219 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 _Phœnicophaus 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
fœtid 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°, 170°, 173°,
and 190°; of the cold, 84° at 4 p.m., and 75° 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.

_Confervæ_ 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°, and as low as 90°. 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 _Cyperaceæ,_ a _Cyperus_ and an
_Eleocharis,_ having their roots in water of 100°, and where they are
probably exposed to greater heat, and a _Fimbristylis_ at 98°; 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°, with quantities of dead shells;
frogs were very lively, with live shells, at 90°, and with various
other water beetles. Having no means of detecting the salts of this
water, I bottled some for future analysis.[15]

[15] For an account of the _Confervæ,_ 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 _Orchideæ_ 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°. 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
1,360 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 p. 12, 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. 1,169 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, 1,320 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.[16]

[16] 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;[17] 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.

[17] A lofty mountain said to be 7000-8000 feet high.

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 1,130 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,[18] 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.

[18] 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.

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°, that of the air
varying from 77·5°, 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° at 10 p.m.; and on the following morning 71·5° in
the deepest hole, and 70° in the shallower: that of the external air
varied from 71° at 3 p.m., to 57° at daylight on the following morning.
At the latter time I took the temperature of the earth near the
surface, which showed,

Surface 53° 1 inch 57° 2 inches 58° 4 inches 62° 7
inches 64°

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.[19]

[19] 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° where sheltered from the
wind, and 104° 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° 2·5 inches 93° 5 inches 88° Sand at
this depth 78° 5 a.m. Surface 51° 28 inches 68·5°

Finding the fresh milky juice of _Calotropis_ to be only 72°, 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° 1 inch 102° 2 inches 94° 2·5 inches 90° 3·5
inches 85° (Compact) 8 inches 73° (Wet) 15
inches 72° (Wet)

The power this plant exercises of maintaining a low temperature of 72°,
though the main portion which is subterraneous is surrounded by a soil
heated to between 90° and 104°, 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°, nearly 25° cooler than the similarly exposed sand
and alluvium. On the same night the leaves were cooled down to 54°,
when the sand had cooled to 51°. Before daylight the following morning
the sand had cooled to 43°, and the leaves of the _Calotropis_ to
45·5°. 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°. And
assuming this to be the heat of the plant, we find that the leaves are
heated by solar radiation during the day 8°, and cooled by nocturnal
radiation, 22·5°.

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 laminæ 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 _Phœnix_ (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 débris 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 fœtida_ “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. 4 feet 6 inches,
under good shade
of trees 9 p.m. 64·5° 77° 11 p.m. 76° 5.30
a.m. 58·5° 76°

This is a very great rise (of 4°) 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°
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;[20] 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° above, to 74° at the
bottom, where the water was 60°; 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.

[20] On the 24th of June, 1848, the Soane rose to an unprecedented
height, and laid this grove of Mangos three feet under water.

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 1,200
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 1,490 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°) 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, _Adroideæ,_ Peppers, _Orchideæ_ 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°, the air varying
from 56° to 79·5°. Dew had formed every night since leaving Dunwah, the
grass being here cooled 12° 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
_Compositæ_ and _Labiatæ_; _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° Daylight of
following
morning Surface 110° 52° 1 inch 102° 55° 2
inches 93·5° 58° 4 inches 84° 67° 8 inches 77° sand
wet 73° wet 12 inches 76° sand wet 74°

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 _Carabideæ_
and _Staphylinideæ,_ 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
_Ægle marmelos_[21] were very abundant, with _Sterculia,_ and the dwarf
date-palm.

[21] The Bhel fruit, lately introduced into English medical practice,
as an astringent of great effect, in cases of diarrhœa and dysentery.

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).

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
_Cetoniæ_ I did not see one.

[Illustration: Soane Valley and Kymore Hills. Cochlospermum
gossypium and Butea frondosa in flower.]

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)[22] 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.

[22] 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.

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° 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. 1,090 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 (1,100 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, _Nymphæa, 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,
Nymphæa,_ 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°), 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° 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°) 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 1,826 to 1830: the last
party was taken in 1836. And again, between the years 1826 and 1835,
1,562 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 sketch at p.88 will
give some idea of this 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.[23] 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.

[23] The first station at which Henry Martyn laboured in India.

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 Sun-dial]

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: Equinoctiall 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.[24] 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.”

[24] Hunter, in As Soc. Researches, 177 (Calcutta); Sir R. Barker in
Phil. Trans., lxvii. 608 (1777); J. L. Williams, Phil. Trans.,
lxxxiii. 45 (1793).

[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’œil._ 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.[25] 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.

[25] 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.

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[26] 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.

[26] 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.

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 _Phœnix_: 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,[27] 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.

[27] Large Hemipterous insects, of the genus _Derecteryx._

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 lonjpgolia,
Spondias manjpgera, 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[28] 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.

[28] 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.

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 1._—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 _Phœnix 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 Curruckpore 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, 1,200 to 1 500 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°), 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,[29] 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.

[29] 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.

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 18_s._ 6_d._ 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, _Hiræa,
Leea, Menispermeæ, Cucurbitaceæ,_ and _Bignoniaceæ._ 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 _Urticeæ._ 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, Scitamineæ,_ 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 _Acanthaceæ_ 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, Sikkim Terai, and Balasun River.]

The soil and bushes everywhere swarmed with large and troublesome ants,
and enormous earthworms. In the evening, the noise of the great
_Cicadæ_ 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 _Cicadæ._ 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 fo1lowed 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 _Leguminosæ,_ 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 _Bignoniæ._
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. _Araliaceæ,_ with smooth
or armed slender trunks, and _Mappa_-like _Euphorbiaceæ,_ 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 4,800 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 cbesnut, 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 _Cælogynes,_ which bloom in a profuse manner, whitening
their trunks like snow. More bulky trunks were masses of interlacing
climbers, _Araliaceæ, Leguminosæ, Vines,_ and _Menispermeæ,_ 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.[30]

[30] 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 _Cæloynes,_ 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
_Leguminosæ_ 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 _Ranunculaceæ_ still more so. _Cruciferæ_ 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 _Compositæ, Leguminosæ, Cruciferæ,_ and
_Ranunculaceæ,_ 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.
7,400 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 6,500 to 7,500 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°.

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.[31]

[31] 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.[32] 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.

[32] 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.

In estimating in a sanitory 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
Dalhousiæ, 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.[33] 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.

[33] For an account of the geography of these regions, and the
relation of the Sikkim Himalaya to Tibet, etc., see Appendix.

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° (from north 30° west to north 50° 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°. 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° 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°
31" 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° 55"
above the horizon; an angle which is quite inappreciable to the eye,
when unaided by instruments.[34]

[34] 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 Dalhousiæ_ 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. Dalhousiæ,_ 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.[35] 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 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,[36] but never draw it on one another: family and political feuds
are alike unheard of amongst them.

[35] 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.

[36] It is called “Ban,” and serves equally for plough, toothpick,
table-knife, hatchet, hammer, and sword.

[Illustration: Lepcha girl and Bhoodist Lama]

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[37] 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 _Scitamineæ,_ 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.[38] 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.

[37] 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.

[38] 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.

In diet, they are gross feeders;[39] 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 _Scitamineæ,_ 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.

[39] 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.

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
4_d._ or 6_d._ 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 Æolian, as are the airs usually played, which fall
by octaves: it seems to harmonize with the solitude of their primæval
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,[40] 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.

[40] oulder-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.

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.[41] 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.

[41] Yet, during the Ghorka war, they displayed many instances of
courage: when so hard pressed, however, that there was little choice
of evils.

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[42] (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.

[42] 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.

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,[43] 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.

[43] See “Dorjiling Guide,” p. 89. Calcutta, 1845.

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[44] 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,[45] and when travelling in the
districts of Khasia and Cachar.

[44] 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.

[45] “Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.”

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.[46]—4. 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.

[46] 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. _Phœnix_ (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 oblonjpgolia,_ 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).

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 goître. 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 lonjpgolia_ and Sal. The
dwarf date-palm (_Phœnix 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 lonjpgolia), Rungeet Valley]

In the gorge of the Rungeet the heat was intolerable, though the
thermometer did not rise above 95°. 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.

[Illustration: Construction of a cane suspension bridge]

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 bridge,[47] 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.

[47] A sketch of one of these bridges will be found in Vol. II.

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 _Orchideæ,_ 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. _Cicindelæ_ were very
numerous, and incredibly active, as were _Grylli_; and the great
_Cicadeæ_ 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°, but a fine cool
easterly wind blew. Descending to the bed of the river, the temperature
was 84°. 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°, and consequently the saturation point,
0·713; at the lower, the wet bulb was 68°, and saturation, 0·599. The
temperature of the river was, at all hours of the preceding day, and
this morning, 67·5°.[48]

[48] At this hour, the probable temperature at Dorjiling (6000 feet
above this) would be 56°, with a temperature of wet bulb 55°, and the
atmosphere loaded with vapour. At Calcutta, again, the temperature was
at the observatory 98.·3°, wet bulb, 81.8°, 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° below
that of the Rungeet.[49] 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.

[49] 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°, and that of the other 60·5°.

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.[50]

[50] 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;[51] the clay makes excellent bricks, and often contains nearly
30 per cent. of alumina.

[51] An analysis of the soil will be found in the Appendix.

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.

[Illustration: 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°; 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,[52] and their allies, the nettles,[53]
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.

[52] One species of this very tropical genus ascends almost to 9000
feet on the outer ranges of Sikkim.

[53] 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.

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° 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°; 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[54] gained the Lama’s residence.

[54] 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.”

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,[55]
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.

[55] 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 differedt accounts of the produce, which,
on the whole, appears to be inferior.

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°. 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 1 _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 Dalhousiæ_ 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 its destroyer. To the first of these
groups belong many natural orders, of which the most prominent
are—_Leguminosæ,_ 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.

[Illustration: Clasping roots of Wightia]

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.[56]

[56] 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) _Laurineæ_ of several species, all beautiful forest-trees,
straight-holed, and umbrageous above.—(4) Magnolias.[57]—(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.

[57] 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 _Magnoliaceæ_ (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.

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 (_Cælogyne 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[58] also swarm below 7000 feet; a small black species
above 3000 feet, and a large yellow-brown solitary one below that
elevation.

[58] 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.

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,_[59] _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.

[59] 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.

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.[60] Of European genera I found _Thalictrum, Anemone, Fumaria,_
violets, _Stellaria, Hypericum,_ two geraniums, balsams, _Epilobium,
Potentilla, Paris_ and _Convallariæ,_ one of the latter has
verticillate leaves, and its root also called “bikh,” is considered a
very virulent poison.

[60] “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.

Still, the absence or rarity at this elevation of several very large
natural families,[61] 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.

[61] _Ranunculaceæ, Fumariæ, Cruciferæ, Alsineæ, Geranicæ, Leguminosæ,
Potentilla, Epilobium, Crassulaceæ, Saxifrageæ, Umbelliferæ, Lonicera,
Valerianeæ, Dipsaceæ,_ various genera of _Compositæ, Campanulaceæ,
Lobeliaceæ, Gentianeæ, Boragineæ, Scrophularineæ, Primulaceæ,
Gramineæ._

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°, 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.[62] 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.

[62] 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.

During the whole of the 22nd, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., the thermometer
never varied 6·5°, ranging from 47·5 in the morning to 54°, 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° and 6° 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,[63]
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.[64]

[63] 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.

[64] 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: rumpet 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.[65] 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.

[65] 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._

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° at noon, and that of the stream 69°;
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° in a bracing wind, to a hot close jungly valley at
75°, 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 aforded 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,[66] 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.

[66] This Mahometan title, by which the officers of state are known in
Sikkim, is there generally pronounced Kajee.

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.”[67] From the bearings I took of
it from several positions, it is in about lat. 27° 49′ and long. 86°
24′, 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.

[67] 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.

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°, extremes 53·2/26°: the nights were
very clear, with sharp hoar-frost; the radiating thermometer sank to
21°, the temperature at 3·5 feet depth was 51·5°.

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.[68] 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.

[68] This oak ascends in the N.W. Himalaya to the highest limit of
forest (12,000 feet).

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 p. 95).

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 _Acanthaceæ_ 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° to 58°. The breadth of the foaming
Khawa was twelve to fifteen yards, and its temperature 56·5°. The
surrounding vegetation was entirely tropical, consisting of scrubby sal
trees, acacia, _Grislea, Emblica, Hibiscus,_ etc.; the elevation being
but 1,300 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°, 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° in a sheltered spot, dried by the sun, to 40° 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°, 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 and Valley (East Nepal) from Chintam.
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° (extremes, 80°/41°), that of the Tambur, 53°, and
of the Mywa, 56°; each varying a few° (the smaller stream the most)
between sunrise and 4 p.m.: the sunk thermometer was 72°.

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°. Where the
angle was less than 15°, 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.[69] 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,_ _Spiræa,_ shrubby _Compositæ,_ and very many plants absent
at similar elevations on the wet outer Dorjiling ranges.

[69] 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.

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.[70] 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.

[70] 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.

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.

_Elæagnus_ was common here, with _Edgeworthia Gardneri,_[71] 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.

[71] 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.

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, bcrberry, 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° in the night, and that of the
river, which was always below 40°. 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 p. 133).
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;[72] 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.[73] 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.

[72] The latter is, however, of little consequence in the dry climate
of Tibet.

[73] 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.

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,[74] 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.

[74] A broad ring of this material, agate, or chalcedony, is a mark of
rank here, as amongst the Man-choos, and throughout Central Asia.

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°) 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° at sunrise, to
50° at 10 a.m.; the mean being 35°;[75] one night it fell to 64°.
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° below the dry, thus giving a
mean dew-point of 30·25°. A thermometer sunk two feet stood at 44°,
fully 9° 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° to 14·75° lower. The black-bulb
thermometer, in the sun, rose to 65·75° above the air, indicating
upwards of 90° 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[76] as the maximum intensity of sunlight; the
temperature of the river close by fell to 32° during the night, and
rose to 37° in the day. In my tent, the temperature fluctuated with the
state of the fire, from 26° at night to 58° when the sun beat on it;
but the only choice was between cold and suffocating smoke.

[75] This gives 1° Fahr. for every 309 feet of elevation, using
contemporaneous observations at Calcutta, and correcting for latitude,
etc.

[76] 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
(7,340 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.

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,
_Spiræa,_ 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° at 9
p.m., and to 12° in the night, and that by my bedside to 20°.

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°,
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 _Compositæ,_ 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° at 6.30 a.m., and rose
to 30° when the sun appeared over the mountains at 8.15, at which time
the black bulb thermometer suddenly mounted to 112°, upwards of 80°
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.

[Illustration: Demon’s head]

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[77] 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.

[77] 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.

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 vcry 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.[78]

[78] _Cardamine hirsuta, Limosella aquatica,_ and _Juncus bufonius._

The night was calm, misty, and warm (Max. 41·5°, Min. 29°) 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 l_s_., and every horse 4_s_.; 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]

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 débris. A stream flowed
over this débris, dividing into branches before reaching the lake-bed,
where its waters were collected, and whence it meandered southward to
fall into the Yangma.

[Illustration: Ancient moraines in the Yangma Valley]

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 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 débris, 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.[79]

[79] 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.

[Illustration: Diagram of the glacial terraces at the fork of the
Yangma Valley]

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 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°, while the dew-point was only
20·7°.[80] At the same time, the black bulb thermometer, fully exposed
on the snow, rose 54° 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.

[80] This indicates a very dry state of the air, the saturation-point
being 0·133°; whereas, at the same hour at Calcutta it was 0·559°.

[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
débris, 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 débris 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° to 30·75°.[81]

[81] At 4 o’clock, to 29·5°, the average dew-point was 16·3°, 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°, it fell to
14·75° at night; the ground was frozen for several inches below the
surface, but at two feet depth its temperature was 37·5°. The black
bulb thermometer rose on one occasion 84° 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 débris; 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
débris; 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 débris 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 débris, 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

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.[82] 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.

[82] 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.

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
_Compositæ,_ 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°, and bitterly cold; the elevation, 15,770 feet; dew-point, 16°. The
air was not very dry; saturation-point, 0·670°, whereas at Calcutta it
was 0·498° 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 débris 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°.

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 débris 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[83] Sikkim and Bhotan _Coniferæ_ (including yew, junipers, and
_Podocarpus_) eight are common to the North-west Himalaya (west of
Nepal), and four[84] are not: of the thirteen natives of the north-west
provinces, again, only five[85] 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,[86] 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!

[83] Juniper, 3; yew, _Abies Webbiana, Brunoniana,_ and _Smithiana_:
Larch, _Pinus excelsa,_ and _longifolia,_ and _Podocarpus neriifolia._

[84] Larch, _Cupressus funebris, Podocarpus neriifolia, Abies
Brunoniana._

[85] 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._

[86] 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
_Coniferæ_ 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.

At the bottom of the valley we turned up the stream, and passing the
Tassichooding convents[87] 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° to 7° 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,[88] 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[89] 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.

[87] These were built by the Sikkim people, when the eastern valleys
of Nepal belonged to the Sikkim rajah.

[88] Which I passed, on the Tambur, on the 21st Nov. See page 204.

[89] his is one of the most sudden slopes in this part of the
Himalaya, the angle between the top of Junnoo and Kambachen being
2,786 feet per mile, or 1 in 1·8. The slope from the top of Mont Blanc
to the Chamouni valley is 2,464 feet per mile, or 1 in 2·1. That from
Monte Rosa top to Macugnaga greatly exceeds either.

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.

[Illustration: Ancient moraines in the Kambachen Valley]

Ascending the great moraine at a place where it overhung the main
river, I had a good _coup-a’œil_ 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.

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° 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.[90]

[90] 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[91] (mentioned at p. 185),
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.

[91] Called Tsungau by the Bhoteeas. Junnoo is called Kumbo~Kurma by
the Hill-men of Nepal.

From 4 to 5 p.m. the temperature was 24°, with a very cold wind; the
elevation by the barometer was 15,260 feet, and the dew-point 10.5°,
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°, dew-point 60·5°, 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°. On the following morning we saw
two musk-deer,[92] 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.

[92] 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.

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 débris 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 débris 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° and 38°, 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° 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°. 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°, and the black-bulb thermometer to 140°.
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°,
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° 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, Umbelliferæ,
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°.

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°) was cold for the elevation
(4,860 feet): 52·5° was the highest temperature observed, and 39° 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 at p. 175), 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,[93] 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.

[93] 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.

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°, 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,_[94] 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.

[94] _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.

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° 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[95] 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.

[95] 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.

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,[96] 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.

[96] Whence the name of Bhomsong Samdong, the latter word meaning
bridge.

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,[97] 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.

[97] 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.

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.[98] 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.

[98] The Tibetans court promiscuous intercourse between their families
and the Kashmir merchants who traverse their country.

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 entrepôt[99] 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.

[99] The entrepôt is now removed to Tang-Keou-Eul.—See Huc and Gabet.

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° to 70°.

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°, the maximum 71·25°, the minimum 42·75°. 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°. The temperature
of the water was pretty constant at 51°: 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°, 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°. 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° 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° (max.
41·5°/min. 27·2°), 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°, and stood at 25·5°, at 10 a.m. The black bulb
thermometer rose to 132°, at 9 a.m. on the 27th, or 94·2° 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°), we shall have a difference of 148·6°
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°, or 78° above that
of the air in the shade (32°); the radiating surface of the same snow
in the shade being 21·2°, or 86·8° 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.[100] 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.

[100] 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.

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]

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.[101] 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.

[101] 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.

[Illustration: Group of chaits at Tassiding]

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°,
that of the air being about 50°. 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.

[Illustration: Doorway]

The three temples stand about fifty yards apart, but are not parallel
to one another, although their general direction is east and west.[102]
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. 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.

[102] 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.

[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]

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.[103]

[103] 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]

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 cbaits of the same form,[104]
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.

[104] 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.

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°,
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.[105] The square end of
every beam in the roof is ornamented either with a lotus flower or with
a Tibetan character, in endless diversity 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.

[105] 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.

[Illustration: Interior of the temple at Pemiongchi]

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,[106] 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.

[106] 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.

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°, 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.[107] 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.

[107] Described at page 287.

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°: 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°, being fully 7° 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 _Artemisiæ,_
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°
30′, 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 Cœlogynes, 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’œil 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.[108]

[108] 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°: 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, Cyrtandraceæ,_ pepper, fig, _Menispermum,_ wild cinnamon,
_Scitamineæ,_ 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°, with a brisk south-east moist wind, and the dew point
22·8°.

The night was magnificent, brilliant starlight, with a pale mist over
the mountains: the thermometer fell to 15·5° at 7.30 p.m., and one laid
upon wood with its bulb freely exposed, sank to 7·5°: 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° in shade.[109] 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.

[109] At sunrise the temperature was 11·5°; that of grass, cleared on
the previous day from snow, and exposed to the sky, 6·5°; that on
wool, 2·2°; and that on the surface of the snow, 0·7°.

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[110] called Gubroo, of 15,000 feet elevation, which presents a
black cliff to the south.

[110] 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.

Kinchinjunga rises in three heads, of nearly equal height,[111] which
form a line running north-west. It exposes many white or grey rocks,
bare of snow, and disposed in strata[112] 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°; while Kinchin top, though 15,000 feet higher
than Mon Lepcha, being eighteen miles distant, rises only 9° 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.

[111] The eastern and western tops, are respectively 27,826 and 28,177
feet above the level of the sea.

[112] 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 (p. 264, 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.

[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 laminæ 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° 30′.

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° or 20°; 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.[113] 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, _Umbelliferæ,_ grass, and sedges.

[113] 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.

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
Linnæus 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° north, and 50° 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°, with a powerful sun shining, and
it fell to 28° 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° to 30°. 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°, the wind seemed steady,
and I went to bed with a relieved mind.

_Jan. 10._—During the night the temperature fell to 11·2°, and at 6
a.m. was 19·8°, falling again to 17° 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°. 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°, 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°, and it snowed
very hard; at 6 p.m., it was 11°, but rose afterwards to 18°.

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°, the temperature rose to 27° at 9 a.m., after which the wind fell,
and with it the thermometer to 18°. 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—_Araliaceæ,_ 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°; 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.[114] 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 _Orchideæ,_ 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 _Araliaceæ,_ 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.[115]

[114] They consisted of the above-mentioned _Trichomanes,_ three
_Hymenophyllæ, Vittaria, Pleopeltis,_ and _Marattia,_ together with
several _Selaginellas._

[115] 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 1,800 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 _Melastomaceæ_ 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°, the extremes being 19·2° and 60°; and even at 8 a.m. the
thermometer, laid on the frosty grass, stood at 20°; temperatures which
are rare at Dorjiling, 1,500 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.[116]

[116] 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°.

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,_[117] but the
mass of the vegetation was similar to that of Dorjiling.

[117] 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.

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.[118]

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.

[118] 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 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[119] with the yellow-caps, they were driven
from that country, and took refuge principally in the Himalaya. The
Bhotan or Dhurma[120] 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.

[119] 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, wbence 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.

[120] Bhotan is generally known as the Dhurma country. See note, page
136.

The internal organisation of the different monastic establishments is
very simple. The head or Teshoo Lama[121] 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.

[121] 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.

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 page 365;
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.
13. 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 _Acanthaceæ,
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,[122] 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.

[122] 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.

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 _0sbeckia_ 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.[123]

[123] 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[124] was accumulating at the foot of the
mountains.

[124] 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.

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,[125] or by a depression of the mountain mass equal to 8000
feet, since the formation of these moraines.

[125] 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.

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 _Phœnix_ 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°; one laid on grass during the
night falling 7° below that temperature: dew forms, but never
copiously: by 10 a.m. the temperature has risen to 75°, and the faint
easterly morning breezes die away; the haze thickens, and covers the
sky with a white veil, the thermometer rising to 82° 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°,
and the minimum at night is not below 55°: 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°, and the dew-point 22° lower, indicating great
drought. The temperature at Calcutta was 7° 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 _Gramineæ_ 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,_[126] 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.

[126] 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.

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 _0sbeckia_ was common along the roadsides, and, with a
_Clerodendron,_[127] 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_).

[127] _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.

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° 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 _Ærides._

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;[128]
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.

[128] Now covered with _Anthistiria_ grass, fifteen feet high, a
little _Sissoo,_ and _Bombax._

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 _Acanthaceæ,_ Indian horse-chesnut, loaded
with white racemes of flowers, gay _Convolvuli,_ laurels, terrestrial
and parasitic _Orchideæ, 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 primæval 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 _Sisso._

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.[129]

[129] 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:—

Exit
Water
Air

2.30 p.m.
62°

3.00 p.m.
62·2°
74°

3.30 p.m.
63·2°

4.00 p.m.
64°

4.30 p.m.
65°

5.00 p.m.
65·4°
72·5° opposite Rummai

5.30 p.m.
66°

6.00 p.m.
66°
71·7° 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.[130]

[130] 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 saw on 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
(_Phœnix 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_ (_Lagærstræmia 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 assafœtida. 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°):
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°). 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 page 8), but too imperfect to justify any
conclusion as to the relation between these formations.[131]

[131] 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° and 70°, 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.[132]

[132] 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°. Below this, beds of saccharine quartz, with seams
of mica, dip north-north-west 20°. 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;[133] in whose views of the formation of these rocks I entirely
concur.

[133] Journal of Geological Society for 1846, p. 267, and “Voyage of
the Beagle”.

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° to 50°, and alternates
with a very hard slaty schist, dipping north-west 45°, and still lower
is a blue-grey clay-slate, dipping north-north-west 30°. 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 by the mech tribes]

[Illustration: The Himalaya & Tibet]

[Illustration: Sikkim and Eastern Nepal]

[Illustration: View of Kinchinjunga from Singtam, looking
north-westward]

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—Orcbids—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.[134] 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.

