the plant hunters, by captain mayne reid. the plant hunters--by captain mayne reid chapter one. the plant-hunter. "a plant-hunter! what is that? "we have heard of fox-hunters, of deer-hunters, of bear and buffalo-hunters, of lion-hunters, and of `boy-hunters;' of a plant-hunter never. "stay! truffles are plants. dogs are used in finding them; and the collector of these is termed a truffle-hunter. perhaps this is what the captain means?" no, my boy reader. something very different from that. my plant-hunter is no fungus-digger. his occupation is of a nobler kind than contributing merely to the capricious palate of the gourmand. to his labours the whole civilised world is indebted--yourself among the rest. yes, you owe him gratitude for many a bright joy. for the varied sheen of your garden you are indebted to him. the gorgeous dahlia that nods over the flower-bed--the brilliant peony that sparkles on the parterre-- the lovely camelia that greets you in the greenhouse,--the kalmias, the azaleas, the rhododendrons, the starry jessamines, the gerania, and a thousand other floral beauties, are, one and all of them, the gifts of the plant-hunter. by his agency england--cold cloudy england--has become a garden of flowers, more varied in species and brighter in bloom than those that blossomed in the famed valley of cashmere. many of the noble trees that lend grace to our english landscape,--most of the beautiful shrubs that adorn our villas, and gladden the prospect from our cottage-windows, are the produce of his industry. but for him, many fruits, and vegetables, and roots, and berries, that garnish your table at dinner and dessert, you might never have tasted. but for him these delicacies might never have reached your lips. a good word, then, for the plant-hunter! and now, boy reader, in all seriousness i shall tell you what i mean by a "plant-hunter." i mean a person who devotes all his time and labour to the collection of rare plants and flowers--in short, one who makes this occupation his _profession_. these are not simply "botanists"-- though botanical knowledge they must needs possess--but, rather, what has hitherto been termed "botanical collectors." though these men may not stand high in the eyes of the scientific world--though the closet-systematist may affect to underrate their calling, i dare boldly affirm that the humblest of their class has done more service to the human race than even the great linnaeus himself. they are, indeed, the botanists of true value, who have not only imparted to us a knowledge of the world's vegetation, but have brought its rarest forms before our very eyes--have placed its brightest flowers under our very noses, as it were--flowers, that but for them had been still "blushing unseen," and "wasting their sweetness on the desert air." my young reader, do not imagine that i have any desire to underrate the merits of the scientific botanist. no, nothing of the sort. i am only desirous of bringing into the foreground a class of men whose services in my opinion the world has not yet sufficiently acknowledged--i mean the botanical collectors--the _plant-hunters_. it is just possible that you never dreamt of the existence of such a profession or calling, and yet from the earliest historic times there have been men who followed it. there were plant-collectors in the days of pliny, who furnished the gardens of herculaneum and pompeii; there were plant-collectors employed by the wealthy mandarins of china, by the royal sybarites of delhi and cashmere, at a time when our semi-barbarous ancestors were contented with the wild flowers of their native woods. but even in england the calling of the plant-hunter is far from being one of recent origin. it dates as early as the discovery and colonisation of america; and the names of the tradescants, the bartrams, and the catesbys--true plant-hunters--are among the most respected in the botanical world. to them we are indebted for our tulip-trees, our magnolias, our maples, our robinias, our western _platanus_, and a host of other noble trees, that already share the forest, and contest with our native species, the right to our soil. at no period of the world has the number of plant-hunters been so great as at present. will you believe it, hundreds of men are engaged in this noble and useful calling? among them may be found representatives of all the nations of europe--germans in greatest number; but there are swedes and russ as well, danes and britons, frenchmen, spaniards, and portuguese, swiss and italians. they may be found pursuing their avocation in every corner of the world--through the sequestered passes of the rocky mountains, upon the pathless prairies, in the deep barrancas of the andes, amid the tangled forests of the amazon and the orinoco, on the steppes of siberia, in the glacier valleys of the himalaya--everywhere--everywhere amid wild and savage scenes, where the untrodden and the unknown invite to fresh discoveries in the world of vegetation. wandering on with eager eyes, scanning with scrutiny every leaf and flower--toiling over hill and dale--climbing the steep cliff-- wading the dank morass or the rapid river--threading his path through thorny thicket, through "chapparal" and "jungle"--sleeping in the open air--hungering, thirsting, risking life amidst wild beasts, and wilder men,--such are a few of the trials that chequer the life of the plant-hunter. from what motive, you will ask, do men choose to undergo such hardships and dangers? the motives are various. some are lured on by the pure love of botanical science; others by a fondness for travel. still others are the _employes_ of regal or noble patrons--of high-born botanical amateurs. not a few are the emissaries of public gardens and arboretums; and yet another few--perchance of humbler names and more limited means, though not less zealous in their well-beloved calling,-- are collectors for the "nursery." yes; you will no doubt be astonished to hear that the plain "seedsman" at the town end, who sells you your roots and bulbs and seedlings, keeps in his pay a staff of plant-hunters--men of botanical skill, who traverse the whole globe in search of new plants and flowers, that may gratify the heart and gladden the eyes of the lovers of floral beauty. need i say that the lives of such men are fraught with adventures and hair-breadth perils? you shall judge for yourself when i have narrated to you a few chapters from the experience of a young bavarian botanist,--karl linden--while engaged in a _plant-hunting_ expedition to the alps of india--the stupendous mountains of the himalaya. chapter two. karl linden. karl linden was a native of upper bavaria, near the tyrolese frontier. not high-born, for his father was a gardener; but, what is of more importance in modern days, well brought up and well educated. a gardener's son may still be a gentleman; and so may a gardener himself, for that matter, or he may not. there are many senses to this much-abused title. it so happens, that young linden was a gentleman in the _true_ sense; that is, he was possessed of a feeling heart, a nice sense of honesty and honour, and was, notwithstanding his humble lineage, an educated and accomplished youth. his father, the gardener, was a man of ambitious spirit, though quite unlettered; and, having himself often experienced the disadvantage of this condition, he resolved that his son never should. in most parts of germany, education is considered a thing of value, and is eagerly sought after. it is provided liberally for all classes; and the germans, as a people, are perhaps the best educated in the world. it is partly owing to this fact, and partly to their energetic industry, that they exercise so great an influence in the affairs of the world; in the arts and sciences, in music, painting, and the study of nature-- above all, in a knowledge of botany. i cannot believe that the germans stand highest as an _intellectual_ race, but only as an _educated_ people. what a pity i could not add, that they are a free people; but in that their condition differs less from our own than we fondly imagine. at nineteen years of age, young karl linden did not consider them as free as they deserved to be. he was then a student in one of the universities; and, naturally enough, had imbibed those principles of patriotic liberty, that, in , were stirring in the german heart. he did more than advocate his faith by empty words. joined with his college compatriots, he endeavoured to have it carried into practice; and he was one of those brave students, who, in , gave freedom to baden and bavaria. but the hydra league of crowned heads was too strong to be so easily broken; and, among other youthful patriots, our hero was forced to flee from his native land. an exile in london--"a refugee," as it is termed--he scarce knew what to do. his parent was too poor to send him money for his support. besides, his father was not over well pleased with him. the old man was one of those who still clung to a belief in the divine right of kings, and was contented with the "powers that be," no matter how tyrannical they be. he was angry with karl, for having made a fool of himself by turning patriot, or "rebel," as it pleases crowned monsters to term it. he had intended him for better things; a secretary to some great noble, a post in the custom-house, or, may be, a commission in the bodyguard of some petty tyrant. any of these would have fulfilled the ambitious hopes of karl's father. the latter, therefore, was displeased with the conduct of his son. karl had no hope from home, at least until the anger of the old man should die out. what was the young refugee to do? he found english hospitality cold enough. he was free enough; that is, to wander the streets and beg. fortunately, he bethought him of a resource. at intervals, during his life, he had aided his father in the occupation of gardening. he could dig, plant, and sow. he could prune trees, and propagate flowers to perfection. he understood the management of the greenhouse and hothouse, the cold-pit and the forcing-pit; nay, more--he understood the names and nature of most of the plants that are cultivated in european countries; in other words, he was a botanist. his early opportunities in the garden of a great noble, where his father was superintendent, had given him this knowledge; and, having a taste for the thing, he had made botany a study. if he could do no better, he might take a hand in a garden, or a nursery, or some such place. that would be better than wandering idly about the streets of the metropolis, and half-starving in the midst of its profuse plenty. with such ideas in his mind, the young refugee presented himself at the gate of one of the magnificent "nurseries," in which great london abounds. he told his story; he was employed. it was not long before the intelligent and enterprising proprietor of the establishment discovered the botanical knowledge of his german _protege_. he wanted just such a man. he had "plant-hunters" in other parts of the world; in north and south america, in africa, in australia. he wanted a collector for india; he wanted to enrich his stock from the flora of the himalayas, just then coming into popular celebrity, on account of the magnificent forms of vegetation discovered there, by the great "plant-hunters" boyle and hooker. the splendid pine-trees, arums, and screw-pines; the varied species of bambusa, the grand magnolias and rhododendrons, which grow so profusely in the himalaya valleys, had been described, and many of them introduced into european gardens. these plants were therefore the rage; and, consequently, the _desiderata_ of the nurseryman. what rendered them still more interesting and valuable was, that many of those beautiful exotics would bear the open air of high latitudes, on account of the elevated region of their native habitat possessing a similarity of temperature and climate to that of northern europe. more than one "botanical collector" was at this time despatched to explore the chain of the indian alps, whose vast extent offered scope enough for all. among the number of these plant-hunters, then, was our hero, karl linden. chapter three. caspar, ossaroo, and fritz. an english ship carried the plant-hunter to calcutta, and his own good legs carried him to the foot of the himalaya mountains. he might have travelled there in many other ways--for perhaps in no country in the world are there so many modes of travelling as in india. elephants, camels, horses, asses, mules, ponies, buffaloes, oxen, zebus, yaks, and men are all made use of to transport the traveller from place to place. even dogs, goats, and sheep, are trained as beasts of burden! had karl linden been a government emissary, or the _employe_ of some regal patron, he would very likely have travelled in grand style--either upon an elephant in a sumptuous howdah, or in a palanquin with relays of bearers, and a host of coolies to answer to his call. as it was, he had no money to throw away in such a foolish manner. it was not _public_ money he was spending, but that of private enterprise, and his means were necessarily limited. he was not the less likely to accomplish the object for which he had been sent out. many a vast and pompous expedition has gone forth regardless either of expense or waste--ay, many a one that has returned without having accomplished the object intended. "too many cooks spoil the dinner," is a familiar old adage, very applicable to exploring expeditions; and it is a question, whether unaided individual enterprise has not effected more in the way of scientific and geographical discovery, than has been done by the more noisy demonstrations of governments. at all events, it is certain enough, that the exploring expeditions to which we are most indebted for our geognostic knowledge are those that have been fitted out with the greatest economy. as an example, i may point to the tracing of the northern coasts of america--which, after costing enormous sums of money, and the lives of many brave men, has been done, after all, by the hudson's bay company with a simple boat's crew, and at an expense, that would not have franked one of our grand arctic exploring expeditions for a week! i might point to the economic mode by which the americans are laying open their whole continent--a _single_ officer having lately been sent to descend the amazon alone, and explore its extensive valley from the andes to the atlantic. this was performed, and a copious report delivered to the american government and to the world at an expense of a few hundred dollars; whereas an english exploration of similar importance would have cost some thousands of pounds, with perhaps a much scantier return, for the outlay. as with the american explorer, so was it with our plant-hunter. there was no expensive equipment or crowd of idle attendants. he reached the himalayas on foot, and on foot he had resolved to climb their vast slopes and traverse their rugged valleys. but karl linden was not alone. far from it. he was in company with him he held dearest of all others in the world--his only brother. yes, the stout youth by his side is his brother caspar, who had joined him in his exile, and now shares the labours and perils of his expedition. there is no great difference between them in point of size, though caspar is two years the younger. but caspar's strength has not been wasted by too much study. he has never been penned up within the walls of a college or a city; and, fresh from his native hills, his stout build and bright ruddy cheek present a contrast to the thinner form and paler visage of the student. their costumes are in keeping with their looks. that of karl exhibits the sombre hue of the man of learning, while on his head he wears the proscribed "hecker hat." caspar's dress is of a more lively style, and consists of a frock of tyrolese green, a cap of the same colour, with long projecting peak, over-alls of blue velveteen, and blucher boots. both carry guns, with the usual accoutrements of sportsmen. caspar's gun is a double-barrelled fowling-piece;--while that of karl is a rifle of the species known as a "swiss yager." a true hunter is caspar, and although still but a boy, he has often followed the chamois in its dizzy path among his native mountains. of letters he knows little, for caspar has not been much to school; but in matters of hunter-craft he is well skilled. a brave and cheerful youth is caspar--foot-free and untiring--and karl could not have found in all india a better assistant. but there is still another individual in the train of the plant-hunter-- the guide, _ossaroo_. it would take pages to describe ossaroo; and he is worthy of a full description: but we shall leave him to be known by his deeds. suffice it to say, that ossaroo is a hindoo of handsome proportions, with his swarth complexion, large beautiful eyes, and luxuriant black hair, which characterise his race. he is by caste a "shikarree," or hunter, and is not only so by hereditary descent, but he is one of the noted "mighty hunters" in the province to which he belongs. far and wide is his name known--for ossaroo possesses, what is somewhat rare among his indolent countrymen, an energy of mind, combined with strength and activity of body, that would have given him distinction anywhere; but among a people where such qualities are extremely rare, ossaroo is of course a hunter-hero--the nimrod of his district. ossaroo's costume and equipments differ entirely from those of his fellow-travellers. a white cotton tunic, and wide trousers, sandals, a scarlet sash around the waist, a check shawl upon the head, a light spear in the hand, a bamboo bow, a quiver of arrows on his back, a long knife stuck behind the sash, a shoulder-belt sustaining a pouch, with various trinket-like implements suspended over his breast. such is the _coup d'oeil_ presented by the shikarree. ossaroo had never in his life climbed the mighty himalayas. he was a native of the hot plains--a hunter of the jungles--but for all that the botanist had engaged him for a _guide_. it was not so much a guide to enable them to find their route, as one who could assist them in their daily duties, who knew the way of life peculiar to this part of the world, who knew how to _keep house in, the open air_, ossaroo was the very man of all others. moreover the expedition was just to his mind. he had long gazed upon the gigantic himalaya from the distant plains--he had looked upon its domes and peaks glittering white in the robes of eternal snow, and had often desired to make a hunting excursion thither. but no good opportunity had presented itself, although through all his life he had lived within sight of those stupendous peaks. he, therefore, joyfully accepted the offer of the young botanist, and became "hunter and guide" to the expedition. there was still another of the hunter-race in that company--one as much addicted to the chase as either ossaroo or caspar. this was a quadruped as tall as a mastiff dog, but whose black-and-tan colour and long pendulous ears bespoke him of a different race--the race of the hound. he was, in truth, a splendid hound, whose heavy jaws had ere now dragged to the ground many a red stag, and many a wild bavarian boar. a dog to be valued was fritz, and highly did his master esteem him. caspar was that master. caspar would not have exchanged fritz for the choicest elephant in all india. chapter four. is it blood? behold the plant-hunter and his little party _en route_! it was the same day on which they had engaged the guide ossaroo, and this was their first journey together. each carried his knapsack and blanket strapped to his back--and as each was to be his own travelling attendant, there was not much extra baggage. ossaroo was some paces in the advance, and karl and caspar habitually walked side by side, where the nature of the path would permit. fritz usually trotted along in the rear, though he sometimes busked up to the side of the guide, as if by instinct he recognised the born hunter. although the acquaintance was but a short one, already had fritz become a favourite with the "shikarree." as they trudged along, the attention of caspar was drawn to some red spots that appeared at intervals upon the path. it was a smooth road, and a very small object could be discerned upon it. the spots had all the appearance of blood-spots, as if quite freshly dropped! "blood it is," remarked karl, who was also observing the spots. "i wonder whether it's been a man or a beast," said caspar, after an interval. "well, brother," rejoined karl, "i think it must have been a beast, and a pretty large one too; i have been noticing it for more than a mile, and the quantity of blood i've observed would have emptied the veins of a giant. i fancy it must have been an elephant that has been bleeding." "but there's no trace of an elephant," replied caspar; "at least no tracks that are fresh; and this blood appears to be quite newly spilled." "you are right, caspar," rejoined his brother. "it cannot have been an elephant, nor a camel neither. what may it have been, i wonder?" at this interrogatory both the boys directed their glances along the road, in the direction in which they were going, hoping to discover some explanation of the matter. there was no object before them as far as they could see except ossaroo. the hindoo alone was upon the road. the blood could not be from him--surely not? such a loss of blood would have killed the shikarree long ago. so thought karl and caspar. they had fixed their eyes, however, upon ossaroo, and just at that moment they saw him lean his head to one side, as though he had spat upon the ground. they marked the spot, and what was their astonishment on coming up and discovering upon the road another red spot exactly like those they had been noticing. beyond a doubt ossaroo was spitting blood! to make sure, they watched him a little longer, and about a hundred yards farther on they saw him repeat his red expectoration! they became considerably alarmed for the life of their guide. "poor ossaroo!" exclaimed they, "he cannot live much longer after the loss of so much blood!" and as this remark was made, both ran forward calling upon him to stop. the guide wheeled round, and halted, wondering what was the matter. he quickly unslung his bow and placed an arrow to the string, fancying that they were attacked by some enemy. the hound, too, catching the alarm, came scampering up, and was soon upon the ground. "what's the matter, ossaroo?" demanded karl and caspar in a breath. "matter, sahibs! me knowee noting--matter." "but what ails you? are you ill?" "no, sahibs! me not ill--why my lords askee?" "but this blood? see?" they pointed to the red saliva on the road. at this the shikarree burst out laughing, still further perplexing his interrogators. his laughter was not intended to be disrespectful to the young "sahibs," only that he was unable to restrain himself on perceiving the mistake they had made. "pawnee, sahibs," said he, drawing from his pouch a small roll like a cartridge of tobacco-leaves, and taking a bite off the end of it, to convince them that it was it--the "pawn"--which had imparted to his saliva such a peculiar colour. the boys at once comprehended the nature of their mistake. the roll shown them by ossaroo was the celebrated _betel_; and ossaroo himself was a "betel-chewer," in common with many millions of his countrymen, and still more millions of the natives of assam, burmah, siam, china, cochin china, malacca, the philippine, and other islands of the great indian archipelago. of course the boys were now curious to know what the betel was, and the shikarree proceeded to give them full information about this curious commodity. the "betel," or "pawn" as it is called by the hindoos, is a compound substance, and its component parts are a leaf, a nut, and some quicklime. the leaf is taken from an evergreen shrub, which is cultivated in india for this very purpose. ossaroo stated that it is usually cultivated under a shed made of bamboos, and wattled all around the sides to exclude the strong rays of the sun. the plant requires heat and a damp atmosphere, but exposure to the sun or dry winds would wither it, and destroy the flavour and pungency of the leaf. it requires great care in the cultivation, and every day a man enters the shed by a little door and carefully cleans the plants. the shed where it grows is usually a favourite lurking-place for poisonous snakes, and this diurnal visit of the betel-grower to his crop is rather a dangerous business; but the article is so profitable, and the mature crop yields such a fine price, that both the labour and the danger are disregarded. ossaroo chanced to have some of the leaves in his pouch still in an entire state. he only knew them as "pawn-leaves," but the botanist at once recognised a rare hothouse plant, belonging to the pepper tribe, _piperacea_. it is in fact a species of _piper_, the _piper-betel_, very closely allied to the climbing shrub which produces the common black-pepper of commerce, and having deep green oval and sharply-pointed leaves of very similar appearance to the leaves of the latter. another species called _piper siriboa_ is also cultivated for the same purpose. so much for one of the component parts of this singular oriental "quid." "now," continued ossaroo, facing to one side of the path and pointing upwards, "if sahibs lookee up, dey see de pawn-nut." the boys looked as directed, and beheld with interest a grove of noble palms, each of them rising to the height of fifty feet, with a smooth cylindrical shank, and a beautiful tuft of pinnated leaves at the top. these leaves were full two yards in breadth, by several in length. even the pinnae, or leaflets, were each over a yard long. just below where the leaves grew out from the stem, a large bunch of nuts of a reddish orange colour, and each as big as a hen's egg, hung downward. these were the famous _betel-nuts_, so long recorded in the books of oriental travellers. karl recognised the tree as the _areca catechu_, or betel-nut palm--by many considered the most beautiful palm of india. of the same genus _areca_ there are two other known species, one also a native of india, the other an american palm, and even a still more celebrated tree than the betel-nut, for it is no other than the great "cabbage-palm" of the west indies (_areca oleracea_). this last tree grows to the height of two hundred feet, with a trunk only seven inches in diameter! this beautiful shaft is often cut down for the sake of the young heart-leaves near the top, that when dressed are eaten as a substitute for cabbage. ossaroo showed his young masters how the betel was prepared for chewing. the leaves of the betel pepper are first spread out. upon these a layer of lime is placed, moistened so as to keep it in its place. the betel-nut is then cut into very thin slices, and laid on top; and the whole is rolled up like a cheroot, and deposited with other similar rolls in a neat case of bamboo--to be taken out whenever required for chewing. the nut is not eatable alone. its flavour is too pungent, and too highly astringent on account of the tannin it contains; but along with the pepper-leaf and the lime, it becomes milder and more pleasant. withal, it is too acrid for a european palate, and produces intoxication in those not used to it. an old betel-eater like ossaroo does not feel these effects, and would smile at the idea of getting "tipsy" upon pawn. a singular peculiarity of the betel-nut is that of its staining the saliva of a deep red colour, so as to resemble blood. ossaroo, who possessed a large share of intelligence, and who had travelled to the great city of calcutta and other parts of india, narrated a good anecdote connected with this fact. the substance of his relation was as follows:-- a young doctor, fresh from europe and from the university, had arrived in one of the indian cities in a big ship. the morning after his arrival he was walking out on the public road near the suburbs, when he chanced to meet a young native girl who appeared to be spitting blood. the doctor turned and followed the girl, who continued to spit blood at nearly every step she took! he became alarmed, thinking the poor girl could not live another hour, and following her home to her house, announced to her parents who he was, and assured them that, from the symptoms he had observed, their daughter had not many minutes to live! her parents in their turn grew alarmed, as also did the girl herself-- for the skill of a great sahib doctor was not to be doubted. the priest was sent for, but before he could arrive the young girl _actually died_. now it was from _fear_ that the poor girl had died, and it was the doctor who had _frightened_ her to death! but neither parents, nor priest, nor the doctor himself, knew this at the time. the doctor still believed the girl had died of blood-spitting, and the others remained in ignorance that it was upon this he had founded his prognosis. the report of such a skilful physician soon spread abroad. patients flocked to him, and he was in a fair way of rapidly accumulating a fortune. but ere long he had observed other people with symptoms of the same complaint which had caused the death of the poor girl, and had learnt also that these symptoms proceeded from chewing the betel-nut. had he been discreet he would have kept his secret to himself; but, unluckily for his good fortune he was a talker, and could not help telling his companions the whole affair. he related it rather as a good joke--for, sad to say, the life of a poor native is held but too lightly by europeans. in the end, however, it proved no joke to the doctor. the parents of the girl came to understand the matter, as well as the public at large, and vengeance was vowed against him by the friends of the deceased. his patients deserted him as rapidly as they had come; and to get rid of the scandal, as well as to get out of the danger that surrounded him, he was but too glad to take passage home in the same ship that had brought him out. chapter five. the fishing-birds. our travellers were following up one of the tributaries of the burrampooter, which, rising in the himalayas, and running southward joins the latter near its great bend. the plant-hunter designed to penetrate the bholan himalaya, because it had not yet been visited by any botanist, and its flora was reported to be very rich and varied. they were still passing through a settled part of the country, where fields of rice and sugar-cane, with groves of bananas, and various species of palm, were cultivated; some of the latter, as the cocoa-palm and betel, for their nuts, while others, as the large-leaved _caryota_, for the wine which they produce. the opium-poppy was also seen in cultivation, and mango-trees, and the great broad-leaved pawpaw, and black-pepper vines, with beautiful green leaves, trained against the stems of the palms. jack-trees with their gigantic fruit, and figs, and nettle-trees, and the singular screw-pines, and euphorbias, and various species of the orange, were observed along the way. the botanist saw many trees and plants, which he recognised as belonging to the chinese flora, and he could not help remarking many other things that reminded him of what he had read about china. in fact, this part of india--for he was very near the borders of assam--bears a considerable resemblance to china, in its natural productions, and even the customs of the people assimilate somewhat to those of the celestial land. to make the resemblance more complete, the cultivation of the tea-plant has been introduced into this part of the world, and is now carried on with success. but as our travellers proceeded, they became witnesses of a scene which brought china more vividly, before their minds than anything they had yet observed. on rounding a clump of trees they came in view of a moderate-sized lake. on the water, near the edge of this lake, they perceived a man in a small light boat. he was standing up, and held in his hands a long slender pole, with which he was poling the boat out towards the centre of the lake. our travellers, ossaroo excepted, uttered exclamations of surprise, and came at once to a halt. what had caused them such astonishment? not the boat, nor the man in it, nor yet the long bamboo pole. no. such were common objects seen every day on their journey. it was none of these that had brought them to so sudden a stop, and caused them to stand wondering. it was the fact that along both sides of the boat--on the very edge or gunwale--was a row of large birds as big as geese. they were white-throated, white-breasted birds, mottled over the wings and back with dark brown, and having long crooked necks, large yellow bills, and broad tails rounded at the tips. although the man was standing up in his boat, and working his long pole over their heads, now on one side, then on the other, the birds appeared so tame that they did not heed his manoeuvres; and yet not one of them seemed to be fastened, but merely perched upon the edge of the skiff! now and then one would stretch its long neck over the water, turn its head a little to one side, and then draw it in again, and resume its former attitude. such tame birds had never been seen. no wonder the sight astonished the bavarian boys. both turned to ossaroo for an explanation, who gave it by simply nodding towards the lake, and uttering the words-- "he go fishee." "ah! a fisherman!" rejoined the botanist. "yes, sahib--you watchee, you see." this was explanation enough. the boys now remembered having read of the chinese mode of fishing with cormorants; and even at the distance at which they saw them, they could perceive that the birds on the boat were no other than cormorants. they were the species known as _phalacrocorax sinensis_; and although differing somewhat from the common cormorant, they possessed all the characteristic marks of the tribe,--the long flat body, the projecting breastbone, the beak curving downward at the tip, and the broad rounded tail. desirous of witnessing the birds at work, our travellers remained stationary near the shore of the lake. it was evident the fisherman had not yet commenced operations, and was only proceeding towards his ground. after a short while he reached the centre of the lake; and then, laying aside his long bamboo, he turned his attention to the birds. he was heard giving them directions--just as a sportsman might do to his pointer or spaniel--and the next moment the great birds spread their shadowy wings, rose up from the edge of the boat, and after a short flight, one and all of them were seen plunging into the water. now our travellers beheld a singular scene. here a bird was observed swimming along, with its keen eye scanning the crystal below--there the broad tail of another stood vertically upwards, the rest of its body hidden below the surface--yonder, a third was altogether submerged, the ripple alone showing where it had gone down--a fourth was seen struggling with a large fish that glittered in its pincer-like beak--a fifth had already risen with its scaly prey, and was bearing it to the boat; and thus the twelve birds were all actively engaged in the singular occupation to which they had been trained. the lake, that but the moment before lay tranquil and smooth as glass, was now covered with ripples, with circling eddies, with bubbles and foam, where the huge birds darted and plunged, and flapped about after their finny prey. it was in vain the fish endeavoured to escape them--for the cormorant can glide rapidly through the water, and swim beneath with as much rapidity as upon the surface. its keel-like breastbone cuts the liquid element like an arrow, and with its strong wings for paddles, and its broad tail acting as a rudder, the bird is able to turn sharply round, or shoot forward with incredible rapidity. a singular circumstance came under the observation of our travellers. when one of the birds had succeeded in bringing up a fish, which was larger than common, and too large for its captor to convey to the boat, several others might be seen rushing forward, to render assistance in carrying the fish aboard! you will wonder that these creatures--whose food is the very prey they were capturing for their master--did not swallow some of the fish they were taking. in the case of the younger birds, and those not fully trained, such little thefts do occasionally occur. but in such cases the fisherman adopts a preventive precaution, by fastening a collar round the necks of the birds--taking care that it shall not descend to the thick part of the throat, where it might choke them. with well-trained old birds this precaution is unnecessary. no matter how hungry the latter may be, they bring all they "take" to their master, and are rewarded for their honesty by the smaller and more worthless fish that may have been caught. sometimes a bird becomes lazy, and sits upon the water without attempting to do his duty. in such cases, the fisherman approaches with his boat, stretches forward his bamboo, strikes with violence close to where the indolent individual is seated, and scolds him for his laziness. this treatment seldom fails in its effect; and the winged fisher, once more roused by the well-known voice of its master, goes to work with renewed energy. for several hours this fishing scene is kept up, until the birds, becoming tired, are allowed to return and perch themselves on the boat; where their throat-straps are removed, and they are fed and caressed by their master. our travellers did not wait for this finale, but kept on their route; while karl related to caspar how that, not a great while ago, so late as the time of king charles the first, the common cormorant of europe was trained to fish in the same way in several european countries, and especially in holland; and that, at the present day, in some parts of china, this mode of fishing is followed to so great an extent, that the markets of some of the largest cities are supplied with fish caught altogether by cormorants. certainly, no people exhibit more ingenuity in the training either of plants or animals, than do these same _oblique-eyed inhabitants_ of the celestial empire. chapter six. the terai. in approaching any great chain of mountains from the sea-level, you will find a large tract of country consisting of elevated hills and deep ravines, intersected by rapid streams and torrents. this tract is more or less broad, in proportion to the grandeur of the mountain chain; and, in the case of mountains of the first class, it is usually from twenty to fifty miles in breadth. such a tract of country lies along both sides of the great chain of the andes in south and north america, and also marks the approach to the rocky mountains and the alleghanies. it is well-known in italy, under the alps; and "piedmont" is the french appellation for this sort of country, which is designated, in our language, by an equally appropriate phrase, "foot-hills." the "alps of india" are not without this geological peculiarity. along their whole southern flank, facing the hills of hindustan, extends a belt of foot-hills, often above fifty miles in breadth; and characterised by steep ascents, deep dales and ravines, rapid foaming torrents, difficult paths and passes, and, consequently, by wild and picturesque scenery. the lower part of this belt--that is, the portion which lies contiguous to the lot plains, is known to europeans as the "terai." the terai is an irregular strip, of from ten to thirty miles in width, and extends along the whole base of the himalayas, from the sutledge river, on the west, to upper assam. its character is peculiar. it differs both from the plains of india and from the himalaya mountains, possessing a botany and zoology almost totally distinct from either. it differs from both, in the malarious and unhealthy character of its climate, which is one of the deadliest in the world. in consequence of this, the terai is almost uninhabited; the few scattered settlements of half-savage mechs, its only inhabitants, lying remote and distant from each other. most of the terai is covered with forest and thick jungle; and, notwithstanding its unhealthy climate, it is the favourite haunt of the wild beasts peculiar to this part of the globe. the tiger, the indian lion, the panther and leopard, the cheetah, and various other large _jelidae_, roam through its jungly coverts; the wild elephant, the rhinoceros, and gyal, are found in its forests; and the sambur and axis browse on its grassy glades. venomous snakes, hideous lizards, and bats, with the most beautiful of birds and butterflies, all find a home in the terai. several days' marching carried our travellers beyond the more settled portions of the country, and within the borders of this wild, jungle-covered district. on the day they entered the terai, they had made an early start of it; and, therefore, arrived at their camping-ground some hours before sunset. but the young botanist, filled with admiration at the many singular and novel forms of vegetation he saw around him, resolved to remain upon the ground for several days. our travellers had no tent. such an incumbrance would have been troublesome to them, travelling, as they were, afoot. indeed, all three had their full loads to carry, as much as they could well manage, without the additional weight of a tent. each had his blanket, and various other _impedimenta_; but one and all of them had often slept without roof or canvas, and they could do so again. at their present halting-place, they had no need for either. nature had provided them with a cover quite equal to a canvas-tent. they had encamped under a canopy of thick foliage, the foliage of the _banyan_ tree. young reader, you have heard of the great banyan of india; that wonderful tree, whose branches, after spreading out from the main trunk, send down roots to the earth, and form fresh stems, until a space of ground is covered with a single tree, under whose shade a whole regiment of cavalry may bivouac, or a great public meeting be held! no doubt, you have read of such a tree, and have seen pictures of one? i need not, therefore, describe the banyan very particularly. let me say, however, that it is a fig-tree; not the one that produces the eatable fig, of which you are so very fond, but another species of the same genus--the genus _ficus_. now, of this genus there are a great many species; as many, perhaps, as there are of any other genus of trees. some of them are only creeping and climbing plants; adhering to rocks and the trunks of other trees, like vines or ivy. others, like the banyan, are among the largest trees of the forest. they are chiefly confined to tropical countries, or hot regions lying on the borders of the tropics; and they are found in both hemispheres, that is, both in america and the old world. some splendid species belong also to australia. all of them possess, more or less, the singular habit of throwing out roots from their branches, and forming new stems, like the banyan; and frequently they embrace other trees in such a manner, as to hide the trunks of the latter completely from view! this curious spectacle was witnessed by our travellers where they had encamped. the banyan which they had chosen as their shelter was not one of the largest--being only a young tree, but out of its top rose the huge fan-shaped leaves of a palm-tree of the kind known as the palmyra palm (_borassus flagelliformis_). no trunk of the palm-tree was visible; and had not karl linden been a botanist, and known something of the singular habit of the banyan, he would have been puzzled to account for this odd combination. above spread the long radiating fronds of the palmyra directly out of the top of the trunk of the fig, and looking so distinct from the foliage of the latter as to form a very curious sight. the leaves of the banyan being ovate, and somewhat cordate or heart-shaped, of course presented quite a contrast to the large stiff fronds of the palmyra. now the puzzle was, how the palm got there. naturally one would suppose that a seed of the palm had been deposited on the top of the banyan, and had there germinated and thrown out its fronds. but how did the palm seed get to the top of the fig? was it planted by the hand of man? or carried thither by a bird? it could not well have been by the latter mode--since the fruit of the palmyra is as large as a child's head, and each one of the three seeds it contains as big as a goose's egg!! no bird would be likely to carry about such a bulky thing as that. if there were only one palm-tree growing from the top of one banyan, it might be conjectured that some one had so planted it; but there are many such combinations of these trees met with in the forests of india, and also in districts entirely uninhabited. how then was this union of the two trees to be accounted for? of our three travellers caspar alone was puzzled. not so karl and ossaroo. both were able to explain the matter, and karl proceeded to offer the elucidation. "the fact is," said the botanist, "that the palm has not grown out of the fig, but _vice versa_. the banyan is the true parasite. a bird-- wood-pigeon, or minobird, or tree-pheasant perhaps--has carried the berries of the fig-tree, and deposited them in the axil of the palmyra. this the smallest birds may easily do, since the fruit of the banyan is not larger than a diminutive cherry. once in its place the seed has germinated, and sent its roots downward along the trunk of the palm until they have reached the ground. these roots have then flattened around the stem of the palm, until they have enveloped it completely, with the exception of the top, as you see. afterwards the fig has thrown out lateral branches, until the whole has assumed the appearance of a banyan-tree with a fan-palm growing out of its trunk!" this was the true explanation. ossaroo added some remarks stating that the hindoo people always regard such a union of the two trees with great veneration, and believe it to be a holy marriage instituted by providence. for himself, ossaroo--not being a very strict sectarian, nor much given to religion in any form, laughed at the superstition, and called it "humbug." chapter seven. tapping the palmyra. almost the first thing done by ossaroo after he had got relieved of his baggage was to climb the banyan. this he was able to do with ease, as the trunk, in consequence of the peculiar mode of its growth, was full of ridges and inequalities, and moreover ossaroo could climb like a cat. but what wanted he up the tree? was he after the fruit? it could not be that, for the figs were not yet ripe, and even had they been quite mellow, they are but poor eating. maybe he was going up for the nuts of the palmyra? no--it could not be that either, for these were not shaped. the great flower-spathe had not yet opened, and was only beginning to burst its green envelopes. had the nuts been formed, and still in their young state, they would have afforded delicate eating. as already stated, the palmyra nuts grow to the size of a child's head. they are three-cornered, rounded off at the corners, consisting of a thick succulent yellowish rind, each containing three seeds as large as goose-eggs. it is the seeds that are eaten when young and pulpy; but if allowed to ripen, they become quite hard and blue-coloured, and are then insipid and uneatable. but it could not be the seed either which ossaroo was after, since there were no seeds, nor nuts--only the flower, and that still hidden in its great spadix. the boys watched ossaroo narrowly. he had carried up with him a bamboo-joint which he had cut from a very thick cane. it was open at one end, and formed a vessel that would hold rather more than a quart. another thing they had observed him to take with him; and that was a stone about as big as a paving-stone. still another implement he carried up the tree--his long knife. in a few seconds the shikarree had reached the top of the banyan; and clutching the great leaf-stalks of the palm, he climbed up among its huge fronds. here he was observed to lay hold of the spathe of the flower, and bending it against the trunk, he commenced hammering away with the stone, evidently with the intention of crushing the young inflorescence. with a few blows he succeeded in doing this effectually. he then drew the knife from his scarf, and, with an adroit cut, detached the upper half of the flower-spike, which fell neglected to the ground. the bamboo vessel was next brought into service. this he fixed on the spathe in such a manner that the incised end remained inside the hollow of the cane. both flower-spike and cane were then tied to one of the leaf-stalks of the palm, so that the bamboo hung vertically bottom downward; and this arrangement having been completed, the shikarree flung down his hammering stone, replaced his knife under his belt, and defended from the tree. "now, sahibs," said he, as soon as he had reached terra firma, "you waitee hour--you drinkee indoo champagne." in an hour or so his promise was fulfilled. the bamboo-joint was released and brought down; and, sure enough, it was found to be full of a cool clear liquor, of which all of them drank, esteeming it equal to the best champagne. in fact, there is no more seducing and delicious drink in all india than the sap of the palmyra palm; but it is also very intoxicating, and is used too freely by the natives of the country where this splendid tree flourishes. sugar can also be manufactured from this sap, simply by boiling it down. when sugar is to be made, the tree is tapped in a similar manner; but it is necessary to have a little lime in the vessel while collecting the liquid, else it would ferment, and thus spoil it for sugar-boiling. the reason why ossaroo was so ready in tapping this particular _tree_, was because the banyan which enveloped its trunk offered him an excellent means of getting at it. otherwise it would have been no easy matter to have ascended the smooth slender shaft of a palmyra, rising thirty or forty feet without knot or branch. of course ossaroo, as soon as the bamboo was empty, once more climbed up and readjusted it to the "tap," knowing that the sap would continue to run. this it does for many days, only that each day it is necessary to cut a fresh slice from the top of the flower-stalk, so as to keep the pores open and free. though the day had been hot, as soon as twilight came on the coolness of the air rendered it necessary for our travellers to kindle a fire. ossaroo was not long in striking a light out of his tinder-box, and having set fire to some dry leaves and moss, a blaze was soon produced. meanwhile karl and caspar had broken some branches from a dead tree that lay near the spot, and carrying them up in armfuls, piled them upon the burning leaves. a roaring fire was created in a few minutes, and around this the party seated themselves, and commenced cooking their supper of rice, with some pieces of dried meat, which they had brought along from the last village. whilst engaged in this occupation, so agreeable to men who are hungry, the botanist, whose eye was always on the alert for matters relating to his favourite calling, remarked that the wood out of which their fire had been made burned very much like oak. on taking up one of the fagots, and cutting it with his knife, he was astonished to find that it _was_ oak in reality--for there is no mistaking the grain and fibre of this giant of the northern forests. what astonished him was the existence of oak-trees in a country where the flora was altogether tropical. he knew that he might expect to find representatives of the oak family upon the sides of the himalayas; but he was still only at their foot, and in the region of the palms and bananas. karl knew not then, nor is it yet generally known, that many species of oaks are tropical trees--in fact, many kinds may be found in the torrid zone, growing even as low as the level of the sea. it is no less strange, that although there are no oaks in tropical south america and africa, in ceylon, or even in the peninsula of india itself, yet there are numerous species in east bengal, the moluccas, and the indian islands--perhaps a greater number of species than grows in any other part of the world! the sight of this old acquaintance, as they termed the oak, had a cheering effect upon the bavarian boys; and after supper they sat conversing upon the subject, determined as soon as it was day to look out for some of the living trees as further confirmation of the strange fact they had observed. they were about thinking of wrapping themselves up in their blankets, and retiring to rest, when an incident occurred that kept them awake for another hour or two. chapter eight. the sambur stag. "see!" cried caspar, who was more sharp-eyed than karl. "look! look yonder! two lights, i declare!" "indeed, yes," replied karl; "i see them--bright round lights! what can they be?" "an animal!" answered caspar; "i can affirm that much. some wild beast, i fancy!" they regarded the strange object with some uneasiness, for they knew they were in the haunts of dangerous wild beasts. "maybe a tiger?" suggested karl. "or a panther?" added his brother. "i hope neither one nor the other," said karl. he was interrupted by ossaroo, who had now observed the shining spots, and who with a single word reassured the whole party. "samboo," said the shikarree. both knew that ossaroo meant by "samboo," the great deer or stag known to europeans as the sambur deer. it was the eyes of a deer, then, glancing back the blaze of the oak fagots, that had alarmed them. their fears were suddenly changed to feelings of joy. they had a double motive for being pleased at the sight. to shoot and bring down the deer would be such excellent sport; besides, a fresh venison steak was a delicacy which both could appreciate. all of them, ossaroo included, were too well accustomed to the habits of hunters to act rashly. any sudden movement among them might frighten the game; and if it bounded off into the forest, or even turned its head, it could no longer be seen in the pitchy darkness that surrounded them. the shining eyes were all of it that were visible; and if the creature had but chosen to _shut its eyes_ it might have stood there till the morning light, without the least chance of being aimed at. the animal, however, was too full of its own curiosity to adopt this precaution. instead, it remained where it had been first observed--its great round orbs uncovered to their full extent and gleaming in the light like a pair of "bull's-eyes." caspar in a whisper cautioned the others to remain silent and not to move hand or finger. he, himself, gradually dropped his arm, until he was able to grasp his large double-barrelled gun; and then, raising the piece slowly to a level, took aim and fired. he very prudently did not aim for the centre spot between the eyes. had it been a bullet that was in his gun he might have done so; but he knew that his piece was only loaded with shot, and shot--even though they were "buckshot"--might not penetrate the hard thick skull of a stag so strong as the sambur. instead of aiming for the eyes, therefore, he took sight at least a foot below them, and in a direct line below. he had already conjectured, from the even set of the eyes, that the deer was standing full front towards the camp-fire, and his object was to send the shot into its breast and throat. the instant after he had delivered the first barrel, although the shining eyes went out like the snuffing of candles, he fired the second, so as to take advantage of a random shot. he might have spared his load, for the first had done the business; and the noise of kicking and sprawling among the dry leaves told that the deer was knocked over, and, if not killed, at least badly wounded. the dog fritz had already leaped forth; and before the hunters could procure a torch and reach the spot, the huge hound had seized the quarry by the throat, and finished its struggles by strangling it to death. they now dragged the carcass up to the light of the fire, and it was just as much as the three of them could manage--for the sambur deer is one of the largest animals of its kind, and the one that had fallen into their hands was a fine old buck, with a pair of immense antlered horns, of which no doubt in his lifetime he had been excessively proud. the sambur deer is one of the most distinguished of the deer tribe. although not equal in size to the american wapiti (_cervus canadensis_), he is much superior to the stag or red-deer of europe. he is an active, bold, and vicious animal; and, when bayed, a dangerous antagonist either to dogs or hunters. his coat is close, the hair harsh, of a brown colour, and slightly grizzled. around the neck it is long and shaggy, but particularly upon the under line of the throat, where it forms a mane similar to that of the american wapiti. another mane runs along the back of the neck, adding to the fierce bold appearance of the animal. a blackish band encircles the muzzle, and the usual "crupper mark" around the tail is small and of a yellowish colour. this is the description of the common sambur deer (_cervus hippelaphus_) best known to europeans, and among anglo-indian sportsmen called "stag"; but it is to be observed that in different parts of asia there are many different species and varieties of the sambur. zoologists usually class them in a group called _rusa_; and one or other of this group may be found in every district of india from ceylon to the himalayas, and from the indus to the islands of the indian archipelago. they haunt in timber, and usually by the banks of streams or other waters. america has long been regarded as the favourite region of the deer tribe, as africa is the true home of the antelopes. this belief, however, seems to be rather an incorrect one, and has arisen, perhaps, from the fact that the american species are better known to europeans. it is true that the largest of the deer--the moose (_cervus alces_)--is an inhabitant of the american continent in common with northern europe and asia; but the number of species on that continent, both in its northern and southern divisions, is very limited. when the zoology of the east--i mean of all those countries and islands usually included under the term east indies--shall have been fully determined, we shall no doubt find not only twice, but three times the number of species of deer that belongs to america. when we consider the vast number of educated englishmen--both in the array and in the civil service--who have idled away their lives in india, we cannot help wondering at the little that is yet known in relation to the _fauna_ of the oriental world. most of the indian officers have looked upon the wild animals of that country with the eye of the sportsman rather than of the naturalist. with them a deer is a deer, and a large ox-like animal a buffalo, or it may be a gayal, or a jungle cow, or a gour, or a gyall; but which of all these is an ox, or whether the four last-mentioned bovine quadrupeds are one and the same species, remains to be determined. were it not that these gentlemen have had spirit enough occasionally to send us home a skin or a set of horns, we might remain altogether ignorant of the existence of the creature from which these trophies were taken. verily science owes not much to the honourable east india company. we are not blind to such noble exceptions as sykes, hodgson, and others; and, if every province of india had a resident of their character, a fauna might soon be catalogued that would astonish even the spectacled _savant_. chapter nine. a night marauder. ossaroo soon stripped the stag of its skin, cut the carcass into quarters, and hung them on the limb of a tree. although the party had already supped, the excitement which had been occasioned by the incident gave them a fresh appetite; and venison-steaks were broiled over the oak-wood cinders, and eaten with a relish. these were washed down by fresh draughts of the delicious palm-wine; and then the travellers, having gathered some of the hanging moss, "_usnea_," and strewed it near the fire, rolled themselves in their blankets, and went to sleep. about midnight there was a camp alarm. the sleepers were awakened by the dog fritz; who, by his angry baying and fierce demonstrations, showed that some creature must have approached the fire that had no business to be there. on rousing themselves they thought they heard footsteps at a little distance, and a low growl as of some wild beast; but it was not easy to distinguish any sound in particular, as at this season the tropical forest is full of noises--so loud that it is often difficult for persons to hear each other in conversation. what with the chirruping of cicadas, the croaking of swamp-frogs, the tinkling of tree-toads, and the hooting and screeching of owls and night-hawks, the indian forest is filled with a deafening din throughout the whole night. fritz ceased barking after a time; and they all went to sleep again, and slept till morning. as soon as day broke, they were up, and set about preparing breakfast. fresh fagots were piled upon the fire, and preparations made for a savoury roast of venison rib. ossaroo climbed up to his tap, while caspar went for the meat. the quarters of the deer had been suspended upon a tree, at the distance of about fifty paces from the camp-fire. the reason of their being hung at such a distance was that a stream flowed there, and in order to clean the meat, they had carried it down to the water's edge. a horizontal branch, which was about the proper height from the ground, had tempted ossaroo, and he had chosen it for his "meat-rack." an exclamation from caspar now summoned the others to the spot. "see!" cried he, as they came up, "one of the quarters gone!" "ha! there have been thieves!" said karl. "that was what caused fritz to bark." "thieves!" ejaculated caspar. "not men thieves! they would have carried off the four quarters instead of one. some wild beast has been the thief!" "yes, sahib, you speakee true," said the shikarree, who had now reached the spot; "he wild beast--he very wild beast--big tiger!" at the mention of the name of this terrible animal, both boys started, and looked anxiously around. even ossaroo himself exhibited symptoms of fear. to think they had been sleeping on the open ground so close to a tiger--the most savage and dreaded of all beasts--and this, too, in india, where they were constantly hearing tales of the ravages committed by these animals! "you think it was a tiger?" said the botanist, interrupting ossaroo. "sure, sahib--lookee here!--sahib, see him track!" the shikarree pointed to some tracks in the selvedge of sand that lined the bank of the rivulet. there, sure enough, were the foot-prints of a large animal; and, upon inspecting them closely, they could easily be distinguished as those of a creature of the cat tribe. there were the pads or cushions smoothly imprinted in the sand, and the slight impression of the claws--for the tiger, although possessed of very long and sharp claws, can retract these when walking, so as to leave very little mark of them in the mud or sand. the tracks were too large to be mistaken for those either of a leopard or panther, and the only other animal to which they could appertain was the lion. there were lions in that district. but ossaroo well knew how to distinguish between the tracks of the two great carnivora, and without a moment's hesitation he pronounced the robber to have been a tiger. it now became a matter of serious consideration what they should do under the circumstances. should they abandon their camp, and _move_ forward? karl was very desirous of spending a day or two in the neighbourhood. he made no doubt of being able to find several new species of plants there. but with the knowledge of having such a neighbour they would not sleep very soundly. the tiger would, no doubt, return to the camp. he was not likely to stay away from a quarter where he had found such hospitable entertainment--such a good supper. he must have seen the rest of the venison, and would be sure to pay them another visit on the following night. true, they might kindle large fires, and frighten him off from their sleeping place; still, they would be under an unpleasant apprehension; and even during the day they had no confidence that he might not attack them--particularly if they went botanising in the woods. the very places into which their occupation would lead them, would be those in which they were most likely to meet this dreaded neighbour. perhaps, therefore, it would be best to pack up, and proceed on their journey. while eating their breakfasts the thing was debated among them. caspar, full of hunter-spirit, was desirous of having a peep at the tiger anyhow; but karl was more prudent, if not a little more timid, and thought it was better to "move on." this was the opinion of the botanist; but he at length gave way to caspar, and more particularly to ossaroo, who proposed _killing_ the tiger if they would only remain one night longer upon the ground. "what! with your bow, ossaroo?" asked caspar; "with your poisoned arrows?" "no, young sahib," replied ossaroo. "i thought you would have but little chance to kill a great tiger with such weapons. how do you mean to do it then?" "if sahib karl consent to stay till to-morrow, ossaroo show you--he kill tiger--he catch 'im 'live." "catch him alive!--in a trap?--in a snare?" "no trapee--no snaree. you see. ossaroo do what he say--he take tiger 'live." ossaroo had evidently some plan of his own, and the others became curious to know what it was. as the shikarree promised that it was unattended with danger, the botanist consented to remain, and let the trial be made. ossaroo now let them into the secret of his plan; and as soon as they had finished eating their breakfasts, all hands set to work to assist him in carrying it into execution. they proceeded as follows. in the first place, a large number of joints of bamboo were obtained from a neighbouring thicket of these canes. the bark of the banyan was then cut, and the canes inserted in such a manner that the white milky sap ran into them. each joint was left closed at the bottom, and served as a vessel to collect the juice, and such stems of the fig only were tapped as were young and full of sap. as soon as a sufficient quantity of the fluid had been distilled into the canes, the contents of all were poured into the cooking-pot, and hung over a slow fire. the sap was then stirred--fresh juice being occasionally thrown in--and in a short while the whole attained the toughness and consistency of the best birdlime. it was, in fact, true birdlime--the same that is used by the bird-catchers of india, and quite equal to that manufactured from the holly. during the time that this was being prepared, karl and caspar, by the directions of ossaroo, had climbed into the trees, and collected an immense quantity of leaves. these leaves were also taken from the banyan figs, and for this purpose they had selected those that grew on the youngest trees and shoots. each leaf was as large as a tea-plate, and they were covered with a woolly pubescence, peculiar only to the leaves upon the younger trees--for as the banyan grows old its leaves become harder and smoother on the surface. the fig-leaves having been gathered to his hand, and the birdlime made ready, ossaroo proceeded to carry out his design. the two remaining quarters of the venison still hung on the tree. these were permitted to remain--as a bait to the singular trap that ossaroo was about to set--only that they were raised higher from the ground, in order that the tiger might not too readily snatch them away, and thus defeat the stratagem of the hunter. the venison having been hung to his liking, ossaroo now cleared the ground for a large space around--directing his assistants to carry off all the brush and dead wood to a distance from the spot. this was quickly done, and then the shikarree put the finishing stroke to his work. this occupied him for two hours at least, and consisted in anointing all the fig-leaves that had been gathered with a coat of birdlime, and spreading them over the ground, until they covered a space of many yards in circumference. in the centre of this space hung the venison; and no creature could have approached within yards of it without treading upon the smeared leaves. the leaves had been anointed upon both sides, so that they adhered slightly to the grass, and a breeze of wind could not have disarranged them to any great extent. when all was fixed to their satisfaction, ossaroo and the others returned to the camp-fire, and ate a hearty dinner. it was already late in the day, for they had been many hours at work, and they had not thought of dining until their arrangements were complete. nothing more remained to be done, but to await the result of their stratagem. chapter ten. a talk about tigers. i need not describe a tiger. you have seen one, or the picture of one. he is the great _striped_ cat. the large _spotted_ ones are not tigers. they are either jaguars, or panthers, or leopards, or ounces, or cheetahs, or servals. but there is no danger of your mistaking the tiger for any other animal. he is the largest of the feline tribe--the lion alone excepted--and individual tigers have been measured as large as the biggest lion. the shaggy mane that covers the neck and shoulders of an old male lion gives him the appearance of being of greater dimensions than he really is. skin him and he would not be larger than an old male tiger also divested of his hide. like the lion, the tiger varies but little in form or colour. nature does not sport with these powerful beasts. it is only upon the meaner animals she plays off her eccentricities. the tiger may be seen with the ground-colour of a lighter or deeper yellow, and the stripes or bars more or less black; but the same general appearance is preserved, and the species can always be recognised at a glance. the range or habitat of the tiger is more limited than that of the lion. the latter exists throughout the whole of africa, as well as the southern half of asia; whereas the tiger is found only in the south-eastern countries of asia, and some of the larger islands of the indian archipelago. westwardly his range does not extend to this side of the indus river, and how far north in asia is uncertain. some naturalists assert that there are tigers in asia as far north as the obi river. this would prove the tiger to be not altogether a tropical animal, as he is generally regarded. it is certain that tigers once did inhabit the countries around the caspian sea. there lay hyrcania; and several roman writers speak of the hyrcanian tigers. they could not have meant any of the spotted cats,--ounce, panther, or leopard,--for the romans knew the difference between these and the striped or true tiger. if, then, the tiger was an inhabitant of those trans-himalayan regions in the days of augustus, it is possible it still exists there, as we have proofs of its existence in mongolia and northern china at the present day. were we to believe some travellers, we should have the tiger, not only in africa, but in america. the jaguar is the tiger (_tigre_) of the spanish americans; and the panther, leopard, and cheetah, have all done duty as "tigers" in the writings of old travellers in africa. the true home of this fierce creature is the hot jungle-covered country that exists in extended tracts in hindostan, siam, malaya, and parts of china. there the tiger roams undisputed lord of the thicket and forest; and although the lion is also found in these countries, he is comparatively a rare animal, and, from being but seldom met with, is less talked about or feared. we who live far away from the haunts of these great carnivora, can hardly realise the terror which is inspired by them in the countries they infest. in many places human life is not safe; and men go out upon a journey, with the same dread of meeting a tiger, that we would have for an encounter with a mad dog. this dread is by no means founded upon mere fancies or fabricated stories. every village has its true tales of tiger attacks and encounters, and every settlement has its list of killed or maimed. you can scarce credit such a relation; but it is a well-known fact that whole districts of fertile _country_ have from time to time been abandoned by their inhabitants out of pure fear of the tigers and panthers which infested them! indeed, similar cases of depopulation have occurred in south america, caused by a far less formidable wild beast--the jaguar. in some parts of india the natives scarce attempt resistance to the attack of the tiger. indeed, the superstition of his victims aids the fierce monster in their destruction. they regard him as being gifted with supernatural power, and sent by their gods to destroy; and under this conviction yield themselves up, without making the slightest resistance. in other parts, where races exist possessed of more energy of character, the tiger is hunted eagerly, and various modes of killing or capturing him are practised in different districts. sometimes a bow is set with poisoned arrows, and a cord attached to the string. a bait is then placed on the ground, and arranged in such a way that the tiger, on approaching it, presses against the cord, sets the bow-string free, and is pierced by the arrow--the poison of which eventually causes his death. a spring-gun is set off by a similar contrivance, and the tiger shoots himself. the log-trap or "dead-fall"--often employed by american backwoodsmen for capturing the black bear--is also in use in india for trapping the tiger. this consists of a heavy log or beam so adjusted upon the top of another one by a prop or "trigger," as to fall and crush whatever animal may touch the trigger. a bait is also used for this species of trap. hunting the tiger upon elephants is a royal sport in india, and is often followed by the indian rajahs, and sometimes by british sportsmen-- officers of the east india company. this sport is, of course, very exciting; but there is nothing of a _ruse_ practised in it. the hunters go armed with rifles and spears; and attended by a large number of natives, who beat the jungle and drive the game within reach of the sportsmen. many lives are sacrificed in this dangerous sport; but those who suffer are usually the poor peasants employed as beaters; and an indian rajah holds the lives of a score or two of his subjects as lightly as that of a tiger itself. it is said the chinese catch the tiger in a box-trap, which they bait simply with a looking-glass. the tiger, on approaching the looking-glass, perceives his own shadow, and mistaking it for a rival, rushes forward to the trap, frees the trigger, and is caught. it may be that the chinese practised such a method. that part is likely enough; but it is not likely that they take many tigers in this way. perhaps you may be of opinion that the plan which ossaroo was about to follow was quite as absurd as that of the chinese. it certainly did sound very absurd to his companions, when he first told them that it was his intention to _catch the tiger by birdlime_! chapter eleven. a tiger taken by birdlime. the plan of the shikarree was put to the test sooner than any of them expected. they did not look for the tiger to return before sunset, and they had resolved to pass the night among the branches of the banyan in order to be out of the way of danger. the tiger might take it into his head to stroll into their camp; and although, under ordinary circumstances, these fierce brutes have a dread of fire, there are some of them that do not regard it, and instances have occurred of tigers making their attack upon men who were seated close to a blazing pile! ossaroo knew of several such cases, and had, therefore, given his advice, that all of them should pass the night in the tree. it was true the tiger could easily scale the banyan if the notion occurred to him; but, unless they made some noise to attract his attention, he would not be likely to discover their whereabouts. they had taken the precaution to erect a platform of bamboos among the branches, so as to serve them for a resting-place. after all, they were not under the necessity of resorting to this elevated roost,--at least for the purpose of passing the night there. but they occupied it for a while; and during that while they were witnesses to a scene that for singularity, and comicality as well, was equal to anything that any of them had ever beheld. it wanted about half-an-hour of sunset, and they were all seated around the camp-fire, when a singular noise reached their ears. it was not unlike the "whirr" made by a thrashing-machine--which any one must have heard who has travelled through an agricultural district. unlike this, however, the sound was not prolonged, but broke out at intervals, continued for a few seconds, and then was silent again. ossaroo was the only one of the party who, on hearing this sound, exhibited any feelings of alarm. the others were simply curious. it was an unusual sound. they wondered what was producing it--nothing more. they quite shared the alarm of the shikarree, when the latter informed them that what they heard was neither more nor less than the "purr" of a tiger! ossaroo communicated this information in an ominous whisper, at the same instant crouching forward towards the main trunk of the banyan, and beckoning to the others to follow him. without a word they obeyed the sign, and all three climbed, one after the other, up the trunk, and silently seated themselves among the branches. by looking through the outer screen of leaves, and a little downward, they could see the quarters of venison hanging from the limb, and also the whole surface of the ground where the glittering leaves were spread. whether the haunch which the tiger had stolen on the preceding night had not been sufficient for his supper, and he had grown hungry again before his usual feeding-time, is uncertain. but certain it is that ossaroo, who understood well the habits of this striped robber, did not expect him to return so soon. he looked for him after darkness should set in. but the loud "purr-r-r" that at intervals came booming through the jungle, and each time sounding more distinctly, showed that the great cat was upon the ground. all at once they espied him coming out of the bushes, and on the other side of the rivulet--his broad whitish throat and breast shining in contrast with the dark green foliage. he was crouching just after the manner of a house-cat when making her approach to some unwary bird--his huge paws spread before him, and his long back hollowed down--a hideous and fearful object to behold. his eyes appeared to flash fire, as he bent them upon the tempting joints hanging high up upon the branch of the tree. after reconnoitring a little, he gathered up his long back into a curve, vaulted into the air, and cleared the rivulet from bank to bank. then, without further pause, he trotted nimbly forward, and stopped directly under the hanging joints. ossaroo had purposely raised the meat above its former elevation, and the lowest ends of the joints were full twelve feet from the ground. although the tiger can bound to a very great distance in a horizontal direction, he is not so well fitted for springing vertically upwards, and therefore the tempting morsels were just beyond his reach. he seemed to be somewhat nonplussed at this--for upon his last visit he had found things rather different--but after regarding the joints for a moment or two, and uttering a loud snuff of discontent, he flattened his paws against the ground, and sprang high into air. the attempt was a failure. he came back to the earth without having touched the meat, and expressed his dissatisfaction by an angry growl. in another moment, he made a second spring upwards. this time, he struck one of the quarters with his paw, and sent it swinging backwards and forwards, though it had been secured too well to the branch to be in any danger of falling. all at once, the attention of the great brute became directed to a circumstance, which seemed to puzzle him not a little. he noticed that there was something adhering to his paws. he raised one of them from the ground, and saw that two or three leaves were sticking to it. what could be the matter with the leaves, to cling to his soles in that manner? they appeared to be wet, but what of that? he had never known wet leaves stick to his feet any more than dry ones. perhaps it was this had hindered him from springing up as high as he had intended? at all events, he did not feel quite comfortable, and he should have the leaves off before he attempted to leap again. he gave his paw a slight shake, but the leaves would not go. he shook it more violently, still the leaves adhered! he could not make it out. there was some gummy substance upon them, such as he had never met with before in all his travels. he had rambled over many a bed of fig-leaves in his day, but had never set foot upon such sticky leaves as these. another hard shake of the paw produced no better effect. still stuck fast the leaves, as if they had been pitch plasters; one covering the whole surface of his foot, and others adhering to its edges. several had even fastened themselves on his ankles. what the deuce did it all mean? as shaking the paw was of no use, he next attempted to get rid of them by the only other means known to him; that was by rubbing them off against his cheeks and snout. he raised the paw to his ears, and drew it along the side of his head. he succeeded in getting most of them off his foot in this way, but, to his chagrin, they now adhered to his head, ears, and jaws, where they felt still more uncomfortable and annoying. these he resolved to detach, by using his paw upon them; but, instead of doing so, he only added to their number, for, on raising his foot, he found that a fresh batch of the sticky leaves had fastened upon it. he now tried the other foot, with no better effect. it, too, was covered with gummy leaves, that only became detached to fasten upon his jaws, and stick there, in spite of all his efforts to tear them off. even some of them had got over his eyes, and already half-blinded him! but one way remained to get rid of the leaves, that had so fastened upon his head. every time he applied his paws, it only made things worse. but there was still a way to get them off--so thought he--by rubbing his head along the ground. no sooner thought of than done. he pressed his jaws down to the earth, and, using his hind-legs to push himself along, he rubbed hard to rid himself of the annoyance. he then turned over, and tried the same method with the other side; but, after continuing at this for some moments, he discovered he was only making matters worse; in fact, he found that both his eyes were now completely "bunged up," and that he was perfectly blind! he felt, moreover, that his whole head, as well as his body, was now covered, even to the tip of his tail. by this time, he had lost all patience. he thought no longer of the venison. he thought only of freeing himself from the detestable plight in which he was placed. he sprang and bounded over the ground; now rubbing his head along the surface, now scraping it with his huge paws, and ever and anon dashing himself against the stems of the trees that grew around. all this while, his growling, and howling, and screaming, filled the woods with the most hideous noises. up to this crisis, our travellers had watched his every movement, all of them bursting with laughter; to which, however, they dare not give utterance, lest they might spoil the sport. at length, ossaroo knew that the time was come for something more serious than laughter; and, descending from the tree with his long spear, he beckoned the others to follow with their guns. the shikarree could have approached and thrust the tiger, without much danger; but, to make sure, the double-barrel, already loaded with ball, was fired at him, along with caspar's rifle; and one of the bullets striking him between the ribs, put an end to his struggles, by laying him out upon the grass dead as a herring. upon examining him, they found that the fig-leaves go covered his eyes, as to render him completely blind. what prevented him from scratching them off with his huge claws was, that these were so wrapped up in the leafy envelope as to render them perfectly useless, and no longer dangerous, had any one engaged with him in close combat. when the exciting scene was over, all of the party indulged in hearty laughter; for there was something extremely ludicrous, not only in the idea, but in the act itself, of trapping a royal tiger by so simple a contrivance as birdlime. chapter twelve. a rare raft. ossaroo did not fail to skin the tiger, and to eat for his supper a large steak, cut off from his well-fleshed ribs. the others did not join him in this singular viand, although the shikarree assured them that tiger-beef was far superior to the venison of the sambur deer. there may have been truth in ossaroo's assertion; for it is well-known, that the flesh of several kinds of carnivorous animals is not only palatable, but delicate eating. indeed, the delicacy of the meat does not seem at all to depend upon the food of the animal; since no creature is a more unclean feeder than the domestic pig, and what is nicer or more tender than a bit of roast pork? on the other hand, many animals, whose flesh is exceedingly bitter, feed only on fresh grass or sweet succulent roots and plants. as a proof of this, i might instance the tapir of south america, the quaggas and zebras of africa, and even some animals of the deer and antelope tribes, whose flesh is only eatable in cases of emergency. the same fact may be observed in relation to birds. many birds of prey furnish a dish quite equal to choice game. for one, the flesh of the large chicken-hawk of america (eaten and eagerly sought after by the plantation negroes) is not much, if anything, inferior to that of the bird upon which it preys. it was not for the "meat," however, that ossaroo stripped the tiger of his skin, but rather for the skin itself; and not so much for the absolute value of the skin, for in india that is not great. had it been a panther or leopard skin, or even the less handsome hide of the cheetah, its absolute value would have been greater. but there was an artificial value attached to the skin of a tiger, and that well knew the shikarree. he knew that there was a _bounty of ten rupees_ for every tiger killed, and also that to obtain this bounty it was necessary to show the skin. true it was the east india company that paid the bounty, and only for tigers killed in their territory. this one had not been killed under the british flag, but what of that? a tiger-skin was a tiger-skin; and ossaroo expected some day not distant to walk the streets of calcutta; and, with this idea in his mind, he climbed up the great banyan, and hid his tiger-skin among its topmost branches, to be left there till his return from the mountains. the next two days were spent in the same neighbourhood, and the plant-hunter was very successful. the seeds of many rare plants, some of them quite new to the botanical world, were here obtained, and like the skin of the tiger deposited in a safe place, so that the collectors might not be burdened with them on their journey to the mountains. it was in this way that karl had resolved upon making his collections, leaving the seeds and nuts he should obtain at various places upon his route; and, when returning, he trusted to be able to employ some coolies to assist in getting them carried to calcutta or some other sea-port. on the fourth day the travellers again took the route, still facing due northward in the direction of the mountains. they needed no guide to point out their course, as the river which they had resolved upon following upwards was guide enough; usually they kept along its banks, but sometimes a thick marshy jungle forced them to abandon the water-edge and keep away for some distance into the back country, where the path was more safe and open. about midday they arrived at the banks of a stream, that was a branch of the main river. this stream lay transversely to their route, and, of course, had to be crossed. there was neither bridge nor ford, nor crossing of any kind to be seen, and the current was both wide and deep. they followed it up for more than a mile; but it neither grew shallower nor yet more narrow. they walked up and down for a couple of hours, endeavouring to find a crossing, but to no purpose. both caspar and ossaroo were good swimmers, but karl could not swim a stroke; and it was entirely on his account that they stayed to search for a ford. the other two would have dashed in at once, regardless of the swift current. what was to be done with karl? in such a rapid running river it was as much as the best swimmer could do to carry himself across; therefore not one of the others could assist karl. how then, were they to get over? they had seated themselves under a tree to debate this question; and no doubt the habile ossaroo would soon have offered a solution to it, and got the young sahib across, but at that moment assistance arrived from a very unexpected quarter. there was a belt of open ground--a sort of meadow upon the side opposite to where they were seated, which was backed by a jungly forest. out of this forest a man was seen to emerge, and take his way across the meadow in the direction of the river. his swarthy complexion, and bushy black hair hanging neglected over his shoulders--his dress consisting of a single blanket-like robe, held by a leathern belt around the waist-- his bare legs and sandalled feet--all bore evidence that he was one of the half-savage natives of the terai. his appearance created a great sensation, and astonished all the party-- ossaroo, perhaps, excepted. it was not his wild look nor his odd costume that produced this astonishment, for men who have travelled in hindostan are not likely to be surprised by wild looks and strange dresses. what astonished our travellers--and it would have had a like effect upon the most stoical people in the world--was that the individual who approached was carrying a _buffalo upon his back_! not the quarter of a buffalo, nor the head of a buffalo, but a whole one, as big, and black, and hairy, as an english bull! the back of the animal lay against the back of the man, with the head and horns projecting over his shoulder, the legs sticking out behind, and the tail dragging about his heels! how one man could bear up under such a load was more than our travellers could divine; but not only did this wild mech bear up under it, but he appeared to carry it with ease, and stepped as lightly across the meadow as if it had been a bag of feathers he was carrying! both karl and caspar uttered exclamations of surprise, and rapid interrogatories were put to ossaroo for an explanation. ossaroo only smiled significantly in reply, evidently able to explain this mysterious phenomenon; but enjoying the surprise of his companions too much to offer a solution of it as long as he could decorously withhold it. the surprise of the boys was not diminished, when another native stepped out of the timber, buffalo on back, like the first; and then another and another--until half-a-dozen men, with a like number of buffaloes on their shoulders, were seen crossing the meadows! meanwhile the foremost had reached the bank of the river; and now the astonishment of the botanists reached its climax, when they saw this man let down the huge animal from his shoulders, embrace it with his arms, place it before him in the water, and then mount astride _upon its back_! in a moment more he was out in the stream, and his buffalo swimming under him, or rather he seemed to be pushing it along, using his arms and legs as paddles to impel it forward! the others, on reaching the water, acted in a precisely similar manner, and the whole party were soon launched, and crossing the stream together. it was not until the foremost mech had arrived at the bank close to where our travellers awaited them, _lifted his buffalo out of the water, and reshouldered it_, that the latter learnt to their surprise that what they had taken for buffaloes were nothing more than the inflated skins of these animals that were thus employed as rafts by the rude but ingenious natives of the district! the same contrivance is used by the inhabitants of the punjaub and other parts of india, where fords are few and bridges cannot be built. the buffaloes are skinned, with the legs, heads, and horns left on, to serve as handles and supports in managing them. they are then rendered airtight and inflated, heads, legs, and all; and in this way bear such a resemblance to the animals from which they have been taken, that even dogs are deceived, and often growl and bark at them. of course the quantity of air is for more than sufficient to buoy up the weight of a man. sometimes, when goods and other articles are to be carried across, several skins are attached together, and thus form an excellent raft. this was done upon the spot, and at a moment's notice. the mechs, although a half-savage people, are far from uncivil in their intercourse with strangers. a word from ossaroo, accompanied by a few pipes of tobacco from the botanist, procured the desired raft of buffalo-skins; and our party, in less than half-an-hour, were safely deposited upon the opposite bank, and allowed to continue their journey without the slightest molestation. chapter thirteen. the tallest grass in the world. as our travellers proceeded up-stream, they were occasionally compelled to pass through tracts covered with a species of jungle-grass, called "dab-grass," which not only reached above the heads of the tallest of the party, but would have done so had they been giants! goliath or the cyclops might have, either of them, stood on tiptoe in a field of this grass, without being able to look over its tops. the botanist was curious enough to measure some stalks of this gigantic grass, and found them full fourteen feet in height, and as thick as a man's finger near the roots! of course no animal, except a giraffe, could raise its head over the tops of such grass as this; but there are no giraffes in this part of the world--these long-necked creatures being confined to the continent of africa. wild elephants, however, are found here; and the largest of them can hide himself in the midst of this tall sward, as easily as a mouse would in an english meadow. but there are other animals that make their layer in the dab-grass. it is a favourite haunt both of the tiger and indian lion; and it was not without feelings of fear that our botanical travellers threaded their way amidst its tall cane-like culms. you will be ready to admit, that the dab-grass is a tall grass. but it is far from being the tallest in the world, or in the east indies either. what think you of a grass nearly five times as tall? and yet in that same country such a grass exists. yes--there is a species of "panic-grass," the _panicum arborescens_, which actually grows to the height of fifty feet, with a culm not thicker than an ordinary goose-quill! this singular species is, however, a climbing plant, growing up amidst the trees of the forest, supported by their branches, and almost reaching to their tops. this panic-grass you will, no doubt, fancy _must be the tallest grass in the world_. but no. prepare yourself to hear that there is still another kind, not only taller than this, but one that grows to the prodigious height of a hundred feet! you will guess what sort i am about to name. it could be no other than the giant _bamboo. that is the tallest grass in the world_. you know the bamboo as a "cane;" but for all that it is a true grass, belonging to the natural order of _gramineae_, or grasses, the chief difference between it, and many others of the same order, being its more gigantic dimensions. my young reader, i may safely assert, that in all the vegetable kingdom there is no species or form so valuable to the human race as the "grasses." among all civilised nations bread is reckoned as the food of primary importance, so much so as to have obtained the sobriquet of "the staff of life;" and nearly every sort of bread is the production of a grass. wheat, barley, oats, maize, and rice, are all grasses; and so, too, is the sugar-cane--so valuable for its luxurious product. it would take up many pages of our little volume to enumerate the various species of _gramineae_, that contribute to the necessities and luxuries of mankind; and other pages might be written about species equally available for the purposes of life, but which have not yet been brought into cultivation. of all kinds of grasses, however, none possesses greater interest than the bamboo. although not the most useful as an article of food, this noble plant serves a greater number of purposes in the economy of human life, than perhaps any other vegetable in existence. what the palm-tree of many species is to the natives of south america or tropical africa, such is the bamboo to the inhabitants of southern asia and its islands. it is doubtful whether nature has conferred upon these people any greater boon than this noble plant, the light and graceful culms of which are applied by them to a multitude of useful purposes. indeed so numerous are the uses made of the bamboo, that it would be an elaborate work even to make out a list of them. a few of the purposes to which it is applied will enable you to judge of the valuable nature of this princely grass. the young shoots of some species are cut when tender, and eaten like asparagus. the full-grown stems, while green, form elegant cases, exhaling a perpetual moisture, and capable of transporting fresh flowers for hundreds of miles. when ripe and hard, they are converted into bows, arrows, and quivers, lance-shafts, the masts of vessels, walking-sticks, the poles of palanquins, the floors and supporters of bridges, and a variety of similar purposes. in a growing state the strong kinds are formed into stockades, which are impenetrable to any thing but regular infantry or artillery. by notching their sides the malays make wonderfully light scaling ladders, which can be conveyed with facility, where heavier machines could not be transported. bruised and crushed in water, the leaves and stems form chinese paper, the finer qualities of which are only improved by a mixture of raw cotton and by more careful pounding. the leaves of a small species are the material used by the chinese for the lining of their tea-chests. cut into lengths, and the partitions knocked out, they form durable water-pipes, or by a little contrivance are made into cases for holding rolls of paper. slit into strips, they afford a most durable material for weaving into mats, baskets, window-blinds, and even the sails of boats; and the larger and thicker truncheons are carved by the chinese into beautiful ornaments. for building purposes the bamboo is still more important. in many parts of india the framework of the houses of the natives is chiefly composed of this material. in the flooring, whole stems, four or live inches in diameter, are laid close to each other, and across these, laths of split bamboo, about an inch wide, are fastened down by filaments of rattan cane. the sides of the houses are closed in by the bamboos opened and rendered flat by splitting or notching the circular joints on the outside, chipping away the corresponding divisions within, and laying it in the sun to dry, pressed down with weights. whole bamboos often form the upright timbers, and the house is generally roofed in with a thatch of narrow split bamboos, six feet long, placed in regular layers, each reaching within two feet of the extremity of that beneath it, by which a treble covering is formed. another and most ingenious roof is also formed by cutting large straight bamboos of sufficient length to reach from the ridge to the eaves, then splitting them exactly in two, knocking out the partitions, and arranging them in close order with the hollow or inner sides uppermost; after which a second layer, with the outer or concave sides up, is placed upon the other in such a manner that each of the convex pieces falls into the two contiguous concave pieces covering their edges, thus serving as gutters to carry off the rain that falls on the convex layer. such are a few of the uses of the bamboo, enumerated by an ingenious writer; and these are probably not more than one tenth of the purposes to which this valuable cane is applied by the natives of india. the quickness with which the bamboo can be cut and fashioned to any purpose is not the least remarkable of its properties. one of the most distinguished of english botanists (hooker) relates that a complete _furnished_ house of bamboo, containing chairs and a table, was erected by his six attendants in the space of one hour! of the bamboos there are many species--perhaps fifty in all--some of them natives of africa and south america, but the greater number belonging to southern asia, which is the true home of these gigantic grasses. the species differ in many respects from each other--some of them being thick and strong, while others are light and slender, and elastic. in nothing do the different species vary more than in size. they are found growing of all sizes, from the dwarf bamboo, as slender as a wheat-stalk, and only two feet high, to the _bambusa maxima_, as thick as a man's body, and towering to the height of a hundred feet! chapter fourteen. the man-eaters. ossaroo had lived all his life in a bamboo country, and was well acquainted with all its uses. hardly a vessel or implement that he could not manufacture of bamboo canes of some kind or another, and many a purpose besides he knew how to apply them to. had he been obliged to cross a tract of country where there was no water, and required a large vessel, or "canteen," to carry a supply, he would have made it as follows. he would have taken two joints of bamboo, each a couple of feet long and six or seven inches in diameter. these he would have trimmed, so that one of the nodes between the hollow spaces would serve as a bottom for each. in the node, or partition, at the top, he would have pierced a small hole to admit the water, which hole could be closed by a stopper of the pith of a palm or some soft wood, easily procured in the tropical forests of india. in case he could not have found bamboos with joints sufficiently long for the purpose it would have mattered little. two or more joints would have been taken for each jar, and the partitions between them broken through, so as to admit the water into the hollow spaces within. the pair of "jars" he would have then bound together at a very acute angle--something after the form of the letter v--and then to carry them with ease he would have strapped the bamboos to his back, the apex of the angle downwards, and one of the ends just peeping over each shoulder. in this way he would have provided himself with a water-vessel that for strength and lightness--the two great essentials--would have been superior to anything that either tinker or cooper could construct. as it happened that they were travelling through a district where there was water at the distance of every mile or two, this bamboo canteen was not needed. a single joint holding a quart was enough to give any of the party a drink whenever they required it. now had the mechs not arrived opportunely with their rafts of inflated buffalo-skins, there can be no doubt that ossaroo would have found some mode of crossing the stream. a proof that he could have done so occurred but a few hours after, when our travellers found themselves in a similar dilemma. this time it was the main river, whose course they were following, that lay in the way. a large bend had to be got over, else, they would have been compelled to take a circuitous route of many miles, and by a path which the guide knew to be difficult on account of some marshes that intervened. ossaroo proposed fording the river, but how was that to be done? it would be a longer swim than the other, and there were no natives with their skin-rafts--at least none were in sight. but there grew close by a clump of noble bamboos, and the guide pointed to them. "oh! you intend to make a raft of the canes?" inquired the botanist. "yes, sahib," replied the shikarree. "it will take a long time, i fear?" "no fearee, sahib; half-hour do." ossaroo was as good as his promise. in half-an-hour not only one raft, but three--that is, a raft for each--was constructed and ready to be launched. the construction of these was as simple as it was ingenious. each consisted of four pieces of bamboo, lashed together crossways with strips of rattan, so as to form a square in the centre just large enough to admit the body of a man. of course, the bamboos, being hollow within, and closed at both ends, had sufficient buoyancy to sustain a man's weight above water, and nothing more was wanted. each of the party having adjusted his burden upon his back, stepped within the square space, lifted the framework in his hands, walked boldly into the river, and was soon floating out upon its current. ossaroo had given them instructions how to balance themselves so as to keep upright, and also how to paddle with both hands and feet: so that, after a good deal of plashing and spluttering, and laughing and shouting, all three arrived safely on the opposite bank. of course, fritz swam over without a raft. as the river had to be re-crossed on the other arm of the bend, each carried his raft across the neck or isthmus, where a similar fording was made, that brought them once more on the path they were following. thus every day--almost every hour--our travellers were astonished by some new feat of their hunter-guide, and some new purpose to which the noble bamboo could be applied. still another astonishment awaited them. ossaroo had yet a feat in store, in the performance of which the bamboo was to play a conspicuous part; and it chanced that upon the very next day, an opportunity occurred by which the hunter was enabled to perform this feat to the great gratification not only of his travelling companions, but to the delight of a whole village of natives, who derived no little benefit from the performance. i have already said, that there are many parts of india where the people live in great fear of the tigers--as well as lions, wild elephants, panthers, and rhinoceroses. these people have no knowledge of proper fire-arms. some, indeed, carry the clumsy matchlock, which, of course, is of little or no service in hunting; and their bows, even with poisoned arrows, are but poor weapons when used in an encounter with these strong savage beasts. often a whole village is kept in a state of terror for weeks or months by a single tiger who may have made his lair in the neighbourhood, and whose presence is known by his repeated forays upon the cows, buffaloes, or other domesticated animals of the villagers. it is only after this state of things has continued for a length of time, and much loss has been sustained, that these poor people, goaded to desperation, at length assemble together, and risk an encounter with the tawny tyrant. in such encounters human lives are frequently sacrificed, and generally some one of the party receives a blow or scratch from the tiger's paw, which maims or lames him for the rest of his days. but there is still a worse case than even this. not infrequently the tiger, instead of preying upon their cattle, carries off one of the natives themselves; and where this occurs, the savage monster, if not pursued and killed, is certain to repeat the offence. it is strange, and true as strange, that a tiger having once fed upon human flesh, appears ever after to be fonder of it than of any other food, and will make the most daring attempts to procure it. such tigers are not uncommon in india, where they are known among the natives by the dreaded name of _man-eaters_! it is not a little curious that the caffres and other natives of south africa, apply the same term to individuals of the lion species, known to be imbued with a similar appetite. it is difficult to conceive a more horrible monster than a lion or tiger of such tastes; and in india, when the presence of such an _one_ is discovered, the whole neighbourhood lives in dread. often when a british post is near, the natives make application to the officers to assist them in destroying the terrible creature--well knowing that our countrymen, with their superior courage, with their elephants and fine rifles, are more than a match for the jungle tyrant. when no such help is at hand, the shikarrees, or native hunters, usually assemble, and either take the tiger by stratagem, or risk their lives in a bold encounter. in many a tiger-hunt had ossaroo distinguished himself, both by stratagem and prowess, and there was no mode of trapping or killing a tiger that was not known to him. he was now called upon to give an exhibition of his craft, which, in point of ingenuity, was almost equal to the stratagem of the limed fig-leaves. chapter fifteen. the death of the man-eater. the path which our travellers were following led them into one of the native villages of the terai, which lay in a sequestered part of the forest. the inhabitants of this village received them with acclamations of joy. their approach had been reported before they reached the place, and a deputation of the villagers met them on the way, hailing them with joyful exclamations and gestures of welcome. karl and caspar, ignorant of the native language, and, of course, not comprehending what was said, were for some time at a loss to understand the meaning of these demonstrations. ossaroo was appealed to, to furnish an explanation. "a man-eater," he said. "a man-eater!" "yes, sahib; a man-eater in the jungle." this was not sufficiently explicit. what did ossaroo mean? a man-eater in the jungle? what sort of creature was that? neither karl nor caspar had ever heard of such a thing before. they questioned ossaroo. the latter explained to them what was a man-eater. it was a tiger so called, as you already know, on account of its preying upon human beings. this one had already killed and carried off a man, a woman, and two children, beside large numbers of domestic animals. for more than three months it had infested the village, and kept the inhabitants in a state of constant alarm. indeed, several families had deserted the place solely through fear of this terrible tiger; and those that remained were in the habit, as soon as night came on, of shutting themselves up within their houses, without daring to stir out again till morning. in the instance of one of the children, even this precaution had not served, for the fierce tiger had broken through the frail wall of bamboos, and carried the child off before the eyes of its afflicted parents! several times the timid but incensed villagers had assembled and endeavoured to destroy this terrible enemy. they had found him each time in his lair; but, on account of their poor weapons and slight skill as hunters, he had always been enabled to escape from them. indeed on such occasions the tiger was sure to come off victorious, for it was in one of these hunts that the man had fallen a sacrifice. others of the villagers had been wounded in the different conflicts with this pest of the jungle. with such a neighbour at their doors no wonder they had been living in a state of disquietude and terror. but why their joy at the approach of our travellers? this was proudly explained by ossaroo, who of course had reason to be proud of the circumstance. it appeared that the fame of the shikarree, as a great tiger-hunter, had preceded him, and his name was known even in the terai. the villagers had heard that he was approaching, accompanied by two feringhees, (so europeans are called by the natives of india,) and they hoped, by the aid of the noted shikarree and the feringhee sahibs, to get rid of the dreaded marauder. ossaroo, thus appealed to, at once gave his promise to aid them. of course the botanist made no objection, and caspar was delighted with the idea. they were to remain all night at the village, since nothing could be done before night. they might have got up a grand battue to beat the jungle and attack the tiger in his lair, but what would have come of that? perhaps the loss of more lives. none of the villagers cared to risk themselves in such a hunt, and that was not the way that ossaroo killed his tigers. karl and caspar expected to see their companion once more try his stratagem of the birdlime and the leaves; and such at first was his intention. upon inquiry, however, he found that no birdlime was to be had. the villagers did not know how to prepare it, and there were no fig-trees about the neighbourhood, nor holly, nor trees of any other kind out of which it could properly be made. what was ossaroo to do under these circumstances? must he abandon the idea of destroying the man-eater, and leave the helpless villagers to their fate? no. his hunter pride would not permit that. his name as a great shikarree was at stake. besides, his humanity was touched--for, although but a poor hindoo, he possessed the common feelings of our nature. karl and caspar, moreover, had taken an interest in the thing, and urged him to do his best, promising him all the assistance it was in their power to give. it was resolved, therefore, that, cost what it might, the tiger should be destroyed. ossaroo had other resources besides the birdlime and the battue, and he at once set to work to prepare his plan. he had an ample stock of attendants, as the villagers worked eagerly and ran hither and thither obedient to his nod. in front of the village there was a piece of open ground. this was the scene of operations. ossaroo first commanded four large posts to be brought, and set in the ground in a quadrangle of about eight feet in length and width. these posts when sunk firmly in their place stood full eight feet in height, and each had a fork at the top. on these forks four strong beams were placed horizontally, and then firmly lashed with rawhide thongs. deep trenches were next dug from post to post, and in these were planted rows of strong bamboos four inches apart from each other--the bamboos themselves being about four inches in thickness. the earth was then filled in, and trodden firmly, so as to render the uprights immovable. a tier of similar bamboos was next laid horizontally upon the top, the ends of which, interlocking with those that stood upright, held the latter in their places. both were securely lashed to the frame timbers--that had been notched for the purpose--and to one another, and then the structure was complete. it resembled an immense cage with smooth yellow rods, each four inches in diameter. the door alone was wanting, but it was not desirable to have a door. although it was intended for a "trap cage," the "bird" for which it had been constructed was not to be admitted to the inside. ossaroo now called upon the villagers to provide him with a goat that had lately had kids, and whose young were still living. this was easily procured. still another article he required, but both it and the goat had been "bespoke" at an earlier hour of the day, and were waiting his orders. this last was the skin of a buffalo, such a one as we have already seen used by these people in crossing their rivers. when all these things had been got ready it was near night, and no time was lost in waiting. with the help of the villagers ossaroo was speedily arrayed in the skin of the buffalo, his arms and limbs taking the place of the animal's legs, with the head and horns drawn over him like a hood, so that his eyes were opposite the holes in the skin. thus metamorphosed, ossaroo entered the bamboo cage, taking the goat along with him. the stake, that had been kept out for the purpose of admitting them within the enclosure, was now set into its place as firmly as the others; and this done, the villagers, with karl and caspar, retired to their houses, and left the shikarree and his goat to themselves. a stranger passing the spot would have had no other thoughts than that the cage-like enclosure contained a buffalo and a goat. on closer examination it might have been perceived that this buffalo held, grasped firmly in its fore-hoofs, a strong bamboo spear; and that was all that appeared odd about it--for it was lying down like any other buffalo, with the goat standing beside it. the sun had set, and night was now on. the villagers had put out their lights, and, shut up within their houses, were waiting in breathless expectation. ossaroo, on his part, was equally anxious--not from the fear of any danger, for he had secured himself against that. he was only anxious for the approach of the man-eater, in order that he might have the opportunity to exhibit the triumph of his hunter-skill. he was not likely to be disappointed. the villagers had assured him that the fierce brute was in the habit of paying them a nightly visit, and prowling around the place for hours together. it was only when he had succeeded in carrying off some of their cattle that he would be absent for days--no doubt his hunger being for the time satiated; but as he had not lately made a capture, they looked for a visit from him on that very night. if the tiger should come near the village, ossaroo had no fear that he could attract him to the spot. he had laid his decoy too well to fail in this. the goat, deprived of her young, kept up an incessant bleating, and the kids answered her from one of the houses of the village. as the hunter knew from experience that the tiger has a particular relish for goat-venison, he had no fear but that the voice of the animal would attract him to the spot, provided he came near enough to hear it. in this the villagers assured him he would not be disappointed. he _was not disappointed_; neither was he kept long in suspense. he had not been more than half-an-hour in his buffalo disguise, before a loud growling on the edge of the forest announced the approach of the dreaded man-eater, and caused the goat to spring wildly about in the enclosure, uttering at intervals the most piercing cries. this was just what ossaroo wanted. the tiger, hearing the voice of the goat, needed no further invitation; but in a few moments was seen trotting boldly up to the spot. there was no crouching on the part of the terrible brute. he had been too long master there to fear anything he might encounter, and he stood in need of a supper. the goat that he had heard would be just the dish he should relish; and he had determined on laying his claws upon her without more ado. in another moment he stood within ten feet of the cage! the odd-looking structure puzzled him, and he halted to survey it. fortunately there was a moon, and the light not only enabled the tiger to see what the cage contained, but it also gave ossaroo an opportunity of watching all his movements. "of course," thought the tiger, "it's an enclosure some of these simple villagers have put up to keep that goat and buffalo from straying off into the woods; likely enough, too, to keep me from getting at them. well, they appear to have been very particular about the building of it. we shall see if they have made the walls strong enough." with these reflections he drew near, and rearing upward caught one of the bamboos in his huge paw, and shook it with violence. the cane, strong as a bar of iron, refused to yield even to the strength of a tiger; and, on finding this, the fierce brute ran rapidly round the enclosure, trying it at various places, and searching for an entrance. there was no entrance, however; and on perceiving that there was none, the tiger endeavoured to get at the goat by inserting his paws between the bamboos. the goat, however, ran frightened and screaming to the opposite side, and so kept out of the way. it would have served the tiger equally well to have laid his claws upon the buffalo, but this animal very prudently remained near the centre of the enclosure, and did not appear to be so badly scared withal. no doubt the coolness of the buffalo somewhat astonished the tiger, but in his endeavours to capture the goat, he did not stop to show his surprise, but ran round and round, now dashing forcibly against the bamboos, and now reaching his paws between them as far as his fore-legs would stretch. all at once the buffalo was seen to rush towards him, and the tiger was in great hopes of being able to reach the latter with his claws, when, to his astonishment, he felt some hard instrument strike sharply against his snout, and rattle upon his teeth, while the fire flew from his eyes at the concussion. of course it was the _horn_ of the buffalo that had done this; and now, rendered furious by the pain, the tiger forgot all about the goat, and turned his attention towards revenging himself upon the animal who had wounded him. several times he launched himself savagely against the bamboos, but the canes resisted all his strength. just then it occurred to him that he might effect an entrance by the top, and with one bound he sprang upon the roof of the enclosure. this was just what, the buffalo wished, and the broad white belly of his assailant stretched along the open framework of bamboos, was now a fair mark for that terrible horn. like a gleam of lightning it entered between his ribs; the red blood spouted forth, the huge man-eater screamed fiercely as he felt the deadly stab, and then, struggling for a few minutes, his enormous body lay stretched across the rack silent,-- motionless,--dead! a signal whistle from ossaroo soon brought the villagers upon the spot. the shikarree and the goat were set free. the carcass of the man-eater was dragged into the middle of the village amidst shouts of triumph, and the rest of the night was devoted to feasting and rejoicing. the "freedom of the city" was offered to ossaroo and his companions, and every hospitality lavished upon them that the grateful inhabitants knew how to bestow. chapter sixteen. karl's adventure with the long-lipped bear. next morning they were _en route_ at an early hour; and having passed through some cultivated fields, they once more entered the wild primeval forest which covers most of the hills and valleys of the terai. their road during the whole day was a series of ascents and descents, now running along the bed of a stream; now upon its high bank, anon over some projecting ridge, and at intervals crossing the stream, sometimes by fording, and once or twice by natural bridges formed by the long trailing roots of various species of fig-trees. although they were gradually ascending to a higher elevation, the vegetation was still of a tropical character. pothos plants, and broad-leaved arums, bamboos, wild plantains, and palms, were seen all along the way, while lovely orchidaceous flowers,--epiphytes and trailing plants,--hung down from the trunks and branches of the great trees, forming festoons and natural trellis-work, that stretched across the path and almost closed it up. that was a busy day for the botanical collector. many rare species were found in seed, and he gathered a load for all three, to be carried on to their halting place, and stored until their return from the mountains. those species that were yet only in flower he noted down in his memorandum-book. they would be ripe for him on his way back. about noon they halted to refresh themselves. the spot they had chosen was in a grove of purple magnolias, whose splendid flowers were in full bloom, and scented the air around with their sweet perfume. a crystal stream,--a mere rivulet,--trickled in its deep bed through the midst of the grove, and the movement of its waters seemed to produce a refreshing coolness in the surrounding atmosphere. they had just unbuckled their packs, intending to lunch, and remain an hour or so on the ground, when some animal was heard moving among the bushes on the other side of the rivulet. caspar and ossaroo, ever ready for the chase, immediately seized their weapons; and, crossing the stream, went in search of the animal, which they supposed would turn out to be a deer. karl, therefore, was left by himself. now karl felt very much jaded. he had worked hard in gathering his seeds, and nuts, and drupes, and berries, and pericarps, and he felt quite done up, and had some thoughts of remaining upon that spot for the night. before giving up, however, he determined to try a refreshing medicine, which he had brought with him, and in which he had been taught to have great faith. this medicine was nothing more than a bottle of hot peppers pickled in vinegar, which karl had been told by a friend was one of the finest remedies for fatigue that could be found in the world,--in fact, the sovereign cure,--far excelling rum or brandy, or even the potent spirit of his native land, the kirschen-wasser. a drop or two of it mixed with a cup of water would impart instantaneous relief to the weary traveller, and enable him to continue his journey like a new man. so karl's friend had told him, and he was now determined to give the pickled peppers a trial. taking the bottle in one hand, and his tin drinking-cup in the other, he descended to the bed of the rivulet to fill the cup with water. the little stream ran in a deep cut or gully, and its bed was not more than a yard or two in width, but it was nearly empty--so that karl as soon as he had clambered down the steep sloping bank, found dry footing among the pebbles. he was just in the act of stooping to fill his cup, when he heard the voices of caspar and ossaroo farther up the stream, as if they were in pursuit of some animal. presently a shot rang through the woods. of course it was caspar's gun, for caspar was heard shouting in the direction whence the shot came. karl had raised himself erect, and was thinking, whether he could give any help to the hunters, by intercepting the animal if it came his way. he heard the voice of caspar crying to him to "look out," and just at the moment he did "look out," and saw coming right down upon him a large animal covered with black shaggy hair, and a white patch upon its breast. at the first glance it had the look of a bear, but karl noticed a hunch upon its back, which gave it a very peculiar appearance, and rendered him doubtful as to what sort of beast it was. he had no time to examine it very minutely--although it was close enough, for when he first set eyes upon it, it was within six paces of where he stood. it was altogether too close to him, karl thought; and so far from endeavouring to intercept it, he tried with all his might to get out of its way. his first impulse was to rush up the bank. he saw that the bear, or whatever it was, was resolved to keep right on; and the only way to avoid an encounter would be to leave the channel free. he therefore made a dash at the bank, and tried to clamber out. the clayey slope, however, chanced to be wet and slippery, and before karl could reach the top his feet flew from under him, and he came back to the bottom faster than he had gone up. he now found himself face to face with the bear--for it _was_ a bear-- and not six feet separated them from each other. neither could pass the other in the narrow channel, and karl knew that by turning down he would soon be overtaken, and perhaps hugged to death. he had no weapon-- nothing in his hand but the bottle of red peppers--what could he do? there was not a moment left for reflection. the bear reared upward with a savage growl, and rushed forward to the attack. he had almost got his claws upon the plant-hunter, when the latter mechanically struck forward with the battle, and, as good luck guided it, hit his assailant fair upon the snout. a loud smash, and the rattling of glass among the pebbles, announced the fate of the bottle, and the red peppers, vinegar, and all, went streaming about the head of the bear. the brute uttered a scream of terror--such as bears will do when badly frightened--and, wheeling away from the conflict, headed up the sloping bank. he succeeded in his climbing better than karl had done; for, in the twinkling of an eye, he had reached the top of the slope, and in the twinkling of another eye would have disappeared among the bushes, had not caspar at this moment arrived upon the ground, and with his second barrel brought him rolling back into the channel. the bear fell dead almost at karl's feet, and the latter stepped forward to examine the carcass. what was his astonishment on perceiving that what he had taken for a hunch on the bear's back was a brace of young cubs, that had now rolled off, and were running round the body of their dam, whining, and snarling, and snapping like a pair of vixens! but fritz at this moment rushed forward, and, after a short fierce struggle, put an end to their lively demonstrations. caspar now related that when he and ossaroo first came in sight of the bear the cubs were upon the ground playing; but the moment he fired the first shot--which had not hit the old bear withal--she seized the cubs one after the other in her mouth, flung them upon her shoulders, and then made off! the animal that had fallen before the bullet of caspar's gun was the "long-lipped," or sloth-bear (_ursus labiatus_). the first name has been given to this species on account of the capability it possesses of protruding the cartilage of its nose and its lips far in advance of its teeth, and by this means seizing its food. it is called "sloth" bear, because when first known it was supposed to belong to the sloths; and its long shaggy hair, its rounded back, and the apparently unwieldy and deformed contour of its whole body, gave some colour to the idea. these marks of ugliness, combined with its sagacity--which enables the indian jugglers to train it to a variety of tricks--render this species of bear a favourite with them, and on this account it is also known by the name of the "ours de jongleurs," or "jugglers' bear." the sloth-bear is long-haired and shaggy, of a deep black colour, except under the throat, where there is a white mark shaped like the letter y. it is nearly as large as the black bear of america, and its habits in a state of nature are very similar to this species. it will not attack man unless closely pressed or wounded; and had karl been able to get out of her way, the old she would not have followed him, savage as she was from being shot at by caspar. no doubt the "pickle" had helped him out of a worse pickle. the peppery vinegar getting into the eyes of the bear quite confounded her, and caused her to turn tail. but for that karl might have undergone a hug and a sharp scratch or two, and he might well be thankful--as he was-- that he had escaped with no more serious damage than the loss of his precious peppers. chapter seventeen. ossaroo in trouble. fritz had scarce finished his battle with the young bears, with karl and caspar standing over him, when a loud shouting drew the attention of all to another quarter. the shouting evidently proceeded from ossaroo, as the boys could distinguish his voice. the shikarree was in trouble--as they could easily understand by his shrill continued screams--and the words "help! sahibs, help!" which he repeatedly uttered. what could be the matter with ossaroo? had another bear attacked him? maybe a panther, or a lion, or a tiger? no matter what it was, both karl and caspar felt it to be their duty to hasten to his assistance; and without more ado both of them started off in the direction whence came the shouts. karl had got possession of his rifle, and caspar hastily rammed a load into the right-hand barrel, so that both were in readiness to offer good help to the guide, if it should turn out to be a wild beast that was his assailant. in a few moments, they came in sight of ossaroo; and, to their great relief, saw that no animal was near him. neither bear nor panther, nor lion nor tiger, appeared upon the spot ossaroo, however still continued his noisy cries for help; and, to the astonishment of the boys, they saw him dancing about over the ground, now stooping his head downwards, now leaping up several feet, his arms all the while playing about, and striking out as if at some imaginary enemy! what could it all mean? had ossaroo gone mad? or had he become suddenly afflicted with the malady of saint vitus? his movements were altogether of a comical nature; no mountebank could have danced about with more agility; and, but for the earnestness of his cries, evidently forced from him by fear, both karl and caspar would have burst out into a fit of laughter. they saw, however, that the shikarree was in some danger--from what, they could not tell; but they very naturally suspected that he had been attacked by a venomous serpent, and, perhaps, already bitten by it. it might still be attacking him, _perhaps under his clothes_, and that was why they could not perceive it. this idea restrained them from laughter, for, if their conjecture proved correct, it would be no laughing matter for poor ossaroo; and, with fear in their hearts, both the boys rushed forward to the spot. on getting nearer, however, the odd behaviour of the shikarree was explained, and the enemy with which he was contending, and which had hitherto remained invisible, came under their view. around the head of ossaroo there appeared a sort of misty halo, encircling him like a glory; which, on closer view, the boys perceived was neither more nor less than a _swarm of bees_! the whole matter was cleared up. ossaroo had been assailed by bees; and it was they that were making him dance and fling his arms about in so wild a manner! karl and caspar had forborne to laugh, so long as they believed their guide to be in real danger; but now that they saw what it was, they could no more restrain their mirth, and both simultaneously broke out into a fit of cachinnation, that caused the woods to ring again. on seeing how his young companions sympathised with his distress, ossaroo was by no means pleased. the stings of the bees had nettled the hindoo's temper, and the laughter of the boys exasperated him still more. he resolved, therefore, that they should both have a taste of the same trouble; and, without saying another word, he rushed between the two; of course, carrying the swarm of bees along with him. this unexpected manoeuvre on the part of the guide, at once put, an end to the merriment of his companions; and the next moment, instead of enjoying a laugh at ossaroo's expense, both of themselves exhibited a spectacle equally ludicrous. the bees, on perceiving these new enemies, at once separated into three distinct swarms, each swarm selecting its victim; so that not only ossaroo, but karl and caspar as well, now danced over the ground like acrobats. even fritz was attacked by a few--enough to make him scamper around, and snap at his own legs as if he had suddenly gone mad! karl and caspar soon learnt, that what had so lately amused them was by no means a thing to be amused at. they were stung about the face, and found the stings to be exceedingly virulent and painful. besides, the number of their assailants rendered the affair one of considerable danger. they began to feel that there was peril as well as pain. where was it to end? all their demonstrations failed to drive off the bees. run where they would, the enraged insects followed them, buzzing about their ears, and alighting whenever an opportunity offered. where was it to end? it was difficult to tell when and how the scene would have been brought to a termination, had it not been for ossaroo himself. the cunning hindoo had bethought him of a plan, and, calling to the others to follow him, was seen to run forward in a direct line through the woods. karl and caspar started after, in hopes of finding relief from their tormentors. in a few minutes, ossaroo approached the bank of the stream, at a place where it was dammed up, and formed a reach of deep water--a pool. without hesitating a moment, the hindoo plunged into the water. the boys, flinging down their guns, imitated his example; and all three stood side by side, neck-deep in the pool. they now commenced ducking their heads under, and continued this, at intervals; until at length the bees, finding themselves in danger of being drowned, gave up the attack, and, one after another, winged their way back into the woods. after remaining long enough in the pool, to make sure that their enemies had gone quite away, the three smarting hunters climbed out, and stood dripping upon the bank. they would have laughed at the whole adventure, but the pain of the stings put them out of all humour for enjoying a joke; and, out of sorts altogether, they quietly wended their way back to the place of their temporary encampment. on their way, ossaroo explained how he had chanced to provoke the attack of the bees. on hearing the report of caspar's gun, and the noise of the conflict between fritz and the bears, he had started in great haste to get up to the spot, and give assistance. in running forward, he scarce looked before him; and was dashing recklessly through among trees, when his head came in contact with a large bees' nest, which was suspended upon a vine that stretched across the path. the nest was constructed out of agglutinated mud, and attached only slightly to the vine; and ossaroo, having become entangled in the latter, shook it so violently that the nest fell down, broke into pieces, and set the whole swarm of angry bees about his ears. it was just then that he had been heard crying out, and that karl and caspar had run to his rescue; which act both of them now said they very much regretted. they were hardly in earnest, however; and ossaroo, having procured an herb from the woods, the sap of which soon alleviated the pain of the stings, in a short time the tempers of all three were restored to their usual equanimity. chapter eighteen. the axis and panther. the maternal solicitude displayed by the bear in endeavouring to carry her young out of danger, had quite won the admiration of the plant-hunters; and now that the excitement of the conflict was over, they experienced some pangs of regret at having killed the creature. but the thing was done, and could not be helped. besides, as ossaroo informed them, these bears are esteemed a great nuisance in the country. descending from their mountain retreats, or issuing out of the jungle during the season of the crops, they commit very destructive depredations upon the produce of the farmer, often entering his very garden without fear, and in a single night laying waste the contents of a whole enclosure. on hearing this, both karl and caspar were more contented with what they had done. perhaps, reflected they, had these two cubs lived to grow up, they or their mother might have devastated the paddy-field of some poor jemindar, or farmer, and he and his family might have been put to great distress by it. whether or not their reasoning was correct, it satisfied the two boys, and quieted their consciences about the killing of the bears. but as they continued their journey, they still conversed of the curious circumstance of the old one carrying off her cubs in the manner she was doing. karl had read of such a habit in animals--which is common to many other sorts along with the bears--such as the great ant-eater of south america, the opossum, and most kinds of monkeys. both agreed that it was a pretty trait in the character of the lower animals, and proved even the most savage of them capable of tender affection. it chanced that upon that same day they had another illustration of this very nature, and one that by good fortune did not have so tragical an ending. they had finished their day's journey, and were reclining under a great _talauma_ tree--a species of magnolia, with very large leaves--by the edge of a little glade. they had not yet made any preparations for their camp. the day's march had been a severe one, for they were now among the foot-hills of the great himalaya chain; and though they appeared to travel as much down hill as up they were in reality ascending, and by evening they were really more than five thousand feet above the plains of india. they had arrived in a new zone of vegetation, among the great forests of magnolias which gird the middle parts of the mountains. it is in this part of the world that the remarkable genus of magnolia is found in its greatest vigour and variety; and many species of these trees, in forests of vast extent, cover and adorn the declivities of the lower himalayas. there are the white-flowered magnolias, at an elevation of from four thousand to eight thousand feet, which are then replaced by the still more gorgeous purple magnolia (_magnolia campbellia_)--the latter being the most superb species known, its brilliant corollas often arraying the sloping sides of the hills as with a robe of purple. here, too, our travellers observed chestnut-trees of rare species, and several kinds of oak-- laurels also, not in the form of humble shrubs, but rising as tall trees, with straight smooth boles, to the height of the oaks themselves. maples, too, were seen mingling in the forest, and the tree rhododendrons growing forty feet high! what appeared singular to the eyes of the botanist, was the mingling of many european forms of plants among those of a strictly tropical character. for instance, there were birches, willows, alders, and walnut-trees, growing side by side with the wild plantain, the wallich palm, and gigantic bamboos; while the great _cedrela toona_, figs of several species, _melastomas_, balsams, _pothos_ plants, peppers, and gigantic climbing vines and orchids, were intermixed with speedwell, common bramble, forget-me-not, and stinging-nettles, just such as might have been met with in a european field! tree ferns were seen rising up and towering high above the common brake-fern of the english moors; while the wild strawberry of britain was seen covering the ground in patches of large extent. its fruit, however, in the himalayas is quite insipid, but a fine yellow raspberry--one of the most luscious fruits met with in these mountains--was found growing in the same districts, as if to compensate for the absence of flavour in the strawberry. under one of these magnificent magnolias, whose large wax-like corollas filled the air with their odorous perfume, our travellers had just stretched themselves--intending, after a few minutes of rest, to make the necessary arrangements for passing the night there. ossaroo was chewing his betel-nut, and karl and caspar, both very tired, were doing nothing and saying as little. fritz, too, lay along the ground, with his tongue out, and panting after the hot day's rambling among the bushes. just at that moment, caspar, whose sharp hunter eye was always on the alert, caught karl by the sleeve, and in a hurried whisper, said-- "see, karl! see!--isn't it a beauty?" as caspar said this, he pointed to an animal that had just come out of the jungle, and stood within a few feet of its edge. the creature in question had the shape, size, and general appearance of a fallow-deer, and its slender limbs and well proportioned body bespoke it to be a near kin to that animal. in colour, however, it essentially differed from the fallow-deer. its ground-colour was much the same, but it was spotted all over with snow-white spots that gave it a very beautiful appearance. it looked somewhat like the young of the fallow-deer, and might have been taken for an overgrown fawn. karl, however, knew what it was. "a spotted deer," he replied, also in a whisper. "it is the _axis_. hold back fritz, and let us watch it a moment." karl had guessed correctly what kind of animal it was. it was the axis, one of the best known of the indian deer, and closely allied to the _linsa_ group of asia as well as to the fallow-deer of europe. there are several species of the axis in eastern asia, more or less marked with spots, and in no part are they more common than in the country through which the plant-hunters were passing--the country of the ganges and the burrampooter. caspar caught fritz as desired, and held him fast; and the travellers, without making any noise, sat watching the movements of the axis. to their surprise, another axis now showed itself upon the ground, but this one was of such small dimensions that they saw at once it was the young of the first. it was a tiny little fawn, but a few days old, and speckled all over with similar snow-white spots. the deer, unconscious of the presence of the travellers, walked several paces out upon the meadow, and commenced browsing upon the grass. the little fawn knew not, as yet, how to eat grass; and occupied itself by skipping and playing about its mother, like a kid. the hunters, all speaking in whispers, now counselled among themselves as to what they should do. ossaroo would have liked a bit of venison for supper, and, certainly, the fawn was a tempting _morceau_. caspar voted to kill; but karl, of gentler nature, opposed this design. "a pity!" he said. "look, brother, how gentle they appear? remember how we felt after killing the savage bear, and this would be far worse." while engaged in this undertone discussion, a new party made his appearance upon the scene, which drove all thoughts of killing the deer out of the minds both of caspar and ossaroo. this intruder was an animal quite as large as the axis, but of an entirely different form. its ground-colour was not unlike that of the deer, with a deeper tinge of yellow, and it, too, was spotted all over the body. herein, however, a striking contrast existed between the two. as already stated, the spots upon the axis were snow-white; while those upon the new comer were just the reverse--black as jet. spots they could hardly be termed, though, at a distance, they presented that appearance. when closely viewed, however, it would have been seen that they were rather rosettes, or rings; the centre part being of the same yellowish ground-colour as the rest of the body. the animal had a stout, low body; short, but strong limbs; a long, tapering tail, and a cat-like head. the last is not to be wondered at, since it was in reality a cat. it was the _panther_. the attention of the hunters was at once taken away from the axis, and became fixed on the great spotted cat, which all three knew to be a panther; next to the lion and tiger, the most formidable of asiatic _felida_. all knew that the indian panther often attacks man; and it was, therefore, with no very comfortable feelings that they hailed his appearance. the boys grasped their guns more firmly, and ossaroo his bow, ready to give the panther the volley, should he approach within range. the latter, however, had no design of molesting the travellers. he was unaware of their presence. his whole attention was occupied with the axis; upon whose ribs, or, perhaps, those of the fawn, he intended to make his supper. with crouching gait and silent tread he approached his intended victims, stealing along the edge of the jungle. in a few seconds, he was near enough to spring, and, as yet, the poor doe browsed unconsciously. he was just setting his paws for the leap, and, in all probability, would have pounced next moment upon the back of the deer, but, just in the nick of time, caspar chanced to sneeze. it was not done designedly, or with, any intention of warning the deer; for all three of the hunters were so absorbed in watching the manoeuvres of the panther, that they never thought of such a thing. perhaps the powerful odour of the magnolia blossoms had been the cause; but, whether or no, caspar sneezed. that sneeze was a good thing. it saved the tender mother and her gentle fawn from the fangs of the ferocious panther. she heard it, and, raising her head on the instant, glanced round. the crouching cat came under her eyes; and, without losing a second of time, she sprang up to the fawn, seized the astonished little creature in her mouth, and, bounding like an arrow across the glade, was soon out of sight, having disappeared into the jungle on the opposite side! the panther, who had either not heard or not regarded the sneeze, sprang out, as he had intended, but missed his aim. he ran a few stretches, rose into the air, and, a second time, came down without touching the deer; and then, seeing that the latter had sped beyond his reach, according to the usual habit of all the _felidae_, he desisted from farther pursuit. trotting back whence he had come, he entered the jungle before the hunters could get within shooting distance of him, and was never more seen by any of the three. as they returned to camp, karl congratulated caspar for having sneezed so opportunely; though caspar acknowledged that it was quite accidental, and that, for his part, he would rather he had not sneezed at all, and that he had either got a shot at the panther, or had a bit of the fawn for his supper. chapter nineteen. the pests of the tropics. much has been said and written in praise of the bright sun and the blue skies of tropical countries; and travellers have dilated largely upon the magnificent fruits, flowers, and foliage of tropical forests. one who has never visited these southern climes is disposed to indulge in very fanciful dreams of enjoyment there. life would seem to be luxurious; every scene appears to be _couleur de rose_. but nature has not designed that any portion of her territory should be favoured beyond the rest to such an extreme degree; and, perhaps, if a just comparison were instituted, it would be found that the esquimaux, shivering in his hut of snow, enjoys as much personal happiness as the swarth southerner, who swings in his hammock under the shade of a banyan or a palm-tree. the clime of the torrid zone, with its luxuriant vegetation, is also prolific of insect and reptile life; and, from this very circumstance, the denizen of a hot country is often subject to a greater amount of personal discomfort than the dweller in the arctic zone. even the scarcity of vegetable food, and the bitter, biting frost, are far easier to endure than the plague of tipulary insects and reptiles, which swarm between cancer and capricorn. it is a well-known fact, that there are large districts in tropical america where human life is scarce endurable, on account of the mosquitos, gnats, ants, and other insects. thus writes the great prussian geognosist:-- "persons who have not navigated the rivers of equinoctial america can scarcely conceive how, at every instant, without intermission, you may be tormented by insects flying in the air, and how the multitudes of these little animals may render vast regions almost uninhabitable. whatever fortitude be exercised to endure pain without complaint, whatever interest may be felt in the objects of scientific research, it is impossible not to be constantly disturbed by the mosquitos, zancudos, jejens, and tempraneros, that cover the face and hands, pierce the clothes with their long, needle-formed suckers; and, getting into the mouth and nostrils, occasion coughing and sneezing, whenever any attempt is made to speak in the open air. "in the missions of the orinoco, in the villages on the banks of the river, surrounded by immense forests, the _plaga de las moscas_, or plague of the mosquitos, affords an inexhaustible subject of conversation. when two persons meet in the morning, the first questions they address to each other are: `how did you find the zancudos during the night?' `how are we to-day for the mosquitos?' "an atmosphere filled with venomous insects always appears to be more heated than it is in reality. we were horribly tormented in the day by mosquitos and the jejen (a small venomous fly), and at night by the zancudos, a large species of gnat, dreaded even by the natives. "at different hours of the day you are stung by different species. every time that the scene changes, and, to use the simple expression of the missionaries, other insects `mount guard,' you have a few minutes-- often a quarter of an hour, of repose. the insects that disappear have not their places instantly supplied by their successors. from half-past six in the morning till live in the afternoon the air is filled with mosquitos. an hour before sunset a species of small gnats--called tempraneros, because they appear also at sunrise--take the place of the mosquitos. their presence scarcely lasts an hour and a half. they disappear between six and seven in the evening. after a few minutes' repose, you feel yourself stung by zancudos, another species of gnat, with very long legs. the zancudo, the proboscis of which contains a sharp-pointed sucker, causes the most acute pain, and a swelling that remains several weeks. "the means that are employed to escape from these little plagues are very extraordinary. at maypures the indians quit the village at night to go and sleep on the little islets in the midst of the cataracts. there they enjoy some rest, the mosquitos appearing to shun air loaded with vapours. "between the little harbour of higuerote and the mouth of the rio unare the wretched inhabitants are accustomed to stretch themselves on the ground, and pass the night buried in the sand three or four inches deep, leaving out the head only, which they cover with a handkerchief. "at mandanaca we found an old missionary, who told us with an air of sadness that he had had his `twenty years of mosquitos' in america. he desired us to look at his legs, that we might be able to tell one day beyond sea `what the poor monks suffer in the forests of cassiquiare.' every sting leaving a small darkish brown spot, his legs were so speckled that it was difficult to recognise the whiteness of his skin, through the spots of coagulated blood!" just such torments as the great prussian traveller suffered from insects in the forests of south america, our plant-hunters had to endure while passing through the humid woods of the lower himalayas. by night and by day the air seemed filled with insects, in countless swarms,--large and small moths, cockchafers, glow-flies, cockroaches, winged ants, may-flies, flying earwigs, beetles, and "daddy longlegs." they experienced the bite of ants or the stings of mosquitoes every moment, or they were attacked by large ticks, a species of which infests the bamboo, and which is one of the most hateful of insects. these the traveller cannot avoid coming in contact with while brushing through the forest. they get inside his dress, often in great numbers, and insert their proboscis deeply, but without pain. buried head and shoulders, and retained by its barbed lancet, this tick can only be extracted with great force, and the operation is exceedingly painful. but of the tortures to which they were subjected by insects and reptiles, there was one more disagreeable and disgusting than all the rest, and on their first experience of it the three were quite horrified. it happened to them on the very day after their adventure with the bear and the bees. they had walked several miles for their morning stage, and the sun having grown quite hot, they agreed to rest for some hours till afternoon. having thrown off their packs and accoutrements, all three lay down upon the grass close by the edge of a little stream, and under the shadow of a spreading tree. the fatigue of the walk, combined with the heated atmosphere, had rendered them drowsy, and one and all of them fell fast asleep. caspar was the first to awake. he did not feel quite comfortable during his sleep. the mosquitos or some other kind of insects appeared to be biting him, and this had prevented him from sleeping soundly. he awoke at length and sat upright. the others were still asleep close by, and the eyes of caspar by chance rested upon ossaroo, whose body was more than half naked, the slight cotton tunic having fallen aside and exposed his breast to view; besides, his legs were bare, as the shikarree had rolled up his trousers on account of the damp grass they had been passing through. what was the astonishment of caspar at perceiving the naked part of ossaroo's body mottled with spots of dark and red--the latter being evidently blotches of blood! caspar perceived that some of the dark spots were in motion, now lengthening out, and then closing up again into a smaller compass; and it was only after he had drawn closer, and examined these objects more minutely that he was able to determine what they were. they were _leeches! ossaroo was covered with leeches_! caspar uttered a cry that awoke both of his companions on the instant. ossaroo was not a little disgusted with the fix he found himself in, but karl and caspar did not waste much time in condoling with him, for upon examination they found that they themselves had fared no better, both of them being literally covered with the same bloodthirsty reptiles. a scene now ensued that would not be easy to describe. all three pulled off their garments, and went to work to extract the leeches with their fingers--for there was no other mode of getting rid of the troublesome intruders--and after a full half-hour spent in picking one another clean, they rapidly dressed again, and took the route, desirous of getting away from that spot as quickly as possible. of all the pests of warm oriental climates, there are none so troublesome to the traveller, or so disgusting, as these land-leeches. they infest the humid woods on the slopes of the himalaya mountains from about two thousand to eleven thousand feet of elevation; but they are not confined to the himalayas alone, as they are common in the mountain forests of ceylon, sumatra, and other parts of the indies. there are many species of them--and even upon the himalayas more than one kind-- the small black species swarming above the elevation of three thousand feet, while a large yellow kind, more solitary, is found farther down. they are not only troublesome and annoying, but dangerous. they often crawl into the fauces, noses, and stomachs of human beings, where they produce dreadful sufferings and even death. cattle are subject to their attacks; and hundreds perish in this way--the cause of their death not being always understood, and usually attributed to some species of vermin. it is almost impossible to keep them off the person while travelling through a track of woods infested by them. if the traveller only sit down for a moment, they crawl upon him without being perceived. they are exceedingly active, and move with surprising rapidity. indeed, some fancy they have the power to spring from the ground. certain it is that they possess the powers of contraction and extension to a very great degree. when fully extended they appear as thin as a thread, and the next moment they can clue themselves up like a pea. this power enables them to pass rapidly from point to point, and also to penetrate into the smallest aperture. they are said to possess an acute sense of smell, and guided by this they approach the traveller the moment he sits down. they will crowd up from all quarters, until fifty or a hundred crawl upon one person in a few minutes' time, so that one is kept busy in removing them as fast as they appear. they occur in greatest numbers in moist shady woods, and cover the leaves when heavy dew is on them. in rain they are more numerous than at other times, and then they infest the paths; whereas in dry weather they betake themselves into the streams, or the thickly-shaded interior of the jungle. those who know not their haunts, their love of blood, their keenness and immense numbers, cannot understand the disgust and annoyance experienced from them by travellers. they get into the hair, hang by the eyelids, crawl up the legs, or down the back, and fasten themselves under the instep of the foot; and if not removed, gorge themselves with blood till they roll off. often the traveller finds his boots filled with these hideous creatures when arrived at the end of his day's journey. their wound at the time produces no pain, but it causes a sore afterwards, which is frequently months in healing, and leaves a scar that remains for years! many antidotes are adopted, and tobacco-juice or snuff will keep them off when applied over the skin; but in passing through moist woods and the long wet jungle-grass, such applications require to be continually renewed, and it becomes so troublesome and vexatious to take these precautions, that most travellers prefer wearing long boots, tucking in their trousers, and then keeping a good lookout for these insidious crawlers. chapter twenty. the musk-deer. a few days' more journeying up the mountains brought our travellers to the limits of the forest. they once more looked upon the snowy peaks of the great central chain towering up into the clouds. i say once more-- for they had already seen these peaks from the plains of india while still more than a hundred miles distant from them; but, as they approached nearer, and while advancing through the foot-hills, the snow-covered mountains had no longer been in sight! this may appear a puzzle, but it is very easily explained. when very near to a house you will be unable to see the steeple of a church that is behind it; whereas by going to a greater distance from the house, the higher steeple comes at once before your eyes. so is it with mountains. from a great distance their highest peaks are those that may be seen, but as you draw nearer, their lower range, or foot-hills, subtend the angle of vision; and it is only after having passed through, or over these, that you again behold the more elevated summits. our travellers were now in sight of the snowy summits of the himalayas, several of which rose to the stupendous height of five miles above the level of the sea--one or two even exceeding this elevation. of course it was not the design of the plant-hunters to attempt to climb to the tops of any of these gigantic mountains. that they well knew would not be possible, as it is almost certain that at such an elevation a human being could not live. karl, however, was determined to proceed as far as vegetation extended; for he believed that many rare and choice plants might be found even as high as the snow-line; and indeed there are several species of beautiful rhododendrons, and junipers, and pines, which grow only in what may be termed the "arctic zone" of the himalayas. with this idea, then, the travellers kept on--each day getting higher, and farther into the heart of the great chain. for two or three days they had been climbing through wild desolate valleys, quite without inhabitants; yet they were able to find plenty of food, as in these valleys there were animals of various kinds, and with their guns they had no difficulty in procuring a supply of meat. they found the "talin," a species of wild goat, the male of which often attains to the weight of three hundred pounds, and a fine species of deer known in the himalayas as the "serow." they also shot one or two wild sheep, known by the name of "burrell," and an antelope called "gooral," which is the "chamois" of the indian alps. it may be as well here to remark, that in the vast extended chain of the himalayas, as well as throughout the high mountain steppes of asia, there exist wild sheep and wild goats, as well as deer and antelopes, of a great many species that have never been described by naturalists. indeed, but little more is known of them than what has been obtained from the notes of a few enterprising english sportsmen. it would be safe to conjecture that there are in asia a dozen species of wild sheep, and quite as many belonging to the goat-tribe; and when that continent shall be thoroughly explored by scientific travellers, a very large addition will be made to the catalogue of ruminant animals. nearly every extensive valley or chain of the asiatic mountains possesses some species of the sheep or goat-tribe peculiar to itself, and differing from all others of the same genus; and in ascending the stupendous heights of the himalayas you find that every stage of elevation has its peculiar species. some dwell in dense forests, others in those that are thin and open. some prefer the grassy slopes, while others affect the barren ridges of rock. there are those that are found only upon the very limits of vegetation, spending most of their lives within the region of eternal snow. among these are the famed ibex and the large wild sheep known as the _ovis ammon_. there was none of the himalayan animals that interested our travellers more than the curious little creature known as the "musk-deer." this is the animal from which the famous scent is obtained; and which is consequently a much persecuted creature. it dwells in the himalayan mountains, ranging from an elevation of about eight thousand feet to the limits of perpetual snow, and is an object of the chase to the hunters of these regions, who make their living by collecting the musk and disposing of it to the merchants of the plains. the animal itself is a small creature, less in size than our fallow-deer, and of a speckled brownish grey colour, darker on the hind-quarters. its head is small, its ears long and upright, and it is without horns. a peculiarity exists in the males which renders them easy to be distinguished from other animals of the deer kind. they have a pair of tusks in the upper jaw projecting downwards, each full three inches in length, and about as thick as a goose's quill. these give to the animal altogether a peculiar appearance. the males only yield the musk, which is found in grains, or little pellets, inside a sac or pod in the skin, situated near the navel; but what produces this singular substance, or what purpose it serves in the economy of the animal, it is not easy to say. it has proved its worst foe. but for the musk this harmless little deer would be comparatively a worthless object of the chase; but as it is, the valuable commodity has created for it a host of enemies, who follow no other occupation but that of hunting it to the death. the plant-hunters had several times seen musk-deer as they journeyed up the mountain; but as the animal is exceedingly shy, and one of the swiftest of the deer kind, they had not succeeded in getting a shot. they were all the more anxious to procure one, from the very difficulty which they had met with in doing so. one day as they were proceeding up a very wild ravine, among some stunted juniper and rhododendron bushes, they started from his lair one of the largest musk-deer they had yet seen. as he kept directly on, and did not seem to run very fast, they determined to pursue him. fritz, therefore, was put upon his trail, and the others followed as fast as they were able to get over the rough ground. they had not gone far, when the baying of the dog told them that the chase had forsaken the ravine in which they had first started it, and had taken into a lateral valley. on arriving at the mouth of this last, they perceived that it was filled by a glacier. this did not surprise them, as they had already seen several glaciers in the mountain valleys, and they were every hour getting farther within the region of these icy phenomena. a sloping path enabled them to reach the top of the glacier, and they now perceived the tracks of the deer. some snow had fallen and still lay unmelted upon the icy surface, and in this the foot-prints of the animal were quite distinct, fritz had stopped at the end of the glacier, as if to await further instructions; but without hesitation the hunters climbed up on the ice, and followed the trail. chapter twenty one. the glacier. for more than a mile they toiled up the sloping glacier which all the way lay between two vertical cliffs. that the musk-deer was still in advance of them, they had evidence from the imprint of its tracks. even without this evidence they could not doubt that the game was still before them. it would have been impossible for it to have scaled the cliffs on either side, so far as they had yet seen them; and as far before them as they could see, both sides appeared equally steep and impracticable. as the hunters advanced, the cliffs gradually converged; and at the distance of a few hundred yards before them, appeared to close in--as if the ravine ended there, and there was no outlet in that direction. in fact they appeared to be approaching the apex of a very acute angle, the sides of which were formed by the black granite cliffs. this singular formation was just what the hunters desired. if the valley ended in a _cul-de-sac_, then the game would be hemmed in by their approach, and they might have a chance of obtaining a shot. in order the more surely to accomplish this, they separated, and deployed themselves into a line which extended completely across the valley. in this formation they continued to advance upward. when they first adopted this plan, the ravine was about four hundred yards in width--so that less than one hundred lay between each two of them. these equal distances they preserved as well as they could, but now and then the cracks in the icy mass, and the immense boulders that lay over its surface, obliged one or other, of them to make considerable detours. as they advanced, however, the distance between each two grew less, in consequence of the narrowing of the valley, until at length a space of only fifty yards separated one from the other. the game could not now pass them without affording a fine opportunity for all to have a shot; and with the expectation of soon obtaining one, they kept on in high spirits. all at once their hopes appeared to be frustrated. the whole line came to a halt, and the hunters stood regarding each other with blank looks. directly in front of them yawned an immense crevasse in the ice, full five yards in width at the top, and stretching across the glacier from cliff to cliff. a single glance into this great fissure convinced them that it was impassable. their hunt was at an end. they could go no farther. such was the conviction of all. the glacier filled the whole ravine from cliff to cliff. there was no space or path between the ice and the rocky wall. the latter rose vertically upward for five hundred feet at least, and no doubt extended downward to as great a depth. indeed, by looking into the fissure, they could trace the wall of rock to an immense distance downward, ending in the green cleft of the ice below. to look down into that terrible abyss made their heads reel with giddiness; and they could only do so with safety by crawling up to the edge of the lye, and peeping over. a glance convinced one and all of them that the crevasse was impassable. but how had the deer got over it? surely it had not leaped that fearful chasm? but surely it had. close by the edge its tracks were traced in the snow, and there, upon the lower side of the cleft, was the spot from which it had sprung. on the opposite brink the disarrangement of the snow told where it had alighted, having cleared a space of sixteen or eighteen feet! this, however, was nothing to a musk-deer, that upon a deal level often bounds to more than twice that length; for these animals have been known to spring down a slope to the enormous distance of sixty feet! the leap over the crevasse, therefore, fearful as it appeared in the eyes of our hunters, was nothing to the musk-deer, who is as nimble and sure-footed as the chamois itself. "enough!" said karl, after they had stood for some minutes gazing into the lye. "there's no help for it; we must go back as we came--what says ossaroo?" "you speakee true, sahib--no help for we--we no get cross--too wide leapee--no bridge--no bamboo for makee bridge--no tree here." ossaroo shook his head despondingly as he spoke. he was vexed at losing the game--particularly as the buck was one of the largest, and might have yielded an ounce or two of musk, which, as ossaroo well knew, was worth a guinea an ounce in the bazaars of calcutta. the hindoo glanced once more across the lye, and then turning round, uttered an exclamation, which told that he was beaten. "well, then, let us go back!" said karl. "stay, brother!" interrupted caspar, "a thought strikes me. had we not better remain here for a while? the deer cannot be far off. it is, no doubt, up near the end of the ravine; but it won't stay there long. there appears to be nothing for it to eat but rocks or snow, and it won't be contented with that. if there's no outlet above, it must come back this way. now i propose we lie in wait for it a while, and take it as it comes down again. what say you to my plan?" "i see no harm in trying it, caspar," replied karl. "we had better separate, however, and each hide behind a boulder, else it may see us, and stay back. we shall give it an hour." "oh!" said caspar, "i think it'll tire of being cooped up in less time than that; but we shall see." the party now spread themselves right and left along the lower edge of the crevasse--each choosing a large rock or mass of snowy ice as a cover. caspar went to the extreme left, and even to the edge of the glacier, where a number of large rocks rested on its surface. having entered among these, he was hidden from the others, but presently they heard him calling out-- "hurrah! come here!--a bridge! a bridge!" karl and ossaroo left their hiding-places, and hastened to the spot. on arriving among the boulders, they saw, to their delight, that one of the largest of these--an enormous block of gneiss--lay right across the crevasse, spanning it like a bridge, and looking as though it had been placed there by human hands! this, however, would have been impossible, as the block was full ten yards in length, and nearly as broad as it was long. even giants could not have built such a bridge! a little examination showed where it had fallen from the overhanging precipice--and it had rested on the glacier, perhaps, before the great cleft had yawned open beneath it. its upper end overlapped the ice for a breadth of scarce two feet, and it seemed a wonder that so huge a weight could be sustained by such an apparently fragile prop. but there it rested; and had done so for years--perhaps for ages--suspended over the beetling chasm, as if the touch of a feather would precipitate it into the gulf below! if karl had been near, he might have warned his brother from crossing by such a dangerous bridge; but before he had reached the spot, caspar had already mounted on the rock, and was hurrying over. in a few moments he stood upon the opposite side of the crevasse; and, waving his cap in the air, shouted to the rest to follow. the others crossed as he had done, and then the party once more deployed, and kept up the ravine, which grew narrower as they advanced, and appeared to be regularly closed in at the lop, by a perpendicular wall. surely the deer could not escape them much longer? "what a pity," said caspar, "we could not throw down that great stone and widen the crack in the ice, so that the deer could not leap over it! we should then have it nicely shut up here." "ay, caspar," rejoined karl, "and where should _we_ be then? shut up too, i fear." "true, brother, i did not think of that. what a terrible thing it would be to be imprisoned between these black cliffs! it would, i declare." the words had scarce issued from caspar's lip, when a crash was heard like the first bursting of a thunderclap, and then a deafening roar echoed up the ravine, mingled with louder peals, as though the eternal mountains were being rent asunder! the noise reverberated from the black cliffs; eagles, that had been perched upon the rocks, rose screaming into the air; beasts of prey howled from their lurking-places; and the hitherto silent valley was all at once filled with hideous noises, as though it were the doom of the world! chapter twenty two. the glacier slide. "an avalanche!" cried karl linden, as the first crash fell upon his ear; but on turning, he saw his mistake. "no," he continued, with a look of terror, "it is not an avalanche! my god! my god! _the glacier is in motion_!" he did not need to point out the spot. the eyes of caspar and ossaroo were already turned upon it.--away down the ravine as far as they could see the surface of the glacier appeared in motion, like sea-billows; huge blocks of ice were thrown to the top and rolled over, with a rumbling crashing noise, while large blue fragments raised high above the general surface, were grinding and crumbling to pieces against the faces of the cliffs. a cloud of snow-spray, rising like a thick white mist, filled the whole ravine--as if to conceal the work of ruin that was going on--and underneath this ghostly veil, the crushing and tearing for some moments continued. then all at once the fearful noises ceased, and only the screaming of the birds, and the howling of beasts, disturbed the silence of the place. pale, shuddering, almost paralysed by fear, the hunters had thrown themselves on their hands and knees, expecting every moment to feel the glacier move beneath them,--expecting to sink beneath the surface, or be crushed amidst the billows of that icy sea. so long as the dread sounds echoed in their ears, their hearts were filled with consternation, and long after the crashing and crackling ceased, they remained the victims of a terrible suspense; but they felt that that portion of the glacier upon which they were did not move. it still remained firm; would it continue so? they knew not the moment it, too, might commence sliding downward, and bury them under its masses, or crush them in some deep crevasse. o heavens! the thought was fearful. it had paralysed them for a moment; and for some time after the noises had ceased, they remained silent and motionless. indeed, absurd as it may seem, each dreaded to stir, lest the very motion of his body might disturb the icy mass upon which he was kneeling! reflection soon came to their aid. it would never do to remain there. they were still exposed to the danger. whither could they retreat? up the ravine might be safer? above them the ice had not yet stirred. the ruin had all been below--below the crevasse they had just crossed. perhaps the rocks would afford a footing? they would not move, at all events, even if the upper part of the glacier should give way; but was there footing to be found upon them? they swept their eyes along the nearest cliff. it offered but little hope. yes--upon closer inspection there was a ledge--a very narrow one, but yet capable of giving refuge to two or three men; and, above all, it was easy of access. it would serve their purpose. like men seeking shelter from a heavy shower, or running to get out of the way of some impending danger, all three made for the ledge; and after some moments spent in sprawling and climbing against the cliff, they found themselves standing safely upon it.--small standing-room they had. had there been a fourth, the place would not have accommodated him. there was just room enough for the three side by side, and standing erect. small as the space was, it was a welcome haven of refuge. it was the solid granite, and not the fickle ice. it looked eternal as the hills; and, standing upon it, they breathed freely. but the danger was not over, and their apprehensions were still keen. should the upper part of the glacier give way, what then? although it could not reach them where they stood, the surface might sink far below its present level, and leave them on the cliff--upon that little ledge on the face of a black precipice! even if the upper ice held firm, there was another thought that now troubled them. karl knew that what had occurred was a _glacier slide_-- a phenomenon that few mortals have witnessed. he suspected that the slide had taken place in that portion of the glacier below the crevasse they had just crossed. if so, the lye would be widened, the huge gneiss rock that bridged it gone, and their _retreat down the glacier cut off_! upward they beheld nothing but the beetling cliffs meeting together. no human foot could scale them. if no outlet offered in that direction, then, indeed, might the jesting allusion of caspar be realised. they might be imprisoned between those walls of black granite, with nought but ice for their bed, and the sky for their ceiling. it was a fearful supposition, but all three did not fail to entertain it. as yet they could not tell whether their retreat downwards was in reality cut off. where they stood an abutment of the cliff hid the ravine below. they had rushed to their present position, with the first instinct of preservation. in their flight, they had not thought of looking either toward the crevasse or the gneiss rock.--other large boulders intervened, and they had not observed whether it was gone. they trembled to think of such a thing. the hours passed; and still they dared not descend to the glacier. night came on, and they still stood upon their narrow perch. they hungered, but it would have been of no use to go down to the cold icy surface. that would not have satisfied their appetite. all night long they remained standing upon the narrow ledge; now on one foot, now on the other, now resting their backs against the granite wall, but all night, without closing an eye in sleep. the dread of the capricious ice kept them on their painful perch. they could bear it no longer. with the first light of morning they determined upon descending. the ice had remained firm during the night. no farther noises had been heard. they gradually recovered confidence; and as soon as the day began to break, all three left the ledge, and betook themselves once more to the glacier. at first they kept close to the cliff; but, after a while, ventured out far enough to get a view of the ravine below. caspar mounted upon a rocky boulder that lay upon the surface of the glacier. from the top of this he could see over the others. _the crevasse was many yards wide. the bridge-rock was gone_! chapter twenty three. the pass. the philosophy of the movement of glaciers is but ill understood, even by the most accomplished geologists. it is supposed that the under surface of these great icy masses is detached from the ground by the thaw which continually takes place there, caused by the radiating heat of the earth. water is also an agent in loosening their hold; for it is well-known that currents of water--sometimes large streams,--run under the glaciers. the icy mass thus detached, and resting on an inclined surface, is carried down by its own weight. sometimes only a very small portion of a glacier moves, causing a fissure above the part that has given way; and at other times these fissures are closed up, by the sliding of that portion next above them. an unusually hot summer produces these effects upon the glacier ice, combined with the falling of avalanches, or mountain slides, which, with their weight, serve to impel the icy mass downwards. the weight of our three hunters was but as a feather, and could have had no effect in giving motion to the glacier; but it is possible that the gneiss rock was just upon the balance when they crossed it. thawed around its surface, it had no cohesion with the ice on which it rested; and, as a feather turns the scale, their crossing upon it may have produced a motion, which resulted in its fall. so vast a mass hurled into the great cleft, and acting as a driven wedge, may have been the feather's touch that imparted motion to a section of the glacier, already hanging upon the balance, and ready to slide downwards. whether or not they had any agency in producing this fearful phenomenon, our travellers reflected not at the time. they were far too much terrified at the result to speculate upon causes. one after another they mounted upon the great boulder, and satisfied themselves of the facts that the crevasse had widened,--the bridge-rock had disappeared,-- and their retreat was cut off! after a little, they ventured closer to the fearful chasm. they climbed upon a ledge of the precipice, that gave them a better view of it. from this elevation they could partially see into the cleft. at the surface it was many yards wide. it appeared to be hundreds of feet in depth. human agency could not have bridged it. all hope of getting back down the glacier was at an end; and with consternation in their looks, they turned their faces away, and commenced ascending towards the head of the ravine. they advanced with timid steps. they spoke not at all, or only in low murmuring voices. they looked right and left, eagerly scanning the precipice on both sides. on each side of them towered the black cliffs, like prison walls, frowning and forbidding. no ledge of any size appeared on either; no terrace, no sloping ravine, that might afford them a path out of that dark valley. the cliffs, sheer and smooth, presented no hold for the human foot. the eagles, and other birds that screamed over their heads, alone could scale them. still they had not lost hope. the mind does not yield to despair without full conviction. as yet they were not certain that there was no outlet to the ravine; and until certain they would not despair. they observed the tracks of the musk-deer as they went on. but these were no longer fresh; it was the trail of yesterday. they followed this trail with renewed hopes,--with feelings of joy. but it was not the joy of the hunter who expects ere long to overtake his game. no, directly the reverse. hungry as all three were, they _feared_ to overtake the game; they dreaded the discovery of fresh tracks! you will wonder at this; but it is easily explained. they had reasoned with themselves, that if there existed any outlet above, the deer would have gone out by it. if the contrary, the animal would still be found near the head of the ravine. nothing would have been less welcome than the sight of the deer at that moment. their hopes rose as they advanced. no fresh tracks appeared upon the glacier. the trail of the musk-deer still continued onward and upward. the creature had not halted, nor even strayed to either side. it had gone straight on, as though making for some retreat already known to it. here and there it had made detours; but these had been caused by lyes in the ice, or boulders, that lay across the path. with beating hearts the trackers kept on; now scanning the cliffs on each hand, now bending their eyes in advance. at length they saw themselves within a hundred paces of the extreme end of the ravine, and yet no opening appeared. the precipice rose high and sheer as ever, on the right, on the left, before their faces. nor break nor path cheered their eyes. where could the deer have gone? the ground above was pretty clear of _debris_. there were some loose rocks lying on one side. had it hidden behind these? if so, they would soon find it; for they were within a few paces of the rocks. they approached with caution. they had prepared their weapons for a shot. despite their fears, they had still taken some precautions. hunger instigated them to this. caspar was sent on to examine the covert of rocks, while karl and the shikarree remained in the rear to intercept the deer if it attempted to retreat down the ravine. caspar approached with due caution. he crawled silently up to the boulders. he placed himself close to the largest; and, raising his head, peeped over it. there was no deer behind the rock, nor any traces of it in the snow. he passed on to the next, and then to the next. this brought him into a new position, and near the head of the ravine; so that he could now see the whole surface of the glacier. there was no musk-deer to be seen; but a spectacle greeted his eyes far more welcome than the sight of the largest herd of deer could have been to the keenest hunter; and a cry of joy escaped him on the instant. he was seen to start out from the rocks, shouting as he ran across the ravine-- "come on, brother! we are safe yet! there's a pass! there's a pass!" chapter twenty four. the lone mountain valley. a pass there was, sure enough, that opened between the cliffs like a great gate. why they had not perceived it sooner was because the gorge bent a little to the right before opening to this outlet; and, of course, the bend from a distance appeared to be the termination of the ravine. a hundred yards from the bend brought them into the great gate between the cliffs, and there a view opened before their eyes that filled their hearts with joy and admiration. perhaps in all the world they could not have looked upon a more singular landscape. right before their faces, and somewhat below the level on which they stood, lay a valley. it was nearly of a circular shape, and, perhaps, a league or more in circumference. in the middle of this valley was a lake several hundred yards in diameter. the whole bottom of the valley appeared to be a plane, but slightly elevated above the water level, consisting of green meadows, beautifully interspersed with copses of shrubbery and clumps of trees, with foliage of rich and varied colours. what appeared to be droves of cattle and herds of deer were browsing on the meadows, or wandering around the copses; while flocks of waterfowl disported themselves over the blue water of the lake. so park-like was the aspect of this sequestered valley, that the eyes of our travellers instinctively wandered over its surface in search of human dwellings or the forms of human beings; and were only astonished at not perceiving either. they looked for a house,--a noble mansion,--a palace to correspond to that fair park. they looked for chimneys among the trees--for the ascending smoke. no trace of all these could be detected. a smoke there was, but it was not that of a fire. it was a white vapour that rose near one side of the valley, curling upward like steam. this surprised and puzzled them. they could not tell what caused it, but they could tell that it was not the smoke of a fire. but the form of the valley--its dimensions--its central lake--its green meadows and trees--its browsing herds--its wild fowl might have been seen elsewhere. all these things might occur, and do occur in many parts of the earth's surface without the scene being regarded as singular or remarkable. it was not these that have led us to characterise the landscape in question as one of the most singular in the world. no--its singularity rested upon other circumstances. one of these circumstances was, that around the valley there appeared a dark belt of nearly equal breadth, that seemed to hem it in as with a gigantic fence. a little examination told that this dark belt was a line of cliffs, that, rising up from the level bottom on all sides, fronted the valley and the lake. in other words, the valley was surrounded by a precipice. in the distance it appeared only a few yards in height, but that might be a deception of the eye. above the black line another circular belt encompassed the valley. it was the sloping sides of bleak barren mountains. still another belt higher up was formed by the snowy crests of the same mountains--here in roof-like ridges, there in rounded domes, or sharp cone-shaped peaks, that pierced the heavens far above the line of eternal snow. there seemed to be no way of entrance into this singular basin except over the line of black cliff. the gap in which our travellers stood, and the ravine through which they had ascended appeared to be its only outlet; and this, filled as it was by glacier ice, raised the summit of the pass above the level of the valley; but a sloping descent over a vast _debris_ of fallen rocks--the "moraine" of the glacier itself-- afforded a path down to the bottom of the valley. for several minutes all three remained in the gap, viewing this strange scene with feelings that partook of the nature of admiration--of wonder--of awe. the sun was just appearing over the mountains, and his rays, falling upon the crystallised snow, were refracted to the eyes of the spectators in all the colours of the rainbow. the snow itself in one place appeared of a roseate colour, while elsewhere it was streaked and mottled with golden hues. the lake, too--here rippled by the sporting fowl, there lying calm and smooth--reflected from its blue disk the white cones of the mountains, the darker belting of the nearer cliffs, or the green foliage upon its shores. for hours karl linden could have gazed upon that fairy-like scene. caspar, of ruder mould, was entranced by its beauty; and even the hunter of the plains--the native of palm-groves and cane fields--confessed he had never beheld so beautiful a landscape. all of them were well acquainted with the hindoo superstition concerning the himalaya mountains. the belief that in lonely valleys among the more inaccessible peaks, the brahmin gods have their dwelling and their home; and they could not help fancying at that moment that the superstition might be true. certainly, if it were true, some one of these deities, vishnu, or siva, or even brahma himself, must dwell in that very valley that now lay before them. but poetical and legendary sentiment soon vanished from the minds of our travellers. all three were hungry--hungry as wolves--and the ruling thought at the moment was to find the means for satisfying their appetites. with this intent, therefore, they strode forward out of the gap, and commenced descending towards the bottom of the valley. chapter twenty five. grunting oxen. there were several kinds of animals in sight, but it was natural that the hungry hunters should choose those that were nearest for their game. the nearest also chanced to be the largest--though in the flock there were individuals of different sizes, from the bigness of a large ox to that of a newfoundland dog. there were about a dozen in all, evidently of one kind, and the difference in size and other respects arose from a difference of age and sex. what sort of animals they were, not one of the party could tell. even ossaroo did not know them. he had never seen such creatures on the plains of india. it was evident to all, however, that they were some species of oxen or buffaloes, since they bore a general resemblance to animals of the family of _bovidae_. first there was the great massive bull, the patriarch of the herd, standing nearly as tall as a horse, and quite as tall reckoning from the top of the stately hump on his shoulders. his curved horns spreading outward rose from a mass of thick curled hair, giving him the fierce aspect which characterises animals of the buffalo kind. but his chief peculiarity lay in the drapery of long silky hair, that from his sides, flanks, neck, belly, and thighs, hung downward until its tips almost dragged upon the grass. this singular appendage gave the animal the appearance of being short-legged, and the massive thickness of the legs themselves added to the effect. karl could not help remarking in the old bull a considerable resemblance to the rare musk-ox of america; an animal with which he was acquainted, from having seen stuffed specimens in the museums. he noted, however, that there was one point in which the musk-ox differed essentially from the species before him--in regard to the fail. the musk-ox is almost tailless; or, rather, his fail is so small as to be quite inconspicuous amidst the long masses of hair that adorn his croup; whereas the strange creature before them was remarkable for the large development of this appendage, which swept downward, full and wide, like the tail of a horse. the colour of the bull's body appeared black in the distance, though, in reality, it was not black, but of a dark, chocolate brown; the tail, on the contrary, was snow-white, which, from this contrast in colour, added to the singularity of the animal's appearance. there was but one large bull in the herd; evidently the lord and master of all the others. these consisted of the females or cows, and the young. the cows were much smaller, scarce half the size of the old bull; their horns less massive, and the tails and long hair less full and flowing. of the young, there were some of different ages; from the half-grown bull or heifer, to the calves lately dropped; which last were tearing about over the ground, and gambolling by the feet of their mothers. about these little creatures there was a peculiarity. the long hair upon their flanks and sides had not yet made its appearance; but their whole coat was black and curly, just like that of a water-spaniel, or newfoundland dog. in the distance, they bore a striking resemblance to these animals; and one might have fancied the herd to be a flock of buffaloes, with a number of black dogs running about in their midst. "whatever they be," remarked caspar, "they look like they might be eatable. i think they're beef of some kind." "beef, venison, or mutton--one of the three," rejoined karl. ossaroo was not particular at that moment. he could have picked a rib of wolf-meat, and thought it palatable. "well, we must stalk them," continued karl. "i see no other way of getting near them but by crawling through yonder copse." the speaker pointed to a grove, near which the animals were browsing. caspar and ossaroo agreed with this suggestion, and all three, having now reached the bottom of the descent, commenced their stalk. without any difficulty, they succeeded in reaching the copse; and then, creeping silently through the underwood, they came to that edge of it which was closest to the browsing herd. the bushes were evergreens-- rhododendrons--and formed excellent cover for a stalk; and, as yet, the game had neither seen, nor heard, nor smelt the approaching enemy. they were too distant for the arrows of ossaroo, therefore ossaroo could do nothing; but they were within excellent range of the rifle and double-barrel, loaded, as the latter was, with large buckshot. karl whispered to caspar to choose one of the calves for the first barrel, while he himself aimed at the larger game. the bull was too distant for either bullet or buckshot. he was standing apart, apparently acting as sentry to the herd, though this time he did not prove a watchful guardian. he had some suspicion, however, that all was not right; for, before they could fire, he seemed to have caught an alarm, and, striking the ground with his massive hoofs, he uttered a strange noise, that resembled the grunting of a hog. so exactly did it assimilate to this, that our hunters, for the moment, believed there were pigs in the place, and actually looked around to discover their whereabouts. a moment satisfied them, that the grunting came from the bull; and, without thinking any more about it, karl and caspar levelled their pieces, and fired. the reports reverberated through the valley; and the next moment the whole herd, with the bull at their head, were seen going in full gallop across the plain. not all of them, however. a calf, and one of the cows, lay stretched upon the sward, to the great delight of the hunters, who, rushing forth from their cover, soon stood triumphant over the fallen game. a word or two passed between them. they had determined on first cooking the calf, to appease their hunger, and were about proceeding to skin it, when a long, loud grunting sounded in their ears; and, on looking around, they beheld the great bull coming full tilt towards them, his head lowered to the ground, and his large, lustrous eyes flashing with rage and vengeance, he had only retreated a short distance, fancying, no doubt, that his whole family was after him; but, on missing two of its members, he was now on his return to rescue or revenge them. strange as was the animal to all three, there was no mistaking his prowess. his vast size, his wild, shaggy front and sweeping horns, the vengeful expression of his eyes, all declared him a powerful and dangerous assailant. not one of the hunters thought for a moment of withstanding such an assault; but, shouting to each other to run for their lives, all three started off as fast as their legs would carry them. they ran for the copse, but that would not have saved them had it been mere copse-wood. such a huge creature as their pursuer would have dashed through copse-wood as through a field of grass; and, in reality, he did so, charging through the bushes, goring them down on all sides of him, and uttering his loud grunting like a savage boar. it so happened that there were several large trees growing up out of the underwood, and these, fortunately, were not difficult to climb. the three hunters did not need any advice, as to what they should do under the circumstances. each had an instinct of his own, and that instinct prompted him to take to a tree; where, of course, he would be safe enough from an animal, whose claws, if it had any, were encased in hoofs. the bull continued for some minutes to grunt and charge backward and forward among the bushes, but, not finding any of the party, he at length returned to the plain, where the dead were lying. he first approached the cow, and then the calf, and then repeatedly passed from one to the other, placing his broad muzzle to their bodies, and uttering his grunting roar, apparently in a more plaintive strain than before. after continuing these demonstrations for a while, he raised his head, looked over the plain, and then trotted sullenly off in the direction in which the others had gone. hungry as were the hunters, it was some time before they ventured to come down from their perch. but hunger overcame them at length, and descending, they picked up their various weapons--which they had dropped in their haste to climb--and, having loaded the empty barrels, they returned to the game. these were now dragged up to the edge of the timber--so that in case the bull should take it into his head to return, they might not have so far to run for the friendly trees. the calf was soon stripped of its skin--a fire kindled--several ribs broiled over the coals, and eaten in the shortest space of time. such delicious veal not one of the three had ever tasted in his life. it was not that their extreme hunger occasioned them to think so, but such was really the fact, for they were no longer ignorant of what they were eating. they now knew what sort of animals they had slain, and a singular circumstance had imparted to them this knowledge. as the bull charged about in front of the thicket, ossaroo from his perch on the tree had a good view of him, and one thing belonging to the animal ossaroo recognised as an old acquaintance--it was his _tail_! yes, that tail was not to be mistaken. many such had ossaroo seen and handled in his young days. many a fly had he brushed away with just such a one, and he could have recognised it had he found it growing upon a fish. when they returned to the quarry, ossaroo pointed to the tail of the dead cow--not half so full and large as that of the bull, but still of similar character--and with a significant glance to the others, said-- "know 'im now, sahibs--_ghowry_." chapter twenty six. the yaks. what ossaroo meant was that he knew the tail; but he was as ignorant of the animal to which it was attached, as if the latter had been a dragon or a comet. ossaroo saw that the tail was a "chowry," in other words, a fly-flapper, such as is used in the hot countries of india for brushing away flies, mosquitos, and other winged insects. ossaroo knew it, for he had often handled one to fan the old sahib, who had been his master in the days of his boyhood. the word chowry, however, at once suggested to the plant-hunter a train of ideas. he knew that the chowries of india were imported across the himalayas from chinese tartary and thibet; that they were the tails of a species of oxen peculiar to these countries, known as the yak, or grunting ox. beyond a doubt then the animals they had slain were "yaks." karl's conjecture was the true one. it was a herd of wild yaks they had fallen in with, for they were just in the very country where these animals exist in their wild state. linnaeus gave to these animals the name of _bos grunniens_, or grunting ox--seeing that they were clearly a species of the ox. it would be difficult to conceive a more appropriate name for them; but this did not satisfy the modern closet-naturalists--who, finding certain differences between them and other _bovidae_, must needs form a new genus, to accommodate this one species, and by such means render the study of zoology more difficult. indeed, some of these gentlemen would have a genus for _every_ species, or even variety--all of which absurd classification leads only to the multiplication of hard names and the confusion of ideas. it is a great advantage to the student, as well as to the simple reader, when the scientific title of an animal is a word which conveys some idea of its character, and not the latinised name of smith or brown, hofenshaufer or wislizenus; but this title should usually be the specific one given to the animal. where a genus exists so easily distinguished from all others as in the case of the old genus "_bos_," it is a great pity it should be cut up by fanciful systematists into _bos, bubalus, bison, anoa, poephagus, ovibos_, and such like. the consequence of this subdividing is that readers who are not naturalists, and even some who are, are quite puzzled by the multitude of names, and gain no clear idea of the animal mentioned. all these titles would have been well enough as specific names, such as _bos bubalus, bos bison, bos grunniens_, etcetera, and it would have been much simpler and better to have used them so. of course if there were many species under each of these new genera, then the case would be different, and subdivision might load to convenience. as it is, however, there are only one or two species of each, and in the case of some of the genera, as the musk-ox (_ovibos_) and the yak or grunting ox, only one. why then multiply names and titles? these systematists, however, not satisfied with the generic name given by the great systematic linnaeus, have changed the name of the _bos grunniens_ to that of _poephagus grunniens_, which i presume to mean the "grunting poa-eater," or the "grunting eater of poa grass!"--a very specific title indeed, though i fancy there are other kinds of oxen as well of the yak who indulge occasionally in the luxury of poa grass. well, this yak, or syrlak, or grunting ox, or poa-eater, whatever we may call him, is a very peculiar and useful animal. he is not only found wild in thibet and other adjacent countries, but is domesticated, and subjected to the service of man. in fact, to the people of the high cold countries that stretch northward from the himalayas he is what the camel is to the arabs, or the reindeer to the people of lapland. his long brown hair furnishes them with material out of winch they weave their tents and twist their ropes. his skin supplies them with leather. his back carries their merchandise or other burdens, or themselves when they wish to ride; and his shoulder draws their plough and their carts. his flesh is a wholesome and excellent beef, and the milk obtained from the cows--either as milk, cheese, or butter--is one of the primary articles of food among the thibetian people. the tails constitute an article of commerce, of no mean value. they are exported to the plains of india, where they are bought for several purposes--their principal use being for "chowries," or fly-brushes, as already observed. among the tartar people they are worn in the cap as bridges of distinction, and only the chiefs and distinguished lenders are permitted the privilege of wearing them. in china, also, they are similarly worn by the mandarins, first having been dyed of a bright red colour. a fine full yak's tail will fetch either in china or india quite a handsome sum of money. there are several varieties of the yak. first, there is the true wild yak--the same as those encountered by our travellers. these are much larger than the domestic breeds, and the bulls are among the most fierce and powerful of the ox tribe. hunting them is often accompanied by hair-breadth escapes and perilous encounters, and large dogs and horses are employed in the chase. the tame yaks are divided into several classes, as the ploughing yak, the riding yak, etcetera, and these are not all of the dark brown colour of the original race, but are met with dun-coloured, mottled red, and even pure white. dark brown or black, however, with a white tail, is the prevailing colour. the yak-calf is the finest veal in the world; but when the calf is taken from the mother, the cow refuses to yield milk. in such cases the foot of the calf is brought for her to lick, or the stuffed skin to fondle, when she will give milk as before, expressing her satisfaction by short grunts like a pig. the yak when used as a beast of burden will travel twenty miles a day, under a load of two bags of rice or salt, or four or six planks of pine-wood slung in pairs along either flank. their ears are generally pierced by their drivers, and ornamented with tufts of scarlet worsted. their true home is on the cold table-lands of thibet and tartary, or still higher up among the mountain valleys of the himalayas, where they feed on grass or the smaller species of carices. they love to browse upon steep places, and to scramble among rocks; and their favourite places for resting or sleeping are on the tops of isolated boulders, where the sun has full play upon them. when taken to warm climates, they languish, and soon die of disease of the liver. it is possible, however, that they could be acclimated in many european countries, were it taken in hand by those who alone have the power to make the trial in a proper manner--i mean the governments of these countries. but such works of utility are about the last things that the tyrants of the earth will be likely to trouble their heads with. chapter twenty seven. curing the yak-meat. our travellers found the yak-veal excellent, and the three consumed a quarter of it for their breakfasts before their appetites were satisfied. this business being brought to a conclusion, they held a council as to what was best to be done next. of course they had already made up their minds to spend some days in this beautiful valley in plant-hunting. from the glance they had had of it, karl had no doubt that its _flora_ and _sylva_ were exceedingly rich and varied. indeed, while passing through the underwood he had noticed many curious kinds that were quite new to him, and he would be likely enough to find some altogether unknown to the botanical world. these thoughts filled him with joyful anticipations--bright visions of future triumph in his beloved science passed before his mind's eye, and he felt for the moment contented and happy. the peculiar situation of the valley led him to expect a peculiar flora, surrounded as it was by snowy mountains--isolated apparently from other fertile tracts, and sheltered from every wind by the lofty ridges that encircled it. among other peculiarities he had observed plants of almost tropical genera, although the altitude could not be less than , feet, and the snowy mountains that towered above it were some of the highest peaks of the himalayas! these tropical forms had puzzled him not a little, considering the altitude at which he observed them; and to account for the apparent anomaly was one of the thoughts that was passing through his mind at the moment. as for caspar, he was pleased to know that his brother desired to remain there for some days. he had less interest in the rare plants, but he had observed that the place was very well stocked with wild animals, and he anticipated no little sport in hunting them. it is just possible that ossaroo sighed for the warm plains, for the palm-groves and bamboo thickets, but the shikarree liked the look of the game, and could spend a few days well enough in this region. moreover, the atmosphere of the valley was much warmer than that of the country in which they had been travelling for several days past. indeed, the difference was so great as to surprise all three of them, and they could only account for the higher temperature by supposing that it arose from the sheltered situation of the valley itself. having determined on remaining, therefore it became necessary to make some provision against hunger. though the game seemed plenty enough, they might not always be so successful in stalking it; and as the yak cow offered them beef enough to last for some days, it would not do to let the meat spoil. that must be looked to at once. without further ado, therefore, they set about preserving the meat. having no salt this might appear to be a difficult matter, and so it would have been to the northern travellers. but ossaroo was a man of the tropics--in whose country salt was both scarce and dear--and consequently he knew other plans for curing meat besides pickling it. he knew how to cure it by the process called "jerking." this was a simple operation, and consisted in cutting the meat into thin slices, and either hanging it upon the branches of trees, or spreading it out upon the rock--leaving the sun to do the rest. it happened, however, that on that day the sun did not shine very brightly, and it was not hot enough for jerking meat. but ossaroo was not to be beaten so easily. he knew an alternative which is adopted in such cases. he knew that the meat can be jerked by the fire as well as by the sun, and this plan he at once put into operation. having gathered a large quantity of fagots, he kindled them into a fire, and then hung the beef upon scaffolds all around it--near enough to be submitted to the heat and smoke, but not so near as that the meat should be either broiled or burnt. when it should hang thus exposed to the fire for a day or so, ossaroo assured his companions it would be cured and dried so as to keep for months without requiring a pinch of salt. the skinning of the yak, and then cutting its flesh into strips--the erection of the scaffold-poles, and stringing up of the meat, occupied all hands for the space of several hours, so that when the job was finished it was past midday. dinner had then to be cooked and eaten, which occupied nearly another hour; and although it was not yet quite nightfall, they were all so sleepy from their long vigil, and so tired with standing upon the ledge, that they were glad to stretch themselves by the fire and go to rest. the cold air, as evening approached, caused them to shiver; and now for the first time they began to think of their blankets, and other matters which they had left at their last camp. but they only thought of them with a sigh. the road, to where these had been left, could no longer be traversed. it would no doubt be necessary for them to make a long detour over the mountains, before they could get back to that camp. ossaroo had prepared a substitute for one of the blankets at least. he had stretched the yak-skin upon a frame, and placed it in front of the fire, so that by night it was dry enough for some of the party to wrap their bodies in. sure enough, when caspar was enveloped in this strange blanket--with the hairy side turned inward--be obtained in it, as he himself declared, one of the pleasantest and soundest sleeps he had ever slept in his life. all three, rested well enough; but had they only known of the discovery that awaited them on the morrow, their sleep would not have been so sound, nor their dreams so light. chapter twenty eight. the boiling spring. they ate their breakfasts of boiled yak-steak, washing it down with a draught of water. they had not even a cup to hold the water. they knelt down and drank it out of the lake. the water was clear enough, but not as cold as they might have expected at such an elevation. they had noticed this on the preceding day, and now expressed their surprise at finding it so warm. they had no thermometer with which to test it, but it was evidently of much higher temperature than the air! whence came this water? it could not be from the melting snow--else it would certainly have been colder than it was. perhaps there was a spring somewhere? perhaps there was a hot spring? this was not at all improbable, for, strange to say, hot springs are numerous on the himalaya mountains--often bursting out amidst ice and snow, and at very great elevations. karl had read of such springs, and this it was that led him to infer the existence of one in the valley. how else could the water be warm? now they recollected that on the previous morning they had noticed a singular cloud of vapour that hung over the tops of the trees on one side of the valley. it was no longer visible, after they had descended from the elevation at which they then were; but they remembered the direction in which it had been seen, and now went in search of it. they soon reached the spot, and found it just as they had conjectured. a hot spring was there, bubbling out from among the rocks, and then running off in a rivulet towards the lake. caspar thrust his hand into the water, but drew it back again with an exclamation that betokened both pain and surprise. the water was almost boiling! "well," said he, "this is convenient at all events. if we only had a teapot, we should need no kettle. here's water on the boil at all hours!" "ha!" ejaculated karl, as he dipped his fingers into the hot stream; "this explains the high temperature of the valley, the rich luxuriant vegetation, the presence of plants of the lower region; i thought that there was some such cause. see, yonder grow magnolias! how very interesting! i should not wonder if we meet with palms and bamboos!" just at that moment the attention of the party was called away from the hot spring. a noble buck came bounding up until he was within twenty yards of the spot, and then halting in his tracks, stood for some moments gazing at the intruders. there was no mistaking this creature for any other animal than a stag. the vast antlers were characteristics that left no room to doubt of his species. he was about the size of the european stag or red-deer, and his branching horns were very similar. his colour, too, was reddish grey with a white mark around the croup, and his form and proportion were very like to those of the english stag. he was, in fact, the asiatic representative of this very species--known to naturalists as the _cervus wallichii_. at sight of the party around the spring, he exhibited symptoms more of surprise than of fear. perhaps they were the first creatures of the kind his great large eyes had ever glanced upon. he knew not whether they might prove friendly or hostile. simple creature! he was not to remain long in doubt as to that point. the rifle was brought to bear upon him, and the next moment he was prostrate upon the ground. it was karl who had fired, as caspar with the double-barrel was standing at some distance off. all three, however, ran forward to secure the game, but, to their chagrin, the stag once more rose to his feet and bounded off among the bushes, with fritz following at his heels. they could see that he went upon three legs, and that the fourth--one of the hind ones--was broken and trailing upon the ground. the hunters started after, in hopes of still securing the prize; but after passing through the thicket they had a view of the buck still bounding along close by the bottom of the cliffs, and as yet far ahead of the hound. it was near the cliff where the animal had been wounded, for the hot spring was close in to the rocks that bounded that side of the valley. the dog ran on after him, and the hunters followed as fast as they were able. karl and ossaroo kept along the bottom of the cliff, while caspar remained out in the open valley, in order to intercept the game should it turn outwards in the direction of the lake. in this way they proceeded for more than half-a-mile before seeing anything more of the stag. at length the loud baying of fritz warned them that he had overtaken the game, which was no doubt standing to bay. this proved to be the case. fritz was holding the buck at bay close to the edge of a thicket; but the moment the hunters came in sight, the stag again broke, dashed into the thicket, and disappeared as before. another half-mile was passed before they found the game again, and then the dog had brought him to bay a second time; but just as before, when the hunters were approaching, the stag made a rush into the bushes, and again got off. it was mortifying to lose such noble game after having been so sure of it, and all determined to follow out the chase if it should last them the whole day. karl had another motive for continuing after the deer. karl was a person of tender and humane feelings. he saw that the ball had broken the creature's thigh-bone, and he knew the wound would cause its death in the end. he could not think of leaving it thus to die by inches, and was anxious to put an end to its misery with this view as well as for the purpose of obtaining the venison, he continued the chase. the stag gave them another long run, before it was again brought up; and again, for the third time, it broke and made off. they began to despair of being able to come up with it. all this while the deer had kept along the base of the cliffs, and the hunters as they ran after it could not help noticing the immense precipice that towered above their heads. it rose to the height of hundreds of feet, in some places with a slanting face, but generally almost as vertical as a wall. the chase of the wounded stag, however, occupied too much their attention to allow of their observing anything else very minutely; and so they pressed on without halting anywhere--except for a moment or so to gain breath. six or seven times had they seen the wounded stag, and six or seven times had fritz brought him to bay, but fritz for his pains had only received several severe scores from the antlers of the enraged animal. the hunters at length approached the great gap in the cliff, through which they had first entered the valley, but the chase was carried past this point and continued on as before. once more the loud barking of the dog announced that the deer had come to a stand; and once more the hunters hurried forward. this time they saw the stag standing in a pool of water up to the flanks. the ground gave caspar an opportunity to approach within a few yards without being observed by the game, and a discharge from the double-barrel put an end to the chase. chapter twenty nine. an alarming discovery. you will naturally suppose that this successful termination of the chase gave great satisfaction to the hunters. it might have done so under other circumstances, but just then their minds became occupied by thoughts of a far different nature. as they came up to the spot where the stag had fallen, and were preparing to drag it from the pool, their eyes rested upon an object which caused them to turn toward one another with looks of strange significance. this object was no other than the hot spring--the place where the chase had begun. within less than a hundred yards of the spot where the stag had received his first wound was he now lying dead! the pool in fact was in the little rivulet that ran from the spring to the lake. i have said that the hunters on observing this exchanged significant glances. one fact was evident to all of them--that they had got back to the spot whence they started. a very little reasoning taught them another fact--that in the pursuit of the stag they must have made the full circuit of the valley. they had not turned back anywhere--they had not crossed the valley--they had not even been in sight of the lake during the whole chase. on the contrary, karl with ossaroo had kept continually along the bottom of the cliffs, sometimes in the timber, and at intervals passing across stretches of open ground. what was there remarkable about all this? it only proved that the valley was small, and of roundish form; and that in about an hour's time any one might make the circuit of it. what was there in this discovery that should cause the hunters to stand gazing upon one another with troubled looks? was it surprise at the stag having returned to die where he had received his wound? certainly there was something a little singular about that, but so trifling a circumstance could not have clouded the brows of the hunters. it was not surprise that was pictured in their looks--more serious feelings were stirring within them. their glances were those of apprehension--the fear of some danger not fully defined or certain. what danger? the three stood, ossaroo lightly grasping his bow, but not thinking of the weapon; karl holding his rifle with its butt resting on the ground, and caspar gazing interrogatively in the face of his brother. for some moments not one of them spoke. each guessed what the other was thinking of. the stag lay untouched in the pool, his huge antlers alone appearing above the surface of the water, while the dog stood baying on the bank. karl at length broke silence. he spoke half in soliloquy, as if his thoughts were busy with the subject. "yes, a precipice the whole way round. i saw no break--no signs of one. ravines there were, it is true, but all seemed to end in the same high cliffs. you observed no outlet, ossaroo?" "no, sahib; me fearee de valley shut up, no clear o' dis trap yet sahib." caspar offered no opinion. he had kept farther out from the cliffs, and at times had been quite out of sight of them--the trees hiding their tops from his view. he fully comprehended, however, the meaning of his brother's observations. "then you think the precipice runs all around the valley?" he asked, addressing the latter. "i fear so, caspar. i observed no outlet--neither has ossaroo; and although not specially looking for such a thing, i had my eyes open for it; i had not forgotten our perilous situation of yesterday, and i wished to assure myself. i looked up several gorges that ran out of the valley, but the sides of all seemed to be precipitous. the chase, it is true, kept me from examining them very closely; but it is now time to do so. if there be no pass out of this valley, then are we indeed in trouble. these cliffs are five hundred feet in height--they are perfectly impassable by human foot. come on! let us know the worst." "shall we not draw out the stag?" inquired caspar, pointing to the game that still lay under the water. "no, leave him there; it will get no harm till our return: should my fears prove just, we shall have time enough for that, and much else beside. come on!" so saying karl led the way toward the foot of the precipice, the others following silently after. foot by foot, and yard by yard, did they examine the beetling front of those high cliffs. they viewed them from their base, and then passing outward scanned them to the very tops. there was no gorge or ravine which they did not enter and fully reconnoitre. many of these there were, all of them resembling little bays of the ocean, their bottoms being on the same level with the valley itself, and their sides formed by the vertical wall of granite. at some places the cliffs actually hung over. now and then they came upon piles of rock and scattered boulders--some of them of enormous dimensions. there were single blocks full fifty feet in length, breadth, and height; and there were also cairns, or collections of rocks, piled up to four times that elevation, and standing at such a distance from the base of the cliff, that it was evident they could not have fallen from it into their present position. ice, perhaps, was the agent that had placed them where they lay. none of the three were in any mood to speculate upon geological phenomena at that moment. they passed on, continuing their examination. they saw that the cliff was not all of equal height. it varied in this respect, but its lowest escarpment was too high to be ascended. at the lowest point it could not have been less than three hundred feet sheer, while there were portions of it that rose to the stupendous height of one thousand from the valley! on went they along its base, carefully examining every yard. they had gone over the same path with lighter feet and lighter hearts. this time they were three hours in making the circuit; and at the end of these three hours they stood in the gap by which they had entered, with the full and painful conviction that that gap was the only outlet to this mysterious valley--the only one that could be traversed by human foot! the valley itself resembled the crater of some extinct volcano, whose lava lake had burst through this gate-like gorge, leaving an empty basin behind. they did not go back through the glacier ravine. they had no hope of escaping in that direction. that they knew already. from the gap they saw the white vapour curling up over the spring. they saw the remaining portion of the precipice that lay beyond. it was the highest and most inaccessible of all. all three sat down upon the rocks; and remained for some minutes silent and in a state of mind bordering upon despair. chapter thirty. prospects and precautions. brave men do not easily yield to despair. karl was brave. caspar, although but a mere boy, was as brave as a man. so was the shikarree brave--that is, for one of his race. he would have thought light of any ordinary peril--a combat with a tiger, or a gayal, or a bear; but, like all his race, he was given to superstition, he now firmly believed that some of his hindoo gods dwelt in this valley, and that they were all to be punished for intruding into the sacred abode. there was nothing singular about his holding this belief. it was perfectly natural,--in fact, it was only the belief of his religion and his race. notwithstanding his superstitious fears, he did not yield himself up to destiny. on the contrary, he was ready to enter heart and soul into any plan by which he and his companions might escape out of the territory of brahma, vishnu, or siva--whichsoever of these it belonged to. it was in thinking over some plan that kept all three of them in silence, and with such thoughts ossaroo was as busy as the others. think as they would, no feasible or practicable idea could be got hold of. there were five hundred feet of a cliff to be scaled. how was that feat to be accomplished? by making a ladder? the idea was absurd. no ladder in the world would reach to the quarter of such a height. ropes, even if they had had them, could be in no way made available. these might aid in going _down_ a precipice, but for going _up_ they would be perfectly useless. the thought even crossed their minds of cutting notches in the cliff, and ascending by that means! this might appear to be practicable, and viewing the matter from a distance it certainly does seem so. but had you been placed in the position of our travellers,--seated as they were in front of that frowning wall of granite,--and told that you must climb it by notches cut in the iron rock by your own hand, you would have turned from the task in despair. so did they; at least the idea passed away from their thoughts almost in the same moment in which it had been conceived. for hours they sat pondering over the affair. what would they not have given for wings; wings to carry them over the walls of that terrible prison? all their speculations ended without result; and at length rising to their feet, they set off with gloomy thoughts toward the spot where they had already encamped. as if to render their situation more terrible, some wild beasts,--wolves they supposed,--had visited the encampment during their absence, and had carried off every morsel of the jerked meat. this was a painful discovery, for now more than ever should they require such provision. the stag still remained to them. surely it was not also carried off? and to assure themselves they hurried to the pool, which was at no great distance. they were gratified at finding the deer in the pool where it had been left; the water, perhaps, having protected it from ravenous beasts. as their former camp ground had not been well chosen, they dragged the carcass of the deer up to the hot spring; that being a better situation. there the animal was skinned, a fire kindled, and after they had dined upon fresh venison-steaks, the rest of the meat ossaroo prepared for curing,--just as he had done that of the yak,--but in this case he took the precaution to hang it out of reach of all four-footed marauders. so careful were they of the flesh of the deer, that even the bones were safely stowed away, and fritz had to make his supper upon the offal. notwithstanding their terrible situation, karl had not abandoned one of the national characteristics of his countryman,--prudence. he foresaw a long stay in this singular valley. how long he did not think of asking himself; perhaps for life. he anticipated the straits in which they might soon be placed; food even might fail them; and on this account every morsel was to be kept from waste. around their night camp-fire they talked of the prospects of obtaining food; of the animals they supposed might exist in the valley; of their numbers and kinds,--they had observed several kinds; of the birds upon the lake and among the trees; of the fruits and berries; of the roots that might be in the ground; in short, of every thing that might be found there from which they could draw sustenance. they examined their stock of ammunition. this exceeded even their most sanguine hopes. both caspar's large powder-horn and that of his brother were nearly full. they had used their guns but little since last filling their horns. they had also a good store of shot and bullets; though these things were less essential, and in case of their running short of them they knew of many substitutes, but gunpowder is the _sine qua non_ of the hunter. even had their guns failed them, there was still the unerring bow of ossaroo, and it was independent of either powder or lead. a thin reed, or the slender branch of a tree, were nearly all that ossaroo required to make as deadly a shaft as need be hurled. they were without anxiety, on the score of being able to kill such animals as the place afforded. even had they been without arrows, they felt confident that in such a circumscribed space they would have been able to circumvent and capture the game. they had no uneasiness about any four-footed creature making its escape from the valley any more than themselves. there could be no other outlet than that by which they had entered. by the ravine only could the four-footed denizens of the place have gone out and in; and on the glacier they had observed a beaten path made by the tracks of animals, before the snow had fallen. likely enough the pass was well-known to many kinds, and likely also there were others that stayed continually in the valley, and there brought forth their young. indeed, it would have been difficult for a wild animal to have found a more desirable home. the hope of the hunters was that many animals might have held this very opinion, and from what they had already observed, they had reason to think so. of course they had not yet abandoned the hope of being able to find some way of escape from their singular prison. no, it was too early for that. had they arrived at such a conviction, they would have been in poor heart indeed, and in no mood for conversing as they did. the birds and the quadrupeds, and the fruits and roots, would have had but little interest for them with such a despairing idea as that in their minds. they still hoped, though scarce knowing why; and in this uncertainty they went to rest with the resolve to give the cliffs a fresh examination on the morrow. chapter thirty one. measuring the crevasse. again, on the morrow, every foot of the precipitous bluffs was minutely scanned and examined. the circuit of the valley was made as before. even trees were climbed in order the better to view the face of the cliffs that soared far above their tops. the result was a full conviction, that to scale the precipice at any point was an utter impossibility. until fully convinced of this, they had not thought of going back through the gap that led to the glacier; but now that all hopes of succeeding elsewhere had vanished from their minds, they proceeded in that direction. they did not walk towards it with the light brisk step of men who had hopes of success; but rather mechanically, as if yielding to a sort of involuntary impulse. as yet they had not examined the ice-chasm very minutely. awed by the terror of the glacier slide, they had retreated from the spot in haste. one glance at the crevasse was all they had given; but in that glance they had perceived the impossibility of crossing it. at the time, however, they were not aware of the resources that were so near. they were not aware that within less than five hundred yards of the spot grew a forest of tall trees. indeed, it was not until they had fully reconnoitred the cliffs, and turned away from them in despair, that such a train of reasoning occurred to tha mind of any of the three. as they were entering the portals of that singular passage, the thought seemed for the first time to have taken shape. karl was the first to give expression to it. suddenly halting, he pointed back to the forest, and said,-- "if we could bridge it!" neither of his companions asked him what he contemplated bridging. both were at that moment busy with the same train of thought. they knew it was the crevasse. "those pine-trees are tall," said caspar. "not tall enough, sahib," rejoined the shikarree. "we can splice them," continued caspar. ossaroo shook his head, but said nothing in reply. the idea, however, had begotten new hopes; and all three walked down the ravine with brisker steps. they scanned the cliffs on either side as they advanced, but these they had examined before. treading with caution they approached the edge of the crevasse. they looked across. a hundred feet wide--perhaps more than a hundred feet-- yawned that fearful gulf. they knelt down and gazed into the chasm. it opened far away into the earth--hundreds of feet below where they knelt. it narrowed towards the bottom. they could see the crystal cliffs, blue at the top, grow greener and darker as they converged towards each other. they could see huge boulders of rock and masses of icy snow wedged between them, and could hear far below the roaring of water. a torrent ran there--no doubt the superfluous waters of the lake escaping by this subglacial stream. a sublime, but terrible sight it was; and although the nerves of all were strung to an extreme degree, it made them giddy to look into the chasm, and horrid feelings came over them as they listened to the unnatural echoes of their voices. to have descended to the bottom would have been a dread peril: but they did not contemplate such an enterprise. they knew that such a proceeding would be of no use, even could they have accomplished it. once in the bottom of the chasm the opposite steep would still have to be climbed, and this was plainly an impossibility. they thought not of crossing in that way--their only hope lay in the possibility of bridging the crevasse; and to this their whole attention was now turned. such a project might appear absurd. men of weaker minds would have turned away from it in despair; and so, too, might they have done, but for the hopelessness of all other means of escape. it was now life or death with them--at all events, it was freedom or captivity. to give up all hope of returning to their homes and friends--to spend the remainder of their lives in this wild fastness--was a thought almost as painful as the prospect of death itself. it was maddening to entertain such a thought, and as yet not one of them could bring himself to dwell upon the reality of so terrible a destiny. but the fact that such in reality would be their fate, unless they could discover some mode of escaping from their perilous situation, sharpened all their wits; and every plan was brought forward and discussed with the most serious earnestness. as they stood gazing across that yawning gulf, the conviction entered their minds that _it was possible to bridge it_. karl was the first to give way to this conviction. caspar, ever sanguine, soon yielded to the views of his brother; and ossaroo, though tardily convinced, acknowledged that they could do no better than try. the scientific mind of the botanist had been busy, and had already conceived a plan--which though it would be difficult of execution, did not seem altogether impracticable. on one thing, however, its practicability rested--the width of the chasm. this must be ascertained, and how was it to be done? it could not be guessed--that was clear. the simple estimate of the eye is a very uncertain mode of measuring--as was proved by the fact that each one of the three assigned a different width to the crevasse. in fact, there was full fifty feet of variation in their estimates. karl believed it to be only a hundred feet in width, ossaroo judged it at a hundred and fifty, while caspar thought it might be between the two. how, then, were they to measure it exactly? that was the first question that came before them. had they been in possession of proper instruments, karl was scholar enough to have determined the distance by triangulation; but they had neither quadrant nor theodolite; and that mode was therefore impossible. i have said that their wits were sharpened by their situation, and the difficulty about the measurement was soon got over. it was ossaroo who decided that point. karl and caspar were standing apart discussing the subject, not dreaming of any aid from the shikarree upon so scientific a question, when they perceived the latter unwinding a long string, which he had drawn from his pocket. "ho!" cried caspar, "what are you about, ossaroo? do you expect to measure it with a string?" "yes, sahib!" answered the shikarree. "and who is to carry your line to the opposite side, i should like to know?" inquired caspar. it seemed very ridiculous, indeed, to suppose that the chasm could be measured with a string--so long as only one side of it was accessible; but there was a _way_ of doing it, and ossaroo's native wit had suggested that way to him. in reply to caspar's question, he took one of the arrows from his quiver, and, holding it up, he said,-- "this, sahib, this carry it." "true! true!" joyfully exclaimed the brothers; both of whom at once comprehended the design of the shikarree. it cost ossaroo but a few minutes to put his design into execution. the string was unwound to its full extent. there were nearly a hundred yards of it. it was stretched tightly, so as to clear it of snarls, and then one end was adjusted to the shaft of the arrow. the other end was made fast to a rock, and after that the bow was bent, and the arrow projected into the air. a shout of joy was raised as the shaft was seen to fall upon the snowy surface on the opposite side; and the tiny cord was observed, like the thread of a spider's web, spanning the vast chasm. ossaroo seized the string in his hand, drew the arrow gently along until it rested close to the opposite edge; and then marking the place with a knot, he plucked the arrow till it fell into the chasm, and hand over hand commenced winding up the string. in a few moments he had recovered both cord and arrow; and now came the important part, the measurement of the string. the hearts of all three beat audibly as foot after foot was told off; but a murmur of satisfaction escaped from all, when it was found that the lowest estimate was nearest the truth. the chasm was about a hundred feet wide! chapter thirty two. the hut. karl felt confident they could bridge the crevasse. the only weapons they had were their knives, and a small wood hatchet which ossaroo chanced to have in his belt when they set out in chase of the musk-deer. true they had their guns, but of what service could these be in making a bridge? ossaroo's knife, as already described, was a long-bladed one,--half knife, half sword,--in fact, a jungle knife. the hatchet was not larger than an indian tomahawk; but with these weapons karl linden believed he could build a bridge of one hundred feet span! he communicated to his companions his plan in detail, and both believed in its feasibility. i need hardly say that under such a belief their spirits rose again; and, though they felt that success was far from certain, they were once more filled with hope; and having taken all the necessary steps, in regard to measuring the narrowest part of the crevasse, and noted the ground well, they returned to the valley with lighter hearts. the bridge was not to be the work of a day, nor a week, nor yet might a month suffice. could they only have obtained access to both sides of the chasm it would have been different, and they could easily have finished it in less time. but you are to remember that only one side was allowed them to work upon, and from this they would of necessity have to project the bridge to the other. if they could even have got a cable stretched across, this would have been bridge enough for them, and they would have needed no other. a cable, indeed! they would soon have found their way over upon a cable or even a stout rope; but the stoutest communication they had was a slender string, and only an arrow to hold it in its place! the genius of karl had not only projected the bridge, but a mode of placing it across the chasm, though many a contrivance would have to be adopted, before the work could be finished. much time would require to be spent, but what of time when compared with the results of failure or success? the first thing they did was to build them a hut. the nights were cold, and growing colder, for the himalaya winter was approaching, and sleeping in the open air, even by the largest fire they might make, was by no means comfortable. they built a rude hovel therefore, partly of logs, and partly of stone blocks, for it was difficult to procure logs of the proper length, and to cut them with such tools as they had would have been a tedious affair. the walls were made thick, rough, and strong; the interstices were matted and daubed with clay from the bed of the rivulet; the thatch was a sedge obtained from the lake; and the floor of earth was strewed with the leaves of the sweet-smelling rhododendron. the hole was left for the smoke to escape. several granite slabs served for seats--tables were not needed--and for beds each of the party had provided himself with a thick mattress of dried grass and leaves. with such accommodations were the hunters fain to content themselves. they felt too much anxiety about the future to care for present luxuries. they were but one single day in building the hut. had there been bamboos at hand, ossaroo would have constructed a house in half the time, and a much handsomer one. as it was, their hovel occupied them just a day, and on the next morning they set to work upon the bridge. they had agreed to divide the labour; karl with the axe, and ossaroo with his large knife, were to work upon the timbers; while caspar was to provide the food with his double-barrelled gun, helping the others whenever he could spare time. but caspar found another purpose for his gun besides procuring meat. ropes would be wanted, long tough ropes; and they had already planned it, that these should be made from the hides of the animals that might be killed. caspar, therefore, had an important part to play. two strong cables would be required, so karl told him, each about a hundred feet in length, besides many other ropes and cords. it would be necessary to hunt with some success before these could be obtained. more than one large hide, a dozen at least, would be required; but caspar was just the man to do his part of the work, and procure them. for the timbers, the trees out of which they were to be made had already been doomed. even that morning four trees had been marked by the axe and girdled. these were pine-trees, of the species known as thibet pines, which grow to a great height, with tall trunks clear of branches full fifty feet from the ground. of course it was not the largest trees that were chosen; as it would have cost too much labour to have reduced their trunks to the proper dimension, and particularly with such tools as the workmen had. on the contrary, the trees that were selected were those very near the thickness that would be required; and but little would have to be done, beyond clearing them of the bark and hewing the heavier ends, so as to make the scantling of equal weight and thickness all throughout their length. the splicing each two of them together would be an operation requiring the greatest amount of care and labour. all their designs being fully discussed, each set about his own share of the work. karl and ossaroo betook themselves to the pine-forest, while caspar prepared to go in search of the game. chapter thirty three. the barking-deer. "now," said caspar to himself, as he shouldered his double-barrelled gun, and started forth, "now to find that same herd of grunters! they're the biggest animals here i fancy, and their beef's not bad--the veal isn't, i know. besides, the hide of the old bull would make--let me see--how many yards of rope." here caspar entered into a mental calculation as to what length of rawhide rope, of two inches in diameter, might be twisted out of the yak bull's skin. karl had said two inches in diameter would be strong enough for his purpose, provided the hide of the animal was as tough as ordinary cow's hide; and this the skin of the yak really is. the young hunter, after much computation, having stripped the great bull of his skin, and spread it out upon the grass, and measured it--all in fancy of course--and cut it into strips of near three inches in width-- had arrived at the conclusion that he would get about twenty yards of sound rope out of the hide. then he submitted the skins of the cows to a similar process of measurement. there were four of them--there had been five, but one was already killed. to each of the four caspar allowed a yield of ten yards of rope--as each of them was only a little more than half the size of the bull--besides their skins would not be either so thick or so strong. there were four half-grown yaks--young bulls and heifers. caspar remembered the number well, for he had noted this while stalking them. to these he allowed still less yield than to the cows--perhaps thirty yards from the four. so that the hides of all--old bull, cows, and yearlings--would, according to caspar's calculation, give a cable of ninety yards in length. what a pity it would not make a hundred--for that was about the length that karl had said the cable should be. true, there were some young calves in the herd, but caspar could make no calculation on these. their skins might serve for other purposes, but they would not do for working up into the strong cable which karl required. "maybe there is more than the one herd in the valley," soliloquised caspar. "if so it will be all right. another bull would be just the thing;" and with this reflection the hunter brought his double-barrel down, looked to his flints and priming, returned the gun to his shoulder, and then walked briskly on. caspar had no fear that he should be able to kill all the yaks they had seen. he was sure of slaughtering the whole herd. one thing certain, these animals could no more get out of the valley than could the hunter himself. if they had ever been in the habit of going out of it to visit other pastures, they must have gone by the glacier; and they were not likely to traverse that path any more. the hunter now had them at an advantage--in fact, they were regularly penned up for him! after all, however, it was not such a pen. the valley was a full mile in width, and rather better in length. it was a little country of itself. it was far from being of an even or equal surface. some parts were hilly, and great rocks lay scattered over the surface here and there, in some places forming great mounds several hundred feet high, with cliffs and ravines between them, and trees growing in the clefts. then there were dark woods and thick tangled jungle tracts, where it was almost impossible to make one's way through. oh, there was plenty of covert for game, and the dullest animal might escape from the keenest hunter in such places. still the game could not go clear away; and although the yaks might get off on an occasion, they were sure to turn up again; and caspar trusted to his skill to be able to circumvent them at one time or another. never in his life before had caspar such motives for displaying his hunter-skill. his liberty--that of all of them--depended on all his success in procuring the necessary number of hides; and this was spur enough to excite him to the utmost. in starting forth from the hut, he had taken his way along the edge of the lake. several opportunities offered of a shot at brahmin geese and wild ducks but, in anticipation of finding the yaks, he had loaded both barrels of his gun with balls. this he had done in order to be prepared for the great bull, whose thick hide even buckshot would scarce have pierced. a shot at the waterfowl, therefore, could not be thought of. there would be every chance of missing them with the bullet; and neither powder nor lead were such plentiful articles as to be thrown away idly. he therefore reserved his fire, and walked on. nothing appeared to be about the edge of the lake; and after going a short distance he turned off from the water and headed the direction of the cliffs. he hoped to find the herd of yaks among the rocks--for karl, who knew something of the natural history of these animals, had told him that they frequented steep rocky places in preference to level ground. caspar's path now led him through a belt of timber, and then appeared a little opening on which there was a good deal of tall grass, and here and there a low copse or belt of shrubbery. of course he went cautiously along--as a hunter should do--at every fresh vista looking ahead for his game. while passing through the open ground his attention was attracted to a noise that appeared to be very near him. it exactly resembled the barking of a fox--a sound with which caspar was familiar, having often heard foxes bark in his native country. the bark, however, appeared to him to be louder and more distinct than that of a common fox. "perhaps," said he to himself, "the foxes of these mountains are bigger than our german reynards, and can therefore bark louder. let me see if it be a fox. i'm not going to waste a bullet on him either; but i should like just to have a look at a himalaya fox." with these reflections caspar stole softly through the grass in the direction whence issued the sounds. he had not advanced many paces when he came in sight of an animal differing altogether from a fox; but the very one that was making the noise. this was certain, for while he stood regarding it, he perceived it in the very act of uttering that noise, or _barking_, as we already called it. caspar felt very much inclined to laugh aloud, on perceiving that the barking animal was neither fox, nor dog, nor yet a wolf, nor any other creature that is known to bark, but on the contrary an animal of a far different nature--a deer. yes, it was really a deer that was giving utterance to those canine accents. it was a small, slightly-made creature, standing about two feet in height, with horns seven or eight inches long. it might have passed for an antelope; but caspar observed that on each horn there was an antler-- a very little one, only an inch or so in length--and that decided him that it must be an animal of the deer family. its colour was light red, its coat short and smooth, and, on a closer view, caspar saw that it had a tusk in each jaw, projecting outside the mouth, something like the tushes of the musk-deer. it was, in fact, a closely allied species. it was the "kakur," or "barking-deer;" so called from its barking habit, which had drawn the attention of the hunter upon it. of the barking-deer, like most other deer of india, there are several varieties very little known to naturalists; and the species called the "muntjak" (_cervus vaginalis_) is one of these. it also has the protruding tushes, and the solitary antler upon its horns. the "barking-deer" is common on the lower hills of the himalaya mountains, as high as seven or eight thousand feet; but they sometimes wander up the courses of rivers, or valley gorges, to a much higher elevation; and the one now observed by caspar had possibly strayed up the glacier valley in midsummer, guided by curiosity, or some instinct, that carried it into the beautiful valley that lay beyond. poor little fellow! it never found its way back again; for caspar bored its body through and through with a bullet from his right-hand barrel, and hung its bleeding carcass on the branch of a tree. he did not shoot it upon sight, however. he hesitated for some time whether it would be prudent to waste a shot upon so tiny a morsel, and had even permitted it to run away. as it went off, he was surprised at a singular noise which it made in running, not unlike the rattling of two pieces of loose bone knocked sharply together; in fact, a pair of castanets. this he could hear after it had got fifty yards from him, and, perhaps, farther; but there the creature suddenly stopped, turned its head round, and stood barking as before. caspar could not make out the cause of such a strange noise, nor, indeed, has any naturalist yet offered an explanation of this phenomenon. perhaps it is the cracking of the hoofs against each other, or, more likely, the two divisions of each hoof coming sharply together, when raised suddenly from the ground. it is well-known that a similar, only much louder noise, is made by the long hoofs of the great moose-deer; and the little kakur probably exhibits the same phenomenon on a smaller scale. caspar did not speculate long about the cause. the creature, as it stood right before the muzzle of his gun, now offered too tempting a shot, and the right-hand barrel put an end to its barking. "you're not what i came after," soliloquised caspar; "but the old stag's no great eating, he's too tough for me. you, my little fellow, look more tender, and, i dare say, will make capital venison. hang there, then, till i return for you!" so saying, caspar, having already strung the kakur's legs, lifted the carcass, and hung it to the branch of a tree. then, reloading his right-hand barrel with a fresh bullet, he continued on in search of the herd of yaks. chapter thirty four. the argus-pheasant. caspar proceeded with increased caution. his design was to _stalk_ the wild oxen; and he had left fritz at the hut, as the dog could be of no use in that sort of hunting. he intended to stalk the animals with more than ordinary caution, for two reasons. the first was, of course, in order to get a shot at them; but there was another reason why he should be careful, and that was, the fierce and dangerous nature of the game. he had not forgotten the way in which the old bull had behaved at their last interview; and karl had particularly cautioned him, before setting out, to act prudently, and to keep out of the way of the bull's horns. he was not to fire at the yaks, unless there was a tree near, or some other shelter, to which he could retreat if pursued by the bull. the necessity, therefore, of choosing such a point of attack, would make his stalk all the more difficult. he walked silently on, sometimes through spots of open ground; at others, traversing belts of woodland, or tracts of thickety jungle. wherever there was a reach, or open space, he stopped before going out of the cover, and looked well before him. he had no wish to come plump on the game he was in search of, lest he might get too close to the old bull. fifty or sixty yards was the distance he desired; and, with the large bullets his gun carried, he would have been near enough at that. several kinds of large birds flew up from his path, as he advanced; among others, the beautiful argus-pheasant, that almost rivals the peacock in the splendour of its plumage. these rare creatures would whirr upward, and alight among the branches of the trees overhead; and, strange to say, although nearly as large as peacocks, and of a most striking and singular form, caspar could never get his eyes upon them after they had once perched. it is the habit of these birds, when aware of the presence of the hunter, to remain perfectly silent and motionless, and it requires the keenest eyes to make them out among the leaves. in fact, the very beauty of their singular plumage, which makes the argus-pheasant so marked and attractive an object when side by side with other birds, is the very thing which, amid the foliage of trees, renders it so difficult to be seen. ocellated as the bird is all over its body, wings, and tail, the general-effect is such as rather to conceal it. a disk of the same size of an unbroken colour, even though the tints be less brilliant, is far more likely to arrest the eye-glance. besides, the collected foliage of the trees, when gazed at from beneath, presents a species of ocellation, to which that of the argus-pheasant is in some way assimilated. this may be a provision of nature, for the protection of this beautiful and otherwise helpless bird; for it is no great creature at a flight, with all its fine plumes; and, but for its power of thus concealing itself, would easily fall a prey to the sportsman. naturalists often, and, perhaps, oftener hunters, have noted this adaptation of the colour of wild animals to their haunts and habits. the jaguars, the leopards, and panthers, whose bright, yellow skins, beautifully spotted as they are, would seem to render them most conspicuous objects, are, in reality, the most difficult to be perceived amid the haunts which they inhabit. an animal of equal size, and of the dullest colouring, provided it were uniform, would be more easily seen than they. their very beauty renders them invisible; since their numerous spots, interrupting the uniformity of colour, breaks up the large disk of their bodies into a hundred small ones, and even destroys, to the superficial glance, the form which would otherwise betray their presence. for some such reason then the argus-pheasant is most difficult to be seen, when once settled on his perch among the leaves and twigs of the trees. but though himself not observed, he sees all that passes below. he is well named. although the eyes all over his body be blind, he carries a pair in his head, that rival those of the famed watchman from whom he borrows his surname. he keeps the sportsman well in sight; and should the latter succeed in espying him, the argus knows well when he is discovered, and the moment a cock clicks or a barrel is poised upward, he is off with a loud whirr that causes the woods to ring. but, as already stated, he is no great flyer. the smallness of the primary quills of his wing--as well as the unwieldy size of the secondaries, forms an impediment to his progress through the air, and his flight is short and heavy. he is a good runner, however, like all birds of his kind; and he passes rapidly over the ground, using his wings in running like the wild turkey, to which bird he is kindred. when the argus-pheasant is at rest or unexcited, his plumage is neither so bright nor beautiful. it is when showing himself off in the presence of his females that he appears to best advantage. then he expands his spotted wings, and trails them on the ground in the same manner as the peacock. his tail, too, becomes spread and raised erect, whereas at other times it is carried in a line with the body with the two long feathers folded over each other. the argus-pheasant (which closet-naturalists now say is not a pheasant, but an _argus_) is peculiar to the southern parts of asia, though the limits of its range are not well understood. it is found in all parts of india, and also, as is supposed, in china, even in the northern provinces of that country. but the argus is not the only beautiful pheasant of these regions. india, or rather southern asia, is the true home of the pheasant tribe. already nearly a dozen species of these birds, some of them far more beautiful than the birds of paradise, are known to naturalists; and when the ornithology of the indian islands has been thoroughly investigated, a still greater number will be found to exist there. the impeyan pheasant, larger than the common fowl, rivals the crested peacock in the brilliancy of its hues. no words can give any adequate idea of the splendour of this bird. nearly the whole surface of its plumage is resplendent--dazzling with changing hues of green and steel-blue, of violet and gold. it looks as if its body was clothed in a scale armour of bright shining metal, while the plumage is soft and velvety to the touch. this magnificent bird is a native of the himalaya mountains; where is also found another splendid species, the peacock-pheasant of thibet, the latter closely allied to a still more gorgeous bird, the crested polyplectron of the moluccas. one cannot look upon these lovely winged creatures without a feeling of gratitude to him who sent them to adorn the earth, and give pleasure to all who may behold them. chapter thirty five. stalking the yaks. caspar was not out pheasant-shooting, and therefore these beautiful birds were permitted to fly off unscathed. caspar's game was the grunting bull. where could the herd be? he had already traversed half the extent of the valley without finding the yaks; but there was nothing singular in this. there was plenty of covert among the rocks and woods; and wild animals, however large, have an instinct or a faculty of concealing themselves that often surprises the hunter. even the gigantic elephant will get out of sight amidst thin jungle, where you might suppose his huge body could hardly be hidden; and the great black buffalo often springs unexpectedly out of a bushy covert not much bigger than his own body. just as partridges can squat unseen in the shortest stubble, or squirrels lie hid along the slenderest branch, so have the larger wild animals the faculty of concealing themselves in a covert proportionately scanty. the young hunter was aware of this fact; and therefore was not so much surprised that he did not at once come in sight of the yaks. the former attack upon them, resulting in the loss of two of their number, had rendered them wary; and the noises made in building the hut had, no doubt, driven them to the most secluded corner of the valley. thither caspar was bending his steps. he was calculating that they would be found in some cover, and was beginning to regret that he had not brought fritz, instead of trying to stalk them, when all at once the herd came under his eyes. they were quietly browsing out in a stretch of open ground--the young calves, as on the former occasion, playing with each other, tearing about over the ground, biting one another, and uttering their tiny grunts, like so many young porkers. the cows and yearlings were feeding unconcernedly-- occasionally raising their heads and looking around, but not with any signs of uneasiness or fear. the bull was not in sight! "where can he be?" inquired caspar of himself. "perhaps these may be a different herd; `one, two, three;'" and caspar went on to tell over the individuals of the flock. "yes," he continued, muttering to himself, "they are the same, i fancy: three cows--four yearlings--the calves--exactly the number--all except the bull.--where can the old rascal have concealed himself?" and with his eyes caspar swept the whole of the open space, and looked narrowly along the selvedge of the timber which grew around it. no bull, however, was to be seen. "now where can the old grunter have gone to?" again inquired caspar of himself. "is he off by himself, or along with some other herd? surely there is but the one family in this valley. yaks are gregarious animals: karl says so. if there were more of them, they would be all together. the bull must be ranging abroad by himself, on some business of his own. after all, i suspect he's not far off. i dare say he's in yonder thicket. i'd wager a trifle the knowing old fellow has a trick in his head. he's keeping sentry over the flock, while he himself remains unseen. in that way he has the advantage of any enemy who may assail them. a wolf, or bear, or any preying beast that should want to attack the calves where they now are, would be certain to approach them by that very thicket. indeed, i should have done so myself, if i didn't know that there _was_ a bull. i should have crouched round the timber and got under cover of the bushes, which would have brought me nicely within range. but now i shall do no such thing; for i suspect strongly the old boy's in the bushes. he would be on me with a rush if i went that way, and in the thicket there's not a tree big enough to shelter a chased cat. it's all brush and thorn bushes. it won't do; i shan't stalk them from that direction; but how else can i approach them? there's no other cover. ha! yonder rock will serve my purpose!" caspar was not half the time in going through this soliloquy that you have been in reading it. it was a mental process entirely, and, of course, carried on with the usual rapidity of thought. the interjection which ended it, and the allusion to a rock, were caused by his perceiving that a certain rock might afford him the necessary cover for approaching the game. this rock he had observed long before--in fact, the moment he had seen the herd. he could not have failed to observe it, for it lay right in the middle of the open ground, neither tree nor bush being near to hide it. it was of enormous size, too--nearly as big as a hovel, square-sided and apparently flat-topped. of course, he had noticed it at the first glance, but had not thought of making it a stalking-horse-- the thicket seeming to offer him a better advantage. now, however, when he dared not enter the thicket--lest he might there encounter the bull--he turned his attention to the rock. by keeping the boulder between him and the yaks, he could approach behind it, and that would bring him within distance of the one or two of the herd that were nearest. indeed, the whole flock appeared to be inclining towards the rock; and he calculated, that by the time he could get there himself they would all be near enough, and he might make choice of the biggest. up to this time he had remained under cover of the timber, at the point where he first came in sight of the yaks. still keeping in the bushes, he made a circuit, until the rock was put between him and the herd. big as the boulder was, it hardly covered the whole flock; and much caution would be required to get up to it without alarming them. he saw that if he could once pass over the first one hundred yards, the rock, then subtending a larger angle of vision, would shield him from their sight, and he might walk fearlessly forward. but the first hundred yards would be awkward stalking. crawling flat upon his breast appeared to be his only chance. but caspar had often stalked chamois on his native hills; and many a crawl had he made, over rocks and gravel, and ice and snow. he thought nothing, therefore, of progression in this way, and a hundred yards would be a mere bagatelle. without farther hesitation, therefore, he dropped to his marrow-bones, and then flat upon his breast, and in this attitude commenced wriggling and shuffling along like a gigantic salamander. fortunately the grass grew a foot or more in height, and that concealed him from the view of the yaks. on he went, pushing his gun before him, and every now and then raising his eyes cautiously above the sward to note the position of the herd. when it changed, he also deflected slightly from his course-- so as always to keep the centre of the rock aligned upon the bodies of the animals. after about ten minutes of this horizontal travelling, the hunter found himself within thirty paces of the great boulder. its broad sides now appeared sufficient to cover the whole flock; and as crawling along the ground was by no means pleasant, caspar was fain to give it up, and take once more to his feet. he rose erect, therefore; and running nimbly forward, in another moment he stood behind the rock. chapter thirty six. caspar retreats to the rock. caspar now perceived that the rock was not all in one piece. in other words, there were two rocks--both of them immense boulders, but of very unequal size. the largest, as already observed, was of the size of a small house, or it might be compared to a load of hay; while the smaller was not much bigger than the wagon. they lay almost contiguous to each other, with a narrow space, about a foot in width, forming a sort of alley between them. this space resembled a cleft, as if the two blocks had once been united, and some terrible force had cloven them asunder. caspar only glanced at these peculiarities as he came up--his eye mechanically searching for the best point of the rock to shelter him from the game, while it afforded him an opportunity of aiming at them. it was altogether a very awkward cover--the rock was square-sided as a wall, with no jutting point that he could crawl behind and rest his gun over. in fact, at the corners it rather hung over, resting on a base narrower than its diameter. there was no bush near to it--not even long grass to accommodate him. the ground was quite bare, and had the appearance of being much trampled, as if it was a favourite resort--in fact, a "rubbing-stone" for the yaks. it was their tracks caspar saw around it--some of them quite fresh--and conspicuous among the rest were some that by their size must have been made by the hoofs of the bull. the sight of these large fresh tracks conducted caspar, and very suddenly too, into a train of reflections that were anything but agreeable. "the bull's tracks!" muttered he to himself. "quite fresh, by thunder! why he must have been here but a minute ago! what if--" here caspar's heart thumped so violently against his ribs, that he could scarce finish the interrogation. "_what if he be on the other side of the rock_?" the hunter was in a dilemma. up to that moment he had never thought of the probability of the bull being behind the rock. he had taken it into his fancy, that the thicket must be the place of his concealment, but without any very good reason did he fancy this. it was assigning more cunning to the animal than was natural; and now on second thoughts caspar perceived that it was far more probable the bull should be sunning himself on the other side of the great boulder! there he would be near to the herd,--and likely enough there he _was_. "by thunder!" mentally exclaimed caspar, "if he be there, the sooner i get back to the timber the better for my health. i never thought of it. he could run me down in half a minute. there's no place to escape to. ha!--what!--good!" these ejaculations escaped from the hunter as he cast his eyes upward. it was a peculiarity in the form of the rocks that had caused him to utter them. he noticed that the lesser one had a sloping ridge that could be easily ascended; and from its highest point the top of the larger might also be reached by a little active climbing. "good!" repeated he to himself; "i'll be safe enough there, and i can easily get up if i'm chased. the top of the rock's equal to any tree. it'll do if i am put to the pinch; so here goes for a shot, bull or no bull!" saying this, he once more looked to his gun; and kneeling down close in to the great rock, he commenced shuffling round one of its impending corners, in order to get within view of the herd. he did not move one inch forward without looking well before him into the plain where the yaks were feeding, but quite as anxiously did he bend his eyes around the edge of the boulder, where he surmised the bull might be. he even listened at intervals, expecting to hear the latter breathing or giving a grunt, or some other sign, by which his presence might be made _known_. if behind the rock at all he must be very near, thought caspar--near enough for his breathing to be heard; and once caspar fancied that he actually heard a grunt, which did not proceed from any of the herd. the hunter, however, had less fear now, as he believed he could retreat to the rock before even the swiftest animal could overtake him. he therefore moved on with sufficient confidence. you are not to suppose that all these thoughts and movements occupied much time. there were not five minutes consumed from the time caspar arrived at the rocks, until he had taken all his measures; and another minute or two were occupied in creeping round within view of the herd-- where at length caspar arrived. as yet no bull was seen. he might still be there, but if so, he was farther round the corner of the rock; and the sight of the others now fair before the muzzle of caspar's gun drove all thoughts of the bull out of his mind. he resolved to fire at the nearest. quick as thought the gun was to his shoulder, his finger touched the trigger, and the loud report echoed from the distant cliffs. the ball told, and a cow was bowled over, and lay sprawling on the plain. bang went the second barrel, and a young bull with a broken leg went hobbling off toward the thicket. the rest of the herd tore away at top speed, and were soon lost sight of in the bushes. a little calf alone remained by the cow that had fallen. it ran frisking around, uttering its singular cries, and seemingly astonished and unable to comprehend the catastrophe that had befallen its mother! under other circumstances caspar would have pitied that calf--for though a hunter, he was not hard-hearted. but just then he had something else to do than give way to pity. he had scarce aimed his second shot--even while his finger was still resting on the trigger--when a sound reached his ears that made his heart leap. it spoiled his aim in fact, or the yearling would have had it between his ribs instead of in his hind-leg. that sound could be nothing else than the grunt of the old bull himself; and so close to caspar did it appear that the hunter suddenly dropped the muzzle of his gun, and looked around thinking the animal was right by him! he did not see the bull on looking around; but he knew the latter could not be many feet off, just behind the angle of the boulder. under this impression caspar sprang to his feet, and ran with lightning speed to ascend the rock. chapter thirty seven. face to face with a fierce bull. caspar leaped on to the lower one, and scrambled up its sloping ridge. his eyes were turned more behind than before him, for he expected every moment to see the bull at his skirts. to his astonishment no bull had yet appeared, although as he was running around the rock twice or thrice had he heard his terrific grunting. he now faced toward the summit, determined to climb up to the safest place. from the top he would be able to see all around, and could there watch the movements of the bull, as he fancied, in perfect security. he laid his hand on the edge of the rock and drew himself over it. it was as much as he could do. the parapet was chin high, and it required all his strength to raise himself up. his attention was so occupied in the endeavour, that he was fairly upon the top ere he thought of looking before him; and when he did look, he saw, to his amazement and terror, that he was not alone. _the bull was there too_! yes! the bull was there, and had been there all the while. the top of the boulder was a flat table, several yards in length and breadth, and upon this the old bull had been quietly reclining, basking himself in the sun, and watching his wives and children as they browsed on the plain below. as he had been lying down, and close to that edge of the table which was most distant from caspar, the latter could not have perceived him while approaching the rock. he did not even think of turning his eyes in that direction, as he would as soon have thought of looking for the old bull in the top of one of the trees. caspar had quite forgotten what karl had told him,--that the summits of rocks and isolated boulders are the favourite haunts of the yaks,--else he might have kept out of the scrape he had now fairly got into. on perceiving his dilemma, the young hunter was quite paralysed; and for some moments stood aghast, not knowing how to act. fortunately for him the bull had been standing at the farthest extremity of the table, looking out over the plain. the trouble he was in about his family occupied all his attention, and he stood loudly grunting to them as if calling them back. he was unable to comprehend what had caused such a rout among them; although he had already experienced the dire effect of those loud detonations. he was "craning" forward over the edge, as if half determined to leap from the summit, instead of turning to the easier descent by which he had got up. as caspar scrambled up to the ledge, the rattle of his accoutrements on the rock reached the ears of the bull; and just as the former had got to his feet the latter wheeled round, and the two were now face to face! there was a moment's pause. caspar stood in terror; his antagonist, perhaps, also surprised at the unexpected rencontre. it was a very short pause, indeed. almost in the next instant the fierce yak, uttering his terrific cry, charged forward. there was no chance to evade the shock by springing to one side or the other. the space was too circumscribed for such a manoeuvre, and the most adroit matador could not have executed it where caspar stood. he was too near the edge of the rock to make the experiment. his only hope lay in bounding back as he had come; which he did almost mechanically upon the instant. the impetus of the leap, and the slanting surface of the lower boulder, carried him onward to the bottom; and, unable any longer to retain his feet, he fell forward upon his face. he heard the rattle of the bull's hoofs upon the rock behind him; and before he could recover his feet again he felt the brute trampling over him. fortunately he was not hurt, and fortunately the same impetus that had flung him upon his face also carried his antagonist far beyond him; and before the latter could turn from his headlong charge, the young hunter again stood erect. but whither was he to run? the trees were too far off;--oh! he could never reach them. the fierce beast would be on him ere he could half cross the open ground, and would drive those terrible horns into his back. whither?--whither? confused and irresolute, he turned and rushed back up the rock. this time he scaled the slope more nimbly; more lightly did he leap upon the ledge, but without any feeling of hope. it was but the quick rush of despair,--the mechanical effort of terror. the manoeuvre did not yield him a minute's respite. his fierce antagonist saw it all, and went charging after. lightly the huge brute bounded up the slope, and then leaped upon the table, as if he had been a chamois or a goat. no pause made he, but rushed straight on with foaming tongue and flaming eye-balls. now, indeed, did caspar believe his last moment had come. he had rushed across the table of granite, and stood upon its extremest end. there was no chance to get back to the place where he had ascended. his vengeful antagonist was in the track, and he could not pass him. he must either spring down from where he stood, or be tossed from the spot upon the horns of the fierce bull. dizzy was the height,--over twenty feet,--but there was no alternative but take the leap. he launched himself into the air. he came down feet foremost, but the terrible shock stunned him, and he fell upon his side. the sky was darkened above him. it was the huge body of the bull that had bounded after, and the next moment he heard the heavy sound of the animal's hoofs as they came in contact with the plain. the hunter struggled to regain his feet. he rose and fell again. one of his limbs refused to perform its functions. he felt there was something wrong; he believed that his leg was broken! even this fearful thought did not cause the brave youth to yield. he saw that the bull had recovered himself; and was once more approaching him. he scrambled towards the rock, dragging the useless limb behind him. you will suppose that there was no longer a hope for him, and that the wild ox rushing upon him must certainly gore him to death. and so he would have done, had not caspar been in the hands of providence, who gave him a stout heart, and enabled him to make still another effort for his safety. as he turned toward the boulder, an object came before his eyes that filled him with fresh hopes. that object was the cleft between the rocks. it was, as already described, about a foot in width, and separated the two boulders at all points,--except along the top, where they rested against each other. caspar's quick mind at once perceived the advantage. if he could only reach this crevice, and crawl into it in time, he might still be saved. it was big enough for his body; it would be too narrow to admit that of his huge antagonist. on hands and knees he glided along with desperate speed. he reached the entrance of the crevice. he clutched the angle of rock, and drew himself far inward. he had not a moment to spare. he heard the horns of the bull crash against the cheeks of the chasm; but the charge was followed by a grunt of disappointment uttered by the furious animal. a cry of joy involuntarily escaped from the lips of the hunter,--who felt that he was saved! chapter thirty eight. caspar in the cleft. caspar breathed freely. he had need; for the peril he had passed, and the rushing backward and forward, and springing over the rocks, had quite taken away his breath. he could not have lasted another minute. the bull, thus balked of his revenge, seemed to become more furious than ever. he rushed to and fro, uttering savage grunts, and at intervals dashing his horns against the rocks, as if he hoped to break them to pieces, and open a passage to his intended victim. once he charged with such fury that his head entered the cleft till his steaming snout almost touched caspar where he lay. fortunately, the thick hairy shoulders of the bull hindered him from advancing farther; and in drawing back his head, he found that he had wedged himself; and it was with some difficulty that he succeeded in detaching his horns from the rock! caspar took advantage of his struggles; and seizing a stone that lay near at hand, he mauled the bull so severely about the snout, that the brute was fain to get his head clear again; and although he still stood madly pawing by the outside of the cleft, he took care not to repeat his rude assault. caspar now seeing that he was safe from any immediate danger, began to feel uneasiness about his broken limb. he knew not how long he might be detained there--for it was evident that the yak was implacable, and would not leave him while he could keep his eyes upon him. it is the nature of these animals to hold their resentment so long as the object of their vengeance is in sight. only when that is hidden from them, do they seem to _forget_--for it is probable they never _forgive_. the bull showed no signs of leaving the ground. on the contrary, he paced backward and forward, grunting as fiercely as ever, and at intervals making a rush towards the entrance as if he still had hopes of reaching his victim. caspar now regarded these demonstrations with indifference, he was far more concerned about his limb; and as soon as he could turn himself into a proper position, he began to examine it. he felt the bone carefully from the knee downward. he knew the thigh was safe enough. it was his ankle-joint, he feared, was broken. the ankle was already swollen and black--badly swollen, but caspar could detect no evidence of a fracture of the bones. "after all," soliloquised he, "it may be only sprained. if so, it will be all right yet." he continued to examine it, until he at length arrived at the conviction that it was "only a sprain." this brought him into good spirits again, though the leg was very painful; but caspar was a boy who could bear pain very stoically. he now began to ponder upon his situation. how was he to be rescued from his fierce besieger? would karl and ossaroo hear him if he were to shout? that was doubtful enough. he could not be much less than a mile from them; and there were woods and rough ground between him and them. they might be chopping, too, and would not hear his calls. still, they would not always be chopping, and he could keep up a constant shouting till they did hear him. he had already noticed that in the valley, shut in on all sides as it was by cliffs, sounds were transmitted to a great distance--in fact, the cliffs seem to act as conductors somewhat after the manner of a whispering-gallery. no doubt, then, karl and ossaroo would hear him--especially if he gave one of his shrill whistles; for caspar knew how to whistle very loudly, and he had often made the bavarian hills ring again. he was about to make the himalayas ring, and had already placed his fingers to his lips, when the thought occurred to him that it would be wrong to do so. "no," said he, after reflecting a moment, "i shall not call them. my whistle would bring karl, i know. he would come running at the signal. i might not be able to stop him till he had got quite up to the rocks here, and then the bull! no--karl's life might be sacrificed instead of mine. i shall not whistle." with these reflections, he removed his fingers from his lips, and remained silent. "if i only had my gun," thought he, after a pause,--"if i only had my gun, i'd soon settle matters with you, you ugly brute! you may thank your stars i have dropped it." the gun had escaped from caspar's hands as he fell upon his face on first rushing down from the rock. it was no doubt lying near the spot where he had fallen, but he was not sure where it had been flung to. "if it was not for this ankle," he continued, "i'd chance a rush for it yet. oh! if i could only get the gun here; how i'd fix the old grunter off, before he could whisk that tail of his twice--that i would." "stay!" continued the hunter, after some minutes' pause, "my foot seems to get well. it's badly swollen, but the pain's not much. it's only a sprain! hurrah!--it's only a sprain! by thunder! i'll try to get the gun." with this resolve, caspar raised himself to a standing attitude, holding by the rocks on both sides. the lane between them just gave him room enough to move his body along; and the cleft being of a uniform width from side to side, he could get out on either side he might choose. but, strange to relate, the old bull, whenever he saw the hunter move towards the opposite side, rushed round to the same, and stood prepared to receive him upon his horns! this piece of cunning, on the part of his antagonist, was quite unexpected by caspar. he had hoped he would be able to make a sally from one side of the rock while his adversary guarded the other; but he now saw that the animal was as cunning as himself. it was but a few yards round from one side to the other, and it would be easy for the bull to overtake him, if he only ventured six feet from the entrance. he made one attempt as a sort of feint or trial; but was driven back again into the crevice almost at the point of his antagonist's horns. the result was, that the yak, now suspecting some design, watched his victim more closely, never for a moment taking his eyes off him. but withal caspar had gained one advantage from the little sally he had made. he had seen the gun where it lay, and had calculated the distance it was off. could he only obtain thirty seconds of time, he felt certain he might secure the weapon; and his thoughts were now bent on some plan to gain this time. all at once a plan was suggested to him, and he resolved to make trial of it. the yak habitually stood with his head close up to the crevice--the froth dropping from his mouth, his eyes rolling fiercely, and his head lowered almost to the earth. caspar could have thrust his head with a spear--if he had been armed with one--or he could even have belaboured it with a cudgel. "is there no way," thought he, "that i can blind the brute? ha! by thunder, i have it!" exclaimed he, hitting upon an idea that seemed to promise the desired result. as quick as thought he lifted over his head his powder-horn and belt; and, then stripping off his jacket, took the latter in both hands, held it spread out as wide as the space would permit. he now approached the edge of the cleft in hopes of being able to fling the jacket over the horns of the bull, and, by thus blinding him, get time to make a rush for his gun. the idea was a good one; but, alas! it failed in the execution. caspar's arms were confined between the boulders, and he was unable to fling the jacket adroitly. it readied the frontlet of the bull; but the latter, with a disdainful toss of his head, flung it to one side, and stood fronting his adversary, as watchful of his movements as ever. caspar's heart sunk at the failure of his scheme, and he retreated despairingly back into the cleft. "i shall have to call karl and ossaroo in the end," thought he. "no! not yet!--not yet! another plan! i'll manage it yet, by thunder!" what was caspar's new plan? we shall soon see. he was not long in putting it to the test. a youth quick in action was caspar. he seized his huge powder-horn, and took out the stopper. once more he crept forward towards the bull, and as near the snout of the latter as it was safe for him to go. holding the horn by its thick end, and reaching far out, he poured upon the levellest and driest spot a large quantity of powder; and, then drawing the horn gradually nearer, he laid a train for several feet inward. little did the grunting yak know the surprise that awaited him. caspar now took out his flint, steel, and touch-paper, and in a moment more struck a fire, and touched off the train. as he had calculated, the exploding powder flashed outward and upward, taking the bull by surprise with the sudden shock, at the same time that it enveloped him in its thick sulphury smoke. the animal was heard routing and plunging about, not knowing which way to run. this was the moment for caspar; who, having already prepared himself for the rush, sprang suddenly forth, and ran towards his gun. with eagerness he grasped the weapon; and, forgetting all about his sprained ankle, ran back with the speed of a deer. even then, he was not a moment too soon in reaching his retreat; for the bull, having recovered from his surprise, saw and pursued him, and once more sent his horns crashing against the rocks. "now," said caspar, addressing his fierce besieger, and speaking with a confidence he had not hitherto felt, "that time you were more scared than hurt; but the next time i burn powder, the case will be rather different, i fancy. stand where you are, old boy. another minute allow me! and i'll raise this siege, without giving you either terms or quarter." as caspar continued to talk in this way, he busied himself in loading his gun. he loaded both barrels--though one would have been sufficient; for the first shot did the business clear as a whistle. it tumbled the old bull off his legs, and put an end to his grunting at once and for ever! caspar now came forth from the cleft; and, placing his fingers to his lips, caused the valley to ring with his loud whistle. a similar whistle came pealing back through the woods; and, in fifteen minutes' time, karl and ossaroo were seen running forward to the spot; and soon after had heard the particulars of caspar's adventure, and were congratulating him on his escape. the yaks were skinned and quartered, and then carried home to the hut. the young bull, that had been wounded, also turned up close at hand; and was finished by the spear of ossaroo. of course, he too was skinned and quartered, and carried home; but all this labour was performed by karl and ossaroo; for caspar's ankle had got so much worse, that he had himself to be carried to the hut on the backs of ossaroo and his brother. chapter thirty nine. the serow. karl and ossaroo had their adventure, though it was not of so dangerous a character as that of caspar. they were spectators rather than actors in it. fritz was the real actor, and fritz had come off only second best, as a huge gash in his side testified. they had chosen a pine, and were busy hacking away at it, when a confused noise--a mixture of yelping and barking--fell upon their ears, and caused them to hold their hands, and listen. it was a thin piece of woods, where they were--composed principally of straggling pine-trees without underwood, and they could see to a distance of several hundred yards around them. as they stood looking out, a large animal, evidently in flight, came dashing past the spot. he did not appear to be a fast runner, and they had a good view of him. he was nearly as large as a jackass, and had something of the appearance of one, but a pair of stout horns, twelve inches in length, and very sharp-pointed, showed that he was a cloven-hoofed animal. his hair was coarse and rough; dark brown on the upper part of his body, reddish on the sides, and whitish underneath. along the back of the neck he was maned like a jackass, and the neck itself was thick with rather a large head to it. the horns curved backwards so as to lie close along the neck; the legs of the animal were thick and stout, and he appeared to be altogether a stupid creature, and ran with a clumsy ungainly gait. neither karl nor ossaroo had ever seen such an animal before, but they guessed it to be the "thar," or "serow,"--one of the tribe of antelopes, known as the _goat-like_ antelopes,--of which there are several species in the east indies. they guessed aright. it was the serow, (_capricornis bubalina_). but the creature was not alone. although we have said he was not running very swiftly, he was going as fast as his thick legs would carry him. and he had good reason too, for, close upon his heels, came a pack of what karl supposed to be red wolves, but which ossaroo recognised as the wild dogs of india. there were about a dozen of these, each nearly as large as a wolf, with long necks and bodies, somewhat long muzzles, and high, erect, round-tipped ears. their general colour was red, turning to reddish white underneath. the tops of their long bushy tails were black, and there was a brown patch between the orbits of their eyes, which added to the fierce wolf-like expression that characterised them. it was from them that the howling and yelping had proceeded. they were in full cry after the serow. fritz, on hearing the music, would have bounded forth and joined them; but to keep him out of harm's way, karl had tied him to a tree before commencing work, and fritz, _nolens volens_, was compelled to keep his place. the chase swept by, and both dogs and antelope were soon lost to the sight, though their howling could still be heard through the trees. after a time it grew louder, and the wood-cutters, perceiving that the chase was again coming in their direction, stood watching and listening. a second time the serow appeared crossing the open tract, and the dogs, as before, close at his heels. once more all disappeared, and then, after a short interval, "hark back" was the cry; and, to their surprise, karl and the shikarree again saw the wild dogs pressing the serow through the woods. now it appeared to both that the dogs might easily have overtaken the antelope at any moment; for they were close up to his heels, and a single spring, which any of them might have given, would have launched them upon its flanks. indeed, it appeared as if they were running it only for their amusement, and at any moment could have overtaken it! this observation of our wood-cutters was partially true. the wild dogs could at any moment have overtaken the antelope, for they had done so already; having turned it more than once. but for all that, they were not running it out of mere sport. they were thus chasing the _game_ back and forward in order _to guide it to their breeding-place, and save themselves the trouble of carrying its carcass thither_! this was in reality what the wild dogs were about, and this accounted for their odd behaviour. ossaroo, who knew the wild dogs well, assured the sahib karl, that such is their practice, that--whenever they have young ones-- they hunt the larger animals from point to point until they get them close to their common burrowing place; that then they all spring upon the victim, and worry it to death, leaving the puppies to approach the carcass and mangle it at their pleasure! the plant-hunter had already heard of this singular practice having been observed in the "wild honden," or hunting-dogs of the cape, and was therefore less surprised at ossaroo's account. of course it was not then that karl and ossaroo conversed upon these topics. they were too busy in watching the chase, which once more passed within twenty yards of the spot where they were standing. the serow seemed now to be quite done up, and it appeared as if his pursuers might at any moment have pulled him down. but this they evidently did not wish to do. they wanted to drive him a little farther. the creature, however, was not going to accommodate them. he had run enough. a very large tree stood in his way. its trunk was many feet in diameter, and great broad buttresses stood out from its flanks, enclosing angular spaces between them, any of which would have made a stall for a horse. it was just the sort of place which the serow was looking out for; and making a sharp rush for the tree, he entered one of these divisions, and wheeling around, buttocks to the stump, stood firmly to bay. this sudden manoeuvre evidently disconcerted his fierce pursuers. there were many of them that knew the serow well, and trembled at the sight of his horns when brought too close to them. they knew his tactics too, and were well aware that once in a position, like that he had now taken up, he became a dangerous customer to deal with. knowing this, most of the old dogs held back. but there were several young ones in the pack, rash, hot-blooded fellows, who, vain of their prowess, were ashamed to hang their tails at this crisis; and these, without more ado, rushed in upon the antelope. then ensued a scene that caused ossaroo to clap his hands and shake his sides with laughter. a desperate struggle was carried on. right and left pitched the wild dogs, some yelping, some skulking back, crippled and limping; while one or two soon lay stretched out dead; transfixed as they had been by the pointed horns of the antelope. ossaroo enjoyed this scene, for the shikarree had a great dislike to these wild dogs, as they had often interfered with his stalking. how the battle would have ended, or whether the bold buck would have beaten off his numerous enemies will never be known; for while the contest was raging, the great boar-hound, fritz, contrived somehow or other to slip his fastening, and the next moment he was seen rushing like a streak of fire towards the _melee_. the wild dogs were as much terrified by his sudden appearance in their midst as the quarry itself could have been, and, without staying to examine the interloper, one and all of them took to their heels, and soon disappeared behind the trees. fritz had never seen a serow before, but taking it for granted it was fair game, he sprang at the creature on sight. better for fritz had it been a saxon boar, for it cost him several sharp rips, and a long struggle before he became master of the field; and it is doubtful whether he would not have suffered still worse, had not a pea of lead from the rifle of his master aided in bringing the strife to an end. the game, but for its hide, was hardly worth faking home; as the flesh of the serow is very coarse, and poor eating. for all that, the animal is eagerly hunted by the natives of the himalayas; partly because it is not difficult to come up with, and partly that these poor people are not very epicurean in their appetites. chapter forty. ossaroo chased by wild dogs. if ossaroo hated any living creature more than another, the wild dogs, as already hinted at, were his particular aversion. they had often spoiled a stalk upon him, when he was in the act of bringing down an axis or an antelope with his arrows, and they themselves were not worth bending a bow upon. their flesh was not fit to be eaten, and their skins were quite unsaleable. in fact, ossaroo regarded them as no better than filthy vermin, to be destroyed only for the sake of exterminating them. hence it was that the shikarree was so delighted, when he saw the old serow dealing death among his canine antagonists. but it was written in the book of fate, that ossaroo should not sleep that night until he had done penance for this exultation. another adventure was in store for him, which we shall now relate. from the place where the yaks had been killed to the hut was a very long distance--full three quarters of a mile; and, of course, transporting the skins and meat thither required karl and ossaroo to make many journeys backward and forward. caspar was laid up with his sprained ankle, and could give them no assistance. as we have said, they had to carry _him_ home as well as the meat. the work occupied them all the rest of the day, and, when twilight arrived, there was still one joint to be got home. for this joint ossaroo started alone, leaving the others at the hut to cook the supper. on cutting up the meat, they had taken the precaution to hang the pieces upon high branches, out of the reach of beasts of prey. experience had taught them, that there were many of these in the place, ravenous enough to devour a whole carcass in a few minutes. what kind of wild beast had carried off the flesh of the cow-yak, they knew not. karl and caspar believed they were wolves, for the wolf, in some form or other, is found in every quarter of the globe; and in india there are two or three distinct species--as the "landgah," or nepaul wolf, (_canis pallipes_), and the "beriah," another indian wolf, of a yellow colour, slenderly made, and about the size of a greyhound, with long, erect ears, like the jackal. the jackal, too, which is only a smaller wolf, and the common or brindled hyena, inhabit these countries; so that it was difficult to say which of all these ravenous creatures had committed the depredation. ossaroo's opinion was, that it was done by _dogs_, not wolves; and, perhaps, by the very pack that had that day been seen in pursuit of the antelope. it made no great difference, as far as that went; for these same wild dogs are in reality more wolf than dog, and in habits quite as ferocious and destructive as the wolves themselves. but to return to ossaroo and his adventure. when the shikarree arrived on the ground where the meat had been left, he was not much surprised to see a number of wild dogs skulking about. half a dozen of them were standing under the joint, where it hung from the branch; some of them in the act of springing upward, and all of them regarding the tempting morsel with fierce, hungry looks. the offal and "giblets" they had already disposed of, so that not the smallest fragment could be seen lying about. what ossaroo regretted most was, that he had brought with him neither bow nor arrow nor spear, nor, in short, any thing in the shape of a weapon. even his long knife he had left behind, in order that he might carry the large joint with greater ease. on seeing the hated dogs, however, he could not resist the temptation of having a shy at them; and, gathering up a handful of bulky stones, he rushed into their midst, and pelted at them right and left. the dogs, startled by this sudden onslaught, took to their heels, but ossaroo could not help observing that they did not appear to be so badly frightened; and, some of them that left the ground sulky and growling, stopped at no great distance from the spot, and appeared half inclined to come back again! it was the first time in his life that ossaroo felt something like fear of the wild dogs. he had been in the habit of chasing them on sight, and they had always scampered off at the sound of his voice. these, however, seemed to be larger and fiercer than any he had before encountered, and it was evident there was fight in them. it was nearly dark, and at night such animals are much bolder than during the daylight. night is, in fact, their true time for rapine and desperate deeds. ossaroo reflected, moreover, that these dogs had, in all probability, never before encountered man, and were, therefore, less inclined to fear or flee from him. it was not without some misgiving, therefore, that he found himself in their presence, thus unarmed and alone. when his armful of stones was exhausted, some of the dogs still remained within sight, looking in the grey twilight much larger than they actually were. ossaroo reflected for a moment whether he would gather some more rocks, and give them a fresh pelting. on second thoughts, he concluded it would be more prudent to let them alone. they were already almost at bay, and any farther demonstration on his part might provoke them to turn upon him in earnest. he determined, therefore, to leave them as they stood, and hurry off with his load. without more ado, he took down the quarter of yak-beef, and, placing it upon his shoulders, turned homeward toward the hut. he had not gone very far when he began to suspect that the dogs were after him. in fact, he more than suspected it, for the pattering of feet upon the dead leaves, and an occasional low growl that reached his ears, convinced him they _were_ after him. the heavy burden upon his shoulders, pressing his head forward and downward, prevented him from seeing either to one side or the other, and to look behind, it would be necessary for him to turn quite round. but the pattering of the feet sounded nearer, and the short half-bark, half-growl, became more frequent, until ossaroo found himself at length constrained to turn, from sheer apprehension of being attacked in the rear. the sight that met his eyes was enough to have terrified the stoutest heart. instead of half a dozen of the wild dogs which he expected to see following him, there were far above a score of them, and they appealed to be of every age, sex, and size. in fact, all the dogs of the valley were trooping at his heels, as if they had been all summoned to join in the attack. but the stout shikarree was not yet dismayed. he had been accustomed to hold the wild dogs in too great contempt to be so easily frightened, even by such numbers of them, and he resolved to make another attempt to drive them off. leaning the beef, therefore, against a tree, he stooped down and groped the ground, until he had again armed himself with pebbles as big as paving-stones; and rushing some paces backward, he flung them with all his might in the teeth of his tormentors. several of the pebbles happened to hit in the right place, and more than one of the dogs ran howling away; but the fiercer and older ones scarce yielded their ground, and only answered the assault by a fierce grinning and jabbering, while their white teeth could be distinguished under the moonlight set in angry menace. upon the whole, ossaroo gained but little by this new demonstration; and as he reshouldered his load, he saw the dogs gathering thick as ever behind him. perhaps he would not have taken up his burden again, but an idea had suddenly entered his mind; he had conceived a plan of getting rid of his ugly followers. he knew that he was near the edge of the lake. he remembered that between him and the hut there lay a long reach of water, where the lake ran up into a sort of branch or bay. he knew that this bay, even at its neck, was quite shallow and fordable. he had, in fact, waded across it that very day in order to shorten the path. he was just then within a hundred yards of the fording-place; and if the dogs contemplated attacking him, he would be able to reach the water before they were likely to begin their attack. he would take to the water, and that would throw them off. with all their fierceness, they surely would not follow him into it? acting under this impression, he reshouldered his load and hurried forward. he did not waste time to look about. he need not have looked around to convince himself that he was still followed, for the thick pattering of the feet, the snarling, and chattering, were behind him as before. every moment it sounded nearer and nearer, and at length when ossaroo arrived by the water's edge he fancied he could hear the breathing of the brutes close to his very ankles. he made no halt, but dashed at once into the lake, and plunged wildly across. the noise made by himself in wading knee-deep prevented him from hearing other sounds; and he did not look to see whether he was followed until he had climbed out on the opposite shore of the bay. then he paused and turned around. to his chagrin the whole pack were in the water, crossing like hounds after a stag! already they were half over. they had no doubt hesitated a moment before taking to the water, and this gave ossaroo some advantage, else they would have landed as soon as he. as it was, they would soon take up the distance. ossaroo hesitated a moment as to whether he should abandon his burden, and retreat towards the hut; but the thought of yielding to a pack of wild dogs was too much for his hunter pride; and, wheeling suddenly into the path, he hurried onward with his load. it was now but a short distance to the hut. he had still hopes that he might reach it before his pursuers would make up their minds to assail him. on he hastened, making his limbs do their best. once more came the pattering feet; once more the growling, and yelping, and jibbering of the wild dogs from behind; once more their hot breathing seemed to be felt close to his heels; and then, all at once, the quarter of yak-beef appeared to increase in weight, and grow heavier and heavier, until it came suddenly to the ground, pulling ossaroo upon his back. several of the ravenous brutes had seized upon and dragged both burden and bearer to the earth! but ossaroo soon recovered his feet; and, seizing a large pole, that fortunately lay near, commenced laying around him right and left, at the same time making the woods echo with his yells. a terrible _melee_ ensued, the dogs showing fight, seizing the pole in their teeth, and springing forward upon the hunter whenever an opportunity offered. the latter, however, handled his _improvised_ weapon so well, that for a long time he kept the whole pack at bay. he was growing very tired, and no doubt in a few minutes more would have been obliged to succumb, when he, as well as the joint of yak-beef, would soon have disappeared from the world; but, before this terrible event could happen, the large spotted body of fritz was seen rushing into the midst of the crowd. fritz was followed by his master, karl, armed with the double-barrelled gun, which soon opened fire, scattering the wild pack like a flock of sheep, and laying out more than one of their number at the feet of ossaroo. the scene was soon over after the arrival of karl and fritz, and ossaroo was delivered from his peril; but if ever a follower of brahma swore vengeance against any living creature, ossaroo did that very thing against the wild dogs. chapter forty one. ossaroo's revenge. so indignant was ossaroo with these animals that he vowed he would not lie down till he had taken wholesale revenge, and karl and caspar were curious to know how he intended to take it. they knew the dogs would be like enough to come round the hut during the night. indeed, they heard them yelping not far off at the moment; but for all that how were they to be killed, for that was the sort of revenge the shikarree meditated taking? it would never do to expend powder and shot on such worthless animals; besides firing at them in the darkness would be a very uncertain mode of killing even a single one of them. did ossaroo intend to sit up all night and shoot at them with his arrows? the chances were he should not hit one; and from the way ossaroo talked he had made up his mind to a whole hetacomb! certainly he could not do it with his bow and arrows. how then was he going to take the wholesale vengeance he had rowed? they knew of no sort of trap that could be arranged, whereby more than a single dog might be captured; and it would take some time with such weapons as they had to construct the rudest kind of trap. true, there was the "dead-fall" that might be rigged up in a few minutes from logs that lay near; but that could only fall once, crushing one victim, unless ossaroo sat up to rearrange it. besides, the cunning dogs might not go under it again, after one of their number had been immolated before their eyes. karl and caspar could not conceive what plan ossaroo intended to pursue; but from experience they knew he had some one; and therefore they asked him no questions, but watched his proceedings in silence. the first thing that ossaroo did was to collect from the antelope all the tendons or sinews that he could lay his fingers on. some, also, he obtained from the barking-deer, which caspar had killed in the morning; and others he took from the limbs of the yaks that had been brought home in their skins. in a short while he had a goodly bunch of these tough strings; which he first dried before the fire, and then twisted after his own fashion into slender cords. in all he made more than a score of them--karl and caspar of course acting under his directions, and lending him all necessary help during the operation. these cords, neatly twined and dried by the heat, now resembled strings of coarse catgut; and it only remained for ossaroo to knot and loop them, and form them into snares. of course karl and caspar now knew what ossaroo purposed--to snare the dogs of course. yet how the snares were to be set, or how a wild dog could be captured with a piece of catgut, was more than they could comprehend. surely, thought they, the dogs will gnaw such a string to pieces in half a minute, and set themselves free again? so it would have appeared, and so they would doubtless have done had the snares been set for them in the ordinary manner. but ossaroo had a plan of his own for setting snares, and it was by this plan he intended to succeed in capturing the dogs. the next thing ossaroo did was to provide himself with an equal number of stoutish thongs, which his knife and the numerous raw hides that lay about soon enabled him to do. when these were all prepared, about twenty small skewer-like rods were obtained from the bushes and sharpened at one end. then a like number of "griskins" were cut from the antelope venison--it being esteemed of least value; and thus provided, ossaroo started forth to set his snares. karl and caspar of course accompanied him, the latter limping on one leg, and carrying a large pine-torch--for as the moon had gone down, and it was now quite dark, they required a light to do the work. karl was loaded with the thongs, skewers, and griskins, while ossaroo himself was in charge of the snares. now it so happened that not far from the hut, and all around it, there grew numbers of low trees, with long branches that extended horizontally outward. they were a species of the _pyrus_, or mountain-ash, sometimes known as "witch hazel." the branches, though long, were thin, tough, and elastic, and not much burdened with either branchlets or leaves. they were the very things for ossaroo's purpose, and he had observed this before it had become quite dark, and while he was meditating upon some plan to get square with the wild dogs. upon these branches he was now to operate. reaching up he caught one of them in his hand, drew it downwards, and then suddenly let it go again, in order to try the "spring" of it. it appeared to satisfy him; and, once more laying hold of it, he stripped off its leaves and twigs, and then tied the rawhide thong to its upper end. to the other end of the string was next adjusted the skewer-like rod, and this last was fastened in the ground in such a way as to hold the branch bent downward with considerable force, while a very slight jerk upon the pin itself would set the former free. the shikarree now arranged his piece of venison for a bait, fixing it so that it could not possibly be dragged away or even slightly tugged without setting free the rod-trigger, and consequently the bent branch. last of all, was arranged the snare, and this was placed in such a position with regard to the bait, that any animal attempting to seize the latter must necessarily have the whole or part of its body encircled by the ready running noose. when all these matters were arranged to his satisfaction, ossaroo proceeded to another tree, and went through a similar process of snare-setting; and then to another, and so on till the whole of his snares were disposed of, when the party returned to the hut. they sat for half-an-hour longer, listening in hopes that before retiring they might enjoy the sport of seeing a wild dog snared. whether it was that the torch-light had frightened them off for a while, or from some other cause, neither yelp, nor growl, nor noise of any kind, gratified the ears of the listeners; so they gave it up, and, shutting the rude door of the hut, one and all of them went soundly to sleep. the fact is, the day's work had been one of the hardest of their lives. all were as tired as hod-carriers; and they were glad to stretch themselves once more on the fragrant leaves of the rhododendrons. had they not slept so soundly, they might have heard a considerable confusion of noises throughout the night. what with barking and growling, and yelping and howling, and snapping and snarling, and the creaking of branches and the rattling of twigs, there was a constant medley, that ought to have awakened the three sleepers long before daylight. it did awake them, however, at last; and as the light streamed through the apertures of the hut, all three sprang to their feet and rushed out into the open air. it was still only grey light; but as soon as they had rubbed their eyes clear of sleep, a sight was before them that caused karl and caspar to break out into loud laughter, while ossaroo jumped about vociferating his delight in wild yells of triumph. nearly every snare they had set had caught its victim--nearly every tree around the hut carried a dog swinging to its branches--some by the neck hanged quite dead--some round the body alive and struggling--while there were others suspended by a single leg, their snouts almost touching the earth, and their tongues hanging from their frothy jaws! it was the strangest of all scenes; and ossaroo had, as he had vowed, a full measure of vengeance--which he now carried to its completion, by seizing his long spear, and putting an end to the struggles of the hideous brutes. chapter forty two. the crevasse bridged. young reader, i shall not weary you by relating every little circumstance which occurred during the time that the bridge was being constructed. suffice it to say, that all hands were busy,--both night and day, i might almost say,--until it was finished. although they were in no want of any thing, and might have lived their lives out in this place, yet the thought that they were imprisoned--cut off from all fellowship with mankind--weighed heavily upon their spirits, and not an hour was wasted in idle amusement. the whole of their time was given up to that which engrossed all their thoughts--the construction of the bridge--that link, which was wanting to unite them once more with the world, and free them from their lonely captivity. they were a whole month in getting their bridge ready; which, after all, consisted only of a single pole of about six inches in diameter, and better than a hundred feet in length. it was nothing more than two slender pine-trees spliced together by means of rawhide thongs. but then these trees had to be shaved down to a nearly uniform thickness, and this had to be done with the small hatchet and knives; and the wood had to be charred by fire until it was quite dry and light; and the splicing had to be made with the greatest neatness and strength, so that there would be no danger of its yielding under a weight; and, moreover, a great many ropes had to be twisted, and many animals had to be captured and killed, to obtain the materials for these ropes; and other apparatus had to be made--so that the getting that bridge ready was a good month's work for all hands. at the end of a month it was ready; and now behold it in the gorge of the glacier, and lying along the snowy surface of the ice, one end of it within a few feet of the crevasse! thither they have transported it, and are just preparing to put it in its place. the first thought that will strike you, will be how that piece of timber is to be placed across that yawning chasm. it is quite long enough to reach across--for they calculated that before making it--and there are several feet to lap over at each end; but how on earth is it to be extended across? if any one of the party was upon the opposite side, and had a rope attached to the end of the pole, then it would be easy enough to manage it. but as there could be nothing of this kind, how did they intend acting? it is evident they could not push it across before them; the end of such a long pole would naturally sink below the horizontal line before reaching the opposite side; and how was it to be raised up? in fact, as soon as they should push it a little more than half its length outward, its own weight would overbalance their united strength, and it would be likely to escape from their hands and drop to the bottom of the cleft--whence, of course, they could not recover it. this would be a sad result, after the trouble they had had in constructing that well-balanced piece of timber. ah! they were not such simpletons as to have worked a whole month without first having settled all these matters. karl was too good an engineer to have gone on thus far, without a proper design of how his bridge was to be thrown across. if you look at the objects lying around, you will perceive the evidence of that design. you will understand how the difficulty is to be got over. you will see there a ladder nearly fifty feet in length--several days were expended in the making of this; you will see a strong pulley, with block-wheels and shears--this cost no little time in the construction; and you will see several coils of stout rawhide rope. no wonder a month was expended in the preparation of the bridge! and now to throw it across the chasm! for that purpose they were upon the ground, and all their apparatus with them. without farther delay the work commenced. the ladder was placed against the cliff, with its lower end resting upon the glacier, and as close to the edge of the crevasse as was reckoned safe. we have said that the ladder was fifty feet in length; and consequently it reached to a point on the face of the cliff nearly fifty feet above the surface of the glacier. at this height there chanced to be a slight flaw in the rock--a sort of seam in the granite--where a hole could easily be pierced with an iron instrument. to make this hole a foot or more in depth was the work of an hour. it was done by means of the hatchet, and the iron point of ossaroo's boar-spear. a strong wooden stake was next inserted into this hole, fitting it as nearly as possible; but, in order to make it perfectly tight and firm, hard wooden wedges were hammered in all around it. when driven home, the end of this stake protruded a foot or more from the wall of the cliff; and, by means of notches cut in the wood, and rawhide thongs, the pulley was securely rigged on to it. the pulley had been made with two wheels; each of them with axles strong enough to bear the weight of several hundreds. both had been well tested before this time. another stake was now inserted into the cliff, within a few feet of the surface of the glacier. this was simply to be used as a belaying-pin, to which the ends of the pulley-ropes could be fastened at a moment's notice. the next operation was the reeving of the ropes over the wheels of the pulley. this was the work of but a few minutes, as the ropes had already been carefully twisted, and had been made of just the thickness to fit the grooves of the wheels. the ropes--or cables, as the boys called them--were now attached at one end to the great pole which was to form the bridge. one to its end, and the other to its middle, exactly around the place where it was joined. the greatest pains was taken in adjusting these knots, particularly the one in the middle; for the duty which this cable was called upon to perform was, indeed, of a most important character. it was to act as the main pier or support of the bridge--not only to prevent the long pole from "swagging" downward, but in fact to keep it from breaking altogether. but for karl's ingenuity in devising this support, a slender pole, such as that they had prepared, would never have sustained the weight of one of them; and had they made it of heavier scantling, they could not have thrown it across the chasm. the centre support, therefore, was the chief object of their solicitude; and this cable, as well as the pulley-wheel over which it passed, were made much stronger than the other. the second rope was intended to hold up the end of the pole, so that, on approaching the opposite side of the chasm, it could be kept high enough to be raised above the ice. the ropes being now completely rigged, each man took his place. ossaroo, who was the strongest of the party, was to push the bridge forward; while karl and caspar attended to the pulley and the ropes. rollers had already been laid under the poles; for, although but six inches in diameter, its great length rendered it no easy matter to slide it forward, even with the advantage of the slippery surface of frozen snow. the word was given by karl, and the pole commenced moving. soon its end passed over the brink of the chasm, close by the edge of the black rock. slowly and gradually it moved forward, and not one of them uttered a word. they were all too much absorbed in attending to their various duties to speak a sentence. slowly and gradually it moved onward, creeping along the cliff, like some huge monster, and protruding its muzzled snout far over the deep chasm. at length the nearest roller approached the brink, find it became necessary to stop the motion till these could be rearranged. this was easily done. a few turns of the cables around the belaying-pin, and all stood fast. the pulley-wheels worked admirably, and the cables glided smoothly over the grooved blocks. the rollers were soon readjusted--the cables again freed from the pin, and the bridge moved on. slowly and gradually--slowly but smoothly and surely, it moved, until its farther end rested upon the opposite cheek of the crevasse, lapping the hard ice by several feet. then the cables were held taut, and securely fastened to the belaying-pin. the nearer end of the pole was tied with other ropes--so that it could not possibly shift from its place--and the yawning abyss was now spanned by a bridge! not till then did the builders rest to look upon their work; and, as they stood gazing upon the singular structure that was to restore them to liberty and home, they could not restrain themselves, but gave vent to their triumphant feelings in a loud huzzah! chapter forty three. the passage of the crevasse. i know you are smiling at this very poor substitute for a bridge, and wondering how they who built it were going to cross upon it. climbing a maypole would be nothing to such a feat. it may seem easy enough to cling to a pole six inches in diameter, and even to "swarm" along it for some yards, but when you come to talk of a hundred feet of such progression, and that over a yawning chasm, the very sight of which is enough to make the head giddy and the heart faint, then the thing becomes a feat indeed. had there been no other mode of getting over, like enough our heroes would have endeavoured to cross in that way. ossaroo, who had "swarmed" up the stem of many a bamboo and tall palm-tree, would have thought nothing of it; but for karl and caspar, who were not such climbers, it would have been rather perilous. they had, therefore, designed a safer plan. each was provided with a sort of yoke, formed out of a tough sapling that had been sweated in the fire and then bent into a triangular shape. it was a rude isosceles triangle, tied tightly at the apex with rawhide thongs; and thereto was attached a piece of well-twisted rope, the object of which was to form a knot or loop over the pole, to act as a runner. the feet of the passenger were to rest on the base of the yoke, which would serve as a stirrup to support the body, while one arm would hug the pole, leaving the other free to push forward the runner by short gradations. in this way each was to work himself across. their guns, and the few other things, were to be tightly strapped to their backs. they had only those that were worth bringing along. as for fritz, he was not to be left behind, although the transporting him across had offered for some time a serious difficulty. ossaroo, however, had removed the difficulty by proposing to tie the dog up in a skin and strap him on his (ossaroo's) own back, and thus carry him over. it would be nothing to ossaroo. in less than half-an-hour after the bridge was in its place, the three were ready to cross. there they stood, each holding the odd-looking stirrup in his hand, with his _impedimenta_ strapped securely on his back. the head of fritz, just showing above the shoulder of the shikarree, while his body was shrouded in a piece of shaggy yak-skin, presented a very ludicrous spectacle, and his countenance wore quite a serio-comical expression. he seemed quite puzzled as to what was going to be done with him. ossaroo proposed crossing first; and then caspar, brave as a lion, said that he was the _lightest_, and _ought_ to go _first_. karl would not listen to either of them, karl alleged that, as he was the builder of the bridge, by all usage it was his place to make trial of it. karl being the sahib of the party, and, of course, the man of most authority, carried his point. stepping cautiously to the point where the pole rested on the ice, he looped the rawhide rope over it, and then suffered the yoke to drop down. he then grasped the pole tightly in his arms, and placed his feet firmly in the stirrup. for a moment or two, he pressed heavily upon the latter, so as to test its strength, while he held on by the beam above; and then, disengaging his left arm, he pushed the runner forward upon the pole, to the distance of a foot or more. this, of course, carried the stirrup along with it, as well as his feet; and then, throwing forward the upper part of his body, he swung himself out above the abyss. it was a fearful sight, even to those who watched him, and would have been too perilous a feat for idle play; but the very nature of their circumstances had hardened them to undergo the danger. after a time, karl was far out from the ice, and seemed to hang upon a thread between heaven and earth! had the pole slipped at either end, it would have precipitated the adventurous karl into the chasm; but they had taken every precaution against this. at the nearer end, they had rendered it secure by rolling immense rocks upon it; while, on the opposite side, it was held in its place by the cable, that had been drawn as tight as the pulley could make it. notwithstanding the mainstay in the middle, it sank considerably under the weight of karl's body; and it was plain that, but for this contrivance, they could never have crossed. when half-way to the point where this stay was attached, the pole bent far below the level of the glacier, and karl now found it up-hill work to force the runner along. he succeeded, however, in reaching the stay-rope in safety. now he had arrived at one of the "knottiest" points of the whole performance. of course, the runner could go no farther, as it was intercepted by the stay. it was necessary, therefore, to detach it altogether from the pole, and then readjust it on the other side of the cable. karl had not come thus far to be stopped by a difficulty of so trifling a kind. he had already considered how he should act at this crisis, and he delayed only a moment to rest himself. aided by the mainstay itself, which served him for a hand-rope, he mounted cross-legs upon the timber, and then, without much trouble, shifted his runner to the opposite side. this done, he once more "sprang to his stirrup," and continued onward. as he approached the opposite edge of the chasm, he again encountered the up-hill difficulty; but a little patience and some extra exertion brought him nearer and nearer, and still nearer, until at last his feet kicked against the icy wall. with a slight effort, he drew himself upon the glacier; and, stepping a pace from the brink, he pulled off his cap, and waved it in the air. a huzza from the opposite side answered his own shout of triumph. but louder still was the cheer, and far more heartfelt and joyous, when, half-an-hour afterwards, all three stood side by side, and, safe over, looked back upon the yawning gulf they had crossed! only they who have escaped from some terrible doom--a dungeon, or death itself--can understand the full, deep emotions of joy, that at that moment thrilled within the hearts of karl, caspar, and ossaroo. alas! alas! it was a short-lived joy,--a moment of happiness to be succeeded by the most poignant misery,--a gleam of light followed by the darkest of clouds! ten minutes had scarce elapsed. they had freed fritz from his yak-skin envelope, and had started down the glacier, impatient to get out of that gloomy defile. scarce five hundred steps had they taken, when a sight came under their eyes that caused them suddenly to hall, and turn to each other with blanched cheeks and looks of dread import. not one of them spoke a word, but all stood pointing significantly down the ravine. words were not needed. the thing spoke for itself. another crevasse, far wider than the one they had just crossed, yawned before them! it stretched from side to side of the icy mass; like the former, impinging on either cliff. it was full two hundred feet in width, and how deep. ugh! they dared hardly look into its awful chasm! it was clearly impassable. even the dog appeared to be aware of this; for he had stopped upon its edge, and stood in an attitude of fear, now and then uttering a melancholy howl! yes, it was impassable. a glance was sufficient to tell that; but they were not satisfied with a glance. they stood upon its brink, and regarded it for a long while, and with many a wistful gaze; then, with slow steps and heavy hearts, they turned mechanically away. i shall not repeat their mournful conversation. i shall not detail the incidents of their backward journey to the valley. i need not describe the recrossing of the crevasse--the different feelings with which they now accomplished this perilous feat. all these may be easily imagined. it was near night when, wearied in body and limb--downcast in mien and sick at heart--they reached the hut, and flung themselves despairingly upon the floor. "my god! my god!" exclaimed karl, in the agony of his soul, "how long is this hovel to be our home?" chapter forty four. new hopes. that night was passed without much sleep. painful reflections filled the minds of all and kept them awake--the thoughts that follow disappointed hopes. when they did sleep it was more painful than waking. their dreams were fearful. they dreamt of yawning gulfs and steep precipices--of being suspended in the air, and every moment about to fall into vast depths where they would be crushed to atoms. their dreams, that were only distorted pictures of the day's experience, had all the vividness of reality, and far more vivid in their horror. often when one or other of them was awakened by the approaching climax of the dream, he endeavoured to keep awake rather than go through even in a vision such horrible scenes. even the dog fritz was not free from similar sufferings. his mournful whimpering told that his sleep like theirs was troubled and uneasy. a bright sunshiny morning had its beneficial effect upon all of them. it aided the reaction--consequent on a night of such a dismal character--and as they ate their breakfasts of broiled meat they were again almost cheerful. the buoyancy of caspar's spirits had well-nigh returned, and his fine appetite showed itself in full vigour. indeed all of them ate heartily, for on the preceding day they had scarce allowed themselves time to taste food. "if we must remain here always," said caspar, "i see no reason why we need starve ourselves! there's plenty to eat, and a variety of it, i can say. i don't see why we shouldn't have some fish. i am sure i have seen trout leap in the lake. let us try a fly to-day. what say you, karl?" caspar said this with the intention of cheering his brother. "i see no harm in it," answered the quiet botanist. "i think there are fish in the lake. i have heard there is a very eatable kind of fish in all the rivers of the himalayas, known as the `himalayan trout'--though it is misnamed, for it is not a trout but a species of carp. it may be found here, i dare say; although it is difficult, to imagine how fish could get into this sequestered lake." "well," rejoined caspar, "we must think of some plan to get them out of it. we have neither nets, rods, hooks, nor lines. what's to be done? can you think of any way of taking the fish, ossaroo?" "ah! sahib," replied the shikarree, "give me bamboo, me soon make net to takee fish--no bamboo--no net--no matter for net--ossaroo poison the water--get all da fish." "what! poison the water? how would you do that? where is the poison?" "me soon find poison--bikh poison do." "`bikh' poison--what is that?" "come, sahib! me show you bikh plant--plenty grow here." both karl and caspar rose and followed the shikarree. they had not gone many paces when their guide stooped and pointed to a plant that grew in plenty about the place. it was an herbaceous plant, having a stem nearly six feet high, and rather broad digitate leaves, with a loose spike of showy yellow flowers at the top. caspar rather hastily took hold of one of the plants; and, plucking off the spike, held it to his nose, to see whether the flowers had any perfume. but caspar dropped the nosegay as hastily as he had seized it, and with an exclamation of terror turned towards his brother, into whose arms he staggered half swooning! fortunately he had taken but a very slight "sniff" of that dangerous perfume, else he might have been laid up for days. as it was he felt giddy for hours after. now this singular plant the botanist karl recognised at a glance. it was a species of aconite, or wolf's-bane, and _very_ similar to the kindred species, _aconitum napellus_, or "monk's hood," of europe, whose roots furnish the most potent of poisons. the whole plant--leaves, flowers, and stem--is of a poisonous nature, but the roots, which resemble small turnips, contain the essence of the poison. there are many species of the plant found in different parts of the world, and nearly a dozen kinds in the himalaya mountains themselves; but the one pointed out by ossaroo was the _aconitum ferox_ of botanists, the species from which the celebrated "bikh" poison of the hindoos is obtained. ossaroo then proposed to poison the fish by throwing a sufficient quantity of the roots and stems of the plant into the lake. this proposal, however, was rejected by karl, who very properly observed, that although by that means they might obtain a plentiful supply of fish, they would destroy more than they could use at the time, and perhaps leave none for the future. karl had already begun to talk about a "future" to be spent on the shores of this lovely lake. the belief that they might never go out of the valley was already taking shape in the minds of all three, though they did not care to give expression to such sad imaginings. karl tried to be cheerful, as he saw that caspar was gay. "come," said he, "let us not mind the fish to-day. i own that fish is usually the first course, but go along with me. let us see what kind of vegetables our garden has got. i am sure we may live better if we only try. for my part i am getting tired of broiled meat, and neither bread nor vegetables to eat along with it. here i dare say we shall find both; for whether it be due to the birds, or its peculiar climate--or a little to both most likely--our valley has a flora such as you can only meet with in a botanic garden. come then! let us see what we can find for the pot." so saying karl led the way, followed by caspar, ossaroo, and the faithful fritz. "look up there!" said the botanist, pointing to a tall pine that grew near. "see those large cones. inside them we shall obtain seeds, as large as pistachio-nuts, and very good to eat. by roasting them, we can make an excellent substitute for bread." "ha, indeed!" exclaimed caspar, "that is a pine-tree. what large cones! they are as big as artichokes. what sort of pine is it, brother?" "it is one of the kind known as the `edible pines,' because their seeds are fit for food. it is the species called by botanists _pinus gerardiana_, or the `neosa' pine. there are pines whose seeds are eatable in other parts of the world, as well as in the himalaya mountains,--for instance, the _pinus cembra_ of europe, the `ghik' of japan, the `lambert' pine of california, and several species in new mexico, known among the people as `pinon' trees. so you perceive that besides their valuable timber--to say nothing of their pitch, turpentine, and resin--the family of the pines also furnishes food to the human race. we shall get some bread from those cones whenever we desire it!" so saying, karl continued on in the direction of the lake. "there again!" said he, pointing to a gigantic herbaceous plant, "rhubarb, you see!" it was, in fact, the true rhubarb, which grows wild among the himalaya mountains, and whose great broad red-edged leaves, contrasting with its tall pyramid of yellow bracts, render it one of the most striking and beautiful of herbaceous plants. its large acid stems--which are hollow and full of pure water--are eaten by the natives of the himalayas, both raw and boiled, and its leaves when dried are smoked as tobacco. but there was a smaller species that grew near, which ossaroo said produced much better tobacco; and ossaroo was good authority, since he had already dried some of the leaves, and had been smoking them ever since their arrival in the valley. in fact, ossaroo was quite out of betel-nut, and suffered so much from the want of his favourite stimulant, that he was glad to get any thing to smoke; and the "chula," or wild rhubarb-leaves, answered his purpose well. ossaroo's pipe was an original one certainty; and he could construct one in a few minutes. his plan was to thrust a piece of stick into the ground, passing it underneath the surface--horizontally for a few inches, and then out again--so as to form a double orifice to the hole. at one end of this channel he would insert a small joint of reed for his mouth-piece, while the other was filled with the rhubarb tobacco, which was then set on fire. it was literally turning the earth into a tobacco-pipe! this method of smoking is by no means uncommon among the half-civilised inhabitants of india as well as africa, and ossaroo preferred a pipe of this kind to any other. karl continued onward, pointing out to his companions several species of edible roots, fruits, and vegetables which the valley contained. there were wild leeks among the number. these would assist them in making soup. there were fruits too,--several species of currants, and cherries, and strawberries, and raspberries,--kinds that had long been introduced to european gardens, and that to karl and caspar looked like old acquaintances. "and there!" continued karl, "see the very water produces food for us. look at the lotus, (_nelumbium speciosum_). those large pink and white flowers are the flowers of the famed lotus. its stalks may be eaten, or, if you will, their hollow tubes will serve us as cups to drink, out of. there, too, is the horned water root (_trapa bicornis_), also excellent eating. oh! we should be thankful. we are well provided with food." yet the heart of karl was sore while thus endeavouring to talk cheerfully. chapter forty five. new survey of the cliff. yes, the hearts of all three were far from being contented, though they returned to the hut laden with fruits, and roots, and nuts, and vegetables; out of which they intended to concoct a better dinner than they had been lately accustomed to. the rest of that day was spent about the hut, and a good deal of it was given up to culinary operations. not that any of the party cared so much for a good dinner; but being thus engaged prevented them from reflecting as much as they would otherwise have done upon their painful situation. besides, they had no other work to do. they had no longer a motive for doing any thing. up to that moment the preparing the ropes and timbers of the bridge had kept them employed; and the very work itself, combined with the hope which they then felt, enabled them to pass the time pleasantly enough. now that these hopes were no more,-- that their whole scheme had ended in failure, they felt restless,--and could think of nothing upon which to employ themselves. preparing their dinner, therefore, out of the new and varied materials that had come into their hands, was, at least, some distraction to their gloomy thoughts. when dinner was ready, all of them ate heartily, and with a relish. indeed, they had been so long without vegetables that these tasted to them as fine as any they had ever eaten. even the wild fruits appeared equal to the best they had ever gathered from an orchard! it was a little after midday, as they were enjoying this dessert. they were seated in the open air, in front of the hut, and caspar was doing most part of the talking, he was doing his best to be cheerful, and to make his companions so as well. "they're the best strawberries i've eaten for a month," said he; "but i think a trifle of sugar and a drop of cream would be an improvement. what say you, karl?" "it would," he replied, nodding assent. "we did wrong to kill all our cows," continued caspar, with a significant look at one of the yak-skins that lay near. "by-the-bye," said karl, interrupting him, "i was just thinking of that. if we are to stay here all our lives,--oh!" the painful reflection, again crossing karl's mind, caused him to exclaim as he did. he left his hypothetic sentence unfinished, and relapsed into silence. several days after this karl left the hut, and, without telling his intention to either of his companions, walked off in the direction of the cliffs. indeed, he had no very definite nor determined aim in so doing; a sort of hopeless idea had come into his mind of making the circuit of the valley, and once more surveying the precipice all round it. neither of the others offered to accompany him, nor did they question him as to his object in setting out. both had gone about business of their own. caspar had become engaged in making a wash-rod for his gun, and ossaroo a net to catch the large and beautiful fish that abounded in the lake. karl, therefore, was permitted to set forth alone. on reaching the precipice, he turned along its base, and walked slowly forward, stopping every yard or two, and looking upward. every foot-- nay, i might say every inch, of the cliff did he scan with care,--even with more care than he had hitherto done; though that would appear hardly possible, for on the former occasions on which the three had examined it, their reconnoissance had been most particular and _minute_. but a new idea had shadowed itself in the mind of karl; and it was in obedience to this, that he now proceeded with a fresh examination of the precipitous enclosure that imprisoned them. it is true it was but a sort of forlorn hope that he had conceived; but a forlorn hope was better than no hope at all, and therefore karl was determined to be satisfied. the thought that had been forming in his mind was, that after all it might be possible for them to _scale the cliff_. that they could not do so by climbing he was already satisfied; as were all three. of this their former examinations had convinced them. but there were other ways of getting up a precipice, besides merely climbing with one's hands and feet; and one of these ways, as already said, had for some time been shadowing itself in the mind of karl. what plan, you will ask, had he now conceived? did he design to make use of ropes? not at all. ropes could be of no service to him in going up a cliff. they might, had they been fastened at the top; for then both he and his companions would soon have contrived some way of getting up the ropes. they could have made a ladder of a single rope by which they might have ascended, by simply knotting pieces of sticks at short intervals, to serve as rests for their feet, and they knew this well. such a contrivance would have suited admirably, if they had been required to _descend_ a precipice, for then they could have let the rope down, and fastened it at the top themselves. but to go up was altogether a different operation; and it was necessary for at least one to be above to render it at all practicable or possible. of course, if one could have got to the top by any means, the others could have done so by the same; and then the rope-ladder would not have been needed at all. no. such a contrivance could not be used, and indeed they had never thought of it--since to the meanest comprehension it was plainly impossible. karl therefore was not thinking of a rope-ladder. nevertheless it was actually about a _ladder_ that he was thinking--not made of ropes, but of timber--of sides and rounds like any other ladder. "what!" you will exclaim, "a ladder by which to scale the cliff! why, you have told us that it was three hundred feet in sheer height? the longest ladder in the world would not reach a third of the way up such a precipice. even a fireman's ladder, that is made to reach to the tops of the highest houses, would be of no use for such a height as that?" "quite true! i know all that as well as you," would have been karl's reply to your objections. "what, then, master karl? do you design to make a ladder that will be taller than all we have ever seen--tall enough to reach to the top of a precipice three hundred feet high? we know you have both energy and perseverance; and, after witnessing the way that you worked at the building of your bridge, and the skill with which you built it, we are ready to believe that you can accomplish a very great feat in the joiner's line; but that _you_ can make a ladder three hundred feet in length, we are not prepared to believe--not if you had a whole chest of tools and the best timber in the world. we know you might put a ladder together ever so long, but would it hold together? or even if it did, how could you set it up against the cliff? never. three of the strongest men could not do it,--nor six neither,--nor a dozen, without machinery to assist them; therefore scaling the cliff by means of a wooden ladder is plainly impracticable; and if that be your idea, you may as well abandon it." "quite true, i know all this as well as you," would have been karl's reply; "but i had no idea of being able to scale the cliff by means of a ladder. it was not of _a ladder_, but of _ladders_, i was thinking." "ha! there may be something in that." karl knew well enough that no single ladder could be made of sufficient length and strength to have reached from the bottom to the top of that great wall; or if such could be constructed, he knew equally well that it would be impossible to set it up. but the idea that had been forming in his mind was, that several ladders might effect the purpose--one placed above another, and each one resting upon a _ledge of the cliff_, to which the one next below should enable them to ascend. in this idea there was really some shadow of practicability, though, as i have said, it was but a very forlorn hope. the amount of its practicableness depended upon the existence of the _ledges_; and it was to ascertain this that karl had set forth. if such ledges could be found, the hope would no longer have been forlorn. karl believed that with time and energy the ladders might be constructed, notwithstanding the poor stock of carpenter's tools at their service; though he had scarce yet thought of how the holes were to be made to receive the rounds, or how the ladders themselves might be set upon the ledges, or any other detail of the plan. he was too eager to be satisfied about the first and most important point--whether there were ledges that would answer the purpose? with his eyes, therefore, keenly scanning the face of the cliff, he kept on along its base, walking slowly, and in silence. chapter forty six. karl climbs the ledge. he continued on until he had reached that end of the valley most remote from the hut, and along the whole of the cliffs that he passed his reconnoissance had been fruitless. he saw many ledges, and some of considerable width--quite wide enough to rest a ladder upon, and also allow it a proper lean to the wall. some were higher and some lower; but unfortunately they were not above one another, as karl desired to find them. on the contrary, they were far apart--so that if one of them could have been reached by means of a ladder, as many of them might, this would in no way facilitate communication with the one that was higher up. of course then, for karl's purpose, these ledges were of no avail; and, after observing their relative situations, he passed on with looks of disappointment. at the farthest end of the valley--that is, the place farthest from the hut--there was a little bay, or indentation, in the cliffs. as already stated, there were several of these at intervals around the valley, but the one in question was the largest of any. it was very narrow, only a few yards in width, and about a hundred in depth--that is, a hundred yards from the line, which indicated the general outline of the valley, to the apex of the angle where the indentation ended. its bottom was nearly upon the same level with that of the valley itself, though it was raised a little higher in some places by loose rocks, and other _debris_ that had fallen from the impending cliffs. karl had entered this bay, and was regarding its cliffs all around with intense eagerness of glance. any one who could have seen him at that moment would have observed that his countenance was brightening as he gazed; and that pleasant thoughts were springing up within his bosom. any one who had seen that face but the moment before, and had looked upon it now, could not fail to have noticed the change that had so suddenly come over it--a perfect contrast in its expression. what had produced this metamorphosis? something of importance, i warrant; for the young botanist, naturally of a sober turn, but now more than ever so, was not given to sudden transitions of feeling. what, then, was the cause of his joy? a glance at the cliff will answer these interrogatories. at the first glance it might be noted that that part of the precipice surrounding the bay--or ravine, as it might more properly be called--was lower than elsewhere,--perhaps not quite three hundred feet in height. it was not this peculiarity, however, at which karl was rejoicing. a ladder of three hundred feet was not to be thought of any more than one of three thousand. it was that he had just observed upon the face of the cliff a series of ledges that rose, shelf-like, one above the other. the rock had a seamed or stratified appearance, although it was a species of granite; but the strata were not by any means regular, and the ledges were at unequal distances from each other. some, too, were broader than the rest, and some appeared very narrow indeed; but many of them were evidently of sufficient width to form the stepping-place for a ladder. the lower ones especially appeared as though they might easily be scaled by a series of ladders, each from twenty to thirty feet long,--but with regard to those near the top, karl had great doubts. the shelves did not seem more distant from each other than those below, but their horizontal breadth appeared less. this might possibly be an optical delusion, caused by the greater distance from which they were viewed; but if so, it would not much mend the matter for the design which karl had in view--since the deception that would have given him an advantage in the breadth would have been against him in the height, making the latter too great, perhaps, for any ladder that could be got up. if you have ever stood by the bottom of a great precipice, you may have noticed how difficult it is to judge of the dimensions of an object far up its face. a ledge several feet in width will appear as a mere seam in the rock, and a bird or other creature that may be seen upon it, will, to the eyes of the beholder, be reduced far below its real bulk. karl was philosopher enough to understand these things, he had studied in an elementary way, the laws of optics, and therefore was not going to come to conclusions too hastily. in order the better to form judgment about the breadth of the ledges, and the height of the respective intervals between them, he stepped back as far as the ground would permit him. unfortunately this was not far, for the cliff on the other side, as already stated, was but a few paces distant. consequently he was soon stopped by the rocks, and his situation for viewing the upper portion of the cliff was anything but an advantageous one. he scrambled up one of the highest boulders, and took his survey from its top, but he was still not satisfied with his "point of view." he saw, however, that it was the best he could obtain; and he remained for a good while upon his perch--with eyes bent upon the opposing precipice, now fixed upon a particular spot, and now wandering in one long sweep from bottom to top, and back again from top to bottom. during this operation the expression upon his face once more changed to one of deep gloom, for he had discovered an obstacle to his designs that appeared insurmountable. one of the spaces between two of the ledges was too great to be spanned by a ladder, and this, too, was high up the cliff. it could never be scaled! he noticed that the first ledge from the bottom was about half as high from the ground as this one was from that immediately below it. hitherto he had been but guessing at the height; but it now occurred to him that he should throw conjecture aside, and ascertain by actual measurement the distance from the ground to the first ledge. this might be easily accomplished--karl saw that,--and once done, it would give him a better idea of the distance between the ledges high up. it has been stated that the measurement could be easily made, and that karl knew this; but how? the ledge appeared to be full forty feet from the ground, and how was it to be reached by a measuring rule? but karl had no measuring rule; and it was not in that way he intended to go about it. you will be conjecturing that he looked out for a tall sapling, of sufficient length to reach the ledge, and then afterwards ascertained the number of feet and inches of the sapling. certainly this mode would have done well enough, and karl would very likely have made use of it, had not an easier offered itself--or one that at the moment appeared readier to him. he could have told the height by triangulation, but that would also have involved the procuring of a sapling--and some tedious calculation besides, which would have required time, with not the most certain results either. both these plans had occupied his thoughts for a while. the first was rejected on account of the difficulty of obtaining a rod of sufficient length,--the second was set aside by karl just then perceiving that without much difficulty, he might climb up to the ledge itself. there was a portion of the rock below with a slanting face, and here and there some broken hollows and jutting points that would serve him as foot-holds. once upon the ledge, the measurement would be simple enough. it would be only to let down a string with a small stone at the end, like a plumber's line; and then mark how much string it required to reach the ground. he chanced to have about him a longish piece of rawhide thong, that would serve admirably, and to carry out his purpose, he at once determined upon ascending to the ledge. drawing the thong from his pocket, and attaching to one end of it the piece of stone, he approached the cliff, and commenced scrambling upward. he found it a more difficult task than it had appeared, and it was just as much as he could do to reach the ledge in safety. had it been caspar, the climbing would have been a mere bagatelle, used, as the young hunter had been, to the precipices of the alps while following the rock-loving chamois. but karl was no great hand at such gymnastic exercises; and he was all out of breath, and a little bit frightened at his rashness, before he had placed himself safely on the shelf. stepping along it, therefore, till he reached a point where the cliff below was vertical, he dropped his stone and line, and soon completed his measurement. alas! it proved to be far higher than he had conjectured in viewing it from below. his spirits fell as he contemplated the result. he was now certain that the space higher up could not be spanned by any ladder they might be able to construct. with sad heart, he returned to the place where he had made the ascent, intending to go down again. but it is sometimes easier to say go down than to do it; and to karl's great consternation he saw at the first glance that he could no more go down than fly upward into the air. beyond a doubt he was in a fix; regularly "nailed" upon the cliff. chapter forty seven. karl in a fix. it is not difficult to comprehend the reason. any one who has ever climbed up a steep ascent,--such as a piece of wall, the mast of a ship, or even an ordinary ladder,--will have noticed that the going up, is much easier than the getting down again; and where the ascent is very steep and difficult, it is quite possible that a person may make their way to the top, without being able to get back to the bottom. the difficulty of descending is much greater than that of ascending. in the latter, you can see where you are to set your feet, and also what you are to take hold of with your hands; whereas, in the former you have not this advantage; but must grope your way downward, and are therefore continually exposed to the danger of missing your footing, and being precipitated to the bottom. this was just the situation in which the plant-hunter found himself. it was as much as he had been able to pull himself up; it was more than he could do to let himself down again; this he perceived at a single glance. it is true that the rock slanted a little, and he had clearly seen this from below. now that he looked at it from above, he could scarcely perceive any slant. it appeared almost vertical, and it was full forty feet to the bottom; a fearful height when viewed from above; he wondered how he had been able to climb up at all, and he was now vexed with himself for having been so rash and foolish. but he could not stay there all night. something must be done, to free him from his unpleasant situation; and, gathering resolution, he made an attempt to descend. he knelt down upon the ledge, with his face turned toward the cliff and his back outwards. then, grasping the rock, in his hands, he allowed his feet to slip over. he succeeded in finding the uppermost steps, but then came the difficulty. he dared not let go with his hands, so as to get another step downward; and, on lowering his feet to feel for a fresh foothold, he could not discover any. repeatedly he ran his toes over the face of the rock, groping for a notch or jutting point, but he could find nothing upon which to rest either foot, and he was at length obliged to draw them up, and place himself back upon the ledge. he now bethought him that there might be a better place for making the descent; and, rising to his feet, he proceeded to search for it. he had no difficulty in passing along the ledge; it was several feet in width, and he could walk erect upon it without danger. it extended for nearly fifty yards along the face of the cliff, and was of nearly equal breadth all the way. karl proceeded along it from one end to the other, at every step or two stopping and looking downward. but his examination ended in disappointment. there was no path leading from it, at all practicable for any other creature than a cat, or some other animal with crooked claws,--at all events, there was no place where karl himself could get down,--and he turned to go back to the point where he had ascended, with a feeling of apprehension that he was not going to get down at all! on proceeding along the ledge, he had not yet bent his eyes upon the cliff that rose behind,--his attention being altogether occupied with the part that lay below; on going back, however, his eye ranged more freely, and he now noticed a dark hole in the rock, a few feet above the level of the ledge. this hole was about as big as an ordinary doorway, and upon closer examination, karl perceived that it was the mouth of a cave. he noticed, moreover, that it appeared to grow wider beyond the entrance, and was no doubt a cavern of large dimensions. he had no further curiosity in relation to it; only that the reflection crossed his mind that he might be compelled to pass the night there. this was probable enough; unless, indeed, ossaroo or caspar should come in search of him before nightfall, and relieve him from his elevated prison. but it was just as likely they might not; for frequently one of the party was out for hours together, without causing any uneasiness to the rest, and it would be after night before they would feel any apprehension about his absence. in the darkness, too, they might go in the wrong direction to search for him, and might wander about through the woods a long time before coming near the place where he was. he was in the very farthest corner of the valley, and shut up in the ravine, with rocks and high woods between him and them; and thus his shouts could not be heard at any great distance. these were the reflections that passed through his mind, as he returned along the ledge to the point where he had climbed up. he did not enter the cave to examine it--as he would certainly have done under other circumstances--but his curiosity was now controlled by the apprehension he very naturally felt in the dilemma in which he was placed. that he could do nothing to free himself from it was clear enough to his mind. he must wait, therefore, until either caspar came, or ossaroo, or both; and, summoning all his patience, he sat down upon the ledge and waited. of course, he did not wait in silence. he had the sense to know, that if he kept silent they might not find him at all; and therefore, at short intervals, he rose to his feet, and shouted at the top of his voice, causing the cliffs to reverberate in numberless echoes. the echoes, however, were the only replies he received. loud as were his cries, they were not heard either by caspar or ossaroo. chapter forty eight. the tibet bear. for full two hours sat karl, chewing the cud of impatience. as yet the feeling he experienced was only one of impatience, mingled with a considerable amount of chagrin at being in such a scrape, and having got himself into it in so simple a manner. he had no very painful apprehensions about the result--since he made quite sure that his companions would come to his relief in the end. they might not find him that day, or that night, and he might have to remain all night upon the ledge. this, however, would be no great hardship. he might suffer a little from want of his supper, and he might have to sleep in the cave, but what of that to one so inured to hunger, and to sleeping in the open air, as he was? even had there been no shelter, he could have stretched himself along the ledge, and slept that way without much minding it. certainly in the morning the others would be after him, his shouts would guide them to the spot, and then it would be all right again. such was the reasoning of karl, and therefore, knowing that he had but little to fear, he was not acutely anxious. while he was thus comfortably communing with himself, however, his eyes rested upon an object that rendered him anxious enough--nay, more than anxious--badly frightened, would be nearer the words. his ears first guided him to this new cause of alarm. while sitting on the ledge, and not saying a word, he heard a sound that resembled the snort of a jackass, just as one commences to bray. there were some bushes growing at no great distance from the bottom of the cliff, and it was from the midst of these bushes the sound appeared to proceed. after hearing the snort, karl kept both eyes and ears acutely bent--the former fixed upon the bushes; and in a minute after, the sound was repeated, though he did not see the creature that uttered it. he saw, however, by the motion of the twigs, that something was passing through the thicket; and the loud snapping of dead sticks, and crackling of branches, proved that it was an animal of great weight and dimensions. karl was not long in doubt as to the dimensions; for the instant after he beheld the body of a large beast emerging from the thicket, and moving out into the open ground. it required no skill to tell what sort of animal it was--a bear beyond the probability of a doubt--and yet it was of a species that karl had never before seen. but there is such a similitude between the members of the bruin tribe, that he who has ever seen one--and who has not?