Chapter XXI…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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°.

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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.

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.

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