[134] 8,663 by Col. Waugh’s trigonometrical observations.

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:[135] 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.

[135] 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.

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°, only 7° 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[136] of great beauty.

[136] Especially some species of _Sunipia_ and _Cirrhopetalum,_ whicb
have not yet been introduced into England.

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,[137] 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°. 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.

[137] _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.

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 Lacben-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; tbey 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,[138] a very remarkable race, of
doubtful affinity and origin, inhabiting the Nepal forests.

[138] Hodgson, in “Bengal Asiatic Society’s Journal” for 1848.

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 débris 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°; 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.[139] 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, Scitamineæ,_ 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,_[140] with the English _Funaria hygrometrica._

[139] 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.

[140] 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.

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
1,500 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.[141]

[141] 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, Elæagnus_ (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[142] in pools
surrounded by low banks, was just peeping above ground; and scanty
crops of millet, maize, and buckwheat flourished on the slopes around.

[142] Choongtam is in position and products analogous to Lelyp, on the
Tambur (vol. i, page 204). Rice cultivation advances thus high up each
valley, and at either place Bhoteeas replace the natives of the lower
valleys.

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 goîtres, 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,[143] 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
_Dalhousiæ,_ which do not generally grow at Dorjiling below 7,500
feet.[144] 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.[145] 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.

[143] _Deutzia, Saxifraga caliata, Thalictrum, Euphorbia,_ yellow
violet, _Labiatæ, Androsace, Leguminosæ, Coriaria, Delphinium,_
currant, _Umbelliferæ,_ primrose, _Anemone, Convallaria, Roscœa,
Mitella, Herminium, Drosera._

[144] 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. Dalhousiæ,_ and _R.
Edgeworthii,_ all white-flowered bushes, of which the two first rise
to the height of small trees.

[145] 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.

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,[146] 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 larvæ are said to be greedily eaten, as are those
of various allied insects.

[146] 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 _Colubridæ_ and
innocuous; five _Crotalidæ_ 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.

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 fœtid 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.[147]

[147] 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]

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° to 40°, 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_[148]) was abundant, which formed an excellent
spinach: it is called “Pullop-bi”; a name I shall hereafter have
occasion to mention with gratitude.

[148] _Polygonum cymosum,_ Wall. This is a common Himalayan plant, and
is also found in the Khasia mountains.

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°, 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._[149] 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,[150] not
found at equal elevations on the outer ranges of the Himalaya.

[149] 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.”

[150] Wood-sorrel, a white-stemmed bramble, birch, some maples, nut
gigantic lily (_Lilium giganteum_), _Euphorbia, Pedicularis, Spiræa,
Philadelphus, Deutzia, Indigofera,_ and various other South Europe and
North American genera.

Chateng, a spur from the lofty peak of Tukcham,[151] 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,_[152] a curious evergreen
laurel-like tree: there were also Daphnes, purple magnolia, and a pink
sweet-blossomed _Sphærostema._ Many English water-plants[153] 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.

[151] “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.

[152] 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.

[153] _Sparganium, Typha, Potamogeton, Callitriche, Utricularia,_
sedges and rushes.

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 goîtres 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[154] 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.

[154] _Macacus Pelops?_ Hodgson. This is a very different species from
the tropical kind seen in Nepal, and mentioned at vol. i, p. 278.

The mean temperature of Lamteng (about 50°) is that of the isothermal
which passes through Britain in lat. 52°, and east Europe in lat. 48°,
cutting the parallel of 45° in Siberia (due north of Lamteng itself),
descending to lat. 42° on the east coast of Asia, ascending to lat. 48°
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° 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° and 43°, 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.[155] 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.

[155] 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.

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, _Spiræa, Viburnum, Cotoneaster, Hippophæ._ Herbaceous
plants[156] are far too numerous to be enumerated, as a list would
include most of the common genera of European and North American
plants.

[156] 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, Chærophyllum, Galium, Paris,_ and _Anagallis_;
besides cultivated weeds of shepherd’s-purse, dock, mustard,
Mithridate cress, radish, turnip, _Thlaspi arvense,_ and _Poa annua._

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 _Cruciferæ._ 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 _Cælogyne, Oberonia, Cyrtosia, Calanthe,_ and other
orchids; _Ceropegia, Parochetus, Balanophora,_ and many _Scitamineæ_;
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,[157] 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.

[157] 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.

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.[158] 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.

[158] 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.

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 _Hippophæ._ 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.[159] 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.

[159] The eastern afterwards proved to be the Lachen.

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.[160] 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.[161] 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.

[160] 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.

[161] These woods are all soft and loose in grain, compared with their
European allies.

_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”)[162] yield beautiful
wood, like that of the pencil cedar,[163] 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, Spiræa,
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._[164] The rocks were all of gneiss, with granite veins,
tourmaline, and occasionally pieces of pure plumbago.

[162] This I have, vol. i. p. 256, 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.

[163] Also a juniper, from Bermuda (_J. Bermudiana_).

[164] 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 _Roscœa, Neillia, Morina,_ many grasses and _Umbelliferæ._
These formed a rank and dense herbaceous, mostly annual vegetation,
six feet high, bound together with _Cuscuta,_ climbing _Leguminosæ,_
and _Ceropegia._ The great summer heat and moisture here favour the
ascent of various tropical genera, of which I found in August several
_Orchideæ_ (_Calanthe, Microstylis,_ and _Cœlogyne_), also _Begonia,
Bryonia, Cynanchum, Aristolochia, Eurya, Procris, Acanthaceæ,_ and
_Cyrtandraseæ._

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 p. 13),
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_[165] 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.

[165] A curious leafless parasite, mentioned at vol. i, p. 133.

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,”[166] 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,”[167] 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[168] 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.

[166] _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.

[167] It is also found on the top of Sinchul, near Dorjiling.

[168] Of which I had already gathered thirteen kinds in this valley.

The Zemu continued an impetuous muddy torrent, whose hoarse voice,
mingled with the deep grumbling noise[169] of the boulders rolling
along its bed, was my lullaby for many nights. Its temperature at Zemu
Samdong was 45° to 46° 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.

[169] 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.

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_[170] 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.

[170] Two species of _Arisæma,_ called “Tong” by the Tibetans, and
“Sinkree” by the Lepchas.

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,[171] 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.

[171] 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.

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°.

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°, and of the wet bulb 55°, 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.[172]

[172] 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.[173]

[173] 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 _Spiræa,_ 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: Black juniper 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°) 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 névé) 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 _Compositæ,
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.[174]

[174] 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 _Spircæa._ And in addition
to the herbs mentioned above, may be enumerated _Parnassia,_ many
Saxifrages, _Soldanella, Draba,_ and various other _Cruciferæ,
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 _Carabidæ_ (an order that
is very scarce in the Himalaya); with various moths, chiefly
_Geometræ._

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° and 57·8°, 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°; extremes, 62°/36.5°. 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° temperature, which is at the rate of
1° for every 347 feet of ascent.[175]

[175] Forty-seven observations, comparative with Calcutta, gave 34·8°
difference, and if 5.5° of temperature be deducted for northing in
latitude, the result is 1° 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° to 304 feet, as the result of
twenty-four observations with Dorjiling, and 1° 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° 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.[176] At this season, in descending
from 12,000 feet to 1000 feet, its temperature does not rise 10°,
though that of the air rises 30° or 40°. 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°, or 6° warmer than that river; at 1,100 feet higher
it was 48°, and at 1,100 feet higher still it was 49°! 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.

[176] During my sojourn at Bhomsong in mid-winter of 1848 (see v. i.
p. 305), the mean temperature of the Teesta was 51°, and of the air
52·3°; at that elevation the river water rarely exceeds 60° at
midsummer. Between 4000 feet and 300 (the plains) its mean temperature
varies about 10° between January and July; at 6000 feet it varies from
55° to 43° during the same period; and at 10,000 feet it freezes at
the edges in winter and rises to 50° in July.

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,[177] and accomplished in Tibet slang.

[177] 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.

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° (air 42°), 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. Euphorbiæ_) 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, _Noctuæ_ and
_Geometræ_ abounded, with many flies and _Tipulæ. 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.[178] 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.

[178] _Umbelliferæ_ 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 _Spiræa, 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 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.[179] 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.

[179] I have elsewhere noticed that in Sikkim, the ancient moraines
above 9000 feet are almost invariably deposited from valleys opening
to the westward.

Grassy or stony mountains slope upwards, at an angle of 20°,[180] 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.

[180] At Lamteng and up the Zemu the slopes are 40° and 50°, giving a
widely different aspect to the valleys.

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,[181] 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, Leguminosæ, 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;[182]
sedges were in great profusion, amongst them three of British kinds:
seven or eight were _Orchideæ,_ including a fine _Cypripedium._

[181] 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.

[182] _Cryptogramma crispa, Davallia,_ two _Aspidia,_ and two
_Polypodia._ I gathered ten at the same elevation, in the damper Zemu
valley (see p. 49, note). I gathered in this valley a new species of
the remarkable European genus _Struthiopteris,_ which has not been
found elsewhere in the Himalaya.

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.[183] Bees were common, both _Bombus_ and
_Andræna,_ 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.

[183] 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.

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° to 52°; the mean being 50°.

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° 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[184] 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.

[184] Alluding to the sextant, etc.

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 _Spiræa,_ 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;[185] while mushrooms and other English fungi[186] grew
amongst the grass.

[185] _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.

[186] 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.

[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°; they are flat and
grassy at the base, and no snow is anywhere to be seen.[187] 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.

[187] In the wood-cut the summit of Chomiomo is introduced, as it
appears from a few hundred feet above the point of view.

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.[188] 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° to come to maturity. According to my
observations, the mean temperature of Tungu in July is upwards of 50°,
and, by calculation, that of the three summer months, June, July, and
August, should be about 46·5°. 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.

[188] 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.

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 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[189] from the west: the stream was rapid,
and twelve yards in breadth; its temperature was 48°. 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,_[190]
_Trollius,_ Anemone, _Arenaria, Draba,_ Saxifrages, Potentillas,
Ranunculus, and other very alpine plants abounded.

[189] 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.

[190] 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.

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,[191] 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.

[191] The Siberians hang tufts of horse-hair inside their houses from
superstitious motives (Ermann’s “Siberia,” i., 281).

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[192] 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.

[192] 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.

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:[193]
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°; the temperature of the air between 2.40
and 4 p.m. varied from 41·3° to 42·5°, the dew-point 39·8°; that of the
Lachen was 47°, 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.

[193] 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.

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
_Caryophylleæ_) forming hemi-spherical balls on the naked soil;
others[194] 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_).

[194] The other plants found on the pass were; of smooth hairless
ones, _Ranunculus,_ Fumitory, several species of _Stellaria, Arenaria,
Cruciferæ, Parnassia, Morina,_ saxifrages, _Sedum,_ primrose,
_Herminium, Polygonum, Campanula, Umbelliferæ,_ grasses and _Carices_:
of woolly or hairy once, _Anemone, Artemisia, Myosotis, Draba,
Potentilla,_ and several _Compositæ,_ etc.

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° to
30°.

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.[195] 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.

[195] Amongst them the most numerous Natural orders and genera were,
_Cruciferæ_ 10; _Compositæ_ 20; _Ranunculaceæ_ 10; _Alsineæ_ 9;
_Astragali_ 10; _Potentillæ_ 8; grasses 12; _Carices_ 15;
_Pedicularis_ 7; _Boragineæ_ 7.

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,_[196] 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.

[196] 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.

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.[197] 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.[198] It is fed by the glaciers of Kinchinjhow, and some little
lakes to the east.

[197] _Delphinium, Hypecoum, Sagina, Gymnandra, Artemisia, Caltha,
Dracocephalum, Leontopodium._

[198] These, which grow on an eastern exposure, exist at a higher
elevation than any other bushes I have met with.

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, Mönch,
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 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,[199] 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.

[199] 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.

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°) with that of the air (45·5°) 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.[200] 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;”[201] 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.

[200] The extensive use of these ornaments throughout Tibet, on the
occasion of religious festivals, is alluded to by MM. Huc and Gabet.

[201] This is the “Changra;” and the smaller the “Chyapu” of Mr.
Hodgson’s catalogue. (See “British Museum Catalogue.”)

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°, 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.[202]

[202] _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 cæspitosa,_ and in the
plates of that work it appears as _Periandra cæspitosa_; 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,[203] 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.[204] 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.

[203] De Saussure’s glaciers of the second order: see “Forbes’ Travels
in the Alps,” p. 79.

[204] Temperature of boiling water, 183°, air 35°.

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°: 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°: 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.[205]

[205] 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. p.
309, 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
_Compositæ,_ 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[206] (“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.[207]

[206] 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.

[207] 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;[208] 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° to 10°, 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.

[208] An inch and a half fell at Dorjiling during the same period.

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_[209] 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° (air 43°), which gives an altitude of 16,754 feet.

[209] 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.

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° (max. 65°, min. 40·7°); extremes, 65/38°. The mean
range (23·3°) was thus much greater than at Dorjiling, where it was
only 8·9°. A thermometer, sunk three feet, varied only a few tenths
from 57·6°. By twenty-five comparative observations with Calcutta, 1°
Fahr. is the equivalent of every 362 feet of ascent; and twenty
comparative observations with Dorjiling give 1° 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.[210] On the following day I descended to Lamteng, gathering a
profusion of fine plants by the way.

[210] 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.

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;[211] the temperature of the
water was 92° near the edges, where a water-insect (_Notonecta_) was
swimming about.

[211] _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.

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 p. 31, 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,[212]
_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 _Nymphalidæ_ 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,”[213] a very remarkable animal, half goat and half deer; the
flesh was good and tender, dark-coloured, and lean.

[212] _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.

[213] “Ragoah,” according to Hodgson: but it is not the _Procapra
picticaudata_ of Tibet.

I remained here till the 15th of August,[214] 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.

[214] Though 5° further north, and 5,268 feet above the level of
Calcutta, the mean temperature at Choongtam this month was only 12·5°
cooler than at Calcutta; forty observations giving 1° Fahr. as equal
to 690 feet of elevation; whereas in May the mean of twenty-seven
observations gave 1° Fahr. as equal to 260 feet, the mean difference
of temperature being then 25°. The mean maximum of the day was 80°,
and was attained at 11 a.m., after which clouds formed, and the
thermometer fell to 66° at sunset, and 56° at night. In my blanket
tent the heat rose to upwards of 100° in calm weather. The afternoons
were generally squally and rainy.

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°.

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;[215] its temperature was also 57°. 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.[216]

[215] 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.

[216] 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,[217] 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.[218]

[217] As _Paris, Dipsacus, Circæa, Thalictrum, Saxifraga ciliaris,
Spiranthes, Malva, Hypoxis, Anthericum, Passiflora, Drosera,
Didymocarpus,_ poplar, _Calamagrostis,_ and _Eupatorium._

[218] The woodcut at vol. i. p. 203, 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 1,500 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.[219] 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[220] 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.

[219] _Umbelliferæ_ and _Compositæ_ abound, and were then flowering;
and an orchis (_Satyrium Nepalense_), scented like our English
_Gymnadenia,_ covered the ground in some places, with tall green
_Habenariæ_ 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.

[220] This mountain is seen from Dorjiling; its elevation is about
18,700 feet.

[Illustration: Lachoong valley and village, looking south]

Stupendous moraines rise 1,500 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.[221]

[221] 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,[222] 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._

[222] 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.

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—Moutonnéed 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,[223] and composed of enormous
blocks disintegrating into a deep layer of clay. All are clothed with
luxuriant herbage and flowering shrubs,[224] 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.

[223] 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.

[224] _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._

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._[225] 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.

[225] 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.

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°. 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 entrepôt 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,[226] 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.

[226] 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.

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.[227] 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° to 40·5°,
the air being extremely damp.

[227] 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.

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°, 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[228] 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.[229] 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.

[228] 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.

[229] 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.

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., p. 187)
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 Hierochlœ 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 débâcles
were 400 yards across, and sloped at an angle of 2° to 3°, bearing on
their surfaces blocks fifteen yards in diameter.[230] They seem to
subside materially, as I perceived they had left marks many feet higher
on the tree-trunks. Such débâcles must often bury standing forests in a
very favourable material, climate, and position for becoming
fossilized.

[230] None were to be compared in size and extent with that at Bex, at
the mouth of the Rhone valley.

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°, and 106° in the bath.[231] The water has a slightly
saline taste; it is colourless, but emits bubbles of sulphuretted
hydrogen gas, blackening silver. A cold spring (temperature 42°)
emerged close by, and the Lachoong not ten yards off, was 47° to 50°. A
conferva grows in the hot water, and the garnets are worn out of the
gneiss rock exposed to its action.

[231] This water boiled at 191·6°, 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 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;[232] a phenomenon I never saw in Sikkim.

[232] 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.

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.[233] 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,[234] 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.

[233] 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.

[234] Its elevation by my observations is about 21,870 feet.

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
_moutonnéed_ 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.[235]

[235] 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.[236]

[236] 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° 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.[237] 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 _Astragalus,_ varied
with hard hemispherical mounds of the alsineous plant mentioned at p.
89.

[237] 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 infusoriæ.
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.

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.[238] 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.

[238] 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.

[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[239] 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 Tingré, where it
enters Nepal.

[239] 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 compliin 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° 4′ 20″ 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.

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.[240] 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,[241] 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°. 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.[242]
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.[243]

[240] 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.

[241] Snow, transformed into ice throughout its whole mass: in short,
glacial ice in all physical characters.

[242] 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.

[243] Probably caused by spiculæ of ice floating in the atmosphere,
the lateral surfaces of which would then have an uniform inclination
of 60°: this, according to the observations of Mariotte, Venturi, and
Fraunhœfer 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:—

Temp. D.P. Difference Tension Humidity Sept. 9
Sept. 27
Oct. 19 1.30–3.30 p.m.
1.15–3.15 p.m.
3.00–3.30 p.m. 41·8°
49·2°
40·1° 30·3°
32·6°
25·0° 11·5°
16·6°
15·1° 0·1876
0·2037
0·1551 0·665
0·560
0·585

The first and last of these temperatures were respectively 42·3° and
46·4° lower than Calcutta, which, with the proper deduction for
latitude, allows 508 and 460 feet as equivalent to 1° 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°.

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.[244] 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°, the
extremes being 92° and 120°, and my own 108°.

[244] On the 9th of September the boiling-point was 181·3°, and on the
27th, 181·2°. 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.

One flowering plant ascends to the summit; the alsinaceous one
mentioned at p. 89. The Fescue grass, a little fern (_Woodsia_), and a
_Saussurea_[245] ascend very near the summit, and several lichens grow
on the top, as _Cladonia vermicularis,_ the yellow _Lecidea
geographica,_ and the orange _L. miniata_;[246] 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.

[245] 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.

[246] 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.

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.[247] It drizzled and sleeted
all the way, and was dark before we arrived at the tent.

[247] 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.

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 _Melitæa_; 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 Jacobæa, 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.[248] 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.

[248] An elevation of 20,000 and perhaps 22,000 feet might, I should
think, easily be attained by practice, in Tibet, north of Sikkim.

I made frequent excursions to the great glacier of Kinchinjhow. Its
valley is about four miles long, broad and flat: Chango-khang[249]
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[250] 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°, and
in places 116°, or 4° 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.

[249] The elevation of this mountain is about 20,560 feet, by the mean
of several observations taken from surrounding localities.

[250] Supposing the mean temperature of the air at the elevation of
the Momay springs to be 26° or 28°, 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° for fifty feet) we should find
the temperature of 110° 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° 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.

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[251] 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.

[251] For a description of this curious phenomenon, which has been
illustrated by Agassiz, see “Forbes’s Alps,” p. 26 and 347.

Its average slope for a mile above the terminal moraines was less than
5°, 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 _moutonnéed_ 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),[252] 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,[253] 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° to 34°, and it snowed heavily after 3 p.m.

[252] 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.

[253] This convexity of the ice is particularly alluded to by Forbes
(“Travels in the Alps,” p.386), as the “renflément” 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.

The strike of all the rocks (gneiss with granite veins) seemed to be
north-east, and dip north-west 30°. 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[254] 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.

[254] 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.

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[255] and crevassed.

[255] 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.

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°, while that of the
large lake at the glacier, 1000 feet lower, was only 39°.

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[256] over head, while to the west, across the
grassy Palung dunes rise Chomiomo, the Thlonok mountains, and
Kinchinjunga in the distance.[257] 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.[258] 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.

[256] This ridging or furrowing of steep snow-beds is explained at
vol. i, p. 237

[257] The latter bore 241° 30′; it was distant about thirty-four
miles, and subtended an angle of 3° 2′ 30″. 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.

[258] 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 temperature at this elevation, between 1 and 3 p.m., varied from
38° to 59°; the mean being 46·5°, with the dew-point 34·6°. 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[259] 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[260] 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 spiculæ 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.

[259] About 600 loaded yaks are said to cross the Donkia pass
annually.

[260] 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.

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°
once during the month, and the maximum once rose to 62·5°. The mean
temperature from the 9th to the 30th September was 41·6°,[261] which
coincided with that of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.; the mean maximum, 52·2°,
minimum, 34·7°, and consequent range, 17·5°.[262] On seven nights the
radiating thermometer fell much below the temperature of the air, the
mean being 10·5° and maximum 14·2°; and on seven mornings the sun
heated the black-bulb thermometer considerably, on the mean to 62·6°
above the air; maximum 75·2°, and minimum, 43°. The greatest heat of
the day occurred at noon: the most rapid rise of temperature (5°)
between 8 and 9 a.m., and the greatest fall (5·5°), between 3 and 4
p.m. A sunk thermometer fell from 52·5° to 51·5° 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.

[261] The result of fifty-six comparative observations between
Calcutta and Momay, give 40·6° difference, which, after corrections,
allows 1° Fahr. for every 438 feet of ascent.

[262] At Dorjiling the September range is only 9·5°; and at Calcutta
10°.

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.[263]
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 _Umbelliferæ_ and _Compositæ,_ 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.

[263] 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.

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
débacle 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 débacle, 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° 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[264] 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.

[264] These were made of goat’s wool, teazed into a satiny surface by
little teazle-like brushes of bamboo.

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 altogetber 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_[265]
(“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,[266] 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.

[265] The poisonous honey produced by other species is alluded to at
vol. i., p. 201. An _Andromeda_ and a _Gualtheria,_ I have been
assured are equally deleterious.

[266] The larch of northern Asia (_Larix Europœa_) is said to produce
a pungent smoke, which I never observed to be the case with the Sikkim
species.

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.[267]

[267] 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
Sertulariæ, 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° 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° 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.[268] The mean temperature had fallen from
50° in July to 41°, and that of the sunk thermometer from 57° to 51·4°.
The mean range in July was 23·3°, and in October 13·8°; the weather
during the latter period being, however, uniformly cold and misty, this
was much below the mean monthly range, which probably exceeds 30°. Much
more rain fell in October at Tungu than at Dorjiling, which is the
opposite to what occurs during the rainy season.

[268] 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
Oct. 11, noon
Oct. 14, sunset 189·5
189·5
190·1 air 47·3°
air 37·6°
air 45·3° elev. 12,650
elev. 12,818
elev. 12,544

_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°. 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°, that placed in a
polished parabolic reflector to 20°, and another laid on herbage to
17·5°.

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°. Having had
our sticks[269] 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.

[269] It was an invariable custom of our Lepcba 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.

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
_Lymnæa_;[270] 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.

[270] This is the most alpine living shell in the world; my specimens
being from nearly 17,000 feet elevation; it is the _Lymnæa Hookeri,_
Reeve (“Proceedings of the Zoological Society,” No. 204).

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_),[271] 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°.

[271] 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 at p. 139.

[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;[272] 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.

[272] 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, François 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.

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°, and that in
the reflector to 3.5°; at sunrise it rose to 10°, and soon after 8 a.m.
to 33°; 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°
above the temperature in the shade. The light of the sun, though
sometimes intercepted by vapours aloft, was very brilliant.[273]

[273] 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[274] 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.

[274] 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.

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_[275] 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,[276] 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.

[275] Most of the paper used in Tibet is, as I have elsewhere noticed,
made from the bark of various species of _Daphneæ,_ 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.

[276] 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.

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°, and the black-bulb to 104·5°;
whilst the north-west dusty wind was so dry, that the dew-point fell to
24·2°.

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 débris—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°. 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.[277] The rocks were nearly vertical
strata of quartz, hornstone, and conglomerate, striking north-west, and
dipping south-west 80°. 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_;[278] 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.

[277] 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.

[278] 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.

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.

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

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[279] peeps,
bearing south-east, and from its isolated position and sharpness
looking low and small; it appeared quite near, though thirty-nine miles
distant.

[279] 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° 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., p. 125 and p. 185); 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° 49′ north, long. 89° 18′ 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° 30′ east from Bhomtso.

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[280] I afterwards
took bearings and angular heights from the Khasia mountains, in Bengal,
upwards of 200 miles south-east of its position.

[280] 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° 10′ and longitude 90°, and 200 miles from the former
station, and 90° 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.

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[281] 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° E. to N.
70° 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,[282] 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° 30′ E. and N. 60°
30′ E. A sparingly-snowed group bore N. 26° 30′ E., and another N. 79°
E., the latter being probably that mentioned by Turner as seen by him
from near Giantchi.

[281] 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.

[282] 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.”)

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°. 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°
7′ 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[283] 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.

[283] 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.

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.[284]
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.