-- will easily recognise all the rest of the family. the one which now presented itself to the observation of our plant-hunter, was of medium size--that is, less than the great polar bear, or the "grizzly" of the rocky mountains, but larger than the bornean species, or the sun-bear of the malays. it was scarce so large as the singular sloth-bear, which they had encountered near the foot of the mountains, and with which they had had such a ludicrous adventure. it was but little less, however, than the "sloth," and, like it, was of a deep black colour, though its hair was neither so long nor shaggy. like the latter, too, its under lip was whitish, with a white mark on its throat resembling a y--the stem of the letter being placed upon the middle of its breast, and the fork passing up in front of the shoulders--for this is a mark which belongs to several species of southern asiatic bears. in other respects the bear in question was peculiar. it had a neck remarkably thick; a flattened head, with the forehead and muzzle forming almost a straight line--and on this account distinguishing it from the sloth-bear, in which the forehead rises almost abruptly from the line of the muzzle. its ears were of large size--its body compact, supported on stout but clumsy limbs--and its feet armed with claws of moderate dimensions, and blunted at their points. such were the markings of the bear now before the eyes of karl; and although he had never seen one of the kind before, he had read of one; and by these peculiarities he was able to recognise the species. it was the tibet bear (_ursus tibetanus_)--more commonly styled by closet-naturalists _helarctos tibetanus_--one of the bears that inhabit the high table-lands of tibet, and is supposed to range through the whole of the upper himalayas, since it has been found in nepaul and elsewhere. i have said that karl was badly frightened with this black apparition. this was at the first sight of it, as it came out of the bushes; and, indeed, it is not at all surprising that he was so. there is no one,-- not even a bear-hunter himself,--who can encounter a bear upon the bear's own ground without feeling a little trembling of the nerves; but when it is remembered that karl was quite unarmed--for he had left his gun at the bottom of the cliff--it will not be wondered at, that the appearance of the bear caused him alarm. his fright, however, was of short duration; and for two reasons. first, he remembered having read that this species of bear is of a harmless disposition; that it is not carnivorous, but feeds only on fruits, and in no instance has it been known to attack man unless when wounded or assailed. then, of course, it will defend itself, as many animals will do that are otherwise gentle and harmless. another reason why he soon got over his fright was, that he chanced to be in such a position that it was not likely the bear would attempt to come near him. he was quite out of its way; and if he only kept silent--which he would be careful to do--the animal might not even look in that direction, but go off again without perceiving him. in hope that such would be the result, karl sat without stirring, and kept as quiet as a mouse. but karl chanced to be building his hopes on a false foundation. the bear had no notion of going off as it had come--it had other designs altogether; and, after shuffling about over the stones--now and then uttering the same asinine snort that had first called attention to it-- it marched straight forward to the cliff, just under the spot where karl was seated. then, rearing its body erect, and placing its fore-paws against the rock, it looked up into the face of the astonished plant-hunter! chapter forty nine. an awkward descent. it is probable that the bear at this moment was quite as much astonished as karl, though perhaps not so badly scared. it must have felt alarm though, for on seeing him it permitted its paws to drop suddenly to the ground, and appeared for a moment undecided as to whether it should turn tail and run back into the thicket. it did actually make a turn or two, growling and looking up; and then, as if it had got over its surprise, and was no longer afraid, it once more approached the cliff, and planted itself to spring upward. on first perceiving the bear, karl had been seated upon the ledge, just above the path by which he had climbed up, and it was by this path that the animal was threatening to ascend. on perceiving its intention, karl sprang to his feet, and set to dancing about on the ledge, uncertain what to do, or whither to flee. as to opposing the ascent of the bear, he did not think of such a thing. he had no weapons,--not even a knife; and had he attempted to wrestle with it, trusting to his strength alone, he very well knew that the struggle would end either by his being hugged to death in the arms of the great brute, or pushed off the ledge and crushed to atoms in the fall. he had no idea, therefore, of standing on the defence--he thought only of retreating. but how was he to retreat? whither was he to run? it would be of little use going along the ledge, since the bear could easily follow him; and if the animal meant to attack him, he might as well keep his ground and receive the assault where he stood. karl was still hesitating what to do, and the bear had commenced crawling up, when he chanced to remember the cave. this suggested an idea. perhaps he might conceal himself in the cave? he had no time to consider whether or not this would be a prudent step. if he hesitated any longer, the great black brute would lay hold of him to a certainty; and therefore, without reflecting another moment, he ran off along the ledge. on arriving opposite the cave, he turned into it; and, groping his way for a pace or two, squatted down near the entrance. fortunately for him he had, upon entering, kept well to one side before he squatted. he had done so, in order to place himself under the darkness. had he remained in the central part of the "entrance-hall," he would either have been run over by the bear, or gripped between its huge paws, before he could have pronounced those two famous words, "jack robinson." as it was, he had scarcely crouched down, when the bear entered, still snorting and growling, and rushed past him up the cave. it made no stop near the entrance, but kept right on, until, from the noises it continued to make, karl could tell that it had gone a good way into the interior of the cavern. it was now a question with the plant-hunter what course he should follow--whether remain where he was, or pop out again upon the ledge? certainly his present situation afforded him no security. should the bear return to the attack, he could not expect it to pass without perceiving him. he knew that these animals can see in a very obscure light--almost in the midst of darkness; and therefore he would be seen, or if not seen, he would be scented, which was equally as bad. it was no use, then, remaining inside; and although he might be no safer outside, he determined to go thither. at all events, he would have light around him, and could see his antagonist before being attacked; while the thought of being assailed in the cave, and hugged to death by an unseen enemy in the darkness, had something awful and horrible in it. if he were to be destroyed in this way, neither caspar nor ossaroo might ever know what had become of him--his bones might lie in that dark cavern never to be discovered by human eyes: it was a fearful apprehension! karl could not bear it; and, rising half erect, he rushed out into the light. he did not pause by the entrance of the cave, but ran back along the shelf to the point where the path led up. here he stopped, and for several minutes stood--now looking anxiously back towards the cavern's mouth, and now as anxiously casting his glances down the giddy path that conducted to the bottom of the cliff. had karl known the true disposition of the tibet bear, or the design of the particular one he had thus encountered, he would not have been so badly frightened. in truth, the bear was as much disinclined to an encounter as he, at a loss, no doubt, to make out the character of its adversary. it was probable that karl himself was the first human biped the animal had ever set eyes on; and, not knowing the strength of such a strange creature, it was willing enough to give him a wide berth, provided he would reciprocate the civility! the bear, in fact, was only rushing to its cave; perhaps to join its mate there, or defend its cubs, which it believed to be in danger, and had no idea whatever of molesting the plant-hunter, as it afterwards proved. but karl could not know this, and did not know it. he fancied all the while that the bear was in pursuit of him; that, to attack him, it had sprung up to the ledge; and that it had rushed past him into the cave, thinking he had gone far in; that, as soon as it should reach the interior, and find he was no longer there, it would come rushing out again, and then-- it is well-known that one danger makes another seem less, and that despair will often lend courage to cowards. karl was no coward, although in calm blood the descent of the cliff had cowed him. but now that his blood was up, the danger of the descent appeared less; and, partly inspired by this belief, and partly urged on by the fear of bruin reissuing from the cave, he determined once more to attempt it. in an instant he was on his knees, and letting himself over the edge of the rock. for the first length of himself, he succeeded beyond his expectations, having found the steps below readily enough. he was gaining confidence, and the belief that it would be all right yet, and that, in a few seconds more, he would be at the bottom, where he could soon escape from the bear by taking to a tree, or defend himself with his gun, which was lying, ready loaded, on the ground. all the while, he kept his face upward, except during the moments when it was necessary to glance below, to discover the position of the steps. no wonder he looked upward, with eyes full of anxiety. should the bear attack him now, a terrible fate would be his! still there were no signs of the animal, and karl was gradually getting lower and lower in his descent. he was yet scarce half-way down, and full twenty feet were between his heels and the ground, when he arrived at a point where he could find no resting-place for his feet. he had found one upon a knob of rock; but unfortunately it proved brittle and gave way, leaving him without any thing broad enough to rest even his toe upon. he had already shifted his hold with the hands; and was, therefore, compelled to support the whole weight of his body by the strength of his arms! this was a terrible situation; and unless he could immediately get a rest for his feet, he must fall to the bottom of the cliff! he struggled manfully; he spread out his toes as far as he could reach, feeling the rock on both sides. its face appeared smooth as glass; there was nothing that offered foothold; he believed that he was lost! he tried to reach the notches above him; first with one hand, then with the other. he could just touch, but not grasp them; he could not go up again; he believed that he was lost! his arms were dragged nearly out of joint; his strength was fast going; he believed that he was lost! still he struggled on, with the tenacity by which youth clings to life; he hung on, though certain that every moment would be his last. he heard voices from below--shouts of encouragement--cries of "hold on, karl! hold on!" he knew the voices, and who uttered them. they had come too late; a weak scream was all the answer he could make. it was the last effort of his strength. simultaneous with its utterance, his hands relaxed their hold, and he fell backward from the cliff! chapter fifty. a mysterious monster. karl, poor fellow! was killed, of course; crushed to death upon the rocks; mangled-- stay--not so fast, reader! karl was not killed; not even hurt! he was no more damaged by his tall, than if he had only tumbled from a chair, or rolled from a fashionable couch upon the carpet of a drawing-room! how could this be? you will exclaim. a fall of sheer twenty feet, and upon loose rocks, too! how could he escape being killed, or, at the very least, badly bruised and cut? but there was neither bruise nor scratch upon his body; and, the moment after he had relinquished his hold, he might have been seen standing by the bottom of the cliff, sound in limb, though sadly out of wind, and with his strength altogether exhausted. let us have no mystery about the matter. i shall at once tell you how he escaped. caspar and ossaroo, having expected him to return at an early hour, took it into their heads, from his long absence, that something might be wrong; and, therefore, sallied forth in search of him. they might not have found him so readily but for fritz. the dog had guided them on his trail, so that no time had been lost in scouring the valley. on the contrary, they had come almost direct from the hut to the ravine where he was found. they had arrived just at the crisis when karl was making his last attempt to descend from the ledge. they had shouted to him, when first coming within hail; but karl, intently occupied with the difficulty of the descent, and his anxiety about the bear, had not heard them. it was just at that moment that he lost his foothold, and caspar and ossaroo saw him sprawling helplessly against the cliff. caspar's quick wit suggested what was best to be done. both he and ossaroo ran underneath, and held up their arms to catch karl as he fell; but ossaroo chanced to have a large skin-robe around his shoulders, and, at caspar's prompt suggestion, this was hurriedly spread out, and held between the two, high above their heads. it was while adjusting this, that karl had heard them crying out to him to "hold on." just as the robe was hoisted into its place, karl had fallen plump down into the middle of it; and although his weight brought all three of them together to the ground, yet they scrambled to their feet again without receiving the slightest injury. "ha! ha! ha!" laughed caspar, "just in the nick of time! ha! ha! ha!" of course there followed a good deal of rejoicing and congratulation upon this narrow escape. narrow it certainly was, for had not caspar and ossaroo arrived in the "nick of time," as caspar expressed it, and acted as promptly as they had, poor karl would never have lived to thank them. "well," said caspar, "i think i may call this one of my lucky days; and yet i don't know about that, since it has come so near being fatal to both my companions." "both?" inquired karl, with some surprise. "indeed, yes, brother," answered caspar. "yours is the second life i've had a hand in saving to-day." "what! has ossaroo been in danger, _too_? ha! he is quite wet--every rag upon his body!" said karl, approaching the shikarree, and laying hand upon his garments. "why, so are you, caspar,--dripping wet, i declare! how is this? you've been in the lake? have you been in danger of drowning?" "why, yes," replied caspar. "ossy has." (caspar frequently used this diminutive for ossaroo.) "i might say worse than drowning. our comrade has been near a worse fate--that of being _swallowed up_!" "swallowed up!" exclaimed karl, in astonishment. "swallowed up! what mean you, brother?" "i mean just what i have said--that ossaroo has been in great danger of being swallowed up,--body, bones, and all,--so that we would never have found a trace of him!" "oh! caspar, you must be jesting with me;--there are no whales in the lake to make a jonah of our poor shikarree; nor sharks neither, nor any sort of fish big enough to bolt a full-grown man. what, then, can you mean?" "in truth, brother, i am quite serious. we have been very near losing our comrade,--almost as near as he and i have been of losing you; so that, you see, there has been a double chance against your life; for if ossaroo had not been saved, neither he nor i would have been here in time to lend you a hand, and both of you in that ease would have perished. what danger have i been in of losing both? and then what would have been my forlorn fate? ah! i cannot call it a lucky day, after all. a day of perils--even when one has the good fortune to escape them--is never a pleasant one to be remembered. no--i shudder when i think of the chances of this day!" "but come, caspar!" interposed the botanist, "explain yourself! tell me what has happened to get both of you so saturated with water. who or what came so near swallowing ossaroo? was it fish, flesh, or fowl?" "a fish, i should think," added karl, in a jocular way, "judging from the element in which the adventure occurred. certainly from the appearance of both of you it must have been in the water, and under the water too? most undoubtedly a fish! come, then, brother! let us hear this _fish story_." "certainly a fish had something to do with it," replied caspar; "but although ossaroo has proved that there are large fish in the lake, by capturing one nearly as big as himself--i don't believe there are any quite large enough to swallow him--body, limbs, and all--without leaving some trace of him behind: whereas the monster that did threaten to accomplish this feat, would not have left the slightest record by which we could have known what had become of our unfortunate companion." "a monster!" exclaimed karl, with increased astonishment and some little terror. "well, not exactly that," replied caspar, smiling at the puzzled expression on his brother's countenance; "not exactly a monster, for it is altogether a _natural_ phenomenon; but it is something quite as dangerous as any monster; and we will do well to avoid it in our future wanderings about the lake." "why, caspar, you have excited my curiosity to the highest pitch. pray, lose no more time, but tell me at once what kind of terrible adventure is this that has befallen you." "that i shall leave ossy to do, for it was his adventure, not mine. i was not even a witness to it, though, by good fortune, i was present at the `wind up,' and aided in conducting it to a different result than it would otherwise have had. poor ossy! had i not arrived just in the right time, i wonder where you'd have been now? several feet under ground, i dare say. ha! ha! ha! it certainly is a very serious matter to laugh at, brother; but when i first set my eyes upon ossaroo--on arriving to relieve him from his dilemma--he appeared in such a forlorn condition, and looked the thing so perfectly, that for the life of me i could not help breaking out into a fit of laughter--no more can i now, when i recall the picture he presented." "bother, caspar!" cried karl, a little vexed at his brother's circumlocution, "you quite try one's patience. pray, ossaroo, do you proceed, and relieve me by giving me an account of your late troubles. never mind caspar; let him laugh away. go on, ossaroo!" ossaroo, thus appealed to, commenced his narration of the adventure that had occurred to him, and which, as caspar had justly stated, had very nearly proved fatal; but as the shikarree talked in a very broken and mixed language, that would hardly be intelligible to the reader, i must translate his story for him; and its main incidents will be found in the chapters that follow. chapter fifty one. "bang." it so happened that ossaroo had made for himself a regular fish-net. not being permitted to poison the lake with wolf's-bane, and having no bamboo to make wicker-work of, he looked around for some other substance wherewith to construct a net; and soon found the very thing itself, in the shape of a plant that grew in abundance throughout the valley, and particularly near the shores of the lake. this plant was a tall single-stemmed annual, with a few digitate and toothed leaves, and a loose panicle of greenish flowers at its top. there was nothing _very_ remarkable about its appearance, except that its stem was covered with short rigid hairs, and rose undivided to a height of nearly twenty feet. many plants were growing together, and when first discovered--all three of our adventurers were present at the discovery--caspar had said that they reminded him of hemp. it was not a bad comparison caspar had hit upon, for the plant was _hemp_, as karl immediately made known--the true _cannabis sativa_, though the variety which grows in india, or rather a drug extracted from it, is called _cannabis indica_, or "indian hemp." it was the tallest hemp either karl or caspar had ever seen--some of the stalks actually measuring eighteen feet in length, whereas that of the northern or middle parts of europe rarely reaches the height of an ordinary man. in italy, however, and other southern portions of the european continent, hemp attains a much greater height, rivalling that of india in the length of its stalk and fibre. it was noticed that nearly one half of the plants, although growing side by side, and mingled with the others, were much riper, and, in fact, fast withering to decay. the botanist explained this to his companions, by saying that these were the male plants, and the growing ones the females; for hemp is what is termed by botanists "dioecious"-- that, is, having male flowers on one plant, and female ones upon another. karl farther observed that the male plants, after having performed their office--that is, having shed their pollen upon the females--not only cease to grow taller, but soon wither and die; whereas the females still flourish, and do not arrive at maturity until several weeks afterwards. in consequence of this peculiarity, people who make a business of cultivating hemp pull the male plants at the time they have shed their pollen, and leave the females standing for four or five weeks after. it is well-known that hemp is one of the finest articles in the world for the manufacture of coarse cloth, and every sort of cordage and ropes. the material used for the purpose is the fibrous covering of the stalk, which is separated almost by the same means that are employed in obtaining flax. the hemp, when pulled up, is tied in bundles, and for a time submitted to the action of water. it is then dried and broken, and afterwards "scutched," and rendered still cleaner and finer by a process called "hackling." it makes no difference in the fineness of the fibre whether the stalks be small or large, since the great coarse stems of the italian and indian hemp produce a staple equally as fine as the small kinds grown farther north. the russians extract an oil from the seeds of hemp, which is used by them in cooking, and by painters in mixing their colours. hemp-seed is also given to poultry--as it is popularly believed that it occasions hens to lay a greater number of eggs. small birds are exceedingly fond of it; but a singular fact has been recorded in relation to this--that the effect of feeding bullfinches and goldfinches on hemp-seed alone, has been to change the red and yellow feathers of these birds to a total blackness! notwithstanding the many valuable properties of this plant, it has some that are not only deleterious, but dangerous. it contains a narcotic principle of great power; and, strange to say, this principle is far more fully developed in the indian or southern hemp than in that grown in middle europe. of course this is accounted for by the difference of temperature. any one remaining for a length of time in the midst of a field of young growing hemp, will feel certain ill effects from it--it will occasion headache and vertigo. in a hot country the effect is still more violent, and a kind of intoxication is produced by it. from observing this, the oriental nations have been led to prepare a drug from hemp, which they make use of in the same way as opium, and with almost similar results--for it produces a drowsy ecstatic feeling, always followed by a reaction of wretchedness. this drug is known by the turks, persians, and hindoos, under a variety of names, such as "bang," "haschish," "chinab," "ganga," and others; but under any name it is a bad article to deal in, either for the health of the body or the mind. but ossaroo was not deterred by any considerations about its baneful effects; and as soon as he saw the hemp growing in the valley, he recognised the plant with a shout of joy, and proceeded to prepare himself a dose of "bang." this he did by simply powdering some of the dry leaves, which he obtained from the withered male stalks, and then mixing the powder with a little water. an aromatic substance is usually added to give flavour to the mixture, but ossaroo did not care so much for flavour as strength; and he drank off his "bang" without any adulteration, and was soon in the land of pleasant dreams. the discovery of the hemp had made ossaroo unusually happy. he had been suffering for the want of his "betel" for a long while, and the rhubarb tobacco had proved but a poor substitute. but the hemp was the very thing, as it not only afforded him an intoxicating drink, but its dry leaves were also good for smoking; and they are often used for this purpose when mixed with real tobacco. of course ossaroo had none of the genuine "weed" wherewith to mix them, else he would not have troubled his head about the rhubarb. ossaroo, however, was glad at discovering the hemp for another reason. from its fibres he could make cordage, and with that cordage a net, and with that net he would soon provide their table with a supply of fish. he was not long about it. the hemp was soon pulled, tied in bundles, and carried to the hot spring. there it was immersed under the water, and soon sufficiently "steeped;" for it is well-known that hot water will bring either flax or hemp to the same state in a few hours that can be obtained by weeks of immersion in water that is cold. ossaroo soon prepared a sufficient quantity for his purpose, having separated the fibre by "hand-scutching;" and working continually at the thing, in a few days he succeeded in making a complete mesh-net of several yards in length. it only remained for him to set it, and see what sort of fish were to be caught out of that solitary mountain lake. and now for ossaroo's adventure! chapter fifty two. setting the net. karl had not been very long gone when caspar and ossaroo both left the hut, but not together. they parted from each other, taking different directions. caspar had his gun, and went forth to search for game; while ossaroo proceeded towards the lake, with the intention of capturing fish. as nothing particular happened to caspar--not even so much as the starling of a head of game, or the getting a shot at any thing--there is nothing to tell about him; and i shall therefore proceed at once to ossaroo and his adventure. the shikarree, on arriving at the lake, soon found a proper place to set his net in. there was a little bay on one side that ran for some twenty or more yards into the land, and ended just at the embouchure of the little rivulet that came from the hot springs. this bay was narrower at its mouth than elsewhere, where it formed a kind of miniature "straits." the water in the bay was of considerable depth; but just at its entrance, where the straits were, it was not over three feet, with a white sandy bottom that could be seen shining like silver. any one standing near this point, in clear weather, could easily observe fishes of several sorts and different sizes passing into the bay and out of it, and disporting themselves over the white sand bed that shone sparkling beneath them. it was an interesting sight to watch them at their innocent gambols, and the boys had more than once gone down to the edge of the straits to observe them. but ossaroo had always regarded the sight rather with feelings of chagrin than pleasure; for plainly as these beautiful fish could be seen, not one of them could he capture. even the shoal-water of the straits, where there was a sort of bar, was too deep to be dammed up in any way, and ossaroo had tried one or two plans for taking the fish, without effect. he had used his bow, and endeavoured to kill them with arrows; but they swam too deep, and, somehow or another, he always missed them. the fact was that ossaroo was not practised in shooting fish with the arrow; and not understanding any thing about optics or the laws of refraction, he missed his mark by aiming too high. had he been an indian of north or south america, instead of an indian of the "east indies," he would have pierced those fishes with an arrow at every twang of his bow. instead of that, he only missed them, and was constantly wading in to recover his arrows, but never to bring out any fish. he was, therefore, rather chagrined than pleased to see them so fearlessly and freely playing about over the silvery sand; and this very chagrin had caused him to work with greater diligence while preparing his mesh-net. the net was now ready, and ossaroo walked along chuckling and congratulating himself on the prospect of speedy revenge--for he had actually become inspired with a revengeful feeling against the poor fish, because he had not been able to capture and kill them! the place where ossaroo intended to set his net was across the strait that formed the mouth of the aforesaid bay. he had designed the net for this very place; and had made it of such length, that when at full stretch, it would just reach from one side to the other. the upper edge of the net was attached to a strong piece of raw hide, for this was more easily attainable than a rope of hemp; and on the lower edge there was another strip of hide, to which were fastened the sinkers. these, with the floats at the top--made out of a sort of light-wood that he had found in the valley--would keep the meshes fully spread, and hold the net in a vertical position. it would thus form a complete gate, shutting up the little bay, and leaving neither egress nor ingress for any fish that could not squeeze itself through the meshes. these last had been made very large; for ossaroo did not care for the "small fry." it was the big fishes he was desirous of capturing--some of those large fellows who had so often glided from under his arrows, and put him out of temper by their saucy sporting. he would see now if they would so easily escape the meshes he had so cunningly contrived for them. proceeding, therefore, to the straits, he set his net across the narrowest part, and just by the entrance to the bay. the thing was easily accomplished, he tied the rawhide rope to a sapling on one side, that grew down by the edge of the water. then holding the upper edge-- so that the net would settle regularly in the water--he waded across, carrying the line along with him, and made it secure on the other side. of course the sinkers did their work by dragging the lower selvage downward, while the floats kept the upper edge from dipping below the surface of the water. there was a large tree upon the opposite side--so large that its great branches spread half-way across the little strait--and when the sun was on that side, which it always was after the hour of noon, this tree, covered with thick foliage, quite shadowed the water, rendering it of darkish colour, and somewhat obscure. at this hour the fish could not be so easily seen, even against the background of the silvery sand at the bottom. now ossaroo had chosen the hour when the sun was gone behind the tree, for he knew that in a very clear sunshine the fish would perceive the net, and of course put about, and shy off from it. he had, therefore, waited for the afternoon to make his first essay. having fastened both ends, and adjusted the whole matter to his liking, he sat down upon the bank; and, summoning all his patience, awaited the result. chapter fifty three. ossaroo stuck fast. for more than an hour sat the shikarree watching every ruffle upon the water, and every motion of the floats, but no movement, either of wood or water, seemed to indicate that there were fish in the lake. once or twice there appeared a little "purl" on the surface, near the line of the floats, and ossaroo fancied he had made a "take" of it; but, on wading in and examining the net, not a fin could be found, and he had to wade out again with empty hands. these "purls" were occasioned either by very small fish passing through the meshes, or else by large ones who came up, and touching the net with their snout, had taken the alarm and beat a retreat back to the pools whence they had come. ossaroo was beginning to grow very impatient with his ill-fortune, and was thinking, too, what a sorry figure he would cut in the eyes of his companions, after returning to the hut. he had calculated on a great triumph to be obtained by means of this net; and now he began to doubt whether it might not turn out a humiliation rather than a triumph. at this crisis, however, an idea occurred to him which promised success. it was simply to _drive the fish into the net_, by wading into the water, and making as much noise and commotion as he could. this was certainly a very good plan, and ossaroo lost no time in putting it into execution. having procured a long stick, with an armful of large stones, he entered the bay above the point where the net was placed, and then plunging through the water, at the same time beating it with his stick, and flinging his stones into the deepest part, he succeeded in making noise enough to have frightened all the fishes in the lake. his plan succeeded admirably. in less than five minutes--nay, in less than half that time--the violent shaking of the floats told to the attentive eyes of the shikarree that one or more large fishes were in the net and struggling within its meshes. he now gave up beating the water and ran to make sure of the prey. on approaching the strait, he perceived that a very large fish had been caught. it was near the middle of the net, and ossaroo, wading out, soon "grabbed" and secured it. the strong creature struggled hard, and endeavoured to escape from the grasp of its captor; but the latter put an end to its efforts, by giving it a sharp knock on the head with one of the stones which he still carried. he next proceeded to release it from the meshes; but these, on account of the desperate struggles which the fish had made, were warped and twisted around its gills and fins, and worked into such a labyrinthine puzzle, that ossaroo found it no joke to get them clear. he was full ten minutes in accomplishing this feat, but he at length succeeded, and, holding the huge fish triumphantly in his hands above the surface of the water, he uttered a shout of victory. he was about to wade out to the bank with his prize, when, to his astonishment, he found that he could not move a step! he tried to lift first one leg and then the other, but without success. both were held as fast as if screwed in a vice! at first he was only puzzled and astonished, but his astonishment soon changed to dismay, when he found that, exert himself as he might, he could not move a limb! he at once perceived the cause, for there was no mystery about that. he perceived that both his legs were fast in a quicksand, into which, while engaged with the meshes of the net, he had been gradually sinking. the surface of the sand was already above his knees, so that he could not even bend the joints, and there he stood as firmly as if he had been planted! for some time he struggled to relieve himself, but his struggles were of no avail--he could not drag out one foot or the other. the sand was wedged around his limbs, and held him as firmly as if it had been roman cement. he could not stir from the spot! at first, i have said, ossaroo felt only astonishment, but this feeling soon changed to dismay. it became absolute terror when he perceived that he was _still gradually sinking_!--yes, beyond a doubt, he was going down deeper and deeper. the sand was already up to his thighs, and, as the water was nearly a yard in depth, his chin almost touched the surface. six inches more, and _he would drown_! drown, thus standing erect, with part of his head above the surface, and his eyes wide open and gazing upon the light of heaven! it was an awful situation--a fearful fate that threatened him! it would not be true to say that ossaroo remained silent during all this terrible trial. he did nothing of the kind; on the contrary, as soon as he became aware of his danger, he set up a continuous screaming, and yelling, and shrill piping, that caused both the woods and rocks to ring around him, to the distance of a mile at least. fortunately for the shikarree, caspar chanced to be within the circumference of that mile, wandering about with his gun. the quick ear of the hunter caught the sounds, and knew that they were signals of distress. without a moment's delay, therefore, he set off; and, guided by the cries, soon arrived upon the ground. it was some time, however, before ossaroo was relieved from his perilous position, for although caspar could wade in to his side, he was quite unable to drag him out of the sand. in fact, caspar himself sank so rapidly, whenever he stood still, that he was compelled to keep constantly moving, and changing from one foot to the other. his strength, then, was quite unequal to the task, and both began to be uneasy about the result. up to this time caspar had been laughing heartily at the ludicrous spectacle which ossaroo presented, with only his head above the water, and his face wearing the most lugubrious of looks; but caspar's mirth was soon dissipated, when he perceived the real danger in which the shikarree was placed; his laughter was brought abruptly to an end, and an expression of anxiety now clouded his countenance. but caspar was just the one for quick thought and action in a ease of danger like this, and, almost in an instant, he conceived a plan by which ossaroo might be saved. crying to the latter to keep still, he dashed out of the water and loosed the net at both ends. he then drew out the long rope that formed its upper border, cutting away the meshes and floats. this done, he rapidly climbed the great tree, and sprawled out along one of its horizontal limbs that stretched right over the place where the shikarree was fixed. he had taken the rope along with him; and, now throwing one end to ossaroo, and directing him to fasten it around his body, he passed the other over the branch, and slipped down it into the water. in a few seconds the rope was made fast upon the body of ossaroo--just under his armpits--and then both laid hold of the other end, and commenced pulling with all their might. to their great joy their united strength proved sufficient for the purpose. it out-balanced the weight and tenacity of the sand; and after a good spell of pulling and tugging, ossaroo's limbs were drawn upward and once more set free. then both rushed out to the bank, and the same trees and rocks that so lately echoed the mournful cries of the shikarree, now rang with shouts of joy. chapter fifty four. a demand for bear's grease. the peril from which he had just escaped, drove all thoughts of fishing out of ossaroo's head, for that day at least. moreover, the net was damaged by the rope having been so rudely taken out, and would require repairs before it could be set again; so, taking up the fish that had been caught and the net also, caspar and the fisherman walked off toward the hut. on arriving there, they were surprised to find that karl had not returned, for it was getting late; and fearing that some accident might have happened to him, they lost no time in setting forth in search of him. as already known they were guided upon his trail by fritz, and arrived just in time to save karl's life. "but tell us, brother," inquired caspar after a while, "what took you up there anyhow?" karl now entered into a detail of _his_ afternoon's adventures--telling them at the same time of the hope he had conceived of their being able to scale the precipice with ladders. when he came to the bear, caspar was all ears. "what! a bear?" he exclaimed; "a bear, you say, brother?--which way did it go?" "into the cave--it is still there." "still in the cave! good! we'll have him out--let us go after him at once." "no, brother, it is better not,--it might be dangerous to attack, him in the cave." "not a bit of it," replied the daring hunter; "ossaroo says that these bears are great cowards, and that he would not be afraid to attack one single-handed with his spear. you think so, shikarree?" "yes, sahib, he bear--big coward, me no fear him anywhere." "you remember, karl, how the other one ran from us--just like a deer would have done." "but this one is a different kind," suggested karl; and karl proceeded to describe the bear which he had encountered. ossaroo, however, knew the animal by the description given, and declared that it was quite as timid a creature as the sloth-bear. he had hunted this kind in the sylhet hills--where he had been upon an expedition--and where, he asserted, the tibet bear was to be found in considerable numbers. it would not be dangerous, therefore, to attack it in the cave, or anywhere else. such was the opinion of the shikarree. karl at length ceased to urge his objections. he began to think that the bear had not been in pursuit of him, after all,--else it would have returned out of the cave on not finding him--most likely the cave was its den, and it was to hide itself there that it had rushed so determinedly past him. this appeared probable enough, since they had been waiting a good while, and bruin had not yet condescended to show himself upon the ledge. it was resolved, therefore, that they should all enter the cavern, and kill the bear if possible. this resolve, however, was not made without considerable deliberation; but two reasons were at length brought forward that not only decided the point in favour of killing the bear, but rendered it a matter of some consequence that they should succeed in this design. the first reason was that they really wanted the animal, and it was of importance to them that it should be killed. it was not for its fine skin they wanted it--though that might be of use to them in the cold winter, now near at hand--nor did they want to kill the bear merely for the pleasure and excitement of the thing. no. they had a very different object in view. they wanted the carcass, or rather that portion of it that is termed the "fat." they wanted the "bear's grease." for what purpose? you will ask. to make their hair grow? nothing of the sort. the hair of all three, from late neglect, was long enough-- quite as long as they could have wished it. caspar's curls hung over his shoulders, and ossaroo's snaky black tresses dangled down his back like the tail of a horse. even karl's silken locks were long enough to have satisfied the most romantic of refugees. no. they wanted the bear's fat, not for their hair, but for their kitchen. they wanted it to cook with, for one thing, but a still more important use they intended to apply it to,--and that was for making candles! for both of the above purposes they had need of the bear's fat, since the other animals which they were accustomed to hunt and kill were chiefly ruminant animals, with very little fat upon them, and never enough of it to cook their own flesh. you who live in a land where there is plenty of lard and butter, can hardly understand what it is to be without these essential articles of the _cuisine_. in most civilised countries that valuable pachyderm,-- the pig,--supplies the desideratum of lard; and you will scarce appreciate the importance of this article until you have travelled in a country where the hog is not found among the domesticated animals. in such places the smallest morsel of fat is highly prized, for without it, good cooking is a dry and difficult business. such considerations as these determined the fate of the bear. the hunters well knew that animals of this kind yield large quantities of the very best fat, which they then stood in want of, and would need still more during the long nights of winter. perhaps there might be more than one bear in the cave; so much the better; one or more, they must be attacked and killed. but there was another reason why they had determined to enter the cave; one of far greater consideration than the killing of the bear. it was caspar who had suggested it. "why," asked he, "why might we not get out by this very cave? what if it should prove to run upward, and have an entrance above, or on the other side of the mountain?" both karl and ossaroo were startled at the suggestion. the idea put all of them into a flurry of excitement. "i have read of such things," continued caspar; "of great caverns that extended from one side of a mountain to the other. there is one in america that has been traced for twelve miles; the mammoth, i mean! this might be one of the same kind. you say you saw far into it, karl? let us explore it then, and see where it leads to." it was but a slight hope, still it was a hope; and it could not cost much trouble to give the cave a thorough exploration. it would be but a small matter compared with the construction of ladders to scale the cliff; besides, they were now convinced by a farther examination of the precipice that this was not practicable, and had quite abandoned all thought of it. should the cavern prove to be of vast extent, and have another opening elsewhere than in the valley, they might escape from their terrible prison, and their troubles would be at an end. with such hopes,--that were indeed little better than fancies,--they consoled themselves for the moment. it was resolved, then, that on the morrow the cave was to be entered. for all the assistance they would have from the light of the sun, they might as well have begun their exploration at night. but they were not ready to begin. torches had to be procured; and a notched tree by which to ascend the cliff; and to obtain these required time. they would have them ready by the morrow. with this determination, they returned to their hut; and at once set about making the torches, and preparing the notched tree for their ladder. there were other little preparations to be made, but most of them were completed before they thought of retiring to rest. chapter fifty five. bear-hunt by torch-light. as soon as it was daylight again, they went to work once more, and finished their preparations for entering the cave, and at a tolerably early hour they took the route for the ravine. two of them carried the _improvised_ ladder; which was only a slender pine-tree, of about forty feet long, notched by the axe, the notches being at intervals of a foot to eighteen inches apart. at its more slender part, there were no notches required, as the natural branches of the tree, lopped into short stumps, were to be used as foot-holds, and would serve the purpose better than any notches. forty feet of even the slenderest tree when green would be load sufficient for a couple of stout men. this one was not green; for they had been fortunate enough to find one that had fallen long ago, and that was now quite dead and dry. for all that, it "tied" the united strength of caspar and ossaroo to carry it along, for it was they who performed this duty. karl was loaded with the guns, torches, and the great spear of the shikarree. fritz carried nothing except his tail; and this he bore aloft in a swaggerish manner, as though he knew that something more than common was designed, and that grand game was to be killed that day. they moved but slowly; but after about two hours' walking, including many stoppages and rests, they arrived within the ravine and under the ledge. it occupied about another hour to erect the ladder. it was placed nearly opposite the mouth of the cave, instead of by the path; for there appeared a favourable crevice in the rocks, which promised to hold it steady, and keep it from turning round; an important consideration with so rude a ladder. the upper end of the tree was laid into the crevice, and fitted exactly. the lower end was rendered firm by something like a cartload of heavy boulders being built around it. it could neither shift nor turn. it was fast as a shut trap. nothing now remained but to ascend, light the torches, and enter the cave. a question, however, arose, whether bruin might still be inside? it was doubtful enough, and there was no means of knowing. he had ample time to have gone out, since they left the place on the preceding evening, and, very likely, had wandered forth for a nocturnal ramble; but, had he returned? was he now "at home" to receive them? or, was he still abroad, robbing the bushes of their fruit, and the bees of their honey? no one could tell; there was no sign visible; no hint far visitors. the door was open, and all who came night enter or not, as they pleased. for a while, our hunters had some hesitation about this matter, and debated the point as to whether it might not be better to lie in ambush, and watch for bruin going out or returning home. most certainly the cave was his home. the path leading up had all the appearance of being much used. the rocks were scratched by his claws, and discoloured by his feet--his, or those of other animals. karl had noticed all this, when making his first ascent; therefore, there need be no fear but that the bear would come back in one direction or another. he might be trapped, and that would save a struggle; but this mode was not to the liking either of caspar or ossaroo, and fritz apparently voted for a bear-fight. ossaroo, especially, declared that there was not the slightest danger in attacking him, armed as they were; not so much as there would be in an encounter with a sambur stag. he suggested, moreover, that it might be days before they would set eyes upon him; that he might go to sleep in his den, and lie there for a week without showing himself; and, therefore, it would never do to wait for him. he must be looked for within the cave, and assailed in his gloomy stronghold. so counselled the hindoo hunter. but it needed no argument. karl alone was for the prudent way of setting a trap, and capturing the animal without risk; but karl was as anxious as either of the others to explore the cave. the words of caspar had made a deep impression upon him; and, slight as was the hope that caspar's conjecture might be true, still there was something in it. it _might_ be so. once more, it was like the drowning man catching at the straw. without farther hesitation the ladder was set up, as already described; and, shortly after, all four--for fritz is to be counted in this adventure--stood upon the ledge in front of the cavern's mouth. each had now possession of his own weapons: karl, his rifle; caspar, the double-barrel; and ossaroo, his spear, bow and arrows, hatchet and knife. there were two torches, each one nearly a yard in length, with handles that measured nearly another yard. they were made of splints from the pine-trees, that had been shared off while dressing the latter for the bridge. they were now quite dry, and, tied together in a bundle, would burn splendidly. they were no novelty, these torches. they had made similar ones before, and tried them; and, therefore, they could depend upon them to give them light within the cave. they entered without lighting the torches, intending only to use them when it became necessary. perhaps, after all, the cave might be of small extent, though karl believed that such was not the case. he had noted that the bear had gone a good way back, as he was able to judge by his snorts and growling. this point was soon settled. when they had proceeded many paces from the entrance, and the light of the sun began to fail them, they could perceive that the cavern grew wider and higher, and, like a great, black gateway, yawned far back into the rocks. apparently, there was no termination to it! the tinder which they had prepared was now set on fire; and the ends of the torches, touched with pine-tree resin, were soon ignited, and began to blaze. all at once the cavern shone with a thousand lights, which had not been hitherto observed. the sparkling stalactites projecting downward from the roof, with here and there the drops of clear filtered water, gave back the glare from the torches in a thousand coruscations. it seemed to our young hunters as though they were treading the famed halls of aladdin's palace. on they marched along the wide passage, holding their torches on high, and, at intervals, pausing to examine some nook or chamber that opened right or left--still searching for the bear. as yet, they had seen no traces of the animal; though, from the excited baying of fritz, it was plain to them that either bruin himself, or some other quadruped, had passed up the cave before them. the dog was evidently upon a hot scent, and lifting it as fast as they could follow him. a little after, fritz doubled to one side, and appeared busy with some object by the side of the cave. the hunters were under the impression that the game had been found, and halted, each bringing his piece to the ready. after a moment, however, fritz glided out, and again sprang forward on the trail. the torches were carried up to where fritz had made his temporary pause, and, under their light, a large pile of withered leaves and grass was made visible. it was the snug den of bruin--still warm where his huge carcass had lain; but the cunning brute was no longer "abed." he had been roused by the noises of his enemies, and had retreated farther into the cavern. fritz was again moving forward along the trail, uttering an occasional "growl" as he went. he was by no means a fast dog at taking up a scent, nor yet on the run. these were not his qualities. but he was stanch and sure, and desperate when once he grappled with the game. so sure was he, that, whenever he started off upon a trail, you might rely upon it, with perfect confidence, that the game was before you. the three hunters thought no longer of looking for the bear anywhere else than before the snout of fritz; and, therefore, the chase became simplified to keeping the hound in view. the nature of the ground--here covered with blocks of loose stone, there with huge stalagmites-- prevented the dog from making rapid progress. the bear had often doubled and halted, no doubt having some difficulty himself in making way in the darkness; and this doubling caused much delay to fritz; so much, that the torch-bearers could generally keep him in sight. now and again, he became lost to view; and then there was a halt, and some moments of indecision, which were ended only by the long howl of the hound echoing through the cavern, and guiding them to his whereabouts. you will be surprised that they should at any time have lost the chase. you will fancy that, by keeping on, they must overtake fritz in time, or meet him returning. such might have been true, had there been only one passage through this stupendous cavern; but, instead of one, they saw scores of vaulted aisles forking at intervals, and traversing in very different directions. they had long since turned both to the right and the left-- more than once turned--without any other guide than the baying of the hound, or the view of his yellow body, as he scrambled along the trail. an immense cavern if was, full of ways, and passages, and halls, and chambers; many of them so like each other, that the hunters could not help thinking they were running in a maze, and going repeatedly over the same ground! by this time karl had begun to reflect, and his reflection was, that they were proceeding rashly. certain ideas were rising in his mind-- ideas somewhat undefined--but one among the rest was, that, going as they were, without taking either "bearings or distances," they might get lost! before he had time to call his companions to a halt and take some deliberation about the matter, a peculiar noise struck upon their ears-- a noise that was easily recognised as being made by the united voices of two angry animals--a dog and a bear. beyond a doubt it was bruin and fritz--beyond a doubt they were "in grips!" the plant hunters--by captain mayne reid chapter fifty six. lost in the cave. the scene of their encounter was at no great distance--about twenty yards off; and, guided by the loud growling and "worrying," the hunters easily directed themselves towards the spot. after stumbling over stalagmites, and now and then hitting their heads against the projecting points of the stalactites, they arrived upon the ground; and the glare of the torches was thrown upon two animals--a dog and a bear. they were near the middle of an immense open hall, or chamber of the cavern. both were in fighting attitudes; the bear standing upon the flat top of a rock--about three feet above the surrounding level--and the dog assailing his leg, now on one side of the rock, and now upon the other. the bear was defending himself with his huge paws; and at intervals flung the forepart of his body downward, with the design of seizing the hound in his hug. fritz well knew the danger of being embraced in the fore-arms of a bear, and therefore made his attacks from behind; springing up at the hind-quarters of bruin, and biting him in the hams. to avoid these assaults upon his rear, the bear kept turning round and round, as though he was spinning about upon a pivot! it was altogether a laughable sight to witness the curious contest between the two quadrupeds, and had the hunters been pursuing the bear for mere amusement, they would have permitted the fight to go on for some time without interfering in it. but amusement was just then out of the question. the fat of bruin was a thing of far more importance; and now that the hunters had become aware of the vast size and endless labyrinths of the cavern, they perceived that it was quite possible in such a place to lose both the bear and his fat. he might have escaped them as easily as if he were in the open woods. with these ideas, therefore, they were only too anxious to put an end to the struggle, and secure the game. the bear could not have offered them a better opportunity. his position upon the rock rendered him a conspicuous mark, both for the bullets of the guns and the arrows of ossaroo. besides, there was no danger of wounding fritz, if good aim was taken by the marksmen. good aim _was_ taken--a couple of loud reports echoed through the cave-- one of ossaroo's arrows whistled, and penetrated the thick shaggy skin-- and the next moment the huge black mass rolled down from the rock, and lay back uppermost, kicking his paws about in the last throes of death. then fritz leaped upon his upturned breast, seized the white throat between his jaws, and choked and worried at it till the last breath was squeezed out of poor bruin's body, that the next moment lay quite limp and motionless. fritz was now scolded off, and the torches were held near, in order that the hunters might examine the game they had killed. a splendid specimen the bear was--one of the biggest and fattest of his kind; and no doubt would yield them a large amount of the precious "grease." they had scarcely made this reflection when another of far different character forced itself upon their minds, and compelled them to stand gazing at each other with looks of mute inquiry. each waited for one of the others to speak; and although no one had yet said a word, all equally felt that they were in a dilemma. what dilemma? you will ask. the game had been secured--what difficulty would there be in dragging it out of the cave, and afterwards taking it home to their hut? all this may appear easy enough to you, because you do not yet understand the situation in which the hunters were placed--you do not comprehend why they stood gazing upon each other with troubled looks. why they did so was simply this:--while examining the carcass of the bear, they observed that their _torches were burnt out_! not quite to the ends, it is true; but so near that they could not be depended on to light them a score of yards. they were already flickering and burning dimly--in a few seconds more they would be quite extinguished; and what then? ay, what then? that was the thought that was troubling them--that it was that caused them to stand looking anxiously towards one another. even they themselves did not fully comprehend the peril of their situation. they saw that they were going to be left in darkness--the perfect darkness of a dungeon--but it had not yet occurred to them that _they might never again see the light_! that appalling thought had not yet shaped itself in their minds--they only believed that the want of torches would put them to much inconvenience--they would have great trouble, and perhaps difficulty, in finding their way out of the cave, and getting the bear along with them--they might first have to grope their way out, and then get fresh torches, and return for the game; and all this would take a good deal of time, and give them a large amount of trouble; but never mind that--the prize they had obtained in the fat of the bear, and his fine hide--which would make a grand winter robe--would repay them for all. ha! it was only after their torches had gone quite out, and they were left in total darkness--only after they had groped and groped, and wandered about for hours--now sprawling over loose rocks, now tumbling down into deep clefts--only after they had gone through all this, and still saw no light--no sign by which they could even guess at their whereabouts, that they became fully alive to the peril of their situation, and began to experience the awful apprehension already expressed--that _they might never again see the light_! and such in reality was their fear, when, after hours spent in fruitless wandering, they stood holding each other's hands, crouching and cowering together in the midst of that amorphous darkness! chapter fifty seven. a ramble in the dark. their dread was not at all unreasonable, considering the vast extent of the cavern--considering the distance which they knew they had penetrated--considering the various devious and like ways through which they had passed while in pursuit of the bear--and, above all, considering the absolute darkness that now reigned around them. of course they could see nothing, not even each other; not one of them could have seen the nose upon his own face, had he been looking for it. place yourself in the midst of complete darkness, and you will wonder how little progress you can make in any direction. indeed, you cannot follow a right line even were there no impediment in your way. after you have advanced a few steps, your face will begin to turn in a new direction, and perhaps keep turning, until you have gone round the four cardinal points! you need not be told this; "blind man's buff" will have imparted to you the idea, long ere now. you will remember that, after having made a turn or two, you could not tell to which side of the room you were facing, unless you laid your hand upon the piano, or some piece of furniture, and recognised it by the touch. how just like the blind man in the game, so the three were situated; with the exception that they had no piano--no furniture--no object of any kind--to guide them. they knew not where to turn--they knew not which way to advance--which way to go back. for many minutes, they stood paralysed by the confusion. as already stated, they held each other by the hand, and in this way they stood. each feared to let the others go, lest he might lose them! of course this was but an idle tear, as their voices would enable them to keep together; but there was something so awe-inspiring in their situation, that they all felt childish and helpless, and they needed the support of one another. after remaining at rest a while, they started off afresh; holding each other by the hands, as they moved. this precaution was more necessary while they were in motion than at rest. they dreaded that one of their number might fall over some high steep or into a deep hole; and while thus clinging together, the danger would be less--that is, if all three did not go over together. for several hours they wandered about, and, according to their own belief, must have walked many miles; but of course their progress was slow, as they had to feel their way at _every_ step. they grew tired with the effort they had to make, and at intervals sat down to rest themselves; but their feelings would not permit them to pause long; and they would up to their feet again, and scramble on as before. for many hours--and many miles, say they--they walked, but saw no ray of light to cheer them--saw nothing, felt nothing that they could recognise. at times they thought they must be far into the mountain-- perhaps miles from the entrance of the cavern; at other times they fancied they had gone several times through the same passage; and once or twice they knew they had done so, by recognising the rocks over which they had passed. this gave them a hope that in time they might get acquainted with the different turnings and passages,--and that would have been possible enough; but it would have taken a long time, and what were they to subsist upon while acquiring this knowledge? they thought of this, and saw at once the foolishness of the hope they had conceived. the dog fritz moved along, sometimes before, sometimes by their side, and sometimes in the rear. he kept silent, seemingly as much frightened as they. they could tell he was there, by hearing at intervals the scratching of his claws upon the rocks, when some boulder lay in the way, and compelled him to scramble over it. what could fritz do more than they? in such darkness he could not see his nose any more than they? no--but he could make use of that nose to direct himself, which was more than any of his masters could do. "ha!" shouted caspar, as this idea passed through his mind. "ha, brother! ossaroo! why might not fritz guide us? why might he not scent his way out of this horrid dungeon? surely he must be as tired of it as we are!" "let us try what may be done," rejoined karl, by his tone showing that he had no great hope in the experiment. "call him up, caspar! he knows you best." caspar addressed the dog by name, adding a few coaxing words, and in an instant fritz was by his side. "how shall we manage? leave him to himself?" inquired caspar. "i fear he will stand still, and not attempt to go ahead of us," replied karl. "we can try him." and as caspar made this suggestion, all stood silent and listening. they stood a long while to give the dog a fair trial, but he knew not what they wanted, and he remained patiently beside them without manifesting any disposition to leave. the experiment was a failure. "now," suggested karl, "let us urge him forward and follow after-- perhaps he will lead us in that way." fritz was now commanded to advance, and obeyed the command--for they could hear him start off with a slight whimper; but to their chagrin they found that they could not tell in what direction he had gone. had he been running on the scent of some animal, his occasional baying would have served to guide them, as it had done while they were chasing the bear. now, however, the dog ran without noise; and although they could hear an occasional scrape of his claws, yet it was not sufficiently frequent or continuous to guide them. the experiment again failed, and fritz was whistled back. but it was not without result. like many other failures, it led to reflection and a rearrangement of the machinery. a better plan soon offered itself to the quick wit of caspar; and ossaroo had been thinking of something similar when he cried out-- "tie string to ee tail!" "no," replied caspar, "not to his tail, for then he would not go forward; but let us hold him in a leash with the string round his neck, in a regular way. that will be better, i warrant." no sooner said than done. thongs and belts were loosed from powder-horns and pouches; a leash was constructed and fastened round the neck of the dog, and he was then hunted forward as before. caspar handled the straps, and the others followed, guided by caspar's voice. in this order they had scrambled along for a hundred yards or more, when the dog began to whimper, and then to bay, as if going upon a trail; and in a moment or two after, he came, all of a sudden, to a stop. caspar felt by his strong pulling on the leash, that the dog had sprung forward and seized something. he stooped down and felt before him. instead of the hard cold rocks, his fingers came in contact with a mass of long shaggy hair. alas! their hopes were dispelled. instead of conducting to the mouth of the cave, fritz had only brought them back to the carcass of the bear! chapter fifty eight. cavern-life. they were all filled with disappointment, and particularly that the dog, having arrived at the spot where the bear had been killed, would go no farther. drive him as they would by commands, or coax him by words of encouragement, he would not part from the carcass. even when carried off to some distance, and let go, he always drew caspar back to the same spot. it was very vexatious. so thought they at first; but after a little reflection, they began to think better of it; and to recognise in this incident something more than chance. karl especially thought so, and pointed out to his companions that the hand of providence had to do with it; and that that same hand would yet conduct them safely out of the dismal dungeon into which they had so imprudently ventured. karl's words had a cheering effect; for he pointed out how fortunate it was for them that they had once more found the carcass. but for that they should have had nothing to eat, and, as a matter of course, would have soon perished of hunger. now, however, that the bear was found, they could subsist upon his flesh for days; and during one of these days they might succeed in reaching the entrance. they would take care not to lose the knowledge of the place where the carcass lay; and whatever excursion they might make from that spot, they should always arrange some clue by which they might return to it. fortunately for them there was water in the cavern. in many places it dripped from the rocks in sufficient quantity to give them as much as they wanted for drink; and not far off they had crossed a little rivulet that ran down the bottom of one of the great galleries. this they knew they could find again; and, consequently they felt no apprehensions on the score of water. it was a question, then, how long they would be in finding the entrance, and how long they could live upon the flesh of the bear. the finding of bruin's carcass had considerably bettered their prospects; and as they gathered around it to dinner, they felt more cheerful than they had done since the moment when they had laid it low. as they ate, it was dark enough around them to have called the meal a supper; and it was long enough since they had eaten their breakfast-- though they could not guess how long--but as they had eaten nothing since breakfast, they styled this first meal upon the bear-meat their dinner. no dinner or supper was ever cooked like that--_it was not cooked at all_! for they had no fire wherewith to cook it. they were not squeamish. a very long interval had transpired since they had eaten their slight breakfast. karl and caspar had refrained from the uncooked viand until their appetite could resist no longer; and then the raw flesh of the bear became palatable enough. it was supper time with ossaroo. his stomach had more easily got over its scruples, and he had bolted his dinner long, long ago; so that when the others sat down to their first meal, ossaroo was able to join them at his second. both karl and caspar ate heartily enough,--quite as heartily as if a chandelier with its wax-lights had been sparkling over their heads. perhaps the absence of light was a circumstance in their favour. the huge paws--those "titbits" of the bear's flesh--constituted their dinner; and hunters will tell you that, boiled, roasted, or _raw_, a bear's paw is not bad eating. when they had finished their meal, all three groped their way to where they heard the trickling of water. they found a place where it oozed in a rapid and continuous dripping through the rocks; and, applying their mouths to this subterranean fountain, they were enabled in a few moments to slake their thirst. they then returned to where they had dined; and, being now much wearied with their long-continued exertions, they stretched themselves upon the rocks with the intention of having some sleep. though their bed was a hard one, it was not cold; for in the interior of great caverns it is never cold. there the temperature is more equable than that of the atmosphere without--being cooler in summer and warmer in winter, so that variety is scarcely known--at all events, the extremes of heat and cold are never felt. this is the ease with the mammoth cave of kentucky, and other large caverns; and on this account it has been thought that persons suffering from pulmonary complaints might derive benefit by dwelling in caves. there are many such patients who make their home in the mammoth; and where a commodious hotel enables them to live in comfort, and even luxury! it is possible enough that the mild and equable temperature that exists under ground may enable the victim of consumption to prolong life for a considerable time: but it is doubtful whether any radical cure can be effected in this way; and the unfortunate sufferer, once he emerges from his subterranean dwelling, will be in as much danger from the insidious disease as before. little did karl, caspar, and ossaroo, care for the mild atmosphere that surrounded them in the cavern. they would gladly have exchanged it for the hottest country in the torrid zone, or the coldest spot in all the arctic regions. biting mosquitos in the former, or biting frost in the latter, would have been more welcome than that mild and gentle climate that surrounded them--that gloomy atmosphere, where sun had never shone, and where snow had never fallen. notwithstanding their anxiety of mind, their weariness at length overcame them, and all three fell fast asleep. chapter fifty nine. exploration of the cave. they slept a good long while, though, whether if was by night or by day, they had no means of judging. they could only guess at it, by remembering how much time had transpired since they first entered the cave; but to show how little trust can be placed in any conjectures of this sort, they differed from one another in their estimates full twelve hours! karl thought they had been wandering about nearly two days and a night; while the others believed the time not so long by twelve hours at least. karl adduced a reason for his belief--the ravenous appetite which they had acquired, and which must have taken a long time to grow upon them; moreover, they had slept so long that he thought it must be in the night-time--the natural time of rest, which the nerves would understand without any clock to guide them. karl admitted that his second reason was somewhat lame, since, having missed one night of sleep, their nerves on the day following would not be very nice about what hour they should feel inclined towards slumber. it is probable, however, that karl was right in his conjecture. they had been long hours wandering to and fro, and had rested many times. the fuelling of horrid anxiety under which they had been suffering always impelled them to press on; and no wonder they had lost all definite recollection of the distance they had gone, or the time thus fruitlessly spent. it had taken them a good while to get the ladder in place; and the first day had been far spent before they were ready to penetrate the cave. it was, therefore, quite probable that their first sleep had been during the second night, after entering their gloomy chamber. whether or not they had slept long and soundly enough--though not without troubled dreams--in which they had encountered bears, fierce shaggy yak-bulls, deep dangerous pits into which they were about to fall, and high cliffs they were trying in vain to climb--it was quite natural they should dream of such things. it was the awaking that was most unnatural. instead of a bright sunshine to greet their eyes, or the soft blue light of morning, they saw nought--all around was gloom. instead of the music of birds, or even the cheering sounds of active life, they heard nought. all around was the silence of the tomb! a tomb it might yet be to them--for a short while, perhaps, a living tomb; but, sooner or later, a tomb for their dead bodies--a sepulchre for their bones! such were their reflections on awaking. their dreams while asleep were even less horrid than the reality to which they awoke! if the sense of sleep regards not the absence of light, still less is the appetite of hunger affected by it. once more the bear's paws were drawn upon for a meal, and afforded it without boil or broil, bread or salt. as soon as they had eaten to their satisfaction, they rose to their feet, and set about the work which karl had already traced out in his thoughts. of course, before going about it he had fully communicated his plans to his companions. they were to make excursions in every direction from the spot where the bear had been killed. there were many galleries leading from the place--they had noticed that while their torches were yet burning. all these they designed to explore, one after another. the explorations were at first to be for short distances, until they had made themselves familiar with the passage extending in some one particular direction. this they would accomplish by _feeling_ the rocks on either side, until they became thoroughly acquainted with the protuberances, or other marks that could be used as guides. if none existed, they would make them, by piling up stones at such places, or chipping a piece from the stalactites with the hatchet. their design, in effect, was to "blaze" the passages, so that they would know them again, just as a woodman marks his way through the pathless forest. it was altogether an ingenious idea, and one that with time and patience promised success. indeed, it seemed the only plan that held out a hope beyond mere chance--for amidst so many devious ways, to have proceeded without some plan would have been to trust to chance, and that they had tried already. they well knew that to carry out their design would require both time and patience; but by this, all three were well drilled in the lessons of patience. the bridge-building had been a school for them. it might not take much time, but it might; and for either result had they made their minds ready. in all probability, however, they might be long before they should set their eyes upon a ray of the sun's light--before they should see that bright disk of the cavern's mouth, that they had scarce looked at while leaving it behind them. it was their intention then, first, to take one particular direction, and thoroughly explore that before penetrating into any other. when the first should be traversed, either to its termination, or to such a length as might influence them in believing they were in the wrong way, they would then leave it, and set to exploring some other. sooner or later, they believed that this would bring them into the passage that would conduct them out of their gigantic prison. before setting about the execution of their plan, they once more made trial of fritz, as upon the day before; but the dog would not part from the spot; and though, encouraged by the voice of caspar, he would beat about for a certain space--it always ended by his returning to the carcass of the bear. as soon as they became convinced that fritz would not guide them, they released him from the string; and then, in real earnest, set about carrying out the design of karl. their mode of proceeding was quite ingenious. they groped about until they found a large passage that led from the chamber or opening in which they were. this gallery they resolved to explore first. lest by any mistake they might not find their way back, one always remained at a certain point; while the other two went ahead--stopping at intervals to blaze their way. of course should the two who acted as pioneers make a wrong turn, so as not to know the route back, the voice of the third would at once guide them. in this manner they proceeded without much difficulty, though with great slowness. you will fancy they might have gone fast enough, their retreat being thus secured for them. but there were many obstacles to prevent a rapid advance. each lateral passage they came to--and there were numbers of these--had to be marked for future examination, and the mark had to be made distinct and recognisable--this operation sometimes requiring a considerable time to effect. they had also to make their blazes at short intervals, so that these might be the more easily found upon their return. another impediment was found in the clambering over sharp boulders, and getting across clefts that everywhere intercepted their path. ay, slowly and with great caution were they compelled to make their advance, and when _night came_--that is, when they had grown wearied and hungry, and wanted food and rest--they calculated they had not proceeded above half-a-mile from their place of departure. of course no light had cheered them throughout those long working hours; but for all that they returned to the resting-place with their hearts still buoyed up with hope. to-morrow,--or the morrow after, or still another morrow, what mattered it?--they felt high confidence that on some morrow they would look once more upon the sun. chapter sixty. preserving the bear's-meat. there was one thing, however, about which they were apprehensive, and that was about their larder--how long would it last? the bear was large and fat, they could tell by the "feel" of him; and if they drew upon the carcass for moderate rations, it would hold out for many days; but then how was the meat to be preserved? lying as it was--still unskinned--it must soon become unfit for food, though not so soon as in the open air; for meat will keep much longer in a cave,--that is, if it be a very deep one, than it will when exposed to the full light of the sun. this is easily explained. the principle of decomposition exists in the atmosphere itself, as is well-known to every one who deals in the hermetically-sealed airtight canisters of preserved meats; and if you can but remove the atmosphere entirely from a piece of fish, flesh, or vegetable, it is supposed that it will keep for ever! in the interior of a cavern, of course there is still an atmosphere, but it is rarer and of a less changeable sort, and, most probably, less active in its powers to cause decay. hence it is that within the cave decomposition is slower than without; and, indeed, there are some caverns where, instead of being decomposed, the bodies of men and animals have been found still retaining their proper forms, only shrivelled into smaller size, and dried up like mummies. though there was water here and there in the cavern, in all other places it was exceedingly dry. they could tell that the air was so, because the rocks felt dry, and in some places there was dust that was perfectly ready to puff up at the touch. they had noticed this while in pursuit of the bear. both bear and dog had more than once been found enveloped in a cloud of dust as the hunters came near them with the torches. indeed, they could tell that the atmosphere of the cavern was dry by simply breathing it in,--it felt dry to the throat. under the keen apprehension which they had lest the meat should spoil before they could find the entrance of the cave, their wits were set to work to find some means of preserving it. salt they had none, and therefore pickling was out of the question. had they been able to procure the material to make a fire, they could have managed without salt by smoking the meat; but fire-wood was just then as difficult to be got at as salt. even without either, had they only been in the open air, with the warm sun shining down upon them, they could have cured that bear-meat so that it would have kept good for months. alas! the sun's rays were as inaccessible as either the salt or the fuel. preserving the meat by any one of the three different modes of salting, smoking, or jerking, was alike out of their power. having already noticed the extreme dryness of the atmosphere, it occurred to them that if the meat were cut into very thin slices or strips, and then hung up, or spread out upon the rocks, it might not spoil at once--at all events, it might keep for a longer period than if suffered to lie as it was in one great mass. this was ossaroo's suggestion, and a good one it was. at all events, nothing better could be thought of, and after some consideration, they determined to act upon it. where were they to procure lights? how was the bear to be skinned without light? how was the flesh to be cut up and spread out? these were questions that did not present the slightest obstacle--our adventurers scarce gave thought to them. they had by this time almost learnt to work in the darkness; and as for the skinning of the bear, ossaroo could have performed that operation if it had even been darker,--supposing this to be possible. there was no difficulty about lights; and the shikarree, having been assisted by the others to place the carcass in a proper attitude, set to work with the keen blade of his knife, and, almost as readily as if a dozen candles had been held by him, he stripped off the shaggy hide, and laid it back upon the rocks. the cutting the flesh into slices and strips would be easily effected, though it would require more time, and should be done with great nicety. if not sliced very thin, the meat would be liable to spoil the sooner. but the hindoo hunter was a very adept at this sort of thing, and his skill enabled him to complete the business in such a manner that had his "griskins" been submitted to the light, no one could have told they had been "carved" in the darkness. the strips, as they were cut by ossaroo, were passed into the hands of the others, who having already spread out the hide with the hairy side undermost, laid the pieces upon it. as soon as ossaroo had stripped the bones pretty clean, it was then time to dispose of the flesh. a question now arose as to whether it would be better to spread the pieces out upon the rock or hang them up upon lines. decidedly better to hang them up, thought ossaroo; and the others agreed with him. they would dry sooner in that way, it was thought; besides, as caspar suggested, they would be out of the way of fritz, who, if not looked after, might steal a march upon them, and devour half the meat at a single meal. by all means they should be hung out of his reach. but how was this to be accomplished? where were the ropes and lines to be obtained? they had neither poles to serve as uprights, nor ropes to be stretched between them. true, there was a long piece of cord in the possession of ossaroo, which he had manufactured from the indian hemp, while making his fish-net; but this would not be enough. it would take many yards of cord to carry such a quantity of meat. what was to be done? "cut the hide into strips!" cried caspar, in answer to the question. the very thing; and no sooner suggested than carried into effect. the sliced meat was removed--the raw hide was stretched out, and cut into thongs of about an inch in thickness, and these being knotted together, a rope was soon made that reached from side to side of the great chamber. the ends of this were fastened to the rocks; one was looped around a jutting point, and the opposite was held by being placed upon a little shelf with a heavy stone on top of it; and thus a line, something after the fashion of a clothes-line, was carried across the chamber. when they had tried its strength, and were convinced that it would serve the purpose intended, they carried the meat slice by slice, and laid it carefully across, until the string was full. another line had to be made before all was hung up; and this was made and fastened to the rock, in a similar manner as the first. the remainder of the slices were suspended upon it, and all hands now desisted from their labour. their day's work was done; for whether it was night or day, they had been busy for a long time, and on the completion of the job were fain to betake themselves once more to rest. they ate their meal, and lay down intending to sleep only for a few hours, and then to rouse themselves and with renewed energies continue their search after the light of the sun. chapter sixty one. dreams. karl in his sleep had a dream, "let there be light, and there was light!" this highly poetic passage of scripture had been running in his mind during the past hours. he was thinking of chaos before the creation; and their own situation might well suggest the chaotic age. he was thinking--and reverentially--of the wonderful power of the creator, who out of such darkness could cause light to shine forth by the simple expression of his will, "let there be light, and there was light!" karl dreamt that a form had appeared to them,--the form of a beautiful man,--and that from his body a bright light, similar to that of the sun, radiated on all sides. around his head and face the rays were distributed in the form of a glory, such as karl had seen upon many old pictures of the saviour. looking more attentively at the face, karl also recognised its resemblance to the same pictures;--the gentle and benign expression, the noble forehead, and fair curling hair,--all were the same. karl, who was of a religious turn, believed it was the saviour he saw in his dream. the cave was no longer in darkness; it was lit up by the coruscations of light that emanated from the beautiful vision, and karl could see all around him. after regarding him for a while, the bright form turned and moved off, beckoning karl and the others to follow. they obeyed; and, after traversing numerous passages and chambers,--some of which they recognised as having passed through while in chase of the bear,--they were guided to the mouth of the cavern, where the strange apparition, meeting the light of the sun, melted into the air and disappeared from their sight! the delight which karl felt, at this _denouement_ of his dream, caused him to awake with a start, and with a joyful ejaculation upon his lips. it was suddenly suppressed, and followed by an expression of pain and disappointment. the happy passage had been only a dream,--a false delusion. the reality was as dark and gloomy as ever. the interjections of karl awoke his companions; and karl perceived that caspar was greatly excited. he could not see him, but he knew by his talk, that such was the case. "i have been dreaming," said caspar, "a strange dream." "dreaming! of what?" "oh! of lights, brother,--of lights," replied caspar. karl was deeply attentive,--almost superstitious. he fancied that caspar had seen the same vision with himself,--it must have been something more than a dream! "what lights, caspar?" "oh! jolly lights,--lights enough to show us out. hang me! if i think i dreamt it after all. by thunder! good brother, i believe i was half awake when the idea came into my mind. capital idea, isn't it?" "what idea?" inquired karl in surprise, and rather apprehensive that caspar's dream had deprived him of his senses. "what idea, caspar?" "why, the idea of the _candles_, to be sure." "the candles! what candles?--surely," thought karl, as he asked the question,--"surely my poor brother's intellect is getting deranged,-- this horrid darkness is turning his brain." "oh! i have not told you my dream,--if it was a dream. i am confused. i am so delighted with the idea. we shall group no more in this hideous darkness,--we shall have light,--plenty of light, i promise you. odd we did not think of the thing before!" "but what is it, brother? what was your dream about?--tell us that." "well, now that i am awake, i don't think it was a dream,--at least, not a regular one. i was thinking of the thing before i fell asleep, and i kept on thinking about it when i got to be half asleep; and then i saw my way clearer. you know, brother, i have before told you that when i have any thing upon my mind that puzzles me, i often hit upon the solution of it when i am about half dreaming; and so it has been in this case, i am sure i have got the right way at last." "well, caspar,--the right way to do what? the right way to get out of the cave?" "i hope so, brother." "but what do you propose?" "i propose that we turn tallow-chandlers." "tallow-chandlers! poor boy!" soliloquised karl; "i thought as much. o merciful heaven, my dear brother! his reason is gone!" such were karl's painful surmises, though he kept them to himself. "yes, tallow-chandlers," continued caspar, in the same half-earnest, half-jocular way, "and make us a full set of candles." "and of what would you make your candles, dear caspar?" inquired karl, in a sympathising tone, and with the design of humouring his brother, rather than excite him by contradiction. "of what," echoed caspar, "what but the fat of this great bear?" "ha!" ejaculated karl, suddenly changing his tone, as he perceived that caspar's madness had something of method in it, "the fat of the bear, you say?" "certainly, karl. isn't his stomach as full of tallow as it can stick? and what's to hinder us to make candles out of it that will carry us all over the cave,--and out of it, i fancy, unless it be the greatest maze that nature has ever made out of rock-work?" karl was no longer under the belief that his brother had gone mad. on the contrary, he saw that the latter had conceived a very fine idea; and though it did not yet appear how the thing was to be carried out, karl fancied that there was something in it. his sweet dream recurred to him, and this he now regarded as ominous of the success of some plan of escape,--perhaps by the very means which caspar had suggested,--by making candles out of "bear's grease!" these were pleasant thoughts, but to karl the pleasantest thought of all was the returning conviction that caspar _was still in his senses_! chapter sixty two. hopes. ossaroo now joined in the general joy; and the three placed their heads together, to deliberate upon caspar's suggestion, and to discuss its feasibility in detail. but neither karl nor ossaroo had much need to spend their opinion on the details; for the original "promoter" of the plan had already conceived nearly the whole of them. it was, in fact, these that he had got hold of while half asleep; and which, on first awaking, he believed to have occurred to him in a dream. but there was no dream in the matter. the idea of making candles from the bear's fat had been in his mind before he lay down--he had even thought of it while they were at work in curing the meat. "yes," said he, commencing to tell them in detail all that had passed through his mind upon the subject; "i had thought of the candles, while assisting ossaroo to cut up the bear. i could tell, by the touch, that many pieces of the meat were almost pure fat; and i wondered to myself whether it would not burn and make a light. i knew, of course, that there was plenty more in the great stomach of the animal, and that of the real sort of which candles could be made. would it burn? that was the question that puzzled me. i feared that it would not burn without first being rendered to grease or lard, and a wick put into it,--in fact, i knew it could not; and there arose the difficulty, since we had no fire wherewith to render the fat, and no vessel to render it in, even if we had been provided with fire in plenty." "ah! that is too true," assented karl, rather despairingly. "well, so thought i, karl, and i had well-nigh given up thinking about the matter--of course, i said nothing about it to either of you--as i knew you could not create fuel out of stones any more than i, and there was an end of it." "yes--an end of it," unconsciously echoed karl, in a desponding tone. "not yet, brother! not yet!" rejoined caspar, as he proceeded in his relation. "you see the thing had got into my thoughts, and, after a while, i found myself once more speculating upon it. how were we to make a fire that would melt that fat? that we could strike a light, i knew--we could do that with our tinder or gunpowder; but where were we to get sufficient fuel to make a fire with, and where was the vessel to be obtained, in which to render the lard? at first, i thought only of the fire. if we could once raise fuel for that, the vessel would not be of so much importance--we might contrive to heat a flat, thin stone, and melt some of the fat in that way. if we could not make fine candles, we might dip some wick in the grease, and thus have a kind of taper that would serve almost as well. i knew we had wick--i remembered the long hempen string which ossaroo has got, and i knew that that would serve admirably for the purpose. all that would be easy enough--at least it appeared so--all except the stuff for the fire." "very ingenious of you, caspar; these things had never entered my mind. go on, brother!" "well--to make a long story short, i have got the fuel." "bravo! good! good!" exclaimed karl and ossaroo in a breath, and in accents of joy. "you have got the fuel?" "yes--i found it, at length; just as i was bobbing over asleep, the idea crossed my mind; though i fancied i was only dreaming, and must have afterwards fallen asleep. but i partially awoke shortly after, and took to thinking again; and then i found the vessel in which we can render our tallow--i think we can." "hurrah! better than all!" "and now, listen to my plan; for i have been thinking while i have been talking, and i have it _more_ complete than ever. maybe you can both add something, but here is what i propose." "tell us, caspar--all right, go on." "we have with us two guns--ossaroo has his spear, his hatchet, his bow, and a good quiver of arrows--fortunately his quiver, too, is of thick bamboo, and dry as a chip. first, then, i propose that, with ossaroo's axe, we break up the stocks of our guns, ramrods, and all--we can soon make others, once we get out--also the shaft of ossaroo's spear, his bow, arrows, and quiver--never mind, ossaroo, you can replace them from the forest. this being done, we can make a fire large enough to melt as much fat as will make us no end of dips." "you are right, brother," interposed karl; "but how about the vessel to melt it in?" "that puzzled me for a while," replied the ingenious caspar; "but i got over the difficulty, at length, by thinking of my powder-flask; you know it is a patent one, and the top screws off. well--we can take off the top, empty the powder into one of our pockets, and make use of the bottom part for the lard. i am sure it will stand the fire, for it is stout copper without a flaw. the only difficulty is, that it is small; but we can fill it over and over again." "and you propose to make the string which ossaroo has got into wicks, and dip them in the hot grease?" "nothing of the sort," replied caspar, in a triumphant tone; "we shall have no dips. i was contented with them at first, but not any longer. we shall have candles--real mould-candles!" "how? mould-candles? how?" "oh! that you shall see by-and-by. ossaroo would only disclose part of his plans when he went to trap the tiger, and i mean to keep a little of mine to myself, in order to have a _revanche_ upon him. ha! ha! ha!" caspar finished his speech with a laugh. it was the first time any of them had laughed since they entered that cave--no doubt, the first laugh that ever echoed through its gloomy aisles. chapter sixty three. light in darkness. without losing farther time, the three set to work to make the fire, caspar of course taking the direction. the barrels were first taken out of their guns, the locks unscrewed, and then the other iron-work was removed from the stocks. by dint of a little hammering with stones, and cleaving with the hatchet, the butt of each was separated from the heel-piece, and then broken up into small fragments. even the two ramrods were sacrificed--the heads and screws being carefully preserved. in no reckless humour did they act, for they had now very definite expectations of being able to escape from the cave; and prudence whispered them that the valuable weapons they were thus dismantling might be needed hereafter, as much as ever they had been. nothing, therefore, was damaged that could not be afterwards replaced--nothing thrown away. only the wood-work was sacrificed to present necessity. every article of iron, to the smallest nail or screw, was carefully preserved; and when all were separated from the wood-work, they were placed together and tied into a bundle, so that they might be easily carried along. ossaroo's weapon went "to the hammer" next. the spear-head was knocked off, and the long shaft broken into a dozen pieces. the bow was unstringed and cut into chips, and then the arrows were snapped across, and the quiver split up. all these would be excellent materials, and from their age and dryness would ignite and burn like touch-wood. an important addition to their stock of fuel was obtained from a source up to this time quite unthought of. they now remembered the two large handles by which they had carried the torches; for they had made them with handles something after the fashion of a stable-broom. these had been dropped at the time the torches went out, and were lying somewhere near the spot. all three set to "grambling," and soon found both of them; and better still, found them with a considerable quantity of the resinous splits of the pine still attached to their ends. this was a bit of good luck, for the pine-chips thus obtained would be the very thing wherewith to kindle the fire. already well seasoned, and covered with the resin, that had run over them from the burning torches, they would catch like gunpowder itself. the whole of the fire-wood was now collected together, and formed a goodly pile. there would be enough for their purpose, even without the handle of ossaroo's hatchet, which was still left in its socket. it could be drawn out at any time, but very likely would not be required. now it was clear to all of them, that their little stock of fuel, if set fire to in the ordinary way, would burn too rapidly, and become exhausted long before their candle-making operations could be completed. this would be a sad dilemma, and would leave them in a worse situation than ever. means, therefore, must be taken to avoid such a catastrophe, and means were adopted, as follows:-- they first set to work, and constructed a little furnace of only six or eight inches in diameter. this they easily built out of the loose blocks of stone that were lying about. in this furnace they placed a portion of their fire-wood--for it is well-known that the furnace is the best plan for economising fuel. the whole of the heat is thrown upwards, and a vessel placed on top will receive double the heat that it would, if hung over a scattered fire that is open on all sides. but another important consideration led them to the building of the furnace. they saw that when the light-wood should be fairly kindled, they could prevent it from blazing too rapidly, by casting upon it pieces of the bear's fat; and in this way not only prolong the burning of the wood, but make a much stronger fire. this idea was a very happy one, and at once secured them against a scarcity of fuel for their purpose. the furnace was made very narrow at the top, and two stones were placed so that the powder-flask,--emptied of its contents of course--should rest between them, and catch the full strength of the upward blaze. all these things were arranged without light, but when they had proceeded thus far, they worked no longer in the darkness. the chips were placed in the bottom of the furnace--the tinder was ignited by means of flint and steel--its burning edge was placed in contact with the fine resin-covered shavings of pine-wood; and in another instant the great vault, that had so late been buried in amorphous gloom, was sparkling like a chamber set with diamonds! the light enabled all three to do their work with rapidity and sureness. ossaroo was seen over the skeleton carcass cutting out the huge masses of tallow, and placing it upon the rocks. karl was busy in attending to the fire, which, now that it had received several pieces of the fat, burned brightly and steadily--while caspar stood near occupied with the barrels of his gun. what was caspar doing with the gun? surely it could be of no service now, without either stock or lock? ah! you mistake. it was just now that it became of service, and of great service. only watch caspar a little, and you will see that he has an object in handling that brace of barrels. observe!--he has unscrewed both the nipples, and is drawing the end of a string through each of them. the other end of these strings may be seen protruding from the barrels at the muzzle. those strings are wicks already prepared from the hempen cord of ossaroo, and you need not now be told what use caspar intends to make of his beautiful smooth bores, for by this time you will have guessed it. "candle-moulds of course!" i hear you exclaim. "candle-moulds of course," i reply; and most excellent moulds they will make, almost as good as if that had been the original design in their construction. well, the work went on--the wicks were got into their places--and as soon as the first flask of fallow was rendered into grease, it was poured into one of the barrels. this process was repeated again and again, and several times more, until, to the great delight of all, both barrels were observed to be full to the muzzle. of course the barrels were hot, and the grease inside them still in a liquid state. it would be necessary, therefore, to wait patiently until they should cool, and the candles become "frozen" and firm. in order to hasten this result, they carried them to the place where the water dripped from the roof of the cavern; and, resting them in an upright position--so that the drops might fall upon, and trickle along the barrels--they there left them, and returned to the fire. this was instantly put out--all excepting a slight spark or two to assist in rekindling it. it was a wise precaution, for they knew they would have a long while to wait for the cooling of the candles, and they designed making at least another cast, before attempting to stir from the spot. on examining their stock of fuel, they saw that it would be sufficient to melt the tallow for another pair--they had string enough for wicks--and of the grease the great carcass afforded them an abundance. you will wonder why the barrel of karl's gun was not also brought into requisition. that is easily explained. karl's piece was a rifle, and on account of the grooves inside would not have served at all for such a purpose. had they attempted to mould a candle in it, the candle could not have been drawn out, and they would only have wasted their labour. this they knew, and therefore did not make the attempt. during the interval they employed themselves in "flaxing out" the remainder of the hempen cord, and preparing it for wicks. they also enjoyed a meal of the bear's-meat--this time properly cooked--for during the continuance of the little fire, they had taken the opportunity to broil themselves a steak or two; and after eating this, they felt in much better case to continue their labours. they waited patiently until the time came round for drawing the candles. it was a good long while, but the time arrived at length, when the barrels became cold as ice, and the tallow inside appeared to be frozen as hard. the fire was now rekindled--the iron moulds were slightly heated in the blaze; and then the pull was given, slow and steady. a shout of joy hailed the appearance of the long white cylinder as it came softly gliding from the muzzle, until full three feet of a beautiful candle were revealed to the eyes of the delighted trio. the second "draw" succeeded equally well; and a brace of huge candles, each as big as three "sixes," were now completely moulded and ready to be lit. a trial was immediately made, when it was found that both burned beautifully. after a short while, another brace was added; and they had now at their command light enough to last them for a period of nearly a hundred hours! they could still have moulded more candles--for neither their fat nor their fuel was exhausted--but surely they had enough? surely in a hundred hours they would look upon a far lovelier light--the light of the glorious sun? and they did so in far less time--in less than the twentieth part of a hundred hours, they gazed upon the orb of day. i shall not detail their wanderings backward and forward, upward and downward, through the vaulted galleries of that stupendous cavern! suffice it to say, that the bright spot indicating the entrance at length flashed before their eyes like a meteor; and dropping the candles from their fingers they rushed forth, and once more gazed with delighted eyes upon the shining face of heaven! chapter sixty four. conclusion. you will imagine that after such a perilous adventure in the great cave, they would never again set foot within its gloomy precincts. neither would they, had any mode of escaping from their other prison--the valley itself--been offered. but they could think of none, and there still lingered in their mind some slight hopes that one or other of the many passages of the cave might lead through the mountains, or have an opening at the top of the cliffs. slight as were the grounds for hope, they could not give them up until they should satisfy themselves by a complete, and thorough exploration; and for more than a week after their adventure, they employed themselves in making huge torches and moulding candles for this purpose. a large quantity of both were at length prepared, and the exploration commenced. day after day they entered the cavern--each day making an excursion that lasted for several hours. day by day they continued their fruitless search--fruitless, since no outlet could be found. but it was not till after weeks thus spent--till after they had traversed every vault of that stupendous cavern, and traced every passage to its termination in the rocks, that they resigned all hope, and gave up in despair. when the last day's search was ended, and they had emerged from the cave, never to enter it again, all three might have been seen seated upon the rocks near its mouth, in attitudes and with looks that betokened a deep and hopeless despair. for a long time they sat in silence. the same thought was in the minds of all--the one painful thought, that they were hopelessly cut off from all communication with the world, and would never again look on human faces save their own! caspar was the first to break silence. "oh!" groaned he, "it is an awful fate--an awful fate--here must we live--here must we die--far away from home--from the world--alone, alone, oh!" "not alone, caspar," replied karl, making an effort to look cheerful,--"not alone, for god is with us. from this time forth let us strive to forget the world, and make him our companion. _let god be our world_!" the end. [note: for this online edition i have moved the table of contents to the beginning of the text and added three asterisks to mark breaks between sections. i have also made the following spelling changes: latitute to latitude and mountain ash berberis to mountain ash berberries] the heart of nature or the quest for natural beauty by sir francis younghusband k.c.s.i., k.c.i.e. president of the royal geographical society author of "the heart of a continent" london john murray, albemarle street contents preface ix-x introduction xv-xxviii part i chapter i. the sikkim himalaya. the sacred ganges--a beneficent power--beauty of the plains--first sight of the himalaya - chapter ii. the teesta valley. mystery of the forest--the gorges --sequestered glens - chapter iii. the forest. butterflies--ferns--orchids--flower friends--rhododendrons--temperate vegetation--primulas--artic vegetation--the range of vegetation - chapter iv. the denizens of the forest. butterflies--moths--birds --reptiles--mammals--animal beauty--primitive man--higher races - chapter v. the sum impression. two views of nature--variety of life--intensity of life--the battle of life--adaptation and selection --purposiveness--purposeful structures--interdependence--organising activity--gradation--care of offspring--the activity not mechanical but spiritual--nature's end--a common aspiration - chapter vi. kinchinjunga. the foothills--darjiling--a vision of the mountain--full view--mountain grandeur--dawn on the mountain --sunset on the mountain - chapter vii. high solitudes. kashmir--barren mountains--dazzling peaks--purity of beauty - chapter viii. the heavens. desert sunsets--tibetan sunsets--the stars--the whole universe our home--a heavenly presence - chapter ix. home beauty. one's own country--woman's beauty --love and beauty--their divine source--wedding--divine union --the inmost heart of nature - chapter x. the nature of nature. a spiritual background--purpose in nature--higher beings--no confining plan--immanent spirit --collective personality--england a person--nature a person--moved by an ideal--the ideal in plants--the ideal in animals--the ideal in the world - chapter xi. nature's ideal. battling with physical nature--battling with man--in tune with nature--at the heart of the universe is love--divine fellowship is nature's ideal - chapter xii. the heart of nature. picturing the ideal--the ideal man--man and woman--perfecting the ideal--discipline necessary --leadership--nature's method--our own responsibility--the lovability of nature--god at the heart of nature - part ii natural beauty and geography presidential address to the royal geographical society - an address to the union society of university college, london - preface the value of knowledge and character is duly impressed upon us. of the value of freedom we are told so much that we have come to regard it as an end in itself instead of only a means, or necessary condition. but beauty we are half-inclined to connect with the effeminate. poetry, music, and literature are under suspicion with the average english schoolboy, whose love of manliness he will share with nothing else. yet love of beauty persists in spite of all discouragement, and will not be suppressed. natural beauty, especially, insists on a place in our affections, derived originally from love, and essentially and inseparably connected with it, natural beauty acknowledges supremacy to love alone. and it deserves our generous recognition, for it is wholesome and refreshing for our souls. the acute observation and telling description of natural beauty is at least as necessary for the enjoyment of life as the pursuit of natural science to which so much attention is paid. for the concern of the former is the character, and of the latter only the cause of natural phenomena; and of the two, character is the more important. it is, indeed, high time that we englishmen were more awake than we are to the value of natural beauty. for we are born lovers of nature, and no more poetic race than ourselves exists. our country at its best, on an early summer day, is the loveliest little home in all the world. and we go out from this island home of ours to every land. we have unrivalled opportunities, therefore, of seeing innumerable types of natural objects. by observing nature in so many different aspects, and by comparing our impressions with one another, we ought to understand nature better than any other race. and by entering more readily into communion with her we, better than others, should realise the beauty she possesses. i am conscious of having myself made most inadequate use of the splendid opportunities my travels afforded me of seeing the beauty of nature. so i am all the more anxious that those following after me should not, by like omission, commit the same sin against themselves and against our country. we owe it to ourselves and to mankind to give full rein to our instinctive love of natural beauty, and to train and refine every inclination and capacity we have for appreciating it till we are able to see all those finer glories of which we now discern only the first faint glow. and if any other country excel us in appreciation, then it behoves us to brace ourselves up to emulate and surpass that country, and learn how to understand nature better and see more beauty. for in love of natural beauty, and in capacity for communicating that love, england ought to be preeminent. she above every other country should come nearest to the heart of nature. f. e. y. _june,_ . introduction town children let loose in a meadow dash with shouts of joy to pluck the nearest flowers. they ravenously pick handfuls and armfuls as if they could never have enough. they are exactly like animals in the desert rushing to water. they are satisfying a great thirst in their souls--the thirst for beauty. some of us remember, too, our first sight of snowy mountains in the alps or in the himalaya. we recall how our spirits _leaped_ to meet the mountains, how we gasped in wonder and greedily feasted our eyes on the glorious spectacle. in such cases as these there is something in the natural object that appeals to something in us. something in us rushes out to meet the something in the natural object. a responsive chord is struck. a relationship is established. we and the natural object come into harmony with one another. we have recognised in the flower, the mountain, the landscape, something that is the same as what is in ourselves. we fall in love with the natural object. a marriage takes place. our soul is wedded to the soul of the natural object. and at the very moment of wedding beauty is born. it springs from love, just as love itself originally sprang from the wedding of primitive man and woman. in this process all will depend upon the mood. if we are not in the mood for it, we are unreceptive of nature's impressions, and we are irresponsive. we do not come into touch with nature. consequently we see no beauty. but if we are in a sensitive and receptive mood, if our minds are not preoccupied, and if our soul is open to the impressions which nature is ever raining on it, then we respond to nature's appeal. we feel ourselves in tune with her. we come into communion with her, and we see beauty. if we are ourselves feeling sad and sorrowful when we look out on nature, and there all should happen to be bright and gay, we shall feel out of harmony with nature, we shall not feel in touch with her, and we shall not see beauty. on the other hand, when we are in a glad and overflowing mood we shall be extraordinarily responsive to nature's appeal, and see beauty in a rugged, leafless oak tree or a poor old woman at the corner of some mean street. and if when we are in such a mood nature happens to be at her best and brightest, as on some spring morning, the beauty we shall then see will be overpowering, and we shall scarcely be able to contain ourselves for ecstasy of joy. we shall have discovered an identity between what is in nature and what is in us. in looking on nature, we shall have been introduced into a presence, greater than ourselves but like ourselves, which stirs in us this which we feel. when we see beauty in nature we are discovering that nature is not merely a body, but _has_ or _is_ a soul. and the joy we feel is produced by the satisfaction our soul feels in coming into touch and harmony with this soul of nature. our soul is recognising samenesses between what is in it and what is in the soul of nature, and feels joy in the recognition. and the instinct of fellowship with our kind impels us to communicate to others what we ourselves have felt. we want to tell others what we have seen and what we have experienced. we long, too, to share the joy which others also must have felt in contemplating nature. we want especially to know and feel what those with far more sensitive souls than our own--the great poets, painters, and musicians--have felt. so we communicate our feelings to others; and we communicate with others, either personally or through their books or pictures or music, so that we may find out from them what more to look for, and may know better how to look for it. by so doing, our souls become more sensitive to the impressions of nature, and we are better able to express those impressions. our power of vision increases. our soul's eye acquires a keener insight and sees deeper into the soul of nature. we are able to enter more into the spirit of nature, and the spirit of nature is able to enter more into us. we arrive at a completer understanding between ourselves and nature, are more in harmony with her, and consequently see more beauty. we see, indeed, what nature really is. we see the reality behind the appearance--the content within the outward form. we are not for the moment concerned with the _cause_ but with the _character_ of nature. we see the "i" behind the outward manifestation and representation. and if we have sympathy and understanding enough and are able truly to enter into the soul of nature, we shall see the real "i" behind the common everyday "i"--just as the few who intimately know some great man see the real man behind the man who appears in the public eye--the real beaconsfield or kitchener behind the beaconsfield or kitchener of the daily press. and, as we see more of this real "i" in nature and are better able to get in touch and harmony with her, so shall we see greater beauty in nature. if we have petty, meagre souls we shall find little in common with the great soul of nature, and consequently see only shallow beauty. if we have great souls we shall have more in common and see more beauty. but to arrive at a full understanding of the real nature we must observe her from every point of view and see her in all her aspects. only so shall we be able to understand her real self and see her full beauty. and her aspects and the points of view from which we may observe them change so incessantly that the greatest of us falters. the more we see of nature, the more we find there is to understand. and the more we understand nature and commune with her, the more beauty do we find there is to see. so to arrive at a complete understanding of nature and see all her beauty is beyond the capacity of us finite men. yet we are impelled to go on striving to see all we can. and in the following pages an attempt is made to show how, more beauty in nature may be discovered. often in the himalaya i have watched an eagle circling overhead. i have sat on the mountain-side and watched it sail majestically along in graceful curves and circles, and with perfect ease and poise. far above the earth it would range, and seemingly without exertion glide easily over tracts that we poor men could only enter by prodigious effort. captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous of its freedom, i would for hours watch it. and this eagle i knew, from the height and distance from which it would swoop down on its prey, to be possessed of eyesight of unrivalled keenness in addition to its capacity for movement. so this bird had opportunities such as no human being--not even an airman--has of seeing the earth and what is on it. at will it could glide over the loftiest mountain ranges. at will it could sail above the loveliest valleys. at will it could perch upon any chosen point and observe things at close range. in a single day this one eagle might have seen the finest natural scenery in the world--the highest mountain, the most varied forest, thickly populated plains and bare, open plains, peoples, animals, birds, insects, trees, flowers, all of the most varied description. in one day, and in the ordinary course of its customary circlings and sailings, it might have seen what men come from the ends of the earth to view, and are content if they see only a hundredth part of what the eagle sees every day. from its mountain eerie in upper sikkim it might have seen the rose of dawn flushing the snowy summits of kinchinjunga, and far away mount everest. and soaring aloft, the eagle might have looked out over the populous plains of india and seen, like silver streaks, the rivers flowing down from the himalaya to join in the far distance the mighty mother ganges. then its eye might have ranged over the vast forest which clothes in dense green mantle the plain at the foot of the mountains from nepal to bhutan and assam, and from the plain spreads up on the mountain-sides themselves and reaches to the very borders of eternal snow. over this vast forest with its treasures of tree and plant, animal and insect life, tropical, temperate, and alpine, the eagle might have soared; and then, passing over the himalayan watershed, have looked down upon the treeless, open, undulating, almost uninhabited plain of tibet, and in the distance seen the great brahmaputra river, which, circling round bhutan, cuts clean through the himalaya and, turning westward, also joins the ganges. in the whole world no more wonderful natural scenery is to be found. and the eagle with no unusual effort could see it all in a single day, and see it with a distinctness of sight no man could equal. but keen though its eyesight was and wide though its range, the eagle in all that beautiful region would see not a single beauty. neither in the sunrise, nor in the snowy mountains, nor in the luxuriant tropical forest, nor in the flowers, the birds, the butterflies, nor in the people and animals, nor in the cataracts and precipices would it see any beauty whatever. the mountain would be to it a mere outline, the forests a patch of green, the rivers streaks of white, the animals just possible items of food. the eagle would see much, but it would see no beauty. perhaps we shall understand why it is that the eagle with these unbounded opportunities sees no beauty if we consider the case of a little midge buzzing round a man's body. the midge is roughly in about the same relation to the body of a man that the eagle is to the body of the earth. the midge in its hoverings sees vast tracts of the human body; sees the features--the nose, the eye, the mouth; sees the trunk and the limbs and the head. but even in the most beautiful of men it would see no beauty. and it would see no beauty because it would have no soul to understand expression. it might be hovering round the features of a man when the smile on his lips and the exaltation in his eyes were expressive of the highest ecstasy of soul, but the midge would see no beauty in those features because it had not the soul to enter into the soul of the man and understand the expression on his face. all the little shades and gradations and tones and lights in the features of the man would be quite meaningless to the midge because it would know nothing of the man's soul, of which the features and the changes and variations in them were the outward manifestation. the midge would know nothing of the reality of the man which lay hidden behind the appearance. it is the same with the eagle in respect to natural features as it is with the midge in respect to the features of the man. the eagle sees only the bare outward appearance of nature, and sees no meaning in her features. it has no soul to enter into the soul of nature and understand what the natural features are expressing. the delicate lights and shades and changes on the face of nature have no meaning for it. it sees the bare appearance. it sees nothing of the reality behind the appearance. it has no soul to wed to the soul of nature. it therefore sees no beauty. but now supposing that among all the midges that buzz about a man there happened to be an artist-midge with exceeding sensitiveness of soul, one which was able to recognise a fundamental identity of life between it and the man, one which was able to recognise samenesses of feelings and emotions and aspirations, and by recognition of the samenesses between it and the man enter into the very life and soul of the man, then that midge would be able to understand all the varying expressions on the face of the man, and by understanding those expressions see their beauty. we cannot expect an eagle in a similar way to have that sensitiveness of soul which would enable it to enter into the soul of nature, understand nature, and so see its beauty. but what we cannot expect of the eagle we can expect of man. we can expect an artist to appear who will be to the earth what the artist-midge was to the man. man does to some extent enter into the soul of nature. he has _some_ understanding of nature. he sees beauty; and whenever he sees beauty in nature he is in touch with the soul of nature. even ordinary men see some of the beauty of nature and have some feeling of kinship with her. they have something in common between their soul and the soul of nature. they have the sense of more in common between them and nature than a midge has between it and a man. and in a delicately sensitive man such as an artist--painter, poet, or musician--this sense of kinship with nature is highly developed. in regard to his relationship with nature he is like the finely sensitive and cultured artist-midge would be in regard to a man--the midge who, through understanding the inner soul and character of the man, was able to read the expression on his features and see their beauty. what we ordinary men have to do, and what we especially want those gifted with unusually sensitive souls to do, is to bear in mind the difficulties which the midge has in understanding us and in seeing any beauty in us, and the way in which it would have to train and cultivate its faculties before it could ever hope to understand the expression on our features--to bear this in mind, and then to take ourselves in hand and develop the soul within us till it is fine enough and great enough to enter into the great soul of nature. the sense of beauty we all possess in some slight degree is in itself a proof that behind the outward appearance of nature there is a spiritual reality--an "i"--just as behind the outward appearance of the man which the artist-midge sees there is the "i" of the man. and by cultivating this sense--that is, by training and developing our capacity to see deeper into the heart of nature, see more significance and meaning in each shade and change of her features, and read more understandingly what is going on deep within her soul--we shall enable ourselves to see a fuller and richer natural beauty. so we look forward to the appearance among us of a great artist who, born with an exceptionally sensitive soul, will deliberately heighten and intensify this sensitiveness, learn what others have experienced, compare notes with them, and train himself to detect the significance of every slightest indication which nature gives of the workings of the soul within her; and then, recognising the sameness between his own feelings and the feelings of nature, will fall deeply in love with her, give himself up utterly to her, marry her, and in their marriage give birth to beauty of surpassing richness and intensity. what we await, then, is an artist with a soul worthy of being wedded to nature. puny, shallow artists will not be able to see much more of nature than a midge sees of a man. what we want is a man with the physique, the abounding health and spirits, the fine intellect, the poetic power and imagination, the love of animals and his fellow-men, the skill, fitness, and gay courage of a julian grenfell. we want a man with the opportunities he had of mixing from childhood in london and in country houses with every grade and condition of men, with statesmen, soldiers, men of art, hunting men, racing men, schoolboys, undergraduates, literary men, gamekeepers, old family retainers--every kind and sort of human being. we want a man of such qualifications combined with the qualifications of a darwin--with his love of natural history, his power of close and accurate observation, his genius for drawing right inferences from what he observed, his wide knowledge of nature in her many manifestations, his sympathetic touch with every plant and animal, and his warm, affectionate nature in all human intercourse. we want, in fact, a naturalist-artist--a combination of julian grenfell and darwin. and this is no outrageously impossible, but a very likely and fitting combination. for julian grenfell wrote great poetry even in the trenches in flanders between the two battles of ypres. and with his love of country life, shooting, fishing, and hunting, his inclination might very easily have been directed towards natural history. if it had been and the opportunity had offered, we might have had the very type of naturalist-artist we are now awaiting. he would have had the physical fitness and capacity to endure hardships which are required for travel in parts of the earth where the natural beauty is finest, and he would have had, too, the sensitiveness of soul to receive impressions and the power of expressing himself so that others might share with him the impressions he had felt. if after passing through the earlier stages of shooting and hunting birds and animals he had come to the more profitable stage of observing them, and had devoted to the observation of their habits and ways of life the same skill and acumen which he had shown in hunting them, he might, with his innate and genuine love of animals, very well have become a great naturalist as well as what he was--a great sportsman and a writer of great poetry. it is for the advent of such naturalist-artist that we wait. but we have to prepare the way for him and do our share in helping to produce him. and this will now be my endeavour, for it so happens that i have been blessed with opportunities--some of my own making, some provided for me--of seeing nature on a larger scale and under more varied aspects than falls to the lot of most men. i am ashamed when i reflect how little use i have made of those opportunities--how little i was prepared and trained to make the most of them. but this at least i can do: i can point out to the coming artist those parts of the world where he is likely to see the beauty of nature most fully, and in greatest variety. with this end in view i shall begin with the sikkim himalaya, over which the eagle flew, because it contains within a small area a veritable compendium of nature. rising directly out of the plains of india, practically within the tropics, these mountains rise far above the limits of perpetual snow. their base is covered with luxuriant vegetation of a truly tropical character, and this vegetation extends through all the ranges from tropical to temperate and arctic. the animal, bird, and insect life does the same. and here also are to be found representative men of every clime. similarly does the natural scenery vary from plain to highest mountain. there are roaring torrents and wide, placid rivers. the sikkim himalaya, looking down on the plains of india on the one side and the steppes of tibet on the other, is the most suitable place i know for a study of natural beauty. but there are beauties in kashmir and in the great karakoram mountains behind kashmir which are not found in sikkim. and there are beauties in the desert which are not found in either sikkim or kashmir. so i must take the artist to these regions also. and i choose sikkim and kashmir because these are easily accessible regions to which men with a thirst for beauty can return again and again, till they are saturated with the atmosphere and have imbibed the true spirit of the region--till they have realised how much these natural features express sentiments which they, too, are wanting to express--their aspirations for the highest and purest, their longing for repose, their delight in warmth and affection, or whatever their sentiment might be. thousands of englishmen, cultured indians, and travellers from all over the world, visit the himalaya every year--some for sport, some for health, some for social enjoyment. amongst these may be our naturalist-artist who year after year, drawn to sikkim and kashmir by his love of natural beauty, would learn to know nature in the wonderfully varied aspects under which she is to be seen in those favoured regions, who would come into ever-deepening communion with her, would yearly see more beauty in her, and would communicate to us the enjoyment he had felt. but natural beauty includes within its scope a great deal more than only natural scenery. it includes the beauty of all natural objects--men and women as well as mountains, animals, and plants. so these also the artist will have to keep within his purview. and his love of nature, and consequently his capacity for seeing natural beauty, will be all the surer if he uses his head as well as his heart in forming his final conception of her--that is to say, his final for the moment, as no man ever has or _can_ come to a literally final conception of nature. so the artist will pause now and then to test his view of nature in the light of pure reason. for he will be well enough aware that neither love nor beauty can be perfect unless it be irradiated with truth, and the three he will ever strive to keep together. part i the heart of nature chapter i the sikkim himalaya the sikkim himalaya is a region first brought prominently into notice by the writings of sir joseph hooker, the great naturalist, who visited it in . it lies immediately to the east of nepal, and can now be reached by a railway which ascends the outer range to darjiling. it is drained by the teesta river, up the main valley of which a railway runs for a short distance. the region is therefore easily accessible. for the purposes of this book it may be taken to include the flat open forest and grass-covered tract known as the terai, immediately at the base of the mountain. this is only a few hundreds of feet above sea-level, so that from there to the summit of the himalaya there is a rise of nearly , feet in about seventy miles. the lower part is in the th degree of latitude, so that the heat is tropical. and as the region comes within the sweep of the monsoon from the bay of bengal, there is not only great heat in the plains and lower valleys, but great moisture as well. the mountain-sides are in consequence clothed with a luxuriant vegetation. to enter this wonderful region the traveller has first to cross the ganges--the sacred river of the hindus. great rivers have about them a fascination all their own. they produce in us a sense of everlastingness and irresistibility. the ganges, more than a mile wide, comes sweeping along in deep majestic flood from the far distance to the far distance, on and on unendingly, from all time to all time, and in such depth and volume that nothing human can withstand it. in the dry season, when it is low and the sun is shining, it is placid and benign with a bright and smiling countenance. stately temples, set amidst sacred groves and graceful palms, lighten the banks. on the broad steps of the bathing ghats are assembled crowds of pious worshippers in clothes of every brilliant hue. the river has an aspect of kindliness and geniality and life-givingness. its waters and rich silt have brought plenty to many a barren acre, and the dwellers on its banks know well that it issues from the holy himalaya. but the ganges is not always in this gracious mood, and does not always wear this kindly aspect. in the rainy season it is a thing of terror. overhead black, thundery clouds sweep on for days and weeks together towards the mountains. there is not a glimpse of sun. the rain descends as a deluge. the river is still further swollen by the melting of the snow on the himalaya, and now comes swirling along in dark and angry mood, rising higher and higher in its banks, eating into them, and threatening to overtop them and carry death and destruction far and wide. men no longer go down to meet it. they shrink back from it. they uneasily watch it till the fulness of its strength is spent and it has returned to its normal beneficent aspect. no wonder such a river is regarded as sacred. to the more primitive people it is literally a living person--and a person who may be propitiated, a person who may do them harm if they annoy him, and do them good if they make themselves agreeable to him and furnish him with what he wants. to the cultured hindus it is an object of the deepest reverence. if they can bathe in its waters their sins are washed away. if after death their ashes can be cast on its broad bosom, they will be secure of everlasting bliss. from perhaps the earliest days of our race, for some hundreds of thousands of years, men may have lived upon its banks. for it was in the forests beside great rivers, in a warm and even climate, that primitive men must have lived. they would have launched their canoes upon its waters, and used it as their only pathway of communication with one another. and always they would have looked upon it with mingled awe and affection. besides the sun it would have been the one great natural object which would attract their attention. insensibly the sight of that ever-rolling flood must have deeply affected them. they must have come to love it as they beheld it through the greater part of the year. the sight of its destructive power may have made them recoil for a time in fear and awe. but this would be forgotten as the flood subsided, and the river was again smooth and smiling and passing peacefully along before them. so men do not run away from it. they gather to it. they build great cities on its banks, and come from great distances to see it. they perform pilgrimages every year in thousands to the spot where it issues from the himalaya. and they penetrate even to its source far back and high up in the mountains. to the most enlightened, also, the ganges should be an object of reverence for its antiquity, for its future, and for its power. from the surface of the bay of bengal the sun's rays have drawn particles of water into the atmosphere. currents in the air have carried them for hundreds of miles over the sea and over the plains of bengal, till the chill of the himalaya mountains has caused them to condense and fall in snow and rain. but some have been carried farther. they have been transported right over the himalaya at a height of at least , feet, till they have finally fallen in tibet. it is a striking fact that some of the water in the ganges is from rivers in tibet which have cut their way clean through the mighty range of the himalaya. the arun river, for example, rises in tibet and cuts through the himalaya by a deep gorge in the region between mount everest and kinchinjunga. these rivers are, indeed, much older than the mountains. they were running their course before the himalaya were upheaved, and they kept wearing out a channel for themselves as the mountains rose and slowly over-towered them. reverence, therefore, is due to the ganges on account of its vast antiquity. reverence also is due because it will flow on like now for hundreds of thousands and perhaps for millions of years to come. round and round in never-ceasing cycle the water is drawn up from the ocean, is carried along in the clouds, descends upon the mountains, and gathers in the ganges to flow once more into the sea. the ganges may gradually change its course as it eats into first one bank and then the other. but it will flow on and on and on for as far into the future as the human eye can ken. and its power, so terrifying to primitive man--even to us at times --will become more and more a power for good. already great canals have been taken from its main stream and its tributaries, and millions of acres have been irrigated by its water, thus helping to bring to birth great crops of wheat and rice, cotton, sugar-cane, and oil-seeds. schemes for utilising the water-power in its fall through the mountains by converting it into electric power are in contemplation, so that railways may be run by it and power for great industries be furnished. once more, too, the course of the river may become a line of communication as sea-planes are used to fly from town to town and alight upon its surface. so as we come to know the river in its deepest significance, our impression of its everlastingness and its irresistible power remains. but our sense of fear diminishes. we feel that the river is ready to co-operate with us. that it is capable of being taken in hand and led. that its power is not essentially destructive but beneficent. that there is in it almost inexhaustible capacity for helping plant and beast and man. and that it is a friend and anxious to help us. the hindus have been right all along in worshipping it. their worship, with tropical luxuriance, may have developed to extravagant lengths. but the instinct which promoted this worship was perfectly sound. the river bears within its breast great life-giving properties, and in worshipping the river the hindus were half-consciously expressing their sense of dependence on these life-giving properties, and of affection and gratitude to the river for the benefits it conferred. mere fear of its destructive character--fear alone--would not produce the desire for worship. they did and do fear the river, but behind the fear is a feeling that it _can_ be propitiated, that it _can_ be induced to help man and does not want to thwart him. and here they were perfectly right. we are at last learning the way by which this may be done, and now see clearly what the hindus only vaguely felt, that the heart of the river is right enough--that once it is tamed and trained it can bring untold good to man. this the artist will readily discern. he will enter into the spirit of the river. he will read its true character. refusing to be terrorised by its more tremendous moods, he will exult in its might, and see in it a potent agency for good. in these ways the river will make its appeal to him; and responding to the appeal, the artist will see great beauty in the river and describe that beauty to us. * * * beyond the river, before we reach the mountain, we have to pass over absolutely level cultivated plains, without a single eminence in sight. to most they would appear dull, monotonous, uninteresting. there is no horizon to which the eye can wander and find satisfaction in remote distance. there is no hill to which to raise our eyes and our souls with them. the outlook is confined within the narrowest limits. palm trees, banyan trees, houses, walled gardens, everywhere restrict it. the fields are small, the trees and houses numerous. nothing distant is to be seen. to the european the prospect is depressing. but to the bengali it is his very life. these densely inhabited plains are his home. they have, therefore, all the attraction which familiar scenes in which men have grown up from childhood always have. a bengali prefers them to high mountains. he loves the sight of the brilliant emerald rice-fields, of the tall feathery palms, of the shady banyan trees, of the flaming poinsettias, the bright marigolds, cannas and bougainvillea, the many-coloured crotons and calladiums, the sweet-scented jasmine, oranges, tuberoses, and gardenia; and the gaudy jays, the swiftly darting parrots, and the playful squirrels. he loves, too, the bathing-pools, and the patient oxen, and the cool, sequestered gardens. and he loves these things for their very nearness. his attention is not distracted to distant horizons and inaccessible heights. all is close to the eye and easily visible. his world may be small, but it is all within reach. he can know well each tree and flower, each bird and animal. it is not a wide and varied life. but it is an intense and very vivid life; and to the bengali, on that account, more preferable. and if it is confined it is at least confined in the open air, and in a climate of perpetual summer. * * * beyond this highly cultivated and thickly populated part, and still in the plains, we come to a wild jungle country which stretches up to the foothills, and is swampy, pestilential, and swarming with every kind of biting insect. it is a nasty country to travel through. but it has its interests. there grow here remarkable grasses, with tall straight shoots gracefully bending over at the top from the weight of their feathery heads; and so high are these gigantic grasses that they often reach above the head of a man on an elephant. the areas covered by them are practically impenetrable to men on foot, and there is a mysterious feel about this region, for it is the haunt of rhinoceros, tigers, and boars. in passing through it we have an uneasy feeling that almost anything may appear on the instant, and that once we were on foot and away from the path we would be irretrievably lost--drowned in a sea of waving grass. from this sea of grass rise patches of forest and single trees. the most prevalent is the sal tree _(shorea robusta),_ a magnificent gregarious tree with a tall straight stem and thick glossy foliage. but the most conspicuous in march and april is the dák tree _(butea frondosa),_ an ungainly tree, but remarkable for its deep rich scarlet flowers, like gigantic sweet-peas but of a thick velvety texture. these flowers blossom before the leaves appear, and when the tree is in full bloom it looks like a veritable flame in the forest. another beautiful tree which is found in this lower part is the _acacia catechu,_ known in northern india as the khair tree, and found all about the foothills of the himalaya. not tall and stately, but rather contorted and ample like the oak, it has a graceful feathery foliage and a kindly inviting nature. * * * proceeding over these level plains, which as we approach the mountains are covered with dense forest, stagnant morasses, and trim tea-gardens, we one morning awake to find that over the horizon to the north hangs a long cloud-like strip, white suffused with pink--level on its lower edge but with the upper edge irregular in outline. no one who had not seen snow mountains before would suppose for a moment that that strip could be a line of mountain summits. for there is not a trace of any connection with the earth. between it and the earth is nothing but blue haze. and it is so high above the horizon that it seems incredible that any such connection could exist. yet no one who _had_ seen snow mountains could doubt for an instant that that rose-flushed strip of white was the himalaya. for it possesses two unmistakable characteristics which distinguish it from any cloud. firstly, the lower edge is absolutely straight and horizontal: it is exactly parallel with the horizon. secondly, the upper edge is jagged, and the outline of the jaggedness cuts clean and perfectly defined against the intense blue of the sky. no one who knows mountains could doubt that this line was the himalaya, yet every time we see it afresh we marvel more. we know for certain that those sharp edges _are_ the summits of mountains whose base is on this solid earth. yet, however sure we may be of that fact, we do not cease to wonder. and as we gaze upon that line of snowy summits no more--indeed, less--intrinsically beautiful than many a cloud, yet unspeakably more significant, we are curiously elated. something in us leaps to meet the mountains. and we cannot keep our eyes away. we seem lifted up, and feel higher possibilities within ourselves and within the world than we had ever known before. as we travel onward we strain to keep the mountains continually in sight, for we cannot bear to leave them. we feel better men for having seen them, and for the remainder of our days we would keep them in continuing remembrance. * * * as we come closer under the mountains the base emerges from the haze and the line of snowy peaks disappears behind the nearer outer ranges. then we come to these ranges themselves, which rise with considerable abruptness out of the level plains with very little intermediate modulation of form, and we find them densely clothed in forest--true, rich, luxuriant, tropical forest with all the delights of glistening foliage, graceful ferns and palms, glorious orchids, and brilliant butterflies. chapter ii the teesta valley this great forest, which extends for hundreds of miles along the slopes of the himalaya, reaches up from the plains to the snows. in the lower part it is a truly tropical forest, and about a tropical forest there is something peculiarly mysterious. a strange stillness is over all. not, indeed, the absolute silence of the desert, where literally not a sound is heard; for here in the forest, even during the hot noonday quiet, there is always the purring of insect life. but that stillness when not a leaf moves and no harsh noise is heard, when an impressive hush is laid upon the scene and we seem to be in some mysterious presence dominating all about us and rousing our expectancy. a kind of awe seizes us, and with it also comes a keen exhilaration. we can see at most for a hundred yards in any direction. but we know that the forest extends like this for hundreds of miles. and we realise that if we wandered off the track we might never find it again. it is all very awe-inspiring, and in some ways frightening. still, we are thrilled by the sight of such a profusion, intensity, and variety of life. in this hot, steamy atmosphere plants and trees grow in luxuriant abundance. every inch of soil is occupied. and these forests are not like woods in england, which contain only three or four species--oaks, beeches, sycamores, etc. in these sikkim forests we seldom see two trees of the same kind standing next each other. one tree may be more prevalent than others, but there is always great variety in the forms and colours of the stems, the branches, the leaves, the flowers, the habit of growth. there are trees of immense height with tall, strong, straight stems, and there are shrubs like hydrangeas of every size and description. there are climbers as huge as cables. and there are gentle little plants hardly rising above the ground. there is no end to the variety of plant life, and we have an inner spring of delight as we come across treasure after treasure that hitherto we had only seen reared with infinite care in some expensive hot-house. and what we see is only, we feel, a stray sample of what there is to be seen. what may there not be in those forest depths which we dare not enter for fear of losing our way! what other towering forest monarchs might we not come across if we plunged into the forest! what other exquisite flowers, what insects, what birds, what animals! what wealth of insect life may there not be at the tops of the trees where the fierce sunshine hidden from us by their leaves is drawing out their flowers! what may there not be going on in the ground beneath us! we know, that in these forests, perhaps near enough to see us, though their forms are hidden by their likeness to their leafy surroundings and the dappled sunlight, are animals as various as elephants, tigers, leopards, foxes, squirrels, and bats; birds as various as hawks, parrots, and finches; and insects from butterflies, bees, and wasps to crickets, beetles, and ants. the forest, we know, in addition to all the wealth of tree and plant life, is teeming with animal and insect life, though of this we are able to see very little, so carefully do animals conceal themselves. in the night they emerge, and in the morning and evening there is a deafening din of insect life. but at noonday there is a soft and solemn hush, and we are tense with curiosity to know all that is going on in those mysterious forest depths and up among the tree-tops, so close but so impossible of access. the great forest is the very epitome of life. concentrated here in small compass is every form and variety of living thing, from lowliest plant to forest monarch, from simplest animalcule to elephant, monkey, and man. there is life and abundant life all about us. but it is not the noisy, clamorous, obtrusive life of the city. it is a still, intense life, full of untold possibilities for good or harm. and herein lies its mystery: we see much, but we feel that there is infinitely more behind. of this life of the forest in all its richness, intensity, and variety we shall come to know more as we ascend the teesta valley till it reaches the snows, and tropical plant and animal life changes first to temperate and then to arctic forms. but first we must note some beauties of the valley itself. * * * the valley of the great teesta river, the valleys of its tributaries, the gorges through which the main river and its tributaries rush, the cascades pouring in succession down the mountain-sides, the sequestered glens and dells--all these have beauties which the terrific rain and the mists in which they are usually enveloped do not hide but augment. the river teesta itself, though only a minor contributor to the brahmaputra, is nevertheless during the rainy season, when it is fed both by the falling rain and by the melting snows and glaciers of the kinchinjunga region, impressive in its might and energy. with a force and tumult that nothing could withstand it comes swirling down the valley. before its rushing impetuosity everything would be swept away. for it is no little tossing torrent: it possesses depth and weight and volume, and sweeps majestically along in great waves and cataracts. in comparison with the serene composure of the lofty summits here is life and force and activity to the full--and destructive activity at that, to all appearance. yet as, from the safety of a bridge by which the genius of man has spanned it, we look upon the turmoil, a strange thrill comes through us. there is such splendid energy in the river. we are fascinated by the power it displays. it is glorious to look upon. alarming in a way it is. but we know it can only act within certain strictly defined bounds. a foot beyond those bounds it is powerless. and while it is already confined by nature within these limits, we know the day will come when it will be completely within the control of man and its very power available for our own purposes. so in the end it is with no sense of terror that we watch the raging river in its headlong course. rather do we enjoy the sight of such exultant energy, which will one day be at man's disposal. we rejoice with the river in a feeling of power, and herein lies its beauty for us. * * * as we look at the tremendous gorges through which the river clears its way we again are filled with awe and wonder. straight facing us is a clean, sheer cliff of hardest, sternest rock. it cannot be actually perpendicular, but to all appearance it is. and the mere sight of it strengthens our souls. here is granite solidity, and yet no mere stolid obstinacy. for these cliffs have risen--so the geologists tell us --through their own internal energy to their present proud position. they have, indeed, had to give place to the river to this extent that they have had to acknowledge his previous right of way and to leave a passage for him in their upward effort. the river is careful to exact that much toll from them year by year. but having paid that toll, they have risen by a process of steady, long persistence, and have maintained themselves in their exalted position by sheer firmness and tenacity of character. and as, dripping with warm moisture and carrying with them in any available crevice graceful ferns and trees, they rise above us high up into the clouds, and form the buttresses of those snowy peaks of which we catch occasional glimpses, we are impressed not only with the height of the aspiration those peaks embody, but with the strength and persistency of purpose which was necessary to carry the aspiration into effect. overpowered, indeed, we feel at times--shut in and overshadowed by what seems so infinitely greater than ourselves. the roaring river fills the centre of the gorge. the precipitous cliffs rise sheer on either hand. we seem for the moment too minute to cope with such titanic conditions. but sometimes by circumventing the cliffs and after a long tedious detour appearing high above them, sometimes by blasting a passage across their very face, we have proved ourselves able to overcome them. they no longer affright us. and as we return down the valley after a journey to its upmost limit, it is with nothing but sheer delight that we look upon these cliffs. they simply impress us with the strength that must go along with elevation of purpose if that purpose is to be achieved. unbuttressed by these staunch cliffs the mountains could never have reached their present height. we glory, then, with the cliffs in their solidity and strength as they proudly face the world. and we recognise that in this firmness and consistency of purpose lies their especial beauty. * * * in contrast with the swirling river and hard, rugged cliffs we, quite close to them, and hidden away in a modest tributary of a tributary in the quiet forest depths, will happen upon some deep sequestered pool which imbues us with a sense of the delicacy and reserve of nature. we here see her in a peculiarly tender aspect. the pool is still and clear. the lulling murmurs of a waterfall show whence it draws its being. a gentle rivulet carries the overbrim away. it is bounded by rocks and boulders green with exquisite ferns and mosses. overhanging it are weeping palms with long straight leaves. trees, with erect stems as tall as nelson's column, strain upward to the light. butterflies in numbers flutter noiselessly about. the air is absolutely still and of a feel like satin. clouds of intangible softness and clean and white as snow float around, appear, dissolve, and reappear. through the parting in the overhanging trees the intense blue sky is seen in glimpses. the sun here and there pierces through the arching foliage, and the greens of the foliage glisten brighter still. the whole atmosphere of the spot is one of reticence and reserve. yet quiet though it be and restful though it be, there is no sense of stagnation. the pool, though deep and still, is vividly alive. its waters are continually being renewed. and the forest, though not a leaf moves, is, we know, straining with all the energy of life for food and light, for air and moisture. so by this jewel of a pool in its verdant setting we have a sense of an activity which is gentle and refined. the glen's is a shy and intimate beauty, especially congenial to us after the forceful beauty of the river and the bold, proud beauty of the cliffs. but it is no insipid beauty: in its very quietness and confidence is strength. chapter iii the forest the teesta valley in its lowest part is only feet above sea-level. it is deep and confined and saturated with perpetual moisture. hardly a breath of wind stirs, and all plant life is forced as in a hothouse. the trees do not, indeed, grow as high as the big trees of california or the eucalyptus in australia, but some of these in the teesta valley are feet in height with buttressed trunks between and feet in girth, and give the same impression of stateliness and calm composure. with incredible effort and incessant struggle they have attained their present proud position, and the traveller most willingly accords them the tribute that is their due. grand tropical oaks nearly feet in girth also occur, screw-pines feet in height with immense crowns of grassy leaves feet long, palms of many kinds, rattan-canes, bamboos, plantains, and tall grasses such as only grow in dense, hot jungles. gigantic climbers tackle the loftiest trees. one allied to the gourd bears immense yellowish-white pendulous blossoms; another bears curious pitcher-shaped flowers. vines, peppers, and pothos interlace with the palms and plantains in impenetrable jungle. orchids clothe the trees. everywhere and always we hear the whirr and hum of insect life, sometimes soft and soothing, sometimes harsh and strident. and floating about wherever we look are butterflies innumerable, many dull and unpretentious, but some of a brilliancy of colour that makes us gasp with pleasure. we may be pouring with perspiration, pestered by flies and mosquitoes, and in constant dread of leeches. but we forget all such annoyances in the joy of these wonders of the tropics, whether they be trees or orchids, ferns or butterflies. and to see one of these gorgeous insects alight in front of us, slowly raise and lower his wings and turn himself about almost as if he were showing himself off for our especial pleasure, compensates us for every worry his fellows in the insect world may cause us. as might be expected, in the steamy, dripping atmosphere ferns are a predominating feature in the vegetation. not less than two hundred different kinds are found. the most noticeable are the tree ferns, of which alone there are eight species. their average height is about feet, but plants of and feet are not uncommon. and with their tall trunks and crown of immense graceful fronds they form a striking feature in the forest, and in the moister valleys where they attain their full luxuriance they may be seen in extensive groves as well as in little groups. four kinds of maidenhair, always light and graceful and attractive, are found; and of ferns common to europe, _osmunda regalis,_ the royal fern of europe, and the european moonwort and alder's-tongue ferns. then there is a fern which attains to gigantic proportions, especially in the cool forests, where its massive fronds grow to more than yards in length and in breadth, with a spread over all, measuring from tip to tip of opposite fronds, of yards. one handsome climbing fern clothes the trunks of tall trees; another which climbs on grasses and the smaller shrubs is common; and another forms almost impenetrable thickets or feet high. of the kinds which grow on rocks and trees the most delicately beautiful are the filmy ferns, of which there are eight kinds. the irish filmy is the largest, covering the face of large rocks under dense shade, its fronds growing to over a foot in length. many polypodiums and aspleniums grow gracefully on the rocks and trees during the rainy season. one especially elegant polypodium growing on the ground has fronds about or feet long, and sometimes as much as feet, and of proportionate width. another conspicuous fern is the bird's-nest fern with its large, massive fronds growing under shade on rocks and stems of trees. unless we are fern experts it is impossible for us to identify each among so many species. but, at any rate, we gather an impression of elegance and grace, often of airy lightness, and of wonderful variety of size and form. * * * from the ferns we look to the rest of the forest, and after the first bewilderment at the profusion and variety of vegetation we try to fasten on to a few individuals or types which we can identify as having seen elsewhere in some other part of india or in some palm-house in england. we are in the still, steamy atmosphere of a hot-house, and we are conscious that all round us, growing in luxuriant abundance, are rare and beautiful plants of which a single specimen would be treasured and treated with every fostering care in england. but we sigh to be able to recognise these treasures and make contact between home and this exceptionally favoured region--favoured, that is to say, as regards plant life. from among the giant trees, the bamboos, the palms, the climbers, the shrubs, the flowers, the orchids, we look out anxiously for friends--or at least for acquaintances whom we hope may develop into friends as we meet them again and again on our journeys through the forest. of the flowers, the orchids are naturally the first to attract us. they shine out as real gems in the greenery around them. the eye jumps to them at once. here seems to be something as nearly perfect in colour, form, and texture as it could possibly be. if the orchid is white it is of the purest whiteness, and shines chaste and unsullied amidst its dull surroundings. if it is purple, or pale yellow, or golden-yellow, or rose, or violet, or white, the colour has always a depth and purity which is deeply satisfying. and it seems to be because the waxy texture of these orchids is such a perfect medium for the display of colour that orchids are so exceptionally beautiful. the texture is of the very consistency best adapted for revealing the beauty of colour. and when we pluck a spray of these choice treasures from the forest branch and hold it in the sunlight, we feel we are seeing colour almost in perfection. the colour and texture are beautiful enough in themselves. but an added attraction in these orchids is their form--the curvature of their sepals and petals, and the wonderful little pitchers and cups and lips and tongues which an orchid exhibits. and the form is no mere geometrical pattern of lines and curves. it is obviously an ingenious contrivance devised for some special purpose. that purpose we now know to be the attraction of insects, who in sucking the orchid's honey will unconsciously carry on their wings or backs the flower's pollen to fertilise another orchid. though whether the insect in the long centuries by probing at the orchid has forced it to adapt itself to it, or whether the flower has forced the insect to adapt itself to the flower, or whether--as seems most likely--a process of mutual adaptation has been going on century by century, and the flower and insect have been gradually adapting themselves to one another, is still a matter of discussion among naturalists. we cannot gather an orchid of any kind without marvelling at its intricate construction. and when we are looking at the orchid in its natural surroundings in the forest itself and see the enormous numbers and the immense variety, in size and form and habits, of the insects around the orchid, and think how the orchid has to select its own particular species of insect and cater for that, and the insect among all the flowers has to select the particular species of orchid; and how the insect, whether butterfly or bee or moth or gnat or ant, or any other of the numerous kinds of insect, and the orchid have to adapt themselves to each other--we see how marvellous the mutual adaptation of flower to insect and insect to flower must have been. we see how the particular species of orchid must have chosen the particular species of bee, and the particular species of bee that particular species of orchid, and the bee and orchid set themselves to adapt themselves to one another, the orchid using all the devices of colour, scent, sweetness of honey, to attract the insect, and gradually shaping itself so that the insect can better reach the honey, and the insect lengthening its proboscis and otherwise adapting itself so that it can better secure what it wants. and we see how perfectly--how nearly perfectly--the flower is designed for its purpose. but what is perhaps most remarkable of all about an orchid is that this marvel of colour and form and of texture of fabric unfolds itself from within a most ungainly, unsightly, unlikely-looking tuber. from shapeless, colourless tubers, which attach themselves to trunks and branches of trees and cling on to rocks, there emerge these peerless aristocrats of the flower-world, finished, polished, immaculate, and reigning supreme through sheer distinction and excellence at every point--and also because theirs is clearly no ephemeral convolvulus-like beauty which will fade and vanish away in a twinkling, but is a beauty intensely matured, strong and deep and firm. * * * of the species of orchids found in the sikkim forest, many are very rare. but fortunately the rarest are not the most beautiful in colour and form. some very beautiful orchids are also very common. the most common are the dendrobiums, of which there are about forty species. the finest and best known is the _dendrobium nobile._ it grows in the lower hills and valleys up to , feet, and also in the plains. the flowers vary both in size and shade of colour; but in sikkim the sepals and petals are always purple, shading off into white at the base. the tip has a central blotch of very deep purple surrounded by a broad margin of pale yellow or white. this orchid is now very common in english hot-houses, so here is one point of contact with the tropical forest. the _d. densiflorum_ is equally common and grows in much the same region. it flowers in a dense cluster on a stalk somewhat after the fashion of a hyacinth. the sepals and petals of this beautiful species are of a pale yellow, while the lip is of a rich orange. one of the most charming of the sikkim dendrobiums has the smell of violets, and the sepals and petals are white-tipped with violet, the stem being sometimes / feet long. another noteworthy dendrobium is the _d. pierardi,_ whose prevailing colour is a beautiful rose or pale purple. after the dendrobiums the coelogyne are the most worth noting. the _ coelogyne cristata_ is common at elevations of from , to , feet, and flowers during march and april. it has numerous large flowers, which are pure white throughout, with the exception of the lamellae of the lip, which are yellow. it may be seen in flower in march in the orchid-house at kew. in the forest it grows in such profusion as to make the trunk of a dead tree look as if it were covered with snow. the _c. humilis_ is known as the himalayan crocus. it grows like a crocus from a pseudo-bulb at elevations from , to , feet, and flowers during february and march. the flowers are white and from to / inches in diameter. the lip is speckled with purple towards the edge. not so common but larger and handsomer than the dendrobiums are the cymbidiums, of which there are sixteen different species, usually with long grassy leaves and many-flowered drooping racemes with large handsome flowers. a very sweet-scented species is the _cymbidium eburneum,_ which is common between elevations of , to , feet, and flowers during march and april. the prevailing colour of the flowers is an ivory white, but the ridge on the lip is a brilliant yellow. this also may be seen at kew in march. these are some of the commonest orchids and all now grow in england, so that we can begin to get a footing in the forest and not feel that it is so completely strange to us. and as we ascend higher we shall find many more friends among the flowers. and to guide us among the trees and flowers we fortunately have sir joseph hooker, who in his "himalayan journals" has described this botanist's paradise in loving detail, so we cannot do better than follow him. amid the many plants he mentions we can only select a few, but these few will at least help to give us some conception of the whole and show the range of variation as we ascend. as we proceed higher up the valley to an altitude of about , feet, european trees and plants begin to be intermingled with the tropical vegetation. hornbeams appear, and birch, willow, alder, and walnut grow side by side with wild plantains, palms, and gigantic bamboos. brambles, speedwells, forget-me-nots, and nettles grow mixed with figs, balsams, peppers, and huge climbing vines. the wild english strawberry is found on the ground, while above tropical orchids like the dendrobiums cover the trunks of the oaks. the bracken and the club-moss of our british moors grow associated with tree-ferns. and english grow alongside himalayan mosses. the valley itself continues of the same character--deep with its steep sides clothed in forest and the path scrambling over spurs, making wide detours up side valleys, or scraping along the sides of cliffs which stand perpendicularly over the raging river below. only here and there are clearings in the forest where lepchas or nepalese have built themselves a few wooden houses and roughly cultivated the land. otherwise we are under the same green mantle of forest which extends everywhere over the mountains; and though we are now piercing straight through the main axis of the himalaya, we seldom catch even a glimpse of the snowy heights which must be so near. but the vegetation is distinctly changing in character as we ascend--the most tropical trees and plants gradually disappearing, and more and more flowers of the temperate zone coming into evidence. and as we pierce farther into the mountains the climate becomes sensibly drier and the forest lighter. there is still a heavy enough rainfall to satisfy any ordinary plant or human being. but there is not the same deluge that descends upon the outer ridges. so the forest is not so dense. frequently in its place social grasses clothe the mountain-sides; and yellow violets, primulas, anemones, delphiniums, currants, and saxifrages remind us of regions more akin to our own. now, too, we have reached the habitat of the rhododendrons, which are so peculiarly a glory of sikkim, and it is worth while to pause and take special note of them. out of the thirty species which are found in sikkim, all the most beautiful have been introduced --chiefly by sir joseph hooker--into england, and are grown in many parks and gardens as well as at kew. so english people can form some idea of what the flowering trees of the sikkim forest are like. but they must multiply by many times the few specimens they see in an english park or hot-house, and must realise that as cowslips are in a grassy meadow, so are these rhododendron trees in the sikkim forest. red, mauve, white, or yellow, they grow as great flowers among the green giants of the forest and brighten it with colour. the separate blossoms of a rhododendron tree cannot compare in beauty with the individual orchid. there is in them neither the deep richness of colour nor wonder of form nor sense of deeply matured excellence. the claim of the rhododendron to favour is rather in the collective quantity and mass of flowers so that by sheer weight of numbers it can produce its effect of colour. in some of the upper valleys the mountain slopes are clothed in a deep green mantle glowing with bells of scarlet, white, or yellow. perhaps the most splendid of these rhododendrons is _rhododendron grande_ or _argenteum,_ which grows to a height of from to feet, and has waxy bell-shaped flowers of a yellowish-white suffused with pink, to inches long and about the same across. the scarlet _r. arboreum,_ so general in the himalaya, is common in sikkim and furnishes brilliant patches of colour in the forest. and a magnificent species is _r. auchlandii_ or _griffithianum,_ which has large white flowers tinged with pink, of a firm fleshy texture and with a mouth inches across. it has been called the queen of all flowering shrubs. it grows well in cornwall, and among the hybrids from it is the famous pink pearl. _r. falconeri,_ a white-flowered species, is eminently characteristic of the genus in habit, place of growth and locality, never occurring below , feet. in foliage it is incomparably the finest. it throws out one or two trunks clean and smooth, feet or so high, the branches terminated by immense leaves, deep green above edged with yellow and ruby red-brown below. the creamy white flowers are shaded with lilac and are slightly scented. they are produced in tightly-packed clusters to inches across and twenty or more in numbers. a peculiar (in that it is of all the species the only one that is epiphytal) but much the largest flowered species is the _r. dalhousiae._ it grows, like the orchids, among ferns and moss upon the trunks of, large trees, especially oaks and magnolias, and attains a height of to feet. the flowers are three to seven in a head, and are / to inches long and as much across the mouth, white with an occasional tinge of rose and very fragrant. in size, colour, and fragrance of the blossoms this is the noblest of the genus. it grows out-of-doors in cornwall and in the greenhouse in other parts of england as a scraggy bush to feet high. _r. barbatum_ is a tree from to feet high, producing flowers of a rich scarlet or blood-colour, and sometimes puce or rich pink. it is one of the most beautiful of the himalayan rhododendrons, and is now very common in england, growing freely out-of-doors. another truly superb plant is _r. maddeni,_ with very handsome pure white flowers / to inches long and as much across the mouth. this is now a special favourite in england. it grows in large bushes in the open in cornwall and is very sweet-scented. _r. virgatum_ is a beautiful delicately white-flowered shrub. and _r. campylo-carpum_ displays masses of exquisite pale yellow bells of rarest delicacy. besides rhododendrons, ash, walnut, and maple become more abundant as we ascend, and at , feet larch appears, and there are woods of a spruce resembling the norwegian spruce in general appearance. among the plants are wood-sorrel, bramble, nut, spiraea, and various other south european and north american genera. the climate is no longer stifling and the leeches have disappeared. we miss many beauties of the tropical forest. but, with the vegetation more and more resembling what we are accustomed to in europe, we are feeling more at home. the path winds through cool and pleasant woods, following the varying contour of the mountain-sides. we are no longer oppressed by the strangeness of the life around us. at almost every turn we come across something new yet not wholly unfamiliar. and standing out especially in our memory of this region will be the sight of a gigantic lily rearing itself ten feet high in the forest, and as pure in its perfect whiteness as if it had been grown in a garden. it is the _lilium giganteum,_ and it has fourteen flowers on a single stalk and each / inches long and the same across. we still love most of all the white violets we have as children picked in an english wood, and even this great white lily will never supplant them in our affections. but the sight of that glorious plant rising proudly from amidst the greenery of its forest setting will be for us more than any picture. and its being "wild" has the same fascination for us that a flower that is "wild," and not garden grown, has for a child. in a florist's shop we may see lilies even more beautiful than this, but the enjoyment we get from seeing the florist's production bears no comparison whatever with the enjoyment we get from seeing this lily in a distant himalayan forest where not so many white men ever go. we often have experiences which perceptibly age us. but this is one of those experiences which most certainly make us younger. we are once again children finding flowers in a wood. as we proceed upward the valley opens out, the mountains recede and are less steep. they are also less wooded, their slopes become more covered with grass, and the river, no longer a raging torrent, now meanders in a broad bed. the great peaks are somewhere close by, but we do not see the highest, and for the himalaya the scenery is somewhat tame. but the number of herbaceous plants is great. a complete record of them would include most of the common genera of europe and north america. among them are purple, yellow, pink, and white primulas, golden potentillas, gentians of deepest azure, delicate anemones, speedwells, fritillaries, oxalis, balsams, and ranunculus. one special treasure of this part is a great red rose _(rosa macrophylla),_ one of the most beautiful of himalayan plants whose single blossoms are as large as the palm of the hand. with these plants from the temperate zone are mixed the far outliers of the tropical genera--orchids, begonias, and others--whose ascent to these high regions has been favoured by the great summer heat and moisture. we are now in the region of the primulas for which (besides its orchids and rhododendrons) sikkim is famous. sikkim may indeed be called the headquarters of the indian primroses, and many species are found there which appear to occur nowhere else. there are from thirty to forty species, the majority growing at altitudes from , to , feet, two or three only being found below , feet, and two or three as high as , to , feet. the best known is the _ primula sikkimensis,_ which grows well in england and resembles a gigantic cowslip. it thrills us to see it growing in golden masses in the high valleys in wet boggy places--though the precise colour may be better described as lemon-yellow rather than gold. the prevailing colour of the primulas is purple, but white, yellow, blue, and pink are also found. the _p. denticulata_ has purple to bright sapphire blue flowers, and great stretches of country are almost blue with the lovely heads of this primrose. miles of country can be seen literally covered with _p. obtusifolia,_ which has purple flowers and a strong metallic smell. _p. kingii_ is a lovely plant with flowers of such a dark claret colour that they are almost black. and perhaps the most striking primula is _p. elwesiana,_ with large solitary deflexed purple flowers. poppies also are a feature of the sikkim vegetation. near the huts the people cultivate a majestic species near _menconopsis simplicifolia,_ but it grows in dense clusters or feet high. the flowers vary in diameter from to inches, and are an intensely vivid blue on opening, though they change before fading into purple. _m. simplicifolia_ itself is also found at altitudes from , to , feet--a clear light blue species of special beauty, growing as a single flower on a single stem, and now to be seen at both edinburgh and kew. another beautiful poppy is the _m. nepalensis,_ which grows in the central dampest regions of sikkim at elevations of , to , feet and resembles a miniature hollyhock, the flowers being of a pale golden or sulphur-yellow, or inches in diameter and several on a stalk. as tangu is approached the valley expands into broad grassy flats, and here at about , feet the vegetation rapidly diminishes in stature and abundance, and the change in species is very great. larch, maple, cherry, and spiraea disappear, leaving willows, juniper, stunted birch, silver fir, mountain ash berberries, currant, honeysuckle, azalea, and many rhododendrons. the turfy ground is covered with gentians, potentillas, geraniums, and purple and yellow meconopsis, delphiniums, orchids, saxifrage, campanulas, ranunculus, anemones, primulas (including the magnificent _primula sikkimensis),_ and three or four species of ferns. the country being now so much more open, the valley bottom and the mountain-sides glow with purples and yellows of various shades. not even here, nor indeed anywhere in the himalaya, do we see that mass and glow of colour we find in california, where wide sheets of meadow-land are ablaze with the purple of the lupins and the gold of the californian poppy. but for the number of varieties of plants these upper valleys of the teesta river can scarcely be excelled. as we ascend the mountain-sides above tangu we find them covered with plants of numerous different kinds, and even at about , feet hooker gathered over two hundred plants. but now we are nearing the limit of plant life. at , feet the vegetation has ceased to be alpine and has become arctic, and the plants nearest the snow-line are minute primulas, saxifrages, gentians, grasses, sedges, some tufted wormwood, and a dwarf rhododendron, the most alpine of wooded plants. at the summit of the donkia pass hooker found one flowering plant, the _arenaria rupifragia._ the fescue _(festuca ovina),_ a little fern _(woodsia),_ and a saussurea ascend very near the summit. a pink-coloured woolly saussurea and _delphinium glaciale_ are two of the most lofty plants, and are commonly found from , feet to , feet. besides some barren mosses several lichens grow on the top, as _cladonia vermicularis,_ the yellow _lecidea geographica_ and the orange _l. miniata._ at , feet hooker found on one stone only a fine scottish lichen, a species of gyrophora, the "tripe de roche" of arctic voyagers and the food of the canadian hunters. it is also abundant in the scotch alps. on the summit of bhomtso, , feet, the only plants were the lichens _lecidea miniata_ (or _parmalia miniata)_ mentioned above, and borrera. the first-named minute lichen is the most arctic, antarctic, alpine, and universally diffused in the world, and often occurs so abundantly as to colour the rocks an orange red. * * * the entire range of plant life, from the truly tropical to the hardiest arctic, is now complete. as we look back from the limit of perpetual snow we see the whole great procession in a glance. we have come across no african, nor south american, nor australian plants, so we have not seen anything like the _whole_ of plant life. but the range from the tropic to the arctic has been complete and continuous. in no other region could we in so short a space as a hundred miles--the distance from bath to london--see the entire range so fully represented. and actually _seeing_ how vast is the range and variety of plant life is a very different thing from knowing that it exists; seeing the flowers in the flesh is altogether different from only reading descriptions of them; and seeing them in masses and in their natural surroundings affects us quite differently from seeing only a few in a garden or in a hot-house. here on the spot we feel close in touch with nature's own heart. we see nature's productions springing up fresh and new straight from the very fountain source. we have the joy of being able to stretch out a hand and pick a flower direct from its own surroundings, and to fondle it, examine it all round, admire its colour, form, and texture, compare its beauty with the beauty of other flowers and settle wherein its special beauty lies. we shall never be able to give to even the most exquisite orchid or the most perfect lily the same affection that we give to the primroses and violets of our native land. but we may be sure that our naturalist-artist, when he gathers together in his mind the impressions which have been made upon him by his passage through the tropical forests to the alpine uplands and thence to the limit of perpetual snow, will find that his sense of the variety of beauty to be found in trees and leaves, in ferns and flowers, has immeasurably expanded. he will have acquired a firmer grasp of plant life as a whole. he will have a truer measure of the beauty in it. and irresistibly, but most willingly, he will have been more closely drawn to nature's heart. chapter iv the denizens of the forest so far we have paid attention almost exclusively to the plant life. but all through sikkim the insect life presses itself just as insistently on our notice. in the tropical portion it is unbelievably abundant and varied. it swarms about us and is ever present. and much of it is as beautiful as the flowers. for sheer attractiveness the butterflies are as compelling as the orchids. mosquitoes, gnats, flies, leeches, every torment there is. but we forgive everything for the chance of being able to see alive and in the full glory of their colouring these brilliant gems of the insect world which we can in places view in hundreds and thousands at a time--and in extraordinary variety, for in this little country more than six hundred species are found--about ten times as many as are met with in england. moreover, there is no season when they are wholly absent, for in the hot valleys they may be seen all the year round, though naturally there are more in the summer than in the winter. if it were not for other attractions we would like to concentrate our attention on these beautiful creatures alone. for they fascinate us by the daring of their colours, by their bold designs, by the way in which they blend the colours with one another, and by the extreme delicacy and chasteness of both colour and design. we are reluctant to take the life of a single one of the thousands we see, but yet we are itching, too, to lay hold of one after another as it sails into sight displaying some fresh beauty. we want to handle it as we would a flower, turn it about and examine it from every point of view till not a shade or aspect of its beauty has escaped us. in the presence of these brilliant butterflies we are children once more. we want to have them in our hands and feel that they are in our possession. it is tantalising merely to view them from a distance. we want to enjoy their beauty to the full. these butterflies of sikkim are such complete strangers to us we do not even know their names. from the "gazetteer," however, we learn that the most beautiful of them are the papilios, of which alone there are no less than forty-two species. and three of these--namely, the _teinophalus imperialis_ (which occurs on tiger hill above darjiling) and two ornithopteras, or bird-butterflies--are among the most splendid of all butterflies. the former is green on the upper side with yellow spots on the hind-wing, and the long tails are tipped with yellow. the two bird-butterflies are common in the low valleys from may to october. they are truly magnificent insects, measuring from to inches across. their fore-wings are wholly of a velvety black and the hind-wing golden yellow scolloped with black. of the well-known green species of papilio, with longish tails and blue or green spots on the hindwing, there are four species, of which one is european. some have semi-transparent wings of a lace-like pattern, with long slender tails to the hind-wings, and are of a very elegant shape. a most gorgeously-coloured butterfly is the _thaumantis diores,_ black with large spots (which cover a great part of both fore and hind wings) of a brilliant metallic, changeable blue. it measures / inches across the outspread wings. it avoids the direct sunlight and dodges about among the scrub growing under the deep shade of tall trees in the hottest and moistest valleys. one of the most lovely butterflies in the world is the _stichophthalma camadeva,_ which is one of the largest of the sikkim butterflies, being from to / inches in expanse. it is more soberly coloured on the upper side than the last-named, being chiefly white and brown, but the underside is more beautiful, having a row of five red ocelli with black irides on each wing and other pretty markings. the lyccenides, or "blues," are represented by no less than species, several of them of surpassing beauty. many are marked with changeable metallic hues on the upper side of the fore-wing: some violet, some with green, and some with golden bronze. the most lovely of all is the _ilerea brahma,_ of which the colouring of the upper side of the male is unique. then there is the curious leaf-butterfly, which has a marvellous resemblance to a dead leaf with its wings folded over the back and showing the underside only, the leaf-stalk veins being excellently mimicked. but when flying about its upper side, which is a deep violet-blue with a conspicuous yellowish bar across the fore-wing, is exposed, and the butterfly is then most beautiful. i have seen many of these lovely butterflies flying about in the teesta valley, glistening in the dappled light of the forest, and then settle on a branch; and unless i had actually seen them alight, i should never have known them from leaves. * * * the moths, though naturally not as beautiful as the butterflies, are far more numerous, there being something like two thousand species. several of them are the largest of the insect race. and one of them, the famous atlas moth, is sometimes nearly a foot across. next in size come several species of the genus _actias,_ of which _selene_ is the most common. it is of a pale green colour with a pinkish; spot, and has long slender tails. it measures about inches across the fore-wings, and nearly as much from shoulder to the tip of the tail. * * * other insects numerously represented in sikkim are beetles, bugs, grasshoppers, praying insects, walking-stick insects, dragon-flies, ants, lantern-flies, cicadae, etc. * * * plant life and insect life are abundant enough, but of birds there seem to be comparatively few. as we travel through the forest we do not notice many of them, and we do not hear many. we do not everywhere find great flocks of birds as we see swarms of insects. and we do not find the forest resounding with the songs of birds as it does with the hum and crackle of insects. in this respect we are disappointed. but the birds of sikkim, if few in number, are great in variety. birds feed on fruits, berries, seeds, insects, grubs, caterpillars, small animals, and even little birds. some birds like a still, hot, damp climate. other birds like a cold, dry climate. some birds like the shade and quiet and protection of the forest. others like the open and the sunshine. some birds find their food in the water, others on the land. and the sikkim himalaya, from the plains to the mountains, provides such a rich variety of plant and insect life, such a variety of climate and of country, and so plentiful a supply of water, that birds of the widest difference of requirements can here be provided with their needs. consequently birds of numerous different species make sikkim their habitat, either permanently or for certain seasons of the year. and gammie, who has specially studied the natural history of sikkim, says in the "sikkim gazetteer" that in no part of the world of an equal area are birds more profusely represented in species. the birds may not be so numerous as in other parts, but they are more varied. between five and six hundred species are represented, varying from the great vulture known as the lammergeyer, which is / feet across the outstretched wing, down to the tiny flower-pecker, barely exceeding inches from the end of its beak to the tip of its tail. of the birds found in the forest itself, the honey-suckers or sun-birds are perhaps the most beautiful. there are no gorgeous birds of paradise, and even resplendent parrots are not very numerous. but these little sun-birds glitter like jewels among the leafy foliage, and the lustrous metallic hues of different shades with which they are richly coloured on the head and long tail-feathers change and flash in the sunlight with every slightest movement. not all so brilliant in colour but very delightful to watch are the fly-catchers. of these there are no less than twenty-six species, the most remarkable being the fairy blue-chat, which is brilliantly marked with different shades of glistening blue, and another which is strikingly coloured in almost uniform verditer blue. in the very lowest valleys is found the beautiful paradise fly-catcher, with a long-pointed black crest, the rest of the plumage white with black shafts and the tail inches in length. the quickness and agility this lovely bird displays as it darts and twists and turns in the pursuit of butterflies in their uneven dodging flight is one of the marvels of forest life. game-birds are not abundant, but four species of pheasant are found, of which the largest and handsomest is the moonal, bronze-green glossed with gold and with a tail of cinnamon red. sportsmen in the himalaya are familiar with the sight of this radiantly-coloured bird swishing down the mountain-side with apparently the speed and almost the brilliancy of a flash of lightning. not so handsome as the moonal, being small and greyish in colour on the back, is the blood-pheasant, remarkable for its blood-red streaks on the breast and its blood-red under-tail-coverts. bulbuls are largely represented and may be seen in large flocks among the scrub--delightful, homely little birds with bright and cheery ways which specially attract us. not very common, but to be found in the lower part of the valley, is the beautiful fairy bluebird, a large bird inches in length with a glistening cobalt-blue upper part and velvet black beneath. the european cuckoo may be heard all day long in the season from about , feet upwards. and about a dozen other cuckoos visit sikkim, of which by far the prettiest is the emerald cuckoo, a small bird not much more than inches long, of a brilliant emerald green with golden sheen, and below white barred with shining green. kingfishers are not numerous, as fish are scarce. but there are four species, of which the prettiest is a lovely little creature about inches long, coloured with rufous, white, and different shades of blue and violet. these are only a few of the most striking birds; but to give an idea of the variety of other birds which may be found in sikkim, many of which are hardly less beautiful than those above described, we may learn from gammie that among the birds of prey there are eleven eagles; the peregrine falcon, a little pigmy falcon, and five other falcons; a big brown wood-owl, feet in length, a pigmy owlet measuring only inches, and nine other owls; and six kites;--among the game-birds, besides pheasants, three quails, two hill-partridges, a jungle-fowl, woodcock, a snow-cock, and a snow-partridge;--among other classes of birds, nine or ten species of pigeons and doves; the european raven and a jungle crow; one jay and several magpies; two hornbills, one of which is feet in length; the common and the nepal swallow; about thirty species of finches, among them being three bullfinches and eight rose-finches; three or four larks; numerous and varied tits; wagtails; five species of parrots; eight or nine species of wren; thrushes of a dozen species; ten species of robin; and, lastly, many species of waders such as florekin, cranes, plovers, snipe, sandpipers, coots, water-hen, storks, heron, cormorants, terns, divers, and ducks. * * * reptiles are not commonly accounted among the beauties of nature; but they must not be lost sight of in reviewing the life of the forest. the largest is the python, whose usual length is feet, though individuals of to feet are not very rare. a very beautiful snake found in the cool forests is green with a broad black band on each side of the hinder half of the body and tail, the green scales being margined with black. another snake of the same length is a handsome green whip-snake, graceful in its movements, but ferocious and aggressive in its habits, although quite harmless. the ordinary cobra is not uncommon. the giant cobra is also found in the lower valleys, and grows to a length of or feet. four species of pit vipers are found. the krait occurs, but is not common. altogether there are nine species of venomous snakes and thirty species of non-venomous snakes found in sikkim. of lizards there are ten species. one is popularly known as the chameleon on account of its rather showy colours, but does not really belong to that family. and a beautiful grass-snake, which, as it is limbless, is often mistaken for a tree-snake, is also of the lizard genus. of frogs and toads there are about sixteen species. among them are several prettily-coloured tree-frogs. several of the species are recognised by their call. * * * of mammals about eighty-one species are found. they include three monkeys, eight of the cat tribe, two civet cats, one tree cat, two mongooses, two of the dog tribe, five pole-cats and weasels, one ferret-badger, three otters, one cat-bear, two bears, one tree-shrew, one mole, six shrews, two water-shrews, twelve bats, four squirrels, two marmots, eight rats and mice, one vole, one porcupine, four deer, two forest-goats, one goat, one sheep, and one ant-eater. the common monkey of india, the bengal monkey, is found in large companies at low elevations. the himalayan monkey is abundant from , to , feet; and the himalayan langur frequents the zone from , to , feet. the tiger inhabits the terai at the foot of the mountains, but is only an occasional visitor to sikkim proper. but the leopard and the clouded leopard are permanent residents and fairly common. this last is of a most beautiful mottled colouring. another leopard is the snow-leopard, which inhabits high altitudes only. the marbled-cat is a miniature edition of the clouded leopard, and the leopard-cat of the common leopard. the large indian civet-cat is not uncommon, but the spotted tiger-civet, a very beautiful and active creature, is rare. the jackal is not uncommon, and there is at least one species of wild-dog. these dogs hunt in packs and kill wild-pig, deer, goats, etc. a very peculiar and interesting animal is the cat-bear, which has the head and arms of a minute bear and the tail of a cat. the brown bear occurs at high altitudes, and the himalayan black bear is common lower down. the black hill squirrel is a large handsome animal of the lower forests, and a very handsome flying squirrel inhabits the forests between , and , feet. the great sikkim stag is not found in sikkim proper, but inhabits the chumbi valley. the sambhar stag is abundant. the commonest of the deer tribe is the khakar, or barking deer. it is, says hodgson, unmatched for flexibility and power of creeping through tangled underwood. the musk deer remains at high elevations. in addition to the above, elephants come up from the forests in the plains, and in these plain forests are found (besides tigers and boars) rhinoceros, bison, and buffalo. * * * this has been a long enumeration of the animal life, in its many branches, which is found in the forest. the mere cataloguing of it is sufficient to show the extent and variety of insect, bird, reptile, and mammal life which the forest contains. but it is with the beauty of this animal life, rather than with its extent and variety, that we are concerned. and if the artist is to see its full beauty, he must see it with the eyes of the naturalist and sportsman--men whose eyes are trained to observe in minutest detail the form and colour and character of each animal, bird, or insect, and who know something of the life each has to lead, and the conditions in which it is placed. more sportsmen than naturalists, and more naturalists than artists, observe these and other animals in their natural surroundings. but, nowadays, at least photographers and cinematographers are going into the wilds to portray them. and perhaps naturalist-artists will arise who, every bit as keen as sportsmen now are to get to close quarters with game animals, will want to get into positions from which they will be able carefully to observe animals of all kinds and take note of every characteristic. these artists will have to be fully as alert as the sportsmen, and be able on the instant, and from a fleeting glimpse, to note the lines and shades and character of the animal. but, if they do this, they will, in all probability, bring back more lasting and deeper impressions of the animals than the sportsman with all his keen observation ever receives--and they will enjoy a greater pleasure. an artist, who from observing an animal in its own haunts, and from the sketches and notes he made there, could paint a picture of it in its own surroundings, would assuredly derive more pleasure from his enterprise than the sportsman who simply brought back the animal's head. in addition he would have enabled others to share his enjoyment with him. there is a great field here for the painter; and many would welcome a change from the same old cows and sheep tamely grazing in a meadow, which is all that artists usually present to us of animal life. among the most conspicuous animals met with are the elephant, the bison, the buffalo, and the rhinoceros. and it would be hard to discover beauty in any of these. as we see the rhinoceros, for example, in the zoological gardens nothing could be more ugly. yet we should not despair of finding beauty even in a rhinoceros if we could study him in his natural surroundings and understand all the circumstances of his life. if we observed him and his habits and habitat with the knowledge of the naturalist and the keenness of the sportsman, we might find that in his form and colour he does in his own peculiar fashion fitly express the purpose of his being. and whatever adequately expresses a definite purpose is beautiful. where a dainty antelope would be altogether out of place, the ponderous rhinoceros may be completely in his element. where a tender-skinned horse would be driven mad by insects, the thick-skinned beast passes the time untroubled. in a drawing-room a daintily-dressed lady is a vision of loveliness. in a ploughed field she would look ridiculous. in a drawing-room a peasant would look uncouth. in a field, as millet has shown us, he possesses a beauty, dignified and touching. it is not impossible, therefore, that an artist who had the opportunity of entering into the life of a rhinoceros, as millet had of entering into the life of a peasant, might discover beauty even in that monstrosity. this, however, i allow is an extreme case. in a less extreme case beauty has already been discovered. the bison does not at first sight strike us as a beautiful animal. yet mr. stebbing, the naturalist-sportsman, says that, as he caught sight of one after a long stalk, and watched it with palpitating heart, he was fascinated by the grand sight-- hands of coal-black beauty shining like satin in the light filtering through the branches of the trees. when we move on from the bison to the stag the beauty is evident enough. a stag carries himself right royally, and has a rugged, majestic beauty all his own. there are few more beautiful sights in the animal world than that of a lordly stag standing tense with preparedness to turn swiftly, and, on the instant, bound away in any direction. not majestic like the great deer, but of a more airy grace and daintiness, are the smaller deer and antelope. the lightness of their tread, their suppleness of movement, and their spring and litheness, fill us with delight. * * * we now come to the crown of the animal kingdom--man. and in the sikkim himalaya are to be found men of all the stages of civilisation from the most primitive to the most advanced. inhabiting the forests at the foot of the mountains are certain jungle peoples of extreme interest simply by reason of their primitiveness. they represent the very early stages of man, and in observing them in their own haunts, we shall understand something of the immensity and the delicacy of man's task in gaining his ascendancy in the animal world and acquiring a greater mastery over his surroundings. in these forests teeming with animal life of all kinds man had to hold his own against dangerous and stronger animals, and to supply himself with food in the face of many rivals. he had to be as alert as the sharpest-witted and as cunning as the most crafty, and to have physical fitness and endurance to stand the strain of incessant rivalry. this is what these jungle people have. their alertness, their capacity to glide through the forest almost as stealthily as an animal, their keenness of sight, their acute sense of hearing, their knowledge of jungle lore and of the habits of animals, and their ability to stand long and hard physical strain, are the envy of us civilised men when we find ourselves among them. particularly is this shown when tracking. they will note the slightest indication of the passage of the animal they are after--the faintest footprint, a stone overturned and showing the moisture on its under surface, a broken twig, a bitten leaf, the bark rubbed--and they will be able to judge from the exact appearance of these signs how long it is since the animal made them. they will, too, detect sounds which we civilised men would certainly never hear, and from a note of alarm in these sounds, or from excitement among birds, infer the presence of a dangerous animal. when seen outside the forests these jungle men look wild and unkempt, but seen in their natural surroundings and compared _there_ with the white man, they have a beauty which is wanting in the white man. in _these_ surroundings they have a dignity and composure and assurance which the european lacks. they are on their own ground, and there they are beautiful. and these primitive men are worthy of being painted by the very greatest of painters, and of having their praises sung by the very first of poets. for it is they and their like who, with only such weapons as the forest affords and their own ingenuity devised, won the way through for us civilised men, won the battle against the fierce and much more powerful beasts around them, and by great daring and through sheer skill, courage, and endurance led the way to the light. it was a marvellous feat. for all the privileges and immunities which we men of to-day enjoy we have to thank these primitive forest men, and our gratitude could never be too great. they are deserving of the closest attention and the warmest appreciation. not many of these really primitive peoples are nowadays left in the jungles. but the tea-gardens have attracted a primitive people, the santals, who are typical of the true dravidian stock of india--a jolly, cheerful, easy-going, and, on the whole, law-abiding, truthful, and honest people who love a roaming life, with plenty of hunting and fishing. the lepchas of sikkim have risen above the first primitive stage. they clothe themselves well and dwell in well-built houses. they do not possess for us the same essential interest as belongs to truly primitive people. but on account of their intimate knowledge of the forest and its denizens, and by reason also of their being a remarkably simple, gentle, and likeable people, they have an unusual attraction for travellers. hooker, who was one of the first to live among them, and claude white, who lived among them for many years, both write of them in affectionate terms. they are child-like and engaging, good-humoured, cheery and amiable, free and unrestrained. they have, too, a reputation for honesty and truthfulness. more vigorous, capable, and virile than the lepchas are the nepalese, who, migrating from nepal, are found in great numbers in this region. they are more given to agriculture than the lepchas, and are thrifty, industrious, and resourceful. though excitable and aggressive, they are also law-abiding. less numerous but prominent inhabitants of this region are the bhutias, who consist of four classes; bhutias, who are a mixed race of tibetans and lepchas; sherpa bhutias, who come from the east of nepal, the word _sher_ merely meaning "east"; the drukpa or dharma bhutias, whose home is bhutan; and the tibetan bhutias from tibet. they are strong, sturdy men, merry and cheerful. these lepchas, nepalese, and bhutias are all of mongolian origin, and therefore have the distinctively mongolian appearance. but besides these, in darjiling and on the tea-gardens are to be found bengali clerks, marwari merchants from rajputana, punjabi traders, hindustani mechanics, and chinese carpenters. and in addition to all these are british government officials, tea-planters, and a continual stream of visitors from all parts of europe and america, who come to darjiling to view the snowy range. so that in this small region may be found representatives of every grade of civilisation and a great variety of types. and what an amount of beauty--as distinct from mere prettiness--there is to discover in even the rough local people may be seen from the pictures of the russian painter verestchagin, engravings from which are given in his autobiographical sketches entitled "vassili verestchagin." this great painter evidently succeeded in getting inside the wild peoples he loved; and his pictures reveal to us beauties we might without them never have known. in these people's gait, their attitudes, their grouping, as well as in their features, he was able to discern the hardihood, the patience, the impetuosity, the gentleness of their character, and portray it for us. putting aside the obvious differences between us and them, we are able to detect our fundamental identity of nature, have a fellow-feeling with them, recognise sameness between us and so see their beauty. chapter v the sum impression the artist has now to stand back and view the forest as a whole. and he must test his view in the light of reason--bring truth to bear upon beauty. the forest with its multitudinous and varied life, ranging from simplest to most cultured man, is an epitome of nature so far as she is manifested on this planet. and he will from this epitome try to get a view of the real character of nature. as he takes stock of the impressions which have been made upon him, he will have to form a conclusion of absolutely fundamental importance for the enjoyment of natural beauty. men's hearts instinctively go out to nature, and in consequence they see beauty in her. as children they love flowers and love animals. and the most primitive races have the same feeling though they are just as callous in their treatment of animals as children are in their treatment of one another. in the more cultured races this instinctive love of nature and appreciation of natural beauty has enormously developed. but if men ever came to hold the idea--as so many since the doctrine of the survival of the fittest has come into prominence are inclined to do--that nature is at heart cold and hard, and recks nothing of human joys and sorrows, then love of nature would fade away from men's hearts. being out of sympathy and repelled from entering into deep communion with her, men would never again see beauty in her. the enjoyment of natural beauty would pass from them for ever. so the artist will try to get at the true heart of nature. if the naturalist part of him tells him that at bottom nature is merciless and unrelenting, utterly regardless of the things of most worth in life; that nature is indeed "red in tooth and claw"; that all she cares for--all she selects as the fittest to survive--are the merely strongest, the most pushing and aggressive, the individuals who will simply trample down their neighbours in order that they themselves may "survive"; or if, again, the naturalist convinces him that all he has seen in the forest has come about by pure chance; that it is by a mere fluke that we find orchids and not mushrooms, men and not monkeys, at the head of plant and animal life; and that nature herself is wholly indifferent as to which of the two establishes its preeminence--then he will feel the chill upon his soul, he will shrivel up within himself, the very fountain-spring of beauty will be frozen up, and never again will he see beauty in any single one of nature's manifestations. but if, on the other hand, the naturalist is able to convince the artist that in spite of the very evident struggle for existence nature does not care twopence whether the "fittest" survive or not so long as what is best in the end prevails; that far from things coming about by mere chance nature has a distinct end in view, and that end the accomplishment of what he himself most prizes, then the heart of the artist will warm to the heart of nature with a fervour it had never known before; his heart will throb with her heart, and every beauty he has seen in plain or mountain, in flower, bird, or man, will be a hundredfold increased. which of these two views of nature, so far as nature can be judged from what we see of her on this planet, is correct, he has now to determine. the profound mystery which everywhere prevails in the forest and which exerts such a compelling spell upon us he will want to probe to the bottom. he will not be content with the outward prettiness of butterfly and orchid, or with the mere profusion and variety of life, or with the colossal size of animals and trees. he will want to burrow down and get at the very root and mainspring of this forest life. he will want to reach the very heart of nature here manifested in such manifold variety. he will want to arrive at the inner significance of all this variety of life. then only will he understand nature and be able to decide whether nature is cruel and therefore to be feared, or kind and gracious and therefore to be loved. * * * now, when we go into the forest and look into it in detail, the profusion is even greater than we expected. in this damp tropical region where there is ample heat and moisture, plant life comes springing out of the earth with a prolificness which seems inexhaustible. and when plant life is abundant, animal and insect life is abundant also. so profuse, indeed, is the output of living things that it seems simply wasteful. a single tree may produce thousands of flowers. each flower may have dozens of seeds. the tree may go on flowering for a hundred or two hundred years. so a single tree may produce millions of seeds, each capable of growing into a forest giant like its parent. with insect life the same profusion of life is evident. a single moth or butterfly lays thousands of eggs. mosquitoes, flies, gnats, midges, leeches swarm in myriads upon myriads. the abundance and superabundance of life is the first outstanding --though it will prove not the most important--impression made upon us by a contemplation of the forest as a whole. * * * scarcely less striking than the abundance is the variety. life does not spring up from the earth in forms as alike one another as two peas. each individual plant or animal, however small, however simple, has its own distinctive characteristics, there is variety and variation everywhere. variety in form, variety in colour, variety in size, variety in character and habit. in size there is the difference between the huge _terminalia_ towering up feet high and the tiny little potentilla; between the atlas moth inches in spread and the hardly discernible midges; between the elephant, massive enough to trample its way through the densest forest, and the humble little mouse peeping out of its hole in the ground. in colour the difference ranges from the light blue of the forget-me-not to the deep blue of the gentian; from the delicate pink of the dianthus to the deep crimson of the rhododendron; from the brilliant hues of the orchids to the dull browns and greens of inconspicuous tree flowers; from the vivid light greens, yellows, and reds of the young leaves of these tropical forests to the greyer green of their maturity; from the smiting reds and blues of the most gaudy butterflies, beetles, and dragon-flies to the modest browns of night-flying moths; from the gorgeous colours of the parrots to the familiar black of crows; from the yellow-striped tiger to the earth-coloured hare; from the dark-skinned aborigine to the yellow-skinned mongolian and the fair european. similarly do plants and animals vary in form: from the straight pines and palms to the spreading, umbrageous oaks and laurels; from upstanding lilies to parasitical orchids; from monstrous spiky beetles to symmetrical dragon-flies; from ungainly rhinoceros to graceful antelope; from short, sturdy bhutias to tall, slim hindustanis. likewise in character individuals are as different as the strong, firm tree standing open-faced, four-square to all the world and the creeping, insinuating parasite; as the intelligent, industrious ant and the clumsy, plodding beetle; as the plucky boar and the timid hare; as the rough forest tribesman and the cultured bengali. lastly, there is variety among not only the different species of plants, animals, insects, etc., but also the individuals of the same species. we ourselves know the differences there are between one man and another, and as far as that goes between ourselves on one day and ourselves on the next. each plant--and still more each animal--has its own unique individuality. every cavalry officer, every shepherd, every dog-owner, every pigeon-fancier knows that each horse, sheep, dog, pigeon has its own individuality and is distinctly different from all others of its kind. and so does every gardener know that each rose, each tulip, each pansy is different from all other roses, tulips, and pansies. it is the same in the forest. hardly two trees or plants of the same species develop their young leaves, open their flowers, ripen their seeds, and drop their leaves at the same time. apart from the size of the flower and leaf there are differences in colour, shape, and marking. each in appearance and in habit has an individuality of its own. such is the variety in the abundant life of the forest that no two individuals, no two blades of grass, or no two leaves are in every detail precisely alike. and this is the second outstanding impression we receive. * * * the abundance and variety of life are evident enough. not so evident but equally noteworthy is the intensity. in the still forest one of the giant trees looks utterly impassive and immobile. it stands there calm and unmoved. not a leaf stirs. yet the whole and every minutest part of it is instinct with intensest life. it is made up of countless microscopic cells in unceasing activity. highly sensitive and mobile cells form the root-tips and insinuate their way into every crevice in search of food for the tree, rejecting what is unpalatable and forwarding what is useful for building up and sustaining the monarch. other cells take in necessary food from the air. others build up the trunk and its protective bark. others, and most important of all, go to make up the flowers of the tree and the organs of reproduction which enable the tree to propagate its kind. all this activity of the separate cells and combinations of cells is taking place. and in addition there is that activity of them all in their togetherness, that activity which keeps the cells together, and which if relaxed for a moment would mean that the cells would all collapse as the grains of dust in an eddying dust-devil at a street corner collapse once the gust of wind which stirred them and keeps them together drops away. what must be the intensity of life required to develop the tree from the seed and to rear that giant straight up from the level soil feet into the air and maintain it there two hundred years, we can only imagine; for to outward appearance the tree is quite impassive. it does not move a muscle of its face to reveal the intensity of life within. the tree is characteristic of every living thing. every plant and every animal, however seemingly sluggish, is working to fulfil its life, to nourish itself, to reproduce its kind. * * * now, the amount of air and sunshine for plants may be practically unlimited, but air and sunshine are not all that plants require. they want soil and moisture as well. and the standing-room for plants is strictly limited. the forest stretches away up to the snows; but there it stops. necessarily, therefore, there must be the keenest and most incessant struggle among the plants for standing-room. only a comparatively few can be accommodated. the rest cannot survive. and as the number of plants which can survive is thus limited, the number of animals is limited also, for animals are dependent on plants. plants, therefore, in spite of their eminently pacific appearance are engaged in a fierce struggle with one another for standing-room. and animals are likewise engaged in a struggle among themselves for the plants. there is competition among the roots of the different individual plants for the food and water of the soil. and there is competition among the leaves for the sunlight. each plant is pushing its roots downwards and spreading outward for more food and to root itself more firmly. each is straining upward to receive more sunlight. each is struggling with its fellows for room and means to develop its life. competitors in hundreds and thousands are forced to withdraw and succumb. and even when a forest giant has defeated all competitors and reached its full maturity it has still to maintain the struggle and hold its own continually against other individuals whose roots are reaching out below and whose branches are spreading out above; against climbers who would smother it; and against parasites who would suck its very life-blood. the battle, moreover, is often not so much between one species and another species as between individuals of the same species. and it is a war which continues through life. the struggle for existence among the plants and trees is keen beyond imagination. and the struggle among the insects, birds and beasts, and man for the plants and products of the trees is no less severe. so now our impression is that of an abundant, varied and intense life in which the individuals are perpetually struggling with one another for bare existence. * * * under these stringent and stressful conditions does each living being come into the world. he has to battle his way through--or succumb. plants as well as men, and men as well as plants. so, as we look into the structure of animals and plants, we are not surprised to find that in order to cope with their surroundings they have developed organs which are specially adapted to enable them to secure the needful food, to hold their own against the competition of their neighbours, to meet the exigencies of their surroundings, and to pursue their own life to the full extent of its possibilities. even plants are like sentient beings in this respect. the sensitive tips of their roots are organs admirably adapted for feeling their way through the soil and selecting from its constituents what will best nourish the plant. the leaves opening out to the air and sunshine are other organs adapted for gathering in nourishment. and thorns and poisonous juices are means adapted to fend off destructive neighbours. the eyes and ears in animals are other instances of organs which enable them to see what will serve them as food, or to hear what may be possible enemies, and to make use of what will help them to the proper fulfilment of their life. we see each individual plant and animal striving to the best of his ability to adjust himself to the conditions in which he finds himself, trying to adapt himself to his surroundings--to his physical surroundings, such as the climate and soil, and to his social surroundings, consisting of his plant and animal neighbours and rivals. we shall probably notice, too, that he seems to be driven by some inner impulse (which in its turn is a responding to the impress of the totality of the individual's surroundings) to strive to do something more than merely adapt himself to his surroundings. he is urged on to rise superior to them. so the course of the individual's life is continually being affected by surroundings which compel him to adapt himself to them on pain of extinction if he fails. on the other hand, he is himself, in his own small way, affecting his surroundings and causing _them_ to adapt themselves to _him._ even the humblest plant takes from the surrounding soil and air what it needs as food and changes it in the process of assimilation, so that the surroundings are, to a slight extent at least, changed by the activity of the plant. and we already have noticed how a plant's insect surroundings have to adapt themselves to the plant. there is reciprocal action, therefore--the surroundings forcing the individual to adapt himself to them, and the individual causing the surroundings to adapt themselves to him. here we have reached the point where, besides the struggle for existence among the individuals of an abundant, varied, and intense life, there is adaptation among the individuals to their surroundings and of their surroundings to the individuals. * * * we have now to note how with the adaptation goes selection. set amid these physical and organic surroundings, some helpful, some harmful, the individual has to spend his life in selecting and rejecting what will further or hinder his natural development. he has to reject much, for there is much that will harm him. he has to select a little--for that little is vitally necessary for his upbuilding and maintenance. from among the elements of the soil he has to choose those particular elements that he needs. thus a plant selects through its roots from the elements of the soil, and through its leaves from the elements of the air, those elements and in those quantities that it needs for nourishment and growth. but it has also, by means of thorns or poison juices or other device, to protect itself from being itself selected by some animal for that animal's own nourishment and growth. so the individual is constantly selecting, and is as constantly on the guard against being selected. the principle of selection among the abundant and varied life is in continual operation. and unless he selects wisely he will not survive; for he will either have insufficient to live on or else have what is harmful to his life. nor will he survive unless he is able to fend off those who would select him for their own maintenance. there is selection everywhere--selection _by_ the individual and selection _of_ the individual by surrounding neighbours and circumstances. * * * thus far we have only recapitulated what most men are familiar with since darwin commenced preaching the doctrine of evolution by natural selection sixty years ago. but the naturalist-artist of the future will probably not be content with the conclusion to which so many jump that all that nature teaches or expects of individuals --plants, beasts, or men--is that they should adapt themselves to their surroundings and fit themselves to survive; that all nature has at heart is adaptability of individuals to their surroundings and their fitness to survive. the lowly amoeba can perform these unenterprising functions more fitly than himself. and the artist would never be satisfied with so mean and meagre an ambition as merely to adapt himself to his surroundings and fit himself to survive. if he saw evidence of no higher expectation than that in the workings of nature, his heart would certainly not cleave to her heart. and there being estrangement and coolness between his heart and hers, he would see no beauty in nature and his pursuit of natural beauty might here end. but an instinct within him tells him that this cannot be the last word as to nature's character and methods. he himself is constantly risking his life with no thought of trying to survive, and he sees his neighbours doing the same. and his inclination is to go a good deal farther than tamely adapting himself to his surroundings. he wants and strives to rise superior to them--and he finds his neighbours likewise striving. so with this instinct goading him on he is driven to probe deeper still into the mystery of the forest life. * * * of selection and adaptation we have seen evidence throughout the whole forest life. now, where there is selection and where there is adaptation there must be _purposiveness._ selection implies the power of choice, and we have seen how plants as well as animals deliberately and effectively exercise this power of choice. and adaptation implies adjustment to an end, and we have seen how wonderfully plants no less than animals adapt themselves to certain ends. and where individuals have the power of choice and exercise that power; and where they have the power of adapting themselves to certain ends and exercise that power, there obviously is purposiveness. purposiveness runs like a streak through every activity. it permeates the whole forest life. it is observable in plants no less than in animals. naturalists, indeed, regard trees and plants as truly sentient beings. and the means plants employ to compass the end they have in view, are truly wonderful. still more remarkable is the fact that hardly two attain their object by exactly the same means. the tropical forest is full of climbing plants bent upon reaching the sunlight. but some climb by coiling round the trunk of a tree like a snake, some swarm up it by holding on with claws, some ascend by means of adhering aerial roots, and some reach what they want by pushing through a tangle of branches spreading out arms and hauling themselves up. and when plants have attained maturity and flowered, the flowers employ numberless ways of attracting insects for the purpose of fertilisation. in a still, tropical forest, such as that of lower sikkim, there is no hope of the pollen being carried from one flower to another by air-currents. the flowers have therefore to devise a means for the transport of the pollen. efforts are made to induce winged creatures--insects in most cases, but sometimes birds--to render assistance. colours for day-flying insects and scent for night-flying insects are accordingly employed as means to this end. brilliant colours attract butterflies and bees by day. strong scent --sometimes pleasant to our taste, sometimes the reverse--attracts moths and other insects by night. and the flowers which depend on their scents and not on colour are usually white or dull brown or green. and this scent is not exhaled when it is not needed, but only when the insects which the flowers wish to attract are about. orchids especially seem to _know_ what they want. their aerial roots wander about in search of what they want and seem to smell their way. they use discrimination in utilising their knowledge. they _choose._ and each individual seems to choose in its own way. from among many means of achieving the same end they make a definite choice, and different plants make different choices--they use different means. plants, therefore, quite evidently employ means to an end. they have an end in view--sometimes their own maintenance, sometimes the perpetuation of their kind, sometimes something else--and they employ means to achieve that end. they are, that is to say, _purposive_ in their nature. * * * evidence of purposiveness is also furnished by the wonderful organs of adaptation, root-tips, leaves, eyes, lungs, etc. it is extremely improbable that they came into being--or even started to come into being--by mere chance alone. the odds are countless millions to one against the atoms, molecules, and cells--myriads in number--of any one of these organs of adaptation having by mere chance grouped themselves in such a way as to form an effective eye, or lung, or leaf. it is, literally speaking, infinitely improbable that the organs of adaptation we see in a forest, in plant and animal, should have come into existence through chance alone. the organs of adaptation are distinctly and definitely purposive structures--not purposed, perhaps, but certainly purposeful. in its struggle with its surroundings and with competitors the individual has been compelled to bring into being organs to fulfil a purpose. it is not the case that the organ was first created and then a use found for it, or use made of it. what actually happens is that first there is a vague but insistent reaching out towards an end, towards the fulfilment of some inner want or need--the need for food or to propagate, or whatever it may be--and that to achieve that end, or fulfil that need, the individual is driven to create a special organisation--as an air ministry was created during the war to fulfil the new need for fighting in the air--and so a new organ is produced: an essentially purposive structure such as the eye or the lung, though unpurposed before the need arose. the organs we see, therefore, are outward and visible signs of the existence within of a definite striving towards an end--that is, of a purpose. the forest shows an abundant, varied, and intense life in which individuals are for ever battling with one another. but all is not happening by chance. everywhere we see signs of purposiveness. purposiveness--the striving towards an end--stands out as a dominating feature in forest life. selections and adaptations are made, but they are made with some purpose in view. purpose governs the adaptations and selections. what that purpose is we shall try and discover as we get to know still more of nature. * * * so far we have been observing individuals as separate individuals. now we must look at them gathered together as a whole. and the first point we note is that though each individual has his own unique individuality, whether he be plant or man, all are kept together as a single whole. we have seen the individuals battling with one another, competing with one another, struggling against one another. but that is only one side of the picture. just as remarkable as the way in which they have to resist one another is the way in which they depend on one another. their interdependence is, therefore, the point we have now to note. since darwin drew our attention to the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, the perpetual strife in nature has been clear enough. but hard, selfish, cruel, brutal though the struggle frequently is, though the strong will often trample mercilessly on the weak and let the unfit go to the wall without any consideration whatever; yet the very strongest and fittest individual could not survive for a moment by itself alone. and what is just as remarkable as the struggle between individuals is their dependence upon one another. all plants depend upon the natural elements--the soil, water, air, and light. animals depend on plants. and many animals depend upon other animals. a forest tree in its maturity is covered with blossoms, some conspicuous, others inconspicuous to sight, but very conspicuous to smell. these blossoms, either by sight or scent, attract butterflies, bees, moths, and other insects to sip their nectar, and in so doing carry away the pollen of the flowers, and unwittingly pass it on to another flower and fertilise it. the insect thus enables the tree to procreate its species. but the butterfly, after sipping the nectar of the flower of the tree, deposits its eggs on the under surface of the leaves, and the leaves give nourishment to the caterpillars into which these eggs develop. besides this, the flowers, having been fertilised by the insects, develop into fruits or berries containing seeds; and these fruits, berries, and seeds form food for monkeys, birds, bats, and rodents. in quarrelling for these many are dropped and form food for mice and others below. birds, finding food so near, pair, build their nests, and bring up their young in its branches. and in addition to the birds which are attracted by the berries, fruits, and seeds, other birds which are attracted by the caterpillars come there and build their nests. without the flowers the bees would be starved; without the bees or other insects the flowers would not be fertilised and the tree would not perpetuate itself.[*] [*] i take this illustration from rodway's "in the guiana forest." it applies equally to any tropical forest. the lives of all individuals, whether plants, beasts, or men, are thus curiously interwoven with and interdependent on one another. they are also dependent upon the chemical elements in the soil and air. and even then the dependence does not cease, for they depend, too, upon the light and heat from the sun. and the sun itself, and this earth as well, are subtly connected with the whole stellar universe. it is only within limits that any individual can be regarded as a distinct and separate entity. it has its own unique individuality, it is true. but it is also connected with all the rest of the forest and with all the rest of the earth, of the solar system, and of the universe. each individual is to _some_ extent dependent upon all other individuals. all influence and are influenced by all the rest. there is mutual influence everywhere. and all are connected in a whole--the whole influencing each individual and each individual influencing the whole. so besides the resistance of individuals to one another, there is attraction. besides conflict there is co-operation. besides independence there is interdependence. the life of the forest thus forms a whole. individuals have their due allowance of freedom. but they are kept together in a whole. running through the individuals in their ensemble, binding them together, in spite of the tether they are allowed, must therefore be some kind of organising activity. we cannot look into that marvellous forest life without seeing that at the back of it, working all the way through it, controlling, guiding, inspiring every movement, is some dominating activity, which, while allowing individuals freedom for experimenting by the process of trial and error, yet keeps them all bound together as a whole. and when we note the evidence of purposiveness everywhere so abundant, we cannot resist the conclusion that this activity also gives _direction._ it is not necessary to suppose that this activity emanates from any thing or person _outside_ nature. it may perfectly well exercise its control and guidance from within--just as the activity which is "i" controls, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the movements and actions of every particle of which "my" body is made up. but what we cannot but assume is that throughout this prolific and marvellously varied forest life, through every tiny plant and every forest giant, through every leaf and petal, through each little insect and every bird and butterfly, through the wild beasts of the jungle, the wary forest folk, and the most cultured men--through each and all and the whole in its collectedness there runs some kind of unifying activity, holding the whole together, ordering all, dominating all, directing all--just as the orchid-spirit holds together and directs the activities of each particle which goes to make up the orchid; or the eagle-spirit directs the activities of each particle which goes to make up the eagle. suffusing the whole, embracing the whole, permeating each single member of the whole, there must be an organising and directing activity, or we should not see the order and purposiveness we do. we shall now see that this organising activity gives not only direction, but an _upward_ direction to the whole which it controls. * * * we have already noted that among individuals the variety is such that no two are exactly alike. each individual, however nearly alike, varies in some slight degree from every other. and new variations are constantly being created. now we have to note that besides variation there is _gradation._ there is a _scale_ of being. and individuals are graded on that scale. one is higher than another. as there are gradations in height from the plains to the outlying spurs of the himalaya, and from these again to the higher ridges, and from these on to the great mountains, and finally to kinchinjunga and mount everest; and as there are gradations in size from tiny plants to the giant trees; so there are gradations in worth and value from the simple lichen or moss to the highly complex orchid; from the microscopic animalculae of a stagnant pond to monkeys and men; from simple primitive men to the highly cultured bengali; and from the simple bengali villager to the poet rabindranath tagore. everywhere there is scale, gradation, grade. the differences between individuals is not on the level but on ascending stages. even in very primitive communities, where all men are equal to the extent that there are no formal chiefs, one or two men always stand out pre-eminently above the rest, above the younger, the less skilful, the less experienced. there is variation everywhere, and wherever there is variation there is gradation. living beings are no more exactly _equal_ than they are exactly _alike._ either in proficiency, or in speed, or in strength, or in cunning, or in alertness, or in general worth, one is superior to the other. we determine which is the faster horse by pitting one against the other in a race. we find out which is the superior boxer by making the two men fight each other. we find out which is the cleverest boy by testing him at an examination. we expect to determine which is the ablest political leader by making him submit himself to a general election. we decide which is the most beautiful rose or orchid by putting the various flowers before a committee of judges. it is seldom possible to say with strict accuracy which one individual is superior to the other, and to arrange the various individuals in their truly right place in the scale. but quite evidently we do recognise the scale and recognise that theoretically it is possible to grade each individual on it, even though our practical methods may be somewhat rough-and-ready. this fact that gradation, as well as variation, exists is one of the great facts we have to note. for it indicates that the organising activity which keeps the individuals together is not keeping them together on a uniform dead level like the ocean, but is propelling them upward like the mountain. the significance of this fact has not hitherto been adequately noted. we are for ever speaking of equality when there is no equality. we have never noted with sufficient attention that everywhere there are grades and degrees. but it is a fact which a contemplation of the forest indelibly impresses on us. and it is a most welcome and inspiring fact, for it gives us a vision of higher things and promotes a zealous emulation among us. * * * and the organising activity is not only upward-reaching, but forward-looking. it looks to the future. we have remarked how the individuals strive and compete with one another in order to get food and air and light with which to nourish and maintain themselves. but self-maintenance is not their only object. they seek to propagate themselves--to perpetuate their kind. they even make provision for their offspring. they go further still and _sacrifice_ themselves that their offspring may flourish. here again selfishness is not the last word. even plants will make provision for their offspring, and in the last resort will sacrifice themselves that their offspring may survive. a plant will fight with its neighbours for the means wherewith to build itself up. but it will also provide for more than mere maintenance. it will build up organs for the purpose of propagating itself. even ferns have their organs for producing seeds. and many a plant will make a supreme effort to produce offspring rather than die without having perpetuated its kind. and plants--and of course more markedly animals and men--do not stop with merely reproducing their kind. besides devoting their energies to propagation, they will deliberately make special _provision_ for their offspring; they will supply it with albumen and starch. and many insects are not only indefatigable, but highly intelligent, in providing food for their young even before the young are hatched out. they do not lay their eggs on any plant at random, but will wander for miles to find a plant on which their young can feed, and they then lay their eggs on that plant. individual plants, insects, animals, or men may be frightfully selfish in their hard struggle for existence, but the one thing in regard to which no individual is selfish is in regard to its offspring. primitive man, utterly callous about the sufferings of animals and of his own fellow-men and even of his wife, is tenderly careful of his child while it remains a child--and this is a very significant trait in his character. however indifferent the individual may be to the sufferings of those about him, he will make any sacrifice for his offspring. there is some instinct within plants and animals alike which impels them to sacrifice themselves that their kind may continue. so that activity which is at the source of all life, and is keeping living things together in an interconnected whole, not only forces them upward in the scale of being, but is also driving them to look forward into the future, to provide for the future--and, indeed, to make the future better than the present. * * * this seems to be the way--judging by what we see in the forest--the activity works. things have i not come to be as they are by the slap-dash, irresponsible, unregulated methods of mere chance. we cannot fail to see that chance does play _some_ part. one seed from a tree may fall into a rivulet and be swept away to the sea, while another may be borne by a gust of wind, or by a bird, on to rich soil where competitors are few, and be able to grow up into a monarch of the forest, to live for a hundred years, and to give birth to thousands like itself. this is true. but chance will not produce the advancement and progress which is observable. chance will not produce a single one of those organs of adaptation we see in myriads in the forest. and chance would not have made the barren earth of a hundred million years ago bring forth the plant, animal, and human life we see on it to-day. the activity does not work on the haphazard methods of pure chance. nor, on the other hand, are its operations conducted in the rigid, mechanical method of a machine. nor, again, can the result we see be due to the working of blind physical and chemical processes alone. there is a great deal too much variety and spontaneity and originality about. we could not possibly look upon the forest as a machine--even of the most complicated kind. a machine goes grinding round and round, producing things of exactly the same pattern. whereas no two things exactly alike are ever turned out in the forest. and blind physical and chemical processes could by _themselves_--by themselves alone--never produce the novelties, the entirely new and unique things, and things higher and higher in the scale of being, which we see in the forest. only a man impervious to the teaching of common sense could suppose that the care which plant, beast, and man alike show for their offspring could be the result of bare physical and chemical processes without the inclusion with these processes of any other agency whatsoever. nor, on the other hand, do we see any signs of the forest being the result of a preconceived plan gradually being worked out--as a bridge is gradually built up according to the previously thought out plan of the engineer. the carrying out of a plan means that in course of time the plan will be completed, and that each stage is a step towards its completion. but in the forest life there is no sign of any beginning of an approach towards the completion of a plan. there is no tendency to a closing in. there is a reaching upward, it is true. but there is also a splaying outward. one line leads up to man. but others splay out to insects, birds, and elephants. another noticeable fact is that nowhere is perfection reached. if a plan were being worked we should expect to see the lower stages --like the foundations of the bridge--well and truly laid, incapable of improvement. but no living being--neither the lowliest nor the highest--is itself as a whole or in any one particular absolutely perfect. there is room for improvement everywhere. most wonderful things we see. but not perfection. the eye is a wonderful thing. but an oculist would point out defects in even the best. and if it be argued that there has not been sufficient time yet to work out a plan, the reply is that there has been infinite time. time is infinite. if the activity were merely working out a plan, the plan would have been completed ages ago. so the organising activity which we see must be working at the back of things, keeping all the separate individuals together in a connected whole, not only preserves the strictest order among them, but grants them freedom, stimulates emulation among them, inspires them to reach upward and to look into and provide for the future. such an activity is no mere mechanical activity. it is a purposive activity. it is an essentially _spiritual_ activity. spirit is not the casual flash flaming up from the working of blind physical and chemical forces. spirit dominates these blind forces. spirit is a true determining factor in the whole process. spirit is at the root and source and permeates the whole. this spiritual activity is what in ordinary language we speak of as "the spirit of nature," and emanates from the heart of nature. * * * when, therefore, our artist sums up his impressions of nature as epitomised in the life of the forest; when he has been able to feel that he has, as it were, got inside the skin of nature, entered into her spirit and really understood her--as the artist-midge we have referred to would enter into the nature of a man and try and understand him--he will probably find that nature works in very much the same way as he himself works, and is of much the same character as himself. the artist will observe that nature neither works by mere chance, tossing up at each turning whether she shall go to the right or to the left, and quite indifferent as to which way she takes; nor in the set and rigid manner of a machine; nor yet, again, in the cut-and-dried fashion which the execution of a previously conceived plan implies. order everywhere the artist will have observed. but order need not mean woodenness and machinery. order is simply the absolutely essential prerequisite of any freedom. and it is freedom that the artist everywhere observes. nature is not closed in by the designed overarch of an eventually-to-be-completed plan. the zenith and horizon are always open. there is always order, but there is scope illimitable for nature's workings. so the sum impression the artist will probably receive is that nature is in her essential character an artist like himself--that she creates and goes on creating, just as he creates and goes on creating. a painter who is a true artist and not a mere copyist paints "out of his head," as the saying goes, pictures which are true creations --something new and unique, though founded on and related to the pre-existing. and there is no limit to the pictures he might paint out of his head. he is not tied down in advance by any preconceived plan. according as he is roused and stirred by the complex life around him, he could--if he were physically able--go on for ever painting picture after picture, each a new creation. in the same way a poet could go on writing poems. the poet does not turn out poems like a machine turns out pins, each like the other. he is not tied down to what he writes. he writes out of his own heart what he likes. and he does not and _could_ not turn out two poems exactly the same. nor does he write according to plan as the bridge-builder works according to the plan of the engineer. he works as he goes. he works by spontaneous creativeness. he is utterly original--a true creator. and even so will our artist hold that nature works. the letters of nature's alphabet which the artist sees in the forest are not in the places they are either through mere chance or according to a definitely prepared plan. the letters form words, the words form lines, and the lines form poems. the artist reads the words and understands the meaning of the poems, and so understands the character of the poet--the poet whose name is nature. but the artist knows that the words and lines and poems he sees in the forest are there as spontaneous creations from the mind of nature as poems arise in his own mind. and he knows that nature could go on--and must go on--creating these poems, painting these pictures, for ever and ever. nature will, indeed, work to an end as an artist works to an end. nature has purposiveness as an artist has purposiveness. but that end is something which nature, like the artist, is always revising, re-creating, improving, perfecting. an artist has the general end of creating beauty, but he is always striving to enrich and intensify it, to create it in greater and greater perfection. and even so does nature work. * * * as the artist puts himself in touch with the heart of nature, the dominant impression he receives is of nature ever straining after higher, perfection, ever striving to achieve a greater excellence, and create beings with higher and higher, modes of life. he sees her straining upward in the mountain, in the trees, in the climbers on the trees, in every blade of grass. he sees the whole of life, straining to achieve higher and higher forms, more perfect flowers, more intelligent animals, more spiritual men. he sees the life of the seas stretching up out of the seas on to the land. he sees the life of the land striving to reach the highest points on the land. and he sees it also soaring up into the air and making itself at home there, too. everywhere he sees evidence of aspiration and upward effort. but he notes also that with this upward effort there goes a downward pull. the mountain strives upward, but it is drawn down by the forces of gravitation. the eagle soars up in the sky, but has to come down to earth to rest and feed. the poet aspires to heaven, but has to stop on earth and earn his daily bread. nature, like himself, the artist finds, is engaged in a constant struggle between an impulse to excentration and the necessity for concentration. she wants to fly off to the zenith and to the horizon, but is continually being drawn into the centre. she wants to let herself go, but has to keep herself in. and all this is to the good. for the necessity for concentration only serves to strengthen and refine her aspiration. and the net result is higher and higher perfection. she cannot rise any higher in a mountain, so she rises in a higher form in a tree. she cannot rise any higher in a tree, so she rises in higher form in an orchid. she cannot rise any higher in an orchid, so she rises in higher form in a man. she cannot rise any higher in man as an intelligent animal, so she rises in higher form in man as a spiritual being, capable of spiritual appreciation and of spiritual communion with her. the gravitation to a centre--the necessity for concentration--does not suppress and crush the aspiration of nature; it only serves to compel the aspiration to refine and perfect itself. in this spirit of aspiration checked by concentration the artist will surely find what is after his own heart. he will recognise that what is going on in nature is the same as what goes on in his own heart. he and nature have a common aspiration. as he aspires but has to concentrate, so does nature aspire but has to concentrate. as he works, so does nature work. what he aims at, that also does nature aim at. and when the naturalist within him convinces him that, so far as forest life reveals it, this is nature's manner and this is nature's end, then his heart goes out to the heart of nature, his heart and her heart become one; and from that community of heart beauty unending springs. he will without reserve or hesitation be able to throw his whole heart into the enjoyment of natural beauty in a way that would have been utterly impossible if he had had to come to the conclusion that nature cared only for the brutally fittest, wholly irrespective of their worth, or that nature was at the mercy of chance and had no wish, intention, or power to make good prevail over ill. and with his instinctive love of natural beauty thus confirmed and strengthened by this testing of his instinct against what cool reasoning on the facts revealed by observation in the forest had to say about it, he can with lightened heart search still further into nature, and see her in higher, wider, deeper aspects than the forest alone can disclose. chapter vi kinchinjunga aspiration is the root sentiment at the heart of nature as she manifests herself in the forest--aspiration upward checked by concentration upon the inmost centre. and the very emblem of the aspiration of nature kept in hand and under control is to be found in that proud pinnacle of the sikkim himalaya, kinchinjunga, as it is seen from darjiling rising from amidst the rich tropical forests which clothe its base. to darjiling, therefore, we should be wise to go. to reach it we must ascend the slopes of the outer ranges which rise abruptly from the plains. a giant forest now replaces the stunted and bushy timber of the terai proper and clothes the steep mountain-sides with dense, deep-green, dripping vegetation. the trees are of great height, and are sheathed and festooned with climbing plants of many kinds. bauhinias and robinias, like huge cables, join tree to tree. peppers, vines, and convolvulus twine themselves round the trunks and branches, and hang in graceful pendants from the boughs. and the trees, besides being hung with climbers, are also decked with orchids and with foliaceous lichens and mosses. the wild banana with its crown of glistening leaves is everywhere conspicuous. bamboos shoot up through the undergrowth to a hundred feet or more in height. the fallen trees are richly clothed with ferns typical of the hottest and dampest climates. and dendrobiums and other orchids fasten on the branches. * * * at kurseong there is another striking change, for the vegetation now becomes more characteristic of the temperate zone. the spring here vividly recalls the spring in england. oaks of a noble species and magnificent foliage are flowering and the birch bursting into leaf. the violet, strawberry, maple, geranium, and bramble appear, and mosses and lichens carpet the banks and roadsides. but the species of these plants differ from their european prototypes, and are accompanied at this elevation (and for , feet higher up) with tree ferns forty feet in height, bananas, palms, figs, pepper, numbers of epiphytal orchids, and similar genuine tropical genera. from kurseong we ascend through a magnificent forest of chestnut, walnut, oaks, and laurels. hooker, when he subsequently visited the khasia hills in assam, said that though the subtropical scenery on the outer himalaya was on a much more gigantic scale, it was not comparable in beauty and luxuriance with the really tropical vegetation induced by the hot, damp, and insular climate of those perennially humid khasia hills. the forest of gigantic trees on the himalaya, many of them deciduous, appear from a distance as masses of dark grey foliage, clothing mountains , feet high. whereas in the khasia hills the individual trees are smaller, more varied in kind, of a brilliant green, and contrast with grey limestone and red sandstone rocks. still, even of the forest between kurseong and darjiling, hooker says that it is difficult to conceive a grander mass of vegetation--the straight shafts of the timber trees shooting aloft, some naked and clean with grey, pale, or brown bark; others literally clothed for yards with a continuous garment of epiphytes (air-plants), one mass of blossoms, especially the white orchids, coelogynes, which, bloom in a profuse manner, whitening their trunks like snow. more bulky trunks bear masses of interlacing climbers--vines, hydrangea, and peppers. and often the supporting tree has long ago decayed away and their climbers now enclose a hollow. perpetual moisture nourishes this dripping forest, and pendulous mosses and lichens are met with in profusion. for this forest life, however, we cannot at present spare the attention that is its due, for we want above all things to see the mountains on the far side of this outer ridge. tropical forests may be seen in many other parts of the world. but only here on all the earth can we see mountains on so magnificent a scale. so we do not pause, but cross the ridge and come to the slopes and spurs which face northward, away from the plains and towards the main range of the himalaya. here is situated darjiling, which ought to be set apart as a sacred place of pilgrimage for all the world. directly facing the snowy range and set in the midst of a vast forest of oaks and laurels, rhododendrons, magnolias, and camellias, the branches and trunks of which are festooned with vines and smilax and covered with ferns and orchids, and at the base of which grow violets, lobelias, and geraniums, with berberries, brambles, and hydrangeas--it is adapted as few other places are for the contemplation of nature's beauty in its most splendid aspects. its only disadvantage is that it is so continually shrouded in mist. the range on which it stands being the first range against which the moisture-laden currents from the bay of bengal strike, the rainfall is very heavy and amounts to or inches in the year. and even when rain is not actually falling there is much cloud hanging about the mountains. so the traveller cannot count upon seeing the snows. there is no certainty that as he tops the ridge or turns the corner he will see kinchinjunga in the full blaze of its glory. he cannot be as sure of seeing it as he is of seeing a picture on entering a gallery. during the month of november alone is there a reasonable surety. all the rest of the year he must take his chance and possess his soul in patience till the mountain is graciously pleased to reveal herself. perhaps because of the uncertainty of seeing kinchinjunga the view when it is seen is all the more impressive. the traveller waits for hours and days, even for only a glimpse. one minute's sight of the mountains would satisfy him. but still the clouds eddy about in fleecy billows wholly obscuring the mountains. six thousand feet below may now and then be seen the silver streak of the rangit river and forest-clad mountains beyond. around him are dripping forests, each leaf glistening with freshest greenness, long mosses hanging from the boughs, and the most delicate ferns and noblest orchids growing on the stems and branches. all is very beautiful, but it is the mountain he wants to see; and still the cloud-waves collect and disperse, throw out tender streamers and feelers, disappear and collect again, but always keep a veil between him and the mountain. then of a sudden there is a rent in the veil. without an inkling of when it is to happen or what is to be revealed, those mists of infinite softness part asunder for a space. the traveller is told to look. he raises his eyes but sees nothing. he throws back his head to look higher. then indeed he sees, and as he sees he gasps. for a moment the current of his being comes to a standstill. then it rushes back in one thrill of joy. much he will have heard about kinchinjunga beforehand. much he will remember of it if he has seen it before. but neither the expectation nor the memory ever comes up to the reality. from that time, henceforth and for ever, his whole life is lifted to a higher plane. through the rent in the fleecy veil he sees clear and clean against the intense blue sky the snowy summit of kinchinjunga, the culminating peak of lesser heights converging upward to it and all ethereal as spirit, white and pure in the sunshine, yet suffused with the delicatest hues of blue and mauve and pink. it is a vision of colour and warmth and light--a heaven of beauty, love, and truth. but what really thrills us is the thought that, incredibly high though it is, yet that heaven is part of earth, and may conceivably be attained by man. it is nearly double the height of mont blanc and more than six times the height of ben nevis, but still it is rooted in earth and part of our own home. this is what causes the stir within us. hardly less striking than its height is its purity and serenity. the subtle tints of colour and the brilliant sunlight dispel any coldness we might feel, while the purity is still maintained. and the serenity is accentuated by the ceaseless movements of the eddying clouds through which the vision is seen. there is about kinchinjunga the calm and repose of stupendous upward effort successfully achieved. a sense of solemn elevation comes upon us as we view the mountain. we are uplifted. the entire scale of being is raised. our outlook on life seems all at once to have been heightened. and not only is there this sense of elevation: we seem purified also. meanness, pettiness, paltriness seem to shrink away abashed at the sight of that radiant purity. the mountain has made appeal to, and called forth from us all that is most pure and most noble within us, and aroused our highest aspirations. our heart, therefore, goes out lovingly to it. we long to see it again and again. we long to be always in a mood worthy of it. and we long to have that fineness of soul which would enable us to appreciate it still more fully. glowing in the heart of the mountain is the pure flame of undaunted aspiration, and it sets something aglow in our hearts also which burns there unquenchably for the rest of our days. we see attainment of the i highest in the physical domain, and it stirs us to achieve the highest in the spiritual. between ourselves and the mountain is the kinship of common effort towards high ends. and it is because of this kinship that we are able to see such lofty beauty in the mountain. for only a few minutes are we granted this heavenly vision. then the veil is drawn again. but in those few minutes we have received an impression which has gone right down into the depths of our soul and will last there for a lifetime. * * * on other occasions the mountain is not so reserved, but reveals itself for whole days in all its glory. the central range of the himalaya will be arrayed before us in its full majesty from one horizon to the other without a cloud to hide a single detail. we see the lesser ranges rolling up, wave after wave, in higher and higher effort towards the culminating line of peaks. and along this central line itself all the lesser heights we see converging on the supreme peak of kinchinjunga. the scene, too, will be dazzling in the glorious sunshine and suffused with that purply-blue translucent atmosphere which gives to the whole a fairy-like, ethereal aspect. and on this occasion we have no hurried glimpse of the mountain. we have ample time to contemplate it, looking at it, turning away from it to rest our souls from so deep an emotion, looking at it again, time after time, till we have entered into its spirit and its spirit has entered into us. and always our eyes insensibly revert to the culminating-point--the summit of kinchinjunga itself. we note all the rich forest foreground, the deep valley beneath us, the verdure-covered subsidiary ranges, and the strong buttresses of the higher peaks. but our eyes do not linger there. they unconsciously raise themselves beyond them to the summit ridge. nor do we look long on the distant peaks on either hand. they are over , feet in height. but they are not the _highest._ so our eyes pass over peaks of every remarkable form--abrupt, rugged, and enticing, and we seek the highest peak of all. and kinchinjunga is a worthy mountain-monarch. it is not a needle-point--a sudden upstart which might easily be upset. kinchinjunga is grand and massive and of ample gesture, broad and stable and yet also culminating in a clear and definite point. there is no mistaking her superiority both in massiveness and height to every peak around her. and thick-mantled in deep and everlasting snow though the whole long range of mountains is, the spectacle of all this snow brings no chill upon us. for we are in latitudes more southern still than italy and greece--farther south than cairo. the entire scene is bathed in warm and brilliant sunshine. the snows are glittering white, but with a white that does not strike cold upon us, for it is tinted in the tenderest way with the most delicate hues of blue and pink. they are, indeed, in the strictest sense not white at all, but a mingling of the very faintest essence of the rose, the violet, and the forget-me-not. and we view the distant mountains through an atmospheric veil which has the strange property of revealing instead of hiding the real nature of the object before which it stands. it does not conceal the mountains. it reveals them in their real nature--the spiritual. each country has an atmosphere of its own. there is a blue of the alps, a blue of italy, a blue of greece, and a blue of kashmir. the blue of the sikkim himalaya, perhaps on account of the excessive amount of moisture in the air, has a special quality of its own. it seems to me to have more _colour_ in it--a _fuller_ colour, a bluer blue, a purpler purple than the atmosphere of these other countries. from this cause and from the greater brilliance of the sun there is a more satisfying _warmth_ even in the snows. so besides beauty in the form of the mountains there is this exquisite loveliness of colour. in the immediate foreground are greens, fresh and shining and of every tint. and these shade away into deep purples and violets of the supporting ranges, and these again into those most delicate hues of the snows which vary according to the time of day, from decided rose-pink in the early morning and evening to, perhaps, faintest blue or violet in the full day. and over all and as a background is a sky of the intensest blue. what these colours are it is impossible to describe in words, for even the violet, the rose, and the forget-me-not have not the delicacy which these colours in the atmosphere possess. and assuredly no painter could do them justice, simply because paints and canvas are mediums far too coarse in which to reproduce the impression which such brilliance of light acting on a medium so fine as the thin air produces. the great russian painter verestchagin once visited darjiling, and took his seat to paint the scene. he looked and looked, but did not paint. his wife kept handing him the brush and paints. but time after time he said: "not now, not now; it is all too splendid." night came and the picture never was painted. and it never _could_ be painted, though great artists most assuredly could at least point out to us in their pictures the subtler glories which are to be seen, and which we expect them to indicate to us. * * * so the view of the snows from darjiling, grand and almost overpowering though it is, has warmth in it too. the main impression is one of magnitude and amplitude, of vastness and immensity, and withal of serene composure. the first view of the mountain seen through a rent in the clouds was perhaps more uplifting, though this view excites a sense of elevation also, for the eye is continually being drawn to the highest point. but in this full view the impression of breadth and bigness of scale is combined with the impression of height. the _dimensions_ of life in every direction seem to be enlarged. we seem to be able to look at things from a broader, bigger point of view, as well as a higher. we ourselves and the world at large are all on a larger scale than we had hitherto suspected. and while on a broader scale, we feel that things are always working _upward_ and converging towards some lofty but distinct, defined summit. this also do we feel, as we look upon the view, that with all the bigness and massiveness and loftiness there is the very finest tenderness as well--such delicacy as we had never before imagined. and to anyone who really knows them the littleness of man in comparison with these mighty mountains is not the impression made upon him. he is not overawed and overcome by them. his soul goes out most lovingly to them because they have aroused in him all the greatness in his soul, and purified it--even if only for a time--of all its dross and despicableness. and he loves them for that. he does not go cringing along, feeling himself a worm in comparison with them. there is warm kinship between him and them. he knows what is in their soul. and they have aroused in his soul exactly what he rejoices in having aroused there, and which but for them might have remained for ever unsurmised. so he revels in their beauty. * * * another aspect in which we may see kinchinjunga is in its aspect at dawn. it will be still night--a starlit night. the phantom snowy range and the fairy forms of the mountains will be bathed in that delicate yellow light the stars give forth. the far valley depths will be hidden in the sombrest purple. overhead the sky will be glittering with brilliant gems set in a field of limpid sapphire. the hush of night will be over all--the hush which heralds some great and splendid pageant. then, almost before we have realised it, the eastward-facing scarps of the highest peaks are struck with rays of mingled rose and gold, and gleam like heavenly realms set high above the still night-enveloped world below. farther and farther along the line, deep and deeper down it, the flush extends. the sapphire of the sky slowly lightens in its hue. the pale yellow of the starlight becomes merged in the gold of dawn. white billowy mists of most delicate softness imperceptibly form themselves in the valley depths and float up the mountain-sides. the deep hum of insect life, the chirping of the birds, the sounds of men, begin to break the hush of night. the snows become a delicate pink, the valleys are flooded with purple light, the sky becomes intensest blue, and the sun at last itself appears above the mountains, and the ardent life of day vibrates once more. in the full glare of day the mountains are not seen at their very best. the best time of all to see them is in the evening. if we go out a little from darjiling into the forest to some secluded spur we can enjoy an evening of rare felicity. on the edge of the spur the forest is more open. the ground is covered with grass and flowers and plants with many-coloured leaves. rich orchids and tender ferns and pendant mosses clothe the trees. graceful vines and creepers festoon themselves from bough to bough. the air is fragrant with the scent of flowers. bright butterflies flutter noiselessly about. the soft purr of forest life drones around. rays from the setting sun slant across the scene. the leaves in their freshest green and of every shade glitter like emeralds in the brilliant light. through the trunks of the stately trees and under their overarching boughs we look out towards the snowy mountains. we look over the brink of the spur, down into the deeps of the valleys richly filled with tropical vegetation, their eastward-facing sides now of purplest purple, their westward-facing slopes radiant in the evening sunshine, with the full richness of their foliage shown up by the dazzling light. far below we see the silver streak of some foaming river, and then as we raise our eyes we mark ridge rising behind ridge, higher and higher and each of a deeper shade of purple than the one in front. the lower are still clothed in forest, but the green has been merged in the deep purple of the atmosphere. the higher are bare rock till the snow appears. but just across them floats a long level wisp of fleecy cloud, and apparently the limits of earth have been reached and sky has begun. we would rest content with that. but our eyes are drawn higher still. and high above the cloud, and rendered inconceivably higher by its presence, emerges the snowy summit of kinchinjunga, serene and calm and flushed with the rose of the setting sun. as a background is a sky of the clearest, bluest blue. these are the chief elements of the scene, but all is in process of incessant yet imperceptible change. the sunshine slowly softens, the purples deepen, the flush on the mountains reddens. the air becomes as soft as velvet. not a leaf now stirs. a holy peace steals over the mountains and settles in the valleys. the snow mountains no longer look cold, hard, and austere. their purity remains as true as ever. and they still possess their uplifting power. but they now speak of serenity and calm--not, indeed, of the unsatisfying ease of the slothful, but of the earned repose of high attainment. great peace is about them--deep, strong, satisfying peace. the sun finally sets. night has settled in the valleys. the lights of darjiling sparkle in the darkness. but long afterwards a glow still remains on kinchinjunga. lastly that also fades away. and now night spreads her veil on every part. but here night brings with it no sense of gloom and darkness, much less death. far otherwise, for now it seems as if we were only beginning our intenser and still wider life. the fret of ordinary life is soothed away in the serene ending of the day. the quietness, profound and meaningful, yet further calms our spirit. every condition is now favourable for the life of that inmost soul of us, which is too sensitive often to emerge into the glare and rubs of daylight life, but which in this holy peace, in the presence of the heavenly mountains, and with the stars above to guide it, can reach out to its fullest extent and indulge its highest aspirations. chapter vii high solitudes from these scenes of tropical luxuriance and teeming life i would transport the artist to a region of austerest beauty, far at the back of the himalaya, where only one white man as yet has penetrated: where no life at all exists--no tree, no simplest plant, no humblest animalcula; where, save for some rugged precipice too steep for snow to lie, and save also for the intense azure of the sky, all is radiant whiteness. a region far distant from any haunt of man, where reigns a mountain which acknowledges supremacy to mount everest alone. a region of completest solitude, where the solemn silence is unbroken by the twitter of a single bird or the drone of the smallest insect, and is disturbed only by the occasional thunder of an avalanche or the grinding crunch of the glacier as a reminder of the titanic forces which are perpetually though invisibly at work. freezing this region is and full of danger. and there is no short cut to it and no easy means of transport. only men in the prime of health can reach there and return. and it is only men whose faculties are at their finest who are fit to stand the austerity of its cold, stern beauty. it lies at the dividing line between india and central asia where the waters which flow to india are parted from the waters which flow to central asia, and where the indian and chinese empires touch one another. it may be approached from two directions--from turkistan or from kashmir and the karakoram pass. the artist had better approach it by kashmir, for he will see there certain beauties which even sikkim does not possess, and this will make him further realise the variety of beauty this earth displays. kashmir is altogether different from sikkim. in sikkim the valleys are deep, steep, and narrow, and markedly inclined, so that the rivers run strong and there is no room or level for lakes. in kashmir the main valley is from twenty to thirty miles broad and ninety miles long. over a large portion it is nearly dead level. so the river is even and placid. and there are tranquil lakes and duck-haunted marshes. the climate is different, too. it is the climate of north italy. consequently there are no tropical forests, and the mountain-sides are covered with trees of the temperate zone--the stately deodar cedars, spruce fir, maples, walnut, sycamore, and birch; while in the valley itself grow poplars, willows, mulberries, and most beautiful of all, and a speciality of kashmir, the magnificent chenar tree--akin to the plane tree of europe, but larger, fuller, and richer in its foliage. in kashmir there is also far more variety of colour than there is in sikkim. and in the spring, with the willows and poplars in freshest green; the almond, pear, apple, apricot, and peach trees in full blossom, white and pink; the fields emerald with young wheat, blue with linseed, or yellow with mustard; and the village-borders purple with iris; or in the autumn when the chenars, the poplars, and apricots are turning to every tint of red and yellow and purple, kashmir is in a glow of colour. and the famous valley is all the more beautiful because it is ringed round with a circle of snowy mountains of at least alpine magnitude, with a glimpse here and there, such as that of nanga parbat, of much more stupendous peaks beyond; and because the sky is so blue, the atmosphere so delicate in its hues, and the sunshine so general throughout the year. in this favoured land there is many a variety of beauty, but all is of the easy, pleasant kind. all the colours are soft and soothing. it is a land to dream of, a gentle and indulgent land of soft repose, and calm content, and quiet relaxation; a dreamy, peaceful land where life glides smoothly forward, and all makes for enjoyment and idleness and holiday. from the pleasant vale of kashmir the artist would have to make his way up the sind valley--a valley, typical of those beautiful tributaries which add so much to the whole charm of kashmir. these are comparatively narrow, and the mountain-sides are steep, but the valleys are not so narrow nor the sides so steep as the valleys of sikkim, nor are the forests anything like so dense. the scenery is, indeed, much more swiss in appearance with open pine forests, picturesque hamlets, grassy pasture-lands, flowery meadows, and clear, rushing rivers; and with the rocky crests or snow-capped summits of the engirdling mountains always in the background. but when we emerge from this delightful valley of the sind river and cross the zoji-la pass, we come upon a very different style of country--bare, dreary, desolate, monotonous, uninteresting. the forest has all disappeared, for the rainfall is here slight. the moisture-laden clouds have precipitated themselves upon the seaward-facing slopes of the mountains we have already passed through. and because of this lack of rainfall the valleys are not cut out deep, but are high and broad. it is a delightful experience to pass from this brown, depressing landscape to the rich beauties of the sind valley and kashmir. but to make the journey the other way round, and to pass _into_ the gloomy region after being spoilt by the luxuries of kashmir, is sadly disheartening at first. the experience has, however, its advantages, for it makes us throw off all ideas of soft ease we may have harboured in kashmir, and reminds us that we have to prepare ourselves to face beauties of a far sterner kind. so we insensibly alter our whole attitude of mind, and as we plod our way through the mountains we summon up from within ourselves all the austerer stuff of which we are made. we cross some easy passes of , feet or so in height. we cross the river indus. we reach leh. we cross a , feet pass and then a glacier pass of , feet, and then the watershed of india and central asia by the karakoram pass, nearly , feet in height. we are six hundred miles from the plains of india now, and in about as desolate a region as the world contains. then, bearing westward, we make for the aghil pass. we have now got right in behind the himalaya, and as we reach the top of the aghil pass we look towards the himalaya from the central asian side, on what is known as the karakoram range, and here at last is the remote, secluded glacier region which has been the object of our search. its glory bursts upon us as we top the last rise to the aghil pass. across the deep valley is arrayed in bold and jagged outline a series of pinnacles of ice glistening in the brilliant sunshine, showing up in clearest definition against the intense blue sky, and rising abruptly and incredibly high above the rock-bound oprang river. they are the mighty peaks which group around k --the noblest cluster in the whole himalaya. there are here no inviting grassy slopes and no enticing forests. the mountain-sides are all hard rock and rugged precipices. and the summits are of ice or with edges sharp and keen direct from nature's workshop. but the sight, though it awes us, does not depress us or deter us. we are keyed up by high anticipation when we arrive on the threshold of this secluded region, and a fierce joy seizes us as we first set eyes on these mountains. we know we have before us one of the great sights of the world--something unique and apart, something the like of which we shall never see again. and awed as we are by the mountains' unsurpassed magnificence, we do not bow down in any abject way before them. we are not impressed by our littleness in comparison. they have, indeed, shown us that the world is something greater than we knew. but they have shown us also that _we_ too are something greater than we knew. the peaks in their dazzling altitude have set an exacting standard for us. they have incited us to rise to that standard. their call is great, but a thrill runs through us as we feel ourselves responding to the challenge, collecting ourselves together and gathering up every stiffest bit of ourselves to rise to their high standard. we feel nerved and steeled; and in high exhilaration we plunge down into the valley to join issue with the mountains. arrived on the oprang river we can turn either to the left or the right. if we turn to the left we get right in under a knot of stupendous peaks. towering high and solitary above the rocky wall which bounds the valley on the south is a peak which may be k , , feet in height, which must be somewhere in the neighbourhood. but the investigations of the duke of the abruzzi throw a doubt as to whether this can be k itself. if it is not, it must be some unfixed and unnamed peak. at any rate it is a magnificent, upstanding peak rising proud and steep-sided high and clear above its neighbours. then beyond it, farther up the oprang valley, we catch glimpses of that wondrous company of gusherbrum peaks--four of them over , feet in height, with rich glaciers flowing from them. but if we turn to the right on descending from the aghil pass, and if we turn again in the direction of the mustagh pass, we come to an icy realm which has about it, above every other region, the impress of both extreme remoteness and loftiest seclusion. as we ascend right up the glacier--either the one coming down from the mustagh pass or the one to the east running parallel with the general line of the karakoram range--we feel not only far away from but also high above the rest of the world. and we seem to have risen to an altogether purer region. especially if we sleep in the open, without any tent, with the mountains always before us, with the stars twinkling brightly above us, do we have this sense of having ascended to a loftier and serener world. at the heads of these glaciers there is little else but snow and ice. the moraines have almost disappeared--or, rather, have hardly yet come into being. and the mountains are so deeply clothed in ice and snow, it is only when they are extremely steep that rock appears. the glacier-filled valley below and the mountain above are therefore almost purely white. the atmosphere, too, is marvellously clear, so that by day the mountains and glaciers glitter brightly in the sunshine, and at night the stars shine out with diamond brilliance. the effect on a moonlight night is that of fairyland. we see the mountains as clearly as we would by the daylight of many regions, but the light is now all silver, and the mountains not solid and substantial but ethereal as in a vision. the pureness of the beauty is unspotted. it is the direct opposite of the voluptuous beauty of kashmir. no one would come here for repose and holiday. but we like to have been there once. we like to have attained even once in a lifetime to a world so refined and pure. cold it may be--and dangerous. but we soon forget the cold. and the dangers only string us up to meet them, so that we are in a peculiarly alert, observant mood. and we have a secret joy in watching nature in her most threatening aspects and in measuring ourselves against her. white it may be, but not colourless. for the whiteness of the snow is most exquisitely tinged with blue. the lakelets on the glacier are of deepest blue. they are encircled by miniature cliffs of ice of transparent green. the blue-ness of the sky is of a depth only seen in the highest regions. and the snowy summits of the mountains are tinged at sunset and dawn with finest flush of rose and primrose. so with all the whiteness there is, too, the most delicate colouring. standing thus on the glacier and looking up to the snowy peaks all round us, we think how, wholly unobserved by men, they have reared themselves to these high altitudes and there remain century by century unseen by any human being. from deep within the interior of the earth they have arisen. and they are only touched by the whitest snowflakes. they are only touched by snowflakes fashioned from the moisture which the sun's rays have raised off the surface of the indian ocean, and which the monsoon winds have transported in invisible currents, high above the plains of india, till they are gently precipitated on these far-distant heights. "blessed are the pure in heart," we are told, "for they shall see god." and blessed are they who are able to ascend to a region like this, for here they cannot but be pure in heart, and cannot _help_ seeing god. for the time being at least, they _have_ to be pure. in the spotless purity of that region they cannot harbour any thought that is sordid or unclean. and they pray that ever after they may maintain what they have reached. for they know that if they could maintain it they would see beauties which in the murky state of common life it is impossible to perceive. in the white purity which this high region exacts they are forced to pierce through the superficial and unimportant and they catch sight of the real. they are in a remote and lofty solitude, and in touch with the naked elementals of which the world has built itself. but they do not feel alone. they feel themselves in a great presence, and in a presence with which they are most intimately in touch. and it is no dread presence, but one which they delight to feel. holiness is its essence, and their souls are purged and purified. they are suffused with it; it enters deeply into them, and translates them swiftly upward. chapter viii the heavens the remote glacier region gives us a sense of purity, and gives us, too, a vision of colour in its finest delicacy. but for depth, extent, and brilliancy of colour we must look to sunsets--and sunsets in those high desert regions where the outlook is widest and the atmosphere clearest. in deserts everywhere marvellous sunsets may be seen, for the comparative absence of moisture in the atmosphere and the presence of invisible particles of dust gives these sunsets an especial brilliancy. in the middle of the day a desert in its uniform brownness is dreary and monotonous to a degree. but at dawn and sunset when the sun's rays slant across the scene the desert glows with colour of every shade and hue and in ever-changing combination. in the gobi desert of central asia, in the egyptian desert, in the arabian desert, in arizona, i have seen sunsets that thrill one with delight. but nowhere have i seen more glorious sunsets than in the highlands of tibet. and what makes them there so remarkable is that the plains themselves are , feet above sea-level, so that the atmosphere is exceptionally clear. great distances are therefore combined with unusual clearness. the country is open enough and the air clear enough for us to see far distances. and extent is a prime essential in the glory of a sunset. it is difficult to make those who have never been outside europe understand what sunsets can be. in england, as turner has shown, there are sunsets to be seen containing in abundance many such elements of beauty as varied and varying and great extent of colour. but the atmosphere here is so thick that the colours appear as if thrown on to a solid background. so the sunsets look opaque. on the continent of europe the atmosphere is clearer and the opaqueness less pronounced. the colouring is in consequence more vivid. but--except in high alpine regions--the clearness does not approach the clearness of tibet. and neither in england nor on the continent do we get the great _distances_ of desert sunsets. and great distances increase immeasurably that feeling of _infinity_ which is the chief glory in a sunset. the clearness of the atmosphere is important in this respect also, that it produces the effect upon the colours of the sunset that they seem more like the colours we see in precious stones than the colours a painter throws on a canvas. there is no milkiness or murkiness in them. the sky is so clear that we see a colour as we see the red in a ruby. we see deep into the colour. the colour comes right _out_ of the sky and has not the appearance of being merely plastered on the surface. and the variety of the colours and the rapidity with which they change and merge and mingle into one another is another wonder of these desert sunsets. it would be wholly impossible to paint a picture of them which would adequately express the impression they give, for the main impression is derived from light, and the colours are therefore far more glowing than they could ever be reproduced on canvas. nor can the changing effects be reproduced on a stationary medium. the nearest approach to the glory of a tibet sunset which i have seen is a picture in pastel by simon de bussy a sunset in the alps. but all pictures--even turner's;--can only draw attention to the glory and show us what to look for. they cannot reproduce the impression in full. the medium through which the artist has to work--the paints and the canvas--are inadequate for his needs. if we try to describe the impression in words we are no better off. we can, indeed, compare the sunset colours with the colours of flowers and precious stones. but here also we miss the light which is the very foundation of the sunset beauties. and we have neither the changefulness nor the vast extent of the sunset colouring. to get the least idea of the variety of colours mixing, merging, and intermingling with one another we must go to the opal, though even there there is not the intensity of colour, and of course not the change nor extent. from an orange--especially a blood orange--we get a notion of the combined reds and yellows of the sunsets, though the reds may range deeper than orange into the reds of the ruby or the cardinal flower, and lighter into the pinks of the rose or the carnation; and the yellows range from the gold of the eseholtzia to the delicate hue of the primrose. and for the translucency of their yellower effects we must bring in the amber. often there is a green which can only be matched by jade or emerald. and sometimes there is an effect with which only the amethyst can be compared. then there are mauves and purples for which the precious stones have no parallel, and of which heliotrope, the harebell, and the violet give us the best idea. and the blues range from the deep blue of the sapphire and the gentian to the light blue of the turquoise and the forget-me-not. in these stones and flowers we get something near the actual colour, but the depth, the clearness, the luminosity, and the vast extent are all wanting, and these are all essential features of the sunset's glories. so we must imagine all these colours glowing with light and never still--perpetually changing from one to the other and shading off from one into the other, one colour emerging, rising to the dominant position, and then disappearing to give place to another, and effecting these changes imperceptibly yet rapidly also, for if we take our eyes away for even a few minutes we find that the aspect has altogether altered. from my camp in tibet for weeks together i could be sure of witnessing every evening one of these glorious sunsets. for while the mighty monsoon clouds used to roll up on to the line of himalayan peaks and pile themselves up there, billow upon billow, in magnificent array, dark and fearful in the general mass, but clear-edged and silver-tipped along the summits, yet beyond that line, in tibet, the sky was nearly always clear and blue of the bluest. with nothing whatever to impede my view--no trees, nor houses, nor fences, nor obstacles of any kind--i could look out far over these open plains to distant hills; beyond them, again, to mount everest a hundred miles away; beyond it, again, to still more distant mountains; and, finally, behind them into the setting sun. and these far hills and snowy mountains, seen as they were across an absolutely open plain, seemed not to impede the view but only to heighten the impression of great distance. the eye would be led on from feature to feature, each receding farther into the distance till it seemed only a step from the farthest snowy mountain into the glowing sun itself. every evening, whenever i could, i used to walk out alone into the open plain to feast my soul on the splendid scene. in the stern glacier region round k had had to brace myself up and to summon up all that was toughest within me in order to cope with the terribly exacting conditions in which i found myself. in the presence of these calm but fervent sunsets there was a different feeling. i had a sense of expansion, a longing to let myself go. and i would feel myself craving to let myself go out all i could into these glowing depths of light and colour, and trying to open myself out to their beauty, that as much as possible of it should flow into me and glorify my whole being. i had the feeling that in those sunsets there was _any_ length for my soul to go out to--that there was _infinite_ room there for the soul's expansion. there was inexhaustible glory for the soul to absorb, and the soul was thirsting for it and could never have enough. evening after evening came to me, too--quite unconsciously, and as it were inevitably--shelley's words (slightly altered): "be thou, spirit bright, my spirit! be thou me, most glorious one! be through my lips to unawakened earth the trumpet of a prophecy." it was not that there was any particular message that i had to give. but there was aroused in me just this simple, insistent longing to let others know what glory there was in the world, and to be able to communicate to them something of the joy i was then feeling in beholding it. i was highly privileged in having this opportunity of witnessing a tibetan sunset's splendours. i was yearning for others to share my enjoyment with me. the white radiance of the glacier region instils into us a sense of purity, and without the purity of heart which that stern region exacts we cannot see the sunset's glory in all its fulness. but now in these tibetan sunsets we have not purity alone, but warmth and richness as well. they give an impression of infinity of glory. we catch alight from their consuming glory, and our hearts flame up in correspondence with them. the fervent glow in the heart of nature kindles a like glow in our own hearts; and we are enraptured by the beauty. on our misty island we are apt to connect sunsets with coming darkness and a black end of things. and in gazing on them we are prone to have a sense of sadness mingled with our joy. they seem to mean for us a passage from light to darkness, and from life to death. but in the deserts we have no such feeling. as day imperceptibly fades away it is not black darkness that succeeds, but a light that enables us to see farther, a mellower light that enables us to see the universe at large. from this earthly life we are transported to a higher, intenser, ampler life among the stars. and it is in the desert that we best live among the stars. in europe we look up into the sky between trees and houses; and among the clouds and through a murky atmosphere we see a few stars. even when we have a clear sky we seldom get a chance of seeing the whole expanse of the heavens all the way round. and even if we get this rare chance of a clear sky and a wide horizon we do not live with the stars in the open the night through and night after night. in the gobi desert i had this precious opportunity. and i had it when my whole being was tuned up to highest pitch. i was not in the limp state of one who steps out into his garden and looks up casually to the stars. i was tense with high enterprise. i was passing through unknown country on a journey across the chinese empire from peking to india. i was keen and alive in every faculty, in a state of high exhilaration, and both observant and receptive. it was a rare chance, and much i wish now i had made more of it. my party in crossing the gobi desert consisted only of a chinese guide, a chinese servant, and a mongol camel-man. as i had no european companion i was driven in upon myself. i had to explore a route never before traversed by europeans, and the distance to be covered across the open steppes of mongolia and over the gobi desert to the first town in turkestan was twelve hundred miles. beyond that was the whole length of turkestan and the six-hundred-mile breadth of the himalaya to be crossed before i should reach india. so i had a big task before me, and was stirring with the sense of high adventure and vast distances to overcome. to enable my eight camels to feed by daylight, i used to start at five o'clock in the afternoon and march till one or two in the morning. sometimes in order to reach water we had to march all through the night and well into the following day. frequently there were terrific sandstorms, but there were seldom any clouds. so the atmosphere was clear. in the distance were sometimes hills. but for the most part all round the desert was absolutely open. i could see for what seemed an indefinite distance in any direction. the conditions were ideal for observing the stars. seated on my camel, or trudging along apart from my little caravan, i would watch the sun set in always varying splendour. no two sunsets were anything like the same. each through the ascendancy of some one shade of colour, or through an unusual combination of colour, had a special beauty of its own. i would watch each ripening to the climax and then shade away into the beauty of the night. and when the day was over the night would reveal that higher, wider life which daylight only served to hide. the sunset glow would fade away. star after star would spring into sight till the whole vault of heaven was glistening with diamond points of light. above me and all round me stars were shining out of the deep sapphire sky with a brilliance only surpassed by the stars in the high himalayan solitudes i have already described. and a great stillness would be over all--a silence even completer than the silence among the mountains, for there it was often broken by creaking of the ice, whereas here in the desert it was so profound that, when at the end of many weeks i arrived at a patch of grass and trees, the twittering of the birds and the whirr of insects sounded like the roar of a london street. in this unbroken stillness and with the eye free to rove all round with nothing in any direction to stay its vision, and being as i was many weeks' distance from any settled human habitation, i often had the feeling of being more connected with the starry firmament than with this earth. in a curious way the bodily and the material seemed to exist no longer, and i would be in spirit among the stars. they served to guide us over the desert and i gradually became familiar with them. and i used to feel as much a part of the stellar world as of this earth. i lost all sense of being confined to earth and took my place in the universe at large. my home was the whole great cosmos before me. the cosmos, and not the earth, was the whole to which i belonged. and in that unbroken quiet and amid this bright company of heaven my spirit seemed to become intenser and more daring. right high up in the zenith, to infinite height, it would soar unfettered. and right round to any distance in any direction it would pierce its way. the height and distance of the highest and farthest stars i knew had been measured. i knew that the resulting number of miles is something so immense as to be altogether beyond human conception. i knew also that the number of stars, besides those few thousands which i saw, had to be numbered in hundreds of millions. all this was astonishing, and the knowledge of it filled me with wonder at the immensity of the starry universe. but it was not the mere magnitude of this world that impressed me. what stirred me was the presence, subtly felt, of some mighty all-pervading influence which ordered the courses of the heavenly hosts and permeated every particle. we cannot watch the sun go down day after day, and after it has set see the stars appear, rise to the meridian and disappear below the opposite horizon in regular procession, without being impressed by the order which prevails. we feel that the whole is kept together in punctual fashion, and is not mere chaos and chance. the presence of some power upholding, sustaining, and directing the whole is deeply impressed upon us. and in this presence so steadfast, so calm, so constant, we feel soothed and steadied. the frets and pains of ordinary life are stilled. deep peace and satisfaction fill our souls. sandstorms so terrific that we cannot stand before them or see a thing a foot or two distant come whirling across the desert, and all for the time seems turmoil and confusion and nothing is visible. but behind all we know the stars still pursue their mighty way. at the back of everything we realise there is a power constant and dependable in whom we can absolutely put our trust. this is the impression--the impression of steadfastness, constancy, and reliability--which a nightly contemplation of the stars makes upon us. at the foundation of things is something dependable, something in which we can repose our faith. and so the sense of calm and confidence we feel. and in the desert we have no feeling that the stars pursue their course in cold indifference to us--that the power which sustains them works its soulless way unregardful of the frettings of us little men. not thus are we who watch the desert stars impressed. quite otherwise. for nowhere do we feel the influence nearer, more intimate or more beneficent. we seem in the very midst of the great presence. we are immersed in it. it is pervading us on every side. we do not expect it to alter the whole course of nature for our private good. but we feel confident that the course of nature is for _good_--that nature is a beneficent and no callous power, and has good at heart. _because_ the foundations are so sure and good we can each pursue our way in confidence. this is the impression we get. and the power which guides the stars upon their heavenly way, and which, in guiding them, guides us across the desert, does not reside, we feel, in lonely grandeur in the empty places of the heavens, but in the stars themselves--in their very constitution--in each individually and in all in their togetherness. it burns in each star and shines forth from it, and yet holds the whole together as we see it every night in that circling vault around us. the activity does not appear to us to emanate from some invisible being dwelling wholly apart and isolated from the stars and this earth, and sending forth invisible spiritual rays, as the sun stands apart from the earth but sends out rays of sunlight to it. it seems rather to dwell in the very heart and centre of each star, and the stars seem _spiritual_ rather than material beings. so this power, as we experience it in the desert, does not impress us as being awful and remote, gloomy and inexorable, enforcing unbending law and exacting terrible penalties. our impression of it is that, though it preserves order with unfailing regularity, it is yet near and kindly, radiating with light and warmth. we not only feel it to be something steadfast, something on which we can rely and in which we may have confidence; we also feel warmed and kindled by it. so what we get from a nightly contemplation of the stars is a sense of happy companionship with nature. the heart of nature as here revealed is both dependable and kindly. nature is our friend. and in her certain friendship the balm of peace falls softly on us. our hearts blend tenderly with the heart of nature; and in their union we see beauty of the gentlest and most reassuring kind. chapter ix home beauty the artist in his quest for natural beauty will have pursued it in the remotest and wildest parts of the earth, where he can see nature in her primeval and most elemental simplicity. he will have seen her in many and most varied aspects--the grandest, the wildest, and the most luxuriant. and from these numerous and so different manifestations of nature he will have been enabled more fully to understand her meaning and comprehend her soul. moreover, this contemplation of nature will have evoked from within himself much that he had never suspected he possessed, and thereby his own soul also he will have learned to understand. and from this completer comprehension of his own soul and hers will have emerged a fuller community of heart between him and nature. he will have come to worship her with a still more ardent devotion, and through the intensity of his love discovered richer and richer beauty in her. but even yet he has not seen natural beauty where it can be found in its highest perfection. only when there can be the most intimate possible relationship between him and the natural object he is contemplating can beauty at its finest be seen. and this closest correspondence of all between him and nature will only be when he is in the natural surroundings with which he has been familiar from childhood, and which have affected him in his most impressionable years. the artist will have seen nature as she manifests herself in the teeming life of a tropical forest and the most varied races of men; in the highest mountains and the widest deserts; in the glory of sunsets and the calm of stars. but it is in none of these that he will see deepest into the true heart of nature and understand her best. it is amid scenery which he has loved since boyhood, in the hearts of his own countrymen in their own country, that he will see deepest into nature. and deepest of all will he see when from among his countrywomen he has united himself to the one of his own deliberate choice, and in this union realised in its fulness, strength, and intensity that creative love which springs from nature's very heart, and is the ultimate fount and source of all natural beauty. we like to go out over all the earth and see the wonders of it. and we learn to love the great mountains and rich forests and unfenced steppes and veldts and prairies. and we get to love also the various peoples among whom we have to work and travel. but in his heart of hearts each man likes to get back to the scenes of his childhood. the plainsman likes to get back again from the mountains to his level plains where the scene is closer and more intimate. the mountaineer likes to retire again from the plains into the mountains. the dweller on the veldt likes to get out of the forest on to the great open spaces once more. the inhabitant of the forest likes to get back there again from the plains. and the englishman, though he loves the alps and the himalaya, is touched by nothing so deeply as by a devonshire lane with its banks of primroses and violets. and he may have the greatest affection for peoples of other races among whom he may have had to work, yet it is his own countrymen that he will always really love. so the artist comes back to home surroundings and his own people. and he will return with his sense of beauty quickened and refined by this wide and varied experience of nature. his sensibility to the beauties of nature will now be of rarest delicacy, and his capacity for fine discrimination and his feeling for distinction and excellence sure and keen. he will have been toned and tuned up to the highest pitch in his wrestling with nature, and will have been purged and purified in the white region of the highest mountains. and in this high-strung state he will now see that creation and manifestation of nature which of all natural objects will best declare her meaning, bring him into closer touch with her very heart, and stir in him the deepest emotions. between him and this object there will be possible the closest community of soul. here then he will see natural beauty at its very finest. the natural object in which he will see this consummation of beauty will be the woman who will be to him a kindred spirit, and whom he will first admire and then love. it was through the love of man and woman for each other in the far-off ages when love first came into the hearts of men that natural beauty also first dawned upon them. it is through that love that natural beauty has been continually growing in fulness and splendour. and it will be through that same love of man and woman for each other that the artist will see natural beauty reach its highest perfection. for in this love man first learned to enter into the soul of another, to recognise samenesses between himself and another, and to live in communion with another. and so in time he came to recognise samenesses between what was in his heart and what was in the heart of nature, to enter into communion with nature, and through the wedding of himself with nature see the beauty in her. he was able in some slight degree to be towards nature what we see the midge buzzing round a man must be if that midge is to see the beauty of man. just as the midge, if it is to see the beauty in man, must be able to recognise samenesses between its life and the life of man, so man to see beauty in nature had to recognise identity of life between him and nature as he was first inspired to see it through the love of man and woman for each other. and now the artist with his wide experience of nature and united with his own countrywoman in his own country will recognise a still closer identity between himself and nature, and so see an even fuller beauty in her. assuming the man and woman, both by their upbringing and by outward circumstances, to have been able to develop the best capacities within them and to be meeting now under conditions most favourable for their union, we shall see how perfect is the beauty which may be revealed. the man will be in the prime of his manhood, and the woman in the prime of her womanhood. the man manly and radiating manhood, the woman womanly and radiating womanhood: their manhood and womanhood welling up within them, each eager to answer the call of the other. hers will be no light and shallow beauty insipid as milk and water, but will be sweet as the violet, delicate as the primrose, pure as the lily, yet with all the sweetness, delicacy and purity, radiant as the sunrise. and they will be no pale and puny lovers, soft and mild as doves, and content to lead a dull and trivial life. they will be high of spirit, graceful, swift, and supple as the greyhound; and as keenly intent on living a full and varied life with every moment of it worth while as ever the greyhound is in pursuing its object. they will be capable of intense and passionate emotion, yet with all their eager impulsiveness they will have wills strong to keep themselves in hand, and to maintain their direction true through all the mazy intricacies of life and love. in the bringing together of such a pair natural beauty will play a vitally important part. of all objects that nature has produced--of all the offspring of the earth--such a man and woman are the most beautiful. and we may assume that as they are drawn to each other they will put forth the very best of themselves and give out the utmost beauty that is in them. moreover, they will be more beautiful to each other than they are to anybody else. unconsciously they will reveal to each other what they _can_ reveal to none other but themselves. insensibly the windows of their souls will be opened to each other. the lovelight in their eyes--the lovelight which can _only_ be shown to each other--will discover to them hidden depths of beauty they had never gathered they possessed. and this beauty will be something more than mere prettiness or handsomeness of face. the man will see the beauty of the woman --and she his--not only in the face and features, but in the presence, bearing, and carriage, in the gestures, movements, and behaviour. behind the outward aspect he will see the inward spirit, the real self, the true nature, the radiant personality. and the beauty that he sees will fill him with a passionate yearning, both to give and to possess. he will want both to give the utmost and best of himself, and also to possess what so satisfies all the cravings of the soul. and whether it be to give or to possess that he most wants he will be unable to distinguish. but, in the craving to give and possess, the highest stimulus will be afforded him to exert every faculty to its limit. the effort will give zest, and with zest will come added powers of vision, so that he will be able to see both her and his inmost and utmost capabilities. and though the force of outward circumstances may prevent both her and him from ever completely fulfilling those latent possibilities, what they see of themselves and of each other in those divine moments may nevertheless be a perfectly true vision of their real and fundamental nature. love is not so blind as is supposed. love is capable of seeing clearer and deeper than any other faculty. what the artist now sees with the eyes of love will be the ground upon which he will have to form his judgment in the most critical decision of his life. for the moment will now have come when he will have to decide whether of all others he will give himself to her, and whether he can presume to ask of her that she will give herself to him--and each to the other for all the rest of their lives. it is a momentous decision to have to make. with his highly developed power of vision he will have divined her true nature. but he will have now to exercise his judgment on it--whether it will satisfy the needs of his whole being and whether his whole being is sufficient to satisfy her needs. each has to be sure that his peculiar nature satisfies--and satisfies fully--his or her own peculiar needs, and that his peculiar nature satisfies the other's needs. a wrong decision here is fatal. the responsibility is fearful. all will depend upon his keenness of vision, his capacity for discrimination, and his soundness of judgment. the decision may be arrived at swiftly and consciously, or it may be come to unconsciously, gradually, and imperceptibly. but shorter or longer the time, consciously or unconsciously the method, it will have in the end to be made in a perfectly definite fashion--yes or no--and from that decision there can be no going back. and on that clear decision will hang the future welfare not only of the one who makes it, but of both. each, therefore, has to decide for the welfare of both. this is the real day of judgment. and each is his own judge. now all his and her past life and inborn nature is being put to the test in a fierce ordeal--and the fiery ordeal of love is more searching even than the ordeal of war. every smallest blot and blemish, every slightest impurity is shown up in startling clearness. every flaw at once betrays itself. what will not bear a strain immediately breaks down. there is not an imperfection which is not glaringly displayed. the other may not see it, but he himself will--and upon him is the responsibility. no wonder that both the one and the other hesitate to commit themselves finally and irrevocably! can he with all his blots and blemishes, his failings and weaknesses, offer to give himself to the other? is he worthy to receive all that he would expect to receive in return? is he justified in asking that the whole being and the most sacred thing in life should be given over utterly to him? it seems astounding that any man should ever have the impudence to answer such questions in the affirmative. doubtless he would not have had such effrontery but for two considerations. in the first place he knows that, imperfect as he may be--downright sinful as he may often have been--he is not bad at bottom. at heart, he knows for certain he has capacities for improvement which would come at once into being if only they had the opportunity for development. and he knows that the other could make those opportunities--could provide the stimulus which would awaken in him and bring to fruit many a hidden capability of good. every faculty in him he now feels being quickened to an activity never known before. blemishes he feels being purged away in the cleansing fires of pure love. he feels that with the other he will be, as he has never been before, his whole and his true self. and this is the first consideration which gives him confidence. the second is that he feels himself now to a very special degree in direct and intimate touch with the central heart of nature. something from what he feels by instinct is the divine source of life and love comes springing up within him, penetrating him through and through, supporting and upholding him and urging him forward. he feels that he directly springs from that source, and that it will ever sustain him as long as he is true to his own real self, and works for those high ends towards which he feels himself impelled. with strong faith, then, he makes his decision--with strong faith in _himself,_ for he knows himself to be inspired by the same great spirit which animates the whole world of which he is himself a part. and having in this faith made his decision, he girds himself for the poignant battle of love. and as in war so in love men--and women--rise to altogether unexpected heights of courage, endurance, and devotion. war is a fine spur to excellence. but love is an even finer. every faculty is quickened and refined. every high quality brought into fullest exercise. daring and caution, utter disregard of self and selfishness in the extreme, are alike required. for the two will never achieve full wedded union until they have fought their way through many an interposing obstacle. adroitness, and that rare quality, social courage, will be needed in dealing with ever-recurring, complicated, painful, and nerve-straining situations. even in their attitude towards one another as they gradually come together the finest address will be required. for each has necessarily to be comparing himself and comparing the object of his love with others; and each feels that he is being similarly compared. there can be no final assurance till the union is completed. a single ill-judged word or action may ruin all. at any moment another may be preferred--or at least one of the two may find the other inadequate or deficient. all this will afford the highest stimulus to emulation. each will strive to excel in what the other approves and appreciates--or at any rate to excel in what is his own particular line. he will be incited to show himself at his best and to be his best. but before the bliss of completest union is attained anguish and rapture in exquisite extremes will be experienced. for the soul of each will be exposed in all its quivering sensitiveness, and any but the most delicate touch will be a torture to it. fortitude of the firmest will be required to bear the wounds which must necessarily come from this exposure. each, too, will have to bear the pain of the suffering they must inevitably be causing to some few others--and those others among their very dearest. as the intimacy of union becomes closer and closer the call for bodily union will become more and more insistent. in the first instance--and this is a point which is specially worth noting--the desire was _entirely_ for spiritual union, for union of the _spirits_ of each. what each admired and loved in the other was his or her capacity for love. he realised what a wonderful love the other _could_ give. and he yearned with all his heart to have that love directed towards himself. it was a purely spiritual union that his heart was set on. the thought of bodily union did not enter his head. but the need for bodily touch as a means of expressing human feeling is inherent in human nature, and becomes more and more urgent as the feeling becomes warmer. friends have to shake hands with each other and pat each other on the back in order to show the warmth of their feeling for one another. women affectionately embrace one another. parents and children, brothers and sisters, kiss one another. it is impossible adequately to express affection without bodily touch. and in the case of lovers, as the love deepens so also deepens the compelling need to express this love in bodily union of the closest possible. and so the supreme moment arrives when each gives himself wholly, utterly, and for ever to the other--body, soul, and spirit--and they twain are one. and the remarkable result ensues that each in giving himself to the other has become more completely and truly himself than he has ever been before. he strives to become more and more closely wedded with the other. he yearns to give himself more completely and longs that there was more of himself to give. and he gives himself as completely as he can. yet he has never before been so fully himself. the closeness and intimacy of the union, and all that he has received, has enabled him to bring forth and give utterance to what had lain deep and dormant within him--all his fondest hopes, his dearest dreams, his highest aspirations. each is more himself in the other. he is, indeed, not himself without the other. each has won possession of the other. each has with joy and gladness given himself to the other. each belongs to the other. each is all the world to the other--a treasure without price. he is ever after in her as her own being. and she is in him as his own being. apart from each other they are never again themselves. they are absorbed in mutual joy in one another. the intensity of delight is more than they can bear. it brims up and overflows and goes bursting out to all the world. by being able to be their whole selves they have become more closely in touch with the deepest heart of nature and nearest the divine. in that hushed and sacred moment when the ecstasy of life and love is at its highest they have never felt stronger, purer, lighter, nearer the divine. they have reached deep down to the most elemental part of their nature. and they have soared up highest to the most divine. but divine and elemental, spiritual and bodily, seem one. there seems to be nothing bodily which is not spiritual. and nothing elemental which is not divine. it is not often that they will attain these culminating heights of spiritual exaltation. nor will they be able long to remain there. the lark, the eagle, the airman, have all to come to earth again. and they spend most of their lives on the earth. but the lovers will have known what it is to soar. they will have found their wings. they will have seen heaven once, and breathed its air. and all nature, all human relationships, will be for ever after transfigured in heaven's light. the state of being to which these twain have now arrived is the highest and best in life. this spiritual union of man and woman--this union of their souls which their bodily union has made possible in completeness--is that which of all else has most value. the friendship of men for men and women for women is high up in the scale of being. but it is not at the supreme summit. the holy union of man and woman is higher still, because it is a relation of the _whole_ being of each to the other, and because it brings both into direct and closest contact with the primal source of things, and on the line which points them highest. the relationship satisfies the _whole_ needs of the selves of each and satisfies the urgency of the heart of nature. * * * so now our artist will have experienced true spirituality in its highest degree; and having experienced also the most elemental in his nature, he will perforce have come in touch with nature along her whole range. and his soul being at the finest pitch of sensitiveness, he will be able to appreciate natural beauty as never before. and nothing less than _natural_ beauties, and nothing less than these beauties at their best, will in his exalted mood be satisfying to him. he will be driven irresistibly into the open air and the warm sunshine, and to the bosom of mother-earth. and there in the blue of heaven and in dreamy clouds; in the wide sea, or in tranquil lakes; in ethereal mountains or in verdant woodlands; in the loveliness of flowers, and in the music of the birds, he will find that which his spirit seeks--that to which his spirit wants to give response. only there in the open, in the midst of nature, will he find horizons wide enough, heights high enough, beauties rich enough, for his soul's needs. the flowers as he looks into them will disclose glories of colour, texture, form, and fragrance he never yet had seen. the comely forms of trees, their varying greenery, and the dancing sunlight on the leaves, will fill him with an intensity of delight that heretofore he had never known. and as once more he goes among his fellow-men he will see them in a newer and a truer light. his contact with them will be easier; his friendships deeper; his certainty of affection surer; and his capacity for entering into every joy and sorrow immeasurably enlarged. through his love, our ideal artist will have been enabled to reach deeper into the heart of nature than he had ever reached before, and to feel more intimately at one with her. and being thus in warmest touch with her, natural beauty, strong, deep, and delicate as only finest love can disclose, will be revealed to him. enjoyment of natural beauty in its perfection is the prize he will have won. chapter x the nature of nature the artist is now in a position to take stock of nature as a whole, of her nature, methods, and manner of working, of the motives which actuate her--of what, in short, she really is at heart. and having thus reviewed her, he will have to determine whether his wider and deeper knowledge of nature confirms or detracts from the impression of her which he had gained from a contemplation of the forest's innumerable life. upon this decision will depend his final attitude towards her. and upon his attitude towards her depends his capacity for enjoying natural beauty. for if he has any doubt in his mind as to the goodness of nature or any hesitation about giving himself out to her, there is little prospect of his seeing beauty in her. he will remain cold and unresponsive to her calls and enjoyment of natural beauty will not be for him. and each of us--each for himself--just as much as the artist will have to make up his mind on this fundamental question. if we are to get the full enjoyment we should expect out of natural beauty we must have a clear and firm conception in our minds of what nature really is, what is her essential character, whether at heart she is cold and callous or warm and loving. so far as we were justified in drawing conclusions regarding the character of nature as a whole from what we saw of her manifestations in the life of the forest, we came to the conclusion that she was not so hard and repellent as she assuredly would be to us if her guiding principle of action were the survival of the fittest. we inferred, rather, from our observations of her in the forest that she was actuated by an aspiration towards what we ourselves hold to be of most worth and value. we were therefore not disillusioned by closer familiarity with her, but more closely drawn towards her, and therefore prepared to see more beauty in her. now we have to review nature as a whole--that is, in the starry world as well as on this earth--and see if the same conclusions hold good, and if we are therefore justified in loving nature, or if we should view her with suspicion and distrust, hold ourselves aloof from her, and cultivate a stoic courage in face of a power whose character we must cordially dislike. there are men who hold that the appearance of life and love on this earth is a mere flash in the pan and comes about by pure chance. they believe that life will be extinguished in a twinkling as we collide with some other star, or will simply flicker out again as the sun's heat dies down and the earth becomes cold. if this view be correct, then that impression of the reliability and kindliness of nature which we formed when contemplating the stars in the desert would be a false impression; our feelings of friendship with nature would at once freeze up and our vision of beauty vanish like a wraith. fortunately truth and knowledge do not deal so cruel a blow at beauty. far from it: they take her side. there are no grounds for supposing that either chance or mechanism produces spirit, or that from merely physical and chemical combinations spirit can emerge. spirit is no casual by-product of mechanical or chemical processes. spirit is the governing factor regulating and controlling the physical movements--controlling them, indeed, with such orderliness that we may be apt from this very orderliness to regard the whole as a machine and fail to see that all is directed towards high spiritual ends. if we are to appeal to reason, it is much more reasonable to assume that spirit always existed, and that the conditions for the emergence of life were brought about on purpose, than to assume that spirit is a mere excretion, like perspiration, of chemical processes. certainly the former assumptions more clearly fit the facts of the case. for these facts are, firstly, that we spiritual selves exist, next that we have ideas of goodness and a determination to achieve it, next that plant as well as animal life on this earth is purposive, then that the stars, numbering anything from a hundred to a thousand million, each of them a sun and many of them presumably with planets, are made of the same materials as this earth, the plants, animals, and ourselves are composed of; that these materials have the same properties; that the same fundamental laws of gravitation, heat, motion, chemical and electrical action prevail there as here; and lastly that they are all connected with the earth by some medium or continuum of energies, which enables vibrations, of which the most obvious are the vibrations of light, to reach the earth from them. these facts point towards the conclusion that the whole universe, as well as ourselves and the animals and plants on this earth, is actuated by spirit. goodness we have seen to be working itself out on the earth; and there is nothing we see in the world of stars that prevents us from concluding that in the universe as well as on the earth what _should_ be is the ground of what _is_. something higher than life, or life in some higher form than we know, may indeed have been brought into being among the stars. life has appeared in an extraordinary variety of forms on this earth, and it would necessarily appear in other forms elsewhere. and it is not difficult to imagine more perfect forms in which it might have developed. we men are the most highly developed beings on this planet. but our eyes and ears and other organs of sense take cognisance of only a few of the vibrations raining in upon our bodies from the outside world. there is a vast range of vibrations of the medium in which we are immersed of which our bodily organs take no cognisance whatever. if we had better developed organs we would be in much more intimate touch with the world about us, and be aware of influences and existences we are blind to now. beings with these superior faculties may very possibly have come into existence among the stars. nor is there anything unreasonable in the assumption that from the inhabitants of these stars in their _ensemble_ issue influences which directly affect conditions on this earth; that in the all in its togetherness is purpose; and that it was due to the working of this purpose that conditions were produced on the earth which made the emergence of life possible. to some it may seem that it was only by chance that the atoms and molecules happened to come together in such a particular way that from the combination the emergence of life was possible. to men of such restricted vision it would seem equally a matter of chance that a heavenly song resulted when a dozen choirboys came together, opened their mouths and made a noise. but men of wider vision would have seen that this song was no matter of chance, but was the result of the working out of a purpose; that the choirboys were brought together for a purpose; and that that purpose was resident in each of a large number of people scattered about a parish, but who, though scattered, were all animated by the same purpose of maintaining a choir to sing hymns. so it is not unreasonable to suppose that when the particles came together under conditions that life resulted, they had been brought together in those conditions to fulfil a purpose resident in each of a number of beings and groups of beings scattered about the universe, but who, though scattered, were nevertheless animated by the same purpose. anyhow, this seems a more reasonable assumption than the assumption that the particles came together by pure chance. beings with these superior faculties may very possibly have emerged among the stars. it would seem not at all improbable, therefore, that in some unrecognised way conditions on this earth may be influenced in their general outlines by what is taking place in the universe at large, in the same way as conditions in a village in india are affected by public opinion in england as epitomised in the decisions of the cabinet. the remote indian village is unaware that men in england have decided to grant responsible government to india in due course. and even if the villagers were told of this they would not realise the significance of the decision and how it would affect the fortunes of their village for good or ill during the next century or two. conditions on this earth may be similarly being affected by decisions made in other parts of the universe--decisions the significance of which we would be as totally unable to recognise as the indian villagers are to recognise the significance of the steps towards self-government which have just been made. the universe is so interconnected, and there is so much interaction between the parts and the whole, that the earth may be more affected than we think by what goes on in the universe at large. if there are higher levels of being among the stars, it may well be that the successive rises to higher levels on this earth--from inorganic to organic, from organic to mental, and from the mental to the spiritual--have come about through this interaction between the parts and the whole. conditions on this earth may be more affected than we are aware of by the universe in its ensemble, and by the actions of higher beings in other earths. in this very matter of beauty, for example, it may quite possibly be the case that our intimation of beauty has been received through the influence upon the most sensitive among us of beings in other parts of the universe. we may be as unaware of the existence of those beings or of their having feelings towards us as the indian villager is of the existence of the cabinet in london or of the cabinet's feelings towards him. but these stellar beings may be exerting their influence all the same. and it may be because of this influence that we men are able to see beauty which escapes the eye of the eagle. because of our higher receptiveness and responsiveness we may be able to receive and respond to spiritual calls from the heart of nature. and thus it may have been that we men learned to see beauty, and now learn to see it more and more. there may be parts of the universe where people live their lives in a blaze of beauty, and are as anxious to impart to us their enjoyment of it as certain freedom-loving englishmen are to instil ideas of freedom into the villagers of india. these, at any rate, are among the possibilities of existence. it would be the veriest chance if on this little speck of an earth the highest beings of all had come to birth. it may be so, of course. but the probabilities seem to be enormously great against it. it seems far more probable that among the myriads of stars some higher beings than ourselves have come into existence, and that conditions on this earth are affected by the influence which they exert. we are under no compulsion whatever to believe that we men are completely at the mercy of blind forces or that chance rules supreme in nature. we have firm ground for holding that it is spirit which is supreme, and that every smallest part and the whole together are animated by purpose. so when we view nature in the tropical forests and in barren deserts, in mountains and in plains, in meadows and in woodlands, in seas and in stars, in animals and in men, we do not see nature as a confused jumble with all her innumerable parts come together in haphazard fashion as the grains of sand shovelled into a heap--a chance aggregate of unrelated particles in which it is a mere toss-up which is next to which and how they are arranged. nature is evidently not a chance collection of unrelated particles. we came to that conclusion when studying the forest, and a study of the stars shows nothing to weaken that conclusion. nature is animated by purpose. yet because nature is animated by purpose, we need not regard her as a machine, a piece of mechanism which has been designed and put together, wound up and set going by some outside mechanician, and regard ourselves as cogs on the wheels, watching all the other wheels go round and through the maze of machinery catching sight of the mechanician standing by and watching his handiwork. a cog on the wheel as it revolved would be rigidly confined in its operations: it would have no choice as to what means it should employ to carry out its end. yet even plants have the power of choice, as we have seen, and use different means to achieve the same end. they also spend their entire lives in selecting and rejecting--in selecting and assimilating what will nourish their growth and enable them to propagate their kind, and in rejecting what would be useless or harmful. these are something more than mechanical operations; and if nature were a machine, not even plants, much less animals and men, could have been produced. the operations of nature, though orderly, are not mechanical only, and we cannot regard nature as a machine. and if nature is purposive, she is at work at something more than the completion of a prearranged plan. we do not picture nature as a _structure,_ as a cathedral, for example, designed by some super-architect, in process of construction. in a cathedral each stone is perfectly and finally shaped and placed in a position in which it must ever after remain, and the whole shows signs of gradual completion as it is being built, and when it is built remains as it is. the architect has made i and carried out his plan, and there is an end of the matter. it is not thus that we view nature, for everywhere we see signs of perfectibility in the component parts and in the whole together. only if the cathedral had in it the power to be continually making its foundations deeper, to be ever towering higher, and to be perpetually shaping itself into sublimer form, should we look on nature as a cathedral. but in that case the mind of the architect would have to dwell in each stone and in all together, and the cathedral would be something more than a structure in the ordinary use of the word. nature is not a chance collection of particles, nor is she a mere machine, nor some kind of structure like a cathedral in course of construction. but she is a power of some kind, and what we have to determine is the kind of power she is. now we have seen that running through the life of the forest, controlling and directing the whole, is an organising activity. and our observation of the stars leads us to think that this same organising activity runs through them also. there is quite evidently an activity at work keeping the whole together--the particles which go to form great suns, the particles which go to form a flower, and the particles which go to form a man; and all in their togetherness. only we would not look upon this activity as working anywhere outside nature: we would look for it within her. we would not regard it as emanating from some kind of spiritual central sun situated among the stars midway between us and the farthest star we see--as irradiating from some sort of centrally-situated spiritual power-house. as we look up into the starry heavens we cannot imagine the activity as residing in the empty space between the stars or between the stars and the earth on which we stand. it seems absurd to picture its dwelling-place there. equally absurd does it seem to regard the activity as emanating from some spiritual sun situated far beyond the confines of the stars, and from there emitting spiritual rays upon nature, including us men. as we look out upon nature we see that the activity which animates her does not issue from any outside source, but is actually in her. we do not need to look for the seat of that animating activity in the empty spaces of the starry heavens or anywhere beyond them. we look for it in the stars themselves, in our own star, in the earth, in every particle of which the stars and sun and earth are composed, in every plant and animal, and in every human heart, and in the whole together. there it is--and especially in the human heart--that the soul of nature resides. there is its dwelling-place. to each of us it is nearer than father is to son. it is as near as "i" am to each one of the myriad particles which in their togetherness go to make up the body and soul which is "me." the spirit of nature is resident in no remoteness of cold and empty space. it is deep within us and all around us. it permeates everything and everybody, everywhere and always. and if we wish to be unmistakably aware of its presence, we have only to look within ourselves, and whenever we are conscious of a higher perfection which something within, responding to the influences impinging insistently on us, is urging us to achieve; whenever we have a vision of something more perfect, more lovely, more lovable, and feel ourselves urged on to reach after that greater perfection--we are in those moments directly and unmistakably experiencing the divine spirit of nature. whenever we feel the spirit within us showing us greater perfectibility and prompting us to make ourselves and others more perfect than we have been we are, in that moment, being directly influenced by the spirit of nature itself. we are receiving inspiration direct from the genius of nature, the _driving_ spirit which is continually urging her on, and the _directing_ spirit which guides her to an end. we are in touch with the true heart of nature. so as we take a comprehensive view of nature both in her outward bodily form and her inner spiritual reality, and find her to be an interconnected whole in which all the parts are interrelated with one another, one body and one mind, self-contained and self-conscious, and driven by a self-organising, self-governing, self-directing activity--we should regard her as nothing _less_ than a _personal being._ in ordinary language we speak of nature as a person, and when we so speak we should not regard ourselves as speaking figuratively: we should mean quite literally and as a fact that she is a person. and we should look upon that personal being, in which we are ourselves included, as in process of realising an ideal hidden within her--an ideal which in its turn is ever perfecting itself. * * * what is meant by nature being a person, and a person actuated by a hidden ideal, and being in process of realising that ideal, and what is meant by an ideal perfecting itself, may be best explained with the help of an illustration. first it will be necessary to explain how we can regard nature as a _person,_ or at least as nothing less than a person--though possibly _more._ it is contended by many authorities that we cannot regard any collective being, such as a college or a regiment--and nature is a collective being--as a true person. but their arguments are unconvincing. they allow that "i" am a person because "i" possess rationality and self-consciousness. but "i" am a system or organisation of innumerable beings--electrons, groupings of electrons, groups of groupings in rising complexity. "i"--the body and soul which makes up "me"--am nothing but a collective being myself. and if we take the case of "england" as an example of a collective being, we shall see that england has as much right to be considered a personal being as any single englishman, composed as he is of innumerable separate beings. perhaps to one who is representing england among strange peoples the personality of england is more apparent than to those who are constantly living in england itself. to the foreign people among whom this representative is living england is a very real person. what she thinks about them, what she does, what her intentions are, what is her character and disposition, are matters of high interest; for upon england's good or ill will towards them may perhaps depend to a large extent their own future. viewed from a distance like that, england quite obviously does possess a _character_ of her own. she appears to some people large-hearted and generous; to others aggressive and domineering; to most solid, sensible, reasonable, steadfast, and steady. and to all she has a character quite distinctive and her own--quite different from the character of france or of russia. and england with equal obviousness _thinks._ she forms her own opinions of other nations, of their character, intentions, activities, and feelings. she thinks over her own line of action in regard to them. she takes decisions. and she _acts._ she is for a long time suspicious of russia, and takes measures to defend herself against any possible hostile russian action. she later comes to the conclusion that there is no fundamental difference between her and russia, so she takes steps to compose the superficial differences. later still, when both she and russia are being attacked by a common enemy, she deliberately places herself on terms of closest friendship with russia, and both gives her help and receives help from her. at the same time, having come to the conclusion that germany is threatening her very life, she makes war on germany, and prosecutes that war with courage, endurance, steadfastness and intelligence, and with a determination to win at any cost. england has deep _feeling,_ too. she had a feeling of high exaltation on the day she determined to fight for her life and freedom. she had a feeling of sadness and anxiety as things went against her at mons, ypres, gallipoli, kut. she was wild with joy when the war was victoriously concluded. and she was proud of herself as she thought how among the sister nations of the empire of which she was the centre, and among the allied nations, she had played a great and noble part. now when a body, like england, can thus think for itself, form its own decisions, take action, establish friendships, fight enemies, and feel deeply, surely that body must possess personality. in ordinary language england is always spoken of as a person. and ordinary language speaks with perfect accuracy in this respect. in her relations with individual englishmen england also shows her personality. the representative abroad feels very vividly how she _expects_ him to act in certain ways--ways in accordance with her character and her settled line of action. and she conveys these expectations to him not only in formal official instructions from her government: the most important of those expectations are conveyed in a far more subtle and intimate but most unmistakable way. the english government did not write officially to nelson at trafalgar that england expected every man to do his duty. but nelson, standing there for england, knew very well that this was what england was expecting of him and of those serving under him. a representative would find it very hard to locate the exact dwelling-place of the heart and soul and mind of england, whether in parliament, or in the press, or in the universities, or in factories, or in the villages. but that there is an england expecting him to behave himself in accordance with her traditions and character, and to act on certain general but quite definite lines, and who will admire and reward him if he acts faithfully to her expectations, and condemn and in extreme cases punish him if he is unfaithful, he has not the shadow of a doubt. nor does he doubt that this england, besides expecting a certain general line of conduct, will and can _constrain_ him to act in accordance with her settled determination--that she has authority and has power to give effect to her will. and the official governmental representatives are not the only representatives of england. _every_ englishman is a representative of england. how representative he is he will experience as he finds himself among strange peoples outside his own country. he will find then that he has certain traits and traditions and characteristics which clearly distinguish him from the people among whom he is travelling. and unofficial though he may be, he will yet feel england expecting him to behave as an englishman. and though he may not be so vividly aware of it when he is at home, he is still a representative of england when he is in england itself. in everyday life he is being expected and constrained by england to act in certain ways. nor is it all a one-sided affair--england expecting so much of him and he having no say or control over what england does. on the contrary, the relationship is mutual. he goes to the making and shaping of england just as much as she goes to the making and shaping of him. he expects certain behaviour of her as she expects such of him. and if he has gained the confidence of his fellow-countrymen and has energy and determination, he may do much to affect her destiny. england is therefore, so it seems, a _person_ just as much as a single englishman is a person. englishmen, in fact, only attain their full personality in an england which _has_ personality. * * * now nature, i suggest, in spite of what has been said against the view, is a person in exactly the same way as england is a person. nature is a collective being made up of component beings--self-active electrons, self-active atoms, self-active suns and planets, self-active cells, plants, animals, men, and groups and nations of men--as england is made up of the land of england and all that springs therefrom, including the englishmen themselves. nature thinks and feels and strives as england thinks and feels and strives. and nature cares for her children as england looks after her sons. it is often said, indeed, that nature is hard and cruel. but it is only through the unfailing regularity and reliability of her fundamental laws--of her "constitution"--that freedom and progress are possible. if we could not depend upon perfect law we could make no advance whatever. we should all be abroad and uncertain. yet in spite of her unbending rigidity over fundamentals, she does also show mercy and pity. a child toddling along downhill unregardful of the force of gravitation falls on its face and screams with pain. but nature, represented by the mother, rushes up, seizes the little thing in her arms, presses it lovingly to her bosom, rock it and coaxes it and covers it with kisses. so if nature can think and feel and strive and show mercy and loving-kindness, she is entitled to the dignity of personality. and when we stand back and regard nature as a whole, we shall look upon her as a person and nothing less. * * * we have now to understand what is meant by saying that nature is a person actuated by a hidden ideal and being in process of realising that ideal. when travelling across the gobi desert i found a yellow rose--a dwarf, simple, single rose. it is known to botanists as _rosa persica,_ and is believed to be the original of all roses. i found it on the extreme outlying spurs of the altai mountains. now, a seed of the rose, partly under the influence of its surroundings (soil, moisture, air, sunshine) but chiefly _by virtue of something which it contains within itself,_ something inherent in its very nature, will grow up into a rose-bush and give forth roses. the seed develops into a rose, not because some outside super-gardener takes hold of each one of the million million ultra-microscopic particles of which it is made up and puts it carefully into its appointed place, as a builder might put the stones of a building into their exact places according to the plans of an architect; but because each of those minutest ultimate particles has that within it which prompts it to act of its own accord in response to the call of the whole. each of these electrons is in incessant and terrific motion, moving at the rate of something like , miles a second, so placing it in position would be a difficult matter. besides which, each electron is not a tiny bit of matter as we ordinarily conceive matter--something which we can touch and handle. it is a mere centre or nucleus of energy. any placing of it in position by a super-gardener is therefore out of the question. each of those little particles moves and acts of itself in accordance with its own inner promptings, and in response to the influence of those other myriads of particles and groups of particles about it. and that system of these groups of particles which is enclosed within the rondure of the seed must have within it the ideal of the rose to be. each particle will act on its own initiative, but all will act under the mutual influence of one another, and in their togetherness will make up the rose-spirit, being informed by the ideal of the rose which in its turn will suffuse the whole. and this rose-spirit--this rose-disposition--as it gives itself play, so controls and directs their movements that eventually the full-blown rose comes into being. what happens is, we may imagine, much the same as what happened in the case of australia. a handful of settlers from the mother-country formed the germ-seed from which the australia of to-day has grown up. there was no external despot ordering each individual australian to do this, that, and the other--to come this way and go that, and to stop in one place this year and in another place the next. each australian acting on his own initiative, and all in their togetherness, created the australian spirit, which again reacting upon each australian induced him to act in accordance with that spirit. and so in time australia, assimilating individuals from outside and absorbing them into its texture, and imbuing them with the australian spirit, grew up into manhood in the great war and astonished the world by its strong individuality, its character, intelligence, determination, and good comradeship. in the same way these particles of the rose-seed, each acting of itself, in their collectivity formed the rose-spirit. and each was in turn imbued by the rose-spirit. they had in them unconsciously the ideal of the rose-bush with its roots, stem, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit, seed. in all their activities they were actuated by this ideal. it was always constraining them in the given direction. by reason of the working of it in the particles they could by no possibility arrange themselves into a may tree or a lilac bush. there was an inner core of activity which persisted through all the countless changes of the process, which permeated the whole and which kept it directed to the particular end it had all the time in view. that activity had, in fact, a well-defined disposition, and that disposition was defined by the ideal of the rose, and was to form a rose-bush bearing roses. that the rose-seed developed into the rose was due, therefore, not to the operation of any outside agent, but was due to the operation of the rose-spirit that it had within it, and which was persistently driving it to bring into actual being that ideal of the rose which was the essence of its spirit. the ideal of the rose was the motive-power of the whole process. where the rose-spirit derived from we shall later on enquire. here we must note a point of the utmost importance. the seed of this _rosa persica_ is imbued with the spirit of _rosa persica._ it has this ideal working within it. but it is not confined within the rigid limits of that ideal. it has that ideal, but _something beyond also_ --something in the _direction_ of that ideal, but stretching on ahead to an illimitable distance. the rose-seed developed riot only into the rose-flower, but through the flowers into numerous rose-seeds. and from the original _rosa persica_ seeds have sprung roses of scores of varieties. roses of every variety of form, colour, habit, texture are constantly appearing. by purposeful mating, and supplying favourable conditions of soil, temperature, etc., almost any kind of variety can be produced. so we have not only yellow roses of every shade from gold and cream to lemon, but also white and red and pink roses of every hue. we have single roses and roses as full as small cabbages. and we have dwarf roses and roses climbing or feet in height. from all this it is evident that within the original seed of _rosa persica_ was a rose-spirit which refused to be confined within the limits of _rosa persica_ only, but stretched out far beyond as well. the rose-spirit had latent in it, and was unconsciously stretching out to, all the beauties which roses have since attained to, and beyond that again to all the beauties that are yet to come. the horizon of the rose-spirit was never confined by a single plan--the plan of the _rosa persica_--as the builder is confined by the plan of the architect, beyond which he cannot go. the rose-spirit could reach out along the line of roses to an unlimited extent. it could produce nothing but roses; it could not produce laburnums. but it could produce roses of unlimited variety, provided favourable conditions were available. but the _rosa persica_ was itself the outcome of a long line of development from a far-away primordial plant-germ. from that original plant-germ have sprung all the ferns and grasses, the shrubs and trees and flowers, of the present day. so in that plant-germ must have resided the plant-spirit with an ideal of all this variety of plant-life actuating it--unconsciously, of course, but most effectively for all that. the particles of that original germ in their individual activities and in their mutual influence upon one another were in their togetherness actuated by a plant-spirit which had in mind--so to speak--not only the reproduction of a plant precisely similar to the original plant, but one with the possibilities of development and of reproducing others with possibilities of still further development. all that plant life has so far attained and all that it will attain to in future--perhaps also all that it _might_ have attained to--must have been present in the plant-spirit of that original plant-germ. and it is through the working out--the realising--of this ideal which actuated that plant-spirit, and through the response which this spirit made to the stimulus of its surroundings that all the wonderful development of plant life has taken place. the plant-spirit had to keep within the lines of plant life; it could not stray beyond it to develop lions and tigers. but within the lines of plant life it could stretch out to illimitable distances. all that was wanted was the stimulus of favourable conditions, and from its surroundings it could select, reject, assimilate, all that would further its end. * * * in the gobi desert i also saw the wild horse--_equus prjevalskyi_ --supposed to be the original horse. and as the rose springs from the seed, so the horse develops from the ovum. and by virtue of the horse-spirit, the horse-ideal, by which all the innumerable particles of that ovum is actuated, it develops into a horse, and not into a donkey or a cow. but the ovum of the original _equus prjevalskyi_ must have had in it the ideal of something more than the _equus prjevalskyi,_ for from the original stock has sprung the great variety of horses we see to-day--race-horses, cart-horses, hunters, polo ponies, shetland ponies, etc. and these are still varying. and the _equus prjevalskyi_ was itself the outcome of a long line of development. like all other animals, including man, it must have sprung from an original animal-germ. and the particles of that original animal-germ must have had in them the animal-spirit actuated by the ideal of all the animals of the present day, including man, and ready to develop as soon as favourable conditions provided the necessary stimulus to which the germ was ready to respond. and both the original plant-germ and the original animal-germ sprang from an original plant-animal germ. and this, again, from the earth itself. so that the earth must always have had hidden in it the ideal of all plant and animal and human life--and not only the ideal of what it has reached at present, but of all it _will_ become, and, it is important to note, of all it _might_ become in future. it is the working of this ideal in the earth, from the time five hundred million years or so ago when it budded off from the sun as a fiery mist, that it has, under the influence of the light and heat of the sun, and possibly also under the influences from the stellar universe as well, produced what we see to-day. the earth-spirit was inspired by this ideal, and in the ideal was this capacity for improving itself. and through the working of this ideal, and under the influence of the rest of the world, the earth has developed from a flaming sphere into a molten ball, into a globe of barren land and sea, and so on into the verdure-covered and animal- and man-inhabited earth of the present age. the earth, like the rose-seed, contained within it a core of activity which permeated every particle and constrained it with its fellow-particles to direct itself towards the ideal--a core of activity which was animated by the ideal, while the ideal on its part had an innate faculty of perfecting itself. but the earth is itself only a minute mite even of the solar system. and the sun is only one of perhaps a thousand million other stars, some so distant that light travelling at the rate of , miles a second must have started from them before the birth of christ to reach us to-day. nevertheless the earth is composed of the same ultimate particles of matter that even the most distant stars are made of. the earth, the sun and stars, are composed of electrons which are all alike. doubtless there are individual differences between electrons as there are between men, but in a general way they are as much alike as all men appear alike to an eagle. and of these electrons the whole universe is made as well as the earth. the same laws of motion, of gravitation, and of electro-magnetic and chemical attraction, obtain there as here. the scale of the stellar world is immensely larger than the scale we are accustomed to on this earth. but the same fundamental laws everywhere prevail, and the earth and stars are composed of the same material. so it must have been from the heart of nature as a whole that the earth-spirit must have derived the ideal which actuated it. deep in the heart of nature must have resided the ideal of the state of the earth as it is to-day. in the great world as a whole, as in the rose-seed, must have been operating an ideal at least of what is on the earth to-day, and of what this earth will become and of what it might become; and possibly _also_ of greater things which have already been realised, or _will_ be realised and _might_ be realised in the planets of other suns than our sun. there must ever have been working throughout the universe an activity constraining the ultimate particles in a given direction. there must have been an organising activity, collecting the diffused particles together, grouping them into concentrated organisms and achieving loftier and loftier modes of being. each of those inconceivably numerous and incredibly minute particles which make up the stars and the earth and all on it--each one acted of itself. but each acted of itself under the influence of its fellows--that is, of every other particle; that is, of the _whole._ each acted in response to its surroundings, but its surroundings were nothing short of the whole of nature outside itself. together they formed the spirit of nature with the ideal as its essence. and nature in her turn acted on the particles--as englishmen form the spirit of england and the spirit of england acts back upon individual englishmen. it was the working of this spirit, with its self-improving ideal, that has produced nature as we see her to-day. the distant ideal furnished the motive-power by which the whole is driven forward. and this ideal was itself built up by the unceasing interaction of the whole upon the parts and the parts upon the whole. what was in the parts responded to the stimulus of what was in the whole, and the whole was affected by the activity of the parts. what was immanent responded to what was transcendent. and the transcendence was affected by the immanence. chapter xi nature's ideal if we have been right so far, we have arrived at the position that nature is a personal being in process of realising an ideal operating within herself. we have now to satisfy ourselves as to the character of that ideal. what is the full ideal working in the whole of nature we cannot possibly know. we can only know so much of it as can be detected with our imperfect faculties on this minute atom of the universe on which we dwell. we cannot be sure we have even discerned the highest levels of the ideal. for there may be higher beings than ourselves on the planets of the stars, and among those higher beings higher qualities than any we know of, or can conceive, may have emerged. love is the highest quality we know. but love in any true sense of the word--love as a self-conscious activity--has only emerged with man, and man has only appeared within the last half-million of the earth's four or five hundred million years of existence as the earth. we cannot, therefore, presume to say what is the ideal in its highest development for the whole of nature. but from our experience here we can see what that ideal is up to (what for us is) a very high level, and we can make out what is apparently its fundamental characteristic. i obtained my best conception of it on the evening i left lhasa at the conclusion of my mission to tibet in , when i had an experience of such value for determining nature's ideal, and, for me at any rate, so convincingly corroborative of the conclusions which others who have had similar experiences have drawn from them as to nature's ideal, that i hope i may be excused for relating in some detail the circumstances in which it came to me. these circumstances, though not the experience itself, were somewhat exceptional. i was at that particular moment at the highest pitch of existence--that is to say, of my own existence. i had had an unusually wide experience of the wild countries of that most interesting and varied of the continents--asia, and for that reason had been specially selected for the charge of a mission to tibet. however ill-qualified i might be for other tasks, for this particular business of establishing neighbourly relations with a very secluded and seclusive asiatic people, difficult of approach both on account of their natural disposition and of the mighty mountain barrier which stood between them and the rest of the world, i was esteemed to have peculiar qualifications. my comrades were also men selected for their special qualifications--one for his knowledge of the tibetans, another for his knowledge of the chinese, another for his knowledge of geology, and so on. the troops engaged were selected for their experience in frontier warfare, and each man had had to pass a medical test. we were at the top of our physical fitness and ripe in experience. besides british officers and a few british troops, there were among the soldiers sikhs, pathans, gurkhas, a few bengalis, a few rajputs and dogras; and among the followers were bhutias and lepchas from sikkim, baltis from kashmir, bhutanese from bhutan. there were thus christians, mohammedans, hindus, and buddhists: men from an island in the atlantic, and men from the remotest valleys of the himalaya. and our destination had been a sacred city hidden two hundred miles behind the loftiest range of mountains in the world. on our way we had had to battle with the elements of nature in very nearly their extremest forms and in every variety. we started in the sweltering heat of the plains of india in the hottest season. we passed the lower outer ranges of the himalaya in the midst of torrential rain, like the heaviest thunder-shower in england, continuing all day long and day after day with scarcely a break, and penetrating through a waterproof coat as if it were paper. following this we had to cross the main axis of the himalaya in january, to pass the winter at an altitude of , feet above sea-level, and face blizzards which cut through heavy fur coats and left us as if we were standing before it in our bare bones. we had also had to battle with the tibetans--not only in actual fighting, but in diplomacy as well. i had deliberately risked my life in order to effect a settlement by persuasion and without resort to arms. officers and men at my request had done the same. subsequently we had both attacked and been attacked. five hundred of us had for two months to face the attacks of eight thousand tibetans. later, again, we had had a long, tough, diplomatic contest with the tibetans. besides battling with the elements and with the tibetans, i had also had to battle with my own people--as is always and inevitably the case on such occasions. military and political considerations had to contend against each other. this local question between india and tibet was part of the general international question of the relations of european nations, russia, france, germany, italy, america, with china, for tibet was under the suzerainty of china. local considerations had therefore to contend with international considerations. then from the local point of view the permanent settlement of this particular question was desirable, whereas those responsible for the international situation would not object to a temporary arrangement of this single question as long as the whole general situation could be favourably secured. the tibetan question was part of the whole question of our relations with russia. our relations with russia were connected with our relations with france. we were coming to an arrangement with france as regards egypt and morocco. if we did anything in tibet which vexed russia she might be troublesome as regards egypt, and make it difficult to come to an arrangement with france and to bring off the anglo-french entente. of all these international considerations i was kept aware by government even in the heart of tibet. but my position required that i should stand up for the political as against the military, the local as against the international, and the permanent settlement as against the temporary arrangement. it was my duty vigorously to battle for this--as it was equally the duty of the military and those responsible for international affairs to battle for their own point of view. and of course i had to submit, after contesting my standpoint, to the decision of those in authority; though i had to contend for the particular, it was the general which had to prevail. in the end a settlement was reached, and in this remote city we had received congratulations from many different people in many different lands. the troops, my staff, and all about me were filled with delight at the success of our enterprise. even the tibetans themselves seemed pleased at the settlement; at any rate, they asked to be taken under our protection. on the morning we left lhasa the lama regent, who in the absence of the dalai lama had conducted negotiations with us, paid us a farewell visit and gave us the impression of genuine goodwill towards us. we and the tibetans had contended strongly against one another. but it seemed that a way had been found by which good relations between us could be maintained. we had discovered that fundamentally we were perfectly well-disposed towards each other, and means had been found for composing our differences. throughout the mission we had kept before us the supreme importance of securing this goodwill eventually. the tibetan frontier runs with the indian frontier for a thousand miles, and it would have been the height of folly to have stirred up in the tibetans a lasting animosity. far more important, then, than securing the actual treaty we regarded securing the permanent goodwill; and when i felt that through the exertion of my staff and the good behaviour of the troops as well as through my own efforts the goodwill of the tibetans really had been secured, my satisfaction was profound. it was after enduring all these hardships, after running all these risks, and after battling in all these controversies, that this deep satisfaction came upon me. for though at times i felt, as every leader feels in like circumstances, that success must have been due to everyone else besides myself--to the backing and firm direction i had received from government, to the sound advice and help of my staff, to the bravery and endurance of the troops, without all or any one of which aids success would have been unattainable--yet i could not help also feeling that i had often on my own responsibility to make decisions and run risks, and to give advice to government; and that if i had erred in my decisions or in the advice i gave or in taking the risks, success most assuredly would not have been achieved, however much support i received from elsewhere. i had, therefore, that satisfaction a man naturally feels when his special qualifications and training and the experience he has gained during the best part of his life have proved of acknowledged good to his country. and this was the frame of mind in which i rode out of lhasa on our march homeward. these were the circumstances in which i had the experience i now venture to describe. after arrival in camp i went off into the mountains alone. it was a heavenly evening. the sun was flooding the mountain slopes with slanting light. calm and deep peace lay over the valley below me--the valley in which lhasa lay. i seemed in tune with all the world and all the world seemed in tune with me. my experiences in many lands--in dear distant england; in india and china; in the forests of manchuria, kashmir, and sikkim; in the desert of gobi and the south african veldt; in the himalaya mountains; and on many an ocean voyage; and experiences with such varied peoples as the chinese and boers, tibetans and mahrattas, rajputs and kirghiz--seemed all summed up in that moment. and yet here on the quiet mountain-side, filled as i was with the memories of many experiences that i had had in the high mountain solitudes and in the deserts of the world away from men, i seemed in touch with the wide universe beyond this earth as well. after the high tension of the last fifteen months, i was free to let my soul relax. so i let it open itself out without restraint. and in its sensitive state it was receptive of the finest impressions and quickly responsive to every call. i seemed to be truly in harmony with the heart of nature. my vision seemed absolutely clear. i felt i was seeing deep into the true heart of things. with my soul's eye i seemed to see what was really in men's hearts, in the heart of mankind as a whole and in the heart of nature as a whole. and my experience was this--and i try to describe it as accurately as i can. i had a curious sense of being literally in love with the world. there is no other way in which i can express what i then felt. i felt as if i could hardly contain myself for the love which was bursting within me. it seemed to me as if the world itself were nothing but love. we have all felt on some great occasion an ardent glow of patriotism. this was patriotism extended to the whole universe. the country for which i was feeling this overwhelming intensity of love was the entire universe. at the back and foundation of things i was certain was love--and not merely placid benevolence, but active, fervent, devoted love and nothing less. the whole world seemed in a blaze of love, and men's hearts were burning to be in touch with one another. it was a remarkable experience i had on that evening. and it was not merely a passing roseate flush due to my being in high spirits, such as a man feels who has had a good breakfast or has heard that his investments have paid a big dividend. i am not sure that i was at the moment in what are usually called high spirits. what i felt was more of the nature of a deep inner soul-satisfaction. and what i saw amounted to this--that evil is the superficial, goodness the fundamental characteristic of the world; affection and not animosity the root disposition of men towards one another. men are inherently good not inherently wicked, though they have an uphill fight of it to find scope and room for their goodness to declare itself, and though they are placed in hard conditions and want every help they can to bring their goodness out. fundamentally men are consuming with affection for one another and only longing for opportunity to exert that affection. they want to behave straightly, honourably, and in a neighbourly fashion towards one another, and are only too thankful when means and conditions can be found which will let them indulge this inborn feeling of fellowship. wickedness, of course, exists. but wickedness is not the essential characteristic of men. it is due to ignorance, immaturity, and neglect, like the naughtinesses of children. it springs from the conditions in which men find themselves, and not from any radical inclination within themselves. with maturity and reasonable conditions the innate goodness which is the essential characteristic will assert itself. this is what came to me with burning conviction. and it arose from no ephemeral sense of exhilaration, nor has it since evaporated away. it has remained with me for fifteen years, and so i suppose will last for the rest of my life. of course in a sense there has been disillusionment, both as to myself and as to the world. as one comes into the dull round of everyday life the glow fades away and all seems grey and colourless. nevertheless, the conviction remains that the glow was the _real,_ and that the grey is the superficial. the glow was at the heart and is what some day _will_ be--or, anyhow, _might_ be. an additional ground i have for believing it to be true is that on that mountain-side near lhasa i had a specially favourable opportunity of looking at the world from, as it were, a proper focal distance. and it is only from a proper focal distance that we can see what things really are. if we put ourselves right up against a picture in the national gallery we cannot possibly see its beauty--see what the picture really is. no man is a hero to his own valet. and that is not because a man is not a hero, but because the valet is too close to see the real man. cecil rhodes at close quarters was peevish, irritable, and like a big spoilt child. now at a distance we know him, with all his faults, to have been a great-souled man. social reformers near at hand are often intolerable bores and religious fanatics frequently a pestilential nuisance. we have to get well away from a man to see him as he really is. and so it is with mankind as a whole. so i become more and more certain that my vision was true. and the experience of the great war strengthens my conviction. as we recede from it, what will stand out, we may be sure, are not the crimes and cruelties that have been committed and the suffering that has been caused, but the astounding heroism which was displayed, the self-sacrifice, the devotion and love of country that were shown--heroism and devotion such as have never before in the world's history been approached, and which was manifested by common everyday men and women in every branch of life and in every country. * * * the conclusion i reach from this experience is that i was, at the moment i had it, intimately in touch with the true heart of nature. in my exceptionally receptive mood i was directly experiencing the genius of nature in the very act of inspiring and vitalising the whole. i was seeing the divinity in the heart streaming like light and heat through every part of nature, and with the dominating forcefulness of love lifting each to its own high level. and my experience was no unique experience. it was an experience the like of which has come to many men and many women in every land in all ages. it may not be common; but it is not unusual. and in all cases it gives the same certainty of conviction that the heart of nature is _good,_ that men are not the sport of chance, but that divine love is a real, an effectively determining and the dominant factor in the processes of nature, and divine fellowship the essence of the ideal which is working throughout nature and compelling all things unto itself. chapter xii the heart of nature that nature is a personal being--or at least nothing _less_ than a personal being--that she is actuated by an ideal, and that her ideal, so far as we are able to judge, is an ideal of divine fellowship, is the conclusion at which we have now arrived. but we shall understand nature better, and so see her beauty more fully, if we can understand how she works out this ideal in detail. and we shall best understand how she works it out if we examine what goes on within our own selves and see how _we_ work out the ideal with which we believe nature herself has inspired us. for it is in ourselves that the dominating spirit of nature is most clearly manifested to us. and being ourselves the instruments and agents of nature, and informed through and through with her spirit, we ought to be able to understand how she works if only we look carefully enough into the working of our own inner selves. what we find is that under the inspiration of the genius of nature we are perpetually projecting in front of us a pattern or standard of what we think we ought to be, or should like to be, and of what we think our country and the world ought to be. we set up an ideal. it is generally very vague. but there is always at the back of our minds an idea of something more perfect. and this idea we bring out from time to time from its seclusion and set up before us as an end to aim at. sometimes we deliberately try to draw the outlines of this ideal more definitely. each of us will picture a slightly different ideal to the rest. the ideal men will differ just as much as actual men, and the ideal countries as much as actual countries. no two will be exactly alike. and each of us will probably make his ideal man very different from himself--perhaps the exact opposite, for each will be peculiarly conscious of his own imperfections and shortcomings. but if the ideal man which each sets up differs in small particulars from what others set up, the general outline of all will probably be very much the same, as men in general are much the same when compared with other animals. all will be based on the idea of fellowship. so aided by examples chosen from among our friends, we may here attempt to build up an ideal type of man. for the effort will help us to realise better both what nature is aiming at and how she works. formerly we might have drawn this ideal man upright, straight, rigid, unbending. more recently we might have drawn him as a super-man, the fittest-to-survive kind of man, all muscular will, intent only on bending every other will to his and crashing relentlessly on through life like a bison in the forest. but nowadays we want a man with the same reliability as the upright type, but with grace and suppleness in place of rigidity; and with the same strength as the super-man, but with gentleness and consideration in proportion to the strength. we do not want a man of wood; and what we do want is not so much a super-man as a gentle-man--a man of courtesy and grace as well as strength. the stiff and stilted type of a bygone age will have melted under the warmth of deepening fellowship and become flowing and fluid. the man of this type will not only be full of consideration for others, but will naturally, out of a full and overflowing heart and of his own generous prompting, eagerly enter into the lives and pursuits, the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows of those with whom he is connected. and with all this wide _general_ kindliness he will be something more than merely amiable and good-natured, and will have capacity for intense devotion for _particular_ men and women. he will necessarily have fine tact and address, adroitness and skill in handling difficult and delicate situations, and the sensitiveness to appreciate the most hidden feelings of others. wit and distinction he will have, too, with ability to discern the real nature of people and events, and to distinguish the best from the good, and the good from the indifferent and bad. he will also possess that peculiar sweetness of disposition which is only found when behind it is the surest strength. and with all his gentleness, tenderness, and capacity for sympathy he will have the grit and spirit to hold his own, to battle for his rights, and to fight for those conditions which are absolutely necessary for his full development. he will, in addition, have the initiative to think out and strike out his own line and to make his own mark. he will be a man of the world in the sense of being accustomed to meet and mix with men in many different walks of life and of many different nationalities. and he will be a man of the home in the sense of being devoted to his own family circle. he will be at home in the town and at home in the country; adapted to the varied society, interests, and pursuits which town life can afford, but devoted also to the country, to the open air and elemental nature and animals and plants. a fixed principle and firm determination with him will be to do his duty--to do his social duty, to do the right thing at whatever temporary cost to himself. the right thing for him will be that which produces most good. and he will deem that the most good which best promotes human fellowship, warms it with love, colours it with beauty, enlightens it with truth, and sweetens it with grace. finally, and culminatingly, he will have that spirituality and fine sensitiveness of soul which will put him in touch with the true heart of nature and make him eagerly responsive to the subtlest promptings which spring therefrom; so he will be possessed of a profound conviction, rooted in the very depths of his being, that in doing the right thing, or in other words pursuing righteousness, he is carrying out the will and intention of that divine being whom we here call nature but whom we might also call god. this, or something like it, is the ideal of a man which most of us would form under the impress and impetus of the indwelling genius of nature. but this ideal can only be reached by an individual when his country also has reached it. he will be driven, therefore, to make his country behave and act up to this ideal. and his country cannot so act till the general society of nations conducts itself on the same general lines. his country, therefore, will be driven to make the general society of nations behave in accordance with the principles of high fellowship. * * * we have made for ourselves the ideal of a man. it remains to show that the finest pitch of all is only reached in the union of man and woman. the man is not complete without the woman, nor the woman without the man. it is in their union, therefore, that the ideal in its greatest perfection will be seen. the flower which results from the working of the ideal in the heart of nature, as the flower of the rose results from the working of the rose-ideal in the heart of the rose-seed, we see in the love of man and woman at the supreme moment of their union. this is the very holiest thing in nature. it is then that both the man and the woman are to the fullest extent themselves, both to be and to express all that is in them to be. they love then to their extreme capacity to love. they are gentle then to the utmost limit of tenderness. and they are strong then to the farthest stretch of their strength. and while they thus reach the very acme of nature's ideal so far as we men can discern it, they, at the same time and in so doing, touch the very foundations of nature as well. mathematicians have discovered that there is no such thing as a perfectly straight line, and that curvature is a fundamental property of the physical world. so also is it in the spiritual world. as we reach the topmost height of the ideal we find that it has curved round, and that we are at that moment at the very base and foundation. what is attracting us forward in the farthest distance in front is the very thing that is urging us forward from behind. pinnacle and foundation, source and end, meet. the love which attracted the man and woman together and which they keep striving to attain in higher and higher degree, is the same as the creative impulse which comes surging up from the very heart of nature. direct and without ever a break it has come out of the remotest past and deepest deeps. few seem aware of this, and yet it is an obvious fact--and a fact which vastly increases our sense of intimacy with nature. it was due to the same impulse which has brought the man and woman together that they themselves were brought into being. their parents had been attracted by the same vision of love and impelled by the same impulse. their parents' parents had been similarly attracted and impelled, and so on back and back through the whole long line of ancestry, through half a million years to primitive men, back beyond them again through the long animal ancestry for scores of millions of years to the beginning of life. even then there is no break. direct from the very fountain source of things this creative impulse has come bursting up into their hearts. at the moment of union they are straight along the direct line of the whole world-development, so far as this planet is concerned. the elemental in the natural impulse is the most ultimately elemental, for it derives itself straight from the pure origin of things. as they reach after the most divine they are impelled by the most elemental. what, in fact, happens is that the elemental is inspired through and through with the divine. the union of man and woman is the flower of nature. but, like the rose, it bears within it the seed from which some still more beautiful flower may result. no pair, however sublime their union, suppose that it is the best that could by any possibility at any time exist. an absolutely perfect union depends upon an absolutely perfect pair in absolutely perfect surroundings. and no one supposes that he himself is perfect or that the world around him is perfect. so there is in the pair a consciousness of imperfection, a vision of perfection, and a desperate yearning to be more perfect and to make the world more perfect. deep and strong as the creative impulse itself is the impulse to improvement. it is due to this impulse that the mother reaches over her child with such loving care, strives to shield it from all harm, social as well as physical, and to give it a better chance than she herself enjoyed. it is due to this same impulse that the man works to leave his profession, his business, his science, his art, his country, better than he found it. it is due to this impulse also that men as a whole are driven to improve the whole earth, to improve plants, flowers, trees, animals, men, and make the world a better place for their successors than it has ever been for them. the pair--even the most splendid pair that has ever wedded --have deep within them this perhaps unrecognised impulse to improvement. they know that the rose can only bring forth roses, and that they can only bring forth men: they know that they cannot bring forth angels. but they know also that the rose, when wisely mated and its offspring provided with favourable surroundings of soil and air and sunshine, can give rise to blooms incomparably more perfect than itself. and they know that they themselves, if they have wisely mated, if they carefully tend their offspring and provide them with healthy, sunny, physical and social surroundings, can give rise, in generations to come, to unions of men and women incomparably more perfect than their own--as much more perfect as their union is than the unions of primitive men--richer in colour, more graceful in form, sweeter in fragrance, and of an altogether finer texture. * * * this, then, is the ideal in its completeness which we set up before us. but we have no sooner set it up than we find that the presence of this ideal within us makes us restless, unsatisfied, discontented, till we have set to work to bring things up to it; and that when we do start improving them we are forthwith involved in endless strife. improvement means effort. it does not come by itself. it is only effected by strong, persistent, determined effort. it was no easy matter for the particles in the rose-seed to battle their way through the hard seed-case, strike down into the soil, send up shoots into the air, stand steadfastly to their ideal of the rose, and produce a seed capable of bringing forth a still more perfect flower. and it is no easy matter for us to burst through our own shells, strike our roots far down into the soil of common humanity and common animality, and there firmly rooted strike up skyward, stand faithfully to our ideal, and produce something which will have capacity for still further improvement. immense and sustained effort is required of us for this to be accomplished. each man finds he has to battle with himself to make way for all the best in himself to come to the front. each has to battle with the circumstances in which he is placed in order to find scope for the exercise of the best in himself. each has to break his way through, as that wonder of nature, poor primitive man, had to battle his way through the impediments of the tropical forests and the brute beasts by which he was surrounded. and just as primitive man was not the animal provided with the thickest hide like the rhinoceros, nor with sharpest claws like the lion, nor with the fiercest temper like the tiger, but was of all his fellows the one with the most sensitive nature, so are those nearest the ideal the most delicately sensitive of mankind. the ideal is never approached, much less attained, except by men and women of the most highly-strung natures--natures peculiarly susceptible to pain. and with this extra susceptibility to pain they have to expose to the risk of wounds and bruises the most sensitive parts of their natures. suffering is therefore inevitably their lot. it is the invariable attendant of progress however beneficent. excruciating pain each expects to have to endure--as every expectant mother and every soldier anticipates on the physical plane. we find, too, that in working out our ideal we are not only required to endure pain, but to submit to the sternest discipline. first, we need self-discipline. each individual finds that he is required to exercise his faculties to the full, make the utmost of himself, attain to the highest of which he is capable, and be ready for any sacrifice. so he must train his faculties to the highest. he is required also to work in concert with his fellows. the stern obligation is therefore upon him to forgo his own private advantage in order that the common end may be achieved. this obligation he has readily to acknowledge and submit to. he has also to acknowledge what he owes to nature, what is his _duty_ to nature. and that duty he has to perform and her authority he has to admit. he can retain his freedom and initiative and enterprise. but he has to obey the laws of nature, acknowledge her authority, submit to her discipline. no soldiers were more full of independence and initiative than the australians, but no troops at the end of the war realised better than they did that success can only be achieved through strictest discipline as well as freedom and initiative. the lover also knows that only through the sternest discipline and constraint upon himself is his object attained. thus there is an imperative necessity upon a man to be orderly in his behaviour, loyal, faithful, dutiful, and obedient to the ideal within him. any failure in loyalty and obedience is a sin against nature and a sin against himself. the call of honour and of humanity is upon him, and that call he has to obey without hesitation. equally are men expected to be ready to _exercise_ authority, to maintain discipline and preserve order. the exercise of authority is no less an obligation and duty upon men than obedience to it. and the one has to be practised just as much as the other. or, rather, the exercise of authority has to be practised more, for it is more difficult and more valuable. and the proper exercise of authority, maintenance of discipline, and preservation of order, is a duty men owe ultimately to nature herself. for it is from nature that they finally derive their authority and to nature that they are ultimately responsible. whether as captain of the eleven or as head of the house at school, as manager of an office or a business, as policeman or foreman, as corporal or commander-in-chief, as administrator or prime minister, whether as nurse, parent, or schoolmistress, a man or woman is in his position of authority directly or indirectly on the appointment or choice of those over whom he has to exercise authority. he is there to exercise authority for their benefit. they have placed him--as the public place the policeman--in authority for that purpose. and they have a right to expect that he will exercise his authority with decision, maintain discipline with firmness, and preserve order with even-handed justice. for only then can they themselves know where they are, get on with their own duties and affairs, and fulfil the law of their being. ultimately those in authority are chosen by, and are responsible to, those over whom they exercise authority. and those who choose them expect and require them to exercise authority authoritatively. each in his own particular sphere, in that particular place and for the time being, has to exercise his authority with strictness. otherwise the rest cannot fulfil their own duties. the policeman has to exercise his authority even over a prince, as otherwise there might be chaos in the streets and no one would be able to get about his business with surety. the whole people have chosen each for his particular position of authority, and for their benefit expect him to exercise it strictly. the people, again, spring from nature as a whole. they are the representatives of nature. those in authority are therefore, in their particular province, for that particular purpose, and for the time being the representatives of nature. they are accountable to nature, and nature expects them as her representatives to exercise authority with wisdom and discretion, but on the same basic principles of absolute fairness and perfect orderliness that she herself in her elemental aspects exercises her authority. besides obeying authority and exercising authority, men have also to practise _leadership._ merely to give and obey orders is nothing like sufficient. in most things a man follows some leader, but in each man there is one thing--his own particular line--in which he can _lead._ in that line he is expected to qualify himself for leadership, and be prepared to take the risks of high adventure. for it is only through leadership, through someone venturing out beyond the ruck and getting his fellows to follow him, that any progress is made. mere obedience to authority and exercise of authority never initiate any new departure. these only provide the conditions for progress. in addition to these the divine gift of leadership is required. leadership is therefore the supremely important quality which men require. but men cannot intelligently act in concert and alertly; cannot willingly submit themselves to a rigid discipline; cannot exercise authority with confidence and weight; and cannot lead so that others may follow, unless all are animated by the same idea. and they are not likely to sacrifice their lives for that idea unless they are convinced of its value. only for the most precious things in life do men willingly give up their lives. and before they submit to unquestioning discipline and sacrifice themselves for an ideal they need a clear understanding of that ideal and a just appreciation of its value. so they think out the ideal with greater precision and make sure that what they are aiming at is nothing short of the highest. now the ideal of fellowship enriched with beauty and elevated to the divine is one which all can understand and of which all can see the value. because it is the highest it is satisfying to the deepest needs and cravings of their nature, and is therefore of a value beyond all reckoning. assured of that, they summon up all the courage and fortitude that is theirs, all their spirit and mettle, to endure unflinchingly the pain that must be theirs. and in spite of the effort, the long, strict training, the rigid discipline, the hardship and suffering they have to undergo, they joyfully play their part because they are assured in their hearts that what they are living for and would readily die for is supremely worth while. deep in their hearts is that divine joy of battle that fighters for the highest always feel. and they fight with power and conviction because they know that their ideal has come into their hearts straight from nature herself, and experience has shown that what nature has in mind she does in the end achieve: she not only has the will and intention but the _power_ to carry into effect what she determines. * * * this is how we formulate the ideal to ourselves in ever-developing completeness; and this is how with pain and effort but with over-compensating joy we carry it into effect. and these experiences of ours in the formulation and working out of our ideal give us the clue to the manner in which nature on her part works out _her_ ideal. we are the representations and representatives of the whole, and we may assume that the whole works in much the same way as we ourselves work. if this be so we may expect to find that nature will work as an _artist_ works, that is, out of his own inner consciousness, spontaneously generating and continually creating new and original forms approaching (through a process of trial and error experimentation) more and more closely to that ideal of perfection which he has always, though often unconsciously, before him. and this is how we actually do find nature working. we find her reaching after perfection of form, now in one direction, now in another; first in plants, next in animals, then in insects, then in birds, then in apes, then in men, here in one type and there in another, never reaching complete perfection anywhere, any more than the greatest artist ever does in any particular, but still reaching perfection in a higher and higher degree, and making the state of the whole of a richer and intenser perfection. we have, therefore, ample evidence that nature is actuated by an intention to enrich perfection and is continually working towards it. so we have confidence that nature, hard and exacting though she be, is _only_ exacting in order that the highest may be attained. we know that nature is aiming at the highest and nothing short of the highest. and all the spirit of daring and adventure in us leaps to the call she makes. and we respond to the call with all the greater alacrity because we feel that the attainment of that highest is dependent to a large degree upon ourselves. we have a sense of real responsibility in the matter. and for this reason--that though nature lays down the great constitutional laws within which man, her completest representative, must work; and though nature as a whole formulates the main outlines of her ideal; yet man _within that constitution_ can make his own laws, and within its main outlines may refine and perfect the ideal. nature may be working out her ideal on other stars through the agency of other kinds of beings more perfect than ourselves; and while the ideal in its main outlines may be the same there as the ideal which is working itself out on this planet, it may there have assumed a higher form and be more nearly attained. but on this planet the more definite formulation of the ideal and the measures for its attainment are in the hands of men. we can perfect the ideal for ourselves, and make laws and establish customs to ensure its attainment. we are not the slaves of a despotic ruler, or pawns in the hand of an external player. within the limits of nature's constitution, the laws we obey are laws of our own making; the authority we obey is the authority which we ourselves have set up; and both authority and laws we can change in accordance with the growing requirements of the ideal which we ourselves are perfecting. we go forward, therefore, with inextinguishable faith in the value of what we are battling for, and in the worthwhileness of all our efforts and endurances. and though the ideal, with which nature has inspired us makes us restless and discontented, provokes us to increasing effort, causes us endless pain and suffering, and exacts from us the sacrifice even of our lives, we nevertheless love to have the ideal, and love nature for implanting it in us. * * * and now that we have seen what is the nature of nature, what is the end she has before her, and how she works to accomplish her end, we feel that we have gone a long way towards knowing and understanding her. we have had a vision of the hidden divinity by which she is inspired. and this mysterious power we have not found reigning remote in the empty spaces of the heavens. we have found it dwelling in every minutest particle of which this earth and all the world is built, and of which we ourselves also are made--dwelling in the earth, and in the air, and in the stars; and in every living thing, in beast and bird and insect, in flower, plant, and man--and dwelling in them all in their togetherness. we have found it to be both immanent and transcendent. it only exists--and can only exist--in these its single self-active representations. but in relation to each of them it is transcendent. each star and flower, each beast and man, is its partial representation. but the whole together is that power which while it transcends is yet resident in, and inspires, each single part which goes to its making. in the inmost heart of nature, as the ground and source of nature, yet permeating nature to the uttermost confines, and reigning supreme over the whole, we find god; actuating the heart of god we find an ideal; and actuating the heart of the ideal we find an imperative urge towards perfection, an inborn necessity to perfect itself for ever--just as inside the rough exterior of abraham lincoln was the real abraham lincoln, at his heart was an ideal, and at the heart of the ideal an inner impulse towards perfection; or as within the exterior france is the real france, in the heart of france an ideal, and in the heart of the ideal the determination to perfect itself. this view of nature is very different from that view of her which would regard the world as having been originally created by, and now being governed by, an always and already perfect being, living as apart from it as the sun is from the earth, and being as distinct and separate from it as a father is from his son. and the difference in view must make a profound difference in our attitude to nature, and therefore in our capacity for seeing and enjoying natural beauty. we may admire and worship but we can scarcely love, in any true sense of the word, a being dwelling distant and aloof from us, and with whom, from the mere fact of his being perfect, it is most difficult for us to be on terms of homely intimacy and affection. but for a being who, like our country, is one of whom we ourselves form part, we can have not only admiration and reverence but deep affection. we can and do love our country, for we form part of her, and have a voice and share in making and shaping her. we know that she cares for us, will look after us in misfortune, and will honour and love us if we serve her well and show her loyalty and devotion. and we can and do love nature for precisely the same reasons. we feel ourselves part of her, and in intimate touch with her all round and always. and we have that which is so satisfying to us--the feeling that there is _reciprocity_ of love between us and her. so our love is active, and it vehemently impels us to get to know her better and better, to get ourselves in ever closer touch with her, to discover the utmost fulness of her beauty, and to communicate to others all that we have come to know and all the beauty we have seen, so that others may share in our enjoyment and come to love nature more even than we love her ourselves--love nature in all her aspects, love physical nature in the mountains, seas and deserts, the clouds, sunsets and stars, love plant nature and animal nature and human nature; and, above all, love divine nature as best revealed in supreme men in their supreme moments. in some of her aspects nature may be stern and exacting. but she is never sheerly hard. she is compounded of mercy and compassion as well as of rigid orderliness. and her essential character is love--and love of no impassive and insipid kind, but of a power and activity beyond all human conception. the importance and significance of this conclusion, if we accept it, is that we definitely abandon the repellent conception of nature as governed by chance, or as cold and mechanical, or as guided solely by the principle of the survival of the fittest, and we accept instead the humaner and diviner view that nature is actuated by love; and, accepting that more winning conception, we can enter unreservedly into the spirit of nature and see her beauty. unless we had been assured in our minds, without any possibility of doubt whatever, that we could _love_ nature, we could never really have enjoyed her _beauty._ * * * so nature is not something static, fixed, and immovable, determined once and for all like a rock is, at least to outward appearance. nature is a person, and a person is a process. nature flows. nature is always moving on. as our thoughts are all connected with one another and passing into one another; as all events are connected with one another and are continually passing from one into another, and form one great all-inclusive event which is in continual process of happening; so is nature always in process of passing from one state into another state, while the whole forms one great event for ever happening. and actuating the whole process, determining the whole great event, is an inner core of activity which endures through all the changes. it is the "i" of nature, which informs, directs, controls the whole from centre to utmost extremity through all space and all time. it is the soul and spirit, the genius of nature. it is what we should mean when we speak of god. actuated by this spirit, whose essential character is love, the process glides smoothly, unbrokenly, and wellnigh imperceptibly forward. as we lift our eyes and look out upon nature in its present actually existing state, what we see in that instant is the whole achievement of the past, and it contains within it here and now the promise of all the future. all the past is in the present, and in it also is the potency of the future. the achievement fills us with admiration. the promise thrills us with hope. to that spirit which has achieved this result, which actuates the process and ourselves with it, which determines the great event, which ensures the uniformity and law and order which are the foundations of our freedom, and the essential condition of all progress, our hearts are drawn out and yearningly stretch themselves out in a love boundless as the process itself. the more we find ourselves drawn to nature and in harmony and love with her, the more beauty do we see. in closest reciprocity love of nature inspires natural beauty and natural beauty promotes love of nature. and it is from the heart of nature that both love and beauty spring. both also remain permanent and everlasting through all the changing processes of nature--permanent but ever increasing in depth and height and volume. the promise of all the love and beauty of to-day was hidden in the womb of the past. in the womb of to-day is contained the promise of a love and beauty still more glorious. and ours it is to bring them into being. part ii natural beauty and geography presidential address to the royal geographical society, delivered at the anniversary meeting, may , natural beauty and geographical science i have something to say which to old-fashioned geographers may appear very revolutionary, and which you may hesitate to accept straight away. but it has come to me as the result of much and varied geographical work in the field; of listening to many lectures before this society; and of composing this address and five lectures for you, firstly, as far back as , on my journey across central asia from peking to india; secondly, on my journey to hunza and the pamirs; thirdly, on chitral; fourthly, on my mission to tibet; and fifthly, on the himalaya. and i expect when you come to think over what i have now to say you will find that, after all, my conclusions are not anything desperately revolutionary but something quite obvious and natural. what i want to lay before you for your very earnest consideration is this--that we should take a profounder and broader view of geography, of its fundamental conception, and of its scope and aim, than we have hitherto taken; and should regard the earth as _mother_-earth, and the _beauty_ of her features as within the purview of geography. i will state my case as clearly and briefly as i can. geography is a science. science is learning, knowing, understanding. the object of geographical learning, knowing, understanding is the earth. we must first, then, have a true conception of what the earth really is. and next we must be certain in our minds as to what is most worth knowing about it. to begin with our conception of the earth. at the dawn of geography it was believed to be a flat disc. later it was discovered to be a sphere. then it was found to be not a hard solid sphere like a billiard-ball, but to be hard only on the surface, and within to be quick with fervent heat. now it is coming to be regarded as spirit as well as body--as in its essential nature spiritual rather than material. when we get as far back as science is able to take us we find that the ultimate particles of which the earth is made up are not minute specks of some substance or material, but are simply centres of radiant energy. even with a microscope of infinite power we should never be able to see one, like we see a grain of pollen or a grain of sand. and if we had fingers of infinite delicacy, we should never be able to take one up between the forefinger and thumb and feel it. these ultimate particles are invisible and intangible. nothing could be less substantial. and we find further that, inconceivably minute as they are, they _act of themselves_ under the mutual influence of one another. the electrons are not like shot which have been heaped together by some outside agency, and which roll about the floor if someone outside gives them a push, but which will otherwise remain immobile. they congregate together of their own inner prompting. they are like a swarm of midges or bees in which each individual acts on its own impulsion, and, in the case of bees, all together form themselves into a definite organisation with a collective spirit of its own. the earth is indeed influenced by its parent the sun, and acts in accordance with the same laws and is swayed by the same impulses as govern the whole universe, of which it is a minute though highly important mite. but the point is that the earth is not something like a lump of clay which a potter takes in his hands and moulds into a ball. the earth moulds itself from activities that it contains within itself. running through the whole mighty swarm of electrons we call the earth is a tendency to order, organisation, and system. the myriad millions of ultimate particles in their all-togetherness and from their interaction upon one another become possessed of an imperative urge towards excellence. the electrons group themselves into atoms; the atoms clump themselves together into molecules; the molecules combine into chemical compounds, and these into organisms of ever-increasing size and complexity. so in the process of the ages there came into being, from out of the very earth itself, first, lowly forms of plants and animals, then higher and higher forms exhibiting higher and higher qualities, till the flowers of the field, the animals, and man himself came into existence. and now we reach the point i wish to make. if this account of the earth which physicists and biologists give us be true, then we geographers should take a less material and a more spiritual view of the earth than we have done, and should, like primitive people all the world over, regard her as mother-earth, and recognise our intimate connection with her. primitive peoples everywhere regard the earth as alive and as their mother. and so intensely do they feel this liveness that many will not run the plough through the soil from dislike of lacerating the bosom of mother-earth. they see plants and trees spring up out of her, and these plants and trees providing them with fruits and seeds, leaves and roots, upon which to live. and they quite naturally look upon her as their mother. and we men of the more advanced races have still more cause to consider her as our mother, for we now know that not only the plants and trees but we ourselves sprang from her--as indeed we are nourished by her daily, eating her plants or the animals which feed on her plants. and as we judge of a lily, not by its origin, the ugly bulb, but by the climax, the exquisite flower; so we should not judge of the earth by its origin, the fiery mist, but by its issue--ardent human fellowship. and if we thus judge her we shall find her a mother worthy of our affection. so the first point i have to put before you is that we geographers should regard the object of our science not as a magnified billiard-ball, but as a living being--as mother-earth. not as hard, unimpressionable, dull, and inert, but as live, supple, sensitive, and active--active with an intensity of activity past all conceivability. yet with no chaotic activity, but with activity having coherence and direction, and that direction towards excellence. * * * now as to what we ought to know about the earth. while geology concerns itself with its anatomy, geography, by long convention, restricts its concern to the earth's outward aspect. accordingly, it is in the face and features of mother-earth that we geographers are mainly interested. we must know something of the general principles of geology, as painters have to know something of the anatomy of the human or animal body. but our special business as geographers is with the outward expression. and my second point is that the characteristic of the face and features of the earth most worth learning about, knowing, and understanding is their beauty; and that knowledge of their beauty may be legitimately included within the scope of geographical science. it may be argued, indeed, that science is concerned with quantity --with what can be measured--and that natural beauty is quality which is something that eludes measurement. but geographical science, at least, should refuse to be confined within any such arbitrary limits and should take cognisance of quality as well as quantity. this is my contention. i am not maintaining that the actual enjoyment of the natural beauty of the earth should be regarded as within the scope of geographical science, though this society as a social body might well participate in such enjoyment. enjoyment is feeling, whereas science is knowing; and feeling and knowing are distinct faculties. we can easily see the distinction. we may be travelling to plymouth to embark for south africa on some absorbing enterprise, and be so engrossed with thoughts of the adventure before us as to be unable to enjoy the famed west country through which the train is passing, though all the time we were quite aware in our minds of its beauty. we are not actually enjoying the beauty, though we know quite well that it is there. on another occasion we may be returning after long absence in countries of far different character; our minds may be free from any disturbing thoughts; and we may be in a mood to enjoy to the full every beauty we see. england will then seem to us a veritable garden, the greenness of everything, the trimness of the hedges, the sheets of purple hyacinths, and some still remaining primroses, will startle us with joy, though we have long been aware of their beauty. this time we both know and enjoy the natural beauty. we see from this instance the distinction between knowing natural beauty and enjoying it. i am not claiming more than that _knowing_ natural beauty--being aware of it--is part of geography. but i _am_ claiming liberty to extend our knowing up to the extreme limit when it merges into feeling. what we have now to consider is the value of this natural beauty. a region may be flat or mountainous, dry or wet, barren or fertile, useful or useless for either political or commercial purposes. but it is not its flatness or ruggedness, or its utility or inutility for political or commercial purposes, that we may find in the end is the most noteworthy characteristic, but its beauty--its own particular beauty. the conventional gold or oil prospector, or railway engineer, or seeker for sites for rubber or coffee plantation, or pasture-lands for sheep and cattle, may not bother his head about the beauty of the forests, the rivers, the prairies, and the mountains he is exploring. he is much too absorbed in the practical business of life to be distracted by anything so fanciful--as he thinks. yet even he does see the beauty, and long afterwards he finds it is that which has stuck most firmly in his mind. and when he has unthinkingly destroyed it, future generations lament his action and take measures to preserve what remains. advertisements, also, show us daily that nearly all countries--and it seems more especially new countries like canada and new zealand--regard natural beauty as one of their most valuable assets. and the reason why the natural beauty of the earth is deemed so valuable a characteristic of its features is not hard to understand when we come to reflect. it is because beauty is a quality which appeals to the universal in man--appeals to all men for all time, and appeals to them in an increasing degree. it is something which all men can admire and enjoy. and the more they enjoy it the more they want to get others to share in their enjoyment. also the more natural beauty they see, the more, apparently, there is to see. poets in their poems, and painters in their pictures, are continually pointing out to us less keen-sighted individuals new beauties in the features of the earth. the mineral wealth of the earth has its limits; even the productivity, though perennially renewed, is not unbounded. but the natural beauty is inexhaustible. and it is not only inexhaustible: it positively increases and multiplies the more we see of it and the more of us see it. so it has good claim to be considered the most valuable characteristic of the earth. and if beauty should prove to be its most valuable characteristic, it follows that knowledge of it is the knowledge about the earth which is most worth having. it will certainly be the case that knowledge of other characteristics may be of more value to particular men for a special purpose for the time being. if an engineer has to build a railway, knowledge of the exact height above sea-level of various points and of the general configuration of the ground is of more value than knowledge of its beauty. but for the engineer himself, when he is not thinking of his railway, and for mankind in general, knowledge of the beauty may be the more valuable kind of knowledge. for years i was employed in exploring the region where three empires meet, where the himalaya, the hindu kush, and mountains which form the roof of the world converge. i had to report on the extent to which it afforded a barrier against the advance of russia towards india, and wherein it would lie the most appropriate boundary between india and russia, between india and china, and between russia and china. what i learned of that region as a barrier against invasion was of more value to the viceroy and commander-in-chief in india and the political and military authorities in england in the discharge of their official duties than what i learned of its beauties. but this utility of the region as a military barrier is not the characteristic which has most value to men in general. what to them has most value is its beauty--the awful beauty of its terrific gorges and stupendous heights. and it is knowledge of this beauty which is most worth having, and which has most geographical value. besides exploring the far region beyond kashmir i was also employed for years in exercising a general supervision over the entire administration of kashmir itself. reports from experts used to come to me containing every description of geographical knowledge. surveyors would send in maps for general purposes, for the construction of roads and railways, for the delimitation of village boundaries, and for registering the ownership of individual fields. geologists would report on the crustal relief (as the features of mother-earth are inelegantly termed). forestry, agricultural, and botanical experts would report on the productivity of the soil, on the plants and trees which are or might be grown, and on their present and possible distribution. mineralogists would report on the minerals, their distribution and the possibility of commercially exploiting them. every aspect of geographical science was presented to me. and each particular kind of knowledge for its own particular purpose was highly valuable. but the point i would wish to make is that my geographical knowledge of kashmir would have been incomplete--and i would have been wanting in knowledge of its most valuable characteristic--if i had had no knowledge of its beauty. i might have had the most precise knowledge about the form and structure of the crustal relief of this portion of the earth, of the productivity of the soil, of the distribution of its population, and of animals and plants, and about the effect of the crustal forms on the animals and plants, and of the animals and plants upon the crustal forms and of all upon man, and of man upon them all; but if i had had no knowledge of the beauty of these crustal forms and of the influence which their beauty has upon man, i should not have known what was most worth knowing about kashmir. my geographical knowledge of that country would have been wanting in its most important particular. these illustrations will, i hope, make clear what i mean when i urge that beauty may be the most valuable characteristic of the earth's features, and that the scope of geography should certainly be extended to include a knowledge of it. and there should be less hesitation in accepting the latter half of this conclusion when we note that natural beauty affects the movements of man, and that man is having an increasing effect upon natural beauty--spoiling it in too many cases, improving it in many others, but certainly having an effect upon it. there is thus a quite definite relation between man and natural beauty, and it should therefore be within the scope of geography to take note of this relationship. to an increasing degree man now moves about in search of new natural beauty or to enjoy it where it has been already found. from all over the world men flock to switzerland, drawn there by its beauty. here at home they go to the thames valley, or dartmoor, or the coast of cornwall, or north wales, or the highlands, simply to enjoy the natural beauty. and railway companies and the governments of canada, australia, and new zealand think it worth while to spend large sums of money in publishing pictures of the beauty of the countries in which they are interested in order to attract holiday-makers or home-seekers to them. and here, as in other cases, man now is not content to be an impassive spectator and to be entirely controlled by his surroundings. he does not allow the "crustal relief" to have the upper hand in the matter. he will not admit that all he has to do is to adapt himself to his surroundings. that servile view of our position in the universe is fast departing. we are determined to have the ascendancy. and much as we admire the beauty of the earth we set about improving it. we fail disastrously at times, i allow. but sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes deliberately, we succeed. we have in places made the earth more beautiful than it was before we came, and we have certainly shown the possibility of this being done. from what i have seen in uninhabited countries i can realise what the river-valleys of england must have been like before the arrival of man--beautiful, certainly; but not _so_ beautiful as now. they must have been an unrelieved mass of forest and marsh. now the marshes are drained and turned into golden meadows. the woods are cleared in part and well-kept parks take their place, with trees specially selected, pruned, and trim, and made to stand out well by themselves so that their umbrageous forms may be properly seen. gardens are laid out, the famous lawns of england are created, and flowering and variegated shrubs from many lands are planted round them. and homes are built--the simple homes of the poor and the stately homes of the rich--which in the setting of trees and lawns and gardens add unquestionably to the natural beauty of the land. st. james's park, with its lake, its well-tended trees, its daisy-covered lawns, its flowerbeds, its may and lilac, laburnum and horse-chestnut, and with the towers of westminster abbey and the houses of parliament rising behind it, is certainly more beautiful than the same piece of land was two thousand years ago in its natural condition. what has been done in this respect in england is only typical of what is done in every country and of what has been done for ages past. the moghul emperors, by the planting of gardens on the borders of the dal lake in kashmir, added greatly to its beauty. and the japanese are famous for the choice of beautiful surroundings for their temples and for the addition which they themselves, by the erection of graceful temples and by properly cared-for trees and gardens, make to the natural beauty of the place. so man is both affected by the beauty of the earth's features and himself affects that beauty. and this relationship between man and the natural beauty of the earth is one of which geography should take as much cognisance as it does of the relationship between man and the productivity of the earth. but natural beauty is manifested in an innumerable variety of forms. the whole beauty is never manifested in any one particular feature or region, but each has its unique aspect. each feature has its own peculiar beauty different from the beauty of any other feature. and what men naturally do, and what i would suggest geographers should deliberately do, is to compare the beauty of one region with the beauty of another, so that we may realise the beauty of each with a greater intensity and clearness. we can compare the beauty of kashmir with the beauty of switzerland and california. and the comparison will enable us to see more clearly and to appreciate the distinctive elements which make up the peculiar beauty of each of those countries. it has been frequently noticed that people who have always lived in the same place are unable to see its full beauty. the inhabitants of the gilgit frontier, when i first went among them, had never left their mountains, and were altogether ignorant of the special grandeur of their beauty. they thought all the world was just the same. but men who have seen many varieties of natural beauty and have taken pains to compare the varieties with one another become trained to see more beauty in each feature. fresh discoveries of beauty are thus made, and our knowledge of the beauty of the earth is thereby increased. * * * what i hope, then, is that this society should definitely recognise that learning to see the beauty in natural features and comparing the peculiar beauties of the different features with one another is within the scope of geography, and will indeed become its chief function. i should like to see the tradition established and well known and recognised that we encourage the search for natural beauty, and look upon the discovery of a new region which possesses special beauty, and the discovery of a new beauty in a region already well known, as among the most important geographical discoveries to be made. in this matter i trust our society will take the lead. englishmen are born lovers of natural beauty and born travellers. the search for natural beauty ought, therefore, to be a congenial task for this society. as i have tried to make clear, we cannot really know and understand the earth--which is the aim of geography --until we have seen its beauties and compared the varying beauties of the different features with one another and seen how they affect man and man affects them. we are constituted as a society for the purpose of diffusing geographical knowledge, and i trust that in future we shall regard knowledge of the beauty of the earth as the most important form of geographical knowledge that we can diffuse. when i was writing out the lecture which i was invited to give before the society on "the geographical results of the tibet mission" i could not resist devoting special attention to the natural beauty of tibet. but as i read the manuscript through i feared that this attention to beauty would be regarded by our society as a lapse from the narrow path of pure geography, and that i should be frowned upon in consequence and not regarded as a serious geographer. i ought, i feared, to have devoted more attention to survey matters, to the exact trend of the mountains, and the source and course of the rivers. but looking back now i see that my natural instinct was a right one--that a knowledge of the beauties of tibet was not only one geographical result of the mission, but the chief geographical result; and that, in fact, i ought to have paid not less but more attention, both in tibet to noting its beauties in all their multitudinous variety, and in writing my lecture to expressing with point and precision what i had seen, so that you might share it with me, and learn what is the most valuable characteristic of tibet. when the new tradition is established, and travellers become aware that we regard knowledge of natural beauty as within the scope of our activities, the error into which i fell will be avoided. we shall think travellers barbaric if they continue to concern themselves with all else about the face of the earth except its beauty. we shall no longer tolerate a geographer who will learn everything about the utility of a region for military, political, and commercial purposes, but who will take no trouble to see the beauty it contains. we shall expect a much higher standard of him. we shall expect him to cultivate the power of the eye till he has a true eye for country--a seeing eye; an eye that can see into the very heart and, through all the thronging details, single out the one essential quality; an eye which can not only observe but can make discoveries. we shall require him to have the capacity for discriminating the essential from the unessential, for bringing that essential into proper relief and placing upon it the due emphasis. when he thus has true vision and can really see a country, and when he has acquired the capacity for expressing either in words or in painting what lie has seen, so that he can communicate it to us, then he will have reached the standard which this society should demand. and this is nothing less than saying that we expect of him that he should have in him something of the poet and the painter. careless snap-shotting in the field and idle turning on of lantern slides at our meetings will no longer satisfy us. a traveller if he is going to photograph must spend the hours which a real artist would devote to discovering the essential beauty of a scene, and to composing his picture before he dreams of exposing his plate. but we want more than photographs: we want pictures to give that important element in natural beauty--the colour. and we want pictures painted in words as well as on canvas. not shallow rhapsodising of the journalese and guide-book type, but true expression in which each noun exactly fits the object, each epithet is truly applicable, and each phrase is rightly turned, and in which the emphasis is placed on the precisely right point, and the whole composed so as distinctly to bring out that point. then in time we shall gather together the most valuable knowledge about the earth. and when a stranger from a far land comes to us to know about any particular country, we shall be able to provide him with something worth having. when an australian comes to england and wishes to know its essential characteristics, we shall do something more than hand him over maps and treatises on the orography and hydrography, the distribution of rainfall, of plants and animals, and the population. we shall regard ourselves as having omitted to point out to him the essential characteristic of the land from which englishmen have sprung and in which they dwell if we have not shown him the beauty of its natural features. we shall give him the maps as aids to finding his way about, and we shall give him the treatises. but we shall tell him that these are only aids for special purposes, and that if he is really to understand england he must know its beauty in its many aspects. he will then have the geographical knowledge of chief value about england. * * * a project in which the society is now interested affords an excellent opportunity of applying the principles i have been trying to persuade you to adopt. the most prominent feature of this earth, and the feature of most geographical interest, is the great range of the himalaya mountains. in this range the supreme summit is mount everest, the highest point on the earth, , feet above sea-level. attempts have been made to ascend the second highest mountain, k , , feet, notably by the duke of the abruzzi. colonel hon. charles bruce, major rawling, and others have had in mind the idea of ascending mount everest itself. and for more than a year past both the alpine club and this society have been definitely entertaining the idea of helping forward the achievement of this object. we hope within the next few years to hear of a human being standing on the pinnacle of the earth. if i am asked, what is the use of climbing this highest mountain? i reply, no use at all: no more use than kicking a football about, or dancing, or playing on the piano, or writing a poem, or painting a picture. the geologist predicts to a certainty that no gold will be found on the summit, and if gold did exist there no one would be able to work it. climbing mount everest will not put a pound into anyone's pocket. it will take a good many pounds out of people's pockets. it will also entail the expenditure of much time and necessitate the most careful forethought and planning on the part of those who are organising the expedition. and it will mean that those who carry it out will have to keep themselves at the very highest pitch of physical fitness, mental alertness, and moral courage and endurance. they will have to be prepared to undergo the severest hardships and run considerable risks. and all this, i say, without the prospect of making a single penny. so there will be no _use_ in climbing mount everest. if the ascent is made at all it will be made for the sheer love of the thing, from pure enjoyment--the enjoyment a man gets from pitting himself against a big obstacle. but if there is no _use,_ there is unquestionably _good_ in climbing mount everest. the accomplishment of such a feat will elevate the human spirit. it will give men--and especially us geographers--a feeling that we really are getting the upper hand on the earth, that we are acquiring a true mastery of our surroundings. as long as we impotently creep about at the foot of these mighty mountains and gaze on their summits without attempting to ascend them, we entertain towards them a too excessive feeling of awe. we are almost afraid of them. we have a secret fear that they, the material, are dominating us, the spiritual. but as soon as we have stood on their summit we feel that _we_ dominate _them_--that we, the spiritual, have ascendancy over them, the material. and if man stands on earth's highest summit he will have an increased pride and confidence in himself in his struggle for ascendancy over matter. this is the incalculable good which the ascent of mount everest will confer. we who have lived among the peoples of the himalaya are better able than most to appreciate how great this good is. we have seen how tame and meagre is their spirit in comparison with the spirit of, for example, the swiss, or french, or italian inhabitants of the alps; and in comparison with what men's spirit ought to be. they have many admirable qualities, but they are fearful and unenterprising. contact with them brings home to us what a spirit of daring and high adventure means to a people. and we are impressed with the necessity of taking every step possible to create, sustain, and strengthen this spirit in a people and in the human race generally. the ascent of mount everest, we believe, will be a big step in that direction. the actual climbing of this mountain this society will leave in the hands of the alpine club, who have special experience in mountain climbing. but the reconnaissance and mapping of the mountain and its neighbourhood will fitly remain with us. and here we reach the point where the principles i have been offering for your consideration might be applied. were it not that the size of the first party will have to be limited on account of transport and supply difficulties, i should greatly like to have a poet or a painter, or anyhow a climber like mr. freshfield with a poetic soul, a member of it. for i say quite deliberately and mean quite literally that the geography of mount everest and its vicinity will not be complete until it has been painted by some great painter and described by some great poet. making the most accurate map of it will not be completing our knowledge of it. the map-maker only prepares the way--in some cases for the soldier or the politician or the engineer --in this case for the geologist, the naturalist, and above all for the painter and poet. until we have a picture and a poem--in prose or verse--of mount everest we shall not really know it; our geography will be incomplete, and, indeed, will lack its chief essential. the duke of the abruzzi, in his expedition to the second highest mountain in the world, took with him the finest mountain photographer there is--signor vittorio sella--and he brought back superb photographs, for he is a true artist with a natural feeling for high mountains. but i have seen the very mountains that he photographed, and when i look at these photographs--the best that man can produce--i almost weep to think how little of the real character of great mountains they communicate to us. the sight of the photographs wrings me with disappointment that it was a photographer and not a painter who went there. here in europe are artists by the score painting year after year the same old european scenes. and there in the himalaya is the grandest scenery in the world, and not a painter from europe ever goes there--except just one, the great russian verestchagin, whose pictures, alas! are now buried somewhere in russia. the indian services might do something, and they have indeed produced one great painter of himalayan scenery, colonel tanner. but the services are limited, and it is to europe that we must mainly look. on the first expedition to mount everest it may be only possible to send a photographer. but this will be a pioneering expedition to open the way, at least, for the painter. and then we may have mount everest pictured in all her varied and ever-varying moods, as i have, from a distance, seen her for three most treasured months. now serene and majestic; now in a tumult of fury. now rooted solid on earth; now hung high in the azure. now hard and material; now ethereal as spirit. now stern and austere--cold, and white, and grey; now warm and radiant and of every most delicate hue. now in one aspect, now in its precisely opposite, but always sublime and compelling; always pure and unspotted; and always pointing us starward. these are the pictures--either by painter or by poet--that we want. and they can only be painted by one who has himself gone in among the mountains, confronted them squarely, braced himself against them, faced and overcome them--realised their greatness, realised also that great as they are he is greater still. and this that we want of the greatest natural feature of the earth is only typical of what this society should require in regard to all earth's other features in order to make our geography complete. as men have pictured the loveliness of england, the fairness of france, the brilliance of greece, so we want them to picture the spaciousness of arabia, the luxuriance of brazil, and the sublimity of the himalaya. for not till that has been done will our geography be complete. but when that has been accomplished and the quest for beauty is being pushed to the remotest lands and earth's farthest corners, even the british schoolboy will love his geography, and our science will have won its final triumph. at nothing less, then, than the heart of the boy should our society deign to aim. an address to the union society of the university college, london, delivered on march , . you have been good enough to leave to me the choice of subject on which to address you this evening, and i have chosen the subject "natural beauty and geography" because i have the honour to hold at present the position of president of the royal geographical society, and am therefore supposed to know something about geography, and because a love of natural beauty is one of the great passions of my life. i believe the two are inseparably connected with one another, and, briefly, the view i want to put before you is this--.that a description of the natural beauty of the earth should be included in geography. by geography we mean a _description_ of the earth. and we cannot adequately describe the earth until we have observed it in all its aspects and really know and understand it. and we cannot really understand the earth until we have entered into her spirit and feel ourselves in harmony with it. but _when_ our spirit is in harmony with the spirit of the earth we, in that instant, see the beauty of the earth. when we are seeing beauty in the earth we are understanding the earth. in describing the beauty of the earth we shall be describing something that we really know about it--something of the real nature of the earth. for this reason i maintain that geography should be taken to include a description of the natural beauty of the earth's features. the description of the earth is not full and complete, and is lacking in its most important particular, when it excludes a description of natural beauty, and only includes scientific details about the size and shape of the earth; its configuration; the composition of the crust; the depth, area, and volume of the ocean; the temperature, degree of moisture and pressure of the atmosphere; the height of the mountains; the length, breadth, volume, course, and catchment area of its rivers; the mineral and vegetable products of various regions; the political areas into which it is divided; the relation of the political and commercial activities of the population to the physical character of the features and to the climate. i, of course, acknowledge the importance of all this geographical knowledge. to the historian and the statesman it is essential that he should know the part which a certain mountain range or river or desert has played in human history. a soldier must know with extreme accuracy the configuration of the country over which his army is operating. an engineer must know the exact level and contour of a region over which he has to lay a railway or construct a canal. a merchant must know whether a country produces cotton, tea, and sugar; or wheat, wool, and meat. for all these and others, each for his own particular purpose, we want the kind of information i have described above--that is, what usually goes under the name of geography. but the point i wish now to urge is that we shall not have plucked the very flower of geographical knowledge until in addition to all this we have a knowledge of the _beauty_ of the earth. perhaps you will understand me better if i illustrate my point. when a dressmaker has to make a dress for a lady she has to measure her with the minutest accuracy. she must gain a knowledge, by careful measurement, of the exact shape and size of the lady's body, its true contour, and the length and breadth of the limbs--just as an engineer must have accurate knowledge of the earth's surface. and to the dressmaker _as_ a dressmaker knowledge of the lady's beauty has no value whatever. the lady may have the beauty of form of a venus, but if the dressmaker has only knowledge of that beauty and has not exact measurements she will never be able to make the dress. but for humanity at large--and, as far as that goes, for the dressmaker herself when she is free of her dressmaking--knowledge of the lady's beauty is the knowledge that really matters. whether she is twenty-six inches round the waist or only twenty-five matters comparatively little. now the earth i regard as a lady--as dear mother-earth. a real living being--live enough, at any rate, to give birth to mankind, to microscopic animalculae first and through them to man. and no one can look at the features of mother-earth without recognising her beauty. it is there staring us in the face. so i cannot conceive why we geographers should confine ourselves to the dressmaker attitude of mind and describe every other characteristic of the earth except her beauty. i should have thought that it was the very first thing with which we should have concerned ourselves--that the first duty of those who profess and call themselves geographers should have been to describe the beauty of their mother-earth. say a visitor from mars arrived upon the earth, he would no doubt report on his return that the mountains here were so many thousands of feet high and the seas so many thousands of feet deep, and the area of the land and sea so many thousand square miles; that the productivity of the land in one quarter had had the effect of attracting a large part of the population to that quarter, and the aridity or cold of another portion had had the effect of preventing human settlement there; and that mountains, seas, or deserts confining certain groups of human beings tightly within given areas had had the effect of compacting them into highly organised political bodies. all this and much more geographical knowledge the martian would bring back to mars. but his fellow-martians would tell him that this was all very interesting, but that what they really wanted to know was what the earth was _like._ they would ask him if he had not some lantern slides of the earth, some photographs, something which would convey to them an impression of the real character of the earth. and then at last he would be driven to describe her beauty. in the best words he could find he would express the impression which the earth had made upon him. if he were a painter and if the martians possess paint, he would paint pictures to express the feelings which a contemplation of the earth had aroused in him. that is, he would show them the beauty of the earth in her various aspects. perhaps he might not be able to see as much beauty in her as we her children see. we may be too partial and see beauties that a stranger may not perceive. on the other hand, he might see beauties that we through being so accustomed to them have never recognised--as men living always within sight of some superb mountain scarcely appreciate its grandeur. anyhow, he would describe to the martians whatever he had seen of the beauty of the earth, and then at last they would feel that they were really able to know and understand her. to descend from these celestial spheres and to examine what actually happens among ourselves when we venture into an unknown portion of this globe and seek to know what is there, a chief ingredient in the lure which draws men on to fill up the blank spaces in the map is undoubtedly a love of natural beauty; and its natural beauty is certainly what above everything else regarding that region remains in their memories after it has been explored. it is not _only_ love of natural beauty that draws men on. love of adventure has much to do with it also. men feel a fearful joy in pitting themselves against stern natural obstacles and being compelled to exert all their physical energy and endurance, and all their wit and nerve and courage, in order to overcome them. the stiffer the obstacle, the more insistent do they feel the call to measure themselves against it. they thrill to the expectation of having their full capacities and faculties drawn out. by some curious natural instinct they seem driven to put themselves into positions where they are forced to exert themselves to the full stretch of their capabilities. this same instinct tells them that they will be never so happy as when they are making the very utmost of themselves and exercising their whole being at its highest pitch. anticipation of their joy in adventure is therefore no small part of the lure which draws men into the unknown. and with it also is ambition to make a name and achieve fame. some, too, are drawn on by the hope of wealth through finding gold, diamonds, and so on. but from what i have seen of gold and diamond prospectors on the spot in the act of prospecting, i should say it was quite as much love of adventure as covetousness of wealth that drew them into unknown parts. for experience shows them only too often that it is not the prospector but the company promoter and financier who make the money even when the prospector finds the gold or diamonds. yet prospectors go forward as cheerfully as ever. they are fascinated by the life of adventure. all this is true. men delight in sheer adventure and in testing and sharpening themselves against formidable natural obstacles. yet we shall find that love of natural beauty has an even greater share than love of adventure in enticing them to the unknown. men picture to themselves beauties of the most wonderful kind which they expect to see--enchanting islands, mysterious forests, majestic rivers, heavenly mountains, delightful lakes. instinct tells them that they will have the joy which comes from exerting their capacities to the full. but somewhere in the back of their being is, also this expectation of seeing wonders of natural beauty, and of seeing _more_ of this beauty from the very fact that they will be seeing it as a prize truly _won_ and when their faculties are all tuned up to a fine pitch of appreciation. and when they return from the unknown, when the adventure is over, when they are again relaxed, it will be the natural beauty which they have seen that will remain in their memories long after they have forgotten their exertion, long after they have expended any wealth they may have found, long after they have recorded the exact measurements of the various features of the region. curiosity to see the natural beauty of an unknown region is a principal ingredient in the lure that draws men to it. and natural beauty is what, above everything else in regard to the unknown region, stands out in men's memories on their return. this at any rate is my own experience, and we are perhaps on safer ground when we speak of what we have ourselves experienced than when we speak of what we imagine must be the experiences of others. though in this case i have good reason to believe that my own experiences are very similar to the experiences of others, and may therefore be taken as typical. almost my earliest recollections are of a somersetshire village set in a lovely valley, fringed with woods and surrounded by hills. up the hills on the side of the valley on which i lived i used constantly to go. but over the hills on the far side of the river i was never taken. so i used to picture to myself wonderful woods and rivers, and castles and great cities, and i longed to go there. the lure of natural beauty was beginning to make itself felt. as i grew to boyhood i was fortunate enough to be taken to north wales, devonshire and cornwall, and later on to switzerland and the south of france, and everywhere i saw much natural beauty. but, still, that only made me want to see more. in all these cases, however, i only went where i was taken. i did not go where i chose or with an object of my own. it was not till i was in india and had the first leave from my regiment that i could go where i liked. now, where i liked was to the himalaya. and if i look back now and enquire of myself what made me choose the himalaya, i can say most clearly that it was because i had in my mind a vision of long snowy ranges, and dazzling peaks, and frowning precipices, and rushing torrents, and endless forests. i thought how glorious it would be to be able to wander about at will and see all the magnificent scenery, to feast on the natural beauty, and when i came back to be able to tell others of the wonders i had seen. so i made my first short trip in the himalaya. but this only served to arouse my curiosity still more. i had seen some great mountains. but they were none of them more than , feet in height. i wanted to see still higher mountains. i heard, too, that up the valley of the sutlej were some fearful gorges through which the river forced its way. i wanted to see them too, and see a great river in the very act of forcing its way through the mighty himalaya. above all, i wanted to see what lay on the other side of the himalaya. i wanted to get into tibet. that for the time being proved impossible, and my thoughts wandered off to the far eastern part of asia. i had read a book called "on the amur," by atkinson. not altogether a very veracious book, but a fascinating book for all that. in it were alluring pictures of the broad, placid river. rich forests came down to the water's edge. and on its surface were depicted delightful rafts and canoes. to glide down such a river, to camp on its banks and plunge into the forests which clothed them, seemed a joy second only to the joy of scrambling about the himalaya. so with mr. h. e. m. james--now sir evan james--i went to manchuria, not, indeed, to reach the amur itself, but to discover the source of its great tributary the sungari, and to follow it down through the forests and over the plains for several hundred miles. now, what i want to impress upon you is that in all these cases it was the natural beauty which was the attraction--it was the picture i made to myself of what these countries would be like that drew me on. and i am sure it is with others as it was with me. natural beauty is at bottom what incites the traveller. and, whether i had to go where i was taken or could go where i chose, it was the natural beauty that stuck in my memory. and when i returned it was of the natural beauty that i wished to tell my friends. and this, again, is the experience of others also. to this day, though i have never since seen them, i remember the beauties of cader idris and dolgelly, snowdon and carnarvon, in north wales, and of the rugged cliffs and long atlantic waves on the cornish coast. the dart, here rippling over boulders and between rocky banks, here in deep, clear salmon pools, here merging into a long inlet of the sea and everywhere framed in wooded hill-sides, i have often again seen. but even if i had not, its beauty would never have departed from my memory. and it is the same with the first view of the alps from the jura, the view of lake geneva, of the jungfrau, of the pyrenees from pau, and of the valley of the loire. i have never seen those parts of switzerland and of france since then, but their beauty remains with me to this day. and it is of their beauty that i have ever afterwards been naturally inclined to speak. when i talk about the loire i do not tell my friends that it rises in a certain place, is so many miles long, at certain parts has a certain width, depth, and volume, and eventually flows into a certain sea. what i naturally speak about is its beauty, the rich valley through which it flows, the graceful bridges by which it is spanned, the picturesque old towns and romantic castles on the banks. and this is the common habit of mankind. our friends may bore us--and we may bore our friends --with interminable accounts of the discomfort and inconveniences and the petty little incidents of travel. but when they and we have got through that and settle down to describe the country itself, it is of its beauty that we speak. natural beauty is what attracts us to a country. its natural beauty is the fact about it which remains most persistently in our memory. and it is about its natural beauty that we are most inclined to speak. lastly, when we are in distant countries it is of the natural beauty that we chiefly think. when our thoughts go back to the home country it is not on its exact measurements and configuration that they dwell, but on its beauty. from all of which considerations i conclude that any description of the earth which excludes a description of its natural beauty is incomplete. geography must include a description of natural beauty. and personally i would go so far as to say that the description of natural beauty is the most important part of geography. here i must answer an objection which may be raised--namely, that natural beauty is the concern of aesthetics, not of geography. an objector may freely acknowledge the value and importance of recognising and describing the natural beauty of a country, but may contend that this is beyond the province of geography. it should be left to poets and painters, he might say, and geographers should confine themselves to the more prosaic business of exact measurement, of accurate delineation, of reasoning regarding the relation of the facts to one another, and of explaining the facts. to such an objector i would reply that geography is an art as well as a science. and in parenthesis i may say that i doubt whether any science can be complete which has not art behind it. we shall never be able fully to know and understand the earth or to describe what we see if we use our intellectual and reasoning powers alone. if we are to attain to a complete knowledge of the earth, and if we are to describe what we learn about it in an adequate manner so that others may participate in our knowledge, then we must use our hearts as well as our heads. we must be artists as well as meticulous classifiers, cataloguers, and reasoners. the earth is a living being, a throbbing, palpitating, living being--"live" enough to have given birth to the remote ancestors of mankind, and live enough, so some biologists consider, to be continually to this day generating the lowliest forms of organisms. to know and understand a living being, particularly when that living being happens to be his own mother, man must use his heart as well as his head. with his head alone the geographer may do a vast amount of most useful and necessary work which will help us to understand the earth. he may collect and classify facts about her and record measurements, and reason about these facts and measurements, but if he is to get the deepest vision of the earth and learn the profoundest truth about her he must exercise his finest spiritual senses as well. and when he brings those faculties of the soul into play, it will be the beauty on the face of mother-earth that he will see and that will disclose to him her real nature. and therefore i hold that if it be the function of geography to know the earth and to describe the earth, then the objection that the description of its natural beauty is outside the scope of geography is not a valid objection. the picture and the poem are as legitimate a part of geography as the map. some years ago in lecturing to the royal geographical society i said that the society ought to have given wordsworth the gold medal. i meant that the poet by his vision had taught us more about the lake district than any ordinary geographer had been able to see. with his finer sensibility he had been able to see deeper. he had been able to reveal to us truths about the district which no mere ordnance surveyor was able to disclose. he was a true discoverer--a geographical discoverer--a geographer of the highest type. he had helped us really to know and understand the district. be it noted, too, that he did not, as some would think, put into the lakes and hills and valleys something from within himself which was not really in those natural features. the particular beauty that he saw there was there waiting to be revealed. the natural features aroused emotions in his sensitive soul, and his soul being aroused saw the beauty in them. if the district had been of billiard-table flatness, with no lakes, no hills, no valleys, then even he, with all his poetic feeling and imagination, could not have put into the district what it did not possess. the beauty that he saw was really there, only it required a poetic soul to discover and reveal it. the spirit of the poet put itself in touch with the spirit of the district and elicited from the district what was already in it. the spirit of wordsworth and the spirit of the district acted and reacted upon one another and came into harmony with one another. and as he had the capacity for communicating to others what he himself had seen, we are now able to see in the lakeland beauties which our forefathers had scarcely known. this is why i suggest to you that natural beauty should be considered as a legitimate part of geography. and if you will look about you, you will note that natural beauty is having an increasing effect upon the movements of men. there is a very definite relationship between the beauty of the earth and her human inhabitants. the poet laureate builds his house on the top of boar's hill not because the soil is specially productive up there so that he may be able to grow food, for the soil is rather poor; not because water is easily available, for it is very difficult to get, as he found when his house took fire; not because of the climate, for the climate is just as good a hundred feet lower down; not because it is easily accessible to oxford, for a big climb up the hill is entailed every time he returns from that city--not for any of these reasons did he build his house there, but because of the view which he obtains from that spot. it was natural beauty which drew, the poet laureate to boar's hill, as it was natural beauty which drew tennyson to blackdown to build aldworth with a view all over the surrey hills and the sussex downs. it is this same spell of natural beauty, too, which is drawing people all over england to build their houses on the most beautiful spots. our great country-seats--the pride of england--are usually placed where the natural scenery is finest. humbler dwellings whenever the owner has the opportunity of making a choice are for a similar reason built wherever a beautiful view, however limited, may be obtained. whole towns even are built on spots where the surroundings are most beautiful, or, at any rate, if for some other reason they were located where they are they tend to spread in the direction of most beauty. dartmouth was originally built where it is because that site made an excellent port. but the new town has spread all over the cliffs at the entrance of the harbour wherever a beautiful view may be found. it is the same with torquay. people originally went there on account of the warm, soft air. but though they can get much the same air in any part of the torquay area, where they like to build their houses is where they can get the finest views. on the continent a similar tendency may be observed. nice, cannes, monte carlo, biarritz, montreux, vevey, were no doubt originally located where they are for other reasons than only the facilities they afford for observing natural beauty, but that they have grown to what they are is undoubtedly due to natural beauty, and natural beauty has given the direction in which they have expanded. it is not by chance that villas and terraces and hotels have been built just on those particular points from which the most beautiful views may be seen. and how great is the influence of natural beauty upon the movements of men may be gathered from the amount of money railway companies and hotels spend in advertising the charms of the particular localities which they serve. railway-carriages are full of photographs and tourist agencies of pictures of different points in the neighbourhood of the railway or hotel. and we may be certain that business companies would not go to the expense of setting up these photographs and pictures if they did not think that people were influenced by them and would be tempted to travel to the scenes they depict. the development of char-a-banc tours is another indication of the attraction--and the increasing attraction--of natural beauty. since the war, especially, there has been a remarkable tendency of people of every rank in life to rush off whenever they can get a holiday to the most beautiful parts of these islands--to the moors of yorkshire and devonshire, to the wye, the dart, and the severn, to the mountains of wales, westmoreland, and scotland--to wherever natural beauty may be found. it is a noteworthy and most refreshing feature in our national life. every summer, too, both here and on the continent, people make their way to the most beautiful parts of europe--to switzerland or the pyrenees, the vosges or the rhine. and in the dominions and america whenever they get their holidays they likewise trek away to mountain, lake, or river, wherever nature may be enjoyed at her best. men may, to carry on the ordinary business of life, be compelled to live in cities and places which are chosen for other reasons than their facilities for observing natural beauty. but whenever they can get away from their ordinary duties the tendency of men--and a tendency increasing in strength--is to fly away to the moors and sea-coast and river-sides and wherever else they can see the beauties of the earth. then, again, men are increasingly sensitive about preserving natural beauty wherever it is best. it is quite true that men by the building of industrial towns and the erection of hideous factories, mining plant, gasometers, and so on terribly destroy natural beauty. but they are at least becoming conscious of their sins in this respect and of what they have lost thereby. they are therefore the more anxious to preserve what remains. and whenever there is an attempt to build on box hill, or erect an electric power-station on dartmoor, a howl of execration is raised. and this howl means that men do value natural beauty and mean to preserve it. young countries also realise its value. in california the yosemite valley is preserved for ever for human enjoyment. and in canada, australia, and south africa national parks are protected against the encroachments of industrial enterprises. men not only preserve spots of natural beauty; they also seek to improve them. the nobleman of ancient lineage and the new millionaire alike strive to add to the beauty of their estates. the hours they love best are the hours they can devote to opening up vistas, planting beautiful trees or flowering shrubs from distant lands, building up rockeries, forming artificial lakes, laying out lawns, and stocking their gardens with the choicest flowers. the effect of natural beauty upon man and of man upon natural beauty is immense. geographers take note of the effect which the alps by reason of their height and ruggedness, or the rhine by reason of its length, breadth, and depth, have upon the activities of men--upon their history, politics, and economic life. my contention is that equally should geographers note the effect which these same natural features of the earth by reason of their _beauty_ have upon men's activities and movements. and when natural beauty is fully recognised as within the province of geography, we shall be taught to pay to it the attention it deserves--taught to look for it, taught how to observe it, taught how to describe it, taught where are the regions of special beauty and wherein their beauty lies, and lastly taught where in an ordinary district beauty may be found, for even in the flattest, dreariest region _some_ beauty at some time of day or at some season may be discovered. we shall, in short, be taught to cultivate the sense for natural beauty, and how to put in fitting words a description of the beauty we see. our geography textbooks, besides all the mathematical, physical, political, and commercial geography they contain, will tell us something of the natural beauty of the countries they set themselves to describe. and geographers when they set themselves to describe a new region will not think it necessary to confine themselves within the old limits, but will do what the ordinary man instinctively does--describe its beauties. our methods of describing countries will thus radically change. a few years ago colonel tanner of the survey of india read to the royal geographical society a paper entitled "our present knowledge of the himalaya." in that paper he gave an account of the height of the peaks, the trend of the mountain ranges, the course of the rivers, and a deal of other very valuable geographical information. but in only one single line did he make any remark about the natural beauty of that wonderful region. yet this omission was not due to any lack of appreciation by colonel tanner of himalayan beauty, for he himself had painted the finest pictures of the himalaya which have yet been produced. he made no mention of it because he thought that to describe the natural beauty of the himalaya was to stray beyond the bounds of geography. such a grievous misconception of the true scope of geography will, i trust, be removed in future. and when it no longer exists geography will require for its pursuit the exercise of the finest faculties of the soul as well as the strictest qualities of the intellect. it will call forth capacity for the closest and most accurate observation and the highest powers of description. to us adventure-loving and nature-loving englishmen it should of all subjects be the most popular. the cliff climbers a sequel to "the plant hunters" by captain mayne reid ________________________________________________________________________ the book begins with two young brothers and an indian guide, in a valley in the himalayas, into which they had ascended with some difficulty in the preceding book - "the plant hunters". unfortunately they find they cannot get out at the top of the valley, and they cannot go back the way they came. so they are stuck. they try various ingenious ideas for getting out, each of which appears as though it would work, but in the end does not, usually in a quite entertaining way. eventually they do think of a way, which i will not divulge here, and they get out, but it had been a long nerve-racking period before their final release. the copy of the book i worked from looked at first sight as though it had been beautifully printed. but this turned out to be a delusion, for the type-setting had been truly awful. it does seem sad that an author, a well-known one at the time, could take the trouble to write a good book, that he should use a good publisher, and a good illustrator, a good book-binder, only to have the whole thing let down by very poor type-setting. and that goes on down to proof-reading, too, for the publisher should have checked all this as well. nh ________________________________________________________________________ the cliff climbers a sequel to "the plant hunters" by captain mayne reid chapter one. the himalayas. who has not heard of the himalayas--those titanic masses of mountains that interpose themselves between the hot plains of india and the cold table-lands of thibet--a worthy barrier between the two greatest empires in the world, the mogul and the celestial? the veriest tyro in geography can tell you that they are the tallest mountains on the surface of the earth; that their summits--a half-dozen of them at least--surmount the sea-level by more than five miles of perpendicular height; that more than thirty of them rise above twenty thousand feet, and carry upon their tops the eternal snow! the more skilled geographer, or _geognosist_, could communicate hundreds of other interesting facts in relation to these majestic mountains; vast volumes might be filled with most attractive details of them--their _fauna_, their _sylva_, and their _flora_. but here, my reader, we have only space to speak of a few of the more salient points, that may enable you to form some idea of the titanic grandeur of these mighty masses of snow-crowned rock, which, towering aloft, frown or smile, as the case may be, on our grand empire of ind. it is the language of writers to call the himalayas a "chain of mountains." spanish geographers would call them a "sierra" (saw)--a phrase which they have applied to the andes of america. either term is inappropriate, when speaking of the himalayas: for the vast tract occupied by these mountains--over , square miles, or three times the size of great britain--in shape bears no resemblance to a chain. its length is only six or seven times greater than its breadth--the former being about a thousand miles, while the latter in many places extends through two degrees of the earth's latitude. moreover, from the western termination of the himalayas, in the country of cabul, to their eastern declension near the banks of the burrampooter, there is no continuity that would entitle them to the appellation of a "chain of mountains." between these two points they are cut transversely--and in many places--by stupendous valleys, that form the channels of great rivers, which, instead of running east and west, as the mountains themselves were supposed to trend, have their courses in the transverse direction--often flowing due north or south. it is true that, to a traveller approaching the himalayas from any part of the great plain of india, these mountains present the appearance of a single range, stretching continuously along the horizon from east to west. this, however, is a mere optical illusion; and, instead of one range, the himalayas may be regarded as a _congeries_ of mountain ridges, covering a superficies of , square miles, and running in as many different directions as there are points in the compass. within the circumference of this vast mountain tract there is great variety of climate, soil, and productions. among the lower hills--those contiguous to the plains of india--as well as in some of the more profound valleys of the interior--the flora is of a tropical or subtropical character. the palm, the tree fern, and bamboo here flourish in free luxuriance. higher up appears the vegetation of the temperate zone, represented by forests of gigantic oaks of various species, by sycamores, pines, walnut, and chestnut trees. still higher are the rhododendrons, the birches, and heaths; succeeded by a region of herbaceous vegetation--by slopes, and even table-plains, covered with rich grasses. stretching onward and upward to the line of the eternal snow, there are encountered the _cryptogamia_--the lichens and mosses of alpine growth--just as they are found within the limits of the polar circle; so that the traveller, who passes from the plains of india towards the high ridges of the himalayas, or who climbs out of one of the deeper valleys up to some snow-clad summit that surmounts it, may experience within a journey of a few hours' duration every degree of climate, and observe a representative of every species of vegetation known upon the face of the earth! the himalayas are not uninhabited. on the contrary, one considerable kingdom (nepaul), with many petty states and communities (as bhotan, sikhim, gurwhal, kumaon, and the famed cashmere), are found within their boundaries--some enjoying a sort of political independence, but most of them living under the protection either of the anglo-indian empire, on the one side, or that of china upon the other. the inhabitants of these several states are of mixed races, and very different from the people of hindostan. towards the east--in bhotan and sikhim--they are chiefly of the mongolian stock, in customs and manners resembling the people of thibet, and, like them, practising the religion of the lamas. in the western himalayas there is an admixture of ghoorka mountaineers, hindoos from the south, sikhs from lahore, and mahometans from the old empire of the moguls; and here, also, are to be found, in full profession, the three great representative religions of asia--mahometan, buddhist, and brahmin. the population, however, is exceedingly small compared with the surface over which it is distributed; and there are many tracts in the himalayan hills, thousands of square miles in extent, where no human being dwells--where no chimney sends up its smoke. indeed, there are vast tracts, especially among the high snow-covered summits, that have either never been explored, or only very rarely, by the adventurous hunter. others there are quite inaccessible; and it is needless to say, that the highest peaks--such as chumulari, kinchinjunga, donkia, dawalghisi, and the like--are far beyond the reach of even the most daring climber. perhaps no one has ever ascended to the height of five miles above the level of the sea; and it is a question whether at that elevation a human being could exist. at such a height it is probable that animal life would become extinct, by reason either of the extreme cold or the rarity of the atmosphere. though the himalaya mountains have been known from the earliest historic times--for they are the _imaus_ and _emodus_ of the ancient writers--it is only within the present century that we in europe have obtained any definite knowledge of them. the portuguese and dutch--the first european colonists of india--have told us very little about them; and even our own anglo-indian writers were long silent upon this interesting theme. exaggerated accounts of the hostility and cruelty of the himalayan highlanders--more especially the ghoorkas--prevented private explorations; and with the exception of some half-dozen books, most of them referring to the western section of the himalayas, and comparatively valueless, from the want of scientific knowledge on the part of their authors, this vast tract has remained almost a _terra incognita_ up to the present time. of late, however, we have obtained a better acquaintance with this interesting portion of the earth's surface. the botanist, lured thither by its magnificent _flora_, has opened to us a new world of vegetation. royle and hooker have ably achieved this task. the zoologist, equally attracted by its varied _fauna_, has made us acquainted with new forms of animal life. hodgson and wallich are the historians in this department. scarcely less are we indebted to the sportsman and hunter-- to markham, dunlop, and wilson the "mountaineer." but in addition to these names, that have become famous through the published reports of their explorations, there are others that still remain unrecorded. the _plant-hunter_--the humble but useful commissioner of the enterprising nurseryman--has found his way into the himalayas; has penetrated their most remote gorges; has climbed their steepest declivities; and wandered along the limit of their eternal snow. in search of new forms of leaf and flower, he has forded the turbid stream, braved the roaring torrent, dared the dangerous avalanche, and crossed the dread crevasse of the glistening glacier; and though no printed book may record his adventurous experience, not the less has he contributed to our knowledge of this great mountain world. his lessons may be read on the parterre, in the flowers of the purple magnolia, the deodar, the rhododendron. they may be found in the greenhouse, in the eccentric blossoms of the orchis, and curious form of the screw-pine--in the garden, in many a valuable root and fruit, destined ere long to become favourites of the dessert-table. it is ours to chronicle the story of an humble expedition of this kind--the adventures of a young plant-hunter, the _employe_ of an enterprising "seedsman" well-known in the world's metropolis. chapter two. a view from chumulari. our scene lies in the very heart of the himalayas--in that district of them least explored by english travellers, though not the most distant from the anglo-indian capital, calcutta. almost due north of this city, and in that portion of the himalayan ranges embraced by the great bend of the burrampooter, may be found the spot upon which our interest is to be fixed. literally may it be termed a spot, when compared in superficies with the vast extent of wilderness that surrounds it--a wilderness of bleak, barren ridges, of glistening glaciers, of snow-clad summits, soaring one above another, or piled incongruously together like cumuli in the sky. in the midst of this chaos of rock, ice, and snow, chumulari raises his majestic summit, crowned and robed in white, as becomes his sacred character. around are other forms, his acolytes and attendants, less in stature, but mighty mountains nevertheless, and, like him, wearing the vestment of everlasting purity. could you stand upon the top of chumulari, you would have under your eye, and thousands of feet below your feet, the scene of our narrative-- the arena in which its various incidents were enacted. not so unlike an amphitheatre would that scene appear--only differing from one, in the small number of the _dramatis persona_, and the entire absence of spectators. from the top of chumulari, looking down among the foot hills of this majestic mountain, you might behold a valley of a singular character--so singular as at once to fix your attention. you would note that it is of a regular oval shape; and that instead of being bounded by sloping declivities, it is girt by an almost vertical cliff that appears to be continuous all around it. this cliff of dark granitic rock you might guess with your eye to rise several hundred feet sheer from the bottom of the valley. if it were in the season of summer, you might further observe, that receding from its brow a dark-coloured declivity of the mountain rises still higher, terminating all around in peaks and ridges--which, being above the snow-line are continually covered with the pale white mantle that has fallen upon them from the heavens. these details would be taken in at the first glance; and then your eye would wander into the valley below, and rest there--fixed by the singularity of the scene, and charmed by its soft loveliness--so strongly contrasting with the rude surroundings on which you had been hitherto gazing. the form of the valley would suggest the existence of the grand elliptical crater of some extinct volcano. but instead of the black sulphuric _scoria_, that you might expect to see strewed over its base, you behold a verdant landscape of smiling loveliness, park-like plains interposed with groves and copses, here and there a mound of rock-work, as if piled artificially and for ornament. around the cliffs appears a belt of forest of darker green; and occupying the centre a limpid lake, on whose silver surface at a certain hour of the day you might see reflected part of the snow-crowned summit on which you are standing--the cone of chumulari itself. with a good glass you might distinguish quadrupeds of several _species_ straying over the verdant pastures; birds of many kinds upon the wing, and others disporting themselves upon the surface of the lake. you would be tempted to look for a grand mansion. you would send your glance in every direction, expecting to see chimneys and turrets overtopping the trees; but in this you would be disappointed. on one side of the valley, near to the base of its bounding cliff, you might see a white vapour ascending from the surface of the earth. it would be an error to believe it smoke. it is not that--only the _rime_ rising over a hot-spring bubbling out from the rocks and forming the little rivulet, that, like a silver string, connects it with the lake. charmed with the view of this lovely valley, you would desire to visit it. you would descend the long slope of chumulari, and straggling through the labyrinth of rugged foot hills that surround it, you would reach the brow of the bounding precipice; but there you must come to a halt. no path leads downward; and if you are still determined to set foot on the shores of that smiling lake, you will have to make the descent of the cliffs by means of a rope or rope-ladder several hundred feet in length. with comrades to help you, you may accomplish this; but once in the valley, you can only get out of it by remounting your rope-ladder: for you will find no other means of exit. at one end of the valley you may perceive a gap in the cliffs; and fancy that through this you may make your way out to the side of the mountain. the gap may be easily reached, by going up a gentle acclivity; but having passed through it, you will discover that it only guides you into a gorge, like the valley itself, bounded on both sides by precipitous cliff's. this gorge is half filled by a glacier; on the surface of which you may pass for a certain distance downward. at the end of that descent you will find the glacier cut by a deep crevasse, a hundred feet in depth and a hundred in width. without bridging the crevasse, you can go no further; and if you did succeed in bridging it, further down you would find others deeper and wider, over which it would be impossible for you to pass. return then, and examine the singular valley into which you have made your way. you will find there trees of many kinds, quadrupeds of many kinds, birds of many kinds, and insects of many kinds--you will find every form of animal life, except that of the human being. if you find not man, however, you may discover traces of him. close to the hot-spring, and forming a sort of "lean-to" against the cliff, you may observe a rude hut built with blocks of stone, and plastered with mud from the bed of the rivulet. enter it. you will find it empty, cold, untenanted by living thing. no furniture. stone couches covered with sedge and grass, upon which men may have slept or lain; and two or three blocks of granite upon which they may have sat. that is all. some pieces of skin hanging around the walls, and the bones of animals strewed over the ground outside, give a clue to the kind of food upon which the inhabitants of the hut may have subsisted. hunters they must have been. that will be your natural conjecture. but how did they get into this valley, and how got they out of it? of course, like yourself, they descended into it, and then ascended out again, by means of a rope-ladder. that would be the explanation at which you would arrive; and it would be a satisfactory one, but for a circumstance that just now comes under your observation. scanning the _facade_ of the cliff, your eye is arrested by a singular appearance. you perceive a serried line, or rather a series of serried lines, running from the base in a vertical direction. on drawing nearer to these curious objects, you discover them to be ladders--the lowest set upon the earth, and reaching to a ledge, upon which the second is rested; this one extending to a second ledge, on which the third ladder finds support; and so on throughout a whole series of six. at first sight, it would appear to you as if the _ci-devant_ denizens of the hut had made their exodus from the valley by means of these ladders; and such would be the natural conviction, but for a circumstance that forbids belief in this mode of exit: _the ladders do not continue to the top of the cliff_! a long space, which would require two or three more such ladders to span it, still intervenes between the top of the highest and the brow of the precipice; and this could not have been scaled without additional ladders. where are they? it is scarcely probable they had been drawn up; and had they fallen back into the valley, they would still be there. there are none upon the ground. but these conjectures do not require to be continued. a short examination of the cliff suffices to convince you that the design of scaling it by ladders could not have succeeded. the ledge against which rests the top of the highest must have been found too narrow to support another; or rather, the rocks above and projecting over would render it impossible to place a ladder upon this ledge. it is evident that the scheme had been tried and abandoned. the very character of the attempt proves that they who had made it must have been placed in a desperate situation--imprisoned within that cliff-girt valley, with no means of escaping from it, except such as they themselves might devise. moreover, after a complete exploration of the place, you can find no evidence that they ever did escape from their strange prison; and your thoughts can only shape themselves into conjectures, as to who they were that had wandered into this out-of-the-way corner of the world; how they got into, and how out of it; and, finally, whether they ever succeeded in getting out at all. your conjectures will come to an end, when you have read the history of the _cliff-climbers_. chapter three. the plant-hunter and his companions. karl linden, a young german student, who had taken part in the revolutionary struggles of , had by the act of banishment sought an asylum in london. like most refugees, he was without means; but, instead of giving himself up to idle habits, he had sought and obtained employment in one of those magnificent "nurseries" which are to be met with in the suburbs of the world's metropolis. his botanical knowledge soon attracted the attention of his employer, the proprietor of the nursery--one of those enterprising and spirited men who, instead of contenting themselves with merely cultivating the trees and flowering-plants already introduced into our gardens and greenhouses, expend large sums of money in sending emissaries to all parts of the earth, to discover and bring home other rare and beautiful kinds. these emissaries--botanical collectors, or "plant-hunters," as they may be called--in the pursuit of their calling, have explored, and are still engaged in exploring, the wildest and most remote countries of the globe--such as the deep, dark forests upon the amazon, the orinoco, and the oregon in america; the hot equatorial regions of africa; the tropical jungles of india; the rich woods of the oriental islands; and, in short, wherever there is a prospect of discovering and obtaining new floral or sylvan beauties. the exploration of the sikhim himalaya by the accomplished botanist, hooker--recorded in a book of travels not inferior to that of the great humboldt--had drawn attention to the rich and varied _flora_ of these mountains; and in consequence of this, the enterprising "seedsman" who had given karl linden temporary employment in his garden, promoted him to a higher and more agreeable field of labour, by sending him as a "plant-hunter" to the thibetan himalayas. accompanied by his brother, caspar, the young botanist proceeded to calcutta; and, after a short residence there, he set out for the himalayas--taking a direction almost due north from the city of the ganges. he had provided himself with a guide, in the person of a celebrated hindoo hunter or "shikaree," called ossaroo; and this individual was the sole attendant and companion of the two brothers--with the exception of a large dog, of the boar-hound species, which had been brought with them from europe, and that answered to the name of fritz. the young botanist had come to india furnished with a letter of introduction to the manager of the botanical garden of calcutta--an establishment of world-wide renown. there he had been hospitably received on his arrival in the oriental city; and during his sojourn he had spent much of his time within its boundaries. moreover, the authorities of the place, interested in his expedition, had given him all the information in their power as to the route he intended pursuing--though that was not much: for the portion of the himalayas he was about to explore was at that time a _terra incognita_ to englishmen--even in the city of calcutta! it is not necessary here to detail the many adventures that befel our plant-hunter and his party, during the progress of their journey towards the himalayas, and after they had entered within the grand gorges of these mountains. suffice it to say, that in pursuit of a beautiful little animal--a "musk-deer"--they had gone up a gully filled by one of those grand glaciers so common in the higher himalayas; that the pursuit had led them far up the ravine, and afterwards conducted them into a singular crater-like valley--the one already described; that once in this valley, they could find no way out of it, but by the ravine through which they had entered; and that on returning to make their exit, they discovered to their great consternation that a crevasse in the glacier, over which they had passed, had opened during their absence, and to such an extent as to render their exit impossible! they had endeavoured to span this crevasse; and had spent much time in making a bridge of pine-trees for the purpose. they had succeeded at length in getting across the chasm--but only to find others in the glacier below, which no ingenuity could enable them to get over. they were compelled to abandon the idea, and return again to the valley; which, though lovely to the eye, had now become hateful to their thoughts: since they knew it to be their _prison_. during their residence in the place, many adventures befel them with wild animals of various kinds. there chanced to be a small herd of "yaks," or grunting oxen, in the valley; and these formed for a time the staple article of their food. caspar, who, though younger than karl, was the more skilled hunter of the two, had a very narrow escape from the old yak bull; though he succeeded at length in killing the dangerous animal. ossaroo was very near being eaten up by a pack of wild dogs-- every one of which he afterwards succeeded in killing; and ossaroo was also in danger of being swallowed up by an enemy of a very different kind--that is by a _quicksand_, into which he had got his legs while engaged in taking fish out of a net! karl was not without _his_ hair-breadth "'scape"--having been chased by a bear along a ledge of the cliff, from which he was compelled to make a most perilous descent. the bear itself took refuge in a cave, where it was afterwards pursued and killed, by all three acting in concert, materially assisted by the dog fritz. they had incurred great risk in this chase of the bear: for although they had succeeded in destroying the formidable animal they lost themselves in the great labyrinthine cavern, and were only able to find their way out by making a fire with the stocks of their guns, and rendering the bear's-grease available for candles--which fortunately enabled them to extricate themselves. during the pursuit of the bear, and their subsequent endeavours to find their way out, our adventurers had been struck by the enormous dimensions of the cavern in which the animal had taken refuge; and in the hope that some of its great galleries might lead out through the mountain, and offer them a way of escape from the valley, they had made torches, and explored it from end to end. it was all to no purpose; and becoming satisfied that there was no exit by way of the cavern, they had at length desisted from the search. from this point shall we continue, in more circumstantial detail, the history of their attempts to escape from their mountain prison; which they were now convinced could only be done by _climbing the cliff_ that encircled it. the cliff climbers--by captain mayne reid chapter four. home to the hut. emerging from the cave after their fruitless exploration, all three-- karl, caspar, and ossaroo--sat down upon the rocks in front of the cliff, and for some time remained silent. the looks of all betokened a deep and hopeless despair. the same thought was passing in their minds. a painful thought it was--that they were completely cut off from all communication with the world, and might never again look on human faces, save their own! caspar was the first to give expression to this gloomy foreboding. "oh, brother!" groaned he, addressing himself to karl, who sat nearest to him, "oh! it is an awful fate! here must we live, here must we die, far away from home, far away from the world--alone--alone!" "no," replied karl, deeply moved by the distress of his brother, "no, caspar, not alone--god is with us. let him be our world." however caspar in his conscience might have acknowledged the justice of the admonition, it failed to cheer him. indeed, he could not help perceiving, that karl had uttered the speech half doubtingly, and with the design of affording consolation. moreover, the effort which karl was making to look hopeful and cheerful was evidently constrained; and only the more convinced his companions that neither hope nor joy was in his breast. to karl's consolatory words his brother made no rejoinder. ossaroo, however, gave vent to his thoughts by an ambiguous shake of the head, and a brief speech characteristic of that belief in fatalism peculiar to his race. "ah, sahibs," said he, addressing himself to both, "if the great sahib in the sky will we go out from here, we go--if he no will, we no go-- nivvamore." ossaroo's speech, however compatible with a true faith, did not contribute much towards cheering the spirits of the party; and for another long interval all remained silent. caspar and ossaroo appeared completely prostrated by the new disappointment. karl, on the other hand, seemed less disposed to view things despairingly; and as he sate, was evidently engaged in active thought. after awhile his companions observed this; though neither made any attempt to rouse him from his reverie. they guessed, that, whatever was passing in his mind would soon be communicated to them. they were right in this conjecture: for in a few minutes karl terminated the silence by addressing them. "come!" said he, speaking in a tone of encouragement, "we are wrong in so soon yielding to despair. let us not give up, till we are beaten at all points. i have told you what my object was, when i first mounted upon that ledge, and discovered the cave and its surly occupant, the bear. i thought then, that, if we could find a series of ledges one above another, and sufficiently near each other, we might plant ladders upon them, and so reach the top. you see that there is such a succession of ledges--just before your faces there. unfortunately there is one of the spaces high up yonder--where the cliff is darkest--that cannot be less than sixty or seventy feet in width. i have ascertained that by comparing it with the height from the ground to the cave--which i had just finished measuring when i met the bear. it would be impossible for us to make a ladder that length--or even to hoist it up there if made--so that all thought of scaling the cliff at this point must be given up." "perhaps," interposed caspar, catching at karl's idea, "there may be some other part of the precipice where the ledges are nearer to each other? did you examine it all around?" "no. i had got no further than this place, when i met master bruin; and, as you know, our adventures with him and our exploration of the cave have taken up our time ever since, and, indeed, driven the design of the ladders quite out of my head. now, however, we may return to it; and our next move will be to go all round, and see whether a better place may not be discovered. to-night it is too late. it already begins to darken; and we must have clear daylight for such a purpose. let us home to our hut, and have some supper and then go to rest--having first prayed to him for success. we may rise in better spirits, and continue our examination in the morning." to this proposal there was no objection on the part of either caspar or ossaroo. on the contrary, the mention of supper--both being very hungry--had caused them to start to their feet with remarkable alacrity; and karl, taking the lead, they followed him, fritz in turn following them. on arriving at their hut, supper was cooked and eaten, with that zest which hunger always gives, even to the coarsest viands; and, having carried out the remaining part of the programme which karl had suggested--that is, the offering up a prayer for success on the morrow-- the trio sought their grass-covered couches with a feeling of renewed hopefulness. chapter five. a midnight intruder. they had been asleep several hours, when all three were suddenly awakened by the barking of fritz. during night hours the faithful creature stayed habitually within the hut--where he also had his bed of dry grass. on hearing any unusual noise without, he would rush forth and prowl about for awhile; and, after satisfying himself that there was no enemy in the neighbourhood, would return quietly to his lair. fritz was far from being a noisy dog. he had seen too much service, and gathered too much wisdom, to waste his breath in idle barking; and it was only upon grand and important occasions that he condescended to give tongue. then, however, his bark--or bay, it should rather be termed-- was terrific. on the occasion in question--which happened just about the hour of midnight--the three sleepers were suddenly awakened by his expansive "yowl," that filled the whole valley, and reverberating from the cliffs, appeared continuous. the dog, after uttering this warning note, had rushed out of the hut--which had no door to it--and it was from some place down near the lake that his barking appeared to proceed. "what can it be?" was the prompt and _very_ natural inquiry of the three individuals, whom fritz had so abruptly awakened from their slumbers. "something fritz is frightened at," said caspar, who knew the dog's nature better than either of the others. "he don't bark that way at any sort of game that he knows he can conquer. it's some animal that's a match for him, i warrant. if the old yak bull were still alive, i should say it was he." "there may be tigers in this valley; i never thought of that," rejoined karl. "now that i do think of it," continued he, drawing upon the reminiscences of his zoological reading, "it is quite probable. people believe the tiger to be exclusively an inhabitant of tropical or subtropical regions. that is an error. on this continent (the speaker was in asia) the royal bengal tiger ranges at least as far north as the latitude of london. i know he is found on the amoor as high as the fiftieth degree." "mercy on us!" broke in caspar; "it may be a tiger, and we have never thought of having a door to our hut! if it should be one--" here the hypothetic speech of caspar was abruptly brought to a conclusion, by a singular noise from without--which was heard mingling in chorus with the baying of fritz. the noise in question bore some resemblance to the sound of a trumpet, only sharper and more treble in its character. it was in effect more like the squeak of a _penny trumpet_ than the real article; and yet, withal, there was something terrifying in the sound. it must have terrified fritz: for the moment after it was heard, the dog came rushing back into the hut, as if pursued by a legion of horned bulls; and, though he kept up his angry baying, he appeared altogether disinclined to venture out again. just then, the singular noise was heard outside the door--something between a shriek and a whistle--and this time with a far more terrifying effect: since, whatever produced it--bird, beast, or man--was evidently near, and still approaching nearer. of the three individuals within the hut, only one had ever before heard a sound exactly similar to that. ossaroo was the one. the old shikaree recognised the noise the moment it reached his ears, and knew perfectly well the sort of instrument that must have been producing it; but he was hindered for a time from proclaiming his knowledge, by surprise, as well as a strong feeling of terror at hearing such a sound in such a place. "by de wheels ob juggernaut car!" he gasped out. "can't be--can't be; no possible him be here." "who? what?" demanded karl and caspar, in a breath. "see, sahibs! it him--it him!" hurriedly rejoined the hindoo, in a sort of shrieking whisper. "we all perish--it him--it him--de god--de mighty--de terrible--" there was no light within the hovel, except a faint glimmer from the moon shining brightly enough outside; but it did not require any light to tell that the shikaree was frightened pretty nearly out of his senses. his companions could discover by his voice that he had suddenly changed position, and was retreating backward to that corner of the hut furthest from the doorway. at the same time his words reached them in whispers, cautioning them to lie close and keep silent. both, without knowing what the danger was, of course obeyed injunctions thus emphatically delivered; and remained sitting up on their couches without uttering a word. ossaroo, after having delivered his cautioning speeches, kept equally silent. once more the strange sound fell upon their ears--this time as if the instrument that produced it had been thrust into the doorway of the hovel. at the same instant the turf outside, hitherto glistening under a bright moonlight, became darkened by the shadow of an enormous creature--as if the queen of night had suddenly disappeared behind the blackest of clouds! still the light could be seen beyond, and the moon was shining. it was no cloud that had obscured her; but some vast body moving over the earth, and which, having come up to the front of the hovel, was there halting. karl and caspar fancied they could see a gigantic living form, with huge thick limbs, standing outside; but, indeed, both were as much terrified by the apparition as ossaroo himself, though perhaps for a different reason. fritz must have been as much frightened as any of the four; and fear had produced upon him an effect exactly similar to that it had produced upon ossaroo. it kept him silent. cowering in a corner, fritz was now as quiet as if he had been born a voiceless _dingo_. this speechless trance seemed to have its influence upon the awe-inspiring shadow outside the door: for, after giving utterance to another specimen of shrill piping, it withdrew with as much silence as if it had been but the shadow it appeared! caspar's curiosity had become too strong to be kept any longer under the control of his fears. as soon as the strange intruder was seen moving away from the hut, he stole forward to the entrance, and looked out. karl was not slow in following him; and ossaroo also ventured from his hiding-place. a dark mass--in form like a quadruped, but one of gigantic size--could be seen going off in the direction of the lake. it moved in majestic silence; but it could have been no shadow, for on crossing the stream-- near the point where the latter debouched into the lake--the plashing of its feet could be heard as it waded through the water, and eddies could be seen upon the calm surface. a simple shadow would not have made such a commotion as that? "sahibs!" said ossaroo, in a tone of mysterious gravity, "he be one ob two ting. he eider be de god brahma, or--" "or what?" demanded caspar. "an ole rogue." chapter six. a talk about elephants. "an old rogue?" said caspar, repeating the words of the shikaree. "what do you mean by that, ossy?" "what you feringhee, sahib, call _rogue_ elephant." "oh! an elephant!" echoed karl and caspar--both considerably relieved at this natural explanation of what had appeared so like a supernatural apparition. "certainly the thing looked like one," continued caspar. "but how could an elephant enter this valley?" ossaroo could not answer this question. he was himself equally puzzled by the appearance of the huge quadruped; and still rather inclined to the belief that it was some of his trinity of brahminee gods, that had for the nonce assumed the elephantine form. for that reason he made no attempt to explain the presence of such an animal in the valley. "it is possible for one to have come up here from the lower country," remarked karl, reflectively. "but how could he get into the valley?" again inquired caspar. "in the same way as we got in ourselves," was karl's reply; "up the glacier and through the gorge." "but the crevasse that hinders us from getting out? you forget that, brother? an elephant could no more cross it than he could fly; surely not?" "surely not," rejoined karl. "i did not say that he could have crossed the crevasse." "oh! you mean that he may have come up here before we did?" "exactly so. if it be an elephant we have seen--and what else can it be?" pursued karl, no longer yielding to a belief in the supernatural character of their nocturnal visitant--"it must of course have got into the valley before us. the wonder is our having seen no signs of such an animal before. you, caspar, have been about more than any of us. did you never, in your rambles, observe anything like an elephant's track?" "never. it never occurred to me to look for such a thing. who would have thought of a great elephant having climbed up here? one would fancy such unwieldy creatures quite incapable of ascending a mountain." "ah! there you would be in error: for, singular as it may appear, the elephant is a wonderful climber, and can make his way almost anywhere that a man can go. it is a fact, that in the island of ceylon the wild elephants are often found upon the top of adam's peak--to scale which is trying to the nerves of the stoutest travellers. it would not be surprising to find one here. rather, i may say, it _is_ not: for now i feel certain what we have just seen is an elephant, since it can be nothing else. he may have entered this valley before us--by straying up the glacier as we did, and crossing the chasm by the rock bridge--which i know he could have done as well as we. or else," continued karl, in his endeavour to account for the presence of the huge creature, "he may have come here long ago, even before there was any crevasse. what is there improbable in his having been here many years--perhaps all his life, and that may be a hundred years or more?" "i thought," said caspar, "that elephants were only found on the plains, where the vegetation is tropical and luxuriant." "that is another popular error," replied karl. "so far from affecting tropical plains, the elephant prefers to dwell high up on the mountains; and whenever he has the opportunity, he climbs thither. he likes a moderately cool atmosphere--where he may be less persecuted by flies and other troublesome insects: since, notwithstanding his great strength and the thickness of his hide, so small a creature as a fly can give him the greatest annoyance. like the tiger, he is by no means exclusively a tropical animal; but can live, and thrive too, in a cool, elevated region, or in a high latitude of the temperate zone." karl again expressed surprise that none of them had before that time observed any traces of this gigantic quadruped, that must have been their neighbour ever since the commencement of their involuntary residence in the valley. of course this surprise was fully shared by caspar. ossaroo participated in it, but only to a very slight degree. the shikaree was still inclined towards indulging in his superstitious belief that the creature they had seen was not of the earth, but some apparition of brahma or vishnu. without attempting to combat this absurd fancy, his companions continued to search for an explanation of the strange circumstance of their not having sooner encountered the elephant. "after all," suggested caspar, "there is nothing so strange about it. there are many large tracts of the valley we have not explored; for instance, that wide stretch of black forest that lies at its upper end. neither of us has ever been through there since the first two days, when we followed the deer all round, and went afterwards to examine the cliff. for myself, i never strayed that way while hunting--because i always found the game in the open grounds near the lake. now the elephant may have his lair in that piece of forest, and only come out at night. as for tracks, no doubt there are plenty, but i never thought of looking for them. you know, brother, we have been too busy in making our tree-bridge, and afterwards exploring the cavern, to think of much else." karl admitted the truth of these observations; for it was as caspar had alleged. during the whole time of their residence in the valley, the minds of all three, filled with anxiety about the future, had been keenly bent upon devising some means of escape; and on this account they had given very little attention to anything that did not in some way contribute to that end. even caspar, in his hunting excursions, had not gone over one-half of the valley; nor had these excursions been very numerous. in three or four days he had procured as much _meat_ as was necessary. this had been carefully cured by ossaroo, and formed the staple of their daily food. only upon rare occasions were the guns afterwards used to procure a little fresh provision--such as a brace of wild duets from the lake, or one of the smaller game animals which could be found almost any morning within gunshot distance of the hut. for these reasons many parts of the valley had been left unvisited; and it was deemed possible enough for even a great elephant to have been all the time dwelling within its boundaries, unseen by any of the party. indulging in these conjectures, all three remained awake for more than an hour; but as the subject of their speculations appeared to have gone altogether away, they gradually came to the conclusion that he was not going to return at least for that night--and their confidence being thus restored, they once more betook themselves to sleep--resolved in future to keep a sharp lookout for the dangerous neighbour that had so unexpectedly presented himself to their view. chapter seven. re-stocking the guns. next morning all three were astir betimes, and out of the hut by the earliest light of day. karl and caspar were anxious to obtain more definite information about the elephant, whose existence ossaroo was still inclined to doubt. indeed, with the exception of the three or four shrieking whistles to which the animal had given utterance, so silently and mysteriously had he come and departed, that they might almost have fancied the whole thing a dream. but such an immense creature could not move about, without leaving some traces of his presence; and as he had crossed the stream, or rather a little embayment of the lake into which the stream emptied itself, no doubt his tracks would be found on the sandy shore. as soon, therefore, as the day broke, all three started for the spot where the creature had been seen to cross. on reaching it, they could no longer doubt that an elephant had paid them a visit. huge footprints--nearly as big as the bottom of a bushel measure--were deeply indented in the soft sand; and looking across the "straits" (for so they were in the habit of calling the narrow mouth of the bay), they could see other similar tracks on the opposite shore, where the animal had waded out. ossaroo was no longer doubtful as to the character of the creature that had made those tracks. he had hunted elephants in the jungles of bengal, and knew all the peculiarities of the grand quadruped. such footmarks as were now under his eyes could not have been made by a mere visionary animal, but only by a real elephant in the flesh. "and one of the biggest kind," asserted the shikaree, now speaking in full confidence, and declaring, at the same time, that he could tell its height to an inch. "how can you do that?" asked caspar, in some surprise. "me berra easy tell, young sahib," replied ossaroo; "only need takee size ob de rogue's foot. dis way, sahibs." saying this, the shikaree drew forth from one of his pockets a piece of string; and, choosing one of the tracks which had made the clearest impression, he carefully applied the string around its outer edge. in this way the circumference of the elephant's foot was obtained. "now, sahibs," said ossaroo, holding the string between his fingers-- that portion of it which had been applied around the footprint--"_twice_ the length of dis reachee to the top of he shoulder; that how ossaroo know he biggee elephant." the circumference of the foot thus measured being nearly six feet, it would follow, from the rule laid down by the shikaree, that the elephant in question was nearly twelve feet high; and this karl knew to be one of the largest. nor did karl question the correctness of the deduction: for he had often heard, from hunters whose word was not to be doubted, that the height of an elephant is exactly twice the circumference of his foot. ossaroo, having now yielded up his belief--that the elephant was one of his gods in disguise--declared with full confidence that the animal was a _rogue_. karl needed no explanation of what was meant by this. he knew that the rogue elephant is an old male, who, for some reason or other--perhaps for bad behaviour--has had the cold shoulder given him by the rest of the herd, and from whose association he has been driven away. thus _cut_ by his former acquaintances, he is compelled to lead a solitary life--the consequence of which is, that he becomes exceedingly spiteful and morose in his disposition, and will not only attack any other animal that may chance to cross his path, but will even seek them out, as if for the mere purpose of indulging in a spirit of revenge! there are many such in the jungles of india, as well as in africa; and, since man himself is not excepted from this universal hostility, a rogue elephant is regarded as an exceedingly dangerous creature in the neighbourhood where he takes up his abode. there are many instances recorded--and well authenticated too--where human beings have been sacrificed to the fury of these gigantic monsters: and cases are known where a rogue elephant has purposely placed himself in waiting by the side of a frequented path, with the object of destroying the unwary traveller! in the valley of the dheira doon an elephant of this class-- one, too, that had once been tamed, but had escaped from his servitude-- is known to have taken the lives of nearly twenty unfortunate people before his destruction could be effected. well knowing these proclivities on the part of the _rogue_, ossaroo at once counselled caution in the future movements of all--a counsel which karl was too prudent to reject; and even the bold, rash caspar did not think it proper to dissent from. it was resolved, therefore, before continuing their projected exploration of the cliffs, to set their weapons once more in proper order--against any chance of an encounter with the elephant. their guns had to be re-stocked, and a new handle put into the axe--as well as a shaft into the boar-spear of ossaroo--for all the woodwork of these weapons had been broken up and burnt into ashes in the manufacture of the candles of bear's-grease that had lighted them out of the cave. the search after the ledges must necessarily be postponed; until they could go upon that errand properly armed and equipped, against any enemy that might oppose their progress. having come to this wise determination, they returned to their hut; kindled a fire; cooked breakfast; and having despatched the meal, at once set about selecting pieces of wood for the various purposes for which they were required. they had no difficulty in procuring just what was wanted: for the valley contained many valuable sorts of timber; and several kinds that had been already cut for other purposes, now well seasoned and ready to hand, were found lying about the hut. setting about their work in earnest, and labouring diligently from morning to night--and even into the night hours--they knew they would not be long in accomplishing a task so trifling as the stocking of a gun, or putting the handle to a boar-spear. chapter eight. inspecting the cliffs. working diligently with their knives two days sufficed to make guns, axe, and spear as good as ever. ossaroo also made himself a new bow and a full quiver of arrows. on the third morning, after breakfasting, all three set out with the determination not to leave any portion of the cliff unexamined. the part which lay between their hut and the cave, karl had already scrutinised with great care; so they went direct to the point where he had left off, and there commenced their new survey. it is true they had already examined the cliffs all around; but this was just after they arrived in the valley, and the purpose of that exploration was very different from that of the present one. then they were only looking for a place by which they might climb out; and the idea of making ladders had not occurred to them. now that this scheme had suggested itself, they entered upon their second survey with the view of ascertaining whether it was practicable or possible. consequently, they went in search of facts of a different nature--viz., to see if there existed a series of ledges, one above another, that could be spanned by an equal number of such ladders as they might be able to construct. that they could make ladders of a prodigious length--allowing sufficient time for the execution of the work--all felt confident. they knew that the thibet pine-trees--the same sort as they had used in making the bridge for the glacier crevasse--grew in great numbers not far from their hut; and by selecting some of the slenderest trunks of these, they would have the sides of as many ladders as they might want, almost ready made, and each forty or fifty feet in length. if there should only be discovered a series of ledges, with not more than forty feet space between each two, there would be a fair hope of their being able to escalade the cliff, and escape from a place which, although one of the pleasantest-looking spots in the world, had now become to them loathsome as the interior of a dungeon. sure enough, and to the great joy of all, such a set of shelves was soon after presented to their eyes--having, at least in appearance, all the requirements of which they were in search. the spaces between no two of them appeared to be greater than thirty feet, some were much nearer to each other. the part of the cliff where these terraces were found was not quite so low, as that where karl had made his measurement. it did not appear, however, to be more than three hundred and fifty feet--a fearful height, it is true--but nothing when compared with other sections of the same precipice. to reach to its top, more than a dozen ladders would be required--each between twenty and thirty feet in length. the labour of making these ladders, with such tools as they had, might be looked upon as something stupendous--sufficient, you might suppose, to deter them from the task. but you must endeavour to realise the situation in which they were placed--with no other hope of being delivered from their mountain prison--and with this idea in your mind, you will comprehend why they should have been willing to undertake even a far greater labour. of course, they did not expect to complete it in a day, neither in a week, nor in a month: for they well knew that it would take several months to make the number of ladders that would be required. and then there would be the additional labour of getting each into its place: as all, after the first one, would have to be carried up the cliff to the ledge for which it should be constructed. indeed, to raise ladders of thirty feet in the manner contemplated, would seem an impossibility-- that is, for such strength or mechanism as they could command. and so it might have proved, had they intended to make these ladders of the ordinary weight. but they foresaw this difficulty, and hoped to get over it by making them of the very lightest kind--something that would just carry the weight of a man. becoming more than half satisfied that at this point the precipice might be scaled in the manner contemplated, they remained upon the ground in order to give it a thorough examination. that done, they intended to make the complete circuit of the valley, and ascertain whether there might not be some other place still easier of ascent. the point where they had halted was behind the tract of heavily-timbered forest--of which caspar had spoken, and which up to this time none of them had entered. between the trees and the cliff they were now contemplating, there was a narrow strip of ground destitute of timber; and covered with a shingle of loose stones which had fallen from the mountain above. several boulders of large dimensions rested upon the ground, at short distances apart; and there was one of a pillar-shape that stood some twenty-feet high, while it was only about five or six in diameter. it bore a sort of rude resemblance to an obelisk; and one might easily have fancied that the hand of man had accomplished its erection. for all that, it was a mere freak of nature, and had probably been set up by ancient glacier ice. up one of its sides there was a series of projections, by which an active man might climb to the top; and ossaroo _did_ climb it, partly out of playfulness, and partly, as he said, to get a better view of the cliff. the shikaree stayed only a few minutes on its top; and his curiosity having been satisfied, he had let himself down again. chapter nine. a reconnoissance interrupted. though the three had set out that morning with a wholesome dread of the elephant, and a determination to go about their reconnoissance with caution, their joy at the discovery of the ledges, and the eagerness with which they were scanning them, had for the moment banished from their minds all thoughts of the great quadruped. they were thinking only of ledges and ladders, and talking loudly of how the latter might best be made and placed upon the former. just then, and just at the moment ossaroo descended from the obelisk rock, fritz, who had been prowling about among the trees, set up a fearful baying--such another as that to which he had given utterance on the night when the elephant had paid its visit to the hut. there was a certain intonation of terror in the dog's voice--as if whatever called it forth was something that inspired him with fear. the apprehension that it was the elephant occurred to all three at once; and with a simultaneous impulse they faced towards the spot whence the baying of the dog appeared to proceed. simultaneously, too, they clutched more firmly their respective weapons--karl his rifle, caspar his double-barrel, and ossaroo his bow, with an arrow at the string. it is superfluous to say, that there was a certain amount of consternation visible in the countenances of all three; which was rather increased than diminished by the sight of fritz dashing suddenly out of the underwood, and running towards them at full speed, with his tail considerably below the horizontal. fritz, moreover, was giving utterance to something that very closely resembled a howl. the dog had evidently been attacked by some animal that had put him to flight; and his masters knew that it must be a formidable creature that was causing the variant fritz to behave in such an ignominious manner. they were not kept long in doubt as to the character of fritz's conqueror and pursuer: for close behind his hips, almost touching them, appeared a long, cylindrical, or trumpet-shaped object, of a bluish-grey colour, protruding between two yellowish crescents, like a pair of huge ivory horns. behind those appeared a pair of large ears, like flaps of sole leather; and in the rear of these last appendages came the round, massive form of an enormous elephant! crashing through the underwood, the monstrous creature soon cleared his body from the timber, and rushed straight across the open ground-- winding his terrible trumpet as he went. he was following fritz as straight as he could go, and evidently enraged at the dog. the latter, on escaping from the tangle of the thicket, made direct for the spot occupied by his masters--thus directing the elephant upon them. it was no longer a question of protecting fritz from his formidable pursuer; for the elephant, on seeing three adversaries more worthy of his tusks, seemed to forget all about the puny four-footed creature who had provoked him; and at once directed his attack upon the upright bipeds--as if resolved to punish them for the misbehaviour of their subordinate. the three, standing close together, saw at a glance that fritz was no longer the object of the elephant's animosity: for the massive monster was now charging directly down upon them. there was no time for concerted counsel--neither to take nor to give it. each had to act upon his own instinct; and following this each acted. karl sent the bullet from his rifle right between the tusks of the advancing foe; while caspar fired both barrels of his piece "bang" into the forehead of the monster. ossaroo's arrow was seen sticking through the elephant's trunk; and the moment after ossaroo's heels were presented to the enemy. karl and caspar also ran: for it would have been sheer madness to have remained a moment longer in that perilous proximity. indeed, it is but justice to the shikaree to say, that karl and caspar ran first: for they had been the first to deliver their fire; and as soon as they had done so, each scampered as he best could. they ran together; and fortunately for both a large tree was near, with low horizontal limbs, which favoured a rapid ascent towards its top. there was only a second of time between the commencement of their flight and that of ossaroo; but short as it was, it decided the preference of the pursuer, and ossaroo became the sole object of pursuit. the shikaree would fain have made for the tree, to which the others were retreating; but the proboscis of the elephant was already so far advanced in that direction, that there was every probability it might get lapped upon him before he could climb beyond reach. for a moment he was in a dilemma, and his customary coolness seemed to have forsaken him. the elephant was advancing upon him, its little switch of a tail oscillating rapidly in the air, and its trunk stretched horizontally towards him, with ossaroo's own arrow still sticking in it. it seemed to know that it was he who had sent that skewer through its gristly snout--perhaps giving it far more pain than the leaden missiles that had flattened against its thick skull; and for this reason it had chosen him as the first victim of its vengeance. in truth, ossaroo's position was one of extreme peril--so much so that karl and caspar--now perceiving themselves comparatively safe from the pursuit--uttered a simultaneous cry: both believing that their faithful guide and follower was on the point of "coming to grief." ossaroo seemed bewildered at the very imminence of the danger. but it was only for a moment--only while he hesitated as to whether he should try to reach the tree. on perceiving that he could not do this with a fair chance of safety, he turned and ran in an opposite direction. whither? to the obelisk. yes, by good fortune, the pillar from which he had just descended was only ten paces distant; and ossaroo, in returning towards it, measured the ground with less than five. flinging away his now useless weapons, he clutched hold of the prominent points of the rock, and "swarmed" up it like a squirrel. he had good occasion to employ all his powers of agility. a second-- half a second more--and he would have been too late: for ere he had reached the summit of the pillar, the digit point of the elephant's trunk was inserted under the skirt of his tunic; and had the garment been of tougher material; ossaroo would have been jerked back to the ground more rapidly than he had ascended. as it was, the cotton fabric--frail from long wear and exposure--gave way with a loud "screed;" and although the shikaree was stripped of his coat-tail, and suffered a rather ignominious exposure, still he had the satisfaction of knowing that to this circumstance he was indebted for the safety of his skin. chapter ten. ossaroo on the obelisk. the moment after, ossaroo stood upon the summit of the obelisk. but even there he was far from being confident of security: for the pursuer had not abandoned the hope of being able to reach him. on the contrary, the infuriated animal, on finding itself baulked by the worthlessness of the fabric composing the skirt of the shikaree, spitefully tossed the piece of cloth from its trunk; and, rearing itself on its hind-legs, threw its body into an erect attitude, with its fore-feet resting high up against the rock. one might have fancied that it was about to climb the obelisk; and this it would certainly have done had the thing been possible. as it was, however, ossaroo was not out of danger: for as the elephant stood on its hind-legs, with its prehensile proboscis extended to the full length, the tip of the latter was not more than six inches from the soles of his feet. the shikaree stood upright like a statue on its pedestal--though unlike to a statue in his features, which were anything but unmoved. on the contrary, his countenance exhibited the utmost consternation. and no wonder: for he could plainly perceive that should the elephant succeed in lengthening its carcase only another twelve inches, he himself would be brushed from the summit like a fly. in fearful suspense, therefore, did he stand, contemplating the monster which was making every effort to reach him. these efforts were made with as much sagacity as energy. not only did the quadruped erect itself to its greatest height--standing, as one might say, upon its toes--but on finding that it was not tall enough, it fell back upon all fours, and then reared up afresh in an endeavour to stretch still higher. several times did it repeat the attempt--on each occasion trying a different side of the rock--as if in hopes that a greater elevation of the ground around the base might give it that advantage of twelve inches which it required for seizing its victim. fortunately for ossaroo, the elephant had reached its very highest on first rearing up; and though it kept going round and round the rock, from no side could it do more than just touch with the top of its trunk the edge of the little flat space, upon which the feet of the shikaree were resting. ossaroo was beginning to be satisfied with this fact; and probably might have come to believe himself secure in his position, but for a circumstance that was making him uneasy. it was, that, standing upon such a limited surface--a pedestal whose diameter was but little over the length of his own feet--he found it exceedingly difficult to keep his balance. had he been on the ground, there would have been no difficulty about it; but, perched as he was full twenty-feet aloft, the thing was quite different; and, with nerves unstrung by the fearful danger that threatened him below, it was just as much as he could do to keep his equilibrium. though only a "mild hindoo," ossaroo was possessed of a high degree of courage; and, most of his life having been spent as a shikaree, he had become well inured to the risk of losing it. had he been a coward, or unused to such perils as at that moment surrounded him, he would in all likelihood have succumbed through fear; and toppled helplessly over upon the shoulders of the merciless monster that was threatening to destroy him. with all his bravery, however, it was just as much as he could do to keep his balance. unfortunately, in climbing up the rock, he had been compelled to abandon his boar-spear: else with that he might have supported himself. his long knife was still in his belt; and this he drew forth--not with the design of using it upon his antagonist, but only the better to balance himself. it is true he would have been fain to take a chop or two at the gristly proboscis of the elephant; but he dared not bend his body into a stooping attitude, lest his centre of gravity might get beyond the supporting base, and thus bring about the result he dreaded. no other course remained for him, than to preserve his body in an upright attitude; and, conscious of this fact, he braced his nerves to the utmost, and maintained himself erect and rigid as a statue of bronze. chapter eleven. a wholesale tumble. in this attitude he remained for several minutes--the elephant all the while continuing its efforts to reach him karl and caspar, seated upon the branches of the tree, to which they had retreated, were witnesses of the whole scene from beginning to end. the situation of ossaroo would have bean sufficiently ludicrous for caspar to have laughed at it, but for the danger in which the shikaree was placed. this was so evident, that instead of indulging in anything akin to levity, caspar looked on with feelings of deep anxiety, karl being equally apprehensive about the result. neither could do anything to aid or rescue him, as they were unarmed--both having dropped their pieces when ascending the tree. i have said that karl was as uneasy about the result as his brother. he was even more so. it was not that he liked ossaroo better, or would have more bitterly lamented his fate, had the latter perished by the proboscis of the elephant. no, that was not the reason; but simply that karl more clearly comprehended the danger in which the shikaree was placed. after watching the efforts of the elephant for a short time, caspar had become convinced that the animal could not reach ossaroo--so long as the latter preserved his balance upon the summit of the rock. karl was equally satisfied of this; and both by their shouts kept encouraging the shikaree to stand firm. but karl soon noted another circumstance, which was as yet unperceived by caspar, and it was this that was inspiring him with keener apprehension than that felt by his brother. he had noticed that, each time as the elephant erected himself against the obelisk, the rock seemed slightly to shake. ossaroo was himself well aware of the circumstance--and more troubled at it than any of them--for it rendered it more difficult for him to preserve his equilibrium. caspar at length also observed the trembling of the rock, but it gave him no particular uneasiness: as, after what had passed, he felt confident that ossaroo would be able to keep his place. nor was it the fear of his falling in that way that was distressing the young botanist; but rather a deduction which he drew from the circumstance, not apparent to the less philosophic mind of his brother. the shaking of the rock had suggested to karl a dangerous contingency. what was it? the speech addressed by him at that moment to caspar will explain. "oh, brother!" he exclaimed, on perceiving the danger, "if the rock should fall--" "no danger of that," said caspar, interrupting him; "it stands firm enough. true, i see it shake a little, but only a very little; and that only when the brute springs up against it. no danger, i should think!" "but i fear there is clanger," rejoined karl, in a tone of undiminished anxiety. "not," added he, "so long as the elephant acts as he is doing; but he may not continue thus. these creatures are wonderfully sagacious; and if he only perceives that the pillar moves under his weight, a new idea may get into his brain, and then it will be all up with ossaroo." "ha! i begin to comprehend you," said caspar, beginning to share the alarm of his brother. "there is danger in that. what is to be done? if we only had our guns up here, we might open fire on the brute. whether we succeeded in killing him or not, we might at all events divert his attention from ossaroo, and perhaps hinder him from thinking of the plan you speak of. we might go down and get our guns. what is to hinder us?--the elephant is too busy to notice us." "true--an excellent idea of yours, brother caspar." "well, then, to put it in execution. i shall slip down to the ground; you follow to the lowest branch, and i can hand the guns up to you. keep steady, and don't you fear, ossy!" added the young hunter in a louder voice, addressing himself to the shikaree. "we'll fetch him away from you directly--we'll tickle him with an ounce or two of lead through that thick hide of his." so saying, caspar commenced letting himself rapidly down from branch to branch, karl following more leisurely. caspar had got upon the lowest limb of the tree, and karl on that immediately above it, when a loud crash, accompanied by a piercing shriek, arrested the progress of both, causing them suddenly to turn their faces towards the obelisk. during the short time that their eyes had been averted from it, a complete change had taken place in that curious tableau. instead of a tall column of stone, standing twenty-feet perpendicular, the same column was now seen lying along the earth in a nearly horizontal position, with a huge mass of broken boughs and branches of trees crushed under its top. near its base, now upturned and standing almost vertically, was the elephant, no longer on its hind feet, nor yet on all fours, but down upon its back, kicking its huge hoofs in the air, and making the most stupendous efforts to recover its legs. ossaroo was nowhere to be seen! the contingency dreaded by karl had come to pass. the elephant, finding it impossible to reach the shikaree with its trunk--and no doubt judging by the "feel" that the rock was not immobile--had at length dropped down on all fours and, placing its broad shoulder against it, backed by the enormous weight of its bulky body, had sent the column crashing among the tops of a chestnut tree growing near--the trunk of which, yielding to the weight, gave way with a crash, and trunk, limbs, and branches were all borne downward to the earth! the elephant itself, not calculating that it should find the task so easy of performance, had fallen at the same time--its cumbrous body losing balance by the impetus which it had thrown into the effort. in short, of the four objects that formed the tableau--rock and tree, quadruped and man--not one was standing any longer in its place--for it is superfluous to say that ossaroo had gone down with the obelisk. but where was ossaroo? that was the question that occurred to both karl and caspar. "oh! brother!" groaned caspar, "i fear he is killed!" karl made no reply; but for all that, caspar's reflection, delivered in a loud tone, was not left without rejoinder. directly after the phrase had issued from his lips, an answer was heard proceeding from among the branches of the fallen chestnut tree, in a voice and with words that caused the hearts of the brothers to beat with joy. "no, young sahibs," replied the unseen ossaroo; "me no killee, me no bit damage. if i only can get pass de old rogue, i safe and sound as ibber. here go for run!" at the same moment the shikaree was seen shooting out from among the branches under which he had been for the time buried; and, then running with all his might towards the tree upon which the brothers had found refuge. long before the elephant could regain its feet, ossaroo had reached a position of perfect security among the upper branches of the great tree; which karl and caspar, no longer thinking of their guns, had also re-ascended. chapter twelve. a ring performance. as the tree into which they had retreated was a very large one, there was no longer any present fear of danger from the elephant, however furious the latter might be; and they could look down upon it and watch its movements with a feeling of perfect security. the only one of the party that was in dangerous proximity to that dreaded proboscis was fritz; but fritz had already been well warned of the wicked designs of the great brute, and was sufficiently swift-footed and sage enough to give the animal a wide berth. as for the elephant itself, having recovered its feet, it stood for some seconds flapping its huge ears, and apparently in a kind of quandary--as if taken aback by the unexpected accident that had befallen it. not for long, however, did it continue in this tranquil attitude. the arrow still sticking in its trunk reminded it of its purposes of vengeance. once more angrily elevating its tail, and sounding its shrill trumpet, it rushed towards the fallen tree, and buried its long proboscis among the branches. one by one it turned them over, as if in search of some object. it was searching for the shikaree. after a time it desisted from this manoeuvre, and looked around-- evidently with a puzzled air, and wondering what had become of the man. it had not seen him as he rushed towards the great tree: for his retreat had been made while the creature was sprawling upon its back. just then fritz chanced to show himself--crouching under the branches upon which his masters had taken refuge, and evidently envying them their secure situation. the sight of fritz was enough. it was he who had first challenged the elephant on its approach through the woods, and had conducted it under that terrible battery of bullets and arrows. as soon, therefore, as the latter set eyes upon the dog, its fury not only became rekindled, but apparently redoubled; and, hoisting its tail on high, it charged full tilt upon its original adversary. had the assailant been a boar, or even a bull, no doubt fritz would have stood his ground, or only swerved to one side, the better to elude the onset, and make an attack in turn. but with a quadruped as big as a house--and of which fritz, not being of oriental origin, knew so little; and of that little nothing that was good--one, too, evidently provided with most formidable weapons, a tongue several feet long, and tusks in proportion--it is not to be wondered at, nor is it any great blot upon his escutcheon, that fritz turned tail and fled. so fast fled he, that in less than a score of seconds he was out of sight--not only of his masters in the tree, but of his pursuer, the elephant. the latter only followed him for some half-dozen lengths of its own carcase; and seeing that the pursuit was likely to be a wild-goose chase, declined following fritz any farther. they in the tree, as the elephant started after the dog, were in hopes that the pursuit might carry the dangerous animal to some distance, and thus give them time to get back to the ground, and make their escape from the spot. in this, however, they were doomed to disappointment; for having desisted from the chase of the dog, the great pachyderm returned to the point from whence it had started; and, after once more tossing the broken branches of the fallen chestnut tree upon the point of its proboscis, it commenced pacing round and round the fallen obelisk, keeping in regular circles, as if it were training itself for some performance in an amphitheatre. for more than an hour did the brute continue this circular promenade, at intervals stopping to give utterance to its shrieking note; but most of the time moving on in sullen silence. now and then it directed its eyes, and once or twice its trunk, towards the branches of the prostrate tree as if it had still some suspicion that he who sent that stinging arrow was there concealed. indeed, it appeared by its movements to be keeping guard over that particular spot, lest its enemy should escape. it had long since extracted the arrow, by placing its great foot upon the shaft, and drawing it forth. fritz had stolen back to the edge of the thicket, but kept cowering so close that the elephant could not see him. the parties perched above were more than annoyed by their imprisonment thus procrastinated, and began to think of how they might set themselves free. they talked of making a rush to possess themselves of their guns; but to karl this appeared too perilous to be attempted. it was not twenty yards from the tree to the spot where rested the dismounted monolith; and the elephant, whose eye was in a state of continual activity, could not fail to see them descending from the branches. the massive creature, though it moved about with apparently a gentle griding step, could go almost as fast as a galloping horse; and should it espy them in time, there would be but slight chance of eluding its prehensile trunk. moreover, the sight of them--even should they succeed in regaining the tree--would rekindle its rage, and cause it to prolong its stay upon the ground. there was yet another consideration that influenced them to remain patiently on their perch. they knew that they had provided themselves with only a very limited quantity of ammunition. that article had become scarce with them; and they had prudently determined to economise it. karl had only two bullets left, with just powder enough to make two charges; while caspar's horn and pouch were not better filled. they might fire their whole stock of lead into the elephant, and still not succeed in killing a creature that sometimes walks off triumphantly with a score of bullets "under his belt." these shots might only have the effect of incensing it still more, and causing it to stay upon the ground to an indefinite period. it was a true _rogue_--ossaroo had long since pronounced it one--and an "old tusker" at that. it was therefore a most dangerous creature; and though they knew they would never be safe in that valley until it should be destroyed, it was agreed by all that it would be more prudent to leave it undisturbed until some more favourable opportunity occurred for effecting its destruction. for these various reasons they resolved to remain quiet in the tree, and patiently await the termination of that curious "ring performance," which the old tusker still continued to keep up. chapter thirteen. an odd appearance. for the full length of another hour did the trio in the tree have their patience tested. during all that time the "rogue" remained upon the ground, continuing his perambulations around the rock--until he had trodden out a path that resembled the arena of a circus at the close of a night's performance. it is not necessary to say that the time hung heavily upon the hands of the spectators--to say nothing of fritz, who would no doubt have been satisfied with a much shorter programme. as regards the former, the hour might have been spent less pleasantly than it was; for it so chanced that an _interlude_ was introduced, of so interesting a character to all, but more especially to the naturalist karl, that for a while the proximity of their savage besieger was forgotten, and they scarcely remembered that they were besieged. favoured by the accident of their situation, they became spectators of a scene--one of those scenes only to be viewed amid the wild solitudes of nature. not far from the tree on which they had found shelter, stood another of equal dimensions, but of an entirely different species. it was a sycamore, as even caspar, without any botanical skill, could testify. its smooth bark, piebald with white and green spots, its widely-straggling limbs and leaves, left no doubt about its being one. it was the sycamore, identical with its european congener, the _platanus orientalis_. it is the habit of this fine tree to become hollow. not only does the lower part of its trunk exhibit the phenomenon of great cavities, but holes are found high up in its main shaft or in the larger limbs. the tree in question stood within a few yards of that on which karl, caspar, and ossaroo were perched. it was just before their eyes, whenever they looked in a horizontal direction; and occasionally, when tired with watching the monotonous movements of the elephant, one or other of them _did_ look horizontally. the scanty foliage upon the sycamore enabled them to see its trunk and most of its larger limbs, without any obstruction of leaves or branches. caspar had not cast his eyes more than twice in the direction of this tree, when he saw there was something peculiar about it. caspar was a youth of quick sight and equally quick perception. in the main stem of the tree, and about six feet above its first forking, he perceived an object that at once fixed his attention. it looked like a goat's horn, only that it was more like the curving tusk of a rhinoceros or a very young elephant. it was sticking out from the tree, with the curve directed downwards. altogether, it looked quite different from a branch of the sycamore, or anything belonging to the tree. once or twice, while caspar had his eyes upon it, he thought or fancied that it moved; but not being sure of this, he said nothing, lest the others might laugh at him. it would not have been the first time that karl, from his superior knowledge, had indulged in a laugh at his brother's expense. caspar's attention being now engrossed by the peculiar appearance he had noted, he continued to scrutinise it; and soon perceived that around the curved excrescence there was a circular disc some eight or ten inches in diameter, and differing in colour from the bark of the sycamore--by being many shades darker. this disc appeared composed of some substance that was not ligneous: for it no more resembled wood than the curved ivory-like object that protruded from its centre. had caspar been asked what it did look like, he would have answered that it resembled the agglutinated mud used by swallows in building their nests--so like it, that it might have been the same substance. caspar continued to scrutinise these two curious objects--the tusk-like excrescence, and the dark disc from which it protruded; and not until he became fully aware that the former had life in it, did he communicate his discovery to his companions. of this fact he was convinced by seeing the crescent suddenly disappear--as if drawn within the tree, while in its place a dark round hole was alone visible. presently the yellowish horn reappeared through the hole, and protruded outside, filling it up as before! caspar was too much astonished by this exhibition to remain any longer the sole proprietor of such a mysterious secret, and without more delay he communicated his discovery to karl, and indirectly to ossaroo. both at the same time turned their eyes towards the tree, and bent them upon the indicated spot. karl was as much mystified by the strange appearance as had been caspar himself. not so ossaroo. the moment he saw the carving ivory and the dark-coloured disc, he pronounced, in a tone of careless indifference, the simple phrase,-- "_hornbill_--_de bird on him nest_." chapter fourteen. a curious nest. just then the curved projection was observed to recede within the tree; and in its place appeared a small dark hole, apparently the entrance to a larger cavity. karl, as caspar had done the moment before, saw this with surprise. "nest?" repeated caspar, astonished at the shikaree's statement. "a bird's nest? is that what you mean, ossy?" "that just it, sahib. nest of great biggee bird. feringhees him call _horneebill_." "well," rejoined caspar, not greatly enlightened by ossaroo's explanation, "that's very curious. we have seen something like a horn sticking out of the tree, though it looks more like ivory than horn. it may be the bill of a bird; but as to a bird itself, or the nest of one, where is that, pray?" ossaroo intimated that the nest was inside the tree; and that the bird was on the nest just behind its beak, where it ought to be. "what! the bird is in that hole where we saw the white thing sticking out? why, it quite filled the hole, and if there's a bird there, and what we saw be its bill, i have only to say that its bill must be as big as its body--else how can it get out and in through so small an aperture? certainly i see no hole but the one. oh! perhaps the bird is a _toucan_. i have heard there are some of that sort that can go through any place where they can pass their beaks. is it a toucan, ossaroo?" ossaroo could not tell what a toucan was, never having heard of such a bird. his ornithological knowledge went no further than to the birds of bengal; and the toucan is found only in america. he stated that the bird in the tree was called by the feringhees a "hornbill," but it was also known to some as the "rhinoceros bird." ossaroo added that it was as large as a goose; and that its body was many times thicker than its bill, thick as the latter appeared to be. "and you say it has its nest inside that hole?" interrogated caspar, pointing to the little round aperture, which did not appear to be over three inches in diameter. "sure of it, young sahib," was ossaroo's reply. "well, certainly there is some living creature in there, since we have seen it move; and if it be a bird as large as a goose, will you explain to me how it got in, and how it means to get out? there must be a larger entrance on the other side of the tree." "no, sahib," confidently asserted ossaroo; "that you see before your eye--that the only way to de horneebill nest." "hurrah for you, ossy! so you mean to say that a bird as large as a goose can go in and out by that hole? why, a sparrow could scarcely squeeze itself through there!" "horneebill he no goee in, he no goee out. he stay inside till him little chickees ready for leavee nest." "come, ossy!" said caspar, in a bantering way; "that story is too good to be true. you don't expect us to believe all that? what, stay in the nest till the young are ready to leave it! and how then? how will the young ones help their mother out of the scrape? how will they get out themselves: for i suppose they don't leave the nest till they are pretty well grown? come! good shikaree; let us have no more circumlocution about the matter, but explain all these apparently inexplicable circumstances." the shikaree, thus appealed to, proceeded to give the explanation demanded. the hornbill, he said, when about to bring forth its young, selects a hollow in some tree, just large enough conveniently to hold the nest which it builds, and also its own body. as soon as the nest is constructed and the eggs all laid, the female bird takes her seat upon them, and there remains; not only until the eggs are hatched, but for a long time afterwards--in fact, until the young are nearly fledged and able to take care of themselves. in order that she may be protected during the period of her incubation against weasels, polecats, ichneumons, and all such vermin, a design exhibiting either wonderful instinct or sagacity, is carried into execution by the male. as soon as his mate has squatted upon her eggs, he goes to work at the masonic art; and using his great horned mandibles, first as a hod, and afterwards as a trowel, he walls up the entrance to the nest--leaving an aperture just large enough to be filled up by the beak of the female. the material employed by him for this purpose is a kind of agglutinated mud, which he procures from the neighbouring watercourse or quagmire, and somewhat similar to that used by the common house-swallow for constructing _its_ peculiar nest. when dried, this mud becomes exceedingly hard--bidding defiance to the teeth and claws of all would-be intruders, whether bird or quadruped; and with the horny beak of the old hen projected outward, and quite filling up the aperture, even the slippery tree-snake cannot find room enough to squeeze his body through. the female, thus free from all fear of being molested, quietly continues her incubation! when ossaroo had got thus far with his explanation, caspar interrupted him with a query. "what!" said he, "sit all the time--for weeks, i suppose--without ever coming out--without taking an airing? and how does she get her food?" as caspar put this question, and before ossaroo had time to answer, a noise reached their ears which appeared to proceed from the sky above them. it was a noise well calculated to inspire terror in those who had never before heard it, or did not know what was causing it. it was a sort of fluttering, clattering sound, or rather a series of sounds, resembling the quickly repeated gusts of a violent storm. the moment ossaroo heard it, he knew what it was; and instead of giving a direct answer to caspar's question, he simply said-- "wait a bit, sahib. here come old cockee horneebill; he show you how de hen getee her food." the words had scarcely passed from the lips of the shikaree, when the cause of that singular noise became known to his companions. the maker of it appeared before them in the form of a great bird, that with a strong flapping of its wings flew past the tree in which they were seated, towards that which contained the nest. in an instant afterwards, it was seen resting on a spur-like projection of the trunk, just below the aperture; and it needed not ossaroo to tell them that it was the cock hornbill that had there alighted. the large beak--the tip of it resembling that which they had already seen sticking out of the hole, and which was once more visible and in motion-- surmounted by an immense helmet-like protuberance, rising upon the crown, and running several inches along the top of the upper mandible, which might have been taken for a second beak--this singular appendage could belong to no other bird than the _hornbill_. chapter fifteen. the hornbill. karl, although he had never seen one of these birds alive, had yet examined stuffed specimens of them in museums, and he had no difficulty in recognising the bird. he was able even to identify the species, for there are many species of hornbill, known under the generic name, _bucerus_. that before their eyes was the _bucerus rhinoceros_, or "rhinoceros hornbill," called also the "topau," and sometimes the "horned indian raven," from a sort of resemblance which it bears both in shape and habits to the well-known bird of this name. ossaroo had not exaggerated the size of these birds when he compared it to that of a goose. on the contrary, he had rather moderated the dimensions: for the one in question looked much larger than either goose or gander. it was rather more than three feet in length--reckoning from the tip of its tail to the point of its curving beak, which of itself was nearly a foot long! its colour was black above, and yellowish-white underneath, the tail feathers being a clear white, with a broad black band crossing them near the middle. its bill, like that of its mate already observed, was of a yellowish-white, the upper mandible being reddish around the base, while the casque-like protuberance exhibited a mottled surface of white and black. ossaroo had to tell them pretty nearly all he knew in relation to this curious bird; for although there are several species of hornbills natives of india, it is by no means a common creature, even at home in its own country. karl could have told them much more about its species and habits, and no doubt he would have done so had they been otherwise engaged. but situated as they were, with an angry elephant besieging them in the tree, and now for a while interested in observing the movements of the bird itself, karl was in no humour to deliver an ornithological lecture. he might have told them that ornithologists have differed much about the classification of the hornbill--some of them placing it among the toucans, while others assert that it belongs to the crow family. its immense beak--out of all proportion to its body--is not the only point of resemblance it bears to the toucans. like them, it flings its food into the air, catching and swallowing it as it comes down. unlike the toucans, however, it cannot climb trees, and is therefore not of the scansorial order. it is said to be omnivorous in its food; and in this it resembles the crows and ravens: but, indeed, as already stated, there are many species of hornbills, and the habits of the different kinds, by no means uniform or alike, have been confounded by most writers. there are species in africa, others in india and the indian islands, and new guinea is known to have one or two distinct species of its own. all these differ not only in size, colour, shape of their beak, and the protuberance that surmounts it; but also in the kind of food which they live upon. for instance, the african hornbills, and one or more of the asiatic species, are carnivorous, and some even carrion-eaters. these are filthy birds, their flesh and feathers smelling rank as those of vultures. on the other hand, there is a species in the indian islands-- the moluccas more particularly--whose sole food is the nutmeg, which gives to its flesh an exquisite aromatic flavour, causing it to be much relished at the tables of oriental epicures. the bill of this species after a certain time appears with a number of grooves or furrows in it. as these furrows are observed only on the beaks of the old birds, the dutch colonists established in the moluccas believe them to indicate their age, each wrinkle standing for a year. hence the hornbill has obtained among the colonists the name of _yerrvogel_ (year bird). karl, as i have said, was acquainted with all these facts in the natural history of the hornbill; but just then he did not think of making them known to his companions--all three being too much occupied in watching the movements of the male bird. it was evident that he was not one of the vegetable feeders: for on his alighting they could see hanging from his beak a long cylindrical object, which they were able to identify as a portion--the head and part of the body--of a dead snake. it was equally evident that his mate was not accustomed to a vegetable diet: for from the way in which he was manoeuvring, the spectators saw that the mutilated reptile was intended for her. no doubt it was her dinner, for it had now got to that hour of the day. she was not to be kept waiting any longer. almost on the instant her provider alighted on the projecting spur, with a toss of his head he jerked the piece of snake up into the air, and then caught it as it came down again--not with the intention to swallow it, but only to get a better grip, in order that he might deliver it the more adroitly into the mandibles of his mate--now protruding through the aperture, and opened to receive it. in another instant the savoury morsel was transferred from the beak of the male to that of the female; and then the ivory forceps of the latter, with the snake held tightly between them, disappeared within the cavity. the old cock stayed not a moment longer upon the tree. he had served his mate with her dinner, and perhaps he had yet to bring on the dessert. whether or not, he rose immediately afterwards into the air, with the same clangorous clapping of his wings; but this time the noise was accompanied by the clattering of his horny mandibles, like a pair of castanets, causing a sound not only singular, but, if heard by strangers, calculated to beget within them a considerable feeling of alarm. chapter sixteen. a four-footed burglar. after the departure of the bird, that had taught our young adventurers so interesting a chapter of natural history, the elephant once more engrossed their attention. not that there was anything new in the movements of the latter--for it was acting just as before--but simply because they knew that, so long as it remained upon the ground, they would have to stay in the tree; and they naturally bent their eyes upon it, to see if it was showing any signs of moving off. they could perceive none. not the slightest appearance to indicate its intention of departing from the spot. while engaged in regarding the besieger, their eyes were of course removed from the sycamore; nor might they have been again turned towards that tree--at least, not for a good while--but for a sound that reached their ears, and which appeared to proceed from the direction of the hornbill's nest. it was a soft and rather plaintive sound--unlike any that had been made by the rhinoceros bird; nor was it at all like the voice of a bird, of any kind. it was more like the utterance of some four-footed creature; or it might even have been a human voice pronouncing the syllable "wha," several times repeated. that it was neither bird nor human being, ossaroo could tell the moment he heard the first "wha." almost as soon were the others convinced that it was neither: for on turning their eyes to the sycamore, they saw upon the projecting spur that had been so lately occupied by the hornbill, a creature of a very different kind--in short, a quadruped. had it been in an american forest, they might have taken the creature for a racoon though a very large one. on closer scrutiny, many points of resemblance, and also of difference, would have become apparent. like the racoon, it had plantigrade feet, a burly, rounded body, and a very thick hairy tail--ringed also like that of the american animal--but unlike the latter, its muzzle, instead of being long and slender, was short, round, and somewhat cat-like; while its hair, or more properly its fur, formed a thick even coat all over its body, limbs, and tail, and presented a smooth and shining surface. its general colour was a very dark brown, streaked and mottled with golden yellow; and caspar remarked, upon the moment of seeing it, that it was one of the handsomest creatures he had ever beheld. the naturalist cuvier had made the same remark long before caspar's time. so said karl, on hearing the observation escape from the lips of his brother. ossaroo knew that the animal was the "wha," a name derived from its ordinary call; and that it was sometimes known as the "chetwa," and also the "panda." karl, on hearing ossaroo's name for it, and indeed, on hearing it pronounced by the creature itself, was able to identify the animal, and to give it still another name--that which has been bestowed upon it by frederick cuvier--_ailurus_. this is the generic name, of which, up to the present time, it has been left in undisturbed possession. since only one species has been discovered, it has the name all to itself; and therefore would not require any specific appellation. but for all that, one has been given to it. on account of its shining coat, it has been called the _ailurus fulgens_. though the closet naturalists, in following out their pedantic propensities, have created a genus expressly for this animal, there is nothing either in its appearance or habits to separate it from the badgers, the racoons, the coatimondis, and such other predatory creatures. like them it preys upon birds and their eggs, as also on the smaller kinds of quadrupeds, and like the racoon, it is a nimble tree-climber. the situation in which the particular panda, of which we are writing, first appeared to the eyes of karl and caspar, proved this capacity, and its actions the moment after testified to its fondness for birds'-eggs. it had not been a minute under the eyes of the spectators, when they saw that it was after the eggs of the hornbill; perhaps, too, it might have had a design of tasting the flesh of their owner. resting its thick plantigrade hind feet upon the projection of the tree, it erected itself like a little bear; and with its fore-paws commenced scraping at the barrier wall which the male bird had spent so much time and taken so much pains in building. it is possible that if it had been left to itself, it might in time have succeeded in forcing an entrance into the nest, and highly probable too--or it would scarcely have entered upon the task. but it was not left to itself. not that the sitter inside could have done much to hinder it: though it was evident from the way in which her beak was repeatedly projected and drawn back through the hole, and also from her angry hissing, that she knew there was danger without, and that an enemy was assailing her citadel. most likely after a time, and by constant scraping, the clay wall would eventually have been pulled down; but before that event came to pass, a loud flapping and fluttering, and cracking and clattering, was heard among the tops of the trees; and in an instant afterwards the broad, shadowy wings of the old male hornbill were swashing about the ears of the four-footed robber, where the long cutlass-like beak, armed at its edges, at once interrupted the intent. the panda, taken by surprise, quailed at this first onset: for like any other _paterfamilias_ who on returning home finds a burglar breaking into his house, the cock bird charged in the full tide of impetuous fury. the robber, however, evidently used to this sort of thing, soon recovered his self-possession; and instead of retreating from the tree, he only planted himself more firmly upon the projection; and, facing towards his feathery assailant, prepared to show fight. and fight was instantly shown on both sides--the bird swooping repeatedly at its adversary, striking with its strong wings and thrusting with its ensiform beak; while the quadruped played back both with teeth and claws--several times plucking a mouthful of feathers from the breast of its winged adversary. chapter seventeen. fritz interferes. how the affair might have ended had the panda and the hornbill been the only parties to the combat, can but be guessed at. in all likelihood the quadruped would have triumphed over the biped: the entrance would have been forced; the old hen dragged off her nest--perhaps killed and eaten--and the eggs after her. but it was not written in the book of destiny that this should be the _denouement_ of that little drama: for at that moment an incident occurred which changed the whole character of the contest--followed by a series of other incidents which brought the affair to a termination unexpected by all parties engaged, as well as by those who witnessed it. the first of these incidents--and that which formed the key to this change in the circumstances of the combat, was one of a very ludicrous character--so much so as to elicit laughter from the spectators in the tree. it chanced that the eyes of the panda, as the animal stood erect on its hind quarters, were directly opposite the little aperture that represented the entrance to the nest. not dreaming of any danger in that direction, the robber only thought of guarding his "daylights" against the hornbill upon the wing. but the hen bird inside the nest-- who could see well enough what was passing outside--had no idea of remaining a passive spectator; and perceiving her opportunity--for she was within striking distance--she quietly drew back her long ivory beak, and, throwing all the strength of her neck into the effort--assisted by the weight of her heavy helmeted head--as if with the blow of a pick-axe, she struck the panda right in the eye--the sharp point penetrating almost to its skull. terror-stricken, partly by surprise at this unexpected stroke, and partly by the pain caused by it, the quadruped uttered a shrill cry; and at once scrambling down from the tree, seemed only anxious to make his escape. in this design he, no doubt, would have succeeded, with only the loss of an eye; but the eye of still another enemy had been upon him--one whom he had yet to encounter. fritz, from his position near the bottom of the tree, attracted by the noise of the strife, had drawn nearer; and looking up, had been watching the combat throughout. it is scarcely probable that the sympathies of honest fritz could have been otherwise than in favour of the innocent bird, and against the guilty beast; but whatever way they may have been inclined, certain it is that as the panda came to "grass," the dog "jumped" it upon the instant, and commenced worrying it, as if the creature had been the oldest and bitterest of his enemies! despite the suddenness of this new attack--equally unexpected as the peck in the eye--the fierce panda showed no signs of yielding without a struggle; and, although far overmatched by its canine antagonist, it was likely to give the latter a scratch or two, as souvenirs that he would carry to his grave. but at this moment a much greater danger was threatening fritz than any harm he might suffer from the claws of the panda; and had chance not favoured him, as he jumped about in the struggle, by turning his eyes in a particular direction, he would have found himself in the clutches of an antagonist, that would have shown him as little mercy as he was himself extending to the poor panda. but he was favoured by chance: for it was nothing more that directed his glance towards his old pursuer, the elephant; and showed him the latter, at that moment advancing upon him at a charging pace, with eyes sparkling in silent vengeance, and trunk extended to seize him. under the circumstances, it did not cost fritz a moment's calculation as to what course he should pursue. suddenly dropping the panda--as if he had discovered the quadruped to be a lump of poison--he bounded from the spot in a direction the very opposite to that by which the elephant was approaching; and in less than a score of seconds the only part of him to be seen was the tip of his tail just disappearing into the thicket. of all the creatures that had borne part in this curious affray, the poor panda was perhaps the most to be pitied. at all events he was the most unfortunate: for with the drama ended also his life. in every one encountered by him he had found an enemy; and in the last he met with a dread foe that soon made a finish of him. this last was the elephant. the great animal, rushing forward upon fritz, seeing that the latter had escaped, was determined this time not to be baulked of a victim. instead of carrying out the design it had only partially resolved upon-- that of following fritz into the forest--it suddenly altered its plan, and transferred its hostility to the panda. it saw that the latter was within reach: for half blinded by the beak of the bird, and half worried to death by the dog, the creature did not perceive, as fritz had done, the approach of the elephant. it is possible it may have seen the danger, but not until the elephant had got in such dangerous proximity as left it no chance of escape. before the panda could make the slightest effort to get away from the ground, the elephant had lapped its prehensile proboscis around it, and lifted it into the air as if its body had been no heavier than a feather. holding it aloft, the merciless monster took several long strides in the direction of the fallen obelisk; and then, as if choosing a spot suitable for its design, it placed the still struggling body of the panda upon the ground, set its huge fore-feet upon it, and using them alternately, continued to trample it until the only vestige left of the crushed creature was a shapeless mass of fur and flesh! it was a painful spectacle to those in the tree; but it was succeeded by a sight that was pleasant to all three--the sight of the elephant's hind quarters as it walked off toward the woods, evidently with the intention of retiring from the ground. whether its vengeance had been satisfied by the destruction of the panda, or whether it had gone off in search of fritz, none of the three could conjecture; but whatever may have been the motive, certain it is that it guided the rogue from the spot, and raised a siege that was on the point of becoming exceedingly irksome. chapter eighteen. "death to the rogue." as soon as the elephant was fairly out of sight, the besieged took counsel among themselves about descending to the earth. they were sorely tired of the positions which they had been so long constrained to keep; for, to tell the truth, sitting astride upon the hard branch of a tree, though easy enough for a short spell, becomes in time so painful as to be almost unendurable. caspar especially had grown impatient of this irksome inaction; and highly exasperated at the _rogue_ who was forcing it upon them. several times had he been on the point of forsaking his perch, and stealing down for his gun; but karl, each time perceiving his design, very prudently persuaded him to forego it. all were anxious enough to get out of the tree; and they would have vacated their sents at once on the disappearance of their dreaded enemy, had they been certain that he was gone for good; but they were suspicious that it might be only a temporary absence--perhaps some _ruse_ of the rogue to decoy them down: for elephants of this character have been known to practise tricks with almost as much cunning as rogues among men. while holding counsel as to how they had best act, ossaroo cut short their deliberations by volunteering to descend first; and by stealing a short way along the track which the elephant had taken, ascertain whether he was really gone from the ground, or only tying in ambush near the skirt of the forest. as the shikaree could creep through underwood as silently as a snake, there could be no great danger in his doing this, provided he did not go too far. he could not fail to see the elephant before approaching too near to it; and in the event of its turning and pursuing him, he could once more flee to their tree-fortress. he scarcely waited for the consent of his companions; but, immediately after conceiving the idea, he let himself down among the branches; and once on the ground, glided hurriedly, but cautiously, off in the direction taken by the elephant. karl and caspar stayed some five minutes longer upon their perch; but the shikaree not returning as soon as they had expected, they became impatient, and also dropped down from the tree. their first act was to recover their guns, and reload them; and then, taking stand in a position from which, in case of being suddenly attacked, they could easily spring back among the branches, they awaited the return of ossaroo. a considerable time elapsed, without their either seeing or hearing aught of the shikaree. indeed they heard nothing: for a complete silence reigned around them, broken only now and then by the fluttering of the wings of the old male hornbill--who was still keeping in the neighbourhood of the nest, apparently puzzled to make out by what mysterious combination of circumstances he had been so abruptly disembarrassed of his adversary, the panda. the movements of the bird had no longer any interest for karl and caspar--who were beginning to grow uneasy at the prolonged absence of ossaroo. soon after, however, they were relieved from their suspense, by seeing the shikaree emerging from the underwood, and advancing at a quick pace to the open ground. they had the additional pleasure of beholding fritz following at his heels. the dog had joined ossaroo near the edge of the timber--where he had been quietly secreting himself from the eyes of the dreaded elephant. as ossaroo drew near, both karl and caspar noticed an expression upon his countenance, which, combined with his hurried advance, told that he had something of an important nature to communicate. "well, ossy," asked caspar, who was the first to speak, "what news? have you seen anything more of the rogue?" "ah, rogue indeed!" replied ossaroo, in a tone expressive of some secret fear. "you speakee true, sahib; the rogue, if he no worse." "why, what now? have you seen anything since you left us?" "seen, sahibs! where you tinkee he now gone?" "where?" "hee go for de hut." "for the hut?" "straight trackee. ah, sahibs!" continued the shikaree, speaking in a low voice and with an air of superstitious terror; "dat animal too wise for dis world; he know too much. i fear him be no elephan' after all, but only de devil, who hab takee elephan' shape. why he go back there?" "ah! why, i wonder," inquired caspar. "do you think," added he, "it is in the hope of finding us there? if that's his purpose," he continued, without waiting for a reply, "we shall have no peace so long as he remains alive. we must either kill him, or he will do as much for us." "sahibs," observed the hindoo, with a significant shake of the head, "we no able killee him; that elephan' he nebba die." "oh, nonsense, ossy! if that's what you mean," rejoined caspar, disdainfully repudiating the superstitious belief of the shikaree; "there is not much doubt of our being able to kill him, if we once get a fair shot; and by my word, the sooner we set about it the better. it's evident, from his having gone back to our hut, that he has some wicked design. very likely he remembers being first attacked there by fritz; and as he may be under the belief that the dog has retreated there, he is gone in search of him. ho, fritz, old fellow! you needn't be afraid. you can easily get out of his way, whenever you like. your masters are in more danger than you, my boy." "you are sure, ossaroo," said karl, who had stood for some time silently reflecting, "you are sure he has gone to the hut?" in reply to this interrogation, ossaroo would not state positively that he had seen the elephant arrive on the very spot where the hovel stood; but he had followed his track through the belt of heavy timber; and then, having climbed a tree, had descried the great quadruped moving in the direction of the hut. he had no doubt it was for that point he was making, though with what design ossaroo could not guess--his superstitious dread having hindered him from venturing upon any conjecture. "one thing is clear," said karl, after another interval spent in reflection: "it will be no list our attempting to continue the survey we have commenced, until the elephant be got out of the way. what you say, brother caspar, is quite true. now that he has become aware of our presence, and has, moreover, been roused to fury by the wounds we have given him, it is not likely he will forget what has passed; and we can hope for neither peace nor safety till we have succeeded in destroying him. there is no reason why we should not set about it at once, but every reason why we should. our very lives depend upon his destruction; and they will not be safe till that has been accomplished." "let us after him at once, then," cried caspar; "and be our motto, `_death to the rogue_'!" chapter nineteen. a home in ruins. without further delay, our adventurers took the back track towards the hut, which was exactly that which the elephant had taken--as they could tell by traces of the animal all along the route, which the experienced eye of the shikaree had already discovered, and which he now pointed out to his companions as they passed on. here and there its great footprints were visible in the turf, in places where the ground was soft; and at other places where no tracks appeared, leaves and twigs freshly strewn upon the earth, and also branches of considerable size broken off from the trees, and borne for some distance before being dropped, clearly indicated to ossaroo the route which the rogue had taken. the shikaree had often followed the spoor of wild elephants through the jungles of bengal, and knew everything about their way of travelling. he was therefore able to tell the others that the rogue had not been browsing as he went--for the leaves and twigs showed no signs of his teeth--but on the contrary, he had moved forward rapidly, and as if with some special determination. the broken branches which they saw were more likely to have been torn off out of spite at the ill-usage he had received, and the disappointment at not having succeeded in his purposes of vengeance. it did not need for ossaroo to caution his companions to circumspection. they knew as well as he that an elephant enraged as this one was, whether a _rogue_ elephant or an _honest_ one, was anything but a safe customer to come in contact with; and that this particular rogue was most particularly angry they had just had both ocular and auricular evidence. they went forward, therefore, with unusual caution, taking care to keep both their eyes and ears on the alert, and at the same time moving in perfect silence, or conversing only in whispers. the path upon which they were returning was not that by which they had gone forth. the reconnoissance of the cliffs had carried them a good distance around the edge of the valley; but now they were following the track taken by the elephant, which, as already ascertained by ossaroo, led almost in a direct line to the hut. as they drew nearer to their rude habitation, they saw indications that the enemy was still before them. as they knew that in the immediate neighbourhood of the hot-spring, and consequently of the hut itself, there were no large trees or other place of safety to which they might retreat in case of being again attacked, they began to advance with increased caution. from the direction in which they were approaching, the hovel could not be seen until they should get within less than two hundred yards of it. there was a belt of rather tall jungle to be passed through, and then it would be in sight. through this jungle they commenced advancing; and there, to their no slight uneasiness, they also observed fresh traces of the elephant. they were now certain that he had passed through it before them, still going direct for the hut. what on earth can he want there? was the query that once more suggested itself to the minds of all three. it certainly looked as if he had proceeded there in search of _them_! as if, missing them from the scene of the encounter, he believed they had returned home, and was following up their acquaintance. from what they had observed, they could not help attributing to the great quadruped the possession of an intelligence something more than natural; and this, though it may have been only an absurd fancy on their part, had the effect of begetting within their minds a very painful feeling of apprehension. what they saw on coming out on the other side of the jungle not only strengthened this feeling of apprehension, but increased it all at once to a positive terror. the hut, which should now have been before their eyes, and at a distance of not quite two hundred paces, _was no longer there_! the ruins of it alone were visible. the large boulders with which its walls had been built, the beams and thatch that had composed its roof, the grass couches upon which they had slept, the rude improvised utensils and other articles which had served them for furniture, were all strewed far and wide over the ground; and not the semblance of a house, or even hovel, remained to show that the spot had been occupied by a human habitation! yes--in what had been their rude dwelling our adventurers beheld only a ruder ruin--scarce one stone standing upon, another! they beheld all this with feelings of fear--ay, something stronger--with awe. the pagan worshipper of brahma or vishnu was no longer alone in his superstitious imaginings. his young christian companions were almost equally victims to a belief in the supernatural. they comprehended well enough what had caused the destruction of the house. though the author of that mischief was nowhere to be seen, they knew it was the elephant. there was no alternative but to accept that explanation; and it was not the act itself that was awing them, but the contemplation of the human-like, or rather demon-like, intelligence that had guided the animal thither, and instructed it to this act of retribution, perhaps only preliminary to a still greater one. though the work of devastation could not have been completed many minutes before their arrival, the elephant appeared to have gone away from the ground. at east, it was not to be seen anywhere near the spot; and it is needless to say that it was carefully looked for. dreading its dangerous proximity, they had kept under cover of the bushes while contemplating the ruin from a distance; and it was not until after a considerable interval had elapsed that they ventured forward over the open space to ascertain the full extent of the damage. this they at length did, and found that it was _total_ destruction. so far as the hut was concerned, not a vestige of construction remained-- walls and roof had been alike levelled with the ground. but what was a greater source of chagrin to the now homeless plant-hunters, was that their little store of ammunition--the gunpowder, which during all the period of their imprisonment they had been carefully hoarding--was spilled among the rubbish, and of course irrecoverable. it had been deposited in a large gourd-shell prepared for the purpose; and this, among other similar chattels, the enraged quadruped had crushed under its feet. their cured provisions had also been turned out from their place of deposit, and trampled into the dust of the earth. but this, though also a chagrin, was one of less bitterness. other provisions might be obtained--not now so easily, since the powder was destroyed-- but the latter they could not replace. chapter twenty. up a tree again! they might have remained longer on the ground lamenting this irreparable loss, but that they were still apprehensive of the return of the elephant. whither had it gone? that was the question which one was addressing to the other, while the eyes of all kept turning in different directions, and with glances that betrayed their uneasiness. the rogue could not have been off the ground more than a very few minutes: the grass that he had trampled down was still wet with its own sap, crushed out by his ponderous weight. and yet he might have been seen all around for nearly a quarter of a mile's distance. there was no timber within that distance that could have given concealment to an animal so bulky as an elephant? so thought karl and caspar; but ossaroo was of a different opinion. the bit of jungle through which they had passed would suffice to screen the rogue, said he: adding at the same time a piece of intelligence derived from his shikaree experience: that an elephant, large as it is, can hide in a slight cover with wonderful cunning; that its sagacity enables it to select the best place for concealment; and that, although it neither crouches nor squats, it contrives, by keeping perfectly still--added to the circumstance of its being a shapeless sort of mass--ofttimes to elude the eye of the most vigilant hunter. though karl and caspar could scarcely credit him, ossaroo expressed his belief, not only that the elephant might be hid in the scant jungle they were talking about, but that it actually _was_ there. unfortunately for them, ossaroo's argument was too soon to be supported by facts which left no doubt of its accuracy. as they stood scanning the jungle with keen glances, and with ears acutely bent to catch every sound that might issue from it, a movement was perceptible among the tops of some tall saplings that grew near its centre. in the next moment a brace of the beautiful argus pheasants rose on whirring wing, at the same time giving forth their loud note of alarm. the birds, forsaking the jungle, in their flight passed over the heads of our adventurers, and by their cries caused such a clangour as to set fritz off into a prolonged fit of baying. whether it was that the enemy had been only lying in ambush, waiting for a good opportunity to charge, or whether the voice of the dog--already known and hated--had been just then heard by the elephant, stirring him to a fresh thirst for vengeance, certain it is, that before a sentence could be exchanged among the terrified trio, the long conical trunk and broad massive shoulders were visible through the scanty jungle; and it was plain to all that the monster was making towards them with that deceptive shamble which, though only a walk, carries the huge quadruped over the ground almost with the speed of a galloping horse. for a moment our adventurers stood their ground--not, however, with any idea of awaiting the attack or attempting to repel it; but simply because they knew not in what direction to retreat. so dismayed were they at the sight of the advancing enemy, that it was some seconds before any of the three could suggest a plan that offered a prospect of escape. rather mechanically than otherwise did karl and caspar bring their pieces to the level, with the intention of firing in the face of the foe: for they had but little hope that the lead from their guns, both of light calibre, would stop his impetuous charge. both fired at the same instant; and then caspar delivered his second shot; but, just as they had expected, the elephant continued to charge onward. fortunately for them, the shikaree had not condescended to draw the string of his bow. experience had taught him that under such circumstances an arrow was an useless weapon. he might as well have attempted to kick the elephant, or stick a pin into its trunk; either of which proceedings would have damaged the animal nearly as much, and perhaps irritated it a little less, than would one of ossaroo's arrows. knowing this, the shikaree, instead of bothering himself with his bow, or wasting time by any thoughts of resistance, had occupied the few seconds left for consideration in a rapid reconnoissance of the neighbourhood--to see if it offered any chance of escape. to tell the truth, the vicinity appeared rather unpromising. the cliffs offered no ledge upon which they might have climbed out of reach of the rogue, the jungle might have afforded them a temporary shelter; but although it had concealed the elephant from their eyes, it could not long conceal them from the eyes of such a sagacious creature as their antagonist appeared to be. besides, the elephant was between them and it, and to retreat in that direction would be to run point blank upon its proboscis! fortunately in this moment of uncertainty and irresolution a point of safety appeared to the eye of the shikaree, in the shape of a tree--the only one near the spot. it was a tree that had already been instrumental in saving his life: for it was the same that stood by the little straits where ossaroo had set his nets, and by means of which caspar had been enabled to hoist him up out of the quicksand. this tree was a very large one; and standing alone, its branches, free to extend their growth, had spread far out in every direction, almost stretching across the straits. ossaroo wasted not the precious moments in idle reflection, but shouting to the young sahibs, and signalling them to follow his example, he struck off towards the tree with all the speed that lay in his legs; and not till he had got up to the third or fourth tier of branches did he look behind him, to see whether his advice had been taken. the young sahibs had adopted his suggestion with alacrity, without staying a moment to question its propriety; and both were up the tree almost as soon as the shikaree himself. chapter twenty one. an implacable besieger. fritz had retreated with his masters as far as the bottom of the tree; but possessing only canine claws, he was not a climber; and of course could follow them no further. but if he could not ascend the tree, he had no intention of remaining under it--when he saw no chance of avoiding the vengeance of the elephant--and, without pausing for a moment, he plunged into the water, and swam across the straits. then wading out on the the opposite bank, he scuttled off into a cover of reeds which grew along the shore of the lake, and there concealed himself. this time the elephant paid no attention to the dog. it was upon the hunters alone that its eyes were fixed; and towards them its vindictive designs were now specially directed. it had been close upon their heels, as they ran over the open ground, and distinctly saw them ascending into the tree. indeed, so near was it, that both karl and caspar were once more obliged to let go their guns, in order that they might have both hands free for climbing. otherwise they might have been too late to get out of reach, and the least delay on their part might have been fatal to one or both. karl was the last to climb up; and just as he lifted his feet from a branch to set them on one higher up, the rogue twisted his trunk around the former, and snapped it in two, as if it had been only a slender reed. but karl, with the others, was now beyond his reach; and all three congratulated themselves on once more having escaped from a danger that was nothing short of death itself. if possible, the elephant was now more enraged than ever. it had not only been a second time baulked in its vengeance, but had received three fresh bullet-wounds; which, though mere scratches upon the skin of its huge cranium, were sore enough to irritate it to an extreme degree. uttering its shrill, trumpet-like screech, it flourished its proboscis high in the air; and seizing the branches that were within its reach, it snapped them off from the main stem as if they had been tiny twigs. in a short time the tree, which had been furnished with low-spreading limbs, was completely stripped of these to a height of nearly twenty-feet from the ground; while the space underneath had become strewn with twigs, leaves, and broken branches, crushed into a litter under the broad, ponderous hooves of the mammoth as he kept moving incessantly over them. not content with stripping the tree of its branches, the old tusker seized hold of its trunk--lapping his own _trunk_ as far as he could around it--and commenced tugging at it, as if he had hopes of being able to drag it up by the roots. perceiving after trial that this feat was beyond his power, he relaxed his hold, and then set about another experiment--that of pushing down the tree with his shoulder. although he succeeded in causing the tree to tremble, he soon became satisfied that it stood firm enough to resist all his strength, great as it was: and under this conviction he at length desisted from the attempt. he showed no sign, however, of any intention to leave the ground; but, on the contrary, took his stand under the tree: since the very opposite was the determination which he had formed in his mind. although confident that they were in security, our adventurers were anything but exultant. they saw that they were only safe for the time; and, that although their dreaded adversary might after a while withdraw and leave them free to descend, still there could be no security for the future. they had now less hope of being able to destroy this powerful enemy: as they had only one charge left for their guns, and that might not be sufficient to take away his life. the spilling of their powder by the elephant itself seemed like a piece of strategy on his part, leaving them in a sad dilemma. inside any house they might build, they would be no better protected against him than on the open ground: for the rogue had proved himself capable of demolishing the strongest walls they might construct; and to be out of his reach, they would be obliged to keep eternally among the tops of the trees, and lead the life of monkeys or squirrels--which would be a very disagreeable kind of existence. just then an idea occurred to caspar that offered them an alternative to this unpleasant prospect of an arboreal life. he bethought him of the cave in which they had killed the bear. it could only be reached by a ladder, and would of course be inaccessible to the elephant. once out of their present dilemma, they might seek refuge there. chapter twenty two. drawing their drink. the idea about the cave was a good one, and gave them some little comfort in the midst of their tribulation. still, it was not much; for although they would be safe enough while in the cavern, they could not accomplish anything there. the want of light would hinder them from working at the ladders; and while cutting the timber out of which to make them, and every hour that they might be engaged upon them, they would be exposed to the attacks of their implacable enemy. the prospect was sufficiently discouraging--even with the knowledge that the cave would offer them a safe asylum to which they could retreat whenever pursued. as the elephant remained comparatively tranquil for a length of time, these thoughts of future operations had engaged their attention. confident in their present security, they were not troubled by the fear of any immediate danger. very soon, however, this confidence began to forsake them. how long were they going to be kept in the tree? that was a question that now presented itself; and as the time passed, became a source of uneasiness. though none of them could answer this question, yet all could understand that the siege promised to be a long one--perhaps much longer than that which had so lately been raised: for the rogue, inspired by a rage profound and implacable, exhibited in his sullen look a determination to stand his ground for an indefinite period of time. seeing this, our adventurers once more became uneasy. not only was their situation irksome--from the fact of their having to sit astride slender branches-- but should the siege be continued, they would be subjected to that danger peculiar to all people besieged--the danger of starvation. even at the outset all three were as hungry as wolves. they had eaten but a very light breakfast, and nothing since: for they had not found time to cook dinner. it was now late in the afternoon; and should the enemy continue there all night, they would have to go to bed supperless. ah! to bed indeed. perhaps there would be neither bed nor sleep that night: for how could they slumber upon those hard branches? should they lose consciousness for a moment, they would drop off, and tumble down upon their sleepless besieger! even should they tie themselves in the tree, to go to sleep upon such narrow couches would be out of the question. thus, then, they saw no prospect of either supper or sleep for that night. but there was another appetite now annoying them far worse than either hunger or longing for sleep. it was the desire to drink. the rough and varied exercise which they had been compelled to take since starting in the morning--climbing trees, and skulking through pathless jungles--combined with the varied emotions which their repeated perils had called up--all had a tendency to produce thirst; and thirst they now felt in an extreme degree. it was not lessened by the sight of the water shining beneath them. on the contrary, this only increased the craving to an extent that was almost unendurable. for a considerable time they bore the pain, without any hope of being able to get relieved of it; and with the lake glistening before their eyes under the clear sunlight, and the current gently gliding through the straits underneath, they could realise, in something more than fancy, what must have been the terrible sufferings of poor tantalus. after submitting to this infliction for a considerable length of time, an exclamation escaping from caspar drew upon him the attention of the others. "dunder und blitzen!" cried he; "what have we been thinking about all this time? the three of us sitting here choking with thirst, and a river of water within our reach!" "within our reach? i wish it were, caspar," rejoined karl, in rather a desponding tone. "certainly it is within our reach. look here!" as caspar spoke, he held out his copper powder-flask, now nearly empty. karl did not yet quite comprehend him. "what is to hinder us from letting this down," he inquired, "and drawing it up again full of water? nothing. have you a piece of string about you, ossy?" "yes, sahib, i have," briskly replied the shikaree, at the same time drawing a roll of hempen twist out of the breast of his cotton shirt, and holding it out towards the young hunter. "long enough, it is," said caspar, taking the cord; which the next moment he attached around the neck of the flask. after pouring the powder into his bullet-pouch, he permitted the flask to drop down till it became immersed under the current. allowing it to remain there, till it had become filled with water, he drew it up again; and with a congratulatory exclamation presented it to karl, telling him to drink to his heart's content. this injunction karl obeyed without the slightest reluctance. the flask was soon emptied; and once more let down and re-filled, and again emptied; and this series of operations was continued, until all were satisfied, and there was no longer a thirsty individual in the top of that tree. chapter twenty three. a gigantic syringe. having by caspar's ingenious artifice obtained as much water as they wanted, the besieged felt better able to endure their irksome situation. they were resigning themselves with as much philosophy as they could command to bear it a little longer, when to their great astonishment they were treated to more water than they wanted, and from a source as curious as was unexpected. whether the elephant had taken a hint from seeing the flask plunged down into the water, or whether the idea had occurred to it without being suggested by anything in particular, it would be difficult to say. certain it is, that just after the last flask-full had been pulled up, and before the eddying ripples had subsided from the surface, the rogue was seen to make a rush into the water, at the same time deeply submerging his proboscis, as if about to take a drink. for some moments he remained in a stationary attitude, apparently filling his capacious stomach with the fluid. there was no reason why he should not be as thirsty as themselves; and the spectators in the tree had no other thought, than that the great quadruped had waded into the pool simply for the purpose of quenching his thirst. there was something about his movements, however, and the style in which he had set about sucking up the water, which betrayed a different determination; and it was not long before this was evinced by a performance which, under other circumstances, might have evoked laughter from those who witnessed it. in this instance, however, the spectators were themselves the victims of the joke--if joke it might be termed--and during its continuance, not one of the three felt the slightest inclination to indulge in mirth. it was thus that the elephant acted:-- having filled its trunk with the water of the stream, it raised it aloft. then pointing it towards the tree, and even directing it with as much coolness and precision as an astronomer would have used in adjusting his telescope, it sent the fluid in a drenching stream into the faces of the three individuals whom it was holding in siege. all three, who chanced to be sitting close together, were at the same instant, and alike, the victims of this unexpected deluge; and before any of them could have counted half a score, they were wet from head to foot, every rag upon their backs, and fronts too, becoming as thoroughly saturated as if they had been exposed for hours to a drenching rain storm! but the elephant was not satisfied with giving them a single shower-bath. as soon as its first supply was exhausted, it once more immersed its pliant sucker, re-filled the reservoir, took a good aim, and ejected the fluid into their faces. in this way the creature continued drawing up the water from the stream, and squirting it from its vast muscular syringe, until it had douched them nearly a dozen times. their situation was anything but enviable; for the watery stream, propelled against them with as much force as from the hose-pipe of a fire-engine, almost washed them from their unstable seats; to say nothing of the great discomfort which the douche occasioned them. it would be difficult to guess what could be the object of the elephant in this curious performance. perhaps it may have conceived a hope either of driving them out of the tree, or forcibly washing them from the branches; or perhaps it merely designed to make their situation as uncomfortable as possible, and thus to some extent satisfy its spite. it would be equally difficult to tell how long the performance might have lasted. perhaps for hours longer--since the supply of water was inexhaustible; but it was brought to a conclusion which neither the great pachyderm himself foresaw, nor they who were the subjects of his aqueous dispensation. chapter twenty four. swallowed wholesale. just while it was in the midst of its performance, keeping its _water-battery_ in full play, and apparently with malicious enjoyment, it was seen all at once to desist; and then its huge body commenced rocking from side to side, one shoulder now upheaving, then the other, while the long trunk was swept in circles through the air, at the same time emitting, instead of water, shrill sounds that proclaimed either pain or terror. what could it mean? the quadruped was evidently smitten with some sudden fear; but who and what was the enemy it dreaded? so mentally inquired karl and caspar; but before either had time to shape his thought into an interrogative speech, the shikaree had answered it. "he-ho!" he exclaimed. "goot! vair goot!--praise to the god of the great gangee! see, sahibs, the rogue he go down, down--he sinkee in de quicksand that near swalley ossaroo; he-ho; sinkee! he sinkee!" karl and caspar easily comprehended the meaning of ossaroo's broken but exultant speeches. bending their eyes on the brute below, and watching its movements, they at once perceived that the shikaree had spoken the truth. the elephant was evidently sinking in the quicksand! they had noticed that when it first entered the bed of the stream, the water had not reached far above its knees. now it was up to its sides, and slowly but gradually rising higher. its violent struggles, moreover--the partial and alternate raising of its shoulders, its excited shrieks--and the proboscis, rapidly extended now to this side, now to that, as if searching to grasp some support--all proved the truth of ossaroo's assertion--the rogue was sinking in the quicksand. and rapidly was the creature going down. before the spectators had been watching it five minutes, the water lapped up nearly to the level of its back, and then inch by inch, and foot by foot, it rose higher, until the round shoulders were submerged, and only the head and its long trumpet-like extension appeared above the surface. soon the shoulders ceased to play; and the vast body exhibited no other motion, save that gentle descent by which it was being drawn down into the bowels of the earth! the trunk still kept up its vibratory movement, now violently beating the water into foam, and now feebly oscillating, all the while breathing forth its accents of agony. at length the upturned head and smooth protuberant jaws sank beneath the surface; and only the proboscis appeared, standing erect out of the water like a gigantic bologna sausage. it had ceased to give out the shrill trumpet scream; but a loud breathing could still be heard, interrupted at intervals by a gurgling sound. karl and caspar kept their seats upon the tree, looking down upon the strange scene with feelings of awe depicted in their faces. not so the shikaree, who was no longer aloft. as soon as he had seen the elephant fairly locked in the deadly embrace of that quicksand that had so nearly engulfed his own precious person, he lowered himself nimbly down from the branches. for some moments he stood upon the bank, watching the futile efforts which the animal was making to free itself, all the while talking to it, and taunting it with spiteful speeches--for ossaroo had been particularly indignant at the loss of his skirt. when at length the last twelve inches of the elephant's trunk was all that remained above the surface, the shikaree could hold back no longer. drawing his long knife, he rushed out into the water; and, with one clean cut, severed the muscular mass from its supporting stem, as a sickle would have levelled some soft succulent weed. the parted tube sank instantly to the bottom; a few red bubbles rose to the surface; and these were the last tokens that proclaimed the exit of that great elephant from the surface of the earth. it had gone down into the deep sands, there to become fossilised--perhaps after the lapse of many ages to be turned up again by the spade and pick-axe of some wondering quarry-man. thus by a singular accident were our adventurers disembarrassed of a disagreeable neighbour--or rather, a dangerous enemy--so dangerous, indeed, that had not some chance of the kind turned up in their favour, it is difficult to conjecture how they would have got rid of it. it was no longer a question of pouring bullets into its body, and killing it in that way. the spilling of their powder had spoiled that project; and the three charges that still remained to them might not have been sufficient with guns of so small a calibre as theirs. no doubt in time such gallant hunters as caspar and ossaroo, and so ingenious a contriver as karl, would have devised some way to circumvent the rogue, and make an end of him; but for all that they were very well pleased at the strange circumstance that had relieved them of the necessity, and they congratulated themselves on such a fortunate result. on hearing them talking together, and perceiving that they were no longer in the tree, fritz, who had all this while been skulking only a few paces from the spot, now emerged from his hiding-place, and came running up. little did fritz suspect, while swimming across the straits to rejoin his masters, that the huge quadruped which had so frequently given him chase was at that moment so very near him; and that his own claws, while cutting the water, came within an inch of scratching that terrible trunk, now _truncated_ to a _frustrum_ of its former self! but although fritz had no knowledge of strange incident that had occurred during his absence--and may have been wondering in what direction the enemy had gone off--while swimming across the straits, the red colour of the water at a particular place, or more likely the scent of blood upon it, admonished him that some sanguinary scene had transpired; and drew from him a series of excited yelps as he buoyantly breasted the wave. fritz came in for a share of the congratulations. although the faithful creature had retreated on each occasion of his being attacked, no one thought of casting a slur upon his canine courage. he had only exhibited a wise discretion: for what chance would he have stood against such a formidable adversary? he had done better, therefore, by taking to his heels; for had he foolishly stood his ground, and got killed in the first encounter by the obelisk, the elephant might still have been alive, and besieging them in the tree. besides, it was fritz who had sounded the first note of warning, and thus given time to prepare for the reception of the assailant. all of the party regarded fritz as worthy of reward; and ossaroo had made up his mind that he should have it, in the shape of a dinner upon elephant's trunk. but in wading back into the stream, the shikaree perceived to his chagrin that the brave dog must be disappointed: since the piece which he had so skilfully lopped off, had followed the fortunes of the part from which it had been severed, and was now far below the surface of the sand! ossaroo made no attempt to dig it up again. he had a wholesome dread of that treacherous footing; and treading it gingerly, he lost no time in returning to the bank, and following the sahibs--who had already taken their departure from the water's edge, and were proceeding in the direction of the ruined hut. chapter twenty five. the deodar. the idea that had occurred to them--of making the cave their home--was no longer deemed worthy of being entertained. the dangerous proximity of the elephant had alone suggested it; and this no longer existed. it was not likely that there was another _rogue_ in the valley. indeed, ossaroo was able to set their minds at rest on this point--assuring them that two animals of the kind are never found occupying the same district: since two creatures of such malignant dispositions would certainly enact the tragedy of the kilkenny cats--though ossaroo did not illustrate his meaning by quoting this celebrated expression. possibly there might be other animals in the neighbourhood as much to be dreaded as the elephant had been. there might be panthers, or leopards, or tigers, or even another bear; but against any of these the cave would be no safe asylum--not safer than their old hut. they could reconstruct it more strongly than ever; and put a stout door upon it to keep out any midnight intruder; and to this work did they apply themselves as soon as they had eaten dinner, and dried their garments--so thoroughly saturated by the colossal syringe of the defunct elephant. several days were spent in restoring the hovel--this time with considerable improvements. the winter weather had now fairly set in; and household warmth had become an important object: so that not only did they fill up the chinks with a thick coating of clay, but a fireplace and chimney were constructed, and a strong door was added. they knew that it would take them a long time to make the ladders--more than a dozen long ladders--each of which must be light as a reed and straight as an arrow. during the milder days of winter they might work in the open air; indeed, the greater part of their work they must needs do outside the hut. still it would be necessary to have shelter not only during the nights, but in times of storm and severe weather. prudence therefore counselled them to providence; and before proceeding farther with their design of scaling the cliff, they made all snug within doors. they had no fear of suffering from the winter's cold--either for want of clothing by day, or covering by night. some of the yak-skins were still in good preservation--with the pelts of several other animals that had fallen before the double-barrel of caspar--and these would suffice for warm clothing by day and bed-covering by night. about their winter's food they were a little more anxious. the elephant had succeeded not only in destroying their means of obtaining provisions, but had also damaged the stock which was on hand, by trampling it in the mud. those portions of the dried venison and yak-beef that the brute had not succeeded in completely spoiling, were once more collected, and stored in a safe place; while it was resolved, in the event of their not being able to procure more, that they should go on rations proportioned to the time which they might have to continue in their rock-bound prison. of course, though their ammunition was exhausted, they were not without hopes of being able to add to their store of provisions. the arrows of ossaroo still existed, independent of either powder or lead. snares and traps would enable them to capture many of the wild creatures that, like themselves, appeared to have found a prison in that secluded and singular valley. when all the arrangements regarding their winter residence were completed, they returned once more to the survey of the cliffs, which had been interrupted by the elephant. after a prolonged examination of the ledges, that had been discovered on that eventful day, they continued on until they had made the circuit of the valley. not a foot of the precipice was passed without the most elaborate inspection being bestowed upon it; and of course the twin cliffs which hemmed in the gorge of the glacier were examined with the rest. there proved to be no place offering such advantages for an ascent by ladders as that already discovered; and although there was no positive certainty that they might be able to accomplish their formidable task, they determined to make a trial, and without further delay set about preparing the ladders. the preliminary step was to select and cut down a sufficient quantity of timber of the right length. they were about to have recourse to the beautiful thibet pine--the sort which had served them for bridging the crevasse--when a new tree was discovered by them, equally beautiful, and more suitable for their purpose. it was the cedar (_pinus deodara_). ossaroo once more lamented the absence of his beloved bamboos--alleging that with a sufficient number of these he could have made ladders enough for scaling the cliff, in less than a quarter of the time it would take to construct them out of the pines. this was no exaggeration: for the culm of the great bamboo, just as it is cut out of the brake, serves for the side of a ladder, without any pains taken with it, further than to notch out the holes in which to insert the rounds. moreover, the bamboo being light, would have served better than any other timber for such ladders as they required--enabling them with less trouble to get them hoisted up to the ledges--an operation in which they apprehended no little difficulty. but although there was a species of cane growing in the valley--that known to the hill people as the "ringall"--its culms were neither of sufficient length nor thickness for their purpose. it was the great bamboo of the tropical jungles that ossaroo sighed for; and which on their way up through the lower ranges of the himalayas they had seen growing in vast brakes, its tall stems often rising to the height of a hundred feet. the deodar, under favourable circumstances, attains to vast dimensions, trunks being often met with in the mountains upwards of ten feet in diameter, and rising to the height of one hundred feet. a few sticks of this description would have made their labour both short and easy. failing the bamboo, therefore, they selected the second best material which the forest afforded them--the tall "deodar." this tree, which is known to the anglo-indian residents of the himalayan countries as the "cedar," has long since been introduced into english parks and arboretums, under the name of _deodara_--its specific botanical appellation. it is a true pine and is found in most of the hills and valleys of the himalayan chain, growing at almost any elevation and on any kind of ground--in the low warm valleys, as well as near the line of everlasting snow. its favourite habitat, however, is on the lower hills, and though by no means a beautiful tree, it is valuable on account of the great quantity of tar which can be extracted from its sap. where many deodar trees are growing together, they shoot up in long tapering shafts, with short branches, and present the acute conical form characteristic of the pines. when individual trees stand singly, or at some considerable distance apart, their habit is different. they then stretch out long massive arms in a horizontal direction; and as the separate twigs and leaves also extend horizontally, each branch thus presents a surface as level as a table. the deodar often reaches the height of one hundred feet. the wood of the deodar is everywhere esteemed throughout the countries where it is found. it is excellent for building purposes, easily worked, almost imperishable, and can be readily split into planks--an indispensable requisite in a country where saws are almost unknown. in cashmere, bridges are built of it: and the long time that some of these have been standing, affords a proof of its great durability. a portion of these bridges are under water for more than half the year; and although there are some of them nearly a hundred years old, they are still in good preservation, and safe enough to be crossed. when the deodar is subjected to the process by which tar is extracted from other pines, it yields a much thinner liquid than tar--of a dark red colour, and very pungent smell. this liquid is known as "cedar oil;" and is used by the hill people as a remedy for skin diseases--as also for all scrofulous complaints in cattle. the deodar is of very slow growth; and this unfits it for being introduced into european countries--except as an ornamental timber for parks and pleasure grounds. it was chiefly on account of its property of being easily split into planks, or pieces of light scantling, that the deodar was selected for making the sides of the ladders. to have cut down the trunks of heavy trees to the proper thickness for light ladders--with such imperfect implements as they were possessed of--would have been an interminable work for our inexperienced carpenters. the little axe of ossaroo and the knives were the only tools they possessed available for the work. as the deodar could be split with wedges, it was just the timber wanted under these circumstances. while engaged in "prospecting" among the deodar trees, a pine of another species came under the observation of our adventurers. it was that known as the "cheel." it might have been seen by them without attracting any particular notice, but for karl; who, upon examining its leaves, and submitting them to a botanical test, discovered that within the body of the "cheel" there existed qualities that, in the circumstances in which they were placed, would be of great value to them. karl knew that the "cheel" was one of those pines, the wood of which, being full of turpentine, make most excellent torches; and he had read, that for this very purpose it is used by all classes of people who dwell among the himalaya mountains, and who find in these torches a very capital substitute for candles or lamps. karl could also have told his companions, that the turpentine itself--which oozes out of the living tree--is used by the people as an ointment for sores--and that for chapped hands it is a speedy and effectual cure. the "cheel" pine is nearly always found side by side with the deodar--especially where the latter forms the chief growth of the forest. karl could also have informed them that the deodar and the cheel are not, the only pines indigenous to the himalayas. he could have mentioned several other species, as the "morenda," a large and handsome tree, with very dark foliage, and one of the tallest of the _coniferae_--often rising to the stupendous height of two hundred feet; the "rye" pine, of almost equal height with the morenda, and perhaps even more ornamental; and the "kolin," or common pine, which forms extensive forests, upon the ridges that rise from six to nine thousand feet above sea-level. the last thrives best in a dry, rocky soil and it is surprising in what places it will take root and grow. in the perpendicular face of a smooth granite rock, large trees of this species may be seen. in the rock there exists a little crevice. into this a seed in some manner finds its way, vegetates, and in time becomes a great tree--flourishing perhaps for centuries, where, to all appearance, there is not a particle of soil to nourish it, and probably deriving sustenance from the rock itself! it was with no slight gratification that karl beheld the "cheel" growing so near. he knew that from it they would obtain brilliant torches--as many as they might stand in need of; so that during the dark nights, instead of sitting idle for the want of light, they could occupy themselves till a late hour within the hovel, in making the "rounds" of the ladders, and doing such other little "chores" as the occasion might require. chapter twenty six. the scaling ladders. the cutting down of the trees did not occupy them a very long time. they chose only those of slender girth--the more slender the better, so long as they answered the requirements as to length. trees of about fifty feet in total height were the best: as these, when the weaker part of the tops was cut off, yielded lengths of thirty or more feet. where they were only a few inches in diameter, there was very little trouble in reducing them to the proper size for the sides of the ladders--only to strip off the bark and split them in twain. making the rounds was also an easy operation--except that it required considerable time, as there were so many of them. the most difficult part of the work--and this they had foreseen--would be the drilling of the holes to receive the rounds; and it was the task which proved the most dilatory--taking up more time in its accomplishment than both the cutting of the timber, and reducing it to its proper shapes and dimensions. had they owned an auger or a mortising chisel, or even a good gimlet, the thing would have been easy enough. easier still had they possessed a "breast bit." but of course not any of these tools could be obtained; nor any other by which a hole might be bored big enough to have admitted the points of their little fingers. hundreds of holes would be needed; and how were they to be made? with the blades of their small knives it would have been possible to scoop out a cavity--that is, with much trouble and waste of time; but vast time and trouble would it take to scoop out four hundred; and at least that number would be needed. it would be a tedious task and almost interminable, even supposing that it could be accomplished; but this was doubtful enough. the blades of the knives might be worn or broken, long before the necessary number of holes could be made. of course, had they been possessed of a sufficient number of nails, they might have done without holes. the steps of the ladders could have been nailed upon the sides, instead of being mortised into them. but nails were a commodity quite as scarce with them as tools. with the exception of those in the soles of their shoes, or the stocks of their guns, there was not a nail in the valley. it is not to be denied that they were in a dilemma. but karl had foreseen this difficulty, and provided against it before a stick of timber had been cut. indeed, close following on the first conception of the scaling ladders, this matter had passed through his mind, and had been settled to his satisfaction. only theoretically, it is true; but his theory was afterwards reduced to practice; and, unlike many other theories, the practice proved in correspondence with it. karl's theory was to make the holes by fire--in other words, to bore them with a red-hot iron. where was this iron to be obtained? that appeared to offer a difficulty, as great as the absence of an auger or a mortise-chisel. but by karl's ingenuity it was also got over. he chanced to have a small pocket pistol: it was single-barrelled, the barrel being about six inches in length, without any thimbles, beading, or ramrod attached to it. what karl intended to do, then, was to heat this barrel red-hot, and make a boring-iron of it. and this was exactly what he _did_ do; and after heating it some hundreds of times, and applying it as often to the sides of the different ladders, he at last succeeded in burning out as many holes as there were rounds to go into them, multiplied exactly by two. it is needless to say that this wonderful boring operation was not accomplished at a single "spell," nor yet in a single day. on the contrary, it took karl many an hour and many a day, and cost him many a wet skin--by perspiration, i mean--before he had completed the boring of those four hundred holes. numerous were the tears drawn from the eyes of the plant-hunter--not by grief, but by the smoke of the seething cedar wood. when karl had finished the peculiar task he had thus assigned to himself, but little more remained to be done--only to set each pair of sides together, stick in the rounds, bind fast at each end, and there was a ladder finished and ready to be scaled. one by one they were thus turned off; and one by one earned to the foot of the cliff, up which the ascent was to be _attempted_. sad are we to say that it was still only an attempt; and sadder yet that that attempt proved a failure. one by one were the ladders raised to their respective ledges--until three-fourths of the cliff had been successfully scaled. here, alas! was their climbing brought to a conclusion, by a circumstance up to this time unforeseen. on reaching one of the ledges--the fourth from the top of the cliff--they found, to their chagrin, that the rock above it, instead of receding a little, as with all the others, _hung over_-- projecting several inches beyond the outer line of the ledge. against that rock no ladder could have been set; none would have rested there-- since it could not be placed even perpendicularly. there was no attempt made to take one up. though the projection could not be discerned from below, karl, standing on the topmost round of the last ladder that had been planted, saw at once, with the eye of an engineer, that the difficulty was insurmountable. it would be as easy for them to fly, is to stand a ladder upon that ill-starred ledge; and with this conviction fully impressed upon his mind, the young plant-hunter returned slowly and sorrowfully to the ground to communicate the disagreeable intelligence to his companions. it was no use for either caspar or ossaroo to go up again. they had been on the ledge already; and had arrived at the same conviction. karl's report was final and conclusive. all their ingenuity defeated--all their toil gone for nothing--their time wasted--their hopes blighted--the bright sky of their future once more obscured with darkest clouds--all through that unforeseen circumstance. just as when they returned out of the cavern--after that patient but fruitless search--just as then, sate they down upon the rocks--each staggering to that which was nearest him--sad, dispirited, forlorn. there sate they, with eyes now fixed upon the ground, now turning towards the cliff and gazing mechanically upon that serried line, like the stairway of some gigantic spider--those long ladders, planted with so much pains, climbed only once, and never to be climbed again! chapter twenty seven. an empty larder. long sat they in this attitude, all three, observing a profound silence. the air was keenly cold, for it was now mid-winter, but none of them seemed to feel the cold. the deep disappointment, the bitter chagrin that filled their minds, hindered them from perceiving bodily pain; and at that moment had an avalanche threatened to slide down upon them from the snowy summit above, not one of the three would have much cared to escape out of its way. so tired had they become of their aerial prison--so terrified by the prospect of its continuing for ever--or at least as long as they might live--they could have contemplated even death without additional terror. the straw, to which they had so long and so fondly clung, was snatched from their grasp. again were they drowning. for nearly an hour sat they thus, moody and desponding. the purple-coloured tints, that began to play over the surface of the eternal snows above, admonished them that the sun was far down in the heavens, and that night was approaching. karl was the first to become conscious of this--the first to break silence. "oh, brothers!" said he, under the impress of their common misfortune including ossaroo in the fraternal appellation. "come away! it is useless to stay longer here. let us go home!" "home!" repeated caspar, with a melancholy smile. "ah! karl, i wish you had not spoken the word. so sweet at other times, it now rings in my ears like some unearthly echo. home, indeed! alas, dear brother! we shall ne'er go home." to this pathetic speech karl made no reply. he could offer no word of hope or consolation; and therefore remained silent. he had already risen to his feet--the others following his example--and all three walked moodily away from the spot, taking the most direct route towards their rude dwelling, which now more than ever they had reason to regard as their _home_. on reaching the hut they found still another cause of inquietude. their stock of provisions, which had survived the destructive onset of the elephant, had been economised with great care. but as they had been too busy in making the ladders to waste time on any other species of industry, nothing had been added to the larder--neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. on the contrary, it had dwindled down, until upon that clay when they issued forth to try their ladders against the cliff, they had left behind them only a single piece of dried yak-beef--about enough to have furnished them with a single meal. hungry after the day's fruitless exertion, they were contemplating a supper upon it, and not without some degree of pleasant anticipation: for nature under all circumstances will assert her rights, and the cravings of appetite are not to be stifled even by the most anguished suffering of the spirit. as they drew nearer to the hut, but more especially when they came in sight of it, and perceived its rude but hospitable doorway open to receive them--as from the chill atmosphere through which they were passing they beheld its sheltering roof of thatch, and thought of its snug, cosy interior--as, keenly experiencing the pangs both of cold and hunger, they beheld in fancy a bright faggot fire crackling upon the hearth, and heard the yak-beef hissing and sputtering in the blaze, their spirits began to return to their natural condition, and if not actual joy, something that very much resembled cheerfulness might have been observed in the demeanour of all. it is ever thus with the mind of man, and perhaps fortunate that it is so. the human soul finds its type in the sky--cloud and sunshine, sunshine and cloud. with our adventurers the dark cloud had for the moment passed; and a gleam of light was once more shining upon their hearts. it was not destined to shine long. a light had been struck, and a fire kindled that soon blazed brightly. so far one desire had been satisfied. they could warm themselves. but when they came to think of gratifying an appetite of a far more craving character--when they essayed to search for that piece of yak flesh that was to furnish forth their supper--they found it not! during their absence, the burglar had also been abroad. their larder had been assailed. the _hung_ beef was hanging there no longer. some wild animal--wolf, panther, or other predatory creature--had entered by the open doorway,--left open in the excitement of that hopeful departure--found open upon their return--but, like the door of that oft-quoted stable, not worth shutting, since the steed had been stolen. not a morsel, not a mouthful remained--either of yak-beef or food of any other kind--and all three, fritz making the fourth, had to go supperless to sleep. chapter twenty eight. going abroad for breakfast. the exertions which they had made in carrying and erecting the ladders had so wearied them, that, despite their empty stomachs, all three were able to sleep. their slumber, however, was neither profound nor prolonged; and one and another of them awoke at intervals during the night and lay awake, reflecting upon the miserable fate that had befallen them, and the poor prospects now before them. they were even without the ordinary consolation of knowing that they might find something to eat in the morning. before they could have any breakfast, they knew they would first have to find it in the forest. they would have to search, find, and kill, before they could eat. but they had reason now not only to be in doubt about procuring their breakfast, but their dinner and supper--in short, their whole future subsistence. circumstances had become changed. the larder, hitherto amply provided by caspar's hunting skill, was now quite empty; and although he could soon have replenished it had their ammunition not been destroyed, it was now quite a different thing. caspar's power was gone along with his powder; and the deer and other quadrupeds, which were known to be yet numerous in the valley--to say nothing of the winged creatures that frequented it, could now smile at any attempt on the part of caspar to trouble them any longer with his double-barrelled detonator. the gun would hereafter be as useless as a bar of iron. only one charge of powder for each barrel remained, and one more for karl's rifle. when these three should be fired off, not another shot might ever again be heard ringing through that silent valley, and waking the echoes of the surrounding cliffs. but it had not yet entered their minds that they might be unable to kill any of the wild animals with which the place abounded. had they thought so, they would have been unhappy indeed--perhaps so anxious as not to have slept another wink for that night. but they did not yet contemplate the future so despondingly. they hoped that, even without their guns, they would still be enabled to procure sufficient game for their support; and as they all lay awake, just before the breaking of the day, this became the subject of their conversation. ossaroo still felt full confidence in his bow and arrows; and should these fail, there was his fishing-net; and if that also were to draw blank, the experienced shikaree knew a score of other schemes for circumventing the beasts of the earth, the birds of the air, and the finny denizens of the water. karl expressed his determination, as soon as spring should return, to commence cultivating certain edible roots and plants, which grew rather sparsely around, but, by the careful propagation of which, a crop might be procured of sufficient abundance. moreover, they resolved that in the following year they should store up such wild fruits and berries as were fit for food; and thus insure themselves against any chance of famine for months to come. the failure of their late attempt with the ladders had reproduced within them the firm though fearful conviction, that for the rest of their lives they were destined to dwell within the mountain valley--never more to go beyond the bounds of that stupendous prison-like wall that encircled them. with this impression now freshly stamped upon their minds, they returned to speculate on the means of present existence, as also on that of their more immediate future; and in this way did they pass the last hour of the night--that which was succeeded by the daybreak. as the first streaks of dawning day appeared upon the snowy summits-- several of which were visible from the door of the hut--all three might have been seen outside preparing themselves for the execution of some important design. their purpose might easily be told from the character of their preparations. caspar was charging his double-barrelled gun; and carefully too--for it was the "last shot in his locker." karl was similarly employed with his rifle, while ossaroo was arming himself in his peculiar fashion, looking to the string of his bow, and filling the little wicker bag, that constituted his quiver, with sharp-pointed arrows. from this it was evident that the chase was the occupation immediately intended, and that all three were about to engage in it. in truth, they were going out in search of something for their breakfast; and if a keen appetite could ensure success, they could scarce fail in procuring it: for they were all three as hungry as wolves. fritz, too, was as hungry as any of them; and looked as if he meant to do his best in helping them to procure the material for a meal. any creature, beast or bird, that should be so unfortunate as to come within clutching distance of his gaunt jaws, would have but little chance on that particular morning of escaping from them. it had been resolved upon that they should go in different directions: as by that means there would be three chances of finding game instead of one; and as something was wanted for breakfast, the sooner it could be procured the better. if ossaroo should succeed in killing anything with his arrows, he was to give a shrill whistle to call the others back to the hut; while if either of them should fire, of course the shot would be heard, and that would be the signal for all to return. with this understanding, and after some little badinage about who would be the successful caterer, they all set forth, caspar going to the right, ossaroo to the left, and karl, followed by fritz, taking the centre. chapter twenty nine. caspar on a stalk. in a few minutes the three hunters had lost sight of one another, karl and caspar proceeding round the lake by opposite sides, but both keeping under cover of the bushes; while ossaroo wended his way along the bottom of the cliff--thinking he might have a better chance in that direction. the game which caspar expected first might fall in his way was the "kakur," or barking-deer. these little animals appeared to be more numerous in the valley than any other creatures. caspar had scarcely ever been abroad upon a shooting excursion without seeing one; and on several occasions a kakur had constituted his whole "bag." he had learnt an ingenious way of bringing them within range of his gun--simply by placing himself in ambush and imitating their call; which, as may be deduced from one of their common names, is a sort of bark. it is a sound very much resembling the bark of a fox, only that it is much louder. this the kakur sends forth, whenever it suspects the presence of an enemy in its neighbourhood; and keeps repeating it at short intervals, until it believes either that the danger has been withdrawn, or withdraws itself from the danger. the simple little ruminant does not seem to be aware that this sound-- perhaps intended as a note of warning to its companions--too often becomes its own death-signal, by betraying its whereabouts to the sportsman or other deadly enemy. not only the hunter, man, but the tiger, the leopard, the cheetah, and other predatory creatures, take advantage of this foolish habit of the barking-deer; and stealing upon it unawares, make it their victim. the bark is very easily imitated by the human voice; and after a single lesson, with ossaroo as instructor, not only could caspar do the decoy to a nicety, but even karl, who only overheard the shikaree instructing his pupil, was able to produce a sound precisely similar. present hunger prompted caspar to go in search of the kakur, as that would be the game most likely to turn up first. there were other quadrupeds, and some birds too, whose flesh would have served better, as being of superior delicacy: for the venison of the barking-deer is none of the sweetest. in the autumn it is not bad--nor up to a late period in the winter--though it is never very delicious at any season. on that morning, however, caspar was not at all fastidious; and he knew that neither were the others--hunger having robbed them of all delicacy of appetite. even kakur venison would be palatable enough, could he procure it; and for this purpose was he going in a particular direction, and not wandering hither and thither, as sportsmen usually do when in search of game. he knew of a spot where kakur were almost sure of being found. it was a pretty glade, surrounded by thick evergreen shrubbery--not far from the edge of the lake, and on the side opposite to that where the hut was built. caspar had never entered this glade--and he had gone through it several times--without seeing kakur browsing upon the grassy turf, or lying in the shade of the bushes that grew around its edge. it was but fair to presume, therefore, that on that morning, as upon others, the glade would furnish him with this species of game. without making stop anywhere else, he walked on till he had got within a few rods of the spot where he expected to procure the materials of the breakfast; and then, entering among the underwood, he advanced more slowly and with greater caution. to ensure success, he even dropped upon his knees, and crawled cat-like, using his arms as forelegs and his hands as paws! after this fashion he worked his way forward to the edge of the opening--all the while keeping a thick leafy bush before his body to screen himself from the eyes of any creature--kakur or other animal-- that might be within the glade. on getting close up behind the bush, he came to a halt; and then, cautiously raising his shoulders, he peeped through between the leafy branches. it took him some seconds of time to survey the whole surface of the glade; but when he had finished his scrutiny, a shadow of disappointment might have been seen passing over his countenance. there was no game there--neither kakur nor animals of any other kind. not without a certain feeling of chagrin did the young hunter perceive that the opening was empty: for, to say nothing of the annoyance he felt on not being able to procure a joint of venison for breakfast, he had been flattering himself that, from his superior knowledge of the ground, he would be the first to find the material for their matutinal meal-- about which he had some little feeling of hunter-pride and rivalry. he did not permit this preliminary disappointment to rob him of all hope. if there were no kakur within the glade, there might be some in the bushes near its edge; and perhaps, by adopting the decoy he had several times already practised--that of imitating their call--he might entice one out into the open ground. acting upon this idea, he squatted close behind the bush, and commenced barking, as near as he could, _a la kakur_. chapter thirty. the double decoy. it was some considerable time before he heard any response to cheer him, or observed any sign that indicated the presence or proximity of an animal. he repeated his bark many times, with intervals of silence between--and was about yielding to the conviction, that not only the open ground, but the bushes around it, were going to draw blank. he had uttered his last bark, with all the alluring intonation that he could throw into the sound; and was about starting to his feet to proceed elsewhere, when just then the real cry of the kakur responded to his feigned one--apparently coming from out the thicket on the opposite side of the glade. the sound was heard only faintly, as if the animal was at a great distance off; but caspar knew that if it was a response to his call-- which he believed it to be--it would soon draw nearer. he lost no time, therefore, in giving utterance to a fresh series of barks of the most seductive character; and then once more strained his ears to listen for the reply. again the barks of the kakur came back upon the breeze--repeated serially, and so resembling his own, that had caspar not known that they proceeded from the throat of a deer, he might have fancied them to be echoes. he did not allow many seconds to elapse before barking again, and again, with an equal straining at allurement. this time, to the surprise of the young hunter, there was no response. he listened, but not a sound came back--not even an echo. he barked again, and again listened. as before, silence profound, unbroken. no--it was not unbroken. although it was not the call of the kakur, another sound interrupted the stillness--a sound equally welcome to the ear of the young hunter. it was a rustling among the leaves on the opposite side of the glade; just such as might indicate the passage of an animal through the bushes. directing his eye towards the spot where the sound appeared to proceed, caspar saw, or fancied he saw, some twigs in motion. but it was no fancy: for the moment after he not only saw the twigs move, but behind the bush to which they belonged he could just make out a darkish-coloured object. it could be nothing else than the body of the kakur. although it was very near--for the glade was scarce twenty yards across, and the deer was directly behind the line of low shrubs which formed a sort of selvedge around it--caspar could not get a good view of the animal. it was well screened by the foliage, and better perhaps by the absence of a bright light: for it was yet only the grey twilight of morning. there was light enough, however, to take aim; and as the intervening branches were only tiny twigs, caspar had no fear that they would interfere with the direction of his ballet. there was no reason, therefore, why he should delay longer. he might not get a better chance; and if he waited longer, or barked again, the kakur might discover the decoy, and run back into the bushes. "here goes, then!" muttered caspar to himself; at the same time placing himself firmly on one knee, raising his gun and cocking it. it was a splendid lock--that upon the right-hand barrel of caspar's gun--one in which the cock, on being drawn to the full, gives tongue to tell that the spring is in perfect order. in the profound stillness of the morning-air the "click" sounded clear enough to have been heard across the glade, and much further. caspar even feared that it might be loud enough to affright the deer; and kept his eye fixed upon the latter as he drew back the cock. the animal stirred not; but instead--almost simultaneous with the click of his gun, and as if it had been its echo--another click fell upon the hunter's ear, apparently coming from the spot on which the kakur was standing! fortunate was it for caspar that his own spring had clicked so clear-- and fortunate also he had heard that apparent echo--else he might either have shot his brother, or his brother him, or each might have shot the other! as it was, the second click caused caspar to start to his feet. karl at the same instant was seen hurriedly rising erect upon the opposite side of the glade, while both with cocked guns in their hands stood eyeing each other, like two individuals about to engage in a deadly duel of rifles! had any one seen them at that moment, and in that attitude, their wild looks would have given colour to the supposition that such was in reality their intent; and some time would have elapsed before any action on the part of either would have contradicted this fearful belief: for it was several seconds before either could find speech to express their mutual surprise. it was something more than surprise--it was awe--a deep tragical emotion of indefinable terror, gradually giving way to a feeling of heartfelt thankfulness, at the fortunate chance that had made them aware of each other's presence, and saved them from a mutual fratricide. for some seconds i have said not a word was spoken; and then only short exclamations of similar import came trembling from the lips of both. both, as if acting under a common impulse, flung their guns to the ground. then, rushing across the glade, they threw their arms around each other; and remained for some moments locked in a brotherly embrace. no explanation was needed by either. karl, after passing round the lake by the other side, had strayed by chance in the direction of the glade. on nearing it, he had heard the barking of a kakur--not dreaming that it was caspar acting as a decoy. he had answered the signal; and finding that the kakur still kept its place, he had advanced toward the opening with the intention of stalking it. on getting nearer he had ceased to utter the call, under the belief that he should find the deer out in the open ground. just as he arrived by its edge, caspar was mimicking the kakur in such an admirable manner, and so energetically, that karl could neither fail to be deceived as to the character of the animal, nor remain ignorant of its position. the darkish disc visible behind the evergreen leaves could be no other than the body of the deer; and karl was just about cocking his rifle, to bore it with a bullet, when the click of caspar's double-barrel sounding ominously in his ear, fortunately conducted to a far different _denouement_ than that fatal _finale_ which was so near having occurred. chapter thirty one. the signal of the shikaree. as if sent to cheer and distract their minds from the feeling of dread awe which still held possession of them, just then the shrill whistle of ossaroo came pealing across the lake, reverberating in echoes from the cliff toward which he had gone. shortly after the signal sounded again in a slightly different direction--showing that the shikaree had succeeded in bagging his game, and was returning towards the hut. on hearing the signal, karl and caspar regarded each other with glances of peculiar significance. "so, brother," said caspar, smiling oddly as he spoke, "you see ossaroo with his despised bow and arrows has beaten us both. what, if either of us had beaten him?" "or," replied karl, "what if we had both beaten him? ah! brother caspar," added he, shuddering as he spoke, "how near we were to making an end of each other! it's fearful to think of it!" "let us think no more of it then," rejoined caspar; "but go home at once and see what sort of a breakfast ossy has procured for us. i wonder whether it be flesh or fowl." "one or the other, no doubt," he continued, after a short pause. "fowl, i fancy: for as i came round the lake i heard some oddish screaming in the direction of the cliff yonder, which was that taken by ossaroo. it appeared to proceed from the throat of some bird; yet such i think i have never heard before." "but i have," replied karl; "i heard it also. i fancy i know the bird that made those wild notes: and if it be one of them the shikaree has shot, we shall have a breakfast fit for a prince, and of a kind lucullus delighted to indulge in. but let us obey the signal of our shikaree, and see whether we're in such good luck." they had already regained possession of their guns. shouldering them, they started forth from the glade--so near being the scene of a tragical event--and, turning the end of the lake, walked briskly back in the direction of the hut. on coming within view of it, they descried the shikaree sitting upon a stone, just by the doorway; and lying across his knee, a most beautiful bird--by far the most beautiful that either flies in the air, swims in the water, or walks upon the earth--the peacock. not the half turkey-shaped creature that struts around the farmyard--though _he_ is even more beautiful than any other bird--but the wild peacock of the ind--of shape slender and elegant--of plumage resplendent as the most priceless of gems--and, what was then of more consequence to our adventurers, of flesh delicate and savoury as the choicest of game. this last was evidently the quality of the peacock most admired by ossaroo. the elegant shape he had already destroyed; the resplendent plumes he was plucking out and casting to the winds, as though they had been common feathers; and his whole action betokened that he had no more regard for those grand tail feathers and that gorgeous purple corselet, than if it had been a goose, or an old turkey-cock that lay stretched across his knee. without saying a word, when the others came up, there was that in ossaroo's look--as he glanced furtively towards the young sahibs, and saw that both were empty-handed--that betrayed a certain degree of pride--just enough to show that he was enjoying a triumph. to know that he was the only one who had made a _coup_, it was not necessary for him to look up. had either succeeded in killing game, or even in finding it, he must have heard the report of a gun, and none such on that morning had awakened the echoes of the valley. ossaroo, therefore, knew that a brace of empty game-bags were all that were brought back. unlike the young sahibs, he had no particular adventure to relate. his "stalk" had been a very quiet one--ending, as most quiet stalks do, in the death of the animal stalked. he had heard the old peacock screeching on the top of a tall tree; he had stolen up within bow range, sent an arrow through his glittering gorget, and brought him tumbling to the ground. he had then laid his vulgar hands upon the beautiful bird, grasping it by the legs, and carrying it with draggling wings--just as if it had been a common dunghill fowl he was taking to the market of calcutta. karl and caspar did not choose to waste time in telling the shikaree how near they had been to leaving him the sole and undisputed possessor of that detached dwelling and the grounds belonging to it. hunger prompted them to defer the relation to a future time; and also to lend a hand in the culinary operations already initiated by ossaroo. by their aid, therefore, a fire was set ablaze; and the peacock, not very cleanly plucked, was soon roasting in the flames--fritz having already made short work with the giblets. chapter thirty two. the ibex. big as was the body of the peacock, there was not much of it left after that _dejeuner aux doigts_! only the bones; and so clean picked were they, that had fritz not already been made welcome to the giblets, he would have had but a scanty meal of it. the savoury roast did a good deal towards restoring the spirits of the party; but they could not help dwelling upon the indifferent prospect they now had of procuring a fresh stock of provisions--so much changed were circumstances by their powder having been destroyed. the bow and arrows of ossaroo were still left, and other bows could be made, if that one was to get broken. indeed, caspar now determined on having one of his own; and practising archery under the tutelage of the shikaree, until he should be able to use that old-fashioned and universal weapon with deadly effect. old-fashioned we may well term it: since its existence dates far beyond the earliest times of historical record; and universal: for go where you will into the most remote corners of the earth, the bow is found in the hands of the savage, copied from no model, introduced from no external source, but evidently native to the country and the tribe, as if when man was first created the weapon had been put into his hands by the creator himself! indeed, the occurrence of the bow--with its necessary adjunct, the arrow--among tribes of savages living widely apart, and who, to all appearance, could never have communicated the idea to one another--is one of the most curious circumstances in the history of mankind; and there is no other way of explaining it, than by the supposition that the propelling power which exists in the recoil of a tightly-stretched string must be one of the earliest phenomena that presents itself to the human mind; and that, therefore, in many parts of the world this idea has been an indigenous and original conception. the bow and arrow is certainly one of the oldest weapons on the earth-- as well as one of the most universally distributed. it is a subject that, in the hands of the skilled ethnologist, might become one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the human race. i have said that after eating the peacock our adventurers were in better spirits; but for all that, they could not help feeling some little apprehension as to how their food was to be obtained for the future. ossaroo's skill had provided their breakfast; but how about their dinner? and after that their supper? even should something turn up for the next meal, they might not be so fortunate in obtaining the next after that; and this precarious way of subsistence--living, as it were, from hand to mouth--would be a constant exposure of their lives to the chances of starvation. as soon, therefore, as they had finished with the flesh of the peacock-- and while ossaroo, who continued eating longer than any of them, was still engaged in polishing off the "drumsticks"--the point of replenishing the larder became the subject of their conversation; and all agreed that to get up a stock of provisions had now become a matter of primary importance. they resolved, therefore, to devote themselves entirely to this business--using such means as were in their power for capturing game, and devising other means should these prove insufficient. first and foremost, then, what were they to have for dinner? was it to be fish, flesh, or fowl? they did not think of having all three: for in their situation they had no desire for a fashionable dinner. one course would be sufficient for them; and they would only be too thankful to have one course assured to them. whether they would choose to go fishing with ossaroo's net, and have fish for their dinner, or whether they would try for another peacock, or an argus pheasant, or a brace of brahminy geese; or whether they would take to the woods and search for grander game, had not become a decided point; when an incident occurred that settled the question, as to what they were to have for dinner. without any exertion on their part-- without the wasting of a single shot, or the spending of an arrow, they were provided with meat; and in quantity sufficient, not only for that day's dinner, but to ration them for a whole week, with odds and ends falling to the share of fritz. they had gone out of the hut again; and were seated, as oft before, on some large stones that lay upon the ground in front. it was a fine bright morning; and, although cold in the shade, the sun shining down upon them, reflected from the white snow on the mountains above, made it warm enough to be pleasant. for that reason, and because there was some smoke inside the hut, where they had cooked their breakfast, they had preferred eating it in the open air; and here also they were holding council as to their future proceedings. while thus engaged, a sound fell upon their ears that bore some resemblance to the bleating of a goat. it appeared to come down from the sky above them; but they knew that it must be caused by some animal on the cliffs overhead. on looking upwards, they beheld the animal; and if its voice had already appeared to them to be like that of a goat, the creature itself in its _personal_ appearance, to a very great extent, carried out the resemblance. to speak the truth, it _was_ a goat; though not one of the common kind. it was an _ibex_. once more karl had the advantage of his companions. his knowledge of natural history enabled him to identify the animal. at the first glance he pronounced it an ibex; although he had never seen a living ibex before. but the goat-like shape of the animal, its shaggy coat, and above all, the immense ringed horns curving regularly backward over its shoulders, were all characteristic points, which karl was able to identify by a comparison with pictures he had seen in books, and stuffed skins he had examined in a museum. ossaroo said it was a goat--some kind of a wild goat, he supposed; but as ossaroo had never before been so high up the mountains, and therefore never in the regions frequented by the ibex, he knew it not. his conjecture that it was a goat was founded on the general resemblance which it bore to a goat; and this caspar had observed as well as ossaroo. they could see the creature from head to foot, standing in a majestic attitude on a prominent point of the cliff; but although it was in reality much larger than the common domestic goat, it was so distant from them as not to appear bigger than a kid. it was _en profile_, however, to their eyes; and against the blue sky they could trace the outlines of the animal with perfect distinctness, and note the grand sweeping curvature of its horns. the first thought of caspar was to lay hold of his gun with the idea of taking a shot at it; but both the others interposed to prevent this-- pointing out the impossibility of hitting at such a distance. although seemingly much nearer, the ibex was considerably more than a hundred yards from where they were seated: for the point of the precipice upon which it stood was quite four hundred feet above the level. caspar, reflecting upon this, was easily dissuaded from his design; and the next moment was wondering why he had been so near playing the fool as to throw away a shot--his penultimate one, too--at an animal placed full fifty yards beyond the carry of his gun! chapter thirty three. goats and sheep. as the ibex kept its ground, without showing any signs of retreating, or even moving a muscle of its body, they remained watching it. not, however, in silence: for as the animal was standing as if to have its portrait painted, karl, in words addressed to his two companions, but chiefly intended for the instruction of caspar, proceeded to execute that very task. "the ibex," said he, "is an animal whose name has been long famous, and about which the closet naturalists have written a great deal of nonsense--as they have about almost every other animal on the earth. after all that has been said about it, it is simply a goat--a wild goat, it is true, but still only a goat--having all the habits, and very much of the appearance characteristic of the domestic animal of this name. "every one knows that the common goat exists in as many varieties as the countries it inhabits. indeed, there are more kinds of goats than countries: for it is not uncommon to meet with three or four sorts within the boundaries of a single kingdom--as in great britain itself. these varieties differ almost as much from each other as the `breeds' of dogs; and hence there has been much speculation among zoologists, as to what species of wild goat they have all originally sprung from. "now, it is my opinion," continued the plant-hunter, "that the tame goats found among different nations of the earth have not all descended from the same stock; but are the progeny of more than one wild species-- just as the domesticated breeds of sheep have sprung from several species of wild sheep; though many zoologists deny this very plain fact." "there are different species of wild goats, then?" said caspar, interrogatively. "there are," replied the plant-hunter, "though they are not very numerous--perhaps in all there may be about a dozen. as yet there are not so many known to zoologists--that is, not a dozen that have been identified and described as distinct species; but no doubt when the central countries, both of asia and africa--with their grand chains of mountains--have been explored by scientific naturalists, at least that number will be found to exist. "the speculating systematists--who decide about genera and species, by some slight protuberance upon a tooth--have already created a wonderful confusion in the family of the goats. not contented with viewing them all as belonging to a single genus, they have divided them into five genera--though to most of the five they ascribe only _one species_!