[284] 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 naïvely 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.”

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[285] 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.

[285] 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° 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.

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;[286] 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.

[286] The Yaru, which approaches the Nepal frontier west of Tingri,
and beyond the great mountain described at vol. i. p. 265, 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.

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 (p. 124). The wild ass[287] 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,[288] probably
blown up also, for it was a flower-feeder, and seemed benumbed with
cold.

[287] 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.

[288] 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° south, longitude
64° 49′ west). This genus hence inhabits a higher southern latitude
than any other land animal attains.

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°. 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°,[289] which is 12·7° above the mean
temperature of the two days we camped here.

[289] It had risen to 43·5° during the previous day.

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;[290] the
temperature between 11.30 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. fluctuated between 44° and
56°: 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°, or 43·5°
below the temperature of the air. Such extraordinary dryness[291] 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.

[290] 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° (49·6° 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.

[291] The weight of vapour in a cubic foot of air was no more than
·087 of a grain, and the saturation-point ·208.

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° to 90°, the tension of
vapour is .400 to .500, with a dew-point 22° 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°. 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.[292] 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°.

[292] This, which is about the level of the lake, gives the Lachen
river a fall of about 1,500 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.

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°: 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°, 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.[293]

[293] 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[294] 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.

[294] 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.

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°, over upwards of
a thousand feet of débris, 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 débris (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.[295]

[295] 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 p. 129), 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 débris: 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° or 9° lower. The minimum thermometer fell
to 22°, being 10° 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 (p. 140) 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 _Compositæ_ and _Umbelliferæ,_ 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.[296]

[296] 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.[297]

[297] 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 débouche
into the Indian Ocean (the so-called Himalayan trout is a species of
carp). This widely distributed natural order of fish (_Salmonidæ_) 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 débouche, is no doubt the proximate
cause of the absence of _Salmonidæ._ 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.
_Compositæ_ 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.[298]

[298] 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 p. 117 the uses to which the Yeumtong hot springs
are put; and the custom of using artificial hot baths is noticed at
vol. i., p. 305.

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.[299]
Ferns and the beautiful air-plant _Cœlogyne 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.

[299] 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 _Magnoliaceæ_ found in India, Australia,
Borneo, and South America.

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 _Labiatæ,_ 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[300] 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.

[300] These Rhododendrons are now all flourishing at Kew and
elsewhere: they are _R. Dalhousiæ, arboreum, Maddeni, Edgeworthii,
Aucklandii_ and _virgatum._

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 (p. 110), 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.

[Illustration: Tibetan Phud]

On the way down the Lachen-Lachoong, we found the valley still flooded
(as described at p. 20 and p. 146), 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._[301]

[301] 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.

At Chakoong the temperature of the river, which in May was 54°, was now
51·5° 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,[302] but they were hard and dry, and the leeches were gone.

[302] 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.

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° W., and N. 63° W.: the south slope of the snowed
portion in profile was 34°, and of the north 40°; 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,[303] 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.

[303] 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.

[Illustration: Tibetan implements]

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[304] goompa
gleamed through the trees. At a considerable distance across the head
of the valley was still a third goompa, that of Phenzong.

[304] Phadong means Royal, and this temple answers to a chapel royal
for the Rajah.

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,[305] 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.

[305] 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.

[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[306] 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.

[306] The lumps of amber forming these (called “Poshea”) were larger
than the fist: they are procured in East Tibet, probably from Birmah.

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;[307] 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.

[307] 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.

[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°.
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 Cbola 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[308] on this and the following day.

[308] These occurred in the following order in ascending, commencing
at 6000 feet.—1. _R. Dalhousiæ_; 2. _R. vaccinioides_; 3. _R.
camelliæflorwm_; 4. _R. arboreum._ Above 8000 feet:—5. _R. argenteum_;
6. _R. Falconeri_; 7. _R. barbatum_; 8. _R. Campbelliæ_; 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._

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,[309] 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.

[309] 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.

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._[310]

[310] 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°, 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 moutonnéed 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°, 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,[311] 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.

[311] 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.

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. p. 305). 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,[312] and had
vowed vengeance against Campbell for the duty he performed in bringing
him to punishment.

[312] This act as I have mentioned at v. i. p. 341, 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.

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°), 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.[313]
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 p. 2).

[313] This was the other man sent with us to Mainom, by the Dewan, in
the previous December.

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.[314] 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.

[314] 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.”

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[315]) had been seized, because they were runaway slaves from
Sikkim; but that I need not alarm myself, for mine should be untouched.

[315] 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.

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,[316] 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,[317] 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.

[316] 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.

[317] 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.

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,[318] 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.

[318] 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.

[Illustration: Horns of the Showa stag (Cervus Wallichii), a native of
Choombi in Tibet.]

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,[319] 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.

[319] 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.

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,[320] 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,[321] 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.

[320] 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°, and from
the maximum and minimum thermometer 49·6°, which is a fair
approximation to the theoretical temperature calculated for the
elevation and month, and allows a fall of 1° for 320 feet of ascent.
The temperature during the spring (from 50 observations) varied during
the day from 2·4° to 5·8° 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°, or 5·2° below that of the air.

[321] 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.

[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[322] 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.

[322] 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.

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[323] from Dorjiling changed their plans, the Dewan
conveniently fell sick on the spot, and we were thrown back again.

[323] 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.

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.[324]

[324] 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;[325] 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.

[325] 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.

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[326] 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.

[326] 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.

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 chalé 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[327] 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.

[327] 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.

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.[328] 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.

[328] 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 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, be 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,[329] 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.

[329] The temporal sovereign, in contra-distinction to the Dhurma
Rajah, or spiritual sovereign of Bhotan.

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 _béche-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_s._ per lb. at Lhassa, which
is sixty times its value in India. Rice at Lhassa, when cheap, sells at
2_s._ 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° at 4 p.m., and 51·7° 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[330] 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.

[330] 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.

[Illustration: Lepcha sepoys. Tibetan sepoys 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[331] 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.[332]

[331] 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.

[332] 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).

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 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

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_), _Dracænæ,_
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.[333]

[333] 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 _Phœnix
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 _Orchideæ_ 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[334] 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.

[334] 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.

_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:[335] 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 (_Dionæa
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.

[335] 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.

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,[336] 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.

[336] 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.

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° to 85°.
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°; 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°, and fell to
78° at night: the mean was 2·5° 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° to 89·8°, being considerably lower than that of the
air (94·2°), whilst that of a fine ripening shaddock, into which I
plunged a thermometer bulb, varied little from 81°, 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° or 5° 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,_[337]
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.

[337] 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.

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°; 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° 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 _Rottbœllia_) 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
palæontologist; 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. p. 382).

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.[338]

[338] 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°.

China roses and tropical plants (_Bignoniæ, Asclepiadeæ,_ 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,[339] 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.

[339] 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.

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,[340] always exposed in the heat of
the day to wet and fatigue, and never having even a _soupçon_ 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.

[340] 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.

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° 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[341] 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.

[341] Temperature in September 77° to 80°; and in November 75·7°.

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;[342] 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 _Euphorbiaceæ_
and _Urticeæ_), 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. _Combretaceæ,_
oaks, oranges, _Garcinia_ (gamboge), _Diospyros,_ figs, Jacks,
plantains, and _Pandanus,_ are more frequent here, together with
pinnated leaved _Leguminosæ, Meliaceæ,_ 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 _Orchideæ, Æshynanthus,_
ferns, mosses, and _Lycopodia_; and on the ground were _Rubiaceæ,
Scitamineæ,_ ferns, _Acanthaceæ,_ beautiful balsams, and herbaceous and
shrubby nettles. Bamboos[343] of many kinds are very abundant, and
these hills further differ remarkably from those of Sikkim in the great
number of species of grasses.

[342] There are upwards of twenty kinds of Palm in this district,
including _Chamærops,_ three species of _Areca,_ two of _Wallichia,
Arenga, Caryota,_ three of _Phœnix, Plectocomia, Licuala,_ and many
species of _Calamus._ Besides these there are several kinds of
_Pandanus,_ and the _Cycas pectinata._

[343] 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.

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 of 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—_Chamærops_ 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[344] (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.

[344] 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.

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.

[Illustration: Mamloo cascades]

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 (p.
261), 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, _Chamærops 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;[345] 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.

[345] 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.

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[346] 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.

[346] See a paper on the geology of the Khasia mountains by Dr.
M’Lelland in the “Bengal Asiatic Society’s Journal.”

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.[347] 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° N.) than in that of
Sikkim (27° N.), though the former is two degrees nearer the equator.

[347] As _Thalictrum, Anemone,_ primrose, cowslip, _Tofieldia,_ Yew,
Pine, Saxifrage, _Delphinium, Pedicularis._

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.

_Orchideæ_ 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
_Chamærops_ 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.
_Scitamineæ_ 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,_[348] though
more closely resembling the Scotch fir than that tree does.

[348] 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.

The natural orders whose rarity is most noticeable, are _Cruciferæ,_
represented by only three kinds, and _Caryophylleæ._ Of _Ranunculaceæ,_
there are six or seven species of _Clematis,_ two of _Anemone,_ one
_Delphinium,_ three of _Thalictrum,_ and two _Ranunculi._ _Compositæ_
and _Leguminosæ_ 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°, or 16°
below that of Calcutta; which, allowing for 2·5° of northing, gives 1°
of temperature to every 290 to 300 feet of ascent. In summer the
thermometer often rises to 88° and 90°; 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 _Orchideæ_ 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,[349] 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._

[349] 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.

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.[350]

[350] 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 _Orchideæ,_ 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,[351] 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.[352]

[351] Formed of rolled masses of greenstone and sandstone, united by a
white and yellow cement.

[352] _Hydrangea_ grows here, with ivy, _Mussœnda, 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, Elæocarpus, 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;[353]
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.

[353] 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.

Small trees of hornbeam grow near the river, with _Rhus, Xanthoxylon,
Vaccinium, Gualtheria,_ and _Spiræa,_ 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 _Orchideæ._ 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 fœtid flowers.[354]
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.

[354] 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 _Sphærocarya,_ 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 _Roscœa purpurea, Tofieldia,_ and various
other fine plants are common.

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° east to
north 35° 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’œil_ 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,[355] whilst the south is grassy and quite bare; and except
some good _Orchideæ_ on the trees, there is little to reward the
botanist. The rocks appeared to be sandstone at the summit, but
micaceous gneiss all around.

[355] These skirt a wood of prickly bamboo, in which occur fig,
laurel, _Aralia, Bœmeria, Smilax, Toddalia,_ wild cinnamon, and three
kinds of oak.

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.[356]

[356] 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 _Jacobæa,_ 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
_Balanophoræ, 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,[357] accessible from the
north and east, but almost perpendicular to the southward, where the
slope is 80° 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.[358]

[357] This granite is highly crystalline, and does not scale or flake,
nor is its surface polished.

[358] _Eria, Cœlogyne_ (_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 _Nymphæa_—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
cœrulea_—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° 4′ 0″, –0° 1′ 30″, and –0° 2′ 28″.[359] From Nunklow (940
feet lower than Myrung) they appear higher, the western peak rising 14°
35′ above the horizon; whilst from Moflong (32 miles further south, and
elevation 6,062 feet) the same is sunk 2° 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.

[359] 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.

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° 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′ 30″ from Myrung, and +6′ 0″ 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° 6′ and 89°
30′, 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′ from the former, and –17′ 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 _Cyperaceæ_: 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 Phœnix 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.

[Illustration: The Bhotan Himalaya, Assam Valley, and Burrampooter
River, from Nunklow, looking north.]

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,
Artocarpeæ,_ and _Elæocarpus,_ 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 Phœnix 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.[360] 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.

[360] 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.

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[361] 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.

[361] 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.

Though the temperature in August rose to 75°, 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° and 30° 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 p.
280): 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 Colubridæ, 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 p. 25), 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° to 35°. 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°), 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[362] to Chattuc, and then north again to
Pundua, and so to Churra.

[362] The common water-plants of the Jheels are _Vallisneria serrata,
Damasonium,_ 2 _Myriophylla,_ 2 _Villarsiæ, Trapa,_ blue, white,
purple and scarlet water-lilies, _Hydrilla, Utricularia, Limnophila,
Azolla, Salvinia, Ceratopteris,_ and floating grasses.

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,[363] 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.

[363] 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.

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[364] 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.

[364] The fall of this river, between this elevation (which may be
considered that of its source) and Chela, is about 5,500 feet.

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 at p. 312. 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, _Cœlogyne 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
_Nymphæa pygmæa_ 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°); 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[365] 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.

[365] _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.

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[366] grew in the mossy crevices of its stones.

[366] _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.

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 _Araliaceæ_; 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.[367]

[367] In some tanks we found _Hydropeltis,_ an American and Australian
plant allied to _Nymphæa._ 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 _Nymphæa,_ 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,[368] 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.

[368] 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.

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 cærulea_ (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.[369] 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.

[369] 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 _mæn,
man,_ or _men_ is the so-called Druidical name for a stony, whence
_Pen-mæn-mawr,_ for “the hill of the big stone,” _Mæn-hayr,_ for the
standing stones of Brittany, and _Dol-men,_ “the table-stone,” for a
cromlech.

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 cœrulea_ 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.[370] 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° and 80°, 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 _Orchideæ,_ grow, of which we found _Dendrobium Farmeri,
Dalhousianum, Devonianum,_ etc., with _Vanda cœrulea_; whilst the most
beautiful species of _Cœlogyne, Cymbidium, Bolbophyllum,_ and
_Cypripedium,_ inhabit cool climates at elevations above 4000 feet in
Khasia, and as high as 6000 to 7000 in Sikkim.

[370] 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_l_, the
individual plants fetching prices varying from 3_l_ to 10_l._ Had all
arrived alive, they would have cleared 1000 pounds. An active
collector, with the facilities I possessed, might easily clear from
2000_l_ to 3000_l_, in one season, by the sale of Khasia orchids.

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 fête!

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;[371] 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.

[371] 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.

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,[372] 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.

[372] “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.

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—_Phœnix 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 (_Lagerstrœmia Reginæ_), 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,[373]
_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.

[373] 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.

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[374] 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.

[374] 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.

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 _Melanorhœa usitatissima,_ which is white
when fresh, and requires to be kept under water.[375]

[375] 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, Urticeæ,_ and _Bauhiniæ,_
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 _Dracæna._ Wild rice grew abundantly in the marshes, with tall
grasses; and _Cardiopteris_[376] 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, 1arger
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.

[376] A remarkable plant of unknown affinity; see Brown and Bennett,
“Flora Java:” it is found in the Assam valley and Chittagong.

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°, minimum 58·4°.[377]

[377] The temperature does not rise above 90° in summer, nor sink
below 45° or 50° in January: forty-seven comparative observations with
Calcutta showed the mean temperature to be 1·8° 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,[378] _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.[379]

[378] 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.

[379] _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 p. 189).

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 _Aroideæ._ 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.[380] 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,[381] 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.

[380] During our stay of five days the mean maximum temperature was
74°, minimum 64·8°: that of thirty-two observations compared with
Calcutta show that Silhet is only 1·7° cooler, though Mr. Stainforth’s
house is upwards of 2° further north, and 160 feet more elevated. A
thermometer sunk two feet seven inches, stood at 73·5°. The relative
saturation-points were, Calcutta ·633, Silhet ·821.

[381] For an account of the early settlement of Silhet, see “Lives of
the Lindsays,” by Lord Lindsay.

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°, but the atmosphere was more humid.[382]

[382] The river-water was greenish, and a little cooler (73·8°) than
that of the Soormah (74·3°), 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 p. 259, 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 _Phœnix_), 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,[383] 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.

[383] “Colly” signifies a muddy creek, such as intersect the 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.[384]

[384] 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 (_Lagerstrœmia_) _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 p. 253) 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_:[385] this plant is not now known to be found
nearer than Dacca (sixty miles north-east, see p. 255), 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.

[385] 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.

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.[386]

[386] 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°, nor sinks below 45°; at this
temperature hoar-frost will form on straw, and ice on water placed in
porous pans, indicating a powerful radiation.[387]

[387] 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°
to 84°; 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
_Cæsalpinia._ In the hollows are native huts amidst vegetation of every
hue, glossy green _Garciniæ_ and figs, broad plantains, feathery
_Cassia_ and Acacias, dark _Mesua_, red-purple _Terminalia,_ leafless
scarlet-flowered _Bombax,_ and grey _Casuarina._[388] Seaward the tide
leaves immense flats, called churs, which stretch for many miles on
either side the offing.

[388] 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.

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.[389] To the south, undulating dunes stretch
along the coast, covered with low bushes, of which a red-flowered
_Melastoma_ is the most prevalent,[390] 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.

[389] The mean temperature of the two days (29th and 30th) we spent at
this bungalow was 66·5°, that of Calcutta being 67·6°; the air was
damp, and the barometer 0·144 lower at the flagstaff hill, but it fell
and rose with the Calcutta instrument.

[390] _Melastoma,_ jasmine, _Calamus, Ægle Marmelos, Adelia,
Memecylon, Ixora, Limostoma, Congea,_ climbing _Cœsalpinia,_ and many
other plants; and along their bases large trees of _Amoora, Gaurea,_
figs, _Mesua,_ and _Micromelon._

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.[391]

[391] 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.[392]

[392] 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[393] 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 p. 7). 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).

[393] 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.

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°. 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
_Phœnix_ 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.

[Illustration: Seetakund Hill]

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.

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 _Phœnix_ 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, _Dracæna,_ 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°.

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 above (p. 343),
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 _Exœcaria,_ 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
_Compositæ,_ 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
détour of three hundred.

From the masts of the steamer we obtained an excellent _coup-d’œil_ 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 _Phœnix 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.[394]

[394] _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

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° 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°.

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.[395] 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.

[395] Journal of Asiatic Society, No. 147 (1844), p.135.

The following summary of meteorological observations is alluded to at
vol. i., p. 15.

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°, and averaged 7°; whereas the average depression of
the dew-point at the same hour amounted to 25° 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
Max.
Min.
Range 56·6
65·2
46·3
18·9 70·1
77·0
61·2
15·8 75·5
81·7
65·2
16·5 61·7
66·2
55·5
10·7 WET-BULB
Mean
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 48·2
12·5
6·0 53·7
19·3
14·3 55·3
22·5
16·7 49·3
20·5
9·0 Elasticity of Vapour ·276 ·264 ·248 ·248 DEW-POINT
Mean
Max.
Min.
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 39·5
52·0
23·3
31·7
10·4 37·9
52·7
24·5
39·2
24·3 36·0
46·8
24·3
48·4
34·9 36·1
50·0
[396]9·1
56·9
16·2 Weight of Vapour in cubic feet 3·088 2·875 2·674 2·745
SATURATION
Mean
Max.
Min. ·550
·680
·330 ·330
·450
·260 ·260
·320
·190 ·410
·590
·140 Number of observations 7 7 7 10

Extreme variations of temperature 35·4° Extreme variations of
relative humidity ·540 Extreme diff. solar and nocturnal radiation
96·5°

[396] Taken during a violent N.W. dust-storm.

SOLAR RADIATION
MORNING Hour Th. Black
Bulb Diff. Phot. 9.30 a.m.
10 a.m.
10 a.m.
9 a.m.
9 a.m.
9 a.m. 77·0
69·5
77·0
63·5
61·2
67·0 130
124
137
94
106
114 53·0
54·5
60·0
30·5
44·8
47·0 --
10·320
--
10·230
--
10·350 Mean 69·2 117·5 48·1 10·300

AFTERNOON Hour Th. Black
Bulb Diff. Phot. 3.30 p.m.
3 p.m.
3 p.m.
3.30 p.m.
3 p.m. 81·7
80·5
81·5
72·7
72·5 109
120
127
105
110 27·3
39·5
45·5
32·3
37·5 --
10·320
10·330
10·230
10·390 Mean 77·8 114·2 68·4 10·318

NOCTURNAL RADIATION
SUNRISE Exposed
thermometer On earth On grass Temperature
Mean diff. from air
Max. diff. from air
Number of observations 51·1
4·0
9·0
6 48·3
2·5
3·7
3 46·6
6·2
9·0
5

NINE P.M. Exposed
thermometer On earth On grass Temperature
Mean diff. from air
Max. diff. from air
Number of observations 56·4
5·3
7·5
7 53·8
4·9
5·5
6 54·4
7·2
10·0
7

On one occasion, and that at night, the dew-point was as low as 11·5°,
with a temperature of 66°, 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° 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°,
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°, and on
these hills 38°, 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° 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 observationsctaken 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° 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° on the hills, and only 12·8° in
the valley. The range from the maximum to the minimum of each day
amounts to the same in both, above 20°. The extreme variations in
temperature too coincide within 1·4°.

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°, and those at the upper level of
21·2°, 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°, and on the hills to
96·5°. 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° 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
Max.
Min.
Range 57·6
62·0
53·5
8·5 74·0
81·0
63·5
17·5 77·6
87·5
71·0
16·5 64·5
68·7
60·0
8·7 WET-BULB
Mean
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 51·7
8·5
3·8 59·5
18·5
4·0 59·9
26·0
6·8 55·5
12·5
2·5 Elasticity of Vapour 0·352 0·382 0·357 0·370 DEW-POINT
Mean
Max.
Min.
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 46·1
53·6
40·6
16·9
7·0 48·5
56·7
38·0
33·5
6·8 46·4
60·0
36·0
44·2
11·0 47·5
55·6
41·0
24·1
4·4 Weight of Vapour in cubic
feet 3·930 4·066 3·658 4·014 SATURATION
Mean
Max.
Min. ·680
·787
·566 ·460
·818
·338 ·352
·703
·237 ·572
·860
·452 Number of observations 10 8 9 10

Extreme variations of temperature 34·0° Extreme variations of
relative humidity ·623 Extreme diff. solar and nocturnal radiation
80·5°

NOCTURNAL RADIATION

SUNRISE Exposed
thermometer On earth On grass Temperature
Mean diff. from air
Max. diff. from air
Number of observations 53·2
4·5
8·5
9 54·0
3·7
9·0
9 51·5
6·2
7·5
8

NINE P.M. Exposed
thermometer On earth On grass Temperature
Mean diff. from air
Max. diff. from air
Number of observations 59·9
4·6
11·5
10 60·7
3·8
10·5
10 56·4
8·1
13·5
10

SOLAR RADIATION
MORNING Time Th. Black
Bulb Diff. Phot. 9 a.m.
11 a.m.
10.30 a.m.
10 a.m.
10 a.m.
10.30 a.m. 70·0
81·0
71·5
72·0
80·0
78·0 125
119
126
117
122
128 55·0
38·0
54·5
45·0
42·0
50·0 10·300
10·230
10·300
10·220
--
-- Mean 75·4 122·8 47·4 10·262

AFTERNOON Time Th. Black
Bulb Diff. Phot. 4 p.m.
3 p.m.
3 p.m.
3 p.m. 76·5
80·0
76·0
87·5 90
105
102
126 13·5
25·0
26·0
38·5 --
10·210
10·170
-- Mean 80·0 105·7 25·7 10·190

NOCTURNAL RADIATION FROM PLANTS
SUNRISE NINE P.M. Air
temperature 59·5 55·0 67·5 67·0 64·3
Calotropis -- 49·5 -- -- 58·5 Difference --
5·5 -- -- 5·83
Argemone 57·0 47·0 53·0 56·0 57·0 Difference
2·5 8·0 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
Max.
Min.
Range 56·8
70·0
50·0
20·0 82·0
89·0
69·0
20·0 88·6
94·7
81·5
13·2 68·0
74·0
61·0
13·0 WET-BULB
Mean
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 52·5
10·0
1·5 61·2
24·3
12·0 62·4
30·2
14·5 56·8
15·0
6·0 Elasticity of Vapour 0·380 0·385 0·289 0·369
DEW-POINT
Mean
Max.
Min.
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 48·3
53·1
41·1
17·3
5·4 48·7
60·2
40·3
45·2
22·0 40·8
50·9
32·3
57·2
25·1 47·4
51·8
42·6
27·1
10·2 Weight of Vapour in cubic feet 4·240 4·097 2·975 3·933
SATURATION
Mean
Max.
Min. ·754
·831
·570 ·342
·488
·226 ·211
·598
·154 ·511
·703
·415 Number of observations 12 11 11 11

Extreme variation of temperature 44·7° Extreme variation of relative
humidity ·677 Extreme diff. solar and nocturnal radiation 100°

NOCTURNAL RADIATION

SUNRISE Exposed
thermometer On earth On grass Temperature
Mean diff. from air
Max. diff. from air
Number of observations 51·7
5·1
8·0
9 52·4
3·4
7·0
9 48·8
7·0
11·5
9

NINE P.M. Exposed
thermometer On earth On grass Temperature
Mean diff. from air
Max. diff. from air
Number of observations 61·2
6·8
10·5
10 64·3
4·6
8·5
9 55·8
11·8
17·0
9

SOLAR RADIATION
MORNING Time Temp. Black
Bulb Diff. Phot. 11.30 a.m.
10.30 a.m.
Noon
Noon
Noon
Noon 85·5
89·0
90·0
85·0
86·0
90·0 129
132
132
130
138
138 44·5
43·0
42·0
45·0
52·0
48·0 --
--
10·140
--
--
-- Mean 87·6 133 45·8 10·140

AFTERNOON Time Temp. Black
Bulb Diff. Phot. 3 p.m.
--
--
--
-- 85·5
92·5
92·0
89·5
93·5 116
128
120
128
144 30·5
35·5
28·0
38·5
50·5 --
--
--
--
-- Mean 90·6 127 36·6 --

NOCTURNAL RADIATION FROM PLANTS
SUNRISE Air
temperature Barley Diff. Calo-
tropis Diff. Arge-
mone Diff. 61·0
57·0
57·0
58·5
57·0
50·0
50·5
56·0 56
46
52
52
52
45
43
-- 5·0
11·0
5·0
6·5
5·0
5·0
7·5
-- 56·5
48·0
--
--
--
45·5
--
-- 4·5
9·0
--
--
--
4·5
--
-- 57·0
50·0
50·0
--
--
--
--
49·0 4·0
7·0
7·0
--
--
--
--
7·0 55·9 49·4 6·4 50·0 6·0 51·5 6·2 NINE P.M. Air
temperature Barley Diff. Calo-
tropis Diff. Arge-
mone Diff. 68·5
70·0
69·0
74·0
62·5
67·5
61·0 --
--
--
--
51·5
67·5
50·0 --
--
--
--
11·0
10·0
11·0 --
65·0
57·0
59·0
--
62·5
-- --
5·0
12·0
15·0
--
5·0
-- 56·0
67·0
57·0
--
--
--
-- 12·5
3·0
12·0
--
--
--
-- 67·5 56·3 10·7 60·9 9·3 60·0 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°. The nights and mornings are cooler, by 1·2°, the days hotter
by 10°. There were also 10° 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)_

February 20th to March 3rd Hour Sunrise 9 a.m. 3
p.m. 9 p.m. TEMPERATURE
Mean
Max.
Min.
Range 65·3
69·0
57·5
11·5 81·6
83·5
79·5
4·0 88·1
90·0
84·5
5·5 71·1
76·0
68·0
8·0 WET-BULB
Mean
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 57·7
8·0
6·0 65·3
19·0
14·0 63·3
26·5
21·5 60·3
13·0
8·3 Elasticity of Vapour 0·428 0·468 0·324 0·433
DEW-POINT
Mean
Max.
Min.
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 52·0
55·5
45·9
14·1
11·6 54·5
57·9
49·0
33·0
12·9 43·7
47·8
37·9
46·6
42·2 52·3
56·7
46·8
21·9
13·8 Weight of Vapour in cubic feet 4·710 5·000 3·417 4·707
SATURATION
Mean
Max.
Min. ·647
·741
·648 ·421
·479
·344 ·240
·295
·214 ·542
·643
·491 Number of observations 4 3 3 4

Extreme variation of temperature 32·5° Extreme variation of relative
humidity ·527 Extreme diff. solar and nocturnal radiation
110·5°

NOCTURNAL RADIATION

SUNRISE Exposed
thermometer On earth On grass Temperature
Mean diff. from air
Max. diff. from air
Number of observations 59·5
3·5
3·5
2 56·0
1·5
1·5
1 54·7
8·2
8·5
2

NINE P.M. Exposed
thermometer On earth On grass Temperature
Mean diff. from air
Max. diff. from air
Number of observations 71·5
3·3
7·0
3 62·5
5·5
5·5
1 61·0
8·2
11·0
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° 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° and 8·5° 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° of heat, whereas a mean of nine
observations at the same hours in the valley below indicated a loss of
12°.