-- thus uselessly multiplying names, and rendering the study of the subject more complicated and difficult. "there can be no doubt that the goats, both wild and tame--including the ibex, which is a true wild goat--form of themselves a separate family in the animal kingdom, easily distinguishable from sheep, deer, antelopes, or oxen. the wild goats often bear a very close resemblance to certain species of wild sheep; and the two are not to be distinguished from each other, by the goats being covered with hair and the sheep with wool--as is generally the case with tame breeds. on the contrary, both sheep and goats in a wild state have _hairy_ coats--the sheep as much as the goats; and in many instances the hair of both is quite as short as that of antelopes or deer. even where there are almost no external marks to distinguish wild goats from certain kinds of wild sheep, there are found _moral_ characteristics which serve as guides to the genus. the goat is bolder, and of a fiercer nature; and its other habits, even in the wild state, differ essentially from those of the wild sheep. "the ibex which we see above us," continued karl, looking up to the quadruped upon the cliff, "is neither more nor less than a wild goat. it is not the only species of wild goat inhabiting the himalayas; for there is the `tahir,' a stronger and larger animal than it; and it is believed that when these great mountains have been thoroughly _ransacked_ [karl here smiled at the very unscientific word he had made use of], there will turn up one or two additional species. "it is not the only species of ibex neither," continued he, "for there is one found in the european alps, known by the name of `steinboc;' another, in the pyrenees, called the `tur;' a third, in the caucasus, the `zac;' and one or two others in the mountains of africa. "with regard to the animal now before, or rather above us," continued karl, "it differs very little from others of the same family; and as both its appearance and habits have been very ably described by a noted sportsman, who was also an accomplished naturalist, i cannot do better than quote his description: since it gives almost every detail that is yet authentically known of the himalayan ibex. "`the male,' writes this gentleman author, `is about the size of the _tahir_ [here he speaks of the other well-known species of himalayan wild goat, and which is itself much larger than any of the domesticated kinds]. except just after changing their coats, when they are of a greyish hue, the general colour of the ibex is a dirty yellowish brown. i have, however, killed the younger animals, both male and female, with their coats as red as that of a deer in his red coat; but never saw an old male of that colour, for the reason, i imagine, that he lives much higher, and sheds his hair much later in the season. the hair is short, something in texture like that of the _burrell_ and other wild sheep; and in the cold weather is mixed with a very soft downy wool, resembling the shawl-wool of thibet. this and the old hair is shed in may and june; and in districts occupied by the flocks at that season the bushes and sharp corners of rocks are covered with their cast-off winter coats. the striking appearance of the ibex is chiefly owing to the noble horns: which nature has bestowed upon it. in full-grown animals the horns, which curve gracefully over the shoulders, are from three to four feet in length along the curve, and about eleven inches in circumference at the base. very few attain a greater length than four feet; but i have heard of their being three inches longer. their beards, six or eight inches in length, arc of shaggy black hair. the females, light greyish-brown in colour, are hardly a third the size of the males; and their horns are round and tapering, from ten inches to a foot in length. their appearance upon the whole is clean-made, agile, and graceful. "`in the summer they everywhere resort to the highest accessible places where food can be found--often to a part of the country several marches distant from their winter haunts. this migration commences as soon as the snow begins to disappear; and is very gradually performed--the animals receding from hill to hill, and remaining a few days upon each. "`at this season the males keep in large flocks, apart from the females; and as many as a hundred may occasionally be seen together. during the heat of the day they rarely move about, but rest and sleep--either on the beds of snow in the ravines, or on the rocks and shingly slopes of the barren hill-sides, above the limits of vegetation. sometimes, but very rarely, they will lie down on the grassy spots where they have been feeding. towards evening they begin to move, and proceed to their grazing-grounds--which are often miles away. they set out walking slowly at first; but, if they have any considerable distance before them, soon break into a trot; and sometimes the whole flock will go as hard as they can lay legs to the ground. from what we could gather from the natives, we concluded that they remain in these high regions until the end of october; when they begin to mix with the females, and gradually descend to their winter resorts. the females do not wander so much or so far--many remaining on the same ground throughout the year-- and those that do visit the distant hills are generally found lower down than the males, seldom ascending above the limits of vegetation. they bring forth their young in july, having generally two at a birth; though, like other gregarious animals, many are frequently found barren. "`the ibex are wary animals, gifted with very sharp sight and an acute sense of smell. they are very easily alarmed, and so wild, that a single shot fired at a flock is often sufficient to drive them away from that particular range of hills they may be upon. even if not fired at, the appearance of a human being near their haunt is not unfrequently attended with the same result. of this we had many instances during our rambles after them, and the very first flock of old males we found gave us a proof. they were at the head of the asrung valley, and we caught sight of them just as they were coming down the hill to feed--a noble flock of nearly a hundred old males. it was late in the day, and we had a long way to return to camp. prudence whispered, "let them alone till to-morrow," but excitement carried the day, and we tried the stalk. having but little daylight remaining, we may have hurried, and consequently approached them with less caution than we should have done had we had time before us. however it might be, we failed; for long before we got within range, some of them discovered us, and the whole flock decamped without giving us the chance of a shot. not having fired at, or otherwise disturbed them, more than by approaching the flock, we were in great hopes of finding them the next day; but that and several succeeding ones were passed in a fruitless search. they had entirely forsaken that range of hills. "`all readers of natural history are familiar with the wonderful climbing and saltatory powers of the ibex; and, although they cannot (as has been described in print) make a spring and hang on by their horns until they gain footing, yet in reality, for such heavy-looking animals, they get over the most inaccessible-looking places in an almost miraculous manner. nothing seems to stop them, nor to impede in the least their progress. to see a flock, after being fired at, take a direct line across country, which they often do, over all sorts of seemingly impassable ground; now along the naked face of an almost perpendicular rock, then across a formidable landslip, or an inclined plane of loose stones or sand, which the slightest touch sets in motion both above and below; diving into chasms to which there seems no possible outlet, but instantly reappearing on the opposite side; never deviating in the slightest from their course; and at the same time getting over the ground at the rate of something like fifteen miles an hour, is a sight not easily to be forgotten. there are few animals, if any, that excel the ibex in endurance and agility.'" chapter thirty four. a battle of bucks. karl had scarcely finished speaking, when, as if to illustrate still further the habits of the ibex, a curious incident occurred to the animal upon, which their eyes were fixed. it ceased to be a solitary individual: for while they were gazing at it another ibex made its appearance upon the cliff, advancing towards the one first seen. the new comer was also a male, as its huge scimitar-shaped horns testified; while in size, as in other respects, it resembled the one already on the rock as much as if they had been brothers. it was not likely they were so. at all events the behaviour of the former evinced anything but a fraternal feeling. on the contrary, it was advancing with a hostile intent, as its attitudes clearly proved. its muzzle was turned downward and inward, until the bearded chin almost touched its chest; while the tips of its horns, instead of being thrown back upon its shoulders--their usual position when the animal stands erect--were, elevated high in the air. moreover, its short tail, held upright and jerking about with a quick nervous motion, told that the animal meditated mischief. even at so great a distance the spectators could perceive this: for the forms of both the ibex were so clearly outlined against the sky, that the slightest motion on the part of either could be perceived with perfect distinctness. the new comer, when first observed, appeared to be approaching by stealth--as if he intended to play the cowardly assassin, and butt the other over the cliff! indeed, this was his actual design, as was discovered in the sequel; and had the other only remained for six seconds longer in the attitude in which he had been first seen, his assailant would no doubt have at once succeeded in his treacherous intent. we are sorry to have to say that he _did_ succeed--though not without a struggle, and the risk of being himself compelled to take that desperate leap which he had designed for his antagonist. it was probably the voice of caspar that hindered the immediate execution of this wicked intention; though, alas! it only stayed it for a short time. caspar, on seeing the treacherous approach, had involuntarily uttered a cry of warning. though it could not have been understood by the imperilled ibex, it had the effect of startling him from his dreamy attitude, and causing him to look around. in that look he perceived his danger, and quick as thought, took measures to avert it. suddenly raising himself on his hind-legs, and using them as a pivot, he wheeled about, and then came to the ground on all fours, face to face with his adversary. he showed no sign of any desire to retreat, but seemed to accept the challenge as a matter of course. indeed, from his position, it would have been impossible for him to have retreated with any chance of safety. the cliff upon which he had been standing, was a sort of promontory projecting beyond the general line of the precipice; and towards the mountain slope above his escape had been already cut off by his challenger. on all other sides of him was the beetling cliff. he had no alternative but fight, or be "knocked over." it was less a matter of choice than necessity that determined him upon standing his ground. this determination he had just time to take, and just time to put himself in an attitude of defence, when his antagonist charged towards him. both animals, at the same instant, uttered a fierce, snorting sound, and rising upon their hind-legs, stood fronting each other like a brace of bipeds. in this movement the spectators recognised the exact mode of combat practised by common goats; for just in the same fashion does the ibex exhibit his prowess. instead of rushing _horizontally_, head to head, and pressing each other backwards, as rams do in their contests, the ibex after rearing aloft, come down again, horns foremost, using the weight of their bodies as the propelling power, each endeavouring to crush the other between his massive crest and the earth. several times in succession did the two combatants repeat their rearings aloft, and the downward strokes of their horns; but it soon became evident, that the one who had been the assailant was also to be the conqueror. he had an advantage in the ground: for the platform which his adversary occupied, and from which he could not escape, was not wide enough to afford room for any violent movements; and the imminent danger of getting a hoof over the cliff, evidently inspired him with fear and constraint. the assailant having plenty of space to move in, was able to "back and fill" at pleasure, now receding foot by foot, then rushing forward, rising erect, and striking down again. each time he made his onslaught with renewed impetus, derived from the advantage of the ground, as well as the knowledge that if his blow failed, he should only have to repeat it; whereas, on the part of his opponent, the failure of a single stroke, or even of a guard, would almost to a certainty be the prelude to his destruction. whether it was that the ibex attacked was the weaker animal of the two, or whether the disadvantage of the ground was against him, it soon became evident that he was no match for his assailant. from the very first, he appeared to act only on the defensive; and in all likelihood, had the road been open to him, he would have turned tail at once, and taken to his heels. but no opportunity for flight was permitted him at any moment from the beginning of the contest; and none was likely to be given him until it should end. the only chance of escape that appeared, even to him, was to make a grand leap, and clear his adversary, horns and all. this idea seemed at length to take possession of his brain: for all on a sudden he was keen to forsake his attitude of defence, and bound high into the air--as if to get over his adversary's horns, and hide himself among the safer snowdrifts of the mountains. if such was his intent it proved a sad failure. while soaring in the air--all his four feet raised high off the ground--the huge horns of his adversary were impelled with fearful force against his ribs, the stroke tossing him like a shuttlecock clear over the edge of the cliff! the blow had been delivered so as to project his body with a revolving impetus into the air; and turning round and round, it fell with a heavy concussion into the bottom of the valley; where, after rebounding full six feet from the ground, it fell back again dead as a stone. it was some seconds before the spectators could recover from surprise at an incident so curious, though it was one that may often be witnessed by those who wander among the wild crags of the himalayas--where combats between the males of the ibex, the tahir, the burrell or himalayan wild sheep, and also the rams of the gigantic _ovis ammon_, are of common occurrence. these battles are often fought upon the edge of a beetling precipice-- for it is in such places that these four species of animals delight to dwell--and not unfrequently the issue of the contest is such as that witnessed by our adventurers--one of the combatants being "butted" or pushed right over the cliff. it does not follow that the animal thus put _hors de combat_ is always killed. on the contrary, unless the precipice be one of stupendous height, an ibex, or tahir, or burrell, will get up again after one of those fearful falls; and either run or limp away from the spot--perhaps to recover, and try his luck and strength in some future encounter with the same adversary. one of the most remarkable instances of this kind is related by the intelligent sportsman, colonel markham, and by him vouched for as a fact that came under his own observation. we copy his account verbatim:-- "i witnessed one of the most extraordinary feats performed by an old tahir, that i, or any other man, ever beheld. i shot him when about eighty yards overhead upon a ledge of rocks. he fell perpendicularly that distance, and, without touching the ground or the sides of the precipice, rebounded, and fell again about fifteen yards further down. i thought he was knocked to atoms, but he got up and went off; and although we tracked him by his blood to a considerable distance, we were after all unable to find him!" my young readers may remember that many similar feats have been witnessed in the rocky mountains of america, performed by the "bighorn"--a wild sheep that inhabits these mountains, so closely resembling the _ovis ammon_ of the himalayas, as to be regarded by some naturalists as belonging to the same species. the hunters of the american wilderness positively assert that the bighorn fearlessly flings himself from high cliffs, alighting on his horns; and, then rebounding into the air like an elastic ball, recovers his feet unhurt, and even unstunned by the tremendous "header!" no doubt there is a good deal of exaggeration in these "hunter stories;" but it is nevertheless true that most species of wild goats and sheep, as well as several of the rock-loving antelopes--the chamois and klipspringer, for instance--can do some prodigious feats in the leaping line, and such as it is difficult to believe in by any one not accustomed to the habits of these animals. it is not easy to comprehend how colonel markham's tahir could have fallen eighty yards--that is, feet--to say nothing of the supplementary descent of forty-five feet further--without being smashed to "smithereens." but although we may hesitate to give credence to such an extraordinary statement, it would not be a proper thing to give it a flat contradiction. who knows whether there may not be in the bones of these animals some elastic principle or quality enabling them to counteract the effects of such great falls? there are many mechanical contrivances of animal life as yet but very imperfectly understood; and it is well-known that nature has wonderfully adapted her creatures to the haunts and habits for which she has designed them. it may be, then, that these wild goats and sheep--the blondins and leotards of the quadruped world--are gifted with certain saltatory powers, and furnished with structural contrivances which are altogether wanting to other animals not requiring them. it would not be right, therefore, without a better knowledge of the principles of animal mechanism, to contradict the statement of such a respectable authority as colonel markham--especially since it appears to be made in good faith, and without any motive for exaggeration. our adventurers had entered into no discussion of this subject on observing the descent of the ibex. indeed, there was nothing to suggest such speculations; for the creature had fallen from such an immense height, and come down with "such a thump" upon the hard turf, that it never occurred to any of them to fancy that there was a single gasp of breath left in its body. nor was there; for on reaching the ground after its rebound, the animal lay with limbs loose and limp, and without sign of motion--evidently a carcass. chapter thirty five. the bearcoots. our adventurers were congratulating themselves on this unexpected accession to their larder; which, like the manna of old, had, as it were, rained down from the sky. "our dinner!" shouted caspar, gleefully, as the "thump" of the falling ibex sounded in their ears. "our supper, too," he added. "ay, more! in such a large carcass there must be provision to last us for a week!" all three rose to their feet, and were about starting forward to secure the prize; when a shrill scream twice repeated fell upon their ears-- coming down apparently from the top of the cliffs, or rather from the mountain that trended still higher above them. could it be the cry of the conquering ibex--his slogan of triumph? no; it was not his voice, nor that of a quadruped of any kind. neither did the spectators for an instant believe it to be so. on turning their eyes upward, they saw the creature, or the creatures--for there were two of them--from whose throats those screams had proceeded. the victorious ibex was still standing conspicuously upon the cliff. during the few seconds that the attention of the spectators had been occupied elsewhere, he appeared to have been contemplating the dire deed of destruction he had just accomplished, and perhaps indulging in the triumph he had obtained over his unfortunate rival. at all events he had stepped forward upon the projecting point of the rock--to the very spot so lately occupied by his adversary. the cry, however, which had been heard in the valley below had reached his ears at the same time, and perhaps a little sooner: for as the spectators looked up, they saw that he had been startled by it, and was looking around him with evident alarm. in the air above and not many yards distant from him, were two dark objects, easily recognisable as birds upon the wing. they were of large size, nearly black in colour, and with that peculiar sharpness of outline and sweep of wing that distinguish the true birds of prey. there was no mistaking their kind-- they were eagles--of a species known in the himalayas and the steppes of thibet as the "bearcoot." they were swooping in short, abrupt curves, at intervals repeating their shrill screams, both crying out together, and from their excited mien, and the character of their movements, no doubt could be entertained as to the object of their noisy demonstrations. they were about to assault an enemy, and that enemy was no other than the ibex. the animal appeared to be fully aware of their intent; and seemed for a moment to be irresolute as to how it should act. instead of placing itself in a bold, defiant attitude--such as it had lately assumed towards an antagonist of its own kind--it stood cowering, and apparently paralysed with fear. it was this very effect which the eagles, by their screaming, had designed to produce; and certainly the fierce birds were succeeding to the utmost of their expectations. the spectators kept their eyes fixed upon the actors of this new drama-- watching every movement, both of the birds and the beast, with intense interest. all were desirous of seeing the latter punished for the cruel act he had just committed, and which they regarded as savouring very strongly of fratricide. it was written in the book of fate that their desire should be gratified, and that the destroyer should himself be destroyed. they were expecting to witness a somewhat prolonged combat; but in this expectation they were disappointed. the duration of the conflict was as brief as the preliminaries that led to it; and these were of the shortest kind: for scarce ten seconds had elapsed, after they had uttered their first scream, before the bearcoots swooped down to the level of the cliff, and commenced a joint attack upon the ibex, striking at him alternately with beak and claws. for a short time the quadruped was shrouded--almost hidden--under the broad, shadowy wings of the birds; but even when its figure could be traced, it appeared to be making no very energetic efforts at defending itself. the sudden attack made by such strange enemies seemed to have completely disconcerted the ibex; and it remained as if still under the paralysis of fear. after a moment or two had passed, the ibex appeared to recover self-possession; and then he, rearing up, struck out with his horns. but the bearcoots were on the alert; and each time that the animal attempted a forward movement, they easily avoided the blow by shying to one side or the other; and then quickly wheeling, they would swoop back upon it from behind. in this way was the conflict progressing, the ibex holding the ground upon which he had been first attacked, turning round and round, with his two fore hoofs held close together, or else rearing aloft on his hind-legs, and using them as a pivot. it would have been better for the ibex had he kept to his fore-feet altogether; as in that attitude he might have held his ground a little longer--perhaps until he had either beaten off his winged assailants, or wearied them out by a prolonged defence. but to fight on "all fours" did not chance to be his fashion. it was contrary to the traditions of his family and race--all of whose members, from time immemorial, had been accustomed, when battling with an enemy, to stand erect upon their hind-legs. following this fashion, he had raised himself to his full perpendicular, and was about aiming a "butt" against the breast of one of the bearcoots that was tantalising him in front, when the other, that had made a short retrocession in order to gain impetus, came swooping back with the velocity of an arrow, and seizing the ibex under the chin, by a quick, strong jerk of its talons, it struck the head of the animal so far backward that it lost its balance, and went toppling over the cliff. in another instant the ibex was in mid-air--falling--falling--through that same fearful space that had just been traversed by his own victim. the spectators looked to see him strike the ground without receiving further molestation from his winged assailants. not so, however, did it result. just as the ibex had got about half-way down the face of the precipice, the second eagle was seen shooting after him with the velocity of a flash of lightning; and before he could reach the ground, the bearcoot was seen striking him once more, and causing him to diverge from his vertical descent. the body came to the ground at length--but at a considerable distance from where the other was lying--the eagle descending with it to the earth, and even remaining over it with wings and limbs extended, as if still clutching it in his talons! why the bearcoot was thus retaining the ibex in his clutch was not quite so clear: for the animal was evidently dead; and apparently had been so long before reaching the earth. there was something strange about this proceeding on the part of the bird--as there had also been in its mode of descent through the last forty or fifty yards of space. from the manner in which it had extended its wings after striking its prey, and from the way in which it still kept exercising them, the spectators began to think that its singular descent, and its remaining over the carcass in that cowering attitude, were neither of them voluntary acts on its part. the truth was soon made clear--proving the contrary to be the case: for as the bearcoot continued to flap its wings, or rather, flutter them in a violent irregular motion, it became evident that instead of desiring to remain by the fallen body of its victim, it was doing its very best to get away from it! this was all the more easily believed, when it commenced uttering a series of wild screams; not as before indicating rage or menace, but in tones expressive of the greatest terror! the spectators, who had already risen from their seats, ran towards the spot--surmising that there was something amiss. on getting close up to the still screaming and fluttering bird, they were able to understand what had appeared so incomprehensible. they saw that the bearcoot was in a dilemma; that its talons were buried in the body of the ibex, and so firmly fixed, that with all the strength of its sinewy legs, backed by the power of its elastic pinions, it was unable to free itself! in striking the ibex in his descent, the bird had buried its crooked claws deeply into the soft abdomen of the animal, but in attempting to draw them out again, had found--no doubt to its great chagrin--that the thick coating of "poshm" which covered the skin of the ibex, had become entangled round its shanks; and the more it fluttered to free itself, turning round and round in the effort, the stronger and tighter became the rope which it was twisting out of that celebrated staple--the shawl-wool of cashmere! beyond a doubt the bearcoot was in a bad fix; and, although it was soon relieved from its tether of _poshm_, it was only to find itself more securely tied by a stronger string taken out of the pocket of ossaroo. the other bearcoot having followed close after, seemed determined upon rescuing its mate out of the hands of its captors; and uttering loud screams, it flew, first at one, then at another of them--with its long pointed talons menacing each of them in turn. as all of them had weapons in their hands, they succeeded in keeping the angry bird at bay, but it might not have fared so well with fritz--who in turn became the object of its furious attack, and who had no weapon but his teeth. these would scarce have been sufficient protection against the talons of an eagle; and fritz would very likely have lost one of his eyes, or perhaps both of them, had it not been for an arrow springing from the bow of the shikaree; which, transfixing the great bird right through the gizzard, brought it down with a "flop" upon the surface of the earth. it was not killed outright by the arrow; and the dog, on seeing it bite the dust, would fain have "jumped" it. but perceiving the strong curving beak and the sharp talons extended towards him, fritz was easily persuaded to remain at a prudent distance, and leave the shikaree to make a finish of the bearcoot with his long boar-spear. chapter thirty six. a hope built upon the bearcoot. in this unexpected supply of food--which might be said almost literally to have descended from heaven--karl could not help recognising the hand of providence, and pointing it out to his companions. even the less reflecting mind of caspar, and the half-heathen heart of the hindoo, were impressed with a belief that some other agency than mere chance had befriended them; and they were only too willing to join with karl in a prayerful expression of their gratitude to that being who, although unseen, was with them even in that lone valley. for a time they stood contemplating with curiosity, not only the two ibex, but also the eagles--interesting on account of the knowledge that all four animals had but lately been roaming freely beyond the boundaries of that mountain prison--and had just arrived, as it were, from the outside world, with which they themselves so eagerly longed to hold communication. what would they not have given to have been each provided with a pair of wings like that bearcoot--the one that still lived? furnished in that fashion, they would soon have sought escape from the valley--to them a valley of tears--and from the snowy mountains that surrounded it. while reflecting thus, a thought shaped itself in the mind of the philosophic karl, which caused his face to brighten up a little. only a little: for the idea which had occurred to him was not one of the brightest. there was something in it, however; and, as the drowning man will clutch even at straws, karl caught at a singular conception, and after examining it a while, communicated it to the others. it was the bearcoot that had brought forth this conception. the bird was a true eagle, strong of wing and muscle like all of his tribe, and one of the strongest of the genus. like an arrow, he could fly straight up towards the sky. in a few minutes--ay, in a few seconds--he could easily shoot up to the summits of the snowy mountains that towered above them. "what is to hinder him?" asked karl, pointing to the bird, "to carry--" "to carry what?" said caspar, interrupting the interrogation of his brother, who spoke in a hesitating and doubtful manner. "not us, karl?" continued he, with a slight touch of jocularity in his manner--"you don't mean that, i suppose?" "not us," gravely repeated karl, "but _a rope_ that may carry _us_." "ha!" exclaimed caspar, a gleam of joy overspreading his face as he spoke. "there's something in that." ossaroo, equally interested in the dialogue, at the same moment gave utterance to a joyous ejaculation. "what do _you_ think of it, shikaree?" inquired karl, speaking in a serious tone. the reply of ossaroo did not bespeak any very sanguine hope on his part. still he was ready to counsel a trial of the scheme. they could try it without any great trouble. it would only need to spin some more rope from the hemp--of which they had plenty--attach it to the leg of the bearcoot, and give the bird its freedom. there was no question as to the direction the eagle would take. he had already had enough of the valley; and would no doubt make to get out of it at the very first flight he should be permitted to make. the scheme superficially considered appeared plausible enough; but as its details were subjected to a more rigorous examination, two grand difficulties presented themselves--so grand that they almost obliterated the hope, so suddenly, and with too much facility, conceived. the first of these difficulties was, that the bearcoot, notwithstanding his great strength of wing, might not be able to carry up a rope, which would be strong enough to carry one of themselves. a cord he might easily take to the top of the cliff, or even far beyond; but a mere cord, or even a very slender rope, would be of no use. it would need one strong enough to support the body of a man--and that, too, while engaged in the violent exertion of climbing. the rope would require to be of great length--two hundred yards or more; and every yard would add to the weight the eagle would be required to carry up. it is not to be supposed that they intended to "swarm" up this rope hand by hand. for the height of a dozen yards or so, any of them could have accomplished that. but there would be a hundred and fifty yards of "swarming" to be done before they could set foot upon the top of the cliff; and the smartest sailor that ever crawled up a main-stay--even sinbad himself--could not have done half the distance. they had foreseen this difficulty from the very first; and the ingenuity of karl had at once provided a remedy for it--as will be seen in the sequel. the second question that presented itself was:--admitting that the bearcoot might bear up a rope stout enough for the purpose, whether there would be any possibility of getting this rope stayed at the top? of course, they could do nothing of themselves; and that point would be a matter of mere chance. there was a chance--all acknowledged that. the bird, in fluttering over the mountain to make its escape, might entangle the rope around a rock, or some sharp angle of the frozen snow. there was a chance, which could be determined by trying, and only by trying; and there were certain probabilities in favour of success. the first difficulty--that relating to the strength and weight of the rope--admitted of rational discussion and calculation. there were _data_ to go upon, and others that might be decided conjecturally, yet sufficiently near the truth for all preliminary purposes. they could tell pretty nearly what stoutness of rope it would take to _hang_ any one of them; and this would be strong enough to carry them up the cliff. the strength of the eagle might also be presumed pretty nearly; and there was no doubt but that the bearcoot would do his very best to get out of the valley. after the rough handling he had already experienced, he would not require any further stimulus to call forth his very utmost exertions. on discussing the subject in its different bearings, it soon became evident to all, that the matter of supreme importance would be the making of the rope. could this be manufactured of sufficient fineness not to overburden the bearcoot, and yet be strong enough to sustain the weight of a man, the first difficulty would be got over. the rope therefore should be made with the greatest care. every fibre of it should be of the best quality of hemp--every strand twisted with a perfect uniformity of thickness--every plait manipulated with an exact accuracy. ossaroo was the man to make such a cord. he could spin it with as much evenness as a manchester mill. there would be no danger that in a rope of ossaroo's making the most critical eye could detect either fault or flaw. it was finally determined on that the rope should be spun--ossaroo acting as director, the others becoming his attendants rather than his assistants. before proceeding to work, however, it was deemed prudent to secure against a hungry day by curing the flesh of the brace of ibex. the dead bearcoot was to be eaten while fresh, and needed no curing. and so indeed it was eaten--the bird of jove furnishing them with a dinner, as that of juno had given them a breakfast! chapter thirty seven. the log on the leg. as soon as they had hung the ibex-meat upon the curing strings, and pegged out the two skins for drying, they turned their attention to the making of the rope by which they were to be pulled out of their prison. by good fortune they had a large stock of hemp on hand all ready for twisting. it was a store that had been saved up by ossaroo--at the time when he had fabricated his fish-net; and as it had been kept in a little dry grotto of the cliff, it was still in excellent preservation. they had also on hand a very long rope, though, unfortunately, not long enough for their present purpose. it was the same which they had used in projecting their tree-bridge across the crevasse; and which they had long ago unrove from its pulleys, and brought home to the hut. this rope was the exact thickness they would require: for anything of a more slender gauge would scarcely be sufficient to support the weight of a man's body; and considering the fearful risk they would have to run, while hanging by it against the face of such a cliff, it was necessary to keep on the safe side as regarded the strength of the rope. they could have made it of ample thickness and strength, so as to secure against the accident of its breaking. but then, on the opposite hand, arose the difficulty as to the strength of the eagle's wing. should the rope prove too heavy for the bearcoot to carry over the top of the cliff, then all their labour would be in vain. "why not ascertain this fact before making the rope?" this was a suggestion of karl himself. "but how are we to do it?" was the rejoinder of caspar. "i think we can manage the matter," said the botanist, apparently busying his brain with some profound calculation. "i can't think of a way myself," replied caspar, looking inquiringly at his brother. "i fancy i can," said karl. "what is to hinder us to ascertain the weight of the rope before making it, and also decide as to whether the bird can carry so much?" "but how are you to weigh the rope until it is made? you know it's the trouble of making it we wish to avoid--that is, should it prove useless afterwards." "oh! as for that," rejoined karl, "it is not necessary to have it finished to find out what weight it would be. we know pretty near the length that will be needed, and by weighing a piece of that already in our hands, we can calculate for any given length." "you forget, brother karl, that we have no means of weighing, even the smallest piece. we have neither beam, scales, nor weights." "pooh!" replied karl, with that tone of confidence imparted by superior knowledge. "there's no difficulty in obtaining all these. any piece of straight stick becomes a beam, when properly balanced; and as for scales, they can be had as readily as a beam." "but the weights?" interrupted caspar. "what about them? your beam and scales would be useless, i apprehend, without proper weights? i think we should be `stumped' for the want of the pounds and ounces." "i am surprised, caspar, you should be so unreflecting, and allow your ingenuity to be so easily discouraged and thwarted. i believe i could make a set of weights under any circumstances in which you might place me--giving me only the raw material, such as a piece of timber and plenty of stones." "but how, brother? pray, tell us!" "why, in the first place, i know the weight of my own body." "granted. but that is only one weight; how are you to get the denominations--the pounds and ounces?" "on the beam i should construct i would balance my body against a lot of stones. i should then divide the stones into two lots, and balance these against one another. i should thus get the half weight of my body--a known quantity, you will recollect. by again equally dividing one of the lots i should find a standard of smaller dimensions; and so on, till i had got a weight as small as might be needed. by this process i can find a pound, an ounce, or any amount required." "very true, brother," replied caspar, "and very ingenious of you. no doubt your plan would do--but for one little circumstance, which you seem to have overlooked." "what is that?" "are your data quite correct?" naively inquired caspar. "my data!" "yes--the original standard from which you propose to start, and on which you would base your calculations. i mean the _weight of your body_. do you know that?" "certainly," said karl; "i am just pounds weight--to an ounce." "ah, brother," replied caspar, with a shake of the head, expressive of doubt, "you _were_ pounds in london--i know that myself--and so was i nearly as much; but you forget that the fret and worry of this miserable existence has reduced both of us. indeed, dear brother, i can see that you are much thinner since we set out from calcutta; and no doubt you can perceive the like change in me. is it not so?" karl was forced to give an affirmative reply to the question, at the same time that he acknowledged the truth of his brother's statement. his data were not correct. the weight of his body--which, not being a constant quantity, is at all times an unsafe standard--would not serve in the present instance. the calculation they desired to make was of too important a character to be based upon such an untrustworthy foundation. karl perceived this plainly enough; but it did not discourage him from prosecuting his purpose to make the attempt he had proposed. "well, brother!" said he, looking smilingly towards the latter, and apparently rather pleased at caspar's acuteness; "i acknowledge you have had the better of the argument this time; but that's no reason why i should give up my plan. there are many other ways of ascertaining the weight of an object; and no doubt if i were to reflect a little i could hit upon one; but as luck has it, we need not trouble ourselves further about that matter. if i mistake not, we have a standard of weight in our possession, that is just the thing itself." "what standard?" demanded caspar. "one of the leaden bullets of your own gun. they are ounce bullets, i've heard you say?" "they are exactly sixteen to the pound, and therefore each of them an ounce. you are right, karl, that is a standard. certainly it will do." the subject required no further sifting; and without delay they proceeded to ascertain the weight of two hundred yards of rope. a balance was soon constructed and adjusted, as nicely as if they had meant to put gold in the scale. twenty yards of the rope already in hand was set against stones--whose weight they had already determined by reduplicating a number of bullets--and its quantity ascertained in pounds and ounces. eight times that gave one hundred and sixty yards-- the probable amount of cord they should require. this being determined upon, the next thing was to find out whether the eagle could carry such a burden into the sky. of course, the bird would not have the whole of it to carry at first, as part would rest upon the ground; but should it succeed in reaching the top of the cliff--even at the lowest part--there would then be the weight of at least one hundred yards upon its leg; and if it ascended still higher, a greater amount in proportion. it was natural to suppose that the bearcoot in going out would choose the lowest part of the precipice--especially when feeling his flight impeded by the strange attachment upon his leg; and if this conjecture should prove correct, there would be all the less weight to be sustained. but, indeed, by the cord itself they could guide the bearcoot to the lowest part--since by holding it in their hands, they could hinder him taking flight in any other direction. considering all these circumstances, and rather cheered by the many points that appeared to be in their favour, they proceeded to make trial of the eagle's strength. it would not take long to decide; but conscious of the great importance of the result, they set about it with due deliberation. a log of wood was procured, and chopped down, till it was exactly the weight of the rope to be used. to this the piece of twenty yards-- already employed for a different purpose--was attached at one end--the other being tightly knotted around the shank of the eagle. when all was ready, the bird was stripped of his other fastenings; and then all retired to a distance to give him space for the free use of his wings. fancying himself no longer under restraint, the bearcoot sprang up from the rock on which he had been placed; and, spreading his broad wings, rose almost vertically into the air. for the first twenty yards he mounted with a vigorous velocity; and the hopes of the spectators found utterance in joyful ejaculations. alas! these hopes were short-lived, ending almost on the instant of their conception. the rope, carried to its full length, became suddenly taut--jerking the eagle several feet back towards the earth. at the same time the log was lifted only a few inches from the ground. the bird fluttered a moment, taken aback by this unexpected interruption; and, after recovering its equilibrium, again essayed a second flight towards the sky. once more the rope tightened--as before raising the log but very little from the ground--while the eagle, as if this time expecting the pluck, suffered less derangement of its flight than on the former occasion. for all that, it was borne back, until its anchor "touched bottom." then after making another upward effort, with the like result, it appeared to become convinced of its inability to rise vertically, and directed its flight in a horizontal line along the cliffs. the log was jerked over the ground, bounding from point to point, occasionally swinging in the air, but only for a few seconds at a time. at length the conviction forced itself upon the minds of the spectators--as it seemed also to have done upon that of the performer-- that to reach the top of the cliff--with a cord upon its leg, equal in weight to that log--was more than a bearcoot could accomplish. in short, the plan had proved a failure; and, no longer hoping for success, our adventurers turned their disappointed looks upon each other--leaving the eagle free to drag his wooden anchor whithersoever he might wish. chapter thirty eight. further experiments. the usual silence which succeeds a disappointment was for some time preserved by the three individuals who had been spectators of the unsuccessful attempt of the eagle. caspar seemed less cast down than the others; but why it was so, neither of them thought of asking him. it was not a silence of very long duration, nor was the chagrin that had caused it of much longer continuance. both were evanescent as the summer cloud that for a moment darkens the sky, and then glides off-- leaving it bright and serene as ever. it was to caspar the party was indebted for this happy change of feeling. an idea had occurred to the young hunter--or rather a new scheme--which was at once communicated to his companions. strictly speaking, caspar's scheme could not be termed a _new_ one. it was only supplementary to that already set before them by karl; and the bearcoot, as before, was to be the chief actor in it. while calculating the length of rope it would take to reach to the top of the cliff, caspar had already bethought him of a way by which it might be shortened--in other words, how it might be arranged, that a shorter rope would suffice. he had for some time carried this idea in his mind; but had declined communicating it, to the others, until after witnessing the test of the eagle's strength. now that the bearcoot had been "weighed and found wanting," you might suppose that the creature would be no longer cared for--excepting to furnish them with a meal. this was the reflection of karl and ossaroo; but caspar thought differently. he was impressed with a belief, that the bird might still do them a service--the very one which he had undertaken so unsuccessfully. caspar reflected, and very correctly: that it was the extra weight that had hindered the eagle from ascending. it was not so much beyond his strength neither. perhaps had it been only half as heavy, or even a little more, he might have succeeded in carrying it over the cliff. what if the weight should be reduced? to make the rope more slender did not enter into caspar's calculations. he knew this could not be done: since it was a point already discussed and decided upon. but how if the rope were to be _shorter_, than that which had been theoretically considered? how if it were to be only fifty yards, instead of one hundred and fifty? of course, then the eagle might fly with it, to whatever height its length would allow. caspar felt satisfied of this fact; nor did either of the others question its truth--but what then? "what," inquired karl, "would be the use of a rope of fifty yards, though the eagle might carry it up to the moon? even at the lowest part of the cliffs--should the bearcoot take one end over, the other would be fifty yards above our heads?" "not a yard, brother--not a foot. the other end would be in our hands-- in our hands, i tell you." "well, caspar," calmly rejoined the philosopher, "you appear to be confident enough; though i can't guess what you are driving at. you know this hideous precipice is at no point less than a hundred yards in sheer height?" "i do," replied caspar, still speaking in the same tone of confidence; "but a rope of only fifty--ay, of not more than half that length--may be held in our hands, while the other end is over the top of the cliff." karl looked perplexed; but the shikaree, on this occasion quicker of perception than the philosopher, catching at caspar's meaning, cried out:-- "ha, ha! young sahib meanee from top ob da ladder! dat meanee he." "exactly so," said caspar; "you've guessed right, ossy. i mean just that very thing." "oh! then, indeed," said karl, in a drawling tone, at the same time lapsing into a reflective silence. "perhaps you are right, brother," he added, after a pause. "at all events, it will be easy to try. if your scheme succeed, we shall not require to make any more cord. what we have will be sufficient. let us make trial at once!" "where is the bearcoot?" asked caspar, looking around to discover the bird. "yonner be he, young sahib," answered ossaroo, pointing towards the precipice; "yonner sitee he--ober da rock." the eagle was perceived, perched, or rather crouching, on a low ledge of the cliff,--upon which it had dropped down after its unsuccessful attempt at flight. it looked crestfallen, and as if it would suffer itself to be caught by the hand. but as ossaroo approached it with this intention, the bird seemed to fancy itself free, and once more rose, with a bold swoop, into the air. it was only to feel the check-string tighten afresh upon his leg. it came fluttering down again, first drawn back by the weight of the log, and afterwards by the strong arm of the shikaree. the log was now removed; and the whole rope they had on hand--a length of rather more than fifty yards--was knotted in its place. the bearcoot was again set free--ossaroo taking care to keep the leash well in hand; and now the beautiful bird of jove rose into the air, as if not the summit of the cliff, but the proud peak of chumulari, was to be the limit of its flight. at the height of fifty yards its soaring ambition was suddenly curbed, by the check-string of ossaroo, reminding it that it was still a captive. the experiment had proved successful. caspar's plan promised well; and they at once proceeded to take the necessary steps for carrying it into practical effect. chapter thirty nine. the eagle's escape. the first thing to be done, was to look to the quality of the rope, and test its strength. the ladders were already in place, just as they had been left. the rope once _proved_, there would be nothing further to do, but make it secure to the shank of the bearcoot; ascend the cliff to the highest ledge, reached by the ladders; and then fly the bird. should they succeed in getting the creature to go over the cliff--and by some means entangle the cord at the top--they might consider themselves free. the very thought of such a result--now apparently certain--once more raised their spirits to the highest pitch. they did not count on being able to "swarm" up a piece of slender cord of nearly fifty yards in length--a feat that would have baffled the most agile tar that ever "slung the monkey" from a topgallant stay. they had no thoughts of climbing the rope in that way; but in another, long before conceived and discussed. they intended--once they should be assured that the cord was secure above--to make steps upon it, by inserting little pieces of wood between the "strands;" and these, which they could fix at long distances, one after the other, would form supports, upon which they might rest their feet in the ascent. as we have said, all this had been settled beforehand; and no longer occupied their attention--now wholly absorbed in contriving some way to prove the reliability of the rope, upon which their lives were about to be imperilled. it was not deemed sufficient to tie the rope to a tree, and pull upon it with all their united strength. karl and caspar thought this would be a sufficient test; but ossaroo was of a different opinion. a better plan--according to the shikaree's way of thinking--was one which had generated in his oriental brain; and which, without heeding the remonstrances of the others, he proceeded to make trial of. taking one end of the rope with him, he climbed into a tall tree; and, after getting some way out on a horizontal branch--full fifty feet from the ground--he there fastened the cord securely. by his directions the young sahibs laid hold below; and, both together, raising their feet from the ground, remained for some seconds suspended in the air. as the rope showed no symptoms either of stretching or breaking under the weight of both, it was evident that it might, under any circumstances, be trusted to carry the weight of one; and in this confidence, the shikaree descended from the tree. with the eagle carried under his right arm, and the coil of rope swinging over his left, ossaroo now proceeded towards the place where the ladders rested against the cliff. karl and caspar walked close after, with fritz following in the rear--all four moving in silence, and with a certain solemnity of look and gesture--as befitted the important business upon which they were bent. the new experiment, like the trial of the eagle's strength, did not occupy any great length of time. had it proved successful, our adventurers would have been longer occupied, and in the end would have been seen triumphantly standing upon the summit of the cliff--with fritz frisking up the snowy slope beyond, as if he intended to chase the great _ovis ammon_ upon the heaven-kissing crest of chumulari. ah! how different was the spectacle presented on the evening of that eventful day! a little before sunset the three adventurers were seen slowly and sadly returning to their hut--that despised hovel, under whose homely roof they had hoped never to seek shelter again! alas! in the now lengthened list of their unsuccessful struggles, they had once more to record a failure! ossaroo, bearing the bearcoot under his arm, had climbed the ladders up to the highest ledge that could be attained. from it he had "flown" the eagle--freely dealing out all the cord in his possession. that was a perilous experiment for the shikaree to make; and came very near proving the last act in the drama of his life. thinking that the bearcoot would rise upward into the air, he had not thought of anything else; and as he stood balancing himself on that narrow shelf, he was but ill prepared for what actually came to pass. instead of soaring upwards, the eagle struck out in a horizontal direction, not changing its course till it had reached the end of its tether; and then not changing it, nor even pausing in its flight, but with the fifty yards of rope trailing behind it--which, fortunately for ossaroo, he was himself no longer at the end of--it continued on across the valley towards the cliffs on the opposite side--the summit of which it would have no difficulty in attaining by following the diagonal line in which it was making that unexpected escape from the clutches of the shikaree. not without chagrin did karl and caspar behold the spectacle of the bearcoot's departure; and for a while they were under the impression that ossaroo had bungled the business with which he had been entrusted. ossaroo's explanations, however, were soon after received; and proved satisfactory. it was evident from these, that had he not let go in the right time, he would have been compelled to make a leap, that would have left him no opportunity for explaining the nature of the eagle's escape. chapter forty. fritz and the falcons. with feelings of sad and bitter disappointment did our adventurers turn their backs upon these ladders--that had once more deluded them--and make their way towards the hut. as upon the former occasion, they walked with slow steps and downcast mien. fritz, by his slouching gait and drooped tail, showed that he shared the general despondency. they had arrived nearly at the hut, before any of the three thought of speaking; when the sight of that rude homestead, to which they had so often fancied themselves on the eve of bidding farewell--and to which as often had they been compelled to return--suggested a theme to karl: causing him to break silence as they advanced towards the doorway. "our true friend," said he, pointing to the hovel, "a friend, when all else fails us. rough it is--like many a friend that is nevertheless worthy. i begin to like its honest look, and feel regard for it as one should for a home." caspar said nothing in reply. he only sighed. the young chamois-hunter of the bavarian alps thought of another home--far away towards the setting sun; and, so long as that thought was in his mind, he could never reconcile himself to a forced residence in the himalayas. the thoughts of ossaroo were equally absent from that spot. he was thinking of a bamboo hut by the borders of some crystal stream, overshadowed by palms and other tropical trees. he was thinking still more of rice curry and chutnee; but above all, of his beloved "betel," for which the "bang" of the _cannabis sativa_ was but a poor substitute. but caspar had another thought in his mind; one which proved that he had not yet abandoned all hope of returning to the home of his nativity; and, after they had finished eating their supper of broiled venison, he gave utterance to it. he had not volunteered to break the silence. it was done in obedience to a request of karl who, having noticed the abstracted air of his brother, had asked for an explanation. "i've been thinking," said caspar, "ever since the eagle has escaped us, of another bird i know something about--one that might perform the service we want quite as well, if not better, than a bearcoot." "another bird!" inquired karl; "of what bird are you speaking? do you mean one of those brahminy geese upon the lake? we might catch one alive, it is true; but let me tell you, brother, that their wings are constructed just strong enough to carry their own ponderous bodies; and if you added another pound or two, by tying a cord to their legs, they could no more mount out of this valley than we can. no--no. i fancy we may as well give up that idea. there's no bird but an eagle with wing strong enough to do what you wish." "the bird i was thinking of," rejoined caspar, "is of the same _genus_ as the eagle. i believe that's correctly scientific language. isn't it, my buffon of a brother? ha! ha! well, shall i name it? surely, you have already divined the sort of bird to which i allude?" "no, indeed," replied karl. "there are no other birds in this valley of the same genus as the eagle--except hawks; and according to the closet naturalists, they are not of the same genus--only of the same _family_. if you mean a hawk, there are several species in this place; but the largest of them could not carry anything over the cliff heavier than a string of twine. see, there's a brace of them now!" continued karl, pointing to two birds that were circling in the air, some twenty yards overhead. "`churk' falcons they are called. they are the largest of the himalayan hawks. are these your birds, brother?" "a couple of kites, are they not?" interrogated caspar, turning his eyes upward, and regarding the two winged creatures circling above, and quartering the air as if in search of prey. "yes," answered the naturalist, "they are of that species; and, correctly described, of the same genus as the eagles. you don't mean them, i suppose?" "no--not exactly," replied caspar, in a drawling tone, and smiling significantly as he spoke; "but if they be _kites_--ho! what now?" exclaimed the speaker, his train of thought, as well as speech, suddenly interrupted by a movement on the part of the falcons. "what the mischief are the birds about? as i live, they seem to be making an attack upon fritz! surely they don't suppose they have the strength to do any damage to our brave old dog?" as caspar spoke, the two falcons were seen suddenly to descend--from the elevation at which they had been soaring--and then sweep in quick short circles around the head of the bavarian boar-hound--where he squatted on the ground, near a little copse, some twenty yards from the hut. "perhaps their nest is there--in the copse?" suggested karl; "that's why they are angry with the dog: for angry they certainly appear to be." so any one might have reasoned, from the behaviour of the birds, as they continued their attack upon the dog--now rising some feet above him, and then darting downward in a sort of parabolic curve--at each swoop drawing nearer and nearer, until the tips of their wings were almost flapped in his face. these movements were not made in silence: for the falcons, as they flew, kept uttering their shrill cries--that sounded like the voice of a pair of angry vixens. "their young must be near?" suggested karl. "no, sahib," said ossaroo, "no nest--no chickee. fritz he hab suppa--de piece ob meat ob da ibex. churk wantee take de dog suppa away." "oh! fritz is eating something, is he?" said caspar. "that explains it then. how very stupid of these birds, to fancy they could steal his supper from our valiant fritz: more especially since he seems to relish it so much himself! why he takes no notice of them!" it was quite true that fritz, up to this time, had scarcely noticed the brace of winged assailants; and their hostile demonstrations had only drawn from him an occasional "yir." as they swooped nearer, however, and the tips of their wings were "wopped" into his very eyes, the thing was growing unbearable; and fritz began to lose temper. his "yirs" became more frequent; and once or twice he rose from his squatting attitude, and made a snap at the feathers that were nearest. for more than five minutes this curious play was kept up between the boar-hound and the birds; and then the episode was brought to a somewhat singular--and in fritz's estimation, no doubt--a very unpleasant termination. from the first commencement of their attack, the two falcons had followed a separate course of action. one appeared to make all its approaches from the front; while the other confined its attacks exclusively to fritz's rear. in consequence of these tactics on the part of his assailants, the dog was compelled to defend himself both before and behind: and to do this, it became necessary for him to look "two ways at once." now, he would snarl and snap at the assailant in front--anon, he must sieve himself round, and in like manner menace the more cowardly "churk" that was attacking him in the rear. of the two, however, the latter was the more demonstrative and noisy; and at length, not content with giving fritz an occasional "wop" with its wing, it had the daring audacity to strike its sharp talons into a part of his posteriors approximate to the seat of honour. this was something more than canine flesh and blood could bear; and fritz determined not to submit to it any longer. dropping the "quid" he had been chewing, he started up on all fours; wheeled suddenly towards the kite that had clawed him; and bounded aloft into the air with the design of clutching it. but the wary bird had foreseen this action on the part of the quadruped; and, ere the latter could lay a fang upon it, had soared off--far beyond the highest leap that any four-footed creature might accomplish. fritz, with a disappointed growl, turned round again to betake himself to his piece of meat; but still more disappointed was his look, when he perceived that the latter was no longer within reach! churk falcon number one had clawed him over the croup, but churk falcon number two had deprived him of his supper! the last look fritz ever had of that piece of ibex venison, was seeing it in the beak of the bird, high up in air, growing smaller by degrees and beautifully less--until it disappeared altogether in the dim distance. chapter forty one. fritz offended. this odd little episode, between the boar-hound and the churk falcons, had interrupted the conversation of the two brothers on the subject which caspar had introduced. nor was it resumed immediately, on the termination of the affair: for the look with which fritz regarded the departure of the bird, that had so adroitly bilked him out of his bit of venison, was so supremely ludicrous, as to elicit long loud peals of laughter from the spectators. fritz's "countenance" betrayed the presence of rare emotions. profound surprise and chagrin--strongly blended with a feeling of concentrated rage--were visible not only in his eyes, but his attitude, and, for some time, he stood with head erect and muzzle high in air, his glances speaking unutterable vows of vengeance, as they followed the flight of the falcons. never in all his life--not even when the trunk of the elephant was trumpeting at his tail--had fritz so sensibly felt the want of wings. never had he so regretted the deficiency in his structure that left him without those useful appendages; and had he been gifted with the "wand of a fairy," the use to which he would at that moment have applied it would have been to furnish himself with a pair, not of "beautiful wings"--for that was a secondary consideration--but of strong and long ones, such as would have enabled him to overhaul those churk falcons, and punish them for their unheard-of audacity. for more than a minute fritz preserved the attitude to which we have alluded: the demeanour of a dog that had been regularly duped and "sold" by a brace of beings, for whose strength and capacity he had exhibited supreme contempt; and it was this mingling of surprise and rage that imparted to him that serio-comic appearance that had set them all a-laughing. nor was his countenance less ludicrous under the expression with which, on turning round, he regarded his trio of human companions. he saw that they were making merry at his expense; and his look of half-reproach half-appeal had no other effect than to redouble their mirth. glancing from one to the other, he appeared to seek sympathy from each in turn--from karl, caspar, and ossaroo. it was an idle appeal. all three had equally surrendered themselves to hilarity--unsympathetic, as it was uncontrollable. fritz had not a friend on the ground. full ten minutes must have elapsed before any of them could check his loud cachinnations; but long before that time, the butt of their ridicule had betaken himself out of sight--having moved away from the spot, where he had been robbed of his supper, and retired, with an offended and sneaking air, to the more friendly concealment of the hovel. it was some time before our adventurers could recover their serious mood; but the subject of their mirth being now out of their sight, went gradually also out of their minds. it might be wondered that, circumstanced as they were, they had thus given way to a fit of jollity. but, indeed, there was nothing wonderful about it. on the contrary, it was perfectly natural--perfectly true to the instincts of the human soul--to be thus stirred: joy and sorrow following each other in periodic succession--as certainly as day follows night, or fair weather succeeds to the storm. though we know not the why and the wherefore of this, we can easily believe that a wise providence has ordered it so. a poet who has sung sweetly says, that:-- "spring would be but gloomy weather, if we had nothing else but spring;" and our own experience proclaims the truth conveyed in the distich. he who has lived in the tropical lands of ever-spring--where the leaves never fall, and the flowers never fade--can well confirm the fact: that even spring itself may in time become tiresome! we long for the winter--its frost and snow, and cold bitter winds. though ever so enamoured of the gay green forest, we like at intervals to behold it in its russet garb, with the sky in its coat of grey, sombre but picturesque. strange as it may appear, it is true: the moral, like the natural atmosphere, stands in need of the storm. chapter forty two. a kite! as soon as their mirth had fairly subsided, karl and caspar resumed the conversation, which had been broken off so abruptly. "and so, brother," said karl, who was the first to return to the subject, "you say there is a bird of the eagle genus, that might carry a rope over the cliff for us. of what bird are you speaking?" "why, karl, you are dull of comprehension this morning. surely the presence of the two _kites_ should have suggested what i mean." "ha! you mean a kite, then?" "yes, one with a very broad breast, a very thin body, and a very long tail: such as you and i used to make not so many years ago." "a _paper kite_," said karl, repeating the phrase mechanically, at the same time settling down, into a reflecting attitude. "true, brother," he added, after a pause; "there might be something in what you have suggested. if we had a paper kite--that is, a very large one--it is possible it would carry a rope over the summit of the cliff; but, alas!--" "you need not proceed further, karl," said caspar, interrupting him. "i know what you are going to say: that we have no paper out of which to make the kite; and that, of course, puts an end to the matter. it's no use our thinking any more about it: since we have not got the materials. the body and bones we could easily construct; and the tail too. but then the wings--ah, the wings. i only wish we had a file of old newspapers. but what's the use of wishing? we haven't." karl, though silent, did not seem to hear, or at all events heed, what caspar had been just saying. he appeared to be buried either in a reverie, or in some profound speculation. it was the latter: as was very soon after made manifest by his speech. "perhaps," said he, with a hopeful glance towards the wood, "we may not be so deficient in the material of which you have spoken." "of paper, do you mean?" "we are in the very region of the world where it grows," continued karl, without heeding the interrogation. "what! where paper _grows_?" "no," replied karl, "i do not mean that the paper itself grows here; but a `fabric' out of which that useful article may be made." "what is that, brother?" "it is a tree, or rather a shrub, belonging to the order of the _thymelaceae_, or `daphnads.' the plants of this order are found in many countries; but chiefly in the cooler regions of india and south america. there are even representatives of the order in england: for the beautiful `spurge laurel' of the woods and hedges--known as a remedy for the toothache--is a true daphnad. perhaps the most curious of all the thymelaceae is the celebrated lagetta, or lace-bark tree of jamaica; out of which the ladies of that island know how to manufacture cuffs, collars, and berthas, that, when cut into the proper shapes, and bleached to a perfect whiteness, have all the appearance of real lace! the maroons, and other runaway negroes of jamaica, before the abolition of slavery, used to make clothing out of the lagetta; which they found growing in plenty in the mountain forests of the island. previous also to the same abolition of slavery, there was another, and less gentle, use made of the lace-bark, by the masters of these same negroes. the cruel tyrants used to spin its tough fibres into thongs for their slave-whips." "and you think that paper can be made out of these trees?" asked caspar, impatient to know whether there might be any chance of procuring some for the covering of a kite. "there are several species of daphnads," replied the botanist, "whose bark can be converted into paper. some are found at the cape of good hope, and others in the island of madagascar; but the best kinds for the purpose grow in these very mountains, and in china. there is the `daphne bholua,' in nepaul; from which the nepaulese make a strong, tough, packing-paper; and i have reason to believe that it also grows in the bhotan himalayas--at no very great distance from our position here. besides, in china and japan, on the other side of these mountains, there are two or three distinct kinds of the same plant--out of which the chinese make the yellowish-coloured paper, you may have seen in their books, and pasted upon their tea-chests. so then," added the botanist, looking wistfully towards the woods, "since the paper-yielding daphne grows in china, to the east of us, and in nepaul and bhotan to the west, it is but reasonable to conclude that some species of it may be found in this valley--where the climate is just that which it affects. its seed may have been transported hither by birds: since many species of birds are fond of its berries, and eat them without receiving any injury; though, strange to say, they are poisonous to all kinds of quadrupeds!" "do you think you would know the shrub, if you saw it, brother?" "well, to say the truth, i do not think i could recognise it by its general appearance; but if i had a flower of the _daphne_, i could no doubt tell it by its botanical characteristics. the leaves of the paper-yielding species are of a lanceolate form and purplish hue, glabrous and shining, like the leaves of laurels--to which genus the _daphne_ is closely allied. unfortunately, the shrub would not be in flower at this season; but if we can find one of the berries, and a leaf or two, i fancy i shall be able to identify it. besides, the bark, which is very tough, would help to guide us. indeed, i have some reason to think that we shall find it not far off; and that is why i speak with such confidence, in saying, that we might not be so deficient in the materials for paper-making." "what reason, brother karl? perhaps you have seen something like it?" "i have. some time ago, when i was strolling about, i passed through a thicket of low shrubs--the tops of which reached up to my breast. they were then in flower--the flowers being of a lilac colour, and growing at the tops of the branches in little cymes. they had no corolla--only a coloured calyx. now these characters correspond with those of the daphne. besides, the leaves were lanceolate, velvety on the surface, and of purplish colour; and the flowers were of an exceedingly sweet scent--as is the case with all the daphnads. i did not think of examining them at the time; but, now that i recall these characteristics, i feel almost certain that the shrubs were of this genus." "do you think you can find the thicket again?" "oh! yes, easily enough. it is not very distant from the place, where we were so near fighting that fearful duel." "ha! ha! ha!" laughed caspar, in reply to the significant remark of the botanist. "but, brother!" continued he, "suppose it should prove to be the shrub you speak of, what good would there be in our finding it, so long as we don't understand the process of manufacturing it into paper?" "how do you know that we don't?" said karl, challenging the too positive declaration of caspar. "i am not so sure that we don't. i have read the whole account of the process, as given by one of the old writers upon china. it is very simple; and i think i remember enough to be able to follow it. perhaps not to make fine paper, that one might write upon; but something that would serve our purpose just as well. we don't want the best `cream-laid.' unfortunately, we have no post-office here. i wish we had. if we can fabricate anything as fine as the coarsest packing-paper, it will do well enough for a kite, i fancy." "true," replied caspar. "it would be all the better to be coarse and strong. but, dear karl, suppose we go at once, and see if we can discover the trees." "that is just what we shall do," replied karl, rising as he spoke, and preparing to set out in search of the daphne. all, of course, went together: for ossaroo was as much interested in the result of the exploration as any of them; and fritz, from within the hut, perceiving that they were about to depart upon some new expedition, managed partially to coax himself out of his ill-humour; and, sallying forth from his hiding-place, trotted silently after them. chapter forty three. the paper-tree. to the great delight of the party, it turned out just as karl had conjectured. the thicket that he had spoken of was composed chiefly of daphne shrubs--judging by the appearance of the fallen leaves, and some berries that still remained on the branches, karl believed them to be of this species. but the bark was also a characteristic: being exceedingly tenacious, and moreover of a strongly acrid taste--so much so as to cauterise he skin of ossaroo's mouth, who had been foolish enough to chew it too freely. after duly examining the leaves, berries, and bark, the botanist came to the conclusion that the shrub must be a true daphne; and so in reality it was--that species known in nepaul as the _daphne bholua_--from which, as already stated, the nepaulese manufacture a coarse, but soft paper. as soon as this point was determined to their satisfaction, they resolved upon carrying caspar's hint into execution--by trying the experiment of a paper kite. but for karl's practical education--which had made him acquainted not only with the botanical characters of plants and trees, but also with their uses--and in some cases with the mode of using them--the mere discovery of the daphne would have availed them nothing. as it stood in the thicket, it was no more like paper than any of the trees that grew around it. indeed, there were many others that would have yielded bark in broader flakes than it, and much more resembling paper: for that of the daphne, stripping off as it did in narrow pieces, looked like the last thing in the world of which to make a kite out of. but karl knew the process by which it could be metamorphosed into paper; and without further delay, he entered upon the performance--the others placing their services at his disposal, and acting in obedience to his orders. the knife-blades of all three were called into requisition; and in an incredibly short space of time, some scores of the little trees were stripped of their bark--from their roots up to the lower branches. the trees themselves were not cut down; as that was not necessary. they could be peeled more readily, as they stood; and for this reason they were left standing. up to the hour of sunset did these "cascarilleros" work--with only a few minutes of interruption, while they went back to the hut, and ate a hurried luncheon of ibex-meat--and just as the sun was sinking behind the summit of the great chumulari, they might have been seen trudging homeward--each bearing a heavy bundle of bark, with fritz following gleefully at their heels. the thicket from which they had taken their departure, gave evidence of the industry with which they had been working all day long. over a space, of nearly half an acre in extent, the trees were seen standing, each with its tiny trunk completely divested of bark: as if a whole gang of goats had been browsing upon them! on reaching the hovel, our bark-gatherers did not desist from their labour. they only entered upon a new branch of industry: by becoming _paper manufacturers_. it was after night; and they had to work by the light of their torches of cheel-pine, already prepared. but as these burnt with a clear steady flame, they served quite as well as candles would have done. the first process in the paper-making did not require much nicety in its execution; and, moreover, it could be performed as well inside the hut as in the largest room of a paper-mill. all they had to do was to pick the bark to shreds. this occupied them the whole evening--during which there was much conversation of a cheerful kind, with a joke or two about oakum-picking in a prison; and of this, not only the task in which they were engaged, but the situation in which they were executing it, did not fail to remind them. when they had finished, they ate their frugal supper and retired to rest--full of the idea of continuing the paper manufacture in the morning. when morning came, they had not much to do: for the next process was one which required the exercise of patience rather than of labour. when the bark of the daphne has been thoroughly picked to pieces, it is put into a large pot or cauldron filled with water. a lixivium of wood-ashes is then thrown in along with it; and it is suffered to boil for several hours. as our manufacturers were without pot or cauldron of any kind, there would have been here an interruption of an insurmountable kind: had it not been that they had plenty of water already on the boil, and perpetually boiling--in the hot-spring near the hut. apparently all they should have to do would be, to immerse the prepared bark in the spring, and there leave it for a proper length of time. but then the water, where it was hottest, was constantly in motion--bubbling up and running off; so that not only would the strings of bark be carried away, but the ashes would be separated from the mass, and consequently of no service in aiding to macerate it. how was this difficulty to be got over? easily enough. they had not proceeded thus far without thinking of a plan; and this plan was, to place the bark along with the ashes in one of the large yak-skins still in good preservation, and after making it up into a sort of bundle--like clothes intended for the laundry--to plunge the skin and its contents into the spring, and there leave them--until the boiling water should perform its part. by this ingenious contrivance, did they get over the difficulty, of not being provided with a not. when karl thought that the bark was sufficiently boiled, it was taken out of the water, and also out of its yak-skin wrapper. it was then placed, in mass, upon a flat rock near by--where it was left to drip and get dry. during the time that it was in the water--and also while it was dripping and drying on the rock--none of them were idle. caspar was engaged in fashioning a stout wooden mallet--a tool which would be needed in some after operations--while ossaroo was equally busy upon an article of a very different kind. this was a sort of sieve made of thin splints of cane, set in a frame of thicker pieces of the same cane--ringall bamboo. ossaroo had undertaken this special task: as none of the others knew so well, how to fashion the bamboo into any required utensil; and although he was now making something altogether new to him, yet, working under the direction of karl, he succeeded in making a sieve that was likely to serve the purpose for which plant-hunter designed it. that purpose will presently be spoken of. as soon as the fibre was nearly dry, the mallet was brought into requisition; and with this the mass was pounded upon the flat surface of the rock--until it became reduced to a complete state of "pulp." this pulp was once more put into the yak-skin--which had been gathered up around the edges so as to form a sort of concavity or rude vat--and again immersed under water--not of the boiling spring, but the cool water of the lake--until the bag became full. the pulp was next stirred with a stick--which brought the coarse dirty parts to the surface. these were skimmed off, and thrown away as refuse; and the process was repeated with fresh water--until the whole substance, which was of a mucilaginous character, was rendered pure, and soft to the touch. the next and last operation was in fact the making of the paper; and was performed by karl himself. it was simple enough, though requiring a certain dexterity, or sleight of hand, to do it well. it consisted in placing a quantity of the pulp upon the sieve before mentioned; and cradling the frame about--all the time held under water--until the substance became equally and uniformly spread over the whole surface. the sieve was then taken out of the water--being raised gently and kept in a horizontal position--so as not to derange the even stratum of pulp that severed it. this done, nothing more remained but to place the frame across a pair of bars, and leave the pulp to get drained and eventually become dry. when dry, it would be _paper_! of course, with one sieve, the whole quantity required could not be made at a single cast; but, as soon as one sheet became sufficiently dry to be taken off the frame, the sieve was again repulped; and so on, till the whole of the boiled bark was converted into paper; and they found themselves in possession of a sufficient number of broad sheets to make a kite as big as a coach-house-door. in consequence of their having to wait for the drying of each sheet, the process occupied them for several days; but during this time they had not been either idle or inactive. karl and caspar had been hard at work, in getting up the "bones" of the kite; while ossaroo had undertaken to fabricate the tail. the rope with which it was to be "flyed," occupied more time, and required more care, than any other portion of their work. every strand had to be twisted with the greatest exactness; and almost every fibre tested, as to its strength and fitness. could they have used a rope of stouter build, it would not have been necessary to be so particular; but a thick rope would have been too heavy for the kite to carry--just as it had been too heavy for the strength of the eagle. a slender cord, therefore, like that they were obliged to make, required to be faultless--else the life of some one of them might be sacrificed while attempting the ascent. with a foreknowledge of this, it is hardly necessary to say that ossaroo did his best in the manufacture of that rope--every strand of it being twisted between his index finger and his thumb, as smoothly and evenly as if he had been spinning it for a fishing-line. the framework of the kite was made out of split culms of the ringall bamboo; which, on account of its strength, elasticity, and lightness, was far superior for the purpose to any species of exogenous wood; while the glue for laying on the paper was procured from the root of an arum-- grated, and then boiled into a glutinous starch. in about a week after the notion of a kite had been "hatched" in the brain of caspar, the bird itself might have been seen outside the door of the hut--full-fledged and ready for flight! chapter forty four. flying the kite. the kite having been thus prepared, they only waited for an opportunity of flying it--for a day when the wind should be sufficiently strong, and blowing from the right quarter--that is, towards that portion of the precipice over which it appeared best that the paper-bird should be dispatched. this was the same place, where the ladders had been set, and where they had unsuccessfully endeavoured to send up the bearcoot. they had already ascended one of the isolated cairns of rock, that stood within the valley nearly opposite this part of the cliff; and from its top they had been able to get a view--though not a very good one--of a portion of the sloping declivity of the mountain above. it appeared to be covered with snow--here and there supporting huge masses of something, either boulders of rock, or dark-coloured lumps of ice. the eyes of our adventurers rested on these with the greatest interest: as they had done upon a former occasion, when about to send the bearcoot among them. now they had conceived higher hopes than ever--founded upon the presence of these masses. if they should succeed in flying the kite into their midst, and there dropping it, it was not only possible, but highly probable, that it might either get the rope warped around one of them, or itself become caught between two, so as to hold fast. to render this the more practicable, they had furnished its wings with spurs--in other words, they had left the cross-piece of bamboo to extend on each side about a foot beyond the edge of the paper; and near the end of each extension, they had placed other pieces transversely, and lashed them firmly--so that they might act as the flukes of an anchor. they had spared neither pains nor ingenuity to ensure success. they had done all, that man could do, to deserve it. fortune was so far favourable, as not to keep them long in suspense. only two or three days had passed, when one came, on which the wind blew in their favour--exactly as they wanted it. it was a stiff breeze, steady in the right direction, and strong enough to carry up the largest of paper kites. proceeding to the place, where the ladders were set, with the huge bird carried in the arms of ossaroo, they made ready for its flight. karl was to start the kite, and guide its ascent from the ground; while caspar and the shikaree were to run out with the rope: as it would require the united strength of both to hold such a broad-breasted bird against the wind. they had taken the precaution to cut away the bushes to a long distance backwards from the cliff, and so clear the track: there was therefore nothing to impede them while paying out the string. it was arranged that karl should have direction of the movement, and give out the signal for them to start. it was a moment of vivid emotion, as each of he three placed himself in the position assigned to him--karl by the kite, with its backbone in one hand, and its tail in the other--ossaroo clutching the rope--and caspar by his side, holding the great coil in readiness for delivery. karl poised the creature upon the stump of its tail; and then, lifting with all his strength--so as to raise it several feet from the ground-- he gave forth the signal at the highest pitch of his voice. at the same instant, caspar and the shikaree ran backward--tightening the rope as they went; and like a vast vulture with outspread wings, the bird soared silently upward into the air. it rose with a regular majestic motion, soon overtopping the trees that grew near, and still mounting on towards the summit of the cliff. karl cheered as he saw it ascend. the others were too busy in the performance of their parts to find time for this expression of triumph; and not until the kite had soared high into the heavens, and appeared many yards above the brow of the beetling precipice, did caspar and ossaroo respond to the cheering of karl. then both together gave vent to their excited feelings in a long-continued hurrah! "let go now, ossaroo!" cried karl, shouting so as to be heard above the wind. "you, caspar, keep hold of the end of the cord." ossaroo, obedient to the order, suddenly slackened his hold--at the same time springing towards caspar, and prudently seizing the end along with him. the kite, thus released, like some huge bird that had received its death-wound, turned head downwards towards the earth; and, after making various sinuous evolutions through the air, flouting its long tail first in one direction then in another--it was seen darting down towards the acclivity of the mountain. at length, passing behind the summit of the cliffs, it was no longer visible to the eyes of those who had aided it in its lofty flight, and then left it helplessly to fall. so far they had succeeded to the utmost of their expectations. the kite had alighted, just where they wanted it. but now arose the question--would it stay there? in other words, would it be caught among the rocks, and hold fast? if not, they would have to fly it again and again, until it should get fastened above, or until the experiment should prove a failure. karl stepped forward to decide the point--the others looking on with an eagerness of glance, that betrayed how deep was their interest in the result. karl's hand trembled as he laid hold of the cord. at first he pulled upon it in a gentle way--hand over hand--so as merely to take in the slack. at length it began to tighten, requiring greater strength to take it in: as if the kite was still free, and dragging over the snow. this produced anything but a pleasant anticipation; and as the rope came to hand, foot after foot, and yard after yard, a shadow, that had stolen over the countenances of all three, became sensibly darker. only for a short while did this shadow remain. it vanished, more suddenly than it had arisen: when they saw the running cord become abruptly checked, and then tighten as karl continued to draw it in. he pulled upon it, at first exerting only a part of his strength, as if afraid that it might again come loose. after awhile, gaining confidence, he pulled with all his power. it still held fast! ossaroo and caspar now joined their strength to his; and all three pulled together. hurrah! the kite would not come! the cord kept its place, stretching to the bottom of the cliff, as taut as the main-stay of a ship! ejaculations of joy escaped from all three at the same instant of time: and for some moments they stood, tightly clutching the rope, and holding it firmly: as if in dread of its being dragged out of their grasp by some hostile and invisible hand. at length karl suggested the propriety of making the cord secure, by fastening it to some object. a large upright stone, close by the bottom of the cliff, appeared to be the most proper thing; and to this they determined upon tying it. still keeping it taut--lest by slackening it they might disturb the anchor aloft--they moved hand over hand along the rope, until they had got close to the bottom of the precipice. then, while karl and caspar still held on, ossaroo gathered up the slack; and, turning it several times round the stone, securely _belayed_ it. nothing more remained but to make the steps--which had been already designed--adjust them in their places--climb up to the top of the cliff--and be free as the mountain breeze, which would there be blowing around them! the thought of such a lucky deliverance filled them once more with joyous imaginings; and they stood around the stone, to which the rope had been attached--congratulating themselves, as if they had already escaped. they knew there would still be some time required to make the steps, and fix them in their places; but, since they no longer doubted their ability to accomplish the ascent, the interval of time might be passed cheerfully enough; and, with this pleasant anticipation, they went back to their workshop in the best of spirits, and cooked themselves a more careful dinner than they had eaten since the discovery of the daphne trees. chapter forty five. the rope-ladder. it took them another day--with their blades all busy from morning till night--to prepare the pegs which were to constitute the "rounds" of their rope-ladder. more than a hundred were required: as the cliff where the rope passed up was over a hundred yards in height; and the steps were intended to be placed at equal distances of about two feet apart. it had been their design at first to insert the steps in the rope-- between the strands of which it was composed; but, on reflection, a better plan suggested itself. by opening the strands to let in the pieces of wood, the rope might be weakened, so much as to endanger its breaking; and this alone, above all things, was to be avoided. it was deemed more prudent to leave the cord untouched, and place the sticks crosswise outside of it. whipped round with strong pieces of other cord, they could easily be made to keep their places--more especially as, with the hands of the climber grasping the rope above, no one stick would have to carry the full weight of his body; and, even should one of them slip a little out of place, there would be no great danger of an accident arising out of the circumstance. it occupied them a second day in twining the pieces of string, required for tying the sticks in their places; and, upon the morning of the third, they returned to the cliff, with the intention of transforming the cord, that the kite had carried up, into a rope-ladder. the mode by which they intended to effect this purpose will be easily understood--after what has been already said respecting it. the little sticks were to be laid transversely against the rope, and then so tightly tied in their places, as to prevent them from slipping down. the first was to be attached about the height of a man's waist from the ground; and the second on a level with his chin. then with the feet resting upon the first, and the left hand grasping the rope above, it would be possible to fix another at the height of the chin, as it would then be. by climbing up to the second, a fourth could be placed at a little distance above; and thus in succession, till the top of the cliff should be attained. it was not supposed, that any one could continue the process of attaching the steps, till all were set in their places; nor did they contemplate being able to complete the work in a little time. on the contrary, they expected it to occupy them for days; and they knew, moreover, that long intervals of rest would be required by any one who should have to execute it. standing upon such unstable footing, for any considerable length of time, would be both irksome and fatiguing; and they were about to enter upon the task with a full knowledge of its difficulties. on reaching the cord they at once set to work upon it. rather should it be said, that one of them did so: for only one could work at a time in this, the last labour, as they supposed, they would have to perform in that lone valley. in attaching the steps to the rope, ossaroo was allowed to act as sole operator: since neither of the others understood the handling of cordage so well as he. they could but act as spectators and the only purpose which their presence could serve, was to cheer the shikaree by their company and conversation. by good fortune it was not necessary for ossaroo to fix any steps to the first thirty feet of the kite cord. one of the long ladders which they had made enabled him to ascend that far without using the sticks; and, indeed, all of the ladders might have served in this way, had the kite carried its cord up the cliff within reach of them. unfortunately, this did not happen to be the case; and only the first ladder could be made available. placing it nearly parallel with the rope, ossaroo mounted up; and, when near its top, commenced attaching the steps. he had carried up along with him about a dozen of the little sticks, with cords to correspond-- in a sort of pouch, which he had formed with the skirts of his cotton tunic. karl and caspar below, seated upon stones, and fritz squatted on the ground, watched the movements of the shikaree with deep and speechless interest. it was not a very long time, before he had adjusted the first two pegs in their proper places; and, then letting himself off the ladder, and placing both his feet upon the first cross-piece, in a way that they balanced one another and kept the stick in a horizontal position--he proceeded to attach the third about the height of his chin. to do this required, a good deal of adroitness; but ossaroo was gifted with this quality to a high degree; and, so far as his footing was concerned, the hindoo was as much at home upon a rope, as would have been one of those monkeys sacred to the believers in his brahministic creed. any other feet would soon have become tired--resting upon such a slender support; but ossaroo had been accustomed to climbing the tall lofty palms, until his toes had acquired a certain degree of prehensile power; and the smallest branch or protuberance on the trunk of a tree, or even a knot on a rope, was footing enough to enable him to hold on for many minutes at a time. he had no difficulty, therefore, in balancing himself upon the sticks, which he had already attached; nor ascending from one to the other, as each was got into its place. in this way he proceeded, until the stock which he had taken up with him was exhausted, and his apron hung empty. then, letting himself down from step to step, and cautiously returning to the wooden ladder, he descended to the bottom of the cliff. karl or caspar might have rendered his coming down unnecessary, as either could have carried so light a "hod" up the ladder; but there was good reason why ossaroo should make the descent--that was, to rest and refresh himself. he did not remain very long below--just long enough to let the blood circulate along the soles of his naked feet--and then, with his apron distended--being once more full of sticks--he reclimbed the ladder, swung himself out upon the cord, and clambered up the steps he had already fixed in their places. his second stock of sticks becoming exhausted as the first, he again revisited the earth; again allowed himself an interval of rest; and then ascended as before. with ossaroo proceeding in this fashion, the remainder of the day was spent--a long interval being allowed for dinner; which karl and caspar, having nothing else to do, had cooked with extra care. they did not go home to the hut to perform their culinary operations. there would have been no advantage in doing so: since the kitchen accommodation there was not a whit better than where they were at work; and the larder contained nothing more than what they had brought along with them--some dried ibex-meat. but karl had not been idle for a portion of the time; and had collected various roots and fruits that, when roasted, not only helped out the meal, but rendered it sufficiently luxurious for stomachs like theirs, no longer fastidious. after dinner, ossaroo indulged in a long smoke of his favourite "bang;" and, stimulated by this, returned to his task with renewed energy. so successful was he in its accomplishment, that, before sunset he had full fifty steps in place; which, along with the wooden ladder, enabled him to climb nearly a third of the way up the cliff. of course darkness put an end to his operations for that day; and with the intention of continuing them on the morrow, both the operator and spectators wended their way back to the hut--karl and caspar showing as much respect to ossaroo, as if he had been the master architect, and they only his assistants or labourers. even fritz appeared to be impressed with the belief that the shikaree was the most important personage in the party: for every time that the latter descended from the cliff the dog had paid his "devoirs" to him, frisking around, leaping up, and looking steadfastly in his face, as if congratulating him on being their deliverer! on the road home fritz continued these demonstrations--springing against the legs of the shikaree so as occasionally to impede his progress, evidently convinced--either from his own observation or from the respect which he saw the others were paying him--that the hindoo was the hero of the day! chapter forty six. ossaroo makes a quick descent. next morning, as soon as they had despatched an early meal, they returned to their work--that is, ossaroo to work, the others to watch. unfortunately on this day the weather was unfavourable for operations. there was a high wind, not continuous, but blowing in short, quick puffs--gusty and violent. as ossaroo hung upon the rope half-way up the precipice, the wind acting upon his body, carried him at times several feet out from the face of the cliff--causing him also to oscillate violently from side to side, notwithstanding that the rope was fast at both ends. it was fearful to look at him thus suspended, and swinging in mid-air. at times the hearts of the spectators were filled with consternation, lest the brave shikaree should either have his brains dashed out against the beetling cliff; or, being forced to let go his hold, be flung far out, and falling upon the rocks below, get crushed to atoms. often during the earlier part of the day were the alarms of karl and caspar raised to such a height, that they shouted to ossaroo to come down; and when down, entreated him not to go up again until, by the lulling of the wind, the danger should become diminished. their entreaties, however, were of no avail. the shikaree, accustomed all his life to braving the elements, felt no fear of them; but on the contrary, seemed to feel a pride, if not an actual pleasure, in thus daring danger. even while swinging out from the cliff, and oscillating along its _facade_--like the pendulum of some gigantic clock--he was seen tying the strings and adjusting the pieces of stick, as coolly, as if he had been standing upon _terra firma_ at the bottom! thus, nearly to the hour of noon, did ossaroo continue his arduous undertaking--of course with the usual intervals of rest, during each of which karl and caspar reiterated their entreaties for him to desist and leave the work to be executed at a more favourable opportunity. fritz, too, while lavishing his caresses on the daring climber, seemed to look persuadingly into his face--as if he knew there was danger in what the hindoo was doing. it was all in vain. the shikaree, while resisting all their efforts to restrain him, seemed to scorn the danger which they dreaded; and, without hesitation, returned to his perilous task. and no doubt he would have succeeded in accomplishing it, allowing due time for its completion. it was not the wind that would have shaken him from that rope, to which he clung with the tenacity of a spider. had the support proved true, he could have held on, even though it had been blowing a hurricane! it was not in this that his chief danger lay; nor from such source was it to come; but from one altogether unexpected and unthought-of. it was near the hour of noon, and ossaroo had already succeeded in setting the steps up to about half the height of the cliff. he had descended for a fresh supply of sticks; and, having gone up the tree-ladder, and swung himself back upon the kite cord, was just commencing to clamber up it--as he had already done nearly a score of times. the eyes of karl and caspar were upon him, following his movements, as they had been doing all along; for, despite his frequent repetition of the ascent, it was always a perilous performance, and interesting to behold. just as he had got free from the ladder, and fairly out upon the rope, a cry came from his lips that thrilled the hearts of the spectators with alarm: for they knew that the utterance was one of terror. they needed no explanation of that cry; for at the same moment that it reached their ears, they perceived the danger that had caused ossaroo to utter it. he was descending along the facade of the cliff--not gliding down the rope of his own free will, but as if the kite had got loose at the top, and, yielding to the weight of his body, was being dragged over the surface of the snow! at first, he appeared to be descending only very slowly; and, but for the cries he was putting forth, and the slackening of the rope below, they upon the ground might not have been aware of what was going on. but they had not regarded his movements for many seconds, before perceiving the true state of the case, and the fearful peril in which their faithful shikaree was now placed. beyond doubt the kite had become detached above; and, yielding to the strain upon the rope, caused by ossaroo's weighty was being pulled towards the edge of the precipice! would the resistance be equal to the weight of the man's body? would it let him down easily? or would the dragging anchor arrive at a place where the surface was smooth, and then gliding rapidly over it, increase the velocity of the descent? in other words, was the shikaree about to be projected through a fall of thirty feet to the bottom of the cliff? the spectators were left but little time to speculate on probabilities. not a moment was allowed them to take measures for securing the safety of their companion. before they could recover from the surprise, with which his first shout had inspired them, they saw that his descent was every moment becoming more accelerated: now in gradual declination, then in quick, short jerks--until he had got within about twenty-feet of the ground. they were in hopes that he might continue to descend in this fashion for a few yards further, and then the danger would be over; but, just at that moment, the broad breast of the kite was seen poising itself over the top of the cliff; and like a great living bird, it sprang off from the rocks, and soared out over the valley! ossaroo, still clinging to the cord, was carried some distance from the cliff; but, fortunately for him, the weight of his body overbalanced the resistance which the atmosphere offered to the broad surface of the kite; else he might have been carried much higher into the air. equally fortunate was it, that the amount of overbalance was exceedingly slight--otherwise he might have been dashed with violence to the earth! as it was, he came down as gently as a dove, alighting upon his legs, and remaining erect upon them, like mercury upon the top of his "sky-kissing mountain." the moment that the shikaree felt his feet touching _terra firma_, he sprang nimbly to one side, at the same instant letting go the rope, as if it had been a rod of red-hot iron! the great kite, no longer held in poise against the wind, commenced darting hither and thither; at each turn descending lower and lower-- until by one last swoop, in which it seemed to concentrate all its failing strength, it came down towards ossaroo like a gigantic bird of prey descending upon its victim! it was just as much as the shikaree could do to get out of the way; and, had he not ducked his head in the very nick of time, he would certainly have received a blow upon his skull, that would have endangered its entirety. chapter forty seven. the escape of the kite. the joy, which all felt at the miraculous escape of ossaroo, more than compensated for their chagrin at the circumstance of the kite having returned to them: more especially, as they believed that the accident was not without remedy. it might be attributed to the wind: which no doubt had lifted the kite from where it lay, detaching it from the rock, or whatever other object that had for the time entangled it. they doubted not, but that they might again succeed in sending it up, and getting it fast as before; and this confidence hindered them from grieving over the unfortunate occurrence, as they might otherwise have done. as the wind on that day was in the wrong quarter for flying a kite towards the cliff, they determined to postpone the attempt, till a more favourable opportunity; and, in order that their kite should not be in danger of getting spoiled by the rain, they once more shouldered, and carried it back, rope and all, to the shelter of the hut. nearly a week elapsed, before there was a breeze that blew in their favour; but during this interval, they had not been altogether unemployed. still uncertain of the length of time they might be detained in the valley, they had passed almost every hour of the daylight in increasing their stock of provisions--so as not to encroach upon the cured venison of the ibex, of which a considerable quantity was still to the good. their guns were no longer used for procuring food. the last loads still remained in the barrels; and were not to be fired off--until every other means of capturing game should fail them. indeed, they were now so confident of being able to get out of their prison, that at times they almost fancied themselves already on their way down the mountains; and talked of keeping their guns loaded, against any danger from large animals they might encounter on their homeward journey. for procuring food they knew that firearms were not necessary. ossaroo's bow was sufficient weapon for that. often might it be heard twanging among the trees; and as often did the shikaree's arrow pierce the breast of some fine bird--a peacock, or argus pheasant, or one of the beautiful brahminy geese that frequented the waters of the lake. ossaroo's nets and lines, too, were not without their use. fish were caught of various kinds, and excellent quality; and there was one sort in particular, should all else fail, that promised to furnish them with an inexhaustible supply. this was a large species of eel, in which the lake abounded, to such an extent, that it was only necessary to cast in a hook, with a worm upon it, and an eel of nearly six feet in length would be instantly landed. as they did not always relish to dine upon eels, but little of their time was spent in procuring them. for all that, they were gratified on discovering the abundance of these slippery creatures--knowing that, should other resources fail, they would find in them a staple article of wholesome food, that could never become scarce, no matter how much they should eat of it. a favourable wind at length came on to blow; and the kite was once more shouldered, and carried to the same place as before. just in the same way did they proceed to fly it; and in the same style it again rose soaring above the cliff; and--the cord having been suddenly slacked-- sank to rest upon the slope of the mountain. so far were they once more successful; but alas! it proved to be just so far and no farther. pulling upon the rope, to ascertain whether their anchor had "bit," they were chagrined to receive an answer in the negative. the cord came back to them with scarce any resistance; or only such, as was caused by friction over the edge of the cliff, and by the drag of the kite itself along the snowy surface. hand over hand, they drew it back: foot by foot, and yard by yard, it came yieldingly towards them--until they saw the broad curving breast of the pseudo-bird projecting over the parapet edge of the precipice! once more was it launched out into the air; once more was rope given it, till it had ascended to the full length of its tether; and once more was it allowed to alight. again the pull downward and inward--again the cord came freely to hand-- and again was the rounded bow seen upon the brow of the precipice, and outlined against the blue sky above; not like the beautiful bow of the iris--a thing of promise--but one of disappointment and chagrin. again the flight--again the failure--again and again; until the patience of the operators--to say nothing of their strength--was well nigh exhausted. but it was no mere play for the sake of pastime. they were not flying that kite for their amusement; nor yet for the purpose of making some scientific experiment. they were flying it as a means of obtaining their personal liberty; and they were all of them interested in the success or failure of the attempt--almost as much as if their lives rested on the issue. however tried their strength, or worn out their patience, it would not do to give up; and therefore--although at each unsuccessful effort, with hopes constantly becoming diminished--they continued their exertions. for more than a score of times they had sent up the kite, and as often dragged it back to the brow of the cliff; not always at the same point: for they had themselves changed their ground, and tried the flight in different places. in all cases, the result was the same. the bird refused to take hold with its claws--either on rocks, or blocks of ice, or banks of frozen snow--all of which lay scatter over the slope of the mountain. considering that it had caught hold on the very first trial, so many failures were regarded by our adventurers with some surprise. had it never held, there would have been no cause for this; and after so many attempts, they would have been the more inclined to yield up their plan, deeming it impracticable. but the fact of their first success sustained them in the hope that success might again be obtained; and, in this belief, they were encouraged to "keep on trying." half a dozen additional flights were made, but fortune still declining to favour them, they desisted from their efforts, leaving the paper-bird with its breast protruding over the cliff: as if perched there in preparation for a further flight. by this time the kite had become sadly damaged--its _plumage_ having received rough usage by constant trailing over the rocks and sharp angles of ice. while up in the air, daylight could be seen shining through it in several places; and it no longer exhibited that majesty of flight that had originally characterised it. it was evident that repairs would soon be needed; and to discuss this question, as also to consider the propriety of proceeding to make trial at some other place, our adventurers, for a time, discontinued their efforts. all three were standing together, but at several paces distant from the end of the rope; which they had for the moment abandoned, and which lay negligently along the ground. they had not taken the slightest precaution to secure it: for it had not occurred to them that there was any risk in leaving it loose. it was only when too late, that they perceived the mistake they had committed--only when they saw the cord suddenly jerked up from the ground, as if some invisible hand was lifting it aloft into the sky! all three rushed towards it at the same instant. they were too late. already the end of the rope was dangling at such a height above their heads, that even the tallest of them could not touch it with the tips of his fingers. ossaroo leaped high into the air in an endeavour to clutch the string. caspar ran to procure a pole which lay near, in hopes of retaining it in that way: while karl ran up the ladder that was resting against the cliff, near which the rope was yet trailing. the efforts of all three were alike vain. for a second or two, the end of the cord hung oscillating above their heads--just sufficiently out of reach to tantalise them; and then, as if the invisible hand above had given it another gigantic jerk, it was drawn rapidly and vertically upward, till it finally disappeared over the crest of the cliff! chapter forty eight. no more paper-trees! there was nothing mysterious in the disappearance of the cord. the kite was no longer visible on the summit of the cliff. the wind had carried it away; and, of course, its rope along with it. when the first moment of surprise had passed, our adventurers turned towards each other with glances that spoke something more than disappointment. notwithstanding the number of times that the kite had failed to fix itself, still it had once taken a fast hold, and it was but reasonable to suppose it would have done so again. besides, there were other places where the precipice was as low, and even lower, than where they had made the trials; and at some of these they might have been more successful. indeed, there was every probability that, had they not lost that kite, they would have been able in due time to have climbed out of their rock-bound prison by a ladder of rope; but now all chance of doing so was gone for ever--swept off by a single puff of wind. you may be fancying, that the misfortune was not irremediable. another kite, you will be saying, might be constructed out of similar materials as those used in making the one carried away. but to say this, would be to speak without a full knowledge of the circumstances. the same thought had already passed through the minds of our adventurers, when they perceived that the kite they were flying was getting torn and otherwise damaged. "we can easily make another," suggested caspar at that crisis. "no, brother," was the answer of karl; "never another, i fear. we have paper enough left to patch this one; but not enough to make another." "but we can make more paper, can we not?" urged caspar, interrogatively. "ah!" again replied karl, with a negative shake of the head, "no more-- not another sheet!" "but why? do you think there are no more daphne trees?" "i think there are not. you remember we stripped all there were in the thicket; and since then, thinking we might need more bark, i have gone all through the valley, and explored it in every direction, without meeting with a single shrub of the daphne. i am almost certain there are none." this conversation between the brothers had occurred, long before the losing of the kite. when that event came to pass, it was not necessary for them to repeat it; and, both being thus acquainted with the fact that it was impossible for them to construct another, they felt that they had sustained an irreparable loss. in what direction had the kite been carried off? might it not be blown along the line of cliffs, and tossed back again into the valley? as there appeared some probability that such a chance might arise, all three ran outward from the rocks--in order to command a better view of the precipice, on each side. for a long time they stood watching--in hopes that they might see the great paper-bird returning to the scene of its nativity. but it never came back; and they became at length convinced, that it never would. indeed, the direction of the wind--when they paused to consider it-- rendered the thing not only improbable, but impossible. it was blowing _from_ the cliffs, and _towards_ the snowy ridge. no doubt the kite had been carried up the sloping acclivity; and had either passed clear over the mountains, or become lodged in some deep defile, where the wind could no longer reach it. at all events, it was certain, that both kite and cord were lost to them for ever. "ach! how very unfortunate!" exclaimed caspar, in a vexed tone, when they had finally arrived at this conviction. "what ill-starred luck we have, to be sure!" "nay! brother," remarked karl, in a tone of reproval; "do not chide fortune for what has happened just now. i acknowledge it is a great misfortune; but it is one for which we may justly blame ourselves, and only ourselves. by sheer negligence we have lost the kite, and along with it, perhaps, the last chance of regaining our liberty." "yes, you speak truly," rejoined caspar, in a tone of mingled regret and resignation. "it _was_ our fault, and we must suffer for it." "but are you quite sure, brother karl," resumed he, after a pause, and referring to the conversation that had already passed between them--"are you quite sure there are no more of these paper-bearing trees?" "of course," replied the plant-hunter, "i am not positive--though i fear it is as i have said--that there are no more. it will be easy for us to determine the point, by making a complete exploration of the valley. it may be that something else might turn up which would answer the purpose equally as well. there is a birch-tree indigenous to the himalaya mountains, found both in nepaul and thibet. its bark can be stripped off in broad flakes and layers, to the number of eight or ten--each almost as thin as common paper, and suitable for many purposes to which paper is usually applied." "do you think it would do for a kite?" inquired caspar, without waiting for karl to finish his explanation. "i am sure of it," replied the botanist. "it would serve even better than the daphne paper; and had i believed there was a chance of finding it here, i should have preferred it to that. but i do not think we shall find it. i have observed no species of birch; and i know that this one, like most of the _betulaceae_, affects a much colder climate than there is in this valley. likely enough, it grows on the mountains above; but there it is out of our reach. could we reach it there, we should not need to be robbing it of its manifold envelope. but let us not despair," added karl, endeavouring to appear cheerful; "perhaps it may be found growing down here; or, if not, we may still find another grove of the daphne trees. let us proceed on and search!" karl was far from being sanguine in either conjecture; and it was as well for him that he was not: for after a minute and careful exploration of the valley--which occupied nearly three whole days--neither the wished-for birch, nor the desired daphne trees--nor any other material out of which a kite might be manufactured--rewarded their search. it was of no use, therefore, to think any longer of a kite; and the subject was at length dismissed from their minds. chapter forty nine. aerostatics. it is scarce possible to talk of a paper kite, without thinking of that other and greater aerostatic contrivance--a balloon. karl had thought of it, long before this time; and so had caspar, just as long: for the kite had suggested it simultaneously to the minds of both. it may be asked why they had not entertained the thought, and endeavoured to carry it into practical effect: since a balloon would have been far more likely to have delivered them out of their "mountain prison" than a paper kite? but they _had_ entertained the thought--at least, karl had done so--and examined it in all its bearings. caspar had permitted it to pass out of his mind, under the impression that _they could not make a balloon_; and karl had arrived at the same conclusion; but only from a belief that they _had not the materials_ with which to make one. given the materials, karl felt quite equal to the construction of a balloon--a rude one, it is true; but one which might have served the purpose for which they required it. during the days when they had been occupied in making the paper-bird, he had given his thoughts a good deal to this subject; for, to say the truth, he had never been very sanguine about the success of the kite experiment. he had pondered long and patiently on the subject of balloons--endeavouring to recall to mind what little he had studied of aerostatics--and had mentally examined all the material objects within reach, in the hope of discovering some substance out of which one might be constructed. unfortunately, he had not been able to think of anything that appeared to be suitable. the daphne paper--even had it been in abundance--would not do: for paper of itself, however close in texture, is not strong enough to withstand the pressure of the outside air--that is, in a balloon of sufficient size to carry any considerable weight. but it was of no use to talk of paper: since there was not enough; and karl had given over thinking of a balloon: because there was nothing within reach likely to serve for its construction. he knew that that great sphere would require to be air-proof. he had thought of the skins of animals; but such of these as might have been obtained in sufficient quantity, were entirely too thick and heavy to make the covering of a balloon. the hemp, of which there _was_ an abundance, might be woven into a cloth, and then coated over by gum obtained from some tree; for in the valley were several species of gum-exuding trees. but the question was, could they manufacture a cloth out of hemp that would be light enough when thus coated over? it was very doubtful whether they could--at all events they would have to practise the weaving trade for a long time, before they should arrive at a sufficient expertness to accomplish such a feat. the plan was too unpromising to be seriously entertained; and karl had dismissed it, along with the whole subject of the balloon. that had been previous to the experiment of the kite, and its unfortunate ending. but now that all hope from this quarter had been brought to an end, the balloon once more began to shape itself in his mind, as well as in that of caspar; and for the first time they proceeded to talk over the subject together. "cords we could have in plenty," remarked caspar, "but they'd be of no use, without the stuff to cover the great globe. they make it of silk, don't they?" "yes," replied karl, "silk is the best material for the purpose." "and why?" inquired caspar. "because it combines the three properties of lightness, strength, and closeness of texture, in a greater degree than any other known substance." "would nothing else do?" "oh, yes; many things would answer to make a balloon, that might carry up a certain amount of weight. even a paper balloon can be constructed to take up a few pounds--a cat, or a small dog; and people in many countries have been cruel enough to dispatch such creatures into the air, not caring what became of them." "very cruel indeed!" assented caspar, who, although a hunter, was far from having an unfeeling heart. "such people should be sent up themselves in paper balloons." "yes, if paper balloons would carry them; which, unfortunately for us, they wouldn't. even if we had an unlimited supply of paper, it would be of no use to us. we require something stronger, and more tenacious." "can we not think of something? let us try, karl!" "ah! dear brother, i have been trying for days, and in vain. there is nothing within this valley at all suitable for the purpose." "would canvas do? have you thought of that?" "i have. it would be too coarse and heavy." "but, with great pains, could we not make it light enough? we might choose the finer fibres of the hemp; and spin and weave it with scrupulous care. ossaroo here is a perfect omphale in his way. i'll warrant he could beat hercules with the distaff." "ho! brother!" exclaimed karl, a little astonished. "you are quite classical in your speech this morning. where learnt you the history of hercules--you who have never seen the inside of a university?" "you forget, brother karl, that you yourself have been my instructor in these classical themes, as you call them. though i must tell you that, with the exception of their occasionally lending a little ornament to my speech, i have derived not the slightest advantage from them; nor is it likely i ever shall." "well, caspar," answered the botanist, "i am not going to stand up for the classics, as you are well aware. although i have taught you a little of their lore, it was when i had nothing to do, and you were equally idle; otherwise i should have considered that both of us were wasting time. you already know my opinions on that subject--which are: that a knowledge of what is usually termed `the classics' is of about as much use to a reasoning man as might be an equally profound knowledge of chinese _mnemonics_. the time i have spent in the study of the _dead_ languages has been sheer waste; and all i have learnt wont raise us a foot higher here. my knowledge of jupiter and juno is not likely to gain us the means of getting out of our difficulty, no more than my acquaintance with mercury will help me to a pair of wings. so a truce to classical ideas, and let us see whether scientific ones may not serve us better just now. you have a quick invention, brother caspar; can you think of anything--i mean anything within our reach--that would make the air-bag of a balloon?" "but could you make the balloon, if you had the stuff?" inquired caspar, still in doubt whether any other than an experienced aeronaut could construct so wonderful a machine. "pooh!" replied the philosopher, "the making of a balloon is almost as easy as making a soap-bubble. any air-tight bag, filled with heated atmosphere, becomes a balloon. the question is, what weight it can be made to carry--including the materials out of which it may be constructed." "but how are you to get the heated air into it?" "simply by making a fire under an aperture left open below." "but would not this air soon become cold again?" "yes; and then the balloon would sink back to the earth from the air inside getting cooled, and becoming as heavy as that without. of course," continued the philosopher, "you are aware that heated air is much lighter than the ordinary atmosphere; and that is why a balloon filled with the former, rises, and will continue rising, till it has reached that elevation, where the rarefied atmosphere is as light as the heated air. then it can go no further, and the weight of the balloon itself will bring it down again. a bladder of ordinary air sunk in water, or a corked bottle, will illustrate this point to your comprehension." "i comprehend it well enough," rejoined karl, rather piqued at being treated too much _a l'enfant_ by his learned brother. "but i thought that, in a balloon, it was necessary to keep a fire constantly burning-- a sort of grate or fire-basket suspended below. now, even if we had the silk to make the great spherical bag, how could we make a fire-basket without iron?" "we should not need the fire-basket you speak of. that is only required, when you design to keep your balloon some length of time in the air. if you only wish to make a short ascent, once filling the bag with hot air is sufficient; as it would be for us here. even if we wanted a suspended grate, surely, brother, you have enough ingenuity to get over such a trifling difficulty as that?" "well, i'm not so sure that i could. how would you get over it?" "why, by making a common basket, and lining it with clay. that would carry fire, as well as a vessel of either cast or wrought iron--at least sufficient to serve for a short excursion such as we should care to make. now-a-days, fire is not used for inflating balloons. inflammable gas has been found to be far superior for this purpose; but as we have no such thing in stock, we should have to proceed on the old original plan--that employed by the brothers montgolfier--the first inventors of the balloon." "you think, then, that the fire apparatus could be dispensed with, if we could only discover some material that would make the great globe-shaped bag to contain the heated air?" "ay," replied karl; "think of something to do that, and i promise to make you a balloon." thus challenged, caspar set his wits to work; and for a long while he sat in silence, as if buried in some very profound speculation. probably, there was no material substance in that valley that did not pass in review before the retina of his mental vision; and all were considered in turn. "it must be light, air-tight, and strong?" asked he, at length, as if there was something in his thoughts possessing these three requisites. "light, air-tight, and strong," answered karl, simply repeating his words. "the two last i am sure of," rejoined caspar. "of the first only have i my doubts." "what is it?" asked karl, in a tone that betrayed his interest in what caspar had said. "eel-skins!" was the laconic answer. chapter fifty. the skin balloon. "eel-skins," said caspar, repeating the phrase, as he saw that karl hesitated before pronouncing an opinion. "don't you think they would do?" karl had it on the tip of his tongue to cry out--"the very thing!" but something withheld him from making this unqualified declaration. "they might--it is possible they might," said he, apparently debating the question within himself--"just possible; and yet i fear--" "what do you fear?" asked caspar. "do you think they would not be strong enough?" "strong enough," replied karl. "that's not what i fear." "the air can't pass through an eel-skin?" "no--not that." "at the seams, perhaps? we can stitch them neatly; and then gum them over at the joinings. i'll warrant ossaroo can sew like a shoemaker." the shikaree could do all that. karl knew it. it was not there the difficulty lay. "the weight, then?" pursued caspar interrogatively. "precisely that," answered karl; "i fear they will be too heavy. bring one, ossaroo; and let us have a look at it." the shikaree rose from his seat; and going into the hovel, returned presently--bringing back with him a long shrivelled object, which any one could tell to be a dried eel-skin. there were many like it inside: for they had carefully preserved the skins of the eels they had caught, induced to do so by a sort of presentiment, that some day they might find a use for them. in this case their prudent providence was likely to prove of service to them. karl took the skin; and, holding it out on the palm of his hand, appeared to make an estimate of its weight. caspar watched his brother's countenance, and waited to hear what he would say; but karl only expressed himself by a doubtful shake of the head, which seemed to show that his opinion was _against_ the eel-skins. "they might be made much lighter, i fancy," suggested caspar: "scraping would do a deal for them; and by the way, why would not boiling make them light enough? it would take all the fatty, oily substance out of them." "there's something in what you say," rejoined karl, apparently impressed by the last suggestion. "boiling might render them a good deal lighter. we can easily try it." as karl said this, he proceeded to the boiling spring, and plunged the eel-skin under the water. there it was permitted to remain for about half an hour, when it was taken out; and, after being scraped with the blade of a knife, was spread upon a rock, under the sun, where it would soon get thoroughly dry. they all waited patiently for the completion of this process. the result was of too interesting a character to allow of their occupying themselves with anything else. in due time the eel-skin had become sufficiently dry, to be submitted to examination; and karl, once more taking it up, balanced it upon his palm. tested, even in this inexact fashion, it was evidently much lighter than before; and, by the gratified look with which the philosopher regarded it, he appeared to be much better satisfied with its weight. still, however, he was not sanguine: as his words testified. they were almost a repetition of what he had said before. "it may do--it is just possible. at all events, there can be no harm in trying. let us try it, then." to say, "let us try it," meant the same as to say, "let us make the balloon." the others understood that; and of course acquiesced in the determination. as there was nothing to interfere with the immediate commencement of the work, they resolved to set about it at once; and in fact did set about it without farther delay. the number of eel-skins on hand, though very considerable, would not be near enough for covering a balloon; and therefore ossaroo went to work with his hooks and lines to catch a few hundreds more. karl was able to tell how many it would take; or he could at least make an estimate sufficiently exact for the purpose. he designed a balloon of twelve feet diameter: for he knew that one of less size would not have power enough to carry up the weight of a man. of course, karl knew how to calculate the surface of a sphere whose diameter should be twelve feet. he had only to multiply the diameter on the circumference; or the square of the diameter on the fixed number . ; or find the convex surface of the circumscribing cylinder; or else find four times the area of a great circle of the said sphere. any one of these methods would give him the correct result. on making the calculation, he found that a sphere of feet diameter would have a surface of square feet, within a trifling fraction. therefore square feet of eel-skins would be required to cover it. in other words, that quantity would be required to make the balloon. as the eels happened to be of large size--most of them being over a yard in length, and full four inches in average girth--the skin of one when spread out would yield about a square foot of surface. taking large and small together--and allowing for waste, the heads and tails that would have to be chopped off--karl calculated that he would get nearly a square foot each out of the eels; and that about five hundred skins would make the balloon bag. but as they would have to be cut occasionally with a slant, in order to get the globe shape, perhaps a few more would be needed; and therefore ossaroo was to keep his baits in the water, until the requisite number of eels should be hooked out of it. ossaroo had another department assigned to him besides catching the fish; and one that took up more of his time: since the baiting of the hooks, and looking after them, required only his occasional attention. spinning the thread by which the skins were to be sewed together, was a much more delicate operation: since in these both strength and fineness were absolutely necessary. but as caspar had said, ossaroo was an adept with the distaff; and several large skeins of the finest twist were soon turned off from his nimble fingers. when enough thread had been thus produced, ossaroo proceeded to making the cords and stronger ropes, that would be needed for attaching the "boat"--as well as to hold the balloon in its place, while being got ready for its ascent. caspar's employment was--first, the skinning of the eels; and afterwards the scraping, boiling, and drying of the skins; while karl, who acted as engineer-in-chief, besides giving a general superintendence to the work, occupied himself in imparting the final dressing to the material, and cutting it into such shapes, that it could be closely and conveniently stitched together. karl had also made an excursion into the forest, and brought back with him large quantities of a gum, which he had extracted from a tree of the genus _ficus_--a sort of _caoutchouc_--which is yielded by many species of _ficus_ in the forests of the lower himalayas. karl had gone in search of this substance, because he knew it would be required for paying the seams, and rendering them air-tight. when they had pursued their various avocations for about a week, it was thought that material enough of every kind was collected and made ready; and then ossaroo was set to stitching. fortunately, they were provided with needles: for these had formed a part of the _accoutrement_ of the plant-hunters--when originally starting upon their expedition. as neither karl nor caspar had any experience in handling such sharp tools, the sewing had all to be done by ossaroo; and it took another full week to accomplish this sartorean task. at the end of that time, it was fully accomplished and complete; and the huge bag was ready to receive its coat of gum varnish. a day sufficed for "paying;" and nothing more remained but to attach the "boat," or "car," that was to carry them aloft in their daring flight into the "azure fields of air." chapter fifty one. making ready for the ascent. karl was the only one of the three who knew anything about a balloon, or the mode of inflating it. had it been their intention of navigating the air, an apparatus would have been required to carry up a fire. this karl could easily have contrived. a basket of wicker-work, as he had said, well lined with clay, would have answered the purpose after a fashion; but as they did not intend to use the balloon for any purpose beyond making the single ascent to lift them over the cliffs, a continuous fire would not be required. the first inflation would answer that end well enough; and therefore a grate or fire-basket was not thought of. the car to carry the passengers--or boat, as it is sometimes styled: since, for reasons easily understood, it is usually a boat--was quite another affair; and had it been designed for more than a mere temporary use, would have taken a considerable time in the making; but for what they wanted almost anything would serve; and all that they intended employing was a sort of wicker basket, or deep hamper, suspended by stout ropes. this had been already prepared; and only needed to be attached to the bottom of the air-bag. in the present case, the "bottom of the bag" is quite a figure of speech--_lucus a non lucendo_. strictly speaking, it had no bottom; but, where this should have been, there was a round aperture, formed by a stout hoop of ringall bamboo, to which the skin covering was lashed, and to which, also, the cords intended to sustain the afore-mentioned basket, as also the stay-ropes, were to be attached. the object of this aperture will be easily understood. it was by it that the hot air was to be admitted inside the balloon, for the purpose of inflating it. and how was this hot air to be obtained? that was a question which karl alone could answer. of course, fire was to be the agent for producing it: but how was it to be got into the bag? karl could tell that, and karl only; and, now that the time had arrived for trying the experiment, he condescended to explain to his coadjutors how he meant to proceed. the bag was to be propped up between tall stakes set in the ground; its bottomless bottom turned towards the earth, so that the aperture would be below. under this a fire was to be kindled--not, however, until everything else should be ready; and the hot air rising up into the aperture would enter the balloon, and cause it to swell out to its full globular dimensions. more hot air being admitted, the cooler atmosphere within would be expelled, the balloon would become lighter than the surrounding air, and by the simple principle of atmospheric pressure it would ascend into the air. it was expected it would do so--it was hoped it would. to say the truth, the hopes of the engineer were far from being high-- his expectations anything but sanguine. he had observed all along, that, notwithstanding the process employed for lightening the eel-skins, they were still far heavier than silk; and perhaps, after all, the experiment might not succeed. there was another circumstance that had as much _weight_ on the mind of karl as the eel-skins; and that was quite as likely to have a _bearing_ upon the balloon. he had not overlooked the fact, that the spot, from which they proposed making the ascent, was nearly ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. he knew that the atmosphere in such a situation would be extremely rarefied, and that a balloon, which might easily ascend many thousand feet into the air starting from the level of the sea, would not stir from the ground if carried to the top of a mountain ten thousand feet high. this was the circumstance which preyed upon the spirit of the young philosopher, and hindered him from entertaining any very sanguine hopes of success in the experiment they were making. the philosophical truth had been before his mind from the first, and at times had almost determined him to abandon the project. but as he was not sufficiently acquainted with the laws of aerostation as to be certain of failure, he had worked on with the determination to seek success, though it must be acknowledged with but faint hopes of finding it. thus stood matters on the morning when it was finally arranged to launch their great aerial ship, and ascertain whether it would swim. all things were made ready at an early hour. the huge bag was set up between the supporting stakes the _car_ was attached to it, as also several ropes to keep the balloon from being carried away; and these were fastened at their other ends to stout pegs, driven firmly into the ground; while a little furnace of stones was built underneath to hold the fire, whose ascending caloric was to expand the balloon, and raise it into the air. the fuel out of which this fire was to be made had been already collected near the spot. it was not wood, nor faggots of any kind; for although these might have served after a fashion, karl was acquainted with a better material. he remembered that the montgolfiers, and other early aerostats--previous to the introduction of the inflammable gas-- had used chopped straw and wool, and regarded these materials to be the best substances for inflating their balloons. karl had adopted their idea; and had provided chopped grass as a substitute for the chopped straw, and in lieu of sheep's wool he had procured a quantity of the _poshm_ of the ibex, and other animals, that had been killed--the rich shawl-wool of cashmere! the car, which has already been described as a sort of deep hamper, was not over three feet in diameter. it was evidently not equal to the holding of three persons--to say nothing of a large dog--for it is hardly necessary to say that fritz was not going to be left behind. the faithful creature had too long followed the fortunes of our adventurers to be abandoned by them now. but there was not the slightest danger of that. the dimensions of the car were large enough for what the "vehicle" was intended to carry, which was only _one_. karl believed that there would be little chance of the balloon having sufficient power to take up all three of them, their united weight being over four hundred pounds. he would be but too contented if one should be carried aloft; and if that one should succeed in effecting a landing on the summit of the cliff, it was of no importance what afterwards became of the aerial ship. having completed that one voyage, it might make another on its own account--either south to calcutta or eastward to hong kong, if it liked china better. of course, if any one of them should succeed in surmounting the cliff, it would be an easy matter to get over the mountain; and as they had passed native villages on their way upward, these could be reached in a day or two, and a party of men, with a proper rope-ladder, brought to the rescue of the others. even had there been no prospect of assistance from any one outside, it would not matter very much. if only one of them could get to the top of the cliffs, they could construct a rope-ladder of themselves--by which the other two would be able to make the ascent. it is hardly necessary to say who was to make the attempt--ossaroo was to be the aeronaut. ossaroo had voluntarily offered himself for this perilous performance; and his offer had been accepted. not that either of the others were at all afraid to have run the risk. it was from no desire to shirk the danger that they had appointed ossaroo to undertake it; but simply because, once outside, the shikaree would be far better able to find his way down the mountains: and in his native language could readily communicate with the villagers, and give a correct account of their situation. chapter fifty two. inflation and failure. at length arrived the hour for making that important experiment--as to whether their aerial ship would prove herself air-worthy. all three stood around the spot where the chopped grass and shawl-wool were to be set on fire. this fuel itself appeared underneath--in a little heap lightly laid, and ready for the touch of the tinder. karl had a piece of blazing torch in his hand; caspar held one of the stay-ropes, to prevent the balloon from rising too rapidly; while ossaroo, equipped as if for a journey, stood by the hamper, in readiness, when the proper time should arrive, to "pack" himself into it. alas! for the frailty of all human foresight! the most careful calculations often prove erroneous--not that in the present instance there was any unforeseen error: for from the very first, karl had been distrustful of his data; and they were now to disappoint, rather than deceive him. it was not written in the book of destiny that ossaroo should ever set foot in that wicker car or ever make an ascent by that balloon. the torch was applied to the chopped grass and shawl-wool. both blazed and smoked, and smouldered; and, more being thrown on, the blaze was kept up continuously. the heated air ascended through the aperture, causing the great sphere of stitched skins to swell out to its full dimensions. it trembled and rocked from side to side, like some huge monster in pain. it rose to the height of a few inches from the ground, sank, and then rose again, sank once more, and so kept on rising and sinking and bobbing about, but alas! never exhibiting sufficient ascending power, to raise the hamper even as high as their heads! karl continued to feed the furnace with the chopped grass and poshm, but all to no purpose. the air within was sufficiently heated to have raised it for miles--had they only been as low as the sea-level, and the balloon constructed of lighter materials. as it was, all their efforts were in vain. the gigantic globe could not be raised above six feet from the ground. it had not power enough to carry up a cat--much less a man. in short, it was a failure--one more added to the long list of their dark disappointments! for more than an hour karl continued to keep his fire ablaze. he even tried faggots of the resinous pine: in hopes that by obtaining a greater strength of caloric he might still succeed in causing the balloon to soar upward; but there was no perceptible difference in the effect. it bobbed about as before, but still obstinately refused to ascend. at length, with patience exhausted and hopes completely crushed, the engineer turned away from the machine which he had taken so much pains in constructing. for a moment he stood irresolute. then heaving a sigh at the recollection of his wasted labour, with sad, slow step he departed from the spot. caspar soon followed him--fully participating in the feeling of grievous disappointment. ossaroo took leave of the inflated monster in a different fashion. drawing near to it, he stood for some seconds contemplating it in silence--as if reflecting on the vast amount of seam he had stitched to no purpose. then uttering a native ejaculation, coupled with a phrase that meant to say, "no good either for the earth, the water, or the air," he raised his foot, kicked the balloon in the side--with such violence that the toe of his sandals burst a hole in the distended eel-skins; and, turning scornfully away, left the worthless machine to take care of itself. this task, however, it proved ill adapted to accomplish: for the disappointed aeronauts had not been gone many minutes from the ground, when the heated air inside, which had for some time been gradually growing cooler, reached at length so low a temperature, that the great sphere began to collapse and settle down upon the embers of the pine faggots still glowing red underneath. the consequence was that the inflammable skins, cords, and woodwork coming in contact with the fire, began to burn like so much tinder. the flames ran upward, licking the oily eel-skins like the tongues of fiery serpents; and when the _ci-devant_ aeronauts looked back from the door of their hut, they perceived that the balloon was ablaze! had the accident occurred two hours before, they would have looked upon it as the saddest of calamities. now, however, they stood regarding the burning of that abandoned balloon, with as much indifference as is said to have been exhibited by nero, while contemplating the conflagration of the seven-hilled city! chapter fifty three. another spell of despair. never, during all the days of their sojourn in that "valley of despond," did our adventurers feel more despondence, than on the afternoon that succeeded the bursting of their great air-bubble--the balloon. they felt that in this effort, they had exhausted all their ingenuity; and so firmly were they convinced of its being the last, that no one thought about making another. the spirits of all three were prostrate in the dust, and seemed at length to have surrendered to despair. of course, it was not that sort of despair which takes possession of one conscious of coming and certain death. it was far from being so dire as this; but for all it was a bitter feeling. they knew they could continue to live, perhaps as long there, as elsewhere upon the earth; but what would life be worth to them, cut off from all communication with the world?--for now, to the fulness of conviction, did they believe themselves thus isolated. in disposition not one of the three had the slightest particle of the hermit. not one of them, but would have shuddered at the thought of becoming a simon stylites. you might suppose that, with books and nature to study, karl could have made shift. true, with such companions he might have lived a less irksome life than either of the others; but even with these to occupy him, it is doubtful whether karl could have passed the time; for it is not very certain, that a man--knowing himself alone in the world, and for ever to be alone--would care either for the books of men or the book of nature. as for caspar, the thought that their lonely existence was to be perpetual, was enough at times to send the blood rushing coldly through his veins. the hindoo felt the affliction as much as either of his companions in misfortune; and sighed as much for his bamboo hut on the hot plains of hindostan, as they for their home in the far fatherland of bavaria. it is true their situation was not so bad as if each had been left alone by himself. many a poor castaway upon a desert island has been condemned to a far more unhappy fate. they knew and acknowledged this. each had the other two for companions; but as they reflected thus, they could not hinder their thoughts from casting forward into the future-- perhaps not distant--when one of them might leave that valley without the aid of either rope-ladders or balloons; and then another--leaving the last of the three lonely and forlorn! with such sad reflections did they pass the evening of that day, and the morning and evening of that which followed. they took no heed of time; and could scarce summon sufficient energy to cook their frugal meals. the spirit to plan, and the energy to act, seemed both to have departed from them at once and for ever. this state of things could not long continue. as already said, the soul of man holds within itself a power of resuscitation. so long as it continues to live, it may hope to recover from the heaviest blow. broken hearts are more apparent than real; and even those that are worst shattered have their intervals in which they are restored to a perfect soundness. the slave in his chains, the prisoner within his dark dungeon, the castaway on his desert isle, all have their hours of joy-- perhaps as vivid and lasting as those of the king upon his throne, or the conqueror in his car of triumph. on earth there is no happiness unmingled with alloy; and, perhaps, there is no sorrow that may not in time find solace. on the second clay succeeding their last great disappointment, the spirits of all three began to revive; and those natural wants--which, whether we will or not, force themselves upon our attention--commenced to claim their consideration. karl was the first to recognise these necessities. if they were to live there for life, he reasoned,--and this seemed no longer a doubtful supposition,--it would be of no use, giving way to despondency--moping out their days like mutes at a funeral. better far to lead an active life; and live well too--by providing plenty to eat and plenty to drink--which with industry they could easily do. all this might not make them cheerful; but they would certainly be less a prey to melancholy while engaged in some active industry, than if they remained brooding over their fate. these thoughts, as we have said, arose on the morning of the second day succeeding that on which the balloon had been abandoned. karl gave words to them, in an attempt to cheer his brother caspar--who had relapsed into a state of unusual despondency. ossaroo equally required cheering; and therefore it devolved on the botanist to attempt enlivening the spirits of his companions. for a time, he met with very slight success; but gradually the necessity of action forced itself upon the attention of all--if only to provide the means to keep them from starving; and without further loss of time, they resumed the various branches of industry, by which they had hitherto been enabled to supply their larder. to caspar, as before, the chase was entrusted; while ossaroo attended to the fishing; as he, better than either of the others, understood the management of hooks, lines, and nets. the botanist busied himself in the old way, exploring the valley, in search of such seeds, plants, and roots, as might be found wholesome for food--not neglecting others of a medicinal character, that might serve in case of sickness. many such had the young plant-hunter encountered during his early researches; and had made note of them against the possibility of their being required. fortunately, up to that time there had been no real need for any of the party to make trial of the natural _pharmacopoeia_ which the valley afforded: and it was to be hoped they should never have occasion to test the virtues of the specifics which the plant-hunter had discovered. karl nevertheless collected several kinds; and, after submitting them to a process necessary for their preservation, had stored them away within the hut. of those vegetable products adapted for food, the chief article obtained was the nutritive seed yielded by the edible pine (_pinus gerardiana_). the cones of this valuable tree were as large as artichokes; each yielding several seeds of the size and appearance of pistachio nuts. the wild cockscomb (_amaranthus cruentus_) also furnished a portion of their supply. its seeds when parched, and crushed between two stones, produced a kind of meal, of which cakes of bread were manufactured by ossaroo. these, although very far inferior to the real home-bake, or even to the most ordinary production of the bakehouse, were nevertheless sufficiently palatable to those who had no other bread. the lake, besides yielding fish to the nets of ossaroo, also afforded a supply of vegetables. on searching it, the botanist discovered several edible kinds of plants; among others the curious _trapa bicornis_, or horned water-nut--known among the natives of the himalayan countries by the name _singara_, and much used by them as an article of wholesome food. there was also a splendid water-lily--with very broad leaves and large flowers of pink and white colour--the seeds and the stalks of which karl knew to be edible; as he had read of their being used for this purpose by the poorer people in the country of cashmeer. the lily in question, viz. the _nelumbium speciosum_, grows plentifully in the lakes of the far-famed valley so named. on first observing this beautiful plant growing luxuriantly, as it was, in their own little valley lake, karl took occasion to inform his brother--ossaroo at the same time listening attentively to his statement--of the various uses made of it by the inhabitants of cashmeer. how the boys sailing about in their boats when the day chances to be very hot, are in the habit of plucking one of its large shining leaves out of the water, and spreading it over their crowns, to protect them from the fervid rays of the sun; and how the petiole of the leaf, being hollow inside, serves them as a tube for drinking out of. many such interesting particulars, in regard to the economy of this fine aquatic plant, did the young botanist communicate to his companions; but none more interesting than the fact that both its seeds and stalks are edible: since this promised them additional security against the danger of running short in their supply of vegetable food. chapter fifty four. the bean of pythagoras. the discovery of the water-lily was not a thing of recent occurrence. they had known of its existence before; and more than once had visited the little embayment in the lake, where it chiefly grew. in fact, it had attracted their attention a few days after their first arrival in the valley--not by its own conspicuousness, for its broad round leaves, spread horizontally upon the surface, could scarce be seen from the shore. only when its beautiful pink-white flowers were in bloom, could it be observed at any great distance. that which had first led them to approach the place where it grew, and examine the plant, was their having noticed a singular phenomenon connected with it; and which for awhile had puzzled all three of them to explain. the _bed_ of lilies, at that time in full bloom, was visible from the place where they had originally made their encampment; and every morning, just after daybreak, and sometimes also during the day, they were in the habit of seeing some birds disporting themselves near that place in a singular manner--very singular indeed: since these birds appeared to _walk upon the water_! they were tall, long-legged, slender-bodied creatures, and easily distinguished by both karl and caspar, as belonging to the family of _rallidae_ or water-hens. there could be no doubt that they were walking on the water--sometimes slowly, at other times in a quick run--and, what was even more unaccountable than this, they were seen at times to _stand still upon the water_! ay, and, what might be considered more surprising still, they performed this aquatic feat _upon only one leg_! the thing might have been more mysterious, had not karl from the first suspected the reason why the laws of specific gravity appeared to be thus contradicted. he suspected the existence of some plant, whose leaves, lying spread on the surface, perhaps offered a footing for the birds, sufficiently firm to support the weight of their bodies. the botanist was only reasoning from remembrance. he had lately read the account published but a few years before of the discovery of the gigantic water-lily of tropical america--the _victoria regia_--and remembered how its discoverers had spoken of large birds of the crane family making their perch upon its huge leaves, and thus supported, playing about over the surface of the water, as if the firm earth had been under their feet. with these facts fresh in his memory, karl conjectured that the water-hens seen by him and his companions were supported on a similar pedestal, and playing themselves on a like platform. his conjecture proved correct: for on visiting the place shortly after, the broad orbicular leaves of the _nelumbium speciosum_ were perceived--almost as large as those of their south american congener. other interesting points relating to the great lily growing in the himalayan lake, karl had mentioned from time to time to his companions: for he knew that the _nelumbium speciosum_ was the celebrated pythagorean bean mentioned in the writings of the greeks--more especially by herodotus and theophrastes. it is described by these writers as growing plentifully in egypt; and no doubt was cultivated in that country in their day; though it is not known there at the present time. it is found represented on the egyptian sculptures, and so accurately has it been described by the greek writers, as to leave no doubt as to the identification of the species. it is one of the plants supposed to be the celebrated "lotus" of antiquity; and this supposition is probable enough: since not only its succulent stalk, but its seeds or "beans," have been eaten in all times by the people in whose country it grows. it is a food that produces a strengthening effect upon the system; and is also very refreshing in cases of thirst. the chinese call it "lienwha," and its seeds with thin slices of its root, mixed with the kernels of apricots and walnuts, and placed between alternate layers of ice, constituted one of the select dishes offered by the great mandarins to the british ambassadors on the visit of the latter to the celestial empire. these people store up the roots of the lienwha for winter use-- preserving them in a pickle of salt and vinegar. the japanese also make use of the plant as an esculent; and it is, moreover, regarded by them as sacred to their divinities--the images of which are often represented seated upon its large leaves. the flowers of the _nelumbium speciosum_ when in full bloom, give out a most fragrant odour--somewhat resembling that of anise; while the seeds, shaped like acorns, have a flavour equal in richness and delicacy to that of the finest almonds. chapter fifty five. an aquatic harvest. it was not upon that occasion that karl communicated to his companions all these interesting facts in relation to the great lily. many of them he had made known long before--especially that the seeds of the plant were eatable; and both caspar and ossaroo had often proved to their own satisfaction that they were something more than eatable--in short, a great delicacy. it was from a knowledge of this fact that the thoughts of all three were now turned upon the lilies--whose huge roseate corollas, no longer seen glistening above the surface of the water, proclaimed that the "beans" were ripe, and ready for "shelling." the three were about starting from the hut to reap this aquatic harvest--which, judging from the quantity of seed-pods that appeared above the surface, promised to be abundant. each had provided himself with a rush basket--which the shikaree had woven, during the long winter nights, for other purposes; but as they were of just the size and shape to hold the pythagorean beans they were now to be employed in that capacity. both karl and caspar had rolled up their trowsers to mid-thigh; so as not to wet them while wading among the lilies; but ossaroo, not being provided with any nether garment entitled to the name of trowsers, had simply tucked up the skirt of his cotton tunic, making it fast under his girdle. in this guise all three proceeded round the shore of the lake, to that side where they would be nearest the bed of lilies. the water-hens, seeing them make their approach, rose from their perch upon the leaves, and fluttered off to seek a more secure shelter among the sedge. the aquatic gleaners at once waded in; and commenced picking off the pods, and shelling them into their rush baskets. they had been there before, and knew there was no danger in the depth of the water. they had nearly filled their respective sacks with the pythagorean beans, and were meditating a return to dry land, when a dark shadow passing over the tranquil surface of the lake--closely followed by another of similar size and shape--attracted their attention. all three saw the shadows at the same instant of time; and all simultaneously looked up to ascertain what sort of creatures were casting them. in the sky above they beheld a spectacle, calculated to inspire them with feelings of a strange interest. right above the lake, and also over their heads, a brace of large birds was circling in the air. each was borne up by a pair of huge wings full five yards from tip to tip; while from the body, between, a neck of enormous length was extended horizontally--prolonged into a tapering-pointed beak, in shape like the seed-pistil of a pelargonium. their beaks might well have been compared to the pistil of a pelargonium; or rather the latter should be assimilated to them; since it is from this species of birds, the flower has derived its botanical cognomen. the birds were _storks_. not the ordinary _ciconia_, that makes its home among the hollanders--or finds a still more welcome hospitality on the roof-tree of the hungarian by the plains of the _puszta_--but a stork of far grander dimensions; in short, a stork that is the _tallest_ of his tribe--the _adjutant_. on looking up, karl recognised the species; so did caspar, and at a glance. it required no lengthened scrutiny--no profound knowledge of natural history, to identify the noted _adjutant_. it only needed to have seen him before either in _propria persona_, or in a picture; but both brothers had seen specimens of the bird, in full flesh and feather, on the plains of india--in the environs of calcutta itself. as to the shikaree, was it likely he should be mistaken about the character of those winged giants--those tall scavengers he had seen thousands of times stalking pompously along the sandy shores of the sacred ganges? it was not possible for him, to have a doubt about the identity of the birds, who were now throwing their shadows over that lone lake of the himalayas. he had no doubt. the very certainty that the birds above him were the gigantic cranes of the ganges--the sacred birds of brahma--caused him to utter a sort of frenzied shout, and at the same time, dropping his "sack of beans" into the water! he needed not to look at the colour of the birds, to note that they were brown black above, and white underneath. the naked vulture neck with its pouch-like appendage of brick-red hue; the silken feathers of bluish white under the tail--those precious plumes well-known and worn by the ladies of many lands under the appellation of _marabout feathers_--all were recognised at a glance. even quicker than either of his youthful comrades had the hindoo identified the birds. a single glance sufficed, and simultaneously with that glance had the cry fallen from his lips, and the sack of pythagorean beans from his grasp. the birds were flying slowly, and to all appearance _laboriously_: as if wearied of wing. they appeared to be in search of some roost on which to repose themselves. that they had entered the valley with this intention was made evident a few moments after: for having made a circuit round the little lake, both at the same instant ceased to ply their long pinions, and drawing their wings suddenly in to their bodies, they settled down upon the shore. the spot upon which they had chosen to alight was the prominence terminating a little peninsula that protruded out almost to the bed of lilies, and from which the three waders had themselves descended into the water. as the latter now stood knee-deep among the aquatic plants, they were distant not more than twenty paces from the point of this peninsula. the storks, after alighting, stood upon the shore in erect attitudes-- apparently as unconcerned about the presence of our three adventurers, as if the latter were only overgrown stalks of the pythagorean bean-- utterly incapable of doing them an injury. chapter fifty six. the adjutants. the brace of gigantic birds, that had thus alighted by the shore of the little lake, were, to say the least, uncouth creatures; for the whole ornithological world might be ransacked without finding a greater oddity than the _adjutant_. in the first place, it stands six feet upon its long, straight shanks; though its actual length, measuring from the tip of its bill to the termination of its claws, is full seven and a half. the beak, of itself, is over a foot in length, several inches in thickness, with a gibbous enlargement near the middle, and having both mandibles slightly curved downwards. the spread of a full-grown adjutant's wing is fifteen feet, or five yards, from tip to tip--quite equalling in extent either that of the chilian condor or the "wandering" albatross. in colour the adjutant may be described as black above and white underneath, neither [that] being very pure. the upper plumage is a dirty brownish black; while the belly and under parts present a dull white appearance,--partly from an admixture of greyish feathers, but also from the circumstance that the bird is usually bedaubed with dirt-- as mud from the marshes, where it feeds, and other filth, in which it seems to take delight. but for this foulness, the legs of the adjutant would be of a dark colour; but in the living bird they are never seen of the natural hue--being always whitened by the dust shaken out of its plumage, and other excrement that attaches itself to the skin. the tail is black above and white underneath--more especially the under coverts, which are of a pure white. these last are the plumes so highly prized under the name of "marabout feathers," an erroneous title, arising through a mistake--made by the naturalist temminck in comparing the indian adjutant with another and very different species of the same genus--the marabout stork of africa. one of the distinctive characteristics of the adjutant, or "argala," as it is better known to the indians,--and one, too, of its ugliest "features,"--is a naked neck of a flesh-red colour the skin shrivelled, corrugated, and covered with brownish hairs. these "bristles" are more thickly set in young birds, but become thinner with age, until they almost totally disappear--leaving both head and neck quite naked. this peculiarity causes a resemblance between the adjutant bird and the vultures; but indeed there are many other points of similarity; and the stork may in all respects be regarded as a vulture--the vulture of the _grallatores_, or waders. in addition to the naked neck, the adjutant is furnished with an immense dew-lap, or pouch which hangs down upon its breast--often more than a foot in length, and changing from pale flesh colour to bright red, along with the skin of the throat. at the back of the neck is found still another singular apparatus--the use of which has not been determined by the naturalist. it is a sort of vesicular appendage, capable of being inflated with air; and supposed to serve as an atmospheric buoy to assist in sustaining the bird in its flight. the inflation has been observed to take place under exposure to a hot sun; and, therefore, it is natural to infer, that the rarefaction of the air has something to do in causing [the bird to use this organ]. as the adjutant often flies to a great height, it is possible that this balloon-like apparatus is necessary to sustaining it in the rarefied atmosphere found at such an elevation. the annual migration of the bird over the lofty chain of the himalayas might not be possible, or if possible, more difficult, without this power of decreasing the specific gravity of its body. it is scarce necessary to say that the adjutant--like all birds of the family to which it belongs--is a filthy and voracious feeder; carnivorous in the highest degree; and preferring carrion and garbage to any other sort of food. it will kill and swallow live kind--such as frogs, snakes, small quadrupeds, and birds--the latter not so very small either: since it has been known to bolt a whole fowl at a single "swallow." even a cat or a hare can be accommodated with a passage down its capacious gullet; but it will not attempt to kill either one or the other: since, notwithstanding its gigantic size, it is one of the veriest cowards in creation. a child, with a bit of a switch, can at any time chase the adjutant away; and an enraged hen will put it to flight whenever it strays into the neighbourhood of her young brood. it does not retreat, without first making a show of defiance--by placing itself in a threatening attitude--with reddened throat, and beak wide agape, from which latter proceeds a loud roaring, like that of a bear or tiger. all this, however, is mere braggadocio; for, on the enemy continuing the attack, it immediately cools down, and betakes itself to ignominious flight. such are a few peculiarities of the gigantic stork, known as the _adjutant_ or _argala_. it only remains to be added, that there are at least two, perhaps three, other species of storks of very large dimensions--though not so large as this one--that for a long time have been confounded with it. one of these is the _marabou_; which inhabits the tropical regions of africa, and which also produces the plumes so much prized in the world of fashion. the feathers of the african species, however, are far less beautiful and valuable than those from the tail of the adjutant; and it is these last that are really best known as _marabout feathers_, in consequence of the mistake made by temminck, and propagated by the anatomist cuvier. another great stork--differing both from the _argala_ of asia and the _marabou_ of africa--inhabits the island of sumatra. it is known to the natives as the "boorong cambay;" while in the neighbouring island of java is found either a fourth species of these gigantic birds, or the same that belongs to sumatra. it is somewhat singular that such creatures should have remained so long unknown to the scientific world. it is not much more than half a century since travellers began to describe them with any degree of exactness; and even at the present time their history and habits have received but very slight elucidation. this is the more surprising when we consider that on the banks of the ganges--even in calcutta itself-- the adjutant is one of the most common birds--constantly stalking about the houses, and entering the enclosures with as much familiarity, as if it was one of the regular _domestics_ of the establishment! its services as a "scavenger" procure for it an immunity from persecution; and it is not only tolerated by the people, but encouraged, in its advances towards fellowship with them; notwithstanding that at times it becomes rather troublesome in its attentions to the young ducklings, chicklings, and other denizens of the farmyard. sometimes they are not even contented with such fare as may be found outside; but have been known to enter the bungalow; snatch a smoking joint from the table; and swallow it, before either master or servant could rescue the dainty morsel from between their long and tenacious mandibles! when seen in flocks, wading through the water,--with wings outstretched, as is their custom,--they may be taken for a fleet of small boats. at other times, when stalking about over the sandy shores; and picking up the _debris_ strewed along the banks of the sacred river; they resemble a crowd of native women engaged in the like occupation. ofttimes may they be seen feeding voraciously upon the filthiest carrion of animals; and not unfrequently upon a human body in a state of putrefaction--the corpse of some deluded victim to the superstition of juggernaut--which has been thrown into the so-styled _sacred_ river, to be washed back on the beach, an object of contention between _pariah_ dogs, vultures, and these gigantic cranes of the ganges! chapter fifty seven. the standing sleepers. the advent of the adjutants produced a vivid impression on the minds of all three of our adventurers--more vivid, perhaps, upon ossaroo than either of the others. to him they seemed like old friends who had come to visit him in his prison; and though it never occurred to the shikaree, that they could be in any way instrumental in obtaining his release, still the impression produced was one of a pleasant nature. he saw before him two creatures whose forms, however uncouth, were associated with the scenes of his earliest childhood; and he could not help a passing fancy, that the pair, that had thus unexpectedly made their appearance, might be the same old cock and hen he had so often seen roosted on the branches of a huge banyan tree, that overshadowed the bungalow in which he was born. of course this could be only fancy on the part of ossaroo. out of the thousands of storks, that annually make their migration from the plains of hindostan to the northward of the himalaya mountains, it would have been a rare coincidence if the two that for years had performed the office of scavengers in the shikaree's native village, should be identical with those now hovering above his head--for it was while they were yet upon the wing that ossaroo had indulged in this pleasant speculation. though scarce serious in his thought--and only entertaining it for an instant--he was nevertheless gratified by the sight of the two storks, for he knew they must have come from his native plains--from the banks of that glorious river in whose waters he longed once more to wet his feet. the sight of the huge birds suggested to caspar a different train of thought. as he beheld their immense wings, extended in slow but easy flight, it occurred to him that one or other of the great creatures might have the power to perform that task which had proved too much for the bearcoot; and for which the "kite" had been "flyed" in vain. "oh!" exclaimed he, as the idea came across his mind, "don't you think, karl, that either of those great creatures would be strong enough to carry the line aloft? they look as if they could lift even one of ourselves to the top of the cliff." karl made no reply; though his silence was only caused by caspar's suggestion--which he was proceeding to ponder upon. the young hunter continued: "if we could only catch one of them alive! do you suppose they are going to alight? they look as if they would. what do _you_ say, ossaroo? you know more of these birds than we do." "yees, youngee sahib; ee speakee de true. dey go for come down. you savey dey make long fly. dey both weary on de wing--no able fly furder. 'sides, ee see, here am de lake--water--dey want drinkee--want eat too. dey sure come down." ossaroo's prediction was fulfilled, almost as soon as it was uttered. the birds, first one and then the other, jerked in their spread wings; and dropped down upon the shore of the lake--as already stated, not over twenty paces from the spot where the three waders were occupied among the leaves of the lilies. the eyes of all three were now directed with a fixed gaze upon the new-comers,--in whose behaviour they observed something irresistibly ludicrous. almost on the instant of their feet touching _terra firma_, instead of moving about over the ground in search of food, or striding down towards the water to drink--as the spectators were expecting them to do--the two long-legged bipeds acted in an entirely different manner. neither of them seemed to care either for food or drink. if they did, both these appetites must have been secondary with them to the desire for rest; for scarce ten seconds had elapsed after their alighting, when each drew in its long neck, burying it between the shoulders as in a case, leaving visible only the upper half of the head, with its huge scythe-shaped beak--the mandibles resting against the prominence of the breast bone, and pointing diagonally downwards. simultaneous with this movement, the spectators perceived another-- equally indicative of a desire on the part of the birds to betake themselves to repose. this was the drawing up of one of their long fleshless legs, until it was entirely concealed under the loose feathers of the belly--a movement made by both so exactly at the same instant, as to lead to the belief that they were actuated by like impulses, by some spiritual union that existed between them! in ten seconds more both birds appeared to be asleep. at all events, their eyes were closed; and not a movement could be detected in the limbs, wings, bodies, or beaks of either! it was certainly a ludicrous sight to see these huge creatures--each supporting itself on a single stalk, so straight and slender that nothing but the nicest balance could have ensured their equilibrium; and this, too, while neither seemed conscious of any danger of toppling over--of which, indeed, there was not the slightest reason to be afraid. the hindoo had been too long accustomed to this sort of spectacle, to see anything in it worthy of being laughed at. not so caspar--whose mirth was at once excited to the point of risibility. the unconcerned manner in which the storks had come to a stand--along with the picturesque _pose_ in which they had composed themselves to sleep--was even too much for the stoical karl; who at once echoed the laughter which his brother had inaugurated. their united cachinnations rang loudly over the lake--reverberating in repeated peals from the adjacent cliffs. it might be supposed that the _fracas_ thus created would have alarmed the new arrivals: and caused them once more to make an appeal to their wings. nothing of the sort. the only effect perceptible on either, was the opening of their eyes, a slight protrusion of the neck, a shake of the head, an upraising of the long beak, with a quick clattering of its mandibles--which soon becoming closed again, were permitted to drop into their original position of repose. this cool behaviour of the birds only increased the hilarity of the boys; and for several minutes they remained in their places, giving way to loud and uncontrollable laughter. chapter fifty eight. fritz among the feathers. their hilarity could not be continued for ever. even that of caspar came to a termination; though not until his ribs ached with the agreeable exercise. as their bean-sacks had been already filled, it was determined that they should first take them to the hut, and then return to the storks with the design of capturing them. ossaroo was of the opinion, that they would have no difficulty in effecting this; declaring the birds to be so tame, that he might walk straight up to them, and throw a noose over their necks. this, in all probability, he might have done, had he been provided with a piece of cord proper for the making of such a noose. but there was no cord at hand--not even a bit of string--nothing but the rush baskets filled with the lotus beans. to obtain a snare, it would be necessary to make a journey to the hut. in the minds of our adventurers there was no very clear conception of the object of capturing the storks: unless it might have been that the thought, to which caspar had given speech, was still entertained by himself and his brother. that indeed would have justified them in their attempt to take the birds. another idea may have suggested itself--more especially to ossaroo. if nothing else should come of it, there would be some pleasure in holding the birds in captivity--as pets and companions. ossaroo had been involuntarily contemplating the prospect of a long lonely life in the solitude of that mountain valley. with such a prospect even the solemn stork might be regarded as a cheerful companion. stimulated by these thoughts--and some others of a more indefinite kind--our adventurers came to the determination to ensnare the _adjutants_! all three commenced wading out of the lake--in a direction so as not to disturb the sleepers. karl and caspar--now that they had become inspired with a design--lifted their feet out of the water, and set them down again, as though they ere treading upon egg. ossaroo sneered at their over-caution--telling them, that there was not the slightest fear of frightening the storks; and indeed there was truth in what he affirmed. in most countries bordering upon the banks of the ganges, these birds, protected alike by superstitious fears and edicts of law, have become so used to the proximity of man, that they will scarce stir out of their way to avoid him. it was possible that the brace in question might have belonged to some of the wilder flocks--inhabiting the swamps of the sunderbunds--and therefore less accustomed to human society. in that case there might be some difficulty in approaching them; and it was for this reason that ossaroo had consented to adopt the precautions for their capture which karl had insisted should be taken. the truth is, that karl had conceived a deeper design than either of his companions. it had occurred to him--while engaged with his brother in that laughing duetto--and somewhat to the surprise of caspar, it had caused a sudden cessation of his mirth, or at least the noisy ebullition of it. the philosopher had become silent and serious; as if the thought had suddenly arisen, that hilarity under the circumstances was indecorous and out of place. from that moment karl had preserved a mysterious silence--even refusing to explain it when interrogated by caspar. he was only silent on this one theme. otherwise his speech flowed freely enough--in counsel to his companions--charging both to adopt every precaution for ensuring the capture of the storks--and with an eagerness, which puzzled them to comprehend. a few minutes' walk brought them back to the hut. it was rather a run than a walk--karl going in the lead, and arriving before either of the others. the bean-sacks were flung upon the floor--as if they had been empty and of no value--and then the strings and lines that had been spun by ossaroo were pulled out of their hidden places, and submitted to inspection. it did not take long to make a running noose, which was accomplished by the nimble fingers of the shikaree. easily also was it attached to the end of a long stem of the ringall bamboo; and thus provided, our adventurers once more sallied forth from the hut; and made their way towards the sleeping storks. as they drew near, they were gratified at perceiving the birds still in the enjoyment of their meridian slumber. no doubt they had made a long journey, and needed rest. their wings hung drooping by their sides, proclaiming weariness. perhaps they were dreaming--dreaming of a roost on some tall fig-tree, or the tower of an antique temple sacred to the worship of buddha, vishna, or deva--dreaming of the great ganges, and its odorous waifs--those savoury morsels of putrefying flesh, in which they delighted to dig their huge mattocks of mandibles. ossaroo being entrusted with the noose, did not pause to think, about what they might be dreaming; or whether they were dreaming at all. enough for him to perceive that they were sleeping; and, gliding forward in a bent attitude, silent as a tiger threading his native jungle, the shikaree succeeded in making approach--until he had got almost within _snaring distance_ of the unconscious adjutants. there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. the old saw was illustrated in the case of the shikaree while endeavouring to ensnare the storks; though it was not the snare, but the birds that now illustrated the adage. after the attempt had been made, the snare could be still seen in its place, stiffly projecting from the point of the long bamboo rod; while the adjutants were soaring in the air, mounting still higher upward, their slender necks outstretched, their beaks cracking like castanets, and their throats emitting an angry sound like the roaring of a brace of lions. the failure was not to be attributed to ossaroo; but to the imprudence of one of his companions--an individual of the party close treading upon his heels. that individual was _fritz_! just as ossaroo was about casting his loop over the shoulders of a sleeping adjutant, fritz--who had followed the party from the hut--now for the first time perceiving the birds, rushed forward and seized the tail of one of them between his teeth. then, as if determined on securing the beautiful _marabout feathers_, he pulled a large mouthful of them clean out by the roots. this was not exactly the motive that impelled fritz to make such an unexpected attack--unexpected, because the well-trained animal would have known better than to fright the game which his masters were in the act of stalking; and such imprudence had never before been displayed by him. it was the particular kind of game that had provoked fritz to act contrary to his usual habit of caution; for of all the creatures which he had encountered, since his arrival in the counted there, was none that had inspired him with a more profound feeling of hostility than these same adjutants. during fritz's sojourn in the botanic gardens of calcutta--where his masters, it will be remembered, were for some time entertained as guests--fritz had often come in contact with a brace of these gigantic birds, that were also guests of that justly celebrated establishment: they habitually made their stay within the enclosure, where they were permitted to stalk about unmolested, and pick up such stray scraps as were cast out by the domestics of the _curator's_ mansion. these birds had grown so tame, as to take food freely out of the hand of anyone who offered it to them; and with like freedom, to take it where it was not offered, but found within reach of their long prehensile beaks. often had they pilfered provisions to which they were anything but welcome; and, among other acts of their rapacity, there was one of which fritz had been an interested spectator, and for which he was not likely ever to forgive them. that was, their robbing him of a dainty piece of meat, which one of the cooks had presented to fritz himself; and upon which he had been going to make his dinner. one of the birds had the audacity to seize the meat in its mandibles, jerk it out of the dog's very teeth, and swallow it, before the latter had time to offer either interruption or remonstrance. the consequence was, that, from that time, fritz had conceived a most rancorous antipathy towards all birds of the genus _ciconia_--and the species _argala_ in particular; and this it was that impelled him, on first perceiving the adjutant--for being by the hut on their arrival he had not seen them before,--to rush open-mouthed towards them, and seize the tail of one of them between his teeth. it is not necessary to add that the bird, thus indecorously assailed, took to instant flight, followed by its more fortunate though not less frightened mate--leaving fritz in a temper to treat marabout feathers as they had never been treated before--even when by the hands of some scorned and jealous vixen they may have been torn from the turban of some hated rival! chapter fifty nine. capturing the storks. our adventurers witnessed the uprising of the birds with looks that betokened disappointment and displeasure; and fritz was in danger of getting severely castigated. he merited chastisement; and would have received it on the instant--for caspar already stood over him with an upraised rod--when an exclamation from karl caused the young hunter to hold his hand, and saved fritz from the "hiding" with which he was being threatened. it was not for this that karl had called out. the exclamation that escaped him was of a different import--so peculiarly intoned as at once to draw caspar's attention from the culprit, and fix it on his brother. karl was standing with eyes upraised and gazing fixedly upon the retreating stork--that one with whose tail fritz had taken such an unwarrantable liberty. it was not the ragged marabout feathers, hanging half plucked from the posterior of the stork, upon which karl was gazing; but its long legs, that, as the bird rose in its hurried flight, hung, slantingly downward, extending far beyond the tip of its tail. not exactly these either was it that had called forth that strange cry; but something attached to them--or one of them at least--which, as it came under the shining rays of the sun, gleamed in the eyes of karl with a metallic lustre. it had a yellowish sheen--like gold or burnished brass--but the scintillation of the sun's rays, as they glanced from its surface, hindered the spectators from making out its shape, or being able to say exactly what it was. it was only caspar and ossaroo who were thus perplexed. karl knew that glittering meteor, that for a moment had flashed before his eyes like a beam of hope--now slowly but surely departing from him, and plunging him back into the old misery. "oh! brother!" he exclaimed, as the stork flew upward, "what a misfortune has happened!" "misfortune! what mean you, karl?" "ah! you know not how near we were to a chance of being delivered. alas! alas! it is going to escape us!" "the birds have escaped us, you mean?" inquired caspar. "what of that? i don't believe they could have carried up the rope anyhow; and what good would it be to catch them? they're not eatable; and we don't want their feathers valuable as they may be." "no, no!" hurriedly rejoined karl; "it is not that--not that." "what then, brother?" inquired caspar, somewhat astonished at the incoherent speeches of the plant-hunter. "what are you thinking of?" "look yonder!" said karl, now for the first time pointing up to the soaring storks. "you see something that shines?" "ha! on the leg of one of the birds? yes; i do see something--like a piece of yellow metal--what can it be?" "i know what it is!" rejoined karl, in a regretful tone; "right well do i know. ah! if we could only have caught that bird, there would have been a hope for us. it's no use grieving after it now. it's gone-- alas! it's gone; and you, fritz, have this day done a thing that will cause us all regret--perhaps for the rest of our lives." "i don't comprehend you, brother!" said caspar; "but if it's the escape of the storks that's to be so much regretted, perhaps it will never take place. they don't appear to be in such a hurry to leave us-- notwithstanding the inhospitable reception fritz has given them. see! they are circling about, as if they intended to come down again. and see also ossaroo--he's holding out a lure for them. i warrant the old shikaree will succeed in coaxing them back. he knows their habits perfectly." "merciful father!" exclaimed karl, as he looked first at the flying storks and then at ossaroo; "be it permitted that he succeed! you, caspar, lay hold upon fritz, and give ossaroo every chance! for your life don't let the dog get away from you; for your life--for the lives of all of us!" caspar, though still under surprise at the excited bearing of his brother, did not allow that to hinder him from obeying his command, and rushing upon fritz, he caught hold of the dog. then placing the hound between his legs, he held him with both hands and knees as tightly as if fritz had been screwed in a vice. the eyes of all--the dog included--were now turned upon ossaroo. caspar contemplated his movements with an undefined interest; while karl watched them with feelings of the keenest anxiety. the cunning shikaree had not come to the spot unprepared. having anticipated some difficulty in getting hold of the storks, he had providentially provided a lure, which, in the event of their proving shy, might attract them within reach of his _ringall_. this lure was a large fish--which he had taken out of the larder before leaving the hut, and which he was now holding out--as conspicuously as possible, to attract their attention. he had gone some distance apart from the others, and especially from fritz, whom he had scolded away from his side; and, having stationed himself on a slight eminence near the edge of the lake, he was using all his wiles to coax back the birds that had been so unwittingly compelled to take wing. it was evident to ossaroo--as well as to the others--that the flight of the storks had been against their will; and that they had reluctantly ascended into the air. they were no doubt wearied, and wanted rest. whether this desire would have brought them to the earth again, ossaroo did not stay to determine. as soon as by their actions he became convinced that they saw the fish held out in his hand, he flung the tempting morsel to some distance from him, and then stood awaiting the result. it proved a success--and almost instantaneously. there was nothing in the appearance or attitude of ossaroo to excite the suspicion of the adjutants. his dark skin and hindoo costume were both well-known to them; and though now observed in an odd, out-of-the-way corner of the world, that was no reason for regarding him as an enemy. fritz was alone the object of their fear, but fritz was a good way off, and there appeared no longer any reason for dreading him. reasoning thus--and perhaps with empty stomachs to guide them to a conclusion--the sight of the fish--lying unguarded upon the grass--put an end to their fears; and, without further hesitation, both dropped down beside it. both at the same instant clutched at the coveted prize--each endeavouring to be the first in securing it. as one of the birds had got hold of the fish by the head and the other by its tail, a struggle now arose as to which should be the first to swallow its body. each soon passed a portion of it down its capacious throat, until its mandibles met in the middle, and cracked against each other. as neither would yield to the other, so neither would consent to disgorge, and let go; and for some seconds this curious contention was kept up. how long it might have continued was not left to the determination of the parties themselves; but to ossaroo, who, while they were thus occupied, rushed upon the spot; and, flinging wide his arms, enfolded both the birds in an embrace, from which they vainly struggled to get free. with the assistance of karl and caspar--who had in the meantime tied fritz to a tree--the huge creatures were soon overpowered, and pinioned beyond the possibility of escaping. chapter sixty. a labelled leg. "it is! it is!" cried karl, stooping suddenly down, and grasping the shank of one of the birds. "what?" inquired caspar. "look, brother! see what is there, round the stork's leg! do you not remember having seen that bit of jewellery before?" "a brass ring! oh yes!" replied caspar; "now i do remember. in the botanic gardens there was an adjutant with a ring round its ankle; a brass ring, too--just like this one. how very odd!" "like!" echoed karl. "not only like, but the very _same_! stoop down, and examine it more closely. you see those letters?" "_r.b.g., calcutta_," slowly pronounced caspar, as he read the inscription graven upon the ring. "`_r.b.g_.' what do these initials stand for, i wonder?" "it is not difficult to tell that," knowingly answered karl. "_royal botanical garden_! what else could it be?" "nothing else. for certain, these two birds must be the same we used to see there, and with which we so often amused ourselves!" "the same," asserted karl. "no doubt of it." "and fritz must have recognised them too--when he made that unprovoked attack upon them! you remember how he used to quarrel with them?" "i do. he must not be permitted to assail them any more. i have a use for them." "a use?" "ah, a most important one; so important that these birds, ugly and unamiable as they are, must be cared for, as if they were the prettiest and most prized of pets. we must provide them with food and water; we must tend them by day, and watch over them by night--as though they were some sacred fire, which it was our duty to keep constantly burning." "all that, indeed!" "verily, brother! the possession of these storks is not only important--it is essential to our safety. if they should die in our hands, or escape out of them--even if one of them should die or get away--we are lost. our last hope lies in them. i am sure it is our last." "but what hope have you found in them?" interrogated caspar--puzzled to make out the meaning of his brother's words, and not without wonder at their apparent wildness. "hope? every hope. ay, something more than hope: for in this singular incident i cannot fail to recognise the finger of a merciful god. surely he hath at length taken compassion upon us! surely it is he who has sent these birds! they are messengers from heaven!" caspar remained silent, gazing earnestly in the eyes of his brother, that were now sparkling with mingled gratitude and joy. but although caspar could perceive this expression, he was utterly unable to interpret it. ossaroo was alike puzzled by the strange looks and speeches of the sahib karl; but the hindoo gave less heed to them--his attention being almost wholly taken up by the adjutants, which he fondled in turns--talking to them and embracing them, as if they had been his brothers! as soon as the cord had been looped round their ankles, and there was no longer any danger of their getting away, ossaroo cut up the fish into slices convenient for their gullets; and proceeded to feed them with as much fondness as he could have shown to a brace of human beings, who had arrived from a long journey in a state of starvation. the storks exhibited no signs of shyness--not the slightest. it was not in their nature to do so. they gobbled up the morsels flung before them, with as much avidity and unconcern, as if they were being fed by the side of the great tank in the garden at calcutta. the sight of fritz alone had a disturbing influence upon them; but, by the command of karl, the dog was kept out of view, until they had finished the meal with which ossaroo had provided them. caspar, still in a cloud, once more interrogated the plant-hunter as to his purpose. "ho, brother!" answered karl, "you are not wont to be so dull of comprehension. can you not guess why i am so joyed by the presence of these birds?" "indeed i cannot--unless--" "unless what?" "you expect them to carry a rope up the cliff." "carry a rope up the cliff! nothing of the sort. yes; perhaps it is something of the sort. but since you have made such a poor guess, i shall keep you in suspense a little longer." "o, brother!--" "nay, i shall not tell you. it is news worth guessing at; and you and ossaroo must make it out between you." the two hunters, thus challenged, were about entering upon a series of conjectures, when they were interrupted by karl. "come!" said he, "there is no time now. you can exercise your ingenuity after we have got home to the hut. we must make sure of the storks, before anything else be attended to. this cord is too slight. they may file it in two with their bills, and get free. the very strongest rope we have got will not be more than sufficient. come, ossaroo, you take one. lift it up in your arms. i shall carry the other myself; while you, caspar, see to fritz. lead the dog in a leash. from this time forward he must be kept tied up--lest any misfortune should happen to spoil the best plan that has yet offered for our deliverance." so saying, karl flung his arms around one of the adjutants. ossaroo at the same instant embraced the other; and, despite the roaring that proceeded from their throats, and the clattering made by their mandibles, the huge birds were borne home to the hut. on arriving there, they were carried inside, and fastened with strong ropes--carefully attached to their legs, and tied to the heavy beams forming the rafters of the roof. the door was to be kept shut upon them at all times when the eyes of the captors were not watching them: for karl, knowing the importance of having such guests, was determined to make sure of his "game." chapter sixty one. mail-carriers on wings. it was only after they had gone back for their baskets of beans, and once more returned to the hut, that caspar and ossaroo found time to indulge in their conjectures. then both of them set to work in earnest--seated upon the great stones outside the door, where often before they had conjured up schemes for their deliverance. neither communicated his thoughts to the other; each silently followed the thread of his own reflections--as if there was a rivalry between them, as to who should be the first to proclaim the design already conceived by karl. karl was standing close by, apparently as reflective as either of his companions. but his thoughts were only occupied in bringing to perfection the plan, which to them was still undiscovered. the storks had been brought out of the hut, and tied to a heavy log that lay near. this had been done, partly to accustom them to the sight of the place, and partly that they might be once more fed--the single fish they had swallowed between them not being deemed sufficient to satisfy their hunger. caspar's eyes wandered to that one that had the ring upon its leg; and then to the ring itself--_r.b.g., calcutta_. the inscription at length proved suggestive to caspar, as the ring itself, on first seeing it, had to his brother. on that bit of brass there was information. it had been conveyed all the way from calcutta by the bird that bore the shining circlet upon its shank. by the same means why might not information be carried back? why-- "i have it! i have it!" shouted caspar, without waiting to pursue the thread of conjecture that had occurred to him. "yes, dear karl, i know your scheme--i know it; and by jupiter olympus, it's a capital one!" "so you have guessed it at last," rejoined karl, rather sarcastically. "well, it is high time, i think! the sight of that brass ring, with its engraved letters, should have led you to it long ago. but come! let us hear what you have got to say, and judge whether you have guessed correctly." "oh, certainly!" assented caspar, taking up the tone of jocular badinage in which his brother had been addressing him. "you intend making a change in the character--or rather the calling--of these lately arrived guests of ours." caspar pointed to the storks. "that is your intention, is it not?" "well?" "they are now soldiers--_officers_, as their title imports--adjutants!" "well?" "they will have no reason to thank you for your kind intentions. the appointment you are about to bestow on them can scarce be called a promotion. i don't know how it may be with birds, but i do know that there are not many men ambitious of exchanging from the military to the civil service." "what appointment, caspar?" "if i'm not mistaken, you mean to make _mail-carriers_ of them--_postmen_, if you prefer the phrase." "ha! ha! ha!" laughed karl, in a tone expressive of gratification at the clever manner in which caspar had declared himself. "right, brother! you've guessed my scheme to the very _letter_. that is exactly what i intend doing." "by de wheeles ob juggannaut coachee," cried the shikaree, who had been listening, and understood the figurative dialogue; "dat be da goodee plan. dese stork go back calcutt--surely dey go back. dey carry letter to feringhee sahibs--sahibs dey know we here in prison--dey come d'liva we vey dey affer get de letter--ha! ha! ha!" then _delivering_ himself of a series of shrill ejaculations, the hindoo sprang up from the stone upon which he had been sitting, and danced around the hut, as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses! however imperfectly spoken, the words of ossaroo had disclosed the whole plan, as conceived by the plant-hunter himself. it had vaguely defined itself in karl's mind, on first seeing the storks above him in the air; but when the lustre of metal flashed before his eyes, and he perceived that yellow band encircling the shank of the bird, the scheme became more definite and plausible. when at length the storks were taken captive, and karl deciphered the inscription--by which they were identified as old acquaintances of the r.b.g.--he no longer doubted that providence was in the plot; and that these winged messengers had been sent, as it were, from heaven itself, to deliver him and his companions from that prison in which they had so long been pining. chapter sixty two. conclusion. the deliverance came at length; though it was not immediate. several months more, of that lonely and monotonous life, were our adventurers called upon to endure. they had to wait for the return of the rainy season; when the rivers that traverse the great plains of hindostan became brimful of flood-- bearing upon their turbid bosoms that luxuriance, not of life, but of death, which attracts the crane and the stork once more to seek subsistence upon their banks. then the great adjutant returns from his summer tour to the north--winging his way southward over the lofty summits of imaus. then, too, did karl and his comrades believe that _their adjutants_ would be guided by a like instinct, and go back to the r.b.g.--the royal botanic garden of calcutta. karl felt confident of their doing so, as certain almost as if he had stood on the banks of the sacred stream in the r.b.g. itself, and saw them descending from their aerial flight and alighting within the enclosure. this confidence arose from the remembrance of his having heard--while sojourning with the curator--that such had been their habit for many years; and that the time, both of their departure and arrival, was so periodically regular, that there was not an employe of the place who could not tell it to a day! fortunately, karl remembered the time, though not the exact day. he knew the week, however, in which his guests might be expected to take their departure; and this was enough for his purpose. during their stay in the valley the birds had been cared for, as if they had been sacred to some deity, adored by those who held them in charge. fish and flesh had they a plenty--with ossaroo as their provider. food and drink, whenever they stood in need of either; freedom from annoyance, and protection from enemies of every kind--even from fritz, who had long since ceased to be their enemy. nothing had been wanting to their comfort; everything had been granted--everything but their liberty. this, too, was at length restored to them. on a fair morning--such as a bird might have chosen for its highest flight--both were set free to go whithersoever they listed. the only obstruction to their flight was a pair of small skin sacks, one attached to the neck of each, and prudently placed beyond the reach of its mandibles. both were furnished with this curiously-contrived bag; for karl--as the spare leaves of his memorandum-book enabled him to do-- had determined that each should be entrusted with a letter and lest one should go astray, he had sent his _despatch in duplicate_. for a time the birds seemed reluctant to leave those kind companions-- who had so long fed and cherished them; but the instinct that urged them to seek the sunny plains of the south at length prevailed; and, giving a _scream_ of adieu--reciprocated by the encouraging shouts of those they were leaving behind, and a prolonged baying from the throat of the boar-hound fritz--they soared aloft into the air; and in slow, solemn flight ascended the cliff--soon to disappear behind the crest of the encircling ridge. ten days after, on that same cliff stood a score of men--a glad sight to karl, caspar, and ossaroo. even fritz barked with joy as he beheld them! against the blue background of the sky, it could be perceived that these men carried coils of rope, pieces of wood, and other implements that might be required for scaling a cliff. our adventurers now knew, that, one or other, or both copies of their duplicate despatch, must have reached the destination for which they had designed it. and the same destination was soon after reached by themselves. by the help of their rescuers, and the long rope-ladders which they let down, all three succeeded in _climbing the cliff_--fritz making the ascent upon the shoulders of the shikaree! all three, amidst a company of delighted deliverers--with fritz following at their heels--once more descended the southern slope of the himalayas; once more stood upon the banks of the sacred ganges; once more entered within the hospitable gates of the r.b.g.--there to renew their acquaintance, not only with hospitable friends, but with those winged messengers, by whose instrumentality they had been delivered from their living tomb, and once more restored to society and the world! the end. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). kashmir * * * * * _uniform with this volume_ burma by r. talbot kelly, r.b.a., f.r.g.s. containing full-page illustrations in colour facsimile. india by mortimer menpes text by flora annie steel containing full-page illustrations in colour facsimile. a. and c. black, soho square, london, w. agents america the macmillan company & fifth avenue, new york australasia the oxford university press flinders lane, melbourne canada the macmillan company of canada, ltd. st. martin's house, bond street, toronto india macmillan & company, ltd. macmillan building, bombay bow bazaar street, calcutta germany, austria-hungary, } brockhaus and pehrsson russia, } querstrasse, leipzig scandinavia, and } german switzerland } * * * * * [illustration: wild rhododendrons] kashmir described by sir francis younghusband, k.c.i.e. painted by major e. molyneux, d.s.o. london adam and charles black first published september reprinted august to his highness major-general maharaja sir pratap singh g.c.s.i. maharaja of jammu and kashmir this book is dedicated in recognition of much hospitality and in token of a friendship of many years preface when major molyneux asked me to combine with him in the production of a book on kashmir i could not resist the temptation to describe what he had so faithfully depicted, though my official duties naturally leave me insufficient time to do real justice to the theme. i have not been able to write with the completeness that i should have wished; and i am aware of many sins of omission. i can only hope that when the description fails the reader will be fortunate to have his attention irresistibly diverted to one or other of my collaborator's beautiful pictures. the residency, srinagar, _september _. contents chapter i scenery and seasons bernier's impression of kashmir in --comparison of kashmir and switzerland--the road in--first signs of spring--srinagar in march--a start for shikar--shikaris--forest-clad hill-sides--signs of stag--view over the valley--rosy mountains--unrealised beauties--a duck-shoot--the view from hokrar--harwan in spring--varying beauties of kashmir--harwan in may--clouds on the mountains--a kashmir village--irises and roses--trout-culture--a trout stream--srinagar in april--the view from gupkar--a spring scene--unusual rain--the nishat bagh--pandrathan--srinagar in summer--the valley in september--the end of the monsoon--the gorgeous autumn--a hokrar duck-shoot--the valley in winter--shikaris--shooting in winter chapter ii travel in kashmir travel in old times--my first entrance--my old retainer--present modes of travel--stages from the railway--srinagar house-boats--srinagar shops--expeditions from srinagar--the descent from the tragbal chapter iii srinagar and neighbourhood an old capital--the maharaja's arrival--procession through the city--the european quarter--the jama masjid--shah hamadan--dr. neve's hospital--the takht-i-suliman--pandrathan--the dal lake--the nasim bagh--the shalimar bagh--the nishat bagh--parihasapura chapter iv the residency garden the first week in march--fruit trees in bloom--kashmir tulips--golden orioles--roses in may--strawberries--burbank's delphiniums--the height of summer--the garden in autumn--autumnal colours chapter v gulmarg the "meadow of flowers"--its numerous attractions--views over the valley--flowers--nanga parbat chapter vi the valleys and places of interest the sind valley--gangabal lake--the lolab--the lidar valley--martand--achibal chapter vii sport game preservation--the year's bag--duck-shooting--fishing chapter viii the people kashmir beauties--the pundits--mohamedans--the quadiani sect--kashmiri villagers--boatmen chapter ix the history of kashmir possible effect of natural beauty--ancient ruins--martand--greek influence--buddhist influence--kanishka--lalitaditya--avantivarman--short reigns--internal struggles--perpetual intrigue--advent of mohamedans--zain-ul-ab-ul-din--akbar--the moghals--afghan oppressors--sikhs--rise of gulab singh--break-up of sikhs--gulab singh and the british--treaty of --gulab singh acquires kashmir--its deplorable state--ranbir singh--country still depressed--famine of --improvements during present reign chapter x administration system of rule--personal--sources of revenue--land revenue assessment chapter xi products and manufactures wool--silk--fruit--rice--other grains--experimental farm--soil--implements--forests--mineral products--shawls--carpets--silk--papier-mâché--puttoo-- boat-building--trade chapter xii the electrical scheme water-power turned to electric power--the jhelum river harnessed--the flume--the power-house--difficulties encountered--the dredging scheme chapter xiii the peaks and mountain ranges the peak k --errors in observation--nanga parbat--rocks of great peaks--the himalayan range chapter xiv the story of the mountains interest of study--kashmir under the sea-- , , years ago--kashmir an archipelago--finally upheaved--cause of upheaval--history of life--at first no land life--ferns--the coal measures--great reptiles--mammals--kashmir valley a lake--appearance of man--reflections on the story--need to look forward--creating higher man list of illustrations by major e. molyneux, d.s.o. page . wild rhododendrons _frontispiece_ . approach to srinagar . the land of roses . mouth of the sind valley . sunset on the wular lake . dawn in the nulla . kotwal from the forest above kangan, sind valley . above the camping-ground, sonamarg, sind valley . the kajnag from sopur, early spring . kotwal from near the dal darwaza . the lull before the storm, dal lake . above lidarwat, lidar valley . sunset on the jhelum, above srinagar . spring in kashmir . on the dal lake in spring . entrance to the mar canal . the temple, chenar bagh . ruins of lalla rookh's gardens, lake manasbal . a ladaki in summer costume . the valley of gurais . market boats on the mar canal, srinagar . above the fifth bridge, srinagar . shawl merchants' shops, third bridge, srinagar . mosque of shah hamadan, srinagar . a hindu temple, srinagar . in the mar canal, srinagar . guggribal pointe on the dal lake . lotus lilies on the dal lake . shalimar gardens . the nishat bagh . a terrace of the nishat bagh . the residency and club, srinagar . the takht-i-suliman, from the residency garden . on the circular road, gulmarg . in the forest . from the circular road, gulmarg . gorge of the sind valley at guggangir . the frozen lake, gangabal . early morning near pahlgam, lidar valley . the ruins of martand . a srinagar bazaar . a corner of the village of pahlgam, lidar valley . a mountain farm-house . a boatman and his family . ruins of temples, wangat, sind valley . ruined gateway of martand . ruined temples of avantipur . gate of the outer wall, hari parbat fort, srinagar . at the river's edge, srinagar . lalla rookh's tomb, hassan abdal . bridge of burbur shah, chenar bagh, srinagar . spring floods in the kutical canal, srinagar . looking down the gurais valley, from dudhgai village . akbar's bridge, karallayar . the camping-ground at lidarwat . a wayside shrine . evening on the dal lake . mount haramokh, from the erin nullah . a mountain glen, before the melting of the snows . lake shisha nag, lidar valley . distant view of nanga parbat, from the kamri pass . mount kolahoi, lidar valley . rampur, jhelum valley road . in the sind valley . lake shisha nag at sunset . the tannin glen, lidar valley . going to the wedding, upper indus valley . mountain mists . near the kolahoi glacier, lidar valley . lake sinsa nag, lidar valley _sketch map of kashmir at end of volume._ kashmir chapter i scenery and seasons bernier, the first european to enter kashmir, writing in , says: "in truth, the kingdom surpasses in beauty all that my warmest imagination had anticipated." this impression is not universally felt, for one of the very latest writers on kashmir speaks of it as overrated, and calls the contour of the mountains commonplace and comparable to a second-rate tyrolean valley. and fortunate it is that in this limited earth of ours we every one of us do not think alike. but i have seen many visitors to kashmir, and my experience is that the bulk of them are of the same view as the above-mentioned frenchman. they have read in books, and they have heard from friends, glowing descriptions of the country; but the reality has, with most, exceeded the expectation. some have found the expenses of living and the discomforts of travel greater than they had expected. and some have arrived when it was raining or cloudy, and the snows were not visible; or in the middle of summer when the valley is hazy, steamy, and filled with mosquitoes. but when the clouds have rolled by, the haze lifted, and a real kashmir spring or autumn day disclosed itself, the heart of the hardest visitor melteth and he becomes as bernier. the present book will deal, not with the whole kashmir state, which includes many outlying provinces, but with kashmir proper, with the world-renowned valley of kashmir, a saucer-shaped vale with a length of miles, a breadth of to miles, and a mean height of feet above sea-level, set in the very heart of the himalaya, and corresponding in latitude to damascus, to fez in morocco, and to south carolina. [illustration: approach to srinagar] the country with which one is most apt to compare it is, naturally, switzerland. and switzerland, indeed, has many charms, and a combination of lake and mountain in which, i think, it excels kashmir. but it is built on a smaller scale. there is not the same wide sweep of snow-clad mountains. there is no place where one can see a complete _circle_ of snowy mountains surrounding a plain of anything like the length and breadth of the kashmir valley, for the main valleys of switzerland are like the side valleys of kashmir. and above everything there is not behind switzerland what there is at the back of kashmir, and visible in glimpses from the southern side,--a region of stupendous mountains surpassing every other in the world. by these himalayan regions only, by the mountains of baltistan and hunza, and by those unequalled mountains seen from darjiling, can kashmir be excelled. there indeed one sees mountain majesty and sublimity at their very zenith. and with such as these kashmir cannot compare. but it possesses a combination of quiet loveliness and mountain grandeur which has a fascination all its own. if one could imagine the smiling, peaceful thames valley with a girdle of snowy mountains, he would have the nearest approach to a true idea of kashmir it is possible to give. he would not expect the stern ruggedness and almost overwhelming majesty of the mighty mountains beyond kashmir. but he would have the tranquil beauty and genial loveliness which to some are even preferable. of this, my collaborator's pictures will give a true and vivid impression, though every artist allows that it is impossible to give in a single picture the broad general effect of those wide-flung landscapes and of the snowy ranges stretching from one horizon to another. for that impression and for the varying effect of spring and autumn, of winter and summer, dependence must be on the pen alone. which is the most lovely season each must decide for himself. in the spring we think the spring the most exquisitely beautiful. in the autumn we say that nothing could exceed the charm of the brilliant autumn tints. but as it is in the spring that most visitors first arrive, and as it is the real beginning of the year, there will be some advantage in commencing in that season the delicate task of describing kashmir. in the first week in march i drove into kashmir,--this last year, fortunately, in fine weather. in other years at this season i might not have been so fortunate, and the reader must take this possibility of drenching rain, of muddy roads, and dangerous landslips into account. for that purpose, however, there is no need to offer aid to his imagination, as rainy days are much the same all the world over. [illustration: the land of roses] the long drive from the railway station at rawal pindi, miles from srinagar, was nearly ended. we had steadily ascended the valley of the jhelum, with the river continually dashing past us on the left, a strong impetuous stream now being turned to useful ends, firstly, in generating electric power near rampur, and secondly, in irrigating millions of acres in the plains of the punjab below. we had passed through the peaceful deodar forest on either side of rampur, and the splendid limestone cliffs which rise precipitously from them. just beyond we had passed massive ruins of the so-called buddhist, but really hindu temple, dating about a.d. all the country had been blanketed with snow; the hill-sides forested with thousands of christmas trees glistening in the brilliant sunshine, and the frozen road had been rattling under the ponies' feet. when gradually the narrow valley opened out. the enclosing hills widened apart. the river from a rushing torrent became as placid as the thames, with numerous long-prowed boats gliding smoothly downward. the little town of baramula, and the first distinctive chalet-like, but dirty, shaky habitations of kashmir; a graceful hindu temple; fine specimens of the famous chenar trees; and a typical log bridge, came into view; and then, as the hill-sides finally parted asunder, the glorious valley itself--a valley on so extensive a scale as really to be a plain amidst the mountains--was disclosed; and faintly mingling with the cloudless azure of the sky, on the far side stretched the great range of snowy mountains which bound kashmir on the north, with the haramokh peak, , feet high, standing boldly out miles distant immediately in front; and from just beyond baramula even nanga parbat itself, , feet, and miles distant, towering nobly over the lower ranges, the solitary representative of the many mountain giants which lay behind. then as we emerged into the open valley the snow disappeared and the first faint signs of spring were visible. all the trees were indeed still bare. neither on the massive chenar nor on the long lines of poplars which bordered the road continuously from baramula to srinagar was there a vestige of a leaf; and all the grass was absolutely brown. but in the willows there was just the suspicion of yellow-green. the little leaf-buds were just preparing to burst. on the ground were frequent masses of yellow crocuses and familiar bluebells. here and there were clumps of violets. occasionally a tortoise-shell or cabbage-white butterfly would flutter by. above all, the glorious brilliant sunshine, the open, clear blue sky, and the soft touch and gentle feel which at noonday replaced the crisp, frosty nip of the morning air gave certain promise of the approach of spring. [illustration: mouth of the sind valley] again, when at length srinagar, the capital of kashmir, was reached, and i was back in my much-loved garden, still other signs of spring's arrival were evident. violets, pansies, wallflowers, narcissus, crocuses, and daisies were out. a few green blades were showing through the brown grass. rose leaf-buds were bursting. in one garden near a few apricot blossoms had actually bloomed. and the whole garden was filled with the spring song of the birds lightly turning to thoughts of love--thrushes, minas, sparrows, blue-tits, hoopoes, starlings; bold, familiar crows, and, most delightful of them all, the charming little bulbuls with their coquettish top-knots--the friendly little beings who come confidingly in at the windows and perch on the curtain rails or chairs, and even on the table to peck sugar from the basin. and so for many days the weather continued, the temperature a degree or two below freezing-point at night, and rising to a maximum of ° in the shade and ° in the sun in the day-time. day after day cloudlessly clear. the snowy ranges standing out sharp and distinct. the nearer mountains still covered with snow to within a thousand or two feet of the valley level. in the early morning all the valley-bottom glistening silvery-white with hoar frost. then towards noon a curious struggle between summer and winter. the aspect of the country outside the garden entirely winter--leafless trees and frost-withered grass; but in the still air the sun's rays, with daily increasing power, having all the warmth of an early summer day in england; and under the noonday sun the mountains fading in a dreamy haze. * * * * * then, of a sudden, came one of those complete and rapid changes which so enhance the charm of kashmir. dark ominous clouds settled on the near mountain-tops; here and there sweeping along their summits whirling snowstorms were driven along; the distant snows showed up with that steel-grey definition which in storm-ridden days replaces the dreamy indistinctness of more sunny times; now and then a glinting sun-ray breaking through the driving clouds would brighten up some solitary peak; and in the valley bottom periods of threatening stillness would alternate with gusty bursts of wind. [illustration: sunset on the wular lake] such signs are usually the presage of unpleasant weather. but in the present case rain did not fall; and this was fortunate, for i had gone into camp to shoot a bara-singh, the famous kashmir stag. rising at four on the following morning, and, as soon as i had had a hurried breakfast, mounting a shaggy, naughty little pony captured in the fighting in tibet, i followed the shadowy form of a shikari bestriding a still more diminutive country pony. most of the clouds of the previous day had disappeared. the wind had died down, and the stars were shining out with that clear brilliance only seen amidst the mountains and in the desert. there was a sharp, bracing feeling in the air--not the same stinging cold i had felt when riding along this road at night in january, but strong and invigorating. we stumbled along on our ponies across fields and by paths which only a native could detect. at each village dogs howled dismally at us, but not a soul was astir. we gradually approached the dark outlines of the mountains, and near their base, while it was still pitch dark, we were joined by other shikaris who, like stage conspirators and with bated breath, explained where a stag had been seen on the previous day. i had then to dismount and walk; steadily and silently we ascended the mountain-side, and by sunrise were feet above the valley. the shikaris were now visible, and like their class hard and keen-looking, clearly used to living on mountain-sides in cold and heat, and to be ever peering into distances. the head shikari was a grey, grizzled, old-looking man, though i daresay he was really not over fifty; hard and tough, and very grave and earnest--for to him all else in the world is play, and shikar is man's real work in life. residents, no doubt, have some employments to amuse themselves with in ordinary times; but when the real business of life has to be done they come to him, and he takes them gently in hand like little children, and shows them the haunts of the kashmir stag, his habits, where he wanders, and how to pursue him. [illustration: dawn in the nulla] so now i put myself humbly in charge of the shikaris, for i make no pretence to be a sportsman. they thereupon proceed to whisper together with profound earnestness and dramatic action. they point out the exact spot where, on the previous afternoon, a stag was seen. they pick up little tufts of his hair brushed off, as they say, in fighting. they show his footsteps in the soft soil and on patches of snow. and they are full of marvellous conjectures as to where he can have gone. but gone he has, and that was the main fact which no amount of whispering could get over. so on we went along the mountain-side, and now through deep snow, for we were on a northward-facing slope of an outlying spur--and all slopes which face northward are wooded, while southward-facing slopes are bare. the explanation was evident. for on the latter slopes the sun's rays fell directly and almost at right angles, and in consequence fallen snow quickly disappears: while on the northern slopes the sun's rays only slant across the surface; the snow remains much longer; the moisture in the soil is retained; vegetation flourishes; trees grow up; they in their turn still further shade the snow, and with their roots retain the moisture. and so as a net result one side of a mountain is clothed in dense forest, and on the other there may not be a single tree. thus it is that on the southern side of kashmir, that is, on the _northward_-facing slopes of the pir panjal range, there is, as at gulmarg, dense and continuous forest, while on the northern side of the valley, on the slope of the hill that consequently faces southward, there is no forest except on the slopes of those subsidiary spurs which face northward. we followed the tracks of the stag through this patch of forest, mostly of hazels, the shikaris pointing out where the stag had nibbled off the young leaf-buds and bark which seem to form the staple food of the deer at this time of year. at last we came to another shikari who said he had seen the stag that very morning. but i suspect this was merely a form of politeness to reinspire my lagging hope, for though i went down and up and along the mountain-side, and spent the whole day there, i saw no stag. once we heard a rustling among the leaves, and hope revived, but it was merely a troop of monkeys. a little later a boar shuffled out; and again, on a distant spur, disporting himself in the sunshine, we saw a bear; but no stag. [illustration: kotwal from the forest above kangan, sind valley] still, in spite of the exertion and in spite of the disappointment, a day like this on the mountain-side is felt as one of the days in which one lives. the air was fresh and bracing. there was something both soothing and inspiring in the quiet of the mountains and the immense distances before me. far away to the south majestic clouds and snowstorms were sweeping along the snowy range of the pir panjal. beneath was the placid river wending its tortuous way through the peaceful valley. on one hand would be seen angry storm-clouds rolling threateningly across with numerous sun-rays piercing through and lighting up the serpentine course of the river. on the other, emerging from the black masses, would appear the sunlit snowy range, not hard, defined, and clear, and rooted on earth, but to all appearances hung from the heavens like an ethereal transparency. hour after hour i alternately feasted on the changing scenes displayed across the valley, and with my field-glasses searched the mountain-side for bara-singh. when evening closed in i returned to camp, where business kept me on the following day, but on the day after i again rode out while it was yet dark. as the first faint signs of dawn appeared i began the ascent of the mountain with the shikaris. the heavens were clear and cloudless. the bluey-black of the sky imperceptibly faded into grey. the mountain slowly turned from grey to brown as we steadily worked upward. the reposeful stillness which is the characteristic charm of the mountains was only broken by the cheerful chuckle of the chikor, or the occasional twitter of a bird calling to its mate. then as we reached the summit of a ridge, and i looked out through the greys and browns, a sudden thrill struck through me as, all unexpectedly, my eye lit on the long flush of rosy pink which the yet unrisen sun had thrown upon the distant mountains, and which was the more pronounced and striking because their skyey background and their base was still the grey of night. not often does one see a range of _rosy_ mountains. and even now the effect lasted for a short time only. for rapidly a faint blue drowned the grey. the sky grew bluer and bluer. the valley became filled with light. but, alas! the rosy pink that had flushed the snowy summits faded imperceptibly away to barren whiteness. the whole long range of mountains showed themselves out with admirable clearness, but distinctly rooted in the unromantic brown of the valley. [illustration: above the camping-ground, sonamarg, sind valley] by seven we were at the summit of the mountain with the sun now shining full upon us, the air crisp and frosty-the very ideal of young and vigorous day. we marched steadily along the ridge searching the hollows on either side for stag, but all we saw was a boar breaking the ice in a pool on the ridge to get a morning drink. at length we halted for refreshment and rest still on the summit of the ridge with the most beautiful valley on earth spread out in all its loveliness feet below, and the heavenly snowy range bounding the horizon from end to end before us. just faintly the sounds from some village below would be wafted to us through the clear still air. but otherwise we seemed serenely apart from the noisy turmoil of humanity; and bathed in the warm noonday sunlight i was able to drink in all the spirit of the loveliness around me. and there came upon me this thought, which doubtless has occurred to many another besides myself--why the scene should so influence me and yet make no impression on the men about me. here were men with far keener eyesight than my own, and around me were animals with eyesight keener still. their eyes looked on the same scene as mine did, and could distinguish each detail with even greater accuracy. yet while i lay entranced with its exquisite beauty the keen-eyed shikaris, the animals, and the soaring eagle above me, might have been stone blind for all the impression of beauty it left upon them. clearly it is not the eye, but the soul that sees. but then comes the still further reflection--what may there not be staring _me_ straight in the face which i am as blind to as the kashmir stags are to the beauties amidst which they spend their entire lives? the whole panorama may be vibrating with beauties man has not yet the soul to see. some already living, no doubt, see beauties that we ordinary men cannot appreciate. it is only a century ago that mountains were looked upon as hideous. and in the long centuries to come may we not develop a soul for beauties unthought of now? undoubtedly we must. and often in reverie on the mountains i have tried to imagine what still further loveliness they may yet possess for men. * * * * * from clambering over the high mountains in search of a solitary stag to sitting in a boat in the middle of a lake with thousands of ducks incessantly swishing round, is only one other example of the variety of scene and interest which kashmir affords. there was just time before the end of the season for a final duck shoot, and eight of us rode or drove out six miles from srinagar to the famous hokrar ghat, "jheel," which the maharaja had so kindly placed at the disposal of the resident for the season. [illustration: the kajnag from sopur, early spring] we meet at the edge of the lake and draw lots for the numbered butts. the shikaris, boatmen, and boats are awaiting us, and as soon as we have decided where each is to go, and have fixed a time to cease shooting as an interval for lunch, and to give the ducks time to settle again for the further shooting in the afternoon, we embark each on a light shallow skiff with our guns, cartridges, and tiffin, and glide out through a narrow channel in the reeds to the open water beyond. hokrar is right in the centre of the valley, and from the lake a complete elliptical ring of snowy mountains can be seen. the nearest and most conspicuous peak is haramokh, , feet, and miles distant. from this the eye ranges from peak to peak to the khagan range miles distant in the extreme west of the valley; then along over the kaj nag mountains separated by the gorge of the jhelum river valley from the pir panjal range, which forms the southern boundary of the valley with gulmarg, miles distant, on its southern slopes. then traversing the whole length of the pir panjal range from the highest point, tatakute, , feet, the eye falls to the depression over which lies the banihal pass, and rising again meets the kishtwar range miles distant, closing in the valley on the east, from whence the eye wanders on snowy ranges till haramokh in the north again is met. the day was another of glorious sunshine, and in the noonday sun the southern range was bathed in dazzling light, the northern showed up sharp and clear with the sun's rays beating straight upon it, while the distant ranges right and left faded away in haze and dreamland. soft woolly clouds floated along the mountain-sides. a sharp, crisp air freshened one up and broke the water into dancing glittering ripples on which innumerable duck were bobbing up and down. here we shot for a couple of hours before tiffin, and afterwards till evening closed in. it was not one of the great shoots like we have in the autumn, and which i will describe later, but was none the less enjoyable, and being the last of the season each made the most of it. [illustration: kotwal from near the dal darwaza] at the end of march i visited harwan, a very favourite spot, once the abode of a famous buddhist saint, and now best known as the site of the reservoir for the water-supply of srinagar and of the tanks for trout-breeding. rain had fallen in the night, and heavy clouds hung overhead with only occasional glimpses of intensely clear blue sky between them. but spring was now clearly advancing. the great chenar trees, two and three centuries old, were still bare, but the willows were showing fresh young leaves; the apricot trees were covered with clouds of blossom, pink and white. the mountain-sides were dotted with white wild cherry and pear and apple in full bloom; the ground was often white like snow with the fallen petals; the young hazel-nut leaves gave freshness to the mountain-side; and near at hand were violets, anemones, and cuckoo flowers. the air was rich with the scent of the fruit trees. swarms of bees were humming around them; butterflies--tortoise-shell, clouded yellow, and cabbage-white--fluttered in the sunshine; and the lively twittering of birds--bulbuls, goldfinches, wagtails, and tits--gave yet one further evidence of the awakening spring. each spot in kashmir one is inclined to think the most beautiful of all--perhaps because each in some particular excels the rest. certainly harwan has many fascinations of its own. rising sheer behind was a mountain crowned with dark precipices overhung by heavy clouds through which pierced the snowy summit. clear crystal streams rushed along the valley with a cheery rustling sound. in the middle distance lay the placid dal lake--on the far side overshadowed by the hari parbat fort. the main valley was interspersed with village clumps of fresh willow, clouds of fruit blossom, and majestic chenars. in the far distance lay the snowy ranges of the pir panjal, the kaj nag, and khagan; and facing round again to the north rose the striking mahadeo peak--rocky, bold and precipitous, and pine-clad to near the summit. and one of the further attractions of kashmir is not only that each spot is so different from the other, but that each spot has a different aspect every day. bright days are the more numerous, but dull days also have no less striking attractions. the day after our arrival at harwan was still and heavy; the whole sky was overhung with clouds, though they were high above the mountains, and even the most distant ranges showed up with unusual clearness white and distinct against the grey monotone sky. the stillness and the heavy cloud evidently portended a storm, and in the afternoon the distant horizon grew darker and darker. the snowy mountains were gradually obscured from view. then the middle distance became black and threatening. at the same time on the mountain craigs behind heavy clouds imperceptibly settled down, and the great cliff grew darker and darker. blackness seemed to grow all round, and the mountain summits with the angry clouds upon them looked more and more sombre and threatening. meanwhile all was still and noiseless. then suddenly out of the stillness came a rush of air. the poplar trees bent like whips. the long shoots of the willow trees lashed backwards and forwards. great drops of rain came spitting down. a bright, quick flash darted out from the mountain. then crash came the thunder--clap after clap--and torrents of rain. few things in nature are more impressive than a thunderstorm among the mountains. [illustration: the lull before the storm, dal lake] when next i visited harwan in the middle of may spring had given way to early summer. the mountain-sides were dotted over with clumps of yellow barberry and wild pink roses; clematis was in bloom, and honeysuckle was trailing from the trees. on the ground were large wild geraniums, the big purple iris, white dead nettle, yellow potentillas, strawberry blossom, tom-thumbs, clover, ferns, speedwell, and primulas. the rocks by the stream were often covered with ivy and overhung by sprays of pink roses. while on the mountain-sides, on the northward-facing slopes, the wild apricot, cherry, and wych hazel, and in the valley bottom willow, mulberry, and walnut were in full leaf. and among the birds were now golden orioles, wagtails (white and yellow), kingfishers, herons, water-robins, buntings, grey tits, wren warblers, paradise fly-catchers, bulbuls, thrushes, redstarts, pigeons, doves, and shrikes. the morning was cloudy and misty, but again with special beauties of its own. long streaks of mist were drifting along the mountain-sides, all at precisely the same level. mahadeo, , feet, was at first quite clear and lighted by the sun. then a mist drifted towards it, and rapidly, but by almost imperceptible increase, the cloud enveloped it. light misty clouds swirled about the mountain as currents and counter-currents seized them. anon the mist in great part cleared away, and mahadeo was seen peering through the clouds, bold and supernaturally high. then the peak and all the mountain-sides were enveloped in dark heavy clouds, rain fell, and there seemed every prospect of a wet and gloomy day. but all unexpectedly rifts again appeared, and mahadeo was once more seen rising composedly above the clouds, the young green foliage standing out distinct and bright, and each rock sharp and well defined. and so, hour after hour, the struggle between cloud and sunshine, between good and evil continued, it being impossible to tell at any moment which was more likely to prevail. the clouds seemed settling down, then a glint of sunshine was seen high on some upland lighting the fresh green grass and some stray shepherd hut. finally wet prevailed, and the mist settled lower and lower on the valley, the rain poured down and a seemingly regular rainy day set in. but there was fascination yet in watching the mists floating along the mountains, forming and dispersing, enshrouding and revealing the mountain peaks; and the green of the little valley showed up greener than ever. the mountain-sides, usually so brown, were seen to be tinged with a delicate shade of green. the poplars, mulberries, and chenars at the mouth of the valley had each their own especial tint. the rice-fields showed up in brilliant emerald. [illustration: above lidarwat, lidar valley] yet after it had appeared to settle down for a whole day's rain the mists suddenly cleared away from the mountain. the sun broke through the clouds and showed up the rounded higher spurs with the soft, downy brown of an oriental carpet, and the higher peaks stood out sharp and clear. an hour later long level lines of mist appeared and swiftly grew thicker, the whole mountain from one level upward was once more enveloped in cloud which thus gained the final victory. * * * * * harwan village itself at this time of year was strikingly picturesque. it was enshrouded in massive clumps of chenar foliage, below which were the lighter shades of the willow, mulberry, and walnut, and the straight, graceful, white-trunked poplars piercing through. here and there a horse-chestnut in full flower lit up the foliage, and most beautiful of all were the patches of tall irises--dark purple, mauve, and white--which now surrounded the village. numerous water-courses rushing through the village lands gave brightness, cheeriness, and a sense of coolness; while the crowing of cocks, the twittering of the birds, the lowing of cattle, and the neighing of the ponies grazing on the rich green grass in the valley bottom, and the distant calls of the shepherd boy to the flocks of sheep and goats on the mountain, gave further animation to the scene. and whether it was more entrancing now, or three weeks later when the irises were over, but when it was wreathed in white roses, it would be difficult to say. irises and roses are the two especial beauties of kashmir villages and kashmir lanes and hedgerows. and i would not like to positively state which was the more beautiful--the rich clumps of mauve and purple irises surrounding the village with warmth and colour in the spring, or the clustering wreaths of roses, white and pink, brightening the village lands and hedgerows in the summer. [illustration: sunset on the jhelum, above srinagar] only one desire we must feel in regard to these villages--that all this natural beauty could not be further enhanced by the trim little cottages of rural england or the picturesque chalets of switzerland. every time one sees a kashmir village and succumbs to the charm of all that nature has done for it, one longs to see the squalor, untidiness, and dirt of house and man and clothing removed, and justice done by man to what nature has done for _him_. * * * * * harwan is not only noted for its natural beauty, and as having been the abode of a celebrated buddhist saint: it is also now remarkable as possessing a hatchery of english trout, the ordinary brown trout, and of danube trout or huchon; and here can be seen english trout of all sizes up to lbs. these trout were first placed in the dachigam stream which runs through the valley opening out at harwan; and now all up this valley ideal trout-fishing is given by h.h. the maharaja to his guests. and what more perfect spot for the purpose could be found? kept as a close preserve for two purposes; firstly, for stag-shooting; and, secondly, to insure the freshness of the water which furnishes the water-supply of the whole city of srinagar, it is absolutely quiet and peaceful. there are no inhabitants, and no life but wild life; and, except for the superior grandeur of the mountains on either side, it exactly resembles a highland valley. we see the same clear rushing river, here dashing over boulders in a series of rapids, and there lying in cool, peaceful pools alongside a grassy bank or beneath some overshadowing trees. on a cloudy day, when the high mountains are shrouded in mist and a gentle rain is falling, you might be in scotland itself. on a fine day, with mahadeo towering , feet immediately above you, and with glimpses of snowy ranges in the distance, you have scotland and something _more_. [illustration: spring in kashmir] this is the valley especially reserved for the sport of viceroys, and here it was that in the autumn of the maharaja entertained lord minto. and well do i remember the intense relief of the viceroy as he turned into the valley and left all ceremonials and state business behind, and felt that here at least he was in a haven of rest and natural enjoyment. the air was clear and bracing, the sky cloudless, and the evening sun throwing long soothing shadows up the valley. who could feel a care while he fished or hunted stag in a valley with more than the beauty and with all the freshness of his native land? * * * * * i have said so much about harwan and the dachigam valley as they are typical of the prettiest parts of rural kashmir and the side-valleys, but i must now return to the description of srinagar and the main valley itself and go back to where we left it in the spring. on april st, the chief glory of the kashmir spring, peach trees were in full blossom, and forming in the landscape little clouds of the purest and most delicate pink, and giving it an exquisite touch of light and colour. the taller and larger pear trees were snow-white masses. the pink-tinged apple blossoms, the chenar, and walnut leaves were just appearing, and the poplar and mulberry leaves showed faint symptoms of bursting. we were in the first, most delicate flush of early youthful spring. a mile from srinagar, on the way to gupkar and the dal lake, the road passes over a gap between the takht-i-suliman and the range to the north. this spot is well known as "the gap"; and as it is perhaps a hundred feet above the valley level an extensive view is obtained, on the one hand, over the great vale of kashmir to the snowy pir panjal range in the background on the south, and on the other hand to the dal lake, haramokh, and the mountain range, close by on the north. there were very few days when either in the morning or evening i did not visit this spot, and hardly ever did i see the same view. every day there seemed some fresh beauty; and which day in spring, and whether the days in spring were more beautiful than the days in autumn, i could never satisfy myself. on april st, looking southward, there was first on the sloping foreground an almond orchard with a sprinkling of trees in white and pink blossom and the remainder in young leaf. then in the valley bottom were clumps of willows in the freshest yellowy green; light green wheat-fields; bunches of chenar trees not yet in leaf; broad reaches of the placid river glistening in the sunshine, with numerous boats gliding gracefully on its surface; and away over the valley were little clusters of villages, with the land gradually rising to that range of snowy mountains which forms the culminating touch of beauty in every kashmir scene. [illustration: on the dal lake in spring] looking in the opposite direction from the gap towards the dal lake was a less extensive, but scarcely less attractive scene. on the foreground of the gentle slopes towards the lake were tall pear trees in fresh white bloom dotted prettily among the fields of new green wheat. away to the left was an orchard of peach in the purest and lightest of pink. little hamlets nestled among the fruit trees; and immediately beyond them stretched the still, clear lake reflecting in its mirror surface the graceful willows and chenar trees by its edge, and the mountain ranges by which it was encircled. as it seemed floating in its midst lay the famous isle of chenars mirrored again in its glassy surface. by its shore stretched the renowned moghal gardens--the nishat bagh and the shalimar bagh--with their grand avenues of chenars sloping to the water's edge. above the far border rose a mountain ridge still clothed in snow; above that again the lofty haramokh; and away in the extreme distance lay the fairy khagan snows, while on the whole scene there swam a purple-bluey haze, growing more purple and more blue the more distant it fell, and giving to all a softening sense of peace and ease. for tenderness of restful beauty this scene is not excelled. * * * * * so far the weather had been exceptionally fine and warm for the season, and the rainfall to date from the commencement of the year had been three inches below the normal; but now a wet spell set in such as one has to expect in the spring in kashmir, which is always very uncertain. on april th there were ¾ inches of rain. the total for the year now exceeded the normal by four inches. the river rapidly rose ten feet, flooded all the low-lying fields, and seriously threatened the european quarter; and, finally, snow fell in srinagar itself. the maximum temperature in the shade rose to only ° while the minimum at night fell to °. it is always the exceptional which happens--in weather at any rate. so this must not be expected every year. but something else exceptional will occur whatever year we choose, and there is little use in describing a normal year, for no such year ever comes in real life. on the road into kashmir very serious breaks were made by the rain and by the melting snow and the mud floods which it brought down. whole stretches of road were completely carried away and wiped out of existence. bridges were broken; and so dangerous were the falling boulders, that one european was knocked straight into the jhelum river and drowned, and several natives were badly injured. the dak bungalows were crammed with travellers rolling up from behind, and we subsequently heard of the misery they suffered from overcrowded rooms, from the never-ending rolling of the thunder, and the incessant pelting of the rain. the beauties of kashmir cannot be attained without suffering, and the suffering on the road up is often considerable. a hard-worked member of the government of india came from calcutta to spend a ten-days' holiday with us in the middle of this deluge, and as day after day of his holiday went by with nothing but rain, our pride in the glories of kashmir sank lower and lower, and we feared he would go back to give the country but an evil reputation. but the final day of his stay redeemed all, and for that single day he was good enough to say he would have come the whole way from calcutta. we drove out along the shores of the dal lake to the nishat bagh, and anything more exquisitely lovely than the combination of the freshness of the young spring green, with the whiteness of the snow now low down on the mountain-sides with the blue sky, the brilliant sunshine, the dreamy purply haze, the mirror lake, the yellow mustard fields, and the clouds of pink and white fruit blossom now in its perfection, this earth can surely nowhere show. the lake was full from the recent rain, and lapped up to the edge of the garden. on either side of the gateway were masses of kashmir lilac. stretching up the mountain-side, on either side of the line of fountains and waterfalls which flowed down from the upper end of the garden, was a long avenue of massive chenar trees just freshly tinted with budding foliage, and at the sides and by the entrance were peach, and pear, and cherry in brilliant bloom. slowly we ascended the avenue, and then from the top looked down between the great chenar trees, over the cascades falling to the lake, over the smooth green turf, over the clumps of purple iris, over the white cherry blossom and the mauve lilac; to the still waters of the lake; to the willows and poplars along its edge; to the fort of hari parbat; and then on to the radiant snows now glistening more brightly, and looking more ethereal and lovely than ever before. spring is beautiful everywhere. spring is more beautiful in kashmir than anywhere else, and in a kashmir spring this was the most beautiful day of all. [illustration: entrance to the mar canal] yet another attractive spot near srinagar is the site of the original city founded by asoka at pandrathan, three miles distant on the islamabad road. here at the end of a spur running down from the mountains and jutting out to meet a bend in the river, stands the remains of an immense monolith lingam on the levelled edge of the spur, eighty feet or so above the river. immediately beneath is a majestic bend of the river, and one april evening when i visited the sight i looked out from the raised plateau up two glistening reaches, bordered by fresh green grass and overhung by graceful willows and poplars in their newest foliage. the wheat-fields on the opposite bank were a brilliant emerald, and the fields of glowing yellow mustard and young linseed interspersed with scarlet poppies gave a relieving touch of colour. all the valley was dotted over with picturesque hamlets half-hidden in clumps of willow and over-towering chenar trees. the recent floods gave a lake-like appearance to the middle distance. on the right the temple on the takht-i-suliman formed a graceful feature in the scene; and from there completely round the semicircle to the distant left stretched the dreamy snowy mountains, hazy immediately under the sun, but white and distinct when the evening sun struck full upon them. a more fitting site for worship could hardly be found. * * * * * in full summer the kashmir valley is, perhaps, in its least interesting condition. the snow has nearly melted from the mountains. they are often hidden by heat-haze or dust. the fruit blossoms are all over. the yellow mustard and the blue linseed in the fields have gone to seed. the green of the trees has lost its freshness; and the prevailing tones are heavy greens and browns. the weather too is sultry. the thermometer rises to ° or ° in the shade. a heavy, lethargic feeling oppresses one. mosquitoes appear in swarms. and by the end of june every one who can flees to gulmarg, to pahlgam in the lidar valley, to sonamarg in the sind, to gurais and to the numerous other cool mountain resorts. [illustration: the temple, chenar bagh] but early in september the valley renews its charms and visitors return. the atmosphere has been freshened and cooled by the rains which, though they fall lightly in the valley itself, are often heavy on the surrounding mountains. the ripe rice-fields show an expanse of green and yellow often two or three miles in extent. the villages, dirty and untidy at close quarters, it is true, but nestling among the chenars, willows, poplars, walnuts, and mulberries, show as entrancing islands amidst the sea of rice. ponies browse among the marshes up to their knees in water; and groups of cattle graze along the grassy edge of the streams and water-ducts. the sun is still powerful in the daytime, and the sky usually bright and clear. but the monsoon will often make a few final efforts. one such day i note when voluminous masses of cloud rolled up from behind the pir panjal to a height of twenty-five or thirty thousand feet, their westward edges aglow from the setting sun, and showing clear and distinct against the background of pinky light blue sky, while the great main volume remained dark, heavy, and sombre, with now and then a spit of lightning flashing out, and on the far side, away from the setting sun, threatening tentacles stretched out across the valley in unavailing effort to reach the mountains on the northern side. under these mighty monsoon masses even the great mountains looked dwarfed and puny. it was a great and final effort of that stupendous natural phenomenon which bears the waters of the indian ocean to beat upon the himalaya; and as an omen that the monsoon was now over, the sky behind the storm-clouds was intensely clear and tranquil, and the moon slowly ascended in undisturbed serenity. and the rainy season being finished there now commenced almost the most charming time of all, not, indeed, with the freshness of spring, but with more certainty of continual brightness and light, and more vigour and strength in the air, and above all, with that warmth and richness of colour in the foliage which makes an autumn in kashmir unique. towards the end of october the green of the immense masses of chenar slowly turns to purple, red, and yellow, and every intervening shade. the poplars, mulberries, and apricots add each their quota of autumnal beauty. the valley and the river edge are resplendent in the gorgeous colouring. and beautiful as is the spring, i was tempted to think that even more exquisitely lovely still was the bright autumnal day when we drifted down the river in our house-boat, when all the chenars along the river bank were loaded with the richest and most varied colouring, when the first fresh fall of snow on the mountains was glistening in the radiant sunshine, and there ran through the air that restful sense of certainty that this was no hurried pleasure snatched from a stormy season, but that for day after day and week after week one might count on the same brilliant sunshine, the same clear, blue sky, and daily increasing crispness, freshness, and vigour in the air. [illustration: ruins of lalla rookh's gardens, lake manasbal] the great broad reaches in the river, glistening in the sunlight and fringed with the rich autumnal foliage, were superlatively beautiful. shadipur, at the junction of the sind river, where there is a little temple on an island and hoary old chenars drooping over it to the water's surface, was a dream of all that is most lovely. and the manasbal lake, so fresh and deep and clear, set like a jewel among the mountains, with clumps and avenues of these same red and purple foliaged trees upon its edge, and reflecting in its surface the white snowy range of the distant pir panjal, was the supreme gem of all kashmir. all these are beauties which one cannot describe, for whatever one may say, the reality must ever remain more beautiful than the picture. but perhaps by the unison of pen and brush some faint impression of the loveliness of a kashmir autumn may yet have been conveyed. * * * * * this season to the sportsman also is the most enjoyable. for now come in the duck and geese from far-away siberia, halting here for a time in the lakes and marshes on their way to india. i have already described a duck-shoot in spring. in the autumn there is still finer shooting, for the duck have come in fresh and are in greater numbers than on their return journey. as i have already said, the maharaja most hospitably places at the disposal of the resident the shooting on the hokrar lake and marsh, which affords some of the best duck-shooting in the world, and it was here that lord minto and party shot over duck in one day in . last year we had our first shoot on october th. we rode for six miles in the fresh morning air and brilliant sunshine to the edge of the lake, where the shikaris and boatmen were awaiting us. over the reeds and over the open expanse of water beyond there was that glorious view of the distantly encircling mountains which i have before described. the lower slopes were at this season a reddish pink which merged into the rich purply blue of the higher and more distant portion of the range. soft fleecy clouds and a hazy blue in the sky gave a dreamy tone to the scene. many kinds of waterfowl were lazily disporting themselves on the water and among the reeds. the surface was often covered with numerous flat, round leaves and pure white waxy water-lilies with rich yellow centres. through these we were paddled swiftly to the butts, which were skilfully hidden among the reeds, and here amid clouds of mosquitoes, dragon-flies, and gnats, we awaited the first shot to be fired by the occupant of the farthest butt. the sun beat powerfully down. all was still, and drowsy, and silent, save for the drone of the flies and the occasional "quack, quack!" of the ducks paddling unsuspiciously on the lake. at last a distant shot was heard, and then a suppressed roar, as of breakers on a far-off shore. then from the direction of the shot a black cloud arose and advanced rapidly upon us. the roar increased, and in a few seconds the whole sky was covered with a whirling, swishing, whizzing flight of ducks. thousands and thousands of them: flashing past from right to left, from left to right, backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, in bewildering multitudes. for the moment one's breath was absolutely taken away. there was such a swish and swirr it was impossible to aim. then as the first wild rush was over it became easier to be deliberate, and duck after duck fell to my companions' guns. after a quarter of an hour or so a lull occurred. in the distance, flights of duck were seen circling high in the air, but none came near. a lazy interval ensued. the sun beat down with unexpected force. perspiration poured down head and neck. dragon-flies, blue and red, large and small, with gauze-like wings and brilliant bodies, floated swiftly but noiselessly among the reeds. the purring of the crickets, the occasional twitter of birds, the swishing of high flights of duck far out of reach, the call of a goose and the bang of a distant gun at intervals broke the silence; but otherwise all was wrapped in dreamy noonday stillness. then, of a sudden, another succession of flights of duck came whizzing past, and as fast as we could fire the gun was put to the shoulder. another lull followed, only to be succeeded by more flights, and so on through the day. at . , by previous arrangement, we stopped for lunch and to give the duck an opportunity of settling, then renewed the shooting till nightfall. at the end of the day colonel edwards, the residency surgeon, had himself shot , and others had shot well over the hundred. from this time onward, on three or four days in each month, the duck-shooting on this famous lake continues. the weather now gets gradually colder, till by december there are sixteen degrees of frost. all the leaves have now left the trees. the grass is quite brown. but the days are nearly always fine and clear; and though there will be thick ice and long icicles in the early morning, by ten or eleven all the ice not in the shade has disappeared, the air is pleasantly warm, and there is seldom any wind. christmas brings a round of festivities, dances, dinners, and children's parties, for even in the winter as many as seventy or eighty will assemble at a dance, and occasional outside travellers or sportsmen drop in all through the winter. after christmas a change in weather sets in. clouds bank up and snow or rain falls. january and february are the worst months in the year. but just before leaving the valley this last year i had one further attempt to shoot a kashmir stag. six miles out from srinagar, up the valley, we had a little camp on the edge of the river--a lovely spot in summer when the rich foliage overhangs the water, and when the grassy banks are green and fresh, and the river is full up to the lip; but now when the trees were bare, the banks brown and bleak, and the water at its lowest, an uninviting-looking spot. moreover, the sky was overcast and threatening. women who came to draw water from the river were pale and shivering. our servants were huddled up with the cold. a raw wind whistled down the valley, and snow threatened on the higher mountain. this latter was precisely what i wanted, for it would drive the stag down to the lower ridges when i would be stalking next day. at four in the morning, therefore, i rose, and after a solid early breakfast mounted my faithful but naughty tibetan pony, and, accompanied by a guide, rode for seven miles through the darkness and frosty but invigorating air to the foot of the hills, where the two shikaris awaited me. like their class, they were hard, keen-looking men, accustomed to live on the mountain-side, to weather hardship and exposure, and live with nature and wild animals--an altogether different type from the crafty townsman or indolent dwellers on boats. rahem sheikh, the chief, was a grizzled old man, with keen, far-seeing eyes, tough physique, and a grave, earnest demeanour as if the business of his life was of the most serious. this, indeed, as i have already said, is a special trait of head shikaris all india over; and during viceregal visits to native states i have never been able to decide which takes himself most seriously--the head shikari or the european caterer. both look upon the viceroy, the chief, and the resident, in the way of children who are to be indulged. they have to be amused and fed. they no doubt have unimportant business of their own. but the really serious business in this life is--to the shikari to find game, and to the caterer to provide food. things would rub along somehow or other without a viceroy; but how would life be without the head shikari to show the stag, or the caterer to produce meat and drink? knowing the point of view of head shikaris i placed myself, therefore, with child-like but misplaced confidence in his hand. but, alas! snow had not fallen on the higher mountains. the clouds had cleared away, and the stags must have remained on the distant peaks--many miles away and thousands of feet higher. two days of hard climbing and careful search produced no result. on the third day, rising early and looking out of my tent, i saw a perfectly clear sky and the ground covered thick with hoar frost; a sharp crisp nip was in the air, the thermometer registered ° fahr., and away across the glistening reach in the river appeared a rose-pink range of mountains showing up sharply against the clear blue sky. let the reader imagine a frosty morning in the thames valley. let him imagine, what we never have in england, a really clear blue sky. and then, filling up the distant end of one of its most beautiful reaches, let him imagine a lofty range of rose-coloured mountains; and he will then have a picture of the view from my camp at sunrise on the january morning. mounting my pony, i rode off in the now radiant sunshine to another hill-side nine miles distant. the frosty morning air at first nipped my ears and fingers, but the hard galloping soon sent the blood tingling through my veins, and in little over an hour i again joined the shikaris. with bated breath and significant glances at the mountain-side, they informed me that they had seen seven hinds and two stags, though the latter were both small. i dismounted, and left the wicked little tibetan with his head well buried in a bundle of grass; and then with a coolie to carry my tiffin, overcoat, and rifle, started up the hill-side. one quickly becomes fit in such a climate. this was my third day out, and now i climbed the mountain almost as easily as the shikaris themselves. what on the first day was a decided effort was now a scarcely perceptible strain. perhaps, too, the greater expectation of finding a stag had something to do with the increased elasticity with which i ascended the mountain. anyhow, taking off my coat, as with the exertion of climbing and in the brilliant sunshine it was now really hot, i was on the summit of the ridge feet above the valley, almost without noticing the climb. at our feet on the opposite side lay a cosy little side-valley with villages nestling among the chenar and mulberry trees. behind us lay the broad main valley with the great river gliding through it; and away in the distance the rugged pir panjal mountains were glistening in the noonday sun. the scenery was perfect. but again no stags were seen. till dark we scoured the mountain-side, but all we saw were the tracks of stags--or may be hinds--leading away to the higher mountains. then i had to hurry back to camp, and the next day to srinagar, to prepare for a long journey down to calcutta for the very dull object of giving evidence to a royal commission on decentralisation. the cycle of the seasons has been completed; and the aspect of the valley under the varying conditions of spring and summer, autumn and winter, has been depicted. in another chapter i will describe the means and methods of travel. chapter ii travel in kashmir i have known kashmir for twenty-one years, and ever since i have known it people have said it is getting spoilt. "it is not now what it used to be" is so often said. when the cart-road was being built every one said it would be spoilt. and now, when the construction of a railway is in contemplation, exactly the same remark is made. the impression conveyed is that the pleasures of travel in kashmir are surely and steadily deteriorating. and this, no doubt, is true in certain aspects. supplies are dearer. coolies demand higher wages. the visitor disposed to solitude more frequently encounters his fellow britisher. these are decided drawbacks, and the visitor who telegraphs to danjhibhoy for a tonga, to nedou's for a room in the hotel, and to cockburn's for a house-boat, and has simply to pay his fare and his hotel bill, no doubt pines for the virgin time of kashmir travel before the rattle of the tongas or the tooting of the motor car was heard in the valley. yet i doubt if all was bliss in those "good old days." certainly moorcroft, the first englishman to visit kashmir, had no very comfortable time, and must often in his turn have pined for a good hotel, a clean room, and a decent dinner--and, who knows, for a game of golf? moorcroft visited kashmir in , and first had enormous difficulty in obtaining from ranjit singh, the ruler of the punjab, to whom kashmir was then subject, leave to come to kashmir at all. he arrived there from the north in the autumn, and had fresh difficulty in obtaining permission to remain there for the winter. at the quarters he occupied he was "beset by crowds of people who not only filled the garden, but also came in boats." he was pursued wherever he went by inquisitive crowds, by importunate beggars, and by suspicious officials. when he wished to make short excursions from srinagar objections were at once raised. when he was at length allowed to leave for the lolab, officials were appointed to accompany him "to watch his proceedings and check inquisitiveness." and when he finally left kashmir for the punjab by the jhelum valley he was stopped by a small semi-independent chief near uri, who demanded rs. , as customs duty on his caravan, and as moorcroft refused to pay more than rs. he was compelled to return to srinagar and reach the punjab by another route. these certainly were not the halcyon days of kashmir travel. but i suppose there must have been an intermediate time between then and now when travelling in kashmir was perfection to those who had time enough at their disposal to "march" in. in those delightful times the traveller pitched his little camp wherever he wished. grain was ridiculously cheap. fowls were considered dear at twopence each. coolies were thankful enough to get any payment at all. there were no game laws or game licences, so that the sportsman could shoot to his heart's content. the number of visitors for the year was restricted to , so that each had or square miles to himself, and there was no need of dress clothes, white shirts, or ascot dresses. when i first visited kashmir in the autumn of its glory had already begun to depart, though as regards simplicity of travelling my methods were of the simplest. i had no other clothes but what i stood in, and only the under portion of these were of european origin. all my outer clothes, including my boots, were worn out long before i reached kashmir, and i was accordingly clothed in a long central asian robe and high native boots, for i was at the end of a journey of nearly four thousand miles from peking. i had crossed--and was the first european to accomplish the feat--the mustagh pass, , feet high, into baltistan; and the "pass" being nothing else than a hard ice slope and a rocky precipice, down which i and my five servants and coolies had to let ourselves by means of turbans and waist-clothes tied together, i had been able to carry with me little even of the scanty baggage i had brought up to the other side of the pass. i had indeed only a roll of bedding, which was thrown down the precipice, and a big kettle. i had no tent and no money! i had slept in the open from one side of the himalayas to the other, and my funds were entirely exhausted, so that when i landed in kashmir territory i had to borrow money from the governor of baltistan, pandit rada kishen kol, a very popular and respected official who is still in the maharaja's service, and is now chief judge. simplicity of travel was, then, at least possible twenty years ago, and i managed, after crossing the pass, to get along with only one servant who cooked, performed every function of the numerous servants we employ in india, and carried a load himself in emergency. but he was the most faithful, and my favourite of all the servants i have ever had. his name was shukar ali, and i must ask my reader's indulgence for a digression to describe him. i picked him up in yarkand, in chinese turkestan, but he was a native of ladak. he was the most cheery, happy-go-lucky, easy-going man, who ever proved a good servant in spite of his carelessness. always laughing, always chaffing with the pony-men or coolies, always losing something vitally necessary, but always ready to do the hardest and most dangerous piece of work when the crucial moment arrived, he was the only ladaki who dared to cross the mustagh pass with me, and but for one incident i would have a most grateful recollection of his services then. that incident i have often since reminded him of. after crossing the pass we had to cross a very full and rapid stream flowing straight out of a glacier. immense blocks of ice were breaking off the glacier and floating down the stream. the bottom was also partly ice and partly boulder. shukar ali, with his usual readiness, volunteered to carry me across this stream on his back. but in mid-stream he slipped. i was precipitated into the icy water, while shukar ali, in his frantic efforts to regain his own footing, unknowingly kept pressing me under water. we both eventually gained the opposite bank all right. but i had no change of clothes, and every stitch i had on was wringing wet with ice-cold water. when, two years later, government sent me to explore all the northern frontier of kashmir from ladak and the karakoram pass to the pamirs and hunza, i again sought out shukar ali; and yet a third time, when i was sent on a political mission to chinese turkestan and the pamirs in - . on each of these occasions he rendered unfailing service, and once both he and i were nearly drowned in an avalanche. we had been hewing our way up the steep slopes of an ice pass in a snowstorm, when suddenly out of the snow-clouds above us we heard a roar like thunder approaching nearer and nearer. we could not run if we would, for we were on an ice slope. we could only await our doom, for we knew it was an avalanche. but with a mighty rush it crashed past a few paces in front of us, and we were safe. [illustration: a ladaki in summer costume] after i did not see shukar ali for seventeen years, for my travels never took me to that frontier again. but i heard of him from dr. sven hedin who employed him in tibet, and who told me of the wonderful tales which the imaginative shukar ali related of the journeys we had made together. and last summer the dear old man suddenly appeared at the residency. he had heard that i was now resident, and had walked miles across the mountains to see me, and he presented himself wearing the identical coat i had given him seventeen years ago. he kept jumping up and down, first kissing my feet, then touching my coat, then salaaming, and all the time ejaculating an unceasing flow of speech, calling me by every affectionate term. then from under numerous folds of his clothing he produced a wooden bowl, a bag full of sweets, a pair of goat horns for my wife and myself, and a marvellous collection of showy-looking stones which he had picked up in tibet for my little girl. he remained with me for a few weeks. i gave him something to keep him comfortable at home, but which i am sure in his good nature he will let his relations squeeze out of him, and then i sent him off back to ladak. but before he left i asked the maharaja to give him an order exempting him from service in his village. his highness, with his usual kindness, readily acceded. an order was made out with the maharaja's own signature attached, and at a garden-party at the residency shukar ali was had up and presented with the order. his highness addressed him in a most kindly manner, and on the following day presented him in durbar with a shawl of honour. poor shukar ali left with many tearful farewell expressions, and a few weeks later i received from him the following letter:-- sir--i reached very well home, with very felt happy and found all my poor family very well and showed the all kindly of your they got very glad, and we all family thankfully to you to remember us so much, to little people and my all friends got very glad too, they said thank you, and hope you would not be angry with this english written, please you pardon for this, and could not write myself and could not get other munshi write you, because and found rassul, he was my old friend and let him write this letter. please give my salaam to mem sahib and baby baby sahib. --your obedient servant shukar ali from poor rassul plenty salaam, the mark of shukar ali _o_. all this, however, is a digression, and i have to describe the normal modes of travel of the present day. srinagar is miles distant from the railway at rawal pindi, and is connected with it by a good cart-road--good, that is in its normal condition, but excessively bad after heavy rain, when at places the whole mountain-side slides down with the road into the river. the usual mode of conveyance is a tonga, a very common form of vehicle in the indian "hills." it has two wheels, is drawn by a pair of ponies, has four seats back to back, and carries a mountain of luggage piled up on the splash-boards and on the roof. the ponies, when the season is not crowded and the road is good, gallop at full speed, and are changed every five or six miles. in the full part of the season, which generally coincides with the heaviest fall of rain, with much beating, pulling, and shouting they can scarcely be induced to reach a trot, and may think themselves lucky if they find a change at the end of their stage. other means of conveyance for which extra charge is made are landaus and victorias. these, though more comfortable, are heavier for the ponies, and are more difficult to manipulate over bad places in the rainy season. spare baggage and servants can be brought up in the ordinary indian ckka which, with one pony without changes, takes six to eight days to reach srinagar; or in bullock carts which take fourteen days. tongas will take two, three, four or more days according to the length of the day, the nature of the road, and the disposition of the traveller. the tonga carrying the english mail, travelling almost continuously, covers the distance in thirty-six hours. in the long summer days travellers, starting early, can accomplish the journey in two days. every fourteen miles or so is a dak bungalow, where for the payment of one rupee a furnished room is provided, and on further payment meals may be obtained at any time, but "bedding" must always be taken, as nothing but the bare bed is provided. the stages from rawal pindi ( feet) at which these bungalows may be found, are:-- tret ½ miles ½ miles sunnybank ( feet) (for murree, miles distant) ¼ " ¾ " kohala ( feet) ½ " ¼ " dulai ( feet) " ¼ " domel ( feet) " ¼ " garhi ( feet) ½ " ¾ " chakoti ( feet) miles ¾ miles uri ( feet) ½ " ¼ " rampur ( feet) " ¼ " baramula ( feet) " ¼ " patan ( feet) ½ " ¾ " srinagar ( feet) ½ " ¼ " the road is usually open all the year round except in january, february, and part of march, when it is liable to be blocked by snow over the murree hill and between rampur and baramula. in such emergencies the alternative route by abbotabad may be used, and the traveller must make up his mind to walk the few miles of bad road near rampur. instead of going all the way by road, boat may be taken at baramula for srinagar. this, though longer, is much more comfortable and enjoyable. the time occupied is from two to three days. * * * * * at srinagar there is no dak bungalow, but an hotel--nedou's--which is open the whole year round. srinagar is the central starting-point for all expeditions. here house-boats, dunga-boats, camp equipage, and all the paraphernalia of kashmir travel may be obtained, and shikaris and servants engaged. house-boats are not indigenous to kashmir. they were introduced by mr. m. t. kennard some twenty years ago, but now they may be numbered by hundreds. some are permanently occupied by europeans, who live in them nearly the whole year round for years together, but most are let out at from rs. to rs. per mensem for the season. in midsummer they are hot abodes, but they form a most convenient and luxurious mode of travel. each would contain, probably, a couple of sitting-rooms with fireplaces, bedrooms, and bath-rooms, and with a cook-boat attached for cooking and servants, the traveller launches forth complete, and either drifts lazily down the river to the many attractive spots along its banks, and to the wular lake, or else is towed upwards to islamabad. the house-boat likewise forms a very convenient base from which short expeditions into the mountains can be made. dungas and dunga house-boats are not so luxurious and commodious as the fully developed house-boat; but they are lighter, they travel quicker, and they go up shallow tributaries where the larger boat would stick. they are also less expensive. the former have only loose matting for walls; the walls of the latter are wooden. for getting about the river in srinagar itself the still lighter shikara or ordinary paddle-boat is used, paddled by two to eight men according to the size. house-boats and dunga house-boats require a crew of six to twelve men. dungas carry a family in the stern who work the boat. paddles, poling, and hauling are the means of progression. quite good shops for european stores and articles are now springing up in srinagar. cox & co. and the punjab banking co. have branches there, and cockburn's agency do every kind of agency work, engage boats and servants, and let out tents, camp furniture, etc. there are also many respectable native firms who do the same--of whom, perhaps, the best is mohamed jan, because he does not pester and importune the visitor in the way that most others do, and really render life in srinagar intolerable. * * * * * there is a large choice of expeditions from srinagar to points of interest, which will be described in detail in a later chapter. first in the immediate vicinity there are picnics to be made to the dal lake, to the two moghal gardens,--the nishat bagh and the shalimar bagh,--and to the beautiful camping ground of the nasim bagh. these are expeditions which can be made in a single afternoon if necessary. of more remote tours the favourites are:--up the river to islamabad and the beautiful achibal spring and garden; to the clear crystal springs of vernag, one of the many sources of the jhelum; to the famous ruins of martand which occupy the grandest site for a temple of any in the world; to the lidar valley, pahlgam, the kolahoi glacier, and the caves of amar nath. islamabad is the starting-point for both the lidar valley and martand, and here the house-boat may be left. islamabad, thirty-four miles distant, may also be reached by a road which, though unmetalled, is in dry weather quite good. i have left srinagar in a motor car at . , have spent over an hour going round islamabad, have eaten lunch under the glorious chenar trees at bijbehara, and have been home again at srinagar by . the same afternoon. down the river are equally delightful tours to be made. at shadipur, at the junction of the sind river with the jhelum river, there is a charming grassy camping-ground under chenar trees. ganderbal is a few miles higher up the sind river, and forms the base for expeditions to ( ) the wangat ruins and the gangarbal lake, an exquisite torquoise-coloured sheet of water reposing immediately beneath the great cliff and glaciers of the haramokh mountain; and ( ) the beautiful sind valley with its grand mountain scenery, and the charming camping-ground of sonamarg (the golden meadow) also under towering mountain masses and close to glaciers. up this valley also lies the road to the zoji-la pass on the far side of which branch off roads to baltistan, on the one hand, with its fine ibex-shooting ground, immense glacier region, and k , the second highest mountain in the world; and on the other to ladak with its buddhist monasteries perched on any inaccessible rocky pinnacle that can be found, and leh, the meeting-place of caravans from lhasa and from central asia--a most quaint and picturesque little town embedded among bare, sun-baked mountains which has been the starting-point of two journeys i have made across the dreary, lofty karakoram pass ( , feet) to turkestan and to the pamirs. from shadipur, at the junction of the sind with the jhelum, the next expedition to be made is to the wular lake and bandipur, from whence ascends immediately the long and numerous zigzags to tragbal, a favourite camping-ground amid the pines, and to the tragbal pass ( , feet), from whence a magnificent view of nanga parbat ( , feet) may be seen, though i am bound to say that i have never seen it myself in spite of having crossed the pass six times on the way to, or returning from, gilgit and the hunza frontier which lies in this direction. it is by this route, too, that sportsmen proceeding to shoot markhor in astor, or ibex and bear in tilail and gurais, make their way, as also the few who obtain permission to shoot ovis poli on the pamirs. for myself the tragbal and bandipur have many welcome associations, for it is here that i have finished two great exploring expeditions, and on a third occasion returned there after a stay of two and a half years hard service on the hunza and chitral frontier. it is impossible to convey the delicious sense of relief the traveller feels in descending from the pass, in leaving behind all the rigors of severe mountain travel and intense cold, and with each easy step downward feeling the air growing warmer and warmer, and at length reaching the lake throwing himself into an armchair in a comfortable house-boat, and then gliding smoothly over the placid lake with the evening sunlight flooding the beautiful valley, and a soothing sense suffusing him at difficulties surmounted, at hardships past, and at present relaxation of body, mind, and purpose. [illustration: the valley of gurais] chapter iii srinagar and neighbourhood entering now into greater detail, first among the places of interest to be described must be srinagar, the city of the sun, the capital of the country, and the dwelling-place of , inhabitants. from both the sanitary and the æsthetic point of view i am always disappointed that srinagar was not placed either on the plateau of pariansipura in the centre of the valley, or on the plateau just above pampur on the west. the former was chosen by the great king lalataditya for the site of his capital, of which the ruins remain to this day. it is a karewa just opposite the junction of the sind river with the jhelum, high and dry above all floods and marshes. and it stands well away from the mountain ranges on either hand, right out in the centre of the valley, so that all the higher peaks and the complete circle of snowy mountains may be seen. a nobler site could not be found. the pampur plateau has the like advantage of being high and dry and healthy, and of being sufficiently raised above the ordinary level of the valley to command views right over the fields and marshes and wooded hamlets; and it also immediately overhangs the river, and commands a view of the most picturesque reaches in its course. either of these sites would have been preferable to the present low-lying situation amid the swamps, so muggy in summer and so chill in winter. yet this site has attractions of its own, and built as it is on either side of the river, with canals and waterways everywhere intersecting it, and with the snowy ranges filling the background of every vista, the city of srinagar must be ranked among the most beautiful in the east, and in its peculiar style unique. the distinguishing feature is the combination of picturesque but rickety wooden houses, of mosques and hindu temples, of balconied shops, of merchants' houses and the royal palaces with the broad sweeping river and the white mountain background. [illustration: market boats on the mar canal, srinagar] perhaps srinagar never looks more beautiful than in the fulness of spring towards the end of april, when the maharaja arrives from jammu and enters his summer capital by boat. on such occasions the resident and his staff, all the state officials, and many of the europeans resident in srinagar, go by boat to meet his highness some distance below the city. the maharaja arrived this year on the most perfect day in spring. before the time of his arrival the river was alive with craft of every description, from the resident's state barge of enormous length, and manned by about fifty rowers dressed in scarlet, to light shikaras, and even two motor boats. as we emerged from the town the banks on either side were covered with fresh green grass. the poplars and some magnificent chenar trees overhanging the river were in their freshest foliage. and coming up a long reach of the broad glistening river was the maharaja's flotilla, with their long lines of red and of blue oarsmen giving colour to the scene. the two flotillas joined and slowly made their way through the city. on either side were piled up masses of wooden houses, some low, some high, some leaning to one side, some to the other,--none straight and no two alike. all were crowded with people craning at the windows to see the procession. from many hung shawls, the distinctive decoration of the city for state occasions. and most striking and most beautiful feature of all, and only to be seen at this time of year and in kashmir, the earth-covered roofs were now covered with fresh green grass, with delicate mauve irises, and in some few cases with the gorgeous scarlet kashmir tulip. a more beautiful object than that of a little mosque on the edge of the river with its chalet-like roof covered with this blaze of scarlet, its graceful spire tapering skywards, its tassel-like bells of brass suspended from the corners all set in a group of overshadowing chenar trees, with the snowy ranges in the far distance, the clear blue sky above and the spring sunshine bathing all in warmth and light, it would be hard indeed to find outside kashmir. beyond the seventh bridge is the yarkand serai, filled with the tartar-featured yarkandis from central asia, in whose garb i myself arrived in srinagar twenty-one years ago, and fully as dark as they from many months' exposure to the sun and snow. above this is the first neat, well-constructed buildings--the zenana hospital built and supported by the state, and now lined by the medical and nursing establishment come out to welcome the maharaja. [illustration: above the fifth bridge, srinagar] the sixth and most of the other bridges of srinagar are built up on piers of crossed horizontal logs of wood. they occupy much of the river way, but are very distinctive, and harmonise most picturesquely with the wooden houses of the city. they were all crowded with people. and on the banks near one were assembled many hundreds of school-boys carrying small flags, which they waved as the maharaja passed, and shouted "eep, eep, ra! eep, eep, ra!" continuously for many minutes in imitation of the british cheer. mottoes of welcome were stretched across the houses in places, some invoking long life for the king-emperor, and others expressing loyal wishes for the maharaja. between the third and fourth bridges are the shops of most of the chief bankers and merchants, big, handsome, picturesque buildings of small bricks and woodwork, with semicircular balconies jutting out over the river and pretty carved and lattice-work windows. near the third bridge is the fine shah hamadan mosque of an almost norwegian type of architecture, built of wood with a tall taper spire and handsome hanging ornaments from the eaves. beyond the third bridge is the chief hindu temple, of quite a different order of architecture, built of stone--and, as along the whole embankment of the river, with the great stone blocks from the temples and cities of ancient hindu times. and so the procession up the river continues, through the avenue of houses, mosques, and temples; past rows of grain barges and house-boats tethered to the shores; past the curious wooden bathing-boxes, under the old-style wooden bridge; past flights of steps leading to the water's edge and crowded with people mostly, it is sad to say, in dull brown or the dirtiest white, but sometimes in gay orange-green or purple; past the old residence of the governors and the new villa of sir amar singh till the maharaja's palace is reached, where the procession finally halts while all the hundreds of little boats which had followed in rear swarm round the palace steps. the resident then takes leave, the maharaja ascends into his palace, and the resident and the european community proceed still farther up the river to the european settlement in the area known as the munshi bagh. the palace, though large, is disappointing. it is not what one would have expected on such a site. even the native portion is not handsome, and on to this has been tacked an ugly european edifice. a great chance has been thrown away, and one can only hope that time will either tone down the present ungainliness or remove it altogether, and erect a building more worthy of the rulers and of the beautiful country which they rule. [illustration: shawl merchants' shops, third bridge, srinagar] on either side are two handsome villas of brick and wood such as are seen on the banks of the thames; the one belongs to the maharaja's brother raja sir amar singh, and the other is allotted by his highness to his chief spiritual adviser. beyond is the great flight of steps, at which lord minto landed on his arrival in , leading to the main land entrance of the palace on the one hand, and on the other to a new, well-built, fairly clean and extremely picturesque bazaar. then the last, or rather, as it is commonly known, the first bridge is passed, over which lies the main road from rawal pindi and baramula to srinagar and the munshi bagh; and beyond this are passed more villas, then the state hospital and the museum on the right and various state buildings on the left, including the old guest house in which were entertained sir henry lawrence and john nicholson. beyond is clear of the town, and along the "bund" or embankment, which forms a lovely walk by the water-edge, has now arisen a series of smart european buildings--the missionaries' quarters, the punjab bank, parsi shops, the post office, the residency clerks' quarter and office, and then the residency itself, a regular english country-house; and beyond it a tidy little club, the second assistant resident's quarters, the parsonage, the church, and a line of houses each in its own snug and pretty little garden, the residences of british officials in the employ of the kashmir state. the whole bund is overshadowed by great chenar trees and willows, and both sides of the river are lined with house-boats. a thousand feet immediately behind rises the takht-i-suliman with the graceful hindu temple on its summit, and behind this again the great ranges with snow still lying low upon them. behind the bund lie many other modern houses, including nedou's hotel, and on the slopes of the takht and towards gupkar many english villas are springing up--all in much the same style, built of brick and cross-beams of wood with gable roofs. there are also tennis courts and a croquet and badminton grounds round the club, and on the open plain golf links, a polo ground, and a cricket ground. srinagar is indeed a gay place for the summer months, with games going on every day, dances nearly every week, dinners, garden parties, and picnics. [illustration: mosque of shah hamadan, srinagar] the jama masjid the largest and most striking, though not the most beautiful, of the mohamedan buildings in srinagar is the jama masjid, which was built by the emperor shah jehan. it is constructed of wood throughout, and is in the form of a square enclosing a courtyard. the main building, of course, faces mecca. here there is a forest of pillars all of single deodar trees, and remarkable for their height and grace. a staircase leads on to the roof, from which a good view over the sea of mud-roofed houses of srinagar may be obtained. taken as a whole the building is not very remarkable. the graceful steeples, of the style characteristic of kashmir, in the centre of each face are worthy of note. but all is in disrepair and neglected, and is hardly worthy of a city of over a hundred thousand mohamedans. shah hamadan masjid a more beautiful building than the jama masjid is the graceful mosque of shah hamadan, situated close upon the river, and a very favourite object for artists and photographers. it also is built of wood with pointed steeple, beautifully carved eaves and hanging bells, like most of the mohamedan structures in kashmir. other buildings scattered throughout the city are other mosques of much the same style of architecture. there are also several hindu temples of the usual type, and not especially characteristic of kashmir. dr. neve's hospital conspicuous above the european quarter stand the group of buildings known all over kashmir as dr. neve's hospital, a mission hospital which, with mr. biscoe's school, is the most sincerely appreciated of all the efforts which europeans have made for the welfare of the kashmir people. last year no less than , new out-patients were treated, and the total number of visits amounted to , . in-patients, of whom were females, were also treated; and surgical operations were performed. sometimes over out-patients, and on a few days over out-patients, were treated in a single day. these figures speak for themselves. they show the confidence the people now have in the wonderful institution and the steady practical good it is doing. the heads of the hospital are the brothers drs. arthur and ernest neve; and they are assisted by dr. rawlence, miss neve, miss robinson, mr. s. wilson, and native assistants and servants. [illustration: a hindu temple, srinagar] the hospital was founded in by dr. elsmie, who for many years had uphill work in starting the institution, but at length gained the confidence of the people and of the late maharaja. dr. downes succeeded dr. elsmie, and carried the work forward. in dr. neve took it up. in that year , new patients were treated; there were , visits, and operations were performed. year by year since then the good work has progressed. the original mud-buildings have gradually been replaced by the present solid masonry structures. and the steady growth of the number of in-patients, and the readiness with which even upper-class women remain in the hospital, testify to the confidence with which the institution is now regarded. it is now renowned through all the north of india, and is a splendid testimony to the steady, thorough, and persevering work of two self-sacrificing men. the takht-i-suliman the most conspicuous object in the neighbourhood of srinagar is the takht-i-suliman, a hill exactly a thousand feet above the valley plain, and surmounted by an ancient hindu temple. both for the sake of the view over the valley, up the reaches of the jhelum, and down on to the dal lake and the city of srinagar immediately at the foot, and also to see the older temple even now frequented by pilgrims from all over india, a climb to the summit is well repaid. the temple is believed to have been dedicated to jyesthesvara, a form of the god siva. it was at one time thought that it was built b.c., but it is now believed by the best authorities that while the massive basement and stairs are remains of an ancient building (possibly gopaditya's, as dr. stein thinks), the present superstructure may be of later date. the roof is certainly modern, but the temple as a whole probably belongs to the same period as the other temples in kashmir. it is of the typical hindu plan of a square with recessed corners, and is built like all the ancient kashmir temples of massive blocks of stones. [illustration: in the mar canal, srinagar] pandrathan three miles up the river from srinagar is the site of what is very probably the original city of srinagar founded by asoka. the name of pandrathan now given to the village is identified with the puranadhisthana, or "ancient capital" of the records, and this has been presumed to be the same as srinagar founded by asoka, the buddhist king. but of this city nothing now remains, and the picturesque temple there is of later date. it was built by the minister meruvad-dhana in the beginning of the tenth century, and dedicated to vishnu. the dal lake the dal lake, with the canal leading into it, and the various gardens on its shores, is one of the chief attractions of the neighbourhood of srinagar. it is always lovely, but perhaps at no season more beautiful than early in may. passing through the lock known as the dal darwaza, we glide through channels of still, transparent water hedged in by reeds and willows. on the right rises the takht-i-suliman immediately out of the lake. in front are the snowy ranges bordering the sind valley. numerous side-channels branch off and intersect. the shores are covered with market gardens. country boats laden with their produce continually pass, usually propelled by some old man or woman squatting at the extreme prow, and balancing him or herself there with extraordinary confidence and skill. numerous kingfishers of brilliant sky-blue plumage flash across the water; and gorgeous yellow-golden orioles dart from tree to tree. clumps of noble chenar trees with the kashmir chalet houses are grouped along the banks, and often overhang the mirror waters. orchards of quince trees with their delicate pink and white blossom and fields of brilliant yellow mustard line the shores. cows and their calves, sheep and their little lambs, graze on the fresh green grass; and pretty but dirty little children, geese and goslings, ducks and ducklings, dabble in the water, and all tell of the rich abundant life now bursting into being. rounding a turn in the canal a graceful hindu temple is seen forming the end of a reach, and on its steps leading to the edge of the water and reflected in it are picturesque groups of women, most of them indeed in the dull brown which they wear with lamentable frequency, but some of them also in bright greens and yellows which furnish the needed touch of colour to the scene. [illustration: guggribal pointe on the dal lake] some hundreds of yards farther on we pass under an old bridge with a pointed arch of quaint artistic design of moghal times. numerous grain boats of enormous size are congregated here; and half a mile farther the channel gradually opens out, and at length we emerge on to the open lake itself. the water is so still and so clear that the reflections of the surrounding mountains are seen as in the most polished mirror. the reflected mountain is as sharp and distinct as the mountain itself. the luxuriant plant growth from the bottom and the numerous fishes are seen as in clear air. on the far shores of the lake the stately avenues of the nishat and shalimar baghs approach the water's edge. above them rise high mountain cliffs. graceful boats glide smoothly over the glassy surface of the lake--some the bearers of market produce, some occupied by fishermen, and a few filled with holiday-makers enjoying thoroughly the beauty of the scene, and giving expression to the enjoyment in songs and music. may is not the season for the lotus, so that one additional attraction is lacking; but in july and august, when the lotus is in full bloom, the lake itself, though not the shores and setting, is at perfection. the lotuses are as large as the two hands joined together, of a delicate pink, and set on the water in hundreds. in the midst of their graceful leaves they add a beauty to the lake which attracts multitudes from the city. gliding on beyond the lotuses we pass the famous isle of chenars with its magnificent trees and grassy velvet banks; we pass a little promontory with another huge chenar tree growing out right over the water, and giving shelter to a house-boat comfortably ensconced beneath its shade; and then we reach the widest and most open portion of the lake. in the distance, towards the sind valley, well-wooded villages cover the lower slopes of the mountains inclining towards the lake, and away in the farthest westward distance the khagan snows are faintly traced. from here to the nishat or shalimar baghs we would bear off to the right. to the nasim bagh we bear to the left, and closing in to the southern shore pass a picturesque village by the side of the lake with chalet-like house, a handsome ziarat, a background of chenar trees and long lines of steps, generally crowded with people, leading to the water's edge. in about an hour's row from the start at the dal darwaza the nasim bagh is reached. [illustration: lotus lilies on the dal lake] nasim bagh the nasim bagh is a series of avenues of glorious chenar trees crossing one another at right angles, and each avenue about three hundred yards in length. under these is soft, fresh green grass, and the whole is raised twenty or thirty feet above the water. there are no flower gardens, but the site makes a perfect camping-ground, and many house-boats anchor here in the summer. looking out from the shade of the chenars we see straight across the lake the shalimar bagh with the dachigan valley behind it, and the snowy mahadeo peak towering above. from the opposite side of the bagh, looking away from the lake, there are views over the kashmir valley to the snows of the pir panjal and of the khagan range. and round the edges were clumps of large white and purple irises. in the autumn the nasim bagh is more beautiful still, for then the chenars are in all the richness of their autumn foliage, and a more perfect camping or picnic spot man could hardly wish for. the shalimar bagh on the north-east corner of the dal lake, and approached by a canal about a mile in length, with banks of soft green turf, and running between an avenue of chenars and willows, is the shalimar bagh, or royal garden, the favourite resort of the moghal emperor jehangir and his wife, the famous nurmahal, for whom the taj at agra was built as a tomb. the gardens can also be reached by a beautiful road along the shores of the lake, nine miles from the city of srinagar. the situation is not so beautiful as the site of the nishat bagh, for it is almost on a level, and is surrounded by a high wall. but it is only in comparison with the nishat bagh that it can suffer disparagement, and anywhere else than in kashmir it would be hard to find a more beautiful garden than the shalimar on an autumn evening, when the great avenue of chenar trees is tinged with gold and russet, when the lofty mountains which rise behind it take on every shade of blue and purple, and the long lines of fountains running through the avenue sparkle in the sunshine. [illustration: shalimar gardens] the garden is remarkable too for a pavilion, with exquisitely carved pillars of black marble. it is set in a tank in which play numbers of fountains, and round the borders of the tank are massive chenar trees. the total length of the garden is yards, and it is arranged in four terraces, on three of which are pavilions. except for the pavilion with marble pillars and the water channel, the garden is in a state of ruin; but mr. nichols of the archæological department survey has attempted to reconstruct its former outlines. there is a tradition that the garden was originally larger than the present walled enclosure, and there are found along the canal which connects it with the dal lake the ruins of masonry foundations, which mark either the beginning of the old garden or the site of a pavilion within it. causeways and channels probably extended across the garden with tanks and platforms. the garden was in the strictest sense a formal garden, and in making his recommendation for its restoration, mr. nichols enlarges on the artificiality which is the charm of a formal garden. appreciation of a formal garden requires, he thinks, an acquired taste, but the moghals certainly understood such matters. they were quite right in selecting trees of formal growth, and planting them on geometrical lines, the essence of a good garden being that it should form a pleasing intermediate step between the free treatment which nature lavishes on hills and plains, field and forest, and that necessarily artificial object--a building made by the hand of men. such are mr. nichols' ideas, for which there is a good deal to be said. but some may also think that when a once formal garden and formal buildings have _already_ fallen into ruin and returned as it were to nature, there may be less need to restore the formality, and that to fall in with the ways of nature may be the best method of adding to the existing beauty of the garden. in any case the improvement of the turf, the removal of modern hideosities of buildings, and the replacing of the makeshift fountains by fountains of really tasteful design, would greatly improve this beautiful garden. the nishat bagh the nishat bagh is decidedly the favourite garden in kashmir, though it has no building so fine as the pavilion with the black pillars in the shalimar bagh. its situation on the rising ground sloping up from the dal lake, backed by a range of mountains immediately behind, and with views far over the water and over the valley to the distant snowy mountains, gives it an advantage over every other garden, and its beauty in spring-time when the kashmir lilac and the fruit trees are in blossom, when the chenars are in young leaf and the turf in its freshest green, i have already described.[ ] in the autumn it is scarcely less beautiful in a different way. then the chenars are in a gorgeous foliage of gold and purple. day after day of brilliant sunshine and cloudless sky give a sense of security of beauty, and no more perfect pleasure-ground could be imagined. [illustration: the nishat bagh] the garden was constructed by the moghal emperor jehangir. it can be reached either by water or by road along the shores of the lake. it is about yards long and divided into seven terraces, each rising well above the other. down the centre runs a water-channel broken into a succession of waterfalls and fountains, and shaded by an avenue of chenars. the pavilion at the entrance, though affording from its upper story a striking view of the garden right up the line of waterfalls and fountains, and on to the mountains which hang over the garden, is a modern structure and is not beautiful in itself. it is a thousand pities, indeed, that this most superb site has not been made use of to construct a really beautiful pavilion on the lines of that in the shalimar bagh. on the higher terraces are the foundations of other pavilions and massive stone throne-like seats which indicate the fuller beauties of the moghal times. on the topmost terrace is a beautiful clump of magnificent chenar trees and a wide extent of soft green turf--an ideal spot for picnics and garden-parties. and it is from this point that can be seen the most beautiful and extensive views through the avenue of chenar trees, over the fountains and waterfalls, on to the glassy lake and the distant snowy ranges. parihasapura a very little known but very accessible and particularly interesting spot is the site of the ancient city of parihasapura, the modern paraspur, situated two and a half miles south-west of shadipur, and stretching from there on a karewa, or raised plateau, to the srinagar and baramula road. there is not much left now above ground, for numbers of the massive blocks of stone of which the city and temples were built have been taken away ages ago to build the temples of patan close by, and, alas! also to metal the baramula road. but the outlines of the walls may still be traced sufficiently well to attest the grand scale on which the city was built; and we know from records that it was built by the same great king lalataditya, who erected the temple of martand in the eighth century. [illustration: a terrace of the nishat bagh] and parihasapura, like martand, has been set off to the greatest advantage by natural scenery. this kashmir king must indeed have been worthy of the beautiful country which he ruled. in his time the sind and jhelum rivers met, not at shadipur as now, but at the edge of the karewa on which lalataditya built his city. and from the plateau views could be obtained right up the sind valley to haramukh and the craggy mountain peaks which bound it on either side; far up and down the main valley, over the fields of emerald rice or golden mustard, and the numerous hamlets hidden in clumps of chenar and willow, mulberry and walnut; over also the glistening reaches of the jhelum river, to the snowy ranges which at a distance far enough away not to dwarf or overpower the city encircled it on every side. no temple was ever built on a finer site than martand, and no city was ever set in more lovely surroundings than parihasapura. according to a passage in the rajatarangini the king lalataditya erected five large buildings: ( ) a temple of vishnu parihasakesava with a silver image; ( ) a temple of vishnu muktakesava with a golden image; ( ) a temple of vishnu mahavaraha with an image clad in golden armour; ( ) a temple to the god govardhanadhara with a silver image; ( ) the rajavihara or monastery with a large quadrangle and a colossal statue of buddha in copper, which indicate that in ancient times there must have been a large and important buddhist settlement. the same king is also said to have erected a stone pillar cubits high with an image of garuda on the top. footnote: [ ] p. . chapter iv the residency garden among the beauties of kashmir the residency garden must surely not be omitted. the maharaja has provided for the residency one of the most charming houses in india--a regular english country-house. and successive residents, in my case aided by mr. harrison and major wigram, have striven to make the garden worthy of the country and the house. here grows in perfection every english flower. the wide lawns are as soft and green as any english lawn. all the english fruits--pears, apples, peaches, apricots, plums, greengages, cherries, walnuts, mulberries, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, and strawberries--grow to perfection and in prodigious quantities; and the magnificent chenar and innumerable birds add a special charm of their own. perhaps a record of the cycle of the birds and flowers will give an idea not only of the beauties of the garden, but of the climate of the valley. early in march the garden beauties begin to develop. the turf is then still quite brown and the trees leafless, but on march th, when i returned to srinagar this year, violets, pansies, wall-flowers, narcissus, crocuses, and daisies were all in flower. daffodils, hyacinths, stock and a few carnations were in bud. columbine and larkspur leaves were sprouting. peas and broad beans sown in november were a few inches high. and of the trees, willow leaf-buds were just bursting and showing a tinge of fresh light yellow green, and one apricot tree was nearly bursting into blossom. of birds there were thrushes, minas, bulbuls, sparrows, crows, kites, blue-tits, hoopoes, and starlings; and of butterflies, a few tortoise-shell and cabbage-whites. the maximum temperature in the shade was ° and in the sun °, and the minimum temperature was °. on march th the willow trees had acquired a distinct tinge of green, as also had the grass. wild hyacinths (blue-bells) and yellow crocuses were well out. the maximum temperature was ° in the shade and ° in the sun, and the minimum was °. [illustration: the residency and club, srinagar] on the same day in the previous year the maximum was ° and the minimum °, and four days later there was snow. by march th the apricot blossoms were in full bloom. willow trees were in half-leaf. garden hyacinths, daffodils, crown imperials, and english primroses were just beginning to bloom; and greengages were in blossom. by the end of march the maximum temperature had reached ° in the shade and ° in the sun, while the minimum stood at °. this, however, was an exceptionally warm march. by april st the garden was exquisitely beautiful. the willows were now well out, and in all the charm of fresh young spring foliage. apricots and peach trees formed little clouds of delicate pink and white dotted lightly over the garden, and not too dense to hide the glories of the snowy mountains in the background. the tall pear trees were nearly in full bloom. a few of the pinky-white apple blossoms were just appearing. the may leaves were showing a tinge of green. chenar leaves were just appearing. the mulberry leaf-buds were beginning to burst. catkins were hanging from the poplars. rose leaves were fully out. the grass had nearly turned from brown to green. iris buds were showing a tinge of purple. hyacinths were well out, and crown imperials and daffodils in full bloom. on april rd the first of the pretty little wild tulips striped white and pink appeared, and on the following day the first of the large dark purple irises and two or three large white irises came into bloom. heavy rain fell, and on the th the grass was entirely green. on that day the pears were in full blossom. two of the magnificent scarlet kashmir tulips, which are a joy to any garden, came into blossom, and two english tulips also came out. rose-buds were beginning to form. the maximum temperature was ° and the minimum °. on april th the first columbine came into bloom, and on the th the first shrike appeared. now followed a deluge of rain. on the th ½ inches fell. by the morning of the th · inches had fallen since january st, in comparison with a normal fall of · inches. and, most unexpected of all, on the night of th- th snow fell! the maximum temperature was only ° and the minimum °. in a single night all the lovely delicate peach blossoms, the crowning glory of the kashmir spring, were withered up, and for the moment we seemed plunged back once more to winter. but april th was one of kashmir's most lovely days. the poplars were now in fresh light foliage. may was in full leaf. irises were plentiful. several columbines were in bloom. both the kashmir and english tulips were well out; and the strawberries were in blossom. on this day, too, i saw a flight of green parrots with long yellow tails in the garden. the first rose bloomed on april th, a white climber whose name i do not know, growing on the south verandah. last year the first did not appear till the th. may came into bloom on april th, and on the th a scarlet poppy and a white peony blossomed. for some days then the weather had been exceptionally warm, the maximum rising to ° in the shade and ° in the sun, and the minimum to °. the first golden oriole appeared on the th--exactly the same date as that on which it appeared last year. the golden orioles have a glorious deep liquid note which thrills through the whole garden. two or three pairs always settle there, and all day long their brilliant yellow plumage is seen flashing from tree to tree. three days later another brilliant visitant appears, the paradise fly-catcher. he has not the beautiful note of the golden oriole, nor such striking plumage. but he has exceedingly graceful form and movements. he has a very long, wavy, ribbony tail, like a paradise bird, and the two or three pairs of them which yearly settle in the garden may be seen at any hour undulating through the foliage or darting swiftly out to catch their prey. by may st the magnificent chenar trees were in full leaf. mulberry, horse-chestnut, and walnut were also well in leaf. the roses were coming into bloom--numerous maréchal neil, and a beautiful single pink rose--the sinica anemone--a few of fortune's yellow, and many tea-roses. the may trees were in full blossom. the bank on the south side of the garden was a mass of dark purple and white irises, and of an evening when the sunlight glancing low along its length caused each flower to stand out in separate state, became a blaze of glory. another beauty of this season were bushes of what is generally known as indian may, with long slender stalks bent gracefully downward like a waterfall of snowy flowers. stock was in full bloom. pansies were out in masses. both the english and kashmir lilac were in blossom, and the columbines were in perfection. i had had out from barr & sons a number of varieties, and the success was remarkable. the kashmir soil and climate seem to suit columbines, and varieties from every part of the world, deep purple, light mauve, white, mauve and white, pink and red of many different graceful forms, came up luxuriantly. they were one of the successes which gladden an amateur gardener's heart. the maximum in the shade was °, in the sun °, and the minimum °. the first strawberries ripened a week later. the first horse-chestnuts came into blossom on may th, and on that date the single pink rose, sinica anemone, on the trellis at the end of the garden, was in full bloom and of wondrous beauty; a summer-house covered with fortune's yellow was a dream of golden loveliness; i picked the first bloom of some english roses which a kind friend had sent out, and which had been planted in a special rose garden i had made for them--william shean, mrs. ed. mauley, mrs. w. j. grant, and carmine pillar; and we had our first plateful of strawberries. a light mauve iris, a native of kashmir, now came into bloom; geraniums and some lovely varieties of shirley poppy which i had obtained from mr. luther burbank, the famous plant-breeder of california, began to blossom; and roses of every variety came rapidly on till the garden became a blaze of colour. the first of some remarkably beautiful delphiniums--some a deep blue, some sky blue, and some opalescent--which i had also obtained from luther burbank appeared in bloom on may th. a spell of hot weather now set in, and on may st the maximum temperature rose to ° in the shade and ° in the sun, and the minimum to °. [illustration: the takht-i-suliman, from the residency garden] by may th the roses were at their maximum of beauty. the sweetly-scented and delicately-coloured la france roses were at perfection. rich bushes of general jacqueminot, of john hopper, of the pink rose of kashmir, and of many other kinds whose names i do not know, formed great masses of colour against the soft green leaves and the plentiful foliage of the chenar trees. william alan richardson climbed over the trellises. the shirley poppies gave every deep or delicate shade of red and pink. sweet-peas were in full bloom, and of them also i had had a marvellous variety from england. pinks and carnations were coming rapidly on. a mauve and yellow iris had appeared. luther burbank's delphiniums formed welcome patches of real true blues in the herbaceous border round the lawn. the light and graceful gypsophylis and phlox were in bloom; gladioli were just coming out; and the horse-chestnut trees were all in gorgeous blossom. early in june the gladioli, canterbury bells, pinks, sweet-williams, and foxgloves were in full bloom, and the sweet-william especially gave masses of beautiful and varied colour. the temperature now rose to ° in the shade and ° in the sun, and the minimum to °. on june th, carnations, phlox, and eschscholtzia were in full bloom. and by june th, though many of the best roses had passed over two beautiful climbers which i had obtained from home, dorothy perkins and lady gay were in full blossom, and the delicate pink and graceful form of the latter were especially lovely. geraniums and fuschias were now fully out, and masses of tall hollyhocks in many different shades of colour were most effective. a few cannas and some lilies also came into bloom. by the end of june apricots were ripe. petunias and dahlias were out, and a few columbines still remained in bloom. the temperature had now gone up to ° in the shade and ° in the sun, and the minimum to °; and early in july it rose to ° in the shade, which is about as hot as it ever becomes in the valley. on returning to srinagar on september th i found the bed of scarlet salvias giving brilliant patches of colour and most effectively lighting up the garden. the autumn crop of roses was beginning, though the blooms were not so fine as the spring crop. geraniums, fuschias, asters, cannas, zinnias, gallardia, and verbena were in abundance; stock and phlox were still out, and the hibiscus bushes were in full bloom. burbank's delphiniums were also having a light second bloom. the maximum in the shade was ° and in the sun °, and the minimum °. the rainfall to date from january st was · inches in comparison with a normal fall of · inches. by the beginning of october last year cosmos was blooming luxuriantly. christmas roses were in full blossom, and the first chrysanthemum appeared. during the month these blossomed in great beauty and became the chief attraction in the garden. towards the end of the month and beginning of november the great chenar trees gradually assumed the gorgeous autumn colouring. the virginian creeper on the porch turned to every rich hue of red and purple. then the glories of the garden slowly vanished away. the leaves fell from the trees. the frost turned the turf brown. on december st there were still a few brave remnants of the summer splendour--a few tea-roses, stocks, phlox, wallflower, chrysanthemums, carnations, petunias, gallardia, nasturtiums, salvia, snapdragons, and one or two violets. but the temperature was now ° at night, and the maximum in the day only °, and these too soon disappeared, and the only consolation left was the clearer view of the mountains of which the absence of foliage on the trees allowed. thus ends the story of a garden's glory. chapter v gulmarg what will be one day known as the playground of india, and what is known to the kashmiris as the "meadow of flowers," is situated twenty-six miles from srinagar, half-way up the northward-facing slopes of the pir panjal. there is no other place like gulmarg. originally a mere meadow to which the kashmiri shepherds used to bring their sheep, cattle, and ponies for summer grazing, it is now the resort of six or seven hundred european visitors every summer. the maharaja has a palace there. there is a residency, an hotel, with a theatre and ball-room, post office, telegraph office, club, and more than a hundred "huts" built and owned by europeans. there are also golf links, two polo grounds, a cricket ground, four tennis courts, and two croquet grounds. there are level circular roads running all round it. there is a pipe water-supply, and maybe soon there will be electric light everywhere. and yet for eight months in the year the place is entirely deserted and under snow. like kashmir generally, gulmarg also is said by those who knew it in the old days to be now "spoilt." with the increasing numbers of visitors, with the numerous huts springing up year by year in every direction, with the dinners and dances, it is said to have lost its former charms, and it is believed that in a few years it will not be worth living in. my own view is precisely the opposite. i knew gulmarg nineteen years ago, and it certainly then had many charms. the walks and scenery and the fresh bracing air were delightful. where now are roads there were then only meandering paths. what is now the polo ground was then a swamp. the "fore" of the golfer was unknown. all was then arcadian simplicity. nothing more thrilling than a walk in the woods, or at most a luncheon party, was ever heard of. and, doubtless, this simplicity of life has its advantages. but it had also its drawbacks. man cannot live for ever on walks however charming and however fascinating his companion may be. his soul yearns for a ball of some kind whether it be a polo ball, a cricket ball, a tennis ball, a golf ball, or even a croquet ball. until he has a ball of some description to play with he is never really happy. so now that a sufficient number of visitors come to gulmarg to supply subscriptions enough to make and keep up really good golf links, polo grounds, etc., i for my part think gulmarg is greatly improved. i think, further, that it has not yet reached the zenith of its attractions. it is the gulmarg of the future that will be the really attractive gulmarg, when there is money enough to make the second links as good as the first, to lay out good rides down and around the marg, to make a lake at the end, to stock it with trout, and to have electric light and water in all the "huts," and when a good hotel and a good club, with quarters for casual bachelor visitors, have been built. [illustration: on the circular road, gulmarg] all this is straying far from the original arcadian simplicity, but those who wish for simplicity can still have it in many another valley in kashmir--at sonamarg, pahlgam, or tragbal, and numerous other places, and the advantage of gulmarg is that the visitor can still if he choose be very fairly simple. he can go about in a suit of puttoo. he need not go to a single dance, or theatrical performance, or dinner-party, or play a single game. he need not speak to a soul unless he wants to. he can pitch his tent in some remote end of the marg, and he can take his solitary walks in the woods; _but_, if after a while he finds his own society is not after all so agreeable as he had thought, if he feels a hankering for the society of his fellows, male or female, and if he finds the temptation to play with some ball is irresistible, then just under his nose is every attraction. he can indulge his misanthropic inclinations at will, and at a turn in those inclinations he can plunge into games and gaiety to his heart's content. the main charm of gulmarg will, however, always remain the beauty of its natural scenery and the views of the great peak, nanga parbat, , feet above sea-level, and miles distant across the valley. the marg or meadow itself is a flowery, saucer-shaped hollow under a mountain , feet high, and bounded by a ridge directly overhanging the main valley of kashmir. it is feet above sea-level, open and covered with flowers and soft green turf, but on all sides it is surrounded by forests of silver fir interspersed with spruce, blue pine, maple, and a few horse-chestnuts, and the great attraction is that through this forest of stately graceful firs the most superb views may be had, first over the whole length and breadth of the vale of kashmir, then along the range of snowy mountains on the north, and as a culminating pleasure, to the solitary nanga parbat, which stands out clear and distinct above and beyond all the lesser ranges, and belonging, so it seems, to a separate and purer world of its own. and there is the further attraction in the gulmarg scenery that it is ever changing--now clear and suffused in brilliant sunlight, now the battle-ground of monsoon storms, and now again streaked with soft fleecy vapours and bathed in haze and colour. no two days are alike, and each point of view discloses some new loveliness. round the outside of the ridge runs what is known as the circular road. it has the advantage of being perfectly level, and is fit for riding as well as walking. except the road through the tropical forests near darjiling, along which i rode on my way to and from tibet, and which runs for miles through glorious tropical vegetation, by immense broad-leaved trees with unknown names, all festooned with creepers and lighted with orchids; by great tree ferns, wild bananas, and a host of other treasures of plant life, and through which glimpses of the mighty kinchinjanga, , feet, could be caught,--except that i know of no other more beautiful road than this along the ridge of gulmarg. [illustration: in the forest] from it one looks down through the wealth of forest on to the valley below, intersected with streams and water-channels, dotted over with wooded villages, and covered with rice-fields of emerald green; on to the great river winding along the length of the valley to the wular lake at its western end; on to the glinting roofs of srinagar; on to the snowy range on the far side-valley; and, finally, on to nanga parbat itself. and never for two days together is this glorious panorama exactly the same. one day the valley will be filled with a sea of rolling clouds through which gleams of sunshine light up the brilliant green of the rice-fields below. above the billowy sea of clouds long level lines of mist will float along the opposite mountain-sides. above these again will rise the great mountains looking inconceivably high. and above all will soar nanga parbat, looking at sunset like a pearly island rising from an ocean of ruddy light. on another day there will be not a cloud in the sky. the whole scene will be bathed in a bluey haze. through the many vistas cut in the forest the eye will be carried to the foot-hills sloping gradually towards the river, to the little clumps of pine wood, the village clusters of walnut, pear, and mulberry, the fields of rice and maize, to the silvery reaches of the jhelum, winding from the wular lake to baramula, to the purply blue of the distant mountains, then on to the bluey white of nanga parbat, sharply defined, yet in colour nearly merging into the azure of the sky, and showing out in all the greater beauty that we see it framed by the dark and graceful pines in which we stand. and this forest has no mean attractions of its own, of which to my little girl the chief were the white columbines. here also are found purple columbines, delphiniums, what are known as white slipper orchids, yellow violets, balsams, mauve and yellow primulas, potentillas, anemones, jacob's ladder, monkshood, salvias, many graceful ferns, and numerous other flowers of which i do not pretend to know the name. [illustration: from the circular road, gulmarg] the residency is situated on the summit of the ridge above the circular road, and from it can be seen not only nanga parbat (through a vista cut in the trees) and the main valley, but also a lovely little side-valley known as the ferozepur nulla. looking straight down two thousand feet through the pine trees we see a mountain torrent whose distant rumbling mingles soothingly with the sighing of the pines. brilliant green meadows, on which a few detached pine trees stand gracefully out here and there, line the river banks. steep hill-sides, mostly clad in gloomy forest, rise on either hand, but relieved by many patches of grassy sun-lit slope. the spurs become a deeper and deeper purple as they recede. the openings in the forests become wider higher on the mountain-side where the avalanches have scoured them more frequently. higher still the forest-line is passed, and the little stream is seen issuing from its source among the snow-fields and flowing over enticing grassy meadows. above the glistening snow-fields rises a rugged peak of the pir panjal which, when it is not set against a background of intense blue sky, is the butt of raging storm-clouds. the most beautiful time in gulmarg is in september, when the rains are over and the first fresh autumn nip is in the air. then from the summer-house in our garden, in the early morning, to feast my eyes on nanga parbat was a perpetual delight. it was the very emblem of purity, dignity, and repose. day after day it would appear as a vision of soft pure white in a gauze-like haze of delicate blue. too light and too ethereal for earth, but seemingly a part of heaven; a vision which was a religion in itself, which diffused its beauty throughout one's being, and evoked from it all that was most pure and lovely. the foreground in this autumn month was also worthy of the supreme subject of the picture. through the pines the touches of sunlit meadow, fresh and green, with long shadows of the trees thrown here and there across them and intensifying the effect of the sunlight; the groups of cattle; the horizontal streaks of mist floating on the edge of the woods; the cheerful twittering of the birds; the soothing hum of the bees and insects; the crowing of cocks; the rippling sound of running water; and then, looking towards aparwat, the brilliant sunshine brightening the emerald grass of the marg; the patches of yellow flowers; the little meandering stream; the pretty chalet huts peeping out from the edge of the trees; the background of dark firs and pines getting lighter as they merge into the bluey haze of the distance; the fresh green meadows over the limit of the pines; the snow-fields; the rocky peaks, and above all the clear blue liquid sky,--all this gave a setting and an atmosphere which fitly served as an accompaniment to this most impressive of nature's works. chapter vi the valleys and places of interest the sind valley the most bold and striking of the side-valleys is undoubtedly the sind valley. a fourteen-miles' ride, or a night in a boat, takes the traveller to ganderbal at its mouth, from which sonamarg, the favourite camping-ground near the head of the valley, is four marches distant. the lower portion is not particularly interesting, though even here the pine woods, the rushing river, and the village clusters are beautiful. but at sonamarg--"the golden meadow"--the great peaks close round, glaciers pour down from them almost on to the camping-ground, and the scenery has all the grandeur of the alps. [illustration: gorge of the sind valley at guggangir] sonamarg itself is a narrow grassy flat, feet above sea-level, extending for some two miles between the hill-side and the river bank where another beautiful valley joins in from the south-west. all the slopes and meadows are covered with alpine flowers. rich forests of silver fir, intermingled with sycamore and fringed on their upper borders with silver birch, clothe the mountain-sides. from each valley flows a rich white glacier. grand rocky cliffs encircle the forests and meadows, and culminate in bold snowy peaks which give a crowning beauty to the whole. it is an ideal camping-ground and a strong rival to gulmarg. some fifteen miles beyond sonamarg is the zoji-la pass leading to ladak and baltistan. it was by this pass that i first entered kashmir in , and coming thus from the opposite direction, the change in scenery was most remarkable. for hundreds of miles from the northern side i had traversed country which though of the grandest description, was absolutely devoid of forest. the great mountains, sublime in their ruggedness and in the purity of their snowy mantle, were yet completely barren. then, of a sudden, as i crossed the zoji-la all was changed in a moment, and i burst into one of the loveliest valleys in the world with glorious forests clothing every slope. it was a refreshing and delightful change, a relaxation from a sublimity too stern to bear for long, to the homely geniality of earthly life, and the remembrance of it still lies fresh upon my memory. gangabal lake about forty miles from srinagar, and lying at the foot of the great peak haramokh, is the remarkable gangabal lake. it is reached by a steep pull of feet from the sind valley. by the side of the path rushes a clear, ice-cold stream. from the top of the rise are superb views precipitously down to the wangat valley leading up from the sind and beyond it to a jagged range of spires and pinnacles. the path then leads over rolling downs, covered in summer with ranunculus and primulas, to a chain of torquoise and ice-green lakes, above which grimly towers the massive haramokh six thousand feet above the water, and giving birth to voluminous glistening glaciers which roll down to the water's edge. it is a silent, solitary, and impressive spot, and is held in some reverence by the hindus. the lolab [illustration: the frozen lake, gangabal] the lolab is the western end of the vale of kashmir, and is remarkable rather for the homely picturesqueness of its woodland and village beauty than for the grandeur of its scenery. it is usually reached by boat up the pohru river three miles below sopur. in two days the limit of navigation at awatkula is reached. from thence the road leads to kofwara, eight miles, and lalpura, the chief place, twelve miles farther. the hill-sides are entirely clothed with thick forests of deodar and pine. in the valley bottom are beautiful stretches of soft green turf. dotted over it are villages buried in park-like clumps of walnut, apple, and pear trees; and numerous streams ripple through on every side. for forest and village scenery it is nowhere excelled. it is like a series of english woodland glades, with the additional beauty of snowy peaks in the background. the lidar valley a favourite side-valley is the lidar, for which the road takes off from the main valley at bijbehara. it is not of such wild rocky grandeur as the sind valley, but has milder beauties of its own, charming woodland walks, and in summer a wealth of roses pink and white, jasmine, forget-me-nots, a handsome spiræa, strawberry, honeysuckle, etc. by the side of the road runs the cool, foaming lidar stream, and everywhere are villages hidden amongst masses of chenar, walnut, and mulberry. on the left bank one and a half miles from islamabad is the famous spring of bawan--a great tank under cool chenar trees. the spring is sacred to vishnu, and is in the charge of brahmins, who keep a book in which visitors have inscribed their names since . the tank is full of fishes fed by the brahmins, and thousands dash to catch the bread when thrown into the water. altogether the village and the cool spring welling out of the mountain-side, and the whole shaded by magnificent old chenar trees, form a most attractive spot well worth a visit. twenty-four miles from bijbehara, or twenty-eight from islamabad, is pahlgam, always the camping-ground of several visitors during the summer. here, too, colonel ward for many years has resided in the summer in a small house built by himself, but now taken over by the state. i fancy life here is dull compared with life at gulmarg, but for those who wish to vegetate and lead an absolutely quiet existence pahlgam is admirably suited. it is two thousand feet higher than srinagar. the camping-ground is in a wood of blue pines, and the fresh, clear, pine-scented air is refreshing after the stuffy main valley in midsummer. [illustration: early morning near pahlgam, lidar valley] above pahlgam the valley bifurcates, one branch going to aru, by which a road leads over a troublesome pass into the sind valley; and the other leading to shisha nag and to the famous caves of amarnath, the resort of many hundreds of pilgrims in july and august. immediately beyond pahlgam, on this latter route, the path leads through beautiful woods with fine views of rocky heights and snowy peaks. numerous maiden-hair and other ferns, primulas, crane's bill, gentians, and many other well-known flowers line the road-side. above the wood line are fine grassy uplands frequented by gujars with their cattle, ponies, buffaloes, sheep, and goats. lidarwat is a lovely camping-ground in a green lawn fringed by a deep belt of trees. beyond is the kolahoi glacier, the road to which leads over a wide and treeless valley, and in places crosses snow bridges. the camping-ground is , feet above sea-level, and is set in a circle of stately peaks. the end of the glacier is of grey ice, and so strewn over with fragments of grey rock as hardly to be recognisable as ice, though the ice is, in fact, two hundred feet thick. above it rises the bold peak of kolahoi, so conspicuous in its sharp needle form from gulmarg, and six thousand feet above the glacier. the cave of amarnath is about miles from pahlgam, and is about , feet above sea-level. it is therefore above all tree vegetation, and is set in wild and impressive scenery. the cave itself is of gypsum, and is fifty yards long by fifty broad at the mouth, and thirty at the centre. inside is a frozen spring which is the object of worship, and beside it is a noble glacier and bold and rugged cliffs. martand of all the ruins in kashmir the martand ruins are both the most remarkable and the most characteristic. no temple was ever built on a finer site. it stands on an open plain, where it can be seen to full advantage. behind it rises a range of snowy mountains. and away in the distance before it, first lies the smiling kashmir valley, and then the whole length of the pir panjal range, their snowy summits mingling softly with the azure of the sky. it is one of the most heavenly spots on earth, not too grand to be overpowering, nor too paltry to be lacking in strength and dignity, and it is easy to understand the impulse which led a people to here raise a temple to heaven. [illustration: the ruins of martand] the temple of martand is the finest example of what is known as the kashmirian style of architecture, and was built by the most noted of the kashmir kings, lalataditya, who reigned between the years and a.d. apart from its site it cannot be considered one of the really great ruins of the world; but yet there is about it a combination of massiveness and simplicity, and of solidity combined with grace, which have earned it fame for a thousand years. there is something of the rigidity and strength of the egyptian temples, and something of the grace of the buildings of greece. yet it is neither so egyptian nor so grecian as the one or the other. though hindu, it differs from the usual hindu types; and is known distinctively as kashmirian. it is, however, decidedly hindu, and not either buddhist or jain, and owes much to the influence of gandhara, while the sculptures show, according to marshal, a close connection with the typical hindu work of the late gupta period. achibal at the eastern end of the valley is another of the moghal gardens, at the spot where quite a little river comes gushing straight out of the mountain-side. leaving the house-boat at kanibal, near islamabad, we ride through a charming country, not so flat and swampy as the lower portion of the valley. we approach the semicircle of mountains which bound the valley on the east. numerous streams rush down from the mountains. the valley is divided up into rice-fields, and is everywhere dotted over with hamlets hidden among chenar, mulberry, walnut, and pear or apple trees. passing through one of these villages, which is alive with running water, and completely overshadowed by massive chenar trees, we enter a garden of the usual moghal type, with a straight line of fountains and waterfalls, and an avenue of chenars. at the head of the garden is the mountain-side covered with deodar forest, and welling out of the mountain is a rushing stream of clean, clear water. it is a delicious and remarkable sight; but i think the spot would be more beautiful if the natural conditions had been preserved, and the artificial garden and unsightly buildings had not been constructed round it. for they only serve to hide the magnificent prospect right down the length of the kashmir valley and the snowy mountains on either hand. [illustration: a srinagar bazaar] it is, however, in spite of this a fascinating spot, and the camp which the maharaja pitched here for the entertainment of lord minto was the prettiest i have ever seen, for the lines of the tents accorded with the formality of the garden, and the running water, the fountains, and the waterfalls gave a special charm to the encampment. chapter vii sport sport is, as is well known, one of the chief attractions of kashmir. every year, like the swallows, with the coming of spring, tonga loads of ardent sportsmen begin swarming into the country. nowadays they cannot, as formerly, shoot wherever they like and as much as they like; and in their own interests it is well they cannot, for if they still had the freedom of former days no game would now be left. for some years past a game preservation department has been formed by the maharaja, and placed under the charge of a retired british officer, that keen sportsman major wigram. licences to shoot have now to be taken out, and regulations for sportsmen are published annually. certain localities are strictly preserved for the maharaja's own use and for the entertainment of his guests. others are reserved for raja sir amar singh. others again as sanctuaries. the number of head of the various kind of game which a sportsman may shoot is laid down. the number of sportsmen which may be permitted to visit each locality in the year is fixed. and regulations determine how the places are allotted among the numerous applicants. major wigram has also under him an establishment to prevent poaching by the natives, and he himself is incessantly touring and keeping a watch on the due preservation of the game. he obtains an income of about rs. , per annum from the sale of licences, and spends about rs. , . under these conditions sport in kashmir will always remain. the total bags of big game for the last two years are:-- ibex markhor stags black bears brown bears leopards shapoo burhel goa ovis ammon these figures do not include what was shot in the maharaja's preserve, but they were not all shot within the limits of the kashmir province. they include also what was shot in the high mountains at the back of kashmir proper--in ladak, baltistan, and astor. in this last year it so happens that magnificent trophies were obtained. captain barstow shot a markhor of inches, which is the largest "shot head" ever obtained, though a head measuring inches was once picked up. in the kajnag mountains, which tower over the jhelum river on the drive into kashmir, one sportsman shot a markhor of ½ inches, and several other heads of were obtained last year. and as showing the pure luck which attends sport, it may be mentioned that captain barstow had never shot a markhor before he shot the record head. three good ibex heads, measuring close on inches, were shot last year, and the other trophies shot were good. the reputation of kashmir for sport is therefore being well maintained, though sportsmen have, in their own interest, to conform to more restriction than of old. last year the record ibex was also obtained by a well-known kashmir sportsman, though not in kashmir. mr. frank hadow shot a ½-inch head, but had the bad luck to lose it in a stream while having it cleaned. in duck-shooting, too, last season was a record year. mr. t. kennard shot duck in one day by himself. and colonel edwards twice shot over to his own gun while shooting with others. but it would be a mistake to suppose that mr. kennard secured this record bag merely by good shooting, and by being placed down amidst a crowd of ducks as in a big ceremonial state shoot. mr. kennard is among the most scientific sportsmen who have ever visited kashmir. i first met him twenty years ago when he built the first house-boat ever seen in kashmir. he used then to come out to kashmir regularly every cold weather, and spend many happy months shooting small game in the kashmir valley, markhor and ibex in baltistan, the gilgit district, and astor, and stag in the kashmir mountains. no man had a more glorious time, when major wigram and the whole game preservation department were still unthought of, and at a time of year when game was most easily obtained, and all the sportsmen in india were bound down to their official duties. after an interval of several years mr. kennard returned last year to kashmir for yet another shoot. he set to work in a most methodical and business-like way. he studied his ground well. he found out exactly when most ducks came. he studied their habits. he spared himself no labour and neglected no detail. and he devoted the entire cold weather to this single sport. besides duck and goose shooting there is excellent chikore shooting on the hill-sides, and a few manaul pheasants may also be shot. the maharaja's preserves have for many years been under the management of that old and experienced sportsman and naturalist, colonel ward, to whose book, the _sportsman's guide to kashmir and ladak_, all those who want full information on shooting in kashmir should refer. and in addition to shooting, trout-fishing will soon be established as a further attraction to the sportsman. some years ago a number of keen fishermen banded together, and after some failure and much trouble, and with the assistance of the state authorities in kashmir and of the duke of bedford in england, succeeded in introducing the ova of the english brown trout into the valley. under the special charge of mr. frank mitchell a hatchery has been established at harwan, nine miles out of srinagar, just beyond the shalimar garden, and at the outlet of the dachigam--a perfect trout stream--the valley of which is preserved for the maharaja's shooting. from these stock ponds a trout weighing twelve and a half pounds was taken on lord minto's visit in . the dachigam stream itself is now well stocked, and affords some excellent fishing to those who have obtained his highness' permission. in addition aged ova and yearling trout have been sent to other streams in kashmir--to the achibal, beoru, wangat, vishu, kishenganga at badwan, the liddar at aru and tannin, marwar, erin. yearlings have also been let out in the burzil stream, the gorai (on the north side of the tragbal pass), in the gangarbal lake, and in the punch river. it has been proved satisfactorily that when the snow-water has run off, the biggest trout will take a fly put to them at the right moment, though when the snow-water is coming down there are few flies rising and the fish do not take. a constant enemy of the trout is the poacher. english trout are, unfortunately, becoming very popular among the kashmirs, and it is difficult to protect the fishing. the biggest trout caught so far is a nine-pounder caught in the dachigam stream when the trout have been let out some years. in the summer of a fish weighing two and a half pounds, which must have been one of the yearlings turned out in , was caught in the vishu stream. by both major wigram and mr. frank mitchell great attention is being paid to the development of trout-fishing. seeing the success which has attended the introduction of trout the maharaja on the occasion of lord minto's visit ordered the importation of the ova of the huchon (_salmo hucho_), or so-called danube salmon. mr. frank mitchell in the spring of successfully introduced them, and about hatched out in the harwan hatcheries. they will probably be put out in the rapids of the jhelum river below baramula, and as they run to some lbs. in weight, and are known to be one of the most sporting as well as the largest of the salmonidæ, they should afford another welcome attraction for the sportsman in kashmir. chapter viii the people kashmir is very generally renowned for the beauty of its women and the deftness and taste of its shawl-weavers. and this reputation is, i think, well deserved. sir walter lawrence indeed says that he has seen thousands of women in the villages, and cannot remember, save one or two exceptions, ever seeing a really beautiful face. but whether it is that sir walter was unfortunate, or that he is particularly hard to please, or that villages are not the abodes of kashmir beauties, certain it is that the visitor, with an ordinary standard of beauty, as he passes along the river or the roads and streets, does see a great many more than one or two really beautiful women. he will often see strikingly handsome women, with clear-cut features, large dark eyes, well-marked eyebrows, and a general jewish appearance. as to the deftness and taste of the weavers the shawls themselves are the best testimony. the population of the whole kashmir state is , , , and of the kashmir province , , . of these per cent of the kashmir province and per cent of the whole state are mohamedan, and the remainder chiefly hindu. but the rulers are hindus, and consequently the mohamedans are as much in the shade as hindus are in states ruled by mohamedans. the ruling family is also alien, coming not from the valley itself, but from jammu, on the far side of the mountain to the south. the inhabitants were not, however, always mohamedans. originally they were hindus. it was only in the fourteenth century that they were converted--mostly by force--to become mohamedans. the present indigenous hindus of the valley are generally known as pundits, and kashmir pundits are well known over india for their acuteness and subtlety of mind, their intelligence and quick-wittedness. they prefer priestly, literary, and clerical occupation, but in the severe competition of life many have been compelled to make more use of their hands than their brains, and have had to take up agriculture, and become cooks, bakers, confectioners, and tailors, and, indeed, to follow any trade except the following which, according to lawrence, are barred to them--cobbler, potter, corn-frier, porter, boatman, carpenter, mason, or fruit-seller. it is hard for us occidentals to understand why the line should have been drawn at these apparently harmless occupations, but those of us who have lived in india know that the hindu does fix his lines with extraordinary sharpness and rigidity, and a kashmir pundit would as much think of working as a boatman as an english gentleman would think of wearing a black tie at a formal dinner-party. the kashmir pundits are essentially townspeople, and out of the total number about half live in the city of srinagar. but they are also scattered sparsely through the villages, where the visitor will easily distinguish them by the caste mark on the forehead. on the whole they have a cultured look about them and a superior bearing. * * * * * the mohamedans, forming the large majority of the population, strictly speaking having no caste, are engaged in various occupations, and found in every grade of social life. and the mohamedan gentleman of good position has something singularly attractive about him. he combines dignity with deference to a noteworthy degree, and between him and the european there is not that gulf of caste fixed which makes such a bar to intercourse with hindus. not that the mohamedans of india have not absorbed to a certain degree the atmosphere of caste with which they are surrounded. they are not so entirely free in their customs and behaviour as their co-religionists in purely mohamedan countries. when travelling in turkestan i lived with mohamedans, slept in their houses and tents, ate with them, and generally consorted with them with a freedom that mohamedans in india would think prejudicial to some vague sense of caste which, theoretically, they are not supposed to have, but which in practice they have absorbed from the atmosphere of hinduism which they breathe. the mohamedan, even of kashmir, is not quite so unrestricted as the mohamedan of central asia. still, he is a very attractive gentleman, and though not easily found, for nowadays he lives in some pride of seclusion, and in the pestering importunate merchant the visitor sees but a sorry representative of the class, yet he is occasionally met with--grave, sedate, polite, and full of interesting conversation, and bearing with him a sense of former greatness when his religion was in the ascendant in the seats of power. these old-fashioned mohamedan gentlemen have little or no english education, but they have a culture of their own; and among the mullas may be found men of great learning. [illustration: a corner of the village of pahlgam, lidar valley] other interesting types of kashmir mohamedans are found among the headmen of the picturesque little hamlets along the foot-hills. here may be seen fine old patriarchal types, just as we picture to ourselves the israelitish heroes of old. some, indeed, say, though i must admit without much authority, that these kashmiris are of the lost tribes of israel. only this year there died in the punjab the founder of a curious sect, who maintained that he was both the messiah of the jews and the mahdi of the mohamedans; that christ had never really died upon the cross, but had been let down and had disappeared, as he had foretold, to seek that which was lost, by which he meant the lost tribes of israel; and that he had come to kashmir and was buried in srinagar. it is a curious theory, and was worked out by this founder of the quadiani sect in much detail. there resided in kashmir some years ago a saint of the name of yus asaf, who preached in parables and used many of the same parables as christ used, as, for instance, the parable of the sower. his tomb is in srinagar, and the theory of this founder of the quadiani sect is that yus asaf and jesus are one and the same person. when the people are in appearance of such a decided jewish cast it is curious that such a theory should exist; and certainly, as i have said, there are real biblical types to be seen everywhere in kashmir, and especially among the upland villages. here the israelitish shepherd tending his flocks and herds may any day be seen. yet apart from this, the ordinary kashmiri villager is not an attractive being. like his house he is dirty, untidy, and slipshod, and both men and women wear the most unbecoming clothing, without either shape, grace, or colour. but the physique of both men and women is excellent. they are of medium height, but compared with the people of india of exceptional muscular strength. the men carry enormous loads. in the days before the cart-road was constructed, they might be seen carrying loads of apples sometimes up to and over lbs. in weight; and the labour they do in the rice-fields is excessively severe. [illustration: a mountain farm-house] good as is their physique, the kashmiris are, however, for some quite unaccountable reason lamentably lacking in personal courage. a kashmiri soldier is almost a contradiction in terms. there is not such a thing. they will patiently endure and suffer, but they will not fight. and they are very careful of the truth. as an american once said to me, they set such value on the truth that they very seldom use it. their good points are, that they are intelligent and can turn their hands to most things. they are, says lawrence, excellent cultivators when they are working for themselves. a kashmiri can weave good woollen cloth, make first-rate baskets, build himself a house, make his own sandals, his own ropes, and a good bargain. he is kind to his wife and children, and divorce scandals or immorality among villagers are rarely heard of. he is not a cheery individual, like many hillmen in the himalayas, but he seems to be fond of singing; and dirty as he, his wife, his house and all that belongs to him is, he has one redeeming touch of the æsthetic--all round the village he plants his graves with iris and narcissus. the final conclusion one has, then, is that if only he would wash, if only he would dress his wife in some brighter and cleaner clothes, and if only he would make his house stand upright, then with the good points he already has, and with all nature to back him, he would make kashmir literally perfection. the boatmen, who are the class with whom visitors to kashmir come most intimately into contact, are a separate tribe from the villagers. they are said to claim noah as their ancestor, and certain it is that if they did not borrow the pattern of their boats from noah's ark, noah must have borrowed the pattern from them. they are known as hanji or manjis, and live permanently on their boats with their families complete. some of these boats will carry between six and seven thousand pounds of grain. others are light passenger boats. they all have their little cooking place on board, and a gigantic wooden pestle and mortar in which the women pound the rice. both men and women have extremely fluent and sharp tongues, and have not so far earned the reputation for truthfulness. but they are quick-witted, and can turn their hands to most things, and make themselves useful in a variety of ways. besides carrying goods and passengers among the numerous waterways of kashmir, some gather the singháre (water nuts) on the wular lake, others work market gardens on the dal lake, others fish, and others dredge for driftwood in the rivers. [illustration: a boatman and his family] chapter ix the history of kashmir a country of such striking natural beauty must, surely, at some period of its history have produced a refined and noble people? amid these glorious mountains, breathing their free and bracing air, and brightened by the constant sunshine, there must have sprung a strong virile and yet æsthetic race? the beautiful greece, with its purple hills and varied contour, its dancing seas and clear blue sky, produced the graceful greeks. but kashmir is more beautiful than greece. it has the same blue sky and brilliant sunshine, but its purple hills are on a far grander scale, and if it has no sea, it has lake and river, and the still more impressive snowy mountains. it has, too, greater variety of natural scenery, of field and forest, of rugged mountain and open valley. and to me who have seen both countries, kashmir seems much the more likely to impress a race by its natural beauty. has it ever made any such impression? the shawls for which the country is noted are some indication that its inhabitants have a sense of form and colour, and some delicacy and refinement. but a great people would have produced something more impressive than shawls. are there no remains of buildings, roads, aqueducts, canals, statues, or any other such mark by which a people leaves its impress on a country? and is there any literature or history? [illustration: ruins of temples, wangat, sind valley] all over the kashmir valley there are remains of temples remarkable for their almost egyptian solidity, simplicity, and durability, as well as for what cunningham describes as the graceful elegance of their outlines, the massive boldness of their parts, and the happy propriety of their outlines. the ancient kashmirian architecture, with its noble fluted pillars, its vast colonnades, its lofty pediments, and its elegant trefoiled arches, is, he thinks, entitled to be classed as a distinct style; and we may take it as implying the existence of just such a people as this mountain country might be expected to produce. three miles beyond uri, on the road into kashmir, are the ruins of a temple of extremely pleasing execution. near buniar, just beyond rampur, is another right on the road. at patan, miles before reaching srinagar, are two more ruined temples of massive construction. two and a half miles southward of shadipur, the present junction of the sind river with the jhelum, are the remains of a town, the extent and nature of which show conclusively that it must once have been a large and important centre. on the summit of the hill, rising above the european quarter in srinagar, is a dome-shaped temple erroneously known as the takht-i-suliman. at pandrathan, three miles from srinagar, is a graceful little temple and the remains of a statue of buddha, and of a column of immense strength and size. at pampur and avantipur, on the road to islamabad at payech, on the southern side of the valley, where there is the best preserved specimen temple, and at many other places in the main valley, and in the sind and lidar valleys, there are remains of temples of much the same style. but it is at martand that there is the finest, and as it is not only typical of kashmir architecture at its best, but is built on the most sublime site occupied by any building in the world,--finer far than the site of the parthenon, or of the taj, or of st. peters, or of the escurial,--we may take it as the representative, or rather the culmination of all the rest, and by it we must judge the people of kashmir at their best. on a perfectly open and even plain, gently sloping away from a background of snowy mountains, looking directly out on the entire length both of the smiling kashmir valley and of the snowy ranges which bound it--so situated, in fact, as to be encircled by, yet not overwhelmed by, snowy mountains--stand the ruins of a temple second only to the egyptians in massiveness and strength, and to the greek in elegance and grace. it is built of immense rectilinear blocks of limestone, betokening strength and durability. its outline and its detail are bold, simple, and impressive. and any over-weighing sense of massiveness is relieved by the elegance of the surrounding colonnade of graceful greek-like pillars. it is but a ruin now, but yet, with the other ruins so numerous in the valley, and so similar in their main characteristics, it denotes the former presence in kashmir of a people worthy of study. no one without an eye for natural beauty would have chosen that special site for the construction of a temple, and no one with an inclination to the ephemeral and transient would have built it on so massive and enduring a scale. we cannot, for instance, imagine present-day kashmiris building anything so noble, so simple, so true, and so enduring. the people that built the ancient temples of kashmir must have been religious, for the remains are all of temples or of sacred emblems, and not of palaces, commercial offices, or hotels; they must have held, at least, one large idea to have built on so enduring a scale, and they must have been men of strong and simple tastes, averse to the paltry and the florid. what was their history? were they a purely indigenous race? were they foreigners and conquerors settled in the land, or were they a native race, much influenced from outside, and with sufficient pliability to assimilate that influence and turn it to profitable use for their own ends? [illustration: ruined gateway of martand] fortunately one of their native historians has left us a record, and dr. stein's skill and industry in translating and annotating this record makes it possible to obtain a fairly clear idea of ancient kashmir. from this and from the style of the ruins themselves, we gather that the main impulses came from outside rather than from within, from india and from greece. and perhaps, if in place of their mountains, which tend to seclusion and cut a people off from the full effects of that important factor in the development of a race, easy intercourse and strenuous rivalry with other peoples, the kashmirians had, like the greeks, been in contact with the sea, with ready access to other peoples and other civilisations, they might have made a greater mark in the world's history. but they had this advantage, that the beauty of their country must always, as now, in itself have been an attraction to outsiders, and so from the very commencement of its authentic history we find strong outside influences at work in the country. * * * * * thus among the first authentic facts we can safely lay hold of from among the misty and elusive statements of exuberant oriental historians, is the fact that asoka's sovereign power extended to kashmir-asoka, the contemporary of hannibal, and the enthusiastic buddhist ruler of india, whose kingdom extended from bengal to the deccan, to afghanistan and to the punjab, and the results of whose influence may be seen to this day in kashmir, in the remains of buddhist temples and statues, and in the ruins of cities founded by him years before christ, years before the romans landed in britain, and years before what is now known as england had yet been trodden by truly english feet. [illustration: ruined temples of avantipur] at this time buddhism was the dominating religion in northern india, and perhaps received an additional impulse from the greek kingdoms in the punjab, planted by alexander the great as the result of his invasion in b.c. asoka had organised it on the basis of a state religion, he had spread the religion with immense enthusiasm, and in kashmir he caused stupas and temples to be erected, and founded the original city of srinagar, then situated on the site of the present village of pandrathan, three miles above the existing capital. he had broken through the fetters of brahminism and established a friendly intercourse with greece and egypt, and it is to this connection that the introduction of stone architecture and sculpture is due. the punjab contains many examples of græco-buddhist art, and kashmir history dawns at the time when greek influence was most prominent in india. the first great impulse which has left its mark on the ages came, then, not from within, but from without--not from within kashmir, but from india, greece, and egypt. little, indeed, now remains of that initial movement. the religion which was its mainspring has now not a single votary among the inhabitants of the valley. the city asoka founded has long since disappeared. but the great record remains; and on a site beautiful even for kashmir, where the river sweeps gracefully round to kiss the spur on which the city was built, and from whose sloping terraces the inhabitants could look out over the smiling fields, the purple hills, and snowy mountain summits of their lovely country, there still exist the remnants of the ancient glory as the last, but everlasting sign that once great men ruled the land. * * * * * the next great landmark in kashmir history is the reign of the king kanishka, the indo-scythian ruler of upper india. he reigned about a.d., when the romans were conquering britain and buddhism was just beginning to spread to china. he was of turki descent, and was part of that wave of scythian immigration which for two or three hundred years came pouring down from central asia. and he was renowned throughout the buddhist world as the pious buddhist king, who held in kashmir the famous third great council of the church which drew up the northern canon or "greater vehicle of the law." in his time, too, there lived at a site which is still traceable at harwan, nestling under the higher mountains at the entrance of one of the attractive side-valleys of kashmir, and overlooking the placid waters of the dal lake, a famous bodhisattva, nagarjuna, who from this peaceful retreat exercised a spiritual lordship over the land. buddhism was, in fact, at the zenith of its power in kashmir. but a reaction against it was soon to follow, and from this time onward the orthodox brahministic hinduism, from which buddhism was a revolt, reasserted itself, and buddhism steadily waned. when the chinese buddhist pilgrim hiuen tsiang visited kashmir, about a.d. , he said, "this kingdom is not much given to the faith, and the temples of the heretics are their sole thought." passing now over a period of six centuries, the only authentically recorded event in which is the reign, a.d. , of mihirakula, the "white hun," a persecutor of the buddhist faith, "a man of violent acts and resembling death," whose approach the people knew "by noticing the vultures, crows, and other birds which were flying ahead eager to feed on those who were to be slain," and who succeeded to a kingdom which extended to kabul and central india, we come to the reign of the most famous king in kashmir history, and the first really indigenous ruler of note--lalitaditya. and of his reign we must take especial notice as kashmir was then at its best. * * * * * whether lalitaditya was a pure kashmiri it is impossible to discover. his grandfather, the founder of the dynasty to which he belonged, was a man of humble origin--whether kashmiri or foreign the historian does not relate--who was connected by marriage with the preceding ruling family. his mother was the mistress of a merchant settled in srinagar. the dynasty which his grandfather succeeded was foreign, and it is impossible, therefore, to say how much foreign blood lalitaditya had in his veins; but his family had at any rate been settled in kashmir for a couple of generations, and kashmir was not in his time the mere appanage of a greater kingdom, but was a distinct and isolated kingdom in itself. from this time for many centuries onwards, till the time of akbar, the tide of conquest and political influence was to turn, and instead of more advanced and masterful races from the direction of india spreading their influence over kashmir, it was from kashmir that conquerors were to go forth to extend their sway over neighbouring districts in the punjab. lalitaditya's reign extended from about to . he was therefore a contemporary of charlemagne, and preceded our own king alfred by more than a century. mohamed was already dead a hundred years, but his religion had not yet spread to india. the kashmiri historians speak of lalitaditya's "conquering the world," and mix up much fable with fact. but what certainly is true is that he asserted his authority over the hilly tracts of the northern punjab, that he attacked and reduced the king of kanauj to submission, that he conquered the tibetans, successfully invaded badakhshan in central asia, and sent embassies to peking. though, then, he was not the "universal 'monarch' that the historian described him, and did not move round the earth like the sun," or "putting his foot on the islands as if they were stepping-stones, move quickly and without difficulty over the ocean," he is yet the most conspicuous figure in kashmir history, and raised his country to a pitch of glory it had never reached before or attained to since. it was he who erected the temple at martand; and the ruins of the city parihasapura, near the present shadipur, are an even fuller testimony to his greatness. these, therefore, we