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° 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°, 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 (p. 363).

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°
greater, that laid on bare earth 6°, and that on the grass 1·4°
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° in temperature, and of 30·6° in the rise of the dew-point. The
saturation-point at Mirzakore was ·331, and at the corresponding hours
at Bhaugulpore ·742.

MIRZAPORE (Mean elev. 362 feet)

March 9th to 13th, 1848 Hour Sunrise 9 a.m. 3 p.m. 9
p.m. TEMPERATURE
Mean
Max.
Min.
Range 61·1
63·0
58·0
5·0 76·1
83·0
71·0
12·0 86·0
--
--
-- 76·0
--
--
-- WET-BULB
Mean
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 48·8
51·5
47·0 58·5
56·5
51·7 61·7
24·3
-- 63·5
12·5
-- Elasticity of Vapour ·236 ·302 ·295 ·480 DEW-POINT
Mean
Max.
Min.
Max. Depression
Min. Depression 34·3
39·7
29·7
32·8
23·8 41·9
--
--
52·3
15·7 41·3
--
--
44·7
-- 55·2
--
--
20·8
-- Weight of Vapour in cubic feet 2·574 3·271 3·089 5·127
SATURATION
Mean
Max.
Min. ·405
·450
·327 ·324
·603
·176 ·264
--
-- ·511
--
-- Number of observations 3 3 1 1

Air in
shade
Sunrise Exposed
Therm. Diff. Exposed
on earth Diff. Exposed
on grass Diff. 60·0
62·5
63·0
58·0 55·0
54·5
55·5
53·0 5·0
8·0
7·5
5·0 --
56·0
50·5
54·0 --
6·5
12·5
4·0 52·0
52·5
50·5
50·0 8·0
10·0
12·5
8·0 60·9 54·6 6·4 53·5 7·7 51·3 9·6

ON THE MINERAL CONSTITUENTS AND ALGÆ 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 Algæ,
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., p. 27), contains
chloride of sodium and sulphate of soda.

2. Mineral water, hot springs, Yeumtong, altitude 11,730 feet (see vol.
ii., p. 117). 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,[397] and
united with its alumina. I found traces only of potash in the salt.

[397] I have, in my journal, particularly alluded to the garnets (an
aluminous mineral) being thus entirely decomposed.—J.D.H.

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., p. 133).—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., p. 13), consists of granite
sand, mixed with sesquicarbonate of soda.

_On the Indian Algæ 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
Algæ 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 Algæ 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,_[398] 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 _Cænocoleus 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.

[398] Two of these appear to be _S. Vaucheriæ_ and _S. inæqualis._

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 Algæ
which grow in iron springs in Europe. At elevations between 5000 and
7000 feet, several European forms occur, consisting of _ Ulothrix,
Zygnema, Oscillatoria, Lyngbya, Sphærozyga, 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 débris of Algæ, and abounding in Diatomaceæ, 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 _Cænocoleus._ 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 Algæ, from 4000 feet to 18,000 feet,
various Diatomaceæ 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_)
Odontidium (_hiemale,_ forma minor)
Epithemia, _n. sp._
Cymbella
Navicula, _n. sp._
Tabillaria (_flocculosa_
Odontidium (_hiemale_)
Himantidium
Odontidium (_turgidulum_)
Epithemia (_ocellata_)
Fragillaria
Odontidium (_turgidulum_)
Dictyocha (_gracilis_)
Odontidium (_hiemale_) 4000 to 7000 feet
5000 to 7000 feet
7000 feet
—
—
6000 to 7000 feet
11,000 feet
16,000 feet
17,000 feet
—
18,000 feet
—
—
— Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim
Momay
Momay
Tibet
Momay
Momay
Momay
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 _ Oscillatoriæ,_ remarkable for their interrupted mode of
growth, complete the list of Algæ, with the exception of one, to be
mentioned presently; as also of _Diatomaceæ,_ 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 Algæ occurred at heights varying from 10,000 to
15,500 feet. As in the Southern Himalayan Algæ, the specimens were
infested with many Diatomaceæ, amongst which the most conspicuous were
various _Cymbellæ_ and _Epithemiæ._ The following is a list of the
species observed.

Cymbella (_gastroides_).
Cymbella (_gracilis_).
Cymbella (_Ehrenbergii_)
and three others.
Odontidium (_hiemale_).
Odontidium (_mesodon_).
Odontidium _n. sp._
Epithemia _n. sp._
Synedra (_arcus_).
Synedra (_tenuis_).
Synedra (_æqualis_).
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 Algæ.
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°. Two _ Confervæ_ 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 _Diatomaceæ_ are:—

Odontidium (_hiemale_).
Odontidium (_mesodon_).
Odontidium _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°) at 16,000 feet, produce a golden
brown _Cænocoleus_ representing a small form of _C. cirrhosus,_ and a
very delicate _ Sphærozyga,_ 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)._[399] In mud from one of the Momay springs (_a_), I
detected _Epithemia (Broomeii n.s.),_ and two small _Naviculæ,_ and in
the spring (_c_) two species of _Epithemia_ somewhat like _E. Faba,_
but different from that mentioned above.

[399] 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)._

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° to 158°, 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° and 112° 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°, 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 Diatomaceæ consisted of:—

Epithemia Broomeii, _n. s._
Epithemia thermalis, _n. sp._
Epithemia inæqualis, _n. sp._
Navicula Beharensis, _n. sp._

The vegetation in the three sets of springs was very different. As
regards the _Confervæ,_ 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 _Diatomaceæ_ 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 _Æcidium_ 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
_Æcidium 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 _Æcidium,_ 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 _Sphœria_ 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.

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
Water 83·84
16·16
————
100·00

_b._—ANHYDROUS EARTH

Humic acid
Humine
Undecomposed vegetable matter
Peroxide of iron and manganese
Alumina
Siliceous matter, insoluble in dilute hydrochloric acid
Traces of soda and muriatic acid 3·89
4·61
20·98
7·05
8·95
54·52
--
————
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.

D.
(Vol. i., p. 37)

AN AURORA SEEN FROM BAROON ON THE EAST BANK
OF THE SOANE RIVER.
Lat. 24° 52′ N.; Long. 84° 22′ 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°; D.P. 41·0°; 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° S., and N. 50° E.; altitude
of upper limb of arch 20°, of the lower 8°. The beams crossed the
zenith, and converged towards S. 15° E. The extremity of the largest
was forked, and extended to 25° above the horizon in the S.E. by S.
quarter. The extremity of the centre one bore S. 50° E., and was 45°
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° broad, appeared in the luminous arch,
bearing from N. 55° W. to N. 10° W.; its upper limb was 10° 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° 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.

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° 40′ to 28° N., and longitude 88° to 89° 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.[400]

[400] 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.

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.

Section of the Sikkim Himalaya along the course of the Teesta River.

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[401] 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.

[401] 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.

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°; 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 débris 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° E to that of Kashmir in 75° 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°
30 minutes is at 16,000 feet, whereas in latitude 35° 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°.

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)[402] 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.[403] 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.

[402] 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.

[403] 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.

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 4000 or 5000 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.[404]

[404] 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.[405] 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.

[405] At vol. i. p. 185, 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.

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.[406]

[406] 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.

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,[407] 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.

[407] 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.

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[408] 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.

[408] 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°, 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.

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° 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°, at Mr. Muller’s; whereas
during the summer I spent at Mr. Hodgson’s it never rose much above
70°, 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° for every 300 feet of ascent; according to
which law Mr. Hodgson’s should not be more than 1·5° 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° (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°, or 2° higher than that of London, and 26° below that of Calcutta
(78°,[409] or 78·5° in the latest published tables[410]); which,
allowing 1° of diminution of temperature for every degree of latitude
leaves 1° 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.

[409] Prinsep, in As. Soc. Journ., Jan. 1832, p. 30.

[410] Daniell’s Met. Essays, vol. ii. p. 341.

A remarkable uniformity of temperature prevails throughout the year at
Dorjiling, there being only 22° difference between the mean
temperatures of the hottest and coldest months; whilst in London, with
a lower mean temperature, the equivalent difference is 27°. 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° at least.[411] The
accompanying table is the result of an attempt to approximate to the
mean temperatures and ranges of the thermometer at various elevations.

[411] 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.

Altitude Mean
Shade Mean
Warmest
Month Mean
Coldest
Month Mean Daily
Range of
Temperature Rain-fall
in
inches 11,000 feet
15,000 feet
19,000 feet 40·9
29·8
19·8 50·0
40·0
32·0 24·0
11·0
0·0 20·0
27·0
35·0 40·0
20·0
10·0 1°=320 feet
1°=350 feet
1°=400 feet

Supposing the same formula to apply (which I exceedingly doubt) to
heights above 19,000 feet, 2° 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° on the south flank of Kinchinjunga, and of 22° 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°=320 feet at 6000 to 10,000 feet, 1°=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° 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° 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° 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° 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°; at Delhi, which has a continental one, to 24·6°; and in
London to 17·5°. At 11,000 feet it amounts to about 20°, and at 15,000
feet to 27°. 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° in Aug. and Sept., and 17° in Dec.
At 11,000 feet it amounts to 12° in Aug. and Sept., and 30° in Dec.
At 15,000 feet it amounts to 15° in Aug. and Sept., and 40° in Dec.
At London it amounts to 20° in Aug. and Sept., and 10° 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[412] by Dr. Chapman, is nearly the same as that of
March and October: January, the coldest month, is more than 13·4°
colder than the mean of the year; but the hottest month is only 8·3°
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°
hotter, and January 14° colder than the mean of the year.

[412] 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° or 15°
above the mean of the day; which excessive heat (usually transient)
the maximum thermometer registers, and consequently gives too high a
mean.

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° 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°, and there is no such accession of temperature till
May, which is 8° 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°, or +67°
above the temperature of the air, is the average maximum effect of the
sun’s rays on a black-bulb thermometer[413] throughout the year,
amounting rarely to +70° and +80° 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° with a difl: of +94°, whilst the temperature of shaded
snow hard by was 22°; at 13,100 feet, in January, at 9 a.m., it has
stood at 98°, diff. +68·2°; and at 10 a.m., at 114°, diff. +81·4°,
whilst the radiating thermometer on the snow had fallen at sunrise to
0·7°. In December, at 13,500 feet, I have seen it 110°, diff. +84°; at
11 a.m., 11,500 feet; 122°, diff: +82°. This is but a small selection
from many instances of the extraordinary power of solar radiation in
the coldest months, at great elevations.

[413] From the mean of very many observations, I find that 10° 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.

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,[414] and found no material difference in the mean of many
observations of each, though often 1° to 2° 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.

[414] 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°, which was 10·8° below the temperature at the time, the
grass showing 6·7°; and on another occasion to 1·2°, when the air at
the time (before sunrise) was 21·2°; the difference therefore being
20°. 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.

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°. During the rains,
3° to 4° 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° to 12,
and from January till May greater still, being as much as 15°. 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° 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° to 2° after sunrise of air in the
shade is hence common in valleys in November and December.[415] 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°, 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.

[415] 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.

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° of difference;
and I have seen 16° at 7,500 feet; but the minimum temperature at the
time is 51°, and the absolute amount of cold therefore immaterial. The
mean minimum of London is 38°, and, when lowered 5·5° by radiation, the
consequent cold is very considerable. Mr. Daniell, in his admirable
essay on the climate of London, mentions 17° as the maximum effect of
nocturnal radiation ever observed by him. I have registered 16° in
April at Dorjiling; nearly as much at 6000 feet in February; twice 13°,
and once 14·2° in September at 15,500 feet; and 10° in October at
16,800 feet; nearly 13° in January at 7000 feet; 14·5° in February at
that elevation, and, on several occasions, 14·7° 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,[416] 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.

[416] 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.

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°, or 3° 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° below it. In London the dew-point is on the
average 5·6° 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;[417] 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°, both before and after eating; in one case it was 120°, in
none below 80°.

[417] I have in a note to vol. ii. p. 160, stated that I never
experienced in my own person, nor saw in others, bleeding at the ears,
nose, lips, or eyelids.

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,[418] 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.

[418] 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° 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°, weighs 8,194·35 gr.; and at pressure 30
in., temp. 80°, 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°, is
20·14 per cent. less than when the pressure is 30 in. and the temp.
80°.
When the air at pressure 23 in:, temp. 60°, 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°, 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.

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 7000 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[419] 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.

[419] Calcutta, Berampore, Benares, Nagpore, Moozufferpore, Delhi, and
Saharunpore.

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;[420] 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.

[420] 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.

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[421]
Range of Pressure
Mean Shade
Maximum Shade
Maximum Sun
Greatest Difference
Mean Maximum Shade
Minimum Shade
Minimum Radiation
Greatest Difference
Mean Minimum Shade
Mean Daily Range of Temps
Sunk Thermometer
Mean Dew-point
Mean Dryness
Force of Vapour
Pressure of Dry Air
Mean Saturation
Rain in inches 23·307
·072
40·0
56·0
119·0
72·0
47·2
29·0
16·0
12·7
32·8
14·4
46·0
34·3
5·1
·216
23·091
·84
1·72 23·305
·061
42·1
57·0
124·0
78·0
50·0
25·5
23·0
15·3
34·2
15·8
48·0
37·2
3·9
·239
23·066
·87
0·92 23·307
·083
50·7
66·5
120·0
60·0
58·4
37·0
27·8
8·7
43·1
15·3
50·0
45·8
5·8
·323
23·084
·82
1·12 23·280
·085
55·9
68·5
125·0
66·0
63·7
38·0
33·0
16·0
48·1
15·6
58·0
49·8
6·6
·371
22·909
·80
2·52 23·259
·088
57·6
69·0
125·0
65·0
65·3
38·0
40·0
10·0
50·0
15·3
61·0
54·4
2·7
·434
22·825
·91
9·25 23·207
·067
61·2
71·0
126·2
62·2
66·7
51·5
47·0
4·8
55·8
10·9
62·0
59·5
2·0
·515
22·692
·93
26·96

July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Mean Pressure of
Atmosphere[421]
Range of Pressure
Mean Shade
Maximum Shade
Maximum Sun
Greatest Difference
Mean Maximum Shade
Minimum Shade
Minimum Radiation
Greatest Difference
Mean Minimum Shade
Mean Daily Range of Temps
Sunk Thermometer
Mean Dew-point
Mean Dryness
Force of Vapour
Pressure of Dry Air
Mean Saturation

Rain in inches 23·203
·062
61·4
69·5
130·0
62·0
65·5
56·0
52·0
3·5
57·3
8·2
62·2
60·7
0·8
·535
22·668
·97

25·34 23·230
·070
61·7
70·0
133·0
62·0
66·1
54·5
50·0
3·5
57·4
8·7
62·0
60·4
1·1
·530
22·700
·96

29·45 23·300
·082
59·9
70·0
142·0
70·0
64·7
51·5
47·5
10·0
55·2
9·5
61·0
58·5
1·4
·498
22·802
·95

15·76 23·372
·075
58·0
68·0
133·0
65·0
66·5
43·5
32·0
12·0
49·5
17·0
60·0
52·5
4·2
·407
22·865
·86

8·66 23·330
·078
50·0
63·0
123·0
68·0
56·5
38·0
30·0
12·0
43·5
13·0
55·0
46·5
3·2
·331
22·999
·90

0·11 23·365
·062
43·0
56·0
108·0
77·2
51·6
32·5
26·0
10·0
34·9
16·7
49·0
31·8
10·6
·198
23·165
·69

0·45 22·289
·074
53·5
65·4
125·7
67·3
60·2
41·3
35·4
9·9
46·8
13·4
56·2
49·4
4·0
·383
22·906
·88
Sum
122·26

[421]
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 than Mr. Muller’s, which is a
little lower, and very near it.

_Horary Observations at Jillapahar, Dorjiling, Alt. 7,430 feet._

JULY, 1848

No. of
Obser-
vations Hour Baro-
meter
corrected Temp.
Air Dew
Point Diff. Tension
of
Vapour Weight
of
Vapour Humi-
dity Pressure
of
Dry Air 7
23
27
22
20
26
12
11
25
23
13
10
6
6
22
6
6
19 1 a.m.
8
9
10
11
Noon
1 p.m.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Midnight 22·877
·882
·884
+·899
·899
·884
·876
·866
·852
·846
–·840
·845
·853
·867
·878
·885
+·887
·887 59·6
62·1
62·6
63·5
64·1
65·0
64·1
64·4
64·8
64·1
64·7
63·7
62·7
61·0
60·7
60·5
60·2
59·8 58·9
60·6
61·3
61·7
62·3
63·1
61·7
61·0
62·6
61·7
64·0
61·5
61·1
59·5
59·4
59·5
59·2
59·1 0·7
1·5
1·3
1·8
1·8
1·9
2·4
3·4
2·2
2·4
0·7
2·2
1·6
1·5
1·3
1·0
1·0
0·7 ·504
·534
·546
·554
·565
·580
·566
·541
·571
·554
·597
·549
·542
·515
·512
·514
·508
·507 5·65
6·03
6·10
6·12
6·27
6·44
6·13
6·00
6·32
6·13
6·62
6·12
6·03
5·74
5·72
5·75
5·70
5·68 ·988
·950
·960
·945
·945
·940
·923
·892
·930
·924
·978
·928
·948
·952
·960
·968
·965
·975 22·373
·348
·338
·345
·334
·304
·310
·325
·281
·292
–·243
·296
·311
·352
·366
·371
·379
+·382

AUGUST

No. of
Obser-
vations Hour Baro-
meter
corrected Temp.
Air Dew
Point Diff. Tension
of
Vapour Weight
of
Vapour Humi-
dity Pressure
of
Dry Air 15
26
28
28
24
23
21
21
21
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19 1 a.m.
8
9
10
11
Noon
1 p.m.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Midnight 22·909
·904
·915
+·917
·915
·905
·898
·884
·873
·855
–·853
·863
·865
·878
·890
+·893
·892
·889 59·8
62·1
63·1
64·3
64·7
64·7
65·3
65·0
64·8
63·9
63·2
62·3
61·6
61·1
60·7
60·3
60·1
60·0 59·5
61·5
61·9
62·7
63·1
63·4
63·3
63·4
63·1
62·4
61·7
60·8
60·4
60·2
60·0
59·7
59·7
59·4 0·3
0·6
1·2
1·6
1·6
1·3
2·0
1·6
1·7
1·5
1·5
1·5
1·2
0·9
0·7
0·6
0·4
0·6 ·514
·549
·558
·572
·580
·586
·584
·586
·579
·568
·554
·538
·531
·527
·523
·518
·517
·513 5·70
6·13
6·20
6·35
6·42
6·50
6·48
6·50
6·43
6·30
6·15
6·00
5·92
5·88
5·85
5·78
5·79
5·73 ·992
·980
·962
·950
·948
·958
·940
·950
·943
·952
·952
·952
·962
·970
·976
·980
·988
·980 +22·395
·355
·357
·345
·335
·319
·314
·298
·294
–·287
·299
·325
·334
·351
·367
·375
·375
·376

SEPTEMBER

No. of
Obser-
vations Hour Baro-
meter
corrected Temp.
Air Dew
Point Diff. Tension
of
Vapour Weight
of
Vapour Humi-
dity Pressure
of
Dry Air 28
29
28
24
23
23
23
23
23
19
19
20
21
22
24
24
23 8 a.m.
9
10
11
Noon
1 p.m.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Midnight 23·000
·013
+·018
·009
22·995
·980
·962
·947
–·944
·944
·948
·958
·975
·986
+·991
·989
·994 59·2
60·1
60·8
61·6
62·4
62·7
62·8
62·3
61·8
60·3
59·4
58·7
58·2
57·8
57·4
57·0
56·7 58·1
58·5
59·5
60·0
60·5
60·5
60·4
60·0
59·9
58·6
58·4
57·4
57·0
56·6
56·4
55·9
55·4 1·1
1·6
1·3
1·6
1·9
2·2
2·4
2·3
1·9
1·7
1·0
1·3
1·2
1·2
1·0
1·1
1·3 ·492
·497
·514
·523
·533
·532
·531
·522
·521
·498
·496
·479
·473
·467
·463
·456
·449 5·50
5·57
5·77
5·83
5·93
5·92
5·90
5·83
5·82
5·58
5·58
5·60
5·33
5·25
5·23
5·15
5·07 ·968
·945
·958
·950
·942
·942
·925
·924
·940
·940
·968
·960
·962
·960
·968
·962
·927 22·508
·526
·504
·506
·462
·448
·431
·425
–·423
·446
·452
·479
·502
·519
·528
·533
+·545

OCTOBER (22 days)

No. of
Obser-
vations Hour Baro-
meter
corrected Temp.
Air Dew
Point Diff. Tension
of
Vapour Weight
of
Vapour Humi-
dity Pressure
of
Dry Air 11
19
20
20
19
13
15
13
13
14
16
13
6
7
3
7
14
18
14 6-6.30
7 a.m.
8
9
10
11
Noon
1 p.m.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Midnight 23·066
·072
·086
·099
+·100
·079
·072
·055
·033
·027
·024
–·022
·033
·045
·038
·061
+·072
·067
·068 54·4
54·3
55·2
56·3
57·1
57·6
57·9
58·0
57·7
57·9
57·9
56·6
55·9
55·4
53·7
55·1
54·6
54·5
54·1 52·7
52·3
53·7
54·4
55·5
55·6
56·1
56·4
56·6
56·2
56·1
54·8
54·4
53·8
53·3
54·1
53·0
53·0
52·8 1·7
2·0
1·5
1·9
1·6
2·0
1·8
1·6
1·1
1·7
1·8
1·8
1·5
1·6
0·4
1·0
1·6
1·5
1·3 ·409
·403
·423
·434
·450
·451
·459
·463
·466
·460
·458
·439
·433
·424
·417
·429
·413
·413
·411 4·65
4·58
4·78
4·90
5·07
5·08
5·15
5·17
5·25
5·16
5·15
4·98
4·90
4·80
4·75
4·83
4·82
4·82
4·65 ·943
·025
·950
·935
·942
·935
·940
·950
·962
·940
·940
·948
·950
·950
·990
·965
·949
·950
·962 22·657
+·669
·663
·665
·650
·728
·613
·592
·567
·567
·–·566
·583
·600
·621
·621
·632
·659
·654
·657

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,[423] 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.

[423] Sunrise; 9.50 a.m.; noon; 2.40 p.m.; 4 p.m., and sunset.