must regard as the most reliable indication we have of the degree of culture and civilisation to which kashmir attained in its most palmy day twelve hundred years ago. * * * * * lalitaditya's rule was followed by a succession of short and weak reigns, but his grandson was almost as great a hero of popular legend as himself. he too, "full of ambition, collected an army and set out for the conquest of the world." he reached the ganges and defeated the king of kanauj, but had to return to kashmir to subdue a usurper to his throne. he encouraged scholars and poets and founded cities. after him followed, first, "an indolent and profligate prince"; then a child in the hands of uncles, who as soon as he grew up destroyed him and put another child on the throne. he indeed maintained his position on the throne for years, but only on account of the rivalries of the uncles, and as a mere puppet king, and was eventually deposed by the victorious faction to make place for yet another puppet king, who again was killed by a treacherous relative. so the record goes on till we come to the reign of avantivarman, - , and this appears to have brought a period of consolidation for the country, which must have greatly suffered economically as well as politically from the internal troubles during the preceding reigns. there is no indication of the reassertion of kashmir sovereignty abroad, but there is ample proof of the internal recovery of the country, and the town of avantipura, named after the king, has survived to the present day. it lies one march above srinagar, and the ruins of the ancient buildings, though not equal in size to lalitaditya's structures, yet rank, says stein, among the most imposing monuments of ancient kashmir architecture, and sufficiently attest the resources of the builder. this reign was, too, remarkable for the execution of an engineering scheme to prevent floods and drain the valley, a precisely similar idea to that on which major de lotbinière is working under the direction of the present maharaja. the kashmiri engineer suyya, after whom is named the present town of sopur, saw more than a thousand years ago what modern engineers have also observed, that floods in the valley are due to the waters of the jhelum not being able to get through the gorge three miles below baramula with sufficient rapidity. the constricted passage gets blocked with boulders, and both suyya and our present engineers saw that this obstruction must be removed. but while major de lotbinière imported electrically-worked dredgers from america and a dredging engineer from canada, suyya adopted a much simpler method: he threw money into the river where the obstruction lay. his contemporaries, as perhaps we also would have, looked upon him as a madman. but there was method in his madness, for the report had no sooner got about that there was money at the bottom of the river than men dashed in to find it, and rooted up all the obstructing boulders in their search. so at least says the legend. in any case the obstruction was removed by suyya, and the result was the regulation of the course of the river, a large increase of land available for cultivation, and increased protection against disastrous floods. may the modern suyya be equally successful! the successor of avantivarman, after defeating a cousin and other rivals to the throne, started on a round of foreign expedition, in the historian's words, "to revive the tradition of the conquest of the world." the practical result does not appear to have been much more than an invasion of hazara, an attack on kangra and the subjugation of what is now the town of gujrat in the punjab, since remarkable as the spot where we finally overthrew the power of the sikhs. but the record is of interest, as showing that the conquering tendency was still from kashmir outwards, and not from the punjab into kashmir. * * * * * but this was the last outward effort, and from this reign onward the record is one long succession of struggles between the rulers and usurping uncles, cousins, brothers, ministers, nobles, and soldiers. the immediate successor was a child whose regent mother was under the influence of her paramour the minister. after two years he was murdered by the minister. another boy succeeded who only lived ten days. then the regent mother herself ruled for a couple of years, but a military faction overruled her councils, and by open rebellion obtained the throne for a nominee of their own, and the land became oppressed by exactions of the soldiery backed by unscrupulous ministers. the queen was captured and executed, and a disastrous flood and terrible famine increased the general misery. after two years' reign the soldiers' nominee was deposed and a child put in his place. then there was a fresh revolution and still another nominee, who, as he could not pay a sufficient bribe to the soldiery, was deposed and the crown sold to the minister. and now another power makes itself felt, the influence of the feudal landholders, whose interests had suffered from the prolonged predominance of the military party. they marched upon srinagar, defeated the soldiers, threw out the usurping minister, and restored the legitimate king, who, however, showed little gratitude, but abandoned himself to vile cruelties and excesses, till the feudal landholders became so exasperated that they treacherously murdered him at night within the arms of one of his low-caste queens. the successor was no better. he surpassed his predecessor in acts of senseless cruelty and wanton licence, and was encouraged by his ambitious minister (who was scheming to secure the throne for himself) to destroy his own relatives. some were murdered, and others captured and allowed to starve to death. he himself died after a reign of only two years, and his successor had to flee after occupying the throne for a few days. the commander-in-chief tried to seize it, but on placing the election in the hands of an assembly of brahmins, they chose one of their own number, who for nine years, by a wise and mild rule, gained a respite from the constant troubles of previous reigns. only a short respite, however, for on his death the aforementioned scheming minister, after first putting his rivals out of the way, forced an entrance to the palace, killed the successor of the brahmin, and threw him into the jhelum. he grossly oppressed the land for a year and a half, and then died of dropsy, to be succeeded by a youth grossly sensual and addicted to many vices, who married a princess of the house of punch. this lady happened to have considerable force of character, and when her son succeeded as a child, exercised as his guardian full royal power. she ruthlessly put down all rival parties, executing captured rebels, exterminating their families. she even, on her son's death, murdered two of her own grandsons that she might herself retain power. finally, she fell in love with a letter-carrier who had begun life as a herdsman; she appointed him her minister, and he retained undisputed predominance over her for her reign of twenty-three years, his valour supplementing her cunning diplomacy and bribes in overcoming all opposition. the following reign, which was prudent, but weak, is noticeable from the fact that the famous mahmud of ghazni, who forced mohamedanism upon upper india, made an attempt, a.d. , to invade kashmir. it was unsuccessful, but it marks the first sign of the returning flood of invasion from the punjab inwards to kashmir. the outward flow had ceased. the inward was now to begin. in the meanwhile, until the moghals, five hundred years later, finally established themselves in kashmir, the ceaseless round of intrigue, treachery, and strife continued. the powerful herdsman minister and his son were foully murdered, and a succession of low favourites rose to power and plundered the people. a reign of twenty-two days which follows was terminated by the licentious mother killing her own son. then comes a dangerous rising of the feudal landholders and more short reigns, murders, suicides, till we arrive at the reign of harsa, - , who is said to have been "the most striking figure among the later hindu rulers of kashmir." he was courageous and fond of display, and well versed in various sciences, and a lover of music and the arts, but "cruelty and kindheartedness, liberality and greed, violent self-willedness and reckless supineness, cunning and want of thought, in turn displayed themselves in his chequered life." he kept up a splendid court and was munificent to men of learning and poets. he also succeeded in asserting his authority in the hilly country outside kashmir on the south. but he eventually became the object of conspiracies, and to put them down resorted to the cruellest measures. he had his half-brother, as well as his nephews, and some other relatives, who had given no cause for suspicion, heartlessly murdered. extravagant expenditure on the troops and senseless indulgence in costly pleasures gradually involved harsa in grave financial trouble, from which he endeavoured to free himself by ruthless spoliation of sacred shrines, and even by confiscating divine images made of any valuable metal. he was further reduced to the necessity of imposing new and oppressive imposts. all this misgovernment spread discontent and misery among the people; and while the plague was raging, and robbers everywhere infesting the land, there occurred a disastrous flood which brought on a famine. a rising against harsa was the result. he was slain in the fighting; his head was cut off and burned, while his body, naked like that of a pauper, was cremated by a compassionate wood-dealer. the position of his successor, vecula, was no less precarious than that of the generality of kashmir rulers. his younger brother was ready to rise against him, and the leaders of feudal landholders, to whose rebellion he owed his throne, behaved as the true rulers of the land. he protected himself by fomenting jealousy and mutual suspicion, and murdered or exiled their most influential leaders, and then openly turned upon the remainder and forced them to disarm and submit. he also systematically persecuted the officials. on the other hand he showed considerate regard for the common people, and was on the whole a liberal, capable, and fairly energetic ruler. nevertheless he, too, met with a violent end. the city-prefect and his brothers attacked him at night in the palace as, unarmed and attended only by a few followers, he was proceeding to the seraglio. he fought with desperate bravery, but was soon overpowered by his numerous assailants and cruelly murdered, december . his immediate successor reigned only a few hours; his half-brother only four months. he was then made prisoner by his brother, whose reign of eight years was one succession of internal troubles caused by rebellious and powerful landholders whom he in vain tried to subdue. he imprisoned his minister and the minister's three sons, and finally had them all strangled. he executed with revolting cruelty some hostages of the landholders; and, finally, in face of a rebellion caused by his cruelty and by his oppressive imposts, he had to fly from srinagar to punch. a pretender occupied the throne for a year, during which the people were at the mercy of bands of rebels, while rival ministers contended for what was left of regal power. trade was at a standstill and money scarce. the rightful ruler returned and again occupied the throne, and, owing to the want of union among the feudal landholders, was able to retain it for another five years. but eventually he also met the usual fate of kashmir kings, and was murdered. jayashima, the successor, reigned for twenty-one years, though he had found his country in a pitiable state. the feudal landholders were like kings, while the resources of the king and people alike were well-nigh exhausted by the preceding struggles. his predecessor had been unable by force to permanently reduce the power and pretensions of these petty nobles, and jayashima tried to effect the same object by cunning diplomacy and unscrupulous intrigue. but he was no more successful, and they continued to preserve a rebellious, independent attitude for centuries later, far into the mohamedan period. * * * * * the accounts of this and the immediately preceding reigns are of particular interest, because kalhana, the historian to whom the facts are due, lived at this period. we get then a first-hand account of the state of kashmir eight hundred years ago. it is a petty, melancholy, and sordid history, but it is the record of a contemporary, and i have no hesitation in adopting it as giving a true impression of the state of the country, because i have myself seen a precise counterpart of it in independent states on this very frontier. when i visited hunza in the then chief--now in exile--had murdered his father, poisoned his mother, and thrown his two brothers over a precipice. the chief of chitral, when i was there in , was one of only four survivors of seventeen brothers who were living when their father died, and he himself was subsequently murdered by one of his three surviving brothers--a brother whom he had frequently asked my permission to murder, on the ground that if he did not murder the brother, the brother would murder him. in chitral there was also the same struggle with "nobles" as is recorded of kashmir, and murders of "nobles" were horribly frequent. we may accept, then, as authentic that the normal state of kashmir for many centuries, except in the intervals when a strong, firm ruler came to the front, was a state of perpetual intrigue and assassination, of struggles with brothers, cousins, uncles, before a chief even came to the throne; of fights for power with ministers, with the military, with the "nobles" when he was on it; of constant fear; of poisoning and assassination; of wearying, petty internecine "wars," and of general discomfort, uncertainty, and unrest. * * * * * for two centuries more hindu rule maintained itself, but it was steadily decaying. in the meanwhile mohamedanism had, especially in consequence of the invasion of mahmud of ghazni in a.d., made great advances in the adjoining kingdoms of the punjab; and, in , a mohamedan ruler, shah mir, deposed the widow of the last hindu ruler and founded a mohamedan dynasty. the influx of foreign adventurers from central asia as well as from india had prepared the ground for mohamedan rule, and when shah mir appeared there was little change in the system of administration, which remained as before in the hands of the traditional official class, the brahmins. from this time till the moghal emperors finally conquered kashmir in , there was, with one exception, the usual succession of weak rulers and constant struggles between rival factions of territorial magnates. but this one exception is worthy of notice, as his reign is even now quoted by kashmiris as the happiest of their history. zain-ul-ab-ul-din ( - ) was virtuous in his private life and liberal. he was the staunch friend of the cultivators, and built many bridges and constructed many canals. he was fond of sport, and was tolerant towards brahmins, remitting the poll-tax on them, and encouraging them by grants of land. he also repaired some hindu temples and revived hindu learning. further, he introduced many art-manufactures from foreign countries, and his court was thronged by poets, musicians, and singers. [illustration: gate of the outer wall, hari parbat fort, srinagar] but this reign seems to have been a mere oasis in the dreary record, and it was followed by a succession of weak reigns till , when a direct conquest of the country by a foreign invader was effected. in that year mirza haider, with a following which formed part of the last great wave of turkis (or moghals) from the north, invaded kashmir and held it for some years. then followed one last short period, during which kashmir became once more the scene of long-continued strife among the great feudal families, who set up and deposed their puppet kings in rapid succession, till finally, in , kashmir was incorporated in the dominions of the great akbar, the contemporary of elizabeth, and remained as a dependency of the moghal emperors for nearly two centuries. akbar himself visited the country three times, made a land revenue settlement, and built the fort of hari parbat, which from its situation on an isolated hill, in a flat valley surrounded by mountains, bears some resemblance to the potala at lhasa. akbar's successor, jehangir, was devoted to kashmir and he it was who built the stately pleasure gardens, the shalimar and nishat baghs, where we can imagine that he and his wife, the famous nurmahal, for whom he built the taj at agra, must have spent many a pleasant summer day. * * * * * the rule of the moghals was fairly just and enlightened, and their laws and ordinances were excellent in spirit. bernier, who visited kashmir in the train of aurungzebe, makes no allusion, as travellers of a subsequent date so frequently do, to the misery of the people, but, on the contrary, says of them that they are "celebrated for wit, and considered much more intelligent and ingenious than the indians." "in poetry and the sciences," he continues, "they are not inferior to the persians, and they are also very active and industrious." and he notes the "prodigious quantity of shawls which they manufacture." kashmir was indeed, according to bernier, "the terrestrial paradise of the indies." "the whole kingdom wears the appearance," he says, "of a fertile and highly cultivated garden. villages and hamlets are frequently seen through the luxuriant foliage. meadows and vineyards, fields of rice, wheat, hemp, saffron, and many sorts of vegetables, among which are mingled trenches filled with water, rivulets, canals, and several small lakes, vary the enchanting scene. the whole ground is enamelled with our european flowers and plants, and covered with our apple, pear, plum, apricot, and walnut trees, all bearing fruit in great abundance." all this and the absence of remarks on ruined towns and deserted villages, such as we shall hear so much of later on, implies prosperity. and of the governors of kashmir under the moghals, we read that many were enlightened, reduced taxation, and put down the oppression of petty officials. but as the moghal empire began to decay, the governors became more independent and high-handed. the hindus were more oppressed. the officials fought among themselves, and kashmir fell once more into wild disorder; and eventually, in , came under the cruellest and worst rule of all--the rule of the afghans, who to this day are of all the oppressive rulers in the world the most tyrannical. the period of afghan rule was, says lawrence, a time of "brutal tyranny, unrelieved by good works, chivalry, or honour." men with interest were appointed as governors, who wrung as much money as they could out of the wretched people of the valley. it was said of them that they thought no more of cutting off heads than of plucking a flower. one used to tie up the hindus, two and two, in grass sacks and sink them in the dal lake. the poll-tax on hindus was revived, and many either fled the country, were killed, or converted to islam. * * * * * at last the oppression became so unendurable that the kashmiris turned with hope to ranjit singh, the powerful sikh ruler of the punjab, who, after an unsuccessful attempt, finally in , accompanied by raja gulab singh of jammu, defeated the afghan governor and annexed kashmir to his dominions. it came then once again under hindu rulers, though in the meantime nine-tenths of the population had been converted to mohamedanism. but the unfortunate country had still to suffer many ills. the sikhs who succeeded the afghans were not so barbarically cruel, but they were hard and rough masters. moorcroft, who visited the country in , says that "everywhere the people were in the most abject condition, exorbitantly taxed by the sikh government, and subjected to every kind of extortion and oppression by its officers ... not one-sixteenth of the cultivable surface is in cultivation, and the inhabitants, starving at home, are driven in great numbers to the plains of hindustan." the cultivators were "in a condition of extreme wretchedness," and the government, instead of taking only one-half of the produce on the threshing-floor, had now advanced its demands to three-quarters. every shawl was taxed per cent upon the estimated value, besides which there was an import duty on the wool with which they were manufactured, and a charge was made upon every shop or workman connected with the manufacture. every trade was also taxed, "butchers, bakers, boatmen, vendors of fuel, public notaries, scavengers, prostitutes, all paid a sort of corporation tax, and even the kotwal, or chief officer of justice, paid a large gratuity of thirty thousand rupees a year for his appointment, being left to reimburse himself as he might." [illustration: at the river's edge, srinagar] villages, where moorcroft stopped in the lolab direction, were half-deserted, and the few inhabitants that remained wore the semblance of extreme wretchedness. islamabad was "as filthy a place as can well be imagined, and swarming with beggars." shupaiyon was not half-inhabited, and the inhabitants of the country round, "half-naked and miserably emaciated, presented a ghastly picture of poverty and starvation." the sikhs "seemed to look upon the kashmirians as little better than cattle ... the murder of a native by a sikh is punished by a fine to the government of from sixteen to twenty rupees, of which four rupees are paid to the family of the deceased if a hindu, and two rupees if a mohamedan." vigne's description is hardly more favourable. he visited kashmir in . shupaiyon was "a miserable place, bearing the impression of once having been a thriving town. the houses were in ruins." islamabad was "but a shadow of its former self." the houses "present a ruined and neglected appearance, in wretched contrast with their once gay and happy condition, and speak volumes upon the light and joyous prosperity that has long fled the country on account of the shameless rapacity of the ruthless sikhs." the villages were fallen into decay. the rice-ground was uncultivated for want of labour and irrigation. * * * * * clearly the kashmiris had not yet come to a haven of rest, but they were nearing it. the raja gulab singh of jammu has already been mentioned as accompanying ranjit singh's troops on their victorious march to kashmir in . on the death of ranjit singh there was much violence and mutiny among the sikh soldiery, and the governor of kashmir was murdered by them. thereupon a body of about men, nominally under the command of the son of sher singh, ranjit's successor, but really under the charge of gulab singh, was sent to kashmir to restore authority. this was in the year , when the british were still behind the sutlej, but were engaged in the fruitless and disastrous expedition to kabul, which resulted in the murder of the envoy. gulab singh quelled the mutiny in kashmir, placed there a governor of his own, and from this time he became virtual master of the valley, though till the year it nominally belonged to the sikh rulers at lahore. [illustration: lalla rookh's tomb, hassan abdal] as he was the founder of the present ruling dynasty, it will be well to pause here to describe who he was and where he came from. he was what is known as a dogra rajput, that is, a rajput inhabiting the dogra country--the hilly country stretching down to the plains of the punjab from the snowy range bounding kashmir on the south. his far-away ancestors were rajputs who for generations had followed warlike operations. originally settled in oudh or in rajputana they eventually moved to the punjab, and settled at mirpur in the dogra country. one branch then migrated to chamba, another to kangra, and the one to which gulab singh belonged to jammu, where the great-great-grand-uncle of gulab singh--throv deo--was during the middle of the eighteenth century a man of importance. in the son of throv deo built the palace at jammu, and about gulab singh was born. in , when ranjit singh's troops were attacking jammu, gulab singh so distinguished himself that he gained the favour of ranjit singh. he took service under the sikh ruler, and with the assistance of his brother, ranjit singh's dewan, acquired such influence that when the principality of jammu had been annexed by the sikhs, ranjit singh in conferred it upon gulab singh, with the title of raja. the brother, dhyan singh, was likewise made raja of punch, and the third brother, raja of ramnager. in the course of the next years the three brothers subdued all the neighbouring principalities, and gulab singh's troops under zorawar singh had conquered ladak and baltistan, and even invaded tibet, though there zorawar singh himself was killed and his army annihilated. thus when ranjit singh died in gulab singh, though still feudatory to the sikh government, had established his authority in jammu and neighbouring principalities, and in ladak and baltistan, and he had a commanding influence in kashmir then still under a sikh governor. the traveller vigne saw him in this year at jammu, and speaks of him as feared for his cruelty and tyrannical exactions--very common and, it would almost appear, _necessary_ characteristics of strong rulers in those unruly times--but he remarks on his tolerance and liberality in religious matters. he was never a popular ruler, and the people feared and dreaded him; but he had courage and energy, and above all was successful. [illustration: bridge of burbur shah, chenar bagh, srinagar] on ranjit singh's death all was once more in the melting-pot, and for a time it looked as if gulab singh would come crashing down even faster than he had risen. his influence at the lahore court was lost through the murder of his brother. he himself was attacked by the sikhs and taken to lahore. his fortunes were sinking rapidly. then suddenly there was a turn in the wheel of fortune; and the man who had started life as a courtier of ranjit singh, was confirmed in the possession not only of all that he had subsequently acquired by his own prowess, but also of the rich and beautiful vale of kashmir as well. on the payment of three-quarters of a million sterling down, and of an annual tribute of one horse, twelve goats, and six pairs of shawls, all this was confirmed by the strongest power in asia to himself and his heirs for ever. it was one of those wonderful strokes of fortune which must have lent such zest and interest to life in those otherwise sordid days. it was due to the advent of the british upon the scene. on the death of the strong, stern ruler, ranjit singh, the punjab had fallen into a state of hopeless anarchy. his successor died prematurely of excess, and ranjit's reputed son, sher singh, once governor of kashmir, had marched upon lahore and seized the government in . the punjab was now entirely in the hands of the sikh soldiery, whose movements were regulated not by the will of the sovereign or of the minister, but by the dictation of army committees. the minister, dhyan singh (gulab singh's younger brother) shot the ruler sher singh, and was in turn murdered by a sikh chieftain, ajit singh, who, again, was murdered by the sikh soldiers. dhulip singh, so well known afterwards as an exile in england, and then a child of five years of age, was put on the throne, and from this time the army became the absolute master of the state, though hira singh, dhyan singh's son, and therefore nephew of gulab singh, was nominally minister. he tried to curb the army by distributing the regiments, but the army committees would not allow a single corps to leave the capital without their permission. he had eventually to flee, but he was overtaken and killed, and his head brought back in triumph to lahore. [illustration: spring floods in the kutical canal, srinagar] on hira singh's death the power fell into the hands of the brother of the infant dhulip singh's mother and her paramour, lal singh, a brahmin. they increased the pay of the soldiers, and in order to keep them quiet turned them against gulab singh at jammu. he was brought to lahore and had to pay a crore (ten millions) of rupees. they were then turned against multan. another son of ranjit singh raised a revolt, but was suppressed and murdered by the regnant maternal uncle of the infant dhulip singh. then this uncle was himself murdered. the mother, with the aid of the minister lal singh, and of tej singh, the commander-in-chief of the army, assumed the government and, as it is thought, with the object of employing the army, which was a positive danger to the throne, ordered an advance upon british territory. in november the sikh army of , men with guns crossed the river sutlej which was then our frontier, and by the th of december was encamped by ferozepore fort held by only , british and british indian troops. a bloody and indecisive battle was fought at mudki, december , . another most hard-won battle--"the most severe and critical the british army had ever fought in india"--and in which the governor-general, lord hardinge, himself took part, and lost five aides-de-camp killed, and four wounded, was fought at ferozeshah on december . this just stemmed the tide of invasion, but at such a cost of men and ammunition, that the british could not follow up their success till january , , when the decisive battle of aliwal was fought, which utterly disheartened the government at lahore. lal singh, the minister, was deposed for his incapacity, and gulab singh was invited from jammu to negotiate with the governor-general. * * * * * here was the wonderful turn in the wheel of fortune, which, when his own brother and so many of the leading men of the punjab had been murdered or debased, brought him alone and his descendants after him to a position of security. [illustration: looking down the gurais valley, from dudhgai village] gulab singh immediately made overtures to the british government, but the sikh army was not yet thoroughly defeated, and it was not till after the battle of sobraon, on february th, that the way for negotiations was really clear. the british troops occupied lahore. the sikh government submitted, and the treaty of lahore was concluded on march th. by this, amongst other things, the sikhs ceded to the british all the hill country between the rivers beas and indus, "including the provinces of kashmir and hazara"; and "in consideration of the services rendered by raja golab singh, of jummu, to the lahore state, towards procuring the restoration of the relations of amity between the lahore and british governments," the british agreed to recognise "the independent sovereignty of raja golab singh in such territories and districts in the hills as may be made over to the said raja golab singh, by separate agreement between himself and the british government, with the dependencies thereof, which may have been in the raja's possession since the time of the late maharaja khurruk singh"; further, the british government, "in consideration of the good conduct of raja golab singh," agreed "to recognise his independence in such territories, and to admit him to the privileges of a separate treaty with the british government." a week later, on th march , was signed this separate treaty with gulab singh, by which the british government "transferred and made over, for ever, in independent possession, to maharaja golab singh and the heirs male of his body, all the hilly and mountainous country, with its dependencies, situated to the eastward of the river indus and westward of the river ravi, including chamba and excluding lahoul, being part of the territories ceded to the british government by the lahore state." in consideration of this transfer golab singh was to pay the british government lakhs of rupees, and in token of the supremacy of the british government, was "to present annually to the british government one horse, twelve perfect shawl-goats of approved breed (six male and six female), and three pairs of kashmir shawls." he further engaged "to join with the whole of his military force the british troops when employed within the hills, or in the territories adjoining his possessions"; and on their part the british government engaged to "give its aid to maharaja golab singh in protecting his territories from external enemies." * * * * * thus it was that kashmir came under its present rulers; and surprise has often been expressed that when this lovely land had actually been ceded us, after a hard and strenuous campaign, we should ever have parted with it for the paltry sum of three-quarters of a million sterling. the reasons are to be found in a letter from sir henry hardinge to the queen, published in _the letters of queen victoria_. the governor-general, writing from the neighbourhood of lahore on th of february --that is nearly three weeks before the treaty of lahore was actually signed--says it appeared to him desirable "to weaken the sikh state, which has proved itself too strong--and to show to all asia that although the british government has not deemed it expedient to annex this immense country of the punjab, making the indus the british boundary, it has punished the treachery and violence of the sikh nation, and exhibited its powers in a manner which cannot be misunderstood." "for the same political and military reason," sir henry hardinge continues, "the governor-general hopes to be able before the negotiations are closed to make arrangements by which cashmere may be added to the possessions of golab singh, declaring the rajput hill states with cashmere independent of the sikhs of the plains." "there are difficulties in the way of this arrangement," he adds, "but considering the military power which the sikh nation had exhibited of bringing into the field , men and pieces of field artillery, it appears to the governor-general most politic to diminish the means of this warlike people to repeat a similar aggression." this was the reason we did not annex kashmir. we had not yet annexed the punjab. we did not finally conquer it till three years later, when the continued unruliness of the sikhs and the murder of british officers had rendered a second campaign necessary. in the east india company had no thoughts or inclinations whatever to extend their possessions. all they wished was to curb their powerful and aggressive neighbours, and they thought they would best do this, and at the same time reward a man who had shown his favourable disposition towards them, by depriving the sikhs of the hilly country, and by handing it over to a ruler of a different race. * * * * * so gulab singh became nominal ruler of kashmir. but he did not acquire actual possession of his new province without difficulty. the governor appointed under the sikh government showed no disposition to hand over the province, and with the aid of feudatories attacked gulab singh's troops. gulab singh had to apply to the british government to aid him, and british troops were accordingly sent to jammu to enable gulab singh to send his jammu troops to kashmir, and two british officers, one of whom was the famous sir henry lawrence, accompanied gulab singh to srinagar. owing to his character for oppression and avarice he was not a popular ruler, and the people did not welcome him. but with the support of the british government he was finally able to establish his rule over kashmir by the end of , and sir henry lawrence returned to lahore. the state of kashmir when gulab singh took it over was deplorable. the government took from two-thirds to three-quarters of the gross produce of the land--about three times as much as is now taken. the crops when cut by the cultivators were collected in stacks. one-half was taken as the regular government share, and additional amounts were taken as perquisites of various kinds, leaving one-third or even only a quarter with the cultivators. of this some was taken in kind and some in cash. the whole system of assessment and collection was exceedingly complicated and workable only in the interests of the corrupt officials; and government held a monopoly in the sale of grain. gulab singh during his lifetime did very little to ameliorate this state of things. he took things as he found them and troubled little to improve them. he died in , and was succeeded by his son ranbir singh, who rendered valuable services to government during the mutiny, and received, in recognition, the right to adopt from collateral branches an heir to the succession on the failure of heirs-male of gulab singh on whom alone the country had been conferred by the british. maharaja ranbir singh died in . during his reign there was a steady improvement, but it was very slow, and an account of the condition of kashmir then reads curiously ill beside the account of the province now after nearly a quarter of a century of the present maharaja's reign. the maharaja ranbir singh himself was extremely popular both with his people and with europeans--in this respect being a marked contrast to his father. he was manly, fond of sport, affectionate in his family, and simple and moral in his private life. and mr. drew has given a pleasant picture of how this chief, in the old-fashioned way so liked by the people and so conducive of good relations between rulers and subjects, used to sit daily in public durbar in full view of his people, receiving and answering his people's petitions. [illustration: akbar's bridge, karallayar] with the vastly more complicated system of administration of the present day it is practically impossible for a ruler of kashmir to conduct his business on precisely these lines; but i have seen the same system working in chitral, and quite realise the advantages it has for small states. if it does nothing else it teaches the people good manners, for they learn from observation of others how to comport themselves in high society. but these public durbars are also an education of no small value. here the people discuss men and events. they learn character and hear outside news, and it is surprising to see how much more native intelligence, dignity, and character men brought up in these conditions have than the school-bred men of to-day. * * * * * ranbir singh was then a typical ruler of a type that is now almost gone. unfortunately he had not the officials capable of the immense labour required to remove the terrible effects of many centuries of misgovernment, and especially of the harsh, cruel rules of the afghans and sikhs. his officials were accustomed to the old style of rule and knew no better. in the early 'sixties cultivation was decreasing; the people were wretchedly poor, and in any other country their state would have been almost one of starvation and famine; justice was such that those who could pay could at any time get out of jail, while the poor lived and died there almost without hope. there were few men of respectable, and none of wealthy appearance; and there were almost prohibitive duties levied on all merchandise imported or exported. by the early 'seventies some slight improvement had taken place. the labouring classes as a general rule were well fed and well clothed, and fairly housed. both men and women were accustomed to do hard and continuous labour, and it was obvious that they could not do this and look well unless they were well nourished. their standard of living was not high, but they certainly had enough to eat. and this is not surprising, for a rupee would buy to lbs. of rice, or lbs. of meat, or lbs. of milk. fruit was so plentiful that mulberries, apples, and apricots near the villages were left to rot on the ground. and fish near the rivers could be bought for almost nothing. crime of all kinds was rare, chiefly because of the remembrance of the terrible punishments of gulab singh's time, and because of the system of fixing responsibility for undetected crime upon local officials. drunkenness, too, was almost unknown. about half a lakh of rupees was spent upon education, and another half-lakh on repairing the "paths." a slight attempt was also made to assess the amount of land revenue at a fixed amount this much was to the good, but yet the country was still very far indeed from what it ought to have been. the means of communication were rough and rude in the extreme, so that men instead of animals had to be used as beasts of burden. even the new assessment of the land revenue was three times as heavy as that of the amount demanded in british districts in the punjab. and there was still much waste land which the people were unwilling to put under cultivation, because under the existing system of land revenue administration they could not be sure that they would ever receive the results of their labour. a cultivator would only produce as much as would, after payment of his revenue, provide for the actual wants of himself and his family, because he knew by experience that any surplus would be absorbed by rapacious underling officials. in matters of trade there were, too, still the impediments of former days. upon every branch of commerce there was a multiplicity and weight of exactions. no product was too insignificant, and no person too poor to contribute to the state. the manufacture or production of silk, saffron, paper, tobacco, wine, and salt were all state monopolies. the sale of grain was a state monopoly, and though the state sold grain at an extraordinarily cheap rate, the officials in charge did not always sell it to the people who most required it, or in the quantity they required. favourite and influential persons would get as much as they wanted, but often to the public the stores would be closed for weeks together, and at other times the grain was sold to each family at a rate which was supposed to be proportionate to the number of persons in the family; but the judges of the said quantity were not the persons most concerned, viz. the purchasers, but the local authorities. private grain trade could not be openly conducted, and when the stocks in the country fell short of requirements they could not be replenished by private enterprise. on the manufacture of shawls parallel restrictions were placed. the wool was taxed as it entered kashmir; the manufacturer was taxed for every workman he employed, and at various stages of the process according to the value of the fabric; and, lastly, the merchant was taxed, before he could export the goods, the enormous duty of per cent _ad valorem_. butchers, bakers, carpenters, boatmen, and even prostitutes were still taxed, and coolies who were engaged to carry loads for travellers had to give up half their earnings. the whole country, in fact, was still in the grip of a grinding officialdom; and the officials were the remnants of a bygone, ignorant, and destructive age, when dynasties and institutions and life itself were in daily danger, when nothing was fixed and lasting, when all was liable to change and at the risk of chance, and each man had to make what he could while he could; and when, in consequence, a man of honesty and public spirit had no more chance of surviving than a baby would have in a battle. * * * * * no wonder that in , when--through excess of rain which destroyed the crops--famine came on the land, neither were the people prepared to meet the emergency, nor were the officials capable of mitigating its effects, and direful calamity was the consequence. in the autumn of unusual rain fell, and owing to the system of collecting the revenue in kind and dilatoriness in collection, the crop was allowed to remain in the open on the ground, and then it rotted till half of it was lost. the wheat and barley harvest of the summer of was exceedingly poor. the fruit had also suffered from long continual wet and cold, and the autumn grains, such as maize and millet, were partly destroyed by intense heat and partly devoured by the starving peasants. the following year was also unfavourable, and it was not till that normal conditions returned. these were the causes of the scarcity of food-supply; and when this calamity, which nowadays could be confidently met, fell upon the country, it was found that people had nothing in reserve to fall back on; that the administrative machine was incapable of meeting the excessive strain; that even the will to meet it was wanting; and that corruption and obstruction impeded all measures of relief, and even forbade the starving inhabitants migrating to parts where food could be had. in addition, the communications were so bad that the food, so plentiful in the neighbouring province, could be imported only with the greatest difficulty. as a result two-thirds of the population died; a number of the chief valleys were entirely deserted; whole villages lay in ruins, as beams, doors, etc., had been extracted for sale; some suburbs of srinagar were tenantless, and the city itself was half-destroyed; trade came almost to a standstill, and consequently employment was difficult to obtain. the test of this great calamity showed bare the glaring defects of the system the present dynasty had taken over from their uncultured predecessors, and which in their thirty years' possession of the valley they had not been able to eradicate. during the five years which remained of the late maharaja's reign the first important steps were taken to remedy this terrible state of affairs; the assessment of the land revenue was revised, and the cart-road into the valley was commenced. but it has been during the twenty-three years of the present maharaja's reign that the most real progress has been made. first and foremost the land revenue has been properly assessed; it has been fixed in cash for a definite number of years, and the share claimed by the state has been greatly reduced. then a first-rate cart-road up the jhelum valley has been made. the heavy taxes on trade have been reduced. a well-trained set of officials have been introduced, and they have been well paid. increased, though not yet nearly sufficient attention has been paid to education. surveys for a railroad have been made, and a great scheme for draining the valley, reclaiming waste land, and preventing floods has been commenced. as a result, and in spite of the state taking a smaller share of the cultivator's produce, the revenue has more than doubled. more land is being taken up. the population is steadily increasing. the darkest days are over, and the future is assured. the history of the people has shown that there is latent in them much ability and taste, but that they have always prospered most when most subjected to the influences of the great world outside kashmir. those influences are now strong upon the country, and the future prosperity of the people will very largely depend upon how they meet and profit by them. needless to add, a weighty responsibility lies also upon the british government that it should guide their destinies aright. chapter x administration a more detailed account of the administration may now be given. kashmir proper, that is, what is known as the valley of kashmir, is a province of the jammu and kashmir state, which has a total area of about , square miles, and a population of , , , while the province, which includes for administrative purposes the valley of the jhelum river from baramula to kohala, as well as the district of gurais on the far side of the north kashmir range, has a population of , , . kashmir itself is administered by a governor, and the whole state is ruled over by a maharaja. it is one of what are known as the native states of india,--states which are ruled by their own chiefs, but feudatory to the british government, whose interests are represented by a british resident at the capital. the present ruler, who succeeded his father in , is maharaja sir pratap singh, g.c.s.i., a major-general in the british army, and a chief of strong religious tendencies, who is much respected in india and loved by his own people. he is advised by a chief minister, his very capable and business-like brother, raja sir amar singh, k.c.s.i., and by three subordinate ministers--one in charge of the foreign relations of the state, of the public works, the forests, and several minor departments; another in charge of the land revenue administration; and the third in charge of the home department, including the police, the customs, medical and other branches. the judiciary is presided over by a judge of the high court. all of these officials are natives of india, and, except one, belong to the british service, and have been trained in british provinces. none are kashmiris. they have been lent by the british government to the maharaja for a specified number of years, and draw salaries of from rs. to rs. a month, or £ to £ a year. under them, again, are the governors of kashmir and of jammu; and the wazir-i-wizarats of ladak (including baltistan) and gilgit, of whom all except the latter are also indian officials lent by the government of india. besides these, in the departments of the state where special technical knowledge is required, european and american specialists are employed under the ministers. the finances of the state are controlled by an accountant-general from the british service. the operations for assessing the land revenue are under a settlement commissioner, a member of the indian civil service. the public works are under the charge of a retired engineer from the public works department of the government of india. the forests are controlled by a conservator of forests from the indian forest department. and under the state engineer is the chief engineer of the electrical department, a royal engineer officer, who in his turn has under him a large staff of englishmen, americans, canadians, engaged in carrying out the great schemes for converting water power into electric power, and by means of the latter draining the water-logged portions of the valley, reclaiming land, and preventing floods. this, in brief outlines, is the administrative system in the state. at the head is an hereditary ruler. immediately responsible to him are a group of indian officials mostly born, educated, and trained in the adjoining british province of the punjab. the local executive is likewise chiefly presided over by government of india native officials; and in charge of technical departments are european and american specialists. what is chiefly remarkable is the very small number of kashmiris who are employed. though the majority of the inhabitants are mohamedans, very few mohamedans are employed in high positions. though the kashmiris are very intelligent, extremely few have posts in the state service; and this anomaly, though remarkable, is paralleled in many other native states. they are most of them dependent on officials trained or at least educated in british provinces. the maharaja of kashmir realises, however, the necessity of educating and training his own subjects, and most of the smaller officials and many of the clerks in the offices are state subjects. and these are the men with whom visitors to kashmir come mostly in contact. immediately under the governor of kashmir are officials known as tehsildars, in charge of tehsils or small districts, and under them again are naib-tehsildars in charge of groups of villages; and, finally, we come to the lumberdars, or head-men of the villages. these officials with their attendants collect revenue, keep order, and administer justice in small cases. but for the administration of justice there is also in the kashmir provinces a chief judge holding his court at srinagar, and minor judges known as munsiffs. the chief revenue is derived from the land, and is assessed according to a system which will presently be described. out of a total revenue for the whole state of one hundred lakhs of rupees, the revenue from land amounts to over forty lakhs. customs is another principal source of revenue. the receipts for the kashmir province for the last three years were-- rs. , , = £ , rs. , , = £ , rs. , , = £ , and for the whole kashmir state-- rs. , , = £ , rs. , , = £ , rs. , , = £ , in describing the history of the people we have seen that one of the greatest reforms effected in the reign of the present maharaja has been in the system of assessing and collecting the land revenue--a reform which was carried into effect mainly by sir walter lawrence, who in his work on kashmir has described at length both the old system and the one which has given it place. of every village, with its village lands, a map was made on a scale generally of inches to the mile--that is large enough to show every field accurately, and even the trees on the fields. then in the village registers all necessary facts relating to each field were recorded, such, for instance, as the area, the class of soil, the source of irrigation, the number and description of trees on it, the name of the owner, the name of the person who cultivated it, and the amount of rent payable by the tenant, if any. of these entries the most important, as regards assessing the amount of land revenue to be paid, was that regarding the class of soil. this is now classified as a, irrigated land, ( ) producing rice regularly; ( ) producing rice occasionally, but not in every year; ( ) producing other crops than rice; and b, unirrigated land, ( ) manured; ( ) level unmanured; ( ) sloping unmanured. the name of the "owner" was entered, but "owner" is really an incorrect term, for all land in the kashmir valley is "owned" by the state. the actual holders have a right of occupancy as against the state as long as they pay its dues, and are practically sub-proprietors; but they have no right of alienation or mortgage. at each harvest an official called a patwari, made a field to field inspection, and recorded in a register the crops found in the fields. these proceedings gave the assessing officer a record of crops which formed an aid to assessment. the officer then estimated by observation, inquiry, and experimental cuttings, the yield of average fields of each class. the following are examples of some of the rates of yield:-- per acre. _a._ unhusked rice-- lbs. lbs. . in villages affected by floods to . in villages above the floods but not too near the mountains " . in villages close to the mountains and affected by cold winds and cold water " _b._ maize on unirrigated land-- . by river " . between river and mountains " . near mountains " _c._ wheat on unirrigated land-- . by river " . between river and mountains " . near mountains " all this information furnished the basis on which the amount of revenue could be fixed. in old days the state claimed half the gross produce as it was stacked on the field at harvest time, and various perquisites of officials reduced the share left to the cultivator to only about one-third. moreover, in collecting the revenue in kind there was much room for abuse and loss to both the state and the cultivator, and endless vexation. it was therefore the object of the new settlement to have the revenue paid as much as possible in cash rather than in kind, so that the occupant of a field would be able to know for certain what he would have to pay, and would not have cormorant officials hanging over his field at harvest time; and also so that the state on its side might know precisely what amount of revenue to expect in a year, and not have the trouble of collecting in kind with all its attendant risks and cost. what had to be fixed, then, was the money value of the grain which the state would otherwise have taken from the cultivator. the settlement of this amount in the case of every single field in the whole of kashmir was, necessarily, a gigantic operation and took six years to carry out. but the information collected regarding its area and bearing capacity showed, with considerable degree of accuracy, what each field could produce. the average cash value of this amount of produce in an ordinary year was then determined, and the state had then to say what proportion--whether two-thirds as before, or an half or a third--they would take. lastly, had to be decided for how many years they would agree with the occupier to take this fixed amount of cash--whether for ever, as in lord cornwallis' settlement of bengal, or for thirty, twenty, or ten years. mr. lawrence, though making very great changes, had naturally to also use caution. he could not at once fix the whole revenue in cash. some had still to be taken in kind. and he could not safely make his settlement for more than ten years, for his calculations of the produce of a field and of the money value of that produce might at this first settlement often be unfair, either to the state or the occupier. at first even the villagers, who were most to be benefited, distrusted the settlement and hampered the operations, and the old style petty official, now happily extinct, encouraged them in their distrust. but gradually, under mr. lawrence's influence, the attitude of the villagers changed. when they saw that for ten years to come the amount the state was to take was to be fixed and at a diminished rate, that only a small part was to be taken in kind, and enough was to be left to them for food, and that thereby the ever-present sepoy was to be removed from the villages, the people began to realise that some good was to come of these operations for settling the revenue. ruined houses and desolate gardens were restored, absentees returned, and applications for waste land came in faster than was for the time convenient. at the end of the ten years a second settlement was made, and this time with much diminished troubling, for not only were people and officials better disposed, but there were now available much more reliable statistics as to the produce of the fields. the yield of each field and the money value of the yield could now be fairly accurately known; and the proportion of this money value of the yield which the state should take had now to be fixed. formerly, exclusive of perquisites for local officials, the state would take half the yield. but it was now decided to take only per cent of the gross yield, and to take the money value of it instead of the actual produce in kind as in old days. each occupier was then given a small book containing a copy of the entries in which he was interested, the area of the field, the rate he had to pay, and so on. the all-round incidence of the new land revenue proper is rs. . as. . (or s. d) per acre cultivated; and the rates varied from rs. ( s.) per acre on some of the less irrigated (market garden) land, to ten annas (tenpence) per acre on the poorest unirrigated land in the coldest part of the province. the period of the settlement was fixed at fifteen years. chapter xi products and manufactures what kashmir is principally known for to the outside world is its shawls; but the wool from which they are manufactured is not produced in kashmir itself: it comes from tibet and chinese turkestan. it is the soft down lying under the long hair of the tibetan goat. kashmir does, however, produce a coarser wool of its own. kashmir villagers keep immense numbers of sheep, for round their villages and on the mountain uplands there is an abundance of rich grass, the leaves of the willow trees and of irises furnish winter fodder, and these animals are not only thus easily fed, but also furnish their owner with clothing, with food and with manure, and by crowding in the lower portion of his house keep him warm in winter. they are shorn twice in the year, once in early summer and again in the autumn. the wool is of good quality, and in the winter months the women spin it, and the men weave it into blankets and into the well-known "puttoo" cloth, in which sportsmen in kashmir clothe themselves, and for which, since the swadeshi movement, there has been a great demand in india. silk is another and increasingly important product. the whole of the valley is covered with mulberry trees, and for many centuries sericulture has been practised in the country. but it is only recently that it has been placed on a really business-like footing. now good "seed," _i.e._ silk-worms' eggs, are imported fresh every year from france and italy--about six-sevenths from france and one-seventh from italy--and in the spring are given out to the cultivators free of charge. the villagers hatch out the eggs, feed the silk-worms on the mulberry leaves, and then bring the cocoons to the state silk factory at srinagar for sale. lbs. of eggs were given out last year, and , , lbs. of cocoons were bought in by the state. in the present year the figures were lbs. of eggs and , , lbs. of cocoons. the amount paid for these cocoons to , rearers was rs. , , , so that the kashmiri villagers at very little trouble and no cost are able to put a nice little sum of money into their pockets every summer, and are consequently now clamouring to be given seed. the mulberry trees are carefully watched by the state, and an inspector of mulberry trees goes round the valley, seeing that the trees are not damaged and are properly pruned. young mulberry trees are distributed by the state to the villagers to the number of from , to , a year. fruit is another of kashmir's important products which may be expected to largely increase in the future. kashmir apples are renowned all over india. they are large, red, and attractive looking, and sell well as far down as calcutta and bombay. but they are not of really good flavour, and the apples from european stock now being grown are sure to have a large sale in the future. in the autumn months thousands of cart-loads are carried down the roads to the railway at rawal pindi. the apple grows wild in kashmir, and the villagers uproot the wild trees and plant them in their orchards. but the state also now supplies them with young trees. near srinagar there are large state nurseries stocked with the best kinds from europe, and every year thousands of young trees are given out free to the villagers, so that the valley may gradually be filled with the best available trees. the state also to a small extent grows apples for sale, and their trees are extraordinarily prolific. in the autumn one sees these apple trees weighed down to the ground with fruit, and m. peychaud, the director in charge, says that he has taken as many as , from one tree. the apples also grow to an enormous size. and when the railway comes to kashmir, and carriage is easier and cheaper, the export of apples and other fruit should increase to striking dimensions, and not only be one of the best means of making the railway pay, but bring great profits to the cultivators. the apple of kashmir has a great future before him. so has the pear. he is not so much to the fore at present, because he does not stand carriage as well; but the railway will remove that drawback, and he will run the apple hard. like the apple, the pear also is found wild and transplanted into orchards. but good stock is now being grown in the state orchard and distributed from there. some of these, and some that have been imported by european residents, have taken so kindly to kashmir, that i believe their present products are not surpassed anywhere. from major wigram's garden comes a famous pear, so large, and soft, and luscious, as scarcely to support its own weight. other winter pears keep right through to the early summer. quinces also are grown in considerable quantities. they make excellent jam, but are chiefly grown for their seed, which is exported to the punjab. grapes have been tried, and on the shores of the dal lake there is a vineyard under the charge of a frenchman, from which what is known as kashmir wine is made. but this branch of fruit culture has not so far been so successful as the culture of pears and apples. it is said that the rain falls at the wrong time. but probably the most suitable descriptions of grapes have not yet been tried or the most suitable site yet selected. in the time of the moghals they were plentiful, and wild vines are often seen. so it is hard to believe that grapes cannot be grown in kashmir as well as the other fruits for which it is famous. walnut trees are found all over the valley, and quantities of the nuts are now exported, though formerly they were only used for oil. they are an excellent fruit, and one kind known as the _kagazi_ has such a thin shell that it is easily cracked between the fingers, and the kernel is excellent. the villages on the lower slopes are often surrounded with walnut trees, some of enormous size, and adding greatly to the beauty of the village. [illustration: the camping-ground at lidarwat] mulberries, as has been remarked in regard to sericulture, are plentifully grown. they are eaten in immense quantities by the people as well as by their animals. almonds are grown in considerable quantities in large orchards. apricots are grown, but not very plentifully, and principally for oil. peaches, cherries, pomegranates, and plums are also cultivated, but have not yet received much attention from the villagers. strawberries grow abundantly in the gardens of europeans, and gooseberries and currants also succeed. there is, indeed, scarcely a limit to what the fruit production of kashmir might be if it received attention and care. * * * * * of the food grains rice is the principal. with all the streams running down from the mountains ample water for the copious irrigation it requires is available. the kashmiris are exceptionally clever in its cultivation, and they grow it up to an altitude of feet. the fields are terraced carefully to hold the irrigation, and are incessantly watered and anxiously weeded. lawrence says that in one district alone he has found fifty-three varieties, and certain villages are famous for their peculiar rices. but they may be roughly divided into two classes, the white and the red, of which the former is the more esteemed by epicures, though the cultivators prefer the latter as it is less delicate, suffers less from changes of climate, and gives a larger out-turn. lawrence gives the average crop of unhusked rice per acre as maunds, or lbs. large quantities of rice are exported to the punjab. maize is the next most important crop. in the black peaty land lying along the jhelum, and in the high villages where numbers of cattle graze and manure is plentiful, very fine crops are grown. as a rule it is grown on dry land, and is seldom irrigated. the stalk forms excellent fodder for cattle. the average yield in irrigated and dry swamp land is maunds, or lbs., and on dry land maunds, or lbs. per acre. as a diet maize ranks after rice, but the villagers, when money is scarce, will sell their rice and subsist on maize. barley is largely grown, but it is not of good quality, and no pains are taken in its cultivation. wheat receives better treatment, but the wheat flour of kashmir is not esteemed. the average production on dry land is maunds, or lbs. per acre. millet is another food grain grown in kashmir, but not very generally. buckwheat is cultivated in the higher villages. pulses are not much grown. _mung_ (_phaseolus mungo_) is the best, and is often sown in rice lands which require a rest. others are _raáh_ (_phaseolus radiatus_) and _mothi_ (_phaseolus aconitifolius_). peas and white beans are occasionally cultivated; in the gardens of european residents they give excellent results. oil-seeds are largely grown, and now that a company for oil-pressing is being started, still more attention is likely to be paid to them. the kashmiris do not use _ghi_ (clarified butter) in their food. they consequently require vegetable oils for that purpose, and as mineral oils are too expensive, they use them also for lighting. the principal oil-seed grown is the rape, of which there are three varieties. an average crop is maunds, or lbs. per acre. large quantities of linseed are also produced, of which an average crop would be ½ to maunds, to lbs. per acre. _til_ (_sesamum indicum_) is a very common crop. it yields ½ maunds, or lbs. per acre. til is also extracted from the walnut and apricot. rape seed gives the best oil for lighting purposes, and linseed for eating. cotton is grown to a small extent all over the valley, and both the fibre is used for home-manufactured cotton cloth, and the seed is used as food for cattle. tobacco is cultivated in many parts. and two very beautiful crops are amaranth and saffron. the former is grown in many places along the edges of the fields, and gives a purply crimson touch to the landscape. its minute grains are first parched, and then ground and eaten with milk or water. it is especially used by the hindu on festival days. the latter is grown on the plateau above pampur, and when in blossom forms one of the sights of kashmir. the plant is like a crocus, and the flower mauve and purple. a large space of the plateau is covered with it, and this sheet of colour adds a strikingly beautiful effect to an already beautiful landscape. the saffron of kashmir is famous for its bouquet, and is used as a condiment and as a pigment for the forehead marks of the hindus. the flowers are dried in the sun, and the pollen is extracted by hand. it is this pollen and the pollen-bearing portion of the flower which form the saffron. [illustration: a wayside shrine] mustard is also grown--mostly for oil; and round the town, especially round srinagar, in the vicinity of the dal lake, vegetables are cultivated in market gardens. the cultivation of potatoes, indeed, is now increasing so rapidly that many scores of cart-loads are annually exported to the punjab. hops are grown by the state at dabgarh near sopur, and their cultivation could doubtless be extended, but so far the cultivators, who are very conservative, have not taken to it. * * * * * such are the chief vegetable products of kashmir, and the state is making endeavours to improve existing staples and introduce anything new which may prove productive in the country. for this purpose the maharaja has established a model farm, known as the pratab model farm, and situated near the shalimar garden to experiment with different varieties of grain and different methods of cultivation, and it is hoped that if new varieties prove specially productive they will be taken up by the cultivators. the farm was opened by lord minto in the autumn of . long rows of accurately measured plots of ground, one-sixteenth of an acre each, are planted with the different varieties, and their yield carefully measured. as one passes up the line he sees at a glance the relative qualities of each variety of wheat or maize or rice, and if the farm is carefully worked for a series of years it ought to give some valuable results. already the cultivators have been attracted by the enormous size of some maize from canada grown on the farm. some very straight russian flax recommended by the dundee chamber of commerce seems to promise good results. and perhaps beetroot for sugar may also have a success, for almost any vegetable product that grows in a temperate climate will grow in kashmir. the crops reaped in the spring in kashmir are wheat, barley, rape, flax, pea, and bean. those reaped in the autumn are rice, maize, cotton, saffron, millet, tobacco, hop, amaranth, buckwheat, pulse, sesame. * * * * * the alluvial soil of the valley is of great fertility, and every year is renewed by rich silt from the mountain streams. the soil of the higher parts is not so rich, though it, too, will give good returns. irrigation is largely used for water is abundant, as the snow on the mountains forms a natural reservoir stored up for the hot weather, when it melts and runs down to the valley at the time when it is most wanted. the kashmiri is very clever at making his little water channels and leading the water on to his field. the agricultural implements used are simple and primitive. the plough is light, for the cattle which are yoked to it are small. it is made of wood, and the ploughshare is tipped with iron. the spade likewise is made of wood, has a long handle and a narrow face, and is tipped with iron. a hand hoe is also used for weeding. ploughing for rice, maize, and other autumn crops commences in the middle of march. in april and may these crops are sown. in june and july wheat and barley, sown in the previous autumn, are harvested. in july and august linseed is harvested. in august and september cotton-picking commences. in september and october rice, maize, and other autumn crops are harvested. in november and december ploughing for wheat and barley takes place. and during the winter rice and maize and other autumn crops are threshed. forests besides agricultural products the yield of the forests of kashmir is also of great value. all the northward-facing slopes are covered with dense forests, a considerable part of which is of the valuable deodar. this is cut into sleepers, launched into the streams which find their way into the jhelum, and so allowed to float down the river to the plains of the punjab. here the sleepers are caught where the river is slow and shallow, and sold at considerable profit to the state. the deodar is a very handsome tree, and is a variety of the cedar of lebanon. it will be noticed by visitors to the valley along the road between uri and baramula, especially near rampur. less beautiful and less valuable as timber is the blue pine (_pinus excelsa_). it grows to a greater height than the deodar, which does not flourish above feet, and it may be seen at gulmarg. the himalayan spruce (_picea morinda_) is very common, and also grows round gulmarg, but its timber is of little value. birches grow high up above the pines and next the snows; their timber is of no use, but the bark is much employed for roofing. in the forests are also found silver fir, horse-chestnut, and maple. all these forests are owned by the state, and are now under the charge of a forest department, with a conservator from the government service at its head. the boundaries of forests are being laid down, and the state is determining under what conditions neighbouring villagers and others may be granted the customary concessions for felling timber, grazing, and gathering grass and fuel. it is usual for the state to let fuel and fodder be gathered free, and to charge for grazing and for cutting timber for building and agricultural purposes. but the areas in which these operations can be permitted, and the rates to be charged, have to be fixed, and the operations regulated. the trees are counted, marked for felling according to their age, and in regular succession, so as to allow of young trees growing up to fill their place. and in many other ways the forests are watched so as to prevent their denudation, and all the damage that would be caused through the rainfall rushing off at once instead of being held up by the trees. by the proper regulation of the forests the state raises a handsome income; it secures the soil being retained on the hill-sides; and it has the water held up in springs as a reservoir; while the authorities in the punjab know that the rain which falls in kashmir will be held up by the forests till the cold weather, when it is wanted for the canals which are taken off from the jhelum and chenab rivers flowing out of kashmir territory. of the trees which grow in the level portions of the valley the chenar is by far the most striking. as it grows in kashmir it is a king among trees, and in its autumn foliage is one of the many attractions which go to make kashmir one of the supremely beautiful spots in the world. its official botanical name is the _platanus orientalis_, and it is one of the varieties of the plane tree. the chief characteristic is the massiveness of its foliage--its umbrageousness. it grows to a considerable height; it has long outstanding branches and great girth--one which mr. lawrence measured was feet round the base. and as the leaves are broad and flat, the whole mass of foliage is immense, and so thick that both sun and rain are practically excluded from any one sitting in its shade. under the chenar trees in the residency garden one can sit through a summer day without a hat, and through a summer shower without getting wet. all this mass of foliage turned purple, claret, red, and yellow in the autumn tinting, backed against a clear blue sky and overhanging the glittering, placid waters of the dal lake or the jhelum river, forms a picture which can be seen in no other country than kashmir. the elm tree of kashmir, though not so striking as the chenar, is still a very graceful object. one in the lolab valley has been measured as feet in girth, and in the residency garden are some fine specimens. the walnut is more common, and round the villages many handsome trees are often seen. the poplar is now very common, and is planted alongside the road to what is now a quite distressing extent, for though these trees give shade they also cut out the view. the timber is used a good deal for building, though it is of poor quality. the willow is a more really useful tree, and is much planted in moist places. its leaves are used for fodder. its shoots are to some extent, though not sufficiently, used for basket-making. mineral products the mineral products of the kashmir valley are small. in other districts of the kashmir state there are indications of a moderate amount of mineral wealth. in the jammu province there is a considerable quantity of coal of a rather poor quality, and there is good iron and bauxite. sapphires also are found there. and in ladak, in the indus and its tributaries, there are gold-washings. but in the kashmir valley, with which we are at present dealing, only a small amount of iron has been worked so far, though it is believed that large quantities exist near sopor and about islamabad and pampur; and copper has also been found near aishmakam in the liddar valley. peat is extracted from the low-lying lands on the jhelum river, and can be used as a cheap fuel. several strong sulphur springs are found in the valley, and limestone exists in many places, notably about rampur, and on the manasbal lake. arts and manufactures of manufactures the shawl is the best known, but the production has sadly fallen off of late years. in accordance with the treaty between the kashmir state and the british government, six pairs of shawls of fine quality have to be yearly paid to the latter, and but for this the industry would almost disappear. kashmir shawls in the middle of the last century used to be very fashionable in europe, but the franco-prussian war seems to have sealed the fate of the industry. after the fashion went out and has never revived; and the famine of - carried off numbers of the weavers, so that now very few carry on the industry. according to m. dauvergne, who was for many years connected with the shawl and carpet industry in kashmir, the kashmir shawl dates back to the times of the emperor baber. the first shawls which reached europe were brought by napoleon at the time of his campaign in egypt as a present to the empress josephine. [illustration: evening on the dal lake] the best shawls are made from the very fine wool, known as pashm, underlying the long hair of the tibetan goat, which is woven into a delicate material called pashmina on which the shawl patterns are worked. some of this pashm, and some of the best, is also imported from chinese turkestan from the neighbourhood of ush turfan. it so happens that i have been in this particular region, and i well remember the rolling grassy downs among the tian shan mountains on which the nomad kirghiz kept immense flocks of sheep and goats. it was an ideal country for the growth of wool, and i believe much of this beautiful wool of which the finest shawls were made is now allowed to run to waste. from to the export of shawls averaged to lakhs of rupees per annum, or over a quarter of a million sterling, and when the trade was at its zenith , to , persons were engaged in their manufacture. some of the best of the old shawls are preserved in the museum at srinagar. they show much tasteful arrangement of colour and fineness of workmanship; but one does not wonder that they have gone out of fashion, and even at their best one misses that extreme delicacy of finish denoting strength and character in the worker which one sees in japanese, and more still in chinese workmanship. * * * * * carpets have now surpassed shawls in order of importance, and two european firms, messrs. mitchell and co., and mr. hadow, have quite as much as they can do to keep pace with the orders they receive, of which a very large number come from america. many of the old weavers have taken to carpet-making, and the pashm used formerly for shawls is now being increasingly used for the finer kind of carpets. the dyes are good in kashmir, and as the finest wool is to be had the carpet industry ought to have a good future before it. silk is another most thriving industry with great future possibilities. the state have now in srinagar the largest silk factory in the world, employing about men, and turning out , lbs. of silk last year, and in the present year , lbs., most of which is sold as yarn in the european market at prices varying from s. d. to s. d. per lb., and bringing in a very handsome profit to the state. a small amount of silk weaving is also carried on in the same factory, and handlooms have been set up, but at present the factory is only capable of turning out a comparatively light cloth in what is called the green state. for throwing, dyeing, and finishing, other machinery would be necessary, which the state will set up in time as funds become available. the rough cloth already made is admittedly superior to japanese cloth of the same weight, and has sold in london at somewhat higher prices. when it can be turned out dyed and finished it should have a great sale in india, though the state are not likely to derive the same high profits from the woven cloth that they do from selling the yarn. electric power has now been supplied to the silk factory from the great electric installation on the jhelum river, and is used for heating the water in the basins in which the cocoons are immersed for reeling. it will also be used for turning some of the reeling machinery, and possibly also for electrocuting the grubs in the cocoons. papier-mâché is a favourite artistic product of kashmir, and some very handsome candlesticks, bowls, and vases, well adapted for english country houses, may be purchased. the old designs are especially beautiful. but nowadays very little is made from real pulp of paper, and most of what is sold as papier-mâché is made of smooth wood. the silver work is poor, as it lacks finish, and the modern designs are not especially beautiful. but the kashmiri workmen used to be able to produce a peculiar sheen on the silver work which gave it a striking and unusual appearance. some handsome copper work is also produced in srinagar, and some pretty enamel work. but at present the fashion rather turns to wood-carving, which has certainly much improved since i first knew it. very handsome screens, tables, panels, boxes, etc., are made, and the kashmiri carpenter is getting to finish his work much better. whether the work is worth the prices asked is, i think, doubtful. better wood-carving can be had in europe for the same price. * * * * * turning from art industries to more practical manufactures the first to notice is basket-work. most villages have their artisan who makes baskets for agricultural purposes, for carrying loads and for rough village work. willow trees are plentiful and might be much more extensively grown; and raja sir amar singh has always been keenly interested in establishing a really important basket industry in kashmir, and supplying the needs not merely of kashmir villagers, but of india generally. puttoo cloth and blankets are well-known manufactures of kashmir. since the _swadeshi_ movement has extended in india, and the demand for goods made in india has increased, there has been a regular run on the rough woollen "puttoo" of kashmir, and the price has gone up. formerly a sportsman could get a good shikar suit for eight rupees. now he has to pay ten or twelve. it is excellent wearing material, but is too loosely woven and liable to get out of shape. proposals are on foot for establishing woollen factories in kashmir, and with suitable machinery and proper supervision, good useful cloth should be made from the excellent wool with which the country abounds. cotton cloth is also manufactured in the villages, of a rough, homely description. but whether this manufacture will ever increase to a great extent is doubtful. a french gentleman who has lived for many years in bokhara, and who visited kashmir, told me that he considered that as cotton was grown so successfully in bokhara and russian turkestan, it ought to grow equally well in kashmir. this may be so, and the state is making experiments in cotton growing to find a variety suitable to the country. but so far the future of cotton manufacture cannot be considered so assured as that of silk and wool. finally, among the industries of kashmir must be mentioned boat-building, which is indeed one of the most important in the country. the kashmiri is an intelligent and clever carpenter, though in accordance with his character he lacks accuracy and finish. his boats are of all sizes, from the great grain barges, carrying cargoes of thirty tons, to state "parindas" or fliers propelled by forty or fifty rowers, and to light skiffs for a couple of paddlers. house-boats of quite elaborate design are also made. and if properly supervised and instructed, the kashmiri should be capable of constructing any kind of craft. there is little iron-work in kashmir, for iron is not plentiful. but the kashmiri has such natural skill that he can turn out quite good guns and rifles, and will make all the ordinary surgical instruments required in the hospital. trade of these products and manufactures considerable quantities are exported to india, and will help to make the proposed railway pay, while this railway on its part will help to increase the exports, for much that cannot be taken out of the country, now that everything has to be carried miles by road, would be exported if railway carriage were available. apples and pears to the extent of , maunds, or tons, are exported annually, besides from , to , maunds of other fruit. rice and maize exports vary greatly according to the demand in the punjab. the present year was one of scarcity in the adjoining british province, and, consequently, the export of grain was quite unusual--amounting to , maunds, or more than three thousand tons; but ordinarily it does not exceed more than about a thousand tons. the export of ghi or clarified butter amounts to tons. potatoes are an increasingly important export, and the demand for them is certain to rise. last year tons were exported. hides and skins to the amount of some tons are annually exported. linseed was in special demand last year owing to the failure of crops in the punjab, and in consequence tons, to the value of rs. , , , were exported; but the usual amount is only about one-fifth of this. silk to the value of rs. , , was exported last year, and this may be taken as the normal amount. and wool and woollen goods, to the value of about two lakhs of rupees, are also exported, besides a few miscellaneous articles, and some live animals, mostly sheep and goats. in addition, from ten to twelve lakhs of rupees worth of timber are floated down the river. altogether the exports from the kashmir valley, including timber, during the last two years have amounted to-- , , maunds = , tons , , maunds = , tons and their value has been-- rs. , , = £ , rs. , , = £ , of this amount, deducting the timber which was floated down the river, there was exported by road-- , , maunds = , tons , , maunds = , tons cotton piece-goods are the chief imports into kashmir. twenty-five to thirty thousand maunds of piece-goods ( to tons) are imported annually, to the value of fifteen to nineteen lakhs of rupees (£ , to £ , ). some are the coarse, but rough and well-wearing products of the punjab peasants, but most are the products of manchester, and are worn by the srinagar and other townspeople. salt is the next most important import, and now that the government of india has decreased the duty on it, the quantity imported into kashmir is likely to steadily increase. in the last three years the amounts imported have been , , , , and , maunds respectively ( , , tons), with a value of rs. , , , rs. , , , and rs. , , , or £ , , £ , , and £ , . it is sadly needed by the poorer classes, both for themselves and for their animals, and as yet not half enough for their real requirements comes into the country. what is imported comes from the salt districts of the punjab. tea is now being largely imported, which shows that the people are acquiring a larger purchasing power. one and a quarter million pounds of tea, with a value of seven and a half lakhs of rupees, or £ , , are now imported annually. sugar is being imported in increasing quantities, the amounts for the last three years being , , , , and , maunds respectively, or , , tons, with a value of rs. , , , rs. , , , and rs. , , , or £ , , £ , , £ , . the kashmiris are very fond of sugar, and as their condition improves the demand for sugar and the amount of imports is sure to increase. metals are another import of increasing value and importance. , maunds are annually imported, with a value of three lakhs of rupees, or £ , . at present the kashmiris use earthenware cooking pots, but when in time they take to metal the import of copper must increase. other imports of minor importance are wearing apparel, twist and yarns (of a value of nearly three lakhs, or £ , ), drugs and medicines (half a lakh of rupees), turmeric, gunny bags, leather, liquors, petroleum, provisions, seeds (half a lakh), manufactured silk, spices (three-quarters of a lakh), stationery, tobacco (three lakhs), and raw wool. the total weight of imports during the last three years respectively has been-- , , maunds = , tons , , maunds = , tons , , maunds = , tons and their value has been-- rs. , , = £ , rs. , , = £ , rs. , , = £ , chapter xii the electrical scheme in such a country as kashmir, with a great river flowing through it, and with numerous mountain torrents and subsidiary streams running into that river, there is obviously an immense amount of water-power at hand. the difficulty is to make it available for practical purposes. but this difficulty is now being overcome by converting the water-power into electric power, which can then be transmitted to considerable distances and applied in a variety of ways. the idea of thus converting this vast amount of water-power in kashmir into electric power had of recent years, since the development of electrical appliances, naturally occurred to many; but it did not take definite shape till the maharaja engaged the services of major alain de lotbinière, r.e., to carry out a scheme of harnessing the waters of the jhelum river which that officer had formulated, and which has just been completed. major de lotbinière, a canadian by birth, and endowed with a full measure of the energy, resource and hopefulness of his countrymen, had already executed a very successful scheme by which the water-power in the cauvery falls in madras had been converted into electric energy, and transmitted to a distance of a hundred miles, to supply the kolar gold-fields in mysore with motive power, at a cost per cent lower than that which they were paying for steam-power. he had also inspected many electrical projects on the continent and in canada and america. he therefore came to the work in kashmir in september fully primed with the knowledge of all the latest developments of electrical science, and at once conceived the idea of harnessing, not any of the minor rivers of kashmir, but the river jhelum itself, and selected a spot a few miles above rampur where he might entrap some of the water, lead it along the mountain-side at practically a uniform level, till he could drop it through pipes on to turbines--very much in the same manner as a mill-stream is led along and then dropped on to a water-wheel--and so by setting in motion various machines generate electrical energy. the theory of the electric installation is then very simple. the valley falls rapidly. at the part selected it falls about feet in ½ miles. some of the water is taken out and kept at about the same level so that at the end of the ½ miles it has a fall of feet. consequently when it is dropped those feet it falls with immense force and velocity. by most ingenious machinery this force is turned into electrical energy, and then transmitted by wires to wherever wanted--it is hoped even to the plains of the punjab, to rawal pindi at least. meanwhile the water, after fulfilling its mission, returns into the river, and might, if need be, be taken out again, led along the mountain-side, and a few miles lower down dropped once more on to another electrical installation, and generate still more electrical energy. the same lot of water might, in fact, go on performing the same duty time after time till the plains of india were reached. then when it got on to the level, and there was no further fall, it would be impossible to utilise it for generating electrical energy. but it would promptly be seized for another equally important purpose. for it would be caught in the great new canal which is being constructed at the point where the jhelum river emerges from its mountain barriers and enters the plain; and from that point it would be led over some hundreds of miles to irrigate rich, but as yet uncultivated lands, only needing the touch of life-giving water to burst forth into luxuriant vegetation and attract great populations to them. the latent capacity for good of these waters of the jhelum, now tossing heedlessly about as they rush along beside the road into kashmir, is then for practical purposes almost unlimited. even the present installation only takes out a small proportion, and that portion is utilised only once. in the driest season the jhelum river runs with a volume of about cubic feet per second--what are known for short as "cusecs." but of this amount only cusecs are taken, and these cusecs are utilised only once, and not several times, as they might well be in their fall between the valley of kashmir and the plains of india. with these cusecs electrical energy to the extent of , horse-power will be generated; but major de lotbinière thinks that it would be possible to economically develop an aggregate of at least , horse-power of electrical energy from the jhelum river. it is not possible to take out water and conduct it along the mountain-side at any point. it is indeed a matter of some difficulty to choose a site where safe headworks can be constructed to entrap the water of the river, where the water can be taken along the hill-side, and where a forebay or tank can be built from which to lead off the pipes to the generating station below. in many parts the river runs between precipitous banks so that it is impossible to get it out. in others, even when it had been got out, the hill-sides would be found so loose and unsafe it would be impracticable to take a water-course along them. still, in spite of the many difficulties in the way of making practical use of the water-power in the jhelum river, major de lotbinière still thinks that, as above mentioned, electrical energy to the extent of a quarter of a million horse-power could be economically developed. water for the present project has been taken out a couple of miles above rampur at a most charming spot, where the river comes foaming down over innumerable boulders, and the banks are overshadowed by the same graceful deodar trees which clothe the mountain-sides. here very strong and solid masonry headworks and regulating sluices have been built under the lee of some friendly boulders; and elaborate precautions have been taken to protect these headworks from the impact of the thousands of logs which are annually floated down the river by the forest department to be caught and sold in the plains below. from these headworks what is called a flume has been constructed in which the water will run along the mountain-side to the forebay or tank immediately above the generating station. this flume, answering to the channel which conducts the water to a flour-mill, is to the eye absolutely level, but it has in reality the very small drop of · feet in feet--just sufficient to make the water run easily along it. its length is about ½ miles; and the main difficulty in the whole project was found in constructing it. a road or even a railway when it comes to an obstacle can very likely, by a change in the gradient, rise over it or under it. but this flume had to go straight at any obstacle in its way, for it obviously could not rise, and if it were lowered it could not rise again, and so much horse-power would have been lost at the far end. the flume, in fact, once it was started off had to take things as it found them and make the best of them. the first obstacle was a great spur of boulder conglomerate. this had to be cut down into to a depth of forty feet. an arched masonry passage had then to be made, and the whole covered over again. five torrents were negotiated by passing them clean over the flume. over six other torrents the flume--here made of wood--had to be carried on strong iron bridges. and six tunnels were made through projecting rocky spurs. only one-third of the ½ miles' length of flume could be built of masonry, and the remainder had necessarily to be built of timber. this portion had an internal section of - / feet by ½ feet, and was constructed of tongued and grooved, machine-planed, deodar planking ¾ inches thick, supported on cross frames ½ feet apart. the chief danger to guard against in constructing this flume for carrying the water to the generating station was the risk of the hill-sides either bodily slipping downward, as they are very apt to do in heavy rain, or falling in heavy masses on to the wooden flume and breaking through it, and thus completely breaking off the source of power, and bringing all machinery to a standstill. these risks cannot be entirely counteracted. in heavy rain a portion of the wooden flume may be carried away or broken. an alternative supply of water on occasions of exceptional rain has therefore been tapped close up to the generating station, where a strong dam has been thrown across the bed of a mountain torrent, and its waters impounded to lead through a tunnel in a rocky spur almost immediately on to the forebay. in ordinary weather there is little water in this torrent, but in heavy rain, when the flume is most likely to be damaged, it has ample water. and although there is this alternative supply, great precautions have, nevertheless, been taken to ensure the flume against damage, and where slips are to be expected immensely solid timber shoots have been erected over it for rocks or snow and mud floods to shoot over. on emerging from the flume the water enters the brick-lined tank or reservoir called the forebay, where it settles for a moment before descending the great iron pipe which conducts it on to the machinery in the power-house below. in this forebay there are, of course, sluice gates to regulate the flow, and shut it off altogether at one or all the pipes. and there is also a spill channel for the water to flow away to waste when it is not wanted. then four hundred feet below we come to the power-house, with all the most modern electrical plant transported from america, and much of it from the farthest western coast of america, across the atlantic and the indian oceans, right across india, and then for miles by road over a range feet high. the water-power made available by the flume is capable of generating , horse-power; but as that amount of power is not at present required, electrical machinery to develop not more than h.-p. has as yet been put in, though space and all arrangements have been provided in the power-house for machinery to develop , h.-p. more whenever that is required. the machinery is by the general electric co. of new york, and the generators supplied are of the three-phase -cycle type. the water-wheels upon which the water from the forebay, led down the pipes and contracted through a nozzle, impinges with such tremendous velocity that a hatchet could not cut the spout, are made of specially toughened steel, and are so cunningly designed that the utmost effect is obtained from the fall of the water, and that immediately the water has done its work it is allowed to pass away at once through a waste channel back again into the river without further impeding the machinery. these wheels were supplied by abner doble of san francisco. they are sent revolving with immense rapidity--five hundred revolutions per minute, or eight every second--and they cause to revolve the electrical generators which are placed on the same axis, and thereby electric energy is generated. by a series of very ingenious machines this electric energy is regulated and conducted to the transmission wires which are at present carried through baramula to srinagar, and which will transmit the power at the extremely high voltage of , volts from the generating station to the spot where the power is required. the carrying out of such an undertaking in a remote mountainous country, where no railway has yet penetrated and where no great industrial enterprises have yet been established, required no small amount of organising capacity, driving power, and foresight. in the spring the melting snow combined with rain, and in the summer the heavy rain brings down the mountain-sides, impedes construction progress, often filling up what has already been done, and sometimes, alas! burying workmen with it. in winter, snow and frost stopped all work. labour difficulties were another source of trouble. enough was not available on the spot, and many hundreds were engaged from distant baltistan and ladak, and even afghanistan. skilled labour had to be imported from the punjab. with contractors other difficulties arose. they would not work without an advance of money, and when they got an advance many would decamp. again cholera created still other difficulties, and drove labour away when it had with much persuasion been collected. all these are no mean difficulties. they have, however, now been overcome, and this autumn the maharaja, in the presence of many guests, opened the installation and transmitted the power to baramula and srinagar. the horse-power at present available will be utilised for carrying out mr. field's and major de lotbinière's great scheme for dredging the bed of the jhelum river and neighbouring marshes, and thus preventing floods, and for reclaiming some , acres of cultivable land. it will also be used for heating the water basins in the silk factory and turning the reeling machinery, as well as for lighting srinagar. when the railway which has so long been contemplated is at last constructed, more electric power will be needed. and if the durbar in any way encourage outside enterprise, there will be demand for electric power for oil-crushing, for saw-mills, for wool factories, match factories, and many other purposes. in any european country or american state the whole amount of electric power would have been already sold. similar rapidity of progress cannot be expected in kashmir. but still we may hope that now every one can see that the electric power is there, and that it is an eminently useful product, the demand will gradually arise, and the financial success of the project be worthy of the skill and enterprise displayed by the engineers. chapter xiii the peaks and mountain ranges not, indeed, from the valley itself, but from the mountains which bound it, can be seen the second highest mountain in the world, and a number of peaks of , feet and over. kashmir is cradled amidst the very loftiest mountains, and only nepal can claim still higher peaks. by a fortunate coincidence the government of india have this year published a remarkably interesting scientific treatise on the high peaks and principal mountain ranges of asia, by colonel burrard, r.e., f.r.s., the officiating surveyor-general of india, and h. h. hayden, superintendent in the geological survey of india. both these officers have unique qualifications for the task. colonel burrard has for years made a special study of the himalayas, and mr. hayden has for a great part of his service been engaged in investigating the geology of various districts of the himalayas, and he accompanied me to tibet. the highest peak in the world is mount everest, which is taken to be , feet above sea-level, and is situated at the back of nepal. the _second_ highest is the peak k situated on the boundary between the kashmir state and turkestan, and on the main watershed dividing the rivers of india from the rivers of central asia. it is , feet above the sea, and is visible from haramokh on the northern range of kashmir. it may be wondered why so high a peak has no name. the reason is that, though high, it is not visible from any inhabited place. it is hidden away in a remote mountain region behind other peaks of almost as great magnitude, which being nearer overshadow it--as mount everest itself is overshadowed from darjiling by the kinchinjunga range. there is no village within six days' travel of k on either side, and, consequently, until it was fixed by observation of the survey, it was unknown. colonel montgomerie, when making the survey of kashmir, discovered k . it was among a series of peaks on what is known as the karakoram range, and each of these he designated by the capital letter k, after karakoram, and by a number, k , k , k , etc. so it came about that what proved to be the second highest mountain in the world became known, not by any name, but by merely a letter and a number. in , on my way from peking to india, i passed close under k on its northern side, and in a paper read before the royal geographical society in the following year made some reference to it. at the conclusion of my lecture, the late general walker and sir henry rawlinson proposed the name of godwin austin, after the survey officer who made the topographical survey of the southern portion of the karakoram range. this name was adopted by the geographical society, and now appears on many maps. but it has never been accepted by the government of india, and colonel burrard in his above-mentioned treatise now writes:--"of all the designations suggested for the supreme peak of the karakoram that of k has now the widest vogue, and it will be in the interests of uniformity if this symbol be adopted in future to the exclusion of all others. the permanent adoption of the symbol k will serve to record the interesting facts that a mountain exceeding , feet in height had not been deemed worthy of a name by the people living under its shades, and that its pre-eminent altitude was unsuspected until it was brought to light by trigonometrical observation." with these observations i entirely agree. k was, as i have said, discovered by colonel montgomerie in . he took the first observation to it from haramokh, the conspicuous peak on the north side of the valley of kashmir, at a distance of miles. i saw it first from the north from the aghil range which i discovered in , and i subsequently passed close under it both then and in , and never shall i forget the impression it left on me as i rounded a spur, and looking up a valley saw, quite unexpectedly, this real mountain monarch towering almost immediately above me, very abrupt and upstanding, and with immense masses of ice accumulated at its base. i have also seen mount everest from the north, and it is remarkable that both these peaks, which are so inconspicuous from the southern side, should stand out so boldly from the north. k is not so massive a mountain as kinchinjunga and nanga parbat. it is rather the bold culminating peak of a range. the height of k is put down as , feet above the sea. how can we be certain that this is right? the reply is that we cannot. the observations have been made from immense distances, and are consequently liable to certain errors which have been discussed by colonel burrard. it was observed from the following stations:-- station. height above sea. distance. shangruti , · biachuthusa , · marshala , · kastor , · thurigo , · haramokh , · kanuri-nar , · barwai , thalanka , · and apart from the errors due to distance there are others which must always be counted on. as he remarks, no telescope is absolutely perfect; no level is entirely trustworthy; no instrumental graduations are strictly exact; and no observer is infallible. then, again, the peaks themselves do not always have clearly defined summits, though k happens in this respect to be a model for observation, and as it has been observed on several occasions from different stations, the errors in the mean value of height due to faults of observation are, probably, in colonel burrard's opinion, less than ten feet. another source of error is the adoption of possibly erroneous altitudes for the stations of observation. the altitude of k was observed from haramokh and other stations, but the altitude of haramokh itself may be a few feet wrong, and the altitude of k on this account may be thirty feet in error. another element of uncertainty in determining the height of a peak is caused by the variation in the amount of snow on its summit. there is clearly more snow on the summit of a peak in winter than in summer, and in a hot, dry summer there may be less than in a generally cloudy, snowy summer. a more complicated description of error is introduced by the deviation of gravity from the normal in great mountain ranges. the attraction of the great mass of the himalaya mountains and of tibet pulls all liquids towards itself as the moon attracts the ocean. the liquid in levels on the theodolites with which observations of the peaks are made is similarly affected: the plates to the theodolites in consequence cannot be exactly adjusted, and when apparently truly levelled are in reality tilted upwards towards the mountains. at kurseong, near darjiling, they would be as much as " out of true level and at mussouri about ". [illustration: mount haramokh, from the erin nullah] but the most serious source of uncertainty in the measurement of the altitude of a peak is the refraction of the atmosphere. a ray of light from a peak to an observer's eye does not travel along a straight line, but assumes a curved path concave to the earth. the ray enters the observer's eye--i quote from colonel burrard--in a direction tangential to the curve at that point, and this is the direction in which the observer sees the peak. it makes the peak appear too high. this refraction is greatest in the morning and evening, and least in the middle of the day; it is different in summer from what it is in winter. one of the great himalayan peaks visible from the plains of india would appear, from observations with a theodolite made to it from the plains, to fall feet between sunrise and the afternoon, and to rise again feet before sunset; and even in the afternoon, when it would appear lowest, it would still be too high by perhaps feet. this is obviously a very fruitful source of error, and the difficulty of determining the error is increased by the fact that the curvature of the ray varies with the rarefaction of the atmosphere. in the higher altitude, when the rarefaction of the atmosphere increases, the ray assumes a less curved path. all these possible sources of error due to the rarefaction of the atmosphere have been most carefully studied, but even now we must allow to feet as possible error due to the rarefaction of the atmosphere. [illustration: a mountain glen, before the melting of the snows] summarising the possible sources of error in fixing the height of k we may say the error may be from-- errors of observation ft. adoption of erroneous height for observing station ft. variation of snow-level from the mean unknown deviation of gravity unknown atmospheric refraction to ft. k , as i have said, though on the borders of the kashmir state, and visible from the range which bounds the kashmir valley, is not visible from the valley itself. but nanga parbat can be seen from near baramula and from a few other parts of the valley, and is the most striking object in the view from gulmarg and other points of the northward-facing slope of the pir panjal. it ranks eighth among the mountains of the world, except k all the others being in the nepal himalayas. the order of the mountains is:-- feet. mount everest , k , kinchinjunga , makalu , t , dhaulagiri , xxx , nanga parbat , being more accessible than the remote k the observations for its height were made at much closer quarters, the nearest observation point being miles distant instead of as in the case of k . it was observed in all from eleven different points, of which the most remote was miles. but until it had been measured by the survey it had been marked on maps as only , feet. colonel burrard says it is "the most isolated and perhaps the most imposing of all the peaks of asia." it certainly is remarkable for its isolation. with the exception of subordinate pinnacles rising from its own buttresses, no peak within miles of it attains an altitude of more than , feet. throughout a circle of miles' diameter nanga parbat surpasses all other summits by more than feet. and its upper feet are precipitous. it stands out therefore in solitary nobleness, and it can be seen on its northern side rising , feet from the indus, there only above the sea. but whether it is of all mountains the really most imposing it is not easy to say, and personally i almost cling to kinchinjunga. rakaposhi in hunza, which is , feet in altitude, and can be seen rising sheer up from the hunza river feet above sea-level, is also wonderfully impressive. there is a peak on the pamirs , feet high which can be seen rising abruptly from the plains of turkestan, which are but a little over feet; and there is the musherbrum peak near k which is , feet--all of which i have seen, and which i find it hard to place exactly in order of relative impressiveness. but if nanga parbat cannot be placed in unquestionably the first position, it will in most men's estimation approximate to it, and must in any case be reckoned among the few most striking sights in the world. * * * * * of what are these great peaks built up? no one has yet ascended their summits, and as mr. hayden points out, the geologist has to do his work at close quarters, and not like the surveyor from a distance. so the composition of the highest peaks is rarely known in any detail, though the general character of the rocks can be ascertained with a fair approximation to certainty, from observation of material on the flanks, and from a distant view of the weathering character and apparent structure of the peaks themselves. from such observations it has been found that almost all the peaks of , feet or more in height are composed of granite, gneiss, and associated crystalline rocks. it had long be supposed that some of the granites found on the flanks of the great peaks which presented a foliated appearance were of sedimentary origin, and had therefore been once deposited beneath the sea. but their truly intrusive nature was recognised by the late lieutenant-general m'mahon, who proved conclusively that the great central gneissose rock of the himalayas was in reality a granite crushed and foliated by pressure. it may certainly be taken that both k and nanga parbat are composed of granite, and have been intruded or compressed upward from beneath the earth's crust. mr. hayden further concludes that the exceptional height of these great peaks is due to their being composed of granite, for either the superior power of the granite to resist the atmospheric forces tending to their degradation has caused them to stand as isolated masses above surrounding areas of more easily eroded rocks, or they are areas of special elevation. [illustration: lake shisha nag, lidar valley] now it is found that the axes of the great mountain ranges are also composed of granite, and it seems probable that special elevating forces have been at work to raise certain parts of their ranges above the general level of the whole. and when once such elevation has been brought about, the disparity between the higher peaks and the intervening less elevated area would undoubtedly be intensified by the destructive forces at work, for the mantle of snow and ice, while slowly carrying on its work of abrasion, would serve as a protection for the peaks against the disintegrating forces of the atmosphere, while the lower unprotected areas would be more rapidly eroded. so argues mr. hayden, who further demonstrates that when, during the development of the himalayas as a mighty mountain range vast masses of granite welled up from below, forcing their way through and lifting up the pre-existing rocks superimposed upon them, it is probable that, owing to dissimilarity of composition and to structural weaknesses in certain portions of the earth's crust, movement was more intense at some points than at others, and that the granite was raised into more or less dome-like masses standing above the general level of the growing range, and subsequently carved by the process of erosion into clusters of peaks. the great peaks being thus of intrusive origin, the question naturally arises whether they are _still_ being intruded upward; whether those great forces at work beneath the surface of the earth are still impelling them upward; and if so, whether they are being forced upward more rapidly than the atmospheric forces are wearing down their summits. from the geological standpoint mr. hayden says that it is not at present possible to say whether the elevatory movement is still in progress, but he adds that many phenomena observable in the himalayas lead us to infer that local elevation has until quite recently been operative, and the numerous earthquakes still occurring with such frequency and violence forcibly remind us that the himalayas have by no means reached a period of even comparative rest. the surveyor can as yet give us no more certain answer. colonel burrard says the original observations of the great peaks made between and were not sufficiently prolonged at any one station to enable us to rely with certainty on the values of the height then obtained. when a slow variation in height has to be determined it is better to carry out a long series of observations from one station only, rather than to take a number of observations from different stations, as is necessary and as was done in determining the absolute height of peaks. but in the survey of india commenced a series of observations from one station, and it is proposed to observe the heights of several peaks for some years and at different seasons in each year. then if a reliable series of results be once obtained, a similar set of observations can be repeated at a subsequent date, and any actual change of height that has occurred in the interval may be discovered. [illustration: distant view of nanga parbat from the kamri pass] until these observations are made we cannot say for certain whether the great peaks are still rising. the mountain ranges so far we have considered the isolated peaks rather than the ranges themselves. it remains to study these latter. all of them are popularly regarded as forming part of the "himalayas." but himalaya--pronounced with the stress on the second syllable--simply means the "abode of snow"; and geographers have had to define the separate ranges into which this great himalayan region is divided. the name of the great himalaya is consequently reserved for the supreme range which extends from the western borders of china, carries the great peaks, mount everest and kinchinjunga, and runs through kumaon and kashmir to nanga parbat, and possibly farther. this is the culminating range of the earth's surface. the range to the north, on which stands k and some satellite peaks of , feet, is neither so long nor has it quite such lofty peaks. it is known as the karakoram range because a pass called the karakoram pass crosses it. but a pass called the mustagh also crosses it, and mustagh means ice mountain, whereas karakoram means black gravel. mustagh, therefore, appears to me a much more appropriate name for this gigantic range of ice-clad mountains. it so happens that i am the only european who has crossed both passes. each of them is close upon , feet in altitude, but the karakoram, very curiously, has in summer no snow upon it, and the route leads over black gravel. it is a better known pass than the former, and, consequently, the name of black gravel got the start, and now this superb range of mountains is doomed for all time to suffer from this absurd nomenclature. [illustration: mount kolahoi, lidar valley] the range, however, lies far at the back of kashmir, and it is not so much with it as with the true himalaya range that we are here concerned. the mountain ranges which encircle the valley of kashmir are the final prolongations of that mighty range which runs from the borders of burma thirteen hundred miles away, and bifurcating at the sutlej river, forms with its subsidiary spurs the cradle in which the kashmir valley is set. the southern branch of this bifurcation is known as the pir panjal range, and is that which bounds kashmir on the south. it is the largest of all the lesser himalayan ranges, and even at its extremity in kashmir it carries many peaks exceeding , feet; the tatakuti peak, miles south-west of srinagar, , feet in height, being the most conspicuous. the northern branch of the bifurcation at the sutlej river of the great himalayan range culminates in the nun kun peaks ( , feet and , feet), which stand conspicuously feet above the general crest of the range, and can be seen on clear days from gulmarg. from near them, not far from the zoji-la, an oblique range branches from the great himalayan range, and constitutes the parting between the jhelum river and the kishenganga, the latter river draining the angle formed by the bifurcation. the height of this north kashmir range, as colonel burrard calls it, is greatest near the point of bifurcation, one of its peaks, haramokh ( , feet), reaching above the snow-line, and being the most conspicuous object which meets the eye of a traveller entering the valley from the south. farther westward the range ramifies and declines. the main line of the great range of the himalayas has meanwhile continued from the remarkable depression at the zoji pass along by the kamri pass, to the immense mountain buttress of nanga parbat which, overhanging the deep defiles of the indus, seems to form a fitting end to the mighty range which started on the confines of china. but there are great mountains beyond the indus also, and whether these form a continuation of the great himalayan axis which the river indus would in that case have merely cut through in the gorges below nanga parbat, or whether the mountains west of the indus are part of a separate range, we shall not know till these latter have been geologically examined. chapter xiv the story of the mountains how these peaks and mountain ranges arose is a fascinating and impressive study. it has been made by mr. hayden, who, in the fourth part of the scientific memoir quoted in the previous chapter, has compiled their history from his own personal investigations and the accounts of his fellow-observers in the geological survey of india. and surely a scientific man could have no more inspiring task than the unravelling of the past history of the mighty himalaya. here we have clue after clue traced down, the meaning of each extracted, and the broad general outline of the mountain's story told in all its grand impressiveness, till one sees the earth pulsating like a living being, rising and subsiding, and rising again, now sinking inward till the sea flows over the depression, then rising into continental areas, anon subsiding again beneath the waters, and finally, under titanic lateral pressure and crustal compression, corrugating into mighty folds, while vast masses of granite well up from below, force their way through, lift up the pre-existing rocks and toss themselves upward into the final climax of the great peaks which distinguish the himalaya from every other range of mountains in the world. for millions of years a perpetual struggle has been going on between the inherent earth forces pressing upward and the opposing forces of denudation wearing away the surface. sometimes the internal forces are in commotion, or the contracting crust of the earth finds some weak spot and crumples upward, and the mountains win. a period of internal quiescence follows, and the rain and snow, the frost and heat, gain the victory, and wear down the proudest mountains--as they have worn away the snowy glacier mountains which once stood in rajputana. [illustration: rampur, jhelum valley road] of all this wonderful past the mountains themselves bear irrefutable evidence. near rampur, on the road into kashmir, are bold cliffs of limestone, a rock which is merely the accumulation of the relics of generations of minute marine shell-fishes. these cliffs, now upturned to almost the perpendicular, must once have lain flat beneath the surface of the ocean. high up in the sind valley, embedded in the rocks, are fossil oysters, showing that they too must once have lain beneath the sea. more telling still at zewan, a few miles east of srinagar, are fossils of land plants immediately below strata of rocks containing fossils of marine animals and plants, from which may be concluded that the land subsided under the sea, and was afterwards thrust up again. again, an examination of the rocks on the takht-i-suliman shows that they are merely dried lava, and must have had a volcanic origin--perhaps beneath the sea. and an investigation of the rocks on the flanks of nanga parbat has shown that they are of granite which must have been intruded from the interior of the earth. everywhere there is evidence that even k and nanga parbat lay beneath the sea, and that where now are mountains once rolled the ocean; that some once lay in soft, flat layers of mud or sand, or plant and shell deposit on the ocean bottom, while others, as the ocean bottom was upraised above the waters, were obtruded through them; and that everywhere there has been an immense pressing and crumpling of the earth's crust--a rising and subsiding, a throbbing and pulsation, which at one time has brought kashmir in direct contact by land with madagascar and south africa, and at another has brought it into through communication by sea with both america and europe; and which, finally, has projected it upward thousands of feet into the air. the evidence, moreover, shows that millions of years have passed while these titanic movements have been working out their marvellous results. who can but be impressed by such ages and such forces? who that looks on those lovely kashmir mountains, and on the mighty peaks which rise behind, and has learnt their long eventful history, can help being impressed by the immensity of time their structure betokens, by the magnitude of the movements unceasingly at work within, and by the dignity with which they yet present a front so impassive and so sublime? [illustration: in the sind valley] to realise the full, long-measured roll of their majestic evolution we should have to go back to the time when the swift revolving sun--itself one only among a hundred million other stars of no less magnitude--swished off from its circumference the wreath of fiery mist now called the earth; and we should have to trace that mist, cooling and consolidating, first to a molten mass with a plastic crust enveloped in a dense and watery atmosphere, and then to a hardened surface of dry land with cavities in which the ocean settled. but the story, as it is with more detailed accuracy known, commences at the time when a shallow sea covered central and northern india, and extended over the site of the present himalaya, including kashmir and the region of the mighty peaks behind. this, then, is the first essential fact to lay hold of, that at the commencement of the authentic history of kashmir, the whole--vale and mountain peak alike--lay unborn beneath the sea. how long ago this was it is not possible to say within a million years or so. but this much may be said with certainty, that the period is to be reckoned not in thousands, nor yet in hundreds of thousands, but in millions of years. geologists have names for different geological epochs, and do not usually speak of them by definite numbers of years, for there is still much controversy as to the precise length of time occupied by each. but to fix in the mind of the general reader a rough idea of the immense periods of time with which we are dealing in tracing the history of the mountains, it is useful to speak in terms of numbers, even though they may be only very approximately correct. we may then assume that the oldest rocks in kashmir were deposited in sediment at the bottom of the afore-mentioned shallow sea a hundred million years ago. some geologists and biologists think that a still longer time must have elapsed. some physicists would maintain that even so much is not allowable. but as an average opinion, we may take a hundred million years ago as the commencement of kashmir history. what were the limits of the sea which then rolled over the site of kashmir is not yet precisely known. but the lower portion of the indian peninsula was then dry land, and connected by land with africa; and the sea probably extended westward to europe and eastward to china. into it the rivers bore down the debris and detritus worked off by the rain from the dry land; and thus were slowly deposited, in the long course of many million years, sediments hundreds and thousands of feet in thickness which, subsequently upheaved and hardened, form the kashmir mountains of the present day. the first great movement of which authentic record has yet been traced took place at the close of the jaunsar period. the bosom of the earth heaved restlessly, and what had already been deposited in the depths of the sea now emerged above the surface. volcanoes burst through the crust, and the sedimentary deposits, hardened into rock, were covered with sheets of lava and volcanic ash, which now form the hills at the back of srinagar, including the takht-i-suliman. this was kashmir's first appearance--not, however, in the form of a beautiful valley surrounded by forests and snow-capped mountains, but rather in the form of an archipelago of bare volcanic islands. and even these were not permanent, for a period of general subsidence followed and they slowly sank beneath the sea which was then probably connected with america. during the devonian period kashmir was still submerged; but in a subsequent portion of the time when the carbonaceous system was being deposited there was a second period of great volcanic activity, when the southern portion of kashmir again formed an archipelago of volcanic islands. eventually all kashmir emerged, and became part of the mainland of india at that time joined with africa; so that kashmir which had before been joined by sea with america was now joined by land with africa. such are the mighty movements of this seemingly immovable earth. but it was only for a brief space that kashmir was visible. then once again, in mid-carboniferous times, it subsided beneath the sea, there to remain for some millions of years till the early tertiary period, four million years ago, when it again emerged, and the sea was gradually pushed back from tibet and the adjacent himalaya, till by the end of the eocene period both tibet and the whole himalaya had finally become dry land. kashmir was now a portion of the continental area and the culminating effort of the earth forces was at hand. for yet another period of great volcanic activity ensued, connected, perhaps, with the crustal disturbances to which the origin of the himalaya is attributed. masses of molten granite were extruded from beneath the earth's surface through the sedimentary deposit. and these granitic masses, issuing from the fiery interior of the earth, pushing ever upward, reached and passed the level of eternal snow till they finally settled into the line of matchless peaks now known as the himalaya. [illustration: lake shisha nag at sunset] this then, briefly, is a record of the successive phases of upheaval and subsidence through which kashmir has passed. through by far the greater portion of the earth's history--through perhaps ninety out of the hundred million years--kashmir has lain beneath the sea. and it is only within the last four million years that it has finally emerged. * * * * * what has actually caused the final upheaval; from whence came the force which raised the mountains is not yet entirely known. one well-known theory is that the earth's crust in cooling has to accommodate itself to a constantly decreasing diameter, and so gets crinkled and crumpled into folds. anyhow from whatever cause, and quite apart from the ordinary up-and-down movements of the crust, there has evidently been immense lateral pressure, and on the drive into kashmir many instances may be observed of the once level strata being crumpled into folds as the leaves of a book might be on being laterally pressed. there has been, says mr. middlemiss, "a steadily acting lateral pressure of the earth's crust tending to bank it up against the central crystalline zone [that is the core of intrusive granite of which the line of great peaks is formed] by a movement and a resistance in two opposite directions." and besides this pressure, the effect of tangential stresses tending to compress the earth's surface laterally and so form corrugations on it, there was from some remote internal cause this welling up from below of vast masses of granite which forced their way through the pre-existing rocks and formed the high peaks, the core of the himalayan ranges. these were the approximate causes--though the ultimate causes are not known--from which the kashmir mountains originated. and tremendous though the forces must have been to cause such mighty effects, there is no evidence that they were violent. the stupendous result may have been imperceptibly attained. if nanga parbat rose not more than one inch in a month, it would have taken only , years to rise from the sea-level, and this is but a moment in the vast epochs with which we are dealing. nature has worked without haste and without violence. slowly, relentlessly, and uninterruptedly her work has progressed till the great final result stands before us in all its impressive majesty. * * * * * such was the origin and history of the kashmir mountains. it remains to trace the course of life upon them, and picture their appearance in the various stages of their history. [illustration: the tannin glen, lidar valley] in that remote time, which we have roughly taken as a hundred million years ago, when the oldest rocks, those for instance at gulmarg, were first laid down in level soft deposit on the ocean bottom, there was no life on land or sea. in no part of the world have the rocks of this period given the slightest trace of any form of life. but in the course of time, in some warm climate and in some quarter where sea and land meet, and where, through the action of the tides, a portion of the land is alternately covered and laid open to the sunshine--that is, in some spot where earth and air, light, heat and water might all have their effect--it has been surmised that minute microscopic specks of slime must have appeared imbued with just that mysterious element which distinguishes life from all chemical combinations however complex. of this initial stage, which would not have been perceptible to the naked eye, no trace could possibly be left, but in the pre-cambrian rocks in europe there have been detected very minute specimens of the simplest known forms of life--the protozoa--and obscure tracks and markings indicating the existence of life of some kind. and in the next geological period--the cambrian and silurian, say between thirty and fifty million years ago--there is not indeed in the kashmir rocks yet any sign of life, but in the neighbouring district of spiti there has been found in corresponding rocks fossils of corals, trilobites, shell-fish, worms, brachiopods (lamp-shells), and gastropods. * * * * * when kashmir made its first brief emergence from the waters, in an archipelago of volcanic islands, though there was life of low and simple kind in the sea, on land there was none, and the islands must have been absolutely bare. neither on hill-side nor on plain was there a speck of vegetation, not even the humblest moss or lichen, and not a sign of animal life. no bird or insect floated in the air. and over all there must have reigned a silence such as i remember in the gobi desert, and which was so felt that when after many weeks i arrived at an oasis, the twittering of the birds and the humming of the insects appeared as an incessant roar. [illustration: going to the wedding, upper indus valley] it does not, however, follow from its bareness that the scenery of this archipelago may not have been beautiful, for those who have frequently passed up the gulf of suez know that the early morning and evening effects on bare deserts and rocky hills are often the most perfect in the delicacy and brilliance of their opalescent hues, and that the combination of this colouring with the bluey-green and the life and sparkle of the sea makes up a beauty which wooded mountain-sides may often lack. and as from the islands the summits of snowy ranges in india and central asia might be discerned, kashmir even in its primitive and most barren stage must yet have had many a charm of its own. but the bareness of the islands must have shortened the term of their existence, for it meant that the hills and plains were easily scoured out by the torrential rains which then fell upon them. it seems difficult in these days to imagine that when tropical rains fall on barren land they will not at once bring up a luxuriant crop of vegetation which would do much to keep the soil in its position; but in those days there was on land no plant life of any description. the hills and plains must, in consequence, have been deeply scoured, and rushing rivers have rapidly carried, in sand and boulders and muddy and chemical solution, the disintegrated surface of the land to the bottom of the sea, and laid down there the sediments and deposits which, subsequently upheaved, form the kashmir rocks of the present day. * * * * * it is not until we come to the almost mediæval period corresponding to the coal measures, about twenty million years ago, that the record of land life in kashmir begins. in the hill-sides behind khunmu, a little village about ten miles east of srinagar, there is a series of rocks lying in layers over the older "trap" rocks of volcanic origin which form the great bulk of the neighbouring mountains, and in these sedimentary rocks, in what are called carbonaceous shales, are found some ferns named gangamopteris. they were discovered in by mr. hayden, and they are estimated by him to be "not younger than upper carboniferous," and they "may belong to the basis of that subdivision, or even to the middle carboniferous," that is, they may be about fifteen to eighteen million years old. at the same place, but on a layer of later date, have also been found fossil brachiopods--marine shell-fish resembling cockles--also of upper carboniferous times. [illustration: mountain mists] this, as it happens, was an interesting period in the earth's history. for there occurred about then, or somewhat earlier, an extensive upheaval in many parts of the world, and mountains which have been now removed were upheaved to an altitude comparable with that of the highest ranges of the present day, and in the punjab there then existed a snowy range with glaciers. it was at this period that kashmir was joined with the mainland of the indian peninsula, which in its turn was joined with africa, and now, at least, there must have been some vegetation and animal life. at this time of the coal measures--the remnants of forests growing in shallow sea-water--life was well advanced. birds and mammals and flowers, and the more highly developed animals and plants had not yet appeared, but in the sea lived such things as star-fishes, shell-fishes, corals, sea-urchins, sea-lilies, sea-cucumbers, feather stars, sea-worms, sea-snails, cuttlefish, water-fleas and mussels, shrimps, and lobsters and fishes. in the coal swamps were ferns, "horse-tails" similar to the horse-tails of the present day, but of gigantic size, club mosses more than fifty feet high, lycopods, trees with trunks fifty feet high, and which bore catkins ripening into berries not unlike those of yews. in the fresh water were some shell-fishes, crustaceans, and fishes. on land were spiders, scorpions, some of gigantic size, and centipedes. through the air flew hundreds of different kinds of insects, may flies, cockroaches, crickets, and beetles. the magnate of the vertebrate world was the labyrinthodont (traces of which have been found in kashmir), which had a salamander-like body, a long tail, bony plates to protect his head, and armour of integumentary scales to protect his body. of land trees and plants there were lepidodendrons with huge stems clad with linear leaves and bearing cones; huge club mosses, climbing palms, such as grow in tropical forests of the present day, great funguses, and numerous ferns. such was the type of vegetation and of land and sea animal life of the coal period, and although not many remains of this age have yet been found in kashmir, enough traces have been discovered to satisfy us that in the shallow estuarial water and on the islands of the inland sea there lived an animal and vegetable life which must have been very similar to what we know existed elsewhere. [illustration: near the kolahoi glacier, lidar valley] for another fourteen million years or so after the coal period there is nothing special to record in the history of kashmir. there may have been a line of islands along the core of the present ranges, but the greater part of kashmir had sunk once more beneath the waters, in which new sediments to enormous thickness were being accumulated, till in the late cretaceous period, or about four million years ago, the great crustal compression began which finally upheaved these deposits from the ocean bottom, and formed the kashmir of the present day. this upheaval was, however, neither sudden nor continuous. it was very gradual, it had three distinct phases, and was not complete till a million years ago when the dividing ocean entirely disappeared, and the himalaya reached its maximum height. * * * * * and now at this period of upheaval--the tertiary period of geologists--a great change had come in the animal and vegetable worlds. _man_ had not arisen even yet, but birds and mammals and flowers, and all kinds of trees were now developed; and this marked the threshold of the modern type of life. the ages when the great ferns and palms and yew-like conifers were the leading forms of vegetation had passed away, and the period of the hard-wood trees and evergreens had commenced. the great reptiles, too, which in such wonderful variety of type were the dominant animals of the earth's surface in the period following the carboniferous now waned before the increase of the mammals. at the commencement of the tertiary period there grew cypress, sequoiæ (wellingtonia and redwood trees), chestnuts, beeches, elms, poplars, hornbeam, willows, figs, planes, maples, aloes, magnolia, eucalyptus, plums, almonds and alders, laurels, yews, palms, cactus, smilax, lotus, lilies, ferns, etc. later on appeared cedars, spurge laurel, evergreen oak, buckthorn, walnut, sumachs, myrtle, mimosa and acacia, birch, hickory, bamboos, rose laurel, tulip trees; and among flowers buttercups, marsh marigolds, chick-weed, mare's tail, dock, sorrel, pond-weed, cotton-grass, and royal ferns. traces of all these trees and plants have not been found in kashmir, but remains of a great many of them have been discovered, and, as it was linked on with europe where they have been found, there is no doubt that they and the animals now to be described must have grown in the varying altitudes of the now upraised mountains. this period, as we have seen, is particularly remarkable for the advent of mammals, and there now appeared the earliest representative of the tribe of monkeys; the ancestors of the horse, about the size of small ponies with three toes on each foot; herds of ancestral hornless deer and antelope; animals allied to our wolves; foxes; numerous hog-like and large tapir-like animals, some the size of elephants with the habit of a rhinoceros; opossums; and representatives of hedgehogs, squirrels, and bats. the reptiles included tortoises and turtles, crocodiles and serpents. birds had also for some time past developed from reptiles, and now included a kind of albatross and birds allied to the buzzard, osprey, hawk, nuthatch, quail, pelican, ibis, and flamingo. later in the same period appeared parroquets, trogons, cranes, eagles, and grouse. and now was the reign of the hippopotamus, while there followed rhinoceros, shrew, moles, and musk rats. later still the huge animals with probosces held the first place--the colossal mastodons and troops of elephants. the forests were also tenanted with apes. other animals were sabre-toothed tigers and the earliest form of bear. altogether kashmir would at the time have been a paradise for sportsmen. but man had not yet appeared. * * * * * after the mountains had been finally upheaved it is evident, from the existence of those level plateaux of recent alluvial deposit called karewas, that the kashmir valley must have been filled with a lake to some hundreds of feet higher than the present valley bottom. where the jhelum river at present escapes from the valley was then blocked up, and the whole valley filled with what must have been the most lovely lake in the world--twice the length and three times the width of the lake of geneva, and completely encircled by snowy mountains as high and higher than mont blanc; while in the immediately following glacial period mighty glaciers came wending down the sind, lidar, and other valleys, even to the very edge of the water. [illustration: lake sinsa nag, lidar valley] whether man ever saw this lovely lake it is not yet possible to say. the glacial period commenced rather more than a quarter of a million years ago, and it was about then that man first appeared, among other places, in the great river valleys of central and southern india, where the climate is not extreme, and wild fruits, berries, etc., were procurable at every season of the year. but when he spread up the valley of the jhelum to kashmir we have not yet the means of saying. what appear to be some remains of the handiwork of man were recently found by mr. radcliffe in a cave in the lolab, near the borders of the wular lake, and seem to indicate the presence of man long anterior to the first dawn of kashmir history. but the dawn of kashmir history is only years ago, and man must have appeared , years before that. for thousands of years he must have been bravely battling against nature and against the numerous and powerful animals which then lorded the earth. slowly he must have made his way from the warm valleys of the nerbudda and the ganges to the rivers of the punjab, and up the jhelum valley into kashmir. but he eventually established himself there as the beautiful lake was almost drained away and the kashmir of the present day was finally evolved. * * * * * so we bring up the history of the mountains till it joins with the history of the people; and as the story finishes, does not one great thought emerge--the thought of the youth, the recentness of man alongside the hoary mountains? during the one hundred million years of the mountains' history mankind has existed only a quarter of a million; and his recorded history extends over not even a hundredth part of a single million years. and if we reflect on this, and consider, too, that the sun's heat will last to render life possible for many millions of years yet, does it not seem almost criminally childish for us--hindus, christians, and mohamedans alike--to be so continually and incessantly looking backward to great and holy men of the past, as if all the best were necessarily behind, instead of sometimes looking forward to the even greater men to _come_--to the higher _species_ of men who will yet evolve; of whom our holiest and our greatest are only the forerunners; and for the production of whom it should be our highest duty to consciously and of purpose pave the way, as the poor primitive men, though unconsciously, prepared the ground for the civilised men of to-day? ought we not to more accurately adjust our sense of proportion; to rise above the ant-like attitude of mind, and attune our thoughts to the breadth and height of the mountains, to the purity of their snowy summits, and to the depth and clearness of the liquid skies they almost touch? to some the sight of these mountain masses, the thought of the tremendous forces which gave them rise, and the idea of the aeons of time their moulding has involved, brings no other feeling than depression. the size, the titanic nature of the forces and the vastness of the time impress them only with a sense of the littleness of man in comparison. but why should the mountains thus depress? why should not their history bring us the more worthy thought of the mighty possibilities of the race? for man, small in stature though he may be, is after all the flower and finish of the evolutionary process so far; he is century by century acquiring a completer mastery over nature; and when we see how young and recent he is beside the aged mountains, when we realise how they have only evolved by minute gradations accumulating over vast periods of time, and when we reflect that nearly similar periods may yet lie before mankind, should not our thoughts dwell rather on man's future greatness and on the mighty destiny which he _himself_ may shape? with our imagination tethered to the hard-rock fact that man has developed from a savage to a plato and a shakespeare, from the inventor of the stone-axe to the inventor of telegraphy in the paltry quarter million years of his existence, may we not safely give it rope to wander out into the boundless future? we are still but children. we may be only as young bees, crawling over the combs of a hive, who have not yet found their wings to fly out into the sun-lit world beyond. even now we suspect ourselves of possessing wing-like faculties of the mind whose use we do not know, and to which we are as yet afraid to trust. but the period of our infancy is over. the time to let ourselves go is approaching. should we not look confidently out into the future and nerve ourselves for bold, unfettered flight? and may we not still further hope that in the many million years the earth may yet exist we may master the depressing fate which lies before us when the sun's heat is expended; and look forward to evolving from ourselves beings of a higher order who will be independent of the used-up planet which gave them birth, and may be swarm away to some far, other sun-lit home? index abbotabad, achibal, , , administration, afghanistan, , afghans, , africa, , south, aghil range, agra, taj at, aishmakam, ajit singh, akbar, , alexander the great, alfred, king, aliwal, almonds, amar singh, raja sir, , , , , amaranth, amarnath, caves of, , , america, , aparwat, apples, , apricots, , , , trees, , , archæological department survey, arts, aru, , asia, central, , , asoka, the buddhist king, , , , , astor, , , austin, godwin, autumn in kashmir, , avantipur, avantipura, avantivarman, , awatkula, baber, emperor, badakhshan, badwan, baltistan, , , , , , , , , governor of, bandipur, , banihal pass, baramula, , , , , , , , , , , , road, bara-singh. _see_ "kashmir stag." barley, , barstow, captain, basket work, bauxite, bawan, beans, white, beas river, bedford, duke of, bengal, settlement of, beoru, bernier, , , bijbehara, , , birches, biscoe's school, mr., blue pine, boat-building, boatmen, bodhisattva, bokhara, bombay, brahminism, brahministic hinduism, brahmins, , , british government, , , , , , , , troops, indian troops, resident, territory, buckwheat, buddha, buddhism, , , buddhist monasteries, temple, , bulbuls, bullock carts, "bund," , buniar, burbank, mr. luther, burma, burrard, colonel, , , , , , , burzil, butter, clarified, , calcutta, , , cambrian period, rocks, pre-, carbonaceous system, carboniferous period, carpets, cashmere, cauvery falls, chamba, , charlemagne, chenab river, chenar, trees, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , foliage, chenars, isle of, , china, chitral, , , frontier, cholera, christians, clarified butter. _see_ "butter" coal measures, , coal period, columbines, copper, , work, cornwallis, lord, cotton, , cloth, piece-goods, cretaceous period, late, customs, the (source of revenue), , dabgarh, dachigam stream, , , valley, , dak bungalows, , , dal darwaza lock, the, , dal lake, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , danjhibhoy, darjiling, , , , dauvergne, m., deccan, decentralisation, royal commission on, deodar forest, , trees, , , devonian period, dhulip singh, , dhyan singh, , dogra country, rajput, downes, dr., dragon-flies, , drew, mr., duck shooting, , , , dundee chamber of commerce, dunga-boats, , durbar, , , east india company, edwards, colonel, , egypt, egyptian temples, electric installation, electrical department, scheme, elizabeth, queen, elm tree, elsmie, dr., enamel work, engineer, chief, state, eocene period, erin, everest, mount, , , ferozepur nulla, ferozepore fort, ferozeshah, field, mr., fir, silver, flax, russian, forest department, , , forests, forests, conservator of, food grains, fowls, fruit, game preservation department, , ganderbal, , gandhara, gangabal lake, , , ganges, the, , gap, the, , garuda, ghi, , gilgit, , district, gobi desert, gold-washings, gopaditya, gorai, govardhanadhara, temple to the god, græco-buddhist art, grain, , grapes, "greater vehicle of the law," greece, , , gujars, gulab singh, raja, , , , , , , , , , , , , , gulmarg, , , , , , , , , , residency at, , gupkar, , gupta period, gurais, , , hanji (boatmen), haramokh peak, , , , , , , , , , , , hardinge, governor-general, lord, , hari parbat fort, , , harsa, king, , harwan, , , , , , , , , hatchery, , , hayden, h. h., , , , , , , hazara, , hedin, dr. sven, hemp, hides, himalaya, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , hindu, the, , , , , , rule, rulers, temple, , , , , , , hindustan, plains of, hira singh, hiuen tsiang, chinese buddhist pilgrim, hokrar, ghat, "jheel," marsh, lake, home department, horse chestnut, , , , house-boats, , , hunza, , , , frontier, river, ibex, , ice mountain, imports, india, , , , , , , , central, geological survey of, , , government of, , , , , native states of, plains of, , , superintendent in the geological survey of, surveyor-general of, indian civil service, forest department, ocean, peninsula, indus river, , , , , industries, iris, , , , , iron, , islam, islamabad, , , , , , , , , iyesthesvara, jama masjid, the, jammu, , , , , , , , governor of, state, jaunsar period, javasimha, king, jehangir, moghal emperor, , , jhelum, the, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , josephine, empress, judiciary, the, judge of the high court, judge, chief, , k peak, , , , , , , , , kabul, , _kagazi_, kaj nag mountains, , , kalhana, kamri pass, kanauj, king of, , kangra, , kanibal, kanishka, king, karakoram pass, , range, , , karewa, a, , kashmir, governor of, , history of, the people, proper, , province, range, north, , stag, , , , state, , , , , , , tulips, , valley of, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , village, kashmirian architecture, , kashmiris, , , , , , , , , , , kennard, mr. m. t., , khagan range, , , khagan snows, , khunnu, khurruk singh, maharaja, kinchinjunga peak, , , , range, king-emperor, kirghiz, kishenganga, , kishtwar range, kofwara, kohala, kolahoi glacier, , peak, kolar gold-fields, kotwal, kumaon, kurseong, ladak, , , , , , , , , , lahore, , , , , , , court, government at, , state, , treaty of, , lahoul, lalitaditya, king, , , , , structures, lalpura, lal singh, , land revenue administration, lawrence, mr., , , , lawrence, sir henry, , lawrence, sir walter, , , , leh, _letters of queen victoria, the_, lhasa, lidar stream, valley, , , , , lidarwat, liddar, the, liddar valley, lilac, limestone, linseed, , , , log bridge, lolab, the, , , valley, , lotbinière, major alain de, r.e., , , , , , , lotus, the, lumberdars, m'mahon, lieutenant-general, madagascar, madras, mahadeo peak, , , , maharaja, h.h. _see_ pratab singh the late, , maharaja's preserves, mahdi of the mohamedans, mahmud of ghazni, , maize, , , manasbal lake, , manchester, cotton goods, manjis, manufactures, , maple, markhor, a, , marshal, mr., martand, , , , , , marwar, "meadow of flowers," mecca, meruvad-dhana, minister, messiah of the jews, metals, middlemiss, mr., mihirakula, the "white hun," millet, mineral products, minto, lord, , , , , , , mirza haider, mirpur, mitchell, mr. frank, , moghal emperors, empire, gardens, , , times, , moghals, the, , , , , mohamed, mohamed jan, mohamedan buildings, dynasty, period, mohamedanism, , , mohamedans, , , , , , monsoon, the, montgomerie, colonel, , moorcroft, mr., , , , mosquitoes, _mothi_, mount everest, , , mountain ranges, , mudki, mulberry, , , , , , , , , , , , trees, , multan, _mung_, munshi bagh, , munsiff, murree hill, , musherbrum peak, mussouri, mustagh pass, , , mustard, fields, , , mutiny, the, mysore, nagarjuna, naib-tehsildars, nanga parbat peak, , , , , , , , , , , , , , nasim bagh, , , nedou's hotel, , , nepal, , nerbudda, neve, dr. arthur, neve, dr. ernest, neve, miss, neve's hospital, dr., nichols, dr., nicholson, john, nishat bagh, , , , , , , , northern canon, the, nun kun peaks, nurmahal, , oil-seeds, oudh, ovis poli, pahlgam, , , , , , pamirs, the, , , , pampur, , , , plateau, pandit rada kishen kol, pandrathan, , , , papier-mâché, paraspur, pariansipura, plateau of, parihasapura, , , parsi shops, pashm, , patan, temples of, patwari, payech, peaks, the, pears, , peas, peat, peking, , , peychaud, m., _phaseolus aconitifolius_, _phaseolus mungo_, _phaseolus radiatus_, _picea morinda_, _pinus excelsa_, pir panjal range, , , , , , , , , , , , , , _platanus orientalis_, pohru river, police, the, poplar trees, , , , , , , , , , post office, potala at lhasa, potatoes, , pratab model farm, pratab singh, maharaja sir, g.c.s.i., , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , palace, products, protozoa, public works department, , punch, house of, raja of, river, pundits, punjab, the, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , bank, peasants, puranadhisthana, "puttoo" cloth, , quadiani sect, , quinces, _raah_, radcliffe, mr., rahem sheikh, rajatarangini, the, rajavihara, the, rajput hill states, rajputana, , rakaposhi peak, ramnager, raja of, rampur, , , , , , , , ranbir singh, maharaja, , ranjit singh, , , , , , ranjit singh's dewan, rape, , ravi river, rawal pindi, , , , , , rawlence, dr., rawlinson, sir henry, residency, the, , , garden, , , resident, the, , , , , , revenue from land, , rice, , , fields, , , robinson, miss, roses, , , royal engineer officer, royal geographical society, saffron, , salt, sapphires, _sesamum indicum_, settlement commissioner, shadipur, , , , , , , shah hamadan, mosque of, , shah jahan, emperor, shah mir, , shalimar bagh, , , , , , , , , shalimar garden, , shawls, , , , , sher singh, , shikar suit, a, shikara, , shikari, , , , , , , , , shisha nag, shukar ali, , , , shupaiyon, , siberian duck, sikh army, , government, , , sikh rulers, soldiery, state, sikhs, , , , , , of the plains, silk, , silurian period, silver fir, work, sind river, , , , , , , , , , , , , , singháre, siva, the god, skins, sobraon, sonamarg, , , , , sopur, , , , spiti, sport, spring in kashmir, , , spruce, himalayan, srinagar, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , city of the sun, guest house, museum, , road, state, the, , , , , , , state hospital, stein, dr., , , sugar, sulphur springs, summer in kashmir, sutlej river, , , suyya, , swadeshi movement, , taj at agra, , takht-i-suliman, , , , , , , , tannin, tatakuti peak, , tea, tehsildars, tej singh, tertiary period, , , third great council of the church, throv deo, tian shan mountains, tibet, , , , , , tibetan goat, , _til_, , tilail, timber, tobacco, tonga, , , trade, tragbal, , , , pass, travel in kashmir, turkestan, , , plains of, chinese, , , , turkis. _see_ moghals uri, , , ush turfan, vaishu stream, vecula, king, vernag, springs of, viceroy, viceroys, sport of, _victoria, queen, letters of_, vigne, , vishnu, , mahavaraha, temple of, muktakesava, temple of, parihasakesave, temple of, vishu, volcanoes, walker, general, walnut, , , , , , , , , , , , wangat, river, wangat ruins, valley, ward, colonel, , water-lilies, water nuts, wheat, , , fields, wigram, major, , , , , willow, , , , , , , , , , , , wilson, mr. s., wood-carving, wool, wular lake, , , , , , yarkand, serai, yus asaf, , zain-ul-ab-ul-din, king, zenana hospital, zewan, zoji pass, zoji-la-pass, , , zorawar singh, _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. * * * * * transcriber's note: inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. obvious typographical errors have been corrected. page : "ckka" is possibly a typographical error. scanned by derek thompson drthom@ihug.co.nz himalayan journals or notes of a naturalist in bengal, the sikkim and nepal himalayas, the khasia mountains, etc. joseph dalton hooker, m.d., r.n., f.r.s. volume i first published to charles darwin, f.r.s., etc. these volumes are dedicated, by his affectionate friend, j.d. hooker kew, jan. th, ------------------------- preface having accompanied sir james boss on his voyage of discovery to the antarctic regions, where botany was my chief pursuit, on my return i earnestly desired to add to my acquaintance with the natural history of the temperate zones, more knowledge of that of the tropics than i bad hitherto had the opportunity of acquiring. my choice lay between india and the andes, and i decided upon the former, being principally influenced by dr. falconer, who promised me every assistance which his position as superintendent of the h.e.i.c. botanic garden at calcutta, would enable hum to give. he also drew my attention to the fact that we were ignorant even of the geography of the central and eastern parts of these mountains, while all to the north was involved in a mystery equally attractive to the traveller and the naturalist. on hearing of the kind interest taken by baron humboldt in my proposed travels, and at the request of my father (sir william hooker), the earl of carlisle (then chief commissioner of woods and forests) undertook to represent to her majesty's government the expediency of securing my collections for the royal gardens at kew; and owing to the generous exertions of that nobleman, and of the late earl of auckland (then first lord of the admiralty), my journey assumed the character of a government mission, £ per annum being granted by the treasury for two years. i did not contemplate proceeding beyond the himalaya and tibet, when lord auckland desired that i should afterwards visit borneo, for the purpose of reporting on the capabilities of labuan, with reference to the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, sugar, indigo, spices, guttapercha, etc. to this end a commission in the navy (to which service i was already attached) was given me, such instructions were drawn up as might facilitate my movements in the east, and a suitable sum of money was placed at my disposal. soon after leaving england, my plans became, from various causes, altered. the earl of auckland* [it is with a melancholy satisfaction that i here record the intentions of that enlightened nobleman. the idea of turning to public account what was intended as a scientific voyage, occurred to his lordship when considering my application for official leave to proceed to india; and from the hour of my accepting the borneo commission with which he honoured me, he displayed the most active zeal in promoting its fulfilment. he communicated to me his views as to the direction in which i should pursue my researches, furnished me with official and other information, and provided me with introductions of the most essential use.] was dead; the interest in borneo had in a great measure subsided; h.m.s. "maeander," to which i had been attached for service in labuan, had left the archipelago; reports of the unhealthy nature of the coast had excited alarm; and the results of my researches in the himalaya had proved of more interest and advantage than had been anticipated. it was hence thought expedient to cancel the borneo appointment, and to prolong my services for a third year in india; for which purpose a grant of £ (originally intended for defraying the expense of collecting only, in borneo) was transferred as salary for the additional year to be spent in the himalaya. the portion of the himalaya best worth exploring, was selected for me both by lord auckland and dr. falconer, who independently recommended sikkim, as being ground untrodden by traveller or naturalist. its ruler was, moreover, all but a dependant of the british government, and it was supposed, would therefore be glad to facilitate my researches. no part of the snowy himalaya eastward of the northwest extremity of the british possessions had been visited since turner's embassy to tibet in ; and hence it was highly important to explore scientifically a part of the chain which, from its central position, might be presumed to be typical of the whole range. the possibility of visiting tibet, and of ascertaining particulars respecting the great mountain chumulari,* [my earliest recollections in reading are of "turner's travels in tibet," and of "cook's voyages." the account of lama worship and of chumulari in the one, and of kerguelen's land in the other, always took a strong hold on my fancy. it is, therefore, singular that kerguelen's land should have been the first strange country i ever visited (now fourteen years ago), and that in the first king's ship which has touched there since cook's voyage, and whilst following the track of that illustrious navigator in south polar discovery. at a later period i have been nearly the first european who has approached chumulari since turner's embassy.] which was only known from turner's account, were additional inducements to a student of physical geography; but it was not then known that kinchinjunga, the loftiest known mountain on the globe, was situated on my route, and formed a principal feature in the physical geography of sikkim. my passage to egypt was provided by the admiralty in h.m. steam-vessel "sidon," destined to convey the marquis of dalhousie, governor-general of india, thus far on his way. on his arrival in egypt, his lordship did me the honour of desiring me to consider myself in the position of one of his suite, for the remainder of the voyage, which was performed in the "moozuffer," a steam frigate belonging to the indian navy. my obligations to this nobleman had commenced before leaving england, by his promising me every facility he could command; and he thus took the earliest opportunity of affording it, by giving me such a position near himself as ensured me the best reception everywhere; no other introduction being needed. his lordship procured my admission into sikkim, and honoured me throughout my travels with the kindest encouragement. during the passage out, some days were spent in egypt, at aden, ceylon, and madras. i have not thought it necessary to give here the observations made in those well-known countries; they are detailed in a series of letters published in the "london journal of botany," as written for my private friends. arriving at calcutta in january, i passed the remainder of the cold season in making myself acquainted with the vegetation of the plains and hills of western bengal, south of the ganges, by a journey across the mountains of birbhoom and behar to the soane valley, and thence over the vindhya range to the ganges, at mirzapore, whence i descended that stream to bhaugulpore; and leaving my boat, struck north to the sikkim himalaya. this excursion is detailed in the "london journal of botany," and the asiatic society of bengal honoured me by printing the meteorological observations made during its progress. during the two years' residence in sikkim which succeeded, i was laid under obligations of no ordinary nature to brian h. hodgson, esq., b.c.s., for many years resident at the nepal court; whose guest i became for several months. mr. hodgson's high position as a man of science requires no mention here; but the difficulties he overcame, and the sacrifices he made, in attaining that position, are known to few. he entered the wilds of nepal when very young, and in indifferent health; and finding time to spare, cast about for the best method of employing it: he had no one to recommend or direct a pursuit, no example to follow, no rival to equal or surpass; he had never been acquainted with a scientific man, and knew nothing of science except the name. the natural history of men and animals, in its most comprehensive sense, attracted his attention; he sent to europe for books, and commenced the study of ethnology and zoology. his labours have now extended over upwards of twenty-five years' residence in the himalaya. during this period he has seldom had a staff of less than from ten to twenty persons (often many more), of various tongues and races, employed as translators and collectors, artists, shooters, and stuffers. by unceasing exertions and a princely liberality, mr. hodgson has unveiled the mysteries of the boodhist religion, chronicled the affinities, languages, customs, and faiths of the himalayan tribes; and completed a natural history of the animals and birds of these regions. his collections of specimens are immense, and are illustrated by drawings and descriptions taken from life, with remarks on the anatomy,* [in this department he availed himself of the services of dr. campbell, who was also attached to the residency at nepal, as surgeon and assistant political agent.] habits, and localities of the animals themselves. twenty volumes of the journals, and the museum of the asiatic society of bengal, teem with the proofs of his indefatigable zeal; and throughout the cabinets of the bird and quadruped departments of our national museum, mr. hodgson's name stands pre-eminent. a seat in the institute of france, and the cross of the legion of honour, prove the estimation in which his boodhist studies are held on the continent of europe. to be welcomed to the himalaya by such a person, and to be allowed the most unreserved intercourse, and the advantage of all his information and library, exercised a material influence on the progress i made in my studies, and on my travels. when i add that many of the subjects treated of in these volumes were discussed between us, it will be evident that it is impossible for me to divest much of the information thus insensibly obtained, of the appearance of being the fruits of my own research. dr. campbell, the superintendent of dorjiling, is likewise the governor-general's agent, or medium of communication between the british government and the sikkim rajah; and as such, invested with many discretionary powers. in the course of this narrative, i shall give a sketch of the rise, progress, and prospects of the sanatarium, or health-station of dorjiling, and of the anomalous position held by the sikkim rajah. the latter circumstance led indirectly to the detention of dr. campbell (who joined me in one of my journeys) and myself, by a faction of the sikkim court, for the purpose of obtaining from the indian government a more favourable treaty than that then existing. this mode of enforcing a request by _douce violence_ and detention, is common with the turbulent tribes east of nepal, but was in this instance aggravated by violence towards my fellow-prisoner, through the ill will of the persons who executed the orders of their superiors, and who had been punished by dr. campbell for crimes committed against both the british and nepalese governments. the circumstances of this outrage were misunderstood at the time; its instigators were supposed to be chinese; its perpetrators tibetans; and we the offenders were assumed to have thrust ourselves into the country, without authority from our own government, and contrary to the will of the sikkim rajah; who was imagined to be a tributary of china, and protected by that nation, and to be under no obligation to the east indian government. with regard to the obligations i owe to dr. campbell, i confine myself to saying that his whole aim was to promote my comfort, and to secure my success, in all possible ways. every object i had in view was as sedulously cared for by him as by myself: i am indebted to his influence with jung bahadoor* [it was in nepal that dr. campbell gained the friendship of jung bahadoor, the most remarkable proof of which is the acceding to his request, and granting me leave to visit the eastern parts of his dominions; no european that i am aware of, having been allowed, either before or since, to travel anywhere except to and from the plains of india and valley of katmandu, in which the capital city and british residency are situated.] for the permission to traverse his dominions, and to visit the tibetan passes of nepal. his prudence and patience in negotiating with the sikkim court, enabled me to pursue my investigations in that country. my journal is largely indebted to his varied and extensive knowledge of the people and productions of these regions. in all numerical calculations connected with my observations, i received most essential aid from john muller, esq., accountant of the calcutta mint, and from his brother, charles muller, esq., of patna, both ardent amateurs in scientific pursuits, and who employed themselves in making meteorological observations at dorjiling, where they were recruiting constitutions impaired by the performance of arduous duties in the climate of the plains. i cannot sufficiently thank these gentlemen for the handsome manner in which they volunteered me their assistance in these laborious operations. mr. j. muller resided at dorjiling during eighteen months of my stay in sikkim, over the whole of which period his generous zeal in my service never relaxed; he assisted me in the reduction of many hundreds of my observations for latitude, time, and elevation, besides adjusting and rating my instruments; and i can recall no more pleasant days than those thus spent with these hospitable friends. thanks to dr. falconer's indefatigable exertions, such of my collections as reached calcutta were forwarded to england in excellent order; and they were temporarily deposited in kew gardens until their destination should be determined. on my return home, my scientific friends interested themselves in procuring from the government such aid as might enable me to devote the necessary time to the arrangement, naming, and distributing of my collections, the publication of my manuscripts, etc. i am in this most deeply indebted to the disinterested and generous exertions of mr. l. horner, sir charles lyell, dr. lindley, professor e. forbes, and many others; and most especially to the presidents of the royal society (the earl of rosse), of the linnean (mr. r. brown), and geological (mr. hopkins), who in their official capacities memorialized in person the chief commissioner of woods and forests on this subject; sir william hooker at the same time bringing it under the notice of the first lord of the treasury. the result was a grant of £ annually for three years. dr. t. thomson joined me in dorjiling in the end of , after the completion of his arduous journeys in the north-west himalaya and tibet, and we spent the year in travelling and collecting, returning to england together in . having obtained permission from the indian government to distribute his botanical collections, which equal my own in extent and value, we were advised by all our botanical friends to incorporate, and thus to distribute them. the whole constitute an herbarium of from to species of indian plants, including an immense number of duplicates; and it is now in process of being arranged and named, by dr. thomson and myself, preparatory to its distribution amongst sixty of the principal public and private herbaria in europe, india, and the united states of america. for the information of future travellers, i may state that the total expense of my indian journey, including outfit, three years and a half travelling, and the sending of my collections to calcutta, was under £ (of which £ were defrayed by government), but would have come to much more, had i not enjoyed the great advantages i have detailed. this sum does not include the purchase of books and instruments, with which i supplied myself, and which cost about £ , nor the freight of the collections to england, which was paid by government. owing to the kind services of mr. j. c. melvill, secretary of the india house, many small parcels of seeds, etc., were conveyed to england, free of cost; and i have to record my great obligations and sincere thanks to the peninsular and oriental steam navigation company, for conveying, without charge, all small parcels of books, instruments and specimens, addressed to or by myself. it remains to say something of the illustrations of this work. the maps are from surveys of my own, made chiefly with my own instruments, but partly with some valuable ones for the use of which i am indebted to my friend captain h. thuillier, deputy surveyor-general of india, who placed at my disposal the resources of the magnificent establishment under his control, and to whose innumerable good offices i am very greatly beholden. the landscapes, etc. have been prepared chiefly from my own drawings, and will, i hope, be found to be tolerably faithful representations of the scenes. i have always endeavoured to overcome that tendency to exaggerate heights, and increase the angle of slopes, which is i believe the besetting sin, not of amateurs only, but of our most accomplished artists. as, however, i did not use instruments in projecting the outlines, i do not pretend to have wholly avoided this snare; nor, i regret to say; has the lithographer, in all cases, been content to abide by his copy. my drawings will be considered tame compared with most mountain landscapes, though the subjects comprise some of the grandest scenes in nature. considering how conventional the treatment of such subjects is, and how unanimous artists seem to be as to the propriety of exaggerating those features which should predominate in the landscape, it may fairly be doubted whether the total effect of steepness and elevation, especially in a mountain view, can, on a small scale, be conveyed by a strict adherence to truth. i need hardly add, that if such is attainable, it is only by those who have a power of colouring that few pretend to. in the list of plates and woodcuts i have mentioned the obligations i am under to several friends for the use of drawings, etc. with regard to the spelling of native names, after much anxious discussion i have adopted that which assimilates most to the english pronunciation. for great assistance in this, for a careful revision of the sheets as they passed through the press, and for numerous valuable suggestions throughout, i am indebted to my fellow-traveller, dr. thomas thomson. contents. chapter i. sunderbunds vegetation -- calcutta botanic garden -- leave for burdwan -- rajah's gardens and menagerie -- coal-beds, geology, and plants of -- lac insect and plant -- camels -- kunker -- cowage -- effloresced soda on soil -- glass, manufacture of -- atmospheric vapours -- temperature, etc. -- mahowa oil and spirits -- maddaobund -- jains -- ascent of paras-nath -- vegetation of that mountain. chapter ii. doomree -- vegetation of table-land -- lieutenant beadle -- birds -- hot springs of soorujkoond -- plants near them -- shells in them -- cholera-tree -- olibanum -- palms, form of -- dunwah pass -- trees, native and planted -- wild peacock -- poppy fields -- geography and geology of behar and central india -- toddy-palm -- ground, temperature of -- baroon -- temperature of plants -- lizard -- cross the soane -- sand, ripple-marks on -- kymore hills -- ground, temperature of -- limestone -- rotas fort and palace -- nitrate of lime -- change of climate -- lime stalagmites, enclosing leaves -- fall of soane -- spiders, etc. -- scenery and natural history of upper soane valley -- _hardwickia binata_ -- bhel fruit -- dust-storm -- alligator -- catechu -- _cochlospermum_ -- leaf-bellows -- scorpions -- tortoises -- florican -- limestone spheres -- coles -- tiger-hunt -- robbery. chapter iii. ek-powa ghat -- sandstones -- shahgunj -- table-land, elevation, etc. -- gum-arabic -- mango -- fair -- aquatic plants -- rujubbund -- storm -- false sunset and sunrise -- bind hills -- mirzapore -- manufactures, imports, etc. -- climate -- thuggee -- chunar -- benares -- mosque -- observatory -- sar-nath -- ghazeepore -- rose-gardens -- manufactory of attar -- lord cornwallis' tomb -- ganges, scenery and natural history of -- pelicans -- vegetation -- insects -- dinapore -- patna -- opium godowns and manufacture -- mudar, white and purple -- monghyr islets -- hot springs of seetakoond -- alluvium of ganges -- rocks of sultun-gunj -- bhaugulpore -- temples of mt. manden -- coles and native tribes -- bhaugulpore rangers -- horticultural gardens. chapter iv. leave bhaugulpore -- kunker -- colgong -- himalaya, distant view of -- cosi, mouth of -- difficult navigation -- sand-storms -- caragola-ghat -- purnea -- ortolans -- mahanuddy, transport of pebbles, etc. -- betel-pepper, cultivation of -- titalya -- siligoree -- view of outer himalaya -- terai -- mechis -- punkabaree -- foot of mountains -- ascent to dorjiling -- cicadas -- leeches -- animals -- kursiong, spring vegetation of -- pacheem -- arrive at dorjiling -- dorjiling, origin and settlement of -- grant of land from rajah -- dr. campbell appointed superintendent -- dewan, late and present -- aggressive conduct of the latter -- increase of the station -- trade -- titalya fair -- healthy climate for europeans and children -- invalids, diseases prejudicial to. chapter v. view from mr. hodgson's of range of snowy mountains -- their extent and elevation -- delusive appearance of elevation -- sinchul, view from and vegetation of -- chumulari -- magnolias, white and purple -- _rhododendron dalhousiae, arboreum_ and _argentium_ -- natives of dorjiling -- lepchas, origin, tradition of flood, morals, dress, arms, ornaments, diet -- cups, origin and value -- marriages -- diseases -- burial -- worship and religion -- bijooas -- kumpa rong, or arrat -- limboos, origin, habits, language, etc. -- moormis -- magras -- mechis -- comparison of customs with those of the natives of assam, khasia, etc. chapter vi. excursion from dorjiling to great rungeet -- zones of vegetation -- tree-ferns -- palms, upper limit of -- leebong, tea plantations -- ging -- boodhist remains -- tropical vegetation -- pines -- lepcha clearances -- forest fires -- boodhist monuments -- fig -- cane-bridge and raft over rungeet -- sago-palm -- india-rubber -- yel pote -- butterflies and other insects -- snakes -- camp -- temperature and humidity of atmosphere -- junction of teesta and rungeet -- return to dorjiling -- tonglo, excursion to -- bamboo, flowering -- oaks -- _gordonia_ -- maize, hermaphrodite flowered -- figs -- nettles -- peepsa -- simonbong, cultivation at -- european fruits at dorjiling-plains of india. chapter vii. continue the ascent of tonglo -- trees -- lepcha construction of hut -- simsibong -- climbing-trees -- frogs -- magnolias, etc. -- ticks -- leeches -- cattle, murrain amongst -- summit of tonglo -- rhododendrons -- _skimmia_ -- yew -- rose -- aconite -- bikh poison -- english genera of plants -- ascent of tropical orders -- comparison with south temperate zone -- heavy rain -- temperature, etc. -- descent -- simonbong temple -- furniture therein -- praying-cylinder -- thigh-bone trumpet -- morning orisons -- present of murwa beer, etc. chapter viii. difficulty in procuring leave to enter sikkim -- obtain permission to travel in east nepal -- arrangements -- coolies -- stores -- servants -- personal equipment -- mode of travelling -- leave dorjiling -- goong ridge -- behaviour of bhotan coolies -- nepal frontier -- myong valley -- ilam -- sikkim massacre -- cultivation -- nettles -- camp at nanki on tonglo -- bhotan coolies run away -- view of chumulari -- nepal peaks to west -- sakkiazong -- _buceros_ -- road to wallanchoon -- oaks -- scarcity of water -- singular view of mountain-valleys -- encampment -- my tent and its furniture -- evening occupations -- dunkotah-cross ridge of sakkiazong -- yews -- silver-firs-view of tambur valley -- pemmi river -- pebbly terraces -- geology -- holy springs -- enormous trees -- _luculia gratissima_ -- khawa river, rocks of -- arrive at tambur -- shingle and gravel terraces -- natives, indolence of -- canoe ferry -- votive offerings -- bad road -- temperature, etc. -- chingtam village, view from -- mywa river and guola -- house -- boulders -- chain-bridge -- meepo, arrival of -- fevers. chapter ix. leave mywa -- suspension bridge -- landslips -- vegetation -- slope of river-bed -- bees' nests -- glacial phenomena -- tibetans, clothing, ornaments, amulets, salutation, children, dogs -- last limboo village, taptiatok -- beautiful scenery -- tibet village of lelyp -- _opuntia -- edgeworthia -- crab-apple_ -- chameleon and porcupine -- praying-machine -- _abies brunoniana_ -- european plants -- grand scenery -- arrive at wallanchoon -- scenery around -- trees -- tibet houses -- manis and mendongs -- tibet household -- food -- tea-soup -- hospitality -- yaks and zobo, uses and habits of -- bhoteeas -- yak-hair tents -- guobah of walloong -- jatamansi -- obstacles to proceeding-climate and weather -- proceed -- rhododendrons, etc. -- lichens -- _poa annua_ and shepherd's purse -- tibet camp -- tuquoroma -- scenery of pass -- glaciers and snow -- summit -- plants, woolly, etc. chapter x. return from wallanchoon pass -- procure a bazaar at village -- dance of lamas -- blackening face, tibetan custom of -- temple and convent -- leave for kanglachem pass -- send part of party back to dorjiling -- yangma guola -- drunken tibetans -- guobah of wallanchoon -- camp at foot of great moraine -- view from top -- geological speculations -- height of moraines -- cross dry lake-bed -- glaciers -- more moraines -- terraces -- yangma temples -- jos, books and furniture -- peak of nango -- lake -- arrive at village -- cultivation -- scenery -- potatos -- state of my provisions -- pass through village -- gigantic boulders -- terraces -- wild sheep -- lake-beds -- sun's power -- piles of gravel and detritus -- glaciers and moraines -- pabuk, elevation of -- moonlight scene -- return to yangma -- temperature, etc. -- geological causes of phenomena in valley -- scenery of valley on descent. chapter xi. ascend to nango mountain -- moraines -- glaciers -- vegetation -- _rhododendron hodgsoni_ -- rocks -- honey-combed surface of snow -- perpetual snow -- top of pass -- view -- elevation -- geology -- distance of sound -- plants -- temperature -- scenery -- cliffs of granite and hurled boulders -- camp -- descent -- pheasants -- larch -- himalayan pines -- distribution of deodar, note on -- tassichooding temples -- kambachen village -- cultivation -- moraines in valley, distribution of -- picturesque lake-beds, and their vegetation -- tibetan sheep and goats -- _cryptogramma crispa_ -- ascent to choonjerma pass -- view of junnoo -- rocks of its summit -- misty ocean -- nepal peaks -- top of pass -- temperature, and observations -- gorgeous sunset -- descent to yalloong valley -- loose path -- night scenes -- musk deer. chapter xii. yalloong valley -- find kanglanamo pass closed -- change route for the southward -- _picrorhiza_ -- view of kubra -- _rhododendron falconeri_ -- yalloong river -- junction of gneiss and clay-slate -- cross yalloong range -- yiew -- descent -- yew -- vegetation -- misty weather -- tongdam village -- khabang -- tropical vegetation -- sidingbah mountain -- view of kinchinjunga -- yangyading village -- slopes of hills, and courses of rivers -- khabili valley -- ghorkha havildar's bad conduct -- ascend singalelah -- plague of ticks -- short commons -- cross islumbo pass -- boundary of sikkim -- kulhait valley -- lingcham -- reception by kajee -- hear of dr. campbell's going to meet rajah -- views in valley -- leave for teesta river -- tipsy kajee -- hospitality -- murwa beer -- temples -- _acorus calamus_ -- long mendong -- burning of dead -- superstitions -- cross great rungeet -- boulders, origin of -- purchase of a dog -- marshes -- lamas -- dismiss ghorkhas -- bhoteea house -- murwa beer. chapter xiii. raklang pass -- uses of nettles -- edible plants -- lepcha war -- do-mani stone -- neongong -- teesta valley -- pony, saddle, etc. -- meet campbell -- vegetation and scenery -- presents -- visit of dewan -- characters of rajah and dewan -- accounts of tibet -- lhassa -- siling -- tricks of dewan -- walk up teesta -- audience of rajah -- lamas -- kajees -- tchebu lama, his character and position -- effects of interview -- heir-apparent -- dewan's house -- guitar -- weather -- fall of river -- tibet officers -- gigantic trees -- neongong lake -- mainom, ascent of -- vegetation -- camp on snow -- silver-firs -- view from top -- kinchin, etc. -- geology -- vapours -- sunset effect -- elevation -- temperature, etc. -- lamas of neongong -- temples -- religious festival bamboo, flowering -- recross pass of raklang -- numerous temples, villages, etc. -- domestic animals -- descent to great rungeet. chapter xiv. tassiding, view of and from -- funereal cypress -- camp at sunnook -- hot vapours -- lama's house -- temples, decorations, altars, idols, general effect -- chaits -- date of erection -- plundered by ghorkas -- cross ratong -- ascend to pemiongehi -- relation of river-beds to strike of rocks -- slopes of ravines -- pemiongehi, view of -- vegetation -- elevation -- temple, decorations, etc. -- former capital of sikkim -- history of sikkim -- nightingales -- campbell departs -- tchonpong -- _edgeworthia_ -- cross rungbee and ratong -- hoar-frost on plantains -- yoksun -- walnuts -- view -- funereal cypresses -- doobdi -- gigantic cypresses -- temples -- snow-fall -- sikkim, etc. -- toys. chapter xv. leave yoksun for kinchinjunga -- ascend ratong valley -- salt-smuggling over ratong -- landslips -- plants -- buckeem -- blocks of gneiss -- mon lepcha -- view -- weather -- view from gubroo -- kinchinjunga, tops of -- pundimcliff -- nursing -- vegetation of himalaya -- coup d'oeil of jongri -- route to yalloong -- arduous route of salt-traders from tibet -- kinchin, ascent of -- lichens -- surfaces sculptured by snow and ice -- weather at jongri -- snow -- shades for eyes. chapter xvi. ratong river below mon lepcha -- ferns -- vegetation of yoksun, tropical -- _araliaceae_, fodder for cattle -- rice-paper plant -- geology of yoksun -- lake -- old temples -- funereal cypresses -- gigantic chart -- altars -- songboom -- weather -- catsuperri -- velocity of ratong -- worship at catsuperri lake -- scenery -- willow -- lamas and ecclesiastical establishments of sikkim -- tengling -- changachelling temples and monks -- portrait of myself on walls -- block of mica-schist -- lingcham kajee asks for spectacles -- hee-hill -- arrive at little rungeet -- at dorjiling -- its deserted and wintry appearance. chapter xvii. dispatch collections -- acorns -- heat -- punkabaree -- bees -- vegetation -- haze -- titalya -- earthquake -- proceed to nepal frontier -- terai, geology of -- physical features of himalayan valleys -- elephants, purchase of, etc. -- river-beds -- mechi river -- return to titalya -- leave for teesta -- climate of plains -- jeelpigoree -- cooches -- alteration in the appearance of country by fires, etc. -- grasses -- bamboos -- cottages -- rajah of cooch behar -- condition of people -- hooli festival -- ascend teesta -- canoes -- cranes -- forest -- baikant-pore -- rummai -- religion -- plants at foot of mountains -- exit of teesta -- canoe voyage down to rangamally -- english genera of plants -- birds -- beautiful scenery -- botanizing on elephants -- willow -- siligoree -- cross terai -- geology -- iron -- lohar-ghur -- coal and sandstone beds -- mechi fisherman -- hailstorm -- ascent to kursiong -- to dorjiling -- vegetation -- geology -- folded quartz-beds -- spheres of feldspar -- lime deposits. list of illustrations. lithographic views. fig. i. the dhak, _butea frondosa,_ and _cochlospermum gossypium,_ with the kymore hills in the background. p. fig. ii. view of kinchinjunga from mr. hodgson's bungalow at dorjiling, from a sketch by w. tayler, esq., b.c.s. frontispiece. fig. iii. from chingtam, looking up the tambur valley. p. fig. vi. nango mountain, from the summit of the great moraine in yangma valley, looking eastward. p. fig. v. junnoo mountain from the choonjerma pass. p. wood engravings. fig. . old tamarind trees. p. fig. . crossing the soane river above tura, with the kymore hills in the background. p. fig. . equatorial sun-dial, benares observatory. p. fig. . equinoctial sun-dial, benares observatory. p. fig. . azimuth circle, benares observatory. p. fig. . monghyr on the ganges. p. fig. . punkabaree, sikkim terai, and balasun river. the trees in the foreground are _araliaceae._ p. fig. . lepcha girl and boodhist priest. from a sketch by miss colvile. p. fig. . _pinus longifolia,_ in the great rungeet valley. p. fig. . construction of a cane suspension-bridge. p. fig. . lepcha boy carrying a bamboo water-vessel. from a sketch by miss colvile. p. fig. . amulet usually worn by lepchas. p. fig. . trunk-like root of _wightia gigantea,_ ascending a tree, which its stout rootlets clasp. p. fig. . interior of boodhist temple at simonbong. p. fig. . trumpet made of a human thigh-bone. p. fig. . tibetan amulet set with turquoises. p. fig. . head of tibet mastiff. from a sketch taken in the zoological gardens by c. jenyns, esq. p. fig. . view on the tambur river, with _ambies brunoniana_. p. fig. . wallanchoon village, east nepal. p. fig. . head of a tibetan demon. from a model in the possession of captain h. strachey. p. fig. . ancient moraines surrounding the lower lake-bed in the yangma valley (looking west). p. fig. . second lake-bed in the yangma valley, with nango mountain, (looking east). p. fig. . diagram of the terraces and glacial boulders, etc., at the fork of the yangma valley (looking north-west up the valley). the terraces are represented as much too level and angular, and the boulders too large, the woodcut being intended as a diagram rather than as a view. p. fig. . view of the head of the yangma valley, and ancient moraines of debris, which rise in confused hills several hundred feet above the floor of the valley below the kanglachem pass (elevation , feet). p. fig. . skulls of _ovis ammon._ sketched by j. e. winterbottom, esq. p. fig. . ancient moraines, in which small lake-beds occur, in the kambachen valley (elevation , feet). p. fig. . brass box to contain amulets, from tibet. p. fig. . pemiongchi goompa (or temple) with chaits in the foreground. p. fig. . costumes of sikkim lamas and monks, with the bell, mani, dobje, and trident. p. fig. . the do-mani stone, with gigantic tibetan characters. p. fig. . implements of worship in the sikkim temples. p. fig. . chaits at tassiding, with decayed funereal cypresses. p. fig. . vestibule of temple at tassiding. p. fig. . southern temple, at tassiding. p. fig. . middle temple, at tassiding, with mounted yaks. p. fig. . chair, altar, and images in the great temple at tassiding. p. fig. . ground-plan of southern temple at tassiding. p. fig. . interior of temple at pemiongchi, the walls covered with allegorical paintings. p. fig. . doobdi temple, with young and old funereal cypress. p. fig. . summit of kinchinjunga, with pundim on the right; its black cliff traversed by white granite veins. p. fig. . image of maitrya, the coming boodh. p. fig. . stone altar, and erection for burning juniper ashes. p. fig. . facsimile of the vermilion seal of the dhurma rajah of bhotan, head of the dookpa sect of boodhists. opposite p. fig. . a mech, native of the sikkim terai. sketched by miss colvile. p. fig. . mech pocket-comb (of wood). p. himalayan journals. chapter i. sunderbunds vegetation -- calcutta botanic garden -- leave for burdwan -- rajah's gardens and menagerie -- coal-beds, geology, and plants of -- lac insect and plant -- camels -- kunker -- cowage -- effloresced soda on soil -- glass, manufacture of -- atmospheric vapours -- temperature, etc. -- mahowa oil and spirits -- maddaobund -- jains -- ascent of paras-nath -- vegetation of that mountain. i left england on the th of november, , and performed the voyage to india under circumstances which have been detailed in the introduction. on the th of january, , the "moozuffer" was steaming amongst the low swampy islands of the sunderbunds. these exhibit no tropical luxuriance, and are, in this respect, exceedingly disappointing. a low vegetation covers them, chiefly made up of a dwarf-palm (_phoenix paludosa_) and small mangroves, with a few scattered trees on the higher bank that runs along the water's edge, consisting of fan-palm, toddy-palm, and _terminalia._ every now and then, the paddles of the steamer tossed up the large fruits of _nipa fruticans,_ a low stemless palm that grows in the tidal waters of the indian ocean, and bears a large head of nuts. it is a plant of no interest to the common observer, but of much to the geologist, from the nuts of a similar plant abounding in the tertiary formations at the mouth of the thames, and having floated about there in as great profusion as here, till buried deep in the silt and mud that now forms the island of sheppey.* [bowerbank "on the fossil fruits and seeds of the isle of sheppey," and lyell's "elements of geology," rd ed. p. .] higher up, the river hoogly is entered, and large trees, with villages and cultivation, replace the sandy spits and marshy jungles of the great gangetic delta. a few miles below calcutta, the scenery becomes beautiful, beginning with the botanic garden, once the residence of roxburgh and wallich, and now of falconer,--classical ground to the naturalist. opposite are the gardens of sir lawrence peel; unrivalled in india for their beauty and cultivation, and fairly entitled to be called the chatsworth of bengal. a little higher up, calcutta opened out, with the batteries of fort william in the foreground, thundering forth a salute, and in a few minutes more all other thoughts were absorbed in watching the splendour of the arrangements made for the reception of the governor-general of india. during my short stay in calcutta, i was principally occupied in preparing for an excursion with mr. williams of the geological survey, who was about to move his camp from the damooda valley coal-fields, near burdwan, to beejaghur on the banks of the soane, where coal was reported to exist, in the immediate vicinity of water-carriage, the great desideratum of the burdwan fields. my time was spent partly at government-house, and partly at sir lawrence peel's residence. the former i was kindly invited to consider as my indian home, an honour which i appreciate the more highly, as the invitation was accompanied with the assurance that i should have entire freedom to follow my own pursuits; and the advantages which such a position afforded me, were, i need not say, of no ordinary kind. at the botanic gardens i received every assistance from dr. mclelland,* [dr. falconer's _locum tenens,_ then in temporary charge of the establishment.] who was very busy, superintending the publication of the botanical papers and drawings of his friend, the late dr. griffith, for which native artists were preparing copies on lithographic paper. of the gardens themselves it is exceedingly difficult to speak; the changes had been so very great, and from a state with which i had no acquaintance. there had been a great want of judgment in the alterations made since dr. wallich's time, when they were celebrated as the most beautiful gardens in the east, and were the great object of attraction to strangers and townspeople. i found instead an unsightly wilderness, without shade (the first requirement of every tropical garden) or other beauties than some isolated grand trees, which had survived the indiscriminate destruction of the useful and ornamental which had attended the well-meant but ill-judged attempt to render a garden a botanical class-book. it is impossible to praise too highly dr. griffith's abilities and acquirements as a botanist, his perseverance and success as a traveller, or his matchless industry in the field and in the closet; and it is not wonderful, that, with so many and varied talents, he should have wanted the eye of a landscape-gardener, or the education of a horticulturist. i should, however, be wanting in my duty to his predecessor, and to his no less illustrious successor, were these remarks withheld, proceeding, as they do, from an unbiassed observer, who had the honour of standing in an equally friendly relation to all parties. before leaving india, i saw great improvements, but many years must elapse before the gardens can resume their once proud pre-eminence. i was surprised to find the botanical gardens looked upon by many of the indian public, and even by some of the better informed official men, as rather an extravagant establishment, more ornamental than useful. these persons seemed astonished to learn that its name was renowned throughout europe, and that during the first twenty years especially of dr. wallich's superintendence, it had contributed more useful and ornamental tropical plants to the public and private gardens of the world than any other establishment before or since.* [as an illustration of this, i may refer to a report presented to the government of bengal, from which it appears that between january, , and december, , , plants were distributed gratis to nearly different gardens.] i speak from a personal knowledge of the contents of our english gardens, and our colonial ones at the cape, and in australia, and from an inspection of the ponderous volumes of distribution lists, to which dr. falconer is daily adding. the botanical public of europe and india is no less indebted than the horticultural to the liberality of the hon. east india company, and to the energy of the several eminent men who have carried their views into execution.* [i here allude to the great indian herbarium, chiefly formed by the staff of the botanic gardens under the direction of dr. wallich, and distributed in to the principal museums of europe. this is the most valuable contribution of the kind ever made to science, and it is a lasting memorial: of the princely liberality of the enlightened men who ruled the counsels of india in those days. no botanical work of importance has been published since , without recording its sense of the obligation, and i was once commissioned by a foreign government, to purchase for its national museum, at whatever cost, one set of these collections, which was brought to the hammer on the death of its possessor. i have heard it remarked that the expense attending the distribution was enormous, and i have reason to know that this erroneous impression has had an unfavourable influence upon the destination of scarcely less valuable collections, which have for years been lying untouched in the cellars of the india house. i may add that officers who have exposed their lives and impaired their health in forming similar ones at the orders and expense of the indian government, are at home, and thrown upon their own resources, or the assistance of their scientific brethren, for the means of publishing and distributing the fruits of their labours.] the indian government, itself, has already profited largely by these gardens, directly and indirectly, and might have done so still more, had its efforts been better seconded either by the european or native population of the country. amongst its greatest triumphs may be considered the introduction of the tea-plant from china, a fact i allude to, as many of my english readers may not be aware that the establishment of the tea-trade in the himalaya and assam is almost entirely the work of the superintendents of the gardens of calcutta and seharunpore. from no one did i receive more kindness than from sir james colvile, president of the asiatic society, who not only took care that i should be provided with every comfort, but presented me with a completely equipped palkee, which, for strength and excellence of construction, was everything that a traveller could desire. often _en route_ did i mentally thank him when i saw other palkees breaking down, and travellers bewailing the loss of those forgotten necessaries, with which his kind attention had furnished me. i left calcutta to join mr. williams' camp on the th of january, driving to hoogly on the river of that name, and thence following the grand trunk-road westward towards burdwan. the novelty of palkee-travelling at first renders it pleasant; the neatness with which every thing is packed, the good-humour of the bearers, their merry pace, and the many more comforts enjoyed than could be expected in a conveyance _horsed by men_, the warmth when the sliding doors are shut, and the breeze when they are open, are all fully appreciated on first starting, but soon the novelty wears off, and the discomforts are so numerous, that it is pronounced, at best, a barbarous conveyance. the greedy cry and gestures of the bearers, when, on changing, they break a fitful sleep by poking a torch in your face, and vociferating "bucksheesh, sahib;" their discontent at the most liberal largesse, and the sluggishness of the next set who want bribes, put the traveller out of patience with the natives. the dust when the slides are open, and the stifling heat when shut during a shower, are conclusive against the vehicle, and on getting out with aching bones and giddy head at the journey's end, i shook the dust from my person, and wished never to see a palkee again. on the following morning i was passing through the straggling villages close to burdwan, consisting of native hovels by the road side, with mangos and figs planted near them, and palms waving over their roofs. crossing the nearly dry bed of the damooda, i was set down at mr. m'intosh's (the magistrate of the district), and never more thoroughly enjoyed a hearty welcome and a breakfast. in the evening we visited the rajah of burdwan's palace and pleasure-grounds, where i had the first glimpse of oriental gardening: the roads were generally raised, running through rice fields, now dry and hard, and bordered with trees of jack, bamboo, _melia, casuarina,_ etc. tanks were the prominent features: chains of them, full of indian water-lilies, being fringed with rows of the fan-palm, and occasionally the indian date. close to the house was a rather good menagerie, where i saw, amongst other animals, a pair of kangaroos in high health and condition, the female with young in her pouch. before dark i was again in my palkee, and hurrying onwards. the night was cool and clear, very different from the damp and foggy atmosphere i had left at calcutta. on the following morning i was travelling over a flat and apparently rising country, along an excellent road, with groves of bamboos and stunted trees on either hand, few villages or palms, a sterile soil, with stunted grass and but little cultivation; altogether a country as unlike what i had expected to find in india as well might be. all around was a dead flat or table-land, out of which a few conical hills rose in the west, about feet high, covered with a low forest of dusky green or yellow, from the prevalence of bamboo. the lark was singing merrily at sunrise, and the accessories of a fresh air and dewy grass more reminded me of some moorland in the north of england than of the torrid regions of the east. at p.m. i arrived at mr. williams' camp, at taldangah, a dawk station near the western limit of the coal basin of the damooda valley. his operations being finished, he was prepared to start, having kindly waited a couple of days for my arrival. early on the morning of the last day of january, a motley group of natives were busy striking the tents, and loading the bullocks, bullock-carts and elephants: these proceeded on the march, occupying in straggling groups nearly three miles of road, whilst we remained to breakfast with mr. f. watkins, superintendent of the east india coal and coke company, who were working the seams. the coal crops out at the surface; but the shafts worked are sunk through thick beds of alluvium. the age of these coal-fields is quite unknown, and i regret to say that my examination of their fossil plants throws no material light on the subject. upwards of thirty species of fossil plants have been procured from them, and of these the majority are referred by dr. mclelland* [reports of the geological survey of india. calcutta, .] to the inferior oolite epoch of england, from the prevalence of species of _zamia, glossopteris,_ and _taeniopteris._ some of these genera, together with _vertebraria_ (a very remarkable indian fossil), are also recognised in the coal-fields of sind and of australia. i cannot, however, think that botanical evidence of such a nature is sufficient to warrant a satisfactory reference of these indian coal-fields to the same epoch as those of england or of australia; in the first place the outlines of the fronds of ferns and their nervation are frail characters if employed alone for the determination of existing genera, and much more so of fossil fragments: in the second place recent ferns are so widely distributed, that an inspection of the majority affords little clue to the region or locality they come from: and in the third place, considering the wide difference in latitude and longitude of yorkshire, india, and australia, the natural conclusion is that they could not have supported a similar vegetation at the same epoch. in fact, finding similar fossil plants at places widely different in latitude, and hence in climate, is, in the present state of our knowledge, rather an argument against than for their having existed cotemporaneously. the _cycadeae,_ especially, whose fossil remains afford so much ground for geological speculations, are far from yielding such precise data as is supposed. species of the order are found in mexico, south africa, australia, and india, some inhabiting the hottest and dampest, and others the driest climates on the surface of the globe; and it appears to me rash to argue much from the presence of the order in the coal of yorkshire and india, when we reflect that the geologist of some future epoch may find as good reasons for referring the present cape, australian, or mexican flora to the same period as that of the lias and oolites, when the _cycadeae_ now living in the former countries shall be fossilised. specific identity of their contained fossils may be considered as fair evidence of the cotemporaneous origin of beds, but amongst the many collections of fossil plants that i have examined, there is hardly a specimen, belonging to any epoch, sufficiently perfect to warrant the assumption that the species to which it belonged can be again recognised. the botanical evidences which geologists too often accept as proofs of specific identity are such as no botanist would attach any importance to in the investigation of existing plants. the faintest traces assumed to be of vegetable origin are habitually made into genera and species by naturalists ignorant of the structure, affinities and distribution of living plants, and of such materials the bulk of so-called systems of fossil plants is composed. a number of women were here employed in making gunpowder, grinding the usual materials on a stone, with the addition of water from the hookah; a custom for which they have an obstinate prejudice. the charcoal here used is made from an _acacia_: the seiks, i believe, employ _justicia adhatoda,_ which is also in use all over india: at aden the arabs prefer the _calotropis_, probably because it is most easily procured. the grain of all these plants is open, whereas in england, closer-grained and more woody trees, especially willows, are preferred. the jungle i found to consist chiefly of thorny bushes, jujube of two species, an _acacia_ and _butea frondosa,_ the twigs of the latter often covered with lurid red tears of lac, which is here collected in abundance. as it occurs on the plants and is collected by the natives it is called stick-lac, but after preparation shell-lac. in mirzapore, a species of _celtis_ yields it, and the peepul very commonly in various parts of india. the elaboration of this dye, whether by the same species of insect, or by many from plants so widely different in habit and characters, is a very curious fact; since none have red juice, but some have milky and others limpid. after breakfast, mr. williams and i started on an elephant, following the camp to gyra, twelve miles distant. the docility of these animals is an old story, but it loses so much in the telling, that their gentleness, obedience, and sagacity seemed as strange to me as if i had never heard or read of these attributes. the swinging motion, under a hot sun, is very oppressive, but compensated for by being so high above the dust. the mahout, or driver, guides by poking his great toes under either ear, enforcing obedience with an iron goad, with which he hammers the animal's head with quite as much force as would break a cocoa-nut, or drives it through his thick skin down to the quick. a most disagreeable sight it is, to see the blood and yellow fat oozing out in the broiling sun from these great punctures! our elephant was an excellent one, when he did not take obstinate fits, and so docile as to pick up pieces of stone when desired, and with a jerk of the trunk throw them over his head for the rider to catch, thus saving the trouble of dismounting to geologise! of sights on the road, unfrequented though this noble line is, there were plenty for a stranger; chiefly pilgrims to juggernath, most on foot, and a few in carts or pony gigs of rude construction. the vehicles from the upper country are distinguished by a far superior build, their horses are caparisoned with jingling bells, and the wheels and other parts are bound with brass. the kindness of the people towards animals, and in some cases towards their suffering relations, is very remarkable, and may in part have given origin to the prevalent idea that they are less cruel and stern than the majority of mankind; but that the "mild" hindoo, however gentle on occasion, is cruel and vindictive to his brother man and to animals, when his indolent temper is roused or his avarice stimulated, no one can doubt who reads the accounts of thuggee, dacoitee, and poisoning, and witnesses the cruelty with which beasts of burthen are treated. a child carrying a bird, kid, or lamb, is not an uncommon sight, and a woman with a dog in her arms is still more frequently seen. occasionally too, a group will bear an old man to see juggernath before he dies, or a poor creature with elephantiasis, who hopes to be allowed to hurry himself to his paradise, in preference to lingering in helpless inactivity, and at last crawling up to the second heaven only. the costumes are as various as the religious castes, and the many countries to which the travellers belong. next in wealth to the merchants, the most thriving-looking wanderer is the bearer of ganges' holy water, who drives a profitable trade, his gains increasing as his load lightens, for the further he wanders from the sacred stream, the more he gets for the contents of his jar. of merchandise we passed very little, the ganges being still the high road between north-west india and bengal. occasionally a string of camels was seen, but, owing to the damp climate, these are rare, and unknown east of the meridian of calcutta. a little cotton, clumsily packed in ragged bags, dirty, and deteriorating every day, even at this dry season, proves in how bad a state it must arrive at the market during the rains, when the low wagons are dragged through the streams. the roads here are all mended with a curious stone, called kunker, which is a nodular concretionary deposit of limestone, abundantly imbedded in the alluvial soil of a great part of india.* [often occurring in strata, like flints.] it resembles a coarse gravel, each pebble being often as large as a walnut, and tuberculated on the surface: it binds admirably, and forms excellent roads, but pulverises into a most disagreeable impalpable dust. a few miles beyond taldangah we passed from the sandstone, in which the coal lies, to a very barren country of gneiss and granite rocks, upon which the former rests; the country still rising, more hills appear, and towering far above all is paras-nath, the culminant point, and a mountain whose botany i was most anxious to explore. the vegetation of this part of the country is very poor, no good-sized trees are to be seen, all is a low stunted jungle. the grasses were few, and dried up, except in the beds of the rivulets. on the low jungly hills the same plants appear, with a few figs, bamboo in great abundance, several handsome _acanthaceae_; a few _asclepiadeae_ climbing up the bushes; and the cowage plant, now with over-ripe pods, by shaking which, in passing, there often falls such a shower of its irritating microscopic hairs, as to make the skin tingle for an hour. on the st of february, we moved on to gyra, another insignificant village. the air was cool, and the atmosphere clear. the temperature, at three in the morning, was degrees, with no dew, the grass only degrees°. as the sun rose, parasnath appeared against the clear grey sky, in the form of a beautiful broad cone, with a rugged peak, of a deeper grey than the sky. it is a remarkably handsome mountain, sufficiently lofty to be imposing, rising out of an elevated country, the slope of which, upward to the base of the mountain, though imperceptible, is really considerable; and it is surrounded by lesser hills of just sufficient elevation to set it off. the atmosphere, too, of these regions is peculiarly favourable for views: it is very dry at this season; but still the hills are clearly defined, without the harsh outlines so characteristic of a moist air. the skies are bright, the sun powerful; and there is an almost imperceptible haze that seems to soften the landscape, and keep every object in true perspective. our route led towards the picturesque hills and values in front. the rocks were all hornblende and micaceous schist, cut through by trap-dykes, while great crumbling masses (or bosses) of quartz protruded through the soil. the stratified rocks were often exposed, pitched up at various inclinations: they were frequently white with effloresced salts, which entering largely into the composition tended to hasten their decomposition, and being obnoxious to vegetation, rendered the sterile soil more hungry still. there was little cultivation, and that little of the most wretched kind; even rice-fields were few and scattered; there was no corn, or gram (_ervum lens_), no castor-oil, no poppy, cotton, safflower, or other crops of the richer soils that flank the ganges and hoogly; a very little sugar-cane, dhal (_cajana_), mustard, linseed, and rape, the latter three cultivated for their oil. hardly a palm was to be seen; and it was seldom that the cottages could boast of a banana, tamarind, orange, cocoa-nut or date. the mahowa (_bassia latifolia_) and mango were the commonest trees. there being no kunker in the soil here, the roads were mended with angular quartz, much to the elephants' annoyance. we dismounted where some very micaceous stratified rock cropped out, powdered with a saline efflorescence.* [an impure carbonate of soda. this earth is thrown into clay vessels with water, which after dissolving the soda, is allowed to evaporate, when the remainder is collected, and found to contain so much silica, as to be capable of being fused into glass. dr. boyle mentions this curious fact (essay on the arts and manufactures of india, read before the society of arts, february , ), in illustration of the probably early epoch at which the natives of british india were acquainted with the art of making glass. more complicated processes are employed, and have been from a very early period, in other parts of the continent.] jujubes (_zizyphus_) prevailed, with the _carissa carandas_ (in fruit), a shrub belonging to the usually poisonous family of dog-banes (_apocyneae_); its berries make good tarts, and the plant itself forms tolerable hedges. the country around fitcoree is rather pretty, the hills covered with bamboo and brushwood, and as usual, rising rather suddenly from the elevated plains. the jungle affords shelter to a few bears and tigers, jackals in abundance, and occasionally foxes; the birds seen are chiefly pigeons. insects are very scarce; those of the locust tribe being most prevalent, indicative of a dry climate. the temperature at a.m.. was degrees; at p.m. degrees; and at p.m., degrees, from which there was no great variation during the whole time we spent at these elevations. the clouds were rare, and always light and high, except a little fleecy spot of vapour condensed close to the summit of paras-nath. though the nights were clear and starlight, no dew was deposited, owing to the great dryness of the air. on one occasion, this drought was so great during the passage of a hot wind, that at night i observed the wet-bulb thermometer to stand . degrees below the temperature of the air, which was degrees; this indicated a dew-point of . degrees, or . degrees below the air, and a saturation-point of . ; there being only . grains of vapour per cubic foot of air, which latter was loaded with dust. the little moisture suspended in the atmosphere is often seen to be condensed in a thin belt of vapour, at a considerable distance above the dry surface of the earth, thus intercepting the radiation of heat from the latter to the clear sky above. such strata may be observed, crossing the hills in ribbonlike masses, though not so clearly on this elevated region as on the plains bounding the lower course of the soane, where the vapour is more dense, the hills more scattered, and the whole atmosphere more humid. during the ten days i spent amongst the hills i saw but one cloudy sunrise, whereas below, whether at calcutta, or on the banks of the soane, the sun always rose behind a dense fog-bank. at . a.m. the black-bulb thermometer rose in the sun to degrees. the morning observation before or a..m. always gives a higher result than at noon, though the sun's declination is so considerably less, and in the hottest part of the day it is lower still ( . p.m. degrees), an effect no doubt due to the vapours raised by the sun, and which equally interfere with the photometer observations. the n.w. winds invariably rise at about a.m. and blow with increasing strength till sunset; they are due to the rarefaction of the air over the heated ground, and being loaded with dust, the temperature of the atmosphere is hence raised by the heated particles. the increased temperature of the afternoon is therefore not so much due to the accumulation of caloric from the sun's rays, as to the passage of a heated current of air derived from the much hotter regions to the westward. it would be interesting to know how far this n.w. diurnal tide extends; also the rate at which it gathers moisture in its progress over the damp regions of the sunderbunds. its excessive dryness in n.w. india approaches that of the african and australian deserts; and i shall give an abstract of my own observations, both in the vallies of the soane and ganges, and on the elevated plateaus of behar and of mirzapore.* [see appendix a.] on the nd of february we proceeded to tofe-choney, the hills increasing in height to nearly feet, and the country becoming more picturesque. we passed some tanks covered with _villarsia_, and frequented by flocks of white egrets. the existence of artificial tanks so near a lofty mountain, from whose sides innumerable water-courses descend, indicates the great natural dryness of the country during one season of the year. the hills and vallies were richer than i expected, though far from luxuriant. a fine _nauclea_ is a common shady tree, and _bignonia indica_, now leafless, but with immense pods hanging from the branches. _acanthaceae_ is the prevalent natural order, consisting of gay-flowered _eranthemums, ruellias, barlerias,_ and such hothouse favourites.* [other plants gathered here, and very typical of the flora of this dry region, were _linum trigynum, feronia elephantum, aegle marmelos, helicteres asoca, abrus precatorius, flemingia_; various _desmodia, rhynchosiae, glycine,_ and _grislea tomentosa_ very abundant, _conocarpus latifoliusa, loranthus longiflorus,_ and another species; _phyllanthus emblica,_ various _convolvuli, cuscuta,_ and several herbaceous _compositae._] this being the most convenient station whence to ascend paras-nath, we started at a.m. for the village of maddaobund, at the north base of the mountain, or opposite side from that on which the grand trunk-road runs. after following the latter for a few miles to the west, we took a path through beautifully wooded plains, with scattered trees of the mahowa (_bassia latifolia_), resembling good oaks: the natives distil a kind of arrack from its fleshy flowers, which are also eaten raw. the seeds, too, yield a concrete oil, by expression, which is used for lamps and occasionally for frying. some villages at the west base of the mountain occupy a better soil, and are surrounded with richer cultivation; palms, mangos, and the tamarind, the first and last rare features in this part of bengal, appeared to be common, with fields of rice and broad acres of flax and rape, through the latter of which the blue _orobanche indica_ swarmed. the short route to maddaobund, through narrow rocky vallies, was impracticable for the elephants, and we had to make a very considerable detour, only reaching that village at p.m. all the hill people we observed were a fine-looking athletic race; they disclaimed the tiger being a neighbour, which every palkee-bearer along the road declares to carry off the torch-bearers, torch and all. bears they said were scarce, and all other wild animals, but a natural jealousy of europeans often leads the natives to deny the existence of what they know to be an attraction to the proverbially sporting englishman. illustration - old tamarind trees. the site of maddaobund, elevated feet, in a clearance of the forest, and the appearance of the snow-white domes and bannerets of its temples through the fine trees by which it is surrounded, are very beautiful. though several hundred feet above any point we had hitherto reached, the situation is so sheltered that the tamarind, peepul, and banyan trees are superb. a fine specimen of the latter stands at the entrance to the village, not a broadheaded tree, as is usual in the prime of its existence, but a mass of trunks irregularly throwing out immense branches in a most picturesque manner; the original trunk is apparently gone, and the principal mass of root stems is fenced in. this, with two magnificent tamarinds, forms a grand clump. the ascent of the mountain is immediately from the village up a pathway worn by the feet of many a pilgrim from the most remote parts of india. paras-nath is a mountain of peculiar sanctity, to which circumstance is to be attributed the flourishing state of maddaobund. the name is that of the twenty-third incarnation of jinna (sanscrit "conqueror"), who was born at benares, lived one hundred years, and was buried on this mountain, which is the eastern metropolis of jain worship, as mount aboo is the western (where are their libraries and most splendid temples). the origin of the jain sect is obscure, though its rise appears to correspond with the wreck of boodhism throughout india in the eleventh century. the jains form in some sort a transition-sect between boodhists and hindoos, differing from the former in acknowledging castes, and from both in their worship of paras-nath's foot, instead of that of munja-gosha of the boodhs, or vishnoo's of the hindoos. as a sect of boodhists their religion is considered pure, and free from the obscenities so conspicuous in hindoo worship; whilst, in fact, perhaps the reverse is the case; but the symbols are fewer, and indeed almost confined to the feet of paras-nath, and the priests jealously conceal their esoteric doctrines. the temples, though small, are well built, and carefully kept. no persuasion could induce the brahmins to allow us to proceed beyond the vestibule without taking off our shoes, to which we were not inclined to consent. the bazaar was for so small a village large, and crowded to excess with natives of all castes, colours, and provinces of india, very many from the extreme w. and n.w., rajpootana, the madras presidency, and central india. numbers had come in good cars, well attended, and appeared men of wealth and consequence; while the quantities of conveyances of all sorts standing about, rather reminded me of an election, than of anything i had seen in india. the natives of the place were a more negro-looking race than the bengalees to whom i had previously been accustomed; and the curiosity and astonishment they displayed at seeing (probably many of them for the first time) a party of englishmen, were sufficiently amusing. our coolies with provisions not having come up, and it being two o'clock in the afternoon, i having had no breakfast, and being ignorant of the exclusively jain population of the village, sent my servant to the bazaar, for some fowls and eggs; but he was mobbed for asking for these articles, and parched rice, beaten flat, with some coarse sugar, was all i could obtain; together with sweetmeats so odiously flavoured with various herbs, and sullied with such impurities, that we quickly made them over to the elephants. not being able to ascend the mountain and return in one day, mr. williams and his party went back to the road, leaving mr. haddon and myself, who took up our quarters under a tamarind-tree. in the evening a very gaudy poojah was performed. the car, filled with idols, was covered with gilding and silk, and drawn by noble bulls, festooned and garlanded. a procession was formed in front; and it opened into an avenue, up and down which gaily dressed dancing-boys paced or danced, shaking castanets, the attendant worshippers singing in discordant voices, beating tom-toms, cymbals, etc. images (of boodh apparently) abounded on the car, in front of which a child was placed. the throng of natives was very great and perfectly orderly, indeed, sufficiently apathetic: they were remarkably civil in explaining what they understood of their own worship. at p.m., the thermometer was only degrees, though the day was fine, a strong haze obstructing the sun's rays; at p.m., degrees; at p.m., degrees, and the grass cooled to degrees. still there was no dew, though the night was starlight. having provided doolies, or little bamboo chairs slung on four men's shoulders, in which i put my papers and boxes, we next morning commenced the ascent; at first through woods of the common trees, with large clumps of bamboo, over slaty rocks of gneiss, much inclined and sloping away from the mountain. the view from a ridge feet high was superb, of the village, and its white domes half buried in the forest below, the latter of which continued in sight for many miles to the northward. descending to a valley some ferns were met with, and a more luxuriant vegetation, especially of _urticeae._ wild bananas formed a beautiful, and to me novel feature in the woods. the conical hills of the white ants were very abundant. the structure appears to me not an independent one, but the debris of clumps of bamboos, or of the trunks of large trees, which these insects have destroyed. as they work up a tree from the ground, they coat the bark with particles of sand glued together, carrying up this artificial sheath or covered way as they ascend. a clump of bamboos is thus speedily killed; when the dead stems fall away, leaving the mass of stumps coated with sand, which the action of the weather soon fashions into a cone of earthy matter. ascending again, the path strikes up the hill, through a thick forest of sal (_vateria robusta_) and other trees, spanned with cables of scandent _bauhinia_ stems. at about feet above the sea, the vegetation becomes more luxuriant, and by a little stream i collected five species of ferns and some mosses,--all in a dry state, however. still higher, _clematis, thalictrum,_ and an increased number of grasses are seen; with bushes of _verbenaceae_ and _compositae._ the white ant apparently does not enter this cooler region. at feet the vegetation again changes, the trees all become gnarled and scattered; and as the dampness also increases, more mosses and ferns appear. we emerged from the forest at the foot of the great ridge of rocky peaks, stretching e. and w. three or four miles. abundance of a species of berberry and an _osbeckia_ marked the change in the vegetation most decidedly, and were frequent over the whole summit, with coarse grasses, and various bushes. at noon we reached the saddle of the crest (alt. feet), where was a small temple, one of five or six which occupy various prominences of the ridge. the wind, n.w., was cold, the temp. degrees. the view was beautiful, but the atmosphere too hazy: to the north were ranges of low wooded hills, and the course of the barakah and adji rivers; to the south lay a flatter country, with lower ranges, and the damooda river, its all but waterless bed snowy-white from the exposed granite blocks with which its course is strewn. east and west the several sharp ridges of the mountain itself are seen; the western considerably the highest. immediately below, the mountain flanks appear clothed with impenetrable forest, here and there interrupted by rocky eminences; while to the north the grand trunk road shoots across the plains, like a white thread, as straight as an arrow, spanning here and there the beds of the mountain torrents. on the south side the vegetation was more luxuriant than on the north, though, from the heat of the sun, the reverse might have been expected. this is owing partly to the curve taken by the ridge being open to the south, and partly to the winds from that quarter being the moist ones. accordingly, trees which i had left feet below in the north ascent, here ascended to near the summit, such as figs and bananas. a short-stemmed palm (_phoenix_) was tolerably abundant, and a small tree (_pterospermum_) on which a species of grass grew epiphytically; forming a curious feature in the landscape. the situation of the principal temple is very fine, below the saddle in a hollow facing the south, surrounded by jungles of plantain and banyan. it is small, and contains little worthy of notice but the sculptured feet of paras-nath, and some marble boodh idols; cross-legged figures with crisp hair and the brahminical cord. these, a leper covered with ashes in the vestibule, and an officiating priest, were all we saw. pilgrims were seen on various parts of the mountain in very considerable numbers, passing from one temple to another, and generally leaving a few grains of dry rice at each; the rich and lame were carried in chairs, the poorer walked. the culminant rocks are very dry, but in the rains may possess many curious plants; a fine _kalanchoe_ was common, with the berberry, a beautiful _indigofera,_ and various other shrubs; a _bolbophyllum_ grew on the rocks, with a small _begonia,_ and some ferns. there were no birds, and very few insects, a beautiful small _pontia_ being the only butterfly. the striped squirrel was very busy amongst the rocks; and i saw a few mice, and the traces of bears. at p.m., the temperature was degrees, and the air deliciously cool and pleasant. i tried to reach the western peak (perhaps feet above the saddle), by keeping along the ridge, but was cut off by precipices, and ere i could retrace my steps it was time to descend. this i was glad to do in a doolie, and i was carried to the bottom, with only one short rest, in an hour and three quarters. the descent was very steep the whole way, partly down steps of sharp rock, where one of the men cut his foot severely. the pathway at the bottom was lined for nearly a quarter of a mile with sick, halt, maimed, lame, and blind beggars, awaiting our descent. it was truly a fearful sight, especially the lepers, and numerous unhappy victims to elephantiasis. though the botany of paras-nath proved interesting, its elevation was not accompanied by such a change from the flora of its base as i had expected. this is no doubt due to its dry climate and sterile soil; characters which it shares with the extensive elevated area of which it forms a part, and upon which i could not detect above species of plants during my journey. yet, that the atmosphere at the summit is more damp as well as cooler than at the base, is proved as well by the observations as by the vegetation;* [of plants eminently typical of a moister atmosphere, i may mention the genera _bolbophyllum, begonia, aeginetia, disporum, roxburghia, panax, eugenia, myrsine, shorea, millettia,_ ferns, mosses, and foliaceous lichens; which appeared in strange association with such dry-climate genera as _kalanchoe, pterospermum,_ and the dwarf-palm, _phoenix._ add to this list the _berberis asiatica, clematis nutans, thalictrum glyphocarpum,_ grasses, _cardamine,_ etc., and the mountain top presents a mixture of the plants of a damp hot, a dry hot, and of a temperate climate, in fairly balanced proportions. the prime elements of a tropical flora were however wholly wanting on paras-nath, where are neither peppers, _pothos, arum,_ tall or climbing palms, tree-ferns, _guttiferae,_ vines, or laurels.] and in some respects, as the increased proportion of ferns, additional epiphytal orchideous plants, _begonias,_ and other species showed, its top supported a more tropical flora than its base. chapter ii. doomree -- vegetation of table-land -- lieutenant beadle -- birds -- hot springs of soorujkoond -- plants near them -- shells in them -- cholera-tree -- olibanum -- palms, form of -- dunwah pass -- trees, native and planted -- wild peacock -- poppy fields -- geography and geology of behar and central india -- toddy-palm -- ground, temperature of -- barroon -- temperature of plants -- lizard -- cross the soane -- sand, ripple marks on -- kymore hills -- ground, temperature of -- limestone -- rotas fort and palace -- nitrate of lime -- change of climate -- lime stalagmites, enclosing leaves -- fall of soane -- spiders, etc. -- scenery and natural history of upper soane valley -- _hardwickia binata_ -- bhel fruit -- dust-storm -- alligator -- catechu -- _cochlospermum_ -- leaf-bellows -- scorpions -- tortoises -- florican -- limestone spheres -- coles -- tiger-hunt -- robbery. in the evening we returned to our tamarind tree, and the next morning regained the trunk road, following it to the dawk bungalow of doomree. on the way i found the _caesalpinia paniculuta,_ a magnificent climber, festooning the trues with its dark glossy foliage and gorgeous racemes of orange blossoms. receding from the mountain, the country again became barren: at doomree the hills were of crystalline rocks, chiefly quartz and gneiss; no palms or large trees of any kind appeared. the spear-grass abounded, and a detestable nuisance it was, its long awns and husked seed working through trowsers and stockings. _balanites_ was not uncommon, forming a low thorny bush, with _aegle marmelos_ and _feronia elephantum._ having rested the tired elephant, we pushed on in the evening to the next stage, baghoda, arriving there at a.m., and after a few hours' rest, i walked to the bungalow of lieutenant beadle, the surveyor of roads, sixteen miles further. the country around baghoda is still very barren, but improves considerably in going westward, the ground becoming hilly, and the road winding through prettily wooded vallies, and rising gradually to feet. _nauclea cordifolia,_ a tree resembling a young sycamore, is very common; with the semul (_bombax_), a very striking tree from its buttressed trunk and gaudy scarlet flowers, swarming with birds, which feed from its honeyed blossoms. at a.m. the sun became uncomfortably hot, the thermometer being degrees, and the black-bulb thermometer degrees. i had lost my hat, and possessed no substitute but a silken nightcap; so i had to tie a handkerchief over my head, to the astonishment of the passers-by. holding my head down, i had little source of amusement but reading the foot-marks on the road; and these were strangely diversified to an english eye. those of the elephant, camel, buffalo and bullock, horse, ass, pony, dog, goat, sheep and kid, lizard, wild-cat and pigeon, with men, women, and children's feet, naked and shod, were all recognisable. it was noon ere i arrived at lieutenant beadle's, at belcuppee (alt. feet), glad enough of the hearty welcome i received, being very hot, dusty, and hungry. the country about his bungalow is very pretty, from the number of wooded hills and large trees, especially of banyan and peepul, noble oak-like mahowa (_bassia_), _nauclea,_ mango, and _ficus infectoria._ these are all scattered, however, and do not form forest, such as in a stunted form clothes the hills, consisting of _diospyros, terminalia, gmelina, nauclea parvifolia, buchanania,_ etc. the rocks are still hornblende-schist and granite, with a covering of alluvium, full of quartz pebbles. insects and birds are numerous, the latter consisting of jays, crows, doves, sparrows, and maina (_pastor_); also the _phoenicophaus tristis_ ("mahoka" of the natives), with a note like that of the english cuckoo, as heard late in the season. i remained two days with lieutenant beadle, enjoying in his society several excursions to the hot springs, etc. these springs (called soorujkoond) are situated close to the road, near the mouth of a valley, in a remarkably pretty spot. they are, of course, objects of worship; and a ruined temple stands close behind them, with three very conspicuous trees--a peepul, a banyan, and a white, thick-stemmed, leafless _sterculia,_ whose branches bore dense clusters of greenish foetid flowers. the hot springs are four in number, and rise in as many ruined brick tanks about two yards across. another tank, fed by a cold spring, about twice that size, flows between two of the hot, only two or three paces distant from one of the latter on either hand. all burst through the gneiss rocks, meet in one stream after a few yards, and are conducted by bricked canals to a pool of cold water, about eighty yards off. the temperatures of the hot springs were respectively degrees, degrees, degrees, and degrees; of the cold, degrees at p.m., and degrees at a.m. the following morning. the hottest is the middle of the five. the water of the cold spring is sweet but not good, and emits gaseous bubbles; it was covered with a green floating _conferva._ of the four hot springs, the most copious is about three feet deep, bubbles constantly, boils eggs, and though brilliantly clear, has an exceedingly nauseous taste. this and the other warm ones cover the bricks and surrounding rocks with a thick incrustation of salts. _confervae_ abound in the warm stream from the springs, and two species, one ochreous brown, and the other green, occur on the margins of the tanks themselves, and in the hottest water; the brown is the best salamander, and forms a belt in deeper water than the green; both appear in broad luxuriant strata, wherever the temp. is cooled down to degrees, and as low as degrees. of flowering plants, three showed in an eminent degree a constitution capable of resisting the heat, if not a predilection for it; these were all _cyperaceae,_ a _cyperus_ and an _eleocharis,_ having their roots in water of degrees, and where they are probably exposed to greater heat, and a _fimbristylis_ at degrees; all were very luxuriant. from the edges of the four hot springs i gathered sixteen species of flowering plants, and from the cold tank five, which did not grow in the hot. a water-beetle, _colymbetes_(?) and _notonecta,_ abounded in water at degrees, with quantities of dead shells; frogs were very lively, with live shells, at degrees, and with various other water beetles. having no means of detecting the salts of this water, i bottled some for future analysis.* [for an account of the _confervae,_ and of the mineral constituents of the waters, etc. see appendix b.] on the following day i botanized in the neighbourhood, with but poor success. an oblique-leaved fig climbs the other trees, and generally strangles them: two epiphytal _orchideae_ also occur on the latter, _vanda roxburghii_ and an _oberonia._ dodders (_cuscuta_) of two species, and _cassytha,_ swarm over and conceal the bushes with their yellow thread-like stems. i left belcuppee on the th of february, following mr. williams' camp. the morning was clear and cold, the temperature only degrees. we crossed the nearly dry broad bed of the burkutta river, a noble stream during the rains, carrying along huge boulders of granite and gneiss. near this i passed the cholera-tree, a famous peepul by the road side, so called from a detachment of infantry having been attacked and decimated at the spot by that fell disease; it is covered with inscriptions and votive tokens in the shape of rags, etc. we continued to ascend to feet, where i came upon a small forest of the indian olibanum (_boswellia thurifera_), conspicuous from its pale bark, and spreading curved branches, leafy at their tips; its general appearance is a good deal like that of the mountain ash. the gum, celebrated throughout the east, was flowing abundantly from the trunk, very fragrant and transparent. the ground was dry, sterile, and rocky; kunker, the curious formation mentioned at chapter , appears in the alluvium, which i had not elsewhere seen at this elevation. descending to the village of burshoot, we lost sight of the _boswellia,_ and came upon a magnificent tope of mango, banyan, and peepul, so far superior to anything hitherto met with, that we were glad to choose such a pleasant halting-place for breakfast. there are a few lofty fan-palms here too, great rarities in this soil and elevation: one, about eighty feet high, towered above some wretched hovels, displaying the curious proportions of this tribe of palms: first, a short cone, tapering to one-third the height of the stem, the trunk then swelling to two-thirds, and again tapering to the crown. beyond this, the country again ascends to burree (alt. feet), another dawk bungalow, a barren place, which we left on the following morning. so little was there to observe, that i again amused myself by watching footsteps, the precision of which in the sandy soil was curious. looking down from the elephant, i was interested by seeing them all in _relief,_ instead of _depressed,_ the slanting rays of the sun in front producing this kind of mirage. before us rose no more of those wooded hills that had been our companions for the last miles, the absence of which was a sign of the nearly approaching termination of the great hilly plateau we had been traversing for that distance. chorparun, at the top of the dunwah pass, is situated on an extended barren flat, feet above the sea, and from it the descent from the table-land to the level of the soane valley, a little above that of the ganges at patna, is very sudden. the road is carried zizgag down a rugged hill of gneiss, with a descent of nearly feet in six miles, of which are exceedingly steep. the pass is well wooded, with abundance of bamboo, _bombax, cassia, acacia,_ and _butea,_ with _calotropis,_ the purple mudar, a very handsome road-side plant, which i had not seen before, but which, with the _argemone mexicana,_ was to be a companion for hundreds of miles farther. all the views in the pass are very picturesque, though wanting in good foliage, such as _ficus_ would afford, of which i did not see one tree. indeed the rarity of the genus (except _f. infectoria_) in the native woods of these hills, is very remarkable. the banyan and peepul always appear to be planted, as do the tamarind and mango. dunwah, at the foot of the pass, is feet above the sea, and nearly below the mean level of the highland i had been traversing. every thing bears here a better aspect; the woods at the foot of the hills afforded many plants; the bamboo (_b. stricta_) is green instead of yellow and white; a little castor-oil is cultivated, and the indian date (low and stunted) appears about the cottages. in the woods i heard and saw the wild peacock for the first time. its voice is not to be distinguished from that of the tame bird in england, a curious instance of the perpetuation of character under widely different circumstances, for the crow of the wild jungle-fowl does not rival that of the farm-yard cock. in the evening we left dunwah for barah (alt. feet), passing over very barren soil, covered with low jungle, the original woods having apparently been cut for fuel. our elephant, a timid animal, came on a drove of camels in the dark by the road-side, and in his alarm insisted on doing battle, tearing through the thorny jungle, regardless of the mahout, and still more of me: the uproar raised by the camel-drivers was ridiculous, and the danger to my barometer imminent. we proceeded on the th of february to sheergotty, where mr. williams and his camp were awaiting our arrival. wherever cultivation appeared the crops were tolerably luxuriant, but a great deal of the country yielded scarcely half-a-dozen kinds of plants to any ten square yards of ground. the most prevalent were _carissa carandas, olax scandens,_ two _zizyphi,_ and the ever-present _acacia catechu._ the climate is, however, warmer and much moister, for i here observed dew to be formed, which i afterwards found to be usual on the low grounds. that its presence is due to the increased amount of vapour in the atmosphere i shall prove: the amount of radiation, as shown by the cooling of the earth and vegetation, being the same in the elevated plain and lower levels.* [see appendix c.] the good soil was very richly cultivated with poppy (which i had not seen before), sugar-cane, wheat, barley, mustard, rape, and flax. at a distance a field of poppies looks like a green lake, studded with white water-lilies. the houses, too, are better, and have tiled roofs; while, in such situations, the road is lined with trees. a retrospect of the ground passed over is unsatisfactory, as far as botany is concerned, except as showing how potent are the effects of a dry soil and climate during one season of the year upon a vegetation which has no desert types. during the rains probably many more species would be obtained, for of annuals i scarcely found twenty. at that season, however, the jungles of behar and birbhoom, though far from tropically luxuriant, are singularly unhealthy. in a geographical point of view the range of hills between burdwan and the soave is interesting, as being the north-east continuation of a chain which crosses the broadest part of the peninsula of india, from the gulf of cambay to the junction of the ganges and hoogly at rajmahal. this range runs south of the soane and kymore, which it meets i believe at omerkuntuk;* [a lofty mountain said to be - feet high.] the granite of this and the sandstone of the other, being there both overlaid with trap. further west again, the ranges separate, the southern still betraying a nucleus of granite, forming the satpur range, which divides the valley of the taptee from that of the nerbudda. the paras-nath range is, though the most difficult of definition, the longer of the two parallel ranges; the vindhya continued as the kymore, terminating abruptly at the fort of chunar on the ganges. the general and geological features of the two, especially along their eastern course, are very different. this consists of metamorphic gneiss, in various highly inclined beds, through which granite hills protrude, the loftiest of which is paras-nath. the north-east vindhya (called kymore), on the other hand, consists of nearly horizontal beds of sandstone, overlying inclined beds of non-fossiliferous limestone. between the latter and the paras-nath gneiss, come (in order of superposition) shivered and undulating strata of metamorphic quartz, hornstone, hornstone- porphyry, jaspers, etc. these are thrown up, by greenstone i believe, along the north and north-west boundary of the gneiss range, and are to be recognised as forming the rocks of colgong, of sultangunj, and of monghyr, on the ganges, as also various detached hills near gyah, and along the upper course of the soane. from these are derived the beautiful agates and cornelians, so famous under the name of soane pebbles, and they are equally common on the curruckpore range, as on the south bank of the soane, so much so in the former position as to have been used in the decoration of the walls of the now ruined palaces near bhagulpore. in the route i had taken, i had crossed the eastern extremity alone of the range, commencing with a very gradual ascent, over the alluvial plains of the west bank of the hoogly, then over laterite, succeeded by sandstone of the indian coal era, which is succeeded by the granite table-land, properly so called. a little beyond the coal fields, the table-land reaches an average height of feet, which is continued for upwards of miles, to the dunwah pass. here the descent is sudden to plains, which, continuous with those of the ganges, run up the soane till beyond rotasghur. except for the occasional ridges of metamorphic rocks mentioned above, and some hills of intruded greenstone, the lower plain is stoneless, its subjacent rocks being covered with a thicker stratum of the same alluvium which is thinly spread over the higher table-land above. this range is of great interest from its being the source of many important rivers,* [the chief rivers from this, the great watershed of western bengal, flow north-west and south-east; a few comparatively insignificant streams running north to the ganges. amongst the former are the rheru, the kunner, and the coyle, which contribute to the soane; amongst the latter, the dammooda, adji, and barakah, flow into the hoogly, and the subunrika, braminee, and mahanuddee into the bay of bengal.] and of all those which water the country between the soane, hoogly, and ganges, as well as from its deflecting the course of the latter river, which washes its base at rajmahal, and forcing it to take a sinuous course to the sea. in its climate and botany it differs equally from the gangetic plains to the north, and from the hot, damp, and exuberant forests of orissa to the south. nor are its geological features less different, or its concomitant and in part resultant characters of agriculture and native population. still further west, the great rivers of the peninsula have their origin, the nerbudda and taptee flowing west to the gulf of cambay, the cane to the jumna, the soane to the ganges, and the northern feeders of the godavery to the bay of bengal. on the th of february, we left sheergotty (alt. feet), crossing some small streams, which, like all else seen since leaving the dunwah pass, flow n. to the ganges. between sheergotty and the soane, occur many of the isolated hills of greenstone, mentioned above, better known to the traveller from having been telegraphic stations. some are much impregnated with iron, and whether for their colour, the curious outlines of many, or their position, form quaint, and in some cases picturesque features in the otherwise tame landscape. the road being highly cultivated, and the date-palm becoming more abundant, we encamped in a grove of these trees. all were curiously distorted; the trunks growing zigzag, from the practice of yearly tapping the alternate sides for toddy. the incision is just below the crown, and slopes upwards and inwards: a vessel is hung below the wound, and the juice conducted into it by a little piece of bamboo. this operation spoils the fruit, which, though eaten, is small, and much inferior to the african date. at mudunpore (alt. feet) a thermometer, sunk feet inches in the soil, maintained a constant temperature of . degrees, that of the air varying from . degrees, at p.m., to at daylight the following morning; when we moved on to nourunga (alt. feet), where i bored to feet inches with a heavy iron jumper through an alluvium of such excessive tenacity, that eight natives were employed for four hours in the operation. in both this and another hole, feet inches, the temperature was degrees at p.m.; and on the following morning . degrees in the deepest hole, and degrees in the shallower: that of the external air varied from degrees at p.m., to degrees at daylight on the following morning. at the latter time i took the temperature of the earth near the surface, which showed, surface degrees, inch degrees, inches degrees, inches degrees, inches degrees. the following day we marched to baroon (alt. feet) on the alluvial banks of the soane, crossing a deep stream by a pretty suspension bridge, of which the piers were visible two miles off, so level is the road. the soane is here three miles wide, its nearly dry bed being a desert of sand, resembling a vast arm of the sea when the tide is out: the banks are very barren, with no trees near, and but very few in the distance. the houses were scarcely visible on the opposite side, behind which the kymore mountains rise. the soane is a classical river, being now satisfactorily identified with the eranoboas of the ancients.* [the etymology of eranoboas is undoubtedly _hierrinia vahu_ (sanskrit), the golden-armed. sons is also the sanskrit for gold. the stream is celebrated for its agates (soane pebbles), which are common, but gold is not now obtained from it.] the alluvium is here cut into a cliff, ten or twelve feet above the bed of the river, and against it the sand is blown in naked _dunes._ at p.m., the surface-sand was heated to degrees where sheltered from the wind, and degrees in the open bed of the river. to compare the rapidity and depth to which the heat is communicated by pure sand, and by the tough alluvium, i took the temperature at some inches depth in both. that the alluvium absorbs the heat better, and retains it longer, would appear from the following, the only observations i could make, owing to the tenacity of the soil. p.m. surface degrees . inches degrees inches degrees sand at this depth degrees. a.m. surface degrees inches degrees finding the fresh milky juice of _calotropis_ to be only degrees, i was curious to ascertain at what depth this temperature was to be obtained in the sand of the river-bed, where the plant grew. surface . degrees, inch degrees, inches degrees, . inches degrees, . inches degrees (compact), inches degrees (wet), inches degrees (wet). the power this plant exercises of maintaining a low temperature of degrees, though the main portion which is subterraneous is surrounded by a soil heated to between degrees and degrees, is very remarkable, and no doubt proximately due to the rapidity of evaporation from the foliage, and consequent activity in the circulation. its exposed leaves maintained a temperature of degrees, nearly degrees cooler than the similarly exposed sand and alluvium. on the same night the leaves were cooled down to degrees, when the sand had cooled to degrees. before daylight the following morning the sand had cooled to degrees, and the leaves of the _calotropis_ to . degrees. i omitted to observe the temperature of the sap at the latter time; but the sand at the same depth ( inches) as that at which its temperature and that of the plant agreed at mid-day, was degrees. and assuming this to be the heat of the plant, we find that the leaves are heated by solar radiation during the day degrees, and cooled by nocturnal radiation, . degrees. mr. theobald (my companion in this and many other rambles) pulled a lizard from a hole in the bank. its throat was mottled with scales of brown and yellow. three ticks had fastened on it, each of a size covering three or four scales: the first was yellow, corresponding with the yellow colour of the animal's belly, where it lodged, the second brown, from the lizard's head; but the third, which was clinging to the parti-coloured scales of the neck, had its body parti-coloured, the hues corresponding with the individual scales which they covered. the adaptation of the two first specimens in colour to the parts to which they adhered, is sufficiently remarkable; but the third case was most extraordinary. during the night of the th of february, i observed a beautiful display, apparently of the aurora borealis, an account of which will be found in the appendix. _february_ .--our passage through the soane sands was very tedious, though accomplished in excellent style, the elephants pushing forward the heavy waggons of mining tools with their foreheads. the wheels were sometimes buried to the axles in sand, and the draught bullocks were rather in the way than otherwise. the body of water over which we ferried, was not above yards wide. in the rains, when the whole space of three miles is one rapid flood, or feet deep, charged with yellow sand, this river must present an imposing spectacle. i walked across the dry portion, observing the sand-waves, all ranged in one direction, perpendicular to that of the prevailing wind, accurately representing the undulations of the ocean, as seen from a mast-head or high cliff. as the sand was finer or coarser, so did the surface resemble a gentle ripple, or an ocean-swell. the progressive motion of the waves was curious, and caused by the lighter particles being blown over the ridges, and filling up the hollows to leeward. there were a few islets in the sand, a kind of oases of mud and clay, in laminae no thicker than paper, and these were at once denizened by various weeds. some large spots were green with wheat and barley-crops, both suffering from smut. we encamped close to the western shore, at the village of dearee (alt. feet); it marks the termination of the kymore hills, along whose s.e. bases our course now lay, as we here quitted the grand trunk road for a rarely visited country. on the th we marched south up the river to tilotho (alt. feet), through a rich and highly cultivated country, covered with indigo, cotton, sugar-cane, safflower, castor-oil, poppy, and various grains. dodders (_cuscuta_) covered even tall trees with a golden web, and the _capparis acuminata_ was in full flower along the road side. tilotho, a beautiful village, is situated in a superb grove of mango, banyan, peepul, tamarind, and _bassia._ the date or toddy-palm and fan-palm are very abundant and tall: each had a pot hung under the crown. the natives climb these trunks with a hoop or cord round the body and both ancles, and a bottle-gourd or other vessel hanging round the neck to receive the juice from the stock-bottle, in this aerial wine-cellar. these palms were so lofty that the climbers, as they paused in their ascent to gaze with wonder at our large retinue, resembled monkeys rather than men. both trees yield a toddy, but in this district they stated that that from the _phoenix_ (date) alone ferments, and is distilled; while in other parts of india, the _borassus_ (fan-palm) is chiefly employed. i walked to the hills, over a level cultivated country interspersed with occasional belts of low wood; in which the pensile nests of the weaver-bird were abundant, but generally hanging out of reach, in prickly _acacias._ the hills here present a straight precipitous wall of horizontally stratified sandstone, very like the rocks at the cape of good hope, with occasionally a shallow valley, and a slope of debris at the base, densely clothed with dry jungle. the cliffs are about feet high, and the plants similar to those at the foot of paras-nath, but stunted: i climbed to the top, the latter part by steps or ledges of sandstone. the summit was clothed with long grass, trees of _diospyros_ and _terminalia,_ and here and there the _boswellia._ on the precipitous rocks the curious white-barked _sterculia foetida_ "flung its arms abroad," leafless, and looking as if blasted by lightning. a hole was sunk here again for the thermometers, and, as usual, with great labour; the temperatures obtained were-- air. p.m. . degrees . a.m. . degrees feet inches, under good shade of trees p.m. degrees p.m. degrees . a.m. degrees this is a very great rise (of degrees) above any of those previously obtained, and certainly indicates a much higher mean temperature of the locality. i can only suppose it due to the radiation of heat from the long range of sandstone cliff, exposed to the south, which overlooks the flat whereon we were encamped, and which, though four or five miles off, forms a very important feature. the differences of temperature in the shade taken on this and the other side of the river are . degrees higher on this side. on the th we marched to akbarpore (alt. . feet), a village overhung by the rocky precipice of rotasghur, a spur of the kymore, standing abruptly forward. the range, in proceeding up the soane valley, gradually approaches the river, and beds of non-fossiliferous limestone are seen protruding below the sandstone and occasionally rising into rounded hills, the paths upon which appear as white as do those through the chalk districts of england. the overlying beds of sandstone are nearly horizontal, or with a dip to the n.w.; the subjacent ones of limestone dip at a greater angle. passing between the river and a detached conical hill of limestone, capped with a flat mass of sandstone, the spur of rotas broke suddenly on the view, and very grand it was, quite realising my anticipations of the position of these eyrie-like hill-forts of india. to the left of the spur winds the valley of the soane, with low-wooded hills on its opposite bank, and a higher range, connected with that of behar, in the distance. to the right, the hills sweep round, forming an immense and beautifully wooded amphitheatre, about four miles deep, bounded with a continuation of the escarpment. at the foot of the crowned spur is the village of akbarpore, where we encamped in a mango tope;* [on the th of june, , the soane rose to an unprecedented height, and laid this grove of mangos three feet under water.] it occupies some pretty undulating limestone hills, amongst which several streams flow from the amphitheatre to the soane. during our two days' stay here, i had the advantage of the society of mr. c. e. davis, who was our guide during some rambles in the neighbourhood, and to whose experience, founded on the best habits of observation, i am indebted for much information. at noon we started to ascend to the palace, on the top of the spur. on the way we passed a beautiful well, sixty feet deep, and with a fine flight of steps to the bottom. now neglected and overgrown with flowering weeds and creepers, it afforded me many of the plants i had only previously obtained in a withered state; it was curious to observe there some of the species of the hill-tops, whose seeds doubtless are scattered abundantly over the surrounding plains, and only vegetate where they find a coolness and moisture resembling that of the altitude they elsewhere affect. a fine fig-tree growing out of the stone-work spread its leafy green branches over the well mouth, which was about twelve feet square; its roots assumed a singular form, enveloping two sides of the walls with a beautiful net-work, which at _high-water mark_ (rainy season), abruptly divides into thousands of little brushes, dipping into the water which they fringe. it was a pretty cool place to descend to, from a temperature of degrees above, to degrees at the bottom, where the water was degrees; and most refreshing to look, either up the shaft to the green fig shadowing the deep profound, or along the sloping steps through a vista of flowering herbs and climbing plants, to the blue heaven of a burning sky. the ascent to rotas is over the dry hills of limestone, covered with a scrubby brushwood, to a crest where are the first rude and ruined defences. the limestone is succeeded by the sandstone cliff cut into steps, which led from ledge to ledge and gap to gap, well guarded with walls and an archway of solid masonry. through this we passed on to the flat summit of the kymore hills, covered with grass and forest, intersected by paths in all directions. the ascent is about feet--a long pull in the blazing sun of february. the turf consists chiefly of spear-grass and _andropogon muricatus,_ the kus-kus, which yields a favourite fragrant oil, used as a medicine in india. the trees are of the kinds mentioned before. a pretty octagonal summer-house, with its roof supported by pillars, occupies one of the highest points of the plateau, and commands a superb view of the scenery before described. from this a walk of three miles leads through the woods to the palace. the buildings are very extensive, and though now ruinous, bear evidence of great beauty in the architecture: light galleries, supported by slender columns, long cool arcades, screened squares and terraced walks, are the principal features. the rooms open out upon flat roofs, commanding views of the long endless table-land to the west, and a sheer precipice of feet on the other side, with the soane, the amphitheatre of hills, and the village of akbarpore below. this and beejaghur, higher up the soane, were amongst the most recently reduced forts, and this was further the last of those wrested from baber in . some of the rooms are still habitable, but the greater part are ruinous, and covered with climbers, both of wild flowers and of the naturalised garden plants of the adjoining shrubbery; the _arbor-tristis,_ with _hibiscus, abutilon,_ etc., and above all, the little yellow-flowered _linaria ramosissima,_ crawling over every ruined wall, as we see the walls of our old english castles clothed with its congener _l. cymbalaria._ in the old dark stables i observed the soil to be covered with a copious evanescent efflorescence of nitrate of lime, like soap-suds scattered about. i made rotas palace feet above the sea, so that this table-land is here only fifty feet higher than that i had crossed on the grand trunk road, before descending at the dunwah pass. its mean temperature is of course considerably ( degrees) below that of the valley, but though so cool, agues prevail after the rains. the extremes of temperature are less marked than in the valley, which becomes excessively heated, and where hot winds sometimes last for a week, blowing in furious gusts. the climate of the whole neighbourhood has of late changed materially; and the fall of rain has much diminished, consequent on felling the forests; even within six years the hail-storms have been far less frequent and violent. the air on the hills is highly electrical, owing, no doubt, to the dryness of the atmosphere, and to this the frequent recurrence of hail-storms may be due. the zoology of these regions is tolerably copious, but little is known of the natural history of a great part of the plateau; a native tribe, prone to human sacrifices, is talked of. tigers are common, and bears are numerous; they have, besides, the leopard, panther, viverine cat, and civet; and of the dog tribe the pariah, jackal, fox, and wild dog, called koa. deer are very numerous, of six or seven kinds. a small alligator inhabits the hill streams, said to be a very different animal from either of the soane species. during our descent we examined several instances of ripple-mark (fossil waves' footsteps) in the sandstone; they resembled the fluting of the _sigillaria_ stems, in the coal-measures, and occurring as they did here, in sandstone, a little above great beds of limestone, had been taken for such, and as indications of coal. on the following day we visited rajghat, a steep ghat or pass leading up the cliff to rotas palace, a little higher up the river. we took the elephants to the mouth of the glen, where we dismounted, and whence we followed a stream abounding in small fish and aquatic insects (_dytisci_ and _gyrini_), through a close jungle, to the foot of the cliffs, where there are indications of coal. the woods were full of monkeys, and amongst other plants i observed _murraya exotica,_ but it was scarce. though the jungle was so dense, the woods were very dry, containing no palm, _adroideae,_ peppers, _orchideae_ or ferns. here, at the foot of the red cliffs, which towered imposingly above, as seen through the tree tops, are several small seams of coaly matter in the sandstone, with abundance of pyrites, sulphur, and copious efflorescences of salts of iron; but no coal. the springs from the cliffs above are charged with lime, of which enormous tuff beds are deposited on the sandstone, full of impressions of the leaves and stems of the surrounding trees, which, however, i found it very difficult to recognize, and could not help contrasting this circumstance with the fact that geologists, unskilled in botany, see no difficulty in referring equally imperfect remains of extinct vegetables to existing genera. in some parts of their course the streams take up quantities of the efflorescence, which they scatter over the sandstones in a singular manner. at akbarpore i had sunk two thermometers, one feet inches, the other feet inches; both invariably indicated degrees, the air varying from degrees to . degrees. dew had formed every night since leaving dunwah, the grass being here cooled degrees below the air. on the th of february we marched up the soane to tura, passing some low hills of limestone, between the cliffs of the kymore and the river. on the shaded riverbanks grew abundance of english genera-- _cynoglossum, veronica, potentilla, ranunculus sceleratus, rumex,_ several herbaceous _compositae_ and _labiatae_; _tamarix_ formed a small bush in rocky hillocks in the bed of the river, and in pools were several aquatic plants, _zannichellia, chara,_ a pretty little _vallisneria,_ and _potamogeton._ the brahminee goose was common here, and we usually saw in the morning immense flocks of wild geese overhead, migrating northward. here i tried again the effect of solar and nocturnal radiation on the sand, at different depths, not being able to do so on the alluvium. noon: temperature of air degrees surface degrees inch degrees inches . degrees inches degrees inches degrees (sand wet) inches degrees (sand wet) daylight of following morning: surface degrees inch degrees inches degrees inches degrees inches degrees (sand wet) inches degrees (sand wet) from tura our little army again crossed the soane, the scarped cliffs of the kymore approaching close to the river on the west side. the bed is very sandy, and about one mile and a half across. the elephants were employed again, as at baroon, to push the cart: one of them had a bump in consequence, as large as a child's head, just above the trunk, and bleeding much; but the brave beast disregarded this, when the word of command was given by his driver. the stream was very narrow, but deep and rapid, obstructed with beds of coarse agate, jasper, cornelian and chalcedony pebbles. a clumsy boat took us across to the village of soanepore, a wretched collection of hovels. the crops were thin and poor, and i saw no palms or good trees. squirrels however abounded, and were busy laying up their stores; descending from the trees they scoured across a road to a field of tares, mounted the hedge, took an observation, foraged and returned up the tree with their booty, quickly descended, and repeated the operation of reconnoitering and plundering. the bed of the river is here considerably above that at dearee, where the mean of the observations with those of baroon, made it about feet. the mean of those taken here and on the opposite side, at tura, gives about feet, indicating a fall of feet in only miles. near this the sandy banks of the soane were full of martins' nests, each one containing a pair of eggs. the deserted ones were literally crammed full of long-legged spiders (_opilio_), which could be raked out with a stick, when they came pouring down the cliff like corn from a sack; the quantities are quite inconceivable. i did not observe the martin feed on them. the entomology here resembled that of europe, more than i had expected in a tropical country, where predaceous beetles, at least _carabideae_ and _staphylinideae,_ are generally considered rare. the latter tribes swarmed under the clods, of many species but all small, and so singularly active that i could not give the time to collect many. in the banks again, the round egg-like earthy chrysalis of the _sphynx atropos_ (?) and the many-celled nidus of the leaf-cutter bee, were very common. a large columnar _euphorbia_ (_e. ligulata_) is common all along the soane, and i observed it to be used everywhere for fencing. i had not remarked the _e. neriifolia_; and the _e. tereticaulis_ had been very rarely seen since leaving calcutta. the _cactus_ is nowhere found; it is abundant in many parts of bengal, but certainly not indigenous. illustration --crossing the soane, with the kymore hills in the distance. from this place onwards up the soane, there was no road of any kind, and we were compelled to be our own road engineers. the sameness of the vegetation and lateness of the season made me regret this the less, for i was disappointed in my anticipations of finding luxuriance and novelty in these wilds. before us the valley narrowed considerably, the forest became denser, the country on the south side was broken with rounded hills, and on the north the noble cliffs of the kymore dipped down to the river. the villages were smaller, more scattered and poverty-stricken, with the mahowa and mango as the usual trees; the banyan, peepul, and tamarind being rare. the native, are of an aboriginal jungle race; and are tall, athletic, erect, much less indolent and more spirited than the listless natives of the plains. _february_ .--started at daylight: but so slow and difficult was our progress through fields and woods, and across deep gorges from the hills, that we only advanced five miles in the day; the elephant's head too was aching too badly to let him push, and the cattle would not proceed when the draught was not equal. what was worse, it was impossible to get them to pull together up the inclined planes we cut, except by placing a man at the head of each of the six, eight, or ten in a team, and simultaneously screwing round their tails; when one tortured animal sometimes capsizes the vehicle. the small carts got on better, though it was most nervous to see them rushing down the steeps, especially those with our fragile instruments, etc. kosdera, where we halted, is a pretty place, elevated feet, with a broad stream front the hills flowing past it. these hills are of limestone, and rounded, resting upon others of hornstone and jasper. following up the stream i came to some rapids, where the stream is crossed by large beds of hornstone and porphyry rocks, excessively hard, and pitched up at right angles, or with a bold dip to the north. the number of strata was very great, and only a few inches or even lines thick: they presented all varieties of jasper, hornstone, and quartz of numerous colours, with occasional seams of porphyry or breccia. the racks were elegantly fringed with a fern i had not hitherto seen, _polypodium proliferum,_ which is the only species the soane valley presents at this season. returning over the hills, i found _hardwickia binata,_ a most elegant leguminous tree, tall, erect, with an elongated coma, and the branches pendulous. these trees grew in a shallow bed of alluvium, enclosing abundance of agate pebbles and kunker, the former derived from the quartzy strata above noticed. on the rd and th we continued to follow up the soane, first to panchadurma (alt. feet), and thence to pepura (alt. feet), the country becoming densely wooded, very wild, and picturesque, the woods being full of monkeys, parrots, peacocks, hornbills, and wild animals. _strychnos potatorum,_ whose berries are used to purify water, forms a dense foliaged tree, to feet high, some individuals pale yellow, others deep green, both in apparent health. _feronia elephantum_ and _aegle marmelos_* [the bhel fruit, lately introduced into english medical practice, as an astringent of great effect, in cases of diarrhoea and dysentery.] were very abundant, with _sterculia,_ and the dwarf date-palm. one of my carts was here hopelessly broken down; advancing on the spokes instead of the tire of the wheels. by the banks of a deep gully here the rocks are well exposed: they consist of soft clay shales resting on the limestone, which is nearly horizontal; and this again, unconformably on the quartz and hornstone rocks, which are confused, and tilted up at all angles. a spur of the kymore, like that of rotas, here projects to the bed of the river, and was blazing at night with the beacon-like fires of the natives, lighted to scare the tigers and bears from the spots where they cut wood and bamboo; they afforded a splendid spectacle, the flames in some places leaping zig-zag from hill to hill in front of us, and looking as if a gigantic letter w were written in fire. the night was bright and clear, with much lightning, the latter attracted to the spur, and darting down as it were to mingle its fire with that of the forest; so many flashes appeared to strike on the flames, that it is probable the heated air in their neighbourhood attracted them. we were awakened between and a.m., by a violent dust-storm, which threatened to carry away the tents. our position at the mouth of the gulley formed by the opposite hills, no doubt accounted for it. the gusts were so furious that it was impossible to observe the barometer, which i returned to its case on ascertaining that any indications of a rise or fall in the column must have been quite trifling. the night had been oppressively hot, with many insects flying about; amongst which i noticed earwigs, a genus erroneously supposed rarely to take to the wing in britain. at . a.m. it suddenly fell calm, and we proceeded to chanchee (alt. feet), the native carts breaking down in their passage over the projecting beds of flinty rocks, or as they burned down the inclined planes we cut through the precipitous clay banks of the streams. near chanchee we passed an alligator, just killed by two men, a foul beast, about nine feet long, of the mugger kind. more absorbing than its natural history was the circumstance of its having swallowed a child, that was playing in the water as its mother was washing her utensils in the river. the brute was hardly dead, much distended by the prey, and the mother was standing beside it. a very touching group was this: the parent with her hands clasped in agony, unable to withdraw her eyes from the cursed reptile, which still clung to life with that tenacity for which its tribe are so conspicuous; beside these the two athletes leaned on the bloody bamboo staffs, with which they had all but despatched the animal. this poor woman earned a scanty maintenance by making catechu: inhabiting a little cottage, and having no property but two cattle to bring wood from the hills, and a very few household chattels; and how few of these they only know who have seen the meagre furniture of danga hovels. her husband cut the trees in the forest and dragged them to the hut, but at this time he was sick, and her only boy, her future stay, it was, whom the beast had devoured. this province is famous for the quantity of catechu its dry forests yield. the plant (_acacia_) is a little thorny tree, erect, and bearing a rounded head of well remembered prickly branches. its wood is yellow, with a dark brick-red heart, most profitable in january and useless in june (for yielding the extract). illustration -- soane valley and kymore hills cochlospermum gossypium and butea frondosa in flower. the _butea frondosa_ was abundantly in flower here, and a gorgeous sight. in mass the inflorescence resembles sheets of flame, and individually the flowers are eminently beautiful, the bright orange-red petals contrasting brilliantly against the jet-black velvety calyx. the nest of the _megachile_ (leaf-cutter bee) was in thousands in the cliffs, with mayflies, caddis-worms, spiders, and many predaceous beetles. lamellicorn beetles were very rare, even _aphodius,_ and of _cetoniae_ i did not see one. we marched on the th to kota, at the junction of the river of that name with the soane, over hills of flinty rock, which projected everywhere, to the utter ruin of the elephants' feet, and then over undulating hills of limestone; on the latter i found trees of _cochlospermum,_ whose curious thick branches spread out somewhat awkwardly, each tipped with a cluster of golden yellow flowers, as large as the palm of the hand, and very beautiful: it is a tropical gum-cistus in the appearance and texture of the petals, and their frail nature. the bark abounds in a transparent gum, of which the white ants seem fond, for they had killed many trees. of the leaves the curious rude leaf-bellows are made, with which the natives of these hills smelt iron. scorpions appeared very common here, of a small kind, . inch long; several were captured, and one of our party was stung on the finger; the smart was burning for an hour or two, and then ceased. at kota we were nearly opposite the cliffs at beejaghur, where coal is reported to exist; and here we again crossed the soane, and for the last time. the ford is three miles up the river, and we marched to it through deep sand. the bed of the river is here feet above the sea, and about three-quarters of a mile broad, the rapid stream being or yards wide, and breast deep. the sand is firm and siliceous, with no mica; nodules of coal are said to be washed down thus far from the coal-beds of burdee, a good deal higher up, but we saw none. the cliffs come close to the river on the opposite side, their bases clothed with woods which teemed with birds. the soil is richer, and individual trees, especially of _bombax, terminalia_ and _mahowa,_ very fine; one tree of the _hardwickia,_ about feet high, was as handsome a monarch of the forest as i ever saw, and it is not often that one sees trees in the tropics, which for a combination of beauty in outline, harmony of colour, and arrangement of branches and foliage, would form so striking an addition to an english park. there is a large break in the kymore hills here, beyond the village of kunch, through which our route lay to beejaghur, and the ganges at mirzapore; the cliff's leaving the river and trending to the north in a continuous escarpment flanked with low ranges of rounded hills, and terminating in an abrupt spur (mungeesa peak) whose summit was covered with a ragged forest. at kunch we saw four alligators sleeping in the river, looking at a distance like logs of wood, all of the short-nosed or mugger kind, dreaded by man and beast; i saw none of the sharp-shouted (or garial), so common on the ganges, where their long bills, with a garniture of teeth and prominent eyes peeping out of the water, remind one of geological lectures and visions of _ichthyosauri._ tortoises were frequent in the river, basking on the rocks, and popping into the water when approached. on the st of march we left the soane, and struck inland over a rough hilly country, covered with forest, fully feet below the top of the kymore table-land, which here recedes from the river and surrounds an undulating plain, some ten miles either way, facing the south. the roads, or rather pathways, were very bad, and quite impassable for the carts without much engineering, cutting through forest, smoothing down the banks of the watercourses to be crossed, and clearing away the rocks as we best might. we traversed the empty bed of a mountain torrent, with perpendicular banks of alluvium feet high, and thence plunged into a dense forest. our course was directed towards mungeesa peak, the remarkable projecting spur, between which and a conical hill the path led. whether on the elephants or on foot, the thorny jujubes, _acacias,_ etc. were most troublesome, and all our previous scratchings were nothing to this. peacocks and jungle-fowl were very frequent, the squabbling of the former and the hooting of the monkeys constantly grating on the ear. there were innumerable pigeons and a few floricans (a kind of bustard--considered the best eating game--bird in india). from the defile we emerged on an open flat, halting at sulkun, a scattered village (alt. feet), peopled by a bold-looking race (coles)* [the coles, like the danghas of the rajmahal and behar hills, and the natives of the mountains of the peninsula, form one of the aboriginal tribes of british india, and are widely different people from either the hindoos or mussulmen.] who habitually carry the spear and shield. we had here the pleasure of meeting mr. felle, an english gentleman employed in the revenue department; this being one of the roads along which the natives transport their salt, sugar, etc., from one province to another. in the afternoon, i examined the conical hill, which, like that near rotas, is of stratified beds of limestone, capped with sandstone. a stream runs round its base, cutting through the alluvium to the subjacent rock, which is exposed, and contains flattened spheres of limestone. these spheres are from the size of a fist to a child's head, or even much larger; they are excessively hard, and neither laminated nor formed of concentric layers. at the top of the hill the sandstone cap was perpendicular on all sides, and its dry top covered with small trees, especially of _cochlospermum._ a few larger trees of _fici_ clung to the edge of the rocks, and by forcing their roots into the interstices detached enormous masses, affording good dens for bears and other wild animals. from the top, the view of rock, river, forest, and plain, was very fine, the eye ranging over a broad flat, girt by precipitous hills;--west, the kymore or vindhya range rose again in rugged elevations; south, flowed the soane, backed by ranges of wooded hills, smoking like volcanos with the fires of the natives;--below, lay the bed of the stream we had left at the foot of the hills, cutting its way through the alluvium, and following a deep gorge to the soane, which was there hidden by the rugged heights we had crossed, on which the greater part of our camp might be seen still straggling onwards;--east, and close above us, the bold spur of mungeesa shot up, terminating a continuous stretch of red precipices, clothed with forest along their bases, and over their horizontal tops. from sulkun the view of the famed fort and palace of beejaghur is very singular, planted on the summit of an isolated hill of sandstone, about ten miles off. a large tree by the palace marks its site; for, at this distance, the buildings are themselves undistinguishable. there are many tigers on these hills; and as one was close by, and had killed several cattle, mr. felle kindly offered us a chance of slaying him. bullocks are tethered out, over-night, in the places likely to be visited by the brute; he kills one of them, and is from the spot tracked to his haunt by natives, who visit the stations early in the morning, and report the whereabouts of his lair. the sportsman then goes to the attack mounted on an elephant, or having a roost fixed in a tree, on the trail of the tiger, and he employs some hundred natives to drive the animal past the lurking-place. on the present occasion, the locale of the tiger was doubtful; but it was thought that by beating over several miles of country he (or at any rate, some other game) might be driven past a certain spot. thither, accordingly, the natives were sent, who built machans (stages) in the trees, high out of danger's reach; mr. theobald and myself occupied one of these perches in a _hardwickia_ tree, and mr. felle another, close by, both on the slope of a steep hill, surrounded by jungly valleys. we were also well thatched in with leafy boughs, to prevent the wary beast from espying the ambush, and had a whole stand of shall arms ready for his reception. when roosted aloft, and duly charged to keep profound silence (which i obeyed to the letter, by falling sound asleep), the word was passed to the beaters, who surrounded our post on the plain-side, extending some miles in line, and full two or three distant from us. they entered the jungle, beating tom-toms, singing and shouting as they advanced, and converging towards our position. in the noonday solitude of these vast forests, our situation was romantic enough: there was not a breath of wind, an insect or bird stirring; and the wild cries of the men, and the hollow sound of the drums broke upon the ear from a great distance, gradually swelling and falling, as the natives ascended the heights or crossed the valleys. after about an hour and a half, the beaters emerged from the jungle under our retreat; one by one, two by two, but preceded by no single living thing, either mouse, bird, deer, or bear, and much less tiger. the beaters received about a penny a-piece for the day's work; a rich guerdon for these poor wretches, whom necessity sometimes drives to feed on rats and offal. we were detained three days at sulkun, from inability to get on with the carts; and as the pass over the kymore to the north (on the way to mirzapore) was to be still worse, i took advantage of mr. felle's kind offer of camels and elephants to make the best of my way forward, accompanying that gentleman, _en route,_ to his residence at shahgunj, on the table-land. both the climate and natural history of this flat on which sulkun stands, are similar to those of the banks of the soane; the crops are wretched. at this season the dryness of the atmosphere is excessive: our nails cracked, and skins peeled, whilst all articles of wood, tortoiseshell, etc., broke on the slightest blow. the air, too, was always highly electrical, and the dew-point was frequently degrees below the temperature of the air. the natives are far from honest: they robbed one of the tents placed between two others, wherein a light was burning. one gentleman in it was awake, and on turning saw five men at his bedside, who escaped with a bag of booty, in the shape of clothes, and a tempting strong brass-bound box, containing private letters. the clothes they dropped outside, but the box of letters was carried off. there were about a hundred people asleep outside the tents, between whose many fires the rogues must have passed, eluding also the guard, who were, or ought to have been, awake. chapter iii. ek-powa ghat -- sandstones -- shahgunj -- table-land, elevation, etc. -- gum-arabic -- mango -- fair -- aquatic plants -- rujubbund -- storm -- false sunset and sunrise -- bind hills -- mirzapore -- manufactures, imports, etc. -- climate of -- thuggee -- chunar -- benares -- mosque -- observatory -- sar-nath -- ghazeepore -- rose-gardens -- manufactory of attar -- lord cornwallis' tomb -- ganges, scenery and natural history of -- pelicans -- vegetation -- insects -- dinapore -- patna -- opium godowns and manufacture -- mudar, white and purple -- monghyr islets -- hot springs of setakoond -- alluvium of ganges -- rocks of sultun-gunj -- bhaugulpore -- temples of mt. manden -- coles and native tribes -- bhaugulpore rangers -- horticultural gardens. on the rd of march i bade farewell to mr. williams and his kind party, and rode over a plain to the village of markunda, at the foot of the ghat. there the country becomes very rocky and wooded, and a stream is crossed, which runs over a flat bed of limestone, cracked into the appearance of a tesselated pavement. for many miles there is no pass over the kymore range, except this, significantly called "ek-powa-ghat" (one-foot ghat). it is evidently a _fault,_ or shifting of the rocks, producing so broken a cliff as to admit of a path winding over the shattered crags. on either side, the precipices are extremely steep, of horizontally stratified rocks, continued in an unbroken line, and the views across the plain and soane valley, over which the sun was now setting, were superb. at the summit we entered on a dead flat plain or table-land, with no hills, except along the brim of the broad valley we had left, where are some curious broad pyramids, formed of slabs of sandstone arranged in steps. by dark we reached the village of roump (alt. feet), beyond the top of the pass. on the next day i proceeded on a small, fast, and wofully high-trotting elephant, to shahgunj, where i enjoyed mr. felle's hospitality for a few days. the country here, though elevated, is, from the nature of the soil and formation, much more fertile than what i had left. water is abundant, both in tanks and wells, and rice-fields, broad and productive, cover the ground; while groves of tamarinds and mangos, now loaded with blossoms, occur at every village. it is very singular that the elevation of this table-land ( feet at shahgunj) should coincide with that of the granite range of upper bengal, where crossed by the grand trunk road, though they have no feature but the presence of alluvium in common. scarce a hillock varies the surface here, and the agricultural produce of the two is widely different. here the flat ledges of sandstone retain the moisture, and give rise to none of those impetuous torrents which sweep it off the inclined beds of gneiss, or splintered quartz. nor is there here any of the effloresced salts so forbidding to vegetation where they occur. wherever the alluvium is deep on these hills, neither _catechu, olibanum, butea, terminalia, diospyros,_ dwarf-palm, or any of those plants are to be met with, which abound wherever the rock is superficial, and irrespectively of its mineral characters. the gum-arabic _acacia_ is abundant here, though not seen below, and very rare to the eastward of this meridian, for i saw but little of it in behar. it is a plant partial to a dry climate, and rather prefers a good soil. in its distribution it in some degree follows the range of the camel, which is its constant companion over thousands of leagues. in the valley of the ganges i was told that neither the animal nor plant flourish east of the soane, where i experienced a marked change in the humidity of the atmosphere on my passage down the ganges. it was a circumstance i was interested in, having first met with the camel at teneriffe and the cape verd islands, the westernmost limit of its distribution; imported thither, however, as it now is into australia, where, though there is no _acacia arabica,_ four hundred other species of the genus are known. the mango, which is certainly _the_ fruit of india, (as the pine-apple is of the eastern islands, and the orange of the west,) was now blossoming, and a superb sight. the young leaves are purplish-green, and form a curious contrast to the deep lurid hue of the older foliage; especially when the tree is (which often occurs) dimidiate, one half the green, and the other the red shades of colours; when in full blossom, all forms a mass of yellow, diffusing a fragrance rather too strong and peculiar to be pleasant. we passed a village where a large fair was being held, and singularly familiar its arrangements were to my early associations. the women and children are the prime customers; for the latter whirl-you-go-rounds, toys, and sweetmeats were destined; to tempt the former, little booths of gay ornaments, patches for the forehead, ear-rings of quaint shapes, bugles and beads. here as at home, i remarked that the vendors of these superfluities occupy the approaches to this vanity-fair. as, throughout the east, the trades are congregated into particular quarters of the cities, so here the itinerants grouped themselves into little bazaars for each class of commodity. whilst i was engaged in purchasing a few articles of native workmanship, my elephant made an attack on a sweetmeat stall, demolishing a magnificent erection of barley-sugar, before his proceedings could be put a stop to. mr. felle's bungalow (whose garden smiled with roses in this wilderness) was surrounded by a moat (fed by a spring), which was full of aquatic plants, _nymphaea, damasonium, villarsia cristata, aponogeton,_ three species of _potamogeton,_ two of _naias, chara_ and _zannichellia_ (the two latter indifferently, and often together, used in the refinement of sugar). in a large tank hard by, wholly fed by rain water, i observed only the _villarsia indica,_ no _aponogeton, nymphaea,_ or _dammonium,_ nor did these occur in any of the other tanks i examined, which were otherwise well peopled with plants. this may not be owing to the quality of the water so much as to its varying quantity in the tank. all around here, as at roump, is a dead flat, except towards the crest of the ghats which overhang the valley of the soane, and there the sandstone rock rises by steps into low hills. during a ride to a natural tank amongst these rocky elevations, i passed from the alluvium to the sandstone, and at once met with all the prevailing plants of the granite, gneiss, limestone and hornstone rocks previously examined, and which i have enumerated too often to require recapitulation; a convincing proof that the mechanical properties and not the chemical constitution of the rocks regulate the distribution of these plants. rujubbund (the pleasant spot), is a small tarn, or more properly the expanded bed of a stream, art having aided nature in its formation: it is edged by rocks and cliffs fringed with the usual trees of the neighbourhood; it is a wild and pretty spot, not unlike some birch-bordered pool in the mountains of wales or scotland, sequestered and picturesque. it was dark before i got back, with heavy clouds and vivid lightning approaching from the south-west. the day had been very hot ( p.m., degrees), and the evening the same; but the barometer did not foretell the coming tempest, which broke with fury at p.m., blowing open the doors, and accompanied with vivid lightning and heavy thunder, close by and all round, though no rain fell. in the clear dry mornings of these regions, a curious optical phenomena may be observed, of a _sunrise_ in the _west,_ and _sunset_ in the _east._ in either case, bright and well-defined beams rise to the zenith, often crossing to the opposite horizon. it is a beautiful feature in the firmament, and equally visible whether the horizon be cloudy or clear, the white beams being projected indifferently against a dark vapour or the blue serene. the zodiacal light shines from an hour or two after sunset till midnight, with singular brightness, almost equalling the milky way. _march_ .-left shahgunj for mirzapore, following the road to goorawal, over a dead alluvial flat without a feature to remark. turning north from that village, the country undulates, exposing the rocky nucleus, and presenting the usual concomitant vegetation. occasionally park-like views occurred, which, where diversified by the rocky valleys, resemble much the noble scenery of the forest of dean on the borders of wales; the _mahowa_ especially representing the oak, with its spreading and often gnarled branches. many of the exposed slabs of sandstone are beautifully waved on the surface with the _ripple-mark_ impression. amowee, where i arrived at p.m., is on an open grassy flat, about fifteen miles from the ganges, which is seen from the neighbourhood, flowing among trees, with the white houses, domes, and temples of mirzapore scattered around, and high above which the dust-clouds were coursing along the horizon. mr. money, the magistrate of mirzapore, kindly sent a mounted messenger to meet me here, who had vast trouble in getting bearers for my palkee. in it i proceeded the next day to mirzapore, descending a steep ghat of the bind hills by an excellent road, to the level plains of the ganges. unlike the dunwah pass, this is wholly barren. at the foot the sun was intensely hot, the roads alternately rocky and dusty, the villages thronged with a widely different looking race from those of the hills, and the whole air of the outskirts, on a sultry afternoon, far from agreeable. mirzapore is a straggling town, said to contain , inhabitants. it flanks the river, and is built on an undulating alluvial bank, full of kunker, elevated feet above the sea, and from to above the present level of the river. the vicinity of the ganges and its green bank, and the numbers of fine trees around, render it a pleasing, though not a fine town. it presents the usual asiatic contrast of squalor and gaudiness; consisting of large squares and broad streets, interspersed with acres of low huts and groves of trees. it is celebrated for its manufactory of carpets, which are admirable in appearance, and, save in durability, equal to the english. indigo seed from bundelkund is also a most extensive article of commerce, the best coming from the doab. for cotton, lac, sugar, and saltpetre, it is one of the greatest marts in india. the articles of native manufacture are brass washing and cooking utensils, and stone deities worked out of the sandstone. there is little native vegetation, the country being covered with cultivation and extensive groves of mango, and occasionally of guava. english vegetables are abundant and excellent, and the strawberries, which ripen in march, rival the european fruit in size, but hardly in flavour. during the few days spent at mirzapore with my kind friend, mr. c. hamilton, i was surprised to find the temperature of the day cooler by nearly degrees than that of the hills above, or of the upper part of the soane valley; while on the other hand the nights were decidedly warmer. the dewpoint again was even lower in proportion, ( degrees) and the climate consequently drier. the atmosphere was extremely dry and electrical, the hair constantly crackling when combed. further west, where the climate becomes still drier, the electricity of the air is even greater. mr. griffith mentions in his journal that in filling barometer tubes in affghanistan, he constantly experienced a shock. here i had the pleasure of meeting lieutenant ward, one of the suppressors of thuggee (_thuggee,_ in hindostan, signifies a deceiver; fraud, not open force, being employed). this gentleman kindly showed me the approvers or king's evidence of his establishment, belonging to those three classes of human scourges, the thug, dakoit, and poisoner. of these the first was the thug, a mild-looking man, who had been born and bred to the profession: he had committed many murders, saw no harm in them, and felt neither shame nor remorse. his organs of observation and destructiveness were large, and the cerebellum small. he explained to me how the gang waylay the unwary traveller, enter into conversation with him, and have him suddenly seized, when the superior throws his own linen girdle round the victim's neck and strangles him, pressing the knuckles against the spine. taking off his own, he passed it round my arm, and showed me the turn as coolly as a sailor once taught me the _hangman's knot._ the thug is of any caste, and from any part of india. the profession have particular stations, which they generally select for murder, throwing the body of their victim into a well. the dakoit (_dakhee,_ a robber) belongs to a class who rob in gangs, but never commit murder--arson and housebreaking also forming part of their profession. these are all high-class rajpoots, originally from guzerat; who, on being conquered, vowed vengeance on mankind. they speak both hindostanee and the otherwise extinct guzerat language; this is guttural in the extreme, and very singular in sound. they are a very remarkable people, found throughout india, and called by various names; their women dress peculiarly, and are utterly devoid of modesty. the man i examined was a short, square, but far from powerful nepalese, with high arched eyebrows, and no organs of observation. these people are great cowards. the poisoners all belong to one caste, of pasie, or dealers in toddy: they go singly or in gangs, haunting the travellers' resting-places, where they drop half a rupee weight of pounded or whole _datura_ seeds into his food, producing a twenty-hours' intoxication, during which he is robbed, and left to recover or sink under the stupifying effects of the narcotic. he told me that the _datura_ seed is gathered without ceremony, and at any time, place, or age of the plant. he was a dirty, ill-conditioned looking fellow, with no bumps behind his ears, or prominence of eyebrow region, but a remarkable cerebellum. though now all but extinct (except in cuttack), through ten or fifteen years of unceasing vigilance on the part of government, and incredible activity and acuteness in the officers employed, the thugs were formerly a wonderfully numerous body, who abstained from their vocation solely in the immediate neighbourhood of their own villages; which, however, were not exempt from the visits of other thugs; so that, as major sleeman says,--"the annually returning tide of murder swept unsparingly over the whole face of india, from the sutlej to the sea-coast, and from the himalaya to cape comorin. one narrow district alone was free, the concan, beyond the ghats, whither they never penetrated." in bengal, river thugs replace the travelling practitioner. candeish and rohilkund alone harboured no thugs as residents, but they were nevertheless haunted by the gangs. their origin is uncertain, but supposed to be very ancient, soon after the mahommedan conquest. they now claim a divine original, and are supposed to have supernatural powers, and to be the emissaries of the divinity, like the wolf, the tiger, and the bear. it is only lately that they have swarmed so prodigiously,--seven original gangs having migrated from delhi to the gangetic provinces about years ago, and from these all the rest have sprung. many belong to the most amiable, intelligent, and respectable classes of the lower and even middle ranks: they love their profession, regard murder as sport, and are never haunted with dreams, or troubled with pangs of conscience during hours of solitude, or in the last moments of life. the victim is an acceptable sacrifice to the goddess davee, who by some classes is supposed to eat the lifeless body, and thus save her votaries the necessity of concealing it. they are extremely superstitious, always consulting omens, such as the direction in which a hare or jackall crosses the road; and even far more trivial circumstances will determine the fate of a dozen of people, and perhaps of an immense treasure. all worship the pickaxe, which is symbolical of their profession, and an oath sworn on it binds closer than on the koran. the consecration of this weapon is a most elaborate ceremony, and takes place only under certain trees. they rise through various grades: the lowest are scouts; the second, sextons; the third are holders of the victims' hands; the highest, stranglers. though all agree in never practising cruelty, or robbing previous to murder, never allowing any but infants to escape (and these are trained to thuggee), and never leaving a trace of such goods as may be identified, there are several variations in their mode of conducting operations; some tribes spare certain castes, others none: murder of woman is against all rules; but the practice crept into certain gangs, and this it is which led to their discountenance by the goddess davee, and the consequent downfall of the system. davee, they say, allowed the british to punish them, because a certain gang had murdered the mothers to obtain their daughters to be sold to prostitution. major sleeman has constructed a map demonstrating the number of "bails," or regular stations for committing murder, in the kingdom of oude alone, which is miles long by broad, and in which are , which are regarded by the thug with as much satisfaction and interest as a game preserve is in england: nor are these "bails" less numerous in other parts of india. of twenty assassins who were examined, one frankly confessed to having been engaged in murders, and the least guilty of the number to . sometimes persons collected into one gang, and their profits have often been immense, the murder of six persons on one occasion yielding , rupees; upwards of pounds. of the various facilities for keeping up the system, the most prominent are, the practice amongst the natives of travelling before dawn, of travellers mixing freely together, and taking their meals by the way-side instead of in villages; in the very bails, in fact, to which they are inveigled by the thug in the shape of a fellow-traveller; money remittances are also usually made by disguised travellers, whose treasure is exposed at the custom-houses, and, worst of all, the bankers will never own to the losses they sustain, which, as a visitation of god, would, if avenged, lead, they think, to future, and perhaps heavier punishment. had the thugs destroyed englishmen, they would quickly have been put down; but the system being invariably practised on a class of people acknowledging the finger of the deity in its execution, its glaring enormities were long in rousing the attention of the indian government. a few examples of the activity exercised by the suppressors may be interesting. they act wholly through the information given by approvers, who are simply king's evidences. of thugs engaged in the murder of people, and the plunder of nearly , pounds, all except seventy were captured in ten years, though separated into six gangs, and their operations continued from to : the last party was taken in . and again, between the years and , thugs were seized, of whom were hanged, and transported; so that now it is but seldom these wretches are ever heard of. to show the extent of their operations i shall quote an anecdote from sleeman's reports (to which i am indebted for most of the above information). he states that he was for three years in charge of a district on the nerbudda, and considered himself acquainted with every circumstance that occurred in the neighbourhood; yet, during that time, people were murdered and buried within less than a quarter of a mile of his own residence! two hundred and fifty boats full of river thugs, in crews of fifteen, infested the ganges between benares and calcutta, during five months of every year, under pretence of conveying pilgrims. travellers along the banks were tracked, and offered a passage, which if refused in the first boat was probably accepted in some other. at a given signal the crews rushed in, doubled up the decoyed victim, broke his back, and threw him into the river, where floating corpses are too numerous to elicit even an exclamation. at mirzapore i engaged a boat to carry me down the river to bhagulpore, whence i was to proceed to the sikkim-himalaya. the vessel, which, though slow and very shabby, had the advantage of being cooler and more commodious than the handsomer craft. its appearance was not unlike that of a floating haystack, or thatched cottage: its length was forty feet, and breadth fifteen, and it drew a foot and a half of water: the deck, on which a kind of house, neatly framed of matting, was erected, was but a little above the water's edge. my portion of this floating residence was lined with a kind of reed-work formed of long culms of _saccharum._ the crew and captain consisted of six naked hindoos, one of whom steered by the huge rudder, sitting on a bamboo-stage astern; the others pulled four oars in the very bows opposite my door, or tracked the boat along the riverbank. in my room (for cabin i cannot call it) stood my palkee, fitted as a bed, with mosquito curtains; a chair and table. on one side were placed all my papers and plants, under arrangement to go home; on the other, my provisions, rice, sugar, curry-powder, a preserved ham, and cheese, etc. around hung telescope, botanical box, dark lantern, barometer, and thermometer, etc., etc. our position was often _ashore,_ and, hindoo-like, on the lee-shore, going bump, bump, bump, so that i could hardly write. i considered myself fortunate in having to take this slow conveyance down, it enabling me to write and arrange all day long. i left on the th of march, and in the afternoon of the same day passed chunar.* [the first station at which henry martyn laboured in india.] this is a tabular mass of sandstone, projecting into the river, and the eastern termination of the kymore range. there is not a rock between this and the himalaya, and barely a stone all the way down the ganges, till the granite and gneiss rocks of the behar range are again met with. the current of the ganges is here very strong, and its breadth much lessened: the river runs between high banks of alluvium, containing much kunker. at benares it expands into a broad stream, with a current which during the rains is said to flow eight miles an hour, when the waters rise feet. the fall hence is feet to its junction with the hooghly, viz., one foot to every mile. my observations made that from mirzapore to benares considerably greater. benares is the athens of india. the variety of buildings along the bank is incredible. there are temples of every shape in all stages of completion and dilapidation, and at all angles of inclination; for the banks give way so much that many of these edifices are fearfully out of the perpendicular. the famed mosque, built by aurungzebe on the site of a hindoo temple, is remarkable for its two octagonal minarets, feet above the ganges. the view from it over the town, especially of the european resident's quarter, is fine; but the building itself is deficient in beauty or ornament: it commands the muddy river with its thousands of boats, its waters peopled with swimmers and bathers, who spring in from the many temples, water-terraces, and ghats on the city side: opposite is a great sandy plain. the town below looks a mass of poor, square, flat-roofed houses, of which , are brick, and , mud and thatch, through the crowd of which, and of small temples, the eye wanders in vain for some attractive feature or evidence of the wealth, the devotion, the science, or the grandeur of a city celebrated throughout the east for all these attributes. green parrots and pigeons people the air. the general appearance of an oriental town is always more or less ruinous; and here the eye is fatigued with bricks and crumbling edifices, and the ear with prayer-bells. the bright meadows and green trees which adorn the european resident's dwelling, some four miles back from the river, alone relieve the monotony of the scene. the streets are so narrow that it is difficult to ride a horse through them; and the houses are often six stories high, with galleries crossing above from house to house. these tall, gaunt edifices sometimes give place to clumps of cottages, and a mass of dusty ruins, the unsavoury retreats of vermin and filth, where the _calotropis arborea_ generally spreads its white branches and glaucous leaves--a dusty plant. here, too, enormous spiders' webs hang from the crumbling walls, choked also with dust, and resembling curtains of coarse muslin, being often some yards across, and not arranged in radii and arcs, but spun like weaver's woofs. paintings, remarkable only for their hideous proportions and want of perspective, are daubed in vermilion, ochre, and indigo. the elephant, camel, and porpoise of the ganges, dog, shepherd, peacock, and horse, are especially frequent, and so is a running pattern of a hand spread open, with a blood-red spot on the palm. a still less elegant but frequent object is the fuel, which is composed of the manure collected on the roads of the city, moulded into flat cakes, and stuck by the women on the walls to dry, retaining the sign-manual of the artist in the impressed form of her outspread hand. the cognizance of the rajah, two fish chained together, appears over the gates of public buildings. the hundreds of temples and shrines throughout the city are its most remarkable feature: sacred bulls, and lingams of all sizes, strewed with flowers and grains of rice meet the eye at every turn; and the city's boast is the possession of one million idols, which, of one kind and another, i can well believe. the great hindoo festival of the _holi_ was now celebrating, and the city more than ordinarily crowded; throwing red powder (lac and flour), with rose-water, is the great diversion at a festival more childish by far than a carnival. through the kindness of mr. reade (the commissioner), i obtained admission to the bishishar-kumardil, the "holiest of holies." it was a small, low, stone building, daubed with red inside, and swarming with stone images of brahminee bulls, and various disgusting emblems. a fat old brahmin, naked to the waist, took me in, but allowed no followers; and what with my ignorance of his phraseology, the clang of bells and din of voices, i gained but little information. some fine bells from nepal were evidently the lion of the temple. i emerged, adorned with a chaplet of magnolia flowers, and with my hands full of _calotropis_ and _nyctanthes_ blossoms. it was a horrid place for noise, smell, and sights. thence i went to a holy well, rendered sacred because siva, when stepping from the himalaya to ceylon, accidentally let a medicine chest fall into it. the natives frequent it with little basins or baskets of rice, sugar, etc., dropping in a little of each while they mutter prayers. illustration -- equatorial-sundial the observatory at benares, and those at delhi, matra on the jumna, and oujein, were built by jey-sing, rajah of jayanagar, upwards of years ago; his skill in mathematical science was so well known, that the emperor mahommed shah employed him to reform the calendar. mr. hunter, in the "asiatic researches," gives a translation of the lucubrations of this really enlightened man, as contained in the introduction to his own almanac. illustration -- equinoctial sun-dial. of the more important instruments i took sketches; no. , is the naree-wila, or equatorial dial; no. , the semrat-yunta, or equinoctial dial; no. , an equatorial, probably a kranti-urit, or azimuth circle.* [hunter, in as soc. researches, (calcutta); sir r. barker in phil. trans., lxvii. ( ); j. l. williams, phil. trans., lxxxiii. ( ).] jey-sing's genius and love of science seem, according to hunter, to have descended to some of his family, who died early in this century, when "urania fled before the brazen-fronted mars, and the best of the observatories, that of oujein, was turned into an arsenal and cannon foundry." illustration -- brass azimuth circle the observatory is still the most interesting object in benares, though it is now dirty and ruinous, and the great stone instruments are rapidly crumbling away. the building is square, with a central court and flat roof, round which the astrolabes, etc. are arranged. a half naked astronomer-royal, with a large sore on his stomach, took me round--he was a pitiful object, and told me he was very hungry. the observatory is nominally supported by the rajah of jeypore, who doles out a too scanty pittance to his scientific corps. in the afternoon mr. reade drove me to the sar-nath, a singular boodhist temple, a cylindrical mass of brickwork, faced with stone, the scrolls on which were very beautiful, and as sharp as if freshly cut: it is surmounted by a tall dome, and is altogether about seventy or a hundred feet high. of the boodh figures only one remains, the others having been used by a recent magistrate of benares in repairing a bridge over the goomtee! from this place the boodhist monuments, hindoo temple, mussulman mosque, and english church, were all embraced in one _coup d'oeil._ on our return, we drove past many enormous mounds of earth and brick-work, the vestiges of old benares, but whether once continued to the present city or not is unknown. remains are abundant, eighteen feet below the site of the present city. benares is the mecca of the hindoos, and the number of pilgrims who visit it is incalculable. casi (its ancient name, signifying splendid), is alleged to be no part of this world, which rests on eternity, whereas benares is perched on a prong of siva's trident, and is hence beyond the reach of earthquakes.* [probably an allusion to the infrequency of these phenomena in this meridian; they being common both in eastern bengal, and in western india beyond the ganges.] originally built of gold, the sins of the inhabitants were punished by its transmutation into stone, and latterly into mud and thatch: whoever enters it, and especially visits its principal idol (siva fossilised) is secure of heaven. on the th i left benares for ghazepore, a pretty town situated on the north bank of the river, celebrated for its manufacture of rose-water, the tomb of lord cornwallis, and a site of the company's stud. the rose gardens surround the town: they are fields, with low bushes of the plant grown in rows, red with blossoms in the morning, all of which are, however, plucked long before midday. the petals are put into clay stills, with twice their weight of water, and the produce exposed to the fresh air, for a night, in open vessels. the unskimmed water affords the best, and it is often twice and even oftener distilled; but the fluid deteriorates by too much distillation. the attar is skimmed from the exposed pans, and sells at pounds the rupee weight, to make which , flowers are required. it is frequently adulterated with sandal-wood oil. lord cornwallis' mausoleum is a handsome building, modelled by flaxman after the sybil's temple. the allegorical designs of hindoos and sorrowing soldiers with reversed arms, which decorate two sides of the enclosed tomb, though perhaps as good as can be, are under any treatment unclassical and uncouth. the simple laurel and oak-leaf chaplets on the alternating faces are far more suitable and suggestive. _march_ .--i left ghazepore and dropped down the ganges; the general features of which are soon described. a strong current four or five miles broad, of muddy water, flows between a precipitous bank of alluvium or sand on one side, and a flat shelving one of sand or more rarely mud, on the other. sand-banks are frequent in the river, especially where the great affluents debouche; and there generally are formed vast expanses of sand, small "saharas," studded with stalking pillars of sand, raised seventy or eighty feet high by gusts of wind, erect, stately, grave-looking columns, all shaft, with neither basement nor capital, the genii of the "arabian nights." the river is always dotted with boats of all shapes, mine being perhaps of the most common description; the great square, yankee-like steamers, towing their accommodation-boats (as the passengers' floating hotels are called), are the rarest. trees are few on the banks, except near villages, and there is hardly a palm to be seen above patna. towns are unfrequent, such as there are being mere collections of huts, with the ghat and boats at the bottom of the bank; and at a respectful distance from the bazaar, stand the neat bungalows of the european residents, with their smiling gardens, hedgings and fencings, and loitering servants at the door. a rotting charpoy (or bedstead) on the banks is a common sight, the "_sola reliquia_" of some poor hindoo, who departs this life by the side of the stream, to which his body is afterwards committed. shoals of small goggled-eyed fish are seen, that spring clear out of the water; and are preyed upon by terns and other birds; a few insects skim the surface; turtle and porpoises tumble along, all forming a very busy contrast to the lazy alligator, sunning his green and scaly back near the shore, with his ichthyosaurian snout raised high above the water. birds are numerous, especially early and late in the day. along the silent shore the hungry pariah dog may be seen tearing his meal from some stranded corpse, whilst the adjutant-bird, with his head sunk on his body and one leg tucked up, patiently awaits his turn. at night the beautiful brahminee geese alight, one by one, and seek total solitude; ever since having disturbed a god in his slumbers, these birds are fated to pass the night in single blessedness. the gulls and terns, again, roost in flocks, as do the wild geese and pelicans,--the latter, however, not till after making a hearty and very noisy supper. these birds congregate by the sides of pools, and beat the water with violence, so as to scare the fish, which thus become an easy prey; a fact which was, i believe, first indicated by pallas, during his residence on the banks of the caspian sea. shells are scarce, and consist of a few small bivalves; their comparative absence is probably due to the paucity of limestone in the mountains whence the many feeders flow. the sand is pure white and small-grained, with fragments of hornblende and mica, the latter varying in abundance as a feeder is near or far away. pink sand* [i have seen the same garnet sand covering the bottom of the himalayan torrents, where it is the produce of disintegrated gneiss, and whence it is transported to the ganges.] of garnets is very common, and deposited in layers interstratified with the white quartz sand. worm-marks, ripple-marks, and the footsteps of alligators, birds and beasts, abound in the wet sand. the vegetation of the banks consists of annuals which find no permanent resting-place. along the sandy shores the ever-present plants are mostly english, as dock, a _nasturtium, ranunculus sceleratus, fumitory, juncus bufonius,_, common vervain, _gnaphalium luteo-album,_ and very frequently _veronica anagallise._ on the alluvium grow the same, mixed with tamarisk, _acacia arabica,_ and a few other bushes. withered grass abounds; and wheat, dhal (_cajanus_) and gram (_cicer arietinum_), _carthamus,_ vetches, and rice are the staple products of the country. bushes are few, except the universally prevalent adhatoda and _calotropis._ trees, also, are rare, and of stunted growth; figs, the _artocarpus_ and some _leguminosa_ prevail most. i saw but two kinds of palm, the fan-palm, and _phoenix_: the latter is characteristic of the driest locality. then, for the animal creation, men, women, and children abound, both on the banks, and plying up and down the ganges. the humped cow (of which the ox is used for draught) is common. camels i occasionally observed, and more rarely the elephant; poneys, goats, and dogs muster strong. porpoises and alligators infest the river, even above benares. flies and mosquitos are terrible pests; and so are the odious flying-bugs,* [large hemipterlus insects, of the genus _derecteryx._] which insinuate themselves between one's skin and clothes, diffusing a dreadful odour, which is increased by any attempt to touch or remove them. in the evening it was impossible to keep insects out of the boat, or to hinder their putting the lights out; and of these the most intolerable was the abovementioned flying-bug. saucy crickets, too, swarm, and spring up at one's face, whilst mosquitos maintain a constant guerilla warfare, trying to the patience no less than to the nerves. thick webs of the gossamer spider float across the river during the heat of the day, as coarse as fine thread, and being inhaled keep tickling the nose and lips. on the th, the morning commenced with a dust-storm, the horizon was about yards off, and ashy white with clouds of sand; the trees were scarcely visible, and everything in my boat was covered with a fine coat of impalpable powder, collected from the boundless alluvial plains through which the ganges flows. trees were scarcely discernible, and so dry was the wind that drops of water vanished like magic. neither ferns, mosses, nor lichens grow along the banks of the ganges, they cannot survive the transition from parching like this to the three months' floods at midsummer, when the country is for miles under water. _march_ .--passed the mouth of the soane, a vast expanse of sand dotted with droves of camels; and soon after, the wide-spread spits of sand along the north bank announced the mouth of the gogra, one of the vastest of the many himalayan affluents of the ganges. on the th of march i reached dinapore, a large military station, sufficiently insalubrious, particularly for european troops, the barracks being so misplaced that the inmates are suffocated: the buildings run east and west instead of north and south, and therefore lose all the breeze in the hottest weather. from this place i sent the boat down to patna, and proceeded thither by land to the house of dr. irvine, an old acquaintance and botanist, from whom i received a most kind welcome. on the road, bengal forms of vegetation, to which i had been for three months a stranger, reappeared; likewise groves of fan and toddy palms, which are both very rare higher up the river; clumps of large bamboo, orange, _acacia sissoo, melia, guatteria longifolia, spondias mangifera, odina, euphorbia pentagona, neriifolia_ and _trigona,_ were common road-side plants. in the gardens, papaw, _croton, jatropha, buddleia, cookia,_ loquat, litchi, longan, all kinds of the orange tribe, and the cocoa-nut, some from their presence, and many from their profusion, indicated a decided change of climate, a receding from the desert north-west of india, and its dry winds, and an approach to the damper regions of the many-mouthed ganges. my main object at patna being to see the opium godowns (stores), i waited on dr. corbett, the assistant-agent, who kindly explained everything to me, and to whose obliging attentions i am much indebted. the e.i. company grant licences for the cultivation of the poppy, and contract for all the produce at certain rates, varying with the quality. no opium can be grown without this licence, and an advance equal to about two-thirds of the value of the produce is made to the grower. this produce is made over to district collectors, who approximately fix the worth of the contents of each jar, and forward it to patna, where rewards are given for the best samples, and the worst are condemned without payment; but all is turned to some account in the reduction of the drug to a state fit for market. the poppy flowers in the end of january and beginning of february, and the capsules are sliced in february and march with a little instrument like a saw, made of three iron plates with jagged edges, tied together. the cultivation is very carefully conducted, nor are there any very apparent means of improving this branch of commerce and revenue. during the n.w., or dry winds, the best opium is procured, the worst during the moist, or e. and n.e., when the drug imbibes moisture, and a watery bad solution of opium collects in cavities of its substance, and is called passewa, according to the absence of which the opium is generally prized. at the end of march the opium jars arrive at the stores by water and by land, and continue accumulating for some weeks. every jar is labelled and stowed in a proper place, separately tested with extreme accuracy, and valued. when the whole quantity has been received, the contents of all the jars are thrown into great vats, occupying a very large building, whence the mass is distributed, to be made up into balls for the markets. this operation is carried on in a long paved room, where every man is ticketed, and many overseers are stationed to see that the work is properly conducted. each workman sits on a stool, with a double stage and a tray before him. on the top stage is a tin basin, containing opium sufficient for three balls; in the lower another basin, holding water: in the tray stands a brass hemispherical cup, in which the ball is worked. to the man's right hand is another tray, with two compartments, one containing thin pancakes of poppy petals pressed together, the other a cupful of sticky opium-water, made from refuse opium. the man takes the brass cup, and places a pancake at the bottom, smears it with opium-water, and with many plies of the pancakes makes a coat for the opium. of this he takes about one-third of the mass before him, puts it inside the petals, and agglutinates many other coats over it: the balls are then again weighed, and reduced or increased to a certain weight if necessary. at the day's end, each man takes his work to a rack with numbered compartments, and deposits it in that which answers to his own number, thence the balls (each being put in a clay cup) are carried to an enormous drying-room, where they are exposed in tiers, and constantly examined and turned, to prevent their being attacked by weevils, which are very prevalent during moist winds, little boys creeping along the racks all day long for this purpose. when dry, the balls are packed in two layers of six each in chests, with the stalks, dried leaves, and capsules of the plant, and sent down to calcutta. a little opium is prepared of very fine quality for the government hospitals, and some for general sale in india; but the proportion is trifling, and such is made up into square cakes. a good workman will prepare from thirty to fifty balls a day, the total produce being , to , a day; during one working season , , balls are manufactured for the chinese market alone. the poppy-petal _pancakes,_ each about a foot radius, are made in the fields by women, by the simple operation of pressing the fresh petals together. they are brought in large baskets, and purchased at the commencement of the season. the liquor with which the pancakes are agglutinated together by the ball-maker, and worked into the ball, is merely inspissated opium-water, the opium for which is derived from the condemned opium, (passewa,) the washing of the utensils, and of the workmen, every one of whom is nightly laved before he leaves the establishment, and the water is inspissated. thus not a particle of opium is lost. to encourage the farmers, the refuse stalks, leaves, and heads are bought up, to pack the balls with; but this is far from an economical plan, for it is difficult to keep the refuse from damp and insects. a powerful smell of opium pervaded these vast buildings, which dr. corbett* [i am greatly indebted to mr. oldfield, the opium agent, and to dr. corbett, for a complete set of specimens, implements, and drawings, illustrating the cultivation and manufacture of opium. they are exhibited in the kew museum of economic botany.] assured me did not affect himself or the assistants. the men work ten hours a day, becoming sleepy in the afternoon; but this is only natural in the hot season: they are rather liable to eruptive diseases, possibly engendered by the nature of their occupation. even the best east indian opium is inferior to the turkish, and owing to peculiarities of climate, will probably always be so. it never yields more than five per cent. of morphia, whence its inferiority, but is as good in other respects, and even richer in narcotine. the care and attention devoted to every department of collecting, testing, manipulating, and packing, is quite extraordinary; and the result has been an impulse to the trade, beyond what was anticipated. the natives have been quick at apprehending and supplying the wants of the market, and now there are more demands for licences to grow opium than can be granted. all the opium eaten in india is given out with a permit to licensed dealers, and the drug is so adulterated before it reaches the retailers in the bazaars, that it does not contain one-thirtieth part of the intoxicating power that it did when pure. patna is the stronghold of mahommedanism, and from its central position, its command of the ganges, and its proximity to nepal (which latter has been aptly compared to a drawn dagger, pointed at the heart of india), it is an important place. for this reason there are always a european and several native regiments stationed there. in the neighbourbood there is little to be seen, and the highly cultivated flat country is unfavourable to native vegetation. the _mudar_ plant (_calotropis_) was abundant here, but i found that its properties and nomenclature were far from settled points. on the banks of the ganges, the larger, white-flowered, sub-arboreous species prevailed; in the interior, and along my whole previous route, the smaller purple-flowered kind only was seen. mr. davis, of rotas, was in the habit of using the medicine copiously, and vouched for the cure of eighty cases, chiefly of leprosy, by the _white mudar,_ gathered on the ganges, whilst the purple of rotas and the neighbourhood was quite inert: dr. irvine, again, used the purple only, and found the white inert. the european and native doctors, who knew the two plants, all gave the preference to the white; except dr. irvine, whose experience over various parts of india is entitled to great weight. _march_ .--dropped down the river, experiencing a succession of east and north-east winds during the whole remainder of the voyage. these winds are very prevalent throughout the month of march, and they rendered the passage in my sluggish boat sufficiently tedious. in other respects i had but little bad weather to complain of: only one shower of rain occurred, and but few storms of thunder and lightning. the stream is very strong, and its action on the sand-banks conspicuous. all night i used to hear the falling cliffs precipitated with a dull heavy splash into the water,--a pretty spectacle in the day-time, when the whirling current is seen to carry a cloud of white dust, like smoke, along its course. the curruckpore hills, the northern boundary of the gneiss and granite range of paras-nath, are seen first in the distance, and then throwing out low loosely timbered spurs towards the river; but no rock or hill comes close to the banks till near monghyr, where two islets of rock rise out of the bed of the river. they are of stratified quartz, dipping, at a high angle, to the south-east; and, as far as i could observe, quite barren, each crowned with a little temple. the swarm of boats from below patna to this place was quite incredible. _april_ .--arrived at monghyr, by far the prettiest town i had seen on the river, backed by a long range of wooded hills,--detached outliers of which rise in the very town. the banks are steep, and they appear more so owing to the fortifications, which are extensive. a number of large, white, two-storied houses, some very imposing, and perched on rounded or conical hills, give a european aspect to the place. monghyr is celebrated for its iron manufactures, especially of muskets, in which respect it is the birmingham of bengal. generally speaking, these weapons are poor, though stamped with the first english names. a native workman will, however, if time and sufficient reward be given, turn out a first rate fowling-piece. the inhabitants are reported to be sad drunkards, and the abundance of toddy-palms was quite remarkable. the latter, (here the _phoenix sylvestris,) i never saw wild, but it is considered to be so in n.w. india; it is still a doubtful point whether it is the same as the african species. in the morning of the following day i went to the hot springs of seeta-koond (wells of seeta), a few miles south of the town. illustration -- monghyr on the ganges, with the currockpore hills in the distance. the hills are hornstone and quartz, stratified and dipping southerly with a very high angle; they are very barren, and evidently identical with those on the south bank of the soane; skirting, in both cases, the granite and gneiss range of paras-nath. the alluvium on the banks of the ganges is obviously an aqueous deposit subsequent to the elevation of these hills, and is perfectly plane up to their bases. the river has its course through the alluvium, like the soane. the depth of the former is in many places upwards of feet, and the kunker pebbles it contains are often disposed in parallel undulating bands. it nowhere contains sand pebbles or fossils; concretions of lime (kunker) alone interrupting its uniform consistence. it attains its greatest thickness in the valleys of the ganges and the soane, gradually sloping up to the himalaya and curruckpore hills on either flank. it is, however, well developed on the kymore and paras-nath hills, to feet above the ganges valley, and i have no doubt was deposited in very deep water, when the relative positions of these mountains to the ganges and soane valleys were the same that they are now. like every other part of the surface of india, it has suffered much from denudation, especially on the above-named mountains, and around their bases, where various rocks protrude through it. along the ganges again, its surface is an unbroken level between chunar and the rocks of monghyr. the origin of its component mineral matter must be sought in the denudation of the himalayas within a very recent geological period. the contrast between the fertility of the alluvium and the sterility of the protruded quartzy rocks is very striking, cultivation running up to these fields of stones, and suddenly stopping. unlike the soorujkoond hot-springs, those of seetakoond rise in a plain, and were once covered by a handsome temple. all the water is collected in a tank, some yards square, with steps leading down to it. the water, which is clear and tasteless (temp. degrees), is so pure as to be exported copiously, and the monghyr manufactory of soda-water presents the anomaly of owing its purity to seeta's ablutions. on my passage down the river i passed the picturesque rocks of sultangunj; they are similar to those of monghyr, but very much larger and loftier. one, a round-headed mass, stands on the bank, capped with a triple-domed mahommedan tomb, palms, and figs. the other, which is far more striking, rises isolated in the bed of the river, and is crowned with a hindoo temple, its pyramidal cone surmounted with a curious pile of weathercocks, and two little banners. the current of the ganges is here very strong, and runs in deep black eddies between the rocks. though now perhaps eighty or a hundred yards from the shore, the islet must have been recently a peninsula, for it retains a portion of the once connecting bank of alluvium, in the form of a short flat-topped cliff, about thirty feet above the water. some curious looking sculptures on the rocks are said to represent naragur (or vishnu), suree and sirooj; but to me they were quite unintelligible. the temple is dedicated to naragur, and inhabited by fakirs; it is the most holy on the ganges. _april_ .--i arrived at bhagulpore, and took up my quarters with my friend dr. grant, till he should arrange my dawk for sikkim. the town has been supposed to be the much-sought palibothra, and a dirty stream hard by (the chundum), the eranoboas; but mr. ravenshaw has now brought all existing proofs to bear on patna and the soane. it is, like most hilly places in india, s. of the himalaya, the seat of much jain worship; and the temples on mount manden,* [for the following information about bhagulpore and its neighbourhood, i am indebted chiefly to col. francklin's essay in the asiatic researches; and the late major napleton and mr. pontet.] a few miles off, are said to have been in number. at the assumed summer-palaces of the kings of palibothra the ground is covered with agates, brought from the neighbouring hills, which were, in a rough state, let into the walls of the buildings. these agates perfectly resemble the soane pebbles, and they assist in the identification of these flanking hills with those of the latter river. again, near the hills, the features of interest are very numerous. the neighbouring mountains of curruckpore, which are a portion of the rajmahal and paras-nath range, are peopled by tribes representing the earliest races of india, prior to the invasion of young rama, prince of oude, who, according to the legend, spread brahminism with his conquests, and won the hand of king jannuk's daughter, seeta, by bending her father's bow. these people are called coles, a middle-sized, strong, very dark, and black-haired race, with thick lips: they have no vocation but collecting iron from the soil, which occurs abundantly in nodules. they eat flesh, whether that of animals killed by themselves, or of those which have died a natural death, and mix with hindoos, but not with mussulmen. there are other tribes, vestiges of the tamulian race, differing somewhat in their rites from these, and approaching, in their habits, more to hindoos; but all are timorous and retiring. the hill-rangers, or bhagulpore-rangers, are all natives of the rajmahal hills, and form a local corps maintained by the company for the protection of the district. for many years these people were engaged in predatory excursions, which, owing to the nature of the country, were checked with great difficulty. the plan was therefore conceived, by an active magistrate in the district, of embodying a portion into a military force, for the protection of the country from invasions of their own tribes; and this scheme has answered perfectly. to me the most interesting object in bhagulpore was the horticultural gardens, whose origin and flourishing condition are due to the activity and enterprise of the late major napleton, commander of the hill-rangers. the site is good, consisting of fifteen acres, that were, four years ago, an indigo field, but form now a smiling garden. about fifty men are employed; and the number of seeds and vegetables annually distributed is very great. of trees the most conspicuous are the tamarind, _tecoma jasminoides, erythrina, adansonia, bombax,_ teak, banyan, peepul, _sissoo, casuarina, terminalia, melia, bauhinia._ of introduced species english and chinese flat peaches (pruned to the centre to let the sun in), mangos of various sorts, _eugenia jambos,_ various anonas, litchi, loquat and longan, oranges, _sapodilla_; apple, pear, both succeeding tolerably; various cabool and persian varieties of fruit-trees; figs, grapes, guava, apricots, and jujube. the grapes looked extremely well, but they require great skill and care in the management. they form a long covered walk, with a row of plantains on the w. side, to diminish the effects of the hot winds, but even with this screen, the fruit on that side are inferior to that on the opposite trellis. easterly winds, again, being moist, blight these and other plants, by favouring the abundant increase of insects, and causing the leaves to curl and fall off; and against this evil there is no remedy. with a clear sky the mischief is not great; under a cloudy one the prevalence of such winds is fatal to the crop. the white ant sometimes attacks the stems, and is best checked by washing the roots with limewater, yellow arsenic, or tobacco-water. numerous cerealia, and the varieties of cotton, sugar-cane, etc. all thrive extremely well; so do many of our english vegetables. cabbages, peas, and beans are much injured by the caterpillars of a _pontia,_ like our english "white;" raspberries, currants, and gooseberries will not grow at all. the seeds were all deposited in bottles, and hung round the walls of a large airy apartment; and for cleanliness and excellence of kind they would bear comparison with the best seedsman's collection in london. of english garden vegetables, and varieties of the indian cerealia, and leguminous plants, indian corn, millets, rice, etc., the collections for distribution were extensive. the manufacture of economic products is not neglected. excellent coffee is grown; and arrow-root, equal to the best west indian, is prepared, at s. d. per bottle of twenty-four ounces, about a fourth of the price of that article in calcutta. in most respects the establishment is a model of what such institutions ought to be in india; not only of real practical value, in affording a good and cheap supply of the best culinary and other vegetables that the climate can produce, but as showing to what departments efforts are best directed. such gardens diffuse a taste for the most healthy employments, and offer an elegant resource for the many unoccupied hours which the englishman in india finds upon his hands. they are also schools of gardening; and a simple inspection of what has been done at bhagulpore is a valuable lesson to any person about to establish a private garden of his own. i often heard complaints made of the seeds distributed from these gardens not vegetating freely in other parts of india, and it is not to be expected that they should retain their vitality unimpaired through an indian rainy season; but on the other hand i almost invariably found that the planting and tending had been left to the uncontrolled management of native gardeners, who with a certain amount of skill in handicraft are, from habits and prejudices, singularly unfit for the superintendence of a garden. chapter iv. leave bhagulpore -- kunker -- colgong -- himalaya, distant view of -- cosi, mouth of -- difficult navigation -- sand storms -- caragola-ghat -- purnea -- ortolans -- mahanuddee, transport of pebbles, etc. -- betel-pepper, cultivation of -- titalya -- siligoree -- view of outer himalaya -- terai -- mechis -- punkabaree -- foot of mountains -- ascent to dorjiling -- cicadas -- leeches -- animals -- kursiong, spring vegetation of -- pacheem -- arrive at dorjiling -- dorjiling, origin and settlement of -- grant of land from rajah -- dr. campbell appointed superintendent -- dewan, late and present -- aggressive conduct of the latter -- increase of the station -- trade -- titalya fair -- healtby climate for europeans and children -- invalids, diseases prejudicial to. i took as it were, a new departure, on saturday, april the th, my dawk being laid on that day from caragola-ghat, about thirty miles down the river, for the foot of the himalaya range and dorjiling. passing the pretty villa-like houses of the english residents, the river-banks re-assumed their wonted features the hills receded from the shore; and steep clay cliffs, twenty to fifty feet high, on one side, opposed long sandy shelves on the other. kunker was still most abundant, especially in the lower bed of the banks, close to the (now very low) water. the strata containing it were much undulated, but not uniformly so; horizontal layers over or under-lying the disturbed ones. at colgong, conical hills appear, and two remarkable sister-rocks start out of the river, the same in structure with those of sultangunj. a boisterous current swirls round them, strong even at this season, and very dangerous in the rains, when the swollen river is from twenty-eight to forty feet deeper than now. we landed opposite the rocks, and proceeded to the residence of mr. g. barnes, prettily situated on one of the conical elevations characteristic of the geology of the district. the village we passed through had been recently destroyed by fire; and nothing but the clay outer walls and curious-looking partition walls remained, often white-washed and daubed with figures in red of the palm of the hand, elephant, peacock, and tiger,--a sort of rude fresco-painting. we did not arrive till past mid-day, and the boat, with my palkee and servant, not having been able to face the gale, i was detained till the middle of the following day. mr. barnes and his brother proved most agreeable companions,--very luckily for me, for it requires no ordinary philosophy to bear being storm-stayed on a voyage, with the prospect of paying a heavy demurrage for detaining the dawk, and the worse one of finding the bearers given to another traveller when you arrive at the rendezvous. the view from mr. barnes' house is very fine: it commands the river and its rocks; the rajmahal hills to the east and south; broad acres of indigo and other crops below; long lines of palm-trees, and groves of mango, banana, tamarind, and other tropical trees, scattered close around and in the distance. in the rainy season, and immediately after, the snowy himalaya are distinctly seen on the horizon, fully miles off. nearly opposite, the cosi river enters the ganges, bearing (considering its short course) an enormous volume of water, comprising the drainage of the whole himalaya between the two giant peaks of kinchinjunga in sikkim, and gossain-than in nepal. even at this season, looking from mr. barnes' eyrie over the bed of the ganges, the enormous expanses of sand, the numerous shifting islets, and the long spits of mud betray the proximity of some very restless and resistless power. during the rains, the scene must indeed be extraordinary, when the cosi lays many miles of land under water, and pours so vast a quantity of detritus into the bed of the ganges that long islets are heaped up and swept away in a few hours; and the latter river becomes all but unnavigable. boats are caught in whirlpools, formed without a moment's warning, and sunk ere they have spun round thrice in the eddies; and no part of the inland navigation of india is so dreaded or dangerous, as the ganges at its junction with the cosi. rain generally falls in partial showers at this season, and they are essential to the well-being of the spring crops of indigo. the stormy appearance of the sky, though it proved fallacious, was hailed by my hosts as predicting a fall, which was much wanted. the wind however seemed but to aggravate the drought, by the great body of sand it lifted and swept up the valleys, obscuring the near horizon, and especially concealing the whole delta of the cosi, where the clouds were so vast and dense, and ascended so high as to resemble another element. all night the gale blew on, accompanied with much thunder and lightning, and it was not till noon of the th that i descried my palkee-boat toiling down the stream. then i again embarked, taking the lagging boat in tow of my own. passing the mouths of the cosi, the gale and currents were so adverse that we had to bring up on the sand, when the quantity which drifted into the boat rendered the delay as disagreeable as it was tedious. the particles penetrated everywhere, up my nose and down my back, drying my eyelids, and gritting between my teeth. the craft kept bumping on the banks, and being both crazy and leaky, the little comfortless cabin became the refuge of scared rats and cockroaches. in the evening i shared a meal with these creatures, on some provisions my kind friends had put into the boat, but the food was so sandy that i had to bolt my supper! at night the storm lulled a little, and i proceeded to caragola ghat and took up my dawk, which had been twenty-eight hours expecting me, and was waiting, in despair of my arrival, for another traveller on the opposite bank, who however could not cross the river. having accomplished thirty miles, i halted at a..m. on the following morning at purnea, quitting it at noon for kishengunj. the whole country wore a greener garb than i had seen anywhere south of the ganges: the climate was evidently more humid, and had been gradually becoming so from mirzapore. the first decided change was a few miles below the soane mouth, at dinapore and patna; and the few hygrometrical observations i took at bhagulpore confirmed the increase of moisture. the proximity to the sea and great delta of the ganges sufficiently accounts for this; as does the approach to the hills for the still greater dampness and brighter verdure of purnea. i was glad to feel myself within the influence of the long-looked-for himalaya; and i narrowly watched every change in the character of the vegetation. a fern, growing by the roadside, was the first and most tangible evidence of this; together with the rarity or total absence of _butea, boswellia, catechu, grislea, carissa,_ and all the companions of my former excursion. purnea is a large station, and considered very unhealthy during and after the rains. from it the road passed through some pretty lanes, with groves of planted guava and a rattan palm (_calamus_), the first i had seen. though no hills are nearer than the himalaya, from the constant alteration of the river-beds, the road undulates remarkably for this part of india, and a jungly vegetation ensues, consisting of the above plants, with the yellow-flowered cactus replacing the euphorbias, which were previously much more common. though still miles distant from the hills, mosses appeared on the banks, and more ferns were just sprouting above ground. the bamboo was a very different species from any i had hitherto met with, forming groves of straight trees fifteen to twenty feet high, thin of foliage, and not unlike poplars. thirty-six miles from purnea brought me to kishengunj, when i found that no arrangements whatever had been made for my dawk, and i was fairly stranded. luckily a thoughtful friend had provided me with letters to the scattered residents along the road, and i proceeded with one to mr. perry, the assistant magistrate of the district,--a gentleman well known for his urbanity, and the many aids he affords to travellers on this neglected line of road. owing to this being some festival or holiday, it was impossible to get palkee-bearers; the natives were busy catching fish in all the muddy pools around. some of mr. perry's own family also were about to proceed to dorjiling, so that i had only to take patience, and be thankful for having to exercise it in such pleasant quarters. the mahanuddee, a large stream from the hills, flows near this place, strewing the surrounding neighbourhood with sand, and from the frequent alterations in its course, causing endless disputes amongst the landholders. a kind of lark called an ortolan was abundant: this is not, however, the european delicacy of that name, though a migratory bird; the flocks are large, and the birds so fat, that they make excellent table game. at this time they were rapidly disappearing; to return from the north in september. i had just got into bed at night, when the bearers arrived; so bidding a hurried adieu to my kind host, i proceeded onwards. _april_ .