SERIES I. _Observations made at or near Dorjiling._

JANUARY, 1849

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 15
15
10
8
9 The Dale,[424]
Mr. Muller’s
…
…
… 6956
…
…
…
… 9.50 a.m.
Noon
2.40 p.m.
4 p.m.
Sunset 42·9
45·8
48·3
48·6
46·5 32·4
33·8
37·4
37·8
37·1 10·5
12·0
10·9
10·8
9·4 ·202
·212
·241
·244
·238 67·5
72·9
76·1
75·1
71·8 55·3
55·7
55·1
54·8
54·9 12·2
17·2
21·0
20·3
16·9 ·446
·455
·444
·440
·441 57
… … Mean 46·4 35·7 10·7 ·227 72·7 55·2 17·5
·445

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·700
2·63 gr. 0·562
4·86 gr.

[424] Observations were taken by Mr. Muller.

JANUARY, 1850

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 3
6
3
5
5
5
13
4

1 Jillapahar,
Mr. Hodgson’s
…
…
…
…
…
Saddle of road
at Sinchul
Pacheem 7430
…
…
…
…
…
…
7412

7258 Sunrise
9.50 a.m.
Noon
2.40 p.m.
4 p.m.
Sunset
Miscel.
Do.

Do. 32·8
39·5
42·4
41·9
41·1
38·7
41·9
41·1

39·8 30·1
34·7
38·0
37·8
38·5
35·6
39·9
36·4

38·7 2·7
4·8
4·4
4·1
2·6
3·1
2·0
4·7

1·1 ·186
·219
·246
·244
·250
·226
·263
·233

·252 51·5
66·9
74·1
78·3
77·4
72·4
77·9
67·7

71·6 48·5
55·1
51·7
51·4
59·5
54·7
60·1
57·2

50·5 3·0
11·8
22·4
26·9
17·9
17·7
17·8
10·5

21·1 ·354
·444
·395
·391
·514
·438
·525
·476

·379 45
… … Mean 39·9 36·6 3·3 ·235 70·9 54·3 16·6
·435

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·890
2·75 gr. 0·580
4·86 gr.

FEBRUARY, 1850

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 6
18
12
12
17
19
13 Jillapahar
…
…
…
…
…
The Dale[425] 7430
…
…
…
…
…
6956 Sunrise
9.50 a.m.
Noon
2.40 p.m.
4 p.m.
Sunset
Misc. 36·9
42·9
44·8
44·8
44·0
42·4
40·8 34·7
38·6
41·3
37·4
35·6
35·8
35·1 2·2
4·3
3·5
7·4
8·4
6·6
5·7 ·219
·251
·276
·241
·226
·228
·222 60·0
72·8
79·8
82·4
81·1
76·3
69·9 54·2
58·8
58·7
57·9
58·1
60·7
59·8 5·8
14·0
21·1
24·5
23·0
15·6
10·1 ·431
·503
·501
·487
·492
·536
·518 97
… … Mean 42·4 36·9 5·4 ·238 74·6 58·3 16·3
·495

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·828
2·75 gr. 0·590
5·40 gr.

[425] Observations were taken by Mr. Muller.

MARCH, 1850

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 10
8
5
8
6
3 Jillapahar
…
…
…
…
Pacheem 7430
…
…
…
…
7258 9.50 a.m.
Noon
2.40 p.m.
4 p.m.
Sunset
Miscel. 44·2
45·5
46·4
45·5
43·1
44·8 42·7
43·0
44·0
43·4
41·5
44·6 1·5
2·5
2·4
2·1
1·6
0·2 ·290
·293
·303
·297
·278
·310 81·6
88·2
91·3
90·1
82·9
85·0 64·1
57·0
53·2
52·0
63·7
74·8 17·5
31·2
38·1
38·1
19·2
10·2 ·602
·472
·416
·399
·590
·848 40
… … Mean 44·9 43·2 1·7 ·295 86·5 60·8 25·7
·555

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·940
3·42 gr. 0·438
5·72 gr.

APRIL

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 3
3
1
7
2
4
3 Jillapahar, 1849
…
…
Dr. Campbell’s, 1850
…
…
… 7430
…
…
6932
…
…
… 9.50 a.m.
Noon
2.40 p.m.
9.50 a.m.
Noon
4 p.m. 57·0
59·8
60·2
61·8
65·4
57·5
56·9 40·2
44·1
44·4
53·3
52·8
53·7
51·4 16·8
15·7
15·8
8·5
12·6
3·8
5·5 ·266
·305
·308
·417
·411
·423
·392 90·3
97·0
97·7
86·7
91·3
88·6
82·8 71·3
64·5
73·4
66·3
68·8
72·1
73·0 19·0
32·5
24·3
20·4
22·5
16·5
9·8 ·758
·607
·812
·644
·699
·778
·800 23
… … Mean 59·8 48·6 11·3 ·360 90·6 69·9 20·7
·728

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·684
3·98 gr. 0·523
7·65 gr.

MAY

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 3
45 Smith’s Hotel, 1848
Colinton,[426] 1849 6863
7179 Miscel.
Miscel. 57·2
60·4 55·0
57·9 2·2
1·5 ·443
·466 88·6
90·0 78·4
77·2 10·2
12·8 ·951
·917 48
… Mean 58·8 56·5 2·4 ·455 89·3 77·8 11·5
·934

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·926
5·22 gr. 0·698
9·90 gr.

[426] Observations were taken by Mr. Muller.

JUNE

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens.
40 Colinton,[427] 7179 Miscel. 60·9 57·6 3·3 ·483
85·5 78·4 7·1 ·952

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·895
5·39 gr. 0·800
10·17 gr.

[427] Observations were taken by Mr. Muller.

JULY, 1848

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 18
25
24
16
31
31
31 Jillapahar
…
…
…
The Dale,[428]
…
… 7430
…
…
…
6952
…
… 9.50 a.m.
Noon
2.40 p.m.
4 p.m.
6 a.m.
2 p.m.
6 p.m. 63·2
65·0
64·7
63·8
60·2
66·3
63·0 61·4
62·6
62·3
61·5
58·7
63·3
60·9 1·8
2·4
2·4
2·3
1·5
3·0
2·1 ·548
·570
·565
·550
·537
·621
·575 87·0
89·0
88·1
87·2
81·3
88·0
84·8 79·4
80·0
79·4
79·5
79·0
79·6
79·2 7·6
9·0
8·7
7·7
2·3
8·4
5·6 ·983
1·001
·983
·985
·969
·989
·977 176
… … Mean 63·7 61·5 2·2 ·567 86·5 79·4 7·0
·984

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·929
6·06 gr. 0·800
10·45 gr.

[428] Observations were taken by Mr. Muller.

AUGUST, 1848

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 23
21
17
13
31
31
31 Jillapahar
…
…
…
The Dale,[429]
…
… 7430
…
…
…
6952
…
… 9.50 a.m.
Noon
2.40 p.m.
4 p.m.
6 a.m.
2 p.m.
6 p.m. 64·2
64·7
64·7
63·9
60·5
65·3
62·8 62·4
63·3
62·8
62·5
59·5
63·6
61·8 1·8
1·4
1·9
1·4
1·0
1·7
1·0 ·567
·584
·574
·568
·551
·628
·591 85·8
87·2
87·4
86·5
80·8
87·2
83·7 79·1
79·2
79·3
79·5
78·8
79·2
78·7 6·7
8·0
8·1
7·0
2·0
8·0
5·0 ·973
·976
·979
·984
·962
·976
·959 167
… … Mean 63·7 62·3 1·5 ·580 85·5 79·1 6·4
·973

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·995
6·25 gr. 0·818
10·35 gr.

[429] Observations were taken by Mr. Muller.

SEPTEMBER, 1848

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 28
23
23
21
30
30
30 Jillapahar
…
…
…
The Dale,[430]
…
… 7430
…
…
…
6952
…
… 9.50 a.m.
Noon
2.40 p.m.
4 p.m.
6 a.m.
2 p.m.
6 p.m. 60·8
62·4
62·4
62·0
57·4
64·9
60·8 59·3
60·3
59·6
59·6
56·2
60·8
59·0 1·5
2·1
2·8
2·4
1·2
4·1
1·8 ·511
·528
·516
·516
·495
·573
·543 87·0
88·5
88·1
86·9
80·9
88·8
84·7 78·4
78·1
77·4
77·1
78·3
77·4
76·6 8·6
10·4
10·7
9·8
2·6
11·4
8·1 ·952
·943
·922
·914
·948
·923
·899 185
… … Mean 61·5 59·3 2·3 ·526 86·4 77·6 8·8
·929

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·932
5·72 gr. 0·760
9·88 gr.

[430] Observations were taken by Mr. Muller.

OCTOBER, 1848

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 6
6
6
4
8
8
17
19 Jillapahar
…
…
Goong.
Ditto
The Dale,[431]
…
… 7430
…
…
7436
7441
6952
…
… Noon
2.40 p.m.
4 p.m.
Misc.
Misc.
6 a.m.
2 p.m.
6 p.m. 55·9
55·7
55·6
48·3
51·2
55·2
61·4
56·9 55·3
54·9
54·9
48·3
50·2
52·7
56·3
54·2 0·6
0·8
0·7
0
1·0
2·5
5·1
2·7 ·446
·440
·441
·352
·376
·439
·497
·463 84·4
86·0
85·2
81·2
80·7
76·1
87·0
82·8 75·3
73·3
74·4
73·7
66·9
74·2
71·2
73·9 9·1
12·7
10·8
7·5
13·8
1·9
15·8
8·9 ·863
·808
·837
·819
·657
·834
·756
·824 74
… … Mean 55·0 53·4 1·7 ·432 82·9 72·9 10·1
·800

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·950
4·74 gr. 0·658
8·55 gr.

[431] Observations were taken by Mr. Muller.

NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER, 1848

DORJILING CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Place Elev.
(feet) Hour Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 4
8
6
9
19 The Dale[432]
Nov./Dec.
…
December
… 6952
…
…
…
… 6 a.m.
2 p.m.
6 p.m.
2 p.m.
6 a.m. 45·6
60·0
50·6
49·7
44·0 41·4
48·3
44·7
41·7
40·5 4·2
11·7
5·9
8·0
3·5 ·277
·355
·311
·280
·269 67·9
83·3
77·3
79·3
75·8 64·7
65·2
63·1
59·0
62·6 3·2
18·1
14·2
20·3
13·2 ·610
·621
·579
·505
·569 46
… … Mean 49·9 43·3 6·7 ·298 76·7 62·9 13·8
·577

Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere 0·798
3·40 gr. 0·640
6·27 gr.

[432] Observations were taken by Mr. Muller.

_Comparison of Dorjiling and Calcutta._

HUMIDITY WEIGHT OF VAPOUR IN
CUBIC FOOT OF AIR No. of
Obs. Month Dorjiling Calcutta Diff.
Dorjiling Dorjiling Calcutta Diff.
Calcutta 102
97
40
23
48
40
176
167
185
74
46 January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
Nov. and Dec. –·795
·828
·940
·684
·926
·895
·929
+·955
·932
·950
·798 ·572
·590
–·438
·523
·698
·800
·800
+·818
·760
·658
·640 +·224
+·238
+·502
+·161
+·228
+·095
+·129
+·136
+·172
+·292
+·158 –2·68
2·75
3·42
3·98
5·22
5·39
6·06
+6·25
5·72
4·74
6·27 –4.80
5·40
5·72
7·65
9·90
10·17
10·05
+10·35
9·88
8·55
6·27 +2·12
+2·65
+2·30
+3·67
+4·62
+4·78
+3·99
+4·10
+4·16
+3·81
+2·87 998 Mean 0·876 0·663
+·212 4·51 8·07 +3·55

It is hence evident, from nearly 1000 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

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 3
2
1
3
1
6
1
5
5
11

10 Katong Ghat, Teesta river
Great Rungeet, at bridge
Ditto
Tambur river, E. Nepal
Ditto
Bhomsong, Teesta river
Ditto
Little Rungeet
Pemiongchi, Great Rungeet
Punkabaree
Ditto
Guard house (Gt. Rungeet) 735
818
818
1388
1457
1596
1596
1672
1840
1850
1850
1864 Dec.
April
May
Nov.
Nov.
Dec.
May
Jan.
Dec.
March
May
April 60·2
82·8
77·8
60·6
64·2
58·6
68·2
51·0
54·6
70·1
73·5
73·7 55·3
63·5
60·3
57·0
59·1
52·0
66·4
50·2
53·7
55·6
68·3
63·8 4·9
19·3
17·5
3·6
5·1
6·6
1·8
0·8
0·9
14·5
5·2
9·9 ·447
·588
·528
·473
·507
·399
·647
·377
·424
·472
·687
·592 73·2
95·8
91·7
73·3
77·3
71·6
82·6
58·5
73·5
79·2
83·7
92·4 56·7
61·9
78·3
62·7
63·4
57·0
77·4
58·0
66·2
62·6
77·9
67·0 16·5
33·9
13·4
10·6
13·9
14·6
5·2
0·5
7·3
16·6
5·8
25·4 ·468
·557
·947
·571
·585
·474
·923
·489
·642
·570
·938
·660 48
Mean 66·3 58·8 7·5 ·512 79·4 65·8 13·6 ·652

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·717
5·57 gr. 0·663
6·88 gr.

ELEVATION 2000 TO 3000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 2
8
3
3
2
8
12
8
3 Singdong
Mywa Guola, E. Nepal
Pemmi river, E. Nepal
Tambur river, E. Nepal
Blingbong (Teesta)
Lingo (Teesta)
Serriomsa (Teesta)
Lingmo (Teesta)
Ditto 2116
2132
2256
2545
2684
2782
2820
2849
2952 Dec.
Nov.
Nov.
Nov.
May
May
Dec.
May
Dec. 60·5
66·2
55·6
57·3
72·6
75·8
64·1
68·6
56·4 53·4
57·5
53·9
51·6
64·0
67·3
56·8
64·6
53·5 7·1
8·7
1·7
5·7
8·6
8·5
7·3
4·0
2·9 ·419
·481
·426
·394
·597
·666
·469
·610
·420 72·1
75·7
62·9
75·0
81·7
90·7
70·8
87·9
69·5 52·9
68·7
62·3
63·7
73·6
77·7
62·4
74·9
66·5 19·2
7·0
0·6
11·3
8·1
13·0
8·4
13·0
3·0 ·411
·697
·566
·591
·817
·932
·567
·851
·647 49
Mean 64·1 58·1 6·1 ·498 76·3 67·0 9·3 ·675

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·820
5·45 gr. 0·740
7·13 gr.

ELEVATION 3000 TO 4000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 5
9
3
2
2
7
7
1
3
1
1
2
5 Kulhait river
Ratong river
Tambur river
Chingtam
Tikbotang
Myong Valley
Iwa river
Ratong river
Tukcham
Pacheem village
Yankoong
Mikk
Sunnook 3159
3171
3201
3404
3763
3782
3783
3790
3849
3855
3867
3912
3986 Jan.
Jan.
Nov.
Nov.
Dec.
Oct.
Dec.
Jan.
Nov.
Jan.
Dec.
May
Dec. 49·8
44·2
53·0
54·8
56·5
61·4
47·5
56·2
68·8
54·5
50·0
66·1
47·9 47·0
43·0
50·0
49·0
53·4
58·4
45·6
41·1
65·4
46·3
43·6
63·9
45·5 2·8
1·2
3·0
5·8
3·1
3·0
1·9
15·1
3·4
8·2
6·4
2·2
2·4 ·337
·294
·373
·360
·419
·496
·321
·275
·625
·329
·299
·595
·320 65·8
69·9
72·9
74·9
68·0
80·7
73·3
75·8
83·7
73·6
69·1
84·3
69·4 57·3
56·6
63·2
73·0
61·8
71·2
64·7
53·0
76·8
59·4
63·8
75·1
61·1 8·5
13·3
9·7
1·9
6·2
9·5
8·6
22·8
6·9
14·2
5·3
9·2
8·3 ·477
·466
·582
·802
·555
·755
·611
·414
·904
·513
·593
·856
·542 48
Mean 54·7 50·2 4·5 ·388 74·0 64·4 9·6 ·621

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·858
4·23 gr. 0·732
6·60 gr.

ELEVATION 4000 TO 5000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 3
4
2
3
7
3
6
7
10
5
5
2
16
6
4
4
2
4
7
6
3
6
11
9 Yangyading
Gorh
Namgah
Taptiatok (Tambur)
Myong Valley
Jummanoo
Nampok
Chakoong
Singtam
Namten
Purmiokshong
Rungniok
Singtam
Cheadam
Sablakoo
Bheti
Temi
Lingtam
Khersiong
Ditto
Tassiding
Lingcham
Dikkeeling
Tchonpong 4111
4128
4229
4283
4345
4362
4377
4407
4426
4483
4521
4565
4575
4653
4676
4683
4771
4805
4813
4813
4840
4870
4952
4978 Dec.
May
Oct.
Nov.
Oct.
Nov.
Dec.
May
May
Dec.
Nov.
Jan.
Oct/Nov.
Dec.
Dec.
Nov.
May
May
Jan.
Mar.
Dec.
Dec.
Dec.
Jan.
52·0
66·4
57·2
51·3
59·1
60·4
49·6
57·8
62·4
44·7
60·5
54·7
63·8
51·4
50·1
59·0
59·8
60·4
51·0
53·6
52·0
48·5
62·0
49·4
43·6
59·0
54·1
45·8
57·8
50·0
49·1
57·6
61·7
44·3
56·5
44·3
60·1
46·6
44·9
52·3
50·1
56·6
45·2
45·5
46·6
46·1
55·3
34·7 8·4
7·4
3·1
5·5
1·3
10·4
0·5
0·2
0·7
0·4
4·0
10·4
3·7
4·8
5·2
6·7
9·7
3·8
5·8
8·1
5·4
2·4
6·7
14·7 ·300
·506
·429
·323
·487
·374
·362
·483
·553
·307
·466
·307
·525
·332
·314
·405
·374
·467
·316
·320
·333
·327
·447
·219 71·1
85·5
80·8
73·3
81·7
77·4
64·1
83·9
88·6
64·8
79·2
66·5
82·5
70·2
72·9
78·3
81·2
80·0
67·0
77·1
79·7
78·5
80·8
71·0 67·2
74·2
73·7
64·8
72·9
70·2
56·3
76·2
79·0
58·3
69·5
59·7
76·7
55·0
65·7
66·1
74·1
73·8
49·8
70·5
60·8
71·8
62·0
54·7 3·9
11·3
7·1
8·5
8·8
7·2
7·8
7·7
9·6
6·5
9·7
6·8
5·8
15·2
7·2
12·2
7·1
6·2
17·2
6·6
18·9
6·7
18·8
16·3 ·663
·834
·819
·614
·797
·731
·462
·889
·969
·495
·715
·517
·901
·442
·632
·639
·834
·820
·370
·738
·538
·771
·559
·439 137
Mean 55·7 50·4 5·4 ·387 76·5 66·8 9·7 ·675

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·837
4·33 gr. 0·730
7·12 gr.

ELEVATION 5000 TO 6000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 4
4
2
7
5
3
4
6
8
8
7
6
8
5
6
3
8
6
3
4
6
16
2
4
3
3
3
3
2
3
3
22
21
20
21
21 Nampok
Tengling
Choongtam, sunrise
Choongtam, 9.50 a.m.
Choongtam, noon
Choongtam, 2.45 p.m.
Choongtam, 4 p.m.
Choongtam, sunset
Choongtam, 9.50 a.m.
Choongtam, noon
Choongtam, 2.40 p.m.
Choongtam, 4 p.m.
Choongtam, sunset
Sulloobong
Lingdam
Makaroumbi
Khabang
Lingdam
Yankutamg
Namtchi
Yoksun
Ditto
Loongtoon
Sakkiazong
Phadong, 8 a.m.
Phadong, 9.50 a.m.
Phadong, noon
Phadong, 2.40 p.m.
Phadong, 4 p.m.
Phadong, sunset
Tumloong
Tumloong, 9. 50 a.m.
Tumloong, noon
Tumloong, 2.40 p.m.
Tumloong, 4 p.m.
Tumloong, sunset 5075
5257
5368
5368
5368
5368
5368
5368
5368
5368
5368
5368
5368
5277
5375
5485
5505
5554
5564
5608
5619
5619
5677
5625
5946
5946
5946
5946
5946
5946
5368
5976
5976
5976
5976
5976 May
Jan.
May
May
May
May
May
May
Aug.
Aug.
Aug.
Aug.
Aug.
Nov.
Dec.
Nov.
Dec.
Dec.
Dec.
May
Jan.
Jan.
Nov.
Nov.
Nov.
Nov.
Nov.
Nov.
Nov.
Nov.
Nov.
Nov/Dec.
Nov/Dec.
Nov/Dec.
Nov/Dec.
Nov/Dec. 65·8
44·7
54·9
71·5
71·0
66·4
63·5
61·4
76·3
78·8
72·9
69·5
66·9
57·6
44·3
52·1
55·1
45·0
43·6
67·1
42·7
43·0
45·3
54·1
51·9
55·9
60·7
57·4
55·5
53·7
64·2
54·1
57·3
57·3
54·7
51·8 60·8
39·1
54·7
58·9
59·4
59·4
59·2
60·5
66·1
67·8
66·5
66·8
65·4
51·2
43·0
48·1
47·3
43·7
41·7
61·2
34·0
33·9
42·8
50·9
50·8
53·0
56·5
54·7
52·8
52·6
62·6
50·0
51·7
51·4
50·5
48·5 5·0
5·6
0·2
12·6
11·6
7·0
4·3
0·9
10·2
11·0
6·4
2·7
1·5
6·4
1·3
4·0
7·8
1·3
1·9
5·9
8·7
9·1
2·5
3·2
1·1
2·9
4·2
2·7
2·7
1·1
1·6
4·1
5·6
5·9
4·2
3·3 ·537
·257
·438
·504
·513
·513
·510
·532
·640
·677
·649
·655
·627
·390
·293
·350
·340
·301
·280
·544
·214
·213
·292
·358
·383
·413
·465
·438
·410
·408
·570
·375
·396
·391
·380
·355 83·1
65·4
78·2
89·8
92·7
95·4
93·6
89·1
85·3
86·6
86·4
85·3
83·6
79·4
68·8
72·5
75·0
71·0
69·5
87·7
68·2
66·2
72·1
78·3
75·0
80·9
85·6
86·6
85·5
80·6
83·8
75·1
79·7
81·3
80·2
76·7 74·7
38·1
73·9
80·0
79·9
78·7
79·0
77·1
78·9
78·8
78·8
79·3
78·5
65·8
59·9
60·5
64·7
56·5
63·1
74·9
58·1
51·9
63·8
66·1
67·5
67·9
64·8
62·2
61·9
67·4
77·5
61·9
60·1
58·0
58·6
61·2 8·4
27·3
4·3
9·8
12·8
16·7
14·6
12·0
6·4
7·8
7·6
6·0
5·1
13·6
8·9
12·0
10·3
14·5
6·4
12·8
10·1
14·3
8·3
12·2
7·5
13·0
20·8
24·4
23·6
13·2
6·3
13·2
19·6
23·3
21·6
15·5 ·845
·247
·826
1·000
·999
·959
·971
·915
·967
·965
·963
·980
·956
·634
·521
·532
·611
·466
·579
·850
·492
·399
·595
·639
·670
·678
·613
·562
·557
·667
·924
·557
·524
·489
·499
·545 260
Mean 57·7 53·3 4·5 ·438 77·6 67·8 9·8 ·700

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·865
4·70 gr. 0·730
7·34 gr.

ELEVATION 6000 TO 7000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 5
11
11
4
2
4
4
3
1
10
4
6
7
4 Runkpo
Leebong
Ditto
Dholeep
Iwa River
Dengha
Kulhait River
Latong
Doobdi
Pemiongchi
Keadom
Hee-hill
Dumpook
Changachelling 6008
6021
6021
6133
6159
6368
6390
6391
6472
6584
6609
6677
6678
6828 Nov.
Feb.
Jan.
May
Dec.
Aug.
Dec.
Oct.
Jan.
Jan.
Aug.
Jan.
Jan.
Jan. 57·5
47·8
47·8
60·5
41·2
66·7
41·9
54·0
46·6
40·7
63·5
40·8
40·2
50·6 54·8
43·7
43·4
59·9
40·5
64·0
41·9
53·2
36·2
35·8
60·0
34·1
31·8
31·8 2·7
4·1
4·4
0·6
0·7
2·7
0
0·8
10·4
4·9
3·5
6·7
8·4
18·8 ·440
·300
·297
·520
·269
·597
·283
·416
·231
·228
·523
·215
·198
·198 79·5
74·9
66·9
89·4
69·6
86·1
71·3
55·5
78·7
66·3
79·7
64·0
68·5
68·3 73·4
59·7
56·2
81·4
60·2
78·8
60·9
44·1
58·0
54·4
77·5
58·0
53·8
53·6 6·1
15·2
10·7
8·0
9·4
7·3
10·4
11·4
20·7
11·9
2·2
6·0
14·7
14·8 ·810
·517
·460
·046
·527
·962
·539
·305
·490
·434
·925
·489
·426
·423 76
Mean 50·0 45·1 4·9 ·337 72·8 62·1 10·6 ·597

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·845
3·60 gr. 0·701
6·11 gr.