--i awoke at a.m., and found my palkee on the ground, and the bearers coolly smoking their hookahs under a tree (it was raining hard): they had carried me the length of their stage, twelve miles, and there were no others to take me on. i had paid twenty-four pounds for my dawk, from caragola to the hills, to which i had been obliged to add a handsome douceur; so i lost all patience. after waiting and entreating during several hours, i found the head-man of a neighbouring village, and by a further disbursement induced six out of the twelve bearers to carry the empty palkee, whilst i should walk to the next stage; or till we should meet some others. they agreed, and cutting the thick and spongy sheaths of the banana, used them for shoulder-pads: they also wrapped them round the palkee-poles, to ease their aching clavicles. walking along i picked up a few plants, and fourteen miles further on came again to the banks of the mahanuddee, whose bed was strewn with pebbles and small boulders, brought thus far from the mountains (about thirty miles distant). here, again, i had to apply to the head-man of a village, and pay for bearers to take me to titalya, the next stage (fourteen miles). some curious long low sheds puzzled me very much, and on examining them they proved to be for the growth of pawn or betel-pepper, another indication of the moisture of the climate. these sheds are twenty to fifty yards long, eight or twelve or so broad, and scarcely five high; they are made of bamboo, wattled all round and over the top. slender rods are placed a few feet apart, inside, up which the pepper vines climb, and quickly fill the place with their deep green glossy foliage. the native enters every morning by a little door, and carefully cleans the plants. constant heat, damp, and moisture, shelter from solar beams, from scorching heat, and from nocturnal radiation, are thus all procured for the plant, which would certainly not live twenty-four hours, if exposed to the climate of this treeless district. great attention is paid to the cultivation, which is very profitable. snakes frequently take up their quarters in these hot-houses, and cause fatal accidents. titalya was once a military station of some importance, and from its proximity to the hills has been selected by dr. campbell (the superintendent of dorjiling) as the site for an annual fair, to which the mountain tribes resort, as well as the people of the plains. the calcutta road to dorjiling by dinajpore meets, near here, that by which i had come; and i found no difficulty in procuring bearers to proceed to siligoree, where i arrived at a.m. on the th. hitherto i bad not seen the mountains, so uniformly had they been shrouded by dense wreaths of vapour: here, however, when within eight miles of their base, i caught a first glimpse of the outer range--sombre masses, of far from picturesque outline, clothed everywhere with a dusky forest. siligoree stands on the verge of the terai, that low malarious belt which skirts the base of the himalaya, from the sutlej to brahma-koond in upper assam. every feature, botanical, geological, and zoological, is new on entering this district. the change is sudden and immediate: sea and shore are hardly more conspicuously different, nor from the edge of the terai to the limit of perpetual snow is any botanical region more clearly marked than this, which is the commencement of himalayan vegetation. a sudden descent leads to the mahanuddee river, flowing in a shallow valley, over a pebbly bottom: it is a rapid river, even at this season; its banks are fringed with bushes, and it is as clear and sparkling as a trout stream in scotland. beyond it the road winds through a thick brushwood, choked with long grasses, and with but few trees, chiefly of _acacia, dalbergia sissoo,_ and a scarlet fruited _sterculia._ the soil is a red, friable clay and gravel. at this season only a few spring plants were in flower, amongst which a very sweet-scented _crinum,_ asphodel, and a small _curcuma,_ were in the greatest profusion. leaves of terrestrial orchids appeared, with ferns and weeds of hot damp regions. i crossed the beds of many small streams: some were dry, and all very tortuous; their banks were richly clothed with brushwood and climbers of convolvulus, vines, _hiraea, leea, menispermeae, cucurbitaceae,_ and _bignoniaceae._ their pent-up waters, percolating the gravel beds, and partly carried off by evaporation through the stratum of ever-increasing vegetable mould, must be one main agent in the production of the malarious vapours of this pestilential region. add to this, the detention of the same amongst the jungly herbage, the amount of vapour in the humid atmosphere above, checking the upward passage of that from the soil, the sheltered nature of the locality at the immediate base of lofty mountains; and there appear to me to be here all necessary elements, which, combined, will produce stagnation and deterioration in an atmosphere loaded with vapour. fatal as this district is, and especially to europeans, a race inhabit it with impunity, who, if not numerous, do not owe their paucity to any climatic causes. these are the mechis, often described as a squalid, unhealthy people, typical of the region they frequent; but who are, in reality, more robust than the europeans in india, and whose disagreeably sallow complexion is deceptive as indicating a sickly constitution. they are a mild, inoffensive people, industrious for orientals, living by annually burning the terai jungle and cultivating the cleared spots; and, though so sequestered and isolated, they rather court than avoid intercourse with those whites whom they know to be kindly disposed. after proceeding some six miles along the gradually ascending path, i came to a considerable stream, cutting its way through stratified gravel, with cliffs on each side fifteen to twenty feet high, here and there covered with ferns, the little _oxalis sensitiva,_ and other herbs. the road here suddenly ascends a steep gravelly hill, and opens out on a short flat, or spur, from which the himalaya rise abruptly, clothed with forest from the base: the little bungalow of punkabaree, my immediate destination, nestled in the woods, crowning a lateral knoll, above which, to east and west, as far as the eye could reach, were range after range of wooded mountains, to feet high. i here met with the india-rubber tree (_ficus elastica_); it abounds in assam, but this is its western limit. from this steppe, the ascent to punkabaree is sudden and steep, and accompanied with a change in soil and vegetation. the mica slate and clay slate protrude everywhere, the former full of garnets. a giant forest replaces the stunted and bushy timber of the terai proper; of which the _duabanga_ and _terminalias_ form the prevailing trees, with _cedrela_ and the _gordonia wallichii._ smaller timber and shrubs are innumerable; a succulent character pervades the bushes and herbs, occasioned by the prevalence of _urticeae._ large bamboos rather crest the hills than court the deeper shade, and of the latter there is abundance, for the torrents cut a straight, deep, and steep course down the hill flanks: the galleys they traverse are choked with vegetation and bridged by fallen trees, whose trunks are richly clothed with _dendrobium pierardi_ and other epiphytical orchids, with pendulous _lycopodia_ and many ferns, _hoya, scitamineae,_ and similar types of the hottest and dampest climates. the bungalow at punkabaree was good--which was well, as my luggage-bearers were not come up, and there were no signs of them along the terai road, which i saw winding below me. my scanty stock of paper being full of plants, i was reduced to the strait of botanising, and throwing away my specimens. the forest was truly magnificent along the steep mountain sides. the apparently large proportion of deciduous trees was far more considerable than i had expected; partly, probably, due to the abundance of the _dillenia, cassia,_ and _sterculia,_ whose copious fruit was all the more conspicuous from the leafless condition of the plant. the white or lilac blossoms of the convolvuluslike _thunbergia,_ and other _acanthaceae_ were the predominant features of the shrubby vegetation, and very handsome. all around, the hills rise steeply five or six thousand feet, clothed in a dense deep-green dripping forest. torrents rush down the slopes, their position indicated by the dipping of the forest into their beds, or the occasional cloud of spray rising above some more boisterous part of their course. from the road, at and a little above punkabaree, the view is really superb, and very instructive. behind (or north) the himalaya rise in steep confused masses. below, the hill on which i stood, and the ranges as far as the eye can reach east and west, throw spurs on to the plains of india. these are very thickly wooded, and enclose broad, dead-flat, hot and damp valleys, apparently covered with a dense forest. secondary spurs of clay and gravel, like that immediately below punkabaree, rest on the bases of the mountains, and seem to form an intermediate neutral ground between flat and mountainous india. the terai district forms a very irregular belt, scantily clothed, and intersected by innumerable rivulets from the hills, which unite and divide again on the flat, till, emerging from the region of many trees, they enter the plains, following devious courses, which glisten like silver threads. the whole horizon is bounded by the sea-like expanse of the plains, which stretch away into the region of sunshine and fine weather, in one boundless flat. in the distance, the courses of the teesta and cosi, the great drainers of the snowy himalayas, and the recipients of innumerable smaller rills, are with difficulty traced at this, the dry season. the ocean-like appearance of this southern view is even more conspicuous in the heavens than on the land, the clouds arranging themselves after a singularly sea-scape fashion. endless strata run in parallel ribbons over the extreme horizon; above these, scattered cumuli, also in horizontal lines, are dotted against a clear grey sky, which gradually, as the eye is lifted, passes into a deep cloudless blue vault, continuously clear to the zenith; there the cumuli, in white fleecy masses, again appear; till, in the northern celestial hemisphere, they thicken and assume the leaden hue of nimbi, discharging their moisture on the dark forest-clad hills around. the breezes are south-easterly, bringing that vapour from the indian ocean, which is rarefied and suspended aloft over the heated plains, but condensed into a drizzle when it strikes the cooler flanks of the hills, and into heavy rain when it meets their still colder summits. upon what a gigantic scale does nature here operate! vapours, raised from an ocean whose nearest shore is more than miles distant, are safely transported without the loss of one drop of water, to support the rank luxuriance of this far distant region. this and other offices fulfilled, the waste waters are returned, by the cosi and teesta, to the ocean, and again exhaled, exported, expended, re-collected, and returned. illustration -- punkabaree bungalow and base of the himalaya. the soil and bushes everywhere swarmed with large and troublesome ants, and enormous earthworms. in the evening, the noise of the great _cicadae_ in the trees was almost deafening. they burst suddenly into full chorus, with a voice so harshly croaking, so dissonant, and so unearthly, that in these solitary forests i could not help being startled. in general character the note was very similar to that of other _cicadae._ they ceased as suddenly as they commenced. on the following morning my baggage arrived, and, leaving my palkee, i mounted a pony kindly sent for me by mr. hodgson, and commenced a very steep ascent of about feet, winding along the face of a steep, richly-wooded valley. the road zigzags extraordinarily in and out of the innumerable lateral ravines, each with its water course, dense jungle, and legion of leeches; the bite of these blood-suckers gives no pain, but is followed by considerable effusion of blood. they puncture through thick worsted stockings, and even trousers, and, when full, roll in the form of a little soft ball into the bottom of the shoe, where their presence is hardly felt in walking. not only are the roadsides rich in plants, but native paths, cutting off all the zigzags, run in straight lines up the steepest hill-faces, and thus double the available means for botanising; and it is all but impossible to leave the paths of one kind or other, except for a yard or two up the rocky ravines. elephants, tigers, and occasionally the rhinoceros, inhabit the foot of these hills, with wild boars, leopards, etc.; but none are numerous. the elephant's path is an excellent specimen of engineering--the opposite of the native track, for it winds judiciously. at about feet above punkabaree, the vegetation is very rich, and appears all the more so from the many turnings of the road, affording glorious prospects of the foreshortened tropical forests. the prevalent timber is gigantic, and scaled by climbing _leguminosae,_ as _bauhinias_ and _robinias,_ which sometimes sheath the trunks, or span the forest with huge cables, joining tree to tree. their trunks are also clothed with parasitical orchids, and still more beautifully with pothos (_scindapsus_), peppers, _gnetum,_ vines, convolvulus, and _bignoniae._ the beauty of the drapery of the pothos-leaves is pre-eminent, whether for the graceful folds the foliage assumes, or for the liveliness of its colour. of the more conspicuous smaller trees, the wild banana is the most abundant, its crown of very beautiful foliage contrasting with the smaller-leaved plants amongst which it nestles; next comes a screw-pine (_pandanus_) with a straight stem and a tuft of leaves; each eight or ten feet long, waving on all sides. _araliaceae,_ with smooth or armed slender trunks, and _mappa_-like _euphorbiaceae,_ spread their long petioles horizontally forth, each terminated with an ample leaf some feet in diameter. bamboo abounds everywhere: its dense tufts of culms, feet and upwards high, are as thick as a man's thigh at the base. twenty or thirty, species of ferns (including a tree-fern) were luxuriant and handsome. foliaceous lichens and a few mosses appeared at feet. such is the vegetation of the roads through the tropical forests of the outer-himalaya. at about feet the road crossed a saddle, and ran along the narrow crest of a hill, the top of that facing the plains of india, and over which is the way to the interior ranges, amongst which dorjiling is placed, still twenty-five miles off. a little below this a great change had taken place in the vegetation, marked, first, by the appearance of a very english-looking bramble, which, however, by way of proving its foreign origin, bore a very good yellow fruit, called here the "yellow raspberry." scattered oaks, of a noble species, with large lamellated cups and magnificent foliage, succeeded; and along the ridge of the mountain to kursiong (a dawk bungalow at about feet), the change in the flora was complete. the spring of this region and elevation most vividly recalled that of england. the oak flowering, the birch bursting into leaf, the violet, _chrysosplenium, stellaria_ and _arum, vaccinium,_ wild strawberry, maple, geranium, bramble. a colder wind blew here: mosses and lichens carpeted the banks and roadsides: the birds and insects were very different from those below; and everything proclaimed the marked change in elevation, and not only in this, but in season, for i had left the winter of the tropics and here encountered the spring of the temperate zone. the flowers i have mentioned are so notoriously the harbingers of a european spring that their presence carries one home at once; but, as species, they differ from their european prototypes, and are accompanied at this elevation (and for feet higher up) with tree-fern, pothos, bananas, palms, figs, pepper, numbers of epiphytal orchids, and similar genuine tropical genera. the uniform temperature and humidity of the region here favour the extension of tropical plants into a temperate region; exactly as the same conditions cause similar forms to reach higher latitudes in the southern hemisphere (as in new zealand, tasmania, south chili, etc.) than they do in the northern. along this ridge i met with the first tree-fern. this species seldom reaches the height of forty feet; the black trunk is but three or four in girth, and the feathery crown is ragged in comparison with the species of many other countries: it is the _alsophila gigantea,_ and ascends nearly to feet elevation. kursiong bungalow, where i stopped for a few hours, is superbly placed, on a narrow mountain ridge. the west window looks down the valley of the balasun river, the east into that of the mahanuddee: both of these rise from the outer range, and flow in broad, deep, and steep valleys (about feet deep) which give them their respective names; and are richly wooded from the terai to their tops. till reaching this spur, i had wound upwards along the western slope of the mahanuddee valley. the ascent from the spur at kursiong, to the top of the mountain (on the northern face of which dorjiling is situated), is along the eastern slope of the balasun. from kursiong a very steep zigzag leads up the mountain, through a magnificent forest of cbesnut, walnut, oaks, and laurels. it is difficult to conceive a grander mass of vegetation: the straight shafts of the timber-trees shooting aloft, some naked and clean, with grey, pale, or brown bark; others literally clothed for yards with a continuous garment of epiphytes, one mass of blossoms, especially the white orchids _caelogynes,_ which bloom in a profuse manner, whitening their trunks like snow. more bulky trunks were masses of interlacing climbers, _araliaceae, leguminosae, vines,_ and _menispermeae,_ hydrangea, and peppers, enclosing a hollow, once filled by the now strangled supporting tree, which had long ago decayed away. from the sides and summit of these, supple branches hung forth, either leafy or naked; the latter resembling cables flung from one tree to another, swinging in the breeze, their rocking motion increased by the weight of great bunches of ferns or orchids, which were perched aloft in the loops. perpetual moisture nourishes this dripping forest: and pendulous mosses and lichens are met with in profusion. two thousand feet higher up, near mahaldiram (whence the last view of the plains is gained), european plants appear,--berberry, _paris,_ etc.; but here, night gathered round, and i had still ten miles to go to the nearest bungalow, that of pacheem. the road still led along the eastern slope of the balasun valley, which was exceedingly steep, and so cut up by ravines, that it winds in and out of gulleys almost narrow enough to be jumped across. it was very late before i arrived at pacheem bungalow, the most sinister-looking rest-house i ever saw, stuck on a little cleared spur of the mountain, surrounded by dark forests, overhanging a profound valley, and enveloped in mists and rain, and hideous in architecture, being a miserable attempt to unite the swiss cottage with the suburban gothic; it combined a maximum of discomfort with a minimum of good looks or good cheer. i was some time in finding the dirty housekeeper, in an outhouse hard by, and then in waking him. as he led me up the crazy verandah, and into a broad ghostly room, without glass in the windows, or fire, or any one comfort, my mind recurred to the stories told of the horrors of the hartz forest, and of the benighted traveller's situation therein. cold sluggish beetles hung to the damp walls,--and these i immediately secured. after due exertions and perseverance with the damp wood, a fire smoked lustily, and, by cajoling the gnome of a housekeeper, i procured the usual roast fowl and potatos, with the accustomed sauce of a strong smoky and singed flavour.* [since writing the above a comfortable house has been erected at senadah, the name now given to what was called pacheem bungalow.] pacheem stands at an elevation of nearly feet, and as i walked out on the following morning i met with english looking plants in abundance, but was too early in the season to get aught but the foliage of most. _chryosplenium,_ violet, _lobelia,_ a small geranium, strawberry, five or six kinds of bramble, _arum, paris, convallaria, stellaria, rubia, vaccinium,_ and various _gnaphalia._ of small bushes, cornels, honeysuckles, and the ivy tribe predominated, with _symplocos_ and _skimmia, eurya,_ bushy brambles, having simple or compound green or beautifully silky foliage; _hypericum,_ berberry, hydrangea, wormwood, _adamia cyanea, viburnum,_ elder, dwarf bamboo, etc. the climbing plants were still _panax_ or _aralia, kadsura, saurauja, hydrangea,_ vines, _smilax, ampelopsis, polygona,_ and, most beautiful of all, _stauntonia,_ with pendulous racemes of lilac blossoms. epiphytes were rarer, still i found white and purple _caeloynes,_ and other orchids, and a most noble white rhododendron, whose truly enormous and delicious lemon-scented blossoms strewed the ground. the trees were one half oaks, one quarter magnolias, and nearly another quarter laurels, amongst which grew himalayan kinds of birch, alder, maple, holly, bird-cherry, common cherry, and apple. the absence of _leguminosae was most remarkable, and the most prominent botanical feature in the vegetation of this region: it is too high for the tropical tribes of the warmer elevations, too low for the alpines, and probably too moist for those of temperate regions; cool, equable, humid climates being generally unfavourable to that order. clematis was rare, and other _ranunculaceae_ still more so. _cruciferae_ were absent, and, what was still more remarkable, i found very few native species of grasses. both _poa annua_ and white dutch clover flourished where accidentally disseminated, but only in artificially cleared spots. of ferns i collected about sixty species, chiefly of temperate genera. the supremacy of this temperate region consists in the infinite number of forest trees, in the absence (in the usual proportion, at any rate) of such common orders as _compositae, leguminosae, cruciferae,_ and _ranunculaceae,_ and of grasses amongst monocotyledons, and in the predominance of the rarer and more local families, as those of rhododendron, camellia, magnolia, ivy, cornel, honeysuckle, hydrangea, begonia, and epiphytic orchids. from pacheem, the road runs in a northerly direction to dorjiling, still along the balasun valley, till the saddle of the great mountain sinchul is crossed. this is narrow, stretching east and west, and from it a spur projects northwards for five or six miles, amongst the many mountains still intervening between it and the snows. this saddle (alt. feet) crossed, one is fairly amongst the mountains: the plains behind are cut off by it; and in front, the snows may be seen when the weather is propitious. the valleys on this side of the mountain run northwards, and discharge their streams into great rivers, which, coming from the snow, wind amongst the hills, and debouche into the teesta, to the east, where it divides sikkim from bhotan. dorjiling station occupies a narrow ridge, which divides into two spurs, descending steeply to the bed of the great rungeet river, up whose course the eye is carried to the base of the great snowy mountains. the ridge itself is very narrow at the top, along which most of the houses are perched, while others occupy positions on its flanks, where narrow locations on the east, and broader ones on the west, are cleared from wood. the valleys on either side are at least feet deep, forest-clad to the bottom, with very few and small level spots, and no absolute precipice; from their flanks project innumerable little spurs, occupied by native clearings. my route lay along the east flank, overhanging the valley of the rungmo river. looking east, the amphitheatre of hills from the ridge i had crossed was very fine; enclosing an area some four miles across and feet deep, clothed throughout with an impenetrable, dark forest: there was not one clear patch except near the very bottom, where were some scattered hamlets of two or three huts each. the rock is everywhere near the surface, and the road has been formed by blasting at very many places. a wooded slope descends suddenly from the edge of the road, while, on the other hand, a bank rises abruptly to the top of the ridge, alternately mossy, rocky, and clayey, and presenting a good geological section, all the way along, of the nucleus of dorjiling spur, exposing broken masses of gneiss. as i descended, i came upon the upper limit of the chesnut, a tree second in abundance to the oak; gigantic, tall, and straight in the trunk. i arrived at dorjiling on the th of april; a showery, cold month at this elevation. i was so fortunate as to find mr. charles barnes (brother of my friend at colgong), the sole tenant of a long, cottage-like building, divided off into pairs of apartments, which are hired by visitors. it is usual for europeans to bring a full establishment of servants (with bedding, etc.) to such stations, but i had not done so, having been told that there was a furnished hotel in dorjiling; and i was, therefore, not a little indebted to mr. barnes for his kind invitation to join his mess. as he was an active mountaineer, we enjoyed many excursions together, in the two months and a half during which we were companions. dr. campbell procured me several active native (lepcha) lads as collectors, at wages varying from eight to twenty shillings a month; these either accompanied me on my excursions, or went by themselves into the jungles to collect plants, which i occupied myself in drawing, dissecting, and ticketing: while the preserving of them fell to the lepchas, who, after a little training, became, with constant superintendence, good plant-driers. even at this season (four weeks before the setting in of the rains) the weather was very uncertain, so that the papers had generally to be dried by the fire. the hill-station or sanatarium of dorjiling owes its origin (like simla, mussooree, etc.) to the necessity that exists in india, of providing places where the health of europeans may be recruited by a more temperate climate. sikkim proved an eligible position for such an establishment, owing to its proximity to calcutta, which lies but miles to the southward; whereas the north-west stations mentioned above are upwards of a thousand miles from that city. dorjiling ridge varies in height from to feet above the level of the sea; feet being the elevation at which the mean temperature most nearly coincides with that of london, viz., degrees. sikkim was, further, the only available spot for a sanatarium throughout the whole range of the himalaya, east of the extreme western frontier of nepal; being a protected state, and owing no allegiance, except to the british government; which, after the rajah had been driven from the country by the ghorkas, in , replaced him on his throne, and guaranteed him the sovereignty. our main object in doing this was to retain sikkim as a fender between nepal and bhotan: and but for this policy, the aggressive nepalese would, long ere this, have possessed themselves of sikkim, bhotan, and the whole himalaya, eastwards to the borders of burmah.* [of such being their wish the nepalese have never made any secret, and they are said to have asked permission from the british to march an army across sikkim for the purpose of conquering bhotan, offering to become more peaceable neighbours to us than the bhotanese are. such they would doubtless have proved, but the nepal frontier is considered broad enough already.] from to no notice was taken of sikkim, till a frontier dispute occurred between the lepchas and nepalese, which was referred (according to the terms of the treaty) to the british government. during the arrangement of this, dorjiling was visited by a gentleman of high scientific attainments, mr. j. w. grant, who pointed out its eligibility as a site for a sanatarium to lord william bentinck, then governor-general; dwelling especially upon its climate, proximity to calcutta, and accessibility; on its central position between tibet, bhotan, nepal, and british india; and on the good example a peaceably-conducted and well-governed station would be to our turbulent neighbours in that quarter. the suggestion was cordially received, and major herbert (the late eminent surveyor-general of india) and mr. grant were employed to report further on the subject. the next step taken was that of requesting the rajah to cede a tract of country which should include dorjiling, for an equivalent in money or land. his first demand was unreasonable; but on further consideration he surrendered dorjiling unconditionally, and a sum of pounds per annum was granted to him as an equivalent for what was then a worthless uninhabited mountain. in dr. campbell was removed from nepal as superintendent of the new station, and was entrusted with the charge of the political relations between the british and sikkim government. once established, dorjiling rapidly increased. allotments of land were purchased by europeans for building dwelling-houses; barracks and a bazaar were formed, with accommodation for invalid european soldiers; a few official residents, civil and military, formed the nucleus of a community, which was increased by retired officers and their families, and by temporary visitors in search of health, or the luxury of a cool climate and active exercise. for the first few years matters went on smoothly with the rajah, whose minister (or dewan) was upright and intelligent: but the latter, on his death, was succeeded by the present dewan, a tibetan, and a relative of the ranee (or rajah's wife); a man unsurpassed for insolence and avarice, whose aim was to monopolise the trade of the country, and to enrich himself at its expense. every obstacle was thrown by him in the way of a good understanding between sikkim and the british government. british subjects were rigorously excluded from sikkim; every liberal offer for free trade and intercourse was rejected, generally with insolence; merchandise was taxed, and notorious offenders, refugees from the british territories, were harboured; despatches were detained; and the vakeels, or rajah's representatives, were chosen for their insolence and incapacity. the conduct of the dewan throughout was indo-chinese; assuming, insolent, aggressive, never perpetrating open violence, but by petty insults effectually preventing all good understanding. he was met by neglect or forbearance on the part of the calcutta government; and by patience and passive resistance at dorjiling. our inaction and long-suffering were taken for weakness, and our concessions for timidity. such has been our policy in china, siam, and burmah, and in each instance the result has been the same. had it been insisted that the terms of the treaty should be strictly kept, and had the first act of insolence been noticed, we should have maintained the best relations with sikkim, whose people and rulers (with the exception of the dewan and his faction) have proved themselves friendly throughout, and most anxious for unrestricted communication. these political matters have not, however, prevented the rapid increase of dorjiling; the progress of which, during the two years i spent in sikkim, resembled that of an australian colony, not only in amount of building, but in the accession of native families from the surrounding countries. there were not a hundred inhabitants under british protection when the ground was transferred; there are now four thousand. at the former period there was no trade whatever; there is now a very considerable one, in musk, salt, gold-dust, borax, soda, woollen cloths, and especially in poneys, of which the dewan in one year brought on his own account upwards of into dorjiling.* [the tibetan pony, though born and bred , to , feet above the sea, is one of the most active and useful animals in the plains of bengal, powerful and hardy, and when well trained early, docile, although by nature vicious and obstinate.] the trade has been greatly increased by the annual fair which dr. campbell has established at the foot of the hills, to which many thousands of natives flock from all quarters, and which exercises a most beneficial influence throughout the neighbouring territories. at this, prizes (in medals, money, and kind) are given for agricultural implements and produce, stock, etc., by the originator and a few friends; a measure attended with eminent success. in estimating in a sanitory point of view the value of any health-station, little reliance can be placed on the general impressions of invalids, or even of residents; the opinion of each varies with the nature and state of his complaint, if ill, or with his idiosyncracy and disposition, if well. i have seen prejudiced invalids rapidly recovering, in spite of themselves, and all the while complaining in unmeasured terms of the climate of dorjiling, and abusing it as killing them. others are known who languish under the heat of the plains at one season, and the damp at another; and who, though sickening and dying under its influence, yet consistently praise a tropical climate to the last. the opinions of those who resort to dorjiling in health, differ equally; those of active minds invariably thoroughly enjoy it, while the mere lounger or sportsman mopes. the statistical tables afford conclusive proofs of the value of the climate to europeans suffering from acute diseases, and they are corroborated by the returns of the medical officer in charge of the station. with respect to its suitability to the european constitution i feel satisfied, and that much saving of life, health, and money would be effected were european troops drafted thither on their arrival in bengal, instead of being stationed in calcutta, exposed to disease, and temptation to those vices which prove fatal to so many hundreds. this, i have been given to understand, was the view originally taken by the court of directors, but it has never been carried out. i believe that children's faces afford as good an index as any to the healthfulness of a climate, and in no part of the world is there a more active, rosy, and bright young community, than at dorjiling. it is incredible what a few weeks of that mountain air does for the india-born children of european parents: they are taken there sickly, pallid or yellow, soft and flabby, to become transformed into models of rude health and activity. there are, however, disorders to which the climate (in common with all damp ones) is not at all suited; such are especially dysentery, bowel complaints, and liver complaints of long standing; which are not benefited by a residence on these hills, though how much worse they might have become in the plains is not shown. i cannot hear that the climate aggravates, but it certainly does not remove them. whoever is suffering from the debilitating effects of any of the multifarious acute maladies of the plains, finds instant relief, and acquires a stock of health that enables him to resist fresh attacks, under circumstances similar to those which before engendered them. natives of the low country, and especially bengalees, are far from enjoying the climate as europeans do, being liable to sharp attacks of fever and ague, from which the poorly clad natives are not exempt. it is, however, difficult to estimate the effects of exposure upon the bengalees, who sleep on the bare and often damp ground, and adhere, with characteristic prejudice, to the attire of a torrid climate, and to a vegetable diet, under skies to which these are least of all adapted. it must not be supposed that europeans who have resided in the plains can, on their first arrival, expose themselves with impunity to the cold of these elevations; this was shown in the winter of and , when troops brought up to dorjiling were cantoned in newly-built dwellings, on a high exposed ridge feet above the sea, and lay, insufficiently protected, on a floor of loosely laid planks, exposed to the cold wind, when the ground without was covered with snow. rheumatisms, sharp febrile attacks, and dysenteries ensued, which were attributed in the public prints to the unhealthy nature of the climate of dorjiling. the following summary of hospital admissions affords the best test of the healthiness of the climate, embracing, as the period does, the three most fatal months to european troops in india. out of a detachment ( strong) of h.m. th regiment stationed at dorjiling, in the seven months from january to july inclusive, there were sixty-four admissions to the hospital, or, on the average, - / per cent. per month; and only two deaths, both of dysentery. many of these men had suffered frequently in the plains from acute dysentery and hepatic affections, and many others had aggravated these complaints by excessive drinking, and two were cases of delirium tremens. during the same period, the number of entries at calcutta or dinapore would probably have more than trebled this. chapter v. view from mr. hodgson's of range of snowy mountains -- their extent and elevation -- delusive appearance of elevation -- sinchul, view from and vegetation of -- chumulari -- magnolias, white and purple -- rhododendron dalhousiae, arboreum and argenteum -- natives of dorjiling -- lepchas, origin, tradition of flood, morals, dress, arms, ornaments, diet -- cups, origin and value -- marriages -- diseases -- burial -- worship and religion -- bijooas -- kampa rong, or arratt -- limboos, origin, habits, language, etc. -- moormis -- magras -- mechis -- comparison of customs with those of the natives of assam, khasia, etc. the summer, or rainy season of , was passed at or near dorjiling, during which period i chiefly occupied myself in forming collections, and in taking meteorological observations. i resided at mr hodgson's for the greater part of the time, in consequence of his having given me a hospitable invitation to consider his house my home. the view from his windows is one quite unparalleled for the scenery it embraces, commanding confessedly the grandest known landscape of snowy mountains in the himalaya, and hence in the world.* [for an account of the geography of these regions, and the relation of the sikkim himalaya to tibet, etc., see appendix.] kinchinjunga (forty-five miles distant) is the prominent object, rising , feet above the level of the observer out of a sea of intervening wooded hills; whilst, on a line with its snows, the eye descends below the horizon, to a narrow gulf feet deep in the mountains, where the great rungeet, white with foam, threads a tropical forest with a silver line. to the north-west towards nepal, the snowy peaks of kubra and junnoo (respectively , feet and , feet) rise over the shoulder of singalelah; whilst eastward the snowy mountains appear to form an unbroken range, trending north-east to the great mass of donkia ( , feet) and thence south-east by the fingered peaks of tunkola and the silver cone of chola, ( , feet) gradually sinking into the bhotan mountains at gipmoochi ( , feet). the most eloquent descriptions i have read fail to convey to my mind's eye the forms and colours of snowy mountains, or to my imagination the sensations and impressions that rivet my attention to these sublime phenomena when they are present in reality; and i shall not therefore obtrude any attempt of the kind upon my reader. the latter has probably seen the swiss alps, which, though barely possessing half the sublimity, extent, or height of the himalaya, are yet far more beautiful. in either case he is struck with the precision and sharpness of their outlines, and still more with the wonderful play of colours on their snowy flanks, from the glowing hues reflected in orange, gold and ruby, from clouds illumined by the sinking or rising sun, to the ghastly pallor that succeeds with twilight, when the red seems to give place to its complementary colour green. such dissolving-views elude all attempts at description, they are far too aerial to be chained to the memory, and fade from it so fast as to be gazed upon day after day, with undiminished admiration and pleasure, long after the mountains themselves have lost their sublimity and apparent height. the actual extent of the snowy range seen from mr. hodgson's windows is comprised within an arc of degrees (from north degrees west to north degrees east), or nearly a quarter of the horizon, along which the perpetual snow forms an unbroken girdle or crest of frosted silver; and in winter, when the mountains are covered down to feet, this white ridge stretches uninterruptedly for more than degrees. no known view is to be compared with this in extent, when the proximity and height of the mountains are considered; for within the degrees above mentioned more than twelve peaks rise above , feet, and there are none below , feet, while kinchin is , , and seven others above , . the nearest perpetual snow is on nursing, a beautifully sharp conical peak , feet high, and thirty-two miles distant; the most remote mountain seen is donkia, , feet high, and seventy-three miles distant; whilst kinchin, which forms the principal mass both for height and bulk, is exactly forty-five miles distant. on first viewing this glorious panorama, the impression produced on the imagination by their prodigious elevation is, that the peaks tower in the air and pierce the clouds, and such are the terms generally used in descriptions of similar alpine scenery; but the observer, if he look again, will find that even the most stupendous occupy a very low position on the horizon, the top of kinchin itself measuring only degrees minutes above the level of the observer! donkia again, which is , feet above the sea, or about , above mr. hodgson's, rises only degrees minutes above the horizon; an angle which is quite inappreciable to the eye, when unaided by instruments.* [these are the apparent angles which i took from mr. hodgson's house (alt. feet) with an excellent theodolite, no deduction being made for refraction.] this view may be extended a little by ascending sinchul, which rises a thousand feet above the elevation of mr. hodgson's house, and is a few miles south-east of dorjiling: from its summit chumulari ( , feet) is seen to the north-east, at eighty-four miles distance, rearing its head as a great rounded mass over the snowy chola range, out of which it appears to rise, although in reality lying forty miles beyond;--so deceptive is the perspective of snowy mountains. to the north-west again, at upwards of miles distance, a beautiful group of snowy mountains rises above the black singalelah range, the chief being, perhaps, as high as kinchinjunga, from which it is fully eighty miles distant to the westward; and between them no mountain of considerable altitude intervenes; the nepalese himalaya in that direction sinking remarkably towards the arun river, which there enters nepal from tibet. the top of sinchul is a favourite excursion from dorjiling, being very easy of access, and the path abounding in rare and beautiful plants, and passing through magnificent forests of oak, magnolia, and rhododendron; while the summit, besides embracing this splendid view of the snowy range over the dorjiling spur in the foreground, commands also the plains of india, with the courses of the teesta, mahanuddee, balasun and mechi rivers. in the months of april and may, when the magnolias and rhododendrons are in blossom, the gorgeous vegetation is, in some respects, not to be surpassed by anything in the tropics; but the effect is much marred by the prevailing gloom of the weather. the white-flowered magnolia (_m. excelsa,_ wall,) forms a predominant tree at to feet; and in it blossomed so profusely, that the forests on the broad flanks of sinchul, and other mountains of that elevation, appeared as if sprinkled with snow. the purple-flowered kind again (_m. campbellii_) hardly occurs below feet, and forms an immense, but very ugly, black-barked, sparingly branched tree, leafless in winter and also during the flowering season, when it puts forth from the ends of its branches great rose-purple cup-shaped flowers, whose fleshy petals strew the ground. on its branches, and on those of oaks and laurels, _rhododendron dalhousiae_ grows epiphytically, a slender shrub, bearing from three to six white lemon-scented bells, four and a half inches long and as many broad, at the end of each branch. in the same woods the scarlet rhododendron (_r. arboreum_) is very scarce, and is outvied by the great _r. argenteum,_ which grows as a tree forty feet high, with magnificent leaves twelve to fifteen inches long, deep green, wrinkled above and silvery below, while the flowers are as large as those of _r. dalhousiae,_ and grow more in a cluster. i know nothing of the kind that exceeds in beauty the flowering branch of _r. argenteum,_ with its wide spreading foliage and glorious mass of flowers. oaks, laurels, maples, birch, chesnut, hydrangea, a species of fig (which is found on the very summit), and three chinese and japanese genera, are the principal features of the forest; the common bushes being _aucuba, skimmia,_ and the curious _helwingia,_ which bears little clusters of flowers on the centre of the leaf, like butcher's-broom. in spring immense broad-leaved arums spring up, with green or purple-striped hoods, that end in tail-like threads, eighteen inches long, which lie along the ground; and there are various kinds of _convallaria, paris, begonia,_ and other beautiful flowering herbs. nearly thirty ferns may be gathered on this excursion, including many of great beauty and rarity, but the tree-fern does not ascend so high. grasses are very rare in these woods, excepting the dwarf bamboo, now cultivated in the open air in england. before proceeding to narrate my different expeditions into sikkim and nepal from dorjiling, i shall give a sketch of the different peoples and races composing the heterogeneous population of sikkim and the neighbouring mountains. the lepcha is the aboriginal inhabitant of sikkim, and the prominent character in dorjiling, where he undertakes all sorts of out-door employment. the race to which he belongs is a very singular one; markedly mongolian in features, and a good deal too, by imitation, in habit; still he differs from his tibetan prototype, though not so decidedly as from the nepalese and bhotanese, between whom he is hemmed into a narrow tract of mountain country, barely miles in breadth. the lepchas possess a tradition of the flood, during which a couple escaped to the top of a mountain (tendong) near dorjiling. the earliest traditions which they have of their history date no further back than some three hundred years, when they describe themselves as having been long-haired, half-clad savages. at about that period they were visited by tibetans, who introduced boodh worship, the platting of their hair into pig-tails, and very many of their own customs. their physiognomy is however so tibetan in its character, that it cannot be supposed that this was their earliest intercourse with the trans-nivean races: whether they may have wandered from beyond the snows before the spread of boodhism and its civilisation, or whether they are a cross between the tamulian of india and the tibetan, has not been decided. their language, though radically identical with tibetan, differs from it in many important particulars. they, or at least some of their tribes, call themselves rong, and arratt, and their country dijong: they once possessed a great part of east nepal, as far west as the tambur river, and at a still earlier period they penetrated as far west as the arun river. an attentive examination of the lepcha in one respect entirely contradicts our preconceived notions of a mountaineer, as he is timid, peaceful, and no brawler; qualities which are all the more remarkable from contrasting so strongly with those of his neighbours to the east and west: of whom the ghorkas are brave and warlike to a proverb, and the bhotanese quarrelsome, cowardly, and cruel. a group of lepchas is exceedingly picturesque. they are of short stature--four feet eight inches to five feet--rather broad in the chest, and with muscular arms, but small hands and slender wrists.* [i have seldom been able to insert my own wrist (which is smaller than the average) into the wooden guard which the lepcha wears on his left, as a protection against the bow-string: it is a curved ring of wood with an opening at one side, through which, by a little stretching, the wrist is inserted.] the face is broad, flat, and of eminently tartar character, flat-nosed and oblique-eyed, with no beard, and little moustache; the complexion is sallow, or often a clear olive; the hair is collected into an immense tail, plaited flat or round. the lower limbs are powerfully developed, befitting genuine mountaineers: the feet are small. though never really handsome, and very womanish in the cast of countenance, they have invariably a mild, frank, and even engaging expression, which i have in vain sought to analyse, and which is perhaps due more to the absence of anything unpleasing, than to the presence of direct grace or beauty. in like manner, the girls are often very engaging to look upon, though without one good feature they are all smiles and good-nature; and the children are frank, lively, laughing urchins. the old women are thorough hags. indolence, when left to themselves, is their besetting sin; they detest any fixed employment, and their foulness of person and garments renders them disagreeable inmates: in this rainy climate they are supportable out of doors. though fond of bathing when they come to a stream in hot weather, and expert, even admirable swimmers, these people never take to the water for the purpose of ablution. in disposition they are amiable and obliging, frank, humorous, and polite, without the servility of the hindoos; and their address is free and unrestrained. their intercourse with one another and with europeans is scrupulously honest; a present is divided equally amongst many, without a syllable of discontent or grudging look or word: each, on receiving his share, coming up and giving the donor a brusque bow and thanks. they have learnt to overcharge already, and use extortion in dealing, as is the custom with the people of the plains; but it is clumsily done, and never accompanied with the grasping air and insufferable whine of the latter. they are constantly armed with a long, heavy, straight knife,* [it is called "ban," and serves equally for plough, toothpick, table-knife, hatchet, hammer, and sword.] but never draw it on one another: family and political feuds are alike unheard of amongst them. illustration -- lepcha girl and bhoodist lama. the lepcha is in morals far superior to his tibet and bhotan neighbours, polyandry being unknown, and polygamy rare. this is no doubt greatly due to the conventual system not being carried to such an excess as in bhotan, where the ties of relationship even are disregarded. like the new zealander, tasmanian, fuegian, and natives of other climates, which, though cold, are moist and equable, the lepcha's dress is very scanty, and when we are wearing woollen under-garments and hose, he is content with one cotton vesture, which is loosely thrown round the body, leaving one or both arms free; it reaches to the knee, and is gathered round the waist: its fabric is close, the ground colour white, ornamented with longitudinal blue stripes, two or three fingers broad, prettily worked with red and white. when new and clean, this garb is remarkably handsome and gay, but not showy. in cold weather an upper garment with loose sleeves is added. a long knife, with a common wooden handle, hangs by the side, stuck in a sheath; he has often also a quiver of poisoned arrows and a bamboo* [the bamboo, of which the quiver is made, is thin and light: it is brought from assam, and called tulda, or dulwa, by the bengalees.] bow across his back. on his right wrist is a curious wooden guard for the bowstring; and a little pouch, containing aconite poison and a few common implements, is suspended to his girdle. a hat he seldom wears, and when he does, it is often extravagantly broad and flat-brimmed, with a small hemispherical crown. it is made of leaves of _scitamineae,_ between two thin plates of bamboo-work, clumsy and heavy; this is generally used in the rainy weather, while in the dry a conical one is worn, also of platted slips of bamboo, with broad flakes of talc between the layers, and a peacock's feather at the side. the umbrella consists of a large hood, much like the ancient boat called a coracle, which being placed over the head reaches to the thighs behind. it is made of platted bamboo, enclosing broad leaves of _phrynium._ a group of lepchas with these on, running along in the pelting rain, are very droll figures; they look like snails with their shells on their backs. all the lepchas are fond of ornaments, wearing silver hoops in their ears, necklaces made of cornelian, amber, and turquoise, brought from tibet, and pearls and corals from the south, with curious silver and golden charm-boxes or amulets attached to their necks or arms. these are of tibetan workmanship, and often of great value: they contain little idols, charms and written prayers, or the bones, hair, or nail-parings of a lama: some are of great beauty, and highly ornamented. in these decorations, and in their hair, they take some pride, the ladies frequently dressing the latter for the gentlemen: thus one may often see, the last thing at night, a damsel of discreet port, demurely go behind a young man, unplait his pig-tail, teaze the hair, thin it of some of its lively inmates, braid it up for him, and retire. the women always wear two braided pig-tails, and it is by this they are most readily distinguished from their effeminate-looking partners, who wear only one.* [ermann (travels in siberia, ii. p. ) mentions the buraet women as wearing two tails, and fillets with jewels, and the men as having one queue only.] when in full dress, the woman's costume is extremely ornamental and picturesque; besides the shirt and petticoat she wears a small sleeveless woollen cloak, of gay pattern, usually covered with crosses, and fastened in front by a girdle of silver chains. her neck is loaded with silver chains, amber necklaces, etc., and her head adorned with a coronet of scarlet cloth, studded with seed-pearls, jewels, glass beads, etc. the common dress is a long robe of indi, a cloth of coarse silk, spun from the cocoon of a large caterpillar that is found wild at the foot of the hills, and is also cultivated: it feeds on many different leaves, sal (_shorea_), castor-oil, etc. in diet, they are gross feeders;* [dr. campbell's definition of the lepcha's _flora cibaria,_ is, that he eats, or must have eaten, everything soft enough to chew; for, as he knows whatever is poisonous, he must have tried all; his knowledge being wholly empirical.] rice, however, forming their chief sustenance; it is grown without irrigation, and produces a large, flat, coarse grain, which becomes gelatinous, and often pink, when cooked. pork is a staple dish: and they also eat elephant, and all kinds of animal food. when travelling, they live on whatever they can find, whether animal or vegetable. fern-tops, roots of _scitamineae,_ and their flower-buds, various leaves (it is difficult to say what not), and fungi, are chopped up, fried with a little oil, and eaten. their cooking is coarse and dirty. salt is costly, but prized; pawn (betel pepper) is never eaten. tobacco they are too poor to buy, and too indolent to grow and cure. spices, oil, etc. are relished. they drink out of little wooden cups, turned from knots of maple, or other woods; these are very curious on several accounts; they are very pretty, often polished, and mounted with silver. some are supposed to be antidotes against poison, and hence fetch an enormous price; they are of a peculiar wood, rarer and paler-coloured. i have paid a guinea for one such, hardly different from the common sort, which cost but d. or d. mm. huc and gabet graphically allude to this circumstance, when wishing to purchase cups at lhassa, where their price is higher, as they are all imported from the himalaya. the knots from which they are formed, are produced on the roots of oaks, maples, and other mountain forest trees, by a parasitical plant, known to botanists, as _balanophora_. their intoxicating drink, which seems more to excite than to debauch the mind, is partially fermented. murwa grain (_eleusine coracana_). spirits are rather too strong to be relished raw, and when a glass of wine is given to one of a party, he sips it, and hands it round to all the rest. a long bamboo flute, with four or six burnt holes far below the month-hole, is the only musical instrument i have seen in use among them. when travelling, and the fatigues of the day are over, the lepchas will sit for hours chatting, telling stories, singing in a monotonous tone, or blowing this flute. i have often listened with real pleasure to the simple music of this rude instrument; its low and sweet tones are singularly aeolian, as are the airs usually played, which fall by octaves: it seems to harmonize with the solitude of their primaeval forests, and he must have a dull ear who cannot draw from it the indication of a contented mind, whether he may relish its soft musical notes or not. though always equipped for the chase, i fancy the lepcha is no great sportsman; there is little to be pursued in this region, and he is not driven by necessity to follow what there is. their marriages are contracted in childhood, and the wife purchased by money, or by service rendered to the future father-in-law, the parties being often united before the woman leaves her parents' roof, in cases where the payment is not forthcoming, and the bridegroom prefers giving his and his wife's labour to the father for a stated period in lieu. on the time of service expiring, or the money being paid up, the marriage is publicly celebrated by feasting and riot. the females are generally chaste, and the marriage-tie is strictly kept, its violation being heavily punished by divorce, beating, slavery, etc. in cases of intermarriage with foreigners, the children belong to the father's country. all the labours of the house, the field, and march, devolve on the women and children, or slaves if they have them. small-pox is dreaded, and infected persons often cruelly shunned: a suspicion of this or of cholera frequently emptying a village or town in a night. vaccination has been introduced by dr. pearson, and it is much practised by dr. campbell; it being eagerly sought. cholera is scarcely known at dorjiling, and when it has been imported thither has never spread. disease is very rare amongst the lepchas; and ophthalmic, elephantiasis, and leprosy, the scourges of hot climates, are rarely known. goitre prevails,* [may not the use of the head instead of the shoulder-strap in carrying loads be a predisposing cause of goitre, by inducing congestion of the laryngeal vessels? the lepcha is certainly far more free from this disease than any of the tribes of e. nepal i have mixed with, and he is both more idle and less addicted to the head-strap as a porter. i have seen it to be almost universal in some villages of bhoteeas, where the head-strap alone is used in carrying in both summer and winter crops; as also amongst the salt-traders, or rather those families who carry the salt from the passes to the nepalese villages, and who very frequently have no shoulder-straps, but invariably head-bands. i am far from attributing all goitre, even in the mountains, to this practice, but i think it is proved, that the disease is most prevalent in the mountainous regions of both the old and new world, and that in these the practice of supporting enormous loads by the cervical muscles is frequent. it is also found in the himalayan sheep and goats which accompany the salt-traders, and whose loads are supported in ascending, by a band passing under the throat.] though not so conspicuously as amongst. bhoteeas, bhotanese, and others. rheumatism is frequent, and intermittent fevers, with ague; also violent and often fatal remittents, almost invariably induced by sleeping in the hot valleys, especially at the beginning and end of the rains. the european complaints of liver and bowel disease are all but unknown. death is regarded with horror. the dead are burnt or buried, sometimes both; much depending on custom and position. omens are sought in the entrails of fowls, etc., and other vestiges of their savage origin are still preserved, though now gradually disappearing. the lepchas profess no religion, though acknowledging the existence of good and bad spirits. to the good they pay no heed; "why should we?" they say, "the good spirits do us no harm; the evil spirits, who dwell in every rock, grove, and mountain, are constantly at mischief, and to them we must pray, for they hurt us." every tribe has a priest-doctor; he neither knows nor attempts to practise the healing art, but is a pure exorcist; all bodily ailments being deemed the operations of devils, who are cast out by prayers and invocations. still they acknowledge the lamas to be very holy men, and were the latter only moderately active, they would soon convert all the lepchas. their priests are called "bijooas": they profess mendicancy, and seem intermediate between the begging friars of tibet, whose dress and attributes they assume, and the exorcists of the aboriginal lepchas: they sing, dance (masked and draped like harlequins), beg, bless, curse, and are merry mountebanks; those that affect more of the lama boodhist carry the "mani," or revolving praying machine, and wear rosaries and amulets; others again are all tatters and rags. they are often employed to carry messages, and to transact little knaveries. the natives stand in some awe of them, and being besides of a generous disposition, keep the wallet of the bijooa always full. such are some of the prominent features of this people, who inhabit the sub-himalayas, between the nepalese and bhotan frontiers, at elevations of to feet. in their relations with us, they are conspicuous for their honesty, their power as carriers and mountaineers, and their skill as woodsmen; for they build a waterproof house with a thatch of banana leaves in the lower, or of bamboo in the elevated regions, and equip it with a table and bedsteads for three persons, in an hour, using no implement but their heavy knife. kindness and good humour soon attach them to your person and service. a gloomy-tempered or morose master they avoid, an unkind one they flee. if they serve a good hills-man like themselves, they will follow him with alacrity, sleep on the cold, bleak mountain exposed to the pitiless rain, without a murmur, lay down the heavy burden to carry their master over a stream, or give him a helping hand up a rock or precipice--do anything, in short, but encounter a foe, for i believe the lepcha to be a veritable coward.* [yet, during the ghorka war, they displayed many instances of courage: when so hard pressed, however, that there was little choice of evils.] it is well, perhaps, he is so: for if a race, numerically so weak, were to embroil itself by resenting the injuries of the warlike ghorkas, or dark bhotanese, the folly would soon lead to destruction. before leaving the lepchas, it may be worth mentioning that the northern parts of the country, towards the tibet frontier, are inhabited by sikkim bhoteeas* [bhote is the general name for tibet (not bhotan), and kumpa is a large province, or district, in that country. the bhotanese, natives of bhotan, or of the dhurma country, are called dhurma people, in allusion to their spiritual chief, the dhurma rajah. they are a darker and more powerful race, rude, turbulent, and tibetan in language and religion, with the worst features of those people exaggerated. the various races of nepal are too numerous to be alluded to here: they are all described in various papers by mr. hodgson, in the "journal of the asiatic society of bengal." the dhurma people are numerous at dorjiling; they are often runaways, but invariably prove more industrious settlers than the lepchas. in the himalaya the name bhotan is unknown amongst the tibetans; it signifies literally (according to mr. hodgson) the end of bhote, or tibet, being the eastern extreme of that country. the lepchas designate bhotan as ayeu, or aieu, as do often the bhotanese themselves. sikkim, again, is called lhop, or lho', by the lepchas and bhotanese.] (or kumpas), a mixed race calling themselves kumpa rong, or kumpa lepchas; but they are emigrants from tibet, having come with the first rajah of sikkim. these people are more turbulent and bolder than the lepchas, and retain much of their tibetan character, and even of that of the very province from which they came; which is north-east of lhassa, and inhabited by robbers. all the accounts i have received of it agree with those given by mm. huc and gabet. next to the lepchas, the most numerous tribe in sikkim is that of the limboos (called "chung" by the lepchas); they abound also in east nepal, which they once ruled, inhabiting elevations from feet to feet. they are boodhists, and though not divided into castes, belong to several tribes. all consider themselves as the earliest inhabitants of the tambur valley, though they have a tradition of having originally emigrated from tibet, which their tartar countenance confirms. they are more slender and sinewy than the lepchas, and neither plait their hair nor wear ornaments; instead of the ban they use the nepal curved knife, called "cookree," while for the striped kirtle of the lepcha are substituted loose cotton trousers and a tight jacket; a sash is worn round the middle, and on the head a small cotton cap. when they ruled over east nepal, their system was feudal; and on their uniting against the nepalese, they were with difficulty dislodged from their strongholds. they are said to be equally brave and cruel in battle, putting the old and weak to the sword, carrying the younger to slavery, and killing on the march such captives as are unable to proceed. many enlist at dorjiling, which the lepchas never do; and the rajah of nepal employs them in his army, where, however, they seldom obtain promotion, this being reserved for soldiers of hindoo tribes. latterly jung bahadur levied a force of of them, who were cantoned at katmandoo, where the cholera breaking out, carried off some hundreds, causing many families who dreaded conscription to flock to dorjiling. their habits are so similar to those of the lepchas, that they constantly intermarry. they mourn, burn, and bury their dead, raising a mound over the corpse, erecting a headstone, and surrounding the grave with a little paling of sticks; they then scatter eggs and pebbles over the ground. in these offices the bijooa of the lepchas is employed, but the limboo has also priests of his own, called "phedangbos," who belong to rather a higher order than the bijooas. they officiate at marriages, when a cock is put into the bridegroom's hands, and a hen into those of the bride; the phedangbo then cuts off the birds' heads, when the blood is caught on a plantain leaf, and runs into pools from which omens are drawn. at death, guns are fired, to announce to the gods the departure of the spirit; of these there are many, having one supreme head, and to them offerings and sacrifices are made. they do not believe in metempsychosis. the limboo language is totally different from the lepcha; with less of the _z_ in it, and more labials and palatals, hence more pleasing. its affinities i do not know; it has no peculiar written character, the lepcha or nagri being used. dr. campbell, from whom i have, derived most of my information respecting these people, was informed,* [see "dorjiling guide," p. . calcutta, .] on good authority, that they had once a written language, now lost; and that it was compounded from many others by a sage of antiquity. the same authority stated that their lepcha name "chung" is a corruption of that of their place of residence; possibly the "tsang" province of tibet. the moormis are the only other native tribe remaining in any numbers in sikkim, except the tibetans of the loftier mountains (whom i shall mention at a future period), and the mechis of the pestilential terai, the forests of which they never leave. the moormis are a scattered people, respecting whom i have no information, except from the authority quoted above. they are of tibetan origin, and called "nishung," from being composed of two branches, respectively from the districts of nimo and shung, both on the road between sikkim and lhassa. they are now most frequent in central and eastern nepal, and are a pastoral and agricultural people, inhabiting elevations of to feet, and living in stone houses, thatched with grass. they are a large, powerful, and active race, grave, very plain in features, with little hair on the face. both their language and religion are purely tibetan. the magras, a tribe now confined to nepal west of the arun, are aborigines of sikkim, whence they were driven by the lepchas westward into the country of the limboos, and by these latter further west still. they are said to have been savages, and not of tibetan origin, and are now converted to hindooism. a somewhat mythical account of a wild people still inhabiting the sikkim mountains, will be alluded to elsewhere. it is curious to observe that these mountains do not appear to have afforded refuge to the tamulian* [the tamulians are the coles, dangas, etc., of the mountains of central india and the peninsula, who retired to mountain fastnesses, on the invasion of their country by the indo-germanic conquerors, who are now represented by the hindoos.] aborigines of india proper; all the himalayan tribes of sikkim being markedly mongolian in origin. it does not, however, follow that they are all of tibetan extraction; perhaps, indeed, none but the moormis are so. the mechi of the terai is decidedly indo-chinese, and of the same stock as the savage races of assam, the north-east and east frontier of bengal, arracan, burmah, etc. both lepchas and limboos had, before the introduction of lama boodhism from tibet, many features in common with the natives of arracan, especially in their creed, sacrifices, faith in omens, worship of many spirits, absence of idols, and of the doctrine of metempsychosis. some of their customs, too, are the same; the form of their houses and of some of their implements, their striped garments, their constant and, dexterous use of the bamboo for all utensils, their practice of night-attacks in war, of using poisoned arrows only in the chase, and that of planting "crow-feet" of sharp bamboo stakes along the paths an enemy is expected to follow. such are but a few out of many points of resemblance, most of which struck me when reading lieutenant phayre's account of arracan,* ["journal of the asiatic society of bengal."] and when travelling in the districts of khasia and cachar. the laws affecting the distribution of plants, and the lower animals, materially influence the migrations of man also; and as the botany, zoology, and climate of the malayan and siamese peninsula advance far westwards into india, along the foot of the himalaya, so do also the varieties of the human race. these features are most conspicuously displayed in the natives of assam, on both sides of the burrampooter, as far as the great bend of that river, beyond which they gradually disappear; and none of the himalayan tribes east of that point practise the bloody and brutal rites in war that prevail amongst the cookies, khasias, garrows, and other indo-chinese tribes of the mountain forests of assam, eastern bengal, and the malay peninsula. i have not alluded to that evidence of the extraction of the sikkim races, which is to be derived from their languages, and from which we may hope for a clue to their origin; the subject is at present under discussion, and involved in much obscurity. that six or seven different tribes, without any feudal system or coercive head, with different languages and customs, should dwell in close proximity and in peace and unity, within the confined territory of sikkim, even for a limited period, is an anomaly; the more especially when it is considered that except for a tincture of the boodhist religion among some few of the people, they are all but savages, as low in the scale of intellect as the new zealander or the tahitian, and beneath those races in ingenuity and skill as craftsmen. wars have been waged amongst them, but they were neither sanguinary nor destructive, and the fact remains no less remarkable, that at the period of our occupying dorjiling, friendship and unanimity existed amongst all these tribes; from the tibetan at , feet, to the mechi of the plains; under a sovereign whose temporal power was wholly unsupported by even the semblance of arms, and whose spiritual supremacy was acknowledged by very few. chapter vi. excursion from dorjiling to great rungeet -- zones of vegetation -- tree-ferns -- palms, upper limit of -- leebong, tea plantations -- ging -- boodhist remains -- tropical vegetation -- pines -- lepcha clearances -- forest fires -- boodhist monuments -- fig -- cane bridge and raft over rungeet -- sago-palm -- india-rubber -- yel pote -- butterflies and other insects -- snakes -- camp -- temperature and humidity of atmosphere -- junction of teesta and rungeet -- return to dorjiling -- tonglo, excursion to -- bamboo flowering -- oaks -- gordonia -- maize, hermaphrodite flowered -- figs -- nettles -- peepsa -- simonbong, cultivation at -- european fruits at dorjiling -- plains of india. a very favourite and interesting excursion from dorjiling is to the cane bridge over the great rungeet river, feet below the station. to this an excellent road has been cut, by which the whole descent of six miles, as the crow flies, is easily performed on pony-back; the road distance being only eleven miles. the scenery is, of course, of a totally different description from that of sinchul, or even of the foot of the hills, being that of a deep mountain-valley. i several times made this trip; on the excursion about to be described, and in which i was accompanied by mr. barnes, i followed the great rungeet to the teesta, into which it flows. in descending from dorjiling, the zones of vegetation are well marked between and feet by-- . the oak, chesnut, and magnolias, the main features from to , feet.-- . immediately below , feet, the tree-fern appears (_alsophila gigantea,_ wall.), a widely-distributed plant, common to the himalaya, from nepal eastward to the malayan peninsula, java, and ceylon.-- . of palms, a species of _calamus,_ and _plectocomia,_ the "rhenoul" of the lepchas. the latter, though not a very large plant, climbs lofty trees, and extends about yards through the forest; , feet is the upper limit of palms in the sikkim himalaya, the rhenoul alone attaining this elevation.*-- . [four other _calami_ range between and feet on the outer hills, some of them being found forty miles distant from the plains of india. the other palms of sikkim are, "simong" (_caryota urens_); it is rare, and ascends to nearly feet. _phoenix_ (probably _p. acaulis,_ buch.), a small, stemless species, which grows on the driest soil in the deep valleys; it is the "schaap" of the lepchas, who eat the young seeds, and use the feathery fronds as screens in hunting. _wallichia oblongifolia,_ the "ooh" of the lepchas, who make no use of it; dr. campbell and myself, however, found that it is an admirable fodder for horses, who prefer it to any other green food to be had in these mountains. _areca gracilis_ and _licuala peltata_ are the only other palms in sikkim; but _cycas pectinata,_ with the india-rubber fig, occurs in the deepest and hottest valleys--the western limit of both these interesting plants. of _pandanus_ there is a graceful species at elevations of to feet ("borr," lepcha).] the fourth striking feature is a wild plantain, which ascends to nearly the same elevation ("lukhlo," lepcha). this is replaced by another, and rather larger species, at lower elevations; both ripen austere and small fruits, which are full of seeds, and quite uneatable; that commonly grown in sikkim is an introduced stock (nor have the wild species ever been cultivated); it is very large, but poor in flavour, and does not bear seeds. the zones of these conspicuous plants are very clearly defined, and especially if the traveller, standing on one of the innumerable spurs which project from the dorjiling ridge, cast his eyes up the gorges of green on either hand. at feet below dorjiling a fine wooded spur projects, called leebong. this beautiful spot is fully ten degrees warmer than mr. hodgson's house, and enjoys considerably more sunshine; peaches and english fruit-trees flourish extremely well, but do not ripen fruit. the tea-plant succeeds here admirably, and might be cultivated to great profit, and be of advantage in furthering a trade with tibet. it has been tried on a large scale by dr. campbell at his residence (alt. feet), but the frosts and snow of that height injure it, as do the hailstorms in spring. below leebong is the village of ging, surrounded by steeps, cultivated with maize, rice, and millet. it is rendered very picturesque by a long row of tall poles, each bearing a narrow, vertically elongated banner, covered with boodhist inscriptions, and surmounted by coronet-like ornaments, or spear-heads, rudely cut out of wood, or formed of basket-work, and adorned with cotton fringe. ging is peopled by bhotan emigrants, and when one dies, if his relations can afford to pay for them, two additional poles and flags are set up by the lamas in honour of his memory, and that of sunga, the third member of the boodhist trinity. below this the _gordonia_ commences, with _cedrela toona,_ and various tropical genera, such as abound near punkabaree. the heat and hardness of the rocks cause the streams to dry up on these abrupt hills, especially on the eastern slope, and the water is therefore conveyed along the sides of the path, in conduits ingeniously made of bamboo, either split in half, or, what is better, whole, except at the septum, which is removed through a lateral hole. the oak and chesnut of this level ( feet), are both different from those which grow above, as are the brambles. the _arums_ are replaced by _caladiums. tree-ferns cease below feet, and the large bamboo abounds. at about feet, and ten miles distant from dorjiling, we arrived at a low, long spur, dipping down to the bed of the rungeet, at its junction with the rungmo. this is close to the boundary of the british ground, and there is a guard-house, and a sepoy or two at it; here we halted. it took the lepchas about twenty minutes to construct a table and two bedsteads within our tent; each was made of four forked sticks, stuck in the ground, supporting as many side-pieces, across which were laid flat split pieces of bamboo, bound tightly together by strips of rattan palm-stem. the beds were afterwards softened by many layers of bamboo-leaf, and if not very downy, they were dry, and as firm as if put together with screws and joints. this spur rises out of a deep valley, quite surrounded by lofty mountains; it is narrow, and covered with red clay, which the natives chew as a cure for goitre. north, it looks down into a gully, at the bottom of which the rungeet's foamy stream winds through a dense forest. in the opposite direction, the rungmo comes tearing down from the top of sinchul, feet above; and though its roar is heard, and its course is visible throughout its length, the stream itself is nowhere seen, so deep does it cut its channel. except on this, and a few similarly hard rocky hills around, the vegetation is a mass of wood and jungle. at this spot it is rather scanty and dry, with abundance of the _pinus longifolia_ and sal. the dwarf date-palm (_phoenix acaulis_) also, was very abundant. the descent to the river was exceedingly steep, the banks presenting an impenetrable jungle. the pines on the arid crests of the hills around formed a remarkable feature: they grow like the scotch fir, the tall, red trunks springing from the steep and dry slopes. but little resin exudes from the stem, which, like that of most pines, is singularly free from lichens and mosses; its wood is excellent, and the charcoal of the burnt leaves is used as a pigment. being confined to dry soil, this pine is local in sikkim, and the elevation it attains here is not above feet. in bhotan, where there is more dry country, its range is about the same, and in the north-west himalaya, from , to feet. the lepcha never inhabits one spot for more than three successive years, after which an increased rent is demanded by the rajah. he therefore _squats_ in any place which he can render profitable for that period, and then moves to another. his first operation, after selecting a site, is to burn the jungle; then he clears away the trees, and cultivates between the stumps. at this season, firing the jungle is a frequent practice, and the effect by night is exceedingly fine; a forest, so dry and full of bamboo, and extending over such steep hills, affording grand blazing spectacles. heavy clouds canopy the mountains above, and, stretching across the valleys, shut out the firmament; the air is a dead calm, as usual in these deep gorges, and the fires, invisible by day, are seen raging all around, appearing to an inexperienced eye in all but dangerous proximity. the voices of birds and insects being hushed, nothing is audible but the harsh roar of the rivers, and occasionally, rising far above it, that of the forest fires. at night we were literally surrounded by them; some smouldering, like the shale-heaps at a colliery, others fitfully bursting forth, whilst others again stalked along with a steadily increasing and enlarging flame, shooting out great tongues of fire, which spared nothing as they advanced with irresistible might. their triumph is in reaching a great bamboo clump, when the noise of the flames drowns that of the torrents, and as the great stem-joints, burst, from the expansion of the confined air, the report is as that of a salvo from a park of artillery. at dorjiling the blaze is visible, and the deadened reports of the bamboos bursting is heard throughout the night; but in the valley, and within a mile of the scene of destruction, the effect is the most grand, being heightened by the glare reflected from the masses of mist which hover above. on the following morning we pursued a path to the bed of the river; passing a rude booddhist monument, a pile of slate-rocks, with an attempt at the mystical hemisphere at top. a few flags or banners, and slabs of slate, were inscribed with "om mani padmi om." placed on a jutting angle of the spur, backed with the pine-clad hills, and flanked by a torrent on either hand, the spot was wild and picturesque; and i could not but gaze with a feeling of deep interest on these emblems of a religion which perhaps numbers more votaries than any other on the face of the globe. booddhism in some form is the predominating creed, from siberia and kamschatka to ceylon, from the caspian steppes to japan, throughout china, burmah, ava, and a part of the malayan archipelago. its associations enter into every book of travels over these vast regions, with booddha, dhurma, sunga, jos, fo, and praying-wheels. the mind is arrested by the names, the imagination captivated by the symbols; and though i could not worship in the grove, it was impossible to deny to the inscribed stones such a tribute as is commanded by the first glimpse of objects which have long been familiar to our minds, but not previously offered to our senses. my head lepcha went further: to a due observance of demon-worship he united a deep reverence for the lamas, and he venerated their symbols rather as theirs than as those of their religion. he walked round the pile of stones three times from left to right repeating his "om mani," etc., then stood before it with his head hung down and his long queue streaming behind, and concluded by a votive offering of three pine-cones. when done, he looked round at me, nodded, smirked, elevated the angles of his little turned-up eyes, and seemed to think we were safe from all perils in the valleys yet to be explored. illustration -- pines (pinus longifolia), rungeet valley. in the gorge of the rungeet the heat was intolerable, though the thermometer did not rise above degrees. the mountains leave but a narrow gorge between them, here and there bordered by a belt of strong soil, supporting a towering crop of long cane-like grasses and tall trees. the troubled river, about eighty yards across, rages along over a gravelly bed. crossing the rungmo, where it falls into the rungeet, we came upon a group of natives drinking fermented murwa liquor, under a rock; i had a good deal of difficulty in getting my people past, and more in inducing one of the topers to take the place of a ghorka (nepalese) of our party who was ill with fever. soon afterwards, at a most wild and beautiful spot, i saw, for the first time, one of the most characteristic of himalayan objects of art, _a cane bridge._ all the spurs, round the bases of which the river flowed, were steep and rocky, their flanks clothed with the richest tropical forest, their crests tipped with pines. on the river's edge, the banana, _pandanus,_ and _bauhinia,_ were frequent, and figs prevailed. one of the latter (of an exceedingly beautiful species) projected over the stream, growing out of a mass of rock, its roots interlaced and grasping at every available support, while its branches, loaded with deep glossy foliage, hung over the water. this tree formed one pier for the canes; that on the opposite bank, was constructed of strong piles, propped with large stones; and between them swung the bridge,* [a sketch of one of these bridges will be found in vol. ii.] about eighty yards long, ever rocking over the torrent (forty feet below). the lightness and extreme simplicity of its structure were very remarkable. two parallel canes, on the same horizontal plane, were stretched across the stream; from them others hung in loops, and along the loops were laid one or two bamboo stems for flooring; cross pieces below this flooring, hung from the two upper canes, which they thus served to keep apart. the traveller grasps one of the canes in either hand, and walks along the loose bamboos laid on the swinging loops: the motion is great, and the rattling of the loose dry bamboos is neither a musical sound, nor one calculated to inspire confidence; the whole structure seeming as if about to break down. with shoes it is not easy to walk; and even with bare feet it is often difficult, there being frequently but one bamboo, which, if the fastening is loose, tilts up, leaving the pedestrian suspended over the torrent by the slender canes. when properly and strongly made, with good fastenings, and a floor of bamboos laid _transversely,_ these bridges are easy to cross. the canes are procured from a species of _calamus_; they are as thick as the finger, and twenty, or thirty yards long, knotted together; and the other pieces are fastened to them by strips of the same plant. a lepcha, carrying one hundred and forty pounds on his back, crosses without hesitation, slowly but steadily, and with perfect confidence. illustration -- cane bridge. a deep broad pool below the bridge was made available for a ferry: the boat was a triangular raft of bamboo stems, with a stage on the top, and it was secured on the opposite side of the stream, having a cane reaching across to that on which we were. a stout lepcha leapt into the boiling flood, and boldly swam across, holding on by the cane, without which he would have been carried away. he unfastened the raft, and we drew it over by the cane, and, seated on the stage, up to our knees in water, we were pulled across; the raft bobbing up and down over the rippling stream. we were beyond british ground, on the opposite bank, where any one guiding europeans is threatened with punishment: we had expected a guide to follow us, but his non-appearance caused us to delay for some hours; four roads, or rather forest paths, meeting here, all of which were difficult to find. after a while, part of a marriage-procession came up, headed by the bridegroom, a handsome young lepcha, leading a cow for the marriage feast; and after talking to him a little, he volunteered to show us the path. on the flats by the stream grew the sago palm (_cycas pectinata_), with a stem ten feet high, and a beautiful crown of foliage; the contrast between this and the scotch-looking pine (both growing with oaks and palms) was curious. much of the forest had been burnt, and we traversed large blackened patches, where the heat was intense, and increased by the burning trunks of prostrate trees, which smoulder for months, and leave a heap of white ashes. the larger timber being hollow in the centre, a current of air is produced, which causes the interior to burn rapidly, till the sides fall in, and all is consumed. i was often startled, when walking in the forest, by the hot blast proceeding from such, which i had approached without a suspicion of their being other than cold dead trunks. leaving the forest, the path led along the river bank, and over the great masses of rock which strewed its course. the beautiful india-rubber fig was common, as was _bassia butyracea,_ the "yel pote" of the lepchas, from the seeds of which they express a concrete oil, which is received and hardens in bamboo vessels. on the forest-skirts, _hoya,_ parasitical _orchideae,_ and ferns, abounded; the chaulmoogra, whose fruit is used to intoxicate fish, was very common; as was an immense mulberry tree, that yields a milky juice and produces a long green sweet fruit. large fish, chiefly cyprinoid, were abundant in the beautifully clear water of the river. but by far the most striking feature consisted in the amazing quantity of superb butterflies, large tropical swallow-tails, black, with scarlet or yellow eyes on their wings. they were seen everywhere, sailing majestically through the still hot air, or fluttering from one scorching rock to another, and especially loving to settle on the damp sand of the river-edge; where they sat by thousands, with erect wings, balancing themselves with a rocking motion, as their heavy sails inclined them to one side or the other; resembling a crowded fleet of yachts on a calm day. such an entomological display cannot be surpassed. _cicindelae_ were very numerous, and incredibly active, as were _grylli_; and the great _cicadeae_ were everywhere lighting on the ground, when they uttered a short sharp creaking sound, and anon disappeared, as if by magic. beautiful whip-snakes were gleaming in the sun: they hold on by a few coils of the tail round a twig, the greater part of their body stretched out horizontally, occasionally retracting, and darting an unerring aim at some insect. the narrowness of the gorge, and the excessive steepness of the bounding hills, prevented any view, except of the opposite mountain face, which was one dense forest, in which the wild banana was conspicuous. towards evening we arrived at another cane-bridge, still more dilapidated than the former, but similar in structure. for a few hundred yards before reaching it, we lost the path, and followed the precipitous face of slate-rocks overhanging the stream, which dashed with great violence below. though we could not walk comfortably, even with our shoes off, the lepchas, bearing their enormous loads, proceeded with perfect indifference. anxious to avoid sleeping at the bottom of the valley, we crawled, very much fatigued, through burnt dry forest, up a very sharp ridge, so narrow that the tent sat astride on it, the ropes being fastened to the tops of small trees on either slope. the ground swarmed with black ants, which got into our tea, sugar, etc., while it was so covered with charcoal, that we were soon begrimed. our lepchas preferred remaining on the river-bank, whence they had to bring up water to us, in great bamboo "chungis," as they are called. the great dryness of this face is owing to its southern exposure: the opposite mountains, equally high and steep, being clothed in a rich green forest. at nine the next morning, the temperature was degrees, but a fine cool easterly wind blew. descending to the bed of the river, the temperature was degrees. the difference in humidity of the two stations (with about feet difference in height) was more remarkable; at the upper, the wet bulb thermometer was . degrees, and consequently the saturation point, . ; at the lower, the wet bulb was degrees, and saturation, . . the temperature of the river was, at all hours of the preceding day, and this morning, . degrees.* [at this hour, the probable temperature at dorjiling ( feet above this) would be degrees, with a temperature of wet bulb degrees, and the atmosphere loaded with vapour. at calcutta, again, the temperature was at the observatory . degrees, wet bulb, . degrees, and saturation= . . the dryness of the air, in the damper-looking and luxuriant river-bed, was owing to the heated rocks of its channel; while the humidity of the atmosphere over the drier-looking hill where we encamped, was due to the moisture of the wind then blowing.] our course down the river was by so rugged a path, that, giddy and footsore with leaping from rock to rock, we at last attempted the jungle, but it proved utterly impervious. on turning a bend of the stream, the mountains of bhotan suddenly presented themselves, with the teesta flowing at their base; and we emerged at the angle formed by the junction of the rungeet, which we had followed from the west, of the teesta, coming from the north, and of their united streams flowing south. we were not long before enjoying the water, when i was surprised to find that of the teesta singularly cold; its temperature being degrees below that of the rungeet.* [this is, no doubt, due partly to the teesta flowing south, and thus having less of the sun, and partly to its draining snowy mountains throughout a much longer portion of its course. the temperature of the one was . degrees, and that of the other . degrees.] at the salient angle (a rocky peninsula) of their junction, we could almost place one foot in the cold stream and the other in the warmer. there is a no less marked difference in the colour of the two rivers; the teesta being sea-green and muddy, the great rungeet dark green and very clear; and the waters, like those of the arve and rhone at geneva, preserve their colours for some hundred yards; the line separating the two being most distinctly drawn. the teesta, or main stream, is much the broadest (about or yards wide at this season), the most rapid and deep. the rocks which skirt its bank were covered with a silt or mud deposit, which i nowhere observed along the great rungeet, and which, as well as its colour and coldness, was owing to the vast number of then melting glaciers drained by this river. the rungeet, on the other hand, though it rises amongst the glaciers of kinchinjunga and its sister peaks, is chiefly supplied by the rainfall of the outer ranges of sinchul and singalelah, and hence its waters are clear, except during the height of the rains. from this place we returned to dorjiling, arriving on the afternoon of the following day. the most interesting trip to be made from dorjiling, is that to the summit of tonglo, a mountain on the singalelah range, , feet high, due west of the station, and twelve miles in a straight line, but fully thirty by the path.* [a full account of the botanical features noticed on this excursion (which i made in may, , with mr. barnes) has appeared in the "london journal of botany," and the "horticultural society's journal," and i shall, therefore, recapitulate its leading incidents only.] leaving the station by a native path, the latter plunges at once into a forest, and descends very rapidly, occasionally emerging on cleared spurs, where are fine crops of various millets, with much maize and rice. of the latter grain as many as eight or ten varieties are cultivated, but seldom irrigated, which, owing to the dampness of the climate, is not necessary: the produce is often eighty-fold, but the grain is large, coarse, reddish, and rather gelatinous when boiled. after burning the timber, the top soil is very fertile for several seasons, abounding in humus, below which is a stratum of stiff clay, often of great thickness, produced by the disintegration of the rocks;* [an analysis of the soil will be found in the appendix.] the clay makes excellent bricks, and often contains nearly per cent. of alumina. at about feet the great bamboo ("pao" lepcha) abounds; it flowers every year, which is not the case with all others of this genus, most of which flower profusely over large tracts of country, once in a great many years, and then die away; their place being supplied by seedlings, which grow with immense rapidity. this well-known fact is not due, as some suppose, to the life of the species being of such a duration, but to favourable circumstances in the season. the pao attains a height of to feet, and the culms average in thickness the human thigh; it is used for large water-vessels, and its leaves form admirable thatch, in universal use for european houses at dorjiling. besides this, the lepchas are acquainted with nearly a dozen kinds of bamboo; these occur at various elevations below , feet, forming, even in the pine-woods, and above their zone, in the skirts of the _rhododendron_ scrub, a small and sometimes almost impervious jungle. in an economical point of view they maybe classed as those which split readily, and those which do not. the young shoots of several are eaten, and the seeds of one are made into a fermented drink, and into bread in times of scarcity; but it would take many pages to describe the numerous purposes to which the various species are put. illusration -- lepcha water-carrier with a bamboo chungi. gordonia is their most common tree (_g. wallichii_), much prized for ploughshares and other purposes requiring a hard wood: it is the "sing-brang-kun" of the lepchas, and ascends to feet. oaks at this elevation occur as solitary trees, of species different from those of dorjiling. there are three or four with a cup-shaped involucre, and three with spinous involucres enclosing an eatable sweet nut; these generally grow on a dry clayey soil. some low steep spurs were well cultivated, though the angle of the field was upwards of degrees; the crops, chiefly maize, were just sprouting. this plant is occasionally hermaphrodite in sikkim, the flowers forming a large drooping panicle and ripening small grains; it is, however, a rare occurrence, and the specimens are highly valued by the people. the general prevalence of figs,* [one species of this very tropical genus ascends almost to feet on the outer ranges of sikkim.] and their allies, the nettles,* [of two of these cloth is made, and of a third, cordage. the tops of two are eaten, as are several species of _procris._ the "poa" belongs to this order, yielding that kind of grass cloth fibre, now abundantly imported into england from the malay islands, and used extensively for shirting.] is a remarkable feature in the botany of the sikkim himalaya, up to nearly , feet. of the former there were here five species, some bearing eatable and very palatable fruit of enormous size, others with the fruit small and borne on prostrate, leafless branches, which spring from the root and creep along the ground. a troublesome, dipterous insect (the "peepsa," a species of _siamulium_) swarms on the banks of the streams; it is very small and black, floating like a speck before the eye; its bite leaves a spot of extravasated blood under the cuticle, very irritating if not opened. crossing the little rungeet river, we camped on the base of tonglo. the night was calm and clear, with faint cirrus, but no dew. a thermometer sunk two feet in rich vegetable mould stood at degrees two hours after it was lowered, and the same on the following morning. this probably indicates the mean temperature of the month at that spot, where, however, the dark colour of the exposed loose soil must raise the temperature considerably. _may th._--the temperature at sunrise was degrees; the morning bright, and clear over head, but the mountains looked threatening. dorjiling, perched on a ridge feet above us, had a singular appearance. we ascended the simonbong spur of tonglo, so called from a small village and lama temple of that name on its summit; where we arrived at noon, and passing some chaits* [the chait of sikkim, borrowed from tibet, is a square pedestal, surmounted with a hemisphere, the convex end downwards, and on it is placed a cone, with a crescent on the top. these are erected as tombs to lamas, and as monuments to illustrious persons, and are venerated accordingly, the people always passing them from left to right, often repeating the invocation, "ora mani padmi om."] gained the lama's residence. two species of bamboo, the "payong" and "praong" of the lepchas, here replace the pao of the lower regions. the former was flowering abundantly, the whole of the culms (which were feet high) being a diffuse panicle of inflorescence. the "praong" bears a round head of flowers at the ends of the leafy branches. wild strawberry, violet, geranium, etc., announced our approach to the temperate zone. around the temple were potato crops and peach-trees, rice, millet, yam, brinjal (egg-apple), fennel, hemp (for smoking its narcotic leaves), and cummin, etc. the potato thrives extremely well as a summer crop, at feet, in sikkim, though i think the root (from the dorjiling stock) cultivated as a winter crop in the plains, is superior both in size and flavour. peaches never ripen in this part of sikkim, apparently from the want of sun; the tree grows well at from to feet elevation, and flowers abundantly; the fruit making the nearest approach to maturity (according to the elevation) from july to october. at dorjiling it follows the english seasons, flowering in march and fruiting in september, when the scarce reddened and still hard fruit falls from the tree. in the plains of india, both this and the plum ripen in may, but the fruits are very acid. it is curious that throughout this temperate region, there is hardly an eatable fruit except the native walnut, and some brambles, of which the "yellow" and "ground raspberry" are the best, some insipid figs, and a very austere crab-apple. the european apple will scarcely ripen,* [this fruit, and several others, ripen at katmandoo, in nepal (alt. feet), which place enjoys more sunshine than sikkim. i have, however, received very differedt accounts of the produce, which, on the whole, appears to be inferior.] and the pear not at all. currants and gooseberries show no disposition to thrive, and strawberries are the only fruits that ripen at all, which they do in the greatest abundance. vines, figs, pomegranates, plums, apricots, etc., will not succeed even as trees. european vegetables again grow, and thrive remarkably well throughout the summer of dorjiling, and the produce is very fair, sweet and good, but inferior in flavour to the english. of tropical fruits cultivated below feet, oranges and indifferent bananas alone are frequent, with lemons of various kinds. the season for these is, however, very short; though that of the plantain might with care be prolonged; oranges abound in winter, and are excellent, but neither so large nor free of white pulp as those of the khasia hills, the west indies, or the west coast of africa. mangos are brought from the plains, for though wild in sikkim, the cultivated kinds do not thrive; i have seen the pine-apple plant, but i never met with good fruit on it. a singular and almost total absence of the light, and of the direct rays of the sun in the ripening season, is the cause of this dearth of fruit. both the farmer and orchard gardener in england know full well the value of a bright sky as well as of a warm autumnal atmosphere. without this corn does not ripen, and fruit-trees are blighted. the winter of the plains of india being more analogous in its distribution of moisture and heat to a european summer, such fruits as the peach, vine, and even plum, fig, strawberry, etc., may be brought to bear well in march, april, and may, if they are only carefully tended through the previous hot and damp season, which is, in respect to the functions of flowering and fruiting, their winter. hence it appears that, though some english fruits will turn the winter solstice of bengal (november to may) into summer, and then flower and fruit, neither these nor others will thrive in the summer of feet on the sikkim himalaya, (though its temperature so nearly approaches that of england,) on account of its rain and fogs. further, they are often exposed to a winter's cold equal to the average of that of london, the snow lying for a week on the ground, and the thermometer descending to degrees. it is true that in no case is the extreme of cold so great here as in england, but it is sufficient to check vegetation, and to prevent fruit-trees from flowering till they are fruiting in the plains. there is in this respect a great difference between the climate of the central and eastern and western himalaya, at equal elevations. in the western (kumaon, etc.) the winters are colder than in sikkim--the summers warmer and less humid. the rainy season is shorter, and the sun shines so much more frequently between the heavy showers, that the apple and other fruits are brought to a much better state. it is true that the rain-gauge may show as great a fall there, but this is no measure of the humidity of the atmosphere, and still less so of the amount of the sun's direct light and heat intercepted by aqueous vapour, for it takes no account of the quantity of moisture suspended in the air, nor of the depositions from fogs, which are far more fatal to the perfecting of fruits than the heaviest brief showers. the indian climate, which is marked by one season of excessive humidity and the other of excessive drought, can never be favourable to the production either of good european or tropical fruits. hence there is not one of the latter peculiar to the country, and perhaps but one which arrives at full perfection; namely, the mango. tile plantains, oranges, and pine-apples are less abundant, of inferior kinds, and remain a shorter season in perfection than they do in south america, the west indies, or western africa. illustration -- lepcha amulet. chapter vii. continue the ascent of tonglo -- trees -- lepcha construction of hut -- simsibong -- climbing-trees -- frogs -- magnolias, etc. -- ticks -- leeches -- -- cattle, murrain amongst -- summit of tonglo -- rhododendrons -- skimmia -- yew -- rose -- aconite -- bikh poison -- english genera of plants -- ascent of tropical orders -- comparison with south temperate zone -- heavy rain -- temperature, etc. -- descent -- simonbong temple -- furniture therein -- praying-cylinder -- thigh-bone trumpet -- morning orisons -- present of murwa beer, etc. continuing the ascent of tonglo, we left cultivation and the poor groves of peaches at to feet (and this on the eastern exposure, which is by far the sunniest), the average height which agriculture reaches in sikkim. above simonbong, the path up tonglo is little frequented: it is one of the many routes between nepal and sikkim, which cross the singalelah spur of kinchinjunga at various elevations between and , feet. as usual, the track runs along ridges, wherever these are to be found, very steep, and narrow at the top, through deep humid forests of oaks and magnolias, many laurels, both _tetranthera_ and _cinnamomum,_ one species of the latter ascending to , feet, and one of _tetranthera_ to . chesnut and walnut here appeared, with some leguminous trees, which however did not ascend to feet. scarlet flowers of _vaccinium serpens,_ an epiphytical species, were strewed about, and the great blossoms of _rhododendron dalhousiae_ and of a magnolia (_talaunaa hodgsoni_) lay together on the ground. the latter forms a large tree, with very dense foliage, and deep shining green leaves, a foot to eighteen inches long. most of its flowers drop unexpanded from the tree, and diffuse a very aromatic smell; they are nearly as large as the fist, the outer petals purple, the inner pure white. heavy rain came on at p.m., obliging us to take insufficient shelter under the trees, and finally to seek the nearest camping-ground. for this purpose we ascended to a spring, called simsibong, at an elevation of feet. the narrowness of the ridge prevented our pitching the tent, small as it was; but the lepchas rapidly constructed a house, and thatched it with bamboo and the broad leaves of the wild plantain. a table was then raised in the middle, of four posts and as many cross pieces of wood, lashed with strips of bamboo. across these, pieces of bamboo were laid, ingeniously flattened, by selecting cylinders, crimping them all round, and then slitting each down one side, so that it opens into a flat slab. similar but longer and lower erections, one on each side the table, formed bed or chair; and in one hour, half a dozen men, with only long knives and active hands, had provided us with a tolerably water-tight furnished house. a thick flooring of hamboo leaves kept the feet dry, and a screen of that and other foliage all round rendered the habitation tolerably warm. at this elevation we found great scandent trees twisting around the trunks of others, and strangling them: the latter gradually decay, leaving the sheath of climbers as one of the most remarkable vegetable phenomena of these mountains. these climbers belong to several orders, and may be roughly classified in two groups.-- ( .) those whose sterns merely twine, and by constricting certain parts of their support, induce death.--( .) those which form a network round the trunk, by the coalescence of their lateral branches and aerial roots, etc.: these wholly envelop and often conceal the tree they enclose, whose branches appear rising far above those of its destroyer. to the first of these groups belong many natural orders, of which the most prominent are--_leguminosae,_ ivies, hydrangea, vines, _pothos,_ etc. the inosculating ones are almost all figs and _wightia_: the latter is the most remarkable, and i add a cut of its grasping roots, sketched at our encampment. illustration -- clasping roots of wightia. except for the occasional hooting of an owl, the night was profoundly still during several hours after dark--the cicadas at this season not ascending so high on the mountain. a dense mist shrouded every thing, and the rain pattered on the leaves of our hut. at midnight a tree-frog ("simook," lepcha) broke the silence with his curious metallic clack, and others quickly joined the chorus, keeping up their strange music till morning. like many batrachians, this has a voice singularly unlike that of any other organised creature. the cries of beasts, birds, and insects are all explicable to our senses, and we can recognise most of them as belonging to such or such an order of animal; but the voices of many frogs are like nothing else, and allied species utter totally dissimilar noises. in some, as this, the sound is like the concussion of metals; in others, of the vibration of wires or cords; anything but the natural effects of lungs, larynx, and muscles.* [a very common tasmanian species utters a sound that appears to ring in an underground vaulted chamber, beneath the feet.] _may_ .--early this morning we proceeded upwards, our prospect more gloomy than ever. the path, which still lay up steep ridges, was very slippery, owing to the rain upon the clayey soil, and was only passable from the hold afforded by interlacing roots of trees. at feet, some enormous detached masses of micaceous gneiss rose abruptly from the ridge, they were covered with mosses and ferns, and from their summit, feet, a good view of the surrounding vegetation is obtained. the mast of the forest is formed of:-- ( ) three species of oak, of which _q. annulata ?_ with immense lamellated acorns, and leaves sixteen inches long, is the tallest and the most abundant.--( ) chesnut.--( ) _laurineae_ of several species, all beautiful forest-trees, straight-holed, and umbrageous above.--( ) magnolias.* [other trees were _pyrus, saurauja_ (both an erect and climbing species), _olea,_ cherry, birch, alder, several maples, _hydrangea,_ one species of fig, holly, and several _araliaceous_ trees. many species of _magnoliaceae_ (including the genera _magnolia, michelia,_ and _talauma_) are found in sikkim: _magnolia campbellii,_ of , feet, is the most superb species known. in books on botanical geography, the magnolias are considered as most abounding in north america, east of the rocky mountains; but this is a great mistake, the indian mountains and islands being the centre of this natural order.]--( ) arborescent rhododendrons, which commence here with the _r. arboreum._ at and feet, a considerable change is found in the vegetation; the gigantic purple _magnolia campbellii_ replacing the white; chesnut disappears, and several laurels: other kinds of maple are seen, with _rhododendron argenteum,_ and _stauntonia,_ a handsome climber, which has beautiful pendent clusters of lilac blossoms. at feet we arrived on a long flat covered with lofty trees, chiefly purple magnolias, with a few oaks, great _pyri_ and two rhododendrons, thirty to forty feet high (_r. barbatum,_ and _r. arboreum,_ var. _roseum_): _skimmia_ and _symplocos_ were the common shrubs. a beautiful orchid with purple flowers (_caelogyne wallichii_) grew on the trunks of all the great trees, attaining a higher elevation than most other epiphytical species, for i have seen it at , feet. a large tick infests the small bamboo, and a more hateful insect i never encountered. the traveller cannot avoid these insects coming on his person (sometimes in great numbers) as he brushes through the forest; they get inside his dress, and insert the proboscis deeply without pain. buried head and shoulders, and retained by a barbed lancet, the tick is only to be extracted by force, which is very painful. i have devised many tortures, mechanical and chemical, to induce these disgusting intruders to withdraw the proboscis, but in vain. leeches* [i cannot but think that the extraordinary abundance of these _anelides_ in sikkim may cause the death of many animals. some marked murrains have followed very wet seasons, when the leeches appear in incredible numbers; and the disease in the cattle, described to me by the lepchas as in the stomach, in no way differs from what leeches would produce. it is a well-known fact, that these creatures have lived for days in the fauces, nares, and stomachs of the human subject, causing dreadful sufferings, and death. i have seen the cattle feeding in places where the leeches so abounded, that fifty or sixty were frequently together on my ankles; and ponies are almost maddened by their biting the fetlocks.] also swarm below feet; a small black species above feet, and a large yellow-brown solitary one below that elevation. our ascent to the summit was by the bed of a watercourse, now a roaring torrent, from the heavy and incessant rain. a small _anagallis_ (like _tenella_), and a beautiful purple primrose, grew by its bank. the top of the mountain is another flat ridge, with depressions and broad pools. the number of additional species of plants found here was great, and all betokened a rapid approach to the alpine region of the himalaya. in order of prevalence the trees were,--the scarlet _rhododendron arboreum_ and _barbatum,_ as large bushy trees, both loaded with beautiful flowers and luxuriant foliage; _r. falconeri,_ in point of foliage the most superb of all the himalayan species, with trunks thirty feet high, and branches bearing at their ends only leaves eighteen inches long: these are deep green above, and covered beneath with a rich brown down. next in abundance to these were shrubs of _skimmia laureola,_* [this plant has been lately introduced into english gardens, from the north-west himalaya, and is greatly admired for its aromatic, evergreen foliage, and clusters of scarlet berries. it is a curious fact, that this plant never bears scarlet berries in sikkim, apparently owing to the want of sun; the fruit ripens, but is of a greenish-red or purplish colour.] _symplocos,_ and hydrangea; and there were still a few purple magnolias, very large _pyri,_ like mountain ash, and the common english yew, eighteen feet in circumference, the red bark of which is used as a dye, and for staining the foreheads of brahmins in nepal. an erect white-flowered rose (_r. sericea,_ the only species occurring in southern sikkim) was very abundant: its numerous inodorous flowers are pendent, apparent as a protection from the rain; and it is remarkable as being the only species having four petals instead of five. a currant was common, always growing epiphytically on the trunks of large trees. two or three species of berberry, a cherry, andromeda, _daphne,_ and maple, nearly complete, i think, the list of woody plants. amongst the herbs were many of great interest, as a rhubarb, and _aconitum palmatum,_ which yields one of the celebrated "bikh" poisons.* ["bikh" is yielded by various _aconita._ all the sikkim kinds are called "gniong" by lepchas and bhoteeas, who do not distinguish them. the _a. napellus_ is abundant in the north-west himalaya, and is perhaps as virulent a bikh as any species.] of european genera i found _thalictrum, anemone, fumaria,_ violets, _stellaria, hypericum,_ two geraniums, balsams, _epilobium, potentilla, paris_ and _convallariae,_ one of the latter has verticillate leaves, and its root also called "bikh," is considered a very virulent poison. still, the absence or rarity at this elevation of several very large natural families,* [_ranunculaceae, fumariae, cruciferae, alsineae, geranicae, leguminosae, potentilla, epilobium, crassulaceae, saxifrageae, umbelliferae, lonicera, valerianeae, dipsaceae,_ various genera of _compositae, campanulaceae, lobeliaceae, gentianeae, boragineae, scrophularineae, primulaceae, gramineae._] which have numerous representatives at and much below the same level in the inner ranges, and on the outer of the western himalaya, indicate a certain peculiarity in sikkim. on the other hand, certain tropical genera are more abundant in the temperate zone of the sikkim mountains, and ascend much higher there than in the western himalaya: of this fact i have cited conspicuous examples in the palms, plantains, and tree-ferns. this ascent and prevalence of tropical species is due to the humidity and equability of the climate in this temperate zone, and is, perhaps, the direct consequence of these conditions. an application of the same laws accounts for the extension of similar features far beyond the tropical limit in the southern ocean, where various natural orders, which do not cross the th and th parallels of n. latitude, are extended to the th of s. latitude, and found in tasmania, new zealand, the so-called antarctic islands south of that group, and at cape horn itself. the rarity of pines is perhaps the most curious feature in the botany of tonglo, and on the outer ranges of sikkim; for, between the level of , feet (the upper limit of _p. longifolia_) and , feet (that of the _taxus_), there is no coniferous tree whatever in southern sikkim. we encamped amongst rhododendrons, on a spongy soil of black vegetable matter, so oozy, that it was difficult to keep the feet dry. the rain poured in torrents all the evening, and with the calm, and the wetness of the wood, prevented our enjoying a fire. except a transient view into nepal, a few miles west of us, nothing was to be seen, the whole mountain being wrapped in dense masses of vapour. gusts of wind, not felt in the forest, whistled through the gnarled and naked tree-tops; and though the temperature was degrees, this wind produced cold to the feelings. our poor lepchas were miserably off, but always happy: under four posts and a bamboo-leaf thatch, with no covering but a single thin cotton garment, they crouched on the sodden turf, joking with the hindoos of our party, who, though supplied with good clothing and shelter, were doleful companions. i made a shed for my instruments under a tree; mr. barnes, ever active and ready, floored the tent with logs of wood, and i laid a "corduroy road" of the same to my little observatory. during the night the rain did not abate; and the tent-roof leaked in such torrents, that we had to throw pieces of wax-cloth over our shoulders as we lay in bed. there was no improvement whatever in the weather on the following morning. two of the hindoos had crawled into the tent during the night, attacked with fever and ague.* [it is a remarkable fact, that both the natives of the plains, under many circumstances, and the lepchas when suffering from protracted cold and wet, take fever and ague in sharp attacks. the disease is wholly unknown amongst europeans residing above feet, similar exposure in whom brings on rheumatism and cold.] the tent being too sodden to be carried, we had to remain where we were, and with abundance of novelty in the botany around, i found no difficulty in getting through the day. observing the track of sheep, we sent two lepchas to follow them, who returned at night from some miles west in nepal, bringing two. the shepherds were geroongs of nepal, who were grazing their flocks on a grassy mountain top, from which the woods had been cleared, probably by fire. the mutton was a great boon to the lepchas, but the hindoos would not touch it, and several more sickening during the day, we had the tent most uncomfortably full. during the whole of the nd, from a.m. to p.m., the thermometer never varied . degrees, ranging from . in the morning to degrees, its maximum, at p.m., and . at night. at seven the following morning it was the same. one, sunk two feet six inches in mould and clay, stood constantly at . . the dew-point was always below the temperature, at which i was surprised, for more drenching weather could not well be. the mean dew-point was . , and consequent humidity, . . these observations, and those of the barometer, were taken feet below the summit, to which i moved the instruments on the morning of the rd. at a much more exposed spot the results would no doubt have been different, for a thermometer, there sunk to the same depth as that below, stood at . (or one degree colder than feet lower down). my barometrical observations, taken simultaneously with those of calcutta, give the height of tonglo, , . feet; colonel waugh's, by trigonometry, , . feet,--a remarkable and unusual coincidence. _may_ .--we spent a few hours of alternate fog and sunshine on the top of the mountain, vainly hoping for the most modest view; our inability to obtain it was extremely disappointing, for the mountain commands a superb prospect, which i enjoyed fully in the following november, from a spot a few miles further west. the air, which was always foggy, was alternately cooled and heated, as it blew over the trees, or the open space we occupied; sometimes varying degrees and degrees in a quarter of an hour. having partially dried the tent in the wind, we commenced the descent, which owing to the late torrents of rain, was most fatiguing and slippery; it again commenced to drizzle at noon, nor was it till we had descended to feet that we emerged from the region of clouds. by dark we arrived at simonbong, having descended feet, at the rate of feet an hour; and were kindly received by the lama, who gave us his temple for the accommodation of the whole party. we were surprised at this, both because the sikkim authorities had represented the lamas as very averse to europeans, and because he might well have hesitated before admitting a promiscuous horde of thirty people into a sacred building, where the little valuables on the altar, etc., were quite at our disposal. a better tribute could not well have been paid to the honesty of my lepcha followers. our host only begged us not to disturb his people, nor to allow the hindoos of our party to smoke inside. illustration--simonbong temple. simonbong is one of the smallest and poorest gumpas, or temples, in sikkim: unlike the better class, it is built of wood only. it consisted of one large room, with small sliding shutter windows, raised on a stone foundation, and roofed with shingles of wood; opposite the door a wooden altar was placed, rudely chequered with black, white, and red; to the right and left were shelves, with a few tibetan books, wrapped in silk; a model of symbonath temple in nepal, a praying-cylinder,* [it consisted of a leathern cylinder placed upright in a frame; a projecting piece of iron strikes a little bell at each revolution, the revolution being caused by an elbowed axle and string. within the cylinder are deposited written prayers, and whoever pulls the string properly is considered to have repeated his prayers as often as the bell rings. representations of these implements will be found in other parts of these volumes.] and some implements for common purposes, bags of juniper, english wine-bottles and glasses, with tufts of _abies webbiana,_ rhododendron flowers, and peacock's feathers, besides various trifles, clay ornaments and offerings, and little hindoo idols. on the altar were ranged seven little brass cups, full of water; a large conch shell, carved with the sacred lotus; a brass jug from lhassa, of beautiful design, and a human thigh-bone, hollow, and perforated through both condyles.* [to these are often added a double-headed rattle, or small drum, formed of two crowns of human skulls, cemented back to back; each face is then covered with parchment, and encloses some pebbles. sometimes this instrument is provided with a handle.] illustration--trumpet made of a human thigh-bone. facing the altar was a bench and a chair, and on one side a huge tambourine, with two curved iron drum-sticks. the bench was covered with bells, handsomely carved with idols, and censers with juniper-ashes; and on it lay the _dorge,_ or double-headed thunderbolt, which the lama holds in his hand during service. of all these articles, the human thigh-bone is by much the most curious; it is very often that of a lama, and is valuable in proportion to its length.* [it is reported at dorjiling, that one of the first europeans buried at this station, being a tall man, was disinterred by the resurrectionist bhoteeas for his _trumpet-bones.] as, however, the sikkim lamas are burned, the relics are generally procured from tibet, where the corpses are cut in pieces and thrown to the kites, or into the water. two boys usually reside in the temple, and their beds were given up to us, which being only rough planks laid on the floor, proved clean in one sense, but contrasted badly with the springy couch of bamboo the lepcha makes, which renders carrying a mattress or aught but blankets superfluous. _may_ .--we were awakened at daylight by the discordant orisons of the lama; these commenced by the boys beating the great tambourine, then blowing the conch-shells, and finally the trumpets and thigh-bone. shortly the lama entered, clad in scarlet, shorn and barefooted, wearing a small red silk mitre, a loose gown girt round the middle, and an under-garment of questionable colour, possibly once purple. he walked along, slowly muttering his prayers, to the end of the apartment, whence he took a brass bell and dorge, and, sitting down cross-legged, commenced matins, counting his beads, or ringing the bell, and uttering most dismal prayers. after various disposals of the cups, a larger bell was violently rung for some minutes, himself snapping his fingers and uttering most unearthly sounds. finally, incense was brought, of charcoal with juniper-sprigs; it was swung about, and concluded the morning service to our great relief, for the noises were quite intolerable. fervid as the devotions appeared, to judge by their intonation, i fear the lama felt more curious about us than was proper under the circumstances; and when i tried to sketch him, his excitement knew no bounds; he fairly turned round on the settee, and, continuing his prayers and bell-accompaniment, appeared to be exorcising me, or some spirit within me. after breakfast the lama came to visit us, bringing rice, a few vegetables, and a large bamboo-work bowl, thickly varnished with india-rubber, and waterproof, containing half-fermented millet. this mixture, called _murwa,_ is invariably offered to the traveller, either in the state of fermented grain, or more commonly in a bamboo jug, filled quite up with warm water; when the fluid, sucked through a reed, affords a refreshing drink. he gratefully accepted a few rupees and trifles which we had to spare. leaving simonbong, we descended to the little rungeet, where the heat of the valley was very great; degrees at noon, and that of the stream degrees; the latter was an agreeable temperature for the coolies, who plunged, teeming with perspiration, into the water, catching fish with their hands. we reached dorjiling late in the evening, again drenched with rain; our people, hindoo and lepcha, imprudently remaining for the night in the valley. owing probably as much to the great exposure they had lately gone through, as to the sudden transition from a mean temperature of degrees in a bracing wind, to a hot close jungly valley at degrees, no less than seven were laid up with fever and ague. few excursions can afford a better idea of the general features and rich luxuriance of the sikkim himalaya than that to tonglo. it is always interesting to roam with an aboriginal, and especially a mountain people, through their thinly inhabited valleys, over their grand mountains, and to dwell alone with them in their gloomy and forbidding forests, and no thinking man can do so without learning much, however slender be the means at his command for communion. a more interesting and attractive companion than the lepcha i never lived with: cheerful, kind, and patient with a master to whom he is attached; rude but not savage, ignorant and yet intelligent; with the simple resource of a plain knife he makes his house and furnishes yours, with a speed, alacrity, and ingenuity that wile away that well-known long hour when the weary pilgrim frets for his couch. in all my dealings with these people, they proved scrupulously honest. except for drunkenness and carelessness, i never had to complain of any of the merry troop; some of whom, bareheaded and barelegged, possessing little or nothing save a cotton garment and a long knife, followed me for many months on subsequent occasions, from the scorching plains to the everlasting snows. ever foremost in the forest or on the bleak mountain, and ever ready to help, to carry, to encamp, collect, or cook, they cheer on the traveller by their unostentatious zeal in his service, and are spurs to his progress. illustration--tibetan amulet. chapter viii. difficulty in procuring leave to enter sikkim -- obtain permission to travel in east nepal -- arrangements -- coolies -- stores -- servants -- personal equipment -- mode of travelling -- leave dorjiling -- goong ridge -- behaviour of bhotan coolies -- nepal frontier -- myong valley -- ilam -- sikkim massacre -- cultivation -- nettles -- camp at nanki on tonglo -- bhotan coolies run away -- view of chumulari -- nepal peaks to west -- sakkiazung -- buceros -- road to wallanchoon -- oaks -- scarcity of water -- singular view of mountain-valleys -- encampment -- my tent and its furniture -- evening occupations -- dunkotah -- crossridge of sakkiazung -- yews -- silver-firs -- view of tambur valley -- pemmi river -- pebbly terraces -- geology -- holy springs -- enormous trees -- luculia gratissima -- khawa river, rocks of -- arrive at tambur -- shingle and gravel terraces -- natives, indolence of -- canoe ferry -- votive offerings -- bad road -- temperature, etc. -- chingtam village, view from -- mywa river and guola -- house -- boulders -- chain-bridge -- meepo, arrival of -- fevers. owing to the unsatisfactory nature of our relations with the sikkim authorities, to which i have elsewhere alluded, my endeavours to procure leave to penetrate further beyond the dorjiling territory than tonglo, were attended with some trouble and delay. in the autumn of , the governor-general communicated with the rajah, desiring him to grant me honourable and safe escort through his dominions; but this was at once met by a decided refusal, apparently admitting of no compromise. pending further negotiations, which dr. campbell felt sure would terminate satisfactorily, though perhaps too late for my purpose, he applied to the nepal rajah for permission for me to visit the tibetan passes, west of kinchinjunga; proposing in the meanwhile to arrange for my return through sikkim. through the kindness of col. thoresby, the resident at that court, and the influence of jung bahadoor, this request was promptly acceded to, and a guard of six nepalese soldiers and two officers was sent to dorjiling to conduct me to any part of the eastern districts of nepal which i might select. i decided upon following up the tambur, a branch of the arun river, and exploring the two easternmost of the nepalese passes into tibet (wallanchoon and kanglachem), which would bring me as near to the central mass and loftiest part of the eastern flank of kinchinjunga as possible. for this expedition (which occupied three months), all the arrangements were undertaken for me by dr. campbell, who afforded me every facility which in his government position he could command, besides personally superintending the equipment and provisioning of my party. taking horses or loaded animals of any kind was not expedient: the whole journey was to be performed on foot, and everything carried on men's backs. as we were to march through wholly unexplored countries, where food was only procurable at uncertain intervals, it was necessary to engage a large body of porters, some of whom should carry bags of rice for the coolies and themselves too. the difficulty of selecting these carriers, of whom thirty were required, was very great. the lepchas, the best and most tractable, and over whom dr. campbell had the most direct influence, disliked employment out of sikkim, especially in so warlike a country as nepal: and they were besides thought unfit for the snowy regions. the nepalese, of whom there were many residing as british subjects in dorjiling, were mostly run-aways from their own country, and afraid of being claimed, should they return to it, by the lords of the soil. to employ limboos, moormis, hindoos, or other natives of low elevations, was out of the question; and no course appeared advisable but to engage some of the bhotan run-aways domiciled in dorjiling, who are accustomed to travel at all elevations, and fear nothing but a return to the country which they have abandoned as slaves, or as culprits: they are immensely powerful, and though intractable to the last degree, are generally glad to work and behave well for money. the choice, as will hereafter be seen, was unfortunate, though at the time unanimously approved. my party mustered fifty-six persons. these consisted of myself, and one personal servant, a portuguese half-caste, who undertook all offices, and spared me the usual train of hindoo and mahometan servants. my tent and equipments (for which i was greatly indebted to mr. hodgson), instruments, bed, box of clothes, books and papers, required a man for each. seven more carried my papers for drying plants, and other scientific stores. the nepalese guard had two coolies of their own. my interpreter, the coolie sirdar (or headman), and my chief plant collector (a lepcha), had a man each. mr. hodgson's bird and animal shooter, collector, and stuffer, with their ammunition and indispensables, had four more; there were besides, three lepcha lads to climb trees and change the plant-papers, who had long been in my service in that capacity; and the party was completed by fourteen bhotan coolies laden with food, consisting chiefly of rice with ghee, oil, capsicums, salt, and flour. i carried myself a small barometer, a large knife and digger for plants, note-book, telescope, compass, and other instruments; whilst two or three lepcha lads who accompanied me as satellites, carried a botanising box, thermometers, sextant and artificial horizon, measuring-tape, azimuth compass and stand, geological hammer, bottles and boxes for insects, sketch-book, etc., arranged in compartments of strong canvass bags. the nepal officer (of the rank of serjeant, i believe) always kept near me with one of his men, rendering innumerable little services. other sepoys were distributed amongst the remainder of the party; one went ahead to prepare camping-ground, and one brought up the rear. the course generally pursued by himalayan travellers is to march early in the morning, and arrive at the camping-ground before or by noon, breakfasting before starting, or _en route._ i never followed this plan, because it sacrificed the mornings, which were otherwise profitably spent in collecting about camp; whereas, if i set off early, i was generally too tired with the day's march to employ in any active pursuit the rest of the daylight, which in november only lasted till p.m. the men breakfasted early in the morning, i somewhat later, and all had started by a.m., arriving between and p.m. at the next camping-ground. my tent was formed of blankets, spread over cross pieces of wood and a ridge-pole, enclosing an area of to feet by to feet. the bedstead, table, and chair were always made by my lepchas, as described in the tonglo excursion. the evenings i employed in writing up notes and journals, plotting maps, and ticketing the plants collected during the day's march. i left dorjiling at noon, on the th october, accompanied by dr. campbell, who saw me fairly off, the coolies having preceded me. our direct route would have been over tonglo, but the threats of the sikkim authorities rendered it advisable to make for nepal at once; we therefore kept west along the goong ridge, a western prolongation of sinchul. on overtaking the coolies, i proceeded for six or seven miles along a zig-zag road, at about , feet elevation, through dense forests, and halted at a little hut within sight of dorjiling. rain and mist came on at nightfall, and though several parties of my servants arrived, none of the bhotan coolies made their appearance, and i spent the night without food or bed, the weather being much too foggy and dark to send back to meet the missing men. they joined me late on the following day, complaining unreasonably of their loads, and without their sirdar, who, after starting his crew, had returned to take leave of his wife and family. on the following day he appeared, and after due admonishment we started, but four miles further on were again obliged to halt for the bhotan coolies, who were equally deaf to threats and entreaties. as they did not come up till dusk, we were obliged to encamp here, (alt. , feet) at the common source of the balasun, which flows to the plains, and the little rungeet, whose course is north. the contrast between the conduct of the bhotan men and that of the lepchas and nepalese was so marked, that i seriously debated in my own mind the propriety of sending the former back to dorjiling, but yielded to the remonstrances of their sirdar and the nepal guard, who represented the great difficulty we should have in replacing them, and above all, the loss of time, at this season a matter of great importance. we accordingly started again the following morning, and still keeping in a western direction, crossed the posts in the forest dividing sikkim from nepal, and descended into the myong valley of the latter country, through which flows the river of that name, a tributary of the tambur. the myong valley is remarkably fine: it runs south-west from tonglo, and its open character and general fertility contrast strongly with the bareness of the lower mountain spurs which flank it, and with the dense, gloomy, steep, and forest-clad gorges of sikkim. at its lower end, about twenty miles from the frontier, is the military fort of ilam, a celebrated stockaded post and cantonment of the ghorkas: its position is marked by a conspicuous conical hill. the inhabitants are chiefly brahmins, but there are also some moormis, and a few lepchas who escaped from sikkim during the general massacre in . among these is a man who had formerly much influence in sikkim; he still retains his title of kazee,* [this mahometan title, by which the officers of state are known in sikkim, is there generally pronounced kajee.] and has had large lands assigned to him by the nepalese government: he sent the usual present of a kid, fowls, and eggs, and begged me to express to dr. campbell his desire to return to his native country, and settle at dorjiling. the scenery of this valley is the most beautiful i know of in the lower himalaya, and the cheer pine (_p. longifolia_) is abundant, cresting the hills; which are loosely clothed with clumps of oaks and other trees, bamboos, and bracken (_pteris_). the slopes are covered with red clay, and separate little ravines luxuriantly clothed with tropical vegetation, amongst which flow pebbly streams of transparent cool water. the villages, which are merely scattered collections of huts, are surrounded with fields of rice, buckwheat, and indian corn, which latter the natives were now storing in little granaries, mounted on four posts, men, women, and children being all equally busy. the quantity of gigantic nettles (_urtica heterophylla_) on the skirts of these maize fields is quite wonderful: their long white stings look most formidable, but though they sting virulently, the pain only lasts half an hour or so. these, however, with leeches, mosquitos, peepsas, and ticks, sometimes keep the traveller in a constant state of irritation. however civilised the hindoo may be in comparison with the lepcha, he presents a far less attractive picture to the casual observer; he comes to your camping-ground, sits down, and stares with all his might, but offers no assistance; if he bring a present at all, he expects a return on the spot, and goes on begging till satisfied. i was amused by the cool way in which my ghorka guard treated the village lads, when they wanted help in my service, taking them by the shoulder, pulling out their knives for them, placing them in their bands, and setting them to cut down a tree, or to chop firewood, which they seldom refused to do, when a little such douce violence was applied. my object being to reach the tambur, north of the great east and west mountain ridge of sakkiazung, without crossing the innumerable feeders of the myong and their dividing spurs, we ascended the north flank of the valley to a long spur from tonglo, intending to follow winding ridges of that mountain to the sources of the pemmi at the phulloot mountains, and thence descend. on the rd november i encamped on the flank of tonglo (called nanki in nepal), at , feet, about feet below the western summit, which is rocky, and connected by a long flat ridge with that which i had visited in the previous may. the bhotan coolies behaved worse than ever; their conduct being in all respects typical of the turbulent, mulish race to which they belong. they had been plundering my provisions as they went along, and neither their sirdar nor the ghorka soldiers had the smallest authority over them. i had hired some ghorka coolies to assist and eventually to replace them, and had made up my mind to send back the worst from the more populous banks of the tambur, when i was relieved by their making off of their own accord. the dilemma was however awkward, as it was impossible to procure men on the top of a mountain , feet high, or to proceed towards phulloot. no course remained but to send to dorjiling for others, or to return to the myong valley, and take a more circuitous route over the west end of sakkiazung, which led through villages from which i could procure coolies day by day. i preferred the latter plan, and sent one of the soldiers to the nearest village for assistance to bring the loads down, halting a day for that purpose. from the summit of tonglo i enjoyed the view i had so long desired of the snowy himalaya, from north-east to north-west; sikkim being on the right, nepal on the left, and the plains of india to the southward; and i procured a set of compass bearings, of the greatest use in mapping the country. in the early morning the transparency of the atmosphere renders this view one of astonishing grandeur. kinchinjunga bore nearly due north, a dazzling mass of snowy peaks, intersected by blue glaciers, which gleamed in the slanting rays of the rising sun, like aquamarines set in frosted silver. from this the sweep of snowed mountains to the eastward was almost continuous as far as chola (bearing east-north-east), following a curve of miles, and enclosing the whole of the northern part of sikkim, which appeared a billowy mass of forest-clad mountains. on the north-east horizon rose the donkia mountain ( , feet), and chumulari ( , ). though both were much more distant than the snowy ranges, being respectively eighty and ninety miles off, they raised their gigantic heads above, seeming what they really were, by far the loftiest peaks next to kinchinjunga; and the perspective of snow is so deceptive, that though to miles beyond, they appeared as though almost in the same line with the ridges they overtopped. of these mountains, chumulari presents many attractions to the geographer, from its long disputed position, its sacred character, and the interest attached to it since turner's mission to tibet in . it was seen and recognised by dr. campbell, and measured by colonel waugh, from sinchul, and also from tonglo, and was a conspicuous object in my subsequent journey to tibet. beyond junnoo, one of the western peaks of kinchinjunga, there was no continuous snowy chain; the himalaya seemed suddenly to decline into black and rugged peaks, till in the far north-west it rose again in a white mountain mass of stupendous elevation at miles distance, called, by my nepal people, "tsungau."* [this is probably the easternmost and loftiest peak seen from katmandoo, distant miles, and estimated elevation , feet by col. crawford's observations. see "hamilton's nepal," p. , and plate .] from the bearings i took of it from several positions, it is in about lat. degrees minutes and long. degrees minutes, and is probably on the west flank of the arun valley and river, which latter, in its course from tibet to the plains of india, receives the waters from the west flank of kinchinjunga, and from the east flank of the mountain in question. it is perhaps one which has been seen and measured from the tirhoot district by some of colonel waugh's party, and which has been reported to be upwards of , feet in elevation; and it is the only mountain of the first class in magnitude between gosainthan (north-east of katmandoo) and kinchinjunga. to the west, the black ridge of sakkiazung, bristling with pines, (_abies webbiana_) cut off the view of nepal; but south-west, the myong valley could be traced to its junction with the tambur about thirty miles off: beyond which to the south-west and south, low hills belonging to the outer ranges of nepal rose on the distant horizon, seventy or eighty miles off; and of these the most conspicuous were the mahavarati which skirt the nepal terai. south and south-east, sinchul and the goong range of sikkim intercepted the view of the plains of india, of which i had a distant peep to the south-west only. the west top of tonglo is very open and grassy, with occasional masses of gneiss of enormous size, but probably not in situ. the whole of this flank, and for feet down the spur to the south-west, had been cleared by fire for pasturage, and flocks of black-faced sheep were grazing. during my stay on the mountain, except in the early morning, the weather was bleak, gloomy, and very cold, with a high south-west wind. the mean temperature was degrees, extremes . / degrees: the nights were very clear, with sharp hoar-frost; the radiating thermometer sank to degrees, the temperature at . feet depth was . degrees. a few of the bhotan coolies having voluntarily returned, i left tonglo on the th, and descended its west flank to the mai, a feeder of the myong. the descent was as abrupt as that on the east face, but through less dense forest; the sikkim side (that facing the east) being much the dampest. i encamped at dark by a small village, (jummanoo) at , feet, having descended feet in five hours. hence we marched eastward to the village of sakkiazung, which we reached on the third day, crossing _en route_ several spurs to feet high, from the same ridge, and as many rivers, which all fall into the myong, and whose beds are elevated from , to feet. though rich and fertile, the country is scantily populated, and coolies were procured with difficulty: i therefore sent back to dorjiling all but absolute indispensables, and on the th of november started up the ridge in a northerly direction, taking the road from ilam to wallanchoon. the ascent was gradual, through a fine forest, full of horn-bills (_buceros_), a bird resembling the toucan ("dhunass" lepcha); at feet an oak (_quercus semecarpifolia_), "khasrou" of the nepalese, commences, a tree which is common as far west as kashmir, but which i never found in sikkim, though it appears again in bhotan.* [this oak ascends in the n.w. himalaya to the highest limit of forest ( , feet). no oak in sikkim attains a greater elevation than , .] it forms a broad-headed tree, and has a very handsome appearance; its favourite locality is on grassy open shoulders of the mountains. it was accompanied by an _astragalus, geranium,_ and several other plants of the drier interior parts of sikkim. water is very scarce along the ridge; we walked fully eight miles without finding any, and were at length obliged to encamp at , feet by the only spring that we should be able to reach. with respect to drought, this ridge differs materially from sikkim, where water abounds at all elevations; and the cause is obviously its position to the westward of the great ridge of singalelah (including tonglo) by which the s.w. currents are drained of their moisture. here again, the east flank was much the dampest and most luxuriantly wooded. while my men encamped on a very narrow ridge, i ascended a rocky summit, composed of great blocks of gneiss, from which i obtained a superb view to the westward. immediately below a fearfully sudden descent, ran the daomy river, bounded on the opposite side by another parallel ridge of sakkiazung, enclosing, with that on which i stood, a gulf from to feet deep, of wooded ridges, which, as it were, radiated outwards as they ascended upwards in rocky spurs to the pine-clad peaks around. to the south-west, in the extreme distance, were the boundless plains of india, upwards of miles off, with the cosi meandering through them like a silver thread. the firmament appeared of a pale steel blue, and a broad low arch spanned the horizon, bounded by a line of little fleecy clouds (moutons); below this the sky was of a golden yellow, while in successively deeper strata, many belts or ribbons of vapour appeared to press upon the plains, the lowest of which was of a dark leaden hue, the upper more purple, and vanishing into the pale yellow above. though well defined, there was no abrupt division between the belts, and the lowest mingled imperceptibly with the hazy horizon. gradually the golden lines grew dim, and the blues and purples gained depth of colour; till the sun set behind the dark-blue peaked mountains in a flood of crimson and purple, sending broad beams of grey shade and purple light up to the zenith, and all around. as evening advanced, a sudden chill succeeded, and mists rapidly formed immediately below me in little isolated clouds, which coalesced and spread out like a heaving and rolling sea, leaving nothing above their surface but the ridges and spurs of the adjacent mountains. these rose like capes, promontories, and islands, of the darkest leaden hue, bristling with pines, and advancing boldly into the snowy white ocean, or starting from its bed in the strongest relief. as darkness came on, and the stars arose, a light fog gathered round me, and i quitted with reluctance one of the most impressive and magic scenes i ever beheld. returning to my tent, i was interested in observing how well my followers had accommodated themselves to their narrow circumstances. their fires gleamed everywhere amongst the trees, and the people, broken up into groups of five, presented an interesting picture of native, savage, and half-civilised life. i wandered amongst them in the darkness, and watched unseen their operations; some were cooking, with their rude bronzed faces lighted up by the ruddy glow, as they peered into the pot, stirring the boiling rice with one hand, while with the other they held back their long tangled hair. others were bringing water from the spring below, some gathering sprigs of fragrant _artemisia_ and other shrubs to form couches--some lopping branches of larger trees to screen them from nocturnal radiation; their only protection from the dew being such branches stuck in the ground, and slanting over their procumbent forms. the bhotanese were rude and boisterous in their pursuits, constantly complaining to the sirdars, and wrangling over their meals. the ghorkas were sprightly, combing their raven hair, telling interminably long stories, of which money was the burthen, or singing hindoo songs through their noses in chorus; and being neater and better dressed, and having a servant to cook their food, they seemed quite the gentlemen of the party. still the lepcha was the most attractive, the least restrained, and the most natural in all his actions, the simplest in his wants and appliances, with a bamboo as his water-jug, an earthen-pot as his kettle, and all manner of herbs collected during the day's march to flavour his food. my tent was made of a blanket thrown over the limb of a tree; to this others were attached, and the whole was supported on a frame like a house. one half was occupied by my bedstead, beneath which was stowed my box of clothes, while my books and writing materials were placed under the table. the barometer hung in the most out-of-the-way corner, and my other instruments all around. a small candle was burning in a glass shade, to keep the draught and insects from the light, and i had the comfort of seeing the knife, fork, and spoon laid on a white napkin, as i entered my snug little house, and flung myself on the elastic couch to ruminate on the proceedings of the day, and speculate on those of the morrow, while waiting for my meal, which usually consisted of stewed meat and rice, with biscuits and tea. my thermometers (wet and dry bulb, and minimum) hung under a temporary canopy made of thickly plaited bamboo and leaves close to the tent, and the cooking was performed by my servant under a tree. after dinner my occupations were to ticket and put away the plants collected during the day, write up journals, plot maps, and take observations till p.m. as soon as i was in bed, one of the nepal soldiers was accustomed to enter, spread his blanket on the ground, and sleep there as my guard. in the morning the collectors were set to change the plant-papers, while i explored the neighbourhood, and having taken observations and breakfasted, we were ready to start at a.m. following the same ridge, after a few miles of ascent over much broken gneiss rock, the ghorkas led me aside to the top of a knoll, , feet high, covered with stunted bushes, and commanding a splendid view to the west, of the broad, low, well cultivated valley of the tambur, and the extensive town of dunkotah on its banks, about twenty-five miles off; the capital of this part of nepal, and famous for its manufactory of paper from the bark of the _daphne._ hence too i gained a fine view of the plains of india, including the course of the cosi river, which, receiving the arun and tambur, debouches into the ganges opposite colgongl (see chapter iv). a little further on we crossed the main ridge of sakkiazung, a long flexuous chain stretching for miles to the westward from phulloot on singalelah, and forming the most elevated and conspicuous transverse range in this part of nepal: its streams flow south to the myong, and north to feeders of the tambur. silver firs (_abies webbiana_) are found on all the summits; but to my regret none occurred in our path, which led just below their limit ( , feet), on the southern himalayan ranges. there were, however, a few yews, exactly like the english. the view that opened on cresting this range was again magnificent, of kinchinjunga, the western snows of nepal, and the valley of the tambur winding amongst wooded and cultivated hills to a long line of black-peaked, rugged mountains, sparingly snowed, which intervene between kinchinjunga and the great nepal mountain before mentioned. the extremely varied colouring on the infinite number of hill-slopes that everywhere intersected the tambur valley was very pleasing. for fully forty miles to the northward there were no lofty forest-clad mountains, nor any apparently above to feet: villages and hamlets appeared everywhere, with crops of golden mustard and purple buckwheat in full flower; yellow rice and maize, green hemp, pulse, radishes, and barley, and brown millet. here and there deep groves of oranges, the broad-leafed banana, and sugar-cane, skirted the bottoms of the valleys, through which the streams were occasionally seen, rushing in white foam over their rocky beds. it was a goodly sight to one who had for his only standard of comparison the view from sinchul, of the gloomy forest-clad ranges of to , feet, that intervene between that mountain and the snowy girdle of sikkim; though i question whether a traveller from more favoured climes would see more in this, than a thinly inhabited country, with irregular patches of poor cultivation, a vast amount of ragged forest on low hills of rather uniform height and contour, relieved by a dismal back-ground of frowning black mountains, sprinkled with snow! kinchinjunga was again the most prominent object to the north-east, with its sister peaks of kubra ( , feet), and junnoo ( , feet). all these presented bare cliff's for several thousand feet below their summits, composed of white rock with a faint pink tint:--on the other hand the lofty nepal mountain in the far west presented cliffs of black rocks. from the summit two routes to the tambur presented themselves; one, the main road, led west and south along the ridge, and then turned north, descending to the river; the other was shorter, leading abruptly down to the pemmi river, and thence along its banks, west to the tambur. i chose the latter. the descent was very abrupt on the first day, from , feet to feet, and on that following to the bed of the pemmi, at feet; and the road was infamously bad, generally consisting of a narrow, winding, rocky path among tangled shrubs and large boulders, brambles, nettles, and thorny bushes, often in the bed of the torrent, or crossing spurs covered with forest, round whose bases it flowed. a little cultivation was occasionally met with on the narrow flat pebbly terraces which fringed the stream, usually of rice, and sometimes of the small-leaved variety of hemp (_cannabis_), grown as a narcotic. the rocks above feet were gneiss; below this, cliffs of very micaceous schist were met with, having a north-west strike, and being often vertical; the boulders again were always of gneiss. the streams seemed rather to occupy faults, than to have eroded courses for themselves; their beds were invariably rocky or pebbly, and the waters white and muddy from the quantity of alumina. in one little rocky dell the water gushed through a hole in a soft stratum in the gneiss; a trifling circumstance which was not lost upon the crafty brahmins, who had cut a series of regular holes for the water, ornamented the rocks with red paint, and a row of little iron tridents of siva, and dedicated the whole to mahadeo. in some spots the vegetation was exceedingly fine, and several large trees occurred: i measured a toon (_cedrela_) thirty feet in girth at five feet above the ground. the skirts of the forest were adorned with numerous jungle flowers, rice crops, blue _acanthaceae_ and _pavetta,_ wild cherry-trees covered with scarlet blossoms, and trees of the purple and lilac _bauhinia_; while _thunbergia, convolvulus,_ and other climbers, hung in graceful festoons from the boughs, and on the dry micaceous rocks the _luculia gratissima,_ one of our common hot-house ornaments, grew in profusion, its gorgeous heads of blossoms scenting the air. at the junction of the pemmi and khawa rivers, there are high rocks of mica-slate, and broad river-terraces of stratified sand and pebbles, apparently alternating with deposits of shingle. on this hot, open expanse, elevated feet, appeared many trees and plants of the terai and plains, as pomegranate, peepul, and sal; with extensive fields of cotton, indigo, and irrigated rice. we followed the north bank of the khawa, which runs westerly through a gorge, between high cliffs of chlorite, containing thick beds of stratified quartz. at the angles of the river broad terraces are formed, fifteen to thirty feet above its bed, similar to those just mentioned, and planted with rows of _acacia serissa,_ or laid out in rice fields, or sugar plantations. i reached the east bank of the tambur, on the th of november, at its junction with the khawa, in a deep gorge. it formed a grand stream, larger than the teesta, of a pale, sea-green, muddy colour, and flowed rapidly with a strong ripple, but no foam; it rises six feet in the rains, but ice never descends nearly so low; its breadth was sixty to eighty yards, its temperature degrees to degrees. the breadth of the foaming khawa was twelve to fifteen yards, and its temperature . degrees. the surrounding vegetation was entirely tropical, consisting of scrubby sal trees, acacia, _grislea, emblica, hibiscus,_ etc.; the elevation being but feet, though the spot was twenty-five miles in a straight line from the plains. i camped at the fork of the rivers, on a fine terrace fifty feet above the water, about seventy yards long, and one hundred broad, quite flat-topped, and composed of shingle, gravel, etc., with enormous boulders of gneiss, quartz, and hornstone, much water-worn; it was girt by another broken terrace, twelve feet or so above the water, and covered with long grass and bushes. the main road from ilam to wallanchoon, which i quitted on sakkiazung, descends steeply on the opposite bank of the river, which i crossed in a canoe formed of a hollow trunk (of toon), thirty feet long. there is considerable traffic along this road; and i was visited by numbers of natives, all hindoos, who coolly squatted before my tent-door, and stared with their large black, vacant, lustrous eyes: they appear singularly indolent, and great beggars. the land seems highly favoured by nature, and the population, though so scattered, is in reality considerable, the varied elevation giving a large surface; but the natives care for no more than will satisfy their immediate wants. the river swarms with fish, but they are too lazy to catch them, and they have seldom anything better to give or sell than sticks of sugar-cane, which when peeled form a refreshing morsel in these scorching marches. they have few and poor oranges, citrons, and lemons, very bad plantains, and but little else;--eggs, fowls, and milk are all scarce. horned cattle are of course never killed by hindoos, and it was but seldom that i could replenish my larder with a kid. potatos are unknown, but my sepoys often brought me large coarse radishes and legumes. from the junction of the rivers the road led up the tambur to mywa guola; about sixteen miles by the river, but fully thirty-five, as we wound, ascended, and descended, during three days' marches. we were ferried across the stream in a canoe much ruder than that of the new zealander. i watched my party crossing by boat-loads of fifteen each; the bhotan men hung little scraps of rags on the bushes before embarking, the votive offerings of a booddhist throughout central asia;--the lepcha, less civilised, scooped up a little water in the palm of his hand, and scattered it about, invoking the river god of his simple creed. we always encamped upon gravelly terraces a few feet above the river, which flows in a deep gorge; its banks are very steep for feet above the stream, though the mountains which flank it do not exceed to feet: this is a constant phenomenon in the himalaya, and the roads, when low and within a few hundred feet of the river, are in consequence excessively steep and difficult; it would have been impossible to have taken ponies along that we followed, which was often not a foot broad, running along very steep cliffs, at a dizzy height above the river, and engineered with much trouble and ingenuity: often the bank was abandoned altogether, and we ascended several thousand feet to descend again. owing to the steepness of these banks, and the reflected heat, the valley, even at this season, was excessively hot and close during the day, even when the temperature was below degrees, and tempered by a brisk breeze which rushes upwards from sunrise to sunset. the sun at this season does not, in many places, reach the bottom of these valleys until a.m., and is off again by p.m.; and the radiation to a clear sky is so powerful that dew frequently forms in the shade, throughout the day, and it is common at a.m. to find the thermometer sink from degrees in a sheltered spot, dried by the sun, to degrees in the shade close by, where the sun has not yet penetrated. snow never falls. the rocks throughout this part of the river-course are mica-schists (strike north-west, dip south-west degrees, but very variable in inclination and direction); they are dry and grassy, and the vegetation wholly tropical, as is the entomology, which consists chiefly of large butterflies, _mantis_ and _diptera._ snowy mountains are rarely seen, and the beauty of the scenery is confined to the wooded banks of the main stream, which flows at an average inclination of fifty feet to the mile. otters are found in the stream, and my party shot two, but could not procure them. illustration--tambur river & valley (east nepal) from chintam. (elevation ft.) looking north. in one place the road ascended for feet above the river, to the village of chingtam, situated on a lofty spur of the west bank, whence i obtained a grand view of the upper course of the river, flowing in a tremendous chasm, flanked by well-cultivated hills, and emerging fifteen miles to the northward, from black mountains of savage grandeur, whose rugged, precipitous faces were streaked with snow, and the tops of the lower ones crowned with the tabular-branched silver-fir, contrasting strongly with the tropical luxuriance around. chingtam is an extensive village, covering an area of two miles, and surrounded with abundant cultivation; the houses, which are built in clusters, are of wood, or wattle and mud, with grass thatch. the villagers, though an indolent, staring race, are quiet and respectable; the men are handsome, the women, though less so, often good-looking. they have fine cattle, and excellent crops. immediately above chingtam, the tambur is joined by a large affluent from the west, the mywa, which is crossed by an excellent iron bridge, formed of loops hanging from two parallel chains, along which is laid a plank of sal timber. passing through the village, we camped on a broad terrace, from sixty to seventy feet above the junction of the rivers, whose beds are feet above the sea. mywa guola (or bazaar) is a large village and mart, frequented by nepalese and tibetans, who bring salt, wool, gold, musk, and blankets, to exchange for rice, coral, and other commodities; and a custom-house officer is stationed there, with a few soldiers. the houses are of wood, and well built: the public ones are large, with verandahs, and galleries of carved wood; the workmanship is of chinese character, and inferior to that of katmandoo; but in the same style, and quite unlike anything i had previously seen. the river-terrace is in all respects similar to that at the junction of the tambur and khawa, but very extensive: the stones it contained were of all sizes, from a nut to huge boulders upwards of fifteen feet long, of which many strewed the surface, while others were in the bed of the river: all were of gneiss, quartz, and granite, and had doubtless been transported from great elevations, as the rocks _in situ_--both here and for several thousand feet higher up the river--were micaceous schists, dipping in various directions, and at all angles, with, however, a general strike to the north-west. i was here overtaken by a messenger with letters from dr. campbell, announcing that the sikkim rajah had disavowed the refusal to the governor-general's letter, and authorising me to return through any part of sikkim i thought proper. the bearer was a lepcha attached to the court: his dress was that of a superior person, being a scarlet jacket over a white cotton dress, the breadth of the blue stripes of which generally denotes wealth; he was accompanied by a sort of attache, who wore a magnificent pearl and gold ear-ring, and carried his master's bow, as well as a basket on his back; while an attendant coolie bore their utensils and food. meepo, or teshoo (in tibetan, mr.), meepo, as he was usually called, soon attached himself to me, and proved an active, useful, and intelligent companion, guide, and often collector, during many months afterwards. the vegetation round mywa guola is still thoroughly tropical: the banyan is planted, and thrives tolerably, the heat being great during the day. like the whole of the tambur valley below feet, and especially on these flats, the climate is very malarious before and after the rains; and i was repeatedly applied to by natives suffering under attacks of fever. during the two days i halted, the mean temperature was degrees (extremes, / degrees), that of the tambur, degrees, and of the mywa, degrees; each varying a few degrees (the smaller stream the most) between sunrise and p.m.: the sunk thermometer was degrees. as we should not easily be able to procure food further on, i laid in a full stock here, and distributed blankets, etc., sufficient for temporary use for all the people, dividing them into groups or messes. chapter ix. leave mywa -- suspension bridge -- landslips -- vegetation -- slope of riverbed -- bees' nests -- glacial phenomena -- tibetans, clothing, ornaments, amulets, salutation, children, dogs -- last limboo village, taptiatok -- beautiful scenery -- tibet village of lelyp -- _opuntia_ -- _edgeworthia_ -- crab-apple -- chameleon and porcupine -- praying machine -- _abies brunoniana_ -- european plants -- grand scenery -- arrive at wallanchoon -- scenery around -- trees -- tibet houses -- manis and mendongs -- tibet household -- food -- tea-soup -- hospitality -- yaks and zobo, uses and habits of -- bhoteeas -- yak-hair tents -- guobah of walloong -- jhatamansi -- obstacles to proceeding -- climate and weather -- proceed -- rhododendrons, etc. -- lichens -- _poa annua_ and shepherd's purse -- tibet camp -- tuquoroma -- scenery of pass -- glaciers and snow -- summit -- plants, woolly, etc. on the th november, we left mywa guola, and continued up the river to the village of wallanchoon or walloong, which was reached in six marches. the snowy peak of junnoo (alt. , feet.) forms a magnificent feature from this point, seen up the narrow gorge of the river, bearing n.n.e. about thirty miles. i crossed the mewa, an affluent from the north, by another excellent suspension bridge. in these bridges, the principal chains are clamped to rocks on either shore, and the suspended loops occur at intervals of eight to ten feet; the single sal-plank laid on these loops swings terrifically, and the handrails not being four feet high, the sense of insecurity is very great. the wallanchoon road follows the west bank, but the bridge above having been carried away, we crossed by a plank, and proceeded along very steep banks of decomposed chlorite schist, much contorted, and very soapy, affording an insecure footing, especially where great landslips had occurred, which were numerous, exposing acres of a reddish and white soil of felspathic clay, sloping at an angle of degrees. where the angle was less than degrees, rice was cultivated, and partially irrigated. the lateral streams (of a muddy opal green) had cut beds feet deep in the soft earth, and were very troublesome to cross, from the crumbling cliffs on either side, and their broad swampy channels. five or six miles above mywa, the valley contracts much, and the tambur (whose bed is elevated about feet) becomes a turbulent river, shooting along its course with immense velocity, torn into foam as it lashes the spurs of rock that flank it, and the enormous boulders with which its bed is strewn.* [in some places torrents of stone were carried down by landslips, obstructing the rivers; when in the beds of streams, they were often cemented by felspathic clay into a hard breccia of angular quartz, gneiss, and felspar nodules.] from this elevation to feet, its sinuous track extends about thirty miles, which gives the mean fall of feet to the mile, quadruple of what it is for the lower part of its course. so long as its bed is below feet, a tropical vegetation prevails in the gorge, and along the terraces, consisting of tall bamboo, _bauhinia, acacia, melastoma,_ etc.; but the steep mountain sides above are either bare and grassy, or cliffs with scattered shrubs and trees, and their summits are of splintered slaty gneiss, bristling with pines: those faces exposed to the south and east are invariably the driest and most grassy; while the opposite are well wooded. _rhododendron arboreum_ becomes plentiful at to feet, forming a large tree on dry clayey slopes; it is accompanied by _indigofera, andromeda,_ _spiraea,_ shrubby _compositae,_ and very many plants absent at similar elevations on the wet outer dorjiling ranges. in the contracted parts of the valley, the mountains often dip to the river-bed, in precipices of gneiss, under the ledges of which wild bees build pendulous nests, looking like huge bats suspended by their wings; they are two or three feet long, and as broad at the top, whence they taper downwards: the honey is much sought for, except in spring, when it is said to be poisoned by rhododendron flowers, just as that, eaten by the soldiers in the retreat of the ten thousand, was by the flowers of the _r. ponticum._ above these gorges are enormous accumulations of rocks, especially at the confluence of lateral valleys, where they rest upon little flats, like the river-terraces of mywa, but wholly formed of angular shingle, flanked with beds of river-formed gravel: some of these boulders were thirty or forty yards across, and split as if they had fallen from a height; the path passing between the fragments.* [the split fragments i was wholly unable to account for, till my attention was directed by mr. darwin to the observations of charpentier and agassiz, who refer similar ones met with in the alps, to rocks which have fallen through crevasses in glaciers.--see "darwin on glaciers and transported boulders in north wales." london, "phil. mag." xxi. p. .] at first i imagined that they had been precipitated from the mountains around; and i referred the shingle to land-shoots, which during the rains descend several thousand feet in devastating avalanches, damming up the rivers, and destroying houses, cattle, and cultivation; but though i still refer the materials of many such terraces to this cause, i consider those at the mouths of valleys to be due to ancient glacial action, especially when laden with such enormous blocks as are probably ice-transported. a change in the population accompanies that in the natural features of the country, tibetans replacing the limboos and khass-tribes of nepal, who inhabit the lower region. we daily passed parties of ten or a dozen tibetans, on their way to mywa guola, laden with salt; several families of these wild, black, and uncouth-looking people generally travelling together. the men are middle-sized, often tall, very square-built and muscular; they have no beard, moustache, or whiskers, the few hairs on their faces being carefully removed with tweezers. they are dressed in loose blanket robes, girt about the waist with a leather belt, in which they place their iron or brass pipes, and from which they suspend their long knives, chopsticks, tobacco-pouch, tweezers, tinder-box, etc. the robe, boots, and cap are grey, or striped with bright colours, and they wear skull-caps, and the hair plaited into a pig-tail. the women are dressed in long flannel petticoats and spencer, over which is thrown a sleeveless, short, striped cloak, drawn round the waist by a girdle of broad brass or silver links, to which hang their knives, scissors, needlecases, etc., and with which they often strap their children to their backs; the hair is plaited in two tails, and the neck loaded with strings of coral and glass beads, and great lumps of amber, glass, and agate. both sexes wear silver rings and ear-rings, set with turquoises, and square amulets upon their necks and arms, which are boxes of gold or silver, containing small idols, or the nail-parings, teeth, or other reliques of some sainted lama, accompanied with musk, written prayers, and other charms. all are good-humoured and amiable-looking people, very square and mongolian in countenance, with broad mouths, high cheek-bones, narrow, upturned eyes, broad, flat noses, and low foreheads. white is their natural colour, and rosy cheeks are common amongst the younger women and children, but all are begrimed with filth and smoke; added to which, they become so weather-worn from exposure to the most rigorous climate in the world, that their natural hues are rarely to be recognised. their customary mode of saluting one another is to hold out the tongue, grin, nod, and scratch their ear; but this method entails so much ridicule in the low countries, that they do not practise it to nepalese or strangers; most of them when meeting me, on the contrary, raised their hands to their eyes, threw themselves on the ground, and kotowed most decorously, bumping their foreheads three times on the ground; even the women did this on several occasions. on rising, they begged for a bucksheesh, which i gave in tobacco or snuff, of which they are immoderately fond. both men and women constantly spin wool as they travel. illustration--tibet mastiff. these motley groups of tibetans are singularly picturesque, from the variety in their parti-coloured dresses, and their odd appearance. first comes a middle-aged man or woman, driving a little silky black yak, grunting under his load of lb. of salt, besides pots, pans, and kettles, stools, churn, and bamboo vessels, keeping up a constant rattle, and perhaps, buried amongst all, a rosy-cheeked and lipped baby, sucking a lump of cheese-curd. the main body follow in due order, and you are soon entangled amidst sheep and goats, each with its two little bags of salt: beside these, stalks the huge, grave, bull-headed mastiff, loaded like the rest, his glorious bushy tail thrown over his back in a majestic sweep, and a thick collar of scarlet wool round his neck and shoulders, setting off his long silky coat to the best advantage; he is decidedly the noblest-looking of the party, especially if a fine and pure black one, for they are often very ragged, dun-coloured, sorry beasts. he seems rather out of place, neither guarding nor keeping the party together, but he knows that neither yaks, sheep, nor goats, require his attention; all are perfectly tame, so he takes his share of work as salt-carrier by day, and watches by night as well. the children bring up the rear, laughing and chatting together; they, too, have their loads, even to the youngest that can walk alone. the last village of the limboos, taptiatok, is large, and occupies a remarkable amphitheatre, apparently a lake-bed, in the course of the tambur. after proceeding some way through a narrow gorge, along which the river foamed and roared, the sudden opening out of this broad, oval expanse, more than a mile long, was very striking: the mountains rose bare and steep, the west flank terminating in shivered masses of rock, while that on the right was more undulating, dry, and grassy: the surface was a flat gravel-bed, through which meandered the rippling stream, fringed with alder. it was a beautiful spot, the clear, cool, murmuring river, with its rapids and shallows, forcibly reminding me of trout-streams in the highlands of scotland. beyond taptiatok we again crossed the river, and ascended over dry, grassy, or rocky spurs to lelyp, the first bhoteea village; it stands on a hill fully feet above the river, and commands a splendid view up the yalloong and kambachen valleys, which open immediately to the east, and appear as stupendous chasms in the mountains leading to the perpetual snows of kinchin-junga. there were about fifty houses in the village, of wood and thatch, neatly fenced in with wattle, the ground between being carefully cultivated with radishes, buckwheat, wheat, and millet. i was surprised to find in one enclosure a fine healthy plant of _opuntia,_ in flower, at this latitude and elevation. a lama, who is the head man of the place, came out to greet us, with his family and a whole troop of villagers; they were the same class of people as i have elsewhere described as cis-nivean tibetans, or bhoteeas; none had ever before seen an englishman, and i fear they formed no flattering opinion from the specimen now presented to them, as they seemed infinitely amused at my appearance, and one jolly dame clapped her hands to her sides, and laughed at my spectacles, till the hills echoed. _elaeagnus_ was common here, with _edgeworthia gardneri,_* [a plant allied to _daphne,_ from whose bark the nepal paper is manufactured. it was named after the eminent indian botanist, brother of the late miss edgeworth.] a beautiful shrub, with globes of waxy, cowslip-coloured, deliciously scented flowers; also a wild apple, which bears a small austere fruit, like the siberian crab. in the bed of the river rice was still cultivated by limboos, and subtropical plants continued. i saw, too, a chameleon and a porcupine, indicating much warmth, and seeming quite foreign to the heart of these stupendous mountains. from to feet, plants of the temperate regions blend with the tropical; such as rhododendron, oak, ivy, geranium, berberry, clematis, and shrubby _vaccinia,_ which all made their appearance at loongtoong, another bhoteea village. here, too, i first saw a praying machine, turned by water; it was enclosed in a little wooden house, and consisted of an upright cylinder containing a prayer, and with the words, "om mani padmi om," (hail to him of the lotus and jewel) painted on the circumference: it was placed over a stream, and made to rotate on its axis by a spindle which passed through the floor of the building into the water, and was terminated by a wheel. above this the road followed the west bank of the river; the latter was a furious torrent, flowing through a gorge, fringed with a sombre vegetation, damp, and dripping with moisture, and covered with long _usnea_ and pendulous mosses. the road was very rocky and difficult, sometimes leading along bluff faces of cliffs by wooden steps and single rotten planks. at feet i met with pines, whose trunks i had seen strewing the river for some miles lower down: the first that occurred was _abies brunoniana,_ a beautiful species, which forms a stately blunt pyramid, with branches spreading like the cedar, but not so stiff, and drooping gracefully on all sides. it is unknown on the outer ranges of sikkim, and in the interior occupies a belt about feet lower than the silver fir (_a. webbiana_). many sub-alpine plants occur here, as _lecesteria, thalictrum,_ rose, thistles, alder, birch, ferns, berberry, holly, anemone, strawberry, raspberry, _gnaphalium, the alpine bamboo, and oaks. the scenery is as grand as any pictured by salvator rosa; a river roaring in sheets of foam, sombre woods, crags of gneiss, and tier upon tier of lofty mountains flanked and crested with groves of black firs, terminating in snow-sprinkled rocky peaks. illustration--tambur river at the lower limit of pines. i now found the temperature getting rapidly cooler, both that of the air, which here at , feet fell to degrees in the night, and that of the river, which was always below degrees. it was in these narrow valleys only, that i observed the return cold current rushing down the river-courses during the nights, which were usually brilliant and very cold, with copious dew: so powerful, indeed, was the radiation, that the upper blanket of my bed became coated with moisture, from the rapid abstraction of heat by the frozen tarpaulin of my tent. the rivers here are often fringed by flats of shingle, on which grow magnificent yews and pines; some of the latter were from to feet high, and had been blown down, owing to their scanty hold on the soil. i measured one, _abies brunoniana,_ twenty feet in girth. many alpine rhododendrons occur at feet, with _astragalis_ and creeping tamarisk. three miles below wallanchoon the river forks, being met by the yangma from the north-east; they are impetuous torrents of about equal volume; the tambur especially (here called the walloong) is often broken into cascades, and cuts a deep gorge-like channel. i arrived at the village of wallanchoon on the rd of november. it is elevated , feet, and situated in a fine open part of the tambur valley, differing from any part lower down in all its natural features; being broad, with a rapid but not turbulent stream, very grassy, and both the base and sides of the flanking mountains covered with luxuriant dense bushes of rhododendron, rose, berberry and juniper. red-legged crows, hawks, wild pigeons, and finches, abounded. there was but little snow on the mountains around, which are bare and craggy above, but sloping below. bleak and forbidding as the situation of any himalayan village at , feet elevation must be, that of wallanchoon is rendered the more so from the comparatively few trees; for though the silver fir and juniper are both abundant higher up the valley, they have been felled here for building materials, fuel, and export to tibet. from the naked limbs and tall gaunt black trunks of those that remain, stringy masses of bleached lichen (_usnea_) many feet long, stream in the wind. both men and women seemed fond of decorating their hair with wreaths of this lichen, which they dye yellow with leaves of _symplocos._ illustration--wallanchoon village. the village is very large, and occupies a flat on the east bank of the river, covered with huge boulders: the ascent to it is extremely steep, probably over an ancient moraine, though i did not recognise it as such at the time. cresting this, the valley at once opens, and i was almost startled with the sudden change from a gloomy gorge to a broad flat and a populous village of large and good painted wooden houses, ornamented with hundreds of long poles and vertical flags, looking like the fleet of some foreign port; while a swarm of good-natured, intolerably dirty tibetans, were kotowing to me as i advanced. the houses crept up the base of the mountain, on the flank of which was a very large, long convent; two-storied, and painted scarlet, with a low black roof, and backed by a grove of dark junipers; while the hill-sides around were thickly studded with bushes of deep green rhododendron, scarlet berberry, and withered yellow rose. the village contained about one hundred houses, irregularly crowded together, from twenty to forty feet high, and forty to eighty feet long; each accommodating several families. all were built of upright strong pine-planks, the interstices of which were filled with yak-dung; and they sometimes rest on a low foundation wall: the door was generally at the gable end; it opened with a latch and string; and turned on a wooden pivot; the only window was a slit closed by a shutter; and the roofs were very low-pitched, covered with shingles kept down by stones. the paths were narrow and filthy; and the only public buildings besides the convents were manis and mendongs; of these the former are square-roofed temples, containing rows of praying- cylinders placed close together, from four to six feet high, and gaudily painted; some are turned by hand, and others by water: the latter are walls ornamented with slabs of clay and mica slate, with "om mani padmi om" well carved on them in two characters, and repeated _ad infinitum._ a tibetan household is very slovenly; the family live higgledy- piggledy in two or more apartments, the largest of which has an open fire on the earth, or on a stone if the floor be of wood. the pots and tea-pot are earthen and copper; and these, with the bamboo churn for the brick tea, some wooden and metal spoons, bowls, and platters, comprise all the kitchen utensils. every one carries in the breast of his robe a little wooden cup for daily use; neatly turned from the knotted roots of maple (see chapter v). the tibetan chiefly consumes barley, wheat, or buckwheat meal--the latter is confined to the poorer classes--with milk, butter, curd, and parched wheat; fowls, eggs, pork, and yak flesh when he can afford it, and radishes, a few potatos, legumes, and turnips in their short season. his drink is a sort of soup made from brick tea, of which a handful of leaves is churned up with salt, butter, and soda, then boiled and transferred to the tea-pot, whence it is poured scalding hot into each cup, which the good woman of the house keeps incessantly replenishing, and urging you to drain. sometimes, but more rarely, the tibetans make a drink by pouring boiling water over malt, as the lepchas do over millet. a pipe of yellow mild chinese tobacco generally follows the meal; more often, however, their tobacco is brought from the plains of india, when it is of a very inferior description. the pipe carried in the girdle, is of brass or iron, often with an agate, amber, or bamboo mouth-piece. many herds of fine yaks were grazing about wallanchoon: there were a few ponies, sheep, goats, fowls, and pigs, but very little cultivation except turnips, radishes, and potatos. the yak is a very tame, domestic animal, often handsome, and a true bison in appearance; it is invaluable to these mountaineers from its strength and hardiness, accomplishing, at a slow pace, twenty miles a day, bearing either two bags of salt or rice, or four to six planks of pinewood slung in pairs along either flank. their ears are generally pierced, and ornamented with a tuft of scarlet worsted; they have large and beautiful eyes, spreading horns, long silky black hair, and grand bushy tails: black is their prevailing colour, but red, dun, parti-coloured, and white are common. in winter, the flocks graze below feet, on account of the great quantity of snow above that height; in summer they find pasturage as high as , feet, consisting of grass and small tufted _carices,_ on which they browse with avidity. the zobo, or cross between the yak and hill cow (much resembling the english cow), is but rarely seen in these mountains, though common in the north west himalaya. the yak is used as a beast of burden; and much of the wealth of the people consists in its rich milk and curd, eaten either fresh or dried, or powdered into a kind of meal. the hair is spun into ropes, and woven into a covering for their tents, which is quite pervious to wind and rain;* [the latter is, however, of little consequence in the dry climate of tibet.] from the same material are made the gauze shades for the eyes used in crossing snowy passes. the bushy tail forms the well-known "chowry" or fly-flapper of the plains of india; the bones and dung serve for fuel. the female drops one calf in april; and the young yaks are very full of gambols, tearing up and down the steep grassy and rocky slopes: their flesh is delicious, much richer and more juicy than common veal; that of the old yak is sliced and dried in the sun, forming jerked meat, which is eaten raw, the scanty proportion of fat preventing its becoming very rancid, so that i found it palatable food: it is called _schat-tcheu_ (dried meat). i never observed the yak to be annoyed by any insects; indeed at the elevation it inhabits, there are no large diptera, bots, or gadflies to infest it. it loves steep places, delighting to scramble among rocks, and to sun its black hide perched on the glacial boulders which strew the wallanchoon flat, and on which these beasts always sleep. their average value is from two to three pounds, but the price varies with the season. in autumn, when her calf is killed for food, the mother will yield no milk, unless the herdsman gives it the calf's foot to lick, or lays a stuffed skin before it, to fondle, which it does with eagerness, expressing its satisfaction by short grunts, exactly like those of a pig, a sound which replaces the low uttered by ordinary cattle. the yak, though indifferent to ice and snow and to changes of temperature, cannot endure hunger so long as the sheep, nor pick its way so well upon stony ground. neither can it bear damp heat, for which reason it will not live in summer below feet, where liver disease carries it off after a very few years.* [nevertheless, the yak seems to have survived the voyage to england. i find in turner's "tibet" (p. ), that a bull sent by that traveller to mr. hastings, reached england alive, and after suffering from languor, so far recovered its health and vigour as to become the father of many calves. turner does not state by what mother these calves were born, an important omission, as he adds that all these died but one cow, which bore a calf by an indian bull. a painting of the yak (copied into turner's book) by stubbs, the animal painter, may be seen in the museum of the royal college of surgeons, london. the artist is probably a little indebted to description for the appearance of its hair in a native state, for it is represented much too even in length, and reaching to too uniform a depth from the flanks.] lastly, the yak is ridden, especially by the fat lamas, who find its shaggy coat warm, and its paces easy; under these circumstances it is always led. the wild yak or bison (d'hong) of central asia, the superb progenitor of this animal, is the largest native animal of tibet, in various parts of which country it is found; and the tibetans say, in reference to its size, that the liver is a load for a tame yak. the sikkim dewan gave dr. campbell and myself an animated account of the chase of this animal, which is hunted by large dogs, and shot with a blunderbuss: it is untameable and horridly fierce, falling upon you with horns and chest, and if he rasps you with his tongue, it is so rough as to scrape the flesh from the bones. the horn is used as a drinking-cup in marriage feasts, and on other grand occasions. my readers are probably familiar with messrs. huc and gabet's account of a herd of these animals being frozen fast in the head-waters of the yangtsekiang river. there is a noble specimen in the british museum not yet set up, and another is preparing for exhibition in the crystal palace at sydenham. the inhabitants of these frontier districts belong to two very different tribes, but all are alike called bhoteeas (from bhote, the proper name of tibet), and have for many centuries been located in what is--in climate and natural features--a neutral ground between dry tibet proper, and the wet himalayan gorges. they inhabit a climate too cold for either the lepcha or nepalese, migrating between and , feet with the seasons, always accompanied by their herds. in all respects of appearance, religion, manners, customs, and language, they are tibetans and lama booddhists, but they pay tax to the nepal and sikkim rajahs, to whom they render immense service by keeping up and facilitating the trade in salt, wool, musk, etc., which could hardly be conducted without their co-operation. they levy a small tax on all imports, and trade a little on their own account, but are generally poor and very indolent. in their alpine summer quarters they grow scanty crops of wheat, barley, turnips, and radishes; and at their winter quarters, as at loongtoong, the better classes cultivate fine crops of buck-wheat, millet, spinach, etc.; though seldom enough for their support, as in spring they are obliged to buy rice from the inhabitants of the lower regions. equally dependent on nepal and tibet, they very naturally hold themselves independent of both; and i found that my roving commission from the nepal rajah was not respected, and the guard of ghorkas held very cheap. on my arrival at wallanchoon, i was conducted to two tents, each about eight feet long, of yak's hair, striped blue and white, which had been pitched close to the village for my accommodation. though the best that could be provided, and larger than my own, they were wretched in the extreme, being of so loose a texture that the wind blew through them: each was formed of two cloths with a long slit between them, that ran across the top, giving egress to the smoke, and ingress to the weather: they were supported on two short poles, kept to the ground by large stones, and fastened by yak's hair ropes. a fire was smoking vigorously in the centre of one, and some planks were laid at the end for my bed. a crowd of people soon came to stare and loll out their tongues at me, my party, and travelling equipage; though very civil, and only offensive in smell, they were troublesome, from their eager curiosity to see and handle everything; so that i had to place a circle of stones round the tents, whilst a soldier stood by, on the alert to keep them off. a more idle people are not to be found, except with regard to spinning, which is their constant occupation, every man and woman carrying a bundle of wool in the breast of their garments, which is spun by hand with a spindle, and wound off on two cross-pieces at its lower end. spinning, smoking, and tea-drinking are their chief pursuits; and the women take all the active duties of the dairy and house. they live very happily together, fighting being almost unknown. soon after my arrival i was waited on by the guobah (or head-man), a tall, good-looking person, dressed in a purple woollen robe, with good pearl and coral ear and finger-rings, and a broad ivory ring over the left thumb,* [a broad ring of this material, agate, or chalcedony, is a mark of rank here, as amongst the man-choos, and throughout central asia.] as a guard when using the bow; he wore a neat thick white felt cap, with the border turned up, and a silk tassel on the top; this he removed with both hands and held before him, bowing three times on entering. he was followed by a crowd, some of whom were his own people, and brought a present of a kid, fowls, rice, and eggs, and some spikenard roots (_nardostachys jatamansi,_ a species of valerian smelling strongly of patchouli), which is a very favourite perfume. after paying some compliments, he showed me round the village. during my walk, i found that i had a good many objections to overrule before i could proceed to the wallanchoon pass, nearly two days' journey to the northward. in the first place, the guobah disputed the nepal rajah's authority to pass me through his dominions; and besides the natural jealousy of these people when intruded upon, they have very good reasons for concealing the amount of revenue they raise from their position, and for keeping up the delusion that they alone can endure the excessive climate of these regions, or undergo the hardships and toil of the salt trade. my passport said nothing about the passes; my people, and especially the ghorkas, detested the keen, cold, and cutting wind; at mywa guola, i had been persuaded by the havildar to put off providing snow-boots and blankets, on the assurance that i should easily get them at walloong, which i now found all but impossible, owing to there being no bazaar. my provisions were running short, and for the same reason i had no present hope of replenishing them. all my party had, i found, reckoned with certainty that i should have had enough of this elevation and weather by the time i reached walloong. some of them fell sick; the guobah swore that the passes were full of snow, and had been impracticable since october; and the ghorka havildar respectfully deposed that he had no orders relative to the pass. prompt measures were requisite, so i told all my people that i should stop the next day at walloong, and proceed on the following on a three days' journey to the pass, with or without the guobah's permission. to the ghorka soldiers i said that the present they would receive, and the character they would take to their commandant, depended on their carrying out this point, which had been fully explained before starting. my servants i told that their pay and reward also depended on their implicit obedience. i took the guobah aside and showed him troops of yaks (tethered by halters and toggles to a long rope stretched between two rocks), which had that morning arrived laden with salt from the north; i told him it was vain to try and deceive me; that my passport was ample, and that i should expect a guide, provisions, and snow-boots the next day; and that every impediment and every facility should be reported to the rajah. during my two days' stay at walloong, the weather was bitterly cold: as heretofore, the nights and mornings were cloudless, but by noon the whole sky became murky, the highest temperature ( degrees) occurring at a.m. at this season the prospect from this elevation ( , feet), was dreary in the extreme; and the quantity of snow on the mountains, which was continually increasing, held out a dismal promise for my chance of exploring lofty uninhabited regions. all annual and deciduous vegetation had long past, and the lofty himalayas are very poor in mosses and lichens, as compared with the european alps, and arctic regions in general. the temperature fluctuated from degrees at sunrise, to degrees at a.m.; the mean being degrees;* [this gives degrees fahr. for every feet of elevation, using contemporaneous observations at calcutta, and correcting for latitude, etc.] one night it fell to degrees. throughout the day, a south wind blew strong and cold up the valley, and at sunset was replaced by a keen north blast, searching every corner, and piercing through tent and blankets. though the sun's rays were hot for an hour or two in the morning, its genial influence was never felt in the wind. the air was never very dry, the wet-bulb thermometer standing during the day . degrees below the dry, thus giving a mean dew-point of . degrees. a thermometer sunk two feet stood at degrees, fully degrees above the mean temperature of the air; one exposed to the clear sky, stood, during the day, several degrees below the air in shade, and, at night, from degrees to . degrees lower. the black-bulb thermometer, in the sun, rose to . degrees above the air, indicating upwards of degrees difference at nearly the warmest part of the day, between contiguous shaded and sunny exposures. the sky, when cloudless, was generally a cold blue or steel-grey colour, but at night the stars were large, and twinkled gloriously. the black-glass photometer indicated . inches* [on three mornings the maxima occurred at between and a.m. they were, nov. th, . , nov. th, . . on the th, at tuquoroma, i recorded . . the maximum effect observed at dorjiling ( feet) was . , and on the plains of india . . the maximum i ever recorded was in yangma valley ( , feet), . at p.m.] as the maximum intensity of sunlight; the temperature of the river close by fell to degrees during the night, and rose to degrees in the day. in my tent, the temperature fluctuated with the state of the fire, from degrees at night to degrees when the sun beat on it; but the only choice was between cold and suffocating smoke. after a good many conferences with the guobah, some bullying, douce violence, persuasions, and the prescribing of pills, prayers, and charms in the shape of warm water, for the sick of the village, whereby i gained some favour, i was, on the th nov., grudgingly prepared for the trip to wallanchoon, with a guide, and some snow-boots for those of my party whom i took with me. the path lay north-west up the valley, which became thickly wooded with silver-fir and juniper; we gradually ascended, crossing many streams from lateral gulleys, and huge masses of boulders. evergreen rhododendrons soon replaced the firs, growing in inconceivable profusion, especially on the slopes facing the south: east, and with no other shrubs or tree-vegetation, but scattered bushes of rose, _spiraea,_ dwarf juniper, stunted birch, willow, honey-suckle, berberry, and a mountain-ash (_pyrus_). what surprised me more than the prevalence of rhododendron bushes, was the number of species of this genus, easily recognised by the shape of their capsules, the form and woolly covering of the leaves; none were in flower, but i reaped a rich harvest of seed. at , feet the valley was wild, open, and broad, with sloping mountains clothed for feet with dark-green rhododendron bushes; the river ran rapidly, and was broken into falls here and there. huge angular and detached masses of rock were scattered about, and to the right and left snowy peaks towered over the surrounding mountains, while amongst the latter narrow gulleys led up to blue patches of glacial ice, with trickling streams and shoots of stones. dwarf rhododendrons with strongly-scented leaves (_r. anthopogon_ and _setosum_), and abundance of a little _andromeda,_ exactly like ling, with woody stems and tufted branches, gave a heathery appearance to the hill-sides. the prevalence of lichens, common to this country and to scotland (especially l. geographicus_), which coloured the rocks, added an additional feature to the resemblance to scotch highland scenery. along the narrow path i found the two commonest of all british weeds, a grass (_poa annua_), and the shepherd's purse! they had evidently been imported by man and yaks, and as they do not occur in india, i could not but regard these little wanderers from the north with the deepest interest. such incidents as these give rise to trains of reflection in the mind of the naturalist traveller; and the farther he may be from home and friends, the more wild and desolate the country he is exploring, the greater the difficulties and dangers under which he encounters these subjects of his earliest studies in science; so much keener is the delight with which he recognises them, and the more lasting is the impression which they leave. at this moment these common weeds more vividly recall to me that wild scene than does all my journal, and remind me how i went on my way, taxing my memory for all it ever knew of the geographical distribution of the shepherd's purse, and musing on the probability of the plant having found its way thither over all central asia, and the ages that may have been occupied in its march. on reaching , feet, the ground was everywhere hard and frozen, and i experienced the first symptoms of lassitude, headache, and giddiness; which however, were but slight, and only came on with severe exertion. we encountered a group of tibetans, encamped to leeward of an immense boulder of gneiss, against which they had raised a shelter with their salt-bags, removed from their herd of yaks, which were grazing close by. they looked miserably cold and haggard, and their little upturned eyes, much inflamed and bloodshot, testified to the hardships they had endured in their march from the salt regions: they were crouched round a small fire of juniper wood, smoking iron pipes with agate mouthpieces. a resting-house was in sight across the stream--a loose stone hut, to which we repaired. i wondered why these tibetans had not taken possession of it, not being aware of the value they attach to a rock, on account of the great warmth which it imbibes from the sun's rays during the day, and retains at night. this invaluable property of otherwise inhospitable gneiss and granite i had afterwards many opportunities of proving; and when driven for a night's shelter to such as rude nature might afford on the bleak mountain, i have had my blankets laid beneath "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." the name of dhamersala is applied, in the mountains as in the plains of india, to a house provided for the accommodation of travellers, whether it be one of the beautiful caravanserais built to gratify the piety, ostentation, or benevolence of a rajah, or such a miserable shieling of rough stone and plank as that of tuquoroma, in which we took up our quarters, at , feet elevation. a cheerful fire soon blazed on the earthen floor, filling the room with the pungent odour of juniper, which made our eyes smart and water. the ghorkas withdrew to one corner, and my lepchas to a second, while one end was screened off for my couch; unluckily, the wall faced the north-east, and in that direction there was a gulley in the snowy mountains, down which the wind swept with violence, penetrating to my bed. i had calculated upon a good night's rest here, which i much needed, having been worried and unwell at wallanchoon, owing to the guobah's obstinacy. i had not then learnt how to treat such conduct, and just before retiring to rest had further been informed by the havildar that the guobah declared we should find no food on our return. to remain in these mountains without a supply was impossible, and the delay, of sending to mywa guola would not have answered; so i long lay awake, occupied in arranging measures. the night was clear and very cold; the thermometer falling to degrees at p.m., and to degrees in the night, and that by my bedside to degrees. on the following morning (nov. th) i started with a small party to visit the pass, continuing up the broad, grassy valley; much snow lay on the ground at , feet, which had fallen the previous month; and several glaciers were seen in lateral ravines at about the same elevation. after a couple of miles, we left the broad valley, which continued north-west, and struck northward up a narrow, stony, and steep gorge, crossing an immense ancient moraine at its mouth. this path, which we followed for seven or eight miles, led up to the pass, winding considerably, and keeping along the south-east exposures, which, being the most sunny, are the freest from snow. the morning was splendid, the atmosphere over the dry rocks and earth, at , feet, vibrating from the power of the sun's rays, whilst vast masses of blue glacier and fields of snow choked every galley, and were spread over all shady places. although, owing to the steepness and narrowness of the gorge, no view was obtained, the scenery was wild and very grand. just below where perpetual snow descends to the path, an ugly carved head of a demon, with blood-stained cheeks and goggle-eyes, was placed in a niche of rock, and protected by a glass. at , feet, the snow closed in on the path from all sides, whether perpetual, glacial, or only the october fall, i could not tell; the guide declared it to be perpetual henceforward, though now deepened by the very heavy october fall; the path was cut some three feet through it. enormous boulders of gneiss cumbered the bottom of the gorge, which gradually widened as we approached its summit; and rugged masses of black and red gneiss and mica schist pierced the snow, and stood out in dismal relief. for four miles continuously we proceeded over snow; which was much honey-combed on the surface, and treacherous from the icy streams it covered, into which we every now and then stumbled; there was scarcely a trace of vegetation, and the cold was excessive, except in the sun. towards the summit of the pass the snow lay very deep, and we followed the course of a small stream which cut through it, the walls of snow being breast-high on each side; the path was still frequented by yaks, of which we overtook a small party going to tibet, laden with planks. all the party appeared alike overcome by lassitude, shortness and difficulty of breathing, a sense of weight on the stomach, giddiness and headache, with tightness across the temples. just below the summit was a complete bay of snow, girdled with two sharp peaks of red baked schists and gneiss, strangely contorted, and thrown up at all angles with no prevalent dip or strike, and permeated with veins of granite. the top itself, or boundary between nepal and tibet, is a low saddle between two rugged ridges of rock, with a cairn built on it, adorned with bits of stick and rag covered with tibetan inscriptions. the view into tibet was not at all distant, and was entirely of snowy mountains, piled ridge over ridge; three of these spurs must, it is said, be crossed before any descent can be made to the chomachoo river (as the arun is called in tibet), on which is the frontier fort of the tibetans, and which is reached in two or three days. there is no plain or level ground of any kind before reaching that river, of which the valley is said to be wide and flat. starting at a.m., we did not reach the top till . p.m.; we had halted nowhere, but the last few miles had been most laborious, and the three of us who gained the summit were utterly knocked up. fortunately i carried my own barometer; it indicated . inches, giving by comparative observations with calcutta , feet, and with dorjiling, , feet, as the height of the pass. the thermometer stood at degrees, and the sun being now hidden behind rocks, the south-east wind was bitterly cold. hitherto the sun had appeared as a clearly defined sparkling globe, against a dark- blue sky; but the depth of the azure blue was not so striking as i had been led to suppose, by the accounts of previous travellers, in very lofty regions. the plants gathered near the top of the pass were species of _compositae,_ grass, and _arenaria_; the most curious was _saussurea gossypina,_ which forms great clubs of the softest white wool, six inches to a foot high, its flowers and leaves seeming uniformly clothed with the warmest fur that nature can devise. generally speaking, the alpine plants of the himalaya are quite unprovided with any special protection of this kind; it is the prevalence and conspicuous nature of the exceptions that mislead, and induce the careless observer to generalise hastily from solitary instances; for the prevailing alpine genera of the himalaya, _arenarias,_ primroses, saxifrages, fumitories, _ranunculi,_ gentians, grasses, sedges, etc., have almost uniformly naked foliage. we descended to the foot of the pass in about two hours, darkness overtaking us by the way; the twilight, however, being prolonged by the glare of the snow. fearing the distance to tuquoroma might be too great to permit of our returning thither the same night; i had had a few things brought hither during the day, and finding they had arrived, we encamped under the shelter of some enormous boulders (at , feet), part of an ancient moraine, which extended some distance along the bed of the narrow valley. except an excruciating headache, i felt no ill effects from my ascent; and after a supper of tea and biscuit, i slept soundly. on the following morning the temperature was degrees at . a.m., and rose to degrees when the sun appeared over the mountains at . , at which time the black bulb thermometer suddenly mounted to degrees, upwards of degrees above the temperature of the air. the sky was brilliantly clear, with a very dry, cold, north wind blowing down the snowy valley of the pass. chapter x. return from wallanchoon pass -- procure a bazaar at village -- dance of lamas -- blacking face, tibetan custom of -- temple and convent -- leave for kanglachem pass -- send part of party back to dorjiling -- yangma guola -- drunken tibetans -- guobah of wallanchoon -- camp at foot of great moraine -- view from top -- geological speculations -- height of moraines -- cross dry lake-bed -- glaciers -- more moraines -- terraces -- yangma temples -- jos, books and furniture -- peak of nango -- lake -- arrive at village -- cultivation -- scenery -- potatos -- state of my provisions -- pass through village -- gigantic boulders terraces -- wild sheep -- lake-beds -- sun's power -- piles of gravel and detritus -- glaciers and moraines -- pabuk, elevation of -- moonlight scene -- return to yangma -- temperature, etc. -- geological causes of phenomena in valley -- scenery of valley on descent. i returned to the village of wallanchoon, after collecting all the plants i could around my camp; amongst them a common-looking dock abounded in the spots which the yaks had frequented. the ground was covered, as with heather, with abundance of creeping dwarf juniper, _andromeda,_ and dwarf rhododendron. on arriving at the village, i refused to receive the guobah, unless he opened a bazaar at daylight on the following morning, where my people might purchase food; and threatened to bring charges against him before his rajah. at the same time i arranged for sending the main body of my party down the tambur, and so back to sikkim, whilst i should, with as few as possible, visit the kanglachem (tibetan) pass in the adjacent valley to the eastward, and then, crossing the nango, kambachen and kanglanamo passes, reach jongri in sikkim, on the south flank of kinchinjunga. strolling out in the afternoon i saw a dance of lamas; they were disfigured with black paint* [i shall elsewhere have to refer to the tibetan custom of daubing the face with black pigment to protect the skin from the excessive cold and dryness of these lofty regions; and to the ludicrous imposition that was passed on the credulity of mm. huc and gabet.] and covered with rags, feathers, and scarlet cloth, and they carried long poles with bells and banners attached; thus equipped, they marched through the village, every now and then halting, when they danced and gesticulated to the rude music of cymbals and horns, the bystanders applauding with shouts, crackers, and alms. i walked up to the convents, which were long ugly buildings, several stories high, built of wood, and daubed with red and grey paint. the priests were nowhere to be found, and an old withered nun, whom i disturbed husking millet in a large wooden mortar, fled at my approach. the temple stood close by the convent, and had a broad low architrave: the walls sloped inwards, as did the lintels: the doors were black, and almost covered with a gigantic and disproportioned painting of a head, with bloody cheeks and huge teeth; it was surrounded by myriads of goggle eyes, which seemed to follow one about everywhere; and though in every respect rude, the effect was somewhat imposing. the similarly proportioned gloomy portals of egyptian fanes naturally invite comparison; but the tibetan temples lack the sublimity of these; and the uncomfortable creeping sensation produced by the many sleepless eyes of boodh's numerous incarnations is very different from the awe with which we contemplate the outspread wings of the egyptian symbol, and feel as in the presence of the god who says, "i am osiris the great: no man hath dared to lift my veil." i had ascended behind the village, but returned down the "via sacra," a steep paved path flanked by mendongs or low stone dykes, into which were let rows of stone slabs, inscribed with the sacred "om mani padmi om."--"hail to him of the lotus and jewel"; an invocation of sakkya, who is usually represented holding a lotus flower with a jewel in it. on the following morning, a scanty supply of vcry dirty rice was produced, at a very high price. i had, however, so divided my party as not to require a great amount of food, intending to send most of the people back by the tambur to dorjiling. i kept nineteen persons in all, selecting the most willing, as it was evident the journey at this season would be one of great hardship: we took seven days' food, which was as much as they could carry. at noon, i left wallanchoon, and mustered my party at the junction of the tambur and yangma, whence i dismissed the party for dorjiling, with my collections of plants, minerals, etc., and proceeded with the chosen ones to ascend the yangma river. the scenery was wild and very grand, our path lying through a narrow gorge, choked with pine trees, down which the river roared in a furious torrent; while the mountains on each side were crested with castellated masses of rock, and sprinkled with snow. the road was very bad, often up ladders, and along planks lashed to the faces of precipices, and over-hanging the torrent, which it crossed several times by plank bridges. by dark we arrived at yangma guola, a collection of empty wood huts buried in the rocky forest-clad valley, and took possession of a couple. they were well built, raised on posts, with a stage and ladder at the gable end, and consisted of one good-sized apartment. around was abundance of dock, together with three common english plants.* [_cardamine hirsuta, limosella aquatica,_ and _juncus bufonius._] the night was calm, misty, and warm (max. . degrees, min. degrees) for the elevation ( , feet). during the night, i was startled out of my sleep by a blaze of light, and jumping up, found myself in presence of a party of most sinister-looking, black, ragged tibetans, armed with huge torches of pine, that filled the room with flame and pitchy smoke. i remembered their arriving just before dark, and their weapons dispelled my fears, for they came armed with bamboo jugs of murwa beer, and were very drunk and very amiable: they grinned, nodded, kotowed, lolled out their tongues, and scratched their ears in the most seductive manner, then held out their jugs, and besought me by words and gestures to drink and be happy too. i awoke my servant (always a work of difficulty), and with some trouble ejected the visitors, happily without setting the house on fire. i heard them toppling head over heels down the stair, which i afterwards had drawn up to prevent further intrusion, and in spite of their drunken orgies, was soon lulled to sleep again by the music of the roaring river. on the th november, i continued my course north up the yangma valley, which after five miles opened considerably, the trees disappearing, and the river flowing more tranquilly, and through a broader valley, when above , feet elevation. the guobah of wallanchoon overtook us on the road; on his way, he said, to collect the revenues at yangma village, but in reality to see what i was about. he owns five considerable villages, and is said to pay a tax of rupees ( pounds) to the rajah of nepal: this is no doubt a great exaggeration, but the revenues of such a position, near a pass frequented almost throughout the year, must be considerable. every yak going and coming is said to pay s., and every horse s.; cattle, sheep, ponies, land, and wool are all taxed; he exports also quantities of timber to tibet, and various articles from the plains of india. he joined my party and halted where i did, had his little chinese rug spread, and squatted cross-legged on it, whilst his servant prepared his brick tea with salt, butter, and soda, of which he partook, snuffed, smoked, rose up, had all his traps repacked, and was off again. we encamped at a most remarkable place: the valley was broad, with little vegetation but stunted tree-junipers: rocky snow-topped mountains rose on either side, bleak, bare, and rugged; and in front, close above my tent, was a gigantic wall of rocks, piled--as if by the titans--completely across the valley, for about three-quarters of a mile. this striking phenomenon had excited all my curiosity on first obtaining a view of it. the path, i found, led over it, close under its west end, and wound amongst the enormous detached fragments of which it was formed, and which were often eighty feet square: all were of gneiss and schist, with abundance of granite in blocks and veins. a superb view opened from the top, revealing its nature to be a vast moraine, far below the influence of any existing glaciers, but which at some antecedent period had been thrown across by a glacier descending to , feet, from a lateral valley on the east flank. standing on the top, and looking south, was the yangma valley (up which i had come), gradually contracting to a defile, girdled by snow-tipped mountains, whose rocky flanks mingled with the black pine forest below. eastward the moraine stretched south of the lateral valley, above which towered the snowy peak of nango, tinged rosy red, and sparkling in the rays of the setting sun: blue glaciers peeped from every gulley on its side, but these were to feet above this moraine; they were small too, and their moraines were mere gravel, compared with this. many smaller consecutive moraines, also, were evident along the bottom of that lateral valley, from this great one up to the existing glaciers. looking up the yangma was a flat grassy plain, hemmed in by mountains, and covered with other stupendous moraines, which rose ridge behind ridge, and cut off the view of all but the mountain tops to the north. the river meandered through the grassy plain (which appeared a mile and a half broad at the utmost, and perhaps as long), and cut through the great moraine on its eastern side, just below the junction of the stream from the glacial valley, which, at the lower part of its course, flowed over a broad steep shingle bed. illustration--ancient moraine thrown across the yangma valley, east nepal (elevn. , ft.) i descended to my camp, full of anxious anticipations for the morrow; while the novelty of the scene, and its striking character, the complexity of the phenomena, the lake-bed, the stupendous ice-deposited moraine, and its remoteness from any existing ice, the broad valley and open character of the country, were all marked out as so many problems suddenly conjured up for my unaided solution, and kept me awake for many hours. i had never seen a glacier or moraine on land before, but being familiar with sea ice and berg transport, from voyaging in the south polar regions, i was strongly inclined to attribute the formation of this moraine to a period when a glacial ocean stood high on the himalaya, made fiords of the valleys, and floated bergs laden with blocks from the lateral gulleys, which the winds and currents would deposit along certain lines. on the following morning i carried a barometer to the top of the moraine, which proved to be upwards of feet above the floor of the valley, and above the dry lake-bed which it bounded, and to which we descended on our route up the valley. the latter was grassy and pebbly, perfectly level, and quite barren, except a very few pines at the bases of the encircling mountains, and abundance of rhododendrons, _andromeda_ and juniper on the moraines. isolated moraines occurred along both flanks of the valley, some higher than that i have described, and a very long one was thrown nearly across from the upper end of another lateral gulley on the east side, also leading up to the glaciers of nango. this second moraine commenced a mile and a half above the first, and abutting on the east flank of the valley, stretched nearly across, and then curving round, ran down it, parallel to and near the west flank, from which it was separated by the yangma river: it was abruptly terminated by a conical hill of boulders, round whose base the river flowed, entering the dry lake-bed from the west, and crossing it in a south-easterly direction to the western extremity of the great moraine. the road, on its ascent to the second moraine, passed over an immense accumulation of glacial detritus at the mouth of the second lateral valley, entirely formed of angular fragments of gneiss and granite, loosely bound together by felspathic sand. the whole was disposed in concentric ridges radiating from the mouth of the valley, and descending to the flat; these were moraines _in petto,_ formed by the action of winter snow and ice upon the loose debris. a stream flowed over this debris, dividing into branches before reaching the lake-bed, where its waters were collected, and whence it meandered southward to fall into the yangma. from the top of the second moraine, a very curious scene opened up the valley, of another but more stony and desolate level lake-bed, through which the yangma (here very rapid) rushed, cutting a channel about sixty feet deep; the flanks of this second lake-bed were cut most distinctly into two principal terraces, which were again subdivided into others, so that the general appearance was that of many raised beaches, but each so broken up, that, with the exception of one on the banks of the river, none were continuous for any distance. we descended feet, and crossed the valley and river obliquely in a north-west direction, to a small temple and convent which stood on a broad flat terrace under the black, precipitous, west flank: this gave me a good opportunity of examining the structure of this part of the valley, which was filled with an accumulation, probably feet thick at the deepest part, of angular gravel and enormous boulders, both imbedded in the gravel, and strewed on the flat surfaces of the terraces. the latter were always broadest opposite to the lateral valleys, perfectly horizontal for the short distance that they were continuous; and very barren; there were no traces of fossils, nor could i assure myself of stratification. the accumulation was wholly glacial; and probably a lake had supervened on the melting of the great glacier and its recedence, which lake, confined by a frozen moraine, would periodically lose its waters by sudden accessions of heat melting the ice of the latter. stratified silt, no doubt, once covered the lake bottom, and the terraces have, in succession, been denuded of it by rain and snow. these causes are now in operation amongst the stupendous glaciers of north-east sikkim, where valleys, dammed up by moraines, exhibit lakes hemmed in between these, the base of the glacier, and the flanks of the valleys. illustration--ancient moraines in the yangma valley. yangma convents stood at the mouth of a gorge which opened upon the uppermost terrace; and the surface of the latter, here well covered with grass, was furrowed into concentric radiating ridges, which were very conspicuous from a distance. the buildings consisted of a wretched collection of stone huts, painted red, enclosed by loose stone dykes. two shockingly dirty lamas received me and conducted me to the temple, which had very thick walls, but was undistinguishable from the other buildings. a small door opened upon an apartment piled full of old battered gongs, drums, scraps of silk hangings, red cloth, broken praying-machines--relics much resembling those in the lumber-room of a theatre. a ladder led from this dismal hole to the upper story, which was entered by a handsomely carved and gilded door: within, all was dark, except from a little lattice-window covered with oil-paper. on one side was the library, a carved case, with a hundred gilded pigeon-holes, each holding a real or sham book, and each closed by a little square door, on which hung a bag full of amulets. in the centre of the book-case was a recess, containing a genuine jos or fo, graced with his chinese attribute of very long pendulous moustaches and beard, and totally wanting that air of contemplative repose which the tibetan lamas give to their idols. banners were suspended around, with paintings of lhassa, teshoo loombo, and various incarnations of boodh. the books were of the usual tibetan form, oblong squares of separate block-printed leaves of paper, made in nepal or bhotan from the bark of a _daphne,_ bound together by silk cords, and placed between ornamented wooden boards. on our way up the valley, we had passed some mendongs and chaits, the latter very pretty stone structures, consisting of a cube, pyramid, hemisphere, and cone placed on the top of one another, forming together the tasteful combination which appears on the cover of these volumes. beyond the convents the valley again contracted, and on crossing a third, but much lower, moraine, a lake opened to view, surrounded by flat terraces, and a broad gravelly shore, part of the lake being dry. to the west, the cliffs were high, black and steep: to the east a large lateral valley, filled at about feet up with blue glaciers, led (as did the other lateral valleys) to the gleaming snows of nango; the moraine, too, here abutted on the east flank of the yangma valley, below the mouth of the lateral one. much snow (from the october fall) lay on the ground, and the cold was pinching in the shade; still i could not help attempting to sketch this wonderfully grand scene, especially as lakes in the himalaya are extremely rare: the present one was about a mile long, very shallow, but broad, and as smooth as glass: it reminded me of the tarn in glencoe. the reflected lofty peak of nango appeared as if frozen deep down in its glassy bed, every snowy crest and ridge being rendered with perfect precision. illustration--looking across yangma valley. nango is about , feet high; it is the next lofty mountain of the kinchinjunga group to the west of junnoo, and i doubt if any equally high peak occurs again for some distance further west in nepal. facing the yangma valley, it presents a beautiful range of precipices of black rock, capped with a thick crust of snow: below the cliffs the snow again appears continuously and very steep, for to feet downwards, where it terminates in glaciers that descend to , feet. the steepest snow-beds appear cut into vertical ridges, whence the whole snowy face is--as it were--crimped in perpendicular, closely-set, zigzag lines, doubtless caused by the melting process, which furrows the surface of the snow into channels by which the water is carried off: the effect is very beautiful, but impossible to represent on paper, from the extreme delicacy of the shadows, and at the same time the perfect definition and precision of the outlines. towards the head of the lake, its bed was quite dry and gravelly, and the river formed a broad delta over it: the terraces here were perhaps feet above its level, those at the lower end not nearly so much. beyond the lake, the river became again a violent torrent, rushing in a deep chasm, till we arrived at the fork of the valley, where we once more met with numerous dry lake-beds, with terraces high up on the mountain sides. in the afternoon we reached the village of yangma, a miserable collection of to stone huts, nestling under the steep south-east flank of a lofty, flat-topped terrace, laden with gigantic glacial boulders, and projecting southward from a snowy mountain which divides the valley. we encamped on the flat under the village, amongst some stone dykes, enclosing cultivated fields. one arm of the valley runs hence n.n.e. amongst snowy mountains, and appeared quite full of moraines; the other, or continuation of the yangma, runs w.n.w., and leads to the kanglachem pass. near our camp (of which the elevation was , feet), radishes, barley, wheat, potatos, and turnips, were cultivated as summer crops, and we even saw some on the top of the terrace, feet above our camp, or nearly , feet above the sea; these were grown in small fields cleared of stones, and protected by dykes. the scenery, though dismal, (no juniper even attaining this elevation,) was full of interest and grandeur, from the number and variety of snowy peaks and glaciers all around the elevated horizon; the ancient lake-beds, now green or brown with scanty vegetation, the vast moraines, the ridges of glacial debris, the flat terraces, marking, as it were with parallel roads, the bluff sides of the mountains, the enormous boulders perched upon them, and strewed everywhere around, the little boodhist monuments of quaint, picturesque shapes, decorated with poles and banners, the many-coloured dresses of the people, the brilliant blue of the cloudless heaven by day, the depth of its blackness by night, heightened by the light of the stars, that blaze and twinkle with a lustre unknown in less lofty regions: all these were subjects for contemplation, rendered more impressive by the stillness of the atmosphere, and the silence that reigned around. the village seemed buried in repose throughout the day: the inhabitants had already hybernated, their crops were stored, the curd made and dried, the passes closed, the soil frozen, the winter's stock of fuel housed, and the people had retired into the caverns of their half subterranean houses, to sleep, spin wool, and think of boodh, if of anything at all, the dead, long winter through. the yaks alone can find anything to do: so long as any vegetation remains they roam and eat it, still yielding milk, which the women take morning and evening, when their shrill whistle and cries are heard for a few minutes, as they call the grunting animals. no other sounds, save the harsh roar and hollow echo of the falling rock, glacier, or snow-bed, disturbed the perfect silence of the day or night.* [snow covers the ground at yangma from december till april, and the falls are said to be very heavy, at times amounting to feet in depth.] i had taken three days' food to yangma, and stayed there as long as it lasted: the rest of my provisions i had left below the first moraine, where a lateral valley leads east over the nango pass to the kambachen valley, which lay on the route back to sikkim. i was premature in complaining of my wallanchoon tents, those provided for me at yangma being infinitely worse, mere rags, around which i piled sods as a defence from the insidious piercing night-wind that descended from the northern glaciers in calm, but most keen, breezes. there was no food to be procured in the village, except a little watery milk, and a few small watery potatos. the latter have only very recently been introduced amongst the tibetans, from the english garden at the nepalese capital, i believe, and their culture has not spread in these regions further east than kinchinjunga, but they will very soon penetrate into tibet from dorjiling, or eastward from nepal. my private stock of provisions --consisting chiefly of preserved meats from my kind friend mr. hodgson--had fallen very low; and i here found to my dismay that of four remaining two-pound cases, provided as meat, three contained prunes, and one _"dindon aux truffes!"_ never did luxuries come more inopportunely; however the greasy french viand served for many a future meal as sauce to help me to bolt my rice, and according to the theory of chemists, to supply animal heat in these frigid regions. as for my people, they were not accustomed to much animal food; two pounds of rice, with ghee and chilis, forming their common diet under cold and fatigue. the poorer tibetans, especially, who undergo great privation and toil, live almost wholly on barley-meal, with tea, and a very little butter and salt: this is not only the case with those amongst whom i mixed so much, but is also mentioned by mm. huc and gabet, as having been observed by them in other parts of tibet. on the st of december i visited the village and terrace, and proceeded to the head of the yangma valley, in order to ascend the kanglachem pass as far as practicable. the houses are low, built of stone, of no particular shape, and are clustered in groups against the steep face of the terrace; filthy lanes wind amongst them, so narrow, that if you are not too tall, you look into the slits of windows on either hand, by turning your head, and feel the noisome warm air in whiffs against your face. glacial boulders lie scattered throughout the village, around and beneath the clusters of houses, from which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the native rock. i entered one house by a narrow low door through walls four feet thick, and found myself in an apartment full of wool, juniper-wood, and dried dung for fuel: no one lived in the lower story, which was quite dark, and as i stood in it my head was in the upper, to which i ascended by a notched pole (like that in the picture of a kamschatk house in cook's voyage), and went into a small low room. the inmates looked half asleep, they were intolerably indolent and filthy, and were employed in spinning wool and smoking. a hole in the wall of the upper apartment led me on to the stone roof of the neighbouring house, from which i passed to the top of a glacial boulder, descending thence by rude steps to the narrow alley. wishing to see as much as i could, i was led on a winding course through, in and out, and over the tops of the houses of the village, which alternately reminded me of a stone quarry or gravel pit, and gipsies living in old lime-kilns; and of all sorts of odd places that are turned to account as human habitations. from the village i ascended to the top of the terrace, which is a perfectly level, sandy, triangular plain, pointing down the valley at the fork of the latter, and abutting against the flank of a steep, rocky, snow-topped mountain to the northward. its length is probably half a mile from north to south, but it runs for two miles westward up the valley, gradually contracting. the surface, though level, is very uneven, being worn into hollows, and presenting ridges and hillocks of blown sand and gravel, with small black tufts of rhododendron. enormous boulders of gneiss and granite were scattered over the surface; one of the ordinary size, which i measured, was seventy feet in girth, and fifteen feet above the ground, into which it had partly sunk. from the southern pointed end i took sketches of the opposite flanks of the valleys east and west. the river was about feet below me, and flowed in a little flat lake-bed; other terraces skirted it, cut out, as it were, from the side of that i was on. on the opposite flank of the valley were several superimposed terraces, of which the highest appeared to tally with the level i occupied, and the lowest was raised very little above the river; none were continuous for any distance, but the upper one in particular, could be most conspicuously traced up and down the main valley, whilst, on looking across to the eastern valley, a much higher, but less distinctly marked one appeared on it. the road to the pass lay west-north-west up the north bank of the yangma river, on the great terrace; for two miles it was nearly level along the gradually narrowing shelf, at times dipping into the steep gulleys formed by lateral torrents from the mountains; and as the terrace disappeared, or melted, as it were, into the rising floor of the valley, the path descended upon the lower and smaller shelf. illustration--diagram of the glacial terraces at the fork of the yanga valley. we came suddenly upon a flock of gigantic wild sheep, feeding on scanty tufts of dried sedge and grass; there were twenty-five of these enormous animals, of whose dimensions the term sheep gives no idea: they are very long-legged, stand as high as a calf, and have immense horns, so large that the fox is said to take up his abode in their hollows, when detached and bleaching, on the barren mountains of tibet. though very wild, i am sure i could easily have killed a couple had i had my gun, but i had found it necessary to reduce my party so uncompromisingly, that i could not afford a man both for my gun and instruments, and had sent the former back to dorjiling, with mr. hodgson's bird-stuffers, who had broken one of theirs. travelling without fire-arms sounds strange in india, but in these regions animal life is very rare, game is only procured with much hunting and trouble, and to come within shot of a flock of wild sheep was a contingency i never contemplated. considering how very short we were of any food, and quite out of animal diet, i could not but bitterly regret the want of a gun, but consoled myself by reflecting that the instruments were still more urgently required to enable me to survey this extremely interesting valley. as it was, the great beasts trotted off, and turned to tantalise me by grazing within an easy stalking distance. we saw several other flocks, of thirty to forty, during the day, but never, either on this or any future occasion, within shot. the _ovis ammon_ of pallas stands from four to five feet high, and measures seven feet from nose to tail; it is quite a tibetan animal, and is seldom seen below , feet, except when driven lower by snow; and i have seen it as high as , feet. the same animal, i believe, is found in siberia, and is allied to the big-horn of north america. soon after descending to the bed of the valley, which is broad and open, we came on a second dry lake-bed, a mile long, with shelving banks all round, heavily snowed on the shaded side; the river was divided into many arms, and meandered over it, and a fine glacier-bound valley opened into it from the south. there were no boulders on its surface, which was pebbly, with tufts of grass and creeping tamarisk. on the banks i observed much granite, with large mica crystals, hornstone, tourmaline, and stratified quartz, with granite veins parallel to the foliation or lamination. a rather steep ascent of a mile, through a contracted part of the valley, led to another and smaller lake-bed, a quarter of a mile long and yards broad, covered with patches of snow, and having no lateral valley opening into it: it faced the now stupendous masses of snow and ice which filled the upper part of the yangma valley. this lake-bed (elevation, , feet) was strewed with enormous boulders; a rude stone hut stood near it, where we halted for a few minutes at p.m., when the temperature was . degrees, while the dew-point was only . degrees.* [this indicates a very dry state of the air, the saturation-point being . degrees; whereas, at the same hour at calcutta it was . degrees.] at the same time, the black bulb thermometer, fully exposed on the snow, rose degrees above the air, and the photometer gave . . though the sun's power was so great, there was, however, no appearance of the snow melting, evaporation proceeding with too great rapidity. illustration--kanglachem pass. enormous piles of gravel and sand had descended upon the upper end of this lake-bed, forming shelves, terraces, and curving ridges, apparently consolidated by ice, and covered in many places with snow. following the stream, we soon came to an immense moraine, which blocked up the valley, formed of angular boulders, some of which were fifty feet high. respiration had been difficult for some time, and the guide we had taken from the village said we were some hours from the top of the pass, and could get but a little way further; we however proceeded, plunging through the snow, till on cresting the moraine a stupendous scene presented itself. a gulf of moraines, and enormous ridges of debris, lay at our feet, girdled by an amphitheatre of towering, snow-clad peaks, rising to , and , feet all around. black scarped precipices rose on every side; deep snow-beds and blue glaciers rolled down every gulley, converging in the hollow below, and from each transporting its own materials, there ensued a complication of moraines, that presented no order to the eye. in spite of their mutual interference, however, each had raised a ridge of debris or moraine parallel to itself. we descended with great difficulty through the soft snow that covered the moraine, to the bed of this gulf of snow and glaciers; and halted by an enormous stone, above the bed of a little lake, which was snowed all over, but surrounded by two superimposed level terraces, with sharply defined edges. the moraine formed a barrier to its now frozen waters, and it appeared to receive the drainage of many glaciers, which filtered through their gravelly ridges and moraines. we could make no further progress; the pass lay at the distance of several hours' march, up a valley to the north, down which the glacier must have rolled that had deposited this great moraine; the pass had been closed since october, it being very lofty, and the head of this valley was far more snowy than that at wallanchoon. we halted in the snow from to p.m., during which time i again took angles and observations; the height of this spot, called pabuk, is , feet, whence the pass is probably considerably over , feet, for there was a steep ascent beyond our position. the sun sank at p.m., and the thermometer immediately fell from degrees to . degrees.* [at o'clock, to . degrees, the average dew-point was . degrees, and dryness . ; weight of vapour in a cubic foot, . grains.] after fixing in my note and sketch books the principal features of this sublime scene, we returned down the valley: the distance to our camp being fully eight miles, night overtook us before we got half-way, but a two days' old moon guided us perfectly, a remarkable instance of the clearness of the atmosphere at these great elevations. lassitude, giddiness, and headache came on as our exertions increased, and took away the pleasure i should otherwise have felt in contemplating by moonlight the varied phenomena, which seemed to crowd upon the restless imagination, in the different forms of mountain, glacier, moraine, lake, boulder and terrace. happily i had noted everything on my way up, and left nothing intentionally to be done on returning. in making such excursions as this, it is above all things desirable to seize and book every object worth noticing on the way out: i always carried my note-book and pencil tied to my jacket pocket, and generally walked with them in my hand. it is impossible to begin observing too soon, or to observe too much: if the excursion is long, little is ever done on the way home; the bodily powers being mechanically exerted, the mind seeks repose, and being fevered through over-exertion, it can endure no train of thought, or be brought to bear on a subject. during my stay at yangma, the thermometer never rose to degrees, it fell to . degrees at night; the ground was frozen for several inches below the surface, but at two feet depth its temperature was . degrees. the black bulb thermometer rose on one occasion degrees above the surrounding air. before leaving, i measured by angles and a base-line the elevations of the great village-terrace above the river, and that of a loftier one, on the west flank of the main valley; the former was about and the latter feet. considering this latter as the upper terrace, and concluding that it marks a water level, it is not very difficult to account for its origin. there is every reason to suppose that the flanks of the valley were once covered to the elevation of the upper terrace, with an enormous accumulation of debris; though it does not follow that the whole valley was filled by ice-action to the same depth; the effect of glaciers being to deposit moraines between themselves and the sides of the valley they fill; as also to push forward similar accumulations. glaciers from each valley, meeting at the fork, where their depth would be feet of ice, would both deposit the necessary accumulation along the flanks of the great valley, and also throw a barrier across it. the melting waters of such glaciers would accumulate in lakes, confined by the frozen earth, between the moraines and mountains. such lakes, though on a small scale, are found at the terminations and sides of existing glaciers, and are surrounded by terraces of shingle and debris; these terraces being laid bare by the sudden drainage of the lakes during seasons of unusual warmth. to explain the phenomena of the yangma valley, it may be necessary to demand larger lakes and deeper accumulations of debris than are now familiar to us, but the proofs of glaciers having once descended to from to , feet in every sikkim and east nepal valley communicating with mountains above , feet elevation, are overwhelming, and the glaciers must, in some cases, have been fully forty miles long, and feet in depth. the absence of any remains of a moraine, or of blocks of rock in the valley below the fork, is i believe, the only apparent objection to this theory; but, as i shall elsewhere have occasion to observe, the magnitude of the moraines bears no fixed proportion to that of the glacier, and at pabuk, the steep ridges of debris, which were heaped up feet high, were far more striking than the more usual form of moraine. on my way up to yangma i had rudely plotted the valley, and selected prominent positions for improving my plan on my return: these i now made use of, taking bearings with the azimuth compass, and angles by means of a pocket sextant. the result of my running-survey of the whole valley, from , to , feet, i have given along with a sketch-map of my routes in india, which accompanies this volume. illustration--skulls of ovis ammon. chapter xi ascend to nango mountain -- moraines -- glaciers -- vegetation -- _rhododendron hodgsoni_ -- rocks -- honey-combed surface of snow -- perpetual snow -- top of pass -- view -- elevation -- geology -- distance of sound -- plants -- temperature -- scenery -- cliffs of granite and hurled boulders -- camp -- descent -- pheasants -- larch -- himalayan pines -- distribution of deodar, note on -- tassichooding temples -- kambachen village -- cultivation -- moraines in valley, distribution of -- picturesque lake-beds, and their vegetation -- tibetan sheep and goats -- _cryptogramma crispa_ -- ascent to choonjerma pass -- view of junnoo -- rocks of its summit -- misty ocean -- nepal peaks -- top of pass -- temperature, and observations -- gorgeous sunset -- descent to yalloong valley -- loose path -- night scenes -- musk deer. we passed the night a few miles below the great moraine, in a pine-wood (alt. , feet) opposite the gorge which leads to the kambachen or nango pass, over the south shoulder of the mountain of that name: it is situated on a ridge dividing the yangma river from that of kambachen, which latter falls into the tambur opposite lelyp. the road crosses the yangma (which is about fifteen feet wide), and immediately ascends steeply to the south-east, over a rocky moraine, clothed with a dense thicket of rhododendrons, mountain-ash, maples, pine, birch, juniper, etc. the ground was covered with silvery flakes of birch bark, and that of _rhododendron hodgsoni,_ which is as delicate as tissue-paper, and of a pale flesh-colour. i had never before met with this species, and was astonished at the beauty of its foliage, which was of a beautiful bright green, with leaves sixteen inches long. beyond the region of trees and large shrubs the alpine rhododendrons filled the broken surface of the valley, growing with _potentilla,_ honeysuckle, _polygonum,_ and dwarf juniper. the peak of nango seemed to tower over the gorge, rising behind some black, splintered, rocky cliffs, sprinkled with snow, narrow defiles opened up through these cliffs to blue glaciers, and their mouths were invariably closed by beds of shingly moraines, curving outwards from either, flank in concentric ridges. towards the base of the peak, at about , feet, the scenery is very grand; a great moraine rises suddenly to the north-west, under the principal mass of snow and ice, and barren slopes of gravel descend from it; on either side are rugged precipices; the ground is bare and stony, with patches of brown grass: and, on looking back, the valley appears very steep to the first shrubby vegetation, of dark green rhododendrons, bristling with ugly stunted pines. we followed a valley to the south-east, so as to turn the flank of the peak; the path lying over beds of october snow at , feet, and over plashy ground, from its melting. sometimes our way lay close to the black precipices on our right, under which the snow was deep; and we dragged ourselves along, grasping every prominence of the rock with our numbed fingers. granite appeared in large veins in the crumpled gneiss at a great elevation, in its most beautiful and loosely-crystallised form, of pearly white prisms of felspar, glassy quartz, and milk-white flat plates of mica, with occasionally large crystals of tourmaline. garnets were very frequent in the gneiss near the granite veins. small rushes, grasses, and sedges formed the remaining vegetation, amongst which were the withered stalks of gentians, _sedum, arenaria, silene,_ and many composite plants. at a little below , feet, we reached enormous flat beds of snow, which were said to be perpetual, but covered deeply with the october fall. they were continuous, and like all the snow i saw at this season, the surface was honeycombed into thin plates, dipping north at a high angle; the intervening fissures were about six inches deep. a thick mist here overtook us, and this, with the great difficulty of picking our way, rendered the ascent very fatiguing. being sanguine about obtaining a good view, i found it almost impossible to keep my temper under the aggravations of pain in the forehead, lassitude, oppression of breathing, a dense drizzling fog, a keen cold wind, a slippery footing, where i was stumbling at every few steps, and icy-cold wet feet, hands, and eyelids; the latter, odd as it sounds, i found a very disagreeable accompaniment of continued raw cold wind. after an hour and a half's toilsome ascent, during which we made but little progress, we reached the crest, crossing a broad shelf of snow between two rocky eminences; the ridge was unsnowed a little way down the east flank; this was, in a great measure, due to the eastern exposure being the more sunny, to the prevalence of the warm and melting south-east winds that blow up the deep kambachen valley, and to the fact that the great snow-beds on the west side are drifted accumulations.* [such enormous beds of snow in depressions, or on gentle slopes, are generally adopted as indicating the lower limit of perpetual snow. they are, however, winter accumulations, due mainly to eddies of wind, of far more snow than can be melted in the following summer, being hence perennial in the ordinary sense of the word. they pass into the state of glacier ice, and, obeying the laws that govern the motions of a viscous fluid, so admirably elucidated by forbes ("travels in the alps"), they flow downwards. a careful examination of those great beds of snow in the alps, from whose position the mean lower level of perpetual snow, in that latitude, is deduced, has convinced me that these are mainly due to accumulations of this kind, and that the true limit of perpetual snow, or that point where all that falls melts, is much higher than it is usually supposed to be.] the mist cleared off, and i had a partial, though limited, view. to the north the blue ice-clad peak of nango was still feet above us, its snowy mantle falling in great sweeps and curves into glacier-bound valleys, over which the ice streamed out of sight, bounded by black aiguilles of gneiss. the yangma valley was quite hidden, but to the eastward the view across the stupendous gorge of the kambachen, feet below, to the waste of snow, ice, and rock, piled in confusion along the top of the range of junnoo and choonjerma, parallel to this but higher, was very grand indeed: this we were to cross in two days, and its appearance was such, that our guide doubted the possibility of our doing it. a third and fourth mountain mass (unseen) lay beyond this, between us and sikkim, divided by valleys as deep as those of yangma and kambachen. having hung up my instruments, i ascended a few hundred feet to some naked rocks, to the northward; they were of much-crumpled and dislocated gneiss, thrown up at a very high angle, and striking north-west. chlorite, schist, and quartz, in thin beds, alternated with the gneiss, and veins of granite and quartz, were injected through them. it fell calm; when the distance to which the voice was carried was very remarkable; i could distinctly hear every word spoken to yards off, and did not raise my voice when i asked one of the men to bring me a hammer. the few plants about were generally small tufted _arenarias_ and woolly _compositae,_ with a thick-rooted umbellifer that spread its short, fleshy leaves and branches flat on the ground; the root was very aromatic, but wedged close in the rock. the temperature at p.m. was degrees, and bitterly cold; the elevation, , feet; dew-point, degrees. the air was not very dry; saturation-point, . °, whereas at calcutta it was . ° at the same hour. the descent was to a broad, open valley, into which the flank of nango dipped in tremendous precipices, which reared their heads in splintered snowy peaks. at their bases were shoots of debris fully feet high, sloping at a steep angle. enormous masses of rock, detached by the action of the frost and ice from the crags, were scattered over the bottom of the valley; they had been precipitated from above, and gaining impetus in their descent, bad been hurled to almost inconceivable distances from the parent cliff. all were of a very white, fine-grained crystallised granite, full of small veins of the same rock still more finely crystallised. the weathered surface of each block was black, and covered with moss and lichens; the others beautifully white, with clean, sharp-fractured edges. the material of which they were composed was so hard that i found it difficult to detach a specimen. darkness had already come on, and the coolies being far behind, we encamped by the light of the moon, shining through a thin fog, where we first found dwarf-juniper for fuel, at , feet. a little sleet fell during the night, which was tolerably fine, and not very cold; the minimum thermometer indicating . degrees. having no tent-poles, i had some difficulty in getting my blankets arranged as a shelter, which was done by making them slant from the side of a boulder, on the top of which one end was kept by heavy stones; under this roof i laid my bed, on a mass of rhododendron and juniper-twigs. the men did the same against other boulders, and lighting a huge fire opposite the mouth of my ground-nest, i sat cross-legged on the bed to eat my supper; my face scorching, and my back freezing. rice, boiled with a few ounces of greasy _dindon aux truffes_ was now my daily dinner, with chili-vinegar and tea, and i used to relish it keenly: this finished, i smoked a cigar, and wrote up my journal (in short intervals between warming myself) by the light of the fire; took observations by means of a dark-lantern; and when all this was accomplished, i went to roost. _december_ .--on looking out this morning, it was with a feeling of awe that i gazed at the stupendous ice-crowned precipices that shot up to the summit of nango, their flanks spotted white at the places whence the gigantic masses with which i was surrounded had fallen; thence my eye wandered down their black faces to the slope of debris at the bottom, thus tracing the course which had probably been taken by that rock under whose shelter i had passed the previous night. meepo, the lepcha sent by the rajah, had snared a couple of beautiful pheasants, one of which i skinned, and ate for breakfast; it is a small bird, common above , feet, but very wild; the male has two to five spurs on each of its legs, according to its age; the general colour is greenish, with a broad scarlet patch surrounding the eye; the nepalese name is "khalidge." the crop was distended with juniper berries, of which the flesh tasted strongly, and it was the very hardest, toughest bird i ever did eat. we descended at first through rhododendron and juniper, then through black silver-fir (_abies webbiana_), and below that, near the river, we came to the himalayan larch; a tree quite unknown, except from a notice in the journals of mr. griffith, who found it in bhotan. it is a small tree, twenty to forty feet high, perfectly similar in general characters to a european larch, but with larger cones, which are erect upon the very long, pensile, whip-like branches; its leaves,--now red--were falling, and covering the rocky ground on which it grew, scattered amongst other trees. it is called "saar" by the lepchas and cis-himalayan tibetans, and "boarga-sella" by the nepalese, who say it is found as far west as the heads of the cosi river: it does not inhabit central or west nepal, nor the north-west himalaya. the distribution of the himalayan pines is very remarkable. the deodar has not been seen east of nepal, nor the _pinus gerardiana, cupressus torulosa,_ or _juniperus communis._ on the other hand, _podocarpus_ is confined to the east of katmandoo. _abies brunoniana_ does not occur west of the gogra, nor the larch west of the cosi, nor funereal cypress (an introduced plant, however) west of the teesta (in sikkim). of the twelve* [juniper, ; yew, _abies webbiana, brunoniana,_ and _smithiana_: larch, _pinus excelsa,_ and _longifolia,_ and _podocarpus neriifolia._] sikkim and bhotan _coniferae_ (including yew, junipers, and _podocarpus_) eight are common to the north-west himalaya (west of nepal), and four* [larch, _cupressus funebris, podocarpus neriifolia, abies brunoniana._] are not: of the thirteen natives of the north-west provinces, again, only five* [a juniper (the european _communis_), deodar (possibly only a variety of the cedar of lebanon and of mount atlas), _pinus gerardiana, p. excelsa,_ and _crupressus torulosa._] are not found in sikkim, and i have given their names below, because they show how european the absent ones are, either specifically or in affinity. i have stated that the deodar is possibly a variety of the cedar of lebanon. this is now a prevalent opinion, which is strengthened by the fact that so many more himalayan plants are now ascertained to be european than had been supposed before they were compared with european specimens; such are the yew, _juniperus communis, berberis vulgaris, quercus ballota, populus alba_ and _euphratica,_ etc. the cones of the deodar are identical with those of the cedar of lebanon: the deodar has, generally longer and more pale bluish leaves and weeping branches,* [since writing the above, i have seen, in the magnificent pinetum at dropmore, noble cedars, with the length and hue of leaf, and the pensile branches of the deodar, and far more beautiful than that is, and as unlike the common lebanon cedar as possible. when it is considered from how very few wild trees (and these said to be exactly alike) the many dissimilar varieties of the _c. libani_ have been derived; the probability of this, the cedar of algiers, and of the himalayas (deodar) being all forms of one species, is greatly increased. we cannot presume to judge from the few cedars which still remain, what the habit and appearance of the tree may have been, when it covered the slopes of libanus, and seeing how very variable _coniferae_ are in habit, we may assume that its surviving specimens give us no information on this head. should all three prove one, it will materially enlarge our ideas of the distribution and variation of species. the botanist will insist that the typical form of cedar is that which retains its characters best over the greatest area, namely, the deodar; in which case the prejudice of the ignorant, and the preconceived ideas of the naturalist, must yield to the fact that the old familiar cedar of lebanon is an unusual variety of the himalayan deodar.] but these characters seem to be unusually developed in our gardens; for several gentlemen, well acquainted with the deodar at simla, when asked to point it out in the kew gardens, have indicated the cedar of lebanon, and when shown the deodar, declare that they never saw that plant in the himalaya! at the bottom of the valley we turned up the stream, and passing the tassichooding convents* [these were built by the sikkim people, when the eastern valleys of nepal belonged to the sikkim rajah.] and temple, crossed the river--which was a furious torrent, about twelve yards wide--to the village of kambachen, on a flat terrace a few feet above the stream. there were about a dozen houses of wood, plastered with mud and dung, scattered over a grassy plain of a few acres, fenced in, as were also a few fields, with stone dykes. the only cultivation consists of radishes, potatos, and barley: no wheat is grown, the climate being said to be too cold for it, by which is probably meant that it is foggy,--the elevation ( , feet) being feet less than that of yangma village, and the temperature therefore degrees to degrees warmer; but of all the mountain gorges i have ever visited, this is by far the wildest, grandest, and most gloomy; and that man should hybernate here is indeed extraordinary, for there is no route up the valley, and all communication with lelyp,* [which i passed, on the tambur, on the st nov. see chapter ix.] two marches down the river, is cut off in winter, when the houses are buried in snow, and drifts fifteen feet deep are said to be common. standing on the little flat of kambachen, precipices, with inaccessible patches of pine wood, appeared to the west, towering over head; while across the narrow valley wilder and less wooded crags rose in broken ridges to the glaciers of nango. up the valley, the view was cut off by bluff cliffs; whilst down it, the scene was most remarkable: enormous black, round-backed moraines, rose, tier above tier, from a flat lake-bed, apparently hemming in the river between the lofty precipices on the east flank of the valley. these had all been deposited at the mouth of a lateral valley, opening just below the village, and descending from junnoo, a mountain of , feet elevation, and one of the grandest of the kinchinjunga group, whose top--though only five miles distant in a straight line--rises , feet* [this is one of the most sudden slopes in this part of the himalaya, the angle between the top of junnoo and kambachen being feet per mile, or in . . the slope from the top of mont blanc to the chamouni valley is feet per mile, or in . . that from monte rosa top to macugnaga greatly exceeds either.] above the village. few facts show more decidedly the extraordinary steepness and depth of the kambachen valley near the village, which, though nearly , feet above the sea, lies between two mountains only eight miles apart, the one , feet high, the other (nango), , feet. the villagers received us very kindly, and furnished us with a guide for the choonjerma pass, leading to the yalloong valley, the most easterly in nepal; but he recommended our not attempting any part of the ascent till the morrow, as it was past p.m., and we should find no camping-ground for half the way up. the villagers gave us the leg of a musk deer, and some red potatos, about as big as walnuts--all they could spare from their winter-stock. with this scanty addition to our stores we started down the valley, for a few miles alternately along flat lake-beds and over moraines, till we crossed the stream from the lateral valley, and ascending a little, camped on its bank, at , feet elevation. in the afternoon i botanized amongst the moraines, which were very numerous, and had been thrown down at right-angles to the main valley, which latter being here very narrow, and bounded by lofty precipices, must have stopped the parent glaciers, and effected the heaping of some of these moraines to at least feet above the river. the general features were modifications of those seen in the yangma valley, but contracted into a much smaller space. the moraines were all accumulated in a sort of delta, through which the lateral river debouched into the kambachen, and were all deposited more or less parallel to the course of the lateral valley, but curving outwards from its mouth. the village-flat, or terrace, continued level to the first moraine, which had been thrown down on the upper or north side of the lateral valley, on whose and curving steep flanks it abutted, and curving outwards seemed to encircle the village-flat on the south and west; where it dipped into the river. this was crossed at the height of about feet, by a stony path, leading to the bed of the rapid torrent flowing through shingle and boulders, beyond which was another moraine, feet high, and parallel to it a third gigantic one. ascending the great moraine at a place where it overhung the main river, i had a good _coup-a'oeil_ of the whole. the view south-east up the glacial valley--(represented in the accompanying cut)--to the snowy peaks south of junnoo, was particularly grand, and most interesting from the precision with which one great distant existing glacier was marked by two waving parallel lines of lateral moraines, which formed, as it were, a vast raised gutter, or channel, ascending from perhaps , feet elevation, till it was hidden behind a spur in the valley. with a telescope i could descry many similar smaller glaciers, with huge accumulations of shingle at their terminations; but this great one was beautifully seen by the naked eye, and formed a very curious feature in the landscape. illustration--ancient moraines in the rambachen valley. between the moraines, near my tent, the soil was perfectly level, and consisted of little lake-beds strewn with gigantic boulders, and covered with hard turf of grass and sedge, and little bushes of dwarf rhododendron and prostrate juniper, as trim as if they had been clipped. altogether these formed the most picturesque little nooks it was possible to conceive; and they exhibited the withered remains of so many kinds of primrose, gentian, anemone, potentilla, orchis, saxifrage, parnassia, campanula, and pedicularis, that in summer they must be perfect gardens of wild flowers. around each plot of a few acres was the grand ice-transported girdle of stupendous rocks, many from to feet long, crested with black tabular-branched silver firs, conical deep green tree-junipers, and feathery larches; whilst amongst the blocks grew a profusion of round masses of evergreen rhododendron bushes. beyond were stupendous frowning cliffs, beneath which the river roared like thunder; and looking up the glacial valley, the setting sun was bathing the expanse of snow in the most delicate changing tints, pink, amber, and gold. the boulders forming the moraine were so enormous and angular, that i had great difficulty in ascending it. i saw some pheasants feeding on the black berries of the juniper, but where the large rhododendrons grew amongst the rocks i found it impossible to penetrate. the largest of the moraines is piled to upwards of feet against the south flank of the lateral valley, and stretched far up it beyond my camp, which was in a grove of silver firs. a large flock of sheep and goats, laden with salt, overtook us here on their route from wallanchoon to yalloong. the sheep i observed to feed on the _rhododendron thomsoni_ and _campylocarpum. on the roots of one of the latter species a parasitical broom-rape (_orobanche_) grew abundantly; and about the moraines were more mosses, lichens, etc., than i have elsewhere seen in the loftier himalaya, encouraged no doubt by the dampness of this grand mountain gorge, which is so hemmed in that the sun never reaches it until four or five hours after it has gilded the overhanging peaks. _december_ .--the morning was bright and clear, and we left early for the choonjerma pass. i had hoped the route would be up the magnificent glacier-girdled valley in which we had encamped; but it lay up another, considerably south of it, and to which we crossed, ascending the rocky moraine, in the clefts of which grew abundance of a common scotch fern, _cryptogramma crispa_! the clouds early commenced gathering, and it was curious to watch their rapid formation in coalescing streaks, which became first cirrhi, and then stratus, being apparently continually added to from below by the moisture-bringing southerly wind. ascending a lofty spur, feet above the valley, against which the moraine was banked, i found it to be a distinct anticlinal axis. the pass, bearing north-west, and the valley we had descended on the previous day, rose immediately over the curved strata of quartz, topped by the glacier-crowned mountain of nango, with four glaciers descending from its perpetual snows. the stupendous cliffs on its flanks, under which i had camped on the previous night, were very grand, but not more so than those which dipped into the chasm of the kambachen below. looking up the valley of the latter, was another wilderness of ice full of enormous moraines, round the bases of which the river wound. ascending, we reached an open grassy valley, and overtook the tibetans who had preceded us, and who had halted here to feed their sheep. a good-looking girl of the party came to ask me for medicine for her husband's eyes, which had suffered from snow-blindness: she brought me a present of snuff, and carried a little child, stark naked, yet warm from the powerful rays of the sun, at nearly , feet elevation, in december! i prescribed for the man, and gave the mother a bright farthing to hang round the child's neck, which delighted the party. my watch was only wondered at; but a little spring measuring-tape that rolled itself up, struck them dumb, and when i threw it on the ground with the tape out, the mother shrieked and ran away, while the little savage howled after her. above, the path up the ascent was blocked with snowbeds, and for several miles we alternately scrambled among rocks and over slippery slopes, to the top of the first ridge, there being two to cross. the first consisted of a ridge of rocks running east and west from a superb sweep of snowy mountains to the north-west, which presented a chaotic scene of blue glacial ice and white snow, through which splintered rocks and beetling crags thrust their black heads. the view into the kambachen gorge was magnificent, though it did not reveal the very bottom of the valley and its moraines: the black precipices of its opposite flank seemed to rise to the glaciers of nango, fore-shortened into snow-capped precipices feet high, amongst which lay the kambachen pass, bearing north-west by north. lower down the valley, appeared a broad flat, called jubla, a halting-place one stage below the village of kambachen, on the road to lelyp on the tambur: it must be a remarkable geological as well as natural feature, fao it appeared to jut abruptly and quite horizontally from the black cliffs of the valley. looking north, the conical head of junnoo was just scattering the mists from its snowy shoulders, and standing forth to view, the most magnificent spectacle i ever beheld. it was quite close to me, bearing north-east by east, and subtending an angle of degrees , and is much the steepest and most conical of all the peaks of these regions. from whichever side it is viewed, it rises feet above the general mountain mass of , feet elevation, towering like a blunt cone, with a short saddle on one side, that dips in a steep cliff: it appeared as if uniformly snowed, from its rocks above , feet (like those of kinchinjunga) being of white granite, and not contrasting with the snow. whether the top is stratified or not, i cannot tell, but waving parallel lines are very conspicuous near it, as shown in the accompanying view.* [the appearance of mont cervin, from the riffelberg, much reminded me of that of junnoo, from the choonjerma pass, the former bearing the same relation to monte rosa that the latter does to kinchinjunga. junnoo, though incomparably the more stupendous mass, not only rising , feat higher above the sea, but towering feet higher above the ridge on which it is supported, is not nearly so remarkable in outline, so sharp, or so peaked as is mount cervin: it is a very much grander, but far less picturesque object. the whiteness of the sides of junnoo adds also greatly to its apparent altitude; while the strong relief in which the black cliffs of mont cervin protrude through its snowy mantle greatly diminish both its apparent height and distance.] illustration--junnoo , ft. from choonjerma pass , ft. east nepal. looking south as evening drew on, another wonderful spectacle presented itself, similar to that which i described at sakkiazung, but displayed here on an inconceivably grander scale, with all the effects exaggerated. i saw a sea of mist floating feet beneath me, just below the upper level of the black pines; the magnificent spurs of the snowy range which i had crossed rising out of it in rugged grandeur as promontories and peninsulas, between which the misty ocean seemed to finger up like the fiords of norway, or the salt-water lochs of the west of scotland; whilst islets tailed off from the promontories, rising here and there out of the deceptive elements. i was so high above this mist, that it had not the billowy appearance i saw before, but was a calm unruffled ocean, boundless to the south and west, where the horizon over-arched it. a little to the north of west i discerned the most lofty group of mountains in nepal* [called tsungau by the bhoteeas. junnoo is called kumbo kurma by the hill-men of nepal.] (mentioned at chapter viii), beyond kinchinjurga, which i believe are on the west flank of the great valley through which the arun river enters nepal from tibet: they were very distant, and subtended so small an angle, that i could not measure them with the sextant and artificial horizon their height, judging from the quantity of snow, must be prodigious. from to p.m. the temperature was degrees, with a very cold wind; the elevation by the barometer was , feet, and the dew-point . degrees, giving the humidity . , and the amount of vapour . grains in a cubic foot of air; the same elements at calcutta, at the same hour, being thermometer . degrees, dew-point . degrees, humidity . , and weight of vapour . grains. i waited for an hour, examining the rocks about the pass, till the coolies should come up, but saw nothing worthy of remark, the natural history and geology being identical with those of kambachen pass: i then bade adieu to the sublime and majestic peak of junnoo. thence we continued at nearly the same level for about four miles, dipping into the broad head of a snowy valley, and ascending to the second pass, which lay to the south-east. on the left i passed a very curious isolated pillar of rock, amongst the wild crags to the north-east, whose bases we skirted: it resembles the capuchin on the shoulder of mont blanc, as seen from the jardin. evening overtook us while still on the snow near the last ascent. as the sun declined, the snow at our feet reflected the most exquisitely delicate peach-bloom hue; and looking west from the top of the pass, the scenery was gorgeous beyond description, for the sun was just plunging into a sea of mist, amongst some cirrhi and stratus, all in a blaze of the ruddiest coppery hue. as it sank, the nepal, peaks to the right assumed more definite, darker, and gigantic forms, and floods of light shot across the misty ocean, bathing the landscape around me in the most wonderful and indescribable changing tints. as the luminary was vanishing, the whole horizon glowed like copper run from a smelting furnace, and when it had quite disappeared, the little inequalities of the ragged edges of the mist were lighted up and shone like a row of volcanos in the far distance. i have never before or since seen anything, which for sublimity, beauty, and marvellous effects, could compare with what i gazed on that evening from choonjerma pass. in some of turner's pictures i have recognized similar effects, caught and fixed by a marvellous effort of genius; such are the fleeting hues over the ice, in his "whalers," and the ruddy fire in his "wind, steam, and rain," which one almost fears to touch. dissolving views give some idea of the magic creation and dispersion of the effects, but any combination of science and art can no more recall the scene, than it can the feelings of awe that crept over me, during the hour i spent in solitude amongst these stupendous mountains. the moon guided us on our descent, which was to the south, obliquely into the yalloong valley. i was very uneasy about the coolies, who were far behind, and some of them had been frost-bitten in crossing the kambachen pass. still i thought the best thing was to push on, and light large fires at the first juniper we should reach. the change, on passing from off the snow to the dark earth and rock, was so bewildering, that i had great difficulty in picking my way. suddenly we came on a flat with a small tarn, whose waters gleamed illusively in the pale moonlight: the opposite flanks of the valley were so well reflected on its gloomy surface, that we were at once brought to a stand-still on its banks: it looked like a chasm, and whether to jump across it, or go down it, or along it, was the question, so deceptive was the spectral landscape. its true nature was, however, soon discovered, and we proceeded round it, descending. of course there was no path, and after some perplexity amongst rocks and ravines, we reached the upper limit of wood, and halted by some bleached juniper-trees, which were soon converted into blazing fires. i wandered away from my party to listen for the voices of the men who had lingered behind, about whom i was still more anxious, from the very great difficulty they would encounter if, as we did, they should get off the path. the moon was shining clearly in the black heavens; and its bright light, with the pale glare of the surrounding snow, obscured the milky way, and all the smaller stars; whilst the planets appeared to glow with broader orbs than elsewhere, and the great stars flashed steadily and periodically. deep black chasms seemed to yawn below, and cliffs rose on all sides, except down the valley, where looking across the yalloong river, a steep range of mountains rose, seamed with torrents that were just visible like threads of silver coursing down broad landslips. it was a dead calm, and nothing broke the awful silence but the low hoarse murmur of many torrents, whose mingled voices rose and fell as if with the pulsations of the atmosphere; the undulations of which appeared thus to be marked by the ear alone. sometimes it was the faintest possible murmur, and then it rose swelling and filling the air with sound: the effect was that of being raised from the earth's surface, and again lowered to it; or that of waters advancing and retiring. in such scenes and with such accompaniments, the mind wanders from the real to the ideal, the larger and brighter lamps of heaven lead us to imagine that we have risen from the surface of our globe and are floating through the regions of space, and that the ceaseless murmur of the waters is the music of the spheres. contemplation amid such soothing sounds and impressive scenes is very seductive, and withal very dangerous, for the temperature was at freezing-point, my feet and legs were wet through, and it was well that i was soon roused from my reveries by the monosyllabic exclamations of my coolies. they were quite knocked up, and came along grunting, and halting every minute to rest, by supporting their loads, still hanging to their backs, on their stout staves. i had still one bottle of brandy left, with which to splice the main brace. it had been repeatedly begged for in vain, and being no longer expected, was received with unfeigned joy. fortunately with these people a little spirits goes a long way, and i kept half for future emergencies. we camped at , feet, the air was calm and mild to the feeling, though the temperature fell to . degrees. on the following morning we saw two musk-deer,* [there are two species of musk-deer in the himalaya, besides the tibetan kind, which appears identical with the siberian animal originally described by pallas.] called "kosturah" by the mountaineers. the musk, which hangs in a pouch near the navel of the male, is the well-known object of traffic with bengal. this creature ranges between and , feet, on the himalaya, often scenting the air for many hundred yards. it is a pretty grey animal, the size of a roebuck, and something resembling it, with coarse fur, short horns, and two projecting teeth from the upper jaw, said to be used in rooting up the aromatic herbs from which the bhoteeas believe that it derives the odour of musk. this i much doubt, because the animal never frequents those very lofty regions where the herbs supposed to provide the scent are found, nor have i ever seen signs of any having been so rooted up. the _delphinium glaciale_ smells strongly and disagreeably of musk, but it is one of the most alpine plants in the world, growing at an elevation of , feet, far above the limits of the kosturah. the female and young male are very good eating, much better than any indian venison i ever tasted, being sweet and tender. mr. hodgson once kept a female alive, but it was very wild, and continued so as long as i knew it. two of my lepchas gave chase to these animals, and fired many arrows in vain after them: these people are fond of carrying a bow, but are very poor shots. we descended feet to the deep valley of the yalloong river which runs west-by-south to the tambur, from between junnoo and kubra: the path was very bad, over quartz, granite, and gneiss, which cut the shoes and feet severely. the bottom of the valley, which is elevated , feet, was filled with an immense accumulation of angular gravel and debris of the above rocks, forming on both sides of the river a terrace feet above the stream, which flowed in a furious torrent. the path led over this deposit for a good many miles, and varied exceedingly in height, in some places being evidently increased by landslips, and at others apparently by moraines. illustration--tibetan charm-box. chapter xii. yalloong valley -- fiud kanglanamo pass closed -- change route for the southward -- _picrorhiza_ -- view of kubra -- _rhododendron falconeri_ -- yalloong river -- junction of gneiss and clay-slate -- cross yalloong range -- view -- descent -- yew -- vegetation -- misty weather -- tongdam village -- khabang -- tropical vegetation -- sidingbah mountain -- view of kinchinjunga -- yangyading village -- slopes of hills, and courses of rivers -- khabili valley -- (ghorkha havildar's bad conduct -- ascend singalelah -- plague of ticks -- short commons -- cross islumbo pass -- boundary of sikkim -- kulhait valley -- lingeham -- reception by kajee -- hear of dr. campbell's going to meet rajah -- views in valley -- leave for teesta river -- tipsy kajee -- hospitality -- murwa beer -- temples -- _acorus calamus_ -- long mendong -- burning of dead -- superstitions -- cross great rungeet -- boulders, origin of -- purchase of a dog -- marshes -- lamas -- dismiss ghorkhas -- bhoteea house -- murwa beer. on arriving at the bottom we found a party who were travelling with sheep laden with salt; they told us that the yalloong village, which lay up the valley on the route to the kanglanamo pass (leading over the south shoulder of kubra into sikkim) was deserted, the inhabitants having retired after the october fall of snow to yankutang, two marches down; also that the kanglanamo pass was impracticable, being always blocked up by the october fall. i was, therefore, reluctantly obliged to abandon the plan of pursuing that route to sikkim, and to go south, following the west flank of singalelah to the first of the many passes over it which i might find open. these people were very civil, and gave me a handful of the root of one of the many bitter herbs called in bengal "teeta," and used as a febrifuge: the present was that of _picrorhiza,_ a plant allied to speedwell, which grows at from , to , feet elevation, and is a powerful bitter, called "hoonling" by the tibetans. they had with them above sheep, of a tall, long-legged, roman-nosed breed. each carried upwards of forty pounds of salt, done up in two leather bags, slung on either side, and secured by a band going over the chest, and another round the loins, so that they cannot slip off, when going up or down hill. these sheep are very tame, patient creatures, travelling twelve miles a day with great ease, and being indifferent to rocky or steep ground. looking east i had a splendid view of the broad snowy mass of kubra, blocking up, as it were, the head of the valley with a white screen. descending to about , feet, the _abies brunoniana_ appeared, with fine trees of _rhododendron falconeri_ forty feet high, and with leaves nineteen inches long! while the upper part of the valley was full of _abies webbiana._ at the elevation of feet, we crossed to the east bank, and passed the junction of the gneiss and mica slate: the latter crossed the river, striking north-west, and the stream cut a dark chasm-like channel through it, foaming and dashing the spray over the splintered ridges, and the broad water-worn hog-backed masses that projected from its bed. immense veins of granite permeated the rocks, which were crumpled in the strangest manner: isolated angular blocks of schist had been taken up by the granite in a fluid state, and remained imbedded in it. the road made great ascents to avoid landslips, and to surmount the enormous piles of debris which encumber this valley more than any other. we encamped at , feet, on a little flat feet above the bed of the river, and on its east flank. a _hydrangea_ was the common small wood, but _abies webbiana_ formed the forest, with great rhododendrons. the weather was foggy, whence i judged that we were in the sea of mist i saw beneath me from the passes; the temperature, considering the elevation, was mild, degrees and degrees, which was partly due to the evolution of heat that accompanies the condensation of these vapours, the atmosphere being loaded with moisture. the thermometer fell to degrees during the night, and in the morning the ground was thickly covered with hoar-frost. _december .--we ascended the yalloong ridge to a saddle , feet elevation, whence the road dips south to the gloomy gorges of the eastern feeders of the tambur. here we bade adieu to the grand alpine scenery, and for several days our course lay in nepal in a southerly direction, parallel to singalelah, and crossing every spur and river sent off by that mighty range. the latter flow towards the tambur, and their beds, for forty or fifty miles are elevated about or feet. few of the spurs are ascended above feet, but all of them rise to , or , feet to the westward, where they join the singalelah range. i clambered to the top of a lofty hummock, through a dense thicket of interwoven rhododendron bushes, the clayey soil under which was slippery from the quantity of dead leaves. i had hoped for a view of the top of kinchinjunga, which bore north-east, but it was enveloped in clouds, as were all the snows in that direction; to the north-west, however, i obtained bearings of the principal peaks, etc., of the yangma and kambachen valleys. to the south and south-east, lofty, rugged and pine-clad mountains rose in confused masses, and white sheets of mist came driving up, clinging to the mountain-tops, and shrouding the landscape with extreme rapidity. the remarkable mountain of sidingbah bore south-south-east, raising its rounded head above the clouds. i could, however, procure no other good bearing. the descent from the yalloong ridge to the khabili feeders of the tambur was very steep, and in some places almost precipitous, first through dense woods of silver fir, with _rhod. falconeri_ and _hodgsoni,_ then through _abies brunoniana,_ with yew (now covered with red berries) to the region of magnolias and _rhod. arboreum_ and _barbatum._ one bush of the former was in flower, making a gorgeous show. here also appeared the great oak with lamellated acorns, which i had not seen in the drier valleys to the westward; with many other dorjiling trees and shrubs. a heavy mist clung to the rank luxuriant foliage, tantalizing from its obscuring all the view. mica schist replaced the gneiss, and a thick slippery stratum of clay rendered it very difficult to keep one's footing. after so many days of bright sunshine and dry weather, i found this quiet, damp, foggy atmosphere to have a most depressing effect: there was little to interest in the meteorology, the atmospheric fluctuations being far too small; geographical discovery was at an end, and we groped our way along devious paths in wooded valleys, or ascended spurs and ridges, always clouded before noon, and clothed with heavy forest. at feet we emerged from the mist, and found ourselves clambering down a deep gully, hemmed in by frightful rocky steeps, which exposed a fine and tolerably continuous section of schistose rocks, striking north-west, and dipping north-east, at a very high angle. at the bottom three furious torrents met: we descended the course of one of them, over slanting precipices, or trees lashed to the rocks, and after a most winding course our path conducted us to the village of tarbu, high above a feeder of the khabili river, which flows west, joining the tambur three days' march lower down. having no food, we had made a very long and difficult march to this place, but finding none here, proceeded on to tonghem village on the khabili, descending through thickets of _rhod. arboreum_ to the elevation of , . this village, or spur, called "tonghem" by the limboos, and "yankutang" by the bhoteeas, is the winter resort of the inhabitants of the upper yalloong valley: they received us very kindly, sold us two fowls, and rice enough to last for one or two days, which was all they could spare, and gave me a good deal of information. i found that the kanglanamo pass had been disused since the nepal war, that it was very lofty, and always closed in october. the night was fine, clear, and warm, but the radiation so powerful that the grass was coated with ice the following morning, though the thermometer did not fall below degrees. the next day the sun rose with great power, and the vegetation reeked and steamed with the heat. crossing the river, we first made a considerable descent, and then ascended a ridge to , feet, through a thick jungle of _camellia, eurya,_ and small oak: from the top i obtained bearings of yalloong and choonjerma pass, and had also glimpses of the kinchin range through a tantalizing jungle; after which a very winding and fatiguing up-and-down march southwards brought us to the village of khabang, in the magnificent valley of the tawa, about feet above the river, and , feet above the sea. i halted here for a day, to refresh the people, and if possible to obtain some food. i hoped, too, to find a pass into sikkim, east over singalelah, but was disappointed: if there had ever been one, it had been closed since the nepal war; and there was none, for several marches further south, which would conduct us to the iwa branch of the khabili. khabang is a village of geroongs, or shepherds, who pasture their flocks on the hills and higher valleys during summer, and bring them down to this elevation in winter: the ground was consequently infested with a tick, equal in size to that so common in the bushes, and quite as troublesome, but of a different species. the temperature rose to degrees, and the black-bulb thermometer to degrees. magnolias and various almost tropical trees were common, and the herbaceous vegetation was that of low elevations. large sugar-cane (_saccharum_), palm (_wallichia_), and wild plantains grew near the river, and _rhod. arboreum_ was very common on dry slopes of mica-slate rocks, with the gorgeous and sweet-scented _luculia gratissima._ up the valley of the tawa the view was very grand of a magnificent rocky mountain called sidingbah, bearing south-east by south, on a spur of the singalelah range that runs westerly, and forms the south flank of the tawa, and the north of the khabili valleys. this mountain is fully , feet high, crested with rock and ragged black forest, which, on the north flank, extends to its base: to the eastward, the bare ridges of singalelah were patched with snow, below which they too were clothed with black pines. from the opposite side of the tawa to khabang (alt. , feet), i was, during our march southwards, most fortunate in obtaining a splendid view of kinchinjunga (bearing north-east by north), with its associates, rising over the dark mass of singalelah, its flanks showing like tier above tier of green glaciers: its distance was fully twenty-five miles, and as only about feet or feet from its summit were visible, and kubra was foreshortened against it, its appearance was not grand; added to which, its top was round and hummocky, not broken into peaks, as when seen from the south and east. villages and cultivation became more frequent as we proceeded southward, and our daily marches were up ridges, and down into deep valleys, with feeders from the flanks of sidingbah to the tambur. we passed through the village of tchonboong, and camped at yangyading ( , feet), sighted yamroop, a large village and military post to the west of our route, crossed the pangwa river, and reached the valley of the khabili. during this part of the journey, i did not once see the tambur river, though i was day after day marching only seven to ten miles distant from it, so uneven is the country. the mountains around taptiatok, mywa guola, and chingtam, were pointed out to me, but they presented no recognizable feature. i often looked for some slope, or strike of the slopes of the spurs, in any one valley, or that should prevail through several, but could seldom trace any, except on one or two occasions, at low elevations. looking here across the valleys, there was a tendency in the gentle slopes of the spurs to have plane faces dipping north-east, and to be bounded by a line of cliffs striking north-west, and facing the south-east. in such arrangements, the upheaved cliffs may be supposed to represent parallel lines of faults, dislocation, or rupture, but i could never trace any secondary valleys at right angles to these. there is no such uniformity of strike as to give to the rivers a zig-zag course of any regularity, or one having any apparent dependence on a prevailing arrangement of the rocks; for, though the strike of the chlorite and clay-slate at elevations below feet along its course, is certainly north-west, with a dip to north-east, the flexures of the river, as projected on the map, deviate very widely from these directions. the valley of the khabili is very grand, broad, open, and intersected by many streams and cultivated spurs: the road from yamroop to sikkim, once well frequented, runs up its north flank, and though it was long closed we determined to follow and clear it. on the th of december we camped near the village of sablakoo ( , feet), and procured five days' food, to last us as far as the first sikkim village. thence we proceeded eastward up the valley, but descending to the iwa, an affluent of the khabili, through a tropical vegetation of _pinus longifolia, phyllanthus emblica,_ dwarf date-palm, etc. gneiss was here the prevailing rock, uniformly dipping north-east degrees, and striking north-west. the same rock no doubt forms the mass sidingbah, which reared its head feet above the iwa river, by whose bed we camped at , feet. sand-flies abounded, and were most troublesome: troops of large monkeys were skipping about, and the whole scene was thoroughly tropical; still, the thermometer fell to degrees in the night, with heavy dew. though we passed numerous villages, i found unusual difficulty in getting provision, and received none of the presents so uniformly brought by the villagers to a stranger. i was not long in discovering, to my great mortification, that these were appropriated by the ghorkha havildar, who seemed to have profited by our many days of short allowance, and diverted the current of hospitality from me to himself. his coolies i saw groaning under heavy burdens, when those of my people were light; and the truth only came out when he had the impudence to attempt to impose a part of his coolies' loads on mine, to enable the former to carry more food, whilst he was pretending that he used every exertion to procure me a scanty supply of rice with my limited stock of money. i had treated this man and his soldiers with the utmost kindness, even nursing them and clothing them from my own stock of flannels, when sick and shivering amongst the snows. though a high caste hindoo, and one who assumed brahmin rank, he had, i found, no objection to eat forbidden things in secret; and now that we were travelling amongst hindoos, his caste obtained him everything, while money alone availed me. i took him roundly to task for his treachery, which caused him secretly to throw away a leg of mutton he had concealed; i also threatened to expose the humbug of his pretension to caste, but it was then too late to procure more food. having hitherto much liked this man, and fully trusted him, i was greatly pained by his conduct. we proceeded east for three days, up the valley, through gloomy forests of tropical trees below feet; and ascended to oaks and magnolias at feet. the path was soon obstructed, and we had to tear and cut our way, from to , feet, which took two days' very hard work. ticks swarmed in the small bamboo jungle, and my body was covered with these loathsome insects, which got into my bed and hair, and even attached themselves to my eyelids during the night, when the constant annoyance and irritation completely banished sleep. in the daytime they penetrated my trousers, piercing to my body in many places, so that i repeatedly took off as many as twelve at one time. it is indeed marvellous how so large an insect can painlessly insert a stout barbed proboscis, which requires great force to extract it, and causes severe smarting in the operation. what the ticks feed upon in these humid forests is a perfect mystery to me, for from to feet they literally swarmed, where there was neither path nor animal life. they were, however, more tolerable than a commoner species of parasite, which i found it impossible to escape from, all classes of mountaineers being infested with it. on the th, after an arduous ascent through the pathless jungle, we camped at , feet on a narrow spur, in a dense forest, amongst immense loose blocks of gneiss. the weather was foggy and rainy, and the wind cold. i ate the last supply of animal food, a miserable starved pullet, with rice and chili vinegar; my tea, sugar, and all other superfluities having been long before exhausted. on the following morning, we crossed the islumbo pass over singalelah into sikkim, the elevation being , feet. above our camp the trees were few and stunted, and we quickly emerged from the forest on a rocky and grassy ridge, covered with withered _saxifrages, umbelliferae, parnassia, hypericum,_ etc. there were no pines on either side of the pass; a very remarkable peculiarity of the damp mountains of sikkim, which i have elsewhere had occasion to notice: we had left _pinus longifolia_ (a far from common tree in these valleys) at feet in the tawa three days before, and ascended to , feet without passing a coniferous tree of any kind, except a few yews, at feet, covered with red berries. the top of the pass was broad, grassy, and bushy with dwarf bamboo, rose, and berberry, in great abundance, covered with mosses and lichens: it had been raining hard all the morning, and the vegetation was coated with ice: a dense fog obscured everything, and a violent south-east wind blew over the pass in our teeth. i collected some very curious and beautiful mosses, putting these frozen treasures into my box, in the form of exquisitely beautiful glass ornaments, or mosses frosted with silver. a few stones marked the boundary between nepal and sikkim, where i halted for half an hour, and hung up my instruments: the temperature was degrees. we descended rapidly, proceeding eastward down the broad valley of the kulhait river, an affluent of the great rungeet; and as it had begun to sleet and snow hard, we continued until we reached , feet before camping. on the following day we proceeded down the valley, and reached habitations at feet: passing many villages and much cultivation, we crossed the river, and ascended by p.m., to the village of lingcham, just below the convent of changachelling, very tired and hungry. bad weather had set in, and it was pitch dark and raining hard when we arrived; but the kajee, or head man, had sent out a party with torches to conduct us, and he gave us a most hospitable reception, honoured us with a salute of musketry, and brought abundance of milk, eggs, fowls, plantains, and murwa beer. plenty of news was awaiting me here, and a messenger with letters was three marches further north, at yoksun, waiting my expected return over the kanglanamo pass. dr. campbell, i was told, had left dorjiling; and was _en route_ to meet the rajah at bhomsong on the teesta river, where no european had ever yet been; and as the sikkim authorities had for sixteen years steadily rejected every overture for a friendly interview, and even refused to allow the agent of the governor-general to enter their dominions, it was evident that grave doings were pending. i knew that dr. campbell had long used every exertion to bring the sikkim rajah to a friendly conference, without having to force his way into the country for the purpose, but in vain. it will hardly be believed that though this chief's dominions were redeemed by us from the nepalese and given back to him; though we had bound ourselves by a treaty to support him on his throne, and to defend him against the nepalese on the west, the bhutan people on the east, and the tibetans on the north; and though the terms of the treaty stipulated for free intercourse, mutual protection, and friendship; the sikkim authorities had hitherto been allowed to obstruct all intercourse, and in every way to treat the governor-general's agent and the east india company with contempt. an affectation of timidity, mistrust, and ignorance was assumed for the purpose of deception, and as a cloak for every insult and resistance to the terms of our treaty, and it was quoted by the government in answer to every remonstrance on the part of their resident agent at dorjiling. on the following morning the kajee waited on me with a magnificent present of a calf, a kid, fowls, eggs, rice, oranges, plantains, egg-apples, indian corn, yams, onions, tomatos, parsley, fennel, turmeric, rancid butter, milk, and, lastly, a coolie-load of fermenting millet-seeds, wherewith to make the favourite murwa beer. in the evening two lads arrived from dorjiling, who had been sent a week beforehand by my kind and thoughtful friend, mr. hodgson, with provisions and money. the valley of the kulhait is one o£ the finest in sikkim, and it is accordingly the site of two of the oldest and richest conventual establishments. its length is sixteen miles, from the islumbo pass to the great rungeet, for ten of which it is inhabited, the villages being invariably on long meridional spurs that project north and south from either flank; they are about feet above the river, and from , to feet above the sea. except where these spurs project, the flanks of the valley are very steep, the mountains rising to or feet. looking from any spur, up or down the valley, five or six others might be seen on each side of the river, at very nearly the same average level, all presenting great uniformity of contour, namely, a gentle slope towards the centre of the valley, and then an abrupt descent to the river. they were about a quarter of a mile broad at the widest, and often narrower, and a mile or so long; some parts of their surfaces and sides were quite flat, and occasionally occupied by marshes or ponds. cultivation is almost confined to these spurs, and is carried on both on their summits and steep flanks; between every two is a very steep gulley and water-course. the timber has long since been either wholly or partially cleared from the tops, but, to a great extent, still clothes their flanks and the intervening gorges. i have been particular in describing these spurs, because it is impossible to survey them without ascribing their comparative uniformity of level to the action of water. similar ones are characteristic features of the valleys of sikkim between and feet, and are rendered conspicuous by being always sites for villages and cultivation: the soil is a vegetable mould, over a deep stratum of red clay. i am far from supposing that any geologically recent action of the sea has levelled these spurs; but as the great chain of the himalaya has risen from the ocean, and as every part of it has been subjected to sea-action, it is quite conceivable that intervals of rest during the periods of elevation or submergence would effect their levelling. in a mountain mass so tumbled as is that of sikkim, any level surface, or approach to it, demands study; and when, as in the kulhait valley, we find several similar spurs with comparatively flat tops, to occupy about the same level, it is necessary to look for some levelling cause. the action of denudation is still progressing with astonishing rapidity, under an annual fall of from to inches of rain; but its tendency is to obliterate all such phenomena, and to give sharp, rugged outlines to these spurs, in spite of the conservative effects of vegetation. the weather at lingcham was gloomy, cold, and damp, with much rain and fog, and the mean temperature ( . degrees) was cold for the elevation ( , feet): . degrees was the highest temperature observed, and degrees the lowest. a letter from dr. campbell reached me three days after my arrival, begging me to cross the country to the teesta river, and meet him at bhomsong, on its west bank, where he was awaiting my arrival. i therefore left on the th of december, accompanied by my friend the kajee, who was going to pay his respects to the rajah. he was constantly followed by a lad, carrying a bamboo of murwa beer slung round his neck, with which he kept himself always groggy. his dress was thoroughly lepcha, and highly picturesque, consisting of a very broad-brimmed round-crowned bamboo-platted hat, scarlet jacket, and blue-striped cloth shirt, bare feet, long knife, bow and quiver, rings and earrings, and a long pigtail. he spoke no hindoostanee, but was very communicative through my interpreters. leaving the lingcham spur, we passed steep cliffs of mica and schist, covered with brushwood and long grass, about feet above which the changachelling convent is perched. crossing a torrent, we came to the next village, on the spur of kurziuk, where i was met by a deputation of women, sent by the lamas of changachelling, bearing enormous loads of oranges, rice, milk, butter, ghee, and the everflowing murwa beer. the villagers had erected a shady bower for me to rest under, of leaves and branches, and had fitted up a little bamboo stage, on which to squat cross-legged as they do, or to hang my legs from, if i preferred: after conducting me to this, the parties advanced and piled their cumbrous presents on the ground, bowed, and retired; they were succeeded by the beer-carrier, who plunged a clean drinking-tube to the bottom of the steaming bamboo jug (described in chapter vii), and held it to my mouth, then placing it by my side, he bowed and withdrew. nothing can be more fascinating than the simple manners of these kind people, who really love hospitality for its own sake, and make the stranger feel himself welcome. just now too, the durbar had ordered every attention to be paid me; and i hardly passed a village however small, without receiving a present, or a cottage, where beer was not offered. this i found a most grateful beverage; and of the occasional rests under leafy screens during a hot day's march, and sips at the bamboo jug, i shall ever retain a grateful remembrance. happily the liquor is very weak, and except by swilling, as my friend the kajee did, it would be impossible to get fuddled by it. at kurziuk i was met by a most respectable lepcha, who, as a sort of compliment, sent his son to escort us to the next village and spur of pemiongchi, to reach which we crossed another gorge, of which the situation and features were quite similar to those of kurziuk and lingcham. the pemiongchi and changachelling convents and temples stand a few miles apart, on the ridge forming the north flank of the kulhait valley; and as they will be described hereafter, i now only allude to the village, which is fully feet below the convent, and large and populous. at pemiongchi a superior lama met me with another overwhelming present: he was a most jolly fat monk, shaven and girdled, and dressed in a scarlet gown: my lepchas kotowed to him, and he blessed them by the laying on of hands. illustration--pemiongchi goompa and chaits. there is a marsh on this spur, full of the common english _acorus calamus,_ or sweet-flag, whose roots being very aromatic, are used in griping disorders of men and cattle. hence we descended suddenly to the great rungeet, which we reached at its junction with the kulhait: the path was very steep and slippery, owing to micaceous rocks, and led along the side of an enormous mendong,* [this remarkable structure, called the kaysing mendong, is yards long, feet high, and or feet broad: it is built of flat, slaty stones, and both faces are covered with inscribed slates, of which there are upwards of , and the inscriptions, chiefly "om mani," etc., are in both the uchen and lencha ranja characters of tibet. a tall stone, nine feet high, covered also with inscriptions, terminates it at the lower end.] which ran down the hill for several hundred yards, and had a large chait at each end, with several smaller ones at intervals. throughout its length were innumerable inscriptions of "om mani padmi om," with well carved figures of boodh in his many incarnations, besides lamas, etc. at the lower end was a great flat area, on which are burnt the bodies of sikkim people of consequence: the poorer people are buried, the richer burned, and their ashes scattered or interred, but not in graves proper, of which there are none. nor are there any signs of lepcha interment throughout sikkim; though chaits are erected to the memory of the departed, they have no necessary connection with the remains, and generally none at all. corpses in sikkim are never cut to pieces and thrown into lakes, or exposed on hills for the kites and crows to devour, as is the case in tibet. we passed some curious masses of crumpled chlorite slate, presenting deep canals or furrows, along which a demon once drained all the water from the pemiongchi spur, to the great annoyance of the villagers: the lamas, however, on choosing this as a site for their temples, easily confounded the machinations of the evil spirit, who, in the eyes of the simple lepchas, was answerable for all the mischief. i crossed the great rungeet at feet above the sea, where its bed was twenty yards in width; a rude bridge, composed of two culms of bamboo and a handrail, conducted me to the other side, where we camped (on the east bank) in a thick tropical jungle. in the evening i walked down the banks of the river, which flowed in a deep gorge, cumbered with enormous boulders of granite, clay-slate, and mica-slate; the rocks _in situ_ were all of the latter description, highly inclined, and much dislocated. some of the boulders were fully ten feet in diameter, permeated and altered very much by granite veins which had evidently been injected when molten, and had taken up angular masses of the chlorite which remained, as it were, suspended in the veins. it is not so easy to account for the present position of these blocks of granite, a rock not common at elevations below , feet. they have been transported from a considerable distance in the interior of the lofty valley to the north, and have descended not less than feet, and travelled fully fifteen miles in a straight line, or perhaps forty along the river bed. it may be supposed that moraines have transported them to feet (the lowest limit of apparent moraines), and the power of river water carried them further; if so, the rivers must have been of much greater volume formerly than they are now. our camp was on a gravel flat, like those of the nepal valleys, about sixty feet above the river; its temperature was degrees, which felt cool when bathing. from the river we proceeded west, following a steep and clayey ascent up the end of a very long spur, from the lofty mountain range called mungbreu, dividing the great rungeet from the teesta. we ascended by a narrow path, accomplishing , feet in an hour and a quarter, walking slowly but steadily, without resting; this i always found a heavy pull in a hot climate. at about feet above the sea, the spur became more open and flat, like those of the kulhait valley, with alternate slopes and comparative flats: from this elevation the view north, south, and west, was very fine; below us flowed the river, and a few miles up it was the conical wooded hill of tassiding, rising abruptly from a fork of the deep river gorge, crowned with its curious temples and mendongs, and bristling with chaits: on it is the oldest monastery in sikkim, occupying a singularly picturesque and prominent position. north of this spur, and similar to it, lay that of raklang, with the temple and monastery of the same name, at about this elevation. in front, looking west, across the great rungeet, were the monasteries of changachelling and pemiongchi, perched aloft; and south of these were the flat-topped spurs of the kulhait valley, with their villages, and the great mendong which i had passed on the previous day, running like a white line down the spur. to the north, beyond tassiding, were two other monasteries, doobdee and sunnook, both apparently placed on the lower wooded flanks of kinchinjunga; whilst close by was dholing, the seventh religious establishment now in sight. we halted at a good wooden house to refresh ourselves with murwa beer, where i saw a woman with cancer in the face, an uncommon complaint in this country. i here bought a little black puppy, to be my future companion in sikkim: he was of a breed between the famous tibet mastiff and the common sikkim hunting-dog, which is a variety of the sorry race called pariah in the plains. being only a few weeks old, he looked a mere bundle of black fur; and i carried him off, for he could not walk. we camped at the village of lingdam (alt. , feet), occupying a flat, and surrounded by extensive pools of water (for this country) containing _acorus, potamogeton,_ and duckweed. such ponds i have often met with on these terraces, and they are very remarkable, not being dammed in by any conspicuous barrier, but simply occupying depressions in the surface, from which, as i have repeatedly observed, the land dips rapidly to the valleys below. this being the high-road from tumloong or sikkim durbar (the capital, and rajah's residence) to the numerous monasteries which i had seen, we passed many lamas and monks on their way home from tumloong, where they had gone to be present at the marriage of the tupgain lama, the eldest son of the rajah. a dispensation having previously been procured from lhassa, this marriage had been effected by the lamas, in order to counteract the efforts of the dewan, who sought to exercise an undue influence over the rajah and his family. the tupgain lama having only spiritual authority, and being bound to celibacy, the temporal authority devolved on the second son, who was heir apparent of sikkim; he, however, having died, an illegitimate son of the rajah was favoured by the dewan as heir apparent. the bride was brought from tibet, and the marriage party were feasted for eighteen days at the rajah's expense. all the lamas whom i met were clad in red robes, with girdles, and were shaven, with bare feet and heads, or mitred; they wore rosaries of onyx, turquoise, quartz, lapis lazuli, coral, glass, amber, or wood, especially yellow berberry and sandal-wood: some had staves, and one a trident like an eel-fork, on a long staff, an emblem of the hindoo trinity, called trisool mahadeo, which represents brahma, siva, and vishnu, in hindoo; and boodh, dhurma, and sunga, in boodhist theology. all were on foot, indeed ponies are seldom used in this country; the lamas, however, walked with becoming gravity and indifference to all around them. the kajee waited upon me in the evening; full of importance, having just received a letter from his rajah, which he wished to communicate to me in private; so i accompanied him to a house close by, where he was a guest, when the secret came out, that his highness was dreadfully alarmed at my coming with the two ghorka sepoys, whom i accordingly dismissed. the house was of the usual bhoteea form, of wood, well built on posts, one-storied, containing a single apartment hung round with bows, quivers, shields, baskets of rice, and cornucopias of indian corn, the handsomest and most generous looking of all the cerealia. the whole party were deep in a carouse on murwa beer, and i saw the operation of making it. the millet-seed is moistened, and ferments for two days: sufficient for a day's allowance is then put into a vessel of wicker-work, lined with india-rubber to make it water-tight; and boiling water is poured on it with a ladle of gourd, from a huge iron cauldron that stands all day over the fire. the fluid, when quite fresh, tastes like negus of cape sherry, rather sour. at this season the whole population are swilling, whether at home or travelling, and heaps of the red-brown husks are seen by the side of all the paths. illustration--sikkim lamas with praying cylinder and dorje; the lateral figures are monks or gylongs. chapter xiii. raklang pass -- uses of nettles -- edible plants -- lepcha war -- do-mani stone -- neongong -- teesta valley -- pony, saddle, etc. -- meet campbell -- vegetation and scenery -- presents -- visit of dewan -- characters of rajah and dewan -- accounts of tibet -- lhassa -- siling -- tricks of dewan -- walk up teesta -- audience of rajah -- lamas -- kajees -- tchebu lama, his character and position -- effects of interview -- heir-apparent -- dewan's house -- guitar -- weather -- fall of river -- tibet officers -- gigantic trees -- neongong lake -- mainom, ascent of -- vegetation -- camp on snow -- silver fire -- view from top -- kinchin, etc. -- geology -- vapours -- sunset effect -- elevation -- temperature, etc. -- lamas of neongong -- temples -- religious festival -- bamboo, flowering -- recross pass of raklang -- numerous temples, villages, etc. -- domestic animals -- descent to great rungeet. on the following morning, after receiving the usual presents from the lamas of dholing, and from a large posse of women belonging to the village of barphiung, close by, we ascended the raklang pass, which crosses the range dividing the waters of the teesta from those of the great rungeet. the kajee still kept beside me, and proved a lively companion: seeing me continually plucking and noting plants, he gave me much local information about them. he told me the uses made of the fibres of the various nettles; some being twisted for bowstrings, others as a thread for sewing and weaving; while many are eaten raw and in soups, especially the numerous little succulent species. the great yellow-flowered _begonia_ was abundant, and he cut its juicy stalks to make sauce (as we do apple-sauce) for some pork which he expected to get at bhomsong; the taste is acid and very pleasant. the large succulent fern, called _botrychium,_* [_botrychium virginicum,_ linn. this fern is eaten abundantly by the new zealanders: its distribution is most remarkable, being found very rarely indeed in europe, and in norway only. it abounds in many parts of the southern united states, the andes of mexico, etc., in the himalaya mountains, australia, and new zealand.] grew here plentifully; it is boiled and eaten, both here and in new zealand. ferns are more commonly used for food than is supposed. in calcutta the hindoos boil young tops of a _polypodium_ with their shrimp curries; and both in sikkim and nepal the watery tubers of an _aspidium_ are abundantly eaten. so also the pulp of one tree-fern affords food, but only in times of scarcity, as does that of another species in new zealand (_cyathea medullaris_): the pith of all is composed of a coarse sago, that is to say, of cellular tissue with starch granules. a thick forest of dorjiling vegetation covers the summit, which is only , feet above the sea: it is a saddle, connecting the lofty mountain of mainom (alt. , feet) to the north, with tendong (alt. , feet) to the south. both these mountains are on a range which is continuous with kinchinjunga, projecting from it down into the very heart of sikkim. a considerable stand was made here by the lepchas during the nepal war in ; they defended the pass with their arrows for some hours, and then retired towards the teesta, making a second stand lower down, at a place pointed out to me, where rocks on either side gave them the same advantages. the nepalese, however, advanced to the teesta, and then retired with little loss. unfortunately a thick mist and heavy rain cut off all view of the teesta valley, and the mountains of chola to the eastward; which i much regretted. descending by a very steep, slippery path, we came to a fine mass of slaty gneiss, thirty feet long and thirteen feet high; not _in situ,_ but lying on the mountain side: on its sloping face was carved in enormous characters, "om mani padmi om"; of which letters the top-strokes afford an uncertain footing to the enthusiast who is willing to purchase a good metempsychosis by walking along the slope, with his heels or toes in their cavities. a small inscription in one corner is said to imply that this was the work of a pious monk of raklang; and the stone is called "do-mani," literally, "stone of prayer." illustration--do-mani stone. the rocks and peaks of mainom are said to overhang the descent here with grandeur; but the continued rain hid everything but a curious shivered peak, apparently of chlorite schist, which was close by, and reflected a green colour it is of course reported to be of turquoise, and inaccessible. descending, the rocks became more micaceous, with broad seams of pipe-clay, originating in decomposed beds of felspathic gneiss: the natives used this to whitewash and mortar their temples. i passed the monastery of neongong, the monks of which were building a new temple; and came to bring me a large present. below it is a pretty little lake, about yards across, fringed with brushwood. we camped at the village of nampok, , feet above the sea; all thoroughly sodden with rain. during the night much snow had fallen at and above feet, but the weather cleared on the following morning, and disclosed the top of mainom, rising close above my camp, in a series of rugged shivered peaks, crested with pines, which looked like statues of snow: to all other quarters this mountain presents a very gently sloping outline. up the teesta valley there was a pretty peep of snowy mountains, bearing north degrees east, of no great height. i was met by a messenger from dr. campbell who told me he was waiting breakfast; so i left my party, and, accompanied by the kajee and meepo, hurried down to the valley of the rungoon (which flows east to the teesta), through a fine forest of tropical trees; passing the villages of broom* [on the top of the ridge above broom, a tall stone is erected by the side of the path, covered with private marks, indicating the height of various individuals who are accustomed to measure themselves thus; there was but one mark above feet inches, and that was inches higher. it turned out to be campbell's, who had passed a few days before, and was thus proved to top the natives of sikkim by a long way.] and lingo, to the spur of that name; where i was met by a servant of the sikkim dewan's, with a pony for my use. i stared at the animal, and felt inclined to ask what he had to do here, where it was difficult enough to walk up and down slippery slopes, amongst boulders of rock, heavy forest, and foaming torrents; but i was little aware of what these beasts could accomplish. the tartar saddle was imported from tibet, and certainly a curiosity; once--but a long time ago--it must have been very handsome; it was high-peaked, covered with shagreen and silvered ornaments, wretchedly girthed, and with great stirrups attached to short leathers. the bridle and head-gear were much too complicated for description; there were good leather, raw hide, hair-rope, and scarlet worsted all brought into use; the bit was the ordinary asiatic one, jointed, and with two rings. i mounted on one side, and at once rolled over, saddle and all, to the other; the pony standing quite still. i preferred walking; but dr. campbell had begged of me to use the pony, as the dewan had procured and sent it at great trouble: i, however, had it led till i was close to bhomsong, when i was hoisted into the saddle and balanced on it, with my toes in the stirrups and my knees up to my breast; twice, on the steep descent to the river, my saddle and i were thrown on the pony's neck; in these awkward emergencies i was assisted by a man on each side, who supported my weight on my elbows: they seemed well accustomed to easing mounted ponies down hill without giving the rider the trouble of dismounting. thus i entered dr. campbell's camp at bhomsong, to the pride and delight of my attendants; and received a hearty welcome from my old friend, who covered me with congratulations on the successful issue of a journey which, at this season, and under such difficulties and discouragements, he had hardly thought feasible. dr. campbell's tent was pitched in an orange-grove, occupying a flat on the west bank of the teesta, close to a small enclosure of pine-apples, with a pomegranate tree in the middle. the valley is very narrow, and the vegetation wholly tropical, consisting of two species of oak, several palms, rattan-cane (screw-pine), _pandanus,_ tall grasses, and all the natives of dense hot jungles. the river is a grand feature, broad, rocky, deep, swift, and broken by enormous boulders of rock; its waters were of a pale opal green, probably from the materials of the soft micaceous rocks through which it flows. a cane bridge crosses it,* [whence the name of bhomsong samdong, the latter word meaning bridge.] but had been cut away (in feigned distrust of us), and the long canes were streaming from their attachments on either shore down the stream, and a triangular raft of bamboo was plying instead, drawn to and fro by means of a strong cane. soon after arriving i received a present from the rajah, consisting of a brick of tibet tea, eighty pounds of rancid yak butter, in large squares, done up in yak-hair cloth, three loads of rice, and one of murwa for beer; rolls of bread,* [these rolls, or rather, sticks of bread, are made in tibet, of fine wheaten flour, and keep for a long time: they are sweet and good, but very dirtily prepared.] fowls, eggs, dried plums, apricots, jujubes, currants, and sultana raisins, the latter fruits purchased at lhassa, but imported thither from western tibet; also some trays of coarse milk-white crystallised salt, as dug in tibet. in the evening we were visited by the dewan, the head and front of all our sikkim difficulties, whose influence was paramount with the rajah, owing to the age and infirmities of the latter, and his devotion to religion, which absorbed all his time and thoughts. the dewan was a good-looking tibetan, very robust, fair, muscular and well fleshed; he had a very broad tartar face, quite free of hair; a small and beautifully formed mouth and chin, very broad cheekbones, and a low, contracted forehead: his manners were courteous and polite, but evidently affected, in assumption of better breeding than he could in reality lay claim to. the rajah himself was a tibetan of just respectable extraction, a native of the sokpo province, north of lhassa: his dewan was related to one of his wives, and i believe a lhassan by birth as well as extraction, having probably also kashmir blood in him.* [the tibetans court promiscuous intercourse between their families and the kashmir merchants who traverse their country.] though minister, he was neither financier nor politician, but a mere plunderer of sikkim, introducing his relations, and those whom he calls so, into the best estates in the country, and trading in great and small wares, from a tibet pony to a tobacco pipe, wholesale and retail. neither he nor the rajah are considered worthy of notice by the best tibet families or priests, or by the chinese commissioners settled in lhassa and jigatzi. the latter regard sikkim as virtually english, and are contented with knowing that its ruler has no army, and with believing that its protectors, the english, could not march an army across the himalaya if they would. the dewan, trading in wares which we could supply better and cheaper, naturally regarded us with repugnance, and did everything in his power to thwart dr. campbell's attempts to open a friendly communication between the sikkim and english governments. the rajah owed everything to us, and was, i believe, really grateful; but he was a mere cipher in the hands of his minister. the priests again, while rejoicing in our proximity, were apathetic, and dreaded the more active dewan; and the people had long given evidence of their confidence in the english. under these circumstances it was in the hope of gaining the rajah's own ear, and representing to him the advantages of promoting an intercourse with us, and the danger of continuing to violate the terms of our treaty, that dr. campbell had been authorised by government to seek an interview with his highness. at present our relations were singularly infelicitous. there was no agent on the sikkim rajah's part to conduct business at dorjiling, and the dewan insisted on sending a creature of his own, who had before been dismissed for insolence. malefactors who escaped into sikkim were protected, and our police interrupted in the discharge of their duties; slavery was practised; and government communications were detained for weeks and months under false pretences. in his interviews with us the dewan appeared to advantage: he was fond of horses and shooting, and prided himself on his hospitality. we gained much information from many conversations with him, during which politics were never touched upon. our queries naturally referred to tibet and its geography, especially its great feature the yarou tsampoo river; this he assured us was the burrampooter of assam, and that no one doubted it in that country. lhassa he described as a city in the bottom of a flat-floored valley, surrounded by lofty snowy mountains: neither grapes, tea, silk, or cotton are produced near it, but in the tartchi province of tibet, one month's journey east of lhassa, rice, and a coarse kind of tea are both grown. two months' journey north-east of lhassa is siling, the well-known great commercial entrepot* [the entrepot is now removed to tang-keou-eul.--see huc and gabet.] in west china; and there coarse silk is produced. all tibet he described as mountainous, and an inconceivably poor country: there are no plains, save flats in the bottoms of the valleys, and the paths lead over lofty mountains. sometimes, when the inhabitants are obliged from famine to change their habitations in winter, the old and feeble are frozen to death, standing and resting their chins on their staves; remaining as pillars of ice, to fall only when the thaw of the ensuing spring commences. we remained several days at bhomsong, awaiting an interview with the rajah, whose movements the dewan kept shrouded in mystery. on dr. campbell's arrival at this river a week before, he found messengers waiting to inform him that the rajah would meet him here; this being half way between dorjiling and tumloong. thenceforward every subterfuge was resorted to by the dewan to frustrate the meeting; and even after the arrival of the rajah on the east bank, the dewan communicated with dr. campbell by shooting across the river arrows to which were attached letters, containing every possible argument to induce him to return to dorjiling; such as that the rajah was sick at tumloong, that he was gone to tibet, that he had a religious fast and rites to perform, etc. etc. one day we walked up the teesta to the rumphiup river, a torrent from mainom mountain to the west; the path led amongst thick jungle of _wallichia_ palm, prickly rattan canes, and the _pandanus,_ or screw-pine, called "borr," which has a straight, often forked, palm-like trunk, and an immense crown of grassy saw-edged leaves four feet long: it bears clusters of uneatable fruit as large as a man's fist, and their similarity to the pine-apple has suggested the name of "borr" for the latter fruit also, which has for many years been cultivated in sikkim, and yields indifferent produce. beautiful pink balsams covered the ground, but at this season few other showy plants were in flower: the rocks were chlorite, very soft and silvery, and so curiously crumpled and contorted as to appear as though formed of scaled of mica crushed together, and confusedly arranged in layers: the strike was north-west, and dip north-east from degrees to degrees. messengers from the dewan overtook us at the river to announce that the rajah was prepared and waiting to give us a reception; so we returned, and i borrowed a coat from dr. campbell instead of my tattered shooting-jacket; and we crossed the river on the bamboo-raft. as it is the custom on these occasions to exchange presents, i was officially supplied with some red cloth and beads: these, as well as dr. campbell's present, should only have been delivered during or after the audience; but our wily friend the dewan here played us a very shabby trick; for he managed that our presents should be stealthily brought in before our appearance, thus giving to the by-standers the impression of our being tributaries to his highness! the audience chamber was a mere roofed shed of neat bamboo wattle, about twenty feet long: two bhoteeas in scarlet. jackets, and with bows in their hands, stood on each side of the door, and our own chairs were carried before us for our accommodation. within was a square wicker throne, six feet high, covered with purple silk, brocaded with dragons in white and gold, and overhung by a canopy of tattered blue silk, with which material part of the walls also was covered. an oblong box (containing papers) with gilded dragons on it, was placed on the stage or throne, and behind it was perched cross-legged, an odd, black, insignificant looking old man, with twinkling upturned eyes: he was swathed in yellow silk, and wore on his head a pink silk hat with a flat broad crown, from all sides of which hung floss silk. this was the rajah, a genuine tibetan, about seventy years old. on some steps close by, and ranged down the apartment, were his relations, all in brocaded silk robes reaching from the throat to the ground, and girded about the waist; and wearing caps similar to that of the rajah. kajees, counsellors, and shaven mitred lamas were there, to the number of twenty, all planted with their backs to the wall, mute and motionless as statues. a few spectators were huddled together at the lower end of the room, and a monk waved about an incense pot containing burning juniper and other odoriferous plants. altogether the scene was solemn and impressive: as campbell well expressed it, the genius of lamaism reigned supreme. we saluted, but received no complimentary return; our chairs were then placed, and we seated ourselves, when the dewan came in, clad in a superb purple silk robe, worked with circular gold figures, and formally presented us. the dewan then stood; and as the rajah did not understand hindoostanee, our conversation was carried on through the medium of a little bare-headed rosy-cheeked lama, named "tchebu," clad in a scarlet gown, who acted as interpreter. the conversation was short and constrained: tchebu was known as a devoted servant of the rajah and of the heir apparent; and in common with all the lamas he hates the dewan, and desires a friendly intercourse between sikkim and dorjiling. he is, further, the only servant of the rajah capable of conversing both in hindoo and tibetan, and the uneasy distrustful look of the dewan, who understands the latter language only, was very evident. he was as anxious to hurry over the interview, as dr. campbell and tchebu were to protract it; it was clear, therefore, that nothing satisfactory could be done under such auspices. as a signal for departure white silk scarfs were thrown over our shoulders, according to the established custom in tibet, sikkim, and bhotan; and presents were made to us of china silks, bricks of tea, woollen cloths, yaks, ponies, and salt, with worked silk purses and fans for mrs. campbell; after which we left. the whole scene was novel and very curious. we had had no previous idea of the extreme poverty of the rajah, of his utter ignorance of the usages of oriental life, and of his not having anyone near to instruct him. the neglect of our salutation, and the conversion of our presents into tribute, did not arise from any ill-will: it was owing to the craft of the dewan in taking advantage of the rajah's ignorance of his own position and of good manners. miserably poor, without any retinue, taking no interest in what passes in his own kingdom, subsisting on the plainest and coarsest food, passing his time in effectually abstracting his mind from the consideration of earthly things, and wrapt in contemplation, the sikkim rajah has arrived at great sanctity, and is all but prepared for that absorption into the essence of boodh, which is the end and aim of all good boodhists. the mute conduct of his court, who looked like attendants at an inquisition, and the profound veneration expressed in every word and gesture of those who did move and speak, recalled a pekin reception. his attendants treated him as a being of a very different nature from themselves; and well might they do so, since they believe that he will never die, but retire from the world only to re-appear under some equally sainted form. though productive of no immediate good, our interview had a very favourable effect on the lamas and people, who had long wished it; and the congratulations we received thereon during the remainder of our stay in sikkim were many and sincere. the lamas we found universally in high spirits; they having just effected the marriage of the heir apparent, himself a lama, said to possess much ability and prudence, and hence being very obnoxious to the dewan, who vehemently opposed the marriage. as, however, the minister had established his influence over the youngest, and estranged the rajah from his eldest son, and was moreover in a fair way for ruling sikkim himself, the church rose in a body, procured a dispensation from lhassa for the marriage of a priest, and thus hoped to undermine the influence of the violent and greedy stranger. in the evening, we paid a farewell visit to the dewan, whom we found in a bamboo wicker-work hut, neatly hung with bows, arrows, and round lepcha shields of cane, each with a scarlet tuft of yak-hair in the middle; there were also muskets, tibetan arms, and much horse gear; and at one end was a little altar, with cups, bells, pastiles, and images. he was robed in a fawn-coloured silk gown, lined with the softest of wool, that taken from unborn lambs: like most tibetans, he extracts all his beard with tweezers; an operation he civilly recommended to me, accompanying the advice with the present of a neat pair of steel forceps. he aspires to be considered a man of taste, and plays the tibetan guitar, on which he performed some airs for our amusement: the instrument is round-bodied and long-armed, with six strings placed in pairs, and probably comes from kashmir: the tibetan airs were simple and quite pretty, with the time well marked. during our stay at bhomsong, the weather was cool, considering the low elevation ( , feet), and very steady; the mean temperature was . degrees, the maximum . degrees, the minimum . degrees. the sun set behind the lofty mountains at p.m., and in the morning a thick, wet, white, dripping fog settled in the bottom of the valley, and extended to or feet above the river-bed; this was probably caused by the descent of cold currents into the humid gorge: it was dissipated soon after sunrise, but formed again at sunset for a few minutes, giving place to clear starlight nights. a thermometer sunk two feet seven inches, stood at degrees. the temperature of the water was pretty constant at degrees: from here to the plains of india the river has a nearly uniform fall of feet in sixty-nine miles, or sixteen feet to a mile: were its course straight for the same distance, the fall would be feet in forty miles, or twenty-five feet to a mile. dr. campbell's object being accomplished, he was anxious to make the best use of the few days that remained before his return to dorjiling, and we therefore arranged to ascend mainom, and visit the principal convents in sikkim together, after which he was to return south, whilst i should proceed north to explore the south flank of kinchinjunga. for the first day our route was that by which i had arrived. we left on christmas-day, accompanied by two of the rajah's, or rather dewan's officers, of the ranks of dingpun and soupun, answering to those of captain and lieutenant; the titles were, however, nominal, the rajah having no soldiers, and these men being profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of war or drill. they were splendid specimens of sikkim bhoteeas (i.e. tibetans, born in sikkim, sometimes called arrhats), tall, powerful, and well built, but insolent and bullying: the dingpun wore the lepcha knife, ornamented with turquoises, together with chinese chopsticks. near bhomsong, campbell pointed out a hot bath to me, which he had seen employed: it consisted of a hollowed prostrate tree trunk, the water in which was heated by throwing in hot stones with bamboo tongs. the temperature is thus raised to degrees, to which the patient submits at repeated intervals for several days, never leaving till wholly exhausted. these baths are called "sa-choo," literally "hot-water," in tibetan. we stopped to measure some splendid trees in the valley, and found the trunk of one to be forty-five feet round the buttresses, and thirty feet above them, a large size for the himalaya: they were a species of _terminalia (pentaptera),_ and called by the lepchas "sillok-kun," "kun" meaning tree. we slept at nampok, and the following morning commenced the ascent. on the way we passed the temple and lake of neongong; the latter is about yards round, and has no outlet. it contained two english plants, the common duckweed (_lemna minor_), and _potamogeton natans_: some coots were swimming in it, and having flushed a woodcock, i sent for my gun, but the lamas implored us not to shoot, it being contrary to their creed to take life wantonly. we left a great part of our baggage at neongong, as we intended to return there; and took up with us bedding, food, etc., for two days. a path hence up the mountain is frequented once a year by the lamas, who make a pilgrimage to the top for worship. the ascent was very gradual for feet. we met with snow at the level of dorjiling ( feet), indicating a colder climate than at that station, where none had fallen; the vegetation was, however, similar, but not so rich, and at feet trees common also to the top of sinchul appeared, with _r. hodgsoni,_ and the beautiful little winter-flowering primrose, _p. petiolaris,_ whose stemless flowers spread like broad purple stars on the deep green foliage. above, the path runs along the ridge of the precipices facing the south-east, and here we caught a glimpse of the great valley of the ryott, beyond the teesta, with tumloong, the rajah's residence, on its north flank, and the superb snowy peak of chola at its head. one of our coolies, loaded with crockery and various indispensables, had here a severe fall, and was much bruised; he however recovered himself, but not our goods. the rocks were all of chlorite slate, which is not usual at this elevation; the strike was north-west, and dip north-east. at feet various shrubby rhododendrons prevailed, with mountain-ash, birch, and dwarf-bamboo; also _r. falconeri,_ which grew from forty to fifty feet high. the snow was deep and troublesome, so we encamped at , feet, or feet below the top, in a wood of _pyrus, magnolia, rhododendron,_ and bamboo. as the ground was deeply covered with snow, we laid our beds on a thick layer of rhododendron twigs, bamboo, and masses of a pendent moss. we passed a very cold night, chiefly owing to damp, the temperature falling to degrees. on the following morning we scrambled through the snow, reaching the summit after an hour's very laborious ascent, and took up our quarters in a large wooden barn-like temple (_goompa_), built on a stone platform. the summit was very broad, but the depth of the snow prevented our exploring much, and the silver firs (_abies webbiana_) were so tall, that no view could be obtained, except from the temple. the great peak of kinchinjunga is in part hidden by those of pundim and nursing, but the panorama of snowy mountains is very grand indeed. the effect is quite deceptive; the mountains assuming the appearance of a continued chain, the distant snowy peaks being seemingly at little further distance than the nearer ones. the whole range (about twenty-two miles nearer than at dorjiling) appeared to rise uniformly and steeply out of black pine forests, which were succeeded by the russet-brown of the rhododendron shrubs, and that again by tremendous precipices and gulleys, into which descended mighty glaciers and perpetual snows. this excessive steepness is however only apparent, being due to foreshortening. the upper , feet of kinchin, and the tops of pundim, kubra, and junnoo, are evidently of granite, and are rounded in outline: the lower peaks again, as those of nursing, etc., present rugged pinnacles of black and red stratified rocks, in many cases resting on white granite, to which they present a remarkable contrast. the general appearance was as if kinchin and the whole mass of mountains clustered around it, had been up-heaved by white granite, which still forms the loftiest summits, and has raised the black stratified rocks in some places to , feet in numerous peaks and ridges. one range presented on every summit a cap of black stratified rocks of uniform inclination and dip, striking north-west, with precipitous faces to the south-west: this was clear to the naked eye, and more evident with the telescope, the range in question being only fifteen miles distant, running between pundim and nursing. the fact of the granite forming the greatest elevation must not be hastily attributed to that igneous rock having burst through the stratified, and been protruded beyond the latter: it is much more probable that the upheaval of the granite took place at a vast depth, and beneath an enormous pressure of stratified rocks and perhaps of the ocean; since which period the elevation of the whole mountain chain, and the denudation of the stratified rocks, has been slowly proceeding. to what extent denudation has thus lowered the peaks we dare scarcely form a conjecture; but considering the number and variety of the beds which in some places overlie the gneiss and granite, we may reasonably conclude that many thousand feet have been removed. it is further assumable that the stratified rocks originally took the forms of great domes, or arches. the prevailing north-west strike throughout the himalaya vaguely indicates a general primary arrangement of the curves into waves, whose crests run north-west and south-cast; an arrangement which no minor or posterior forces have wholly disturbed, though they have produced endless dislocations, and especially a want of uniformity in the amount and direction of the dip. whether the loftiest waves were the result of one great convulsion, or of a long-continued succession of small ones, the effect would be the same, namely, that the strata over those points at which the granite penetrated the highest, would be the most dislocated, and the most exposed to wear during denudation. we enjoyed the view of this superb scenery till noon, when the clouds which had obscured dorjiling since morning were borne towards us by the southerly wind, rapidly closing in the landscape on all sides. at sunset they again broke, retreating from the northward, and rising from sinchul and dorjiling last of all, whilst a line of vapour, thrown by perspective into one narrow band, seemed to belt the singalelah range with a white girdle, darkened to black where it crossed the snowy mountains; and it was difficult to believe that this belt did not really hang upon the ranges from twenty to thirty miles off, against which it was projected; or that its true position was comparatively close to the mountain on which we were standing, and was due to condensation around its cool, broad, flat summit. as usual from such elevations, sunset produced many beautiful effects. the zenith was a deep blue, darkening opposite the setting sun, and paling over it into a peach colour, and that again near the horizon passing into a glowing orange-red, crossed by coppery streaks of cirrhus. broad beams of pale light shot from the sun to the meridian, crossing the moon and the planet venus. far south, through gaps in the mountains, the position of the plains of india, , feet below us, was indicated by a deep leaden haze, fading upwards in gradually paler bands (of which i counted fifteen) to the clear yellow of the sunset sky. as darkness came on, the mists collected around the top of mainom, accumulating on the windward side, and thrown off in ragged masses from the opposite. the second night we passed here was fine, and not very cold (the mean temperature being degrees) and we kept ourselves quite warm by pine-wood fires. on the following morning the sun tinged the sky of a lurid yellow-red: to the south-west, over the plains, the belts of leaden vapour were fewer (twelve being distinguishable) and much lower than on the previous evening, appearing as if depressed on the visible horizon. heavy masses of clouds nestled into all the valleys, and filled up the larger ones, the mountain tops rising above them like islands. the height of our position i calculated to be , feet. colonel waugh had determined that of the summit by trigonometry to be , feet, which probably includes the trees which cover it, or some rocky peaks on the broad and comparatively level surface. the mean temperature of the twenty-four hours was . degrees (max. . degrees/min. . degrees), mean dew-point . , and saturation . . the mercury suddenly fell below the freezing point at sunset; and from early morning the radiation was so powerful, that a thermometer exposed on snow sank to . degrees, and stood at . degrees, at a.m. the black bulb thermometer rose to degrees, at a.m. on the th, or . degrees above the temperature of the air in the shade. i did not then observe that of radiation from snow; but if, as we may assume, it was not less than on the following morning ( . degrees), we shall have a difference of . degrees fahr., in contiguous spots; the one exposed to the full effects of the sun, the other to that of radiation through a rarefied medium to a cloudless sky. on the th the black bulb thermometer, freely suspended over the snow and exposed to the sun, rose to degrees, or degrees above that of the air in the shade ( degrees); the radiating surface of the same snow in the shade being . degrees, or . degrees colder. having taken a complete set of angles and panoramic sketches from the top of mainom, with seventeen hourly observations, and collected much information from our guides, we returned on the th to our tents pitched by the temples at neongong; descending feet, a very severe shake along lepcha paths. in the evening the lamas visited us, with presents of rice, fowls, eggs, etc., and begged subscriptions for their temple which was then building, reminding dr. campbell that he and the governor-general had an ample share of their prayers, and benefited in proportion. as for me, they said, i was bound to give alms, as i surely needed praying for, seeing how i exposed myself; besides my having been the first englishman who had visited the snows of kinchinjunga, the holiest spot in sikkim. on the following morning we visited the unfinished temple. the outer walls were of slabs of stone neatly chiselled, but badly mortared with felspathic clay and pounded slate, instead of lime; the partition walls were of clay, shaped in moulds of wood; parallel planks, four feet asunder, being placed in the intended position of the walls, and left open above, the composition was placed in these boxes, a little at a time, and rammed down by the feet of many men, who walked round and round the narrow enclosure, singing, and also using rammers of heavy wood. the outer work was of good hard timber, of magnolia ("pendre-kun" of the lepchas) land oak ("sokka"). the common "ban," or lepcha knife, supplied the place of axe, saw, adze, and plane; and the graving work was executed with small tools, chiefly on toon (_cedrela_), a very soft wood (the "simal-kun" of the lepchas). this being a festival day, when the natives were bringing offerings to the altar, we also visited the old temple, a small wooden building. besides more substantial offerings, there were little cones of rice with a round wafer of butter at the top, ranged on the altar in order.* [the worshippers, on entering, walk straight up to the altar, and before, or after, having deposited their gifts, they lift both hands to the forehead, fall on their knees, and touch the ground three times with both head and hands, raising the body a little between each prostration. they then advance to the head lama, kotow similarly to him, and he blesses them, laying both hands on their heads and repeating a short formula. sometimes the dorje is used in blessing, as the cross is in europe, and when a mass of people request a benediction, the lama pronounces it from the door of the temple with outstretched arms, the people all being prostrate, with their foreheads touching the ground.] six lamas were at prayer, psalms, and contemplation, sitting cross-legged on two small benches that ran down the building: one was reading, with his hand and fore-finger elevated, whilst the others listened; anon they all sang hymns, repeated sacred or silly precepts to the bystanders, or joined in a chorus with boys, who struck brass cymbals, and blew straight copper trumpets six feet long, and conch-shells mounted with broad silver wings, elegantly carved with dragons. there were besides manis, or praying-cylinders, drums, gongs, books, and trumpets made of human thigh-bones, plain or mounted in silver. throughout sikkim, we were roused each morning at daybreak by this wild music, the convents being so numerous that we were always within hearing of it. to me it was always deeply impressive, sounding so foreign, and awakening me so effectually to the strangeness of the wild land in which i was wandering, and of the many new and striking objects it contained. after sleep, too, during which the mind has either been at rest, or carried away to more familiar subjects, the feelings of loneliness and sometimes even of despondency, conjured up, by this solemn music, were often almost oppressive. ascending from neongong, we reached that pass from the teesta to the great rungeet, which i had crossed on the nd; and this time we had a splendid view, down both the valleys, of the rivers, and the many spars from the ridge communicating between tendong and mainom, with many scattered villages and patches of cultivation. near the top i found a plant of "praong," (a small bamboo), in full seed; this sends up many flowering branches from the root, and but few leaf-bearing ones; and after maturing its seed, and giving off suckers from the root, the parent plant dies. the fruit is a dark, long grain, like rice; it is boiled and made into cakes, or into beer, like murwa. looking west from the summit, no fewer than ten monastic establishments with their temples, villages and cultivation, were at once visible, in the valley of the great rungeet, and in those of its tributaries; namely, changachelling, raklang, dholi, molli, catsuperri, dhoobdi, sunnook, powhungri, pemiongchi and tassiding, all of considerable size, and more or less remarkable in their sites, being perched on spurs or peaks at elevations varying from to feet, and commanding splendid prospects. we encamped at lingcham, where i had halted on the st, and the weather being fine, i took bearings of all the convents and mountains around. there is much cultivation here, and many comparatively rich villages, all occupying flat-shouldered spurs from mainom. the houses are large, and the yards are full of animals familiar to the eye but not to the ear. the cows of sikkim, though generally resembling the english in stature, form, and colour, have humps, and grunt rather than low; and the cocks wake the morning with a prolonged howling screech, instead of the shrill crow of chanticleer. hence we descended north-west to the great rungeet, opposite tassiding; which is one of the oldest monastic establishments in sikkim, and one we were very anxious to visit. the descent lay through a forest of tropical trees, where small palms, vines, peppers, _pandanus,_ wild plantain, and _pothos,_ were interlaced in an impenetrable jungle, and air-plants clothed the trees. illustration--implements used in boodhist temples. praying cylinder in stand (see chapter vii); another to be carried in the hand; cymbals; bell; brass cup; three trumpets; conch; dorje. chapter xiv. tassiding, view of and from -- funereal cypress -- camp at sunnook -- hot vapours -- lama's house -- temples, decorations, altars, idols, general effect -- chaits -- date of erection -- plundered by ghorkas -- cross ratong -- ascend to pemiongchi -- relation of river-beds to strike of rocks -- slopes of ravines -- pemiongchi, view of -- vegetation -- elevation -- temple, decorations, etc. -- former capital of sikkim -- history of sikkim -- nightingales -- campbell departs -- tchonpong -- edgeworthia -- cross rungbee and ratong -- hoar-frost on plantains -- yoksun -- walnuts -- view -- funereal cypresses -- doobdi -- gigantic cypresses -- temples -- snow-fall -- sikkim, etc. -- toys. tassiding hill is the steep conical termination of a long spur from a pine-clad shoulder of kinchinjunga, called powhungri: it divides the great rungeet from its main feeder, the ratong, which rises from the south face of kinchin. we crossed the former by a bridge formed of two bamboo stems, slung by canes from two parallel arches of stout branches lashed together. the ascent for , feet was up a very steep, dry, zigzag path, amongst mica slate rocks (strike north-east), on which grew many tropical plants, especially the "tukla," (_rottlera tinctoria_), a plant which yields a brown dye. the top was a flat, curving north-west and south-east, covered with temples, chaits, and mendongs of the most picturesque forms and in elegant groups, and fringed with brushwood, wild plantains, small palms, and apple-trees. here i saw for the first time the funereal cypress, of which some very old trees spread their weeping limbs and pensile branchlets over the buildings.* [i was not then aware of this tree having been introduced into england by the intrepid mr. fortune from china; and as i was unable to procure seeds, which are said not to ripen in sikkim, it was a great and unexpected pleasure, on my return home, to find it alive and flourishing at kew.] it is not wild in sikkim, but imported there and into bhotan from tibet: it does not thrive well above feet elevation. it is called "tchenden" by the lepchas, bhoteeas, and tibetans, and its fragrant red wood is burnt in the temples. illustration--group of chaits at passiding. the lamas met us on the top of the hill, bringing a noble present of fowls, vegetables and oranges, the latter most acceptable after our long and hot march. the site is admirably chosen, in the very heart of sikkim, commanding a fine view, and having a considerable river on either side, with the power of retreating behind to the convents of sunnook and powhungri, which are higher up on the same spur, and surrounded by forest enough to conceal an army. considering the turbulent and warlike character of their neighbours, it is not wonderful that the monks should have chosen commanding spots, and good shelter for their indolent lives: for the same reason these monasteries secured views of one another: thus from tassiding the great temple of pemiongchi was seen towering feet over head, whilst to the north-west, up the course of the river, the hill-sides seemed sprinkled with monasteries. we camped on a saddle near the village of sunnook, at feet above the sea; and on the last day of the year we visited this most interesting monastic establishment: ascending from our camp along the ridge by a narrow path, cut here and there into steps, and passing many rocks covered with inscriptions, broken walls of mendongs, and other remains of the _via sacra_ between the village and temple. at one spot we found a fissure emitting hot vapour of the temperature of . degrees, that of the air being about degrees. it was simply a hole amongst the rocks; and near the rungeet a similar one is said to occur, whose temperature fluctuates considerably with the season. it is very remarkable that such an isolated spring should exist on the top of a sharp ridge, , feet above the bottom of this deep valley. the general arrangement on the summit was, first the lamas' houses with small gardens, then three large temples raised on rudely paged platforms, and beyond these, a square walled enclosure facing the south, full of chaits and mendongs, looking like a crowded cemetery, and planted with funereal cypress (_cupressus funebris_). the house of the principal lama was an oblong square, the lower story of stone, and the upper of wood: we ascended a ladder to the upper room, which was feet by wattled all round, with prettily latticed windows opening upon a bamboo balcony used for drying grain, under the eaves of the broad thatched roof. the ceiling (of neat bamboo work) was hung with glorious bunches of maize, yellow, red, and brown; an altar and closed wicker cage at one end of the room held the penates, and a few implements of worship. chinese carpets were laid on the floor for us, and the cans of murwa brought round. the lama, though one of the red sect, was dressed in a yellow flowered silk robe, but his mitre was red: he gave us much information relative to the introduction of boodhism into sikkim. the three temples stand about fifty yards apart, but are not parallel to one another, although their general direction is east and west.* [timkowski, in his travels through mongolia (i. p. ), says, "according to the rules of tibetan architecture, temples should face the south:" this is certainly not the rule in sikkim, nor, so far as i could learn, in tibet either.] each is oblong, and narrowed upwards, with the door at one end; the middle (and smallest) faces the west, the others the east: the doorways are all broad, low and deep, protected by a projecting carved portico. the walls are immensely thick, of well-masoned slaty stones; the outer surface of each slopes upwards and inwards, the inner is perpendicular. the roofs are low and thickly thatched, and project from eight to ten feet all round, to keep off the rain, being sometimes supported by long poles. there is a very low upper story, inhabited by the attendant monks and servants, accessible by a ladder at one end of the building. the main body of the temple is one large apartment, entered through a small transverse vestibule, the breadth of the temple, in which are tall cylindrical praying-machines. the carving round the doors is very beautiful, and they are gaudily painted and gilded. illustration--doorway. the northern temple is quite plain: the middle one is simply painted red, and encircled with a row of black heads, with goggle eyes and numerous teeth, on a white ground; it is said to have been originally dedicated to the evil spirits of the lepcha creed. the southern, which contains the library, is the largest and best, and is of an irregular square shape. the inside walls and floors are plastered with clay, and painted with allegorical representations of boodh, etc. from the vestibule the principal apartment is entered by broad folding-doors, studded with circular copper bosses, and turning on iron hinges. it is lighted by latticed windows, sometimes protected outside by a bamboo screen. owing to the great thickness of the walls (three to four feet), a very feeble light is admitted. in the principal temple, called "dugang," six hexagonal wooden columns, narrowed above, with peculiar broad transverse capitals, exquisitely gilded and painted, support the cross-beams of the roof, which are likewise beautifully ornamented. sometimes a curly-maned gilt lion is placed over a column, and it is always furnished with a black bushy tail: squares, diamonds, dragons, and groups of flowers, vermilion, green, gold, azure, and white, are dispersed with great artistic taste over all the beams; the heavier masses of colour being separated by fine white lines. illustration--southern temple. the altars and idols are placed at the opposite end; and two long parallel benches, like cathedral stalls, run down the centre of the building: on these the monks sit at prayer and contemplation, the head lama occupying a stall (often of very tasteful design) near the altar. illustration--middle temple. the principal boodh, or image, is placed behind the altar under a canopy, or behind a silk screen: lesser gods, and gaily dressed and painted effigies of sainted male or female persons are ranged on either side, or placed in niches around the apartment, sometimes with separate altars before them; whilst the walls are more or less covered with paintings of monks in prayer or contemplation. the principal boodh (sakya sing) sits cross-legged, with the left heel up: his left-hand always rests on his thigh, and holds the padmi or lotus and jewel, which is often a mere cup; the right-hand is either raised, with the two forefingers up, or holds the dorje, or rests on the calf of the upturned leg. sakya has generally curled hair, lamas have mitres, females various head-dresses; most wear immense ear-rings, and some rosaries. all are placed on rude pediments, so painted as to convey the idea of their rising out of the petals of the pink, purple, or white lotus. none are in any way disagreeable; on the contrary most have a calm and pleasing expression, suggestive of contemplation. illustration--altar and images. central figure akshobya, the first of the pancha boodha. the great or south temple contained a side altar of very elegant shape, placed before an image encircled by a glory. flowers, juniper, peacock's feathers, pastiles, and rows of brass cups of water were the chief ornaments of the altars, besides the instruments i have elsewhere enumerated. in this temple was the library, containing several hundred books, in pigeon-holes, placed in recesses.* [for a particular account of the images and decorations of these temples, sea dr. campbell's paper in "bengal asiatic society's trans.," may, . the principal object of veneration amongst the ningma or red sect of boodhists in sikkim and bhotan is gorucknath, who is always represented sitting cross-legged, holding the dorje in one hand, which is raised; whilst the left rests in the lap and holds a cup with a jewel in it. the left arm supports a trident, whose staff pierces three sculls (a symbol of shiva), a rosary hangs round his neck, and he wears a red mitre with a lunar crescent and sun in front.] illustration--plan of the south temple. a. entrance; b. four praying cylinders; c. altar, with seven brass cups of water; d. four columns; e. and f. images; g. library. the effect on entering these cold and gloomy temples is very impressive; the dugang in particular is exquisitely ornamented and painted, and the vista from the vestibule to the principal idol, of carved and coloured pillars and beams, is very picturesque. within, the general arrangement of the colours and gilding is felt to be harmonious and pleasing, especially from the introduction of slender white streaks between the contrasting masses of colour, as adopted in the great exhibition building of . it is also well worthy of remark that the brightest colours are often used in broad masses, and when so, are always arranged chromatically, in the sequence of the rainbow's hues, and are hence never displeasing to the eye. the hues, though bright, are subdued by the imperfect light: the countenances of the images are all calm, and their expression solemn. whichever way you turn, the eye is met by some beautiful specimen of colouring or carving, or some object of veneration. the effect is much heightened by the incense of juniper and sweet-smelling herbs which the priests burn on entering, by their grave and decorous conduct, and by the feeling of respect that is demanded by a religion which theoretically inculcates and adores virtue in the abstract, and those only amongst men who practise virtue. to the idol itself the boodhist attaches no real importance; it is an object of reverence, not of worship, and no virtue or attribute belong to it _per se_; it is a symbol of the creed, and the adoration is paid to the holy man whom it represents. beyond the temples are the chaits and mendongs, scattered without much order; and i counted nearly twenty-five chaits of the same form,* [in sikkim the form of the cube alone is always strictly preserved; that of the pyramid and hemisphere being often much modified. the cube stands on a flight of usually three steps, and is surmounted by a low pyramid of five steps; on this is placed a swelling, urn-shaped body, which represents the hemisphere, and is surmounted by another cube. on the latter is a slender, round or angled spire (represented by a pyramid in burma), crowned with a crescent and disc, or sun, in moon. generally, the whole is of stone, with the exception of the spire, which is of wood, painted red.] between eight and thirty feet high. the largest is consecrated to the memory of the rajah's eldest son, who, however, is not buried here. a group of these structures is, as i have often remarked, extremely picturesque, and those at tassiding, from their number, variety, and size, their commanding and romantic position, and their being interspersed with weeping cypresses, are particularly so. the tassiding temples and convents were founded upwards of years ago, by the lamas who accompanied the first rajah to sikkim; and they have been continuously served by lamas of great sanctity, many of whom have been educated at lhassa. they were formerly very wealthy, but during the nepal war they were plundered of all their treasures, their silver gongs and bells, their best idols, dorjes, and manis, and stripped of their ornaments; since which time pemiongchi has been more popular. in proof of their antiquity, it was pointed out that most of the symbols and decorations were those of pure lama boodhism, as practised in tibet. although the elevation is but , feet, the weather was cold and raw, with rain at noon, followed by thunder and lightning. these electrical disturbances are frequent about midsummer and midwinter, prevailing over many parts of india. _january st_, .--the morning of the new year was bright and beautiful, though much snow had fallen on the mountains; and we left sunnook for pemiongchi, situated on the summit of a lofty spur on the opposite side of the ratong. we descended very steeply to the bed of the river (alt. , feet) which joins the great rungeet below the convents. the rocks were micaceous, dipping west and north-west degrees, and striking north and north-east, which direction prevailed for feet or so up the opposite spur. i had observed the same dip and stroke on the east flank of the tassiding spur; but both the ratong on its west side, and the great rungeet on the east, flow in channels that show no relation to either the dip or strike. i have generally remarked in sikkim that the channels of the rivers when cutting through or flowing at the base of bluff cliffs, are neither parallel to nor at right angles to the strike of the rocks forming the cliffs. i do not hence conclude that there is no original connection between the directions of the rivers, and the lines of fracture; but whatever may have once subsisted between the direction of the fissures and that of the strike, it is in the sikkim himalaya now wholly masked by shiftings, which accompanied subequent elevations and depressions. mr. hopkins has mathematically demonstrated that the continued exertion of a force in raising superimposed strata would tend to produce two classes of fractures in those strata; those of the first order at right angles to the direction of the wave or ridge (or line of strike); those of the second order parallel to the strike. supposing the force to be withdrawn after the formation of the two fractures, the result would be a ridge, or mountain chain, with diverging fissures from the summit, crossed by concentric fissures; and the courses which the rivers would take in flowing down the ridge, would successively be at right angles and parallel to the strike of the strata. now, in the himalaya, a prevalent strike to the north-west has been recognised in all parts of the chain, but it is everywhere interfered with by mountains presenting every other direction of strike, and by their dip never remaining constant either in amount or direction. consequently, as might be expected, the directions of the river channels bear no apparent relation to the general strike of the rocks. we crossed the ratong (twenty yards broad) by a cane bridge, suspended between two rocks of green chlorite, full of veins of granite. ascending, we passed the village of kameti on a spur, on the face of which were strewed some enormous detached blocks of white and pink stratified quartz: the rocks _in situ_ were all chlorite schist. looking across the valley to the flank of mainom, the disposition of the ridges and ravines on its sides was very evident; many of the latter, throughout their westerly course, from their commencement at , feet, to their debouchure in the great rungeet at , had a bluff, cliffy, northern flank, and a sloping southern one. the dip of the surfaces is, therefore, north-west, the exposure consequently of the villages which occupy terraces on the south flanks of the lateral valleys. the tassiding spur presented exactly the same arrangement of its ravines, and the dip of the rocks being north-west, it follows that the planes of the sloping surfaces coincide in direction (though not in amount of inclination) with that of the dip of the subjacent strata, which is anything but a usual phenomenon in sikkim. the ascent to pemiongchi continued very steep, through woods of oaks, chesnuts, and magnolias, but no tree-fern, palms, _pothos,_ or plantain, which abound at this elevation on the moister outer ranges of sikkim. the temple (elev. , feet) is large, eighty feet long, and in excellent order, built upon the lofty terminal point of the great east and west spur that divides the kulhait from the ratong and rungbee rivers; and the great changachelling temple and monastery stand on another eminence of the same ridge, two miles further west. the view of the snowy range from this temple is one of the finest in sikkim; the eye surveying at one glance the vegetation of the tropics and the poles. deep in the valleys the river-beds are but feet above the sea, and are choked with fig-trees, plantains, and palms; to these succeed laurels and magnolias, and higher up still, oaks, chesnuts, birches, etc.; there is, however, no marked line between the limits of these two last forests, which form the prevailing arboreous vegetation between and , feet, and give a lurid line to the mountains. pine forests succeed for feet higher, when they give place to a skirting of rhododendron and berberry. among these appear black naked rocks, rising up in cliffs, between which are gulleys, down which the snow now (on the st january) descended to , feet. the mountain flanks are much more steep and rocky than those at similar heights on the outer ranges, and cataracts are very numerous, and of considerable height, though small in volume. pemiongchi is at the same elevation as dorjiling, and the contrast between the shoulders of to , feet on kinchinjunga, and those of equal height on tendong and tonglo, is very remarkable: looking at the latter mountains from dorjiling, the observer sees no rock, waterfall, or pine, throughout their whole height; whereas the equally wooded flanks of these inner ranges are rocky, streaked with thread-like waterfalls, and bristling with silver firs. this temple, the most ancient in sikkim, is said to be years old; it stands on a paved platform, and is of the same form and general character as those of tassiding. inside, it is most beautifully decorated, especially the beams, columns, capitals and architraves, but the designs are coarser than those of tassiding.* [mr. hodgson informed me that many of the figures and emblems in this temple are those of tantrica boodhism, including shiva, devi, and other deities usually called brahminical; kakotak, or the snake king, a figure terminating below in a snake, is also seen; with the tiger, elephant, and curly-maned lion.] the square end of every beam in the roof is ornamented either with a lotus flower or with a tibetan character, in endless diversity of colour and form, and the walls are completely covered with allegorical paintings of lamas and saints expounding or in contemplation, with glories round their heads, mitred, and holding the dole and jewel. illustration--interior of the temple at pemiongchi. the principal image is a large and hideous figure of sakya-thoba, in a recess under a blue silk canopy, contrasting with a calm figure of the late rajah, wearing a cap and coronet. pemiongchi was once the capital of sikkim, and called the sikkim durbar: the rajah's residence was on a curious flat to the south of the temple, and a few hundred feet below it, where are the remains of (for this country) extensive walls and buildings. during the nepal war, the rajah was driven west across the teesta, whilst the ghorkas plundered tassiding, pemiongchi, changachelling, and all the temples and convents to the east of that river. it was then that the famous history of sikkim,* [this remarkable and beautiful manuscript was written on thick oblong sheets of tibet paper, painted black to resist decay, and the letters were yellow and gold. the nepalese soldiers wantonly employed the sheets to roof the sheds they erected, as a protection from the weather.] compiled by the lamas of pemiongchi, and kept at this temple, was destroyed, with the exception of a few sheets, with one of which dr. campbell and myself were each presented. we were told that the monks of changachelling and those of this establishmont had copied what remained, and were busy compiling from oral information, etc.: whatever value the original may have possessed, however, is irretrievably lost. a magnificent copy of the boodhist scriptures was destroyed at the same time; it consisted of volumes, each containing several hundred sheets of daphne paper. the ground about the temple was snowed; and we descended a few hundred feet, to encamp in a most picturesque grove, among chaits and inscribed stones, with a peep of the temples above. nightingales warbled deliciously night and morning, which rather surprised us, as the minimum thermometer fell to . degrees, and the ground next day was covered with hoar-frost; the elevation being , feet. these birds migrate hither in october and november, lingering in the himalayan valleys till the cold of early spring drives them further south, to the plains of india, whence they return north in march and april. on the nd of january i parted from my friend, who was obliged to hurry to the great annual fair at titalya. i regretted much being unable to accompany dr. campbell to this scene of his disinterested labours, especially as the nawab of moorshedabad was to be present, one of the few wealthy native princes of bengal who still keep a court worth seeing; but i was more anxious to continue my explorations northward till the latest moment: i however accompanied him for a short distance on his way towards dorjiling. we passed the old durbar, called phieungoong ("bamboo-hill," so named from the abundance of a small bamboo, "phieung.") the buildings, now in ruins, occupy a little marshy flat, hemmed in by slate rocks, and covered with brambles and _andromeda_ bushes. a wall, a bastion, and an arched gateway, are the only traces of fortifications; they are clothed with mosses, lichens, and ferns. a steep zigzag path, descending amongst long grass and scarlet rhododendrons, leads to the kaysing mendong.* [described at chapter xii.] here i bade adieu to dr. campbell, and toiled up the hill, feeling very lonely. the zest with which he had entered into all my pursuits, and the aid he had afforded me, together with the charm that always attends companionship with one who enjoys every incident of travel, had so attracted me to him that i found it difficult to recover my spirits. it is quite impossible for anyone who cannot from experience realise the solitary wandering life i had been leading for months, to appreciate the desolate feeling that follows the parting from one who has heightened every enjoyment, and taken far more than his share of every annoyance and discomfort: the few days we had spent together appeared then, and still, as months. on my return to pemiongchi i spent the remainder of the day sketching in the great temple, gossiping with the lamas, and drinking salted and buttered tea-soup, which i had begun to like, when the butter was not rancid. my route hence was to be along the south flank of kinchinjunga, north to jongri, which lay about four or five marches off, on the road to the long deserted pass of kanglanamo, by which i had intended entering sikkim from nepal, when i found the route up the yalloong valley impracticable. the village and ruined convents of yoksun lay near the route, and the temples of doobdi, catsuperri and molli, on the ratong river. i descended to the village of tchonpong (alt. , feet), where i was detained a day to obtain rice, of which i required ten days' supply for twenty-five people. on the way i passed groves of the paper-yielding _edgeworthia gardneri_: it bears round heads of fragrant, beautiful, yellow flowers, and would be a valuable acquisition to an english conservatory. from tchonpong we descended to the bed of the rungbee (alt. , feet), an affluent of the ratong, flowing in a deep galley with precipitous sides of mica schist full of garnets, dipping west and north-west degrees: it was spanned by a bridge of two loose bamboo culms, about fifteen yards long, laid across without handrails; after wet sand had been thrown on it the bare-footed coolies crossed easily enough, but i, having shoes on, required a hand to steady me. from this point we crossed a lofty spur to the ratong (alt. feet), where we encamped, the coolies being unable to proceed further on such very bad roads. this river descends from the snows of kinchin, and consequently retains the low temperature degrees, being fully degrees colder than the rungbee, which at an elevation of but feet appears very remarkable: it must however be observed that scarcely anywhere does the sun penetrate to the bottom of its valley. we encamped on a gravelly flat, fifty feet above the river, strewn with water-worn boulders, and so densely covered with tall _artemisiae,_ gigantic grasses, bamboo, plantain, fern, and acacia, that we had to clear a space in the jungle, which exhaled a rank heavy smell. hoar-frost formed copiously in the night, and though above the sun's rays were very powerful, they did not reach this spot till . a.m., the frost remaining in the shade till nearly a.m.; and this on plantains, and other inhabitants of hot-houses in england. hence i ascended to yoksun, one of the most curious and picturesque spots in sikkim, and the last inhabited place towards kinchinjunga. the path was excessively steep and rocky for the first mile or two, and then alternately steep and flat. mixed with many tropical trees, were walnuts of the common english variety; a tree, which, though planted here, is wild near dorjiling, where it bears a full-sized fruit, as hard as a hickory-nut: those i gathered in this place were similar, whereas in bhotan the cultivated nut is larger, thin-shelled, and the kernel is easily removed. we ascended one slope, of an angle of degrees minutes, which was covered with light black mould, and had been recently cleared by fire: we found millet now cultivated on it. from the top the view of the ratong valley was very fine: to the north lay yoksun, appearing from this height to occupy a flat, two miles long and one broad, girdled by steep mountains to the north and east, dipping very suddenly , feet to the ratong on the west. to the right was a lofty hill, crowned with the large temple and convents of doobdi, shadowed by beautiful weeping cypresses, and backed by lofty pine-clad mountains. northward, the gorge of the ratong opened as a gloomy defile, above which rose partially snowed mountains, which shut out kinchinjunga. to the west, massive pine-clad mountains rose steeply; while the little hamlet of lathiang occupied a remarkable shelf overhanging the river, appearing inaccessible except by ropes from above. south-west, the long spurs of molli and catsuperri, each crowned with convents or temples, descended from singalelah; and parallel to them on the south; but much longer and more lofty, was the great mountain range north of the kulbait, with the temples and convents of pemiongchi, and changachelling, towering in the air. the latter range dips suddenly to the great rungeet, where tassiding, with its chaits and cypresses, closed the view. the day was half cloud, half sunshine; and the various effects of light and shade, now bringing out one or other of the villages and temples, now casting the deep valleys into darker gloom, was wonderfully fine. yoksun was the earliest civilised corner of sikkim, and derived its name (which signifies in lepcha "three chiefs") from having been the residence of three lamas of great influence, who were the means of introducing the first tibetan sovereign into the country. at present it boasts of but little cultivation, and a scattered population, inhabiting a few hamlets, , feet above the sea: beautiful lanes and paths wind everywhere over the gentle slopes, and through the copsewood that has replaced the timber-trees of a former period. mendongs and chaits are very numerous, some of great size; and there are also the ruins of two very large temples, near which are some magnificent weeping cypresses, eighty feet high. these fine trees are landmarks from all parts of the flat; they form irregular cones of pale bright green, with naked gnarled tops, the branches weep gracefully, but not like the picture in macartney's embassy to china, whence originated the famous willow-pattern of our crockery. the ultimate branchlets are very slender and pendulous; my lepcha boys used to make elegant chaplets of them, binding the withes with scarlet worsted. the trunk is quite erect, smooth, cylindrical, and pine-like; it harbours no moss, but air-plants, orchids, and ferns, nestle on the limbs, and pendulous lichens, like our beard-moss, wave from the branches. in the evening i ascended to doobdi. the path was broad, and skilfully conducted up a very steep slope covered with forest: the top, which is , feet above the sea, and nearly above yoksun, is a broad partially paved platform, on which stand two temples, surrounded by beautiful cypresses: one of these trees (perhaps the oldest in sikkim) measured sixteen and a half feet in girth, at five feet from the ground, and was apparently ninety feet high: it was not pyramidal, the top branches being dead and broken, and the lower limbs spreading; they were loaded with masses of white-flowered coelogynes, and vacciniums. the younger trees were pyramidal. i was received by a monk of low degree, who made many apologies for the absence of his superior, who had been ordered an eight years' penance and seclusion from the world, of which only three had passed. on inquiry, i learnt the reason for this; the holy father having found himself surrounded by a family, to which there would have been no objection, had he previously obtained a dispensation. as, however, he had omitted this preliminary, and was able to atone by prayer and payment, he had been condemned to do penance; probably at his own suggestion, as the seclusion will give him sanctity, and eventually lead to his promotion, when his error shall have been forgotten. illustration--temple and weeping cypress. both temples are remarkable for their heavily ornamented, two-storied porticos, which occupy nearly the whole of one end. the interior decorations are in a ruinous condition, and evidently very old; they have no hindoo emblems. the head lama sent me a present of dried peaches, with a bag of walnuts, called "koal-kun" by the lepchas, and "taga-sching" by the bhoteeas; the two terminations alike signifying "tree." the view of yoksun from this height was very singular: it had the appearance of an enormous deposit banked up against a spur to the south, and mountains to the east, and apparently levelled by the action of water: this deposit seemed as though, having once completely filled the valley of the ratong, that river had cut a gorge feet deep between it and the opposite mountain. although the elevation is so low, snow falls abundantly at doobdi in winter; i was assured that it has been known of the depth of five feet, a statement i consider doubtful; the quantity is, however, certainly greater than at equal heights about dorjiling, no doubt owing to its proximity to kinchinjunga. i was amused here by watching a child playing with a popgun, made of bamboo, similar to that of quill, with which most english children are familiar, which propels pellets by means of a spring-trigger made of the upper part of the quill. it is easy to conclude such resemblances between the familiar toys of different countries to be accidental, but i question their being really so. on the plains of india, men may often be seen for hours together, flying what with us are children's kites; and i procured a jews'-harp from tibet. these are not the toys of savages, but the amusements of people more than half-civilised, and with whom we have had indirect communication from the earliest ages. the lepchas play at quoits, using slate for the purpose, and at the highland games of "putting the stone" and "drawing the stone." chess, dice, draughts, punch, hockey, and battledore and shuttlecock, are all indo-chinese or tartarian; and no one familiar with the wonderful instances of similarity between the monasteries, ritual, ceremonies, attributes, vestments, and other paraphernalia of the eastern and western churches, can fail to acknowledge the importance of recording even the most trifling analogies or similarities between the manners and customs of the young as well as of the old. chapter xv leave yoksun for kinchinjunga -- ascend ratong valley -- salt-smuggling over ratong -- landslips -- plants -- buckeem -- blocks of gneiss -- mon lepcha -- view -- weather -- view from gubroo -- kinchinjunga, tops of -- pundim cliff -- nursing -- vegetation of himalaya -- coup d'oeil of jongri -- route to yalloong -- arduous route of salt-traders from tibet -- kinchin, ascent of -- lichens -- surfaces sculptured by snow and ice -- weather at jongri -- snow -- shades for eyes. i left yoksun on an expedition to kinchinjunga on the th of january. it was evident that at this season i could not attain any height; but i was most anxious to reach the lower limit of that mass of perpetual snow which descends in one continuous sweep from , to , feet, and radiates from the summit of kinchin, along every spur and shoulder for ten to fifteen miles, towards each point of the compass. the route lay for the first mile over the yoksun flat, and then wound along the almost precipitous east flank of the ratong, feet above its bed, leading through thick forest. it was often difficult, crossing torrents by calms of bamboo, and leading up precipices by notched poles and roots of trees. i wondered what could have induced the frequenting of such a route to nepal, when there were so many better ones over singalelah, till i found from my guide that he had habitually smuggled salt over this pass to avoid the oppressive duty levelled by the dewan on all imports from tibet by the eastern passes: he further told me that it took five days to reach yalloong in nepal front yoksun, on the third of which the kanglanamo pass is crossed, which is open from april to november, but is always heavily snowed. owing to this duty, and the remoteness of the eastern passes, the people on the west side of the great rungeet were compelled to pay an enormous sum for salt; and the lamas of changachelling and pemiongchi petitioned dr. campbell to use his influence with the nepal court to have the kanglanamo pass re-opened, and the power of trading with the tibetans of wallanchoon, yangma, and kambachen, restored to them: the pass having been closed since the nepalese war, to prevent the sikkim people from kidnapping children and slaves, as was alleged to be their custom.* [an accusation in which there was probably some truth; for the sikkim dingpun, who guided dr. campbell and myself to mainom, tassiding, etc., since kidnapped, or caused to be abducted, a girl of brahmin parents, from the mai valley of nepal, a transaction which cost him some rupees. the nepal durbar was naturally furious, the more so as the dingpun had no caste, and was therefore abhorred by all brahmins. restitution was demanded through dr. campbell, who caused the incensed dingpun to give up his paramour and her jewels. he vowed vengeance against dr. campbell, and found means to gratify it, as i shall hereafter show.] we passed some immense landslips, which had swept the forest into the torrent, and exposed white banks of angular detritus of gneiss and granite: we crossed one yards long, by a narrow treacherous path, on a slope of degrees: the subjacent gneiss was nearly vertical, striking north-east. we camped at , feet, amongst a vegetation i little expected to find so close to the snows of kinchin; it consisted of oak, maple, birch, laurel, rhododendron, white _daphne,_ jessamine, _arum, begonia, cyrtandraceae,_ pepper, fig, _menispermum,_ wild cinnamon, _scitamineae,_ several epiphytic orchids, vines, and ferns in great abundance. on the following day, i proceeded north-west up the ratong river, here a furious torrent; which we crossed, and then ascended a very steep mountain called "mon lepcha." immense detached masses of gneiss, full of coarse garnets, lay on the slope, some of which were curiously marked with a series of deep holes, large enough to put one's fist in, and said to be the footprints of the sacred cow. they appeared to me to have been caused by the roots of trees, which spread over the rocks in these humid regions, and wear channels in the hardest material, especially when they follow the direction of its lamination or stratification. i encamped at a place called buckeem (alt. , ft.), in a forest of _abies brunoniana_ and _webbiana,_ yew, oak, various rhododendrons, and small bamboo. snow lay in patches at feet, and the night was cold and clear. on the following morning i continued the ascent, alternately up steeps and along perfectly level shelves, on which were occasionally frozen pools, surrounded with dwarf juniper and rhododendrons. across one i observed the track of a yak in the snow; it presented two ridges, probably from the long hair of this animal, which trails on the ground, sweeping the snow from the centre of its path. at , feet the snow lay deep and soft in the woods of silver fir, and the coolies waded through it with difficulty. enormous fractured boulders of gneiss were frequent over the whole of mon lepcha, from to , feet: they were of the same material as the rock _in situ,_ and as unaccountable in their origin as the loose blocks on dorjiling and sinchul spurs at similar elevations, often cresting narrow ridges. i measured one angular detached block, forty feet high, resting on a steep narrow shoulder of the spur, in a position to which it was impossible it could have rolled; and it is equally difficult to suppose that glacial ice deposited it feet above the bottom of the gorge, except we conclude the valley to have been filled with ice to that depth. a glance at the map will show that mon lepcha is remarkably situated, opposite the face of kinchinjunga, and at the great bend of the ratong. had that valley ever been filled with water during a glacial period, mon lepcha would have formed a promontory, and many floating bergs from kinchin would have been stranded on its flank: but i nowhere observed these rocks to be of so fine a granite as i believe the upper rocks of kinchin to be, and i consequently cannot advance even that far-fetched solution with much plausibility. as i ascended, the rocks became more granitic, with large crystals of mica. the summit was another broad bare flat, elevated , feet, and fringed by a copse of rose, berberry, and very alpine rhododendrons: the himalayan heather (_adromeda fastigiata_) grew abundantly here, affording us good fuel. the toilsome ascent through the soft snow and brushwood delayed the coolies, who scarcely accomplished five miles in the day. some of them having come up by dark, i prepared to camp on the mountain-top, strewing thick masses of _andromeda_ and moss (which latter hung in great tufts from the bushes) on the snow; my blankets bad not arrived, but there was no prospect of a snow-storm. the sun was powerful when i reached the summit, and i was so warm that i walked about barefoot on the frozen snow without inconvenience, preferring it to continuing in wet stockings: the temperature at the time was . degrees, with a brisk south-east moist wind, and the dew point . degrees. the night was magnificent, brilliant starlight, with a pale mist over the mountains: the thermometer fell to . degrees at . p.m., and one laid upon wood with its bulb freely exposed, sank to . degrees: the snow sparkled with broad flakes of hoar-frost in the full moon, which was so bright, that i recorded my observations by its light. owing to the extreme cold of radiation, i passed a very uncomfortable night. the minimum thermometer fell to degrees in shade.* [at sunrise the temperature was . degrees; that of grass, cleared on the previous day from snow, and exposed to the sky, . degrees; that on wool, . degrees; and that on the surface of the snow, . degrees.] the sky was clear; and every rock, leaf, twig, blade of grass, and the snow itself, were covered with broad rhomboidal plates of hoar-frost, nearly one-third of an inch across: while the metal scale of the thermometer instantaneously blistered my tongue. as the sun rose, the light reflected from these myriads of facets had a splendid effect. before sunrise the atmosphere was still, and all but cloudless. to the south-east were visible the plains of india, at least miles distant; where, as usual, horizontal layers of leaden purple vapour obscured the horizon: behind these the sun rose majestically, instantly dispersing them, while a thin haze spread over all the intervening mountains, from its slanting beams reaching me through otherwise imperceptible vapours: these, as the sun mounted higher, again became invisible, though still giving that transparency to the atmosphere and brilliant definition of the distances, so characteristic of a damp, yet clear day. mon lepcha commands a most extensive view of sikkim, southward to dorjiling. at my feet lay the great and profound valley of the ratong, a dark gulf of vegetation. looking northward, the eye followed that river to the summit of kinchinjunga (distant eighteen miles), which fronts the beholder as mont blanc does when seen from the mountains on the opposite side of the valley of chamouni. to the east are the immense precipices and glaciers of pundim, and on the west those of kubra, forming great supporters to the stupendous mountain between them. mon lepcha itself is a spur running south-east from the kubra shoulder: it is very open, and covered with rounded hills for several miles further north, terminating in a conspicuous conical black hummock* [this i have beau told is the true kubra; and the great snowy mountain behind it, which i here, in conformity with the dorjiling nomenclature, call kubra, has no name, being considered a part of kinchin.] called gubroo, of , feet elevation, which presents a black cliff to the south. kinchinjunga rises in three heads, of nearly equal height,* [the eastern and western tops, are respectively , and , feet above the level of the sea.] which form a line running north-west. it exposes many white or grey rocks, bare of snow, and disposed in strata* [i am aware that the word strata is inappropriate here; the appearance of stratification or bedding, if it indicate any structure of the rock, being, i cannot doubt, due to that action which gives parallel cleavage planes to granite in many parts of the world, and to which the so-called lamination or foliation of slate and gneiss is supposed by many geologists to be due. it is not usual to find this structure so uniformly and conspicuously developed through large masses of granite, as it appeared to me to be on the sides of kinchinjunga and on the top of junnoo, as seen from the choonjerma pass (chapter xi, plate); but it is sometimes very conspicuous, and nowhere more than in the descent of the grimsel towards meyringen, where the granite on the east flank of that magnificent gorge seems cleft into parallel nearly vertical strata.] sloping to the west; the colour of all which above , feet, and the rounded knobbed form of the summit, suggest a granitic formation. lofty snowed ridges project from kubra into the ratong valley, presenting black precipices of stratified rocks to the southward. pundim has a very grand appearance; being eight miles distant, and nearly feet above mon lepcha, it subtends an angle of degrees; while kinchin top, though , feet higher than mon lepcha, being eighteen miles distant, rises only degrees minutes above the true horizon: these angular heights are too small to give much grandeur and apparent elevation to mountains, however lofty; nor would they do so in this case, were it not that the ratong valley which intervenes, is seen to be several thousand feet lower, and many degrees below the real horizon. illustration--kinchinjunga and pundim from mon lepcha. pundim has a tremendous precipice to the south, which, to judge from its bareness of snow, must be nearly perpendicular; and it presented a superb geological section. the height of this precipice i found by angles with a pocket sextant to be upwards of , feet, and that of its top to be , above the sea, and consequently only feet less than that of the summit of pundim itself (which is , feet). this cliff is of black stratified rocks, sloping to the west, and probably striking north-west; permeated from top to bottom by veins of white granite, disposed in zigzag lines, which produce a contortion of the gneiss, and give it a marbled appearance. the same structure may be seen in miniature on the transported blocks which abound in the sikkim rivers; where veins of finely grained granite are forced in all directions through the gneiss, and form parallel seams or beds between the laminae of that rock, united by transverse seams, and crumpling up the gneiss itself, like the crushed leaves of a book. the summit of pundim itself is all of white rock, rounded in shape, and forming a cap to the gneiss, which weathers into precipices. a succession of ridges, , to , feet high, presented a line of precipices running south from pundim for several miles: immense granite veins are exposed on their surfaces, and they are capped by stratified rocks, sloping to the east, and apparently striking to the north-west, which, being black, contrast strongly with the white granite beneath them: these ridges, instead of being round-topped, are broken into splintered crags, behind which rises the beautiful conical peak of nursing, , feet above the sea, eight miles distant, and subtending an angle of degrees minutes. at the foot of these precipices was a very conspicuous series of lofty moraines, round whose bases the ratong wound; these appeared of much the same height, rising several hundred feet above the valley: they were comparatively level-topped, and had steep shelving rounded sides. i have been thus particular in describing the upper ratong valley, because it drains the south face of the loftiest mountain on the globe; and i have introduced angular heights, and been precise in my details, because the vagueness with which all terms are usually applied to the apparent altitude and steepness of mountains and precipices, is apt to give false impressions. it is essential to attend to such points where scenery of real interest and importance is to be described. it is customary to speak of peaks as towering in the air, which yet subtend an angle of very few degrees; of almost precipitous ascents, which, when measured, are found to be slopes of degrees or degrees; and of cliffs as steep and stupendous, which are inclined at a very moderate angle. the effect of perspective is as often to deceive in details as to give truth to general impressions; and those accessories are sometimes wanting in nature, which, when supplied by art, give truth to the landscape. thus, a streak of clouds adds height to a peak which should appear lofty, but which scarcely rises above the true horizon; and a belt of mist will sunder two snowy mountains which, though at very different distances, for want of a play of light and shade on their dazzling surfaces, and from the extreme transparency of the air in lofty regions, appear to be at the same distance from the observer. the view to the southward from mon lepcha, including the country between the sea-like plains of india and the loftiest mountain on the globe, is very grand, and neither wanting in variety nor in beauty. from the deep valleys choked with tropical luxuriance to the scanty yak pasturage on the heights above, seems but a step at the first _coup-d'oceil,_ but resolves itself on a closer inspection into five belts: , palm and plantain; , oak and laurel; , pine; , rhododendron and grass; and , rock and snow. from the bed of the ratong, in which grow palms with screw-pine and plantain, it is only seven miles in a direct line to the perpetual ice. from the plains of india, or outer himalaya, one may behold snowy peaks rise in the distance behind a foreground of tropical forest; here, on the contrary, all the intermediate phases of vegetation are seen at a glance. except in the himalaya this is no common phenomenon, and is owing to the very remarkable depth of the river-beds. that part of the valley of the ratong where tropical vegetation ceases, is but feet above the sea, and though fully fifty miles as the crow flies (and perhaps by the windings of the river) from the plains of india, is only eight in a straight line (and forty by the windings) from the snows which feed that river. in other words, the descent is so rapid, that in eight miles the ratong waters every variety of vegetation, from the lichen of the poles to the palm of the tropics; whilst throughout the remainder of its mountain course, it falls from to feet, flowing amongst tropical scenery, through a valley whose flanks rise from to , feet above its bed. from mon lepcha we proceeded north-west towards jongri, along a very open rounded bare mountain, covered with enormous boulders of gneiss, of which the subjacent rock is also composed. the soil is a thick clay full of angular stones, everywhere scooped out into little depressions which are the dry beds of pools, and are often strewed with a thin layer of pebbles. black tufts of alpine aromatic rhododendrons of two kinds (_r. anthopogon_ and _setosum_), with dwarf juniper, comprised all the conspicuous vegetation at this season. after a two hours' walk, keeping at , feet elevation, we sighted jongri.* [i am assured by capt. sherwill, who, in , proceeded along and surveyed the nepal frontier beyond this point to gubroo, that this is not jongri, but yangpoong. the difficulty of getting precise information, especially as to the names of seldom-visited spots, is very great. i was often deceived myself, undesignedly, i am sure, on the part of my informants; but in this case i have dr. campbell's assurance, who has kindly investigated the subject, that there is no mistake on my part. captain sherwill has also kindly communicated to me a map of the head waters of the rungbee, yungya, and yalloong rivers, of which, being more correct than my own, i have gladly availed myself for my map. gubroo, he informs me, is , feet in altitude, and dips in a precipice feet high, facing kubra, which prevented his exploring further north.] there were two stone huts on the bleak face of the spur, scarcely distinguishable at the distance of half a mile from the great blocks around them. to the north gubroo rose in dismal grandeur, backed by the dazzling snows of kubra, which now seemed quite near, its lofty top (alt. , feet) being only eight miles distant. much snow lay on the ground in patches, and there were few remains of herbaceous vegetation; those i recognised were chiefly of poppy, _potentilla,_ gentian, geranium, fritillary, _umbelliferae,_ grass, and sedges. on our arrival at the huts the weather was still fine, with a strong north-west wind, which meeting the warm moist current from the ratong valley, caused much precipitation of vapour. as i hoped to be able to visit the surrounding glaciers from this spot, i made arrangements for a stay of some days: giving up the only habitable hut to my people, i spread my blankets in a slope from its roof to the ground, building a little stone dyke round the skirts of my dwelling, and a fire-place in front. hence to yalloong in nepal, by the kanglanamo pass, is two days' march: the route crosses the singalelah range at an elevation of about , feet, south of kubra, and north of a mountain that forms a conspicuous feature south-west from jongri, as a crest of black fingered peaks, tipped with snow. it is difficult to conceive the amount of labour expended upon every pound of salt imported into this part of sikkim from tibet, and as an enumeration of the chief features of the routes it must follow, will give some idea of what the circuit of the loftiest mountain in the globe involves, i shall briefly allude to them; premising that the circuit of mont blanc may be easily accomplished in four days. the shortest route to yoksun (the first village south of kinchin) from the nearest tibetan village north of that mountain, involves a detour of one-third of the circumference of kinchin. it is evident that the most direct way must be that nearest the mountain-top, and therefore that which reaches the highest accessible elevation on its shoulders, and which, at the same time, dips into the shallowest valleys between those shoulders. the actual distance in a straight line is about fifty miles, from yoksun to the mart at or near tashirukpa. the marches between them are as follows:-- . to yalloong two days; crossing kanglanamo pass, , feet high. . to foot of choonjerma pass, descending to , feet. . cross choonjerma pass, , feet, and proceed to kambachen, , feet. . cross nango pass, , , and camp on yangma river, , feet. . ascend to foot of kanglachem pass, and camp at , feet. . cross kanglachem pass, probably , feet; and - . it is said to be three marches hence to the tibetan custom-house, and that two more snowy passes are crossed. this allows no day of rest, and gives only five miles--as the crow flies--to be accomplished each day, but i assume fully fourteen of road distance; the labour spent in which would accomplish fully thirty over good roads. four snowed passes at least are crossed, all above , feet, and after the first day the path does not descend below , feet. by this route about one-third of the circuit of kinchinjunga is accomplished. supposing the circuit were to be completed by the shortest practicable route, that is, keeping as near the summit as possible, the average time required for a man with his load would be upwards of a month. to reach tashirukpa by the eastern route from yoksun, being a journey of about twenty-five days, requires a long detour to the southward and eastward, and afterwards the ascent of the teesta valley, to kongra lama, and so north to the tibetan arun. my first operation after encamping and arranging my instruments, was to sink the ground thermometer; but the earth being frozen for sixteen inches, it took four men several hours' work with hammer and chisel, to penetrate so deep. there was much vegetable matter for the first eight or ten inches, and below that a fine red clay. i spent the afternoon, which was fine, in botanising. when the sun shone, the smell of the two rhododendrons was oppressive, especially as a little exertion at this elevation brings on headache. there were few mosses; but crustaceous lichens were numerous, and nearly all of them of scotch, alpine, european, and arctic kinds. the names of these, given by the classical linnaeus and wahlenberg, tell in some cases of their birth-places, in others of their hardihood, their lurid colours and weather-beaten aspects; such as _tristis, gelida, glacialis, arctica, alpina, saxatilis, polaris, frigida,_ and numerous others equally familiar to the scotch botanist. i recognised many as natives of the wild mountains of cape horn, and the rocks of the stormy antarctic ocean; since visiting which regions i had not gathered them. the lichen called _geographicus_ was most abundant, and is found to indicate a certain degree of cold in every latitude; descending to the level of the sea in latitude degrees north, and degrees south, but in lower latitudes only to be seen on mountains. it flourishes at , feet on the himalaya, ascending thence to , feet. its name, however, was not intended to indicate its wide range, but the curious maplike patterns which its yellow crust forms on the rocks. of the blocks of gneiss scattered over the jongri spur, many are twenty feet in diameter. the ridge slopes gently south-west to the choroong river, and more steeply north-east to the ratong, facing kinchin: it rises so very gradually to a peaked mountain between jongri and kubra, that it is not possible to account for the transport and deposit of these boulders by glaciers of the ordinary form, viz., by a stream of ice following the course of a valley; and we are forced to speculate upon the possibility of ice having capped the whole spur, and moved downwards, transporting blocks from the prominences on various parts of the spur. the cutting up of the whole surface of this rounded mountain into little pools, now dry, of all sizes, from ten to about one hundred yards in circumference, is a very striking phenomenon. the streams flow in shallow transverse valleys, each passing through a succession of such pools, accompanying a step-like character of the general surface. the beds are stony, becoming more so where they enter the pools, upon several of the larger of which i observed curving ridges of large stones, radiating outwards on to their beds from either margin of the entering stream: more generally large stones were deposited opposite every embouchure. this superficial sculpturing must have been a very recent operation; and the transport of the heavy stones opposite the entrance of the streams has been effected by ice, and perhaps by snow; just as the arctic ice strews the shores of the polar ocean with rocks. the weather had been threatening all day, northern and westerly currents contending aloft with the south-east trade-wind of sikkim, and meeting in strife over the great upper valley of the ratong. stately masses of white cumuli wheeled round that gulf of glaciers, partially dissipating in an occasional snow-storm, but on the whole gradually accumulating. on my arrival the thermometer was degrees, with a powerful sun shining, and it fell to degrees at p.m., when the north wind set in. at sunset the moon rose through angry masses of woolly cirrus; its broad full orb threw a flood of yellow light over the serried tops south of pundim; thence advancing obliquely towards nursing, "it stood tip-toe" for a few minutes on that beautiful pyramid of snow, whence it seemed to take flight and mount majestically into mid-air, illuminating kinchin, pundim, and kubra. i sat at the entrance of my gipsy-like hut, anxiously watching the weather, and absorbed in admiration of the moonrise, from which my thoughts were soon diverted by its fading light as it entered a dense mass of mare's-tail cirrus. it was very cold, and the stillness was oppressive. i had been urged not to attempt such an ascent in january, my provisions were scanty, firewood only to be obtained from some distance, the open undulating surface of jongri was particularly exposed to heavy snow-drifts, and the path was, at the best, a scarcely perceptible track. i followed every change of the wind, every fluctuation of the barometer and thermometer, each accession of humidity, and the courses of the clouds aloft. at p.m., the wind suddenly shifted to the west, and the thermometer instantly rose from degrees to degrees. after p.m., the temperature fell again, and the wind drew round from west by south to north-east, when the fog cleared off. the barometer rose no more than it usually does towards p.m., and though it clouded again, with the temperature at degrees, the wind seemed steady, and i went to bed with a relieved mind. _jan._ .--during the night the temperature fell to . degrees, and at a.m. was . degrees, falling again to degrees soon after. though clouds were rapidly coming up from the west and south-west, the wind remained northerly till a.m., when it shifted to south-west, and the temperature rose to degrees. as it continued fine, with the barometer high, i ventured on a walk towards gubroo, carefully taking bearings of my position. i found a good many plants in a rocky valley close to that mountain, which i in vain attempted to ascend. the air was degrees, with a strong and damp south-west wind, and the cold was so piercing, that two lads who were with me, although walking fast, became benumbed, and could not return without assistance. at a.m., a thick fog obliged us to retrace our steps: it was followed by snow in soft round pellets like sago, that swept across the hard ground. during the afternoon it snowed unceasingly, the wind repeatedly veering round the compass, always from west to east by south, and so by north to west again. the flakes were large, soft, and moist with the south wind, and small, hard, and dry with the north. glimpses of blue sky were constantly seen to the south, under the gloomy canopy above, but they augured no change. as darkness came on, the temperature fell to degrees, and it snowed very hard; at p.m., it was degrees, but rose afterwards to degrees. the night was very cold and wintry: i sat for some hours behind a blanket screen (which had to be shifted every few minutes) at my tent-door, keeping up a sulky fire, and peering through the snow for signs of improvement, but in vain. the clouds were not dense, for the moon's light was distinct, shining on the glittering snow-flakes that fell relentlessly: my anxiety was great, and i could not help censuring myself severely for exposing a party to so great danger at such a season. i found comfort in the belief that no idle curiosity had prompted me, and that with a good motive and a strong prestige of success, one can surmount a host of difficulties. still the snow fell; and my heart sank, as my fire declined, and the flakes sputtered on the blackening embers; my little puppy, who had gambolled all day amongst the drifting white pellets, now whined, and crouched under my thick woollen cloak; the inconstant searching wind drifted the snow into the tent, whose roof so bagged in with the accumulation that i had to support it with sticks, and dreaded being smothered, if the weight should cause it to sink upon my bed during my sleep. the increasing cold drove me, however, to my blankets, and taking the precaution of stretching a tripod stand over my head, so as to leave a breathing hole, by supporting the roof if it fell in, i slept soundly, with my dog at my feet. at sunrise the following morning the sky was clear, with a light north wind; about two feet of snow had fallen, the drifts were deep, and all trace of the path obliterated. the minimum thermometer had fallen to . degrees, the temperature rose to degrees at a.m., after which the wind fell, and with it the thermometer to degrees. soon, however, southerly breezes set in, bringing up heavy masses of clouds. my light-hearted companions cheerfully prepared to leave the ground; they took their appointed loads without a murmur, and sought protection for their eyes from the glare of the newly fallen snow, some with as much of my crape veil as i could spare, others with shades of brown paper, or of hair from the yaks' tails, whilst a few had spectacle-shades of woven hair; and the lepchas loosened their pigtails, and combed their long hair over their eyes and faces. it is from fresh-fallen snow alone that much inconvenience is felt; owing, i suppose, to the light reflected from the myriads of facets which the crystals of snow present. i have never suffered inconvenience in crossing beds of old snow, or glaciers with weathered surfaces, which absorb a great deal of light, and reflect comparatively little, and that little coloured green or blue. the descent was very laborious, especially through the several miles of bush and rock which lie below the summit: so that, although we started at a.m., it was dark by the time we reached buckeem, where we found two lame coolies, whom we had left on our way up, and who were keeping up a glorious fire for our reception. illustration--maitrya, the sixth or coming boodh. chapter xvi. ratong river below mon lepcha -- ferns -- vegetation of yoksun, tropical -- _araliaceae,_ fodder for cattle -- rice-paper plant -- geology of yoksun -- lake -- old temples -- funereal cypresses -- gigantic chait -- altars -- songboom -- weather -- catsuperri -- velocity of ratong -- worship at catsuperri lake -- scenery -- willow -- lamas and ecclesiastical establishments of sikkim -- tengling -- changachelling temples and monks -- portrait of myself on walls -- block of mica-schist -- lingcham kajee asks for spectacles -- hee-hill -- arrive at little rungeet -- at dorjiling -- its deserted and wintry appearance. on the following day we marched to yoksun: the weather was fair, though it was evidently snowing on the mountains above. i halted at the ratong river, at the foot of mon lepcha, where i found its elevation to be , feet; its edges were frozen, and the temperature of the water degrees; it is here a furious torrent flowing between gneiss rocks which dip south-south-east, and is flanked by flat-topped beds of boulders, gravel and sand, twelve to fourteen feet thick. its vegetation resembles that of dorjiling, but is more alpine, owing no doubt to the proximity of kinchinjunga. the magnificent _rhododendron argenteum_ was growing on its banks. on the other hand, i was surprised to see a beautiful fern (a _trichomanes,_ very like the irish one) which is not found at dorjiling. the same day, at about the same elevation, i gathered sixty species of fern, many of very tropical forms.* [they consisted of the above-mentioned _trichomanes,_ three _hymenophyllae, vittaria, pleopeltis,_ and _marattia,_ together with several _selaginellas._] no doubt the range of such genera is extended in proportion to the extreme damp and equable climate, here, as about dorjiling. tree-ferns are however absent, and neither plantains, epiphytical _orchideae,_ nor palms, are so abundant, or ascend so high as on the outer ranges. about yoksun itself, which occupies a very warm sheltered flat, many tropical genera occur, such as tall bamboos of two kinds, grasses allied to the sugar-cane, scarlet _erythrina,_ and various _araliaceae,_ amongst which was one species whose pith was of so curious a structure, that i had no hesitation in considering the then unknown chinese substance called rice-paper to belong to a closely allied plant.* [the chinese rice-paper has long been known to be cut from cylinders of pith which has always a central hollow chamber, divided into compartments by septa or excessively thin plates. it is only within the last few months that my supposition has been confirmed, by my father's receiving from china, after many years of correspondence, specimens of the rice-paper plant itself, which very closely resemble, in botanical characters, as well as in outward appearance of size and habit, the sikkim plant.] the natives collect the leaves of many aralias as fodder for cattle, for which purpose they are of the greatest service in a country where grass for pasture is so scarce; this is the more remarkable, since they belong to the natural family of ivy, which is usually poisonous; the use of this food, however, gives a peculiar taste to the butter. in other parts of sikkim, fig-leaves are used for the same purpose, and branches of a bird-cherry (_prunus_), a plant also of a very poisonous family, abounding in prussic acid. we were received with great kindness by the villagers of yoksun, who had awaited our return with some anxiety, and on hearing of our approach had collected large supplies of food; amongst other things were tares (called by the lepchas "kullai"), yams ("book"), and a bread made by bruising together damp maize and rice into tough thin cakes ("ketch-ung tapha"). the lamas of doobdi were especially civil, having a favour to ask, which was that i would intercede with dr. campbell to procure the permission of the nepalese to reopen the kanglanamo pass, and thus give some occupation to their herds of yaks, which were now wandering idly about. i botanized for two days on the yoksun flat, searching for evidence of lacustrine strata or moraines, being more than ever convinced by the views i had obtained of this place from mon lepcha, that its uniformity of surface was due to water action. it is certainly the most level area of its size that i know of in sikkim, though situated in one of the deepest valleys, and surrounded on almost all sides by very steep mountains; and it is far above the flat gravel terraces of the present river-beds. i searched the surface of the flat for gravel beds in vain, for though it abounds in depressions that must have formerly been lake-beds, and are now marshes in the rainy season, these were all floored with clay. along the western edge, where the descent is very steep for feet to the ratong, i found no traces of stratified deposits, though the spurs which projected from it were often flattened at top. the only existing lake has sloping clay banks, covered with spongy vegetable mould; it has no permanent affluent or outlet, its present drainage being subterranean, or more probably by evaporation; but there is an old water-channel several feet above its level. it is eighty to a hundred yards across, and nearly circular; its depth three or four feet, increased to fifteen or sixteen in the rains; like all similar pools in sikkim, it contains little or no animal life at this season, and i searched in vain for shells, insects, or frogs. all around were great blocks of gneiss, some fully twelve feet square. the situation of this lake is very romantic, buried in a tall forest of oaks and laurels, and fringed by wild camellia shrubs; the latter are not the leafy, deep green, large-blossomed plants of our greenhouses, but twiggy bushes with small scattered leaves, and little yellowish flowers like those of the tea-plant. the massive walls of a ruined temple rise close to the water, which looks like the still moat of a castle: beside it are some grand old funereal cypresses, with ragged scattered branches below, where they struggle for light in the dense forest, but raising their heads aloft as bright green pyramids. illustration--altar and song-boom at yoksun. after some difficulty i found the remains of a broad path that divided into two; one of them led to a second ruined temple, fully a mile off, and the other i followed to a grove, in which was a gigantic chait; it was a beautiful lane throughout, bordered with bamboo, brambles, gay-flowered _melastomaceae_ like hedge-roses, and scarlet _erythrina_: there were many old mendongs and chaits on the way, which i was always careful to leave on the right hand in passing, such being the rule among boodhists, the same which ordains that the praying-cylinder or "mani" be made to revolve in a direction against the sun's motion. this great chait is the largest in sikkim; it is called "nirbogong," and appears to be fully forty feet high; facing it is a stone altar about fifteen feet long and four broad, and behind this again is a very curious erection called "song-boom," used for burning juniper as incense; it resembles a small smelting furnace, and consists of an elongated conical stone building eight feet high, raised on a single block; it is hollow, and divided into three stories or chambers; in the lower of which is a door, by which fuel is placed inside, and the smoke ascending through holes in the upper slabs, escapes by lateral openings from the top compartment. these structures are said to be common in tibet, but i saw no other in sikkim. during my stay at yoksun, the weather was very cold, especially at night, considering the elevation ( , feet): the mean temperature was degrees, the extremes being . degrees and degrees; and even at a.m. the thermometer, laid on the frosty grass, stood at degrees; temperatures which are rare at dorjiling, feet higher. i could not but regard with surprise such half tropical genera as perennial-leaved vines, _saccharum, erythrina,_ large bamboos, _osbeckia_ and cultivated millet, resisting such low temperatures.* [this is no doubt due to the temperature of the soil being always high: i did not sink a thermometer at yoksun, but from observations taken at similar elevations, the temperature of the earth, at three feet depth, may be assumed to be degrees.] on the th january i left yoksun for the lake and temples of catsuperri, the former of which is by much the largest in sikkim. after a steep descent of feet, we reached the ratong, where its bed is only , feet above the sea; it is here a turbulent stream, twelve yards across, with the usual features of gravel terraces, huge boulders of gneiss and some of the same rock _in situ,_ striking north-east. some idea of its velocity may be formed from the descent it makes from the foot of mon lepcha, where the elevation of its bed was , feet, giving a fall of , feet in only ten miles. hence i ascended a very steep spur, through tropical vegetation, now become so familiar to me that i used to count the number of species belonging to the different large natural orders, as i went along. i gathered only thirty-five ferns at these low elevations, in the same space as produces from fifty to sixty in the more equable and humid regions of feet; grasses on the other hand were much more numerous. the view of the flat of yoksun from lungschung village, opposite to it, and on about the same level, is curious; as is that of the hamlet of lathiang on the same side, which i have before noticed as being placed on a very singular flat shelf above the ratong, and is overhung by rocks. ascending very steeply for several thousand feet, we reached a hollow on the catsuperri spur, beyond which the lake lies buried in a deep forest. a lama from the adjacent temple accompanied us, and i found my people affecting great solemnity as they approached its sacred bounds; they incessantly muttered "om mani," etc., kotowed to trees and stones, and hung bits of rag on the bushes. a pretence of opposing our progress was made by the priest, who of course wanted money; this i did not appear to notice, and after a steep descent, we were soon on the shores of what is, for sikkim, a grand sheet of water, ( , feet above the sea), without any apparent outlet: it may be from three to five hundred yards across in the rains, but was much less now, and was bordered by a broad marsh of bog moss (_sphagnum_), in which were abundance of _azolla,_ colouring the waters red, and sedges. along the banks were bushes of _rhododendron barbatum_ and _berberis insignis,_* [this magnificent new species has not been introduced into england; it forms a large bush, with deep-green leaves seven inches long, and bunches of yellow flowers.] but the mass of the vegetation was similar to that of dorjiling. we crossed the marsh to the edge of the lake by a rude paved way of decaying logs, through which we often plunged up to our knees. the lama had come provided with a piece of bark, shaped like a boat, some juniper incense and a match-box, with which he made a fire, and put it in the boat, which he then launched on the lake as a votive offering to the presiding deity. it was a dead calm, but the impetus he gave to the bark shot it far across the lake, whose surface was soon covered with a thick cloud of white smoke. taking a rupee from me, the priest then waved his arm aloft, and pretended to throw the money into the water, singing snatches of prayers in tibetan, and at times shrieking at the top of his voice to the dryad who claims these woods and waters as his own. there was neither bird, beast, nor insect to be seen, and the scenery was as impressive to me, as the effect of the simple service was upon my people, who prayed with redoubled fervour, and hung more rags on the bushes. i need hardly say that this invocation of the gods of the woods and waters forms no part of lama worship; but the lepchas are but half boodhists; in their hearts they dread the demons of the grove, the lake, the snowy mountain and the torrent, and the crafty lama takes advantage of this, modifies his practices to suit their requirements, and is content with the formal recognition of the spiritual supremacy of the church. this is most remarkably shown in their acknowledgment of the day on which offerings had been made from time immemorial by the pagan lepchas to the genius of kinchinjunga, by holding it as a festival of the church throughout sikkim.* [on that occasion an invocation to the mountain is chanted by priests and people in chorus. like the lama's address to the genius of catsuperri lake, its meaning, if it ever had any, is not now apparent. it runs thus:-- "kanchin-jinga, pemi kadup gnetche tangla, dursha tember zu jinga pemsum serkiem dischze kubra kanchin tong." this was written for me by dr. campbell, who, like myself, has vainly sought its solution; it is probably a mixture of tibetan and lepcha, both as much corrupted as the celebrated "om mani padmi boom," which is universally pronounced by lepchas "menny pemmy boom." this reminds me that i never got a solution of this sentence from a lama, of whatever rank or learning; and it was only after incessant inquiry, during a residence of many years in nepal, that mr. hodgson at last procured the interpretation, or rather paraphrase: "hail to him (sakya) of the lotus and the jewel," which is very much the same as m. klaproth and other authorities have given.] the two catsuperri temples occupy a spur feet above the lake, and , feet above the sea; they are poor, and only remarkable for a miserable weeping-willow tree planted near them, said to have been brought from lhassa. the monks were very civil to me, and offered amongst other things a present of excellent honey. one was an intelligent man, and gave me much information: he told me that there were upwards of twenty religious establishments in sikkim, containing more than priests. these have various claims upon the devout: thus, tassiding, doobdi, changachelling, and pemiongchi, are celebrated for their antiquity, and the latter also for being the residence of the head lama; catsuperri for its lake; raklang for its size, etc. all are under one spiritual head, who is the tupgain lama, or eldest son of the rajah; and who resides at the phadong convent, near tumloong: the lama of pemiongchi is, however, the most highly respected, on account of his age, position, and sanctity. advancement in the hierarchy is dependent chiefly on interest, but indirectly on works also; pilgrimages to lhassa and teshoo loombo are the highest of these, and it is clearly the interest of the supreme pontiffs of those ecclesiastical capitals to encourage such, and to intimate to the sikkim authorities, the claims those who perform them have for preferment. dispensations for petty offences are granted to lamas of low degree and monks, by those of higher station, but crimes against the church are invariably referred to tibet, and decided there. the election to the sikkim lamaseries is generally conducted on the principle of self-government, but pemiongchi and some others are often served by lamas appointed from tibet, or ordained there, at some of the great convents. i never heard of an instance of any sikkim lama arriving at such sanctity as to be considered immortal, and to reappear after death in another individual, nor is there any election of infants. all are of the ningma, dookpa, or shammar sect, and are distinguished by their red mitres; they were once dominant throughout tibet, but after many wars* [the following account of the early war between the red and the yellow-mitred lamas was given me by tchebu lama:--for twenty-five generations the red-cape (dookpa or ningma) prevailed in tibet, when they split into two sects, who contended for supreme power; the lama of phado, who headed the dissenters, and adopted a yellow mitre, being favoured by the emperor of china, to whom reference was made. a persecution of the red lamas followed, who were caught by the yellow-caps, and their mitres plunged into dyeing vats kept always ready at the lamaseries. the dookpa, however, still held teshoo loombo, and applied to the sokpo (north tibet) lamas for aid, who bringing horses and camels, easily prevailed over the gelookpa or yellow sect, but afterwards treacherously went over to them, and joined them in an attack on teshoo loombo, which was plundered and occupied by the gelookpas. the dookpa thereafter took refuge in sikkim and bhotan, whence the bhotan rajah became their spiritual chief under the name of dhurma rajah, and is now the representative of that creed. goorucknath is still the dookpa's favourite spiritual deity of the older creed, which is, however, no longer in the ascendant. the dalai lama of teshoo loombo is a gelookpa, as is the rimbochay lama, and the potala lama of lhassa, according to tchebu lama, but turner ("travels in tibet," p. ) says the contrary; the gelookpa consider sakya thoba (or tsongkaba) alias mahamouni, as their great avatar.] with the yellow-caps, they were driven from that country, and took refuge principally in the himalaya. the bhotan or dhurma* [bhotan is generally known as the dhurma country. see note, chapter v.] rajah became the spiritual head of this sect, and, as is well known, disputes the temporal government also of his country with the deva rajah, who is the hereditary temporal monarch, and never claims spiritual jurisdiction. i am indebted to dr. campbell for a copy and translation of the dhurma rajah's great seal, containing the attributes of his spirituality, a copy of which i have appended to the end of this chapter. the internal organisation of the different monastic establishments is very simple. the head or teshoo lama* [i have been informed by letters from dr. campbell that the pemiongchi lama is about to remove the religious capital of sikkim to dorjiling, and build there a grand temple and monastery; this will be attractive to visitors, and afford the means of extending our knowledge of east tibet.] rules supreme; then come the monks and various orders of priests, and then those who are candidates for orders, and dependents, both lay-brothers and slaves: there are a few nunneries in sikkim, and the nuns are all relatives or connections of the rajah, his sister is amongst them. during the greater part of the year, all lead a more or less idle life; the dependents being the most occupied in carrying wood and water, cultivating the land, etc. the lay-brothers are often skilful workmen, and are sometimes lent or hired out as labourers, especially as housebuilders and decorators. no tax of any kind is levied on the church, which is frequently very rich in land, flocks, and herds, and in contributions from the people: land is sometimes granted by the rajah, but is oftener purchased by the priests, or willed, or given by the proprietor. the services, to which i have already alluded, are very irregularly performed; in most temples only on festival days, which correspond to the tibetan ones so admirably described in mm. huc and gabet's narrative; in a few, however, service is performed daily, especially in such as stand near frequented roads, and hence reap the richest harvest. like all the natives of tibet and sikkim, the priests are intolerably filthy; in some cases so far carrying out their doctrines as not even to kill the vermin with which they swarm. all are nominally bound to chastity, but exemptions in favour of lamas of wealth, rank, or power, are granted by the supreme pontiffs, both in tibet and sikkim. i constantly found swarms of children about the lamaseries, who were invariably called nephews and nieces. descending from the catsuperri temples, i encamped at the village of tengling (elevation , feet), where i was waited upon by a bevy of forty women, lepchas and sikkim bhoteeas, accompanied by their children, and bringing presents of fowls, rice and vegetables, and apologising for the absence of their male relatives, who were gone to carry tribute to the rajah. thence i marched to changachelling, first descending to the tengling river, which divides the catsuperri from the molli ridge, and which i crossed. tree-ferns here advance further north than in any other part of sikkim. i did not visit the molli temples, but crossed the spur of that name, to the rungbee river, whose bed is , feet above the sea; thence i ascended upwards of , feet to the changachelling temples, passing tchongpong village. the ridge on which both pemiongchi and changachelling are built, is excessively narrow at top; it is traversed by a "via sacra," connecting these two establishments; this is a pretty wooded walk, passing mendongs and chaits hoary with lichens and mosses; to the north the snows of kinchinjunga are seen glimmering between the trunks of oaks, laurels, and rhododendrons, while to the south the sinchul and dorjiling spurs shut out the view of the plains of india. changachelling temples and chaits crown a beautiful rocky eminence on the ridge, their roofs, cones and spires peeping through groves of bamboo, rhododendrons, and arbutus; the ascent is by broad flights of steps cut in the mica-slate rocks, up which shaven and girdled monks, with rosaries and long red gowns, were dragging loads of bamboo stems, that produced a curious rattling noise. at the summit there is a fine temple, with the ruins of several others, and of many houses: the greater part of the principal temple, which is two-storied and divided into several compartments, is occupied by families. the monks were busy repairing the part devoted to worship, which consists of a large chamber and vestibule of the usual form: the outside walls are daubed red, with a pigment of burnt felspathic clay, which is dug hard by. some were painting the vestibule with colours brought from lhassa, where they had been trained to the art. amongst other figures was one playing on a guitar, a very common symbol in the vestibules of sikkim temples: i also saw an angel playing on the flute, and a snake-king offering fruit to a figure in the water, who was grasping a serpent. amongst the figures i was struck by that of an englishman, whom, to my amusement, and the limner's great delight, i recognised as myself. i was depicted in a flowered silk coat instead of a tartan shooting jacket, my shoes were turned up at the toes, and i had on spectacles and a tartar cap, and was writing notes in a book. on one side a snake-king was politely handing me fruit, and on the other a horrible demon was writhing. a crowd had collected to see whether i should recognise myself, and when i did so, the merriment was extreme. they begged me to send them a supply of vermilion, goldleaf, and brushes; our so called camel's-hair pencils being much superior to theirs, which are made of marmot's hair. i was then conducted to a house, where i found salted and buttered tea and murwa beer smoking in hospitable preparation. as usual, the house was of wood, and the inhabited apartments above the low basement story were approached by an outside ladder, like a swiss cottage: within were two rooms floored with earth; the inner was small, and opened on a verandah that faced kinchinjunga, whence the keen wind whistled through the apartment. the head lama, my jolly fat friend of the th of december, came to breakfast with me, followed by several children, nephews and nieces he said; but they were uncommonly like him for such a distant relationship, and he seemed extremely fond of them, and much pleased when i stuffed them with sugar. changachelling hill is remarkable for having on its summit an immense tabular mass of chlorite slate, resting apparently horizontally on variously inclined rocks of the same: it is quite flat-topped, ten to twelve yards each way, and the sides are squared by art; the country people attribute its presence here to a miracle. the view of the kinchin range from this spot being one of the finest in sikkim, and the place itself being visible from dorjiling, i took a very careful series of bearings, which, with those obtained at pemiongchi, were of the utmost use in improving my map, which was gradually progressing. to my disappointment i found that neither priest nor people knew the name of a single snowy mountain. i also asked in vain for some interpretation of the lines i have quoted at earlier; they said they were lepcha worship, and that they only used them for the gratification of the people, on the day of the great festival of kinchinjunga. hence i descended to the kulhait river, on my route back to dorjiling, visiting my very hospitable tippling friend, the kajee of lingcham, on the way down: he humbly begged me to get him a pair of spectacles, for no other object than to look wise, as he had the eyes of a hawk; he told me that mine drew down universal respect in sikkim, and that i had been drawn with them on, in the temple at changachelling; and that a pair would not only wonderfully become him, but afford him the most pleasing recollections of myself. happily i had the means of gratifying him, and have since been told that he wears them on state occasions. i encamped by the river, , feet above the sea, amongst figs and plantains, on a broad terrace of pebbles, boulders and sand, ten feet above the stream; the rocks in the latter were covered with a red conferva. the sand on the banks was disposed in layers, alternately white and red, the white being quartz, and the red pulverised garnets. the arranging of these sand-bands by the water must be due to the different specific gravities of the garnet and quartz; the former being lighter, is lifted by the current on to the surface of the quartz, and left there when the waters retire. on the next day i ascended hee hill, crossed it at an elevation of , feet, and camped on the opposite side at , feet, in a dense forest. the next march was still southward to the little rungeet guard-house, below dorjiling spur, which i reached after a fatiguing walk amidst torrents of rain. the banks of the little rungeet river, which is only , feet above the sea, are very flat and low, with broad terraces of pebbles and shingle, upon which are huge gneiss boulders, fully feet above the stream. on the th of january, i ascended the tukvor spur to dorjiling, and received a most hospitable welcome from my friend mr. muller, now almost the only european inhabitant of the place; mr. hodgson having gone down on a shooting excursion in the terai, and dr. campbell being on duty on the bhotan frontier. the place looked what it really was--wholly deserted. the rain i had experienced in the valley, had here been snow, and the appearance of the broad snowed patches clear of trees, and of the many houses without smoke or inhabitant, and the tall scattered trees with black bark and all but naked branches, was dismal in the extreme. the effect was heightened by an occasional hindoo, who flitted here and there along the road, crouching and shivering, with white cotton garments and bare legs. the delight of my lepcha attendants at finding themselves safely at home again, knew no bounds; and their parents waited on me with presents, and other tokens of their goodwill and gratitude. i had no lack of volunteers for a similar excursion in the following season, though with their usual fickleness, more than half failed me, long before the time arrived for putting their zeal to the proof. ------------ i am indebted to dr. campbell for the accompanying impression and description of the seal of the dhurma rajah, or sovereign pontiff of bhotan, and spiritual head of the whole sect of the dookpa, or red-mitred lama boodhists. the translations were made by aden tchehu lama, who accompanied us into sikkim in , and i believe they are quite correct. the tibetan characters run from left to right. the seal of the dhurma rajah is divided into a centre portion and sixteen rays. in the centre is the word dookyin, which means "the dookpa creed"; around the "dookyin" are sixteen similar letters, meaning "i," or "i am." the sixteen radial compartments contain his titles and attributes, thus, commencing from the centre erect one, and passing round from left to right:-- . i am the spiritual and temporal chief of the realm. . the defender of the faith. . equal to saruswati in learning. . chief of all the boodhs. . head expounder of the shasters. . caster out of devils. . the most learned in the holy laws. . an avatar of god (or, by god's will). . absolver of sins. . i am above all the lamas of the dookpa creed. . i am of the best of all religions--the dookpa. . the punisher of unbelievers. . unequalled in expounding the shasters. . unequalled in holiness and wisdom. . the head (or fountain) of all religious knowledge. . the enemy of all false avatars. chapter xvii. excursion to terai. dispatch collections -- acorns -- heat -- punkabaree -- bees -- vegetation -- haze -- titalya -- earthquake -- proceed to nepal frontier -- terai, geology of -- physical features of himalayan valleys -- elephants, purchase of, etc. -- riverbeds -- mechi river -- return to titalya -- leave for teesta -- climate of plains -- jeelpigoree -- cooches -- alteration in the appearance of country by fires, etc. -- grasses -- bamboos -- cottages -- rajah of cooch behar -- condition of people -- hooli festival -- ascend teesta -- canoes -- cranes -- forest -- baikant-pore -- rummai -- religion -- plants at foot of mountains -- exit of teesta -- canoe voyage down to rangamally -- english genera of plants -- birds -- beautiful scenery -- botanizing on elephants -- willow -- siligoree -- cross terai -- geology -- iron -- lohar-ghur -- coal and sandstone beds -- mechi fisherman -- hailstorm -- ascent to khersiong -- to dorjiling -- vegetation -- geology -- folded quartz-beds -- spheres of feldspar -- lime deposits. having arranged the collections (amounting to eighty loads) made during , they were conveyed by coolies to the foot of the hills, where carts were provided to carry them five days' journey to the mahanuddy river, which flows into the ganges, whence they were transported by water to calcutta. on the th of february, i left dorjiling to join mr. hodgson, at titalya on the plains. the weather was raw, cold, and threatening: snow lay here and there at feet, and all vegetation was very backward, and wore a wintry garb. the laurels, maples, and deciduous-leaved oaks, hydrangea and cherry, were leafless, but the abundance of chesnuts and evergreen oaks, rhododendrons, _aucuba, linonia,_ and other shrubs, kept the forest well clothed. the oaks had borne a very unusual number of acorns during the last season, which were now falling, and strewing the road in some places so abundantly, that it was hardly safe to ride down hill. the plains of bengal were all but obscured by a dense haze, partly owing to a peculiar state of the atmosphere that prevails in the dry months, and partly to the fires raging in the terai forest, from which white wreaths of smoke ascended, stretching obliquely for miles to the eastward, and filling the air with black particles of grass-stems, carried feet aloft by the heated ascending currents that impinge against the flanks of the mountains. in the tropical region the air was scented with the white blossoms of the _vitex agnus-castus,_ which grew in profusion by the road-side; but the forest, which had looked so gigantic on my arrival at the mountains the previous year, appeared small after the far more lofty and bulky oaks and pines of the upper regions of the himalaya. the evening was sultry and close, the heated surface of the earth seemed to load the surrounding atmosphere with warm vapours, and the sensation, as compared with the cool pure air of dorjiling, was that of entering a confined tropical harbour after a long sea-voyage. i slept in the little bungalow of punkabaree, and was wakened next morning by sounds to which i had long been a stranger, the voices of innumerable birds, and the humming of great bees that bore large holes for their dwellings in the beams and rafters of houses: never before had i been so forcibly struck with the absence of animal life in the regions of the upper himalaya. breakfasting early, i pursued my way in the so-called cool of the morning, but this was neither bright nor fresh; the night having been hazy, there had been no terrestrial radiation, and the earth was dusty and parched; while the sun rose through a murky yellowish atmosphere with ill-defined orb. thick clouds of smoke pressed upon the plains, and the faint easterly wind wafted large flakes of grass charcoal sluggishly through the air. vegetation was in great beauty, though past its winter prime. the tropical forest of india has two flowering seasons; one in summer, of the majority of plants; and the other in winter, of _acanthaceae, bauhinia, dillenia, bombax,_ etc. of these the former are abundant, and render the jungle gay with large and delicate white, red, and purple blossoms. coarse, ill-favoured vultures wheeled through the air, languid bengalees had replaced the active mountaineers, jackal-like curs of low degree teemed at every village, and ran howling away from the onslaught of my mountain dog; and the tropics, with all their beauty of flower and genial warmth, looked as forbidding and unwholesome as they felt oppressive to a frame that had so long breathed the fresh mountain air. mounted on a stout pony, i enjoyed my scamper of sixteen miles over the wooded plains and undulating gravelly slopes of the terai, intervening between the foot of the mountains and siligoree bungalow, where i rested for an hour. in the afternoon i rode on leisurely to titalya, sixteen miles further, along the banks of the mahanuddy, the atmosphere being so densely hazy, that objects a few miles off were invisible, and the sun quite concealed, though its light was so powerful that no part of the sky could be steadily gazed upon. this state of the air is very curious, and has met with various attempts at explanation,* [dr. m'lelland ("calcutta journal of natural history," vol. i, p. ), attributes the haze of the atmosphere during the north-west winds of this season, wholly to suspended earthy particles. but the haze is present even in the calmest weather, and extreme dryness is in all parts of the world usually accompanied by an obscure horizon. captain campbell ("calcutta journal of natural history," vol. ii, p. .) also objects to dr. m'clelland's theory, citing those parts of southern india which are least likely to be visited by dust-storms, as possessing an equally hazy atmosphere; and further denies its being influenced by the hygrometric state of the atmosphere.] all unsatisfactory to me: it accompanies great heat, dryness, and elasticity of the suspended vapours, and is not affected by wind. during the afternoon the latter blew with violence, but being hot and dry, brought no relief to my still unacclimated frame. my pony alone enjoyed the freedom of the boundless plains, and the gallop or trot being fatiguing in the heat, i tried in vain to keep him at a walk; his spirits did not last long, however, for he flagged after a few days' tropical heat. my little dog had run thirty miles the day before, exclusive of all the detours he had made for his own enjoyment, and he flagged so much after twenty more this day, that i had to take him on my saddle-bow, where, after licking his hot swollen feet, he fell fast asleep, in spite of the motion. after leaving the wooded terai at siligoree, trees became scarce, and clumps of bamboos were the prevalent features; these, with an occasional banyan, peepul, or betel-nut palm near the villages, were the only breaks on the distant horizon. a powerfully scented _clerodendron,_ and an _ sbeckia_ gay with blossoms like dog-roses, were abundant; the former especially under trees, where the seeds are dropped by birds. at titalya bungalow, i received a hearty welcome from mr. hodgson, and congratulations on the success of my nepal journey, which afforded a theme for many conversations. in the evening we had three sharp jerking shocks of an earthquake in quick succession, at . p.m., appearing to come up from the southward: they were accompanied by a hollow rumbling sound like that of a waggon passing over a wooden bridge. the shock was felt strongly at dorjiling, and registered by mr. muller at . p.m.: we had accurately adjusted our watches (chronometers) the previous morning, and the motion may therefore fairly be assumed to have been transmitted northwards through the intervening distance of forty miles, in two minutes. both mr. muller and mr. hodgson had noted a much more severe shock at . p.m. the previous evening, which i, who was walking down the mountain, did not experience; this caused a good deal of damage at dorjiling, in cracking well-built walls. earthquakes are frequent all along the himalaya, and are felt far in tibet; they are, however, most common towards the eastern and western extremities of india; owing in the former case to the proximity of the volcanic forces in the bay of bengal. cutch and scinde, as is well known, have suffered severely on many occasions, and in several of them the motion has been propagated through affghanistan and little tibet, to the heart of central asia.* [see "wood's travels to the oxus."] on the morning of the st of march, dr. campbell arrived at the bungalow, from his tour of inspection along the frontier of bhotan and the rungpore district; and we accompanied him hence along the british and sikkim frontier, as far west as the mechi river, which bounds nepal on the east. terai is a name loosely applied to a tract of country at the very foot of the himalaya: it is persian, and signifies damp. politically, the terai generally belongs to the hill-states beyond it; geographically, it should appertain to the plains of india; and geologically, it is a sort of neutral country, being composed neither of the alluvium of the plains, nor of the rocks of the hills, but for the most part of alternating beds of sand, gravel, and boulders brought from the mountains. botanically it is readily defined as the region of forest-trees; amongst which the sal, the most valuable of indian timber, is conspicuous in most parts, though not now in sikkim, where it has been destroyed. the terai soil is generally light, dry, and gravelly (such as the sal always prefers), and varies in breadth, from ten miles, along the sikkim frontier, to thirty and more on the nepalese. in the latter country it is called the morung, and supplies sal and sissoo timber for the calcutta market, the logs being floated down the konki and cosi rivers to the ganges. the gravel-beds extend uninterruptedly upon the plains for fully twenty miles south of the sikkim mountains, the gravel becoming smaller as the distance increases, and large blocks of stone not being found beyond a few miles from the rocks of the himalaya itself, even in the beds of rivers, however large and rapid. throughout its breadth this formation is conspicuously cut into flat-topped terraces, flanking the spurs of the mountains, at elevations varying from to nearly feet above the sea. these terraces are of various breadth and length, the smallest lying uppermost, and the broadest flanking the rivers below. the isolated hills beyond are also flat-topped and terraced. this deposit contains no fossils; and its general appearance and mineral constituents are the only evidence of its origin, which is no doubt due to a retiring ocean that washed the base of the sikkim himalaya, received the contents of its rivers, and, wearing away its bluff spurs, spread a talus upwards of feet thick along its shores. it is not at first sight evident whether the terracing is due to periodic retirements of the ocean, or to the levelling effects of rivers that have cut channels through the deposit. in many places, especially along the banks of the great streams, the gravel is smaller, obscurely interstratified with sand, and the flattened pebbles over-lap rudely, in a manner characteristic of the effects of running water; but such is not the case with the main body of the deposit, which is unstratified, and much coarser. the alluvium of the gangetic valley is both interstratified with the gravel, and passes into it, and was no doubt deposited in deep water, whilst the coarser matter* [this, too, is non-fossiliferous, and is of unknown depth, except at calcutta, where the sand and clay beds have been bored through, to the depth of feet, below which the first pebbles were met with. whence these pebbles were derived is a curious problem. the great himalayan rivers convey pebbles but a very few miles from the mountains on to the plains of india; and there is no rock _in situ_ above the surface, within many miles of calcutta, in any direction.] was accumulating at the foot of the mountains. this view is self-evident, and has occurred, i believe, to almost every observer, at whatever part of the base of the himalaya he may have studied this deposit. its position, above the sandstones of the sewalik range in the north-west himalaya, and those of sikkim, which appear to be modern fossiliferous rocks, indicates its being geologically of recent formation; but it still remains a subject of the utmost importance to discover the extent and nature of the ocean to whose agency it is referred. i have elsewhere remarked that the alluvium of the gangetic valley may to a great degree be the measure of the denudation which the himalaya has suffered along its indian watershed. it was, no doubt, during the gradual rise of that chain from the ocean, that the gravel and alluvium were deposited; and in the terraces and alternation of these, there is evidence that there have been many subsidences and elevations of the coast-line, during which the gravel has suffered greatly from denudation. i have never looked at the sikkim himalaya from the plains without comparing its bold spurs enclosing sinuous river gorges, to the weather-beaten front of a mountainous coast; and in following any of its great rivers, the scenery of its deep valleys no less strikingly resembles that of such narrow arms of the sea (or fiords) as characterize every mountainous coast, of whatever geological formation: such as the west coast of scotland and norway, of south chili and fuegia, of new zealand and tasmania. there are too in these himalayan valleys, at all elevations below feet, terraced pebble-beds, rising in some cases eighty feet above the rivers, which i believe could only have been deposited by them when they debouched into deep water; and both these, and the beds of the rivers, are strewed, down to feet, with masses of rock. such accumulations and transported blocks are seen on the raised beaches of our narrow scottish salt water lochs, exposed by the rising of the land, and they are yet forming of immense thickness on many coasts by the joint action of tides and streams. i have described meeting with ancient moraines in every himalayan valley i ascended, at or about or feet elevation, proving, that at one period, the glaciers descended fully so much below the position they now occupy: this can only be explained by a change of climate,* [such a change of temperature, without any depression or elevation of the mountains, has been thought by capt. r. strachey ("journal of geological society"), an able himalayan observer, to be the necessary consequence of an ocean at the foot of these mountains; for the amount of perpetual snow, and consequent descent of the glaciers, increasing indirectly in proportion to the humidity of the climate, and the snow-fall, he conjectured that the proximity of the ocean would prodigiously increase such a deposition of snow.--to me, this argument appears inconclusive; for the first effect of such a vast body of water would be to raise the temperature of winter; and as it is the rain, rather than the sun of summer, which removes the sikkim snow, so would an increase of this rain elevate, rather than depress, the level of perpetual snow.] or by a depression of the mountain mass equal to feet, since the formation of these moraines. the country about titalya looks desert, from that want of trees and cultivation, so characteristic of the upper level throughout this part of the plains, which is covered with short, poor pasture-grass. the bungalow stands close to the mahanuddy, on a low hill, cut into an escarpment twenty feet high, which exposes a section of river-laid sand and gravel, alternating with thick beds of rounded pebbles. shortly after dr. campbell's arrival, the meadows about the bungalow presented a singular appearance, being dotted over with elephants, brought for purchase by government. it was curious to watch the arrival of these enormous animals, which were visible nearly two miles across the flat plains; nor less interesting was it to observe the wonderful docility of these giants of the animal kingdom, often only guided by naked boys, perched on their necks, scolding, swearing, and enforcing their orders with the iron goad. there appeared as many tricks in elephant-dealers as in horse-jockeys, and of many animals brought, but few were purchased. government limits the price to about pounds, and the height to the shoulder must not be under seven feet, which, incredible as it appears, may be estimated within a fraction as being three times the circumference of the forefoot. the pedigree is closely inquired into, the hoofs are examined for cracks, the teeth for age, and many other points attended to. the sikkim frontier, from the mahanuddy westward to the mechi, is marked out by a row of tall posts. the country is undulating; and though fully miles from the ocean, and not sixty from the top of the loftiest mountain on the globe, its average level is not feet above that of the sea. the upper levels are gravelly, and loosely covered with scattered thorny jujube bushes, occasionally tenanted by the _florican,_ which scours these downs like a bustard. sometimes a solitary fig, or a thorny acacia, breaks the horizon, and there are a few gnarled trees of the scarlet _butea frondosa._ on our route i had a good opportunity of examining the line of junction between the alluvial plains that stretch south to the ganges, and the gravel deposit flanking the hills. the rivers always cut broad channels with scarped terraced sides, and their low banks are very fertile, from the mud annually spread by the ever-shifting streams that meander within their limits; there are, however, few shrubs and no trees. the houses, which are very few and scattered, are built on the gravelly soil above, the lower level being very malarious. thirty miles south of the mountains, numerous isolated flat-topped hills, formed of stratified gravel and sand with large water-worn pebbles, rise from to feet above the mean level, which is about feet above the sea; these, too, have always scarped sides, and the channels of small streams completely encircle them. at this season few insects but grasshoppers are to be seen, even mosquitos being rare. birds, however, abound, and we noticed the common sparrow, hoopoe, water-wagtail, skylark, osprey, and several egrets. we arrived on the third day at the mechi river, to the west of which the nepal terai (or morung) begins, whose belt of sal forest loomed on the horizon, so raised by refraction as to be visible as a dark line, from the distance of many miles. it is, however, very poor, all the large trees having been removed. we rode for several miles into it, and found the soil dry and hard, but supporting a prodigious undergrowth of gigantic harsh grasses that reached to our heads, though we were mounted on elephants. besides sal there was abundance of _butea, diospyros, terminalia,_ and _symplocos,_ with the dwarf _phoenix_ palm, and occasionally _cycas._ tigers, wild elephants, and the rhinoceros, are said to be found here; but we saw none. the old and new mechi rivers are several miles apart, but flow in the same depression, a low swamp many miles broad, which is grazed at this season, and cultivated during the rains. the grass is very rich, partly owing to the moisture of the climate, and partly to the retiring waters of the rivers; both circumstances being the effects of proximity to the himalaya. hence cattle (buffalos and the common humped cow of india) are driven from the banks of the ganges miles to these feeding grounds, for the use of which a trifling tax is levied on each animal. the cattle are very carelessly herded, and many are carried off by tigers. having returned to titalya, mr. hodgson and i set off in an eastern direction for the teesta river, whose embouchure from the mountains to the plains i was anxious to visit. though the weather is hot, and oppressively so in the middle of the day, there are few climates more delicious than that of these grassy savannahs from december to march. we always started soon after daybreak on ponies, and enjoyed a twelve to sixteen miles' gallop in the cool of the morning before breakfast, which we found prepared on our arrival at a tent sent on ahead the night before. the road led across an open country, or followed paths through interminable rice-fields, now dry and dusty. on poor soil a white-flowered _leucas_ monopolized the space, like our charlock and poppy: it was apparently a pest to the agriculturist, covering the surface in some places like a sprinkling of snow. sometimes the river-beds exposed fourteen feet of pure stratified sand, with only an inch of vegetable soil above. at this season the mornings are very hazy, with the thermometer at sunrise degrees; one laid on grass during the night falling degrees below that temperature: dew forms, but never copiously: by a.m. the temperature has risen to degrees, and the faint easterly morning breezes die away; the haze thickens, and covers the sky with a white veil, the thermometer rising to degrees at noon, and the west wind succeeding in parching tornados and furious gusts, increasing with the temperature, which attains its maximum in the afternoon, and falling again with its decline at sunset. the evenings are calm; but the earth is so heated, that the thermometer stands at p.m. at degrees, and the minimum at night is not below degrees: great drought accompanies the heat at this season, but not to such a degree as in north-west india, or other parts of this meridian further removed from the hills. in the month of march, and during the prevalence of west winds, the mean temperature was degrees, and the dew-point degrees lower, indicating great drought. the temperature at calcutta was degrees warmer, and the atmosphere very much damper. on the second day we arrived at jeelpigoree, a large straggling village near the banks of the teesta, a good way south of the forest: here we were detained for several days, waiting for elephants with which to proceed northwards. the natives are cooches, a mogul (mongolian) race, who inhabit the open country of this district, replacing the mechis of the terai forest. they are a fine athletic people, not very dark, and formed the once-powerful house of cooch behar. latterly the upper classes have adopted the religion of the brahmins, and have had caste conferred upon them; while the lower orders have turned mahomedans: these, chiefly agriculturists, are a timid, oppressed class, who everywhere fled before us, and were with difficulty prevailed upon even to direct us along our road. a rude police is established by the british government all over the country, and to it the traveller applies for guides and assistance; but the conches were so shy and difficult to deal with, that we were generally left to our own resources. grass is the prevailing feature of the country, as there are few shrubs, and still fewer trees. goats and the common indian cow are plentiful; but it is not swampy enough for the buffalo; and sheep are scarce, on account of the heat of the climate. this uniformity of feature over so immense an area is, however, due to the agency of man, and is of recent introduction; as all concur in affirming, that within the last hundred years the face of the country was covered with the same long jungle-grasses which abound in the terai forest; and the troops cantoned at titalya (a central position in these plains) from to , confirm this statement as far as their immediate neighbourhood is concerned. these gigantic _gramineae_ seem to be destroyed by fire with remarkable facility at one season of the year; and it is well that this is the case; for, whether as a retainer of miasma, a shelter for wild beasts, both carnivorous and herbivorous, alike dangerous to man, or from their liability to ignite, and spread destruction far and wide, the grass-jungles are most serious obstacles to civilization. next to the rapidity with which it can be cleared, the adaptation of a great part of the soil to irrigation during the rains, has greatly aided the bringing of it under cultivation. by far the greater proportion of this universal short turf grass is formed of _andropogon acicularis, cynodon dactylon,_* [called "dhob." this is the best pasture grass in the plains of india, and the only one to be found over many thousands of square miles.] and in sandy places, _imperata cylindrica_; where the soil is wetter, _ameletia indica_ is abundant, giving a heather-like colour to the turf, with its pale purple flowers: wherever there is standing water, its surface is reddened by the _azolla,_ and _salvinia_ is also common. at jeelpigoree we were waited upon by the dewan, who governs the district for the rajah, a boy about ten years old, whose estates are locked up during the trial of an interminable suit for the succession, that has been instituted against him by a natural son of the late rajah: we found the dewan to be a man of intelligence, who promised us elephants as soon as the great hooli festival, now commenced, should be over. the large village, at the time of our visit, was gay with holiday dresses. it is surrounded by trees, chiefly of banyan, jack, mango, peepul, and tamarind: interminable rice-fields extend on all sides, and except bananas, slender betel-nut palms, and sometimes pawn, or betel-pepper, there is little other extensive cultivation. the rose-apple, orange, and pine-apple are rare, as are cocoa-nuts: there are few date or fan-palms, and only occasionally poor crops of castor-oil and sugar-cane. in the gardens i noticed jasmine, _justicia adhatoda, hibiscus,_ and others of the very commonest indian ornamental plants; while for food were cultivated _chenopodium,_ yams, sweet potatos, and more rarely peas, beans, and gourds. bamboos were planted round the little properties and smaller clusters of houses, in oblong squares, the ridge on which the plants grew being usually bounded by a shallow ditch. the species selected was not the most graceful of its family; the stems, or culms, being densely crowded, erect, as thick at the base as the arm, copiously branching, and very feathery throughout their whole length of sixty feet. a gay-flowered _osbeckia_ was common along the roadsides, and, with a _clerodendron,_* [_clerodendron_ leaves, bruised, are used to kill vermin, fly-blows, etc., in cattle; and the twigs form toothpicks. the flowers are presented to mahadeo, as a god of peace; milk, honey, flowers, fruit, amrit (ambrosia), etc., being offered to the pacific gods, as vishnu, krishna, etc.; while mudar (_asclepias_), bhang (_cannabis sativa_), _datura,_ flesh, blood, and spirituous liquors, are offered to siva, doorga, kali, and other demoniacal deities.] whose strong, sweet odour was borne far through the air, formed a low undershrub beneath every tree, generally intermixed with three ferns (a _polypodium, pteris,_ and _goniopteris_). the cottages are remarkable, and have a very neat appearance, presenting nothing but a low white-washed platform of clay, and an enormous high, narrow, black, neatly thatched roof, so arched along the ridge, that its eaves nearly touch the ground at each gable; and looking at a distance like a gigantic round-backed elephant. the walls are of neatly-platted bamboo: each window (of which there are two) is crossed by slips of bamboo, and wants only glass to make it look european; they have besides shutters of wattle, that open upwards, projecting during the day like the port-hatches of a ship, and let down at night. within, the rooms are airy and clean: one end contains the machans (bedsteads), the others some raised clay benches, the fire, frequently an enormous hookah, round wattled stools, and various implements. the inhabitants appeared more than ordinarily well-dressed; the men in loose flowing robes of fine cotton or muslin, the women in the usual garb of a simple thick cotton cloth, drawn tight immediately above the breast, and thence falling perpendicularly to the knee; the colour of this is a bright blue in stripes, bordered above and below with red. i anticipated some novelty from a visit to a durbar (court) so distant from european influence as that of the rajah of jeelpigoree. all eastern courts, subject to the company, are, however, now shorn of much of their glory; and the condition of the upper classes is greatly changed. under the mogul rule, the country was farmed out to zemindars, some of whom assumed the title of rajah: they collected the revenue for the sovereign, retaining by law ten per cent. on all that was realized: there was no intermediate class, the peasant paying directly to the zemindar, and he into the royal treasury. latterly the zemindars have become farmers under the company's rule; and in the adjudication of their claims, lord cornwallis (then governor-general) made great sacrifices in their favour, levying only a small tribute in proportion to their often great revenues, in the hope that they would be induced to devote their energies, and some of their means, to the improvement of the condition of the peasantry. this expectation was not realized: the younger zemindars especially, subject to no restraint (except from aggressions on their neighbours), fell into slothful habits, and the collecting of the revenue became a trading speculation, entrusted to "middle men." the zemindar selects a number, who again are at liberty to collect through the medium of several sub-renting classes. hence the peasant suffers, and except a generally futile appeal to the rajah, he has no redress. the law secures him tenure as long as he can pay his rent, and to do this he has recourse to the usurer; borrowing in spring (at , and oftener per cent.) the seed, plough, and bullocks: he reaps in autumn, and what is then not required for his own use, is sold to pay off part of his original debt, the rest standing over till the next season; and thus it continues to accumulate, till, overwhelmed with difficulties, he is ejected, or flees to a neighbouring district. the zemindar enjoys the same right of tenure as the peasant: the amount of impost laid on his property was fixed for perpetuity; whatever his revenue be, he must pay so much to the company, or he forfeits his estates, and they are put up for auction. one evening we visited the young rajah at his residence, which has rather a good appearance at a distance, its white walls gleaming through a dark tope of mango, betel, and cocoa-nut. a short rude avenue leads to the entrance gate, under the trees of which a large bazaar was being held; stocked with cloths, simple utensils, ornaments, sweetmeats, five species of fish from the teesta, and the betel-nut. we entered through a guard-house, where were some of the rajah's sepoys in the european costume, and a few of the company's troops, lent to the rajah as a security against some of the turbulent pretenders to his title. within was a large court-yard, flanked by a range of buildings, some of good stone-work, some of wattle, in all stages of disrepair. a great crowd of people occupied one end of the court, and at the other we were received by the dewan, and seated on chairs under a canopy supported by slender silvered columns. some slovenly natch-girls were dancing before us, kicking up clouds of dust, and singing or rather bawling through their noses, the usual indelicate hymns in honour of the hooli festival; there were also fiddlers, cutting uncouth capers in rhythm with the dancers. anything more deplorable than the music, dancing, and accompaniments, cannot well be imagined; yet the people seemed vastly pleased, and extolled the performers. the arrival of the rajah and his brothers was announced by a crash of tom-toms and trumpets, while over their heads were carried great gilt canopies. with them came a troop of relations, of all ages; and amongst them a poor little black girl, dressed in honour of us in an old-fashioned english chintz frock and muslin cap, in which she cut the drollest figure imaginable; she was carried about for our admiration, like a huge dutch doll, crying lustily all the time. the festivities of the evening commenced by handing round trays full of pith-balls, the size of a nutmeg, filled with a mixture of flour, sand, and red lac-powder; with these each pelted his neighbour, the thin covering bursting as it struck any object, and powdering it copiously with red dust. a more childish and disagreeable sport cannot well be conceived; and when the balls were expended, the dust itself was resorted to, not only fresh, but that which had already been used was gathered up, with whatever dirt it might have become mixed. one rude fellow, with his hand full, sought to entrap his victims into talking, when he would stuff the nasty mixture into their mouths. at the end attar of roses was brought, into which little pieces of cotton, fixed on slips of bamboo, were dipped, and given to each person. the heat, dust, stench of the unwashed multitude, noise, and increasing familiarity of the lower orders, warned us to retire, and we effected our retreat with precipitancy. the rajah and his brother were very fine boys, lively, frank, unaffected, and well disposed: they have evidently a good guide in the old dewan; but it is melancholy to think how surely, should they grow up in possession of their present rank, they will lapse into slothful habits, and take their place amongst the imbeciles who now represent the once powerful rajahs of bengal. we rode back to our tents by a bright moonlight, very dusty and tired, and heartily glad to breathe the cool fresh air, after the stifling ordeal we had undergone. on the following evening the elephants were again in waiting to conduct us to the rajah. he and his relations were assembled outside the gates, mounted upon elephants, amid a vast concourse of people. the children and dewan were seated in a sort of cradle; the rest were some in howdahs, and some astride on elephants' backs, six or eight together. all the idols were paraded before them, and powdered with red dust; the people howling, shouting, and sometimes quarrelling. our elephants took their places amongst those of the rajah; and when the mob had sufficiently pelted one another with balls and dirty red powder, a torchlight procession was formed, the idols leading the way, to a very large tank, bounded by a high rampart, within which was a broad esplanade round the water. the effect of the whole was very striking, the glittering cars and barbaric gaud of the idols showing best by torchlight; while the white robes and turbans of the undulating sea of people, and the great black elephants picking their way with matchless care and consideration, contrasted strongly with the quiet moonbeams sleeping on the still broad waters of the tank. thence the procession moved to a field, where the idols were placed on the ground, and all dismounted: the dewan then took the children by the hand, and each worshipped his tutelary deity in a short prayer dictated by the attendant brahmin, and threw a handful of red dust in its face. after another ordeal of powder, singing, dancing, and suffocation, our share in the hooli ended; and having been promised elephants for the following morning, we bade a cordial farewell to our engaging little hosts and their staid old governor. on the th of march we were awakened at an early hour by a heavy thunder-storm from the south-west. the sunrise was very fine, through an arch degrees high of bright blue sky, above which the whole firmament was mottled with cirrus. it continued cloudy, with light winds, througbout the day, but clear on the horizon. from this tinge such storms became frequent, ushering in the equinox; and the less hazy sky and rising hygrometer predicted an accession of moisture in the atmosphere. we left for rangamally, a village eight miles distant in a northerly direction, our course lying along the west bank of the teesta. the river is here navigated by canoes, thirty to forty feet long, some being rudely cut out of a solid log of sal, while others are built, the planks, of which there are but few, being sewed together, or clamped with iron, and the seams caulked with the fibres of the root of dhak (_butea frondosa_), and afterwards smeared with the gluten of _diospyros embryopteris._ the bed of the river is here threequarters of a mile across, of which the stream does not occupy one-third; its banks are sand-cliffs, fourteen feet in height. a few small fish and water-snakes swarm in the pools. the whole country improved in fertility as we advanced towards the mountains: the grass became greener, and more trees, shrubs, herbs, and birds appeared. in front, the dark boundary-line of the sal forest loomed on the horizon, and to the east rose the low hills of bhotan, both backed by the outer ranges of the himalaya. flocks of cranes were abundant over-head, flying in wedges, or breaking up into "open order," preparing for their migration northwards, which takes place in april, their return occurring in october; a small quail was also common on the ground. tamarisk ("jhow") grew in the sandy bed of the river; its flexible young branches are used in various parts of india for wattling and basket-making. in the evening we walked to the skirts of the sal forest. the great trunks of the trees were often scored by tigers' claws, this animal indulging in the cat-like propensity of rising and stretching itself against such objects. two species of _dillenia_ were common in the forest, with long grass, _symplocos, emblica,_ and _cassia fistula,_ now covered with long pods. several parasitical air-plants grew on the dry trees, as _oberonia, vanda,_ and _aerides._ at rangamally, the height of the sandy banks of the teesta varies from fifteen to twenty feet. the bed is a mile across, and all sand;* [now covered with _anthistiria_ grass, fifteen feet high, a little _sissoo,_ and _bombax._] the current much divided, and opaque green, from the glacial origin of most of its head-streams. the west bank was covered with a small sal forest, mixed with _acacia catechu,_ and brushwood, growing in a poor vegetable loam, over very dry sand. the opposite (or bhotan) bank is much lower, and always flooded during the rains, which is not the case on the western side, where the water rises to ten feet below the top of the bank, or from seven to ten feet above its height in the dry season, and it then fills its whole bed. this information we had from a police jemadar, who has resided many years on this unhealthy spot, and annually suffers from fever. the sal forest has been encroached upon from the south, for many miles, within the memory of man, by clearing in patches, and by indiscriminate felling. about ten miles north of rangamally, we came to an extensive flat, occupying a recess in the high west bank, the site of the old capital (bai-kant-pore) of the jeelpigoree rajah. hemmed in as it is on three sides by a dense forest, and on all by many miles of malarious terai, it appears sufficiently secure from ordinary enemies, during a great part of the year. the soil is sandy, overlying gravel, and covered with a thick stratum of fine mud or silt, which is only deposited on these low flats; on it grew many naturalized plants, as hemp, tobacco, jack, mango, plantain, and orange. about eight miles on, we left the river-bed, and struck westerly through a dense forest, to a swampy clearance occupied by the village of rummai, which appeared thoroughly malarious; and we pitched the tent on a narrow, low ridge, above the level of the plain. it was now cool and pleasant, partly due, no doubt, to a difference in the vegetation, and the proximity of swamp and forest, and partly also to a change in the weather, which was cloudy and threatening; much rain, too, had fallen here on the preceding day. brahmins and priests of all kinds are few in this miserable country: near the villages, and under the large trees, are, every here and there, a few immature thatched cottages, four to six feet high, in which the tutelary deities of the place are kept; they are idols of the very rudest description, of vishnu as an ascetic (bai-kant nath), a wooden doll, gilt and painted, standing, with the hands raised as if in exhortation, and one leg crossed over the other. again, kartik, the god of war, is represented sitting astride on a peacock, with the right hand elevated and holding a small flat cup. some fine muscular cooches were here brought for mr. hodgson's examination, but we found them unable or unwilling to converse, in the cooch tongue, which appears to be fast giving place to bengalee. we walked to a stream, which flows at the base of the retiring sand-cliffs, and nourishes a dense and richly-varied jungle, producing many plants, as beautiful _acanthaceae,_ indian horse-chesnut, loaded with white racemes of flowers, gay _convolvuli,_ laurels, terrestrial and parasitic _orchideae, dillenia,_ casting its enormous flowers as big as two fists, pepper, figs, and, in strange association with these, a hawthorn, and the yellow-flowered indian strawberry, which ascends , feet on the mountains, and _hodgsonia,_ a new _cucurbitaceous_ genus, clinging in profusion to the trees, and also found feet high on the mountains. in the evening we rode into the forest (which was dry and very unproductive), and thence along the river-banks, through _acacia catechu,_ belted by _sissoo,_ which often fringes the stream, always occupying the lowest flats. the foliage at this season is brilliantly green; and as the evening advanced, a yellow convolvulus burst into flower like magic, adorning the bushes over which it climbed. it rained on the following morning; after which we left for the exit of the teesta, proceeding northwards, sometimes through a dense forest of sal timber, sometimes dipping into marshy depressions, or riding through grassy savannahs, breast-high. the coolness of the atmosphere was delicious, and the beauty of the jungle seemed to increase the further we penetrated these primaeval forests. eight miles from rummai we came on a small river from the mountains, with a cooch village close by, inhabited during the dry season by timber-cutters from jeelpigoree it is situated upon a very rich black soil, covered with _saccharum_ and various gigantic grasses, but no bamboo. these long grasses replace the sal, of which we did not see one good tree. we here mounted the elephants, and proceeded several miles through the prairie, till we again struck upon the high sal forest-bank, continuous with that of rummai and rangamally, but much loftier: it formed one of many terraces which stretch along the foot of the hills, from punkabaree to the teesta, but of which none are said to occur for eight miles eastwards along the bhotan dooars: if true, this is probably due in part to the alteration of the course of the teesta, which is gradually working to the westward, and cutting away these lofty banks. the elephant-drivers appeared to have taken us by mistake to the exit of the chawa, a small stream which joins the teesta further to the eastward. the descent to the bed of this rivulet, round the first spur of rock we met with, was fully eighty feet, through a very irregular depression, probably the old bed of the stream; it runs southwards from the hills, and was covered from top to bottom with slate-pebbles. we followed the river to its junction with the teesta, along a flat, broad gulley, bounded by densely-wooded, steep banks of clay slate on the north, and the lofty bank on the south: between these the bed was strewed with great boulders of gneiss and other rocks, luxuriantly clothed with long grass, and trees of wild plantain, _erythrina_ and _bauhinia,_ the latter gorgeously in flower. the sal bank formed a very fine object: it was quite perpendicular, and beautifully stratified with various coloured sands and gravel: it tailed off abruptly at the junction of the rivers, and then trended away south-west, forming the west bank of the teesta. the latter river is at its outlet a broad and rapid, but hardly impetuous stream, now fifty yards across, gushing from between two low, forest-clad spurs: it appeared about five feet deep, and was beautifully fringed on both sides with green _sissoo._ some canoes were here waiting for us, formed of hollowed trunks of trees, thirty feet long: two were lashed together with bamboos, and the boatmen sat one at the head and one at the stern of each: we lay along the bottom of the vessels, and in a second we were darting down the river, at the rate of at least ten or fifteen miles an hour, the bright waters leaping up on all sides, and bounding in _jets-d'eau_ between prows and sterns of the coupled vessels. sometimes we glided along without perceptible motion, and at others jolted down bubbling rapids, the steersmen straining every nerve to keep their bark's head to the current, as she impatiently swerved from side to side in the eddies. to our jaded and parched frames, after the hot forenoon's ride on the elephants, the effect was delicious: the fresh breeze blew on our heated foreheads and down our open throats and chests; we dipped our hands into the clear, cool stream, and there was "music in the waters" to our ears. fresh verdure on the banks, clear pebbles, soft sand, long english river-reaches, forest glades, and deep jungles, followed in rapid succession; and as often as we rounded a bend or shot a rapid, the scene changed from bright to brighter still; so continuing until dusk, when we were slowly paddling along the then torpid current opposite rangamally.* [the following temperatures of the waters of the teesta were taken at intervals during our passage from its exit to rangamally, a distance of fifteen linear miles, and thirty miles following the bends:-- water. air. exit h. m. p.m. degrees . degrees degrees . . degrees degrees . degrees . degrees . degrees opposite rummai . degrees degrees . degrees opposite baikant] the absence of large stones or boulders of rock in the bed of the teesta is very remarkable, considering the great volume and rapidity of the current, and that it shoots directly from the rocky hills to the gravelly plains. at the _embouchure_ there are boulders as big as the head, and in the stream, four miles below the exit, the boatmen pointed out a stone as large as the body as quite a marvel. they assured us that the average rise at the mouth of the river, in the rains, was not more than five feet: the mean breadth of the stream is from seventy to ninety yards. from the point where it leaves the mountains, to its junction with the megna, is at this season thirteen days' voyage, the return occupying from twenty to twenty-five days, with the boats unladen. the name "teesta" signifies "quiet," this river being so in comparison with other himalayan torrents further west, the cosi, konki, etc., which are devastators of all that bounds their course. we passed but two crossing-places: at one the river is divided by an island, covered with the rude chaits and flags of the boodhists. we also saw some cooch fishermen, who throw the net much as we do: a fine "mahaser" (a very large carp) was the best fish they had. of cultivation there was very little, and the only habitations were a few grass-huts of the boatmen or buffalo herdsmen, a rare cooch village of catechu and sal cutters, or the shelter of timber-floaters, who seem to pass the night in nests of long dry grass. our servants not having returned with the elephants from rummai, we spent the following day at rangamally shooting and botanizing. i collected about species in a couple of hours, and observed perhaps twice that number: the more common i have repeatedly alluded to, and excepting some small terrestrial _orchids,_ i added nothing of particular interest to my collection.* [the following is a list of the principal genera, most of which are english:--_polygonum, quercus, sonchus, gnaphalium, cratagus, lobelia, lactuca, hydrocotyle, saponaria, campanula, bidens, rubus, oxalis, artemisia, fragaria, clematis, dioscorea, potamogeton, chara, veronica, viola, smilax._] on the th of march we proceeded west to siligoree, along the skirts of the ragged sal forest. birds are certainly the most conspicuous branch of the natural history of this country, and we saw many species, interesting either from their habits, beauty, or extensive distribution. we noticed no less than sixteen kinds of swimming birds, several of which are migratory and english. the shoveller, white-eyed and common wild ducks; merganser, brahminee, and indian goose (_anser indica_); common and gargany teal; two kinds of gull; one of shearwater (_rhynchops ablacus_); three of tern, and one of cormorant. besides these there were three egrets, the large crane, stork, green heron, and the demoiselle; the english sand-martin, kingfisher, peregrine-falcon, sparrow-hawk, kestrel, and the european vulture: the wild peacock, and jungle-fowl. there were at least peculiarly indian birds in addition, of which the more remarkable were several kinds of mina, of starling, vulture, kingfisher, magpie, quail, and lapwing. the country gradually became quite beautiful, much undulated and diversified by bright green meadows, sloping lawns, and deeply wooded nullahs, which lead from the sal forest and meander through this varied landscape. more beautiful sites for fine mansions could not well be, and it is difficult to suppose so lovely a country should be so malarious as it is before and after the rains, excessive heat probably diffusing widely the miasma from small stagnant surfaces. we noticed a wild hog, absolutely the first wild beast of any size i sawon the plains, except the hispid hare (_lepus hispidus_) and the barking deer (_stylocerus ratna_). the hare we found to be the best game of this part of india, except the teal. the pheasants of dorjiling are poor, the deer all but uneatable, and the florican, however dressed, i considered a far from excellent bird. a good many plants grow along the streams, the sandy beds of which are everywhere covered with the marks of tigers' feet. the only safe way of botanizing is by pushing through the jungle on elephants; an uncomfortable method, from the quantity of ants and insects which drop from the foliage above, and from the risk of disturbing pendulous bees' and ants' nests. a peculiar species of willow (_salix tetrasperma_) is common here; which is a singular fact, as the genus is characteristic of cold and arctic latitudes; and no species is found below feet elevation on the sikkim mountain, where it grows on the inner himalaya only, some kinds ascending to , feet. east of siligoree the plains are unvaried by tree or shrub, and are barren wastes of short turf or sterile sand, with the dwarf-palm (_phoenix acaulis_), a sure sign of a most hungry soil. the latter part of the journey i performed on elephants during the heat of the day, and a more uncomfortable mode of conveyance surely never was adopted; the camel's pace is more fatiguing, but that of the elephant is extremely trying after a few miles, and is so injurious to the human frame that the mahouts (drivers) never reach an advanced age, and often succumb young to spine-diseases, brought on by the incessant motion of the vertebral column. the broiling heat of the elephant's black back, and the odour of its oily driver, are disagreeable accompaniments, as are its habits of snorting water from its trunk over its parched skin, and the consequences of the great bulk of green food which it consumes. from siligoree i made a careful examination of the gravel beds that occur on the road north to the foot of the hills, and thence over the tertiary sandstone to punkabaree. at the rukti river, which flows south-west, the road suddenly rises, and crosses the first considerable hill, about two miles south of any rock _in situ._ this river cuts a cliff from to feet high, composed of stratified sand and water-worn gravel: further south, the spur declines into the plains, its course marked by the sal that thrives on its gravelly soil. the road then runs north-west over a plain to an isolated hill about feet high, also formed of sand and gravel. we ascended to the top of this, and found it covered with blocks of gneiss, and much angular detritus. hence the road gradually ascends, and becomes clayey. argillaceous rocks, and a little ochreous sandstone appeared in highly-inclined strata, dipping north, and covered with great water-worn blocks of gneiss. above, a flat terrace, flanked to the eastward by a low wooded hill, and another rise of sandstone, lead on to the great baisarbatti terrace. _bombax, erythrina,_ and _duabanga_ (_lagaerstraemia grandiflora_), were in full flower, and with the profusion of _bauhinia,_ rendered the tree-jungle gay: the two former are leafless when flowering. the duabanga is the pride of these forests. its trunk, from eight to fifteen feet in girth, is generally forked from the base, and the long pendulous branches which clothe the trunk for feet, are thickly leafy, and terminated by racemes of immense white flowers, which, especially when in bud, smell most disagreeably of assafoetida. the magnificent apocyneous climber, _beaumontia,_ was in full bloom, ascending the loftiest trees, and clothing their trunks with its splendid foliage and festoons of enormous funnel-shaped white flowers. the report of a bed of iron-stone eight or ten miles west of punkabaree determined our visiting the spot; and the locality being in a dense jungle, the elephants were sent on ahead. we descended to the terraces flanking the balasun river, and struck west along jungle-paths to a loosely-timbered flat. a sudden descent of feet landed us on a second terrace. further on, a third dip of about twenty feet (in some places obliterated) flanks the bed of the balasun; the river itself being split into many channels at this season. the west bank, which is forty feet high, is of stratified sand and gravel, with vast slightly-worn blocks of gneiss: from the top of this we proceeded south-west for three miles to some mechi villages, the inhabitants of which flocked to meet us, bringing milk and refreshments. the lohar-ghur, or "iron hill," lies in a dense dry forest. its plain-ward flanks are very steep, and covered with scattered weather-worn masses of ochreous and black iron-stone, many of which are several yards long: it fractures with faint metallic lustre, and is very earthy in parts: it does not affect the compass. there are no pebbles of iron-stone, nor water-worn rocks of any kind found with it. the sandstones, close by, cropped out in thick beds (dip north degrees): they are very soft, and beds of laminated clay, and of a slaty rock, are intercalated with them; also an excessively tough conglomerate, formed of an indurated blue or grey paste, with nodules of harder clay. there are no traces of metal in the rock, and the lumps of ore are wholly superficial. below punkabaree the baisarbatti stream cuts through banks of gravel overlying the sandstone (dip north degrees). the sandstone is gritty and micaceous, intercalated with beds of indurated shale and clay; in which i found the shaft (apparently) of a bone; there were also beds of the same clay conglomerate which i had seen at lohar-ghur, and thin seams of brown lignite; with a rhomboidal cleavage. in the bed of the stream were carbonaceous shales, with obscure impressions of fern leaves, of _trizygia,_ and _vertebraria_: both fossils characteristic of the burdwan coal-fields (see chapter i), but too imperfect to justify any conclusion as to the relation between these formations.* [these traces of fossils are not sufficient to identify the formation with that of the sewalik hills of north-west india; but its contents, together with its strike, dip, and position relatively to the mountains, and its mineralogical character, incline me to suppose it may be similar. its appearance in such small quantities in sikkim (where it rises but a few hundred feet above the level of the sea, whereas in kumaon it reaches feet), may be attributed to the greater amount of wearing which it must have undergone; the plains from which it rises being feet lower than those of kumaon, and the sea having consequently retired later, exposing the sikkim sandstone to the effects of denudation for a much longer period. hitherto no traces of this rock, or of any belonging to a similar geological epoch, have been found in the valleys of sikkim; but when the narrowness of these is considered, it will not appear strange that such may have been removed from their surfaces: first, by the action of a tidal ocean; and afterwards, by that of tropical rains.] ascending the stream, these shales are seen _in situ,_ overlain by the metamorphic clay-slate of the mountains, and dipping inwards (northwards) like them. this is at the foot of the punkabaree spur, and close to the bungalow, where a stream and land-slip expose good sections. the carbonaceous beds dip north degrees and degrees, and run east and west; much quartz rock is intercalated with them, and soft white and pink micaceous sandstones. the coal-seams are few in number, six to twelve inches thick, very confused and distorted, and full of elliptic nodules, or spheroids of quartzy slate, covered with concentric scaly layers of coal: they overlie the sandstones mentioned above. these scanty notices of superposition being collected in a country clothed with the densest tropical forest, where a geologist pursues his fatiguing investigations under disadvantages that can hardly be realized in england, will i fear long remain unconfirmed. i may mention, however, that the appearance of inversion of the strata at the foot of great mountain-masses has been observed in the alleghany chain, and i believe in the alps.* [dr. m'lelland informs me that in the curruckpore hills, south of the ganges, the clay-slates are overlain by beds of mica-slate, gneiss, and granite, which pass into one another.] illustration--a mech, native of the sikkim terai. a poor mech was fishing in the stream, with a basket curiously formed of a cylinder of bamboo, cleft all round in innumerable strips, held together by the joints above and below; these strips being stretched out as a balloon in the middle, and kept apart by a hoop: a small hole is cut in the cage, and a mouse-trap entrance formed: the cage is placed in the current with the open end upwards, where the fish get in, and though little bigger than minnows, cannot find their way out. on the th we had a change in the weather: a violent storm from the south-west occurred at noon, with hail of a strange form, the stones being sections of hollow spheres, half an inch across and upwards, formed of cones with truncated apices and convex bases; these cones were aggregated together with their bases outwards. the large masses were followed by a shower of the separate conical pieces, and that by heavy rain. on the mountains this storm was most severe: the stones lay at dorjiling for seven days, congealed into masses of ice several feet long and a foot thick in sheltered places: at purneah, fifty miles south, stones one and two inches across fell, probably as whole spheres. ascending to khersiong, i found the vegetation very backward by the road-sides. the rain had cleared the atmosphere, and the view over the plains was brilliant. on the top of the khersiong spur a tremendous gale set in with a cold west wind: the storm cleared off at night, which at p.m. was beautiful, with forked and sheet lightning over the plains far below us. the equinoctial gales had now fairly set in, with violent south-east gales, heavy thunder, lightning, and rain. whilst at khersiong i took advantage of the very fair section afforded by the road from punkabaree, to examine the structure of the spur, which seems to be composed of very highly inclined contorted beds (dip north) of metamorphic rocks, gneiss, mica-slate, clay-slate, and quartz; the foliation of which beds is parallel to the dip of the strata. over all reposes a bed of clay, capped with a layer of vegetable mould, nowhere so thick and rich as in the more humid regions of feet elevation. the rocks appeared in the following succession in descending. along the top are found great blocks of very compact gneiss buried in clay. half a mile lower the same rock appears, dipping north-north-east degrees. below this, beds of saccharine quartz, with seams of mica, dip north-north-west degrees. some of these quartz beds are folded on themselves, and look like flattened trunks of trees, being composed of concentric layers, each from two to four inches thick: we exposed twenty-seven feet of one fold running along the side of the road, which was cut parallel to the strike. each layer of quartz was separated from its fellows, by one of mica scales; and was broken up into cubical fragments, whose surfaces are no doubt cleavage and jointing places. i had previously seen, but not understood, such flexures produced by metamorphic action on masses of quartz when in a pasty state, in the falkland islands, where they have been perfectly well described by mr. darwin;* [journal of geological society for , p. , and "voyage of the beagle".] in whose views of the formation of these rocks i entirely concur. the flexures of the gneiss are incomparably more irregular and confused than those of the quartz, and often contain flattened spheres of highly crystalline felspar, that cleave perpendicularly to the shorter axis. these spheres are disposed in layers parallel to the foliation of the gneiss: and are the result of a metamorphic action of great intensity, effecting a complete rearrangement and crystallization of the quartz and mica in parallel planes, whilst the felspar is aggregated in spheres; just as in the rearrangement of the mineral constituents of mica-schists, the alumina is crystallized in the garnets, and in the clay-slates the iron into pyrites. the quartz below this dips north-north-west degrees to degrees, and alternates with a very hard slaty schist, dipping north-west degrees, and still lower is a blue-grey clay-slate, dipping north-north-west degrees. these rest on beds of slate, folded like the quartz mentioned above, but with cleavage-planes, forming lines radiating from the axis of each flexure, and running through all the concentric folds. below this are the plumbago and clay slates of punkabaree, which alternate with beds of mica-schist with garnets, and appear to repose immediately upon the carboniferous strata and sandstone; but there is much disturbance at the junction. on re-ascending from punkabaree, the rocks gradually appear more and more dislocated, the clay-slate less so than the quartz and mica-schist, and that again far less than the gneiss, which is so shattered and bent, that it is impossible to say what is _in situ,_ and what not. vast blocks lie superficially on the ridges; and the tops of all the outer mountains, as of khersiong spur, of tonglo, sinchul, and dorjiling, appear a pile of such masses. injected veins of quartz are rare in the lower beds of schist and clay-slate, whilst the gneiss is often full of them; and on the inner and loftier ranges, these quartz veins are replaced by granite with tourmaline. lime is only known as a stalactitic deposit from various streams, at elevations from to feet; one such stream occurs above punkabaree, which i have not seen; another within the sinchul range, on the great rungeet river, above the exit of the rummai; a third wholly in the great central himalayan range, flowing into the lachen river. the total absence of any calcareous rock in sikkim, and the appearance of the deposit in isolated streams at such distant localities, probably indicates a very remote origin of the lime-charged waters. from khersiong to dorjiling, gneiss is the only rock, and is often decomposed into clay-beds, feet deep, in which the narrow, often zigzag folia of quartz remain quite entire and undisturbed, whilst every trace of the foliation of the softer mineral is lost. at pacheem, dorjiling weather, with fog and drizzle, commenced, and continued for two days: we, reached dorjiling on the th of march, and found that the hail which had fallen on the th was still lying in great masses of crumbling ice in sheltered spots. the fall had done great damage to the gardens, and dr. campbell's tea-plants were cut to pieces. illustration--pocket-comb used by the mech tribes. end of volume i of himalayan journals. scanned by derek thompson drthom@ihug.co.nz himalayan journals or notes of a naturalist in bengal, the sikkim and nepal himalayas, the khasia mountains, etc. joseph dalton hooker, m.d., r.n., f.r.s. volume ii first published contents. chapter xviii. arrangements for second journey into sikkim -- opposition of dewan -- lassoo kajee -- tendong -- legend of flood -- lama of silok-foke -- namtchi -- tchebu lama -- top of tendong -- gigantic oak -- plants -- teesta valley -- commencement of rains -- bhomsong -- ascent to lathiang -- view -- bad road -- orchids -- gorh -- opposition of lama -- arrival of meepo -- cross teesta -- difficulties of travelling -- lepchas swimming -- moxa for sprains -- singtam -- grandeur of view of kinchinjunga -- wild men -- singtam soubah -- landslips -- bees' nests and honey-seekers -- leeches, etc. -- chakoong -- vegetation -- gravel terraces -- unpleasant effects of wormwood -- choongtam, scenery and vegetation of -- inhabitants -- tibetan salute -- lamas -- difficulty of procuring food -- contrast of vegetation of inner and outer himalaya -- rhododendrons -- yew -- _abies brunoniana_ -- venomous snakes -- hornets and other insects -- choongtam temple -- pictures of lhassa -- minerals -- scenery. chapter xix. routes from choongtam to tibet frontier -- choice of that by the lachen river -- arrival of supplies -- departure -- features of the valley -- eatable _polygonum_ -- tumlong -- cross taktoong river -- pines, larches, and other trees -- chateng pool -- water-plants and insects -- tukcham mountain -- lamteng village -- inhabitants -- alpine monkey -- botany of temperate himalaya -- european and american fauna -- japanese and malayan genera -- superstitious objections to shooting -- customs of people -- rain -- run short of provisions -- altered position of tibet frontier -- zemu samdong -- imposition -- vegetation -- uses of pines -- ascent to thlonok river -- balanophora wood for making cups -- snow-beds -- eatable mushrooms and _smilacina_ -- asarabacca -- view of kinchinjunga -- arum-roots, preparation of for food -- liklo mountain -- behaviour of my party -- bridge constructed over zemu -- cross river -- alarm of my party -- camp on zemu river. chapter xx. camp on zemu river -- scenery -- falling rocks -- tukcham mountain -- height of glaciers -- botany -- gigantic rhubarb -- insects -- storm -- temperature of rivers -- behaviour of lachen phipun -- hostile conduct of bhoteeas -- view from mountains above camp -- descend to zemu samdong -- vegetation -- letters from dorjiling -- arrival of singtam soubah -- presents from rajah -- parties collecting arum-roots -- insects -- ascend lachen river -- thakya-zong -- tallum samdong village -- cottages -- mountains -- plants -- entomology -- weather -- halo -- diseases -- conduct of singtam soubah -- his character and illness -- agrees to take me to kongra lama -- tungu -- appearance of country -- houses -- poisoning by aram-roots -- yaks and calves -- tibet ponies -- journey to kongra lama -- tibetan tents -- butter, curds, and churns -- hospitality -- kinchinjhow and chomiomo -- magnificent scenery -- reach kongra lama pass. chapter xxi. top of kongra lama -- tibet frontier -- elevation -- view -- vegetation -- descent to tungu -- tungu-choo -- ponies -- kinchinjhow and chango-khang mountains -- palung plains -- tibetans -- dogs -- dingcham province of tibet -- inhabitants -- dresses -- women's ornaments -- blackening faces -- coral -- tents -- elevation of palung -- lama -- shawl-wool goats -- shearing -- siberian plants -- height of glaciers, and perpetual snow -- geology -- plants, and wild animals -- marmots -- insects -- birds -- choongtam lama -- religious exercises -- tibetan hospitality -- _delphinium_ -- perpetual snow -- temperature at tungu -- return to tallum samdong -- to lamteng -- houses -- fall of barometer -- cicadas -- lime deposits -- landslips -- arrival at choongtam -- cobra -- rageu -- heat of climate -- velocity and volume of rivers measured -- leave for lachoong valley -- keadom -- general features of valley -- lachoong village -- tunkra mountain -- moraines -- cultivation -- lachoong phipun -- lama ceremonies beside a sick-bed. chapter xxii. leave lachoong for tunkra pass -- moraines and their vegetation -- pines of great dimensions -- wild currants -- glaciers -- summit of pass -- elevation -- views -- plants -- winds -- choombi district -- lacheepia rock -- extreme cold -- kinchinjunga -- himalayan grouse -- meteorological observations -- return to lachoong -- oaks -- ascend to yeumtong -- flats and debacles -- buried pine-trunks -- perpetual snow -- hot springs -- behaviour of singtam soubah -- leave for momay samdong -- upper limit of trees -- distribution of plants -- glacial terraces, etc. -- forked donkia -- moutonneed rocks -- ascent to donkia pass -- vegetation -- scenery -- lakes -- tibet -- bhomtso -- arun river -- kiang-lah mountains -- yaru-tsampu river -- appearance of tibet -- kambajong -- jigatzi -- kinchinjhow, and kinchinjunga -- chola range -- deceptive appearance of distant landscape -- perpetual snow -- granite -- temperatures -- pulses -- plants -- tripe de roche -- return to momay -- dogs and yaks -- birds -- insects -- quadrupeds -- hot springs -- marmots -- kinchinjhow glacier. chapter xxiii. donkia glaciers -- moraines -- dome of ice -- honey-combed surface -- rocks of donkia -- metamorphic action of granite veins -- accident to instruments -- sebolah pass -- bees and may-flies -- view -- temperature -- pulses of party -- lamas and travellers at momay -- weather and climate -- dr. campbell leaves dorjiling for sikkim -- leave momay -- yeumtong -- lachoong -- retardation of vegetation at low elevations -- choongtam -- landslips and debacle -- meet dr. campbell -- motives for his journey -- second visit to lachen valley -- autumnal tints -- red currants -- lachen phipun -- tungu -- scenery -- animals -- poisonous rhododendrons -- fire-wood -- palung -- elevations -- sitong -- kongra lama -- tibetans -- enter tibet -- desolate scenery -- plants -- animals -- geology -- cholamoo lakes -- antelopes -- return to yeumtso -- dr. campbell lost -- extreme cold -- headaches -- tibetan dingpun and guard -- arms and accoutrements -- temperature of yeumtso -- migratory birds -- visit of dingpun -- yeumtso lakes. chapter xxiv. ascent of bhomtso -- view of snowy mountains -- chumulari -- arun river -- kiang-lah mountains -- jigatzi -- lhassa -- dingcham province of tibet -- misapplication of term "plain of tibet" -- sheep, flocks of -- crops -- probable elevation of jigatzi -- yaru-tsampu river -- tame elephants -- wild horses -- dryness of air -- sunset beams -- rocks of kinchinjhow -- cholamoo lakes -- limestone -- dip and strike of rocks -- effects of great elevation on party -- ascent of donkia -- moving piles of debris -- cross donkia pass -- second visit to momay samdong -- hot springs -- descent to yeumtong -- lachoong -- retardation of vegetation again noticed -- jerked meat -- fish -- lose a thermometer -- lepcha lad sleeps in hot spring -- keadom -- _bucklandia_ -- arrive at choongtam -- mendicant -- meepo -- lachen-lachoong river -- wild grape -- view from singtam of kinchinjunga -- virulent nettle. chapter xxv. journey to the rajah's residence at tumloong -- ryott valley -- rajah's house -- tupgain lama -- lagong nunnery -- phadong goompa -- phenzong ditto -- lepcha sepoys -- proceedings at tumloong -- refused admittance to rajah -- women's dresses -- meepo's and tchebu lama's families -- chapel -- leave for chola pass -- ryott river -- rungpo, view from -- deputation of kajees, etc. -- conference -- laghep -- eatable fruit of _decaisnea -- cathcartia_ -- rhododendrons -- phieung-goong -- pines -- rutto river -- barfonchen -- curling of rhododendron leaf -- woodcock -- chola pass -- small lakes -- tibet guard and sepoys -- dingpun -- arrival of sikkim sepoys -- their conduct -- meet singtam soubah -- chumanako -- we are seized by the soubah's party -- soubah's conduct -- dingpun tinli -- treatment of dr. campbell -- bound and guarded -- separated from campbell -- marched to tumloong -- motives for such conduct -- arrive at rungpo -- at phadong -- presents from rajah -- visits of lama -- of singtam soubah -- i am cross-questioned by amlah -- confined with campbell -- seizure of my coolies -- threats of attacking dorjiling. chapter xxvi. dr. campbell is ordered to appear at durbar -- lamas called to council -- threats -- scarcity of food -- arrival of dewan -- our jailer, thoba-sing -- temperature, etc., at tumloong -- services of goompas -- lepcha girl -- jews'-harp -- terror of servants -- ilam-sing's family -- interview with dewan -- remonstrances -- dewan feigns sickness -- lord dalhousie's letter to rajah -- treatment of indo-chinese -- concourse of lamas -- visit of tchebu lama -- close confinement -- dr. campbell's illness -- conference with amlah -- relaxation of confinement -- pemiongchi lama's intercession -- escape of nimbo -- presents from rajah, ranee, and people -- protestations of friendship -- mr. lushington sent to dorjiling -- leave tumloong -- cordial farewell -- dewan's merchandize -- gangtok kajee -- dewan's pomp -- governor-general's letter -- dikkeeling -- suspicion of poison -- dinner and pills -- tobacco -- bhotanese colony -- katong-ghat on teesta -- wild lemons -- sepoys' insolence -- dewan alarmed -- view of dorjiling -- threats of a rescue -- fears of our escape -- tibet flutes -- negotiate our release -- arrival at dorjiling -- dr. thomson joins me -- movement of troops at dorjiling -- seizure of rajah's terai property. chapter xxvii. leave dorjiling for calcutta -- jung bahadoor -- dr. falconer -- improvements in botanic gardens -- palmetum -- victoria -- _amherstia_ -- orchids spread by seed -- banyan -- _cycas_ -- importation of american plants in ice -- return to dorjiling -- leave with dr. thomson for the khasia mountains -- mahanuddy river -- vegetation of banks -- maldah -- alligators -- rampore-bauleah -- climate of ganges -- pubna -- jummul river -- altered course of burrampooter and megna -- dacca -- conch shells -- saws -- cotton muslins -- fruit -- vegetation -- elevation -- rose of bengal -- burrampooter -- delta of soormah river -- jheels -- soil -- vegetation -- navigation -- mosquitos -- atmospheric pressure -- effects of geological changes -- imbedding of plants -- teelas or islets -- chattuc -- salubrious climate -- rains -- canoes -- pundua -- mr. harry inglis -- terrya ghat -- ascent to churra -- scenery and vegetation at foot of mountains -- cascades. chapter xxviii. churra, english station of -- khasia people -- garrow people -- houses -- habits --	dress -- arms -- dialects -- marriages -- food -- funerals -- superstitions -- flat of churra -- scenery -- lime and coal -- mamloo -- cliffs -- cascades -- _chamaerops_ palm -- jasper-rocks -- flora of churra -- orchids -- rhododendrons --	pine -- climate -- extraordinaiy rain-fall -- its effects -- gardens of lieuts. raban and cave -- leave churra to cross the mountain range -- coal, shale, and under-clay -- kala-panee river -- lailangkot -- _luculia pinceana_ -- conglomerate -- surureem wood -- boga-panee river -- view of himalaya -- greenstone -- age of pine-cones -- moflong plants -- _coix_ -- chillong mountain -- extensive view -- road to syong -- broad valleys -- geology -- plants -- myrung -- granite blocks -- kollong rock -- pine-woods -- features of country -- orchids -- iron forges. chapter xxix. view of himalaya from the khasia -- great masses of snow -- chumulari -- donkia -- grasses -- nunklow -- assam valley and burrampooter -- tropical forest -- bor-panee -- rhododendrons -- wild elephants -- blocks of syenite -- return to churra -- coal -- august temperature -- leave for chela -- jasper hill -- birds -- _arundina_ -- habits of leaf-insects -- curious village -- houses -- canoes -- boga-panee river -- jheels -- chattuc -- churra -- leave for jyntea hills -- trading parties -- dried fish -- cherries -- cinnamon -- fraud -- pea-violet -- nonkreem -- sandstone -- pines -- granite boulders -- iron washing -- forges -- tanks -- siberian _nymphaea_ -- barren country -- pomrang -- _podostemon_ -- patchouli plant -- mooshye -- enormous stone slabs -- pitcher-plant -- joowye -- cultivation and vegetation -- _hydropeltis_ -- sulky hostess -- nurtiung -- _hamamelis chinensis_ -- bor-panee river -- sacred grove and gigantic stone structures -- altars -- pyramids, etc. -- origin of names -- _yandaca coerulea_ -- collections -- november vegetation -- geology of khasia -- sandstone -- coal -- lime -- gneiss -- greenstone -- tidal action -- strike of rocks -- comparison with rajmahal hills and the himalaya. chapter xxx. best voyage to silhet -- river -- palms -- teelas -- botany -- fish weirs -- forests of cachar -- sandal-wood, etc. -- porpoises -- alligators -- silchar -- tigers -- rice crops -- cookies -- munniporees -- hockey -- varnish -- dance -- nagas -- excursion to munnipore frontier -- elephant bogged -- bamboos -- _cardiopteris_ -- climate, etc., of cachar -- mosquitos -- fall of banks -- silhet -- oaks -- _stylidium_ -- tree-ferns -- chattuc -- megna -- meteorology -- palms -- noa-colly -- salt-smuggling -- delta of ganges and megna -- westward progress of megna -- peat -- tide -- waves -- earthquakes -- dangerous navigation -- moonlight scenes -- mud island -- chittagong -- mug tribes -- views -- trees -- churs -- flagstaff hill -- coffee -- pepper -- tea, etc. -- excursions from chittagong -- _dipterocarpi_ or gurjun oil trees -- earthquake -- birds -- papaw -- bleeding of stems -- poppy and sun fields -- -- seetakoond -- bungalow and hill -- perpetual flame -- _falconeria -- cycas_ -- climate -- leave for calcutta -- hattiah island -- plants -- underbunds -- steamer -- tides -- _nipa fruticans_ -- fishing -- otters -- crocodiles -- _phoenix paludosa_ -- departure from india. appendix ===================== list of illustrations lithographic views. fig. vi. view of kinchinjunga from singtam, looking north-westward. p. fig. vii. kinchinjunga from the thlonok river, with rhododendrons in flower. frontispiece fig. viii. tibet and cholamoo lake from the summit of the donkia pass, looking north-west. p. fig. ix. kinchinjhow, donkia, and cholamoo lake, from the summit of bhomtso, looking south; the summit of chumulari is introduced in the extreme left of the view. p. fig. x. the table-land and station of churra, with the jheels, course of the soormah river, and tipperah hills in the extreme distance, looking south. p. fig. xi. the bhotan himalaya, assam valley, and burrampooter river, from nunklow, looking north. p. fig. xii. seetakoond hill. p. wood engravings. fig. . pandanus in the teesta valley. p. fig. . cane-bridge over the lachen-lachoong river, below choongtam. tukcham mountain is brought into the view, as seen from a higher elevation. p. fig. . _juniperus recurva,_ the weeping juniper. p. fig. . lamteng village, with tukcham in the distance. p. fig. . black juniper and young larch. p. fig. . tungu village, with yaks in the foreground. p. fig. . women's head-dresses--the two outer, lepcha girls; the two inner, tibetan women. p. fig. . tibet marmot. sketched by j. e. winterbottom, esq. p. fig. . lachoong valley (looking south), larch tree in the foreground. p. fig. . conical ancient moraines in the lachoong valley, with _abies brunoniana_ and _smithiana_. p. fig. . head and legs of tibet marmot. sketched by j. e. winterbottom, esq. p. fig. . block of gneiss with granite bands, on the kinchinjhow glacier. p. fig. . summit of forked donkia mountain, with goa antelopes in the foreground; from , feet elevation. p. fig. . view of the eastern top of kinchinjhow, and tibet in the distance, with wild sheep in the foreground; from an elevation of , feet. p. fig. . head of chiru antelope, the unicorn of tibet. from a sketch by lieut. h. maxwell. p. fig. . a phud, or tibetan mendicant. sketched at dorjiling by miss colvile. p. fig. . tea (brick of), tea-pot, wooden cup, etc. p. fig. . portrait of aden tchebu lama. sketched by lieut. h. maxwell. p. fig. . silver chain and hooks, ornamented with turquoises, used to fasten women's cloaks. p. fig. . horns of the showa stag of tibet (_cervus wallichii_). sketched by lieut. h. maxwell. p. fig. . rajah's house at tumloong, in the foreground the cottage in which dr. campbell was confined, with the dewan's retinue passing. this is partly executed from memory. p. fig. . tibetan tobacco-pipe and tinder-pouch, with steel attached. p. fig. . lepcha sepoys, the right hand figures, and tibetan ones on the left. p. fig. . dr. falconer's residence, calcutta botanic gardens; from sir l. peel's grounds, looking across the hoogly. p. fig. . view in the jheels of bengal, with khasia mountains in the distance. p. fig. . living bridge, formed of the aerial roots of figs. p. fig. . dewan's ear-ring of pearl and turquoises. p. fig. . waterfalls at mamloo, with fan-palms. p. fig. . kollong rock. p. fig. . chela, on the boga-panee river. p. fig. . nonkreem village, with boulders of denudation. p. fig. . bellows of iron smelters in the khasia mountains. p. fig. . old bridge at amwee. p. fig. . stones at nurtiung. p. fig. . _dipterocarpus turbinatus,_ gurjun or wood-oil tree. p. himalayan journals. chapter xviii. arrangements for second journey into sikkim -- opposition of dewan -- lassoo kajee -- tendong -- legend of flood -- lama of sillok-foke -- namtchi -- tcbebu lama -- top of tendong -- gigantic oak -- plants -- teesta valley -- commencement of rains -- bhomsong -- ascent to lathiang -- view -- bad road -- orcbids -- gorh -- opposition of lama -- arrival of meepo -- cross teesta -- difficulties of travelling -- lepchas swimming -- moxa for sprains -- singtam -- grandeur of view of kinchinjunga -- wild men -- singtam soubah -- landslips -- bees'-nests and honey-seekers -- leeches, etc. -- cbakoong -- vegetation -- gravel terraces -- unpleasant effects of wormwood -- choongtam, scenery and vegetation of -- inhabitants -- tibetan salute -- lamas -- difficulty of procuring food -- contrast of vegetation of inner and outer himalaya -- rhododendrons -- yew -- _abies brunoniana_ -- venomous snakes -- hornets and other insects -- choongtam temple -- pictures of lhassa -- minerals -- scenery. after my return from the terai, i was occupied during the month of april in preparations for an expedition to the loftier parts of sikkim. the arrangements were the same as for my former journey, except with regard to food, which it was necessary should be sent out to me at intervals; for we had had ample proof that the resources of the country were not equal to provisioning a party of from forty to fifty men, even had the dewan been favourable to my travelling, which was clearly not the case. dr. campbell communicated to the rajah my intention of starting early in may for the upper teesta valley, and, in the governor-general's name, requested that he would facilitate my visiting the frontier of sikkim, north-east of kinchinjunga. the desired permission was, after a little delay, received; which appeared to rouse the dewan to institute a series of obstructions to my progress, which caused so many delays that my exploration of the country was not concluded till october, and i was prevented returning to dorjiling before the following christmas. since our visit to the rajah in december, no vakeel (agent) had been sent by the durbar to dorjiling, and consequently we could only communicate indirectly with his highness, while we found it impossible to ascertain the truth of various reports promulgated by the dewan, and meant to deter me from entering the country. in april, the lassoo kajee was sent as vakeel, but, having on a previous occasion been dismissed for insolence and incapacity, and again rejected when proposed by the dewan at bhomsong, he was refused an audience; and he encamped at the bottom of the great rungeet valley, where he lost some of his party through fever. he retired into sikkim, exasperated, pretending that he had orders to delay my starting, in consequence of the death of the heir apparent; and that he was prepared to use strong measures should i cross the frontier. no notice was taken of these threats: the rajah was again informed of my intended departure, unless his own orders to the contrary were received through a proper accredited agent, and i left dorjiling on the rd of may, accompanied by dr. campbell, who insisted on seeing me fairly over the frontier at the great rungeet river. arrangements were made for supplies of rice following me by instalments; our daily consumption being lbs., a man's load. after crossing into sikkim, i mustered my party at the great rungeet river. i had forty-two in all, of whom the majority were young lepchas, or sikkim-born people of tibetan races: all were active and cheerful looking follows; only one was goitred, and he had been a salt-trader. i was accompanied by a guard of five sepoys, and had a lepcha and tibetan interpreter. i took but one personal servant, a portuguese half-caste (john hoffman by name), who cooked for me: he was a native of calcutta, and though hardy, patient, and long-suffering, and far better-tempered, was, in other respects, very inferior to clamanze, who had been my servant the previous year, and who, having been bred to the sea, was as handy as he was clever; but who, like all other natives of the plains, grew intolerably weary of the hills, and left me. the first part of my route lay over tendong, a very fine mountain, which rises , feet, and is a conspicuous feature from dorjiling, where it is known as mount ararat. the lepchas have a curious legend of a man and woman having saved themselves on its summit, during a flood that once deluged sikkim. the coincidence of this story with the english name of ararat suggests the probability of the legend being fabulous; but i am positively assured that it is not so, but that it was current amongst the lepchas before its english name was heard of, and that the latter was suggested from the peculiar form of its summit resembling that given in children's books as the resting-place of the ark. the ascent from the great rungeet (alt. feet) is through dry woods of sal and pines (_p. longifolia_). i camped the first night at the village of mikk (alt. , feet), and on the following day ascended to namtc (alt. , feet). on the route i was met by the lama of silokfoke goompa. though a resident on the lassoo kajee's estates, he politely brought me a present, at the same time apologising for not waiting till i had encamped, owing to his excessive fat, which prevented his climbing. i accepted his excuses, though well aware that his real reason was that he wished to pay his respects, and show his good feeling, in private. besides his ordinary canonicals, he carried a tall crozier-headed staff, and had a curious horn slung round his neck, full of amulets; it was short, of a transparent red colour, and beautifully carved, and was that of the small cow of lhassa, which resembles the english species, and is not a yak (it is called "tundro"). namtchi was once a place of considerable importance; and still possesses a mendong, with six rows of inscribed slabs; a temple, and a lama attached thereto: the latter waited on me soon after i had encamped, but he brought no present, and i was not long kept in suspense as to his motives. these people are poor dissemblers; if they intend to obstruct, they do it clumsily and hesitatingly: in this instance the lama first made up to my people, and, being coolly received, kept gradually edging up to my tent-door, where, after an awkward salute, he delivered himself with a very bad grace of his mission, which was from the lassoo kajee to stop my progress. i told him i knew nothing of the lassoo kajee or his orders, and should proceed on the following morning: he then urged the bad state of the roads, and advised me to wait two days till he should receive orders from the rajah; upon which i dismissed him. soon afterwards, as i sat at my tent-door, looking along the narrow bushy ridge that winds up the mountain, i saw twenty or thirty men rapidly descending the rocky path: they were lepchas, with blue and white striped garments, bows and quivers, and with their long knives gleaming in the sun: they seemed to be following a figure in red lama costume, with a scarlet silk handkerchief wound round his head, its ends streaming behind him. though expecting this apparition to prove the renowned kajee and his myrmidons, coming to put a sudden termination to my progress, i could not help admiring the exceeding picturesqueness of the scenery and party. my fears were soon dissipated by my men joyfully shouting, "the tchebu lama! the tchebu lama!" and i soon recognised the rosy face and twinkling eyes of my friend of bhomsong, the only man of intelligence about the rajah's court, and the one whose services as vakeel were particularly wanted at dorjiling. he told me that the lassoo kajee had orders (from whom, he would not say) to stop my progress, but that i should proceed nevertheless, and that there was no objection to my doing so; and he despatched a messenger to the rajah, announcing my progress, and requesting him to send me a guide, and to grant me every facility, asserting that he had all along fully intended doing so. on the following morning the lama proceeded to dorjiling, and i continued the ascent of tendong, sending my men round the shoulder to temi in the teesta valley, where i proposed to pass the night. the road rapidly ascends by a narrow winding path, covered with a loose forest of oaks, rhododendrons, and various shrubs, not found at equal elevations on the wetter dorjiling ranges: amongst, them the beautiful laburnum-like _piptanthus nepalensis,_ with golden blossoms, was conspicuous. enormous blocks of white and red stratified quartz, and slate, some and even yards long, rest on the narrow ridge at feet elevation. the last ascent is up a steep rounded cone with a broad flat top, covered with dwarf bamboo, a few oaks, laurels, magnolias, and white-flowered rhododendron trees (_r. argenteum_), which obstructed the view. i hung the barometers near one of the many chaits on the summit, where there is also a rude temple, in which worship is performed once a year. the elevation is , feet by my observations.* [ , by col. waugh's trigonometrical observations.] the geological formation of tendong in some measure accounts for its peculiar form. on the conical summit are hard quartzoze porphyries, which have apparently forced up the gneiss and slates, which dip in all directions from the top, and are full of injected veins of quartz. below feet, mica-schist prevails, always inclined at a very high angle; and i found jasper near namtchi, with other indications of plutonic action. the descent on the north side was steep, through a rank vegetation, very different from that of the south face. the oaks are very grand, and i measured one (whose trunk was decayed, and split into three, however), which i found to be feet in girth at feet from the ground. near temi (alt. , feet) i gathered the fruit of _kadsura,_ a climbing plant allied to magnolia, bearing round heads of large fleshy red drupes, which are pleasantly acid and much eaten; the seeds are very aromatic. from temi the road descends to the teesta, the course of which it afterwards follows. the valley was fearfully hot, and infested with mosquitos and peepsas. many fine plants grew in it:* [especially upon the broad terraces of gravel, some of which are upwards of a mile long, and feet above the stream: they are covered with boulders of rock, and are generally opposite feeders of the river.] i especially noticed _aristolochia saccata,_ which climbs the loftiest trees, bearing its curious pitcher-shaped flowers near the ground only; its leaves are said to be good food for cattle. _houttuynia,_ a curious herb allied to pepper, grew on the banks, which, from the profusion of its white flowers, resembled strawberry-beds; the leaves are eaten by the lepchas. but the most magnificent plant of these jungles is _hodgsonia,_ (a genus i have dedicated to my friend, mr. hodgson), a gigantic climber allied to the gourd, bearing immense yellowish-white pendulous blossoms, whose petals have a fringe of buff-coloured curling threads, several inches long. the fruit is of a rich brown, like a small melon in form, and contains six large nuts, whose kernels (called "katior-pot" by the lepchas) are eaten. the stem, when cut, discharges water profusely from whichever end is held downwards. the "took" (_hydnocarpus_) is a beautiful evergreen tree, with tufts of yellow blossoms on the trunk: its fruit is as large as an orange, and is used to poison fish, while from the seeds an oil is expressed. tropical oaks and terminalias are the giants of these low forests, the latter especially, having buttressed trunks, appear truly gigantic; one, of a kind called "sung-lok," measured feet in girth, at feet, and at feet from the ground, and was fully feet high. i could only procure the leaves by firing a ball into the crown. some of their trunks lay smouldering on the ground, emitting a curious smell from the mineral matter in their ashes, of whose constituents an account will be found in the appendix. birds are very rare, as is all animal life but insects, and a small fresh-water crab, _thelphusa,_ ("ti-hi" of the lepchas). shells, from the absence of lime, are extremely scarce, and i scarcely picked up a single specimen: the most common are species of _cyclostoma._ the rains commenced on the th of may, greatly increasing the discomforts of travelling, but moderating the heat by drenching thunder-storms, which so soaked the men's loads, that i was obliged to halt a day in the teesta valley to have waterproof covers made of platted bamboo-work, enclosing phrynium leaves. i was delighted to find that my little tent was impervious to water, though its thickness was but of one layer of blanket: it was a single ridge with two poles, feet high, feet long, and feet broad at the base, forming nearly an equilateral triangle in front. bhomsong was looking more beautiful than ever in its rich summer clothing of tropical foliage. i halted during an hour of heavy rain on the spot where i had spent the previous christmas, and could not help feeling doubly lonely in a place where every rock and tree reminded me of that pleasant time. the isolation of my position, the hostility of the dewan, and consequent uncertainty of the success of a journey that absorbed all my thoughts, the prevalence of fevers in the valleys i was traversing, and the many difficulties that beset my path, all crowded on the imagination when fevered by exertion and depressed by gloomy weather, and my spirits involuntarily sank as i counted the many miles and months intervening between me and my home. the little flat on which i had formerly encamped was now covered with a bright green crop of young rice. the house then occupied by the dewan was now empty and unroofed; but the suspension bridge had been repaired, and its light framework of canes, spanning the boiling flood of the teesta, formed a graceful object in this most beautiful landscape. the temperature of the river was degrees, only degrees above that of mid-winter, owing to the now melting snows. i had rather expected to meet either with a guide, or with some further obstruction here, but as none appeared, i proceeded onwards as soon as the weather moderated. illustration--pandanus. sikkim screw-pine. higher up, the scenery resembles that of tchintam on the tambur: the banks are so steep as to allow of no road, and the path ascends from the river, at feet, to lathiang village, at , feet, up a wild, rocky torrent that descends from mainom to the teesta. the cliffs here are covered with wild plantains and screw-pines (_pandanus_), feet high, that clasp the rocks with cable-like roots, and bear one or two crowns of drooping leaves, feet long: two palms, rattan (_calamus_) and _areca gracilis,_ penetrate thus far up the teesta valley, but are scarcely found further. from the village the view was superb, embracing the tropical gulley below, with the flat of bhomsong deep down in the gorge, its bright rice-fields gleaming like emeralds amid the dark vegetation that surrounded it; the teesta winding to the southward, the pine-clad rocky top of mainom, , feet high, to the south-west, the cone of mount ararat far to the south, to the north black mountains tipped with snow, and to the east the magnificent snowy range of chola, girdling the valley of the ryott with a diadem of frosted silver. the coolies, each carrying upwards of lb. load, had walked twelve hours that day, and besides descending feet, they had ascended nearly feet, and gone over innumerable ups and downs besides. beyond lathiang, a steep and dangerous path runs along the east flank of mainom, sometimes on narrow ledges of dry rock, covered with long grass, sometimes dipping into wooded gullies, full of _edgeworthia gardneri_ and small trees of andromeda and rhododendron, covered with orchids* [especially some species of _sunipia_ and _cirrhopetalum,_ whicb have not yet been introduced into england.] of great beauty. descending to gorh ( , feet), i was met by the lama of that district, a tall, disagreeable-looking fellow, who informed me that the road ahead was impassable. the day being spent, i was obliged to camp at any rate; after which he visited me in full canonicals, bringing me a handsome present, but assuring me that he had no authority to let me advance. i treated him with civility, and regretted my objects being so imperative, and my orders so clear, that i was obliged to proceed on the following morning: on which he abruptly decamped, as i suspected, in order to damage the paths and bridges. he came again at daylight, and expostulated further; but finding it of no use, he volunteered to accompany me, officiously offering me the choice of two roads. i asked for the coolest, knowing full well that it was useless to try and out-wit him in such matters. at the first stream the bridge was destroyed, but seeing the planks peeping through the bushes in which they had been concealed, i desired the lama to repair it, which he did without hesitation. so it was at every point: the path was cumbered with limbs of trees, crossing-stones were removed from the streams, and all natural difficulties were increased. i kept constantly telling the lama that as he had volunteered to show me the road, i felt sure he intended to remove all obstacles, and accordingly i put him to all the trouble i possibly could, which he took with a very indifferent grace. when i arrived at the swinging bridge across the teesta, i found that the canes were loosened, and that slips of bamboo, so small as nearly to escape observation, were ingeniously placed low down over the single bamboo that formed the footing, intended to trip up the unwary passenger, and overturn him into the river, which was deep, and with a violent current. whilst the lama was cutting these, one of my party found a charcoal writing on a tree, announcing the speedy arrival from the rajah of my old guide, meepo; and he shortly afterwards appeared, with instructions to proceed with me, though not to the tibetan frontier. the lateness of the season, the violence of the rains, and the fears, on the rajah's part, that i might suffer from fever or accident, were all urged to induce me to return, or at least only to follow the west branch of the teesta to kinchinjunga. these reasons failing, i was threatened with chinese interference on the frontier. all these objections i overruled, by refusing to recognise any instructions that were not officially communicated to the superintendent of dorjiling. the gorh lama here took leave of me: he was a friend of the dewan, and was rather surprised to find that the rajah had sent me a guide, and now attempted to pass himself off as my friend, pompously charging meepo with the care of me, and bidding me a very polite farewell. i could not help telling him civilly, but plainly, what i thought of him; and so we parted. meepo was very glad to join my party again: he is a thorough lepcha in heart, a great friend of his rajah and of tchebu lama, and one who both fears and hates the dewan. he assured me of the rajah's good wishes and intentions, but spoke with great doubt as to the probability of a successful issue to my journey: he was himself ignorant of the road, but had brought a guide, whose appearance, however, was against him, and who turned out to be sent as a spy on us both. instead of crossing the teesta here, we kept on for two days up its west bank, to a cane bridge at lingo, where the bed of the river is still only feet above the sea, though miles distant from the plains, and flowing in a valley bounded by mountains , to , feet high. the heat was oppressive, from the closeness of the atmosphere, the great power of the sun, now high at noon-day, and the reflection from the rocks. leeches began to swarm as the damp increased, and stinging flies of various kinds. my clothes were drenched with perspiration during five hours of every day, and the crystallising salt irritated the skin. on sitting down to rest, i was overcome with languor and sleep, and, but for the copious supply of fresh water everywhere, travelling would have been intolerable. the coolies were all but naked, and were constantly plunging into the pools of the rivers; for, though filthy in their persons, they revel in cold water in summer. they are powerful swimmers, and will stem a very strong current, striking out with each arm alternately. it is an animated sight when twenty or thirty of these swarthy children of nature are disporting their muscular figures in the water, diving after large fish, and sometimes catching them by tickling them under the stones. of plants i found few not common at similar elevations below dorjiling, except another kind of tree-fern,* [_alsophila spinulosa,_ the "pugjik" of the lepchas, who eat the soft watery pith: it is abundant in east bengal and the peninsula of india. the other sikkim tree-fern, _a. gigantea,_ is far more common from the level of the plains to , elevation, and is found as far south as java.] whose pith is eaten in times of scarcity. the india-rubber fig penetrates thus far amongst the mountains, but is of small size. a gentian, _arenaria,_ and some sub-alpine plants are met with, though the elevation is only feet, and the whole climate thoroughly tropical: they were annuals usually found at to , feet elevation, and were growing here on mossy rocks, cooled by the spray of the river, whose temperature was only . degrees. my servant having severely sprained his wrist by a fall, the lepchas wanted to apply a moxa, which they do by lighting a piece of puff-ball, or nepal paper that burns like tinder, laying it on the skin, and blowing it till a large open sore is produced: they shook their heads at my treatment, which consisted in transferring some of the leeches from our persons to the inflamed part. after crossing the teesta by the cane bridge of lingo, our route lay over a steep and lofty spur, round which the river makes a great sweep. on the ascent of this ridge we passed large villages on flats cultivated with buckwheat. the saddle is , feet high, and thence a rapid descent leads to the village of singtam, which faces the north, and is feet lower, and feet above the river, which is here no longer called the teesta, but is known as the lachen-lachoong, from its double origin in the rivers of these names, which unite at choongtam, twenty miles higher up. of these, the source of the lachen is in the cholamoo lakes in tibet; while the lachoong rises on the south flank of donkia mountain, both many marches north of my present position. at singtam the lacben-lachoong runs westward, till joined by the rihi from the north, and the rinoong from the west, after receiving which it assumes the name of teesta: of these affluents, the rinoong is the largest, and drains the south-east face of kinchinjunga and pundim, and the north of nursing: all which mountains are seen to the north-north-west of singtam. the rinoong valley is cultivated for several miles up, and has amongst others the village and lamasery of bah. beyond this the view of black, rugged precipices with snowy mountains towering above them, is one of the finest in sikkim. there is a pass in that direction, from bah over the tckonglah to the thlonok valley, and thence to the province of jigatzi in tibet, but it is almost impracticable. illustration--view of kinchinjunga from singtam, looking north-westward. a race of wild men, called "harrum-mo," are said to inhabit the head of the valley, living in the woods of a district called mund-po, beyond bah; tbey shun habitations, speak an unintelligible tongue, have more hair on the face than lepchas, and do not plait that of their heads, but wear it in a knot; they use the bow and arrow, and eat snakes and vermin, which the lepchas will not touch. such is the account i have heard, and which is certainly believed in sikkim: similar stories are very current in half civilized countries; and if this has any truth, it possibly refers to the chepangs,* [hodgson, in "bengal asiatic society's journal" for .] a very remarkable race, of doubtful affinity and origin, inhabiting the nepal forests. at singtam i was waited on by the soubah of the district, a tall portly bhoteea, who was destined to prove a most active enemy to my pursuits. he governs the country between gorh and the tibet frontier, for the maha-raanee (wife of the rajah), whose dowry it is; and she being the dewan's relative, i had little assistance to expect from her agent. his conduct was very polite, and he brought me a handsome offering for myself; but after delaying me a day on the pretext of collecting food for my people, of which i was in want, i was obliged to move on with no addition to my store, and trust to obtaining some at the next village, or from dorjiling. owing, however, to the increasing distance, and the destruction of the roads by the rains, my supplies from that place were becoming irregular: i therefore thought it prudent to reduce my party, by sending back my guard of sepoys, who could be of no further use. from this point the upper portion of the course of the teesta (lachen-lachoong) is materially different from what it is lower down; becoming a boisterous torrent, as suddenly as the tambur does above mywa guola. its bed is narrower, large masses of rock impede its course, nor is there any place where it is practicable for rafts at any season; the only means of passing it being by cane bridges that are thrown across, high above the stream. the slope on either side of the valley is very steep; that on the north, in particular, appearing too precipitous for any road, and being only frequented by honey seekers, who scale the rocks by cane ladders, and thus reach the pendulous bees'-nests, which are so large as in some instances to be conspicuous features at the distance of a mile. this pursuit appeared extremely perilous, the long thread-like canes in many places affording the only footing, over many yards of cliff: the procuring of this honey, however, is the only means by which many of the idle poor raise the rent which they must pay to the rajah. the most prominent effect of the steepness of the valleys is the prevalence of land-slips, which sometimes descend for feet, carrying devastation along their course: they are caused either by the melting of the snow-beds on the mountains, or by the action of the rains on the stratified rocks, and are much increased in effect and violence by the heavy timber-trees which, swaying forwards, loosen the earth at their roots, and give impetus to the mass. this phenomenon is as frequent and destructive as in switzerland, where, however, more lives are lost; from the country being more populous, and from the people recklessly building in places particularly exposed to such accidents. a most destructive one had, however, occurred here the previous year, by which a village was destroyed, together with twelve of its inhabitants, and all the cattle. the fragments of rock precipitated are sometimes of enormous size, but being a soft mica-schist, are soon removed by weathering. it is in the rainy season that landslips are most frequent, and shortly after rain they are pretty sure to be heard far or near. i crossed the debris of the great one alluded to, on the first march beyond singtam: the whole face of the mountain appeared more or less torn up for fully a mile, presenting a confused mass of white micaceous clay, full of angular masses of rock. the path was very difficult and dangerous, being carried along the steep slope, at an angle, in some places, of degrees; and it was constantly shifting, from the continued downward sliding, and from the action of streams, some of which are large, and cut deep channels. in one i had the misfortune to lose my only sheep, which was carried away by the torrent. these streams were crossed by means of sticks and ricketty bamboos, and the steep sides (sometimes twenty or thirty feet high), were ascended by notched poles. the weather continued very hot for the elevation ( to feet), the rain brought no coolness, and for the greater part of the three marches between singtam and chakoong, we were either wading through deep mud, or climbing over rocks. leeches swarmed in incredible profusion in the streams and damp grass, and among the bushes: they got into my hair, hung on my eyelids, and crawled up my legs and down my back. i repeatedly took upwards of a hundred from my legs, where the small ones used to collect in clusters on the instep: the sores which they produced were not healed for five months afterwards, and i retain the scars to the present day. snuff and tobacco leaves are the best antidote, but when marching in the rain, it is impossible to apply this simple remedy to any advantage. the best plan i found to be rolling the leaves over the feet, inside the stockings, and powdering the legs with snuf. another pest is a small midge, or sand-fly, which causes intolerable itching, and subsequent irritation, and is in this respect the most insufferable torment in sikkim; the minutest rent in one's clothes is detected by the acute senses of this insatiable bloodsucker, which is itself so small as to be barely visible without a microscope. we daily arrived at our camping-ground, streaming with blood, and mottled with the bites of peepsas, gnats, midges, and mosquitos, besides being infested with ticks. as the rains advanced, insects seemed to be called into existence in countless swarms; large and small moths, cockchafers, glow-worms, and cockroaches, made my tent a noah's ark by night, when the candle was burning; together with winged ants, may-flies, flying earwigs, and many beetles, while a very large species of _tipula_ (daddy-long-legs) swept its long legs across my face as i wrote my journal, or plotted off my map. after retiring to rest and putting out the light, they gradually departed, except a few which could not find the way out, and remained to disturb my slumbers. chakoong is a remarkable spot in the bottom of the valley, at an angle of the lachen-lachoong, which here receives an affluent from gnarem, a mountain , feet high, on the chola range to the east.* [this is called black rock in col. waugh's map. i doubt gnarem being a generally known name: the people hardly recognise the mountain as sufficiently conspicuous to bear a name.] there is no village, but some grass huts used by travellers, which are built close to the river on a very broad flat, fringed with alder, hornbeam, and birch: the elevation is , feet, and many european genera not found about dorjiling, and belonging to the temperate himalaya, grow intermixed with tropical plants that are found no further north. the birch, willow, alder, and walnut grow side by side with wild plantain, _erythrina, wallichia_ palm, and gigantic bamboos: the _cedrela toona,_ figs, _melastoma, scitamineae,_ balsams, _pothos,_ peppers, and gigantic climbing vines, grow mixed with brambles, speedwell, _paris,_ forget-me-not, and nettles that sting like poisoned arrows. the wild english strawberry is common, but bears a tasteless fruit: its inferiority is however counterbalanced by the abundance of a grateful yellow raspberry. parasitical orchids (_dendrobium nobile,_ and _densiflorum,_ etc.), cover the trunks of oaks, while _thalictrum_ and _geranium_ grow under their shade. _monotropa_ and _balanophora,_ both parasites on the roots of trees (the one a native of north europe and the other of a tropical climate), push their leafless stems and heads of flowers through the soil together: and lastly, tree-ferns grow associated with the _pteris aquilina_ (brake) and _lycopodium clavatum_ of our british moors; and amongst mosses, the superb himalayan _lyellia crispa,_* [this is one of the most remarkable mosses in the himalaya mountains, and derives additional interest from having been named after the late charles lyell, esq., of kinnordy, the father of the most eminent geologist of the present day.] with the english _funaria hygrometrica._ the dense jungles of chakoong completely cover the beautiful flat terraces of stratified sand and gravel, which rise in three shelves to feet above the river, and whose edges appear as sharply cut as if the latter had but lately retired from them. they are continuous with a line of quartzy cliffs, covered with scarlet rhododendrons, and in the holes of which a conglomerate of pebbles is found, feet above the river. everywhere immense boulders are scattered about, some of which are sixty yards long: their surfaces are water-worn into hollows, proving the river to have cut through nearly feet of deposit, which once floored its valley. lower down the valley, and fully feet above the river, i had passed numerous angular blocks resting on gentle slopes where no landslips could possibly have deposited them; and which i therefore refer to ancient glacial action: one of these, near the village of niong, was nearly square, eighty feet long, and ten high. it is a remarkable fact, that this hot, damp gorge is never malarious; this is attributable to the coolness of the river, and to the water on the flats not stagnating; for at choongtam, a march further north, and feet higher, fevers and ague prevail in summer on similar flats, but which have been cleared of jungle, and are therefore exposed to the sun. i had had constant headache for several mornings on waking, which i did not fail to attribute to coming fever, or to the unhealthiness of the climate; till i accidentally found it to arise from the wormwood, upon a thick couch of the cut branches of which i was accustomed to sleep, and which in dry weather produced no such effects.* [this wormwood (_artemisia indaca_) is one of the most common sikkim plants at to feet elevation, and grows twelve feet high: it is a favourite food of goats.] from chakoong to choongtam the route lay northwards, following the course of the river, or crossing steep spurs of vertical strata of mica-schist, that dip into the valley, and leave no space between their perpendicular sides and the furious torrent. immense landslips seamed the steep mountain flanks; and we crossed with precipitation one that extended fully feet (and perhaps much more) up a mountain , feet high, on the east bank: it moves every year, and the mud and rocks shot down by it were strewn with the green leaves and twigs of shrubs, some of the flowers on which were yet fresh and bright, while others were crushed: these were mixed with gigantic trunks of pines, with ragged bark and scored timbers. the talus which had lately been poured into the valley formed a gently sloping bank, twenty feet high, over which the lachen- lachoong rolled, from a pool above, caused by the damming up of its waters. on either side of the pool were cultivated terraces of stratified sand and pebbles, fifty feet high, whose alder-fringed banks, joined by an elegant cane bridge, were reflected in the placid water; forming a little spot of singular quiet and beauty, that contrasted with the savage grandeur of the surrounding mountains, and the headstrong course of the foaming torrent below, amid whose deafening roar it was impossible to speak and be heard. illustration--cane-bridge and tukcham mountain. the mountain of choongtam is about , feet high; it divides the lachen from the lachoong river, and terminates a lofty range that runs for twenty-two miles south from the lofty mountain of kinchinjhow. its south exposed face is bare of trees, except clumps of pines towards the top, and is very steep, grassy, and rocky, without water. it is hence quite unlike the forest-clad mountains further south, and indicates a drier and more sunny climate. the scenery much resembles that of switzerland, and of the north-west himalaya, especially in the great contrast between the southern and northern exposures, the latter being always clothed with a dense vegetation. at the foot of this very steep mountain is a broad triangular flat, , feet above the sea, and feet above the river, to which it descends by three level cultivated shelves. the village, consisting of a temple and twenty houses, is placed on the slope of the hill. i camped on the flat in may, before it became very swampy, close to some great blocks of gneiss, of which many lie on its surface: it was covered with tufts of sedge (like _carex stellulata_), and fringed with scarlet rhododendron, walnut, _andromeda, e aeagnus_ (now bearing pleasant acid fruit), and small trees of a _photinia,_ a plant allied to hawthorn, of the leaves of which the natives make tea (as they do of _gualtheria, andromeda, vaccinium,_ and other allied plants). rice, cultivated* [choongtam is in position and products analogous to lelyp, on the tambur (vol. i, chapter ix). rice cultivation advances thus high up each valley, and at either place bhoteeas replace the natives of the lower valleys.] in pools surrounded by low banks, was just peeping above ground; and scanty crops of millet, maize, and buckwheat flourished on the slopes around. the inhabitants of choongtam are of tibetan origin; few of them had seen an englishman before, and they flocked out, displaying the most eager curiosity: the lama and phipun (or superior officer) of the lachoong valley came to pay their respects with a troop of followers, and there was lolling out of tongues, and scratching of ears, at every sentence spoken, and every object of admiration. this extraordinary tibetan salute at first puzzled me excessively, nor was it until reading mm. huc and gabet's travels on my return to england, that i knew of its being the _ton_ at lhassa, and in all civilised parts of tibet. as the valley was under the singtam soubah's authority, i experienced a good deal of opposition; and the lama urged the wrath of the gods against my proceeding. this argument, i said, had been disposed of the previous year, and i was fortunate in recognising one of my changachelling friends, who set forth my kindly offices to the lamas of that convent, and the friendship borne me by its monks, and by those of pemiongchi. many other modes of dissuading me were attempted, but with meepo's assistance i succeeded in gaining my point. the difficulty and delays in remittance of food, caused by the landslips having destroyed the road, had reduced our provisions to a very low ebb; and it became not only impossible to proceed, but necessary to replenish my stores on the spot. at first provisions enough were brought to myself, for the rajah had issued orders for my being cared for, and having some practice among the villagers in treating rheumatism and goitres, i had the power of supplying my own larder; but i found it impossible to buy food for my people. at last, the real state of the case came out; that the rajah having gone to choombi, his usual summer-quarters in tibet, the dewan had issued orders that no food should be sold or given to my people, and that no roads were to be repaired during my stay in the country; thus cutting off my supplies from dorjiling, and, in short, attempting to starve me out. at this juncture, meepo received a letter from the durbar purporting to be from the rajah, commanding my immediate return, on the grounds that i had been long enough in the country for my objects: it was not addressed to me, and i refused to receive it as an official communication; following up my refusal by telling meepo that if he thought his orders required it, he had better leave me and return to the rajah, as i should not stir without directions from dr. campbell, except forwards. he remained, however, and said he had written to the rajah, urging him to issue stringent orders for my party being provisioned. we were reduced to a very short allowance before the long-expected supplies came, by which time our necessities had almost conquered my resolution not to take by force of the abundance i might see around, however well i might afterwards pay. it is but fair to state that the improvident villagers throughout sikkim are extremely poor in vegetable food at this season, when the winter store is consumed, and the crops are still green. they are consequently obliged to purchase rice from the lower valleys, which, owing to the difficulties of transport, is very dear; and to obtain it they barter wool, blankets, musk, and tibetan produce of all kinds. still they had cattle, which they would willingly have sold to me, but for the dewan's orders. there is a great difference between the vegetation of dorjiling and that of similar elevations near choongtam situated far within the himalaya: this is owing to the steepness and dryness of the latter locality, where there is an absence of dense forest, which is replaced by a number of social grasses clothing the mountain sides, many new and beautiful kinds of rhododendrons, and a variety of european genera,* [_deutzia, saxifraga caliata, thalictrum, euphorbia,_ yellow violet, _labiatae, androsace, leguminosae, coriaria, delphinium,_ currant, _umbelliferae,_ primrose, _anemone, convallaria, roscoea, mitella, herminium, drosera.] which (as i have elsewhere noticed) are either wholly absent from the damper ranges of dorjiling, or found there several thousand feet higher up. on the hill above choongtam village, i gathered, at to feet, _rhododendron arboreum_ and _dalhousiae,_ which do not generally grow at dorjiling below , feet.* [i collected here ten kinds of rhododendron, which, however, are not the social plants that they become at greater elevations. still, in the delicacy and beauty of their flowers, four of them, perhaps, excel any others; they are, _r. aucklandii,_ whose flowers are five inches and a half in diameter; _r. maddeni, r. dalhousiae,_ and _r. edgeworthii,_ all white-flowered bushes, of which the two first rise to the height of small trees.] the yew appears at feet, whilst, on the outer ranges (as on tonglo), it is only found at , to , feet; and whereas on tonglo it forms an immense tall tree, with long sparse branches and slender drooping twigs, growing amongst gigantic magnolias and oaks, at choongtam it is small and rigid, and much resembling in appearance our churchyard yew.* [the yew spreads east from kashmir to the assam himalaya and the khasia mountains; and the japan, philippine island, mexican, and other north american yews, belong to the same widely-diffused species. in the khasia (its most southern limit) it is found as low as feet above the sea-level.] at feet the _abies brunoniana_ is found; a tree quite unknown further south; but neither the larch nor the _albies smithiana_ (khutrow) accompanied it, they being confined to still more northern regions. i have seldom had occasion to allude to snakes, which are rare and shy in most parts of the himalaya; i, however, found an extremely venomous one at choongtam; a small black viper, a variety of the cobra di capello,* [dr. gray, to whom i am indebted for the following information, assures me that this reptile is not specifically distinct from the common cobra of india; though all the mountain specimens of it which he has examined retain the same small size and dark colour. of the other sikkim reptiles which i procured seven are _colubridae_ and innocuous; five _crotalidae_ are venomous, three of which are new species belonging to the genera _parias_ and _trimesurus._ lizards are not abundant, but i found at choongtam a highly curious one, _plestiodon sikkimensis,_ gray; a kind of skink, whose only allies are two north american congeners; and a species of _agama_ (a chameleon-like lizard) which in many important points more resembled an allied american genus than an asiatic one. the common immense earth-worm of sikkim, _ichthyophis glutinosus,_ is a native of the khasia mountains, singapore, ceylon and java. it is a most remarkable fact, that whereas seven out of the twelve sikkim snakes are poisonous, the sixteen species i procured in the khasia mountains are innocuous.] which it replaces in the drier grassy parts of the interior of sikkim, the large cobra not inhabiting in the mountain regions. altogether i only collected about twelve species in sikkim, seven of which are venomous, and all are dreaded by the lepchas. an enormous hornet (_vespa magnifica,_ sm.), nearly two inches long, was here brought to me alive in a cleft-stick, lolling out its great thorn-like sting, from which drops of a milky poison distilled: its sting is said to produce fatal fevers in men and cattle, which may very well be the case, judging from that of a smaller kind, which left great pain in my hand for two days, while a feeling of numbness remained in the arm for several weeks. it is called vok by the lepchas, a common name for any bee: its larvae are said to be greedily eaten, as are those of various allied insects. choongtam boasts a profusion of beautiful insects, amongst which the british swallow-tail butterfly (_papilio machaon_) disports itself in company with magnificent black, gold, and scarlet-winged butterflies, of the trojan group, so typical of the indian tropics. at night my tent was filled with small water-beetles (_berosi_) that quickly put out the candle; and with lovely moths came huge cockchafers (_encerris griffithii_), and enormous and foetid flying-bugs (of the genus _derecterix_), which bear great horns on the thorax. the irritation of mosquito and midge bites, and the disgusting insects that clung with spiny legs to the blankets of my tent and bed, were often as effectual in banishing sleep, as were my anxious thoughts regarding the future. the temple at choongtam is a poor wooden building, but contains some interesting drawings of lhassa, with its extensive lamaseries and temples; they convey the idea of a town, gleaming, like moscow, with gilded and copper roofs; but on a nearer aspect it is found to consist of a mass of stone houses, and large religious edifices many stories high, the walls of which are regularly pierced with small square ornamented windows.* [mm. huc and gabet's account of lhassa is, i do not doubt, excellent as to particulars; but the trees which they describe as magnificent, and girdling the city, have uniformly been represented to me as poor stunted willows, apricots, poplars, and walnuts, confined to the gardens of the rich. no doubt the impression left by these objects on the minds of travellers from tree-less tartary, and of sikkimites reared amidst stupendous forests, must be widely different. the information concerning lhassa collected by timkowski, "travels of the russian mission to china" (in ) is greatly exaggerated, though containing much that is true and curious. the dyke to protect the city from inundations i never heard of; but there is a current story in sikkim that lhassa is built in a lake-bed, which was dried up by a miracle of the lamas, and that in heavy rain the earth trembles, and the waters bubble through the soil: a dorjiling rain-fall, i have been assured, would wash away the whole city. ermann (travels in siberia, i., p. ), mentions a town (klinchi, near perm), thus built over subterraneous springs, and in constant danger of being washed away. mm. huc and gabet allude to the same tradition under another form. they say that the natives of the banks of the koko-nor affirm that the waters of that lake once occupied a subterranean position beneath lhassa, and that the waters sapped the foundations of the temples as soon as they were built, till withdrawn by supernatural agency.] there is nothing remarkable in the geology of choongtam: the base of the hill consists of the clay and mica slates overlain by gneiss, generally dipping to the eastward; in the latter are granite veins, containing fine tourmalines. actinolites are found in some highly metamorphic gneisses, brought by landslips from the neighbouring heights. the weather in may was cloudy and showery, but the rain which fell was far less in amount than that at dorjiling: during the day the sun's power was great; but though it rose between five and six a.m., it never appeared above the lofty peaked mountains that girdle the valley till eight a.m. dark pines crest the heights around, and landslips score their flanks with white seams below; while streaks of snow remain throughout the month at feet above; and everywhere silvery torrents leap down to the lachen and lachoong. illustration--juniperus recurva (height feet). chapter xix. routes from choongtam to tibet frontier -- choice of that by the lachen river -- arrival of supplies -- departure -- features of the valley -- eatable _polygonum_ -- tumlong -- cross taktoong river -- pines, larches, and other trees -- chateng pool -- water-plants and insects -- tukcham mountain -- lamteng village -- inhabitants -- alpine monkey -- botany of temperate himalaya -- european and american fauna -- japanese and malayan genera -- superstitious objections to shooting -- customs of people -- rain -- run short of provisions -- altered position of tibet frontier -- zemu samdong -- imposition -- vegetation -- uses of pines -- ascent to thlonok river -- balanophora wood for making cups -- snow-beds -- eatable mushrooms and _smilacina_ -- asarabacca -- view of kinchinjunga -- arum-roots, preparation of for food -- liklo mountain -- bebaviour of my party -- bridge constructed over zemu -- cross river -- alarm of my party -- camp on zemu river. from this place there were two routes to tibet, each of about six days' journey. one lay to the north-west up the lachen valley to the kongra lama pass, the other to the east up the lachoong to the donkia pass. the latter river has its source in small lakes in sikkim, south of the donkia mountain, a shoulder of which the pass crosses, commanding a magnificent view into tibet. the lachen, on the other hand (the principal source of the teesta), rises beyond sikkim in the cholamoo lakes. the frontier at kongra lama was described to me as being a political, and not a natural boundary, marked out by cairns, standing on a plain, and crossing the lachen river. to both donkia and kongra lama i had every right to go, and was determined, if possible, to reach them, in spite of meepo's ignorance, our guide's endeavours to frighten my party and mislead myself, and the country people's dread of incurring the dewan's displeasure. the lachen valley being pronounced impracticable in the height of the rains, a month later, it behoved me to attempt it first, and it possessed the attraction of leading to a frontier described as far to the northward of the snowy himalaya, on a lofty plateau, whose plants and animals were different from anything i had previously seen. after a week the coolies arrived with supplies: they had been delayed by the state of the paths, and had consequently consumed a great part of my stock, reducing it to eight days' allowance. i therefore divided my party, leaving the greater number at choongtam, with a small tent, and instructions to forward all food to me as it arrived. i started with about fifteen attendants, on the th of may, for lamteng, three marches up the lachen. descending the step-formed terraces, i crossed the lachen by a good cane bridge. the river is a headstrong torrent, and turbid from the vast amount of earthy matter which it bears along; and this character of extreme impetuosity, unbroken by any still bend, or even swirling pool, it maintains uninterruptedly at this season from to , feet. it is crossed three times, always by cane bridges, and i cannot conceive any valley of its nature to be more impracticable at such a season. on both sides the mountains rose, densely forest-clad, at an average angle of degrees to degrees, to , and , feet. its extreme narrowness, and the grandeur of its scenery, were alike recalled to my mind, on visiting the sachs valley in the valais of switzerland; from which, however, it differs in its luxuriant forest, and in the slopes being more uniform and less broken up into those imposing precipices so frequent in switzerland, but which are wanting in the temperate regions of the sikkim himalaya. at times we scrambled over rocks feet above the river, or descended into gorges, through whose tributary torrents we waded, or crossed swampy terraced flats of unstratified shingle above the stream; whilst it was sometimes necessary to round rocky promontories in the river, stemming the foaming torrent that pressed heavily against the chest as, one by one, we were dragged along by powerful lepchas. our halting-places were on flats close to the river, covered with large trees, and carpeted with a most luxuriant herbage, amongst which a wild buckwheat (_polygonum_*) [_polygonum cymosum,_ wall. this is a common himalayan plant, and is alsu found in the khasia mountains.] was abundant, which formed an excellent spinach: it is called "pullop-bi"; a name i shall hereafter have occasion to mention with gratitude. a few miles above choongtam, we passed a few cottages on a very extensive terrace at tumlong; but between this and lamteng, the country is uninhabited, nor is it frequented during the rains. we consequently found that the roads had suffered, the little bridges and aids to climb precipices and cross landslips had been carried away, and at one place we were all but turned back. this was at the taktoong river, a tributary on the east bank, which rushes down at an angle of degrees, in a sheet of silvery foam, eighteen yards broad. it does not, where i crossed it, flow in a deep gulley, having apparently raised its bed by an accumulation of enormous boulders; and a plank bridge was thrown across it, against whose slippery and narrow foot-boards the water dashed, loosening the supports on either bank, and rushing between their foundation stones. my unwilling guide had gone ahead with some of the coolies: i had suspected him all along (perhaps unjustly) of avoiding the most practicable routes; but when i found him waiting for me at this bridge, to which he sarcastically pointed with his bow, i felt that had he known of it, to have made difficulties before would have been a work of supererogation. he seemed to think i should certainly turn back, and assured me there was no other crossing (a statement i afterwards found to be untrue); so, comforting myself with the hope that if the danger were imminent, meepo would forcibly stop me, i took off my shoes, and walked steadily over: the tremor of the planks was like that felt when standing on the paddle-box of a steamer, and i was jerked up and down, as my weight pressed them into the boiling flood, which shrouded me with spray. i looked neither to the right nor to the left, lest the motion of the swift waters should turn my head, but kept my eye on the white jets d'eau springing up between the woodwork, and felt thankful when fairly on the opposite bank: my loaded coolies followed, crossing one by one without fear or hesitation. the bridge was swept into the lachen very shortly afterwards. towards lamteng, the path left the river, and passed through a wood of _abies smithiana._* [also called _a. khutrow_ and _morinda._ i had not before seen this tree in the himalaya: it is a spruce fir, much resembling the norway spruce in general appearance, but with longer pendulous branches. the wood is white, and considered indifferent, though readily cleft into planks; it is called "seh."] larch appears at feet, with _abies brunoniana._ an austere crab-apple, walnut, and the willow of babylon (the two latter perhaps cultivated), yellow jessamine and ash, all scarce trees in sikkim, are more or less abundant in the valley, from to feet; as is an ivy, very like the english, but with fewer and smaller yellow or reddish berries; and many other plants,* [wood-sorrel, a white-stemmed bramble, birch, some maples, nut gigantic lily (_lilium giganteum_), _euphorbia, pedicularis, spiraea, philadelphus, deutzia, indigofera,_ and various other south europe and north american genera.] not found at equal elevations on the outer ranges of the himalaya. chateng, a spur from the lofty peak of tukcham,* ["tuk" signifies head in lepcha, and "cheam" or "chaum," i believe, has reference to the snow. the height of tukcham has been re-calculated by capt. r. strachey, with angles taken by myself, at dorjiling and jillapahar, and is approximate only.] , feet high, rises feet above the west bank of the river; and where crossed, commands one of the finest alpine views in sikkim. it was grassy, strewed with huge boulders of gneiss, and adorned with clumps of park-like pines: on the summit was a small pool, beautifully fringed with bushy trees of white rose, a white-blossomed apple, a _pyrus_ like _aria,_ another like mountain-ash, scarlet rhododendrons (_arboreum_ and _barbatum_), holly, maples, and _goughia,_* [this fine plant was named (wight, "ic. plant.") in honour of capt. gough, son of the late commander-in-chief, and an officer to whom the botany of the peninsula of india is greatly indebted. it is a large and handsome evergreen, very similar in foliage to a fine rhododendron, and would prove an invaluable ornament on our lawns, if its hardier varieties were introduced into this country.] a curious evergreen laurel-like tree: there were also daphnes, purple magnolia, and a pink sweet-blossomed _sphaerostema._ many english water-plants* [_sparganium, typha, potamogeton, callitriche, utricularia,_ sedges and rushes.] grew in the water, but i found no shells; tadpoles, however, swarmed, which later in the season become large frogs. the "painted-lady " butterfly (_cynthia cardui_), and a pretty "blue" were flitting over the flowers, together with some great tropical kinds, that wander so far up these valleys, accompanying _marlea,_ the only subtropical tree that ascends to , feet in the interior of sikkim. the river runs close tinder the eastern side of the valley, which slopes so steeply as to appear for many miles almost a continuous landslip, feet high. lamteng village, where i arrived on the th of may, is quite concealed by a moraine to the south, which, with a parallel ridge on the north, forms a beautiful bay in the mountains, , feet above the sea, and above the lachen. the village stands on a grassy and bushy flat, around which the pine-clad mountains rise steeply to the snowy peaks and black cliffs which tower above. it contains about forty houses, forming the winter-quarters of the inhabitants of the valley, who, in summer, move with their flocks and herds to the alpine pastures of the tibet frontier. the dwellings are like those described at wallanchoon, but the elevation being lower, and the situation more sheltered, they are more scattered; whilst on account of the dampness of the climate, they are raised higher from the ground, and the shingles with which they are tiled (made of _abies webbiana_) decay in two or three years. many are painted lilac, with the gables in diamonds of red, black, and white: the roofs are either of wood, or of the bark of _abies brunoniana,_ held down by large stones: within they are airy and comfortable. they are surrounded by a little cultivation of buck-wheat, radishes, turnips, and mustard. the inhabitants, though paying rent to the sikkim rajah, consider themselves as tibetans, and are so in language, dress, features, and origin: they seldom descend to choongtam, but yearly travel to the tibetan towns of jigatzi, kambajong, giantchi, and even to lhassa, having always commercial and pastoral transactions with the tibetans, whose flocks are pastured on the sikkim mountains during summer, and who trade with the plains of india through the medium of these villagers. illustration--lamteng village. the snow having disappeared from elevations below , feet, the yaks, sheep, and ponies had just been driven feet up the valley, and the inhabitants were preparing to follow, with their tents and goats, to summer quarters at tallum and tungu. many had goitres and rheumatism, for the cure of which they flocked to my tent; dry-rubbing for the latter, and tincture of iodine for the former, gained me some credit as a doctor: i could, however, procure no food beyond trifling presents of eggs, meal, and more rarely, fowls. on arriving, i saw a troop of large monkeys* [_macacus pelops?_ hodgson. this is a very different species from the tropical kind seen in nepal, and mentioned at vol. i, chapter xii.] gambolling in a wood of _abies brunoniana_: this surprised me, as i was not prepared to find so tropical an animal associated with a vegetation typical of a boreal climate. the only other quadrupeds seen here were some small earless rats, and musk-deer; the young female of which latter sometimes afforded me a dish of excellent venison; being, though dark-coloured and lean, tender, sweet, and short-fibred. birds were scarce, with the exception of alpine pigeons (_columba leuconota_), red-legged crows (_corvus graculus,_ l.), and the horned pheasant (_meleagris satyra,_ l.). in this month insects are scarce, _elater_ and a black earwig being the most frequent: two species of _serica_ also flew into my tent, and at night moths, closely resembling european ones, came from the fir-woods. the vegetation in the, neighbourhood of lamteng is european and north american; that is to say, it unites the boreal and temperate floras of the east and west hemispheres; presenting also a few features peculiar to asia. this is a subject of very great importance in physical geography; as a country combining the botanical characters of several others, affords materials for tracing the direction in which genera and species have migrated, the causes that favour their migrations, and the laws that determine the types or forms of one region, which represent those of another. a glance at the map will show that sikkim is, geographically, peculiarly well situated for investigations of this kind, being centrically placed, whether as regards south-eastern asia or the himalayan chain. again, the lachen valley at this spot is nearly equi-distant from the tropical forests of the terai and the sterile mountains of tibet, for which reason representatives both of the dry central asiatic and siberian, and of the humid malayan floras meet there. the mean temperature of lamteng (about degrees) is that of the isothermal which passes through britain in lat. degrees, and east europe in lat. degrees, cutting the parallel of degrees in siberia (due north of lamteng itself), descending to lat. degrees on the east coast of asia, ascending to lat. degrees on the west of america, and descending to that of new york in the united states. this mean temperature is considerably increased by descending to the bed of the lachen at feet, and diminished by ascending tukcham to , feet, which gives a range of feet of elevation, and degrees of mean temperature. but as the climate and vegetation become arctic at , feet, it will be as well to confine my observations to the flora of to , feet; of the mean temperature, namely, between degrees and degrees, the isothermal lines corresponding to which embrace, on the surface of the globe, at the level of the sea, a space varying in different meridians from three to twelve degrees of latitude.* [on the west coast of europe, where the distance between these isothermal lines is greatest, this belt extends almost from stockholm and the shetlands to paris.] at first sight it appears incredible that such a limited area, buried in the depths of the himalaya, should present nearly all the types of the flora of the north temperate zone; not only, however, is this the case, but space is also found at lamteng for the intercalation of types of a malayan flora, otherwise wholly foreign to the north temperate region. a few examples will show this. amongst trees the conifers are conspicuous at lamteng, and all are of genera typical both of europe and north america: namely, silver fir, spruce, larch, and juniper, besides the yew: there are also species of birch, alder, ash, apple, oak, willow, cherry, bird-cherry, mountain-ash, thorn, walnut, hazel, maple, poplar, ivy, holly, andromeda, _rhamnus._ of bushes; rose, berberry, bramble, rhododendron, elder, cornel, willow, honeysuckle, currant, _spiraea, viburnum, cotoneaster, hippophae._ herbaceous plants* [as an example, the ground about my tent was covered with grasses and sedges, amongst which grew primroses, thistles, speedwell, wild leeks, _arum, convallaria, callitriche, oxalis, ranunculus, potentilla, orchis, chaerophyllum, galium, paris,_ and _anagallis_; besides cultivated weeds of shepherd's-purse, dock, mustard, mithridate cress, radish, turnip, _thlaspi arvense,_ and _poa annua._] are far too numerous to be enumerated, as a list would include most of the common genera of european and north american plants. of north american genera, not found in europe, were _buddleia, podophyllum, magnolia, sassafras? tetranthera, hydrangea, diclytra, aralia, panax, symplocos, trillium,_ and _clintonia._ the absence of heaths is also equally a feature in the flora of north america. of european genera, not found in north america, the lachen valley has _coriaria, hypecoum,_ and various _cruciferae._ the japanese and chinese floras are represented in sikkim by _camellia, deutzia, stachyurus, aucuba, helwingia, stauntonia, hydrangea, skimmia, eurya, anthogonium,_ and _enkianthus._ the malayan by magnolias, _talauma,_ many vacciniums and rhododendrons, _kadsura, goughia, marlea,_ both coriaceous and deciduous-leaved _caelogyne, oberonia, cyrtosia, calanthe,_ and other orchids; _ceropegia, parochetus, balanophora,_ and many _scitamineae_; and amongst trees, by _engelhardtia, goughia,_ and various laurels. shortly after my arrival at lamteng, the villagers sent to request that i would not shoot, as they said it brought on excessive rain,* [in griffith's narrative of "pemberton's mission to bhotan" ("posthumous papers, journal," p. ), it is mentioned that the gylongs (lamas) attributed a violent storm to the members of the mission shooting birds.] and consequent damage to the crops. my necessities did not admit of my complying with their wish unless i could procure food by other means; and i at first paid no attention to their request. the people, however, became urgent, and the choongtam lama giving his high authority to the superstition, it appeared impolitic to resist their earnest supplication; though i was well aware that the story was trumped up by the lama for the purpose of forcing me to return. i yielded on the promise of provisions being supplied from the village, which was done to a limited extent; and i was enabled to hold out till more arrived from dorjiling, now, owing to the state of the roads, at the distance of twenty days' march. the people were always civil and kind: there was no concealing the fact that the orders were stringent, prohibiting my party being supplied with food, but many of the villagers sought opportunities by night of replenishing my stores. superstitious and timorous, they regard a doctor with great veneration; and when to that is added his power of writing, drawing, and painting, their admiration knows no bounds: they flocked round my tent all day, scratching their ears, lolling out their tongues, making a clucking noise, smiling, and timidly peeping over my shoulder, but flying in alarm when my little dog resented their familiarity by snapping at their legs. the men spend the whole day in loitering about, smoking and spinning wool: the women in active duties; a few were engaged in drying the leaves of a shrub (_symplocos_) for the tibet market, which are used as a yellow dye; whilst, occasionally, a man might be seen cutting a spoon or a yak-saddle out of rhododendron wood. during my stay at lamteng, the weather was all but uniformly cloudy and misty, with drizzling rain, and a southerly, or up-valley wind, during the day, which changed to an easterly one at night: occasionally distant thunder was heard. my rain-gauges showed very little rain compared with what fell at dorjiling during the same period; the clouds were thin, both sun and moon shining through them, without, however, the former warming the soil: hence my tent was constantly wet, nor did i once sleep in a dry bed till the st of june, which ushered in the month with a brilliant sunny day. at night it generally rained in torrents, and the roar of landslips and avalanches was then all but uninterrupted for hour after hour: sometimes it was a rumble, at others a harsh grating sound, and often accompanied with the crashing of immense timber-trees, or the murmur of the distant snowy avalanches. the amount of denudation by atmospheric causes is here quite incalculable; and i feel satisfied that the violence of the river at this particular part of its course (where it traverses those parts of the valleys which are most snowy and rainy), is proximately due to impediments thus accumulated in its bed. it was sometimes clear at sunrise, and i made many ascents of tukcham, hoping for a view of the mountains towards the passes; but i was only successful on one occasion, when i saw the table top of kinchinjhow, the most remarkable, and one of the most distant peaks of dazzling snow which is seen from dorjiling, and which, i was told, is far beyond sikkim, in tibet.* [such, however, is not the case; kinchinjhow is on the frontier of sikkim, though a considerable distance behind the most snowy of the sikkim mountains.] i kept up a constant intercourse with choongtam, sending my plants thither to be dried, and gradually reducing my party as our necessities urged my so doing; lastly, i sent back the shooters, who had procured very little, and whose occupation was now gone. on the nd of june, i received the bad news that a large party of coolies had been sent from dorjiling with rice, but that being unable or afraid to pass the landslips, they had returned: we had now no food except a kid, a few handfuls of flour, and some potatos, which had been sent up from choongtam. all my endeavours to gain information respecting the distance and position of the frontier were unavailing; probably, indeed, the lama and phipun (or chief man of the village), were the only persons who knew; the villagers calling all the lofty pastures a few marches beyond lamteng "bhote" or "cheen" (tibet). dr. campbell had procured for me information by which i might recognise the frontier were i once on it; but no description could enable me to find my way in a country so rugged and forest-clad, through tortuous and perpetually forking valleys, along often obliterated paths, and under cloud and rain. to these difficulties must be added the deception of the rulers, and the fact (of which i was not then aware), that the tibet frontier was formerly at choongtam; but from the lepchas constantly harassing the tibetans, the latter, after the establishment of the chinese rule over their country, retreated first to zemu samdong, a few hours walk above lamteng, then to tallum samdong, feet higher; and, lastly, to kongra lama, , feet up the west flank of kinchinjhow. on the third of june i took a small party, with my tent, and such provisions as i had, to explore up the river. on hearing of my intention, the phipun volunteered to take me to the frontier, which he said was only two hours distant, at zemu samdong, where the lachen receives the zemu river from the westward: this i knew must be false, but i accepted his services, and we started, accompanied by a large body of villagers, who eagerly gathered plants for me along the road. the scenery is very pretty; the path crosses extensive and dangerous landslips, or runs through fine woods of spruce and _abies brunoniana,_ and afterwards along the river-banks, which are fringed with willow (called "lama"), and _hippophae._ the great red rose (_rosa macrophylla_), one of the most beautiful himalayan plants, whose single flowers are as large as the palm of the hand, was blossoming, while golden _potentillas_ and purple primroses flowered by the stream, and _pyrola_ in the fir-woods. just above the fork of the valley, a wooden bridge (samdong) crosses the zemu, which was pointed out to me as the frontier, and i was entreated to respect two sticks and a piece of worsted stretched across it; this i thought too ridiculous, so as my followers halted on one side, i went on the bridge, threw the sticks into the stream, crossed, and asked the phipun to follow; the people laughed, and came over: he then told me that he had authority to permit of my botanising there, but that i was in cheen, and that he would show me the guard-house to prove the truth of his statement. he accordingly led me up a steep bank to an extensive broad flat, several hundred feet above the river, and forming a triangular base to the great spur which, rising steeply behind, divides the valley. this flat was marshy and covered with grass; and buried in the jungle were several ruined stone houses, with thick walls pierced with loopholes: these had no doubt been occupied by tibetans at the time when this was the frontier. the elevation which i had attained (that of the river being , feet) being excellent for botanising, i camped; and the villagers, contented with the supposed success of their strategy, returned to lamteng. my guide from the durbar had staid behind at lainteng, and though meepo and all my men well knew that this was not the frontier, they were ignorant as to its true position, nor could we even ascertain which of the rivers was the lachen.* [the eastern afterwards proved to be the lachen.] the only routes i possessed indicated two paths northwards from lamteng, neither crossing a river: and i therefore thought it best to remain at zemu samdong till provisions should arrive. i accordingly halted for three days, collecting many new and beautiful plants, and exploring the roads, of which five (paths or yak-tracks) diverged from this point, one on either bank of each river, and one leading up the fork. on one occasion i ascended the steep hill at the fork; it was dry and rocky, and crowned with stunted pines. stacks of different sorts of pine-wood were stored on the flat at its base, for export to tibet, all thatched with the bark of _abies brunoniana._ of these the larch (_larix griffithii,_ "sah"), splits well, and is the most durable of any; but the planks are small, soft, and white.* [i never saw this wood to be red, close-grained, and hard, like that of the old swiss larch; nor does it ever reach so great a size.] the silver fir (_abies webbiana,_ "dunshing") also splits well; it is white, soft, and highly prized for durability. the wood of _abies brunoniana_ ("semadoong") is like the others in appearance, but is not durable; its bark is however very useful. the spruce (_abies smithiana,_ "seh") has also white wood, which is employed for posts and beams.* [these woods are all soft and loose in grain, compared with their european allies.] these are the only pines whose woods are considered very useful; and it is a curious circumstance that none produce any quantity of resin, turpentine, or pitch; which may perhaps be accounted for by the humidity of the climate. _pinus longifolia_ (called by the lepchas "gniet-koong," and by the bhoteeas "teadong") only grows in low valleys, where better timber is abundant. the weeping blue juniper (_juniperus recurva,_ "deschoo"), and the arboreous black one (called "tchokpo")* [this i have, vol. i. chapter xi, referred to the _j. excelsa_ of the north-west himalaya, a plant which under various names is found in many parts of europe and many parts of europe and north america; but since then dr. thomson and i have had occasion to compare my sikkim conifers with the north-west himalayan ones and we have found that this sikkim species is probably new, and that _j. excelsa_ is not found east of nepal.] yield beautiful wood, like that of the pencil cedar,* [also a juniper, from bermuda (_j. bermudiana_).] but are comparatively scarce, as is the yew (_taxus baccata,_ "tingschi"), whose timber is red. the "tchenden," or funereal cypress, again, is valued only for the odour of its wood: _pinus excelsa,_ "tongschi," though common in bhotan, is, as i have elsewhere remarked, not found in east nepal or sikkim; the wood is admirable, being durable, close-grained, and so resinous as to be used for flambeaux and candles. on the flat were flowering a beautiful magnolia with globular sweet-scented flowers like snow-balls, several balsams, with species of _convallaria, cotoneaster, gentian, spiraea, euphorbia, pedicularis,_ and honeysuckle. on the hill-side were creeping brambles, lovely yellow, purple, pink, and white primroses, white-flowered _thalictrum_ and _anemone,_ berberry, _podophyllum,_ white rose, fritillary, _lloydia,_ etc. on the flanks of tukcham, in the bed of a torrent, i gathered many very alpine plants, at the comparatively low elevation of , feet, as dwarf willows, _pinguicula,_ (a genus not previously found in the himalaya), _oxyria, adrosace, tofieldia, arenaria,_ saxifrages, and two dwarf heath-like _andromedas._* [besides these, a month later, the following flowered in profusion: scarlet _buddleia?_ gigantic lily, yellow jasmine, _aster, potentilla,_ several kinds of orchids, willow-herb (_epilobium_), purple _roscoea, neillia, morina,_ many grasses and _umbelliferae._ these formed a rank and dense herbaceous, mostly annual vegetation, six feet high, bound together with _cuscuta,_ climbing _leguminosae,_ and _ceropegia._ the great summer heat and moisture here favour the ascent of various tropical genera, of which i found in august several _orchideae_ (_calanthe, microstylis,_ and _coelogyne_), also _begonia, bryonia, cynanchum, aristolochia, eurya, procris, acanthaceae,_ and _cyrtandraseae._] the rocks were all of gneiss, with granite veins, tourmaline, and occasionally pieces of pure plumbago. our guide had remained at lamteng, on the plea of a sore on his leg from leech-bites: his real object, however, was to stop a party on their way to tibet with madder and canes, who, had they continued their journey, would inevitably have pointed out the road to me. the villagers themselves now wanted to proceed to the pasturing-grounds on the frontier; so the phipun sent me word that i might proceed as far as i liked up the east bank of the zemu. i had explored the path, and finding it practicable, and likely to intersect a less frequented route to the frontier (that crossing the tekonglah pass from bah, see chapter xviii), i determined to follow it. a supply of food arrived from dorjiling on the th of june, reduced, however, to one bag of rice, but with encouraging letters, and the assurance that more would follow at once. my men, of whom i bad eight, behaved admirably, although our diet had for five days chiefly consisted of _polygonum_ ("pullop-bi"), wild leeks ("lagook"), nettles and _procris_ (an allied, and more succulent herb), eked out by eight pounds of tibet meal ("tsamba"), which i had bought for ten shillings by stealth from the villagers. what concerned me most was the destruction of my plants by constant damp, and the want of sun to dry the papers; which reduced my collections to a tithe of what they would otherwise have been. from zemu samdong the valley runs north-west, for two marches, to the junction of the zemu with the thlonok, which rises on the north-east flank of kinchinjunga: at this place i halted for several days, while building a bridge over the thlonok. the path runs first through a small forest of birch, alder, and maple, on the latter of which i found _balanophora_* [a curious leafless parasite, mentioned at vol. i, chapter v.] growing abundantly: this species produces the great knots on the maple roots, from which the tibetans form the cups mentioned by mm. huc and gabet. i was so fortunate as to find a small store of these knots, cleaned, and cut ready for the turner, and hidden behind a stone by some poor tibetan, who had never retained to the spot: they had evidently been there a very long time. in the ravines there were enormous accumulations of ice, the result of avalanches; one of them crossed the river, forming a bridge thirty feet thick, at an elevation of only , feet above the sea. this ice-bridge was yards broad, and flanked by heaps of boulders, the effects of combined land and snowslips. these stony places were covered with a rich herbage of rhubarb, primroses, _euphorbia, sedum, polygonum, convallaria,_ and a purple _dentaria_ ("kenroop-bi") a cruciferous plant much eaten as a pot-herb. in the pinewoods a large mushroom ("onglau,"* [_cortinarius emodensis_ of the rev. m. j. berkeley, who has named and described it from my specimens and drawings. it is also called "yungla tchamo" by the tibetans, the latter word signifying a toadstool. mr. berkeley informs me that the whole vast genus _cortinarius_ scarcely possesses a single other edible species; he adds that _c. violaceus_ and _violaceo-cinereus_ are eaten in austria and italy, but not always with safety.] tibet.) was abundant, which also forms a favourite article of food. another pot-herb (to which i was afterwards more indebted than any) was a beautiful _smilacina,_ which grows from two to five feet high, and has plaited leaves and crowded panicles of white bell-shaped flowers, like those of its ally the lily of the valley, which it also resembles in its mucilaginous properties. it is called "chokli-bi,"* [it is also found on the top of sinchul, near dorjiling.] and its young flower-heads, sheathed in tender green leaves, form an excellent vegetable. nor must i forget to include amongst the eatable plants of this hungry country, young shoots of the mountain-bamboo, which are good either raw or boiled, and may be obtained up to , feet in this valley. a species of _asarum_ (asarabacca) grows in the pine-woods; a genus not previously known to be himalayan. the root, like its english medicinal congener, has a strong and peculiar smell. at , feet _abies webbiana_ commences, with a close undergrowth of a small twiggy holly. this, and the dense thicket of rhododendron* [of which i had already gathered thirteen kinds in this valley.] on the banks of the river and edges of the wood, rendered the march very fatiguing, and swarms of midges kept up a tormenting irritation. the zemu continued an impetuous muddy torrent, whose hoarse voice, mingled with the deep grumbling noise* [the dull rumbling noise thus produced is one of the most singular phenomena in these mountains, and cannot fail to strike the observer. at night, especially, the sound seems increased, the reason of which is not apparent, for in these regions, so wanting in animal life, the night is no stiller than the day, and the melting of snow being less, the volume of waters must be somewhat, though not conspicuously, diminished. the interference of sound by heated currents of different density is the most obvious cause of the diminished reverberation during the day, to which humboldt adds the increased tension of vapour, and possibly an echo from its particles.] of the boulders rolling along its bed, was my lullaby for many nights. its temperature at zemu samdong was degrees to degrees in june. at its junction with the thlonok, it comes down a steep gulley from the north, foreshortened into a cataract feet high, and appearing the smaller stream of the two; whilst the thlonok winds down from the snowy face of kinchinjunga, which is seen up the valley, bearing w.s.w., about twenty miles distant. all around are lofty and rocky mountains, sparingly wooded with pines and larch, chiefly on their south flanks, which receive the warm, moist, up-valley winds; the faces exposed to the north being colder and more barren: exactly the reverse of what is the case at choongtam, where the rocky and sunny south-exposed flanks are the driest. my tent was pitched on a broad terrace, opposite the junction of the zemu and thlonok, and , feet above the sea. it was sheltered by some enormous transported blocks of gneiss, fifteen feet high, and surrounded by a luxuriant vegetation of most beautiful rhododendrons in full flower, willow, white rose, white flowered cherry, thorn, maple and birch. some great tuberous-rooted _arums_* [two species of _arisaema,_ called "tong" by the tibetans, and "sinkree" by the lepchas.] were very abundant; and the ground was covered with small pits, in which were large wooden pestles: these are used in the preparation of food from the arums, to which the miserable inhabitants of the valley have recourse in spring, when their yaks are calving. the roots are bruised with the pestles, and thrown into these holes with water. acetous fermentation commences in seven or eight days, which is a sign that the acrid poisonous principle is dissipated: the pulpy, sour, and fibrous mass is then boiled and eaten; its nutriment being the starch, which exists in small quantities, and which they have not the skill to separate by grating and washing. this preparation only keeps a few days, and produces bowel complaints, and loss of the skin and hair, especially when insufficiently fermented. besides this, the "chokli-bi," and many other esculents, abounded here; and we had great need of them before leaving this wild uninhabited region. i repeatedly ascended the north flank of tukcham along a watercourse, by the side of which were immense slips of rocks and snow-beds; the mountain-side being excessively steep. some of the masses of gneiss thus brought down were dangerously poised on slopes of soft shingle, and daily moved a little downwards. all the rocks were gneiss and granite, with radiating crystals of tourmaline as thick as the thumb. below , to , feet the mountain-sides were covered with a dense scrub of rhododendron bushes, except where broken by rocks, landslips, and torrents: above this the winter's snow lay deep, and black rocks and small glaciers, over which avalanches were constantly falling with a sullen roar, forbade all attempts to proceed. my object in ascending was chiefly to obtain views and compass- bearings, in which i was generally disappointed: once only i had a magnificent prospect of kinchinjunga, sweeping down in one unbroken mass of glacier and ice, fully , feet high, to the head of the thlonok river, whose upper valley appeared a broad bay of ice; doubtless forming one of the largest glaciers in the himalaya, and increased by lateral feeders that flow into it from either flank of the valley. the south side of this (the thlonok) valley is formed by a range from kinchinjunga, running east to tukcham, where it terminates: from it rises the beautiful mountain liklo,* [d of the peaks laid down in colonel waugh's "trigonometrical survey from dorjiling," i believe to be the "liklo" of dr. campbell's itineraries from dorjiling to lhassa, compiled from the information of the traders (see "bengal asiatic society's journal" for ); the routes in which proved of the utmost value to me.] , feet high, which, from dorjiling, appears as a sharp peak, but is here seen to be a jagged crest running north and south. on the north flank of the valley the mountains are more sloping and black, with patches of snow above , feet, but little anywhere else, except on another beautiful peak (alt. , feet) marked d on the map. this flank is also continuous from kinchin; it divides sikkim from tibet, and runs north-east to the great mountain chomiomo (which was not visible), the streams from its north flank flowing into the arun river (in tibet). a beautiful blue arch of sky spanned all this range, indicating the dry tibetan climate beyond. i made two futile attempts to ascend the thlonok river to the great glaciers at the foot of kinchinjunga, following the south bank, and hoping to find a crossing-place, and so to proceed north to tibet. the fall of the river is not great at this part of its course, nor up to , feet, which was the greatest height i could attain, and about eight miles beyond my tents; above that point, at the base of liklo, the bed of the valley widens, and the rhododendron shrubbery was quite impervious, while the sides of the mountain were inaccessible. we crossed extensive snow-beds, by cutting holes in their steep faces, and rounded rocks in the bed of the torrent, dragging one another through the violent current, whose temperature was below degrees. on these occasions, the energy of meepo, nimbo (the chief of the coolies) and the lepcha boys, was quite remarkable, and they were as keenly anxious to reach the holy country of tibet as i could possibly be. it was sometimes dark before we got back to our tents, tired, with torn clothes and cut feet and hands, returning to a miserable dinner of boiled herbs; but never did any of them complain, or express a wish to leave me. in the evenings and mornings they were always busy, changing my plants, and drying the papers over a sulky fire at my tent-door; and at night they slept, each wrapt in his own blanket, huddled together under a rock, with another blanket thrown over them all. provisions reached us so seldom, and so reduced in quantity, that i could never allow more than one pound of rice to each man in a day, and frequently during this trying month they had not even that; and i eked out our meagre supply with a few ounces of preserved meats, occasionally "splicing the main brace" with weak rum and water. at the highest point of the valley which i reached, water boiled at . , indicating an elevation of , feet. the temperature at p.m. was nearly degrees, and of the wet bulb degrees, indicating a dryness of . , and dew point . . such phenomena of heat and dryness are rare and transient in the wet valleys of sikkim, and show the influence here of the tibetan climate.* [i gathered here, amongst an abundance of alpine species, all of european and arctic type, a curious trefoil, the _parochetus communis,_ which ranges through feet of elevation on the himalaya, and is also found in java and ceylon.] after boiling my thermometer on these occasions, i generally made a little tea for the party; a refreshment to which they looked forward with child-like eagerness. the fairness with which these good-hearted people used to divide the scanty allowance, and afterwards the leaves, which are greatly relished, was an engaging trait in their simple character: i have still vividly before me their sleek swarthy faces and twinkling tartar eyes, as they lay stretched on the ground in the sun, or crouched in the sleet and snow beneath some sheltering rock; each with his little polished wooden cup of tea, watching my notes and instruments with curious wonder, asking, "how high are we?" "how cold is it?" and comparing the results with those of other stations, with much interest and intelligence. on the th june, my active people completed a most ingenious bridge of branches of trees, bound by withes of willow; by which i crossed to the north bank, where i camped on an immense flat terrace at the junction of the rivers, and about fifty feet above their bed. the first step or ascent from the river is about five feet high, and formed of water-worn boulders, pebbles, and sand, scarcely stratified: the second, fully yards broad, is ten feet high, and swampy. the uppermost is fifteen feet above the second, and is covered with gigantic boulders, and vast rotting trunks of fallen pines, buried in an impenetrable jungle of dwarf small-leaved holly and rhododendrons. the surface was composed of a rich vegetable mould, which, where clear of forest, supported a rank herbage, six to eight feet high.* [this consisted of grasses, sedges, _bupleurum,_ rhubarb, _ranunculus, convallaria, smilacina,_ nettles, thistles, _arum,_ balsams, and the superb yellow _meconopsis nepalensis,_ whose racemes of golden poppy-like flowers were as broad as the palm of the hand; it grows three and even six feet high, and resembles a small hollyhock; whilst a stately _heracleum,_ ten feet high, towered over all. forests of silver fir, with junipers and larch, girdled these flats and on their edges grew rhododendrons, scarlet _spiraea,_ several honeysuckles, white _clematis,_ and _viburnum._ ferns are much scarcer in the pine-woods than elsewhere in the forest regions of the himalaya. in this valley (alt. , feet), i found only two kinds; _hymenophyllum, lomaria, cystopteris, davallia,_ two _polypodia,_ and several _aspidia_ and _asplenia. selaginella_ ascends to zemu samdong ( feet). the _pteris aquilina_ (brake) does not ascend above , feet.] our first discovery, after crossing, was of a good bridge across the zemu, above its junction, and of a path leading down to zemu samdong; this was, however, scarcely traceable up either stream. my men were better housed here in sheds: and i made several more ineffectual attempts to ascend the valley to the glaciers. the path, gradually vanishing, ran alternately through fir-woods, and over open grassy spots, covered with vegetation, amongst which the gigantic arum was plentiful, whose roots seemed to be the only attraction in this wet and miserable valley. on my return one day, i found my people in great alarm, the phipun having sent word that we were on the tibet side of the rivers, and that tibetan troops were coming to plunder my goods, and carry my men into slavery. i assured them he only wanted to frighten them; that the cheen soldiers were civil orderly people; and that as long as meepo was with us, there was no cause for fear. fortunately a young musk-deer soon afterwards broke cover close to the tent, and its flesh wonderfully restored their courage: still i was constantly harassed by threats; some of my people were suffering from cold and bowel complaints, and i from rheumatism; while one fine lad, who came from dorjiling, was delirious with a violent fever, contracted in the lower valleys, which sadly dispirited my party. having been successful in finding a path, i took my tent and a few active lads feet up the zemu, camping on a high rock above the forest region, at , feet; hoping thence to penetrate northwards. i left my collections in the interim at the junction of the rivers, where the sheds and an abundance of firewood were great advantages for preserving the specimens. at this elevation we were quite free from midges and leeches (the latter had not appeared above , feet), but the weather continued so uniformly rainy and bad, that we could make no progress. i repeatedly followed the river for several miles, ascending to , feet; but though its valley widened, and its current was less rapid, the rhododendron thickets below, and the cliffs above, defeated all endeavours to reach the drier climate beyond, of which i had abundant evidence in the arch of brilliant blue that spanned the heavens to the north, beyond a black canopy of clouds that hid everything around, and poured down rain without one day's intermission, during the eight which i spent here. illustration--blach juniper (height silty feet) and young larch. chapter xx. camp on zemu river -- scenery -- falling rocks -- tukcham mountain -- height of glaciers -- botany -- gigantic rhubarb -- insects -- storm -- temperature of rivers -- behaviour of lachen phipun -- hostile conduct of bhoteeas -- view from mountains above camp -- descend to zemu samdong -- vegetation -- letters from dorjiling -- arrival of singtam soubah -- presents from rajah -- parties collecting arum-roots -- insects -- ascend lachen river -- thakya-zong -- tallum samdong village -- cottages -- mountains -- plants -- entomology -- weather -- halo -- diseases -- conduct of singtam soubah -- his character and illness -- agrees to take me to kongra lama -- tungu -- appearance of country -- houses -- poisoning by arum-roots -- yaks and calves -- tibet ponies -- journey to kongra lama -- tibetan tents -- butter, curds, and churns -- hospitality -- kinchinjhow and chomiomo -- magnificent scenery -- reach kongra lama pass. my little tent was pitched in a commanding situation, on a rock fifty feet above the zemu, overlooking the course of that river to its junction with the thlonok. the descent of the zenlu in one thousand feet is more precipitous than that of any other river of its size with which i am acquainted in sikkim, yet immediately above my camp it was more tranquil than at any part of its course onwards to the plains of india, whether as the zemu, lachen or teesta. on the west bank a fine mountain rose in steep ridges and shrubby banks to , feet; on the east a rugged cliff towered above the stream, and from this, huge masses of rock were ever and anon precipitated into the torrent, with a roar that repeatedly spread consternation amongst us. during rains especially, and at night, when the chilled atmospheric currents of air descend, and the sound is not dissipated as in the day-time, the noise of these falls is sufficiently alarming. my tent was pitched near the base of the cliff, and so high above the river, that i had thought it beyond the reach of danger; but one morning i found that a large fragment of granite had been hurled during the night to my very door, my dog having had a very narrow escape. to what depth the accumulation at the base of this cliff may reach, i had no means of judging, but the rapid slope of the river-bed is mainly due to this, and to old moraines at the mouth of the valley below. i have seen few finer sights than the fall of these stupendous blocks into the furious torrent, along which they are carried amid feathery foam for many yards before settling to rest. across the thlonok to the southwards, rose the magnificent mountain of tukcham, but i only once caught a glimpse of its summit, which even then clouded over before i could get my instruments adjusted for ascertaining its height. its top is a sharp cone, surrounded by rocky shoulders, that rise from a mass of snow. its eastern slope of feet is very rapid (about degrees) from its base at the zemu river to its summit. glaciers in the north-west himalaya descend to , feet; but i could not discover any in these valleys even so low as , feet, though at this season extensive snowbeds remain unmelted at but little above , feet. the foot of the stupendous glacier filling the broad head of the thlonok is certainly not below , feet; though being continuous with the perpetual snow (or neve) of the summit of kinchinjunga, it must have , feet of ice, in perpendicular height, to urge it forwards. all my attempts to advance up the zemu were fruitlesss and a snow bridge by which i had hoped to cross to the opposite bank was carried away by the daily swelling river, while the continued bad weather prevented any excursions for days together. botany was my only resource, and as vegetation was advancing rapidly under the influence of the southerly winds, i had a rich harvest: for though _compositae, pedicularis,_ and a few more of the finer himalayan plants flower later, june is still the most glorious month for show. rhododendrons occupy the most prominent place, clothing the mountain slopes with a deep green mantle glowing with bells of brilliant colours; of the eight or ten species growing here, every bush was loaded with as great a profusion of blossoms as are their northern congeners in our english gardens. primroses are next, both in beauty and abundance; and they are accompanied by yellow cowslips, three feet high, purple polyanthus, and pink large-flowered dwarf kinds nestling in the rocks, and an exquisitely beautiful blue miniature species, whose blossoms sparkle like sapphires on the turf. gentians begin to unfold their deep azure bells, aconites to rear their tall blue spikes, and fritillaries and _meconopsis_ burst into flower. on the black rocks the gigantic rhubarb forms pale pyramidal towers a yard high, of inflated reflexed bracts, that conceal the flowers, and over-lapping one another like tiles, protect them from the wind and rain: a whorl of broad green leaves edged with red spreads on the ground at the base of the plant, contrasting in colour with the transparent bracts, which are yellow, margined with pink. this is the handsomest herbaceous plant in sikkim: it is called "tchuka," and the acid stems are eaten both raw and boiled; they are hollow and full of pure water: the root resembles that of the medicinal rhubarb, but it is spongy and inert; it attains a length of four feet, and grows as thick as the arm. the dried leaves afford a substitute for tobacco; a smaller kind of rhubarb is however more commonly used in tibet for this purpose; it is called "chula." the elevation being , feet, i was above the limit of trees, and the ground was covered with many kinds of small-flowered honeysuckles, berberry, and white rose.* [besides these i found a prickly _aralia,_ maple, two currants, eight or nine rhododendrons, many _sedums, rhodiola,_ white _clematis,_ red-flowered cherry, birch, willow, _viburnum,_ juniper, a few ferns, two _andromedas, menziesia,_ and _spircaea._ and in addition to the herbs mentioned above, may be enumerated _parnassia,_ many saxifrages, _soldanella, draba,_ and various other _cruciferae, nardostachys,_ (spikenard), _epilobium, thalictrum,_ and very many other genera, almost all typical of the siberian, north european, and arctic floras.] i saw no birds, and of animals only an occasional muskdeer. insects were scarce, and quite different from what i had seen before; chiefly consisting of _phryganea_ (mayfly) and some _carabidae_ (an order that is very scarce in the himalaya); with various moths, chiefly _geometrae._ the last days of june (as is often the case) were marked by violent storms, and for two days my tent proved no protection; similar weather prevailed all over india, the barometer falling very low. i took horary observations of the barometer in the height of the storm on the th: the tide was very small indeed (. inch, between . a.m. and p.m.), and the thermometer ranged between degrees and . degrees, between a.m. and midnight. snow fell abundantly as low as , feet, and the rivers were much swollen, the size and number of the stones they rolled along producing a deafening turmoil. only . inches of rain fell between the rd of june and the nd of july; whilst inches fell at dorjiling, and . inches at calcutta. during the same period the mean temperature was degrees; extremes, degrees/ . degrees. the humidity was nearly at saturation-point, the wind southerly, very raw and cold, and drizzling rain constantly fell. a comparison of thirty observations with dorjiling gave a difference of degrees temperature, which is at the rate of degree for every feet of ascent.* [forty-seven observations, comparative with calcutta, gave . degrees difference, and if . degrees of temperature be deducted for northing in latitude, the result is degree for every feet of ascent. my observations at the junction of the rivers alt. , feet), during the early part of the mouth, gave degree to feet, as the result of twenty-four observations with dorjiling, and degree to feet, from seventy-four observations with calcutta.] the temperature of these rivers varies extremely at different parts of their course, depending on that of their affluents. the teesta is always cool in summer (where its bed is below feet), its temperature being degrees below that of the air; whereas in mid-winter, when there is less cloud, and the snows are not melting, it is only a few degrees colder than the air.* [during my sojourn at bhomsong in mid-winter of (see v. i. chapter xiii), the mean temperature of the teesta was degrees, and of the air . degrees; at that elevation the river water rarely exceeds degrees at midsummer. between feet and (the plains) its mean temperature varies about degrees between january and july; at feet it varies from degrees to degrees during the same period; and at , feet it freezes at the edges in winter and rises to degrees in july.] at this season, in descending from , feet to feet, its temperature does not rise degrees, though that of the air rises degrees or degrees. it is a curious fact, that the temperature of the northern feeders of the teesta, in some parts of their course, rises with the increasing elevation! of this the zemu afforded a curious example: during my stay at its junction with the thlonok it was degrees, or degrees warmer than that river; at feet higher it was degrees, and at feet higher still it was degrees! these observations were repeated in different weeks, and several times on the same day, both in ascending and descending, and always with the same result: they told, as certainly as if i had followed the river to its source, that it rose in a drier and comparatively sunny climate, and flowed amongst little snowed mountains. meanwhile, the lachen phipun continued to threaten us, and i had to send back some of the more timorous of my party. on the th of june fifty men arrived at the thlonok, and turned my people out of the shed at the junction of the rivers, together with the plants they were preserving, my boards, papers, and utensils. the boys came to me breathless, saying that there were tibetan soldiers amongst them, who declared that i was in cheen, and that they were coming on the following morning to make a clean sweep of my goods, and drive me back to dorjiling. i had little fear for myself, but was anxious with respect to my collections: it was getting late in the day, and raining, and i had no mind to go down and expose myself to the first brunt of their insolence, which i felt sure a night of such weather would materially wash away. meepo was too frightened, but nimbo, my bhotan coolie sirdar, volunteered to go, with two stout fellows; and he accordingly brought away my plants and papers, having held a parley with the enemy, who, as i suspected, were not tibetans. the best news he brought was, that they were half clad and without food; the worst, that they swaggered and bullied: he added, with some pride, that he gave them as good as he got, which i could readily believe, nimbo being really a resolute fellow,* [in east nepal he drew his knife on a ghorka sepoy; and in the following winter was bold enough to make his escape in chains from tumloong.] and accomplished in tibet slang. on the following morning it rained harder than ever, and the wind was piercingly cold. my timid lepchas huddled behind my tent, which, from its position, was only to be stormed in front. i dismantled my little observatory, and packed up the instruments, tied my dog, kinchin, to one of the tent-pegs, placed a line of stones opposite the door, and seated myself on my bed on the ground, with my gun beside me. the dog gave tongue as twenty or thirty people defiled up the glen, and gathered in front of my tent; they were ragged bhoteeas, with bare heads and legs, in scanty woollen garments sodden with rain, which streamed off their shaggy hair, and furrowed their sooty faces: their whole appearance recalled to my mind dugald dalgetty's friends, the children of the mist. they appeared nonplussed at seeing no one with me, and at my paying no attention to them, whilst the valiant kinchin effectually scared them from the tent-door. when they requested a parley, i sent the interpreter to say that i would receive three men, and that only provided all the rest were sent down immediately; this, as i anticipated, was acceded to at once, and there remained only the lachen phipun and his brother. without waiting to let him speak, i rated him soundly, saying, that i was ready to leave the spot when he could produce any proof of my being in bhote (or cheen), which he knew well i was not; that, since my arrival at lachen, he had told me nothing but lies, and had contravened every order, both of the rajah and of tchebu lama. i added, that i had given him and his people kindness and medicine, their return was bad, and he must go about his business at once, having, as i knew, no food, and i having none for him. he behaved very humbly throughout, and finally took himself off much discomfited, and two days afterwards sent men to offer to assist me in moving my things. the first of july was such a day as i had long waited for to obtain a view, and i ascended the mountain west of my camp, to a point where water boiling at . degrees (air degrees), gave an elevation of , feet. on the top of the range, about feet above this, there was no snow on the eastern exposures, except in hollows, but on the west slopes it lay in great fields twenty or thirty feet thick; while to the north, the mountains all appeared destitute of snow, with grassy flanks and rugged tops. drizzling mist, which had shrouded tukcham all the morning, soon gathered on this mountain, and prevented any prospect from the highest point reached; but on the ascent i had an excellent view up the zemu, which opened into a broad grassy valley, where i saw with the glass some wooden sheds, but no cattle or people. to reach these, however, involved crossing the river, which was now impossible; and i reluctantly made up my mind to return on the morrow to zemu samdong, and thence try the other river. on my descent to the thlonok, i found that the herbaceous plants on the terraces had grown fully two feet during the fortnight, and now presented almost a tropical luxuriance and beauty. thence i reached zemu samdong in one day, and found the vegetation there even more gay and beautiful: the gigantic lily was in full flower, and scenting the air, with the lovely red rose, called "chirring" by the tibetans. _neillia_ was blossoming profusely at my old camping-ground, to which i now returned after a month's absence. soon after my arrival i received letters from dr. campbell, who had strongly and repeatedly represented to the rajah his opinion of the treatment i was receiving; and this finally brought an explicit answer, to the effect that his orders had been full and peremptory that i should be supplied with provisions, and safely conducted to the frontier. with these came letters on the rajah's part from tchebu lama to the lachen phipun, ordering him to take me to the pass, but not specifying its position; fortunately, however, dr. campbell sent me a route, which stated the pass to be at kongra lama, several marches beyond this, and in the barren country of tibet. on the th of july the singtam soubah arrived from chola (the rajah's summer residence): he was charged to take me to the frontier, and brought letters from his highness, as well as a handsome present, consisting of tibet cloth, and a dress of china silk brocaded with gold: the ranee also sent me a basket of lhassa sweetmeats, consisting of sultana raisins from bokhara, sliced and dried apricots from lhassa, and _diospyros_ fruit from china (called "gubroon" by the tibetans). the soubah wanted to hurry me on to the frontier and back at once, being no doubt instigated to do so by the dewan's party, and by his having no desire to spend much time in the dreary lofty regions i wanted to explore. i positively refused, however, to start until more supplies arrived, except he used his influence to provide me with food; and as he insisted that the frontier was at tallum samdong, only one march up the lachen, i foresaw that this move was to be but one step forward, though in the right direction. he went forward to tallum at once, leaving me to follow. the lamteng people had all migrated beyond that point to tungu, where they were pasturing their cattle: i sent thither for food, and procured a little meal at a very high price, a few fowls and eggs; the messenger brought back word that tungu was in tibet, and that the villagers ignored kongra lama. a large piece of yak-flesh being brought for sale, i purchased it; but it proved the toughest meat i ever ate, being no doubt that of an animal that had succumbed to the arduous duties of a salt-carrier over the passes: at this season, however, when the calves are not a month old, it was in vain to expect better. large parties of women and children were daily passing my tent from tungu, to collect arum-roots at the thlonok, all with baskets at their backs, down to rosy urchins of six years old: they returned after several days, their baskets neatly lined with broad rhododendron leaves, and full of a nauseous-looking yellow acid pulp, which told forcibly of the extreme poverty of the people. the children were very fair; indeed the young tibetan is as fair as an english brunette, before his perennial coat of smoke and dirt has permanently stained his face, and it has become bronzed and wrinkled by the scorching sun and rigorous climate of these inhospitable countries. children and women were alike decked with roses, and all were good-humoured and pleasant, behaving with great kindness to one another, and unaffected politeness to me. during my ten days' stay at zemu samdong, i formed a large collection of insects, which was in great part destroyed by damp: many were new, beautiful, and particularly interesting, from belonging to types whose geographical distribution is analogous to that of the vegetation. the caterpillar of the swallow-tail butterfly (_papilio machaon_), was common, feeding on umbelliferous plants, as in england; and a _sphynx_ (like _s. euphorbiae_) was devouring the euphorbias; the english _cynthia cardui_ (painted-lady butterfly) was common, as were "sulphurs," "marbles," _pontia_ (whites), "blues," and _thecla,_ of british aspect but foreign species. amongst these, tropical forms were rare, except one fine black swallow-tail. of moths, _noctuae_ and _geometrae_ abounded, with many flies and _tipulae. hymenoptera_ were scarce, except a yellow _ophion,_ which lays its eggs in the caterpillars above-mentioned. beetles were most rare, and (what is remarkable) the wood-borers (_longicorns_ and _curculio_) particularly so. a large _telephora_ was very common, and had the usual propensity of its congeners for blood; _lamellicorns_ were also abundant. on the th of july five coolies arrived with rice: they had been twenty days on the road, and had been obliged to make great detours, the valley being in many places impassable. they brought me a parcel of english letters; and i started up the lachen on the following day, with renewed spirits and high hopes. the road first crossed the zemu and the spur beyond, and then ascended the west bank of the lachen, a furious torrent for five or six miles, during which it descends feet, in a chasm from which rise lofty black pine-clad crags, topped by snowy mountains, , to , feet high. one remarkable mass of rock, on the east bank, is called "sakya-zong" (or the abode of sakya, often pronounced thakya, one of the boodhist trinity); at its base a fine cascade falls into the river. above , feet the valley expands remarkably, the mountains recede, become less wooded, and more grassy, while the stream is suddenly less rapid, meandering in a broader bed, and bordered by marshes, covered with _carex, blysmus,_ dwarf tamarisk, and many kinds of yellow and red _pedicularis,_ both tall and beautiful. there are far fewer rhododendrons here than in the damper zemu valley at equal elevations, and more siberian, or dry country types of vegetation, as _astragali_ of several kinds, _habenaria, epipactis,_ dandelion, and a caraway, whose stems (called in tibet "gzira") are much sought for as a condiment.* [_umbelliferae abound here; with sage, _ranunculus, anemone,_ aconites, _halenia,_ gentians, _panax, euphrasia,_ speedwell, _prunella vulgaris,_ thistles, bistort, _parnassia,_ purple orchis, _prenanthes,_ and _lactuca._ the woody plants of this region are willows, birch, _cotoneaster,_ maple, three species of _viburnum,_ three of _spiraea, vaccinium, aralia, deutzia, philadelphus,_ rhododendrons, two junipers, silver fir, larch, three honeysuckles, _neillia,_ and a _pieris,_ whose white blossoms are so full of honey as to be sweet and palatable.] the singtam soubah and lachen phipun received me at the bridge (samdong), at tallum, and led me across the river (into cheen they affirmed) to a pretty green sward, near some gigantic gneiss boulders, where i camped, close by the river, and , feet above the sea. the village of tallum consists of a few wretched stone huts, placed in a broad part of the valley, which is swampy, and crossed by several ancient moraines, which descend from the gulleys on the east flank.* [i have elsewhere noticed that in sikkim, the ancient moraines above feet are almost invariably deposited from valleys opening to the westward.] the cottages are from four to six feet high, without windows, and consist of a single apartment, containing neither table, chair, stool, nor bed; the inmates huddle together amid smoke, filth, and darkness, and sleep on a plank; and their only utensils are a bamboo churn, copper, bamboo, and earthenware vessels, for milk, butter, etc. grassy or stony mountains slope upwards, at an angle of degrees,* [at lamteng and up the zemu the slopes are degrees and degrees, giving a widely different aspect to the valleys.] from these flats to , feet, but no snow is visible, except on kinchinjhow and chomiomo, about fifteen miles up the valley. both these are flat-topped, and dazzlingly white, rising into small peaks, and precipitous on all sides; they are grand, bold, isolated masses, quite unlike the ordinary snowy mountains in form, and far more imposing even than kinchinjunga, though not above , feet in elevation. herbaceous plants are much more numerous here than in any other part of sikkim; and sitting at my tent-door, i could, without rising from the ground, gather forty-three plants,* [in england thirty is, on the average, the equivalent number of plants, which in favourable localities i have gathered in an equal space. in both cases many are seedlings of short-lived annuals, and in neither is the number a test of the luxuriance of the vegetation; it but shows the power which the different species exert in their struggle to obtain a place.] of which all but two belonged to english genera. in the rich soil about the cottages were crops of dock, shepherd's-purse, _thlaspi arvense, cynoglossum_ of two kinds (one used as a pot-herb), balsams, nettle, _galeopsis,_ mustard, radish, and turnip. on the neighbouring hills, which i explored up to , feet, i found many fine plants, partaking more or less of the siberian type, of which _corydalis, leguminosae, artemisia,_ and _pedicularis,_ are familiar instances. i gathered upwards of species, nearly all belonging to north european genera. twenty-five were woody shrubs above three feet high, and six were ferns; [_cryptogramma crispa, davallia,_ two _aspidia,_ and two _polypodia._ i gathered ten at the same elevation, in the damper zemu valley (see chapter xix, note). i gathered in this valley a new species of the remarkable european genus _struthiopteris,_ which has not been found elsewhere in the himalaya.] sedges were in great profusion, amongst them three of british kinds: seven or eight were _orchideae,_ including a fine _cypripedium._ the entomology of tallum, like its botany, was siberian, arctic types occurring at lower elevations than in the wetter parts of sikkim. of beetles the honey-feeding ones prevailed, with european forms of others that inhabit yak-droppings.* [as _aphodius_ and _geotrupes._ predaceous genera were very rare, as _carabus_ and _staphylinus,_ so typical of boreal regions. _coccinella_ (lady-bird), which swarms at dorjiling, does not ascend so high, and a _clytus_ was the only longicorn. _bupretis, elater,_ and _blaps_ were found but rarely. of butterflies, the _machaon_ seldom reaches this elevation, but the painted-lady, _pontia, colias, hipparchia, argynnis,_ and _polyommatus,_ are all found.] bees were common, both _bombus_ and _andraena,_ but there were no wasps, and but few ants. grasshoppers and other _orthoptera_ were rare, as were _hemiptera_; _tipula_ was the common dipterous insect, with a small sand-fly: there were neither leeches, mosquitos, ticks, nor midges. pigeons, red-legged crows, and hawks were the common birds; with a few waders in the marshes. being now fairly behind most of the great snow and rain-collecting mountains, i experienced a considerable change in the climate, which characterises all these rearward lofty valleys, where very little rain falls, and that chiefly drizzle; but this is so constant that the weather feels chilly, raw, and comfortless, and i never returned dry from botanising. the early mornings were bright with views northwards of blue sky and kinchinjhow, while to the south the lofty peak of tukcham, though much nearer, was seldom seen, and black cumuli and nimbi rolled up the steep valley of the lachen to be dissipated in mist over tallum. the sun's rays were, however, powerful at intervals during the forenoon, whence the mean maximum temperature of july occurred at about a.m. the temperature of the river was always high, varying with the heat of the day from degrees to degrees; the mean being degrees. these streams do not partake of the diurnal rise and fall, so characteristic of the swiss rivers and those of the western himalaya, where a powerful sun melts the glaciers by day, and their head-streams are frozen by night. here the clouds alike prevent solar and nocturnal radiation, the temperature is more uniform, and the corroding power of the damp southerly wind that blows strongly throughout the day is the great melting agent. one morning i saw a vivid and very beautiful halo degrees distant from the sun's disc; it was no doubt caused by snow in the higher regions of the atmosphere, as a sharp shower of rain fell immediately afterwards: these are rare phenomena in mountainous countries. the singtam soubah visited me daily, and we enjoyed long friendly conversations: he still insisted that the yangchoo (the name he gave to the lachen at this place) was the boundary, and that i must not go any further. his first question was always "how long do you intend to remain here? have you not got all the plants and stones you want? you can see the sun much better with those brasses and glasses* [alluding to the sextant, etc.] lower down; it is very cold here, and there is no food:"--to all which i had but one reply, that i should not return till i had visited kongra lama. he was a portly man, and, i think, at heart good-natured: i had no difficulty in drawing him on to talk about tibet, and the holy city of teshoo loombo, with its thousands of gilt temples, nunneries, and convents, its holiest of all the holy grand lamas of tibet, and all the wide boodhist world besides. had it even been politic, i felt it would be unfair to be angry with a man who was evidently in a false position between myself and his two rulers, the rajah and dewan; who had a wife and family on the smiling flanks of singtam, and who longed to be soaking in the warm rain of sikkim, drinking murwa beer (a luxury unknown amongst these tibetans) and gathering in his crops of rice, millet, and buckwheat. though i may owe him a grudge for his subsequent violence, i still recall with pleasure the hours we spent together on the banks of the lachen. in all matters respecting the frontier, his lies were circumstantial; and he further took the trouble of bringing country people to swear that this was cheen, and that there was no such place as kongra lama. i had written to ask dr. campbell for a definite letter from tchebu lama on this point, but unfortunately my despatches were lost; the messenger who conveyed them missed his footing in crossing the lachen, and escaped narrowly with life, while the turban in which the letters were placed was carried down the current. finally the soubah tried to persuade my people that one so incorrigibly obstinate must be mad, and that they had better leave me. one day, after we had had a long discussion about the geography of the frontier, he inflamed my curiosity by telling me that kinchinjhow was a very holy mountain; more so than its sister-peaks of chumulari and kinchinjunga; and that both the sikkim and tibetan lamas, and chinese soldiers, were ready to oppose my approach to it. this led to my asking him for a sketch of the mountains; he called for a large sheet of paper, and some charcoal, and wanted to form his mountains of sand; i however ordered rice to be brought, and though we had but little, scattered it about wastefully. this had its effect: he stared at my wealth, for he had all along calculated on starving me out, and retired, looking perplexed and crestfallen. nothing puzzled him so much as my being always occupied with such, to him, unintelligible pursuits; a tibetan "cui bono?" was always in his mouth: "what good will it do _you_?" "why should you spend weeks on the coldest, hungriest, windiest, loftiest place on the earth, without even inhabitants?" drugs and idle curiosity he believed were my motives, and possibly a reverence for the religion of boodh, sakya, and tsongkaba. latterly he had made up his mind to starve me out, and was dismayed when he found i could hold out better than himself, and when i assured him that i should not retrace my steps until his statements should be verified by a letter from tchebu; that i had written to him, and that it would be at least thirty days before i could receive an answer. on the th of july he proposed to take me to tungu, at the foot of kinchinjhow, and back, upon ponies, provided i would leave my people and tent, which i refused to do. after this i saw little of him for several days, and began to fear he was offended, when one morning his attendant came to me for medicine with a dismal countenance, and in great alarm: he twisted his fingers together over his stomach to symbolise the nature of the malady which produced a commotion in his master's bowels, and which was simply the colic. i was aware that he had been reduced to feed upon "tong" (the arum-root) and herbs, and had always given him half the pigeons i shot, which was almost the only animal food i had myself. now i sent him a powerful dose of medicine; adding a few spoonfuls of china tea and sugar for friendship. on the nd, being convalescent, he visited me, looking wofully yellow. after a long pause, during which he tried to ease himself of some weighty matter, he offered to take me to tungu with my tent and people, and, thence to kongra lama, if i would promise to stay but two nights. i asked whether tungu was in cheen or sikkim; he replied that after great enquiry he had heard that it was really in sikkim; "then," said i, "we will both go to-morrow morning to tungu, and i will stay there as long as i please:" he laughed, and gave in with apparent good grace. after leaving tallum, the valley contracts, passing over great ancient moraines, and again expanding wider than before into broad grassy flats. the vegetation rapidly diminishes in stature and abundance, and though the ascent to tungu is trifling, the change in species is very great. the _spiraea,_ maple, _pieris,_ cherry, and larch disappear, leaving only willow, juniper, stunted birch, silver fir, white rose, _aralia,_ berberry, currant, and more rhododendrons than all these put together;* [_cyananthus,_ a little blue flower allied to _campanula,_ and one of the most beautiful alpines i know, covered the turfy ground, with _orchis, pedicularis, gentian, potentilla, geranium,_ purple and yellow _meconopsis,_ and the _artemisia_ of dorjiling, which ascends to , feet, and descends to the plains, having a range of , feet in elevation. of ferns, _hymenophyllum, cistopteris,_ and _cryptogramma crispa_ ascend thus high.] while mushrooms and other english fungi* [one of great size, growing in large clumps, is the english _agaricus comans,_ fr., and i found it here at , feet, as also the beautiful genus _crucibulum,_ which is familiar to us in england, growing on rotten sticks, and resembling a diminutive bird's nest with eggs in it.] grew amongst the grass. illustration--tungu village. tungu occupies a very broad valley, at the junction of the tungu-choo from the east, and the lachen from the north. the hills slope gently upwards to , feet, at an average angle of degrees; they are flat and grassy at the base, and no snow is anywhere to be seen.* [in the wood-cut the summit of chomiomo is introduced, as it appears from a few hundred feet above the point of view.] a stupendous rock, about fifty feet high, lay in the middle of the valley, broken in two: it may have been detached from a cliff, or have been transported thither as part of an ancient moraine which extends from the mouth of the tungu-choo valley across that of the lachen. the appearance and position of this great block, and of the smaller piece lying beside it, rather suggest the idea of the whole mass having fallen perpendicularly from a great height through a crevasse in a glacier, than of its having been hurled from so considerable a distance as from the cliffs on the flanks of the valley: it is faithfully represented in the accompanying woodcut. a few wooden houses were collected near this rock, and several black tents were scattered about. i encamped at an elevation of , feet, and was waited on by the lachen phipun with presents of milk, butter, yak-flesh, and curds; and we were not long before we drowned old enmity in buttered and salted tea. on my arrival i found the villagers in a meadow, all squatted cross-legged in a circle, smoking their brass and iron pipes, drinking tea, and listening to a letter from the rajah, concerning their treatment of me. whilst my men were pitching my tent, i gathered forty plants new to me, all of tartarian types.* [more siberian plants appeared, as _astragali, chenopodium, artemisia,_ some grasses, new kinds of _pedicularis, delphinium,_ and some small orchids. three species of _parnassia_ and six primroses made the turf gay, mixed with saxifrages, _androsace_ and _campanula._ by the cottages was abundance of shepherd's-purse, _lepidium,_ and balsams, with dock, _galeopsis,_ and _cuscuta._ several low dwarf species of honeysuckle formed stunted bushes like heather; and _anisodus,_ a curious plant allied to _hyoscyamus,_ whose leaves are greedily eaten by yaks, was very common.] wheat or barley i was assured had been cultivated at tungu when it was possessed by tibetans, and inhabited by a frontier guard, but i saw no appearance of any cultivation. the fact is an important one, as barley requires a mean summer temperature of degrees to come to maturity. according to my observations, the mean temperature of tungu in july is upwards of degrees, and, by calculation, that of the three summer months, june, july, and august, should be about . degrees. as, however, i do not know whether these cerealia were grown as productive crops, much stress cannot be laid upon the fact of their having been cultivated, for in a great many parts of tibet the barley is annually cut green for fodder. in the evening the sick came to me: their complaints, as usual, being rheumatism, ophthalmia, goitres, cuts, bruises, and poisoning by tong (_arum_), fungi, and other deleterious vegetables. at tallum i attended an old woman who dressed her ulcers with _plantago_ (plantain) leaves, a very common scotch remedy; the ribs being drawn out from the leaf, which is applied fresh: it is rather a strong application. on the following morning i was awakened by the shrill cries of the tibetan maidens, calling the yaks to be milked, "toosh--toosh-- toooosh," in a gradually higher key; to which toosh seemed supremely indifferent, till quickened in her movements by a stone or stick, levelled with unerring aim at her ribs; these animals were changing their long winter's wool for sleek hair, and the former hung about them in ragged masses, like tow. their calves gambolled by their sides, the drollest of animals, like ass-colts in their antics, kicking up their short hind-legs, whisking their bushy tails in the air, rushing up and down the grassy slopes, and climbing like cats to the top of the rocks. the soubah and phipun came early to take me to kongra lama, bringing ponies, genuine tartars in bone and breed. remembering the dewan's impracticable saddle at bhomsong, i stipulated for a horse-cloth or pad, upon which i had no sooner jumped than the beast threw back his ears, seated himself on his haunches, and, to my consternation, slid backwards down a turfy slope, pawing the earth with his fore-feet as he went, and leaving me on the ground, amid shrieks of laughter from my lepchas. my steed being caught, i again mounted, and was being led forward, when he took to shaking himself like a dog till the pad slipped under his belly, and i was again unhorsed. other ponies displayed equal prejudices against my mode of riding, or having my weight anywhere but well on their shoulders, being all-powerful in their fore-quarters; and so i was compelled to adopt the high demi-pique saddle with short stirrups, which forced me to sit with my knees up to my nose, and to grip with the calves of my legs and heels. all the gear was of yak or horse-hair, and the bit was a curb and ring, or a powerful twisted snaffle.. the path ran n.n.w. for two miles, and then crossed the lachen above its junction with the nunee* [i suspect there is a pass by the nunee to the sheds i saw up the zemu valley on the nd of july, as i observed yaks grazing high up the mountains: the distance cannot be great, and there is little or no snow to interfere.] from the west: the stream was rapid, and twelve yards in breadth; its temperature was degrees. about six miles above tungu, the lachen is joined by the chomio-choo, a large affluent from chomiomo mountain. above this the lachen meanders along a broad stony bed; and the path rises over a great ancient moraine, whose level top is covered with pools, but both that and its south face are bare, from exposure to the south wind, which blows with fury through this contracted part of the valley to the rarified atmosphere of the lofty, open, and dry country beyond. its north slope, on the contrary, is covered with small trees and brushwood, rhododendron, birch, honeysuckle, and mountain-ash. these are the most northern shrubs in sikkim, and i regarded them with deep interest, as being possibly the last of their kind to be met with in this meridian, for many degrees further north: perhaps even no similar shrubs occur between this and the siberian altai, a distance of , miles. the magnificent yellow cowslip (_primula sikkimensis_) gilded the marshes, and _caltha,_* [this is the _c. scaposa,_ n. sp. the common _caltha palustris,_ or "marsh marigold" of england, which is not found in sikkim, is very abundant in the north-west himalaya.] _trollius,_ anemone, _arenaria, draba,_ saxifrages, potentillas, ranunculus, and other very alpine plants abounded. at the foot of the moraine was a tibetan camp of broad, black, yak-hair tents, stretched out with a complicated system of ropes, and looking at a distance--(to borrow m. huc's graphic simile)--like fat-bodied, long-legged spiders! their general shape is hexagonal, about twelve feet either way, and they are stretched over six short posts, and encircled with a low stone wall, except in front. in one of them i found a buxom girl, the image of good humour, making butter and curd from yak-milk. the churns were of two kinds; one being an oblong box of birch-bark, or close bamboo wicker-work, full of branched rhododendron twigs, in which the cream is shaken: she good-naturedly showed me the inside, which was frosted with snow-white butter, and alive with maggots. the other churn was a goat-skin, which was rolled about, and shaken by the four legs. the butter is made into great squares, and packed in yak-hair cloths; the curd is eaten either fresh, or dried and pulverised (when it is called "ts'cheuzip"). except bamboo and copper milk-vessels, wooden ladles, tea-churn, and pots, these tents contained no furniture but goat-skins and blankets, to spread on the ground as a bed. the fire was made of sheep and goats'-droppings, lighted with juniper-wood; above it hung tufts of yaks'-hair, one for every animal lost during the season,* [the siberians hang tufts of horse-hair inside their houses from superstitious motives (ermann's "siberia," i., ).] by which means a reckoning is kept. although this girl had never before seen a european, she seemed in no way discomposed at my visit, and gave me a large slice of fresh curd. beyond this place (alt. , feet), the valley runs up north-east, becoming very stony and desolate, with green patches only by the watercourses: at this place, however, thick fogs came on, and obscured all view. at , feet, i passed a small glacier on the west side of the valley, the first i had met with that descended nearly to the river, during the whole course of the teesta. five miles further on we arrived at the tents of the phipun, whose wife was prepared to entertain us with tartar hospitality: magnificent tawny tibet mastiffs were baying at the tent-door, and some yaks and ponies were grazing close by. we mustered twelve in number, and squatted cross-legged in a circle inside the tent, the soubah and myself being placed on a pretty chinese rug. salted and buttered tea was immediately prepared in a tea-pot for us on the mat, and in a great caldron for the rest of the party; parched rice and wheat-flour, curd, and roasted maize* [called "pop-corn" in america, and prepared by roasting the maize in an iron vessel, when it splits and turns partly inside out, exposing a snow-white spongy mass of farina. it looks very handsome, and would make a beautiful dish for dessert.] were offered us, and we each produced our wooden cup, which was kept constantly full of scalding tea-soup, which, being made with fresh butter, was very good. the flour was the favourite food, of which each person dexterously formed little dough-balls in his cup, an operation i could not well manage, and only succeeded in making a nauseous paste, that stuck to my jaws and in my throat. our hostess' hospitality was too _exigeant_ for me, but the others seemed as if they could not drink enough of the scalding tea. we were suddenly startled from our repast by a noise like loud thunder, crash following crash, and echoing through the valley. the phipun got up, and coolly said, "the rocks are falling, it is time we were off, it will rain soon." the moist vapours had by this time so accumulated, as to be condensed in rain on the cliffs of chomiomo and kinchinjhow; which, being loosened, precipitated avalanches of rocks and snow. we proceeded amidst dense fog, soon followed by hard rain; the roar of falling rocks on either hand increasing as these invisible giants spoke to one another in voices of thunder through the clouds. the effect was indescribably grand: and as the weather cleared, and i obtained transient peeps of their precipices of blue ice and black rock towering feet above me on either hand, the feeling of awe produced was almost overpowering. heavy banks of vapour still veiled the mountains, but the rising mist exposed a broad stony track, along which the lachen wandered, split into innumerable channels, and enclosing little oases of green vegetation, lighted up by occasional gleams of sunshine. though all around was enveloped in gloom, there was in front a high blue arc of cloudless sky, between the beetling cliffs that formed the stern portals of the kongra lama pass. chapter xxi. top of kongra lama -- tibet frontier -- elevation -- view -- vegetation -- descent to tungu -- tungu-choo -- ponies -- kinchinjhow and changokhang mountains -- palung plains -- tibetans -- dogs -- dingcbam province of tibet -- inhabitants -- dresses -- women's ornaments -- blackening faces -- coral -- tents -- elevation of palung -- lama -- shawl-wool goats -- shearing -- siberian plants -- height of glaciers, and perpetual snow -- geology -- plants, and wild animals -- marmots -- insects -- birds -- choongtam lama -- religious exercises -- tibetan hospitality -- _delphinium_ -- perpetual snow -- temperature at tungu -- return to tallum samdong -- to lamteng -- houses -- fall of barometer -- cicadas -- lime deposit -- landslips -- arrival at choongtam -- cobra -- rageu -- heat of climate -- velocity and volume of rivers measured -- leave for lachoong valley -- keadom -- general features of valley -- lachoong village -- tunkra mountain -- moraines -- cultivation -- lachoong phipun -- lama ceremonies beside a sick-bed. we reached the boundary between sikkim and tibet early in the afternoon; it is drawn along kongra lama, which is a low flat spur running east from kinchinjhow towards chomiomo, at a point where these mountains are a few miles apart, thus crossing the lachen river:* [the upper valley of the lachen in tibet, which i ascended in the following october, is very open, flat, barren, and stony; it is bounded on the north by rounded spurs from chomiomo, which are continued east to donkia, forming a watershed to the lachen on the south, and to the arun on the north.] it is marked by cairns of stone, some rudely fashioned into chaits, covered with votive rags on wands of bamboo. i made the altitude by barometer , feet above the sea, and by boiling water, , feet, the water boiling at . degrees; the temperature of the air between . and p.m. varied from . degrees to . degrees, the dew-point . degrees; that of the lachen was degrees, which was remarkably high. we were bitterly cold; as the previous rain had wetted us through, and a keen wind was blowing up the valley. the continued mist and fog intercepted all view, except of the flanks of the great mountains on either hand, of the rugged snowy ones to the south, and of those bounding the lachen to the north. the latter were unsnowed, and appeared lower than kongra lama, the ground apparently sloping away in that direction; but when i ascended them, three months afterwards, i found they were feet higher! a proof how utterly fallacious are estimates of height, when formed by the eye alone. my informants called them peuka-t'hlo; "peu" signifies north in tibetan, and "t'hlo" a hill in lepcha. isolated patches of vegetation appeared on the top of the pass, where i gathered forty kinds of plants, most of them being of a tufted habit characteristic of an extreme climate; some (as species of _caryophylleae_) forming hemi-spherical balls on the naked soil; others* [the other plants found on the pass were; of smooth hairless ones, _ranunculus,_ fumitory, several species of _stellaria, arenaria, cruciferae, parnassia, morina,_ saxifrages, _sedum,_ primrose, _herminium, polygonum, campanula, umbelliferae,_ grasses and _carices_: of woolly or hairy once, _anemone, artemisia, myosotis, draba, potentilla,_ and several _compositae,_ etc.] growing in matted tufts level with the ground. the greater portion had no woolly covering; nor did i find any of the cottony species of _saussurea,_ which are so common on the wetter mountains to the southward. some most delicate-flowered plants even defy the biting winds of these exposed regions; such are a prickly _meconopsis_ with slender flower-stalks and four large blue poppy-like petals, a _cyananthus_ with a membranous bell-shaped corolla, and a fritillary. other curious plants were a little yellow saxifrage with long runners (very like the arctic _s. flagellaris,_ of spitzbergen and melville island), and the strong-scented spikenard (_nardostachys_). the rocks were chiefly of reddish quartz, and so was the base of chomiomo. kinchinjhow on the contrary was of gneiss, with granite veins: the strike of both was north-west, and the dip north-east degrees to degrees. we made a fire at the top with sheep's droppings, of which the phipun had brought up a bagfull, and with it a pair of goat-skin bellows, which worked by a slit that was opened by the hand in the act of raising; when inflated, the hole was closed, and the skin pressed down, thus forcing the air through the bamboo nozzle: this is the common form of bellows throughout tibet and the himalaya. after two hours i was very stiff and cold, and suffering from headache and giddiness, owing to the elevation; and having walked about thirteen miles botanizing, i was glad to ride down. we reached the phipun's tents about 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 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 plants; all gathered above , feet elevation.* [amongst them the most numerous natural orders and genera were, _cruciferae_ ; _compositae_ ; _ranunculaceae_ ; _alsineae_ ; _astragali_ ; _potentillae_ ; grasses ; _carices_ ; _pedicularis_ ; _boragineae_ .] letters arrived from dorjiling with unusual speed, having been only seventeen days on the road: they were full of valuable suggestions and encouragement from my friends hodgson, campbell, and tchebu lama. on the th of july the phipun, who waited on me every morning with milk and butter, and whose civility and attentions were now unremitting, proposed that i should accompany him to an encampment of tibetans, at the foot of kinchinjhow. we mounted ponies, and ascended the tunguchoo eastwards: it was a rapid river for the first thousand feet, flowing in a narrow gorge, between sloping, grassy, and rocky hills, on which large herds of yaks were feeding, tended by women and children, whose black tents were scattered about. the yak-calves left their mothers to run beside our ponies, which became unmanageable, being almost callous to the bit; and the whole party was sometimes careering over the slopes, chased by the grunting herds: in other places, the path was narrow and dangerous, when the sagacious animals proceeded with the utmost gravity and caution. rounding one rocky spur, my pony stumbled, and pitched me forward: fortunately i lighted on the path. the rocks were gneiss, with granite veins (strike north-east, dip south-east): they were covered with _ephedra,_* [a curious genus of small shrubs allied to pines, that grows in the south of europe. this species is the european _e. vulgaris_; it inhabits the driest parts of north-west india, and ascends to , feet in tibet, but is not found in the moist intervening countries.] an _onosma_ which yields a purple dye, _orchis,_ and species of _androsace_; while the slopes were clothed with the spikenard and purple _pedicularis,_ and the moist grounds with yellow cowslip and long grass. a sudden bend in the valley opened a superb view to the north, of the full front of kinchinjhow, extending for four or five miles east and west; its perpendicular sides studded with the immense icicles, which are said to have obtained for it the name of "jhow,"--the "bearded" kinchin. eastward a jagged spur stretches south, rising into another splendid mountain, called chango-khang (the eagle's crag), from whose flanks descend great glaciers, the sources of the tunguchoo. we followed the course of an affluent, called the chachoo, along whose bed ancient moraines rose in successive ridges: on these i found several other species of european genera.* [_delphinium, hypecoum, sagina, gymnandra, artemisia, caltha, dracocephalum, leontopodium._] over one of these moraines, 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, to 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, to feet deep, and covered with juniper bushes.* [these, which grow on an eastern exposure, exist at a higher elevation than any other bushes i have met with.] it is fed by the glaciers of kinchinjhow, and some little lakes to the east. the mean height of palung plains is , feet: they are covered with transported blocks, and i have no doubt their surface has been much modified by glacial action. i was forcibly reminded of them by the slopes of the wengern alp, but those of palung are far more level. kinchinjhow rises before the spectator, just as the jungfrau, monch, and eigher alps do from that magnificent point of view. on ascending a low hill, we came in sight of the tibet camp at the distance of a mile, when the great mastiffs that guarded it immediately bayed; and our ponies starting off at full gallop, we soon reached an enclosure of stone dykes, within which the black tents were pitched. the dogs were of immense size, and ragged, like the yaks, from their winter coat hanging to their flanks in great masses; each was chained near a large stone, on and off which he leapt as he gave tongue; they are very savage, but great cowards, and not remarkable for intelligence. illustration--lepcha girls (the outer figures), and tibetan women. the people were natives of gearee and kambajong, in the adjacent province of dingcham, which is the loftiest, coldest, most windy and arid in eastern tibet; and in which are the sources of all the streams that flow to nepal; sikkim, and bhotan on the one side, and into the yaru-tsampu on the other. these families repair yearly to palung, with their flocks, herds, and tents, paying tribute to the sikkim rajah for the privilege: they arrive in june and leave in september. both men and women were indescribably filthy; as they never wash, their faces were perfectly black with smoke and exposure, and the women's with a pigment of grease as a protection from the wind. the men were dressed as usual, in the blanket-cloak, with brass pipes, long knives, flint, steel, and amulets; the women wore similar, but shorter cloaks, with silver and copper girdles, trowsers, and flannel boots. their head-dresses were very remarkable. a circular band of plaited yak's hair was attached to the back hair, and encircled the head like a saint's glory,* [i find in ermann's "siberia" (i., p. ), that the married women of yekaterinberg wear a head-dress like an ancient glory covered with jewels, whilst the unmarried ones plait their tresses. the same distinguished traveller mentions having seen a lad of six years old suckled, amongst the tungooze of east siberia.] at some distance round it. a band crossed the forehead, from which coins, corals, and turquoises, hung down to the eyebrows, while lappets of these ornaments fell over the ears. their own hair was plaited in two tails, brought over the shoulders, and fastened together in front; and a little yellow felt cap, traversely elongated, so as not to interfere with the shape of the glory, was perched on the head. their countenances were pleasing, and their manners timid. the children crawled half-naked about the tent, or burrowed like moles in an immense heap of goats' and sheep-droppings, piled up for fuel, upon which the family lounged. an infant in arms was playing with a "coral," ornamented much like ours, and was covered with jewels and coins. this custom of decorating children is very common amongst half-civilised people; and the coral is, perhaps, one of the last relics of a barbarous age that is retained amongst ourselves. one mother was nursing her baby, and churning at the same time, by rolling the goat-skin of yak-milk about on the ground. extreme poverty induces the practice of nursing the children for years; and in one tent i saw a lad upwards of four years of age unconcernedly taking food from his aunt, and immediately afterwards chewing hard dry grains of maize. the tents were pitched in holes about two feet and a half deep; and within them a wall of similar height was built all round: in the middle was a long clay arched fire-place, with holes above, over which the cauldrons were placed, the fire being underneath. saddles, horse-cloths, and the usual accoutrements and implements of a nomade 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 ( . degrees) with that of the air ( . degrees) gave an elevation of , feet. barometric observations, taken in october, at a point considerably lower down the stream, made the elevation , feet, or a few feet lower than kongra lama pass. a lama accompanied this colony of tibetans, a festival in honour of kinchinjhow being annually held at a large chait hard by, which is painted red, ornamented with banners, and surmounted by an enormous yak's skull, that faces the mountain. the lama invited me into his tent, where i found a wife and family. an extempore altar was at one end, covered with wafers and other pretty ornaments, made of butter, stamped or moulded with the fingers.* [the extensive use of these ornaments throughout tibet, on the occasion of religious festivals, is alluded to by mm. huc and gabet.] the tents being insupportably noisome, i preferred partaking of the buttered brick-tea in the open air; after which, i went to see the shawl-wool goats sheared in a pen close by. there are two varieties: one is a large animal, with great horns, called "rappoo;"* [this is the "changra;" and the smaller the "chyapu" of mr. hodgson's catalogue. (see "british museum catalogue.")] the other smaller, and with slender horns, is called "tsilloo." the latter yields the finest wool, but they are mixed for ordinary purposes. i was assured that the sheep (of which large flocks were grazing near) afford the finest wool of any. the animals were caught by the tail, their legs tied, the long winter's hair pulled out, and the remainder cut away with a broad flat knife, which was sharpened with a scythe-stone. the operation was clumsily performed, and the skin much cut. turnips are grown at palung during the short stay of the people, and this is the most alpine cultivation in sikkim: the seed is sown early in july, and the tubers are fit to be eaten in october, if the season is favourable. they did not come to maturity this year, as i found on again visiting this spot in october; but their tops had afforded the poor tibetans some good vegetables. the mean temperature of the three summer months at palung is probably about degrees, an element of comparatively little importance in regulating the growth and ripening of vegetables at great elevations in tibetan climates; where a warm exposure, the amount of sunshine, and of radiated heat, have a much greater influence. during the winter, when these families repair to kambajong, in tibet, the flocks and herds are all stall-fed, with long grass, cut on the marshy banks of the yaru. snow is said to fall five feet deep at that place, chiefly after january; and it melts in april. after tea, i ascended the hills overhanging the lachen valley, which are very bare and stony; large flocks of sheep were feeding on them, chiefly upon small tufted sedges, allied to the english _carex pilularis,_ which here forms the greatest part of the pasture: the grass grows mixed with it in small tufts, and is the common scotch mountain pasture-grass (_festuca ovina_). on the top of these hills, which, for barrenness, reminded me of the descriptions given of the siberian steppes, i found, at , feet elevation, several minute arctic plants, with _rhododendron nivale,_ the most alpine of woody plants. on their sterile slopes grew a curious plant allied to the _cherleria_ of the scotch alps, forming great hemispherical balls on the ground, eight to ten inches across, altogether resembling in habit the curious balsambog (_bolax glebaria_) of the falkland islands, which grows in very similar scenes.* [_arenaria rupifraga,_ fenzl. this plant is mentioned by dr. thomson ("travels in tibet," p. ) as common in tibet, as far north as the karakoram, at an elevation between , and , 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 , on the alatau mountains (east of lake aral). in ledebour's "flora rossica" (i. p. ) it appears as _arenaria_ (sub-genus _dicranilla_) _rupifraga,_ fenzl, ms. in decaisne and cambessede's plants of jacquemont's "voyage aus indes orientales," it is described as _flourensia caespitosa,_ and in the plates of that work it appears as _periandra caespitosa_; and lastly, in endlicher's "genera plantarum," fenzl proposes the long new generic name of _thylacospermum_ for it. i have carefully compared the himalayan and alatau plants, and find no difference between them, except that the flower of the himalayan one has petals and sepals, stamens, and styles, and that of the alatau petals and sepals, stamens, and - styles, characters which are very variable in allied plants. the flowers appear polygamous, as in the scotch alpine _cherleria,_ which it much resembles in babit, and to which it is very nearly related in botanical characters.] a few days afterwards, i again visited palung, with the view of ascertaining the height of perpetual snow on the south face of kinchinjhow; unfortunately, bad weather came on before i reached the tibetans, from whom i obtained a guide in consequence. from this place a ride of about four miles brought me to the source of the chachoo, in a deep ravine, containing the terminations of several short, abrupt glaciers,* [de saussure's glaciers of the second order: see "forbes' travels in the alps," p. .] 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 , feet.* [temperature of boiling water, degrees, air degrees.] it was snowing heavily at this time, and we crouched under a gigantic boulder, benumbed with cold. i had fortunately brought a small phial of brandy, which, with hot water from the boiling-apparatus kettle, refreshed us wonderfully. the spur that divides these plains from the lachen river, rises close to kinchinjhow, as a lofty cliff of quartzy gneiss, dipping north-east degrees: this i had noticed from the kongra lama side. on this side the dip was also to the northward, and the whole cliff was crossed by cleavage planes, dipping south, and apparently cutting those of the foliation at an angle of about degrees: it is the only decided instance of the kind i met with in sikkim. i regretted not being able to examine it carefully, but i was prevented by the avalanches of stones and snow which were continually being detached from its surface.* [i extremely regret not having been at this time acquainted with mr. d. sharpe's able essays on the foliation, cleavage, etc., of slaty rocks, gneiss, etc., in the geological society's journal (ii. p. , and v. p. ), and still more so with his subsequent papers in the philosophical transactions: as i cannot doubt that many of his observations, and in particular those which refer to the great arches in which the folia (commonly called strata) are disposed, would receive ample illustration from a study of the himalaya. at vol. i. chapter xiii, i have distantly alluded to such an arrangement of the gneiss, etc., into arches, in sikkim, to which my attention was naturally drawn by the writings of professor sedgwick ("geolog. soc. trans.") and mr. darwin ("geological observations in south america") on these obscure subjects. i may add that wherever i met with the gneiss, mica, schists, and slates, in sikkim, very near one another, i invariably found that their cleavage and foliation were conformable. this, for example, may be seen in the bed of the great rungeet, below dorjiling, where the slates overlie mica schists, and where the latter contain beds of conglomerate. in these volumes i have often used the more familiar term of stratification, for foliation. this arises from my own ideas of the subject not having been clear when the notes were taken.] the plants found close to the snow were minute primroses, _parnassia, draba,_ tufted wormwoods (_artemisia_), saxifrages, gentian, small _compositae,_ grasses, and sedges. our ponies unconcernedly scraped away the snow with their hoofs, and nibbled the scanty herbage. when i mounted mine, he took the bit between his teeth, and scampered back to palung, over rocks and hills, through bogs and streams; and though the snow was so blinding that no object could be distinguished, he brought me to the tents with unerring instinct, as straight as an arrow. wild animals are few in kind and rare in individuals, at tungu and elsewhere on this frontier; though there is no lack of cover and herbage. this must be owing to the moist cold atmosphere; and it reminds me that a similar want of animal life is characteristic of those climates at the level of the sea, which i have adduced as bearing a great analogy to the himalaya, in lacking certain natural orders of plants. thus, new zealand and fuegia possess, the former no land animal but a rat, and the latter very few indeed, and none of any size. such is also the case in scotland and norway. again, on the damp west coast of tasmania, quadrupeds are rare; whilst the dry eastern half of the island once swarmed with opossums and kangaroos. a few miles north of tungu, the sterile and more lofty provinces of tibet abound in wild horses, antelopes, hares, foxes, marmots, and numerous other quadrupeds; although their altitude, climate, and scanty vegetation are apparently even more unsuited to support such numbers of animals of so large a size than the karroos of south africa, and the steppes of siberia and arctic america, which similarly abound in animal life. the laws which govern the distribution of large quadrupeds seem to be intimately connected with those of climate; and we should have regard to these considerations in our geological speculations, and not draw hasty conclusions from the absence of the remains of large herbivora in formations disclosing a redundant vegetation. besides the wild sheep found on these mountains, a species of marmot* [the _lagopus tibetanus_ of hodgson. i procured one that displayed an extraordinary tenacity of life: part of the skull was shot away, and the brain protruded; still it showed the utmost terror at my dog.] ("kardiepieu" of the tibetans) sometimes migrates in swarms (like the lapland "lemming") from tibet as far as tungu. there are few birds but red-legged crows and common ravens. most of the insects belonged to arctic types, and they were numerous in individuals.* [as _meloe,_ and some flower-feeding lamellicorns. of butterflies i saw blues (_polyommatus_), marbled whites, _pontia, colias_ and _argynnis._ a small _curculio_ was frequent, and i found _scolopendra,_ ants and earthworms, on sunny exposures as high as , feet.] illustration--tibet marmot. the choongtam lama was at a small temple near tungu during the whole of my stay, but he would not come to visit me, pretending to be absorbed in his devotions. passing one day by the temple, i found him catechising two young aspirants for holy orders. he is one of the dukpa sect, wore his mitre, and was seated cross-legged on the grass with his scriptures on his knees: he put questions to the boys, when he who answered best took the other some yards off, put him down on his hands and knees, threw a cloth over his back, and mounted; then kicking, spurring, and cuffing his steed, he was galloped back to the lama and kicked off; when the catechising recommenced. i spent a week at tungu most pleasantly, ascending the neighbouring mountains, and mixing with the people, whom i found uniformly kind, frank, and extremely hospitable; sending their children after me to invite me to stop at their tents, smoke, and drink tea; often refusing any remuneration, and giving my attendants curds and yak-flesh. if on foot, i was entreated to take a pony; and when tired i never scrupled to catch one, twist a yak-hair rope over its jaw as a bridle, and throwing a goat-hair cloth upon its back (if no saddle were at hand), ride away whither i would. next morning a boy would be sent for the steed, perhaps bringing an invitation to come and take it again. so i became fond of brick-tea boiled with butter, salt, and soda, and expert in the tartar saddle; riding about perched on the shoulders of a rough pony, with my feet nearly on a level with my pockets, and my knees almost meeting in front. on the th of july much snow fell on the hills around, as low as , feet, and half an inch of rain at tungu;* [an inch and a half fell at dorjiling during the same period.] the former soon melted, and i made an excursion to chomiomo on the following day, hoping to reach the lower line of perpetual snow. ascending the valley of the chomiochoo, i struck north up a steep slope, that ended in a spur of vast tabular masses of quartz and felspar, piled like slabs in a stone quarry, dipping south-west degrees to degrees, and striking north-west. these resulted from the decomposition of gneiss, from which the layers of mica bad been washed away, when the rain and frost splitting up the fragments, the dislocation is continued to a great depth into the substance of the rock. large silky cushions of a forget-me-not grew amongst the rocks, spangled with beautiful blue flowers, and looking like turquoises set in silver: the _delphininin glaciale_* [this new species has been described for the "flora indica" of dr. thomson and myself: it is a remarkable plant, very closely resembling, and as it were representing, the _d. brunonianum_ of the western himalaya. the latter plant smells powerfully of musk, but not so disagreeably as this does.] was also abundant, exhaling a rank smell of musk. it indicates a very great elevation in sikkim, and on my ascent far above it, therefore, i was not surprised to find water boil at . degrees (air degrees), which gives an altitude of , feet. a dense fog, with sleet, shut out all view; and i did not know in what direction to proceed higher, beyond the top of the sharp, stony ridge i had attained. here there was no perpetual snow, which is to be accounted for by the nature of the surface facilitating its removal, the edges of the rocks which project through the snow, becoming heated, and draining off the water as it melts. during my stay at tungu, from the rd to the th 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 degrees (max. degrees, min. . degrees); extremes, / degrees. the mean range ( . degrees) was thus much greater than at dorjiling, where it was only . degrees. a thermometer, sunk three feet, varied only a few tenths from . degrees. by twenty-five comparative observations with calcutta, degree fahr. is the equivalent of every feet of ascent; and twenty comparative observations with dorjiling give degree for every feet. the barometer rose and fell at the same hours as at lower elevations; the tide amounting to . inch, between . a.m. and p.m. i left tungu on the th of july, and spent that night at tallum; where a large party of men had just arrived, with loads of madder, rice, canes, bamboos, planks, etc., to be conveyed to tibet on yaks and ponies.* [about loads of timber, each of six planks, are said to be taken across the kongra lama pass annually; and about of rice, besides canes, madder, bamboos, cottons, cloths, and _symplocos_ leaves for dyeing. this is, no doubt, a considerably exaggerated statement, and may refer to both the kongra lama and donkia passes.] on the following day i descended to lamteng, gathering a profusion of fine plants by the way. the flat on which i had encamped at this place in may and june, being now a marsh, i took up my abode for two days in one of the houses, and paid the usual penalty of communication with these filthy people; for which my only effectual remedy was boiling all my garments and bedding. yet the house was high, airy, and light; the walls composed of bamboo, lath, and plaster. tropical cicadas ascend to the pine-woods above lamteng in this month, and chirp shrilly in the heat of the day; and glow-worms fly about at night. the common bengal and java toad, _bufo scabra,_ abounded in the marshes, a remarkable instance of wide geographical distribution, for a batrachian which is common at the level of the sea under the tropics. on the rd of august i descended to choongtam, which i reached on the th. the lakes on the chateng flat (alt. , feet) were very full, and contained many english water-plants;* [_sparganium ramosum, eleocharis palustris, scirpus triqueter,_ and _callitriche verna?_ some very tropical genera ascend thus high; as _paspalum_ amongst grasses, and _scleria,_ a kind of sedge.] the temperature of the water was degrees near the edges, where a water-insect (_notonecta_) was swimming about. below this i passed an extensive stalactitic deposit of lime, and a second occurred lower down, on the opposite side of the valley. the apparently total absence of limestone rocks in any part of sikkim (for which i made careful search), renders these deposits, which are far from unfrequent, very curious. can the limestone, which appears in tibet, underlie the gneiss of sikkim? we cannot venture to assume that these lime-charged streams, which in sikkim burst from the steep flanks of narrow mountain spurs, at elevations between and 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 yards in breadth of forest. i looked in vain for any signs of scratching or scoring, at all comparable to that produced by glacial action. the bridge at the tuktoong, mentioned at chapter xix, being carried away, we had to ascend for feet (to a place where the river could be crossed) by a very precipitous path, and descend on the opposite side. in many places we had great difficulty in proceeding, the track being obliterated by the rains, torrents, and landslips. along the flats, now covered with a dense rank vegetation, we waded ankle, and often knee, deep in mud, swarming with leeches; and instead of descending into the valley of the now too swollen lachen, we made long detours, rounding spurs by canes and bamboos suspended from trees. at choongtam the rice-fields were flooded: and the whole flat was a marsh, covered with tropical grasses and weeds, and alive with insects, while the shrill cries of cicadas, frogs and birds, filled the air. sand-flies, mosquitos, cockroaches, and enormous cockchafers,* [_eucerris griffithii,_ a magnificent species. three very splendid insects of the outer ranges of sikkim never occurred in the interior: these are a gigantic curculio (_calandra_) a wood-borer; a species of goliath-beetle, _cheirotonus macleaii,_ and a smaller species of the same rare family, _trigonophorus nepalensis_; of these the former is very scarce, the latter extremely abundant, flying about at evenings; both are flower-feeders, eating honey and pollen. in the summer of , the months at dorjiling were well marked by the swarms of peculiar insects that appeared in inconceivable numbers; thus, april was marked by a great black _passalus,_ a beetle one-and-a-half inch long, that flies in the face and entangles itself in the hair; may, by stag-beetles and longicorns; june, by _coccinella_ (lady-birds), white moths, and flying-bugs; july, by a _dryptis?_ a long-necked carabideous insect; august, by myriads of earwigs, cockroaches, goliath-beetles, and cicadas; september, by spiders.] _mantis,_ great locusts, grasshoppers, flying-bugs, crickets, ants, spiders, caterpillars, and leeches, were but a few of the pests that swarmed in my tent and made free with my bed. great lazy butterflies floated through the air; _thecla_ and _hesperides_ skipped about, and the great _nymphalidae_ darted around like swallows. the venomous black cobra was common, and we left the path with great caution, as it is a lazy reptile, and lies basking in the sun; many beautiful and harmless green snakes, four feet long, glided amongst the bushes. my dogs caught a "rageu,"* ["ragoah," according to hodgson: but it is not the _procapra picticaudata_ of tibet.] a very remarkable animal, half goat and half deer; the flesh was good and tender, dark-coloured, and lean. i remained here till the th of august,* [though degrees further north, and , feet above the level of calcutta, the mean temperature at choongtam this month was only . degrees cooler than at calcutta; forty observations giving degree fahr. as equal to feet of elevation; whereas in may the mean of twenty-seven observations gave degree fahr. as equal to feet, the mean difference of temperature being then degrees. the mean maximum of the day was degrees, and was attained at a.m., after which clouds formed, and the thermometer fell to degrees at sunset, and degrees at night. in my blanket tent the heat rose to upwards of degrees in calm weather. the afternoons were generally squally and rainy.] arranging my lachen valley collections previous to starting for the lachoong, whence i hoped to reach tibet again by a different route, crossing the donkia pass, and thence exploring the sources of the teesta at the cholamoo lakes. whilst here i ascertained the velocity of the currents of the lachen and lachoong rivers. both were torrents, than which none could be more rapid, short of becoming cataracts: the rains were at their height, and the melting of the snows at its maximum. i first measured several hundred yards along the banks of each river above the bridges, repeating this several times, as the rocks and jungle rendered it very difficult to do it accurately: then, sitting on the bridge, i timed floating masses of different materials and sizes that were thrown in at the upper point. i was surprised to find the velocity of the lachen only nine miles per hour, for its waters seemed to shoot past with the speed of an arrow, but the floats showed the whole stream to be so troubled with local eddies and backwaters, that it took from forty-three to forty-eight seconds for each float to pass over yards, as it was perpetually submerged by under-currents. the breadth of the river averaged sixty-eight feet, and the discharge was , cubic feet of water per second. the temperature was degrees. at the lachoong bridge the jungle was still denser, and the banks quite inaccessible in many places. the mean velocity was eight miles an hour, the breadth ninety-five feet, the depth about the same as that of the lachen, giving a discharge of , cubic feet of water per second;* [hence it appears that the lachoong, being so much the more copious stream, should in one sense be regarded as the continuation of the teesta, rather than the lachen, which, however, has by far the most distant source. their united streams discharge upwards of , 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 feet per second during the dry season.] its temperature was also degrees. these streams retain an extraordinary velocity, for many miles upwards; the lachen to its junction with the zemu at feet, and the zemu itself as far up as the thlonok, at , feet, and the lachoong to the village of that name, at feet: their united streams appear equally rapid till they become the teesta at singtam.* [the slope of the bed of the lachen from below the confluence of the zemu to the village of singtam is feet per mile, or foot in ; that of the lachoong from the village of that name to singtam is considerably less.] on the th of august, having received supplies from dorjiling, i started up the north bank of the lachoong, following the singtam soubah, who accompanied me officially, and with a very bad grace; poor fellow, he expected me to have returned with him to singtam, and thence gone back to dorjiling, and many a sore struggle we had on this point. at choongtam he had been laid up with ulcerated legs from the bites of leeches and sand-flies, which required my treatment. the path was narrow, and ran through a jungle of mixed tropical and temperate plants,* [as _paris, dipsacus, circaea, thalictrum, saxifraga ciliaris, spiranthes, malva, hypoxis, anthericum, passiflora, drosera, didymocarpus,_ poplar, _calamagrostis,_ and _eupatorium._] many of which are not found at this elevation on the damp outer ranges of dorjiling. we crossed to the south bank by a fine cane-bridge forty yards long, the river being twenty-eight across and here i have to record the loss of my dog kinchin; the companion of all my late journeyings, and to whom i had become really attached. he had a bad habit, of which i had vainly tried to cure him, of running for a few yards on the round bamboos by which the cane-bridges are crossed, and on which it was impossible for a dog to retain his footing: in this situation he used to get thoroughly frightened, and lie down on the bamboos with his legs hanging over the water, and having no hold whatever. i had several times rescued him from this perilous position, which was always rendered more imminent from the shaking of the bridge as i approached him. on the present occasion, i stopped at the foot of some rocks below the bridge, botanizing, and kinchin having scrambled up the rocks, ran on to the bridge. i could not see him, and was not thinking about him, when suddenly his shrill, short barks of terror rang above the roaring torrent. i hastened to the bridge, but before i could get to it, he had lost his footing, and had disappeared. holding on by the cane, i strained my eyes till the bridge seemed to be swimming up the valley, and the swift waters to be standing still, but to no purpose; he had been carried under at once, and swept away miles below. for many days i missed him by my side on the mountain, and by my feet in camp. he had become a very handsome dog, with glossy black hair, pendent triangular ears, short muzzle, high forehead, jet-black eyes, straight limbs, arched neck, and a most glorious tail curling over his back.* [the woodcut at vol. i. chapter ix, gives the character of the tibet mastiff, to which breed his father belonged; but it is not a portrait of himself, having been sketched from a dog of the pure breed, in the zoological society's gardens, by c. jenyns, esq.] a very bad road led to the village of keadom, situated on a flat terrace several hundred feet above the river, and , 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 feet elevation, and cleft by a deep ravine, from which projects what appears to be an old moraine, fully or perhaps feet high. extensive landslips on its steep flank expose (through the telescope) a mass of gravel and angular blocks, while streams cut deep channels in it. this valley is far more open and grassy than that of the lachen, and the vegetation also differs much.* [_umbelliferae_ and _compositae_ abound, and were then flowering; and an orchis (_satyrium nepalense_), scented like our english _gymnadenia,_ covered the ground in some places, with tall green _habenariae_ and a yellow _spathoglottis,_ a genus with pseudo-bulbs. of shrubs, _xanthoxylon, rhus, prinsepia, cotoneaster, pyrus,_ poplar and oak, formed thickets along the path; while there were as many as eight and nine kinds of balsams, some eight feet high.] in the afternoon we reached lachoong, which is by far the most picturesque village in the temperate region of sikkim. grassy flats of different levels, sprinkled with brushwood and scattered clumps of pine and maple, occupy the valley; whose west flanks rise in steep, rocky, and scantily wooded grassy slopes. about five miles to the north the valley forks; two conspicuous domes of snow rising from the intermediate mountains. the eastern valley leads to lofty snowed regions, and is said to be impracticable; the lachoong flows down the western, which appeared rugged, and covered with pine woods. on the east, tunkra mountain* [this mountain is seen from dorjiling; its elevation is about , feet.] rises in a superb unbroken sweep of dark pine-wood and cliffs, surmounted by black rocks and white fingering peaks of snow. south of this, the valley of the tunkrachoo opens, backed by sharp snowed pinnacles, which form the continuation of the chola range; over which a pass leads to the phari district of tibet, which intervenes between sikkim and bhotan. southwards the view is bounded by snowy mountains, and the valley seems blocked up by the remarkable moraine-like spur which i passed above keadom. illustration--lachoong valley and village, looking south. stupendous moraines rise feet above the lachoong in several concentric series, curving downwards and outwards, so as to form a bell-shaped mouth to the valley of the tunkrachoo. those on the upper flank are much the largest; and the loftiest of them terminates in a conical hill crowned with boodhist flags, and its steep sides cut into horizontal roads or terraces, one of which is so broad and flat as to suggest the idea of its having been cleared by art. illustration--lofty ancient moraines in the lachoong valley, looking south-east. on the south side of the tunkrachoo river the moraines are also more or less terraced, as is the, floor of the lachoong valley, and its east slopes, feet up.* [i have since been greatly struck with the similarity between the features of this valley, and those of chamouni (though the latter is on a smaller scale) above the lavanchi moraine. the spectator standing in the expanded part below the village of argentiere, and looking upwards, sees the valley closed above by the ancient moraine of the argentiere glacier, and below by that of lavanchi; and an all sides the slopes are cut into terraces, strewed with boulders. i found traces of stratified pebbles and sand on the north flank of the lavanchi moraine however, which i failed to discover in those of lachoong. the average slope of these pine-clad sikkim valleys much approximates to that of chamouni, and never approaches the precipitous character of the bernese alps' valleys, kandersteg, lauterbrunnen, and grindelwald.] the river is fourteen yards broad, and neither deep nor rapid: the village is on the east bank, and is large for sikkim; it contains fully good wooden houses, raised on posts, and clustered together without order. it was muddy and intolerably filthy, and intersected by some small streams, whose beds formed the roads, and, at the same time, the common sewers of the natives. there is some wretched cultivation in fields,* [full of such english weeds as shepherd's purse, nettles, _solanum nigrum,_ and dock; besides many himalayan ones, as balsams, thistles, a beautiful geranium, mallow, _haloragis_ and cucurbitaceous plants.] of wheat, barley, peas, radishes, and turnips. rice was once cultivated at this elevation ( feet), but the crop was uncertain; some very tropical grasses grow wild here, as _eragrostis_ and _panicum._ in gardens the hollyhock is seen: it is said to be introduced through tibet from china; also _pinus excelsa_ from bhotan, peaches, walnuts, and weeping willows. a tall poplar was pointed out to me as a great wonder; it had two species of _pyrus_ growing on its boughs, evidently from seed; one was a mountain ash, the other like _pyrus aria._ soon after camping, the lachoong phipun, a very tall, intelligent, and agreeable looking man, waited on me with the usual presents, and a request that i would visit his sick father. his house was lofty and airy: in the inner room the sick man was stretched on a board, covered with a blanket, and dying of pressure on the brain; he was surrounded by a deputation of lamas from teshoo loombo, sent for in this emergency. the principal one was a fat fellow, who sat cross-legged before a block-printed tibetan book, plates of raw meat, rice, and other offerings, and the bells, dorje, etc. of his profession. others sat around, reading or chanting services, and filling the room with incense. at one end of the apartment was a good library in a beautifully carved book-case. illustration--head and feet of tibet marmot. chapter xxii. leave lachoong for tunkra pass -- moraines and their vegetation -- pines of great dimensions -- wild currants -- glaciers -- summit of pass -- elevation -- views -- plants -- winds -- choombi district -- lacheepia rock -- extreme cold -- kinchinjunga -- himalayan grouse -- meteorological observations -- return to lachoong -- oaks -- ascent to yeumtong -- flats and debacles -- buried pine-trunks -- perpetual snow -- hot springs -- behaviour of singtam soubah -- leave for momay samdong -- upper limit of trees -- distribution of plants -- glacial terraces, etc. -- forked donkia -- moutonneed rocks -- ascent to donkia pass -- vegetation -- scenery -- lakes -- tibet -- bhomtso -- arun river -- kiang-lah mountains -- yaru-tsampu river -- appearance of tibet -- kambajong -- jigatzi -- kinchinjhow, and kinchinjunga -- chola range -- deceptive appearance of distant landscape -- perpetual snow -- granite -- temperatures -- pulses -- plants -- tripe de roche -- return to momay -- dogs and yaks -- birds -- insects -- quadrupeds -- hot springs -- marmots -- kinchinjhow glacier. the singtam soubah being again laid up here from the consequences of leech-bites, i took the opportunity of visiting the tunkra-lah pass, represented as the most snowy in sikkim; which i found to be the case. the route lay over the moraines on the north flank of the tunkrachoo, which are divided by narrow dry gullies,* [these ridges of the moraine, separated by gullies, indicate the progressive retirement of the ancient glacier, after periods of rest. the same phenomena may be seen, on a diminutive scale, in the swiss alps, by any one who carefully examines the lateral and often the terminal moraines of any retiring or diminishing glacier, at whose base or flanks are concentric ridges, which are successive deposits.] and composed of enormous blocks disintegrating into a deep layer of clay. all are clothed with luxuriant herbage and flowering shrubs,* [_ranunculus, clematis, thalictrum, anemone, aconitum variegatum_ of europe, a scandent species, berberry, _deutzia, philadelphus,_ rose, honeysuckle, thistles, orchis, _habenaria, fritillaria, aster, calimeris, verbascum thapsus, pedicularis, euphrasia, senecio, eupatorium, dipsacus, euphorbia,_ balsam, _hypericum, gentiana, halenia, codonopsis, polygonum._] besides small larches and pines, rhododendrons and maples; with _enkianthus, pyrus,_ cherry, _pieris,_ laurel, and _goughia._ the musk-deer inhabits these woods, and at this season i have never seen it higher. large monkeys are also found on the skirts of the pine-forests, and the _ailurus ochraceus_ (hodgs.), a curious long-tailed animal peculiar to the himalaya, something between a diminutive bear and a squirrel. in the dense and gigantic forest of _abies brunoniana_ and silver fir, i measured one of the former trees, and found it twenty-eight feet in girth, and above feet in height. the _abies webbiana_ attains thirty-five feet in girth, with a trunk unbranched for forty feet. the path was narrow and difficult in the wood, and especially along the bed of the stream, where grew ugly trees of larch, eighty feet high, and abundance of a new species of alpine strawberry with oblong fruit. at , 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, , feet above the sea, choked with rhododendron shrubs, and nearly encircled by snowy mountains. magnificent gentians grew here, also _senecio, corydalis,_ and the _aconitum luridum_ (n. sp.), whose root is said to be as virulent as _a. ferox_ and _a. napellus._* [the result of dr. thomson's and my examination of the himplayan aconites (of which there are seven species) is that the one generally known as _a. ferox,_ and which supplies a great deal of the celebrated poison, is the common _a. napellus_ of europe.] the plants were all fully a month behind those of the lachen valley at the same elevation. heavy rain fell in the afternoon, and we halted under some rocks: as i had brought no tent, my bed was placed beneath the shelter of one, near which the rest of the party burrowed. i supped off half a yak's kidney, an enormous organ in this animal. on the following morning we proceeded up the valley, towards a very steep rocky barrier, through which the river cut a narrow gorge, and beyond which rose lofty snowy mountains: the peak of tunkra being to our left hand (north). saxifrages grew here in profuse tufts of golden blossoms, and _chrysosplenium,_ rushes, mountain-sorrel (_oxyria_), and the bladder-headed _saussurea,_ whose flowers are enclosed in inflated membranous bracts, and smell like putrid meat: there were also splendid primroses, the spikenard valerian, and golden potentillas. the ascent was steep and difficult, up a stony valley bounded by precipices; in this the river flowed in a north-west direction, and we were obliged to wade along it, though its waters were bitterly cold, the temperature being degrees. at , 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 , feet above the sea by barometer, and , 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 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 houses each, varying with the season and state of trade. the latter is considerable, phari being, next to dorjiling, the greatest tibetan, bhotan, sikkim, and indian entrepot along the whole himalaya east of nepal. the general form of choombi valley is triangular, the broader end northwards: it is bounded by the chola range on the west from donkia to gipmoochi, and by the kamphee or chakoong range to the east; which is, i believe, continuous with chumulari. these meridional ranges approximate to the southward, so as to form a natural boundary to choombi. the machoo river, rising from chumulari, flows through the choombi district, and enters bhotan at a large mart called rinchingoong, whence it flows to the plains of india, where it is called at couch-behar, the torsha, or, as some say, the godadda, and falls into the burrampooter. the choombi district is elevated, for the only cultivation is a summer or alpine one, neither rice, maize, nor millet being grown there: it is also dry, for the great height of the bhotan mountains and the form of the machou valley cut off the rains, and there is no dense forest. it is very mountainous, all carriage being on men's and yaks' backs, and is populous for this part of the country, the inhabitants being estimated at , in the trading season, when many families from tibet and bhotan erect booths at phari. a civil officer at phari collects the revenue under the lhassan authorities, and there is also a tibetan fort, an officer, and guard. the inhabitants of this district more resemble the bhotanese than tibetans, and are a thievish set, finding a refuge under the paro-pilo of bhotan,* [there was once a large monastery, called kazioo goompa, at choombi, with upwards of one hundred lamas. during a struggle between the sikkim and bhotan monks for superiority in it, the abbot died. his avatar reappeared in two places at once! in bhotan as a relative of the paro-pilo himself, and in sikkim as a brother of the powerful gangtok kajee. their disputes were referred to the dalai lama, who pronounced for sikkim. this was not to be disputed by the pilo, who, however, plundered the goompa of its silver, gold, and books, leaving nothing but the bare walls for the successful lama! the lhassan authorities made no attempt to obtain restitution, and the monastery has been consequently neglected.] who taxes the refugees according to the estimate he forms of their plunder. the tibetans seldom pursue the culprits, as the lhassan government avoids all interference south of their own frontier. from choombi to lhassa is fifteen days' long journeys for a man mounted on a stout mule; all the rice passing through phari is monopolised there for the chinese troops at lhassa. the grazing for yaks and small cattle is excellent in choombi, and the _pinus excelsa_ is said to grow abundantly there, though unknown in sikkim, but i have not heard of any other peculiarity in its productions. very few plants grew amongst the stones at the top of the tunkra pass, and those few were mostly quite different from those of palung and kongra lama. a pink-floweerd _arenaria,_ two kinds of _corydalis,_ the cottony _saussurea,_ and diminutive primroses, were the most conspicuous.