ELEVATION 7000 TO 8000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 1
2
8
1
1
4
8 Pemiongchi
Goong
Kampo-Samdong
Hee-hill
Ratong river
Source of Balasun
Goong ridge 7083
7216
7329
7289
7143
7436
7441 Jan.
Nov.
May/Aug.
Jan.
Jan.
Oct.
Oct. 46·2
49·0
59·1
51·3
36·5
48·3
51·2 33·5
48·5
58·2
26·4
25·3
48·3
50·2 12·7
0·5
0·9
24·9
11·2
0
1·0 ·210
·355
·493
·163
·157
·352
·376 76·8
79·7
83·6
72·8
60·0
81·2
80·7 51·8
69·1
77·4
56·6
52·9
73·7
66·9 25·0
10·6
6·2
16·2
7·1
7·5
13·8 ·396
·705
·922
·466
·412
·819
·657 35 Dorjiling Mean 48·8 41·5
7·3 ·301 76·4 64·1 12·8 ·625

From mean of
above and Dorjiling Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·826
3·85 gr. 0·668
7·28 gr.

ELEVATION 8000 TO 9000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 4
2
1
2
3
4
6
9
1
11
12
7
4
7
10
12
10
10
4
5
6
8
11
11
7
6
8
10
1
1 Sinchul
Sinchul
Ascent of Tonglo
Tambur river
Sakkiazong
Chateng
Buckim
Buckim
Chateng
Lachoong, 7 a.m.
Lachoong, 9.50 a.m.
Lachoong, noon
Lachoong, 2.40 p.m.
Lachoong, 4 p.m.
Lachoong, sunset
Lachoong, Miscellaneous
Lamteng, 6 a.m.
Lamteng, 9.50 a.m.
Lamteng, noon
Lamteng, 2.40 p.m.
Lamteng, 4 p.m.
Lamteng, sunset
Zemu Samdong, 7 a.m.
Zemu Samdong, 9.50 a.m.
Zemu Samdong, noon
Zemu Samdong, 2.40 p.m.
Zemu Samdong, sunset
Zemu Samdong, 4 p.m.
Goong
Tendong (top) 8607
8607
8148
8081
8353
8418
8659
8659
8752
8777
8777
8777
8777
8777
8777
8777
8884
8884
8884
8884
8884
8884
8976
8976
8976
8976
8976
8976
8999
8663 Jan.
Apr.
May
Nov.
Nov.
Oct.
Jan.
Jan.
May
|
|
||
||
| Aug.
|
| and
|
| Oct.
|
| |
| |
| ||
| ||
| May,
|
| June,
|
| July
|
| and
|
| Aug.
|
| |
| |
| ||
| ||
| June
|
| and
|
| July
|
| |
| |
| ||
| ||
Nov.
May 41·7
66·8
56·2
38·0
49·7
43·8
30·2
33·9
67·2
53·3
60·2
61·6
58·1
58·6
55·5
55·9
53·9
62·8
62·8
58·3
56·2
53·3
55·7
59·7
63·1
61·0
57·9
53·8
49·0
55·5 34·3
44·6
54·4
33·9
37·4
43·2
22·8
33·1
60·7
51·1
55·3
57·1
56·4
53·8
54·3
49·6
52·0
56·2
56·2
54·4
54·7
52·5
55·3
52·8
57·1
58·6
56·1
52·6
48·5
50·0 7·4
22·2
1·8
4·1
12·3
0·6
7·4
0·8
6·5
2·2
4·9
4·5
1·7
4·8
1·2
6·3
1·9
6·6
6·6
3·9
1·5
0·8
0·4
6·9
6·0
2·4
1·8
1·2
0·5
5·5 ·216
·310
·434
·213
·241
·299
·143
·207
·536
·388
·447
·475
·464
·424
·432
·368
·400
·461
·461
·435
·438
·407
·448
·412
·473
·500
·459
·407
·355
·373 66·3
96·9
86·8
71·7
74·0
79·2
68·6
69·8
89·7
83·0
87·1
90·1
88·0
87·5
84·5
85·9
59·5
88·3
92·0
92·2
92·3
88·1
80·4
86·3
88·0
89·6
89·3
82·7
79·7
88·6 56·9
75·4
78·9
64·1
62·4
77·5
49·4
52·2
76·8
78·9
79·9
79·4
80·0
79·4
78·7
75·2
56·4
78·7
78·0
78·4
77·1
77·4
79·8
79·0
79·8
78·2
79·0
77·3
69·1
78·1 9·4
21·5
7·9
7·6
11·6
1·7
19·2
17·6
12·9
4·1
7·2
10·7
8·0
8·1
5·8
10·7
3·1
9·6
14·0
13·8
15·2
10·7
0·6
7·3
8·2
11·4
10·3
5·4
10·6
10·5 ·472
·866
·967
·599
·566
·926
·366
·403
·904
·967
·999
·983
1·007
·981
·959
·858
·464
·959
·939
·950
·914
·922
·997
·969
·994
·944
·970
·920
·705
·943 193 Mean 54·5 50·0
4·5 ·388 83·7 73·7 9·8 ·847

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·858
4·23 gr. 0·730
8·75 gr.

ELEVATION 9000 TO 10,000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 4
8
4
1
1 Yangma Guola
Nanki
Singalelah
Sakkiazong
Zemu river 9279
9320
9295
9322
9828 Nov.
Nov.
Dec.
Nov.
June 37·8
42·3
36·2
53·5
60·0 33·1
38·3
35·7
33·3
47·6 4·7
4·0
0·5
20·2
12·4 ·207
·249
·227
·209
·343 72·7
52·2
70·9
80·0
93·3 61·4
48·3
62·1
57·3
81·9 11·3
3·9
8·8
22·7
11·4 ·549
·352
·560
·478
1·062 18 Mean 46·0 37·6
8·4 ·247 73·8 62·2 11·6 ·600

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·747
2·80 gr. 0·724
6·28 gr.

ELEVATION 10,000 TO 11,000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 13
5
4
2
2
4
10
4
3
16
17
9
8
9
15
4 Tonglo
Nanki
Yalloong river
Tonglo top
Yeunga
Zemu river
Wallanchoon
Laghep
Laghep
Thlonok river, 7 a.m.
Thlonok river, 9.50 a.m.
Thlonok river, noon
Thlonok river, 2.40 p.m.
Thlonok river, 4 p.m.
Thlonok river, sunset
Yangma Valley 10,008
10,024
10,058
10,079
10,196
10,247
10,384
10,423
10,423
10,486
10,486
10,486
10,486
10,486
10,486
10,999 May
Nov.
Dec.
May
Oct.
June
Nov.
Nov.
Nov.
June
June
June
June
June
June
Dec. 51·5
42·8
37·7
49·9
45·9
45·4
37·9
46·0
37·6
48·5
57·6
56·1
54·8
53·4
49·8
31·6 50·2
35·5
29·6
47·9
44·7
44·2
30·2
42·4
37·0
47·2
51·4
50·6
50·6
50·6
48·9
24·3 1·3
7·3
8·1
2·0
1·2
1·2
7·7
3·6
0·6
1·3
6·2
5·5
4·2
2·8
0·9
7·3 ·376
·225
·183
·348
·311
·306
·187
·287
·238
·339
·392
·382
·381
·381
·359
·149 88·8
79·5
77·7
89·4
79·5
84·6
76·5
80·9
75·3
79·0
87·4
90·0
88·5
88·7
85·5
74·4 80·8
65·8
62·1
80·5
77·1
75·1
61·9
68·0
69·4
75·1
78·8
79·3
79·7
78·7
78·0
61·9 8·0
13·7
15·6
8·9
2·4
9·5
14·6
12·9
5·9
3·9
8·6
10·7
8·8
10·0
7·5
12·3 1·030
·633
·560
1·018
·915
·856
·558
·681
·712
·856
·965
·979
·991
·962
·938
·558 123
Mean 46·7 42·8 3·8 ·303 82·8 73·3
9·5 ·826

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·878
3·35 gr. 0·740
8·70 gr.

ELEVATION 11,000 TO 12,000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 3
3
1
12
6
8
5
6
6
2
10
9
5
7
4
10
7 Barfonchen
Punying
Kambachen village
Tallum, 7 a.m.
Tallum, 9.50 a.m.
Tallum, noon
Tallum, 2.40 p.m.
Tallum, 4 p.m.
Tallum, sunset
Kambachen Valley
Yeumtong, 7 a.m.
Yeumtong, 9.50 a.m.
Yeumtong, noon
Yeumtong 2.40 p.m.
Yeumtong, 4 p.m.
Yeumtong, sunset
Yeumtong, Miscellaneous 11,233
11,299
11,378
11,482
11,482
11,482
11,482
11,482
11,482
11,484
11,887
11,887
11,887
11,887
11,887
11,887
11,887 Nov.
Aug.
Dec.
July
July
July
July
July
July
Dec.
|
|
| Aug.,
|
| Sep.,
|
| and
|
| Oct.
|
| |
| |
Oct. 36·8
50·2
43·3
50·4
58·1
57·9
55·7
54·3
48·8
30·4
44·4
53·6
54·5
48·8
48·4
42·0
43·5 31·9
49·5
32·5
47·8
50·5
50·8
50·2
50·1
47·3
26·0
43·8
48·9
48·3
47·4
47·1
35·9
37·1 4·9
0·7
10·8
2·6
7·6
7·1
5·5
4·2
1·5
4·4
0·6
4·7
6·2
1·4
1·3
6·1
6·4 ·198
·367
·203
·347
·380
·384
·377
·375
·340
·161
·302
·360
·353
·342
·338
·229
·239 76·3
84·5
80·0
85·0
88·1
89·7
89·3
90·3
86·6
69·9
83·0
87·5
89·7
87·2
85·2
60·6
83·7 69·6
78·8
61·2
80·3
79·7
81·3
80·6
79·4
80·0
59·5
78·9
78·7
77·2
77·2
77·8
58·5
69·7 6·7
5·7
18·8
4·7
8·4
8·4
8·7
10·9
6·6
10·4
4·1
8·8
12·5
10·0
7·4
2·1
14·0 ·719
·963
·544
1·010
·993
1·043
1·020
·981
1·001
·515
·967
·959
·917
·915
·934
·497
·720 104 Mean 48·3 43·8
4·5 ·311 83·3 74·6 8·7 ·865

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·860
3·46 gr. 0·760
9·00 gr.

ELEVATION 12,000 TO 13,000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 9
9
7
7
7
8
2
1
3
7
5
1
1
6
3
4
4
4
4
6
23
13
6 Zemu river, 7 a.m.
Zemu river, 9.50 a.m.
Zemu river, noon
Zemu river, 2.40 p.m.
Zemu river, 4 p.m.
Zemu river, sunset
Tangma Valley
Zemu river
Chumanako
Tungu, 7 a.m.
Tungu, 9.50 a.m.
Tungu, noon
Tungu, 2.40 p.m.
Tungu, sunset
Tungu, sunrise
Tungu, 9.50 a.m.
Tungu, noon
Tungu, 2.40 p.m.
Tungu, 4 p.m.
Tungu, sunset
Tungu, Miscellaneous
Tungu, Miscellaneous
Tuquoroma 12,070
12,070
12,070
12,070
12,070
12,070
12,129
12,422
12,590
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,751
12,994 |
| June
|
| and
|
| July
|
| |
| |
| ||
| ||
Nov.
June
Nov.
July
July
July
July
July
Oct.
Oct.
Oct.
Oct.
Oct.
Oct.
Oct.
July
Nov. 46·6
51·1
51·1
51·2
49·7
48·1
34·8
49·0
37·3
45·1
53·1
62·3
60·0
46·4
38·2
46·5
46·1
43·8
42·3
41·0
43·2
51·3
26·0 45·6
49·0
50·2
50·3
48·9
47·6
22·7
46·6
28·3
44·1
48·6
52·7
53·8
45·3
35·0
42·8
42·0
42·1
40·8
38·7
40·8
47·7
23·4 1·0
2·1
0·9
0·9
0·8
0·5
12·1
2·4
9·0
1·0
4·5
9·6
6·2
1·1
3·2
3·7
4·1
1·7
1·5
2·3
2·4
3·6
2·6 ·321
·362
·376
·377
·360
·344
·143
·332
·174
·305
·355
·409
·425
·317
·222
·292
·284
·285
·271
·253
·272
·345
·146 80·6
84·5
87·0
86·3
86·5
81·4
70·6
93·2
75·1
80·5
87·1
88·9
85·3
84·7
79·4
85·0
85·0
86·4
85·9
83·3
84·5
85·7
75·1 77·7
75·1
82·2
80·0
80·2
77·5
63·7
79·6
73·8
78·3
79·4
77·8
79·5
79·1
77·8
78·6
78·2
78·8
78·5
78·2
78·4
79·0
60·8 2·9
9·4
4·8
6·3
6·3
3·9
6·9
13·6
1·3
2·2
7·7
11·1
5·8
5·6
1·6
6·4
6·8
7·6
7·4
5·1
6·1
6·7
14·3 ·931
·972
1·074
1·000
1·006
·926
·592
·989
·822
·949
·982
·935
·985
·974
·932
·957
·944
·963
·956
·947
·950
·971
·537 140
Mean 46·3 42·9 3·4 ·303 83·6 77·1 6·5 ·926

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·890
3·37 gr. 0·815
9·75 gr.

ELEVATION 13,000 TO 14,000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 7
4
2
21
1
4
10
1
3 Mon Lepcha
Mon Lepcha
Tunkra valley
Jongri
Zemu river
Choonjerma
Yangma village
Wallanchoon road
Kambachen, below pass 13,090
13,073
13,111
13,194
13,281
13,288
13,502
13,505
13,600 Jan.
Jan.
Aug.
Jan.
June
Dec.
Nov./Dec.
Nov.
Dec. 27·1
25·6
45·0
22·7
46·7
39·0
33·8
28·0
40·0 18·5
16·4
43·5
10·5
46·7
11·1
18·6
9·5
18·6 8·6
9·2
1·5
12·2
0
27·9
15·2
18·5
21·4 ·122
·113
·298
·091
·334
·093
·123
·088
·123 70·0
71·7
81·2
70·6
92·9
69·8
78·9
66·4
72·9 50·8
49·4
78·7
53·2
86·6
61·8
62·1
61·8
62·2 19·2
21·8
2·5
17·4
6·2
8·0
16·8
4·6
10·7 ·527
·373
·962
·417
1·230
·555
·561
·555
·563 53
Mean 34·2 21·5 12·6 ·154 74·9 63·0 11·9 ·
636

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·634
1·61 gr. 0·678
6·28 gr.

ELEVATION 15,000 TO 16,000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 1
1
8
12
6
4
8
10
16
8
6
3
2
1
1 Yangma valley
Choonjerma pass
Lachee-pia
Momay, 7 a.m.
Momay, 9.50 a.m.
Momay, noon
Momay, 2.40 p.m.
Momay, 4 p.m.
Momay, sunset
Momay, Miscellaneous
Momay, Miscellaneous
Sittong
Palung
Kambachen pass
Yeumtong 15,186
15,259
15,262
15,262
15,262
15,262
15,262
15,262
15,262
15,262
15,262
15,372
15,676
15,770
15,985 Dec.
Dec.
Aug.
Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Oct.
Oct.
Oct.
Dec.
Sept. 42·2
34·3
42·0
39·4
50·9
51·7
49·7
44·4
41·5
47·6
40·9
38·6
44·6
26·5
44·6 20·7
10·5
41·6
34·7
41·7
43·6
41·9
41·3
38·6
41·4
36·5
29·8
39·8
15·9
43·7 21·5
23·8
0·4
4·7
9·2
8·1
7·8
3·1
2·9
6·2
4·4
8·8
4·8
10·6
0·9 ·133
·091
·279
·219
·280
·299
·283
·276
·252
·277
·234
·184
·262
·111
·300 80·8
77·9
85·5
80·5
87·6
89·5
90·0
88·7
84·2
87·4
83·9
84·0
86·8
78·0
88·8
62·0
60·6
79·4
78·8
78·8
79·7
78·3
77·6
78·4
78·6
69·3
77·5
78·5
58·5
80·5 18·8
17·3
6·1
1·7
8·8
9·8
11·7
11·1
5·8
8·8
14·6
6·5
8·3
19·5
8·3 ·559
·534
·982
·966
·963
·990
·949
·928
·952
·956
·710
·926
·954
·498
1·016 87 Mean 42·6 34·8
7·8 ·232 84·9 74·4 10·5 ·859

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·763
2·55 gr. 0·719
8·95 gr.

ELEVATION 16,000 TO 17,000 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 1
3
1
5
6
1 Kanglachem pass
Tunkra pass
Wallanchoon pass
Yeumtso
Cholamoo lake
Donkia mountain 16,038
16,083
16,756
16,808
16,900
16,978 Dec.
Aug.
Nov.
Oct.
Oct.
Sept. 32·8
39·8
18·0
32·4
31·4
40·2 16·3
38·7
–6·0
25·1
20·2
25·9 16·5
1·1
24·0
7·3
11·2
14·3 ·110
·252
·046
·156
·130
·160 80·7
86·0
79·9
85·0
79·8
87·6 61·1
78·7
57·6
75·7
68·4
78·8 19·6
7·3
22·3
9·3
11·4
8·8 ·543
·959
·483
·872
·690
·963 17
Mean 32·4 20·0 12·4 ·142 83·2 70·1 13·3 ·
752

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·640
1·53 gr. 0·658
7·80 gr.

ELEVATION 17,000 TO 18,500 FEET

EAST NEPAL AND SIKKIM CALCUTTA No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev. Month Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. Temp. Dew
Point Diff. Tens. 1
1
1
3
2
2 Kinchinjhow
Sebolah pass
Donkia mountain
Bhomtso
Donkia pass
Donkia pass 17,624
17,585
18,307
18,450
18,466
18,466 Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Oct.
Sept.
Oct. 47·5
46·5
38·8
54·0
41·8
40·1 30·9
34·6
35·3
4·4
30·3
25·0 16·6
11·9
3·5
49·6
11·5
15·1 ·191
·218
·224
·072
·188
·155 85·7
88·8
90·7
91·1
84·1
86·5 79·7
80·0
79·3
61·1
78·4
65·5 6·0
8·8
11·4
20·0
5·7
21·0 ·991
1·002
·981
·543
·950
·627 10
Mean 44·8 26·8 18·0 ·175 87·8 74·0 12·2 ·
849

East Nepal
and Sikkim Calcutta Humidity
Weight of vapour 0·532
1·90 gr. 0·648
8·78 gr.

SUMMARY

HUMIDITY WEIGHT OF VAPOUR No. of
Obs. Elevations in
Feet Stations Sikkim Calcutta Diff.
Sikkim Sikkim Calcutta Diff.
Sikkim 48
49
48
137
260
76
1023
193
18
123
104
140
53
87
17
10 735 to 2000
2000 to 3000
3000 to 4000
4000 to 5000
5000 to 6000
6000 to 7000
7000 to 8000
8000 to 9000
9000 to 10,000
10,000 to 11,000
11,000 to 12,000
12,000 to 13,000
13,000 to 14,000
15,000 to 16,000
16,000 to 17,000
17,000 to 18,000 9
9
13
23
15
13
14
13
5
10
6
6
9
8
6
5 ·717
·820
·858
·837
·865
·845
·826
·858
·747
·878
·860
·890
·634
·763
·640
·532 ·663
·740
·732
·730
·730
·701
·668
·730
·724
·740
·760
·815
·678
·719
·658
·648 +·054
·080
·116
·107
·135
·144
·158
·128
·023
·138
·100
·075
–·044
+·044
·018
–·116 5·57
5·45
4·23
4·33
4·70
3·60
3·85
4·23
2·80
3·35
3·46
3·37
1·61
2·55
1·53
1·90 6·88
7·13
6·60
7·12
7·34
6·71
7·28
8·75
6·28
8·70
9·00
9·75
6·28
8·95
7·80
8·78 –1·31
1·68
2·37
2·79
2·64
3·11
3·43
4·52
3·48
4·35
5·54
6·38
4·67
6·40
6·27
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.[433]

[433] 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._

No.
of
Obs. Locality Elev.
above
sea.
Feet TEMPERATURE DEW POINT TENSION SAT.
C. T. C. T. C. T. C. T. 4
4
3
3
4
3
2
8 Rummai
Belakoba
Rangamally
Bhojepore
Thakyagunj
Bhatgong
Sahibgunj
Titalya 293
368
275
404
284
225
231
362 82·2
92·8
84·2
90·1
84·9
87·4
80·2
85·5 70·6
85·5
75·0
81·2
77·1
74·9
68·0
80·0 61·7
62·6
68·7
54·1
61·3
64·7
66·2
55·4 60·5
63·0
62·5
44·3
60·8
54·6
53·1
56·1 ·553
·570
·695
·429
·547
·611
·642
·448 ·532
·578
·568
·308
·537
·436
·414
·459 ·517
·382
·605
·313
·466
·480
·635
·376 ·717
·485
·665
·295
·588
·512
·409
·459 31
Means 305 85·9 79·0 61·8 56·9 ·562 ·479 ·
472 ·516 May, 1850
Kishengunj 131 89·7 K 78·6 76·7 K 71·4
·904 K ·759 ·665 K ·793

Vapour in a cubic foot Kishengunj
Calcutta 8·20
9·52 Terai
Calcutta 5·08
5·90

Mean difference of temperature between Terai and Calcutta,
from 31 observations in March, as above, excluding mimima,
Terai
Mean difference from 26 observations in March, including mimima, Terai
Mean difference of temperature at Siligoree on May 1, 1850
Mean difference of temperature at Kishengunj on May 1, 1850 6·9
9·7
10·9
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° north of Calcutta, is at least 6° or 7°
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.”

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° to 62·2°, 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° above the monthly mean; in November and February 4° to 5°;
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. 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° above that of the air, and at
two feet 1·5°. During the winter months the soil is considerably (l° to
3°) 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° 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° warmer than that of the air;
thus, at Jongri, elevation 13,194 feet, the soil in January was 34·5°,
or 19·2° 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°,
February 22°, March 30°, and April 35°. 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° in July (see Tungu observations), by 8° or 9° in September (see
Yeumtong); by l0° in October (see Tungu); and by 7° to l0° 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_

Akbarpore Feb. 11 to 12
Feb. 12 to 13
Feb. 13 to 14
Feb. 15 to 16

Feb. 17 to 19 440
340
345
395

400 3 4
3 8
2 4
4 6
(2 ther.)
4 6
5 6 71·5
71·7
68·5
76·5

76·0 62·0 to 77·5
57·0 to 71·0
53·5 to 76·0
58·5 to 80·0

56·9 to 79·5 67·0
67·3
67·6
67·8

68·0 +4·5
3·4
1·9
8·7

8·0

SERIES II. _Himalaya of East Nepal and Sikkim_

Locality Date Eleva-
tion
(feet) Depth
(ft. in.) Temperature
of sunk
Thermometer Extreme
Temperature
of Air
observed Approx.
Mean
Temp.
of Air
deduced Diff.
between
Air and
sunk
Therm. Base of Tonglo
Simsibong
Tonglo saddle
Tonglo summit
Simonbong
Nanki
Sakkiazong
Mywa guola
Banks of Tambur
higher up river
Wallanchoon
Yangma village
Yangma river
Bhomsong
Tchonpong
Jongri
Buckeem
Choongtam
Junction of
Thlonok and Zemu
Tungu
Tungu
Lamteng
Choongtam
Lachoong
Yeumtong
Momay
Yeumtso
Lachoong
Great Rungeet
Leebong
Kursiong
Leebong
Punkabaree

Jillapahar
(Mr. Hodgson’s)

Superintendent’s house May 19
May 20
May 21 to 22
May 23
May 24
Nov. 4 to 5
Nov. 9 to 10
Nov. 17 to 18
Nov. 18 to 19
Nov. 19 to 20
Nov. 23 to 25
Nov. 30 to Dec. 3
Dec. 2 to 3
Dec. 24 to 25
Jan. 4
Jan. 10 to 11
Jan.12
May 19 to 25

10,846
12,751
12,751
8,884
5,268
8,712
11,919
15,362
16,808
8,712
818
6,000
4,813
6,000
1,850
7,430
7,430
7,430
7,430
7,430
7,430
7,430
7,430
7,430
7,430
7,430
7,430
6,932 2 0
2 0
2 6
2 6
2 6
3 0
3 0
3 0
3 0
3 0
2 0
2 0
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7

2 7
2 5
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
5 0
7 7
5 0
7 7
5 0
7 7
7 7
7 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7 78
61·7
50·7[434]
49·7
69·7
51·5
53·2
73·0
71·0
64·5
43·5 to 45·0
37·3 to 38·0
41·4 to 42·0
64·5 to 65·0
55·0
34·5
43·2
62·5 to 62·7

51·2
59·0 to 56·5
50·8 to 52·5
62·2 to 62·5
72·1
66·3 to 66·0
55·5 to 56·1
52·5 to 51·5
43·5 to 43·0
60·2
65·0
50·8 to 52·0
64·5
61·8 to 62·0
80·0
62·0 to 62·8
61·5 to 62·3
61·6 to 61·7
60·7
60·2
60·5
60·0
58·5
46·0 to 46·7
46·3 to 48·3
55·3 to 56·0
57·4
58·8 to 60·2 67·5 to 67·0
59·0 to 59·5
47·5 to 57·5
47·5 to 53·2
51·2 to 55·5
33·0 to 50·5
37·8 to 55·0
41·0 to 85·0
48·0 to 65·0
44·3 to 60·0
25·0 to 49·7
20·0 to 46·0
23·0 to 40·0
42·8 to 71·3
33·0 to 54·8
3·7 to 34·0
40·0 to 29·8
48·0 to 78·3

38·2 to 57·2
38·0 to 62·3
34·5 to 53·3
47·5 to 78·2
54·8 to 82·0
43·5 to 68·7
39·5 to 59·5
31·0 to 62·5
4·0 to 52·0
39·0 to 62·6
56·0 to 71·0
41·5 to 56·0
63·0 to 60·0
54·0 to 67·8
68·2 to 78·0
58·0 to 66·0
58·0 to 66·0
58·7 to 67·8
58·7 to 67·8
56·2 to 65·0
56·2 to 65·0
52·0 to 61·0
49·7 to 55·2
36·0 to 52·8
34·5 to 53·3
46·0 to 61·3
46·0 to 61·3
48·5 to 65·8

52·5
52·5
52·5
41·2
46·1
63·4
55·6
51·6
37·4
33·0
27·9
57·1
43·9
15·3
32·4
63·2

49·8
50·0
41·1
57·0
72·0
57·0
47·2
41·6
30·6
52·0
63·5
46·0
63·0
60·0
76·0
61·5
61·5
61·7
61·7
60·0
60·0
58·5
56·5
43·0
46·0
54·0
55·0
58·0

– 1·8
– 1·8
– 1·8
+ 9·7
+ 7·1
+ 9·6
+15·4
+12·9
+ 7·6
+ 4·7
+ 3·6
+ 6·6
+11·1
+19·2
+10·8
– 0·6

+ 1·4
+ 7·7
+10·7
+ 5·3
+ 0·1
+ 9·2
+ 8·6
+10·4
+12·6
+ 8·2
+ 1·5
+ 5·4
+ 1·5
+ 1·9
+ 4·0
+ 0·9
+ 0·4
– 0·1
– 1·0
+ 0·2
+ 0·5
+ 1·5
+ 2·0
+ 6·4
+ 1·3
+ 1·7
+ 2·4
+ 1·5

[434] Sheltered by trees, ground spongy and wet.

SERIES III. _Plains of Bengal_

Locality Date Eleva-
tion
(feet) Depth
(ft. in.) Temperature
of sunk
Thermometer Extreme
Temperature
of Air
observed Approx.
Mean
Temp.
of Air
deduced Diff.
between
Air and
sunk
Therm. Kishengunj
Dulalgunj
Banks of Mahanuddy river
Ditto
Ditto
Maldah
Mahanuddy river
Ganges
Bauleah
Dacca May 3 to 4
May 7
May 8
May 9
May 10
May 11
May 14
May 15
May 16 to 18
May 28 to 30 131
130
100
100
100
100
100
100
130
72 2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7
2 7 §82·8 to 83·0
§81·3
†79·3
†87·5
†88·0
†88·8
†87·8
†88·0
87·8 to 89·8
84·0 to 84·3 70·0 to 85·7
74·3 to 90·3
75·0 to 91·5
77·8 to 92·5
78·5 to 91·5
75·3 to 91·3
71·0 to 91·7
73·0 to 87·8
78·0 to 106·5
75·3 to 95·5 82·0
82·0
83·0
83·0
82·3
82·3
82·3
82·3
80·5
83·3 +0·8
–0·7
–3·7
–4·5
–5·7
–6·5
–4·5
–5·7
+7·3
+0·9

SERIES IV. _Khasia Mountains_

Locality Date Eleva-
tion
(feet) Depth
(ft. in.) Temperature
of sunk
Thermometer Extreme
Temperature
of Air
observed Approx.
Mean
Temp.
of Air
deduced Diff.
between
Air and
sunk
Therm. Churra
Churra
Kala-panee
Kala-panee
Kala-panee
Kala-panee
Moflong
Moflong
Moflong
Syong
Syong
Myrung
Myrung
Myrung
Myrung
Nunklow
Nunklow
Pomrang
Pomrang June 28 to 25
Oct. 29 to Nov. 16
June 28 to 29
Aug. 5 to 7
Sept. 13 to 14
Oct. 27 to 28
June 30 to July 4
July 30 to Aug. 4
Oct. 25 to 27
July 29 to 30
Oct. 11 to 12
July 9 to 10
July 26 to 29
Oct. 12 to 17
Oct. 21 to 25
July 11 to 26
Oct. 17 to 21
Sept. 15 to 23
Oct. 6 to 10 4,226

5,302

6,062

5,725

5,647

4,688

5,143
2 7

2 7

2 7
*71·8 to 72·3
68·3 to 64·0
69·2
70·0 to 70·4
*70·2
*66·3
65·0
67·3
63·2
69·2 to 69·3
67·0
66·2 to 66·3
68·3
66·0 to 64·8
64·8 to 64·0
70·5 to 71·3
68·8 to 68·3
70·3 to 68·5
68·3 64·8 to 72·2
70·7 to 49·3
64·2 to 71·2
72·2 to 61·8
65·5 to 69·8
64·0 to 56·0
61·0 to 68·3
64·0 to 75·8
63·7 to 55·7
60·0 to 78·5
65·7 to 55·5
60·0 to 73·8
78·0 to 64·2
70·0 to 55·5
66·0 to 53·0
65·5 to 81·5
75·7 to 58·0
73·0 to 57·0
73·7 to 58·2 69·9
61·7
67·2
64·9
66·0
60·0
64·0
68·5
64·1
69·2
62·8
67·5
71·1
63·0
60·5
71·5
66·1
65·5
65·0 +2·2
+4·5
+2·0
+5·2
+4·2
+6·3
+2·2
–1·2
–0·9
+0·1
+4·2
–1·2
–2·8
+2·4
+3·9
–0·5
+2·5
+3·9
+3·3

* Hole full of rain-water. † Soil, a moist sand. § Dry sand.

SERIES V. _Jheels, Gangetic Delta, and Chittagong_

Locality Date Eleva-
tion
(feet) Depth
(ft. in.) Temperature
of sunk
Thermometer Extreme
Temperature
of Air
observed Approx.
Mean
Temp.
of Air
deduced Diff.
between
Air and
sunk
Therm. Silchar
Silhet
Noacolly
Chittagong
Chittagong
Chittagong, flagstaff hill
Hat-hazaree
Sidhee
Hattiah
Seetakoond
Calcutta† Nov. 27 to 30
Dec. 3 to 7
Dec. 18 to 19
Dec. 23 to 31
Jan. 14 to 16
Dec. 28 to 30
Jan. 4 to 5
Jan. 5 to 6
Jan. 6 to 9
Jan. 9 to 14
Jan. 16 to Feb. 5 116
133
20
191

151
20
20
20
20
18 2 7 77·7 to 75·8
73·5 to 73·7
73·3
72·5 to 73·0
73·3 to 73·7
72·0 to 71·8
71·3
71·0
*67·7
73·3 to 73·7
76·0 to 77·0 55·0 to 81·7
63·0 to 74·5
58·5 to 76·5
53·2 to 75·0
61·3 to 78·7
55·2 to 74·2
50·5 to 62·0
52·7 to 70·2
50·2 to 77·5
55·2 to 79·5
§56·5 to 82·0 69·1
69·5
69·5
63·8
65·5
65·3
65·0
65·0
64·5
70·2
69·3 +7·7
+3·1
+3·8
+9·0
+8·3
+6·6
+6·3
+6·0
+3·2
+3·3
+7·2

* Shaded by trees. † Observations at the Mint, etc., by Mr. Muller.
§ Observations for temperature of air, taken at the Observatory.

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° 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°–9° 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.

Month No. of
Obs. at
Jillapahar Temp. Temp.
Calcutta Equiv.
of
1° Fahr. July
August
September
October 284
378
407
255 61·7
61·7
58·9
55·3 86·6
85·7
84·7
83·3 364 feet
346 feet
348 feet
316 feet 1,324 … Mean 344 feet

II.—_Winter or dry season observations 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°=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°=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°=290 ft. 4. Miscellaneous (11)
observations at Leebong; elev. 6000 feet; in February;
free exposure all round 1°=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°=252 ft.
———— Mean of winter observations
Mean of summer observations

Mean 1°=286 ft.
1°=344 ft.
————
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._

Month Number of
Observations Difference of
Temperature Equivalent January
February
March
April
March and April
July
August
September
October 27
84
37
7
29
83
74
95
18 30·4
32·8
41·9
36·0
37·3
23·6
22·4
25·7
29·5 1°=287 ft.
1°=265 ft.
1°=196 ft.
1°=236 ft.
1°=224 ft.
1°=389 ft.
1°=415 ft.
1°=350 ft.
1°=297 ft. Sum 454 Mean 31·1 Mean 1°=295 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°
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._

Elevation Number
of Stations Number of
Observations Equivalent 1,000 to 4,000 ft.
4,000 to 8,000 ft.
8,000 to 12,000 ft.
12,000 to 17,000 ft. 27
52
20
14 111
197
84
54 1°=215 ft.
1°=315 ft.
1°=327 ft.
1°=377 ft. Sum 113 Sum 446 Mean 1°=308 ft.

The total number of comparative observations taken during that journey,
amounted to 563, and the mean equivalent was 1°=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._

Elevation Number
of Stations Number of
Observations Equivalent 1,000 to 4,000 ft.
4,000 to 8,000 ft.
8,000 to 12,000 ft.
12,000 to 17,000 ft. 10
21
18
29 45
283
343
219 1°=422 ft.
1°=336 ft.
1°=355 ft.
1°=417 ft. Sum 78 Sum 890 Mean 1°=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°=348
ft.
At 17 stations lower in elevation 1°=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°=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 Upper Stations Lower Stations February and March
February

April
April
March and April
March, April, May Jillapahar, 7,430 ft.
Ditto

Leebong, 6000 ft.
Jillapahar, 7,430 ft.
Khersiong, 4,813 ft.
Jillapahar, 7,430 ft. Leebong, 6000 ft.
Guard House,
Great Rungeet, 1,864 ft.
Ditto
Khersiong, 4,813 ft.
Punkabaree, 1,850 ft.
Ditto 1°=269 ft.

1°=298 ft.
1°=297 ft.
1°=297 ft.
1°=223 ft.
1°=253 ft. Mean 1°=273 ft.

The above results would seem to indicate that up to an elevation of
7,500 feet, the temperature diminishes rather more than 1° 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°=300 feet, for elevations from 1,000 to 8,000 feet.
1°=320 feet, for elevations from 8,000 to 10,000 feet.
1°=350 feet, for elevations from 10,000 to 14,000 feet.
1°=400 feet, for elevations from 14,000 to 18,000 feet.

VIII.—_Khasia mountain observations._

Date Calcutta
Obs. Number
of
Obs. Churra
Obs. Number
of
Obs. Altitude
above
the Sea Churra Poonji, June 13 to 26
Churra Poonji, Aug. 7 to Sept. 4
Churra Poonji, Oct. 29 to Nov. 16 86·3
84·6
80·7 63
196
85 70·1
69·2
63·1 67
214
133 1°=300 ft.
1°=331 ft.
1°=282 ft. 4,069 ft.
4,225 ft.
4,225 ft. 354 414 Mean, 304 ft.

Date Calcutta
Obs. Number
of
Obs. Khasia
Obs. Number
of
Obs. Altitude
above
the Sea Kala-panee, June, Aug., Sept.
Moflong, June, July, Aug., Oct.
Syong
Myrung, Aug.
Myrung, Oct.
Nunklow
Mooshye, Sept. 23
Pomrang, Sept. 23
Amwee, Sept. 23
Joowy, Sept. 23 85·5
85·9
85·1
89·1
82·9
86·4
78·5
82·7
79·9
79·5 35
73
4
42
21
139
9
51
15
11 67·4
68·8
65·0
69·7
63·2
70·9
66·3
65·8
67·1
69·0 35
74
6
41
58
139
12
51
11
7 1°=345 ft.
1°=373 ft.
1°=332 ft.
1°=343 ft.
1°=336 ft.
1°=372 ft.
1°=499 ft.
1°=369 ft.
1°=396 ft.
1°=567 ft. 5,302 ft.
6,062 ft.
5,734 ft.
5,632 ft.
5,632 ft.
4,688 ft.
4,863 ft.
5,143 ft.
4,105 ft.
4,387 ft. 400 434 1°=385 ft.

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.

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° and the boiling-point; from which comparison it appears, that an
error of l·5° 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°, in lat.
45°, which, differing only ·002 from the barometric height
corresponding to 212° Fahrenheit, as determined experimentally by
Regnault, gives 29·921 as the pressure corresponding to 212° 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°, 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° to
212·6°, 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° 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° Fahrenheit, using the Calcutta and upper station observations,
and 65·3° on the assumption of a fall of 1° for every 330 feet. To
show, however, how great an error may accrue in individual cases from
using the formula of 1° 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°, 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°
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°, and
as deduced from the formula to be 73·1°. Here, however, the equivalent
in feet for 1° temp. is in summer very high, being 1°=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._

Place Month Elevation
by Barom.
or
Trigonom. Temp.
B.P. Air Elevation
by B.P. Error

Great Rungeet river
Bhomsong
Guard House, Great Rungeet
Choongtam
Dengha
Mr. Muller’s (Dorjiling)
Dr. Campbell’s (Dorjiling)
Mr. Hodgson’s (Dorjiling)
Sinchul
Lachoong
Lamteng
Zemu Samdong
Mainom
Junction of Zemu & Thlonok
Tallum
Yeumtong
Zemu river
Tungu
Jongri
Zemu river
Lachee-pia
Momay
Palung
Kongra Lama
Snow-bed above Yeumtong
Tunkra pass
Yeumtso
Donkia
Mountain above Momay
Sebolah pass
Kinchinjow
Donkia Mountain
Donkia Mountain
Bhomtso
Donkia pass
Feb.
Dec.
Apr.
Aug.
Aug.
Feb.
Apr.
Feb.
Jan.
Aug.
Aug.
July
Dec.
July
July
Sept.
June
July/Oct.
Jan.
June
Aug.
Sept.
Oct.
July
Sept.
Aug.
Oct.
Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Sept.
Oct.
Sept. (feet)
B. 818
1,544
1,864
5,268
6,368
Tr. 6,925
6,932
B. 7,429
Tr. 8,607
B. 8,712
8,884
8,976
Tr. 10,702
B. 10,846
11,482
11,919
12,070
12,751
13,194
13,281
15,262
15,362
15,620
15,694
15,985
16,083
16,808
16,978
17,394
17,585
17,624
18,510
18,307
18,450
18,466
210·7
210·2
208·1
202·6
200·6
199·4
200·1
199·4
197·0
196·4
196·3
196·1
193·4
193·6
191·8
191·3
190·4
189·7
188·8
188·5
186·0
186·1
185·4
184·1
184·6
164·1
183·1
182·4
181·9
181·9
181·0
180·6
179·9
181·2
181·2
56·3
58·0
72·7
65·0
68·0
41·3
59·5
47·6
41·7
54·6
77·0
58·6
38·0
52·0
54·6
52·2
48·5
43·4
26·0
47·0
42·8
48·6
45·8
41·5
44·5
39·0
15·0
41·0
47·8
46·5
47·5
37·1
38·8
52·0
45·5 (feet)
904
1,321
2,049
5,175
6,246
7,122
6,745
7,318
8,529
8,777
8,937
8,916
10,516
10,872
11,451
11,887
12,139
12,696
13,151
13,360
14,912
14,960
15,437
16,041
15,816
16,317
16,279
17,049
17,470
17,517
18,026
18,143
18,597
18,305
17,866 (feet)
+ 86
– 223
+ 185
– 93
– 122
+ 197
– 187
– 111
– 78
+ 65
+ 53
– 60
– 186
+ 26
– 31
– 32
+ 69
– 55
– 43
+ 79
– 350
– 402
– 183
+ 347
– 169
+ 54
– 529
+ 71
+ 76
– 68
+ 402
– 367
+ 290
– 145
– 600 Mean – 58

SERIES II.—_Khasia Observations._

Place Month Elevation
by
Barometer Temp.
B.P. Air Elevation
by B.P. Diff.

Churra
Amwee
Nurtiung
Nunklow
Kala-panee

Myrung
Syong
Moflong

Chillong
June
September
October
July
June, July,
Sept., Oct.
July
July
July, Aug.,
Oct., Nov.
November (feet)
4,069
4,105
4,178
4,688
5,302

5,647
5,725
6,062

6,662
204·4
205·1
205·0
203·9
202·2

201·9
201·8
201·4

201·2
70·3
67·7
70·0
69·8
65·8

69·4
70·8
64·8

62·8 (feet)
4,036
4,041
4,071
4,333
5,202

5,559
5,632
5,973

6,308 (feet)
– 33
– 64
– 107
– 355
– 100

– 88
– 93
– 89

– 354 Mean 5,160 5·016 – 143

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. 7,430 feet, Lat. 27° 3′ N., Long. 88° 13′
E._
A.—APRIL 19TH, 1850. _Watch slow 1′ 15″ mean time._

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 8.00 to 8.13 a.m.
8.15 to 8.28 a.m.
9.00 to 9.13 a.m.
10.00 to 10.13 a.m.
11.00 to 11.13 a.m.
Noon to 12.13 p.m.
1.00 to 1.13 p.m.
2.00 to 2.13 p.m. 11·1
15·0
17·7
19·1
19·0
18·8
17·2
17·4 65·5
69·5
71·5
72·5
75·0
75·0
73·3
74·0 9·9900
12·2645
14·5140
15·4710
14·9150
12·7600
13·8976
13·8330 22·960

22·948
22·947
22·946
22·944
22·939
22·914 53·5

56·0
57·0
58·5
60·3
59·4
60·3 33·8

37·2
39·7
38·2
44·8
40·7
44·1 19·7

18·8
17·3
20·3
15·5
18·7
16·2 ·505

·513
·550
·500
·592
·546
·577 88·0
111·5
110·0
121·0
125·0
120·0
122·0
108·0 Day unexceptional,
wind S.W.,
after 10 a.m. squally.

Dense haze over
snowy mountains.

B.—APRIL 20TH.

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 8.0 to 8.30 a.m.
9.0 to 9.13 a.m.
10.0 to 10.13 a.m. 11·8
17·8
18·8 64·0
73·3
65·0 10·9150
14·2750
14·7580 22·969
22·974
22·985 54·2
56·2
57·0 43·4
44·1
42·5 10·8
12·1
14·5 ·691
·662
·609 74·0
92·0
92·0 Dense haze,
S.E. wind,
cloudless sky.

_Superintendent’s House, Dorjiling, Elev. 6,932 feet._
C.—APRIL 21ST. _Watch slow 1′ mean time._

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 8.35 to 8.48 a.m.
9.07 to 9.20 a.m.
10.00 to 10.13 a.m.
11.00 to 11.13 a.m. 17·3
20·9
23·9
24·4 65·0
72·7
77·3
81·0 15·7084
16·8872
18·3791
17·8864
23·447 56·4
63·8
60·8 47·6
49·9
49·2 8·8
13·9
11·6 ·741
·628
·677 97.0
100·0
109·0
107·5 Day very fine,
snowy mts. in
dull red haze,
wind S.E. faint.

_Rampore Bauleah (Ganges). Elev. 130 feet, Lat. 24° 24′ N., Long. 88°
40′ E._
MAY 17TH, 1850. _Watch slow 15″ mean time._

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 7.51 to 8.13 a.m.
9.03 to 9.17 a.m.
9.20 to 9.33 a.m.
11.15 to 11.28 a.m.
11.32 to 11.45 a.m.
1.20 to 1.33 p.m.
1.40 to 1.53 p.m. 13·0
19·5
21·2
21·1
16·5
21·6
21·4 88·0
96·0
107·0
105·0
108·7
108·5
113·7 8·8790
12·5190
12·7836
12·8499
9·8770
12·9348
12·4976 29·698

29·615

29·620 87·5
92·0
92·3
98·5
98·3
104·5
105·8 80·1
81·2
80·2
74·8
74·3
76·7
72·2 7·4
10·8
12·1
23·7
24·0
27·8
33·6 ·793
·715
·687
·478
·475
·425
·355 91·0
83·8
132·0
98·5
142·0
144·0
134·0 S.E. wind, very
hazy to west,
sky pale blue.
Wind west,
rising.

_Churra, Khasia Mountains. Elev. 4,225 feet, Lat. 25° 15′ N., Long. 91°
47′ E._
A.—NOVEMBER 4TH, 1850. _Watch slow 7′ mean time._

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 6.20 to 6.30 a.m.
6.32 to 6.42 a.m.
7.55 to 8.05 a.m.
8.08 to 8.18 a.m.
8.20 to 8.30 a.m. 5·0
7·4
20·0
21·0
24·2 63·7
65·4
77·5
82·0
85·8 4·6400
6·6896
15·2400
15·2040
16·8432 25·781 57·8
59·0
63·5
64·4
64·8 53·1
54·8
56·9
57·3
59·5 4·7
4·2
6·6
7·1
5·3 ·850
·870
·806
·790
·837 75·0
83·0
108·0
106·5
113·5 Sky faint blue,
cloudless, wind
S.W., clouding.

B.—NOVEMBER 5TH. _Watch slow 7′ mean time._

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 6.39 to 6.49 a.m.
6.51 to 7.01 a.m.
7.56 to 8.06 a.m.
8.08 to 8.21 a.m.
9.26 to 9.36 a.m.
9.37 to 9.47 a.m.
10.57 to 11.07 a.m. 11·2
13·4
18·4
20·4
23·8
25·1
29·0 70·2
72·8
73·2
77·7
79·5
84·0
89·5 9·3408
10·8138
15·0161
15·4836
17·8072
17·7959
19·5460 59·4
60·5
61·7
63·3

66·7 57·6
57·8
57·7
58·7

60·8 1·8
2·7
4·0
4·6

5·9 ·940
·918
·875
·860

8·28 126·0 Wind S.W.,
clouds rise and
disperse. Sky pale.

C.—NOVEMBER 6TH. _Watch slow 7′ mean time._

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 6.05 to 6.18 a.m.
6.22 to 6.35 a.m.
6.38 to 6.51 a.m.
8.27 to 8.37 a.m.
8.39 to 8.52 a.m. 2·6
6·5
9·6
21·7
23·0 62·0
63·5
66·7
78·8
81·7 2·4986
6·0710
8·5152
16·2750
19·4750 25·781 56·5
57·0
61·0
64·2
64·5 54·5
55·1
57·4
59·3
59·4 2·0
1·9
3·6
4·9
5·1 ·935
·935
·888
·855
·847

100·0
105·0 Sunrise, 6, pale
yellow red,
cloudless.
Cirrhus below.

D.—NOVEMBER 14TH, 1850.

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 6.12 to 6.22 a.m.
6.24 to 6.37 a.m.
7.13 to 7.23 a.m.
7.24 to 7.34 a.m.
8.34 to 8.44 a.m.
8.47 to 9.00 a.m.
9.53 to 10.03 a.m.
10.04 to 10.17 a.m.
11.24 to 11.31 a.m. 2·9
6·1
12·4
14·7
19·9
21·7
23·5
25·3
33·3 60·6
66·0
70·8
76·0
82·8
88·8
86·6
89·5
111·5 3·5988
5·4472
10·2672
11·4025
14·2653
14·7343
16·2620
17·0775
20·7014 25·783

25·832

25·819 51·5
52·7
56·5
57·8
59·8
60·5
67·2
67·0
64·6 49·4
50·3
52·3
53·1
50·8
51·6
61·6
58·8
59·0 2·1
2·4
4·2
4·7
9·0
8·9
5·6
8·2
5·6 ·930
·925
·900
·855
·742
·730
·832
·778
·832

98·0
104·0
117·0
121·0
127·0
133·0
130·0

Thick cumulus
low on plains.
Sunrise yellow
red.
Cloudless.

Clouds rise.

E.—NOVEMBER 15TH, 1850.

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. 9.53 to 10.06 a.m.
10.50 to 11.03 a.m.
11.31 to 11.44 a.m.
12.33 to 12.46 p.m.
1.07 to 1.21 p.m.
2.47 to 3.00 p.m.
3.48 to 4.00 p.m.
4.03 to 4.16 p.m. 25·8
26·1
28·5
30·9
29·1
21·1
16·7
16·2 78·0
80·5
84·0
91·5
90·5
75·0
73·0
75·0 17·5306
19·1835
20·2065
20·4267
20·4388
16·5635
13·4435
12·7170 25·854

25·844

25·808

25·803 63·0
64·0
65·3
65·8
67·0
67·2
62·0
61·5 55·3
52·8
51·9
51·2
49·6
56·6
50·8
50·5 8·7
11·2
13·4
14·6
17·4
10·6
11·2
11·0 ·772
·690
·638
·620
·560
·708
·690
·692 Sky cloudless.
Wind N.E.

_Silchar (Cachar). Elev. 116 feet, Lat. 24° 30′ N., Long. 93° E.
(approximate)_
NOVEMBER 26TH, 1850. _Watch slow 13′ 39″ mean time._

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. 9.11 to 9.24 a.m.
9.34 to 9.41 a.m.
9.50 to 9.57 a.m.
10.07 to 10.14 a.m.
11.03 to 11.16 a.m.
Noon to 12.03 p.m.
12.58 to 1.11 p.m.
2.51 to 3.04 p.m.
3.55 to 4.08 p.m.
4.09 to 4.22 p.m.
4.23 to 4.36 p.m. 19·4
22·7
25·3
26·5
26·3
26·4
27·6
23·0
17·6
15·5
12·0 69·0
81·0
87·5
91·5
89·0
90·0
94·0
93·0
91·5
93·5
93·7 16·4706
16·5937
17·3558
17·5695
17·5251
17·8144
17·9676
15·0880
11·6688
11·0215
7·8360

29·999

29·967

29·892

29·881 66·3

68·7
70·3
73·2
74·5
76·8
78·5
79·5
79·4
78·5 63·5

61·5
62·7
60·3
61·7
60·3
62·1
57·0
62·1
62·1 2·8

7·2
7·6
12·9
12·8
16·5
16·4
22·5
17·3
16·4 ·860

·788
·780
·657
·658
·586
·588
·480
·570
·588 Dense fog till
7.30 a.m. Wind
north. Clear.

Wind N.E.
Light cirrhus low.

Streaks of
cirrhus aloft.

Sun sets in hazy cirrhus.

_Chittagong, Elev. 200 feet, Lat. 22° 20′ N., Long. 91° 55′ E._
A.—DECEMBER 31ST, 1850. _Watch slow 3′ 45″ mean time._

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 7.39 to 7.52 a.m.
8.40 to 8.53 a.m.
9.04 to 9.08 a.m.
9.52 to 9.56 a.m.
10.02 to 10.06 a.m.
11.16 to 11.29 a.m.
11.52 to 11.56 a.m.
1.38 to 1.41 p.m.
1.47 to 1.51 p.m.
3.10 to 3.17 p.m.
3.18 to 3.25 p.m. 10·0
21·3
23·2
24·3
25·1
24·3
26·6
24·7
25·4
21·1
19·3 70·0
91·5
89·5
87·3
90·5
84·5
92·6
84·0
90·7
86·0
89·3 8·3700
14·1219
15·6136
16·7341
16·7668
17·1558
17·5028
17·5123
16·8418
14·6645
13·0468
29·874

29·923

29·892

29·831 57·0
59·5
63·3
64·5
65·7
68·5
69·5
71·7

71·0 55·7
57·2
59·7
61·3
60·4
58·6
59·2
61·8

60·5 1·3
2·3
3·6
3·2
5·3
9·9
10·3
9·9

10·5 ·960
·920
·890
·900
·840
·722
·710
·720

·710
127·0

142·0
148·0
150·0 Cloudless. Mountains
clear. Wind
N.N.E. Cool.
Wind N.W.

Wind S.W.

Clouds about
in patches.

B.—JANUARY 1, 1851. Watch slow 3′ 45″ mean time.

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 7.34 to 7.41 a.m.
8.38 to 8.45 a.m.
9.44 to 9.51 a.m.
10.46 to 10.53 a.m.
11.50 to 11.57 a.m.
12.06 to 12.13 p.m.
12.58 to 1.02 p.m.
1.45 to 1.52 p.m.
3.15 to 3.22 p.m.
4.27 to 4.34 p.m.
4.36 to 4.43 p.m.
4.45 to 4.52 p.m.
4.56 to 5.09 p.m.
5.12 to 5.18 p.m. 10·0
16·0
19·5
21·0
21·5
24·1
23·9
21·4
18·1
10·2
9·8
8·5
5·6
3·8 69·4
70·0
74·7
78·2
81·2
88·0
87·2
84·5
82·5
82·0
84·0
85·0
85·0
84·0 8·4200
13·3920
15·3660
15·8550
15·6950
16·4603
16·4432
15·0870
13·0320
7·3746
6·9482
5·9670
3·9312
2·6942 29·948

29·891

29·850

29·798

29·778 55·4
58·9
63·2
66·7
69·8
70·3
71·0
71·3
71·3
70·0

67·5
68·7 54·0
57·7
61·7
62·4
58·3
56·0
56·7
57·5
57·1
59·5

62·7
62·2 1·4
1·2
1·5
4·3
11·5
14·3
14·3
13·8
14·2
10·5

4·8
6·5 ·953
·970
·960
·870
·688
·625
·625
·633
·625
·708

·855
·810

104·5
115·0
120·0
117·0
122·5

117·0 Mist rises and
drifts westward
till 7.30 a.m.

Wind N.W.,
clouds rise.

Sunset cloudless.

C.—JANUARY 2, 1851. Watch slow 3′ mean time.

Hour Act. Temp.
Act. Act.
reduced Barom. Air D.P. Diff. Sat. Black
Bulb 10.02 to 10.09
10.20 to 10.24
12.03 to 12.10 p.m.
12.22 to 12.25 p.m.
2.04 to 2.08 p.m.
2.10 to 2.14 p.m. 19·2
22·6
24·7
25·9
23·3
23·8 71·0
79·0
89·2
95·5
91·5
93·0 15·8592
16·9048
16·6972
18·6796
15·4479
15·6128
29·861
29·858 64·5
65·6
69·0
70·7
71·2 60·6
61·4
59·3
57·5
61·0 3·9
4·2
9·7
3·2
10·2 ·878
·872
·728
·650
·718 116·0

119·0

112·0 Low, dense fog
at sunrise,
clear at 9 a.m.
Hills hazy and
horizon grey.

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.

Most 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
Obs. Name of Locality Elevation
Feet
1
2
3
2
4
1
2
1
1
1
1
4
1
3
1
3
3
1
1
2
4
1
3
4
4 Burdwan
Gyra
Fitcoree
Tofe Choney
Maddaobung
Paras-nath saddle
Paras-nath cast peak
Paras-nath flagstaff
Paras-nath lower limit of _Clematis_ and _Berberis_
Doomree
Highest point on grand trunk-road
Belcuppee
Hill 236th mile-stone
Burree
Hill 243rd mile-stone
Chorparun
Dunwah
Bahra
284th mile-stone
Sheergotty
Muddunpore
312th mile-stone
Naurungabad
Baroon (on Soane)
Dearee (on Soane) 93
630
860
912
1230
B.4231
4215
4428
3162
996
1446
1219
1361
1169
1339
1322
625
479
474
460
402
365
337
344
332

SERIES II.—_Elevations in the Soane Valley. March, 1848._

No.
of
Obs. Name of Locality Elevation
Feet
3
6
2
4
3
6
4
1
3
1
9
4
4
4
7 Tilotho
Akbarpore
Rotas palace
Tura
Soane-pore
Kosdera
Panchadurma
Bed of Soane above Panchadurma
Pepura
Bed of Soane river
Chahnchee
Hirrah
Kotah
Kunch
Sulkun 395
403
1489
453
462
445
492
482
587
400
499
531
541
561
684

SERIES III.—_Elevations on the Kymore Hills. March, 1848._

No.
of
Obs. Name of Locality Elevation
Feet
2
9
1
1
9 Roump
Shahgunj
Amoee
Goorawul
Mirzapore (on the Ganges) 1090
1102
818
905
362

SERIES IV.—_Elevations near Dorjiling. 1848 to 1850._

Number
of Obs. Name of Locality Elevation
Feet

9
110
104
99
93
37
————
Sum 452
=======

27
84
37
7
83
74
95
18
————
Sum 434
=======

103

38
25

2
2
7

1
12
2
5
8

4
4
1
13
13
2
2

13
1
4

8 Jillapahar (Mr. Hodgson’s house)
sunrise
9.50 p.m.
noon
2.40 p.m.
4 p.m.
sunset

_Ditto by Monthly observations._
January
February
March
April
July
August
September
October

The Dale (Mr. Muller’s)
by trigonometry
Superintendent’s house
by trigonometry
Colinton (Mr. Muller’s)
Leebong
by trigonometry
Summit of Jillapahar
Smith’s hotel
Monastery hill below the Dale
The Dale by barometer

Monastery hill by trigonometry

Ging (measured from Dale)
Guard-house at Great Rungeet
Bed of Great Rungeet at cane-bridge
Guard-house at Little Rungeet
Sinchul top
by trigonometry
Saddle of road over shoulder of Sinchul
Senadah (Pacheem) bungalow
Pacheem village
Kursiong bungalow
Punkabaree
Rungniok village
Tonglo, summit
by trigonometry
Tonglo, Saddle below summit
Tonglo, Rocks on ascent of
Sourse of Balasun
Source of Balasun by Dorjiling
Goong ridge

7301
7443
7457
7477
7447
7447
—————
Mean 7429
=========

7400
7445
7517
7582
7412
7421
7454
7351
—————
Mean 7448
=========

B. 6957
6952
B. 6932
6932
B. 7179
B. 5993
[435]6021
B. 7896
6872
B. 214·1
6952
—————
7166
7165·3
=========

B. 5156
B. 1864
818
1672
8655
8607
7412
7258
3855
B. 4813
1815
B. 4565
B. 10·078
10·079·4
B. 10·008
B. 8148
7436
7451
7441

[435] 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._

Number
of Obs. Name of Locality By
Calcutta
Barom. By
Dorjiling
Barom.

1
7
7
5
2
1
3
8
3
5
4
4
3
1
3
3
3
1
3
2
8
3
3
3
2
2
10
6
1
1
4
2
2
9
1
1
4
1
3
1
2
1
4
1
4
3
1
8
1
3
4
7
2
4
1

Source of Myong river
Myong valley, camp in
Myong valley
Purmiokzong
Shoulder of Nanki
Shepherd’s huts on do.
Summit of Nanki
Camp on Nanki
Jummanoo
Sulloobong
Bheti village
Sakkiazong village
Camp on ridge of mountain
Peak on Sakkiazong
Makarumbi
Pemmi river
Tambur river at junction with Pemmi
Camp on Tambur, Nov. 13
Camp on Tambur, Nov. 14
Chintam village
Mywa Guola
Tambur river, Nov. 18
Tambur river, Nov. 19
Taptiatok village
Loontoong village
Tambur river, Nov. 23
Wallanchoon village
Tuquoroma
Wallanchoon pass
Foot of pass-road
Yangma Guola
Base of great moraine
Top of moraine above ditto
Yangma village camp
Lake bed in valley
Upper ditto (Pabuk)
Yangma valley camp, Dec. 2
Kambachen pass
Camp below ditto
Kambachen village
Camp in valley
Choonjerma pass
Camp below ditto
Yalloong river-terrace
Camp side of valley
Yankutang village
Saddle of road south of Khabili
Khabang village
Spur of Sidingbah, crossed Nov. 10
Yangyading village
Sablakoo
Iwa river, Dec. 12
Iwa river, Dec. 13
Singaleh, camp on
Islumbo pass (feet)
4,798
4,345
3,801
4,507
7,216
8,999
9,994
9,315
4,320
5,244
4,683
5,804
8,315
9,356
5,444
2,149
1,289
1,418
1,600
3,404
2,079
2,515
3,113
4,207
5,615
8,066
10,384
12,889
B. 16,764
13,501
9,236
12,098
B. 679
B. 13,516
15,186
B. 16,038
10,997
B. 15,770
11,643
11,378
11,454
B. 15,259
13,289
10,449
10,080
5,530
5,746
5,495
6,057
4,082
4,735
3,747
6,134
9,263
10,388 (feet)

4,345
3,763
4,535

10,045
9,324
4,404
5,311

5,847
8,391
9,289
5,525
2,262
1,487
1,496

2,185
2,574
3,289
4,359
5,738
8,096
10,389
12,999
16,748
13,518
9,322
12,199

13,488

11,001

11,611

11,514

13,287

10,035
5,598

5,515
5,980
4,145
4,718
3,818
6,184
9,328

Number
of Obs. Name of Locality By
Calcutta
Barom. By
Dorjiling
Barom.

4
6
5
6
6
7
8
1
1
6
1

5
1
1
10
9
1
9
1
22
7
15
7
21
1
1
1
1
4
5
5
5
1
6

Kulhait valley, camp in
Lingcham village
Bed of Great Rungeet, December 20
Lingdam village, December 21
Nampok village
Bhomsong
Mainom top
Neon-gong Goompa
Pass from Teesta to Rungeet
Lingdam village
Great Rungeet below Tassiding
Tassiding temples
Sunnook, camp on
Bed of Ratong
Pemiongchi temple
Camp at Pemiongchi village
Tchonpong village
Bed of Rungbi river
Camp on Ratong river
Doobdi Goompa
Yoksun
Dumpook
Buckim
Mon Lepcha top
Jongri
Ratong below Mon Lepcha
Ratong below Yoksun
Catsuperri lake
Catsuperri temple
Tengling village
Rungbee river bed
Changachelling temple
Kulhait river
Saddle of Hee hill
Camp on Hee hill (feet)
6,406
4,892
1,805
5,552
4,354
1,556
Tr. 10,702
5,225
6,824
5,349
2,030
4,840
3,955
2,481
7,083
6,551
4,952
3,165
3,100
6,493
5,600
6,646
8,625
13,090
B. 13,170
7,069
3,729
6,068
6,493
5,295
3,230
6,805
3,075
7,289
6,609 (feet)
6,374
4,848
1,874
5,556
4,501
1,533
B. 10,613

5,401

4,018

6,616
5,003

3,242
6,451
5,635
6,710
8,693
13,045
13,184
7,217
3,851
6,009
6,476
5,219
3,350
6,850
3,243

6,744

SERIES VII.—_Elevations in the Sikkim Terai and Plains of India,
Gangetic Delta and Jheels._

Number
of Obs. Name of Locality Elevation
Feet
3
12
3
4
4
4
5
5
5
1
6
43
24
12
13
54
33
13
4
3
5 Siligoree Bungalow
Titalya
Sahibgunj (west of Titalya)
Bhatgong
Thakya-gunj
Bhojepore
Rummai
Rangamally
Belakoba
Mela-meli
Kishengunj
Mahanuddy river between Kishengunj and Maldah
Mahanuddy river between Maldah and Rampore Bauleah
Rampore (Mr. Bell’s)
Dacca (Mr. Atherton’s)
Jheels, Dacca to Pundua
Megna river (June 1st-6th
Soormah (June 9th)
Pundua (June 10th and 11th)
Pundua (Sept. 7th)
Pundua (Nov. 16th and 17th) 302
326
231
225
284
404
293
262
368
337
131
153
98
130
72
*– ·003
+ ·008
+ ·048
+ ·018
– ·016
– 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 VIII.—_Elevations in Sikkim, May to December, 1849._

Number
of Obs. Name of Locality By
Calcutta
Barom. By
Dorjiling
Barom.

2
4
1
2
4
8
4
4
2
8
10
16

Mik, on Tendong
Namtchi, camp on spur
Tendong summit
Temi, Teesta valley
Nampok, Teesta valley
Lingmo, Teesta valley
Lingtam spur, Teesta valley
Gorh, Teesta valley
Bling-bong, Teesta valley
Lingo village, Teesta valley
Singtam, May 14 to 16
Singtam (higher on hill) Oct. 30 to Nov. 2 (feet)
3,912
5,608
B. 8,671
4,771
B. 5,138
B. 2,861
B. 4,743
B. 4,061
B. 2,657
B. 2,724
B. 4,435
B. 4,575 (feet)

Tr. 8,663

5,033
2,838
4,867
4,195
2,711
2,839
4,477

SERIES VIII.—_(Continued)_

Number
of Obs. Name of Locality By
Calcutta
Barom. By
Dorjiling
Barom.

5
2
7
27
37
4
4
3
8
1
1
33
53
1
4
74
47
1
1
2
43
20
30
1
3
2
5
2
6
2
2
56

1
1
1
1
1
1

Niong
Namgah
Chakoong
Choongtam, May
Choongtam, August
Dholep, Lachen
Dengha, Lachen
Latong, Lachen
Kampo Samdong
Chateng
Chateng, lower on spur
Lamteng village
Zemu Samdong
Snow bed across Zemu river
Camp on banks of Zemu
Junction of Thlonok and Zemu
Camp on banks of Zemu river
Zemu river, June 13
Zemu river, high up, June 13
Yeunga (Lachen valley)
Tallum Samdong
Tungu, July
Tungu, October
Palung plains
Sitong
Kongra Lama pass
Yeumtso (in Tibet)
Bhomtso (in Tibet)
Cholamoo lakes (in Tibet)
Donkia pass, October
Donkia pass, September
Momay Samdong

Donkia, September 13
Kinchinjhow, September 14
Sebolah pass
South shoulder of Donkia, September 20
Mountain north of Momay, September 17
West shoulder of Donkia mountain, September 26

_The following were measured trigonometrically:_
Forked onkia mountain
Kinchinjhow mountain
Tomo-chamo, east top of Kinchinjhow
Thlonok mount, Peak on
Chango-khang mountain
Tukcham mountain, from Dorjiling
Chomiomo mountain (feet)

4,229
4,371
5,245
5,247
6,120
6,337
6,471
7,315
8,819
8,493
8,900
9,026
9,828
10,223
10,864
12,064
12,422
13,281
10,196
11,540
12,779
12,799
15,697
15,372
15,745
16,808
18,590
16,900
18,589
18,387
15,362

16,876
17,495
17,604
18,257 (feet)
3,954

4,443
5,284
5,297
6,145
6,399
6,310
7,344
8,695
8,343
8,867
8,926

10,271
10,828
12,074

11,424
12,723
12,747

15,642

15,069
Measured
from
Momay
17,079
17,656
17,567
18,357
B. 17,394
B. 18,510

Tr. 20,870
Tr. 22,750
Tr. 21,000
Tr. 20,000
Tr. 20,600
Tr. 19,472
Tr. 22,700

SERIES VIII.—_(Continued)_

Number
of Obs. Name of Locality By
Calcutta
Barom. Measured
by
Trig., etc.

48
7

2
3

51
12
8
2
3
4
3
5
7
1
3
1
3
17
3
105
1
2
3
12
11
2
3
5
6 _The following were measured trigonometrically:_
Summit of Donkia (from Donkia pass and Bhomtso)
Tunkra Mountain, from Dorjiling

Yeumtong
Yeumtong, October

Snow bed above Yeumtong
Punying

Lachoong village, August
Lachoong village, October
Lacheepia
Tunkra pass
Rock on ascent to ditto
Keadom
Tukcham village
Rinkpo village
Laghep
Phieungoong
Barfonchen
Chola pass
Chumanako
Phadong
Tumloong, Nov. 3rd and 4th
Higher on hill, Nov. 16th to Dec. 9th
Yankoong
Tikbotang
Camp, Dec. 11th
Serriomsa
Dikkeeling
Singdong
Katong ghat, Teesta
Namten
Cheadam (feet)

11,933
11,951

B. 15,971
B. 11,299

B. 8,712
B. 8,705
B. 15,293
B. 16,083
B. 13,078
B. 6,609
B. 3,849
B. 6,008
B. 10,423
B. 12,422
B. 11,233
B. 14,925
B. 12,590
B. 5,946
B. 5,368
B. 5,976
B. 3,867
B. 3,763
B. 2,952
B. 2,820
B. 4,952
B. 2,116
B. 735
B. 4,483
B. 4,653 (feet)
Tr. 22,650
Tr. 18,250
By
Dorjiling
Barometer
11,839

By
Yeumtong
Barometer
16,000

By
Der. Bar.
8,474

15,231

13,144

SERIES IX.—_Khasia Mountains, June to November, 1850._

Number
of Obs. Name of Locality Elevation
Feet
36
167
102
25
63
1
9
1
32
6
9
63
6
10
35
12
9
3 Churra (Mr. Inglis’s)
Churra bungalow opposite church, August
Churra bungalow, Oct., Nov.
Kala-panee bungalow
Moflong bungalow
Chillong hill
Syong bungalow
Hill south of ditto
Myrung bungalow, July
Myrung bungalow, Sept.
Chela
Nunklow
Nonkreem
Mooshye
Pomrang
Amwee
Joowye
Nurtiung 4,069
4,193
4,258
5,302
6,062
6,662
5,725
6,050
5,647
5,709
80
4,688
5,601
4,863
5,143
4,105
4,387
4,178

SERIES X.—_Soormah, Silhet, Megna, Chittagong, etc._

Number
of Obs. Name of Locality Elevation
Feet
27
38
36
24
12
10
72
8
2
16
3
12
4
17
10 Silhet (Mr. Stainforth’s)
Soormah river, between Silhet and Megna
Silchar
Megna river
Noacolly (Dr. Baker’s)
Noacolly on voyage to Chittagong
Chittagong (Mr. Sconce’s)
Chittagong flagstaff-hill at south head of harbour
Seetakoond hill
Seetakoond bungalow
Hat-Hazaree
Hattiah
Sidhee
Chittagong to Megua
Eastern Sunderbunds 133
46
116
+ ·020*
– ·039
0†
191
151
1,136
– ·069*
– ·039
– ·049
– ·039
– ·014†
+ ·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

_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.
_Ægle 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.
_Arisœma,_ 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, 384.

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.

Cachar, ii. 326; rain-fall at, ii. 334.
_Cœsalpinia 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.
_Chamærops 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.
_Cœlogyne,_ 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.
_Confervæ_ of hot springs, i. 28; Appendix, 375.
Conglomerate, ii. 19, 165, 176, 177, 402, 403.
_Coniferæ,_ 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.
_Cruciferæ,_ 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.

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.

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.
_Elæagnus,_ 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.

Fair, i. 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.

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
Kinchinjhow (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.

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.
_Hierochlœ,_ ii. 115.
Himalaya, distant view of, i. 96; vegetation and scenery of outer, i.
108; view of from Khasia, ii. 287, 289, 297.
_Hippophæ,_ 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.

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.

Jaws, i. 18, 90.
Japanese plants in Sikkim, i. 126; ii. 39.
Jarool (_Lagerstrœmia_), 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.

_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.

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.
_Lagerstrœmia grandiflora,_ i. 401. _Reginæ,_ 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.
_Leguminosæ,_ 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.
_Lymnæa Hookeri,_ ii. 156.

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.

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.
_Nymphæa pygmæa,_ ii. 312.

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.
_Orchideæ,_ 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.

Pacheem, i. 111; vegetation of, i. 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.
_Phœnix 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 _Bœmeria_), 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.

Quartz-beds folded, i. 406; blocks in Falkland Islands (note), ii. 179.
_Quercus semecarpifolia,_ i. 187.
Quoits, i. 338.

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; _Dalhousiæ,_ 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;
moutonnéed, 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.

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.
_Salmonidæ,_ 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.
_Scitamineæ,_ 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.
_Sphærostema,_ 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 fœtida,_ 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.

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.
Trees, burnt, i. 151; limits of in Sikkim, ii. 75.
_Trichomanes_, i. 358.
Tripe de roche, ii. 130.
Tsang, province of Tibet, ii. 168.
Tukcham mountain, ii. 33.
Tuk-vor, i. 371.
Tumloong, ii. ; confinement at, ii. 213; dismissal from, ii. 228;
meteorology of, ii. 218.
Tungu, ii. 73, 148, 149; meteorology of, ii. 95.
Tunkola, i. 123.
Tunkra mountain, ii. 102; pass, ii. 109; plants of, ii. 112.
Tuquoroma, i. 222.
Turner, Captain, route to Jigatzi (note), ii. 125.
Turnips, alpine cultivation of, ii. 88.

Uggur oil (_Aquilaria_), ii. 328.
Unicorn of MM. Huc and Gabet, ii. 158.
_Urceola elastica_ ii. 351.
_Urtica crenulata_, ii. 188, 336; _heterophylla_, i. 182.
_Urticeæ_, i. 157.
_Usnea_, ii. 10.

_Vacciniæ_, rarity of in upper Himalaya (note), ii. 145.
_Vaccinium_, ii. 22; _serpens_, i. 162.
Vakeel sent to Dorjiling, ii. 2.
_Valeriana Jatamansi_, i. 217.
_Vanda cœrulea_, ii. 319, 321; _Roxburghia_, i. 28.
Varnish, black of Munnipore, ii. 330.
_Valeria robusta_, i. 21.
Vegetation, of Chittagong, ii. 346; of Himalaya, ii. 38; of Jheels, ii.
257; of Khasia, ii 281; of Terai, i. 101; progress of at different
elevations, ii. 145, 181; tropical at the base of Kinchinjunga, i. 341;
zones of at Dorjiling, i. 142; zones of in Sikkim, i. 348.
_Veronica Anagallis_, i. 80.
_Vespa magnifica_, ii. 29.
_Villarsia cristata_, i. 62; Indica, i. 62.
Vindhya hills, i. 32.
_Vitex Agnus-castus_, i. 374.
_Vitis Indica_, ii. 187.

Wallanchoon, i. 227; climate of, i. 218; houses at, i. 211; pass, i.
224; plants on pass, i. 225; village, i. 209.
_Wallichia_ palm, ii. 18.
Wallich, Dr., i. 4.
Walloong, i. 209, 215.
Walnuts, Sikkim, i. 334, 338.
Ward, Lieut, i. 65.
Water-plants, i. 62.
Well, old, i. 41.
_Wightia_, grasping roots of, i. 165.
Willow, ii. 32; of Terai, i. 400; weeping, i. 365.
Winds, hot, i. 15; of Tibet, ii. 159, 163; of Sikkim, Appendix, 403.
Woodcock of Chittagong, ii. 350: at Barfonchen, ii. 199; at Neongong,
i. 306.
Wood-oil (_Dipterocarpus_), ii. 348.
_Woodsia_, ii. 130.
Worm of Sikkim, ii. 26.

Yak, i. 212: breeding, ii. 150; flock of, ii. 150; wild, i. 214.
Yalloong ridge, i. 273; valley, i. 267.
Yamroop, i. 277.
Yangma, cultivation at, i. 238; geology of, i. 248; Guola, i. 229;
houses at, i. 241; temperature at, i. 247; temples, i. 235; village, i.
238.
Yangyading, i. 277.
Yankoong village, ii. 228.
Yankutang, i. 275.
Yaru-tsampu river, i. 299; ii. 124; (note), ii. 171.
Yelpote (_Bassia_), i. 151.
Yeumtong, ii. 115; second visit to, 181.
Yeumtso, ii, 159; elevation of, ii. 174; lake, ii. 163; temperature of
soil at, ii. 174.
Yew, i. 168, 191, 274, 280; ii. 45; distribution of, ii. 2525; in
Khasia, ii. 282.
Yoksun, i. 335; lake, i. 360.

Zemindars of Bengal, i. 388.
Zemu river, camp on, ii. 56; Samdong, ii. 43, 148.
_Zannichellia_, i. 45; _palustris_, ii. 156.
Zobo, ii. 213.
Zodiacal light, i. 63.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Himalayan Journals — Complete
- Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc." ***

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