* [the only others were _leontopodium, sedum,_ saxifrage, _ramunculus hyperboreus, ligularia,_ two species of _polygonum,_ a _trichostomum, stereocaulon,_ and _lecidea geographica,_ not one grass or sedge.] the wind was variable, blowing alternately up both valleys, bringing much snow when it blew from the teesta, though deflected to a north-west breeze; when, on the contrary, it blew from tibet, it was, though southerly, dry. clouds obscured all distant view. the temperature varied between noon and . p.m. from degrees to . degrees, the air being extremely damp. returning to the foot of the glacier, i took up my quarters for two days under an enormous rock overlooking the broad flat valley in which i had spent the previous night, and directly fronting tunkra mountain, which bore north about five miles distant. this rock was sixty to eighty feet high, and , 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 degrees, i was miserably cold; for my blankets being laid on the bare ground, the chill seemed to strike from the rock to the very marrow of my bones. in the morning the fog hung till sunrise, when it rose majestically from all the mountain-tops; but the view obtained was transient, for in less than an hour the dense woolly banks of fog which choked the valleys ascended like a curtain to the warmed atmosphere above, and slowly threw a veil over the landscape. i waited till the last streak of snow was shut out from my view, when i descended, to breakfast on himalayan grouse (_tetrao-perdix nivicola_), a small gregarious bird which inhabits the loftiest stony mountains, and utters a short cry of "quiok, quiok;" in character and appearance it is intermediate between grouse and partridge, and is good eating, though tough. hoping to obtain another view, which might enable me to correct the bearings taken that morning, i was tempted to spend a second night in the open air at lacheepia, passing the day botanizing* [scarcely a grass, and no _astragali,_ grow on these stony and snowy slopes: and the smallest heath-like _andromeda,_ a still smaller _menziesia_ (an erotic genus, previously unknown in the himalaya) and a prostrate willow, are the only woody-stemmed plants above , feet.] in the vicinity, and taking observations of the barometer and wet-bulb: i also boiled three thermometers by turns, noting the grave errors likely to attend observations of this instrument for elevation.* [these will be more particularly alluded to in the appendix, where will be found a comparison of elevations, deduced from boiling point and from barometric observations. the height of lacheepia is , feet by boiling-point, and , feet by barometer.] little rain fell during the day, but it was heavy at night, though there was fortunately no wind; and i made a more comfortable bed with tufts of juniper brought up from below. our fire was principally of wet rhododendron wood, with masses of the aromatic dwarf species, which, being full of resinous glands, blazed with fury. next day, after a very transient glimpse of the kinchinjunga snows, i descended to lachoong, where i remained for some days botanizing. during my stay i was several times awakened by all the noises and accompaniments of a night-attack or alarm; screaming voices, groans, shouts, and ejaculations, the beating of drums and firing of guns, and flambeaux of pine-wood gleaming amongst the trees, and flitting from house to house. the cause, i was informed, was the, presence of a demon, who required exorcisement, and who generally managed to make the villagers remember his visit, by their missing various articles after the turmoil made to drive him away. the custom of driving out demons in the above manner is constantly practised by the lamas in tibet: mm. huc and gabet give a graphic account of such an operation during their stay at kounboum. on the th 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 feet here or elsewhere in the interior of sikkim, where they are replaced by a species of hazel (_corylus_); in the north himalaya, on the other hand, an oak (_quercus semecarpifolia,_ see vol. i., chapter viii) is amongst the most alpine trees, and the nut is a different species, more resembling the european. on the outer sikkim ranges oaks (_q. annulata?_) ascend to , feet, and there is no hazel. above the fork, the valley contracts extremely, and its bed is covered with moraines and landslips, which often bury the larches and pines. marshes occur here and there, full of the sweet-scented hierochloe grass, the scotch _thalictrum alpinum,_ and an _eriocaulon,_ which ascends to , feet. the old moraines were very difficult to cross, and on one i found a barricade, which had been erected to deceive me regarding the frontier, had i chosen this route instead of the lachen one, in may. broad flats clothed with rhododendron, alternate with others covered with mud, boulders, and gravel, which had flowed down from the gorges on the west, and which still contained trees, inclined in all directions, and buried up to their branches; some of these debacles were yards across, and sloped at an angle of degrees to degrees, bearing on their surfaces blocks fifteen yards in diameter.* [none were to be compared in size and extent with that at bex, at the mouth of the rhone valley.] they seem to subside materially, as i perceived they had left marks many feet higher on the tree-trunks. such debacles must often bury standing forests in a very favourable material, climate, and position for becoming fossilized. on the th of august i arrived at yeumtong, a small summer cattle-station, on a flat by the lachoong, , 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 , 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 , 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 , 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 th of september, and found the mean elevation along an even, continuous, and gradual slope, with a full south-west exposure, to be , feet by barometer, and , 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 . degrees, and degrees in the bath.* [this water boiled at . degrees, the same at which snow-water and that of the river did; giving an elevation of , feet. observations on the mineral constituents of the water will be found in the appendix.] the water has a slightly saline taste; it is colourless, but emits bubbles of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, blackening silver. a cold spring (temperature degrees) emerged close by, and the lachoong not ten yards off, was degrees to degrees. a conferva grows in the hot water, and the garnets are worn out of the gneiss rock exposed to its action. the singtam soubah had been very sulky since leaving choongtam, and i could scarcely get a drop of milk or a slice of curd here. i had to take him to task severely for sanctioning the flogging of one of my men; a huntsman, who had offered me his services at choongtam, and who was a civil, industrious fellow, though he had procured me little besides a huge monkey, which had nearly bitten off the head of his best dog. i had made a point of consulting the soubah before hiring him, for fear of accidents; but this did not screen him from the jealousy of the choongtam lama, who twice flogged him in the goompa with rattans (with the soubah's consent), alleging that he had quitted his service for mine. my people knew of this, but were afraid to tell me, which the poor fellow did himself. the lachoong phipun visited me on the tb of september: he had officiously been in tibet to hear what the tibetan people would say to my going to donkia, and finding them supremely indifferent, returned to be my guide. a month's provision for ten men having arrived from dorjiling, i left yeumtong the following day for momay samdong, the loftiest yak grazing station in sikkim (palung being too cold for yaks), and within a day's journey of the donkia pass. the valley remains almost level for several miles, the road continuing along the east bank of the lachen. shoots of stones descend from the ravines, all of a white fine-grained granite, stained red with a minute conferva, which has been taken by himalayan travellers for red snow;* [red snow was never found in the antarctic regions during sir james ross's south polar voyage; nor do i know any authentic record of its having been seen in the himalaya.] a phenomenon i never saw in sikkim. at a fork of the valley several miles above yeumtong, and below the great glacier of chango khang, the ancient moraines are prodigious, much exceeding any i have elsewhere seen, both in extent, in the size of the boulders, and in the height to which the latter are piled on one another. many boulders i measured were twenty yards across, and some even forty; and the chaotic scene they presented baffles all description: they were scantily clothed with stunted silver firs. beyond this, the path crosses the river, and ascends rapidly over a mile of steeply sloping landslip, composed of angular fragments of granite, that are constantly falling from above, and are extremely dangerous. at , 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 , feet above the sea; nearly the elevation of lacheepia (near the tunkra pass), from which, however, its scenery and vegetation entirely differ. i pitched my tent close to a little shed, at the gently sloping base of a mountain that divided the lachoong river from a western tributary. it was a wild and most exposed spot: long stony mountains, grassy on the base near the river; distant snowy peaks, stupendous precipices, moraines, glaciers, transported boulders, and rocks rounded by glacial action, formed the dismal landscape which everywhere met the view. there was not a bush six inches high, and the only approach to woody plants were minute creeping willows and dwarf rhododendrons, with a very few prostrate junipers and _ephedra._ the base of the spur was cut into broad flat terraces, composed of unstratified sand, pebbles, and boulders; the remains, doubtless, of an enormously thick glacial deposit. the terracing is as difficult to be accounted for in this valley as in that of yangma (east nepal); both valleys being far too broad, and descending too rapidly to admit of the hypothesis of their having been blocked up in the lower part, and the upper filled with large lakes.* [the formation of small lakes, however, between moraines and the sides of the valleys they occupy, or between two successively formed moraines (as i have elsewhere mentioned), will account for very extensive terraced areas of this kind; and it must be borne in mind that when the momay valley was filled with ice, the breadth of its glacier at this point must have been twelve miles, and it must have extended east and west from chango khang across the main valley, to beyond donkia. still the great moraines are wanting at this particular point, and though atmospheric action and the rivers have removed perhaps feet of glacial shingle, they can hardly have destroyed a moraine of rocks, large enough to block up the valley.] another tributary falls into the lachoong at momay, which leads eastwards up to an enormous glacier that descends from donkia. snowy mountains rise nearly all round it: those on its south and east divide sikkim from the phari province in tibet; those on the north terminate in a forked or cleft peak, which is a remarkable and conspicuous feature from momay. this, which i have called forked donkia,* [its elevation by my observations is about , feet.] is the termination of a magnificent amphitheatre of stupendous snow-clad precipices, continuously upwards of , 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 , feet, forming the donkia pass, and rise again as the great mural mass of kinchinjhow. this girdle of mountains encloses the head waters of the lachoong, which rises in countless streams from its perpetual snows, glaciers, and small lakes: its north drainage is to the cholamoo lakes in tibet; in which is the source of the lachen, which flows round the north base of kinchinjhow to kongra lama. the bottom of the lachoong valley at momay is broad, tolerably level, grassy, and covered with isolated mounds and ridges that point down the valley, and are the remains of glacial deposits. it dips suddenly below this, and some gneiss rocks that rise in its centre are remarkably _moutonneed_ or rounded, and have boulders perched on their summits. though manifestly rounded and grooved by ancient glaciers, i failed to find scratches on these weather-worn rocks.* [i have repeatedly, and equally in vain, sought for scratchings on many of the most conspicuously moutonneed gneiss rocks of switzerland. the retention of such markings depends on other circumstances than the mere hardness of the rock, or amount of aqueous action. what can be more astonishing than to see these most delicate scratches retained in all their sharpness on rocks clothed with seaweed and shells, and exposed at every tide, in the bays of western scotland!] the lachoong is here twelve or fifteen yards wide, and runs over a pebbly bed, cutting a shallow channel through the deposits, down to the subjacent rock, which is in some cases scooped out six or eight feet deep by its waters. i do not doubt that the flatness of the floor of the momay valley is caused by the combined action of the streams that drained the three glaciers which met here; for the tendency of retiring glaciers is to level the floors of valleys, by giving an ever-shifting direction to the rivers which drain them, and which spread detritus in their course. supposing these glaciers to have had no terminal moraines, they might still have forced immense beds of gravel into positions that would dam up lakes between the ice and the flanks of the valleys, and thus produce much terracing on the latter.* [we are still very ignorant of many details of ice action, and especially of the origin of many enormous deposits which are not true moraines. these, so conspicuous in the lofty himalayan valleys, are not less so in those of the swiss alps: witness that broad valley in which grindelwald village is situated, and which is covered to an immense depth with angular detritus, moulded into hills and valleys; also the whole broad open upper rhone valley, above the village of munster, and below that of obergestelen. the action of broad glaciers on gentle slopes is to raise their own beds by the accumulation of gravel which their lower surface carries and pushes forward. i have seen small glaciers thus raised feet; leaving little doubt in my mind that the upper himalayan valleys were thus choked with deposit 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.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 feet; leaving little doubt in my mind that the upper himalayan valleys were thus choked with deposit 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 th 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 th 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 degrees to broad unsnowed ridges, , to , feet high. shallow valleys, glacier-bound at their upper extremities, descend from the still loftier rearward mountains; and in these occur lakes. about five miles up, a broad opening on the west leads to tomo chamo, as the eastern summit of kinchinjhow is called.* [on one occasion i ascended this valley, which is very broad, flat, and full of lakes at different elevations; one, at about , feet elevation is three-quarters of a mile long, but not deep: no water-plants grew in it, but there were plenty of others round its margin. i collected, in the dry bed of a stream near it, a curious white substance like thick felt, formed of felspathic silt (no doubt the product of glacial streams) and the siliceous cells of infusoriae. it much resembles the fossil or meteoric paper of germany, which is also formed of the lowest tribes of fresh-water plants, though considered by ehrenberg as of animal origin. a vein of granite in the bottom of the valley had completely altered the character of the gneiss, which contained veins of jasper and masses of amorphous garnet. much olivine is found in the fissures of the gneiss: this feral is very rare in sikkim, but i have also seen it in the fissures of the white gneissy granite of the surrounding heights.] above this the valley expands very much, and is stony and desert: stupendous mountains, upwards of , 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 _astraga us,_ varied with hard hemispherical mounds of the alsineous plant mentioned at chapter xxi. i passed several shallow lakes at , 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, 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, , feet above the sea by barometer, and , 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 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 , to , 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 ( , feet) the vast snowy mountains that rose beyond it were, i was assured, beyond the yaru, in the salt lake country.* [this salt country was described to me as enormously lofty, perfectly sterile, and fourteen days' march for loaded men and sheep from jigatzi: there is no pasture for yaks, whose feet are cut by the rocks. the salt is dug (so they express it) from the margin of lakes; as is the carbonate of soda, "pleu" of the tibetans.] a spur from chomiomo cut off the view to the southward of north-west, and one from donkia concealed all to the east of north. illustration--tibet and cholamoo lake from the summit of the donkia pass, looking north-west. the most remarkable features of this landscape were its enormous elevation, and its colours and contrast to the black, rugged, and snowy himalaya of sikkim. all the mountains between donkia pass and the arun were comparatively gently sloped, and of a yellow red colour, rising and falling in long undulations like dunes, to 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 , feet, and are probably much higher. the most lofty mountains were on the range north of nepal, not less than miles distant, and which, though heavily snowed, were below the horizon of donkia pass. cholamoo lake lay in a broad, scantily grassed, sandy and stony valley; snow-beds, rocks, and glaciers dipped abruptly towards its head, but on its west bank a lofty brick-red spur sloped upwards from it, conspicuously cut into terraces for several hundred feet above its waters. kambajong, the chief tibetan village near this, after phari and giantchi, is situated on the arun (called in tibet "chomachoo"), on the road from sikkim to jigatzi* [i have adopted the simplest mode of spelling this name that i could find, and omitted the zong or jong, which means fort, and generally terminates it. i think it would not be difficult to enumerate fully a dozen ways of spelling the word, of which shigatzi, digarchi, and djigatzi are the most common. the tibetans tell me that they cross two passes after leaving donkia, or kongra lama, en route for jigatzi, on both of which they suffer from headaches and difficulty of breathing; one is over the kambajong range; the other, much loftier, is over that of kiang-lah: as they do not compliin of bhomtso, which is also crossed, and is , 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 degrees minutes seconds north, or only seventy miles north of donkia; and as the yak travels at the rate of sixteen miles a day, the country must be extraordinarily rugged, or the valleys tortuous. turner took eight or nine days on his journey from phari to teshoo loombo, a distance of only eighty miles; yet he is quoted as an authority for the fact of tibet being a plain! he certainly crossed an undulating country, probably ,ooo to , feet high; a continuation eastwards of the cholamoo features, and part of the same mountain range that connects chumulari and donkia: he had always lofty mountains in eight, and rugged ones on either side, after he had entered the painomchoo valley. it is a remarkable and significant fact that turner never appears to have seen chumulari after having passed it, nor donkia, kinchinjhow, or kinchinjunga at any time.] and teshoo loombo. i did not see it, but a long, stony mountain range above the town is very conspicuous, its sides presenting an interrupted line of cliffs, resembling the port-holes of a ship: some fresh-fallen snow lay at the base, but none at the top, which was probably , feet high. the banks of the arun are thence inhabited at intervals all the way to tingre, where it enters nepal. donkia rises to the eastward of the pass, but its top is not visible. i ascended (over loose rocks) to between , and , 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, to 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 , 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 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 miles off, they must, from the dip of the horizon, be at least 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 , feet, looks as if diminished by being surveyed through the wrong end of a telescope. a few rude cairns were erected on the crest of the pass, covered with wands, red banners, and votive offerings of rags. i found a fine slab of slate, inscribed with the tibetan characters, "om mani padmi hom," which meepo allowed me to take away, as the reward of my exertions. the ridge is wholly formed of angular blocks of white gneissy granite, split by frost.* [it was not a proper granite, but a highly metamorphic felspathic gneiss, with very little mica; being, i suspect, a gneiss which by metamorphic action was almost remolten into granite: the lamination was obscure, and marked by faint undulating lines of mica; it cleaves at all angles, but most generally along fissures with highly polished undulated black surfaces. the strike of the same rock near at hand was north-west, and dip north-east, at various angles.] there was no snow on the pass itself, but deep drifts and glaciers descended in hollows on the north side, to , feet. the rounded northern red shoulder of kinchinjhow by cholamoo lake, apparently , feet high, was quite bare, and, as i have said, i ascended donkia to upwards of , feet before i found the rocks crusted with ice,* [snow, transformed into ice throughout its whole mass: in short, glacial ice in all physical characters.] and the ground wholly frozen. i assume, therefore, that , 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 degrees. forty miles further north (in tibet) the same line is probably at , feet; for there much less snow falls, and much more melts in proportion.* [two secondary considerations materially affecting the melting of snow, and hence exerting a material influence on the elevation of the snow-line, appear to me never to have been sufficiently dwelt upon. both, however, bear directly upon the great elevation of the snow-line in tibet. from the imperfect transmission of the heating rays of the sun through films of water, which transmit perfectly the luminous rays, it follows that the direct effects of the rays, in clear sunshine, are very different at equal elevations of the moist outer and dry inner himalaya. secondly, naked rock and soil absorb much more heat than surfaces covered with vegetation, and this heat again radiated is infinitely more rapidly absorbed by snow (or other white surfaces) than the direct heat of the sun's rays is. hence, at equal elevations the ground heats sooner, and the snow is more exposed to the heat thus radiated in arid tibet, than in the wooded and grassed mountains of sikkim.] from the elevation of about , feet, which i attained on donkia, i saw a fine illustration of that atmospheric phenomenon called the "spectre of the brocken," my own shadow being projected on a mass of thin mist that rose above the tremendous precipices over which i hung. my head was surrounded with a brilliant circular glory or rainbow.* [probably caused by spiculae of ice floating in the atmosphere, the lateral surfaces of which would then have an uniform inclination of degrees: this, according to the observations of mariotte, venturi, and fraunhoefer being the angle necessary for the formation of halos.] the temperature of the donkia pass is much higher than might be anticipated from its great elevation, and from the fact of its being always bitterly cold to the feelings. this is no doubt due to the warmth of the ascending currents, and to the heat evolved during the condensation of their vapours. i took the following observations:-- sept. , . - . p.m.: temp. . degrees, d.p. . degrees, difference . degrees, tension . , humidity . . sept. . - . p.m.: temp. . degrees, d.p. . degrees, difference . degrees, tension . , humidity . . oct. , . - . p.m.: temp. . degrees, d.p. . degrees, difference . degrees, tension . , humidity . . the first and last of these temperatures were respectively . degrees and . degrees lower than calcutta, which, with the proper deduction for latitude, allows and feet as equivalent to degree fahr. i left a minimum thermometer on the summit on the th of september, and removed it on the th, 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 degrees. a violent southerly wind, with a scud of mist, and sometimes snow, always blew over the pass: but we found shelter on the north face, where i twice kindled a fire, and boiled my thermometers.* [on the th of september the boiling-point was . degrees, and on the th, . degrees. in both observations, i believe the kettle communicated a higher temperature to the thermometer than that of the water, for the elevations deduced are far too low.] on one occasion i felt the pulses of my party several times during two hours' repose (without eating); the mean of eight persons was degrees, the extremes being degrees and degrees, and my own degrees. one flowering plant ascends to the summit; the alsinaceous one mentioned at chapter xxi. the fescue grass, a little fern (_woodsia_), and a _saussurea_* [a pink-flowered woolly _saussurea,_ and _delphinium qlaciale,_ are two of the most lofty plants; both being commonly found from , to , feet.] ascend very near the summit, and several lichens grow on the top, as _cladonia vermicularis,_ the yellow _lecidea geographica,_ and the orange _l. miniata_;* [this is one of the most arctic, antarctic, and universally diffused plants. the other lichens were _lecidea atro-alba, oreina, elegans,_ and _chlorophana,_ all alpine european and arctic species. at , feet occur _lecanora ventosa, physodes, candelaria, sordida, atra,_ and the beautiful swiss _l. chrysoleuca,_ also european species.] also some barren mosses. at , feet, i found on one stone only a fine scotch lichen, a species of _gyrophora,_ the _"tripe de roche"_ of arctic voyagers, and the food of the canadian hunters; it is also abundant on the scotch alps. before leaving, i took one more long look at the boundless prospect; and, now that its important details were secured, i had leisure to reflect on the impression it produced. there is no loftier country on the globe than that embraced by this view, and no more howling wilderness; well might the singtam soubah and every tibetan describe it as the loftiest, coldest, windiest, and most barren country in the world. were it buried in everlasting snows, or burnt by a tropical sun, it might still be as utterly sterile; but with such sterility i had long been familiar. here the colourings are those of the fiery desert or volcanic island, while the climate is that of the poles. never, in the course of all my wanderings, had my eye rested on a scene so dreary and inhospitable. the "cities of the plain" lie sunk in no more death-like sea than cholamoo lake, nor are the tombs of petra hewn in more desolate cliffs than those which flank the valley of the tibetan arun. on our return my pony strained his shoulder amongst the rocks; as a remedy, the lachoong phipun plunged a lancet into the muscle, and giving me his own animal, rode mine down.* [these animals, called tanghan, are wonderfully strong and enduring; they are never shod, and the hoof often cracks, and they become pigeon-toed: they are frequently blind of one eye, when they are called "zemik" (blind ones), but this is thought no great defect. they average pounds to pounds for a good animal in tibet; and the best fetch pounds to 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. ) describes the horses of caraccas as occasionally eating salt meat.] it drizzled and sleeted all the way, and was dark before we arrived at the tent. at night the tibetan dogs are let loose, when they howl dismally: on one occasion they robbed me of all my meat, a fine piece of yak's flesh. the yaks are also troublesome, and bad sleepers; they used to try to effect an entrance into my tent, pushing their muzzles under the flaps at the bottom, and awakening me with a snort and moist hot blast. before the second night i built a turf wall round the tent; and in future slept with a heavy tripod by my side, to poke at intruders. birds flock to the grass about momay; larks, finches, warblers, abundance of sparrows, feeding on the yak-droppings, and occasionally the hoopoe; waders, cormorants, and wild ducks were sometimes seen in the streams, but most of them were migrating south. the yaks are driven out to pasture at sunrise, and home at sunset, till the middle of the month, when they return to yeumtong. all their droppings are removed from near the tents, and piled in heaps; as these animals, unlike their masters, will not sleep amid such dirt. these heaps swarm with the maggots of two large flies, a yellow and black, affording abundant food to red-legged crows, ravens, and swallows. butterflies are rare; the few are mostly _colias, hipparchia, polyommatus,_ and _melitaea_; these i have seen feeding at , feet; when found higher, they have generally been carried up by currents. of beetles, an _aphodeus,_ in yak-droppings, and an _elaphrus,_ a predaceous genus inhabiting swamps, are almost the only ones i saw. the wild quadrupeds are huge sheep, in flocks of fifty, the _ovis ammon_ called "gnow." i never shot one, not having time to pursue them for they were very seldom seen, and always at great elevations. the larger marmot is common, and i found the horns of the "tchiru" antelope. neither the wild horse, fox, hare, nor tailless rat, cross the donkia pass. white clover, shepherd's purse, dock, plantain, and chickweed, are imported here by yaks; but the common _prunella_ of europe is wild, and so is a groundsel like _senecio jacobaea, ranunculus, sibbaldia,_ and 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 , to , feet, but never much higher.* [an elevation of , and perhaps , feet might, i should think, easily be attained by practice, in tibet, north of sikkim.] the observations taken on these excursions are sufficiently illustrated by those of donkia pass: they served chiefly to perfect my map, measure the surrounding peaks, and determine the elevation reached by plants; all of which were slow operations, the weather of this month being so bad that i rarely returned dry to my tent; fog and drizzle, if not sleet and snow, coming on during every day, without exception. i made frequent excursions to the great glacier of kinchinjhow. its valley is about four miles long, broad and flat: chango-khang* [the elevation of this mountain is about , feet, by the mean of several observations taken from surrounding localities.] rears its blue and white cliffs , feet above its west flank, and throws down avalanches of stones and snow into the valley. hot springs* [supposing the mean temperature of the air at the elevation of the momay springs to be degrees or degrees, which may be approximately assumed, and that, as some suppose, the heat of thermal springs is due to the internal temperature of the globe; then according to the law of increment of heat in descending (of degree for fifty feet) we should find the temperature of degrees at a depth of , feet, or at , feet above the level of the sea. direct experiment with internal heat has not, however, been carried beyond feet below the surface, and as the ratio of increment diminishes with the depth, that above assigned to the temperature of degrees is no doubt much too little. the momay springs more probably owe their temperature to chemical decomposition of sulphurets of metals. i found pyrites in tibet on the north flank of the mountain kinchinjhow, in limestones asasociated with shales.] burst from the ground near some granite rocks on its floor, about , feet above the sea, and only a mile below the glacier, and the water collects in pools: its temperature is degrees, and in places degrees, or degrees hotter than that of the yeumtong hot-springs, though feet higher, and of precisely the same character. a _barbarea_ and some other plants make the neighbourhood of the hot-springs a little oasis, and the large marmot is common, uttering its sharp, chirping squeak. the terminal moraine is about feet high, quite barren, and thrown obliquely across the valley, from north-east to south-west, completely hiding the glacier. from its top successive smaller parallel ridges (indicating the periodic retirements of the glacier) lead down to the ice, which must have sunk several hundred feet. this glacier descends from kinchinjhow, the huge cliff of whose eastern extremity dips into it. the surface, less than half a mile wide, is exceedingly undulated, and covered with large pools of water, ninety feet deep, and beds of snow, and is deeply corroded; gigantic blocks are perched on pinnacles of ice on its surface, and the gravel cones* [for a description of this curious phenomenon, which has been illustrated by agassiz, see "forbes's alps," p. and .] are often twenty feet high. the crevassing so conspicuous on the swiss glaciers is not so regular on this, and the surface appears more like a troubled ocean; due, no doubt, to the copious rain and snow-falls throughout the summer, and the corroding power of wet fogs. the substance of the ice is ribboned, dirt-bands are seen from above to form long loops on some parts, and the lateral moraines, like the terminal, are high above the surface. these notes, made previous to reading professor forbes's travels in the alps, sufficiently show that perpetual snow, whether as ice or glacier, obeys the same laws in india as in europe; and i have no remarks to offer on the structure of glaciers, that are not well illustrated and explained in the abovementioned admirable work. its average slope for a mile above the terminal moraines was less than degrees, and the height of its surface above the sea , feet by boiling-point; the thickness of its ice probably feet. between the moraine and the west flank of the valley is a large lake, with terraced banks, whose bottom (covered with fine felspathic silt) is several hundred feet above that of the valley; it is half a mile long, and a quarter broad, and fed partly by glaciers of the second order on chango-khang and sebolah, and partly by filtration through the lateral moraine. illustration--gneiss-block with granite bands, on the kinchinjhow glacier. chapter xxiii. donkia glaciers -- moraines -- dome of ice -- honey-combed surface -- rocks of donkia -- metamorphic action of granite veins -- accident to instruments -- sebolah pass -- bees, and may-flies -- view -- temperature -- pulses of party -- lamas and travellers at momay -- weather and climate -- dr. campbell leaves dorjiling for sikkim -- leave momay -- yeumtong -- lachoong -- retardation of vegetation at low elevations -- choongtam -- landslips and debacle -- meet dr. campbell -- motives for his journey -- second visit to lachen valley -- autumnal tints -- red currants -- lachen phipun -- tungu -- scenery -- animals -- poisonous rhododendrons -- fire-wood -- palung -- elevations -- sitong -- kongra lama -- tibetans -- enter tibet -- desolate scenery -- plants -- animals -- geology -- cholamoo lakes -- antelopes -- return to yeumtso -- dr. campbell lost -- extreme cold -- headaches -- tibetan dingpun and guard -- arms and accoutrements -- temperature of yeumtso -- migratory birds -- visit of dingpun -- yeumtso lakes. on the th 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 , or , feet elevation, containing four marshes or lakes, alternating with as many transverse moraines that have dammed the river. these moraines seem in some cases to have been deposited where rocks in the bed of the valley obstructed the downward progress of the ancient glacier; hence, when this latter finally retired, it rested at these obstructions, and accumulated there great deposits, which do not cross the valley, but project from each side obliquely into it. the rocks _in situ_ on the floor of the valley are all _moutonneed_ and polished on the top, sides, and face looking up the valley, but are rugged on that looking down it: gigantic blocks are poised on some. the lowest of the ancient moraines completely crosses the river, which finds, its way between the boulders. under the red cliff of forked donkia the valley becomes very broad, bare, and gravelly, with a confusion of moraines, and turns more northwards. at the angle, the present terminal moraine rises like a mountain (i assumed it to be about feet high),* [this is the largest and longest terminal moraine backed by an existing glacier that i examined with care: i doubt its being so high as the moraine of the allalein glacier below the mat-maark sea in the sachs valley (valais, switzerland); but it is impossible to compare such objects from memory: the donkia one was much the most uniform in height.] and crosses the valley from n.n.e. to s.s.w. from the summit, which rises above the level of the glacier, and from which i assume its present retirement, a most striking scene opened. the ice filling an immense basin, several miles broad and long, formed a low dome,* [this convexity of the ice is particularly alluded to by forbes ("travels in the alps," p. ), as the "renflement" of rendu and "surface bombee" of agassiz, and is attributed to the effects of hydrostatic pressure tending to press the lower layers of ice upwards to the surface. my own impression at the time was, that the convexity of the surface of the donkia glacier was due to a subjacent mountain spur running south from donkia itself. i know, however, far too little of the topography of this glacier to advance such a conjecture with any confidence. in this case, as in all similar ones, broad expanses being covered to an enormous depth with ice, the surface of the latter must in some degree be modified by the ridges and valleys it conceals. the typical "surface bombee," which is conspicuous in the himalaya glaciers, i was wont (in my ignorance of the mechanical laws of glaciers) to attribute to the more rapid melting of the edges of the glacier by the radiated heat of its lateral moraines and of the flanks of the valley that it occupies.] with forked donkia on the west, and a serried range of rusty-red scarped mountains, , feet high on the north and east, separating large tributary glaciers. other still loftier tops of donkia appeared behind these, upwards of , feet high, but i could not recognise the true summit ( , 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 , feet by barometer, and , by boiling-point. the weather was very cold, the thermometer fell from degrees to degrees, and it snowed heavily after p.m. the strike of all the rocks (gneiss with granite veins) seemed to be north-east, and dip north-west degrees. such also were the strike and dip on another spur from donkia, north of this, which i ascended to , feet, on the th of september: it abutted on the scarped precipices, feet high, of that mountain. i had been attracted to the spot by its bright orange-red colour, which i found to be caused by peroxide of iron. the highly crystalline nature of the rocks, at these great elevations, is due to the action of veins of fine-grained granite, which sometimes alter the gneiss to such an extent that it appears as if fused into a fine granite, with distinct crystals of quartz and felspar; the most quartzy layers are then roughly crystallized into prisms, or their particles are aggregated into spheres composed of concentric layers of radiating crystals, as is often seen in agates. the rearrangement of the mineral constituents by heat goes on here just as in trap, cavities filled with crystals being formed in rocks exposed to great heat and pressure. where mica abounds, it becomes black and metallic; and the aluminous matter is crystallised in the form of garnets. illustration--summit of forked donkia, and "goa" antelopes. at these great heights the weather was never fine for more than an hour at a time, and a driving sleet followed by thick snow drove me down on both these occasions. another time i ascended a third spur from this great mountain, and was overtaken by a heavy gale and thunderstorm, the latter is a rare phenomenon: it blew down my tripod and instruments which i had thought securely propped with stones, and the thermometers were broken, but fortunately not the barometer. on picking up the latter, which lay with its top down the hill, a large bubble of air appeared, which i passed up and down the tube, and then allowed to escape; when i heard a rattling of broken glass in the cistern. having another barometer* [this barometer (one of newman's portable instruments) i have now at kew: it was compared with the royal society's standard before leaving england; and varied according to comparisons made with the calcutta standard . during its travels; on leaving calcutta its error was ; and on arriving in england, by the standard of the royal society, +. . i have given in the appendix some remarks on the use of these barometers, which (though they have obvious defects), are less liable to derangement, far more portable, and stand much heavier shocks than those of any other construction with which i am familiar.] at my tent, i hastened to ascertain by comparison whether the instrument which had travelled with me from england, and taken so many thousand observations, was seriously damaged: to my delight an error of . was all i could detect at momay and all other lower stations. on my return to dorjiling in december, i took it to pieces, and found the lower part of the bulb of the attached thermometer broken off, and floating on the mercury. having quite expected this, i always checked the observations of the attached thermometer by another, but--how, it is not easy to say--the broken one invariably gave a correct temperature. illustration--view from an elevation of , 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 , feet, though where they project as sloping hog-backed spurs from the parent mountain, the snows of the latter roll down on them and form glacial caps, the reverse of glaciers in valleys, but which overflow, as it were, on all sides of the slopes, and are ribboned* [the convexity of the curves, however, seems to be upwards. such reversed glaciers, ending abruptly on broad stony shoulders quite free of snow, should on no account be taken as indicating the lower limit of perpetual snow.] and crevassed. on the th 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 , feet. at nearly , 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 degrees, while that of the large lake at the glacier, feet lower, was only degrees. the view from the summit commands the whole castellated front of kinchinjhow, the sweep of the donkia cliffs to the east, chango-khang's blunt cone of ribbed snow* [this ridging or furrowing of steep snow-beds is explained at vol. i, chapter x.] over head, while to the west, across the grassy palung dunes rise chomiomo, the thlonok mountains, and kinchinjunga in the distance.* [the latter bore degrees minutes; it was distant about thirty-four miles, and subtended an angle of degrees minutes seconds. the rocks on its north flanks were all black, while those forming the upper , feet of the south face were white: hence, the top is probably granite, overlaid by the gneiss on the north.] the palung plains, now yellow with withered grass, were the most curious part of the view: hemmed in by this range which rises feet above them, and by the lachen hills on the east, they appeared a dead level, from which kinchinjhow reared its head, like an island from the ocean.* [it is impossible to contemplate the abrupt flanks of all these lofty mountains, without contrasting them with the sloping outlines that prevail in the southern parts of sikkim. all such precipices are, i have no doubt, the results of sea action; and all posterior influence of sub-aerial action, aqueous or glacial, tends to wear these precipices into slopes, to fill up valleys and to level mountains. of all such influences heavy rain-falls and a luxuriant vegetation are probably the most active; and these features are characteristic of the lower valleys of sikkim, which are consequently exposed to very different conditions of wear and tear from those which prevail on these loftier rearward ranges.] the black tents of the tibetans were still there, but the flocks were gone. the broad fosse-like valley of the chachoo was at my feet, with the river winding along its bottom, and its flanks dotted with black juniper bushes. the temperature at this elevation, between and p.m., varied from degrees to degrees; the mean being . degrees, with the dew-point . degrees. the height i made , feet by barometer, and , by boiling-point. i tried the pulses of eight, persons after two hours' rest; they varied from to , my own being . as usual at these heights, all the party were suffering from giddiness and headaches. throughout september various parties passed my tent at momay, generally lamas or traders: the former, wrapped in blankets, wearing scarlet and gilt mitres, usually rode grunting yaks, which were sometimes led by a slave-boy or a mahogany-faced nun, with a broad yellow sheep-skin cap with flaps over her ears, short petticoats, and striped boots. the domestic utensils, pots, pans, and bamboos of butter, tea-churn, bellows, stools, books, and sacred implements, usually hung rattling on all sides of his holiness, and a sumpter yak carried the tents and mats for sleeping. on several occasions large parties of traders, with thirty or forty yaks* [about loaded yaks are said to cross the donkia pass annually.] laden with planks, passed, and occasionally a shepherd with tibet sheep, goats, and ponies. i questioned many of these travellers about the courses of the tibetan rivers; they all agreed* [one lad only, declared that the kambajong river flowed north-west to dobtah and sarrh, and thence turned north to the yaru; but all campbell's itineraries, as well as mine, make the dobtah lake drain into the chomachoo, north of wallanchoon; which latter river the nepalese also affirm flows into nepal, as the arun. the lachen and lachoong phipuns both insisted on this, naming to me the principal towns on the way south-west from kambajong along the river to tingri maidan, _via_ tashirukpa chait, which is north of wallanchoon pass.] in stating the kambajong or chomachoo liver, north of the lachen, to be the arun of nepal, and that it rose near the ramchoo lake (of turner's route). the lake itself discharges either into the arun, or into the painomchoo (flowing to the yaru); but this point i could never satisfactorily ascertain. the weather at momay, during september, was generally bad after 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 a.m., when the south-east wind, with fog, came on. throughout the day a north current blew above the southern; and when the mist was thin; the air sparkled with spiculae of snow, caused by the cold dry upper current condensing the vapours of the lower. this southern current passes over the tops of the loftiest mountains, ascending to , feet, and discharging frequent showers in tibet, as far north as jigatzi, where, however, violent dry easterly gales are the most prevalent. the equinoctial gales set in on the st, with a falling barometer, and sleet at night; on the rd and th 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 th it cleared, and the snow soon melted. frosty nights succeeded, but the thermometer only fell to degrees once during the month, and the maximum once rose to . degrees. the mean temperature from the th to the th september was . degrees,* [the result of fifty-six comparative observations between calcutta and momay, give . degrees difference, which, after corrections, allows degree fahr. for every feet of ascent.] which coincided with that of a.m. and p.m.; the mean maximum, . degrees, minimum, . degrees, and consequent range, . degrees.* [at dorjiling the september range is only . degrees; and at calcutta degrees.] on seven nights the radiating thermometer fell much below the temperature of the air, the mean being . degrees and maximum . degrees; and on seven mornings the sun heated the black-bulb thermometer considerably, on the mean to . degrees above the air; maximum . degrees, and minimum, degrees. the greatest heat of the day occurred at noon: the most rapid rise of temperature ( degrees) between and a.m., and the greatest fall ( . degrees), between and p.m. a sunk thermometer fell from . degrees to . degrees between the th and th, 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 . of an inch. on the th 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 th, to meet him at choongtam, arriving at yeumtong the same night, amid heavy rain and sleet. autumnal tints reigned at yeumtong, and the flowers had disappeared from its heath-like flat; a small eatable cherry with a wrinkled stone was ripe, and acceptable in a country so destitute of fruit.* [the absence of _vaccinia_ (whortleberries and cranberries) and eatable _rubi_ (brambles) in the alpine regions of the himalaya is very remarkable, and they are not replaced by any substitute. with regard to vaccinium, this is the more anomalous, as several species grow in the temperate regions of sikkim.] thence i descended to lachoong, on the st of october, again through heavy rain, the snow lying on the tunkra mountain at , feet. the larch was shedding its leaves, which turn red before they fall; but the annual vegetation was much behind that at , feet, and so many late flowerers, such as _umbelliferae_ and _compositae,_ had come into blossom, that the place still looked gay and green: the blue climbing gentian (_crawfurdia_) now adorned the bushes; this plant would be a great acquisition in english gardens. a _polygonum_ still in flower here, was in ripe fruit near momay, feet higher up the valley. on the following day i made a long and very fatiguing march to choongtam, but the coolies were not all able to accomplish it. the backwardness of the flora in descending was even more conspicuous than on the previous day: the jungles, at 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 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 th of october i heard the nightingale for the first time this season. expecting dr. campbell on the following morning, i proceeded down the river to meet him: the whole valley was buried under a torrent or debacle of mud, shingle, and boulders, and for half a mile the stream was dammed up into a deep lake. amongst the gneiss and granite boulders brought down by this debacle, i collected some actinolites; but all minerals are extremely rare in sikkim and i never heard of a gem or crystal of any size or beauty, or of an ore of any consequence, being found in this country. i met my friend on the other side of the mud torrent, and i was truly rejoiced to see him, though he was looking much the worse for his trying journey through the hot valleys at this season; in fact, i know no greater trial of the constitution than the exposure and hard exercise that is necessary in traversing these valleys, below 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 th 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 degrees colder than in the beginning of august. during the second day's march we were stopped at the taktoong river by the want of a bridge, which the singtam soubah refused to exert himself to have repaired; its waters were, however, so fallen, that our now large party soon bridged it with admirable skill. we encamped the second night on chateng, and the following day made a long march, crossing the zemu, and ascending half-way to tallum samdong. the alpine foliage was rapidly changing colour; and that of the berberry turning scarlet, gave a warm glow to the mountain above the forest. lamteng village was deserted: turnips were maturing near the houses, and buckwheat on the slope behind; the latter is a winter-crop at lower elevations, and harvested in april. at zemu samdong the willow-leaves were becoming sear and yellow, and the rose-bushes bore enormous scarlet hips, two inches long, and covered with bristles; they were sweet, and rather good eating. near tungu (where we arrived on the th) 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 dumber of blankets* [these were made of goat's wool, teazed into a satiny surface by little teazle-like brushes of bamboo.] for our people, and in arranging for our journey, to which the lachen phipun was favourable, promising us ponies for the expedition. the vegetation around was wholly changed since my july visit: the rhododendron scrub was verdigris-green from the young leaves which burst in autumn, and expose at the end of each branchlet a flower-bud covered with resinous scales, which are thrown off in the following spring. the jungle was spotted yellow with the withered birch, maple and mountain-ash, and scarlet with berberry bushes; while above, the pastures were yellow-brown with the dead grass, and streaked with snow. amongst other luxuries, we procured the flesh of yak calves, which is excellent veal: we always returned the foot for the mother to lick while being milked, without which she yields nothing. the yak goes nine months with calf, and drops one every two years, bearing 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* [the poisonous honey produced by other species is alluded to at vol. i., chapter ix. an _andromeda_ and a _gualtheria,_ i have been assured are equally deleterious.] ("kema kechoong," lepcha: kema signifying rhododendron): this species alone is said to be poisonous; and when used as fuel, it causes the face to swell and the eyes to inflame; of which i observed several instances. as the subject of fire-wood is of every-day interest to the traveller in these regions, i may here mention that the rhododendron woods afford poor fires; juniper burns the brightest, and with least smoke. _abies webbiana,_ though emitting much smoke, gives a cheerful fire, far superior to larch,* [the larch of northern asia (_larix europoea_) is said to produce a pungent smoke, which i never observed to be the case with the sikkim species.] spruce, or _abies brunoniana._ at dorjiling, oak is the common fuel; alder is also good. chestnut is invariably used for blacksmith's charcoal. magnolia has a disagreeable odour, and laurel burns very badly. the phenomenon of phosphorescence is most conspicuous on stacks of fire-wood. at dorjiling, during the damp, warm, summer months (may to october), at elevations of to feet, it may be witnessed every night by penetrating a few yards into the forest--at least it was so in and ; and during my stay there billets of decayed wood were repeatedly sent to me by residents, with inquiries as to the cause of their luminosity. it is no exaggeration to say that one does not need to move from the fireside to see this phenomenon, for if there is a partially decayed log amongst the fire-wood, it is almost sure to glow with a pale phosphoric light. a stack of fire-wood, collected near my host's (mr. hodgson) cottage, presented a beautiful spectacle for two months (in july and august), and on passing it at night, i had to quiet my pony, who was always alarmed by it. the phenomenon invariably accompanies decay, and is common on oak, laurel (_tetranthera_), birch, and probably other timbers; it equally appears on cut wood and on stumps, but is most frequent on branches lying close to the ground in the wet forests. i have reason to believe that it spreads with great rapidity from old surfaces to freshly cut ones. that it is a vital phenomenon, and due to the mycelium of a fungus, i do not in the least doubt, for i have observed it occasionally circumscribed by those black lines which are often seen to bound mycelia on dead wood, and to precede a more rapid decay. i have often tried, but always in vain, to coax these mycelia into developing some fungus, by placing them in damp rooms, etc. when camping in the mountains, i frequently caused the natives to bring phosphorescent wood into my tent, for the pleasure of watching its soft undulating light, which appears to pale and glow with every motion of the atmosphere; but except in this difference of intensity, it presents no change in appearance night after night. alcohol, heat, and dryness soon dissipate it; electricity i never tried. it has no odour, and my dog, who had a fine sense of smell, paid no heed when it was laid under his nose.* [as far as my observations go, this phenomenon of light is confined to the lower orders of vegetable life, to the fungi alone, and is not dependent on irritability. i have never seen luminous flowers or roots, nor do i know of any authenticated instance of such, which may not be explained by the presence of mycelium or of animal life. in the animal kingdom, luminosity is confined, i believe, to the invertebrata, and is especially common amongst the radiata and mollusca; it is also frequent in the entromostracous crustacea, and in various genera of most orders of insects. in all these, even in the sertulariae, i have invariably observed the light to be increased by irritation, in which respect the luminosity of animal life differs from that of vegetable.] the weather continuing bad, and snow falling, the country people began to leave for their winter-quarters at lamteng. in the evenings we enjoyed the company of the phipun and tchebu lama, who relished a cup of sugarless tea more than any other refreshment we could offer. from them we collected much tibetan information:--the former was an inveterate smoker, using a pale, mild tobacco, mixed largely with leaves of the small wild tibetan rhubarb, called "chula." snuff is little used, and is principally procured from the plains of india. we visited palung twice, chiefly in hopes that dr. campbell might see the magnificent prospect of kinchinjhow from its plains: the first time we gained little beyond a ducking, but on the second (october the th) the view was superb; and i likewise caught a glimpse of kinchinjunga from the neighbouring heights, bearing south degrees west and distant forty miles. i also measured barometrically the elevation at the great chait on the plains, and found it , feet, and by carefully boiled thermometers, , , on the th october, and , on the th: the difference being due to the higher temperature on the latter day, and to a rise of . degree on both boiling-point thermometers above what the same instruments stood at on the th. 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 , feet in july, and , in october.* [the elevation of tungu by boiling-point was , feet by a set of july observations, , by a set taken on the th of october, and , by a set on the th of october: the discrepancies were partly due to the temperature corrections, but mainly to the readings of the thermometers, which were-- july , sunset . , air . degrees, elev. , oct. , noon . , air . degrees, elev. , oct. , sunset . , air . degrees, elev. , ] the mean temperature had fallen from degrees in july to degrees, and that of the sunk thermometer from degrees to . degrees. the mean range in july was . degrees, and in october . degrees; the weather during the latter period being, however, uniformly cold and misty, this was much below the mean monthly range, which probably exceeds degrees. much more rain fell in october at tungu than at dorjiling, which is the opposite to what occurs during the rainy season. _october th._ 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 , 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 . degrees. the afternoon was misty, but at 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 degrees, that placed in a polished parabolic reflector to degrees, and another laid on herbage to . degrees. on the th 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 . a.m., when the north wind fell; and within an hour afterwards the temperature had risen to degrees. having had our sticks* [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.] warmed and handed to us, we started on ponies, accompanied by the lama only, to hold a parley with the tibetans; ordering the rest of the party to follow at their leisure. we had not proceeded far when we were joined by two tibetan sepoys, who, on our reaching the pass, bellowed lustily for their companions; when campbell and the lama drew up at the chait of kongra lama, and announced his wish to confer with their commandant. my anxiety was now wound up to a pitch; i saw men with matchlocks emerging from amongst the rocks under chomiomo, and despairing of permission being obtained, i goaded my pony with heels and stick, and dashed on up the lachen valley, resolved to make the best of a splendid day, and not turn back till i had followed the river to the cholamoo lakes: the sepoys followed me a few paces, but running being difficult at , 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 , to , 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 ( , feet above the sea) runs west, forming marshes, which were full of _zannichellia palustris_ and _ranunculus aquatilis,_ both english and siberian plants: the waters contained many shells, of a species of _lymnaea_;* [this is the most alpine living shell in the world; my specimens being from nearly , feet elevation; it is the _lymnaea hookeri,_ reeve ("proceedings of the zoological society," no. ).] and the soil near the edge, which was covered with tufts of short grass, was whitened with effloresced carbonate of soda. here were some square stone enclosures two feet high, used as pens, and for pitching tents in; within them i gathered some unripe barley. beyond this i recognised a hill of which i had taken bearings from donkia pass, and a few miles further, on rounding a great spur of kinchinjunga, i arrived in sight of cholamoo lakes, with the donkia mountain rearing its stupendous precipices of rock and ice on the east. my pony was knocked up, and i felt very giddy from the exertion and elevation; i had broken his bridle, and so led him on by my plaid for the last few miles to the banks of the lake; and there, with the pleasant sound of the waters rippling at my feet, i yielded for a few moments to those emotions of gratified ambition which, being unalloyed by selfish considerations for the future; become springs of happiness during the remainder of one's life. the landscape about cholamoo lakes was simple in its elements, stern and solemn; and though my solitary situation rendered it doubly impressive to me, i doubt whether the world contains any scene with more sublime associations than this calm sheet of water, , feet above the sea, with the shadows of mountains , to , feet high, sleeping on its bosom. there was much short grass about the lake, on which large antelopes, "chiru" (_antilope hodgsoni_,* [i found the horns of this animal on the south side of the donkia pass, but i never saw a live one except in tibet. the _procapra_ is described by mr. hodgson, "bengal as. soc. jour., , p. ," and is introduced into the cut in this chapter.] and deer, "goa" (_procapra picticaudata,_ hodgson), were feeding. there were also many slate-coloured hales with white rumps (_lepus oiostolus_), with marmots and tail-less rats. the abundance of animal life was wonderful, compared with the want of it on the south side of donkia pass, not five miles distant in a straight line! it is partly due to the profusion of carbonate of soda, of which all ruminants are fond, and partly to the dryness of the climate, which is favourable to all burrowing quadrupeds. a flock of common english teal were swimming in the lake, the temperature of which was degrees. illustration--antelope's head.* {the accompanying figures of the heads of the chiru (_antilope hodgsoni_), were sketched by lieut. maxwell (of the bengal artillery), from a pair brought to dorjiling; it is the so-called unicorn of tibet, and of mm. huc and gabet's narrative,--a name which the profile no doubt suggested.] i had come about fifteen miles from the pass, and arrived at 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 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 p.m., and the wind at once dropped, so local are these violent atmospheric currents, which are caused by the heating of the upper extremities of these lofty valleys, and consequent rarefaction of the air. intense terrestrial radiation immediately follows the withdrawal of the sun's rays, and the temperature sinks rapidly. soon after sunset the lama returned, bringing campbell; who, having mistaken some glacier-fed lakes at the back of kinchinjhow for those of cholamoo, was looking for me. he too had speculated on having to pass the night under a rock, with one plaid for himself and servant; in which case i am sure they would both have been frozen to death, having no pony to lie down beside. he told me that after i had quitted kongra lama, leaving him with the tchebu lama and phipun, the dingpun and twenty men came up, and very civilly but formally forbade their crossing the frontier; but that upon explaining his motives, and representing that it would save him ten days' journey, the dingpun had relented, and promised to conduct the whole party to the donkia pass. we pitched our little tent in the corner of the cattle-pen, and our coolies soon afterwards came up; mine were in capital health, though suffering from headaches, but campbell's were in a distressing state of illness and fatigue, with swollen faces and rapid pulses, and some were insensible from symptoms like pressure on the brain;* [i have never experienced bleeding at the nose, ears, lips or eyelids, either in my person or that of my companions, on these occasions; nor did i ever meet with a recent traveller who has. dr. thomson has made the same remark, and when in switzerland together we were assured by auguste balmat, francois coutet, and other experienced mont blanc guides, that they never witnessed these symptoms nor the blackness of the sky, so frequently insisted upon by alpine travellers.] these were chiefly ghorkas (nepalese). the tibetan dingpun and his guard arrived last of all, he was a droll little object, short, fat, deeply marked with small-pox, swarthy, and greasy; he was robed in a green woollen mantle, and was perched on the back of a yak, which also carried his bedding, and cooking utensils, the latter rattling about its flanks, horns, neck, and every point of support: two other yaks bore the tents of the party. his followers were tall savage looking fellows, with broad swarthy faces, and their hair in short pig-tails. they wore the long-sleeved cloak, short trousers, and boots, all of thick woollen, and felt caps on their heads. each was armed with a long matchlock slung over his back, with a moveable rest having two prongs like a fork, and a hinge, so as to fold up along the barrel, when the prongs project behind the shoulders like antelope horns, giving the uncouth warrior a droll appearance. a dozen cartridges, each in an iron case, were slung round the waist, and they also wore the long knife, flint, steel, and iron tobacco-pipe, pouch, and purse, suspended to a leathern girdle. the night was fine, but intensely cold, and the vault of heaven was very dark, and blazing with stars; the sir was electrical, and flash lightning illumined the sky; this was the reflection of a storm that was not felt at dorjiling, but which raged on the plains of india, beyond the terai, fully miles, and perhaps , south of our position. no thunder was heard. the thermometer fell to degrees, and that in the reflector to . degrees; at sunrise it rose to degrees, and soon after a.m. to degrees; till this hour the humidity was great, and a thin mist hung over the frozen surface of the rocky ground; when this dispersed, the air became very dry, and the black-bulb thermometer in the sun rose degrees above the temperature in the shade. the light of the sun, though sometimes intercepted by vapours aloft, was very brilliant.* [my black glass photometer shut out the sun's disc at . inches, from the mean of four sets of observations taken between and a.m.] this being the migrating season, swallows flitted through the air; finches, larches, and sparrows were hopping over the sterile soil, seeking food, though it was difficult to say what. the geese* [an enormous quantity of water-fowl breed in tibet, including many indian species that migrate no further north. the natives collect their eggs for the markets at jigatzi, giantchi, and lhassa, along the banks of the yarn river, ramchoo, and yarbru and dochen lakes. amongst other birds the sara, or great crane of india (see "turner's tibet," p. ), repairs to these enormous elevations to breed. the fact of birds characteristic of the tropics dwelling for months in such climates is a very instructive one, and should be borne in mind in our speculations upon the climate supposed to be indicated by the imbedded bones of birds.] which had roosted by the river, cackled; the wild ducks quacked and plumed themselves; ouzels and waders screamed or chirped; and all rejoiced as they prepared themselves for the last flight of the year, to the valleys of the southern himalaya, to the teesta, and other rivers of the terai and plains of india. the dingpun paid his respects to us in the morning, wearing, besides his green cloak, a white cap with a green glass button, denoting his rank; he informed us that he had written to his superior officer at kambajong, explaining his motives for conducting us across the frontier, and he drew from his breast a long letter, written on _daphne_* [most of the paper used in tibet is, as i have elsewhere noticed, made from the bark of various species of _daphneae,_ and especially of _edgeworthia gardneri,_ and is imported from nepal and bhotan; but the tibetans, as mm. huc and gabet correctly state, manufacture a paper from the root of a small shrub: this i have seen, and it is of a much thicker texture and more durable than daphne paper. dr. thomson informs me that a species of _astragalus_ is used in western tibet for this purpose, the whole shrub, which is dwarf, being reduced to pulp.] paper, whose ends were tied with floss silk, with a large red seal; this he pompously delivered, with whispered orders, to an attendant, and sent him off. he admired our clothes extremely,* [all tibetans admire sad value english broad-cloth beyond any of our products. woollen articles are very familiar to them, and warm clothing is one of the first requisites of life.] and then my percussion gun, the first he had seen; but above all he admired rum and water, which he drank with intense relish, leaving a mere sip for his comrades at the bottom of his little wooden cup, which they emptied, and afterwards licked clean, and replaced in his breast for him. we made a large basin full of very weak grog for his party, who were all friendly and polite; and having made us the unexpected offer of allowing us to rest ourselves for the day at yeumtso, he left us, and practised his men at firing at a mark, but they were very indifferent shots. i ascended with campbell to the lake he had visited on the previous day, about or feet above yeumtso, and , 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 . degrees, and the black-bulb to . degrees; whilst the north-west dusty wind was so dry, that the dew-point fell to . degrees. chapter xxiv. ascent of bhomtso -- view of snowy mountains -- chumulari -- arun river -- kiang-lah mountains -- jigatzi -- lhama -- dingcham province of tibet -- misapplication of term "plain of tibet" -- sheep, flocks of -- crops -- probable elevation of jigatzi -- yarn -- tsampu river -- tame elephants -- wild horses -- dryness of air -- sunset beams -- rocks of kinchinjhow -- cholamoo lakes -- limestone -- dip and strike of rocks -- effects of great elevation on party -- ascent of donkia -- moving piles of debris -- cross donkia pass -- second visit to momay samdong -- hot springs -- descent to yeumtong -- lachoong -- retardation of vegetation again noticed -- jerked meat -- fish -- lose a thermometer -- lepcha lad sleeps in hot spring -- keadom -- _bucklandia_ -- arrive at choongtam -- mendicant -- meepo -- lachen-lachoong river -- wild grape -- view from singtam of kinchinjunga -- virulent nettle. in the afternoon we crossed the valley, and ascended bhomtso, fording the river, whose temperature was degrees. some stupendous boulders of gneiss from kinchinjhow are deposited in a broad sandy track on the north bank, by ancient glaciers, which once crossed this valley from kinchinjhow. the ascent was alternately over steep rocky slopes, and broad shelf-like flats; many more plants grew here than i had expected, in inconspicuous scattered tufts.* [besides those before mentioned, there were fescue-grass (_festuca ovina_ of scotland), a strong-scented silky wormwood (_artemisia_), and round tufts of _oxytropis chiliophylla,_ a kind of _astralagus_ that inhabits eastern and western tibet; this alone was green: it formed great circles on the ground, the centre decaying, and the annual shoots growing outwards, and thus constantly enlarging the circle. a woolly _leontopodium, androsace,_ and some other plants assumed nearly the same mode of growth. the rest of the vegetation consisted of a _sedum, nardostachys jatamansi, meconopsis horridula,_ a slender _androsace, gnaphalium, stipa, salvia, draba, pedicularis, potentilla_ or _sibbaldia, gentiana_ and _erigeron alpinus_ of scotland. all these grow nearly up to , feet.] the rocks were nearly vertical strata of quartz, hornstone, and conglomerate, striking north-west, and dipping south-west degrees. the broad top of the hill was also of quartz, but covered with angular pebbles of the rocks transported from kinchinjhow. some clay-stone fragments were stained red with oxide of iron, and covered with _parmelia miniata_;* [this minute lichen, mentioned at chapter xxxii, is the most arctic, antarctic, and alpine in the world; often occurring so abundantly as to colour the rocks of an orange red. this was the case at bhomtso, and is so also in cockburn island in the antarctic ocean, which it covers so profusely that the rocks look as if brightly painted. see "ross's voyage," vol. ii. p. .] this, with _borrera,_ another lichen, which forms stringy masses blown along by the wind, were the only plants, and they are among the most alpine in the world. bhomtso is , feet above the sea by barometer, and , 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, , 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 , feet elevation, ten miles distant. to the east of kinchinjhow were the cholamoo lakes, with the rugged mass of donkia stretching in cliffs of ice and snow continuously southwards to forked donkia, which overhung momay samdong. a long sloping spur sweeps from the north of donkia first north, and then west to bhomtso, rising to a height of more than , feet without snow. over this spur the celebrated chumulari* [some doubt still hangs over the identity of this mountain, chiefly owing to turner's having neglected to observe his geographical positions. i saw a much loftier mountain than this, bearing from bhomtso north degrees out, 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 degcribes, is seen from tonglo and sinchul (see vol. i., chapters v and viii); this is the one alluded to above, and it is identified by both tibetans and lepchas at dorjiling as the true chumulari, and was measured by colonel waugh, who placed it in lat. degrees minutes north, long. degrees minutes east. the latter position, though fifteen miles south of what turner gives it, is probably correct; as pemberton found that turner had put other places in bhotan twenty miles too far north. moreover, in saying that it is visible from purnea in the plains of bengal, turner refers to kinchinjunga, whose elevation was then unknown. dr. campbell ("bengal as. soc. jour.," ), 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 degrees minutes east from bhomtso.] peeps, bearing south-east, and from its isolated position and sharpness looking low and small; it appeared quite near, though thirty-nine miles distant. north-east of chumulari, and far beyond it, are several meridional ranges of very much loftier snowy mountains, which terminated the view of the snowy himalaya; the distance embraced being fully miles, and perhaps much more. of one of these eastern masses* [] i afterwards took 	" 	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 degrees minutes and longitude degrees, and miles from the former station, and degrees east of the latter. its elevation from bhomtso angles is , 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 , feet! which is very much over the truth; and make that of chumulari still higher: the distance from my position in the khasia being miles from chumulari! which is probably the utmost limit at which the human eye has ever discerned a terrestrial object.] i afterwards took bearings and angular heights from the khasia mountains, in bengal, upwards of miles south-east of its position. turning to the northward, a singular contrast in the view was presented: the broad sandy valley of the arun lay a few miles off, and perhaps , feet below me; low brown and red ridges, , to , 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 , feet* [it is somewhat remarkable that turner nowhere alludes to difficulty of breathing, and in one place only to head-ache (p. ) 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 , feet.] above the sea. beyond it a gorge led through rugged mountains, by which i was told the painom river flows north-west to the yaru; and at an immense distance to the north-east were the khamba mountains, a long blue range, which it is said divides the lhassan or "u" from the "tsang" (or jigatzi) province of tibet; it appeared fully miles off, and was probably much more; it bore from n. degrees e. to n. degrees e., and though so lofty as to be heavily snowed throughout, was much below the horizon-line of bhomtso; it is crossed on the route from jigatzi, and from sikkim to lhassa,* [lhassa, which lies north-east, may be reached in ten days from this, with relays of ponies; many mountains are crossed, where the breath is affected, and few villages are passed after leaving giantchi, the "jhansi jeung" of turner's narrative. see campbell's "routes from dorjiling to lhassa." ("bengal as. soc. journal.")] and is considered very lofty, from affecting the breathing. about twenty miles to the north-east are some curious red conical mountains, said to be on the west side of the ramchoo lakes; they were unsnowed, and bore n. degrees minutes e. and n. degrees minutes e. a sparingly-snowed group bore n. degrees minutes e., and another n. degrees e., the latter being probably that mentioned by turner as seen by him from near giantchi. but the mountains which appeared both the highest and the most distant on the northern landscape, were those i described when at donkia, as being north of nepal and beyond the arun river, and the culminant peak of which bore n. degrees. both dr. campbell and i made repeated estimates of its height and distance by the eye; comparing its size and snow-level with those of the mountains near us; and assuming to feet as the minimum height of its snowy cap; this would give it an elevation of , to , 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 degrees minutes below the horizon of bhomtso, whence the distance must be above 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 and miles distant from the khasia mountains, i feel sure that i underrated the estimates made at bhomtso, and i have no hesitation in saying, that the mean elevation of the sparingly-snowed* [were the snow-level in dingcham, as low as it is in sikkim, the whole of tibet from donkia almost to the yaru-tsampu river would be everywhere intersected by glaciers and other impassable barriers of snow and ice, for a breadth of fifty miles, and the country would have no parallel for amount of snow beyond the polar circles. it is impossible to conjecture what would have been the effects on the climate of northern india and central asia under these conditions. when, however, we reflect upon the evidences of glacial phenomena that abound in all the himalayan valleys at and above feet elevation, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that such a state of things once existed, and that at a comparatively very recent period.] watershed between the yaru and the arun will be found to be greater than that of the snowy himalaya south of it, and to follow the chain running from donkia, north of the arun, along the kiang-lah mountains, towards the nepal frontier, at tingri maidan. no part of that watershed perhaps rises so high as , feet, but its lowest elevation is probably nowhere under , feet. this broad belt of lofty country, north of the snowy himalaya, is the dingcham province of tibet, and runs along the frontier of sikkim, bhotan, and nepal. it gives rise to all the himalayan rivers, and its mean elevation is probably , to , 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 , to , 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 feet, yet never descending below , 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 , and even feet, are common in passing from valley to valley, sometimes in one day's march. the swarthy races of dingcham have been elsewhere described; they are an honest, hospitable, and very hardy people, differing from the northern tibetans chiefly in colour, and in invariably wearing the pigtail, which mm. huc and gabet assure us is not usual in lhassa.* [amongst lhassan customs alluded to by these travellers, is that of the women smearing their faces with a black pigment, the object of which they affirm to be that they may render themselves odious to the male sex, and thus avoid temptation. the custom is common enough, but the real object is to preserve the skin, which the dry cold wind peels from the face. the pigment is mutton-fat, blackened, according to tchebu lama, with catechu and other ingredients; but i believe more frequently by the dirt of the face itself. i fear i do not slander the tibetan damsels in saying that personal cleanliness and chastity are both lightly esteemed amongst them; and as the lama naively remarked, when questioned on the subject, "the tibetan women are not so different from those of other countries as to wish to conceal what charms they possess."] they are a pastoral race, and campbell saw a flock of hornless sheep, grazing on short sedges (_carex_) and fescue-grass, in the middle of october, at , feet above the sea. an enormous ram attended the flock, whose long hair hung down to the ground; its back was painted red. there is neither tree nor shrub in this country; and a very little wheat (which seldom ripens), barley, turnips, and radishes are, i believe, the only crops, except occasionally peas. other legumes, cabbages, etc., are cultivated in the sheltered valleys of the yaru feeders, where great heat is reflected from the rocks; and there also stunted trees grow, as willows, walnuts, poplars, and perhaps ashes; all of which, however, are said to be planted and scarce. even at teshoo loombo and jigatzi* [digarchi, jigatzi, or shigatzi jong (the fort of shigatzi) is the capital of the "tsang" province, and teshoo loombo is the neighbouring city of temples and monasteries, the ecclesiastical capital of tibet, and the abode of the grand (teshoo) lama, or ever-living boodh. whether we estimate this man by the number of his devotees, or the perfect sincerity of their worship, he is without exception one of the most honoured beings living in the world. i have assumed the elevation of jigatzi to be - , feet, using as data turner's october mean temperature of teshoo loombo, and the decrement for elevation of feet to degree fahr.; which my own observations indicate as an approximation to the truth. humboldt ("asie centrale," iii., p. ) uses a much smaller multiplier, and infers the elevation of teshoo loombo to be between , and , 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 , feet for the bed of that river. of the elevation of lhassa itself we have no idea: if mm. huc and gabet's statement of the rivers not being frozen there in march be correct, the climate must be very different from what we suppose.] buckwheat is a rare crop, and only a prostrate very hardy kind is grown. clay teapots and pipkins are the most valuable exports to sikkim from the latter city, after salt and soda. jewels and woollen cloaks are also exported, the latter especially from giantchi, which is famous for its woollen fabrics and mart of ponies. of the yaru river at jigatzi, which all affirm becomes the burrampooter in assam, i have little information to add to turner's description: it is sixty miles north of bhomtso, and i assume its elevation to be - , feet;* [the yaru, which approaches the nepal frontier west of tingri, and beyond the great mountain described at vol. i. chapter xi, makes a sweep to the northward, and turns south to jigatzi, whence it makes another and greater bend to the north, and again turning south flows west of lhassa, receiving the kechoo river from that holy city. from jigatzi it is said to be navigable to near lhassa by skin and plank-built boats. thence it flows south-east to the assam frontier, and while still in tibet, is said to enter a warm climate, where tea, silk, cotton, and rice, are grown. of its course after entering the assam himalaya little is known, and in answer to my enquiries why it had not been followed, i was always told that the country through which it flowed was inhabited by tribes of savages, who live on snakes and vermin, and are fierce and warlike. these are no doubt the singpho, bor and bor-abor tribes who inhabit the mountains of upper assam. a travelling mendicant was once sent to follow up the dihong to the burrampooter, under the joint auspices of mr. hodgson and major jenkins, the commissioner of assam; but the poor fellow was speared on the frontier by these savages. the concurrent testimony of the assamese, that the dihong is the yaru, on its southern course to become the burrampooter, renders this point as conclusively settled as any, resting on mere oral evidence, is likely to be.] it takes an immense bend to the northward after passing jigatzi, and again turns south, flowing to the west of lhassa, and at some distance from that capital. lhassa, as all agree, is at a much lower elevation than jigatzi; and apricots (whose ripe stones dr. campbell procured for me) and walnuts are said to ripen there, and the dama or himalayan furze (_caragana_), is said to grow there. the bactrian camel also thrives and breeds at lhassa, together with a small variety of cow (not the yak), both signs of a much more temperate climate than jigatzi enjoys. it is, however, a remarkable fact that there are two tame elephants near the latter city, kept by the teshoo lama. they were taken to jigatzi, through bhotan, by phari; and i have been informed that they have become clothed with long hair, owing to the cold of the climate; but tchebu lama contradicted this, adding, that his countrymen were so credulous, that they would believe blankets grew on the elephants' backs, if the lamas told them so. no village or house is seen throughout the extensive area over which the eye roams from bhomtso, and the general character of the desolate landscape was similar to that which i have described as seen from donkia pass (chapter xxii). the wild ass* [this, the _equus hemionus_ of pallas, the untameable kiang of tibet, abounds in dingcham, and we saw several. it resembles the ass more than the horse, from its size, heavy head, small limbs, thin tail, and the stripe over the shoulder. the flesh is eaten and much liked. the kiang-lah mountains are so named from their being a great resort of this creature. it differs widely from the wild ass of persia, sind, and beloochistan, but is undoubtedly the same as the siberian animal.] grazing with its foal on the sloping downs, the hare bounding over the stony soil, the antelope scouring the sandy flats, and the fox stealing along to his burrow, are all desert and tartarian types of the animal creation. the shrill whistle of the marmot alone breaks the silence of the scene, recalling the snows of lapland to the mind; the kite and raven wheel through the air, 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 miles of space, and through , feet of elevation. one plant alone, the yellow lichen (_borrera_), is found at this height, and only as a visitor; for, tartar-like, it emigrates over these lofty slopes and ridges, blown about by the violent winds. i found a small beetle on the very top,* [i observed a small red _acarus_ (mite) at this elevation, both on donkia and kinchinjhow, which reminds me that i found a species of the same genus at cockburn island (in latitude degrees south, longitude degrees minutes west). this genus hence inhabits a higher southern latitude than any other land animal attains.] probably blown up also, for it was a flower-feeder, and seemed benumbed with cold. every night that we spent in tibet, we enjoyed a magnificent display of sunbeams converging to the east, and making a false sunset. i detailed this phenomenon when seen from the kymore mountains, and i repeatedly saw it again in the khasia, but never in the sikkim himalaya, whence i assume that it is most frequent in mountain plateaus. as the sun set, broad purple beams rose from a dark, low, leaden bank on the eastern horizon, and spreading up to the zenith, covered the intervening space: they lasted through the twilight, from fifteen to twenty minutes, fading gradually into the blackness of night. i looked in vain for the beautiful lancet beam of the zodiacal light; its position was obscured by chomiomo. on the th of october we had another brilliant morning, after a cold night, the temperature having fallen to degrees. i took the altitude of yeumtso by carefully boiling two thermometers, and the result was , feet, the barometrical observations giving , feet. i removed a thermometer sunk three feet in the gravelly soil, which showed a temperature of degrees,* [it had risen to . degrees during the previous day.] which is . degrees above the mean temperature of the two days we camped here. our fires were made of dry yak droppings which soon burn out with a fierce flame, and much black smoke; they give a disagreeable taste to whatever is cooked with them. having sent the coolies forward to cholamoo lake, we re-ascended bhomtso to verify my observations. as on the previous occasion a violent dry north-west wind blew, peeling the skin from our faces, loading the air with grains of sand, and rendering theodolite observations very uncertain; besides injuring all my instruments, and exposing them to great risk of breakage. the tibetan sepoys did not at all understand our ascending bhomtso a second time; they ran after campbell, who was ahead on a stout pony, girding up their long garments, bracing their matchlocks tight over their shoulders, and gasping for breath at every step, the long horns of their muskets bobbing up and down as they toiled amongst the rocks. when i reached the top i found campbell seated behind a little stone wall which he had raised to keep off the violent wind, and the uncouth warriors in a circle round him, puzzled beyond measure at his admiration of the view. my instruments perplexed them extremely, and in crowding round me, they broke my azimuth compass. they left us to ourselves when the fire i made to boil the thermometers went out, the wind being intensely cold. i had given my barometer to one of campbell's men to carry, who not coming up, the latter kindly went to search for him, and found him on the ground quite knocked up and stupified by the cold, and there, if left alone, he would have lain till overtaken by death. the barometer on the summit of bhomtso stood at . inches;* [the elevation of bhomtso, worked by bessel's tables, and using corrected observations of the calcutta barometer for the lower station, is , feet. the corresponding dew-point . degrees ( . degrees below that of the air at the time of observation). by oltmann's tables the elevation is , feet. the elevation by boiling water is , .] the temperature between . a.m. and . p.m. fluctuated between degrees and degrees: this was very high for so great an elevation, and no doubt due to the power of the sun on the sterile soil, and consequent radiated heat. the tension of vapour was . , and the dew-point was . degrees, or . degrees below the temperature of the air. such extraordinary dryness* [the weight of vapour in a cubic foot of air was no more than . of a grain, and the saturation-point . .] and consequent evaporation, increased by the violent wind, sufficiently accounts for the height of the snow line; in further evidence of which, i may add that a piece of ice or snow laid on the ground here, does not melt, but disappears by evaporation. the difference between the dry cold air of this elevation and that of the heated plains of india, is very great. during the driest winds of the terai, in spring, the temperature is degrees to degrees, the tension of vapour is . to . , with a dew-point degrees below the temperature, and upwards of six grains of vapour are suspended in the cubic foot of air; a thick haze obscures the heavens, and clouds of dust rise high in the air; here on the other hand (probably owing to the rarity of the atmosphere and the low tension of its vapours), the drought is accompanied by perfect transparency, and the atmosphere is too attenuated to support the dust raised by the wind. we descended in the afternoon, and on our way up the lachen valley examined a narrow gulley in a lofty red spur from kinchinjhow, where black shales were _in situ,_ striking north-east, and dipping north-west degrees. these shales were interposed between beds of yellow quartz conglomerate, upon the latter of which rested a talus of earthy rocks, angular fragments of which were strewed about opposite this spur, but were not seen elsewhere. it became dark before we reached the cholamoo lake, where we lost our way amongst glaciers, moraines, and marshes. we expected to have seen the lights of the camp, but were disappointed, and as it was freezing hard, we began to be anxious, and shouted till the echos of our voices against the opposite bank were heard by tchebu lama, who met us in great alarm for our safety. our camp was pitched some way from the shore, on a broad plain, , feet above the sea.* [this, which is about the level of the lake, gives the lachen river a fall of about feet between its source and kongra lama, or sixty feet per mile following its windings. from kongra lama to tallum it is feet per mile; from tallum to singtam feet; and from singtam to the plains of india 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 miles, upwards of double the direct distance.] a cold wind descended from donkia; yet, though more elevated than yeumtso, the climate of cholamoo, from being damper and misty, was milder. the minimum thermometer fell to degrees. before starting for donkia pass on the following morning, we visited some black rocks which rose from the flat to the east of the lake. they proved to be of fossiliferous limestone, the strata of which were much disturbed: the strike appeared in one part north-west, and the dip north-east degrees: a large fault passed east by north through the cliff, and it was further cleft by joints running northwards. the cliff was not yards long, and was about 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 degrees, as if they overlay the limestone, but here as in all similar situations there was great confusion of the strata, and variation in direction and strike. and here i may once for all confess that though i believe the general strike of the rocks on this frontier to be north-west, and the dip north-east, i am unable to affirm it positively; for though i took every opportunity of studying the subject, and devoted many hours to the careful measuring and recording of dips and strikes, on both faces of kinchinjhow, donkia, bhomtso, and kongra lama, i am unable to reduce these to any intelligible system.* [north-west is the prevalent strike in kumaon, the north-west himalaya generally, and throughout western tibet, kashmir, etc., according to dr. thomson.] the coolies of dr. campbell's party were completely knocked up by the rarified air; they had taken a whole day to march here from yeumtso, scarcely six miles, and could eat no food at night. a lama of our party offered up prayers* [all diseases are attributed by the tibetans to the four elements, who are propitiated accordingly in cases of severe illness. the winds are invoked in cases of affections of the breathing; fire in fevers and inflammations; water in dropsy, and diseases whereby the fluids are affected; and the god of earth when solid organs are diseased, as in liver-complaints, rheumatism, etc. propitiatory offerings are made to the deities of these elements, but never sacrifices.] to kinchinjhow for the recovery of a stout lepcha lad (called nurko), who showed no signs of animation, and had all the symptoms of serous apoplexy. the lama perched a saddle on a stone, and burning incense before it, scattered rice to the winds, invoking kinchin, donkia, and all the neighbouring peaks. a strong dose of calomel and jalap, which we poured down the sick lad's throat, contributed materially to the success of these incantations. the tibetan sepoys were getting tired of our delays, which so much favoured my operations; but though showing signs of impatience and sulkiness, they behaved well to the last; taking the sick man to the top of the pass on their yaks, and assisting all the party: nothing, however, would induce them to cross into sikkim, which they considered as "company's territory." before proceeding to the pass, i turned off to the east, and re-ascended donkia to upwards of , 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 degrees, over upwards of a thousand feet of debris, the blocks on which were so loosely poised on one another, that it was necessary to proceed with the utmost circumspection, for i was alone, and a false step would almost certainly have been followed by breaking a leg. the alternate freezing and thawing of rain amongst these masses, must produce a constant downward motion in the whole pile of debris (which was upwards of feet high), and may account for the otherwise unexplained phenomenon of continuous shoots of angular rocks reposing on very gentle slopes in other places.* [may not the origin of the streams of quartz blocks that fill gently sloping broad valleys several miles long, in the falkland islands, be thus explained? (see "darwin's journal," in murray's home and col. lib.) the extraordinary shifting in the position of my thermometer left among the rocks of the donkia pass (see chapter xxii), and the mobile state of the slopes i descended on this occasion, first suggested this explanation to me. when in the falkland islands i was wholly unable to offer any explanation of the phenomenon there, to which my attention had been drawn by mr. darwin's narrative.] the north ascent to the donkia pass is by a path well selected amongst immense angular masses of rock, and over vast piles of debris: the strike on this, the north face, was again north-east, and dip north-west: i arrived at the top at 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 , 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 th, 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 , feet, whereas immediately to the north of the same mountain there was none at , 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 . per cent. in volume of oxygen; whereas his repeated analysis of the air of calcutta gives 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 degrees or degrees lower. the minimum thermometer fell to degrees, being degrees lower than it ever fell in september. we descended to yeumtong in a cold drizzle, arriving by sunset; we remained through the following day, hoping to explore the lower glacier on the opposite side of the valley: which, however, the weather entirely prevented. i have before mentioned (chapter xxiii) that in descending in autumn from the drier and more sunny rearward sikkim valleys, the vegetation is found to be most backward in the lowest and dampest regions. on this occasion, i found asters, grasses, polygonums, and other plants that were withered, brown, and seeding at momay ( , to , feet), at yeumtong ( , feet) green and unripe; and 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:-- , to , feet, _r. nivale_ flowers in july; fruits in september= months. , to , feet, _r. anthopogon_ flowers in june; fruits in oct.= months. , to , feet, _r. campanulatum_ flowers in may; fruits in nov.= months. , to , feet, _r. argenteum_ flowers in april; fruits in dec.= months. and so it is with many species of _compositae_ and _umbelliferae,_ and indeed of all natural orders, some of which i have on the same day gathered in ripe fruit at , to , feet, and found still in flower at to , feet. the brighter skies and more powerful and frequent solar radiation at the greater elevations, account for this apparent inversion of the order of nature.* [the distribution of the seasons at different elevations in the himalaya gives rise to some anomalies that have puzzled naturalists. from the middle of october to that of may, vegetation is torpid above , feet, and indeed almost uniformly covered with snow. from november till the middle of april, vegetation is also torpid above , 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 feet, the earliest appearance of spring at dorjiling ( 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; 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 feet in may, are not so forward at , feet till june, nor at , feet till july. after august, however, the reverse holds good; then the vegetation is as forward at , feet as at 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 , , and november below , 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 , feet: brambles, strange as it may appear, do not ascend beyond that elevation in the sikkim himalaya, though so abundant below it, both in species and individuals, and though so typical of northern europe. at lachoong we found all the yaks that had been grazing till the end of september at the higher elevations, and the phipun presented our men with one of a gigantic size, and proportionally old and tough. the lepchas barbarously slaughtered it with arrows, and feasted on the flesh and entrails, singed and fried the skin, and made soup of the bones, leaving nothing but the horns and hoofs. having a fine day, they prepared some as jerked meat, cutting it into thin strips, which they dried on the rocks. this (called "schat-chew," dried meat) is a very common and favourite food in tibet, i found it palatable; but on the other hand, the dried saddles of mutton, of which they boast so much, taste so strongly of tallow, that i found it impossible to swallow a morsel of them.* [raw dried split fish are abundantly cured (without salt) in tibet; they are caught in the yaru and great lakes of ramchoo, dobtah, and yarbru, and are chiefly carp, and allied fish, which attain a large size. it is one of the most remarkable facts in the zoology of asia, that no trout or salmon inhabits any of the rivers that debouche into the indian ocean (the so-called himalayan trout is a species of carp). this widely distributed natural order of fish (_salmonidae_) is however, found in the oxus, and in all the rivers of central asia that flow north and west, and the _salmo orientalis,_ m'clelland ("calcutta journ. nat. hist." iii., p. ), was caught by mr. griffith (journals, p. ) 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 , to , feet elevation: below that fish abound, but i believe invariably of different species from those found at the sources of the same rivers. the nature of the tropical ocean into which all the himalayan rivers debouche, is no doubt the proximate cause of the absence of _salmonidae._ sir john richardson (fishes of china seas, etc., "in brit. ass. rep. etc."), says that no species of the order has been found in the chinese or eastern asiatic seas.] we staid two days at lachoong, two of my lads being again laid up with fever; one of them had been similarly attacked at the same place nearly two months before: the other lad had been repeatedly ill since june, and at all elevations. both cases were returns of a fever caught in the low unhealthy valleys some months previously, and excited by exposure and hardship. the vegetation at lachoong was still beautiful, and the weather mild, though snow had descended to , feet on tunkra. _compositae_ were abundantly in flower, apples in young fruit, bushes of _cotoneaster_ covered with scarlet berries, and the brushwood silvery with the feathery heads of _clematis._ i here found that i had lost a thermometer for high temperatures, owing to a hole in the bag in which cheytoong carried those of my instruments which were in constant use. it had been last used at the hot springs of the kinchinjhow glacier; and the poor lad was so concerned at his mishap, that he came to me soon afterwards, with his blanket on his back, and a few handfuls of rice in a bag, to make his salaam before setting out to search for it. there was not now a single inhabitant between lachoong and that dreary spot, and strongly against my wish he started, without a companion. three days afterwards he overtook us at keadom, radiant with joy at having found the instrument: he had gone up to the hot springs, and vainly sought around them that evening; then rather than lose the chance of a day-light search on his way back, he had spent the cold october night in the hot water, without fire or shelter, at , feet above the sea. next morning his search was again fruitless; and he was returning disconsolate, when he descried the brass case glistening between two planks of the bridge crossing the river at momay, over which torrent the instrument was suspended. the lepchas have generally been considered timorous of evil spirits, and especially averse to travelling at night, even in company. however little this gallant lad may have been given to superstition, he was nevertheless a lepcha, born in a warm region, and had never faced the cold till he became my servant; and it required a stout heart and an honest one, to spend a night in so awful a solitude as that which reigns around the foot of the kinchinjhow glacier.* [the fondness of natives for hot springs wherever they occur is very natural and has been noticed by humboldt, "pers. narr." iv. , who states that on christianity being introduced into iceland, the natives refused to be baptised in any but the water of the geysers. i have mentioned at chapter xxii the uses to which the yeumtong hot springs are put; and the custom of using artificial hot baths is noticed at vol. i., chapter xiii.] the villagers at keadom, where we slept on the th, were busy cutting the crops of millet, maize, and _amaranthus._ a girl who, on my way down the previous month, had observed my curiosity about a singular variety of the maize, had preserved the heads on their ripening, and now brought them to me. the peaches were all gathered, and though only half ripe, were better than dorjiling produce. a magnificent tree of _bucklandia,_ one of the most beautiful evergreens in sikkim, grew near this village; it had a trunk twenty-one feet seven inches in girth, at five feet from the ground, and was unbranched for forty feet.* [this superb tree is a great desideratum in our gardens; i believe it would thrive in the warm west of england. its wood is brown, and not valuable as timber, but the thick, bright, glossy, evergreen foliage is particularly handsome, and so is the form of the crown. it is also interesting in a physiological point of view, from the woody fibre being studded with those curious microscopic discs so characteristic of pines, and which when occurring on fossil wood are considered conclusive as to the natural family to which such woods belong. geologists should bear in mind that not only does the whole natural order to which _bucklandia_ belongs, possess this character, but also various species of _magnoliaceae_ found in india, australia, borneo, and south america.] ferns and the beautiful air-plant _coelogyne wallichii_ grew on its branches, with other orchids, while _clematis_ and _stauntonia_ climbed the trunk. such great names (buckland, staunton, and wallich) thus brought before the traveller's notice, never failed to excite lively and pleasing emotions: it is the ignorant and unfeeling alone who can ridicule the association of the names of travellers and naturalists with those of animals and plants. we arrived at choongtam (for the fourth time) at noon, and took up our quarters in a good house near the temple. the autumn and winter flowering plants now prevailed here, such as _labiatae,_ which are generally late at this elevation; and grasses, which, though rare in the damp forest regions, are so common on these slopes that i here gathered twenty-six kinds. i spent a day here in order to collect seeds of the superb rhododendrons* [these rhododendrons are now all flourishing at kew and elsewhere: they are _r. dalhousiae, arboreum, maddeni, edgeworthii, aucklandii_ and _virgatum._] which i had discovered in may, growing on the hills behind. the ascent was now difficult, from the length of the wiry grass, which rendered the slopes so slippery that it was impossible to ascend without holding on by the tussocks. a ragged tibetan mendicant (phud) was amusing the people: he put on a black mask with cowrie shells for eyes, and danced uncouth figures with a kind of heel and toe shuffle, in excellent time, to rude tibetan songs of his own: for this he received ample alms, which a little boy collected in a wallet. these vagrants live well upon charity; they bless, curse, and transact little affairs of all kinds up and down the valleys of sikkim and tibet; this one dealt in red clay teapots, sheep and puppies. we found meepo at choongtam: i had given him leave (when here last) to go back to the rajah, and to visit his wife; and he had returned with instructions to conduct me to the chola and yakla passes, in eastern sikkim. these passes, like that of tunkra (chapter xxii), lead over the chola range to that part of tibet which is interposed between sikkim and bhotan. my road lay past the rajah's residence, which we considered very fortunate, as apparently affording campbell an opportunity of a conference with his highness, for which both he and the tchebu lama were most anxious. on the way down the lachen-lachoong, we found the valley still flooded (as described at chapters xviii and xxx), and the alders standing with their trunks twelve feet under water; but the shingle dam was now dry and hard: it would probably soften, and be carried away by the first rains of the following year. i left here the temperate flora of northern sikkim, tropical forms commencing to appear: of these the nettle tribe were most numerous in the woods. a large grape, with beautiful clusters of round purple berries, was very fair eating; it is not the common vine of europe, which nevertheless is probably an himalayan plant, the _vitis indica._* [the origin of the common grape being unknown, it becomes a curious question to decide whether the himalayan _vitis indica_ is the wild state of that plant: an hypothesis strengthened by the fact of bacchus, etc., having come from the east.] illustration--tietan phud. at chakoong the temperature of the river, which in may was degrees, was now . degrees at 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 th of october. the road by which i had come up was for half the distance obliterated in most parts by landslips,* [i took a number of dips and strikes of the micaceous rocks: the strike of these was as often north-east as north-west; it was ever varying, and the strata were so disturbed, as materially to increase the number and vast dimensions of the landslips.] but they were hard and dry, and the leeches were gone. bad weather, and campbell's correspondence with the durbar, who prevented all communication with the rajah, detained us here two days, after which we crossed to the teesta valley, and continued along its east bank to tucheam, feet above the river. we obtained a magnificent view of the east face of kinchinjunga, its tops bearing respectively n. degrees w., and n. degrees w.: the south slope of the snowed portion in profile was degrees, and of the north degrees; but both appeared much steeper to the eye, when unaided by an instrument. the great shrubby nettle (_urtica crenulata_) is common here: this plant, called "mealum-ma," attains fifteen feet in height; it has broad glossy leaves, and though apparently without stings, is held in so great dread,* [the stinging hairs are microscopic, and confined to the young shoots, leaf and flower-stalks. leschenault de la tour describes being stung by this nettle on three fingers of his hand only at the calcutta botanical gardens, and the subsequent sneezing and running at the nose, followed by tetanic symptoms and two days' suffering, nor did the effects disappear for nine days. it is a remarkable fact that the plant stings violently only at this season. i frequently gathered it with impunity on subsequent occasions, and suspected some inaccuracy in my observations; but in silhet both dr. thomson and i experienced the same effects in autumn. endlicher ("lindley's vegetable kingdom") attributes the causticity of nettle-juice to bicarbonate of ammonia, which dr. thomson and i ascertained was certainly not present in this species.] that i had difficulty in getting help to cut it down. i gathered many specimens without allowing any part to touch my skin; still the scentless effluvium was so powerful, that mucous matter poured from my eyes and nose all the rest of the afternoon, in such abundance, that i had to hold my head over a basin for an hour. the sting is very virulent, producing inflammation; and to punish a child with "mealum-ma" is the severest lepcha threat. violent fevers and death have been said to ensue from its sting; but this i very much doubt. illustration--tibetan implements. tea-pot, cup, and brick of tea; knife, tobacco-pipe (across chop-sticks, pouch, and flint-and-steel. chapter xxv. journey to the rajah's residence at tumloong -- ryott valley -- rajah's house -- tupgain lama -- lagong nunnery -- phadong goompa -- phenzong ditto -- lepcha sepoys -- proceedings at tumloong -- refused admittance to rajah -- women's dresses -- meepo's and tchebu lama's families -- chapel -- leave for chola pass -- ryott river -- rungpo, view from -- deputation of kajees, etc. -- conference -- laghep -- eatable fruit of _decaisnia_ -- _cathcartia_ -- rhododendrons -- phieung-goong -- pines -- rutto river -- barfonchen -- curling of rhododendron leaf -- woodcock -- chola pass -- -- small lakes -- tibet guard and sepoys -- dingpun -- arrival of sikkim sepoys -- their conduct -- meet singtam soubah -- chumanako -- we are seized by the soubah's party -- soubah's conduct -- dingpun tinli -- treatment of dr. campbell -- bound and guarded -- separated from campbell -- marched to tumloong -- motives for such conduct -- arrive at rungpo -- at phadong -- presents from rajah -- visits of lama -- of singtam soubah -- i am cross-questioned by amlah -- confined with campbell -- seizure of my coolies -- threats of attacking dorjiling. we started on the rd of november for tumloong (or sikkim durbar), dr. campbell sending tchebu lama forward with letters to announce his approach. a steep ascent, through large trees of _rhododendron arboreum,_ led over a sharp spur of mica-schist (strike north-west and dip north-east), beyond which the whole bay-like valley of the ryott opened before us, presenting one of the most lovely and fertile landscapes in sikkim. it is ten miles long, and three or four broad, flanked by lofty mountains, and its head girt by the beautiful snowy range of chola, from which silvery rills descend through black pine-woods, dividing innumerable converging cultivated spurs, and uniting about feet below us, in a profound gorge. everywhere were scattered houses, purple crops of buckwheat, green fields of young wheat, yellow millet, broad green plantains, and orange groves. we crossed spur after spur, often under or over precipices about fifteen hundred feet above the river, proceeding eastwards to the village of rangang, whence we caught sight of the rajah's house. it was an irregular low stone building of tibetan architecture, with slanting walls and small windows high up under the broad thatched roof, above which, in the middle, was a chinese-looking square copper-gilt canopy, with projecting eaves and bells at the corners, surmounted by a ball and square spire. on either gable of the roof was a round-topped cylinder of gilded copper, something like a closed umbrella; this is a very frequent and characteristic boodhist ornament, and is represented in turner's plate of the mausoleum of teshoo lama ("tibet" plate xi.); indeed the rajah's canopy at tumloong is probably a copy of the upper part of the building there represented, having been built by architects from teshoo loombo. it was surrounded by chaits, mendongs, poles with banners, and other religious erections; and though beautifully situated on a flat terrace overlooking the valley, we were much disappointed with its size and appearance. on the brow of the hill behind was the large red goompa of the tupgain lama, the late heir-apparent to the temporal and spiritual authority in sikkim; and near it a nunnery called lagong, the lady abbess of which is a daughter of the rajah, who, with the assistance of sisters, keeps an enormous mani, or praying-cylinder, revolving perpetually to the prayer of "om mani padmi hom." on this side was a similar spur, on which the gilded pinnacles and copper canopy of the phadong* [phadong means royal, and this temple answers to a chapel royal for the rajah.] goompa gleamed through the trees. at a considerable distance across the head of the valley was still a third goompa, that of phenzong. we were met by a large party of armed lepchas, dressed in blue and white striped kirtles, broad loose scarlet jackets; and the little bamboo wattle hat lined with talc, and surmounted by a peacock's feather; they escorted us to the village, and then retired. we encamped a few hundred feet below the rajah's house, and close by those of meepo and the tchebu lama's family, who are among the oldest and most respectable of tibetan origin in sikkim. the population on this, the north side of the ryott, consists principally of sikkim bhoteeas and tibetans, while the opposite is peopled by lepchas. crowds came to see us, and many brought presents, with which we were overwhelmed; but we could not help remarking that our cordial greetings were wholly from the older families attached to the rajah, and from the lamas; none proceeded from the dewan's relatives or friends, nor therefore any in the name of the rajah himself, or of the sikkim government. tchebu lama vainly used every endeavour to procure for us an audience with his highness; who was surrounded by his councillors, or amlah, all of whom were adherents of the dewan, who was in tibet. my man meepo, and the tchebu lama; who were ordered to continue in official attendance upon us, shrugged their shoulders, but could suggest no remedy. on the following morning campbell was visited by many parties, amongst whom were the lama's family, and that of the late dewan (ilam sing), who implored us to send again to announce our presence, and not to dismiss at once the moonshie and his office,* [it is usual in india for government officers when about to transact business, to travel with a staff (called office) of native interpreters, clerks, etc., of whom the chief is commonly called moonchie.] who had accompanied us for the purpose of a conference with the rajah. their wishes were complied with, and we waited till noon before proceeding. illustration--tchebu lama. a gay and animated scene was produced by the concourse of women, dressed in their pretty striped and crossed cloaks, who brought tokens of good-will. amongst them meepo's wife appeared conspicuous from the large necklaces* [the lumps of amber forming these (called "poshea") were larger than the fist: they are procured in east tibet, probably from birmah.] and amulets, corals, and silver filagree work, with which her neck and shoulders were loaded: she wore on her head a red tiara ("patuk") bedizened with seed pearls and large turquoises, and a gold fillet of filagree bosses united by a web of slender chains; her long tails were elaborately plaited, and woven with beads, and her cloak hooked in front by a chain of broad silver links studded with turquoises. white silk scarfs, the emblem of peace and friendship, were thrown over our hands by each party; and rice, eggs, fowls, kids, goats, and murwa beer, poured in apace, to the great delight of our servants. we returned two visits of ceremony, one to meepo's house, a poor cottage, to which we carried presents of chintz dresses for his two little girls, who were busy teazing their hair with cylindrical combs, formed of a single slender joint of bamboo slit all round half-way up into innumerable teeth. our other visit was paid to the lama's family, who inhabited a large house not far from the rajah's. the lower story was an area enclosed by stone walls, into which the cattle, etc., were driven. an outside stone stair led to the upper story, where we were received by the head of the family, accompanied by a great concourse of lamas. he conducted us to a beautiful little oratory at one end of the building, fitted up like a square temple, and lighted with latticed windows, covered with brilliant and tasteful paintings by lhassan artists. the beams of the ceiling were supported by octagonal columns painted red, with broad capitals. everywhere the lotus, the mani, and the chirki (or wheel with three rays, emblematic of the boodhist trinity), were introduced; "om mani padmi hom" in gilt letters, adorned the projecting end of every beam;* [a mythical animal with a dog's head and blood-red spot over the forehead was not uncommon in this chapel, and is also seen in the sikkim temples and throughout tibet. ermann, in his siberian travels, mentions it as occurring in the khampa lama's temple at maimao chin; he conjectures it to have been the cyclops of the greeks, which according to the homeric myth had a mark on the forehead, instead of an eye. the glory surrounding the heads of tibetan deities is also alluded to by ermann, who recognises in it the nimbus of the ancients, used to protect the heads of statues from the weather, and from being soiled by birds; and adds that the glory of the ancient masters in painting was no doubt introduced into the byzantine school from the boodhists.] and the chinese "cloud messenger," or winged dragon, floated in azure and gold along the capitals and beams, amongst scrolls and groups of flowers. at one end was a sitting figure of gorucknath in lama robes, surrounded by a glory, with mitre and beads; the right hand holding the dorje, and the forefinger raised in prayer. around was a good library of books. more presents were brought here, and tea served. illustration--clasp of a woman's cloak. the route to chola pass, which crosses the range of that name south of the chola peak ( , feet) at the head of this valley, is across the ryott, and then eastwards along a lofty ridge. campbell started at noon, and i waited behind with meepo, who wished me to see the rajah's dwelling, to which we therefore ascended; but, to my guide's chagrin, we were met and turned back by a scribe, or clerk, of the amlah. we were followed by a messenger, apologising and begging me to return; but i had already descended feet, and felt no inclination to reascend the hill, especially as there did not appear to be anything worth seeing. soon after i had overtaken campbell, he was accosted by an excessively dirty fellow, who desired him to return for a conference with the amlah; this was of course declined, but, at the same time, campbell expressed his readiness to receive the amlah at our halting place. the ryott flows in a very tropical gorge feet above the sea; from the proximity of the snowy mountains, its temperature was only . degrees. thence the ascent is very steep to rungpo, where we took up our quarters at a rest house at an height of feet. this road is well kept, and hence onwards is traversed yearly by the rajah on his way to his summer residence of choombi, two marches beyond the cbola pass; whither he is taken to avoid the sikkim rains, which are peculiarly disagreeable to tibetans. rungpo commands a most beautiful view northwards, across the valley, of the royal residence, temples, goompas, hamlets, and cultivation, scattered over spurs that emerge from the forest, studded below with tree-ferns and plantains, and backed by black pine-woods and snowy mountains. in the evening the amlah arrived to confer with campbell; at first there was a proposal of turning us out of the house, in which there was plenty of room besides, but as we declined to move, except by his highness's order, they put up in houses close by. on the following morning they met us as we were departing for chola pass, bringing large presents in the name of the rajah, and excuses on their and his part for having paid us no respect at tumloong, saying, that it was not the custom to receive strangers till after they had rested a day, that they were busy preparing a suitable reception, etc.; this was all false, and contrary to etiquette, but there was no use in telling them so. campbell spoke firmly and kindly to them, and pointed out their incivility and the unfriendly tone of their whole conduct. they then desired campbell to wait and discuss business affairs with them; this was out of the question, and he assured them that he was ever ready to do so with the rajah, that he was now (as he had informed his highness) on his way with me to the chola and yakla passes, and that we had, for want of coolies, left some loads behind us, which, if they were really friendly, they would forward. this they did, and so we parted; they (contrary to expectation) making no objection to campbell's proceeding with me. a long march up a very steep, narrow ridge took us by a good road to laghep, a stone resting-house (alt. , feet) on a very narrow flat. i had abundance of occupation in gathering rhododendron-seeds, of which i procured twenty-four kinds* [these occurred in the following order in ascending, commencing at feet.-- . _r. dalhousiae_; . _r. vaccinioides_; . _r. camelliaeflorwm_; . _r. arboreum._ above feet:-- . _r. argenteum_; . _r. falconeri_; . _r. barbatum_; . _r. campbelliae_; . _r. edgeworthii_; . _r. niveum_; . _r. thomsoni_; . _r. cinnabarinum_; . _r. glaucum._ above , feet:-- . _r. lanatum_; . _r. virgatum_; . _r. campylocarpum_; . _r. ciliatum_; . _r. hodgsoni_; . _r. campanulatum._ above , feet:-- . _r. lepidotum_; . _r. fulgens_; . _r. wightianum_; . _r. anthopogon_; . _r. setosum._] on this and the following day. a very remarkable plant, which i had seen in flower in the lachen valley, called "loodoo-ma" by the bhoteeas, and "nomorchi" by lepchas, grew on the ridge at feet; it bears a yellow fruit like short cucumbers, full of a soft, sweet, milky pulp, and large black seeds; it belongs to a new genus,* [this genus, for which dr. thomson and i, in our "flora indies," have proposed the name _decaisnea_ (in honour of my friend professor j. decaisne, the eminent french botanist), has several straight, stick-like, erect branches from the root, which bear spreading pinnated leaves, two feet long, standing out horizontally. the flowers are uni-sexual, green, and in racemes, and the fruits, of which two or three grow together, are about four inches long, and one in diameter. all the other plants of the natural order to which it belongs, are climbers.] allied to _stauntonia,_ of which two himalayan kinds produce similar, but less agreeable edible fruits ("kole-pot," lepcha). at laghep, iris was abundant, and a small bushy berberry (_b. concinna_) with oval eatable berries. the north wall of the house (which was in a very exposed spot) was quite bare, while the south was completely clothed with moss and weeds. the rocks above laghep were gneiss; below it, mica-schist, striking north-west, and dipping north-east, at a high angle. a beautiful yellow poppy-like plant grew in clefts at , feet; it has flowered in england, from seeds which i sent home, and bears the name of _cathcartia._* [see "botanical magazine," for . the name was given in honour of the memory of my friend, the late j. f. cathcart, esq., of the bengal civil service. this gentleman was devoted to the pursuit of botany, and caused a magnificent series of drawings of dorjiling plants to be made by native artists during his residence there. this collection is now deposited at kew, through the liberality of his family, and it is proposed to publish a selection from the plates, as a tribute to his memory. mr. cathcart, after the expiration of his indian service, returned to europe, and died at lausanne on his way to england.] we continued, on the following morning, in an easterly direction, up the same narrow steep ridge, to a lofty eminence called phieung-goong (alt. , feet), from being covered with the phieung, or small bamboo. _abies webbiana_ begins here, and continues onwards, but, as on tonglo, mainom, and the other outer wetter sikkim ranges, there is neither larch, _pinus excelsa, abies smithiana,_ or _a. brunoniana._ hence we followed an oblique descent of , feet, to the bed of the rutto river, through thick woods of pines and _rhododendron hodgsoni,_ which latter, on our again ascending, was succeeded by the various alpine kinds. we halted at barfonchen (alt. , feet), a stone-but in the silver-fir forest. some yaks were grazing in the vicinity, and from their herdsman we learnt that the dewan was at choombi, on the road to yakla; he had kept wholly out of the way during the summer, directing every unfriendly action to be pursued towards myself and the government by the amlah, consisting of his brothers and relatives, whom he left at tumloong. the night was brilliant and starlight: the minimum thermometer fell to degrees, a strong north-east wind blew down the valley, and there was a thick hoar-frost, with which the black yaks were drolly powdered. the broad leaves of _r. hodgsoni_ were curled, from the expansion of the frozen fluid in the layer of cells on the upper surface of the leaf, which is exposed to the greatest cold of radiation. the sun restores them a little, but as winter advances, they become irrecoverably cured, and droop at the ends of the branches. we left barfonchen on the th november, and ascended the river, near which we put up a woodcock. emerging from the woods at chumanako (alt. , feet), where there is another stone hut, the mountains become bleak, bare, and stony, and the rocks are all moutonneed by ancient glaciers. at , feet the ground was covered with ice, and all the streams were frozen. crossing several rocky ledges, behind which were small lakes, a gradual ascent led to the summit of the chola pass, a broad low depression, , feet above the sea, wholly bare of snow. campbell had preceded me, and i found him conversing with some tibetans, who told him that there was no road hence to yakla, and that we should not be permitted to go to choombi. as the chinese guard was posted in the neighbourhood, he accompanied one of the tibetans to see the commandant, whilst i remained taking observations. the temperature was degrees, with a violent, biting, dry east wind. the rocks were gneiss, striking north-east, and horizontal, or dipping north-west. the scanty vegetation consisted chiefly of grass and _sibbaldia._ in about an hour meepo and some of my people came up and asked for campbell, for whom the tchebu lama was waiting below: the lama had remained at rungpo, endeavouring to put matters on a better footing with the amlah. wishing to see the tibet guard myself, i accompanied the two remaining tibetans down a steep valley with cliffs on either hand, for several hundred feet, when i was overtaken by some sikkim sepoys in red jackets, who wanted to turn me back forcibly: i was at a loss to understand their conduct, and appealed to the tibetan sepoys, who caused them to desist. about feet down i found campbell, with a body of about ninety tibetans, a few of whom were armed with matchlocks, and the rest with bows and arrows. they were commanded by a dingpun, a short swarthy man, with a flat-crowned cap with floss-silk hanging all round, and a green glass button in front; he wore a loose scarlet jacket, broadly edged with black velvet, and having great brass buttons of the indian naval uniform; his subaltern was similarly dressed, but his buttons were those of the th bengal infantry. the commandant having heard of our wish to go round by choombi, told campbell that he had come purposely to inform him that there was no road that way to yakla; he was very polite, ordering his party to rise and salute me when i arrived, and doing the same when we both left. on our return we were accompanied by the dingpun of the tibetans and a few of his people, and were soon met by more sikkim sepoys, who said they were sent from the durbar, to bring campbell back to transact business; they behaved very rudely, and when still half a mile from the sikkim frontier, jostled him and feigned to draw their knives, and one of them pointed a spear-headed bow to his breast. campbell defended himself with a stick, and remonstrated with them on their rudeness; and i, who had nothing but a barometer in my hand, called up the tibetans. the dingpun came instantly, and driving the sikkim people forward, escorted us to the frontier, where he took an inscribed board from the chait, and showing us the great vermilion seal of the emperor of china (or more probably of the lhassan authorities) on one side, and two small brown ones of the sikkim rajah on the other; and giving us to understand that here his jurisdiction ceased, he again saluted and left us. on descending, i was surprised to meet the singtam soubah, whom i had not seen since leaving tungu; he was seated on a rock, and i remarked that he looked ashy pale and haggard, and that he salaamed to me only, and not to campbell; and that tchebu lama, who was with him, seemed very uncomfortable. the soubah wanted campbell to stop for a conference, which at such a time, and in such a wind, was impossible, so he followed us to chumanako, where we proposed to pass the night. a great party of sikkim bhoteeas had assembled here, all strangers to me: i certainly thought the concourse unusually large, and the previous conduct to campbell, strange, rude, and quite unintelligible, especially before the tibetans. but the bhoteeas were always a queer, and often insolent people,* [captain pemberton during his mission to bhotan was repeatedly treated with the utmost insolence by the officials in that country (see griffith's journal). my sirdar, nimbo, himself a native of bhotan, saw a good deal of the embassy when there, and told me many particulars as to the treatment to which it had been subjected, and the consequent low estimation in which both the ambassadors themselves and the government whom they represented were held in bhotan.] whom i was long ago tired of trying to understand, and they might have wanted to show off before their neighbours; and such was the confidence with which my long travels amongst them had inspired me, that the possibility of danger or violence never entered my head. we went into the hut, and were resting ourselves on a log at one end of it, when, the evening being very cold, the people crowded in; on which campbell went out, saying, that we had better leave the hut to them, and that he would see the tents pitched. he had scarcely left, when i heard him calling loudly to me, "hooker! hooker! the savages are murdering me!" i rushed to the door, and caught sight of him striking out with his fists, and struggling violently; being tall and powerful, he had already prostrated a few, but, a host of men bore him down, and appeared to be trampling on him; at the same moment i was myself seized by eight men, who forced me back into the hut, and down on the log, where they held me in a sitting posture, pressing me against the wall; here i spent a few moments of agony, as i heard my friend's stifled cries grow fainter and fainter. i struggled but little, and that only at first, for at least five-and-twenty men crowded round and laid their hands upon me, rendering any effort to move useless; they were, however, neither angry nor violent, and signed to me to keep quiet. i retained my presence of mind, and felt comfort in remembering that i saw no knives used by the party who fell on campbell, and that if their intentions had been murderous, an arrow would have been the more sure and less troublesome weapon. it was evident that the whole animus was directed against campbell, and though at first alarmed on my own account, all the inferences which, with the rapidity of lightning my mind involuntarily drew, were favourable. after a few minutes, three persons came into the hut, and seated themselves opposite to me: i only recognised two of them; namely, the singtam soubah, pale, trembling like a leaf, and with great drops of sweat trickling from his greasy brow; and the tchebu lama, stolid, but evidently under restraint, and frightened. the former ordered the men to leave hold of me, and to stand guard on either side, and, in a violently agitated manner, he endeavoured to explain that campbell was a prisoner by the orders of the rajah, who was dissatisfied with his conduct as a government officer, during the past twelve years; and that he was to be taken to the durbar and confined till the supreme government at calcutta should confirm such articles as he should be compelled to subscribe to; he also wanted to know from me how campbell would be likely to behave. i refused to answer any questions till i should be informed why i was myself made prisoner; on which he went away, leaving me still guarded. my own sirdar then explained that campbell had been knocked down, tied hand and foot, and taken to his tent, and that all his coolies were also bound, our captors claiming them as sikkimites, and subjects of the rajah. shortly afterwards the three returned, the soubah looking more spectral than ever, and still more violently agitated, and i thought i perceived that whatever were his plans, he had failed in them. he asked me what view the governor-general would take of this proceeding? and receiving no answer, he went off with the tchebu lama, and left me with the third individual. the latter looked steadily at me for some time, and then asked if i did not know him. i said i did not, when he gave his name as dingpun tinli, and i recognised in him one of the men whom the dewan had sent to conduct us to the top of mainom the previous year (see vol. i. chapter xiii). this opened my eyes a good deal, for he was known to be a right-hand man of the dewan's, and had within a few months been convicted of kidnapping two brahmin girls from nepal,* [this act as i have mentioned at v. i. chapter xv, was not only a violation of the british treaty, but an outrage on the religion of nepal. jung bahadoor demanded instant restitution, which campbell effected; thus incurring the dingpun's wrath, who lost, besides his prize, a good deal of money which the escapade cost him.] and had vowed vengeance against campbell for the duty he performed in bringing him to punishment. i was soon asked to go to my tent, which i found pitched close by; they refused me permission to see my fellow-prisoner, or to be near him, but allowed me to hang up my instruments, and arrange my collections. my guards were frequently changed during the night, lepchas often taking a turn; they repeatedly assured me that there was no complaint or ill-feeling against me, that the better classes in sikkim would be greatly ashamed of the whole affair, that tchebu lama was equally a prisoner, and that the grievances against campbell were of a political nature, but what they were they did not know. the night was very cold (thermometer degrees), and two inches of snow fell. i took as many of my party as i could into my tent, they having no shelter fit for such an elevation ( , feet) at this season. through the connivance of some of the people, i managed to correspond with campbell, who afterwards gave me the following account of the treatment he had received. he stated that on leaving the hut, he had been met by meepo, who told him the soubah had ordered his being turned out. a crowd of sepoys then fell on him and brought him to the ground, knocked him on the head, trampled on him, and pressed his neck down to his chest as he lay, as if endeavouring to break it. his feet were tied, and his arms pinioned behind, the wrist of the right hand being bound to the left arm above the elbow; the cords were then doubled, and he was violently shaken. the singtam soubah directed all this, which was performed chiefly by the dingpun tinli and jongpun sangabadoo.* [this was the other man sent with us to mainom, by the dewan, in the previous december.] after this the soubah came to me, as i have related; and returning, had campbell brought bound before him, and asked him, through tchebu lama, if he would write from dictation. the soubah was violent, excited, and nervous; tchebu lama scared. campbell answered, that if they continued torturing him (which was done by twisting the cords round his wrists by a bamboo-wrench), he might say or do anything, but that his government would not confirm any acts thus extorted. the soubah became still more violent, shook his bow in campbell's face, and drawing his hand significantly across his throat, repeated his questions, adding others, enquiring why he had refused to receive the lassoo kajee as vakeel, etc. (see chapter xviii). the soubah's people, meanwhile, gradually slunk away, seeing which he left campbell, who was taken to his tent. early next morning meepo was sent by the soubah, to ask whether i would go to yakla pass, or return to dorjiling, and to say that the rajah's orders had been very strict that i was not to be molested, and that i might proceed to whatever passes i wished to visit, whilst campbell was to be taken back to the durbar, to transact business. i was obliged to call upon the soubah and dingpun to explain their conduct of the previous day, which they declared arose from no ill-feeling, but simply from their fear of my interfering in campbell's behalf; they could not see what reason i had to complain, so long as i was neither hurt nor bound. i tried in vain to explain to them that they could not so play fast and loose with a british subject, and insisted that if they really considered me free, they should place me with campbell, under whose protection i considered myself, he being still the governor-general's agent. much discussion followed this: meepo urged me to go on to yakla, and leave these bad people; and the soubah and dingpun, who had exceeded their orders in laying hands on me, both wished me away. my course was, however, clear as to the propriety of keeping as close to campbell as i was allowed, so they reluctantly agreed to take me with him to the durbar. tchebu lama came to me soon afterwards, looking as stolid as ever, but with a gulping in his throat; he alone was glad i was going with them, and implored me to counsel campbell not to irritate the amlah by a refusal to accede to their dictates, in which case his life might be the forfeit. as to himself, the opposite faction had now got the mastery, there was nothing for it but to succumb, and his throat would surely be cut. i endeavoured to comfort him with the assurance that they dared not hurt campbell, and that this conduct of a party of ruffians, influenced by the dewan and their own private pique, did not represent his rajah's feelings and wishes, as he himself knew; but the poor fellow was utterly unnerved, and shaking hands warmly, with his eyes full of tears, he took his leave. we were summoned by the dingpun to march at a.m.: i demanded an interview with campbell first, which was refused; but i felt myself pretty safe, and insisting upon it, he was brought to me. he was sadly bruised about the head, arms, and wrists, walked very lame, and had a black eye to boot, but was looking stout and confident. i may here mention that seizing the representative of a neighbouring power and confining him till he shall have become amenable to terms, is a common practice along the tibet, sikkim, and bhotan frontiers. it had been resorted to in , by the bhotanese, under the instructions of the paro pilo, who waylaid the sikkim rajah when still in tibet, on his return from jigatzi, and beleagured him for two months, endeavouring to bring him to their terms about some border dispute; on this occasion the rajah applied to the british government for assistance, which was refused; and he was ultimately rescued by a tibetan force. in the present case the dewan issued orders that campbell was to be confined at tumloong till he himself should arrive there; and the rajah was kept in ignorance of the affair. the sepoys who met us on our approach to tumloong on the rd of november, were, i suspect, originally sent for the purpose; and i think that the amlah also had followed us to rungpo with the same object. their own extreme timidity, and the general good-feeling in the country towards campbell prevented its execution before, and, as a last resource, they selected the singtam soubah and dingpun tinli for the office, as being personally hostile to him. the dewan meanwhile being in tibet, and knowing that we were about to visit the frontier, for which i had full permission and escort, sent up the tibetan guard, hoping to embroil them in the affair; in this he failed, and it drew upon him the anger of the lhassan authorities.* [in the following summer ( ), when the rajah, dewan, and soubah, repaired to choombi, the lhassan authorities sent a commissioner to inquire into the affair, understanding that the dewan had attempted to embroil the tibetans in it. the commissioner asked the rajah why he had committed such an outrage on the representative of the british government, under whose protection he was; thus losing his territory, and bringing english troops so near the tibet frontier. the rajah answered that he never did anything of the kind; that he was old and infirm, and unable to transact all his affairs; that the mischief had arisen out of the acts and ignorance of others, and finally begged the commissioner to investigate the whole affair, and satisfy himself about it. during the inquiry that followed, the dewan threw all the blame on the tibetans, who, he said were alone implicated: this assertion was easily disproved, and on the conclusion of the inquiry the commissioner railed vehemently at the dewan, saying:--"you tried to put this business on the people of my country; it is an abominable lie. you did it yourselves, and no one else. the company is a great monarchy; you insulted it, and it has taken its revenge. if you, or any other tibetan, ever again cause a rupture with the english, you shall be taken with ropes round your necks to pekin, there to undergo the just punishment of your offence under the sentence of the mighty emperor."] the soubah, in endeavouring to extort the new treaty by force, and the dingpun, who had his own revenge to gratify, exceeded their instructions in using violence towards campbell, whom the dewan ordered should be simply taken and confined; they were consequently disgraced, long before we were released, and the failure of the stratagem thrown upon their shoulders. during the march down to laghep, campbell was treated by the dingpun's men with great rudeness: i kept as near as i was allowed, quietly gathering rhododendron seeds by the way. at the camping-ground we were again separated, at which i remonstrated with the dingpun, also complaining of his people's insolent behaviour towards their prisoner, which he promised should be discontinued. the next day we reached rungpo, where we halted for further instructions: our tents were placed apart, but we managed to correspond by stealth. on the th of november we were conducted to tumloong: a pony was brought for me, but i refused it, on seeing that campbell was treated with great indignity, and obliged to follow at the tail of the mule ridden by the dingpun, who thus marched him in triumph up to the village. i was taken to a house at phadong, and my fellow traveller was confined in another at some distance to the eastward, a stone's throw below the rajah's; and thrust into a little cage-like room. i was soon visited by an old lama, who assured me that we were both perfectly safe, but that there were many grievances against campbell. the soubah arrived shortly after, bringing me compliments, nominally in the rajah's name, and a substantial present, consisting of a large cow, sheep, fowls, a brick of tea, bags of rice, flour, butter, eggs, and a profusion of vegetables. i refused to take them on the friendly terms on which they were brought, and only accepted them as provisions during my detention. i remonstrated again about our separation, and warned the soubah of the inevitable consequence of this outrage upon the representative of a friendly power, travelling under the authority of his own government, unarmed and without escort: he was greatly perplexed, and assured me that campbell's detention was only temporary, because he had not given satisfaction to the rajah, and as the latter could not get answers to his demands from calcutta in less than a month, it was determined to keep him till then; but to send me to dorjiling. he returned in the evening to tell me that campbell's men (with the exception only of the ghorkas* [these people stood in far greater fear of the nepalese than of the english, and the reason is obvious: the former allow no infraction of their rights to pass unnoticed, whereas we had permitted every article of our treaty to be contravened.]) had been seized, because they were runaway slaves from sikkim; but that i need not alarm myself, for mine should be untouched. the hut being small, and intolerably dirty, i pitched my tent close by, and lived in it for seven days: i was not guarded, but so closely watched, that i could not go out for the most trifling purpose, except under surveillance. they were evidently afraid of my escaping; i was however treated with civility, but forbidden to communicate either with campbell or with dorjiling. the soubah frequently visited me, always protesting i was no prisoner, that campbell's seizure was a very trifling affair, and the violence employed all a mistake. he always brought presents, and tried to sound me about the government at calcutta. on the th he paid his last visit, looking wofully dejected, being out of favour at court, and dismissed to his home: he referred me to meepo for all future communications to the rajah, and bade me a most cordial farewell, which i regretted being unable to return with any show of kind feeling. poor fellow! he had staked his last, and lost it, when he undertook to seize the agent of the most powerful government in the east, and to reduce him to the condition of a tool of the dewan. despite the many obstructions he had placed in my way, we had not fallen out since july; we had been constant companions, and though at issue, never at enmity. i had impeached him, and my grievances had been forwarded to the rajah with a demand for his punishment, but he never seemed to owe me a grudge for that, knowing the rajah's impotence as compared with the power of the dewan whom he served; and, in common with all his party, presuming on the unwillingness of the british government to punish. on the th of november i was hurriedly summoned by meepo to the phadong temple, where i was interrogated by the amlah, as the rajah's councillors (in this instance the dewan's adherents) are called. i found four china mats placed on a stone bench, on one of which i was requested to seat myself, the others being occupied by the dewan's elder brother, a younger brother of the gangtok kajee (a man of some wealth), and an old lama: the conference took place in the open air and amongst an immense crowd of lamas, men, women, and children. i took the initiative (as i made a point of doing on all such occasions) and demanded proper interpreters, which were refused; and the amlah began a rambling interrogatory in tibetan, through my lepcha sirdar pakshok, who spoke very little tibetan or hindostanee, and my half-caste servant, who spoke as little english. the dewan's brother was very nervously counting his beads, and never raised his eyes while i kept mine steadily upon him. he suggested most of the queries, every one of which took several minutes, as he was constantly interrupted by the kajee, who was very fat and stupid: the lama scarcely spoke, and the bystanders never. my connection with the indian government was first enquired into; next they came to political matters, upon which i declined entering; but i gathered that their object was to oblige campbell to accept the lassoo kajee as vakeel, to alter the slavery laws, to draw a new boundary line with nepal, to institute direct communication between themselves and the governor-general,* [they were prompted to demand this by an unfortunate oversight that occurred at calcutta some years before. vakeels from the sikkim durbar repaired to that capital, and though unaccredited by the governor-general's agent at dorjiling, were (in the absence of the governor-general) received by the president of the council in open durbar. the effect was of course to reduce the governor-general's agent at dorjiling to a cipher.] and to engage that there should be no trade or communication between sikkim and india, except through the dewan: all of these subjects related to the terms of the original treaty between the rajah and the indian government. they told me they had sent these proposals to the government through dorjiling,* [these letters, which concluded with a line stating that campbell was detained at tumloong till favourable answers should be received, had arrived at dorjiling; but being written in tibetan, and containing matters into which no one but campbell could enter, they were laid on one side till his return. the interpreter did not read the last line, which stated that dr. campbell was detained till answers were received, and the fact of our capture and imprisonment therefore remained unknown for several weeks.] but had received no acknowledgment from the latter place, and they wanted to know the probable result at calcutta. as the only answer i could give might irritate them, i again declined giving any. lastly, they assured me that no blame was imputed to myself, that on the contrary i had been travelling under the rajah's protection, who rejoiced in my success, that i might have visited yakla pass as i had intended doing, but that preferring to accompany my friend, they had allowed me to do so, and that i might now either join him, or continue to live in my tent: of course i joyfully accepted the former proposal. after being refused permission to send a letter to dorjiling, except i would write in a character which they could read, i asked if they had anything more to say, and being answered in the negative, i was taken by meepo to campbell, heartily glad to end a parley which had lasted for an hour and a half. i found my friend in good health and spirits, strictly guarded in a small thatched hut, of bamboo wattle and clay: the situation was pretty, and commanded a view of the ryott valley and the snowy mountains; there were some picturesque chaits hard by, and a blacksmith's forge. our walks were confined to a few steps in front of the hut, and included a puddle and a spring of water. we had one black room with a small window, and a fire in the middle on a stone; we slept in the narrow apartment behind it, which was the cage in which campbell had been at first confined, and which exactly admitted us both, lying on the floor. two or three sepoys occupied an adjoining room, and had a peep-hole through the partition-wall. my gratification at our being placed together was damped by the seizure of all my faithful attendants except my own servant, and one who was a nepalese: the rest were bound, and placed in the stocks and close confinement, charged with being sikkim people who had no authority to take service in dorjiling. on the contrary they were all registered as british subjects, and had during my travels been recognised as such by the rajah and all his authorities. three times the soubah and others had voluntarily assured me that my person and people were inviolate; nor was there any cause for this outrage but the fear of their escaping with news to dorjiling, and possibly a feeling of irritation amongst the authorities at the failure of their schemes. meanwhile we were not allowed to write, and we heard that the bag of letters which we had sent before our capture had been seized and burnt. campbell greatly feared that they would threaten dorjiling with a night attack,* [threats of sacking dorjiling had on several previous occasions been made by the dewan, to the too great alarm of the inhabitants, who were ignorant of the timid and pacific disposition of the lepchas, and of the fact that there are not fifty muskets in the country, nor twenty men able to use them. on this occasion the threats were coupled with the report that we were murdered, and that the rajah had asked for , tibetan soldiers, who were being marched twenty-five days' journey over passes , feet high, and deep in snow, and were coming to drive the english out of sikkim! i need hardly observe that the tibetans (who have repeatedly refused to interfere on this side the snows) had no hand in the matter, or that, supposing they could collect that number of men in all tibet, it would be impossible to feed them for a week, there or in sikkim. such reports unfortunately spread a panic in dorjiling: the guards were called in from all the outposts, and the ladies huddled into one house, whilst the males stood on the defensive; to the great amusement of the amlah at tumloong, whose insolence to us increased proportionally.] as we heard that the lassoo kajee was stationed at namtchi with a party for that purpose, and all communication cut off, except through him. illustration--horns of the showa stag (_cervus wallichii_), a native of choombi in tibet. length of antler, feet in. chapter xxvi. dr. campbell is ordered to appear at durbar -- lamas called to council -- threats -- searcity of food -- arrival of dewan -- our jailer, thoba-sing -- temperature, etc., at tumloong -- services of goompas -- lepcha girl -- jew's-harp -- terror of servants -- ilam-sing's family -- interview with dewan -- remonstrances -- dewan feigns sickness -- lord dalhousie's letter to rajah -- treatment of indo-chinese -- concourse of lamas -- visit of tchebu lama -- close confinement -- dr. campbell's illness -- conference with amlah -- relaxation of confinement -- pemiongchi lama's intercession -- escape of nimbo -- presents from rajah, ranee and people -- protestations of friendship -- mr. lushington sent to dorjiling -- leave tumloong -- cordial farewell -- dewan's merchandise -- gangtok kajee -- dewan's pomp -- governor-general's letter -- dikkeeling -- suspicion of poison -- dinner and pills -- tobacco -- bhotanese colony -- katong-ghat on teesta -- wild lemons -- sepoys' insolence -- dewan alarmed -- view of dorjiling -- threats of a rescue -- fears of our escape -- tibet flutes -- negotiate our release -- arrival at dorjiling -- dr. thomson joins me -- movement of troops at dorjiling -- seizure of rajah's terai property. since his confinement, dr. campbell had been desired to attend the durbar for the purpose of transacting business, but had refused to go, except by compulsion, considering that in the excited state of the authorities, amongst whom there was not one person of responsibility or judgment, his presence would not only be useless, but he might be exposed to further insult or possibly violence. on the th of november we were informed that the dewan was on his way from tibet: of this we were glad, for knave as he was, we had hitherto considered him to possess sense and understanding. his agents were beginning to find out their mistake, and summoned to council the principal lamas and kajees of the country, who, to a man, repudiated the proceedings, and refused to attend. our captors were extremely anxious to induce us to write letters to dorjiling, and sent spies of all kinds to offer us facilities for secret correspondence. the simplicity and clumsiness with which these artifices were attempted would have been ludicrous under other circumstances; while the threat of murdering campbell only alarmed us, inasmuch as it came from people too stupid to be trusted. we made out that all sikkim people were excluded from dorjiling, and the amlah consequently could not conceal their anxiety to know what had befallen their letters to government. meanwhile we were but scantily fed, and our imprisoned coolies got nothing at all. our guards, were supplied with a handful of rice or meal as the day's allowance; they were consequently grumbling,* [the rajah has no standing army; not even a body-guard, and these men were summoned to tumloong before our arrival: they had no arms and received no pay, but were fed when called out on duty. there is no store for grain, no bazaar or market, in any part of the country, each family growing little enough for its own wants and no more; consequently sikkim could not stand on the defensive for a week. the rajah receives his supply of grain in annual contributions from the peasantry, who thus pay a rent in kind, which varies from little to nothing, according to the year, etc. he had also property of his own in the terai, but the slender proceeds only enabled him to trade with tibet for tea, etc.] and were daily reduced in number. the supplies of rice from the terai, beyond dorjiling, were cut off by the interruption of communication, and the authorities evidently could not hold us long at this rate: we sent up complaints, but of course received no answer. the dewan arrived in the afternoon in great state; carried in an english chair given him by campbell some years before, habited in a blue silk cloak lined with lambskin, and wearing an enormous straw hat with a red tassel, and black velvet butterflies on the flapping brim. he was accompanied by a household of women, who were laden with ornaments, and wore boots, and sat astride on ponies; many lamas were also with him, one of whom wore a broad chinese-like hat covered with polished copper foil. half a dozen sepoys with matchlocks preceded him, and on approaching tumloong, bawled out his titles, dignities, etc., as was formerly the custom in england. illustration--rajah's residence, and the hut assigned to us. arrival of the dewan. at dorjiling our seizure was still unknown: our letters were brought to us, but we were not allowed to answer them. now that the dewan had arrived, we hoped to come to a speedy explanation with him, but he shammed sickness, and sent no answer to our messages; if indeed he received them. our guards were reduced to one sepoy with a knife, who was friendly; and a dirty, cross-eyed fellow named thoba-sing, who, with the exception of tchebu lama, was the only bhoteea about the durbar who could speak hindostanee, and who did it very imperfectly: he was our attendant and spy, the most barefaced liar i ever met with, even in the east; and as cringing and obsequious when alone with us, as he was to his masters on other occasions, when he never failed to show off his authority over us in an offensive manner. though he was the most disagreeable fellow we were ever thrown in contact with, i do not think that he was therefore selected, but solely from his possessing a few words of hindostanee, and his presumed capability of playing the spy. the weather was generally drizzling or rainy, and we were getting very tired of our captivity; but i beguiled the time by carefully keeping my meteorological register,* [during the thirty days spent at tumloong, the temperature was mild and equable, with much cloud and drizzle, but little hard rain; and we experienced violent thunder-storms, followed by transient sunshine. unlike , the rains did not cease this year before the middle of december; nor had there been one fine month since april. the mean temperature, computed from observations, was . degrees, and from the maximum and minimum thermometer . degrees, which is a fair approximation to the theoretical temperature calculated for the elevation and month, and allows a fall of degree for feet of ascent. the temperature during the spring (from observations) varied during the day from . degrees to . degrees higher than that of the air, the greatest differences occurring morning and evening. the barometric tide amounted to . between . a.m. and p.m., which is less than at the level of the plains of india, and more than at any greater elevation than tumloong. the air was always damp, nearly saturated at night, and the mean amount of humidity for ninety-eight observations taken during the day was only . , corresponding to a dew-point of . degrees, or . degrees below that of the air.] and by reducing many of my previous observations. each morning we were awakened at daybreak by the prolonged echos of the conchs, trumpets, and cymbals, beaten by the priests before the many temples in the valley: wild and pleasing sounds, often followed by their choral chants. after dark we sat over the fire, generally in company with a little lepcha girl, who was appointed to keep us in fire-wood, and who sat watching our movements with childish curiosity. dolly, as we christened her, was a quick child and a kind one, intolerably dirty, but very entertaining from her powers of mimicry. she was fond of hearing me whistle airs, and procured me a tibetan jews'-harp,* [this instrument (which is common in tibet) is identical with the european, except that the tongue is produced behind the bow, in a strong steel spike, by which the instrument is held firmer to the mouth.] with which, and coarse tobacco, which i smoked out of a tibetan brass pipe, i wiled away the dark evenings, whilst my cheerful companion amused himself with an old harmonicon, to the enchantment of dolly and our guards and neighbours. illustration--tibet pipe, and tinder-pouch with steel attached. the messengers from dorjiling were kept in utter ignorance of our confinement till their arrival at tumloong, when they were cross-questioned, and finally sent to us. they gradually became too numerous, there being only one apartment for ourselves, and such of our servants as were not imprisoned elsewhere. some of them were frightened out of their senses, and the state of abject fear and trembling in which one limboo arrived, and continued for nearly a week, was quite distressing* [it amounted to a complete prostration of bodily and mental powers: the man trembled and started when spoken to, or at any noise, a cold sweat constantly bedewed his forehead, and he continued in this state for eight days. no kindness on campbell's part could rouse him to give any intelligible account of his fears or their cause. his companions said he had lost his goroo, _i.e.,_ his charm, which the priest gives him while yet a child, and which he renews or gets re-sanctified as occasion requires. to us the circumstance was extremely painful.] to every one except dolly, who mimicked him in a manner that was irresistibly ludicrous. whether he had been beaten or threatened we could not make out, nor whether he had heard of some dark fate impending over ourselves--a suspicion which would force itself on our minds; especially as thoba-sing had coolly suggested to the amlah the dispatching of campbell, as the shortest way of getting out of the scrape! we were also ignorant whether any steps were being taken at dorjiling for our release, which we felt satisfied must follow any active measures against these bullying cowards, though they themselves frequently warned us that we should be thrown into the teesta if any such were pursued. so long as our money lasted, we bought food, for the durbar had none to give; and latterly my ever charitable companion fed our guards, including dolly and thoba-sing, in pity to their pinched condition. several families sent us small presents, especially that of the late estimable dewan, ilam-sing, whose widow and daughters lived close by, and never failed to express in secret their sympathy and good feeling. tchebu lama's and meepo's families were equally forward in their desire to serve us; but they were marked men, and could only communicate by stealth. our coolies were released on the th, more than half starved, but the sirdars were still kept in chains or the stocks: some were sent back to dorjiling, and the british subjects billetted off amongst the villagers, and variously employed by the dewan: my lad, cheytoong, was set to collect the long leaves of a _tupistra,_ called "purphiok," which yield a sweet juice, and were chopped up and mixed with tobacco for the dewan's hookah. _november th._--the dewan, we heard this day, ignored all the late proceedings, professing to be enraged with his brother and the amlah, and refusing to meddle in the matter. this was no doubt a pretence: we had sent repeatedly for an explanation with himself or the rajah, from which he excused himself on the plea of ill-health, till this day, when he apprized us that he would meet campbell, and a cotton tent was pitched for the purpose. we went about noon, and were received with great politeness and shaking of hands by the dewan, the young gangtok kajee, and the old monk who had been present at my examination at phadong. tchebu lama's brother was also there, as a member of the amlah, lately taken into favour; while tchebu himself acted as interpreter, the dewan speaking only tibetan. they all sat cross-legged on a bamboo bench on one side, and we on chairs opposite them: walnuts and sweetmeats were brought us, and a small present in the rajah's name, consisting of rice, flour, and butter. the dewan opened the conversation both in this and another conference, which took place on the nd, by requesting campbell to state his reasons for having desired these interviews. neither he nor the amlah seemed to have the smallest idea of the nature and consequences of the acts they had committed, and they therefore anxiously sought information as to the view that would be taken of them by the british government. they could not see why campbell should not transact business with them in his present condition, and wanted him to be the medium of communication between themselves and calcutta. the latter confined himself to pointing out his own views of the following subjects:-- . the seizing and imprisoning of the agent of a friendly power, travelling unarmed and without escort, under the formal protection of the rajah, and with the authority of his own government. . the aggravation of this act of the amlah, by our present detention under the dewan's authority. . the chance of collision, and the disastrous consequences of a war, for which they had no preparation of any kind. . the impossibility of the supreme government paying any attention to their letters so long as we were illegally detained. all this sank deep into the dewan's heart: he answered, "you have spoken truth, and i will submit it all to the rajah;" but at the same time he urged that there was nothing dishonourable in the imprisonment, and that the original violence being all a mistake, it should be overlooked by both parties. we parted on good terms, and heard shortly after the second conference that our release was promised and arranged: when a communication* [i need scarcely say that every step was taken at dorjiling for our release, that the most anxious solicitude for our safety could suggest. but the first communication to the rajah, though it pointed out the heinous nature of his offence, was, through a natural fear of exasperating our captors, couched in very moderate language. the particulars of our seizure, and the reasons for it, and for our further detention, were unknown at dorjiling, or a very different line of policy would have been pursued.] from dorjiling changed their plans, the dewan conveniently fell sick on the spot, and we were thrown back again. in the meantime, however, we were allowed to write to our friends, and to receive money and food, of which we stood in great need. i transmitted a private account of the whole affair to the governor-general, who was unfortunately at bombay, but to whose prompt and vigorous measures we were finally indebted for our release. his lordship expedited a despatch to the rajah, such as the latter was accustomed to receive from nepal, bhotan, or lhassa, and such as alone commands attention from these half-civilized indo-chinese, who measure power by the firmness of the tone adopted towards them; and who, whether in sikkim, birmah, siam, bhotan, or china, have too long been accustomed to see every article of our treaties contravened, with no worse consequences than a protest or a threat, which is never carried into execution till some fatal step calls forth the dormant power of the british government.* [we forget that all our concessions to these people are interpreted into weakness; that they who cannot live on an amicable equality with one another, cannot be expected to do so with us; that all our talk of power and resources are mere boasts to habitual bullies, so long as we do not exert ourselves in the correction of premeditated insults. no government can be more tolerant, more sincerely desirous of peace, and more anxious to confine its sway within its own limits than that of india, but it can only continue at peace by demanding respect, and the punctilious enforcement of even the most trifling terms in the treaties it makes with indo-chinese.] the end of the month arrived without bringing any prospect of our release, whilst we were harassed by false reports of all kinds. the dewan went on the th to a hot bath, a few hundred feet down the hill; he was led past our hut, his burly frame tottering as if in great weakness, but a more transparent fraud could not have been practised: he was, in fact, lying on his oars, pending further negotiations. the amlah proposed that campbell should sign a bond, granting immunity for all past offences on their part, whilst they were to withdraw the letter of grievances against him. the lamas cast horoscopes for the future, little presents continually arrived for us, and the ranee sent me some tobacco, and to campbell brown sugar and murwa beer. the blacksmiths, who had been ostentatiously making long knives at the forge hard by, were dismissed; troops were said to be arriving at dorjiling, and a letter sternly demanding our release bad been received. the lamas of pemiongchi, changachelling, tassiding, etc., and the dewan's enemies, and tchebu lama's friends, began to flock from all quarters to tumloong, demanding audience of the rajah, and our instant liberation. the dewan's game was evidently up; but the timidity of his opponents, his own craft, and the habitual dilatoriness of all, contributed to cause endless delays. the young gangtok kajee tried to curry favour with us, sending word that he was urging our release, and adding that he had some capital ponies for us to see on our way to dorjiling! many similar trifles showed that these people had not a conception of the nature of their position, or of that of an officer of the british government. the tchebu lama visited us only once, and then under surveillance; he renewed his professions of good faith, and we had every reason to know that he had suffered severely for his adherence to us, and consistent repudiation of the amlah's conduct; he was in great favour with his brother lamas, but was not allowed to see the rajah, who was said to trust to him alone of all his counsellors. he told us that peremptory orders had arrived from calcutta for our release, but that the amlah had replied that they would not acknowledge the despatch, from its not bearing the governor-general's great seal! the country-people refusing to be saddled with the keep of our coolies, they were sent to dorjiling in small parties, charged to say that we were free, and following them. the weather continued rainy and bad, with occasionally a few hours of sunshine, which, however, always rendered the ditch before our door offensive: we were still prevented leaving the hot, but as a great annual festival was going on, we were less disagreeably watched. campbell was very unwell, and we had no medicine; and as the dewan, accustomed to such duplicity himself, naturally took this for a _ruse,_ and refused to allow us to send to dorjiling for any, we were more than ever convinced that his own sickness was simulated. on the nd and rd december we had further conferences with the dewan, who said that we were to be taken to dorjiling in six days, with two vakeels from the rajah. the pemiongchi lama, as the oldest and most venerated in sikkim, attended, and addressed campbell in a speech of great feeling and truth. having heard, he said, of these unfortunate circumstances a few days ago, he had come on feeble limbs, and though upwards of seventy winters old, as the representative of his holy brotherhood, to tender advice to his rajah, which he hoped would be followed: since sikkim had been connected with the british rule, it had experienced continued peace and protection; whereas before they were in constant dread of their lives and properties, which, as well as their most sacred temples, were violated by the nepalese and bhotanese. he then dwelt upon campbell's invariable kindness and good feeling, and his exertions for the benefit of their country, and for the cementing of friendship, and hoped he would not let these untoward events induce an opposite course in future but that he would continue to exert his influence with the governor-general in their favour. the dewan listened attentively; he was anxious and perplexed, and evidently losing his presence of mind: he talked to us of lhassa and its gaieties, dromedaries, lamas, and everything tibetan; offered to sell us ponies cheap, and altogether behaved in a most, undignified manner; ever and anon calling attention to his pretended sick leg, which he nursed on his knee. he gave us the acceptable news that the government at calcutta had sent up an officer to carry on campbell's duties, which had alarmed him exceedingly. the rajah, we were told, was very angry at our seizure and detention; he had no fault to find with the governor-general's agent, and hoped he would be continued as such. in fact, all the blame was thrown on the brothers of the dewan, and of the gangtok kajee, and more irresponsible stupid boors could not have been found on whom to lay it, or who would have felt less inclined to commit such folly if it had not been put on them by the dewan. on leaving, white silk scarfs were thrown over our shoulders, and we went away, still doubtful, after so many disappointments, whether we should really be set at liberty at the stated period. although there was so much talk about our leaving, our confinement continued as rigorous as ever. the dewan curried favour in every other way, sending us tibetan wares for purchase, with absurd prices attached, he being an arrant pedlar. all the principal families waited on us, desiring peace and friendship. the coolies who had not been dismissed were allowed to run away, except my bhotan sirdar, nimbo, against whom the dewan was inveterate;* [the sikkim people are always at issue with the bhotanese. nimbo was a runaway slave of the latter country, who had been received into sikkim, and retained there until he took up his quarters at dorjiling.] he, however, managed soon afterwards to break a great chain with which his legs were shackled, and marching at night, eluded a hot pursuit, and proceeded to the teesta, swam the river, and reached dorjiling in eight days; arriving with a large iron ring on each leg, and a link of several pounds weight attached to one. parting presents arrived from the rajah on the th, consisting of ponies, cloths, silks, woollens, immense squares of butter, tea, and the usual et ceteras, to the utter impoverishment of his stores: these he offered to the two sahibs, "in token of his amity with the british government, his desire for peace, and deprecation of angry discussions." the ranee sent silk purses, fans, and such tibetan paraphernalia, with an equally amicable message, that "she was most anxious to avert the consequences of whatever complaints had gone forth against dr. campbell, who might depend on her strenuous exertions to persuade the rajah to do whatever he wished!" these friendly messages were probably evoked by the information that an english regiment, with three guns, was on its way to sikkim, and that of the bhaugulpore rangers had already arrived there. the government of bengal sending another agent* [mr. lushington, the gentleman sent to conduct sikkim affairs during dr. campbell's detention: to whom i shall ever feel grateful for his activity in our cause, and his unremitting attention to every little arrangement that could alleviate the discomforts and anxieties of our position.] to dorjiling, was also a contingency they had not anticipated, having fully expected to get rid of any such obstacle to direct communication with the governor-general. a present from the whole population followed that of the ranee, coupled with earnest entreaties that campbell would resume his position at dorjiling; and on the following day forty coolies mustered to arrange the baggage. before we left, the ranee sent three rupees to buy a yard of chale and some gloves, accompanying them with a present of white silk, etc., for mrs. campbell, to whom the commission was intrusted: a singular instance of the _insouciant_ simplicity of these odd people. the th of december was a splendid and hot day, one of the very few we had had during our captivity. we left at noon, descending the hill through an enormous crowd of people, who brought farewell presents, all wishing us well. we were still under escort as prisoners of the dewan, who was coolly marching a troop of forty unloaded mules and ponies, and double that number of men's loads of merchandize, purchased during the summer in tibet, to trade with at dorjiling and the titalya fair! his impudence or stupidity was thus quite inexplicable; treating us as prisoners, ignoring every demand of the authorities at dorjiling, of the supreme council of calcutta, and of the governor-general himself; and at the same time acting as if he were to enter the british territories on the most friendly and advantageous footing for himself and his property, and incurring so great an expense in all this as to prove that he was in earnest in thinking so. tchebu lama accompanied us, but we were not allowed to converse with him. we halted at the bottom of the valley, where the dewan invited us to partake of tea; from this place he gave us mules* [the tibet mules are often as fine as the spanish: i rode one which had performed a journey from choombi to lhassa in fifteen days, with a man and load.] or ponies to ride, and we ascended to yankoong, a village , feet above the sea. on the following day we crossed a high ridge from the ryott valley to that of the rungmi; where we camped at tikbotang (alt. , feet), and, on the th at gangtok sampoo, a few miles lower down the same valley. we were now in the soubahship of the gangtok kajee; a member of the oldest and most wealthy family in sikkim; he had from the first repudiated the late acts of the amlah, in which his brother had taken part, and had always been hostile to the dewan. the latter conducted himself with disagreeable familiarity towards us, and _hauteur_ towards the people; he was preceded by immense kettle-drums, carried on men's backs, and great hand-bells, which were beaten and rung on approaching villages; on which occasions he changed his dress of sky-blue for yellow silk robes worked with chinese dragons, to the indignation of tchebu lama, an amber robe in polite tibetan society being sacred to royalty and the lamas. we everywhere perceived unequivocal symptoms of the dislike with which he was regarded. cattle were driven away, villages deserted, and no one came to pay respects, or bring presents, except the kajees, who were ordered to attend, and his elder brother, for whom he had usurped an estate near gangtok. on the th, he marched us a few miles, and then halted for a day at serriomsa (alt. , feet), at the bottom of a hot valley full of irrigated rice-crops and plantain and orange-groves. here the gangtok kajee waited on us with a handsome present, and informed us privately of his cordial hatred of the "upstart dewan," and hopes for his overthrow; a demonstration of which we took no notice.* [nothing would have been easier than for the gangtok kajee, or any other respectable man in sikkim, to have overthrown the dewan and his party; but these people are intolerably apathetic, and prefer being tyrannized over to the trouble of shaking off the yoke.] the dewan's brother (one of the amlah) also sent a large present, but was ashamed to appear. another letter reached the dewan here, directed to the rajah; it was from the governor-general at bombay, and had been sent across the country by special messengers: it demanded our instant release, or his raj would be forfeited; and declared that if a hair of our heads were touched, his life should be the penalty. the rajah was also incessantly urging the dewan to hasten us onwards as free men to dorjiling, but the latter took all remonstrances with assumed coolness, exercised his ponies, played at bow and arrow, intruded on us at mealtimes to be invited to partake, and loitered on the road, changing garments and hats, which he pestered us to buy. nevertheless, be was evidently becoming daily more nervous and agitated. from the rungmi valley we crossed on the th southward to that of runniok, and descended to dikkeeling, a large village of dhurma bhoteeas (bhotanese), which is much the most populous, industrious, and at the same time turbulent, in sikkim. it is , feet above the sea, and occupies many broad cultivated spurs facing the south. this district once belonged to bhotan, and was ceded to the sikkim rajah by the paro pilo,* [the temporal sovereign, in contra-distinction to the dhurma rajah, or spiritual sovereign of bhotan.] in consideration of some military services, rendered by the former in driving off the tibetans, who had usurped it for the authorities of lhassa. since then the sikkim and bhotan people have repeatedly fallen out, and dikkeeling has become a refuge for runaway bhotanese, and kidnapping is constantly practised on this frontier. the dewan halted us here for three days, for no assigned cause. on the th, letters arrived, including a most kind and encouraging one from mr. lushington, who had taken charge of campbell's office at dorjiling. immediately after arriving, the messenger was seized with violent vomitings and gripings: we could not help suspecting poison, especially as we were now amongst adherents of the dewan, and the bhotanese are notorious for this crime. only one means suggested itself for proving this, and with campbell's permission i sent my compliments to the dewan, with a request for one of his hunting dogs to eat the vomit. it was sent at once, and performed its duty without any ill effects. i must confess to having felt a malicious pleasure in the opportunity thus afforded of showing our jailor how little we trusted him; feeling indignant at the idea that he should suppose he was making any way in our good opinion by his familiarities, which we were not in circumstances to resist. the crafty fellow, however, outwitted me by inviting us to dine with him the same day, and putting our stomachs and noses to a severe test. our dinner was served in chinese fashion, but most of the luxuries, such as _beche-de-mer,_ were very old and bad. we ate, sometimes with chop-sticks, and at others with tibetan spoons, knives, and two-pronged forks. after the usual amount of messes served in oil and salt water, sweets were brought, and a strong spirit. thoba-sing, our filthy, cross-eyed spy, was waiter, and brought in every little dish with both hands, and raised it to his greasy forehead, making a sort of half bow previous to depositing it before us. sometimes he undertook to praise its contents, always adding, that in tibet none but very great men indeed partook of such sumptuous fare. thus he tried to please both us and the dewan, who conducted himself with pompous hospitality, showing off what he considered his elegant manners and graces. our blood boiled within us at being so patronised by the squinting ruffian, whose insolence and ill-will had sorely aggravated the discomforts of our imprisonment. not content with giving us what he considered a magnificent dinner (and it had cost him some trouble), the dewan produced a little bag from a double-locked escritoire, and took out three dinner-pills, which he had received as a great favour from the rimbochay lama, and which were a sovereign remedy for indigestion and all other ailments; he handed one to each of us, reserving the third for himself. campbell refused his; but there appeared no help for me, after my groundless suspicion of poison, and so i swallowed the pill with the best grace i could. but in truth, it was not poison i dreaded in its contents, so much as being compounded of some very questionable materials, such as the rimbochay lama blesses and dispenses far and wide. to swallow such is a sanctifying work, according to boodhist superstition, and i believe there was nothing in the world, save his ponies, to which the dewan attached a greater value. to wind up the feast, we had pipes of excellent mild yellow chinese tobacco called "tseang," made from _nicotiana rustica,_ which is cultivated in east tibet, and in west china according to mm. huc and gabet. it resembles in flavour the finest syrian tobacco, and is most agreeable when the smoke is passed through the nose. the common tobacco of india (_nicotiana tabacum_) is much imported into tibet, where it is called "tamma," (probably a corruption of the persian "toombac,") and is said to fetch the enormous price of shllings per lb. at lhassa, which is sixty times its value in india. rice at lhassa, when cheap, sells at shillings for lbs.; it is, as i have elsewhere said, all bought up for rations for the chinese soldiery. the bhotanese are more industrious than the lepchas, and better husbandmen; besides having superior crops of all ordinary grains, they grow cotton, hemp, and flax. the cotton is cleansed here as elsewhere, with a simple gin. the lepchas use no spinning wheel, but a spindle and distaff; their loom, which is tibetan is a very complicated one framed of bamboo; it is worked by hand, without beam treddle, or shuttle. on the th we were marched, three miles only, to singdong (alt. , feet), and on the following day five miles farther, to katong ghat (alt. feet), on the teesta river, which we crossed with rafts, and camped on the opposite bank, a few miles above the junction of this river with the great rungeet. the water, which is sea-green in colour, had a temperature of . degrees at p.m., and . degrees the following morning; its current was very powerful. the rocks, since leaving tunlloong, had been generally micaceous, striking north-west, and dipping north-east. the climate was hot, and the vegetation on the banks tropical; on the hills around, lemon-bushes ("kucheala," lepcha) were abundant, growing apparently wild. the dewan was now getting into a very nervous and depressed state; he was determined to keep up appearances before his followers, but was himself almost servile to us; he caused his men to make a parade of their arms, as if to intimidate us, and in descending narrow gullies we had several times the disagreeable surprise of finding some of his men at a sudden turn, with drawn bows and arrows pointed towards us. others gesticulated with their long knives, and made fell swoops at soft plantain-stems; but these artifices were all as shallow as they were contemptible, and a smile at such demonstrations was generally answered with another from the actors. from katong we ascended the steep east flank of tendong or mount ararat, through forests of sal and long-leaved pine, to namten (alt. , feet), where we again halted two days. the dingpun tinli lived near and waited on us with a present, which, with all others that had been brought, campbell received officially, and transferred to the authorities at dorjiling. the dewan was thoroughly alarmed at the news here brought in, that the rajah's present of yaks, ponies, etc., which had been sent forward, had been refused at dorjiling; and equally so at the clamorous messages which reached him from all quarters, demanding our liberation; and at the desertion of some of his followers, on hearing that large bodies of troops were assembling at dorjiling. repudiated by his rajah and countrymen, and paralysed between his dignity and his ponies, which he now perceived would not be welcomed at the station, and which were daily losing flesh, looks, and value in these hot valleys, where there is no grass pasture, he knew not what olive-branch to hold out to our government, except ourselves, whom he therefore clung to as hostages. on the nd of december he marched us eight miles further, to cheadam, on a bold spur , feet high, overlooking the great rungeet, and facing dorjiling, from which it was only twenty miles distant. the white bungalows of our friends gladdened our eyes, while the new barracks erecting for the daily arriving troops struck terror into the dewan's heart. the six sepoys* [these sepoys, besides the loose red jacket and striped lepcha kirtle, wore a very curious national black hat of felt, with broad flaps turned up all round: this is represented in the right-hand figure. a somewhat similar bat is worn by some classes of nepal soldiery.] who had marched valiantly beside us for twenty days, carrying the muskets given to the rajah the year before by the governor-general, now lowered their arms, and vowed that if a red coat crossed the great rungeet, they would throw down their guns and run away. news arrived that the bhotan inhabitants of dorjiling headed by my bold sirdar nimbo, had arranged a night attack for our release; an enterprise to which they were quite equal, and in which they have had plenty of practice in their own misgoverned country. watch-fires gleamed amongst the bushes, we were thrust into a doubly-guarded house, and bows and arrows were ostentatiously levelled so as to rake the doorway, should we attempt to escape. some of the ponies were sent back to dikkeeling, though the dewan still clung to his merchandise and the feeble hope of traffic. the confusion increased daily, but though tchebu lama looked brisk and confident, we were extremely anxious; scouts were hourly arriving from the road to the great rungeet, and if our troops had advanced, the dewan might have made away with us from pure fear. illustration--lepcha sepoys. tibetan sepays in the back-ground. in the forenoon he paid us a long visit, and brought some flutes, of which he gave me two very common ones of apricot wood from lhassa, producing at the same time a beautiful one, which i believe he intended for campbell, but his avarice got the better, and he commuted his gift into the offer of a tune, and pitching it in a high key, he went through a tibetan air that almost deafened us by its screech. he tried bravely to maintain his equanimity, but as we preserved a frigid civility and only spoke when addressed, the tears would start from his eyes in the pauses of conversation. in the evening he came again; he was excessively agitated and covered with perspiration, and thrust himself unceremoniously between us on the bench we occupied. as his familiarity increased, he put his arm round my neck, and as he was armed with a small dagger, i felt rather uneasy about his intentions, but he ended by forcing on my acceptance a coin, value threepence, for he was in fact beside himself with terror. next morning campbell received a hint that this was a good opportunity for a vigorous remonstrance. the dewan came with tchebu lama, his own younger brother (who was his pony driver), and the lassoo kajee. the latter had for two months placed himself in an attitude of hostility opposite dorjiling, with a ragged company of followers, but he now sought peace and friendship as much as the dewan; the latter told us he was waiting for a reply to a letter addressed to mr. lushington, after which he would set us free. campbell said: "as you appear to have made up your mind, why not dismiss us at once?" he answered that we should go the next day at all events: here i came in, and on hearing from campbell what had passed, i added, that he had better for his own sake let us go at once; that the next day was our great and only annual poojah (religious festival) of christmas, when we all met; whereas he and his countrymen had dozens in the year. as for me, he knew i had no wife, nor children, nor any relation, within thousands of miles, and it mattered little where i was, he was only bringing ruin on himself by his conduct to me as the governor-general's friend; but as regarded campbell, the case was different; his home was at dorjiling, which was swarming with english soldiers, all in a state of exasperation, and if he did not let us depart before christmas, he would find dorjiling too hot to hold him, let him offer what reparation he might for the injuries he had done us. i added: "we are all ready to go--dismiss us." the dewan again turned to campbell, who said, "i am quite ready; order us ponies at once, and send our luggage after us." he then ordered the ponies, and three men, including meepo, to attend us; whereupon we walked out, mounted, and made off with all speed. we arrived at the cane bridge over the great rungeet at p.m., and to our chagrin found it in the possession of a posse of ragged bhoteeas, though there were thirty armed sepoys of our own at the guard-house above. at meepo's order they cut the network of fine canes by which they had rendered the bridge impassable, and we crossed. the sepoys at the guard-house turned out with their clashing arms and bright accoutrements, and saluted to the sound of bugles; scaring our three companions, who ran back as fast as they could go. we rode up that night to dorjiling, and i arrived at p.m. at hodgson's house, where i was taken for a ghost, and received with shouts of welcome by my kind friend and his guest dr. thomson, who had been awaiting my arrival for upwards of a month. thus terminated our sikkim captivity, and my last himalayan exploring journey, which in a geographical point of view had answered my purposes beyond my most sanguine expectations, though my collections had been in a great measure destroyed by so many untoward events. it enabled me to survey the whole country, and to execute a map of it, and campbell had further gained that knowledge of its resources which the british government should all along have possessed, as the protector of the rajah and his territories. it remains to say a few words of the events that succeeded our release, in so far as they relate to my connection with them. the dewan moved from cheadam to namtchi, immediately opposite dorjiling, where he remained throughout the winter. the supreme government of bengal demanded of the rajah that he should deliver up the most notorious offenders, and come himself to dorjiling, on pain of an army marching to tumloong to enforce the demand; a step which would have been easy, as there were neither troops, arms, ammunition, nor other means of resistance, even had there been the inclination to stop us, which was not the case. the rajah would in all probability have delivered himself up at tumloong, throwing himself on our mercy, and the army would have sought the culprits in vain, both the spirit and the power to capture them being wanting on the part of the people and their ruler. the rajah expressed his willingness, but pleaded his inability to fulfil the demand, whereupon the threat was repeated, and additional reinforcements were moved on to dorjiling. the general officer in command at dinapore was ordered to dorjiling to conduct operations: his skill and bravery had been proved during the progress of the nepal war so long ago as . from the appearance of the country about dorjiling, he was led to consider sikkim to be impracticable for a british army. this was partly owing to the forest-clad mountains, and partly to the fear of tibetan troops coming to the rajah's aid, and the nepalese* [jung bahadoor was at this time planning his visit to england, and to his honour i must say, that on hearing of our imprisonment he offered to the government at calcutta to release us with a handful of men. this he would no doubt have easily effected, but his offer was wisely declined, for the nepalese (as i have elsewhere stated) want sikkim and bhotan too, and we had undertaken the protection of the former country, mainly to keep the nepalese out of it.] taking the opportunity to attack us. with the latter we were in profound peace, and we had a resident at their court; and i have elsewhere shown the impossibility of a tibet invasion, even if the chinese or lhassan authorities were inclined to interfere in the affairs of sikkim, which they long ago formally declined doing in the case of aggressions of the nepalese and bhotanese, the sikkim rajah being under british protection.* [the general officer considered that our troops would have been cut to pieces if they entered the country; and the late general sir charles napier has since given evidence to the same effect. having been officially asked at the time whether i would guide a party into the country, and having drawn up (at the request of the general officer) plans for the purpose, and having given it as my opinion that it would not only have been feasible but easy to have marched a force in peace and safety to tumloong, i feel it incumbent on me here to remark, that i think general napier, who never was in sikkim, and wrote from many hundred miles' distance, must have misapprehended the state of the case. whether an invasion of sikkim was either advisable or called for, was a matter in which i had no concern: nor do i offer an opinion as to the impregnability of the country if it were defended by natives otherwise a match for a british force, and having the advantage of position. i was not consulted with reference to any difference of opinion between the civil and military powers, such as seems to have called for the expression of sir charles napier's opinion on this matter, and which appears to be considerably overrated in his evidence. the general officer honoured me with his friendship at dorjiling, and to mr. lushington, i am, as i have elsewhere stated, under great obligations for his personal consideration and kindness, and vigorous measures during my detention. on my release and return to dorjiling, any interference on my part would have been meddling with what was not my concern. i never saw, nor wished to see, a public document connected with the affair, and have only given as many of the leading features of the case as i can vouch for, and as were accessible to any other bystander.] there were not wanting offers of leading a company of soldiers to tumloong, rather than that the threat should have twice been made, and then withdrawn; but they were not accepted. a large body of troops was however, marched from dorjiling, and encamped on the north bank of the great rungeet for some weeks: but after that period they were recalled, without any further demonstration; the dewan remaining encamped the while on the namtchi hill, not three hours' march above them. the simple lepchas daily brought our soldiers milk, fowls, and eggs, and would have continued to do so had they proceeded to tumloong, for i believe both rajah and people would have rejoiced at our occupation of the country. after the withdrawal of the troops, the threat was modified into a seizure of the terai lands, which the rajah had originally received as a free gift from the british, and which were the only lucrative or fertile estates he possessed. this was effected by four policemen taking possession of the treasury (which contained exactly twelve shillings, i believe), and announcing to the villagers the confiscation of the territory to the british government, in which they gladly acquiesced. at the same time there was annexed to it the whole southern part of sikkim, between the great rungeet and the plains of india, and from nepal on the west to the bhotan frontier and the teesta river on the east; thus confining the rajah to his mountains, and cutting off all access to the plains, except through the british territories. to the inhabitants (about souls) this was a matter of congratulation, for it only involved the payment of a small fixed tax in money to the treasury at dorjiling, instead of a fluctuating one in kind, with service to the rajah, besides exempting them from further annoyance by the dewan. at the present time the revenues of the tract thus acquired have doubled, and will very soon be quadrupled: every expense of our detention and of the moving of troops, etc., has been already repaid by it, and for the future all will be clear profit; and i am given to understand that this last year it has realized upwards of , rupees ( pounds). dr. campbell resumed his duties immediately afterwards, and the newly-acquired districts were placed under his jurisdiction. the rajah still begs hard for the renewal of old friendship, and the restoration of his terai land, or the annual grant of pounds a year which he formerly received. he has forbidden the culprits his court, but can do no more. the dewan, disgraced and turned out of office, is reduced to poverty, and is deterred from entering tibet by the threat of being dragged to lhassa with a rope round his neck. considering, however, his energy, a rare quality in these countries, i should not be surprised at his yet cutting a figure in bhotan, if not in sikkim itself: especially if, at the rajah's death, the british government should refuse to take the country under its protection. the singtam soubah and the other culprits live disgraced at their homes. tchebu lama has received a handsome reward, and a grant of land at dorjiling, where he resides, and whence he sends me his salaams by every opportunity. chapter xxvii. leave dorjiling for calcutta -- jung bahadoor -- dr. falconer -- improvements in botanic gardens -- palmetum -- victoria -- _amherstia_ -- orchids spread by seed -- banyan -- _cycas_ -- importation of american plants in ice -- return to dorjiling -- leave with dr. thomson for the khasia mountains -- mahanuddy river -- vegetation of banks -- maldah -- alligators -- rampore-bauleah -- climate of ganges -- pubna -- jummul river -- altered course of burrampooter and megna -- dacca -- conch shells -- saws -- cotton muslins -- fruit -- vegetation -- elevation -- rose of bengal -- burrampooter -- delta of soormah river -- jheels -- soil -- vegetation -- navigation -- mosquitos -- atmospheric pressure -- effects of geological changes -- imbedding of plants -- teelas or islets -- chattuc -- salubrious climate -- rains -- canoes -- pundua -- mr. harry inglis -- terrya ghat -- ascent to churra -- scenery and vegetation at foot of mountains -- cascades. i was chiefly occupied during january and february of , in arranging and transmitting my collections to calcutta, and completing my manuscripts, maps, and surveys. my friend dr. thomson having joined me here, for the purpose of our spending a year in travelling and botanising together, it became necessary to decide on the best field for our pursuits. bhotan offered the most novelty, but it was inaccessible to europeans; and we therefore turned our thoughts to nepal, and failing that, to the khasia mountains. the better to expedite our arrangements, i made a trip to calcutta in march, where i expected to meet both lord dalhousie, on his return from the straits of malacca, and jung bahadoor (the nepalese minister), who was then _en route_ as envoy to england. i staid at government house, where every assistance was afforded me towards obtaining the nepal rajah's permission to proceed through the himalaya from dorjiling to katmandu. jung bahadoor received me with much courtesy, and expressed his great desire to serve me; but begged me to wait until his return from england, as he could not be answerable for my personal safety when travelling during his absence; and he referred to the permission he had formerly given me (and such was never before accorded to any european) in earnest of his disposition, which was unaltered. we therefore determined upon spending the season of in the khasia mountains in eastern bengal, at the head of the great delta of the ganges and burrampooter. illustration--dr. falconer's residence, calcutta botanic gardens, from sir l. peel's grounds. i devoted a few days to the calcutta botanic gardens, where i found my kind friend dr. falconer established, and very busy. the destruction of most of the palms, and of all the noble tropical features of the gardens, during dr. griffith's incumbency, had necessitated the replanting of the greater part of the grounds, the obliteration of old walks, and the construction of new: it was also necessary to fill up tanks whose waters, by injudicious cuttings, were destroying some of the most valuable parts of the land, to drain many acres, and to raise embankments to prevent the encroachments of the hoogly: the latter being a work attended with great expense, now cripples the resources of the garden library, and other valuable adjuncts; for the trees which were planted for the purpose having been felled and sold, it became necessary to buy timber at an exorbitant price. the avenue of cycas trees (_cycas circinalis_), once the admiration of all visitors, and which for beauty and singularity was unmatched in any tropical garden, had been swept away by the same unsparing hand which had destroyed the teak, mahogany, clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon groves. in , when i first visited the establishment, nothing was to be seen of its former beauty and grandeur, but a few noble trees or graceful palms rearing their heads over a low ragged jungle, or spreading their broad leaves or naked limbs over the forlorn hope of a botanical garden, that consisted of open clay beds, disposed in concentric circles, and baking into brick under the fervid heat of a bengal sun. the rapidity of growth is so great in this climate, that within eight months from the commencement of the improvements, a great change had already taken place. the grounds bore a park-like appearance; broad shady walks had replaced the narrow winding paths that ran in distorted lines over the ground, and a large palmetum, or collection of tall and graceful palms of various kinds, occupied several acres at one side of the garden; whilst a still larger portion of ground was being appropriated to a picturesque assemblage of certain closely allied families of plants, whose association promised to form a novel and attractive object of study to the botanist, painter, and landscape gardener. this, which the learned director called in scientific language a thamno-endogenarium, consists of groups of all kinds of bamboos, tufted growing palms, rattan canes (_calami_), _dracaenae,_ plantains, screw-pines, (_pandani_, and such genera of tropical monocotyledonous plants. all are evergreens of most vivid hue, some of which, having slender trailing stems, form magnificent masses; others twine round one another, and present impenetrable hillocks of green foliage; whilst still others shoot out broad long wavy leaves from tufted roots; and a fourth class is supported by aerial roots, diverging on all sides and from all heights on the stems, every branch of which is crowned with an enormous plume of grass-like leaves.* [since i left india, these improvements have been still further carried out, and now (in the spring of ) i read of five splendid _victoria_ plants flowering at once, with _euryale ferox,_ white, blue, and red water-lilies, and white, yellow and scarlet lotus, rendering the tanks gorgeous, sunk as their waters are in frames of green grass, ornamented with clumps of _nipa fruticans_ and _phoenix paludosa._] the great _amherstia_ tree had been nearly killed by injudicious treatment, and the baking of the soil above its roots. this defect was remedied by sinking bamboo pipes four feet and a half in the earth, and watering through them--a plan first recommended by major m`farlane of tavoy. some fine _orchideae_ were in flower in the, gardens, but few of them fruit; and those _dendrobiums_ which bear axillary viviparous buds never do. some of the orchids appear to be spread by birds amongst the trees; but the different species of _vanda_ are increasing so fast, that there seems no doubt that this tribe of air-plants grows freely from seed in a wild state, though we generally fail to rear them in england. the great banyan tree (_ficus indica_) is still the pride and ornament of the garden. dr. falconer has ascertained satisfactorily that it is only seventy-five years old: annual rings, size, etc., afford no evidence in such a case, but people were alive a few years ago who remembered well its site being occupied in by a kujoor (date-palm), out of whose crown the banyan sprouted, and beneath which a fakir sat. it is a remarkable fact that the banyan hardly ever vegetates on the ground; but its figs are eaten by birds, and the seeds deposited in the crowns of palms, where they grow, sending down roots that embrace and eventually kill the palm, which decays away. this tree is now eighty feet high, and throws an area feet* [had this tree been growing in over the great palm-stove at kew, only thirty feet of each end of that vast structure would have been uncovered: its increase was proceeding so rapidly, that by this time it could probably cover the whole. larger banyans are common in bengal; but few are so symmetrical in shape and height. as the tree gets old, it breaks up into separate masses, the original trunk decaying, and the props becoming separate trunks of the different portions.] in diameter into a dark, cool shade. the gigantic limbs spread out about ten feet above the ground, and from neglect during dr. wallich's absence, there were on dr. falconer's arrival no more than eighty-nine descending roots or props; there are now several hundreds, and the growth of this grand mass of vegetation is proportionably stimulated and increased. the props are induced to sprout by wet clay and moss tied to the branches, beneath which a little pot of water is hung, and after they have made some progress, they are inclosed in bamboo tubes, and so coaxed down to the ground. they are mere slender whip-cords before reaching the earth, where they root, remaining very lax for several months; but gradually, as they grow and swell to the size of cables, they tighten, and eventually become very tense. this is a curious phenomenon, and so rapid, that it appears to be due to the rooting part mechanically dragging down the aerial. the branch meanwhile continues to grow outwards, and being supplied by its new support, thickens beyond it, whence the props always slant outwards from the ground towards the circumference of the tree. _cycas_ trees abound in the gardens, and, though generally having only one, or rarely two crowns, they have sometimes sixteen, and their stems are everywhere covered with leafy buds, which are developed on any check being given to the growth of the plant, as by the operation of transplantation, which will cause as many as buds to appear in the course of a few years, on a trunk eight feet high. during my stay at the gardens, dr. falconer received a box of living plants packed in moss, and transported in a frozen state by one of the ice ships from north america:* [the ice from these ships is sold in the calcutta market for a penny a pound, to great profit; it has already proved an invaluable remedy in cases of inflammation and fever, and has diminished mortality to a very appreciable extent.] they left in november, and arriving in march, i was present at the opening of the boxes, and saw plants (the whole contents) taken out in the most perfect state. they were chiefly fruit-trees, apples, pears, peaches, currants, and gooseberries, with beautiful plants of the venus' fly-trap (_dionaea muscipula_). more perfect success never attended an experiment: the plants were in vigorous bud, and the day after being released from their icy bonds, the leaves sprouted and unfolded, and they were packed in ward's cases for immediate transport to the himalaya mountains. my visit to calcutta enabled me to compare my instruments with the standards at the observatory, in which i was assisted by my friend, capt. thuillier, to whose kind offices on this and many other occasions i am greatly indebted. i returned to dorjiling on the th of april, and dr. thomson and i commenced our arrangements for proceeding to the khasia mountains. we started on the st of may, and i bade adieu to dorjiling with no light heart; for i was leaving the kindest and most disinterested friends i had ever made in a foreign land, and a country whose mountains, forests, productions, and people had all become endeared to me by many ties and associations. the prospects of dorjiling itself are neither doubtful nor insignificant. whether or not sikkim will fall again under the protection of britain, the station must prosper, and that very speedily. i had seen both its native population and its european houses doubled in two years; its salubrious climate, its scenery, and accessibility, ensure it so rapid a further increase that it will become the most populous hill-station in india. strong prejudices against a damp climate, and the complaints of loungers and idlers who only seek pleasure, together with a groundless fear of the natives, have hitherto retarded its progress; but its natural advantages will outweigh these and all other obstacles. i am aware that my opinion of the ultimate success of dorjiling is not shared by the general public of india, and must be pardoned for considering their views in this matter short-sighted. with regard to the disagreeables of its climate, i can sufficiently appreciate them, and shall be considered by the residents to have over-estimated the amount and constancy of mist, rain, and humidity, from the two seasons i spent there being exceptional in these respects. whilst on the one hand i am willing to admit the probability of this,* [i am informed that hardly a shower of rain has fallen this season, between november , and april ; and a very little snow in february only.] i may be allowed on the other to say that i have never visited any spot under the sun, where i was not told that the season was exceptional, and generally for the worse; added to which there is no better and equally salubrious climate east of nepal, accessible from calcutta. all climates are comparative, and fixed residents naturally praise their own. i have visited many latitudes, and can truly say that i have found no two climates resembling each other, and that all alike are complained of. that of dorjiling is above the average in point of comfort, and for perfect salubrity rivals any; while in variety, interest, and grandeur, the scenery is unequalled. from sikkim to the khasia mountains our course was by boat down the mahanuddy to the upper gangetic delta, whose many branches we followed eastwards to the megna; whence we ascended the soormah to the silhet district. we arrived at kishengunj, on the mahanuddy, on the rd of may, and were delayed two days for our boat, which should have been waiting here to take us to berhampore on the ganges: we were, however, hospitably received by mr. perry's family. the approach of the rains was indicated by violent easterly storms of thunder, lightning, and rain; the thermometer ranging from degrees to degrees. the country around kishengunj is flat and very barren; it is composed of a deep sandy soil, covered with a short turf, now swarming with cockchafers. water is found ten or twelve feet below the surface, and may be supplied by underground streams from the himalaya, distant forty-five miles. the river, which at this season is low, may be navigated up to titalya during the rains; its bed averages yards in width, and is extremely tortuous; the current is slight, and, though shallow, the water is opaque. we slowly descended to maldah, where we arrived on the th: the temperature both of the water and of the air increased rapidly to upwards of degrees; the former was always a few degrees cooler than the air by day, and warmer by night. the atmosphere became drier as we receded from the mountains. the boatmen always brought up by the shore at night; and our progress was so slow, that we could keep up with the boat when walking along the bank. so long as the soil and river-bed continued sandy, few bushes or herbs were to be found, and it was difficult to collect a hundred kinds of plants in a day: gradually, however, clumps of trees appeared, with jujube bushes, _trophis, acacia,_ and _buddleia,_ a few fan-palms, bamboos, and jack-trees. a shell (_anodon_) was the only one seen in the river, which harboured few water-plants or birds, and neither alligators nor porpoises ascend so high. on the th of may, about eighty miles in a straight line from the foot of the himalaya, we found the stratified sandy banks, which had gradually risen to a height of thirteen feet, replaced by the hard alluvial clay of the gangetic valley, which underlies the sand: the stream contracted, and the features of its banks were materially improved by a jungle of tamarisk, wormwood (_artemisia_), and white rose-bushes (_rosa involucrata_), whilst mango trees became common, with tamarinds, banyan, and figs. date and _caryota_ palms, and rattan canes, grew in the woods, and parasitic orchids on the trees, which were covered with a climbing fern (_acrosticum scandens_), so that we easily doubled our flora of the river banks before arriving at maldah. this once populous town is, like berhampore, now quite decayed, since the decline of its silk and indigo trades: the staple product, called "maldy," a mixture of silk and cotton, very durable, and which washes well, now forms its only trade, and is exported through sikkim to the north-west provinces and tibet. it is still famous for the size and excellence of its mangos, which ripen late in may; but this year the crop had been destroyed by the damp heats of spring, the usual north-west dry winds not having prevailed. the ruins of the once famous city of gour, a few miles distant, are now covered with jungle, and the buildings are fast disappearing, owing to the bricks being carried away to be used elsewhere. below maldah the river gets broader, and willow becomes common. we found specimens of a _planorbis_ in the mud of the stream, and saw apparently a boring shell in the alluvium, but could not land to examine it. chalky masses of alligators' droppings, like coprolites, are very common, buried in the banks, which become twenty feet high at the junction with the ganges, where we arrived on the th. the waters of this great river were nearly two degrees cooler than those of the mahanuddy. rampore-bauleah is a large station on the north bank of the ganges, whose stream is at this season fully a mile wide, with a very slow current; its banks are thirty feet above the water. we were most kindly received by mr. bell, the collector of the district, to whom we were greatly indebted for furthering us on our voyage: boats being very difficult to procure, we were, however, detained here from the th to the th. i was fortunate in being able to compare my barometers with a first-rate standard instrument, and in finding no appreciable alteration since leaving calcutta in the previous april. the elevation of the station is feet above the sea, that of kishengunj i made ; so that the gangetic valley is nearly a dead level for fully a hundred miles north, beyond which it rises; titalya, miles to the north, being feet, and siligoree, at the margin of the terai, rather higher. the river again falls more considerably than the land; the mahanuddy, at kishengunj, being about twenty feet below the level of the plains, or above the sea; whereas the ganges, at rampore, is probably not more than eighty feet, even when the water is highest. the climate of rampore is marked by greater extremes than that of calcutta: during our stay the temperature rose above degrees, and fell to degrees at night: the mean was . degrees higher than at calcutta, which is miles further south. being at the head of the gangetic delta, which points from the sunderbunds obliquely to the north-west, it is much damper than any locality further west, as is evidenced by two kinds of _calamus_ palm abounding, which do not ascend the ganges beyond monghyr. advancing eastwards, the dry north-west wind of the gangetic valley, which blows here in occasional gusts, is hardly felt; and easterly winds, rising after the sun (or, in other words, following the heating of the open dry country), blow down the great valley of the burrampooter, or south-easterly ones come up from the bay of bengal. the western head of the gangetic delta is thus placed in what are called "the variables" in naval phraseology; but only so far as its superficial winds are concerned, for its great atmospheric current always blows from the bay of bengal, and flows over all northern india, to the lofty regions of central asia. at rampore i found the temperature of the ground, at three feet depth, varied from . degrees to . degrees, being considerably lower than that of the air ( . degrees), whilst that of a fine ripening shaddock, into which i plunged a thermometer bulb, varied little from degrees, whether the sun shone on it or not. from this place we made very slow progress south-eastwards, with a gentle current, but against constant easterly winds, and often violent gales and thunder-storms, which obliged us to bring up under shelter of banks and islands of sand. sometimes we sailed along the broad river, whose opposite shores were rarely both visible at once, and at others tracked the boat through narrow creeks that unite the many himalayan streams, and form a network soon after leaving their mountain valleys. a few miles beyond pubna we passed from a narrow canal at once into the main stream of the burrampooter at jaffergunj: our maps had led us to expect that it flowed fully seventy miles to the eastward in this latitude; and we were surprised to hear that within the last twenty years the main body of that river had shifted its course thus far to the westward. this alteration was not effected by the gradual working westwards of the main stream, but by the old eastern channel so rapidly silting up as to be now unnavigable; while the jummul, which receives the teesta, and which is laterally connected by branches with the burrampooter, became consequently wider and deeper, and eventually the principal stream. nothing can be more dreary and uninteresting than the scenery of this part of the delta. the water is clay-coloured and turbid, always cooler than the air, which again was degrees or degrees below that of calcutta, with a damper atmosphere. the banks are of stratified sand and mud, hardly raised above the mean level of the country, and consequently unlike those bordering most annually flooded rivers; for here the material is so unstable, that the current yearly changes its course. a wiry grass sometimes feebly binds the loose soil, on which there are neither houses nor cultivation. ascending the jummul (now the main channel of the burrampooter) for a few miles, we turned off into a narrower channel, sixty miles long, which passes by dacca, where we arrived on the th, and where we were again detained for boats, the demand for which is rapidly increasing with the extended cultivation of the sunderbunds and delta. we stayed with mr. atherton, and botanised in the neighbourhood of the town, which was once very extensive, and is still large, though not flourishing. the population is mostly mahometan; the site, though beautiful and varied, is unhealthy for europeans. ruins of great moorish brick buildings still remain, and a greek style of ornamenting the houses prevails to a remarkable degree. the manufacture of rings for the arms and ancles, from conch-shells imported from the malayan archipelago, is still almost confined to dacca: the shells are sawn across for this purpose by semicircular saws, the hands and toes being both actively employed in the operation. the introduction of circular saws has been attempted by some european gentlemen, but steadily resisted by the natives, despite their obvious advantages. the dacca muslin manufacture, which once employed thousands of hands, is quite at an end, so that it was with great difficulty that the specimens of these fabrics sent to the great exhibition of , were procured. the kind of cotton (which is very short in the staple) employed, is now hardly grown, and scarcely a loom exists which is fit for the finest fabrics. the jewellers still excel in gold and silver filagree. pine-apples, plantains, mangos, and oranges, abound in the dacca market, betokening a better climate for tropical fruits than that of western bengal; and we also saw the fruit of _euryale ferox,_* [an indian water-lily with a small red flower, covered everywhere with prickles, and so closely allied to _victoria regia_ as to be scarcely generically distinguishable from it. it grows in the eastern sunderbunds, and also in kashmir. the discoverer of victoria called the latter "_euryale amazonica._" these interestiug plants are growing side by side in the new victoria house at kew. the chinese species has been erroneously considered different from the indian one.] which is round, soft, pulpy, and the size of a small orange; it contains from eight to fifteen round black seeds as large as peas, which are full of flour, and are eaten roasted in india and china, in which latter country the plant is said to have been in cultivation for upwards of years. the native vegetation is very similar to that of the hoogly, except that the white rose is frequent here. the fact of a plant of this genus being as common on the plains of bengal as a dog-rose is in england, and associated with cocoa-nuts, palms, mangos, plantains, and banyans, has never yet attracted the attention of botanists, though the species was described by roxburgh. as a geographical fact it is of great importance, for the rose is usually considered a northern genus, and no kind but this inhabits a damp hot tropical climate. even in mountainous countries situated near the equator, as in the himalaya and andes, wild roses are very rare, and only found at great elevations, whilst they are unknown in the southern hemisphere. it is curious that this rose, which is also a native of birma and the indian peninsula, does not in this latitude grow west of the meridian of degrees; it is confined to the upper gangetic delta, and inhabits a climate in which it would least of all be looked for. i made the elevation of dacca by barometer only seventy-two feet above the sea; and the banks of the dallisary being high, the level of its waters at this season is scarcely above that of the bay of bengal. the mean temperature of the air was . degrees during our stay, or half a degree lower than calcutta at the same period. we pursued our voyage on the th of may, to the old bed of the burrampooter, an immense shallow sheet of water, of which the eastern bank is for eighty miles occupied by the delta of the soormah. this river rises on the munnipore frontier, and flows through cachar, silhet, and the jheels of east bengal, receiving the waters of the cachar, jyntea, khasia, and garrow mountains (which bound the assam valley to the south), and of the tipperah hills, which stretch parallel to them, and divide the soormah valley from the bay of bengal. the immense area thus drained by the soormah is hardly raised above the level of the sea, and covers about , square miles. the anastomosing rivers that traverse it, flow very gently, and do not materially alter their course; hence their banks gradually rise above the mean level of the surrounding country, and on them the small villages are built, surrounded by extensive rice-fields that need no artificial irrigation. at this season the general surface of the jheels is marshy; but during the rains, which are excessive on the neighbouring mountains, they resemble an inland sea, the water rising gradually to within a few inches of the floor of the huts; as, however, it subsides as slowly in autumn, it commits no devastation. the communication is at all seasons by boats, in the management of which the natives (chiefly mahometans) are expert. the want of trees and shrubs is the most remarkable feature of the jheels; in which respect they differ from the sunderbunds, though the other physical features of each are similar, the level being exactly the same: for this difference there is no apparent cause, beyond the influence of the tide and sea atmosphere. long grasses of tropical genera (_saccharum, donax, andropogon,_ and _rottboellia_) ten feet high, form the bulk of the vegetation, with occasional low bushes along the firmer banks of the natural canals that everywhere intersect the country; amongst these the rattan cane (_calamus_), rose, a laurel, _stravadium,_ and fig, are the most common; while beautiful convolvuli throw their flowering shoots across the water. the soil, which is sandy along the burrampooter, is more muddy and clayey in the centre of the jheels, with immense spongy accumulations of vegetable matter in the marshes, through which we poked the boat-staves without finding bottom: they were for the most part formed of decomposed grass roots, with occasionally leaves, but no quantity of moss or woody plants. along the courses of the greater streams drift timber and various organic fragments are no doubt imbedded, but as there is no current over the greater part of the flooded surface, there can be little or no accumulation, except perhaps of old canoes, or of such vegetables as grow on the spot. the waters are dark-coloured, but clear and lucid, even at their height. we proceeded up the burrampooter, crossing it obliquely; its banks were on the average five miles apart, and formed of sand, without clay, and very little silt or mud: the water was clear and brown, like that of the jheels, and very different from that of the jummul. we thence turned eastwards into the delta of the soormah, which we traversed in a north-easterly direction to the stream itself. we often passed through very narrow channels, where the grasses towered over the boats: the boatmen steered in and out of them as they pleased, and we were utterly at a loss to know how they guided themselves, as they had neither compass nor map, and there were few villages or landmarks; and on climbing the mast we saw multitudes of other masts and sails peeing over the grassy marshes, doing just the same as we did. all that go up have the south-west wind in their favour, and this helps them to their course, but beyond this they have no other guide but that instinct which habit begets. often we had to retreat from channels that promised to prove short cuts, but which turned out to be blind alleys. sometimes we sailed up broader streams of chesnut-brown water, accompanied by fleets of boats repairing to the populous districts at the foot of the khasia, for rice, timber, lime, coal, bamboos, and long reeds for thatching, all of which employ an inland navy throughout the year in their transport to calcutta. leeches and mosquitos were very troublesome, the latter appearing in clouds at night; during the day they were rarer, but the species was the same. a large cray-fish was common, but there were few birds and no animals to be seen. fifty-four barometric observations, taken at the level of the water on the voyage between dacca and the soormah, and compared with calcutta, showed a gradual rise of the mercury in proceeding eastwards; for though the pressure at calcutta was . of an inch higher than at dacca, it was . lower than on the soormah: the mean difference between all these observations and the cotemporaneous ones at calcutta was + . in favour of calcutta, and the temperature half a degree lower; the dew-point and humidity were nearly the same at both places. this being the driest season of the year, it is very probable that the mean level of the water at this part of the delta is not higher than that of the bay of bengal; but as we advanced northwards towards the khasia, and entered the soormah itself, the atmospheric pressure increased further, thus appearing to give the bed of that stream a depression of thirty-five feet below the bay of bengal, into which it flows! this was no doubt the result of unequal atmospheric pressure at the two localities, caused by the disturbance of the column of atmosphere by the khasia mountains; for in december of the same year, thirty-eight observations on the surface of the soormah made its bed forty-six feet _above_ the bay of bengal, whilst, from twenty-three observations on the megna, the pressure only differed + . of an inch from that of the barometer at calcutta, which is eighteen feet above the sea-level. these barometric levellings, though far from satisfactory as compared with trigonometric, are extremely interesting in the absence of the latter. in a scientific point of view nothing has been done towards determining the levels of the land and waters of the great gangetic delta, since rennell's time, yet no geodetical operation promises more valuable results in geography and physical geology than running three lines of level across its area; from chittagong to calcutta, from silhet to rampore, and from calcutta to silhet. the foot of the sikkim himalaya has, i believe, been connected with calcutta by the great trigonometrical survey, but i am given to understand that the results are not published. my own barometric levellings would make the bed of the mahanuddy and ganges at the western extremity of the delta, considerably higher than i should have expected, considering how gentle the current is, and that the season was that of low water. if my observations are correct, they probably indicate a diminished pressure, which is not easily accounted for, the lower portion of the atmospheric column at rampore being considerably drier and therefore heavier than at calcutta. at the eastern extremity again, towards silhet, the atmosphere is much damper than at calcutta, and the barometer should therefore have stood lower, indicating a higher level of the waters than is the case. to the geologist the jheels and sunderbunds are a most instructive region, as whatever may be the mean elevation of their waters, a permanent depression of ten to fifteen feet would submerge an immense tract, which the ganges, burrampooter, and soormah would soon cover with beds of silt and sand. there would be extremely few shells in the beds thus formed, the southern and northern divisions of which would present two very different floras and faunas, and would in all probability be referred by future geologists to widely different epochs. to the north, beds of peat would be formed by grasses, and in other parts, temperate and tropical forms of plants and animals would be preserved in such equally balanced proportions as to confound the palaeontologist; with the bones of the long-snouted alligator, gangetic porpoise, indian cow, buffalo, rhinoceros, elephant, tiger, deer, boar; and a host of other animals, he would meet with acorns of several species of oak, pine-cones and magnolia fruits, rose seeds, and _cycas_ nuts, with palm nuts, screw-pines, and other tropical productions. on the other hand, the sunderbunds portion, though containing also the bones of the tiger, deer, and buffalo, would have none of the indian cow, rhinoceros, or elephant; there would be different species of porpoise, alligator, and deer, and none of the above mentioned plants (_cycas,_ oak, pine, magnolia and rose), which would be replaced by numerous others, all distinct from those of the jheels, and many of them indicative of the influence of salt water, whose proximity (from the rarity of sea-shells) might not otherwise be suspected. illustration--view in the jheels. on the st of june we entered the soormah, a full and muddy stream flowing west, a quarter of a mile broad, with banks of mud and clay twelve or fifteen feet high, separating it from marshes, and covered with betel-nut and cocoa-nut palms, figs, and banyans. many small villages were scattered along the banks, each with a swarm of boats, and rude kilns for burning the lime brought from the khasia mountains, which is done with grass and bushes. we ascended to chattuc, against a gentle current, arriving on the th. from this place the khasia mountains are seen as a long table-topped range running east and west, about to feet high, with steep faces towards the jheels, out of which they appear to rise abruptly. though twelve miles distant, large waterfalls are very clearly seen precipitating themselves over the cliffs into a bright green mass of foliage, that seems to creep half way up their flanks. the nearly horizontal arrangement of the strata is as conspicuous here, as in the sandstone of the kymore hills in the soane valley, which these mountains a good deal resemble; but they are much higher, and the climate is widely different. large valleys enter the hills, and are divided by hog-backed spurs, and it is far within these valleys that the waterfalls and precipices occur; but the nearer and further cliffs being thrown by perspective into one range, they seem to rise out of the jheels so abruptly as to remind one of some precipitous island in the ocean. chattuc is mainly indebted for its existence to the late mr. inglis, who resided there for upwards of sixty years, and opened a most important trade between the khasia and calcutta in oranges, potatos, coal, lime, and timber. we were kindly received by his son, whose bungalow occupies a knoll, of which there are several, which attracted our attention as being the only elevations fifty feet high which we had ascended since leaving the foot of the sikkim himalaya. they rise as islets (commonly called teela, beng.) out of the jheels, within twelve to twenty miles of the khasia; they are chiefly formed of stratified gravel and sand, and are always occupied by villages and large trees. they seldom exceed sixty feet in height, and increase in number and size as the hills are approached; they are probably the remains of a deposit that was once spread uniformly along the foot of the mountains, and they in all respects resemble those i have described as rising abruptly from the plains near titalya (see vol. i. chapter xvii). the climate of chattuc is excessively damp and hot throughout the year, but though sunk amid interminable swamps, the place is perfectly healthy! such indeed is the character of the climate throughout the jheels, where fevers and agues are rare; and though no situations can appear more malarious to the common observer than silhet and cachar, they are in fact eminently salubrious. these facts admit of no explanation in the present state of our knowledge of endemic diseases. much may be attributed to the great amount and purity of the water, the equability of the climate, the absence of forests and of sudden changes from wet to dry; but such facts afford no satisfactory explanation. the water, as i have above said, is of a rich chesnut-brown in the narrow creeks of the jheels, and is golden yellow by transmitted light, owing no doubt, as in bog water and that of dunghills, to a vegetable extractive and probably the presence of carburetted hydrogen. humboldt mentions this dark-coloured water as prevailing in some of the swamps of the cassiquares, at the junction of the orinoco and amazon, and gives much curious information on its accompanying features of animal and vegetable life. the rains generally commence in may: they were unusually late this year, though the almost daily gales and thunder-storms we experienced, foretold their speedy arrival. from may till october they are unremitting, and the country is under water, the soormah rising about fifty feet. north-easterly winds prevail, but they are a local current reflected from the khasia, against which the southerly perennial trade-wind impinges. westerly winds are very rare, but the dry north-west blasts of india have been known to traverse the delta and reach this meridian, in one or two short hot dry puffs during march and april. hoarfrost is unknown.* [it however forms further south, at the very mouth of the megna, and is the effect of intense radiation when the thermometer in the shade falls to degrees.] china roses and tropical plants (_bignoniae, asclepiadeae,_ and _convolvuli_) rendered mr. inglis' bungalow gay, but little else will grow in the gardens. pine-apples are the best fruit, and oranges from the foot of the khasia: plantains ripen imperfectly, and the mango is always acid, attacked by grubs, and having a flavour of turpentine. the violent hailstorms of the vernal equinox cut both spring and cold season flowers and vegetables, and the rains destroy all summer products. the soil is a wet clay, in which some european vegetables thrive well if planted in october or november. we were shown marrowfat peas that had been grown for thirty years without degenerating in size, but their flavour was poor. small long canoes, paddled rapidly by two men, were procured here, whereby to ascend the narrow rivers that lead up to the foot of the mountains: they each carry one passenger, who lies along the bottom, protected by a bamboo platted arched roof. we started at night, and early the next morning arrived at pundua,* [pundua, though an insignificant village, surrounded by swamps, has enjoyed an undue share of popularity as a botanical region. before the geographical features of the country north of silhet were known, the plants brought from those hills by native collectors were sent to the calcutta garden (and thence to europe) as from pundua. hence silhet mountains and pundua mountains, both very erroneous terms, are constantly met with in botanical works, and generally refer to plants growing in the khasia mountains.] where there is a dilapidated bungalow: the inhabitants are employed in the debarkation of lime, coal, and potatos. large fleets of boats crowded the narrow creeks, some of the vessels being of several tons burden. elephants were kindly sent here for us by mr. h. inglis, to take us to the foot of the mountains, about three miles distant, and relays of mules and ponies to ascend to churra, where we were received with the greatest hospitality by that gentleman, who entertained us till the end of june, and procured us servants and collectors. to his kind offices we were also indebted throughout our travels in the khasia, for much information, and for facilities and necessaries of all kinds: things in which the traveller is more dependent on his fellow countrymen in india, than in any other part of the world. we spent two days at pundua, waiting for our great boats (which drew several feet of water), and collecting in the vicinity. the old bungalow, without windows and with the roof falling in, was a most miserable shelter; and whichever way we turned from the door, a river or a swamp lay before us. birds, mosquitos, leeches, and large wasps swarmed, also rats and sandflies. a more pestilential hole cannot be conceived; and yet people traverse this district, and sleep here at all seasons of the year with impunity. we did so ourselves in the month of june, when the sikkim and all other terais are deadly: we returned in september, traversing the jheels and nullahs at the very foot of the hills during a short break of fine weather in the middle of the rains; and we again slept here in november,* [at the north foot of the khasia, in the heavily timbered dry terai stretching for sixty miles to the burrampooter, it is almost inevitable death for a european to sleep, any time between the end of april and of november. many have crossed that tract, but not one without taking fever: mr. h. inglis was the only survivor of a party of five, and he was ill from the effects for upwards of two years, after having been brought to death's door by the first attack, which came on within three weeks of his arrival at churra, and by several relapses.] always exposed in the heat of the day to wet and fatigue, and never having even a _soupcon_ of fever, ague, or rheumatism. this immunity does not, however, extend to the very foot of the hills, as it is considered imprudent to sleep at this season in the bungalow of terrya, only three miles off. the elevation of pundua bungalow is about forty feet above the sea, and that of the waters surrounding it, from ten to thirty, according to the season. in june the mean of the barometer readings at the bungalow was absolutely identical with that of the calcutta barometer, in september it was . inch lower, and in november . lower. the mean annual temperature throughout the jheels is less than degrees below that of calcutta. terrya bungalow lies at the very foot of the first rise of the mountains; on the way we crossed many small streams upon the elephants, and one large one by canoes: the water in all was cool* [temperature in september degrees to degrees; and in november . degrees.] and sparkling, running rapidly over boulders and pebbles. their banks of sandy clay were beautifully fringed with a willow-like laurel, _ehretia_ bushes, bamboos, palms, _bauhinia, bombax,_ and _erythrina,_ over which _calamus_ palm (rattan) and various flowering plants climbed. the rock at terrya is a nummulitic limestone, worn into extensive caverns. this formation is said to extend along the southern flank of the khasia, garrow, and jyntea mountains, and to be associated with sandstone and coal: it is extensively quarried in many places, several thousand tons being annually shipped for calcutta and dacca. it is succeeded by a horizontally stratified sandstone, which is continued up to feet, where it is overlain by coal-beds and then by limestone again. the sub-tropical scenery of the lower and outer sikkim himalaya, though on a much more gigantic scale, is not comparable in beauty and luxuriance with the really tropical vegetation induced by the hot, damp, and insular climate of these perennially humid mountains. at the himalaya forests of gigantic trees, many of them deciduous, appear from a distance as masses of dark gray foliage, clothing mountains , feet high: here the individual trees are smaller, more varied in kind, of a brilliant green, and contrast with gray limestone and red sandstone rocks and silvery cataracts. palms are more numerous here;* [there are upwards of twenty kinds of palm in this district, including _chamaerops,_ three species of _areca,_ two of _wallichia, arenga, caryota,_ three of _phoenix, plectocomia, licuala,_ and many species of _calamus._ besides these there are several kinds of _pandanus,_ and the _cycas pectinata._] the cultivated _areca_ (betel-nut) especially, raising its graceful stem and feathery crown, "like an arrow shot down from heaven," in luxuriance and beauty above the verdant slopes. this difference is at once expressed to the indian botanist by defining the khasia flora as of malayan character; by which is meant the prevalence of brilliant glossy-leaved evergreen tribes of trees (as _euphorbiaceae_ and _urticeae_), especially figs, which abound in the hot gulleys, where the property of their roots, which inosculate and form natural grafts, is taken advantage of in bridging streams, and in constructing what are called living bridges, of the most picturesque forms. _combretaceae,_ oaks, oranges, _garcinia_ (gamboge), _diospyros,_ figs, jacks, plantains, and _pandanus,_ are more frequent here, together with pinnated leaved _leguminosae, meliaceae,_ vines and peppers, and above all palms, both climbing ones with pinnated shining leaves (as _calamus_ and _plectocomia_), and erect ones with similar leaves (as cultivated cocoa-nut, _areca_ and _arenga_), and the broader-leaved wild betel-nut, and beautiful _caryota_ or wine-palm, whose immense decompound leaves are twelve feet long. laurels and wild nutmegs, with _henslowia, itea,_ etc., were frequent in the forest, with the usual prevalence of parasites, mistleto, epiphytical _orchideae, aeshynanthus,_ ferns, mosses, and _lycopodia_; and on the ground were _rubiaceae, scitamineae,_ ferns, _acanthaceae,_ beautiful balsams, and herbaceous and shrubby nettles. bamboos* [the natives enumerate about fourteen different kinds of bamboo, of which we found five in flower, belonging to three very distinct genera. uspar, uspet, uspit, usken, uskong, uktang, usto, silee, namlang, tirra, and battooba are some of the names of bamboos vouched for by mr. inglis as correctly spelt. of other khasia names of plants, wild plantains are called kairem, and the cultivated kakesh; the latter are considered so nourishing that they are given to newborn infants. senteo is a flower in khas, so a fruit, ading a tree, and te a leaf. _pandanus_ is kashelan. _plectocomia,_ usmole. _licuala,_ kuslow. _caryota,_ kalai-katang. _wallichia,_ kalai-nili. _areca,_ waisola. various _calami_ are rhimet, uriphin, ureek hilla, tindrio, etc. this list will serve as a specimen; i might increase it materially, but as i have elsewhere observed, the value attached to the supposed definite application of native names to natural objects is greatly over-rated, and too much reliance on them has introduced a prodigious amount of confusion into scientific works and philological inquiries.] of many kinds are very abundant, and these hills further differ remarkably from those of sikkim in the great number of species of grasses. the ascent was at first gradual, along the sides of a sandstone spur. at feet the slope suddenly became steep and rocky, at feet tree vegetation disappeared, and we opened a magnificent prospect of the upper scarped flank of the valley of moosmai, which we were ascending, with four or five beautiful cascades rolling over the table top of the hills, broken into silvery foam as they leapt from ledge to ledge of the horizontally stratified precipice, and throwing a veil of silver gauze over the gulf of emerald green vegetation, feet below. the views of the many cataracts of the first class that are thus precipitated over the bare table-land on which churra stands, into the valleys on either side, surpass anything of the kind that i have elsewhere seen, though in many respects vividly recalling the scenery around rio de janeiro: nor do i know any spot in the world more calculated to fascinate the naturalist who, while appreciating the elements of which a landscape is composed, is also keenly alive to the beauty and grandeur of tropical scenery. illustration--"living bridge" formed by the aerial roots of the india-rubber and other kinds of figs. at the point where this view opens, a bleak stony region commences, bearing numberless plants of a temperate flora and of european genera, at a comparatively low elevation; features which continue to the top of the flat on which the station is built, feet above the sea. illustration--dewan's ear-ring. chapter xxviii. churra, english station of -- khasia people -- garrow people -- houses -- habits -- dress -- arms -- dialects -- marriages -- food -- funerals -- superstitions -- flat of churra -- scenery -- lime and coal -- mamloo -- cliffs -- cascades -- _chamaerops_ palm -- jasper-rocks -- flora of churra -- orchids -- rhododendrons -- pine -- climate -- extraordinary rain-fall -- its effects -- gardens of lieuts. raban and cave -- leave churra to cross the mountain range -- coal, shale, and underclay -- kala-panee river -- lailangkot -- _luculia pinceana_ -- conglomerate surureem wood -- boga-panee river -- view of himalaya -- green-stone -- age of pine-cones -- moflong plants -- _coix_ -- chillong mountain -- extensive view -- road to syong -- broad valleys -- geology -- plants -- myrung -- granite blocks -- kollong rock -- pine-woods -- features of country -- orchids -- iron forges. churra poonji is said to be so called from the number of streams in the neighbourhood, and poonji, "a village" (khas.): it was selected for a european station, partly from the elevation and consequent healthiness of the spot, and partly from its being on the high road from silhet to gowahatty, on the burrampooter, the capital of assam, which is otherwise only accessible by ascending that river, against both its current and the perennial east wind. a rapid postal communication is hereby secured: but the extreme unhealthiness of the northern foot of the mountains effectually precludes all other intercourse for nine months in the year. on the first opening up of the country, the europeans were brought into sanguinary collision with the khasias, who fought bravely with bows and arrows, displaying a most blood-thirsty and cruel disposition. this is indeed natural to them; and murders continued very frequent as preludes to the most trifling robberies, until the extreme penalty of our law was put in force. even now, some of the tributary rajahs are far from quiet under our rule, and various parts of the country are not safe to travel in. the garrows, who occupy the western extremity of this range, at the bend of the burrampooter, are still in a savage state. human sacrifices and polyandry are said to be frequent amongst them, and their orgies are detestable. happily we are hardly ever brought into collision with them, except by their occasional depredations on the assam and khasia frontier: their country is very unhealthy, and is said to contain abundance of coal, iron, and lime. we seldom employed fewer than twelve or fourteen of the natives as collectors, and when travelling, from thirty to forty as coolies, etc. they are averse to rising early, and are intolerably filthy in their persons, though not so in their cottages, which are very poor, with broad grass roofs reaching nearly to the ground, and usually encircled by bamboo fences; the latter custom is not common in savage communities, and perhaps indicates a dread of treachery. the beams are of hewn wood (they do not use saws), often neatly carved, and the doors turn on good wooden pivots. they have no windows, and the fire is made on the floor: the utensils, etc. are placed on hanging shelves and in baskets. the khasia people are of the indo-chinese race; they are short, very stout, and muscular, with enormous calves and knees, rather narrow eyes and little beard, broad, high cheekbones, flat noses, and open nostrils. i believe that a few are tattooed. the hair is gathered into a top-knot, and sometimes shaved off the forehead and temples. a loose cotton shirt, often striped blue and red, without sleeves and bordered with long thread fringes, is their principal garment; it is gathered into a girdle of silver chains by people of rank. a cotton robe is sometimes added, with a large cotton turban or small skull-cap. the women wear a long cloth tied in a knot across the breast. during festivals both men and women load themselves with silk robes, fans, peacock's feathers, and gold and silver ornaments of great value, procured from assam, many of which are said to be extremely curious, but i regret to say that i never saw any of them. on these occasions spirits are drunk, and dancing kept up all night: the dance is described as a slow ungraceful motion, the women being tightly swathed in cloths. all their materials are brought from assam; the only articles in constant use, of their own manufacture, being a rude sword or knife with a wooden handle and a long, narrow, straight blade of iron, and the baskets with head-straps, like those used by the lepchas, but much neater; also a netted bag of pine-apple fibre (said to come from silhet) which holds a clasp-knife, comb, flint, steel, and betel-nut box. they are much addicted to chewing pawn (betel-nut, pepper leaves, and lime) all day long, and their red saliva looks like blood on the paths. besides the sword i have described, they carry bows and arrows, and rarely a lance, and a bamboo wicker-work shield. we found the khasias to be sulky intractable fellows, contrasting unpleasantly with the lepchas; wanting in quickness, frankness, and desire to please, and obtrusively independent in manner; nevertheless we had a head man who was very much the reverse of this, and whom we had never any cause to blame. their language is, i believe, indo-chinese and monosyllabic: it is disagreeably nasal and guttural, and there are several dialects and accents in contiguous villages. all inflections are made by prefixing syllables, and when using the hindoo language, the future is invariably substituted for the past tense. they count up to a hundred, and estimate distances by the number of mouthfuls of pawn they eat on the road. education has been attempted by missionaries with partial success, and the natives are said to have shown themselves apt scholars. marriage is a very loose tie amongst them, and hardly any ceremony attends it. we were informed that the husband does not take his wife home, but enters her father's household, and is entertained there. divorce and an exchange of wives is common, and attended with no disgrace: thus the son often forgets his father's name and person before he grows up, but becomes strongly attached to his mother. the sister's son inherits both property and rank, and the proprietors' or rajahs' offspring are consequently often reared in poverty and neglect. the usual toy of the children is the bow and arrow, with which they are seldom expert; they are said also to spin pegtops like the english, climb a greased pole, and run round with a beam turning horizontally on an upright, to which it is attached by a pivot. the khasias eat fowls, and all meat, especially pork, potatos and vegetables, dried and half putrid fish in abundance, but they have an aversion to milk, which is very remarkable, as a great proportion of their country is admirably adapted for pasturage. in this respect, however, they assimilate to the chinese, and many indo-chinese nations who are indifferent to milk, as are the sikkim people. the bengalees, hindoos, and tibetans, on the other hand, consume immense quantities of milk. they have no sheep, and few goats or cattle, the latter of which are kept for slaughter; they have, however, plenty of pigs and fowls. eggs are most abundant, but used for omens only, and it is a common, but disgusting occurrence, to see large groups employed for hours in breaking them upon stones, shouting and quarrelling, surrounded by the mixture of yellow yolks and their red pawn saliva. the funeral ceremonies are the only ones of any importance, and are often conducted with barbaric pomp and expense; and rude stones of gigantic proportions are erected as monuments, singly or in rows, circles, or supporting one another, like those of stonehenge, which they rival in dimensions and appearance. the body is burned, though seldom during the rains, from the difficulty of obtaining a fire; it is therefore preserved in honey (which is abundant and good) till the dry season: a practice i have read of as prevailing among some tribes in the malay peninsula. spirits are drunk on these occasions; but the hill khasia is not addicted to drunkenness, though some of the natives of the low valleys are very much so. these ascend the rocky faces of the mountains by ladders, to the churra markets, and return loaded at night, apparently all but too drunk to stand; yet they never miss their footing in places which are most dangerous to persons unaccustomed to such situations. illustration--the table-land and station of churra, with the jheels, course of the soormah river, and tipperah hills in the extreme distance, looking south. the khasias are superstitious, but have no religion; like the lepchas, they believe in a supreme being, and in deities of the grove, cave, and stream. altercations are often decided by holding the disputants' heads under water, when the longest winded carries his point. fining is a common punishment, and death for grave offences. the changes of the moon are accounted for by the theory that this orb, who is a man, monthly falls in love with his wife's mother, who throws ashes in his face. the sun is female; and mr. yule* [i am indebted to mr. inglis for most of this information relating to the khasias, which i have since found, with much more that is curious and interesting, in a paper by lieut. yule in bengal asiat. soc. journal.] (who is my authority) says that the pleiades are called "the hen-man" (as in italy "the chickens"); also that they have names for the twelve months; they do not divide their time by weeks, but hold a market every four days. these people are industrious, and good cultivators of rice, millet, and legumes of many kinds. potatoes were introduced amongst them about twenty years ago by mr. inglis, and they have increased so rapidly that the calcutta market is now supplied by their produce. they keep bees in rude hives of logs of wood. the flat table-land on which churra poonji is placed, is three miles long and two broad, dipping abruptly in front and on both sides, and rising behind towards the main range, of which it is a spur. the surface of this area is everywhere intersected by shallow, rocky watercourses, which are the natural drains for the deluge that annually visits it. the western part is undulated and hilly, the southern rises in rocky ridges of limestone and coal, and the eastern is very flat and stony, broken only by low isolated conical mounds. the scenery varies extremely at different parts of the surface. towards the flat portion, where the english reside, the aspect is as bleak and inhospitable as can be imagined: a thin stratum of marshy or sandy soil covers a tabular mass of cold red sandstone; and there is not a tree, and scarcely a shrub to be seen, except occasional clumps of pandanus. the low white bungalows are few in number, and very scattered, some of them being a mile asunder, enclosed with stone walls and shrubs; and a small white church, disused on account of the damp, stands lonely in the centre of all. the views from the margins of this plateau are magnificent: feet below are bay-like valleys, carpetted as with green velvet, from which rise tall palms, tree-ferns with spreading crowns, and rattans shooting their pointed heads, surrounded with feathery foliage, as with ostrich plumes, far above the great trees. beyond are the jheels, looking like a broad shallow sea with the tide half out, bounded in the blue distance by the low-hills of tipperah. to the right and left are the scarped red rocks and roaring waterfalls, shooting far over the cliff's, and then arching their necks as they expand in feathery foam, over which rainbows float, forming and dissolving as the wind sways the curtains of spray from side to side. to the south of churra the lime and coal measures rise abruptly in flat-topped craggy hills, covered with brushwood and small trees. similar hills are seen far westward across the intervening valleys in the garrow country, rising in a series of steep isolated ranges, to feet above the general level of the country, and always skirting the south face of the mountains. considerable caverns penetrate the limestone, the broken surface of which rock presents many picturesque and beautiful spots, like the same rocks in england. westward the plateau becomes very hilly, bare, and grassy, with the streams broad and full, but superficial and rocky, precipitating themselves in low cascades over tabular masses of sand-stone. at mamloo their beds are deeper, and full of brushwood, and a splendid valley and amphitheatre of red cliffs and cascades, rivalling those of moosmai (chapter xxvii), bursts suddenly into view. mamloo is a large village, on the top of a spur, to the westward: it is buried in a small forest, particularly rich in plants, and is defended by a stone wall behind: the only road is tunnelled through the sandstone rock, under the wall; and the spur on either side dips precipitously, so that the place is almost impregnable if properly defended. a sanguinary conflict took place here between the british and the khasias, which terminated in the latter being driven over the precipices, beneath which many of them were shot. the fan-palm, _chamaerops khasiana_ ("pakha," khas.), grows on the cliff's near mamloo: it may be seen on looking over the edge of the plateau, its long curved trunk rising out of the naked rocks, but its site is generally inaccessible;* [this species is very closely allied to, if not identical with _p. martiana_ of nepal; which ascends to feet in the western himalaya, where it is annually covered with snow: it is not found in sikkim, but an allied species occurs in affghanistan, called _p. ritcheana_: the dwarf palm of southern europe is a fourth species.] while near it grows the _saxifragis ciliaris_ of our english gardens, a common plant in the north-west himalaya, but extremely scarce in sikkim and the khasia mountains. illustration--mamloo cascades. the descent of the mamloo spur is by steps, alternating with pebbly flats, for feet, to a saddle which connects the churra hills with those of lisouplang to the westward. the rise is along a very steep narrow ridge to a broad long grassy hill, , feet high, whence an extremely steep descent leads to the valley of the boga-panee, and the great mart of chela, which is at the embouchure of that river. the transverse valley thus formed by the mamloo spur, is full of orange groves, whose brilliant green is particularly conspicuous from above. at the saddle below mamloo are some jasper rocks, which are the sandstone altered by basalt. fossil shells are recorded to have been found by dr. m'lelland* [see a paper on the geology of the khasia mountains by dr. m'lelland in the "bengal asiatic society's journal."] on some of the flats, which he considers to be raised beaches: but we sought in vain for any evidence of this theory beyond the pebbles, whose rounding we attributed to the action of superficial streams. it is extremely difficult to give within the limits of this narrative any idea of the khasia flora, which is, in extent and number of fine plants, the richest in india, and probably in all asia. we collected upwards of flowering plants within ten miles of the station of churra, besides ferns, and a profusion of mosses, lichens, and fungi. this extraordinary exuberance of species is not so much attributable to the elevation, for the whole sikkim himalaya (three times more elevated) does not contain more flowering plants, and far fewer ferns, etc.; but to the variety of exposures; namely, . the jheels, . the tropical jungles, both in deep, hot, and wet valleys, and on drier slopes; . the rocks; . the bleak table-lands and stony soils; . the moor-like uplands, naked and exposed, where many species and genera appear at to feet, which are not found on the outer ranges of sikkim under , .* [as _thalictrum, anemone,_ primrose, cowslip, _tofieldia,_ yew, pine, saxifrage, _delphinium, pedicularis._] in fact, strange as it may appear, owing to this last cause, the temperate flora descends fully feet lower in the latitude of khasia ( degrees n.) than in that of sikkim ( degrees n.), though the former is two degrees nearer the equator. the _pandanus_ alone forms a conspicuous feature in the immediate vicinity of churra; while the small woods about mamloo, moosmai, and the coal-pits, are composed of _symplocos,_ laurels, brambles, and jasmines, mixed with small oaks and _photinia,_ and many tropical genera of trees and shrubs. _orchideae_ are, perhaps, the largest natural order in the khasia, where fully kinds grow, chiefly on trees and rocks, but many are terrestrial, inhabiting damp woods and grassy slopes. i doubt whether in any other part of the globe the species of orchids outnumber those of any other natural order, or form so large a proportion of the flora. balsams are next in relative abundance (about twenty-five), both tropical and temperate kinds, of great beauty and variety in colour, form, and size of blossom. palms amount to fourteen, of which the _chamaerops_ and _arenga_ are the only genera not found in sikkim. of bamboos there are also fifteen, and of other grasses , which is an immense proportion, considering that the indian flora (including those of ceylon, kashmir, and all the himalaya), hardly contains . _scitamineae_ also are abundant, and extremely beautiful; we collected thirty-seven kinds. no rhododendron grows at churra, but several species occur a little further north: there is but one pine (_p. khasiana_) besides the yew, (and two _podocarpi_), and that is only found in the drier interior regions. singular to say, it is a species not seen in the himalaya or elsewhere, but very nearly allied to _pinua longifolia,_* [cone-bearing pines with long leaves, like the common scotch fir, are found in asia, and as far south as the equator (in borneo) and also inhabit arracan, the malay peninsula, sumatra, and south china. it is a very remarkable fact that no gymnospermous tree inhabits the peninsula of india; not even the genus _podocarpus,_ which includes most of the tropical gymnosperms, and is technically coniferous, and has glandular woody fibre; though like the yew it bears berries. two species of this genus are found in the khasia, and one advances as far west as nepal. the absence of oaks and of the above genera (_podocarpus_ and _pinus_) is one of the most characteristic differences between the botany of the east and west shores of the bay of bengal.] though more closely resembling the scotch fir than that tree does. the natural orders whose rarity is most noticeable, are _cruciferae,_ represented by only three kinds, and _caryophylleae._ of _ranunculaceae,_ there are six or seven species of _clematis,_ two of _anemone,_ one _delphinium,_ three of _thalictrum,_ and two _ranunculi._ _compsitae_ and _leguminosae_ are far more numerous than in sikkim. the climate of khasia is remarkable for the excessive rain-fall. attention was first drawn to this by mr. yule, who stated, that in the month of august, , inches fell, or twenty-two feet; and that during five successive days, thirty inches fell in every twenty-four hours! dr. thomson and i also recorded thirty inches in one day and night, and during the seven months of our stay, upwards of inches fell, so that the total annual fall perhaps greatly exceeded inches, or fifty feet, which has been registered in succeeding years! from april, , to april, , inches (forty-two feet) fell. this unparalleled amount is attributable to the abruptness of the mountains which face the bay of bengal, from which they are separated by miles of jheels and sunderbunds. this fall is very local: at silhet, not thirty miles further south, it is under inches; at gowahatty, north of the khasia in assam, it is about ; and even on the hills, twenty miles inland from churra itself, the fall is reduced to . at the churra station, the distribution of the rain is very local; my gauges, though registering the same amount when placed beside a good one in the station; when removed half a mile, received a widely different quantity, though the different gauges gave nearly the same mean amount at the end of each whole month. the direct effect of this deluge is to raise the little streams about churra fourteen feet in as many hours, and to inundate the whole flat; from which, however, the natural drainage is so complete, as to render a tract, which in such a climate and latitude should be clothed with exuberant forest, so sterile, that no tree finds support, and there is no soil for cultivation of any kind whatsoever, not even of rice. owing, however, to the hardness of the horizontally stratified sandstone, the streams have not cut deep channels, nor have the cataracts worked far back into the cliffs. the limestone alone seems to suffer, and the turbid streams from it prove how rapidly it is becoming denuded. the great mounds of angular gravel on the churra flat, are perhaps the remains of an extensive deposit, fifty feet thick, elsewhere washed away by these rains; and i have remarked traces of the same over many slopes of the hills around. the mean temperature of churra (elev. feet) is about degrees, or degrees below that of calcutta; which, allowing for degrees of northing, gives degree of temperature to every to feet of ascent. in summer the thermometer often rises to degrees and degrees; and in the winter, owing to the intense radiation, hoar-frost is frequent. such a climate is no less inimical to the cultivation of plants, than is the wretched soil: of this we saw marked instances in the gardens of two of the resident officers, lieutenants raban and cave, to whom we were indebted for the greatest kindness and hospitality. these gentlemen are indefatigable horticulturists, and took a zealous interest in our pursuits, accompanying us in our excursions, enriching our collections in many ways, and keeping an eye to them and to our plant-driers during our absence from the station. in their gardens the soil had to be brought from a considerable distance, and dressed copiously with vegetable matter. bamboo clumps were planted for shelter within walls, and native shrubs, rhododendrons, etc., introduced. many _orchideae_ throve well on the branches of the stunted trees which they had planted, and some superb kinds of _hedychium_ in the ground; but a very few english garden plants throve in the flower-beds. even in pots and frames, geraniums, etc., would rot, from the rarity of sunshine, which is as prejudicial as the damp and exposure. still many wild shrubs of great interest and beauty flourished, and some european ones succeeded with skill and management; as geraniums, _salvia, petunia,_ nasturtium, chrysanthemum, _kennedya rubicunda, maurandya,_ and fuchsia. the daisy seed sent from england as double, came up very poor and single. dahlias do not thrive, nor double balsams. now they have erected small but airy green-houses, and sunlight is the only desideratum. at the end of june, we started for the northern or assam face of the mountains. the road runs between the extensive and populous native village, or poonji, on the left, and a deep valley on the right, and commands a beautiful view of more waterfalls. beyond this it ascends steeply, and the sandstone on the road itself is curiously divided into parallelograms, like hollow bricks,* [i have seen similar bricks in the sandstones of the coal-districts of yorkshire; they are very puzzling, and are probably due to some very obscure crystalline action analogous to jointing and cleavage.] enclosing irregularly shaped nodules, while in other places it looks as if it had been run or fused: spherical concretions of sand, coloured concentrically by infiltration, are common in it, which have been regarded as seeds, shells, etc.; it also contained spheres of iron pyrites. the general appearance of much of this rock is as if it had been bored by _teredines_ (ship worms), but i never detected any trace of fossils. it is often beautifully ripple-marked, and in some places much honeycombed, and full of shales and narrow seams of coal, resting on a white under-clay full of root-fibres, like those of _stigmaria._ at about feet the country is very open and bare, the ridges being so uniform and flat-topped, that the broad valleys they divide are hidden till their precipitous edges are reached; and the eye wanders far east and west over a desolate level grassy country, unbroken, save by the curious flat-topped hills i have described as belonging to the limestone formation, which lie to the south-west. these features continue for eight miles, when a sudden descent of or feet, leads into the valley of the kala-panee (black water) river, where there is a very dark and damp bungalow, which proved a very great accommodation to us.* [it may be of use to the future botanist in this country to mention a small wood on the right of this road, near the village of surureem, as an excellent botanical station: the trees are chiefly _rhododendron arboreum,_ figs, oaks, laurels, magnolias, and chestnuts, on whose limbs are a profusion of _orchideae,_ and amongst which a rattan palm occurs. lailang-kot is another village full of iron forges, from a height near which a splendid view is obtained over the churra flat. a few old and very stunted shrubs of laurel and _symplocos_ grow on its bleak surface, and these are often sunk from one to three feet in a well in the horizontally stratified sandstone. i could only account for this by supposing it to arise from the drip from the trees, and if so, it is a wonderful instance of the wearing effects of water, and of the great age which small bushes sometimes attain. the vegetation is more alpine at kala-panee (elevation, , feet); _benthamia, kadsura, stauntonia, illicium, actinidia, helwingia, corylopsis,_ and berberry--all japan and chinese, and most of them dorjiling genera--appear here, with the english yew, two rhododendrons, and _bucklandia._ there are no large trees, but a bright green jungle of small ones and bushes, many of which are very rare and curious. _luculia pinceana_ makes a gorgeous show here in october. the sandstone to the east of kala-panee is capped by some beds, forty feet thick, of conglomerate worn into cliffs; these are the remains of a very extensive horizontally stratified formation, now all but entirely denuded. in the valley itself, the sandstone alternates with alum shales, which rest on a bed of quartz conglomerate, and the latter on black greenstone. in the bed of the river, whose waters are beautifully clear, are hornstone rocks, dipping north-east, and striking north-west. beyond the kalapanee the road ascends about feet, and is well quarried in hard greenstone; and passing through a narrow gap of conglomerate rock,* [formed of rolled masses of greenstone and sandstone, united by a white and yellow cement.] enters a shallow, wild, and beautiful valley, through which it runs for several miles. the hills on either side are of greenstone capped by tabular sandstone, immense masses of which have been precipitated on the floor of the valley, producing a singularly wild and picturesque scene. in the gloom of the evening it is not difficult for a fertile imagination to fancy castles and cities cresting the heights above.* [_hydrangea_ grows here, with ivy, _mussoenda, pyrua,_ willow, _viburnum, parnassia, anemone, leycesteria formosa, neillia, rubus, astilbe,_ rose, _panax,_ apple, _bucklandia, daphne,_ pepper, _scindapsus, pierix,_ holly, _lilium giganteum_ ("kalang tatti," khas.), _camellia, elaeocarpus, buddleia,_ etc. large bees' nests hang from the rocks.] there is some cultivation here of potatoes, and of _rhysicosia vestita_ a beautiful purple-flowered leguminous plant, with small tuberous roots. beyond this, a high ridge is gained above the valley of the boga-panee, the largest river in the khasia; from this the bhotan himalaya may be seen in clear weather, at the astonishing distance of from to miles! the vegetation here suddenly assumes a different aspect, from the quantity of stunted fir-trees clothing the north side of the valley, which rises very steeply feet above the river: quite unaccountably, however, not one grows on the south face. a new oak also appears abundantly; it has leaves like the english, whose gnarled habit it also assumes. the descent is very steep, and carried down a slope of greenstone;* [this greenstone decomposes into a thick bed of red clay; it is much intersected by fissures or cleavage planes at all angles, whose surfaces are covered with a shining polished superficial layer; like the fissures in the cleavage planes of the gneiss granite of kinchinjhow, whose adjacent surfaces are coated with a glassy waved layer of hornblende. this polishing of the surfaces is generally attributed to their having been in contact and rubbed together, an explanation which is wholly unsatisfactory to me; no such motion could take place in cleavage planes which often intersect, and were it to occur, it would not produce two polished surfaces of an interposed layer of a softer mineral. it is more probably due to metamorphic action.] the road then follows. a clear affluent of the boga-panee, and afterwards winds along the margin of that river, which is a rapid turbulent stream, very muddy, and hence contrasting remarkably with the kala-panee. it derives its mud from the decomposition of granite, which is washed by the natives for iron, and in which rock it rises to the eastward. thick beds of slate crop out by the roadside (strike north-east and dip north-west), and are continued along the bed of the river, passing into conglomerates, chert, purple slates, and crystalline sandstones, with pebbles, and angular masses of schist. many of these rocks are much crumpled, others quite flat, and they are overlaid by soft, variegated gneiss, which is continued alternately with the slates to the top of the hills on the opposite side. small trees of hornbeam grow near the river, with _rhus, xanthoxylon, vaccinium, gualtheria,_ and _spiraea,_ while many beautiful ferns, mosses, and orchids cover the rocks. an elegant iron suspension- bridge is thrown across the stream, from a rock matted with tufts of little parasitic _orchideae._ crossing it, we came on many pine-trees; these had five-years' old cones on them, as well as those of all succeeding years; they bear male flowers in autumn, which impregnate the cones formed the previous year. thus, the cones formed in the spring of are fertilised in the following autumn, and do not ripen their seeds till the second following autumn, that of . a very steep ascent leads to the bungalow of moflong, on a broad, bleak hill-top, near the axis of the range (alt. , feet). here there is a village, and some cultivation, surrounded by hedges of _erythrina, pieris, viburnum,_ _pyres, colquhounia,_ and _corylopsis,_ amongst which grew an autumn-flowering lark-spur, with most foetid flowers.* [there is a wood a mile to the west of the bungalow, worth visiting by the botanist: besides yew, oak, _sabia_ and _camellia,_ it contains _olea, euonymus,_ and _sphaerocarya,_ a small tree that bears a green pear-shaped sweet fruit, with a large stone: it is pleasant, but leaves a disagreeable taste in the mouth. on the grassy flats an _astragalus_ occurs, and _roscoea purpurea, tofieldia,_ and various other fine plants are common.] the rocks are much contorted slates and gneiss (strike north-east and dip south-east). in a deep gulley to the northward, greenstone appears, with black basalt and jasper, the latter apparently altered gneiss: beyond this the rocks strike the opposite way, but are much disturbed. we passed the end of june here, and experienced the same violent weather, thunder, lightning, gales, and rain, which prevailed during every midsummer i spent in india. a great deal of _coix_ (job's tears) is cultivated about moflong: it is of a dull greenish purple, and though planted in drills, and carefully hoed and weeded, is a very ragged crop. the shell of the cultivated sort is soft, and the kernel is sweet; whereas the wild _coix_ is so hard that it cannot be broken by the teeth. each plant branches two or three times from the base, and from seven to nine plants grow in each square yard of soil: the produce is small, not above thirty or forty fold. from a hill behind moflong bungalow, on which are some stone altars, a most superb view is obtained of the bhotan himalaya to the northward, their snowy peaks stretching in a broken series from north degrees east to north degrees west; all are below the horizon of the spectator, though from , to , feet above his level. the finest view in the khasia mountains, and perhaps a more extensive one than has ever before been described, is that from chillong hill, the culminant point of the range, about six miles north-east from moflong bungalow. this hill, , feet above the sea, rises from an undulating grassy country, covered with scattered trees and occasional clumps of wood; the whole scenery about being park-like, and as little like that of india at so low an elevation as it is possible to be. i visited chillong in october with lieutenant cave; starting from churra, and reaching the bungalow, two miles from its top, the same night, with two relays of ponies, which he had kindly provided. we were unfortunate in not obtaining a brilliant view of the snowy mountains, their tops being partially clouded; but the _coup d'oeil_ was superb. northward, beyond the rolling khasia hills, lay the whole assam valley, seventy miles broad, with the burrampooter winding through it, fifty miles distant, reduced to a thread. beyond this, banks of hazy vapour obscured all but the dark range of the lower himalaya, crested by peaks of frosted silver, at the immense distance of from to miles from chillong. all are below the horizon of the observer; yet so false is perspective, that they seem high in the air. the mountains occupy sixty degrees of the horizon, and stretch over upwards of miles, comprising the greatest extent of snow visible from any point with which i am acquainted. westward from chillong the most distant garrow hills visible are about forty miles off; and eastward those of cachar, which are loftier, are about seventy miles. to the south the view is limited by the tipperah hills, which, where nearest, are miles distant; while to the south-west lies the sea-like gangetic delta, whose horizon, lifted by refraction, must be fully . the extent of this view is therefore upwards of miles in one direction, and the visible horizon of the observer encircles an area of fully thirty thousand square miles, which is greater than that of ireland! scarlet-flowered rhododendron bushes cover the north side of chillong,* [these skirt a wood of prickly bamboo, in which occur fig, laurel, _aralia, boemeria, smilax, toddalia,_ wild cinnamon, and three kinds of oak.] whilst the south is grassy and quite bare; and except some good _orchideae_ on the trees, there is little to reward the botanist. the rocks appeared to be sandstone at the summit, but micaceous gneiss all around. continuing northward from moflong, the road, after five miles, dips into a very broad and shallow flat-floored valley, fully a mile across, which resembles a lake-bed: it is bounded by low hills, and is called "lanten-tannia," and is bare of aught but long grass and herbs; amongst these are the large groundsel (_senecio_), _dipsacus, ophelia,_ and _campanula._ on its south flank the micaceous slates strike north-east, and dip north-west, and on the top repose beds, a foot in thickness, of angular water-worn gravel, indicating an ancient water-level, feet above the floor of the valley. other smaller lake-beds, in the lateral valleys, are equally evident. a beautiful blue-flowered _clitoria_ creeps over the path, with the ground-raspberry of dorjiling. from the top a sudden descent of feet leads to another broad flat valley, called "syong" (elevation, , feet), in which is a good bungalow, surrounded by hedges of _prinsepia utilis,_ a common north-west himalayan plant, only found at feet in sikkim. the valley is grassy, but otherwise bare. beyond this the road passes over low rocky hills, wooded on their north or sheltered flanks only, dividing flat-floored valleys: a red sandy gneiss is the prevalent rock, but boulders of syenite are scattered about. extensive moors (elevation, feet) succeed, covered with stunted pines, brake, and tufts of harsh grasses.* [these are principally _andropogon_ and _brachypodium,_ amongst which grow yellow _corydalis, thalictrum, anemone, parnassia, prunella,_ strawberry, _eupatorium, hypericum,_ willow, a _polygonum_ like _bistorta, osmunda regalis_ and another species _lycopodium alpinum,_ a _senecio_ like _jacobaea,_ thistles, _gnaphalium,_ gentians, _iris, paris, sanguisorba_ and _agrimonia._] near the dengship-oong (river), which flows in a narrow valley, is a low dome of gneiss altered by syenite. the prevalent dip is uniformly south-east, and the strike north-east; and detached boulders of syenite become more frequent, resting on a red gneiss, full of black garnets, till the descent to the valley of myrung, one of the most beautiful spots in the khasia, and a favourite resort, having an excellent bungalow which commands a superb view of the himalaya: it is , feet above the sea, and is placed on the north flank of a very shallow marshy valley, two miles broad, and full of rice cultivation, as are the flat heads of all the little valleys that lead into it. there is a guard here of light infantry, and a little garden, boasting a gardener and some tea-plants, so that we had vegetables during our four visits to the place, on two of which occasions we stayed some days. from kala-panee to myrung, a distance of thirty-two miles, the road does not vary feet above or below the mean level of , feet, and the physical features are the same throughout, of broad flat-floored, steep-sided valleys, divided by bleak, grassy, tolerably level-topped bills. beyond myrung the khasia mountains slope to the southward in rolling loosely-wooded hills, but the spurs do not dip suddenly till beyond nunklow, eight miles further north. on the south side of the myrung valley is nungbree wood, a dense jungle, occupying, like all the other woods, the steep north exposure of the hill; many good plants grow in it, including some gigantic _balanophorae, pyrola,_ and _monotropa._ the bungalow stands on soft, contorted, decomposing gneiss, which is still the prevalent rock, striking north-east. on the hills to the east of it, enormous hard blocks lie fully exposed, and are piled on one another, as if so disposed by glacial action; and it is difficult to account for them by denudation, though their surface scales, and similar blocks are scattered around myrung exactly similar to the syenite blocks of nunklow, and the granite ones of nonkreem, to be described hereafter, and which are undoubtedly due to the process of weathering. a great mass of flesh-coloured crystalline granite rises in the centre of the valley, to the east of the road: it is fissured in various directions, and the surface scales concentrically; it is obscurely stratified in some parts, and appears to be half granite and half gneiss in mineralogical character. we twice visited a very remarkable hill, called kollong, which rises as a dome of granite , feet high, ten or twelve miles south-west of myrung, and conspicuous from all directions. the path to it turns off from that to nunklow, and strikes westerly along the shallow valley of monai, in which is a village, and much rice and other cultivation. near this there is a large square stockade, formed of tall bamboos placed close together, very like a new zealand "pa;" indeed, the whole country hereabouts much recalls the grassy clay hills, marshy valleys, and bushy ridges of the bay of islands. the hills on either side are sometimes dotted with pinewoods, sometimes conical and bare, with small clumps of pines on the summit only; while in other places are broad tracts containing nothing but young trees, resembling plantations, but which, i am assured, are not planted; on the other hand, however, mr. yule states, that the natives do plant fir-trees, especially near the iron forges, which give employment to all the people of monai. all the streams rise in flat marshy depressions amongst the hills with which the whole country is covered; and both these features, together with the flat clay marshes into which the rivers expand, are very suggestive of tidal action. rock is hardly anywhere seen, except in the immediate vicinity of kollong, where are many scattered boulders of fine-grained gneiss, of which are made the broad stone slabs, placed as seats, and the other erections of this singular people. we repeatedly remarked cones of earth, clay, and pebbles, about twelve feet high, upon the hills, which appeared to be artificial, but of which the natives could give no explanation. wild apple and birch are common trees, but there is little jungle, except in the hollows, and on the north slopes of the higher hills. coarse long grass, with bushes of labiate and composite plants, are the prevalent features. kollong rock is a steep dome of red granite,* [this granite is highly crystalline, and does not scale or flake, nor is its surface polished.] accessible from the north and east, but almost perpendicular to the southward, where the slope is degrees for feet. the elevation is feet above the mean level of the surrounding ridges, and above the bottom of the valleys. the south or steepest side is encumbered with enormous detached blocks, while the north is clothed with a dense forest, containing red tree-rhododendrons and oaks; on its skirts grew a white bushy rhododendron, which we found nowhere else. the hard granite of the top was covered with matted mosses, lichens, lycopodiums, and ferns, amongst which were many curious and beautiful airplants.* [_eria, coelogyne_ (_wallichii, maculata,_ and _elata_), _cymbidium, dendrobium, sunipia_ some of them flowering profusely; and though freely exposed to the sun and wind, dews and frosts, rain and droughts, they were all fresh, bright, green and strong, under very different treatment from that to which they are exposed in the damp, unhealthy, steamy orchid-houses of our english gardens. a wild onion was most abundant all over the top of the hill, with _hymenopogon, vaccinium, ophiopogon, anisadenia, commelyna, didymocarpus, remusatia, hedychium,_ grass and small bamboos, and a good many other plants. many of the lichens were of european kinds; but the mosses (except _bryum argenteum_) and ferns were different. a small _staphylinus,_ which swarmed under the sods, was the only insect i remarked.] illustration--kollong rock. the view from the top is very extensive to the northward, but not elsewhere: it commands the assam valley and the himalaya, and the billowy range of undulating grassy khasia mountains. few houses were visible, but the curling smoke from the valleys betrayed their lurking-places, whilst the tinkling sound of the hammers from the distant forges on all sides was singularly musical and pleasing; they fell on the ear like "bells upon the wind," each ring being exquisitely melodious, and chiming harmoniously with the others. the solitude and beauty of the scenery, and the emotions excited by the music of chimes, tended to tranquillise our minds, wearied by the fatigues of travel, and the excitement of pursuits that required unremitting attention; and we rested for some time, our imaginations wandering to far-distant scenes, brought vividly to our minds by these familiar sounds. chapter xxix. view of himalaya from the khasia -- great masses of snow -- chumulari -- donkia -- grasses -- nunklow -- assam valley and burrampooter -- tropical forest -- borpanee -- rhododendrons -- wild elephants -- blocks of syenite -- return to churra -- coal -- august temperature -- leave for chela -- jasper hill -- birds -- _arundina_ -- habits of leaf-insects -- curious village -- houses -- canoes -- boga-panee river -- jheels -- chattuc -- churra -- leave for jyntea hills -- trading parties -- dried fish -- cherries -- cinnamon -- fraud -- pea-violet -- nonkreem -- sandstone -- pines -- granite boulders -- iron washing -- forges -- tanks -- siberian _nymphaea_ -- barren country -- pomrang -- _podostemon_ -- patchouli plant -- mooshye -- enormous stone slabs -- pitcher-plant -- joowye cultivation and vegetation -- _hydropeltis_ -- sulky hostess -- nurtiung -- _hamamelis chinensis_ -- bor-panee river -- sacred grove and gigantic stone structures -- altars -- pyramids, etc. -- origin of names -- _vanda coerulea_ -- collections -- november vegetation -- geology of khasia -- sandstone -- coal -- lime -- gneiss -- greenstone -- tidal action -- strike of rocks -- comparison with rajmahal hills and the himalaya. the snowy himalaya was not visible during our first stay at myrung, from the th to the th of july; but on three subsequent occasions, viz., th and th of july, th to th october, and nd to th october, we saw these magnificent mountains, and repeatedly took angular heights and bearings of the principal peaks. the range, as seen from the khasia, does not form a continuous line of snowy mountains, but the loftiest eminences are conspicuously grouped into masses, whose position is probably between the great rivers which rise far beyond them and flow through bhotan. this arrangement indicates that relation of the rivers to the masses of snow, which i have dwelt upon in the appendix; and further tends to prove that the snowy mountains, seen from the southward, are not on the axis of a mountain chain, and do not even indicate its position; but that they are lofty meridional spurs which, projecting southward, catch the moist vapours, become more deeply snowed, and protect the dry loftier regions behind. the most conspicuous group of snows seen from the khasia bears n.n.e. from myrung, and consists of three beautiful mountains with wide-spreading snowy shoulders. these are distant (reckoning from west to east) respectively , , and miles from myrung, and subtend angles of + degrees minutes seconds, - degrees minute seconds, and - degrees minutes seconds.* [these angles were taken both at sunrise and sunset, and with an excellent theodolite, and were repeated after two considerable intervals. the telescopes were reversed after each observation, and every precaution used to insure accuracy; nevertheless the mean of one set of observations of angular height often varied degree from that of another set. this is probably much due to atmospheric refraction, whose effect and amount it is impossible to estimate accurately in such cases. here the objects are not only viewed through miles of atmosphere, but through belts from between to , feet of vertical height, varying in humidity and transparency at different parts of the interval. if we divide this column of atmosphere into sections parallel to those of latitude, we have first a belt fifteen miles broad, hanging over the khasia, to feet above the sea; beyond it, a second belt, seventy miles broad, hangs over the assam valley, which is hardly feet above the level of the sea; and thirdly, the northern part of the column, which reposes on to miles of the bhotan lower himalaya: each of these belts has probably a different refractive power.] from nunklow ( feet lower than myrung) they appear higher, the western peak rising degrees minutes above the horizon; whilst from moflong ( miles further south, and elevation , feet) the same is sunk degrees below the horizon. my computations make this western mountain upwards of , feet high; but according to col. wilcox's angles, taken from the assam valley, it is only , , the others being respectively , and , . captain thuillier (the deputy surveyor general) agrees with me in considering that colonel wilcox's altitudes are probably much under-estimated, as those of other himalayan peaks to the westward were by the old surveyors. it is further evident that these mountains have (as far as can be estimated by angles) fully - feet of snow on them, which would not be the case were the loftiest only , feet high. it is singular, that to the eastward of this group, no snowy mountains are seen, and the lower himalaya also dip suddenly. this depression is no doubt partly due to perspective; but as there is no such sudden disappearance of the chain to the westward, where peaks are seen degrees to the west of north, it is far more probable that the valley of the soobansiri river, which rises in tibet far behind these peaks, is broad and open; as is that of the dihong, still farther east, which we have every reason to believe is the tibetan yaru or burrampooter. supposing then the eastern group to indicate the mountain mass separating the soobansiri from the monass river, no other mountains conspicuous for altitude or dimension rise between n.n.e. and north, where there is another immense group. this, though within miles of myrung, is below its horizon, and scarcely above that of nunklow (which is still nearer to it), and cannot therefore attain any great elevation. far to the westward again, is a very lofty peaked mountain bearing n.n.w., which subtends an angle of - degrees minutes from myrung, and + degrees minutes from nunklow. the angles of this seem to indicate its being either chumulari, or that great peak which i saw due east from bbomtso top, and which i then estimated at ninety miles off and , feet high. from the khasia angles, its latitude and longitude are degrees minutes and degrees minutes, its elevation , feet, and its distance from myrung miles. i need hardly add that neither the position nor the elevation computed from such data is worthy of confidence. further still, to the extreme west, is an immense low hog-backed mass of snow, with a small peak on it; this bears north-west, both from myrung and nunklow, subtending an angle of - minutes from the former, and - minutes from the latter station. it is in all probability chumulari, miles distant from nunklow. donkia, if seen, would be distant miles from the same spot in the khasia, and kinchinjunga ; possibly they are visible (by refraction) from chillong, though even further from it. the distance from myrung to nunklow is ten miles, along an excellent road. the descent is at first sudden, beyond which the country is undulating, interspersed with jungle (of low trees, chiefly oaks) and marshes, with much rice cultivation. grasses are exceedingly numerous; we gathered fifty kinds, besides twenty _cyperaceae_: four were cultivated, namely sugar-cane, rice, _coix,_ and maize. most of the others were not so well suited to pasturage as those of higher localities. dwarf phoenix palm occurs by the roadside at feet elevation. gneiss (with garnets) highly inclined, was the prevalent rock (striking north-east), and scattered boulders of syenite became very frequent. in one place the latter rock is seen bursting through the gneiss, which is slaty and very crystalline at the junction. nunklow is placed at the northern extremity of a broad spur that over-hangs the valley of the burrampooter river, thirty miles distant. the descent from it is very rapid, and beyond it none of the many spurs thrown out by the khasia attain more than feet elevation; hence, though the range does not present so abrupt a face to the burrampooter as it does to the jheels, nunklow is considered as on the brink of its north slope. the elevation of the bungalow is , feet, and the climate being hot, it swarms with mosquitos, fleas, and rats. it commands a superb view to the north, of the himalayan snows, of the burrampooter, and intervening malarious terai forest; and to the south, of the undulating khasia, with kollong rock bearing south-west. all the hills between this and myrung look from nunklow better wooded than they do from myrung, in consequence of the slopes exposed to the south being bare of forest. a thousand feet below the bungalow, a tropical forest begins, of figs, birch, horse-chestnut, oak, nutmeg. _cedrela, engelhardtia, artocarpeae,_ and _elaeocarpus,_ in the gullies, and tall pines on the dry slopes, which are continued down to the very bottom of the valley in which flows the bor-panee, a broad and rapid river that descends from chillong, and winds round the base of the nunklow spur. many of the pines are eighty feet high, and three or four in diameter, but none form gigantic trees. the quantity of balsams in the wet ravines is very great, and tree-ferns of several kinds are common. the bor-panee is about forty yards wide, and is spanned by an elegant iron suspension-bridge, that is clamped to the gneiss rock (strike north-east, dip north-west) on either bank; beneath is a series of cascades, none high, but all of great beauty from the broken masses of rocks and picturesque scenery on either side. we frequently botanised up and down the river with great success: many curious plants grow on its stony and rocky banks; and amongst them _rhododendron formosum_ at the low elevation of feet. a most splendid fern, _dipteris wallichii,_ is abundant, with the dwarf phoenix palm and _cycas pectinata._ wild animals are very abundant here, though extremely rare on the higher part of the khasia range; tigers, however, and bears, ascend to nunklow. we saw troops of wild dogs ("kuleam," khas.), deer, and immense quantities of the droppings of the wild elephant; an animal considered in assam dangerous to meet, whereas in other parts of india it is not dreaded till provoked. there is, however, no quadruped that varies more in its native state than this: the ceylon kind differs from the indian in the larger size and short tusks, and an experienced judge at calcutta will tell at once whether the newly caught elephant is from assam, silhet, cuttack, nepal, or chittagong. some of the differences, in size, roundness of shoulders and back, quantity of hair, length of limb, and shape of head, are very marked; and their dispositions are equally various. the lowest rocks seen are at a considerable distance down the bor-panee; they are friable sandstones that strike uniformly with the gneiss. from the bridge upwards the rocks are all gneiss, alternating with chert and quartz. the nunklow spur is covered with enormous rounded blocks of syenite, reposing on clay or on one another. these do not descend the hill, and are the remains of an extensive formation which we could only find _in situ_ at one spot on the road to myrung (see earlier), but which must have been of immense thickness.* [the tendency of many volcanic rocks to decompose in spheres is very well known: it is conspicuous in the black basalts north of edinburgh, but i do not know any instance equal to this of nunklow, for the extent of decomposition and dimensions of the resulting spheres.] one block within ten yards of the bungalow door was fifteen feet long, six high, and eight broad; it appeared half buried, and was rapidly decomposing from the action of the rain. close by, to the westward, in walking amongst the masses we were reminded of a moraine of most gigantic sized blocks; one which i measured was forty feet long and eleven above the ground; its edges were rounded, and its surface flaked off in pieces a foot broad and a quarter of an inch thick. trees and brushwood often conceal the spaces between these fragments, and afford dens for bears and leopards, into which man cannot follow them. sitting in the cool evenings on one of these great blocks, and watching the himalayan glaciers glowing with the rays of sunset, appearing to change in form and dimensions with the falling shadows, it was impossible to refrain from speculating on the possibility of these great boulders heaped on the himalayan-ward face of the khasia range, having been transported hither by ice at some former period; especially as the mont blanc granite, in crossing the lake of geneva to the jura, must have performed a hardly less wonderful ice journey: but this hypothesis is clearly untenable; and unparalleled in our experience as the results appear, if attributed to denudation and weathering alone, we are yet compelled to refer them to these causes. the further we travel, and the longer we study, the more positive becomes the conviction that the part played by these great agents in sculpturing the surface of our planet, is as yet but half recognised. we returned on the th of august to churra, where we employed ourselves during the rest of the month in collecting and studying the plants of the neighbourhood. we hired a large and good bungalow, in which three immense coal fires* [this coal is excellent for many purposes. we found it generally used by the assam steamers, and were informed on board that in which we traversed the sunderbunds, some months afterwards, that her furnaces consumed lbs. per hour; whereas the consumption of english coal was lbs., of burdwan coal bs., and of assam lbs.] were kept up for drying plants and papers, and fifteen men were always employed, some in changing, and some in collecting, from morning till night. the coal was procured within a mile of our door, and cost about six shillings a month; it was of the finest quality, and gave great heat and few ashes. torrents of rain descended almost daily, twelve inches in as many hours being frequently registered; and we remarked that it was impossible to judge of the quantity by estimation, an apparent deluge sometimes proving much less in amount than much lighter but steadier falls; hence the greatest fall is probably that in which the drops are moderately large; very close together, and which pass through a saturated atmosphere. the temperature of the rain here and elsewhere in india was always a degree or two below that of the air. though the temperature in august rose to degrees, we never felt a fire oppressive, owing to the constant damp, and absence of sun. the latter, when it broke through the clouds, shone powerfully, raising the thermometer degrees and degrees in as many minutes. on such occasions, hot blasts of damp wind ascend the valleys, and impinge suddenly against different houses on the flat, giving rise to extraordinary differences between the mean daily temperatures of places not half a mile apart. on the th of september we started for the village of chela, which lies west from churra, at the embouchure of the boga-panee on the jheels. the path runs by mamloo, and down the spur to the jasper hill (see chapter xxviii): the vegetation all along is very tropical, and pepper, ginger, maize, and betel palm, are cultivated around small cottages, which are only distinguishable in the forest by their yellow thatch of dry _calamus_ (rattan) leaves. from jasper hill a very steep ridge leads to another, called lisouplang, which is hardly so high as mamloo; the rocks are the same sandstone, with fragments of coal, and remains of the limestone formation capping it. hot gusts of wind blow up the valleys, alternating with clouds and mists, and it is curious to watch the effects of the latter in stilling the voices of insects (cicadas) and birds. common crows and vultures haunt the villages, but these, and all other large birds, are very rare in the khasia. a very few hawks are occasionally seen, also sparrows and kingfishers, and i once heard a cuckoo; pheasants are sometimes shot, but we never saw any. kites become numerous after the rains, and are regarded as a sign of their cessation. more remarkable than the rarity of birds is the absence of all animals except domestic rats, as a more suitable country for hares and rabbits could not be found. reptiles, and especially colubridae, are very common in the khasia mountains, and i procured sixteen species and many specimens. the natives repeatedly assured us that these were all harmless, and dr. gray, who has kindly examined all my snakes, informs me of the remarkable fact (alluded to in a note in chapter xviii), that whereas none of these are poisonous, four out of the eleven species which i found in sikkim are so. one of the khasia blind-worms (a new species) belongs to a truly american genus (_ophisaurus_), a fact as important as is that of the sikkim skink and _agama_ being also american forms. _arundina,_ a beautiful purple grassy-leaved orchid, was abundantly in flower on the hill-top, and the great white swallow-tailed moth (_saturnia atlas_) was extremely common, with tropical butterflies and other insects. the curious leaf-insect (_mantis_) was very abundant on the orange trees, on the leaves of which the natives believe it to feed; nor indeed could we persuade some of our friends that its thin sharp jaws are unsuited for masticating leaves, and that these and its prehensile feet indicate its predacious nature: added to which, its singular resemblance to a leaf is no less a provision against its being discovered by its enemies, than an aid in deceiving its prey. we descended rapidly for many miles through beautiful rocky woods, with villages nestling amongst groves of banana and trellised climbers; and from the brow of a hill looked down upon a slope covered with vegetation and huts, which formed the mart of chela, and below which the boga-panee flowed in a deep gorge. the view was a very striking one: owing to the steepness of the valley below our feet, the roofs alone of the cottages were visible, from which ascended the sounds and smells of a dense native population, and to which there appeared to be no way of descending. the opposite side rose precipitously in lofty table-topped mountains, and the river was studded with canoes. the descent was fully feet, on a slope averaging degrees to degrees. the cottages were placed close together, each within a little bamboo enclosure, eight to ten yards deep; and no two were on the same level. each was built against a perpendicular wall which supported a cutting in the bank behind; and a similar wall descended in front of it, forming the back of the compartment in which the cottage next below it was erected. the houses were often raised on platforms, and some had balconies in front, which overhung the cottage below. all were mere hovels of wattle or mud, with very high-pitched roofs: stone tanks resembling fonts, urns, coffins, and sarcophagi, were placed near the better houses, and blocks of stone were scattered everywhere. we descended from hovel to hovel, alternately along the gravelled flat of each enclosure, and perpendicularly down steps cut in the sandstone or let into the walls. i counted houses from the river, and there must be many more: the inhabitants are bengalees and khasias, and perhaps amount to or ; but this is a very vague estimate. illustration--chela village. we lodged in a curious house, consisting of one apartment, twenty feet long, and five high, raised thirty feet upon bamboos: the walls were of platted bamboo matting, fastened to strong wooden beams, and one side opened on a balcony that overhung the river. the entrance was an oval aperture reached by a ladder, and closed by folding-doors that turned on wooden pivots. the roof was supported by tressels of great thickness, and like the rest of the woodwork, was morticed, no nails being used throughout the building. the floor was of split bamboos laid side by side. we ascended the boga-panee in canoes, each formed of a hollowed trunk fifty feet long and four broad; we could not, however, proceed far, on account of the rapids. the rocks in its bed are limestone, but a great bluff cliff of sandy conglomerate (strike east-south-east and dip south-south-west degrees), several hundred feet high, rises on the east bank close above the village, above which occurs amygdaloidal basalt. the pebbles in the river (which was seventy yards broad, and turbid) were of slate, basalt, sandstone, and syenite: on the opposite bank were sandstones over-lain by limestone, both dipping to the southward. beautiful palms, especially _caryota urens_ (by far the handsomest in india), and groves of betel-nut bordered the river, with oranges, lemons, and citrons; intermixed with feathery bamboos, horizontally-branched acacias, oaks, with pale red young leaves, and deep green foliaged figs. prickly rattans and _plectocomia_ climbed amongst these, their enormous plumes of foliage upborne by the matted branches of the trees, and their arrowy tops shooting high above the forest. after staying three days at chela, we descended the stream in canoes, shooting over pebbly rapids, and amongst rocks of limestone, water-worn into fantastic shapes, till we at last found ourselves gliding gently along the still canals of the jheels. many of these rapids are so far artificial, that they are enclosed by gravel banks, six feet high, which, by confining the waters, give them depth; but, chela being hardly above the level of the sea, their fall is very trifling. we proceeded across the jheels* [the common water-plants of the jheels are _vallisneria serrata, damasonium,_ _myriophylla,_ _villarsiae, trapa,_ blue, white, purple and scarlet water-lilies, _hydrilla, utricularia, limnophila, azolla, salvinia, ceratopteris,_ and floating grasses.] to chattuc, and then north again to pundua, and so to churra. having pretty well exhausted the botany of churra, dr. thomson and i started on the th of september for the eastern part of the khasia and jyntea mountains. on the kala-panee road,* [the pea-violet (_crotalaria occulta_) was very common by the road-side, and smelt deliciously of violets: the english name suggests the appearance of the flower, for which and for its fragrance it is well worth cultivation.] which we followed, we passed crowds of market people, laden with dried fish in a half-putrid state, which scented the air for many yards: they were chiefly carp, caught and dried at the foot of the hills. large parties were bringing down baskets of bird-cherries, cinnamon-bark, iron, pine planks, fire-wood, and potatoes. of these, the bird-cherries (like damsons) are made into an excellent preserve by the english residents, who also make capital cherry-brandy of them: the trade in cinnamon is of recent introduction, and is much encouraged by the inglis family, to whose exertions these people are so greatly indebted; the cinnamon is the peeled bark of a small species of _cinnamomum_ allied to that of ceylon, and though inferior in flavour and mucilaginous (like cassia), finds a ready market at calcutta. it has been used to adulterate the ceylon cinnamon; and an extensive fraud was attempted by some europeans at calcutta, who sent boxes of this, with a top layer of the genuine, to england. the smell of the cinnamon loads was as fragrant as that of the fish was offensive. the road from kala-panee bungalow strikes off north-easterly, and rounds the head of the deep valley to the east of churra; it then crosses the head-waters of the kala-panee river, still a clear stream, the bed of which is comparatively superficial: the rocks consist of a little basalt and much sandstone, striking east by north, and dipping north by west. the boga-panee is next reached, flowing in a shallow valley, about feet below the general level of the hills, which are grassy and treeless. the river [the fall of this river, between this elevation (which may be considered that of its source) and chela, is about , feet.] is thirty yards across, shallow and turbid; its bed is granite, and beyond it scattered stunted pines are met with; a tree which seems to avoid the sandstone. in the evening we arrived at nonkreem, a large village in a broad marshy valley, where we procured accommodation with some difficulty, the people being by no means civil, and the rajah, sing manuk, holding himself independent of the british government. atmospheric denudation and weathering have produced remarkable effects on the lower part of the nonkreem valley, which is blocked up by a pine-crested hill, feet high, entirely formed of round blocks of granite, heaped up so as to resemble an old moraine; but like the nunklow boulders, these are not arranged as if by glacial action. the granite is micaceous, and usually very soft, decomposing into a coarse reddish sand, that colours the boga-panee. to procure the iron-sand, which is disseminated through it, the natives conduct water over the beds of granite sand, and as the lighter particles are washed away, the remainder is removed to troughs, where the separation of the ore is completed. the smelting is very rudely carried on in charcoal fires, blown by enormous double-action bellows, worked by two persons, who stand on the machine, raising the flaps with their hands, and expanding them with their feet, as shown in the cut further on. there is neither furnace nor flux used in the reduction. the fire is kindled on one aide of an upright stone (like the head-stone of a grave), with a small arched hole close to the ground: near this hole the bellows are suspended; and a bamboo tube from each of its compartments, meets in a larger one, by which the draught is directed under the hole in the stone to the fire. the ore is run into lumps as large as two fists, with a rugged surface: these lumps are afterwards cleft nearly in two, to show their purity. illustration--nonkreem village. the scenery about nonkreem village is extremely picturesque, and we procured many good plants on the rocks, which were covered with the purple-flowered orchid, _coelogyne wallichii._ the country is everywhere intersected with trenches for iron-washing, and some large marshes were dammed up for the same purpose: in these we found some beautiful balsams, _hypericum_ and _parnassia_; also a diminutive water-lily, the flower of which is no larger than a half-crown; it proves to be the _nymphaea pygmaea_ of china and siberia--a remarkable fact in the geographical distribution of plants. illustration--bellows. from nonkreem we proceeded easterly to pomrang, leaving chillong hill on the north, and again crossing the bega-panee, beyond which the sandstone appeared (strike north-east and dip north-west degrees); the soil was poor in the extreme; not an inhabitant or tree was to be seen throughout the grassy landscape, and hardly a bush, save an occasional rhododendron, dwarf oak, or _pieris,_ barely a few inches high. at pomrang we took up our quarters in an excellent empty bungalow, built by mr. stainforth (judge of silhet), who kindly allowed us the use of it. its elevation was , feet, and it occupied the eastern extremity of a lofty spur that overhangs the deep fir-clad valley of the oongkot, dividing khasia from jyntea. the climate of pomrang is so much cooler and less rainy than at churra, that this place is more eligible for a station; but the soil is quite impracticable, there is an occasional scarcity of water, the pasture is wholly unsuited for cattle or sheep, and the distance from the plains is too great. a beautiful view extends eastwards to the low jyntea hills, backed by the blue mountains of cachar, over the deep valley in front; to the northward, a few peaks of the himalaya are seen, and westward is chillong. we staid here till the rd september, and then proceeded south-eastward to mooshye. the path descends into the valley of the oongkot, passing the village of pomrang, and then through woods of pine, _gordonia,_ and oak, the latter closely resembling the english, and infested with galls. the slopes are extensively cultivated with black awnless unirrigated rice, and poor crops of _coix,_ protected from the birds by scarecrows of lines stretched across the fields, bearing tassels and tufts of fern, shaken by boys. this fern proved to be a very curious and interesting genus, which is only known to occur elsewhere at hong-kong in china, and has been called _bowringia,_ after the eminent dr. bowring. we crossed the river* [_podostemom_ grew on the stones at the bottom: it is a remarkable waterplant, resembling a liver-wort in its mode of growth. several species occur at different elevations in the khasia, and appear only in autumn, when they often carpet the bottom of the streams with green. in spring and summer no traces of them are seen; and it is difficult to conceive what becomes of the seeds in the interval, and how these, which are well known, and have no apparent provision for the purpose, attach themselves to the smooth rocks at the bottom of the torrents. all the kinds flower and ripen their seeds under water; the stamens and pistil being protected by the closed flower from the wet. this genus does not inhabit the sikkim rivers, probably owing to the great changes of temperature to which these are subject.] twice, proceeding south-west to mooshye, a village placed on an isolated, flat-topped, and very steep-sided hill, , feet above the sea, and perhaps , above the oongkot, which winds round its base. a very steep path led up slate rocks to the top (which was of sandstone), where there is a stockaded guard-house, once occupied by british troops, of which we took possession. a labiate plant (_mesona wallichiana_) grew on the ascent, whose bruised leaves smelt as strongly of patchouli, as do those of the plant producing that perfume, to which it is closely allied. the _pogostemon patchouli_ has been said to occur in these parts of india, but we never met with it, and doubt the accuracy of the statement. it is a native of the malay peninsula, whence the leaves are imported into bengal, and so to europe. the summit commands a fine view northward of some himalayan peaks, and southwards of the broad valley of the oongkot, which is level, and bounded by steep and precipitous hills, with flat tops. on the th we left mooshye for amwee in jyntea, which lies to the south-east. we descended by steps cut in the sandstone, and fording the oongkot, climbed the hills on its east side, along the grassy tops of which we continued, at an elevation of feet. marshy flats intersect the hills, to which wild elephants sometimes ascend, doing much damage to the rice crops. we crossed a stream by a bridge formed of one gigantic block of sandstone, feet long, close to the village, which is a wretched one, and is considered unhealthy: it stands on the high road from jynteapore (at the foot of the hills to the southward) to assam: the only road that crosses the mountains east of that from churra to nunklow. illustration--old bridge at amwee. though so much lower, this country, from the barrenness of the soil, is more thinly inhabited than the khasia. the pitcher-plant (_nepenthes_) grows on stony and grassy hills about amwee, and crawls along the ground; its pitchers seldom contain insects in the wild state, nor can we suggest any special function for the wonderful organ it possesses. about eight miles south of the village is a stream, crossed by a bridge, half of which is formed of slabs of stone (of which one is twenty-one feet long, seven broad, and two feet three and a half inches thick), supported on piers, and the rest is a well turned arch, such as i have not seen elsewhere among the hill tribes of india. it is fast crumbling away, and is covered with tropical plants, and a beautiful white-flowered orchis* [_diplomeris; apostasia_ also grew in this gulley, with a small _arundina,_ some beautiful species of _sonerila,_ and _argostemma._ the neighbourhood was very rich in plants.] grew in the mossy crevices of its stones. from amwee our route lay north-east across the jyntea hills to joowye, the hill-capital of the district. the path gradually ascended, dipping into valleys scooped out in the horizontal sandstone down to the basalt; and boulders of the same rock were scattered about. fields of rice occupy the bottoms of these valleys, in which were placed gigantic images of men, dressed in rags, and armed with bows and arrows, to scare away the wild elephants! slate rocks succeed the sandstone (strike north-east, dip north-west), and with them pines and birch appear, clothing the deep flanks of the mintadoong valley, which we crossed. the situation of joowye is extremely beautiful: it occupies the broken wooded slope of a large open flat valley, dotted with pines; and consists of an immense number of low thatched cottages, scattered amongst groves of bamboo, and fields of plantain, tobacco, yams, sugar-cane, maize, and rice, surrounded by hedges of bamboo, _colquhounia,_ and _erythrina._ narrow steep lanes lead amongst these, shaded with oak, birch, _podocarpus,_ camellia, and _araliaceae_; the larger trees being covered with orchids, climbing palms, _pothos, scindapsus,_ pepper, and _gnetum_; while masses of beautiful red and violet balsams grew under every hedge and rock. the latter was of sandstone, overlying highly inclined schists, and afforded magnificent blocks for the natives to rear on end, or make seats of. some erect stones on a hill at the entrance are immensely large, and surround a clump of fine fig and banyan trees.* [in some tanks we found _hydropeltis,_ an american and australian plant allied to _nymphaea._ mr. griffith first detected it here, and afterwards in bhotan, these being the only known habitats for it in the old world. it grows with _typha, acorus calamus_ (sweet flag), _vallisneria, potamogeton, sparganium,_ and other european water-plants.] we procured a good house after many delays, for the people were far from obliging; it was a clean, very long cottage, with low thatched eaves almost touching the ground, and was surrounded by a high bamboo paling that enclosed out-houses built on a well-swept floor of beaten earth. within, the woodwork was carved in curious patterns, and was particularly well fitted. the old lady to whom it belonged got tired of us before two days were over, and first tried to smoke us out by a large fire of green wood at that end of the cottage which she retained; and afterwards by inviting guests to a supper, with whom she kept up a racket all night. her son, a tall, sulky fellow, came to receive the usual gratuity on our departure, which we made large to show we bore no ill-will: he, however, behaved so scornfully, pretending to despise it, that i had no choice but to pocket it again; a proceeding which was received with shouts of laughter, at his expense, from a large crowd of bystanders. on the th of september we proceeded north-east from joowye to nurtiung, crossing the watershed of the jyntea range, which is granitic, and scarcely raised above the mean level of the hills; it is about , feet elevation. to the north the descent is at first rather abrupt for feet, to a considerable stream, beyond which is the village of nurtiung. the country gradually declines hence to the north-east, in grassy hills; which to the east become higher and more wooded: to the west the khasia are seen, and several himalayan peaks to the north. the ascent to the village from the river is by steps cut in a narrow cleft of the schist rocks, to a flat, elevated , feet above the sea: we here procured a cottage, and found the people remarkably civil. the general appearance is the same as at joowye, but there are here extensive and very unhealthy marshes, whose evil effects we experienced, in having the misfortune to lose one of our servants by fever. except pines, there are few large trees; but the quantity of species of perennial woody plants contributing to form the jungles is quite extraordinary: i enumerated , of which were trees or large shrubs above twenty feet high. one of these was the _hamamelis chinensis,_ a plant hitherto only known as a native of china. this, the _bowringia,_ and the little _nymphaea,_ are three out of many remarkable instances of our approach to the eastern asiatic flora. from nurtiung we walked to the bor-panee river, sixteen or twenty miles to the north-east (not the river of that name below nunklow), returning the same night; a most fatiguing journey in so hot and damp a climate. the path lay for the greatest part of the way over grassy hills of mica-schist, with boulders of granite, and afterwards of syenite, like those of nunklow. the descent to the river is through noble woods of spreading oaks,* [we collected upwards of fifteen kinds of oak and chesnut in these and the khasia mountains; many are magnificent trees, with excellent wood, while others are inferior as timber.] chesnuts, magnolias, and tall pines: the vegetation is very tropical, and with the exception of there being no sal, it resembles that of the dry hills of the sikkim terai. the bor-panee is forty yards broad, and turbid; its bed, which is of basalt, is , feet above the sea: it is crossed by a raft pulled to and fro by canes. nurtiung contains a most remarkable collection of those sepulchral and other monuments, which form so curious a feature in the scenery of these mountains and in the habits of their savage population. they are all placed in a fine grove of trees, occupying a hollow; where several acres are covered with gigantic, generally circular, slabs of stone, from ten to twenty-five feet broad, supported five feet above the ground upon other blocks. for the most part they are buried in brushwood of nettles and shrubs, but in one place there is an open area of fifty yards encircled by them, each with a gigantic headstone behind it. of the latter the tallest was nearly thirty feet high, six broad, and two feet eight inches in thickness, and must have been sunk at least five feet, and perhaps much more, in the ground. the flat slabs were generally of slate or hornstone; but many of them, and all the larger ones, were of syenitic granite, split by heat and cold water with great art. they are erected by dint of sheer brute strength, the lever being the only aid. large blocks of syenite were scattered amongst these wonderful erections. splendid trees of _bombax,_ fig and banyan, overshadowed them: the largest banyan had a trunk five feet in diameter, clear of the buttresses, and numerous small trees of _celtic_ grew out of it, and an immense flowering tuft of _vanda caerulea_ (the rarest and most beautiful of indian orchids) flourished on one of its limbs. a small plantain with austere woolly scarlet fruit, bearing ripe seeds, was planted in this sacred grove, where trees of the most tropical genera grew mixed with the pine, birch, _myrica,_ and _viburnum._ the nurtiung stonehenge is no doubt in part religious, as the grove suggests, and also designed for cremation, the bodies being burnt on the altars. in the khasia these upright stones are generally raised simply as memorials of great events, or of men whose ashes are not necessarily, though frequently, buried or deposited in hollow stone sarcophagi near them, and sometimes in an urn placed inside a sarcophagus, or under horizontal slabs. illustration--stones at nurtiung. the usual arrangement is a row of five, seven, or more erect oblong blocks with round heads (the highest being placed in the middle), on which are often wooden discs and cones: more rarely pyramids are built. broad slabs for seats are also common by the wayside. mr. yule, who first drew attention to these monuments, mentions one thirty-two feet by fifteen, and two in thickness; and states that the sarcophagi (which, however, are rare) formed of four slabs, resemble a drawing in bell's circassia, and descriptions in irby and mangles' travels in syria. he adds that many villages derive their names from these stones, "mau" signifying "stone:" thus "mausmai" is "the stone of oath," because, as his native informant said, "there was war between churra and mausmai, and when they made peace, they swore to it, and placed a stone as a witness;" forcibly recalling the stone jacob set up for a pillar, and other passages in the old testament: "mamloo" is "the stone of salt," eating salt from a sword's point being the khasia form of oath: "mauflong" is "the grassy stone," etc.* [notes on the khasia mountains and people; by lieutenant h. yule, bengal engineers. analogous combinations occur in the south of england and in brittany, etc., where similar structures are found. thus _maen, man,_ or _men_ is the so-called druidical name for a stony, whence _pen-maen-mawr,_ for "the hill of the big stone," _maen-hayr,_ for the standing stones of brittany, and _dol-men,_ °the table-stone," for a cromlech.] returning from this grove, we crossed a stream by a single squared block, twenty-eight feet long, five broad, and two thick, of gray syenitic granite with large crystals of felspar. we left nurtiung on the th of october, and walked to pomrang, a very long and fatiguing day's work. the route descends north-west of the village, and turns due east along bare grassy hills of mica-schist and slate (strike east and west, and dip north). near the village of lernai oak woods are passed, in which _vanda coerulea_ grows in profusion, waving its panicles of azure flowers in the wind. as this beautiful orchid is at present attracting great attention, from its high price, beauty, and difficulty of culture, i shall point out how totally at variance with its native habits, is the cultivation thought necessary for it in england.* [we collected seven men's loads of this superb plant for the royal gardens at kew; but owing to unavoidable accidents and difficulties, few specimens reached england alive. a gentleman who sent his gardener with us to be shown the locality, was more successful: he sent one man's load to england on commission, and though it arrived in a very poor state, it sold for pounds, the individual plants fetching prices varying from pounds to pounds. had all arrived alive, they would have cleared pounds. an active collector, with the facilities i possessed, might easily clear from pounds to pounds, in one season, by the sale of khasia orchids.] the dry grassy hills which it inhabits are elevated to feet: the trees are small, gnarled, and very sparingly leafy, so that the vanda which grows on their limbs is fully exposed to sun, rain, and wind. there is no moss or lichen on the branches with the vanda, whose roots sprawl over the dry rough bark. the atmosphere is on the whole humid, and extremely so during the rains; but there is no damp heat, or stagnation of the air, and at the flowering season the temperature ranges between degrees and degrees, there is much sunshine, and both air and bark are dry during the day: in july and august, during the rains, the temperature is a little higher than above, but in winter it falls much lower, and hoar-frost forms on the ground. now this winter's cold, summer's heat, and autumn's drought, and above all, this constant free exposure to fresh air and the winds of heaven, are what of all things we avoid exposing our orchids to in england. it is under these conditions, however, that all the finer indian _orchideae,_ grow, of which we found _dendrobium farmeri, dalhousianum, devonianum,_ etc., with _vanda coerulea_; whilst the most beautiful species of _coelogyne, cymbidium, bolbophyllum,_ and _cypripedium,_ inhabit cool climates at elevations above feet in khasia, and as high as to in sikkim. on the following day we turned out our vanda to dress the specimens for travelling, and preserve the flowers for botanical purposes. of the latter we had panicles, each composed of from six to twenty-one broad pale-blue tesselated flowers, three and a half to four inches across and they formed three piles on the floor of the verandah, each a yard high: what would we not have given to have been able to transport a single panicle to a chiswick fete! on the th of october we sent twenty-four strong mountaineers to churra, laden with the collections of the previous month; whilst we returned to nonkreem, and crossing the shoulder of chillong, passed through the village of moleem in a north-west direction to the syong bungalow. from this we again crossed the range to nunklow and the bor-panee, and returned by moflong and the kala-panee to churra during the latter part of the month. in november the vegetation above feet turns wintry and brown, the weather becomes chilly, and though the cold is never great, hoar-frost forms at churra, and water freezes at moflong. we prepared to leave as these signs of winter advanced: we had collected upwards of , species, and for the last few weeks all our diligence, and that of our collectors, had failed to be rewarded by a single novelty. we however procured many species in fruit, and made a collection of upwards of kinds of woods, many of very curious structure. as, however, we projected a trip to cachar before quitting the neighbourhood, we retained our collectors, giving orders for them to meet us at chattuc, on our way down the soormah in december, with their collections, which amounted to men's loads, and for the conveyance of which to calcutta, mr. inglis procured us boats. before dismissing the subject of the khasia mountains, it will be well to give a slight sketch of their prominent geographical features, in connection with their geology. the general geological characters of the chain may be summed up in a few words. the nucleus or axis is of highly inclined stratified metamorphic rocks, through which the granite has been protruded, and the basalt and syenite afterwards injected. after extensive denudations of these, the sandstone, coal, and limestone were successively deposited. these are altered and displaced along the southern edge of the range, by black amygdaloidal trap, and have in their turn been extensively denuded; and it is this last operation that has sculptured the range, and given the mountains their present aspect; for the same gneisses, slates, and basalts in other countries, present rugged peaks, domes, or cones, and there is nothing in their composition or arrangement here that explains the tabular or rounded outline they assume, or the uniform level of the spurs into which they rise, or the curious steep sides and flat floors of the valleys which drain them. all these peculiarities of outline are the result of denudation, of the specific action of which agent we are very ignorant. the remarkable difference between the steep cliffs on the south face of the range, and the rounded outline of the hills on the northern slopes, may be explained on the supposition that when the khasia was partially submerged, the assam valley was a broad bay or gulf; and that while the churra cliffs were exposed to the full sweep of the ocean, the nunklow shore was washed by a more tranquil sea. the broad flat marshy heads of all the streams in the central and northern parts of the chain, and the rounded hills that separate them, indicate the levelling action of a tidal sea, acting on a low flat shore;* [since our return to england, we have been much struck with the similarity in contour of the essex and suffolk coasts, and with the fact that the tidal coast sculpturing of this surface is preserved in the very centre of high suffolk, twenty to thirty miles distant from the sea, in rounded outlines and broad flat marshy valleys.]whilst the steep flat- floored valleys of the southern watershed may be attributed to the scouring action of higher tides on a boisterous rocky coast. these views are confirmed by an examination of the east shores of the bay of bengal, and particularly by a comparison of the features of the country about silhet, now nearly miles distant from the sea, with those of the chittagong coast, with which they are identical. the geological features of the khasia are in many respects so similar to those of the vindhya, kymore, behar, and rajmahal mountains, that they have been considered by some observers as an eastern prolongation of that great chain, from which they are geographically separated by the delta of the ganges and burrampooter. the general contour of the mountains, and of their sandstone cliffs, is the same, and the association of this rock with coal and lime is a marked point of similarity; there is, however, this difference between them, that the coal-shales of khasia and limestone of behar are non-fossiliferous, while the lime of khasia and the coal-shales of behar contain fossils. the prevalent north-east strike of the gneiss is the same in both, differing from the himalaya, where the stratified rocks generally strike north-west. the nummulites of the limestone are the only known means we have of forming an approximate estimate of the age of the khasia coal, which is the most interesting feature in the geology of the range: these fossils have been examined by mm. archiac and jules haines,* ["description des animaux fossiles des indes orientales;" p. . these species are _nummulites scabra,_ lamarck, _n. obtusa,_ sowerby, _n. lucasana,_ deshayes, and _n. beaumonti,_ d'arch. and haines.] who have pronounced the species collected by dr. thomson and myself to be the same as those found in the nummulite rocks of north-west india, scinde, and arabia. chapter xxx. boat voyage to silhet -- river -- palms -- teelas -- botany -- fish weirs -- forests of cachar -- sandal-wood, etc. -- porpoises -- alligators -- silchar -- tigers -- rice crops -- cookies -- munniporees -- hockey -- varnish -- dance -- nagas -- excursion to munnipore frontier -- elephant bogged -- bamboos -- _cardiopteris_ -- climate, etc., of cachar -- mosquitos -- fall of banks -- silhet -- oaks -- _stylidium_ -- tree-ferns -- chattuc -- megna -- meteorology -- palms -- noacolly -- salt-smuggling -- delta of ganges and megna -- westward progress of megna -- peat -- tide -- waves -- earthquakes -- dangerous navigation -- moonlight scenes -- mud island -- chittagong -- mug tribes -- views -- trees -- churs -- flagstaff hill -- coffee -- pepper -- tea, etc. -- excursions from chittagong -- _dipterocarpi_ or gurjun oil trees -- earthquake -- birds -- papaw -- bleeding of stems -- poppy and sun fields -- seetakoond -- bungalow and hill -- perpetual flame -- _falconeria -- cycas_ -- climate -- leave for calcutta -- hattiah island -- plants -- sunderbunds -- steamer -- tides -- _nipa fruticans_ -- fishing -- otters -- crocodiles -- _phoenix paludosa_ -- departure from india. we left churra on the th of november, and taking boats at pundua, crossed the jheels to the soormah, which we ascended to silhet. thence we continued our voyage miles up the river in canoes, to silchar, the capital of the district of cachar: the boats were such as i described at chattuc, and though it was impossible to sit upright in them, they were paddled with great swiftness. the river at silhet is yards broad; it is muddy, and flows with a gentle current of two to three miles an hour, between banks six to twelve feet high. as we glided up its stream, villages became rarer, and eminences more frequent in the jheels. the people are a tall, bold, athletic mahometan race, who live much on the water, and cultivate rice, sesamum, and radishes, with betel-pepper in thatched enclosures as in sikkim: maize and sugar are rarer, bamboos abound, and four palms (_borassus, areca,_ cocoa-nut, and _caryota_) are planted, but there are no date-palms. the teelas (or hillocks) are the haunts of wild boars, tigers, and elephants, but not of the rhinoceros; they are to feet high, of horizontally stratified gravel and sand, slates, and clay conglomerates, with a slag-like honey-combed sandstone; they are covered with oaks, figs, _heretiera,_ and bamboos, and besides a multitude of common bengal plants, there are some which, though generally considered mountain or cold country genera, here descend to the level of the sea; such are _kadsura, rubus, camellia,_ and _sabia_; _aerides_ and _saccolabia_ are the common orchids, and rattan-canes and _pandani_ render the jungles impenetrable. a very long sedge (_scleria_) grows by the water, and is used for thatching: boatloads of it are collected for the calcutta market, for which also were destined many immense rafts of bamboo, feet long. the people fish much, using square and triangular drop-nets stretched upon bamboos, and rude basket-work weirs, that retain the fish as the river falls. near the villages we saw fragments of pottery three feet below the surface of the ground, shewing that the bank, which is higher than the surrounding country, increases from the annual overflow. about seventy miles up the river, the mountains on the north, which are east of jyntea, rise feet high in forest-clad ranges like those of sikkim. swamps extend from the river to their base, and penetrate their valleys, which are extremely malarious: these forests are frequented by timber-cutters, who fell jarool (_lagerstroemia reginae_), a magnificent tree with red wood, which, though soft, is durable under water, and therefore in universal use for boat-building. the toon is also cut, with red sandal-wood (_adenanthera pavonina_); also nageesa,* [there is much dispute amongst oriental scholars about the word nageesa; the bombay philologists refer it to a species of _garcinia,_ whilst the pundits on the calcutta side of india consider it to be _mesua ferrea._ throughout our travels in india, we were struck with the undue reliance placed on native names of plants, and information of all kinds; and the pertinacity with which each linguist adhered to his own crotchet as to the application of terms to natural objects, and their pronunciation. it is a very prevalent, but erroneous, impression, that savage and half-civilised people have an accurate knowledge of objects of natural history, and a uniform nomenclature for them.] _mesua ferrea,_ which is highly valued for its weight, strength, and durability: _aquilaria agallocha,_ the eagle-wood, a tree yielding uggur oil, is also much sought for its fragrant wood, which is carried to silhet and azmerigunj, where it is broken up and distilled. neither teak, sissoo, sal, nor other _dipterocarpi,_ are found in these forests. porpoises, and both the long and the short-nosed alligator, ascend the soormah for miles, being found beyond silchar, which place we reached on the nd, and were most hospitably received by colonel lister, the political agent commanding the silhet light infantry, who was inspecting the cookie levy, a corps of hill-natives which had lately been enrolled. the station is a small one, and stands about forty feet above the river, which however rises half that height in the rains. long low spurs of tertiary rocks stretch from the tipperah hills for many miles north, through the swampy jheels to the river; and there are also hills on the opposite or north side, but detached from the cookie hills, as the lofty blue range twelve miles north of the soormah is called. all these mountains swarm with tigers, wild buffalos, and boars, which also infest the long grass of the jheels. the elevation of the house we occupied at silchar was feet above the sea. the bank it stood on was of clay, with soft rocks of conglomerate, which often assume the appearance of a brown sandy slag. during the first birmese war, colonel lister was sent with a force up to this remote corner of bengal, when the country was an uninhabited jungle, so full of tigers that not a day passed without one or more of his grass or wood-cutters being carried off. now, thousands of acres are cultivated with rice, and during our stay we did not see a tiger. the quantity of land brought into cultivation in this part of bengal, and indeed throughout the gangetic delta, has probably been doubled during the last twenty years, and speaks volumes for the state of the peasant under the indian company's sway, as compared with his former condition. the silchar rice is of admirable quality, and much is imported to silhet, the jheels not producing grain enough for the consumption of the people. though silchar grows enough for ten times its population, there was actually a famine six weeks before our arrival, the demand from silhet being so great. the villages of cachar are peopled by mahometans, munniporees, nagas, and cookies; the cacharies themselves being a poor and peaceful jungle tribe, confined to the mountains north of the soormah. the munniporees* [the munnipore valley has never been explored by any naturalist, its mountains are said to be pine-clad, and to rise feet above the level of the sea. the rajah is much harassed by the birmese, and is a dependant of the british, who are in the very frequent dilemma of supporting on the throne a sovereign opposed by a strong faction of his countrymen, and who has very dubious claims to his position. during our stay at silchar, the supposed rightful rajah was prevailing over the usurper; a battle had been fought on the hills on the frontier, and two bodies floated past our bungalow, pierced with arrows.] are emigrants from the kingdom of that name, which lies beyond the british possessions, and borders on assam and birmah. low ranges of forest-clad mountains at the head of the soormah, separate it from silchar, with which it is coterminous; the two chief towns being seven marches apart. to the south-east of silchar are interminable jungles, peopled by the cookies, a wild indo-chinese tribe, who live in a state of constant warfare, and possess the whole hill-country from this, southward to beyond chittagong. two years ago they invaded and ravaged cachar, carrying many of the inhabitants into slavery, and so frightening the people, that land previously worth six rupees a biggah, is now reduced to one and a half. colonel lister was sent with a strong party to rescue the captives, and marched for many days through their country without disturbing man or beast; penetrating deep forests of gigantic trees and tall bamboos, never seeing the sun above, or aught to the right and left, save an occasional clearance and a deserted village. the incursion, however, had its effects, and the better inclined near the frontier have since come forward, and been enrolled as the cookie levy. the munnipore emigrants are industrious settlers for a time, but never remain long in one place: their religion is hindoo, and they keep up a considerable trade with their own country, whence they import a large breed of buffalos, ponies, silks, and cotton cloths dyed with arnotto (_bixa_), and universally used for turbans. they use bamboo blowing-tubes and arrows for shooting birds, make excellent shields of rhinoceros hide (imported from assam), and play at hockey on horseback like the western tibetans. a fine black varnish from the fruit of _holigarna longifolia,_ is imported from munnipore, as is another made from _sesuvium anacardium_ (marking-nut), and a remarkable black pigment resembling that from _melanorhoea usitatissima,_ which is white when fresh, and requires to be kept under water.* [this turns of a beautiful black colour when applied to a surface, owing, according to sir d. brewster, to the fresh varnish consisting of a congeries of minute organised particles, which disperse the rays of light in all directions; the organic structure is destroyed when the varnish dries and the rays of light are consequently transmitted.] one fine moonlight night we went to see a munnipore dance. a large circular area was thatched with plantain leaves, growing on their trunks, which were stuck in the ground; and round the enclosure was a border neatly cut from the white leaf-sheaths of the same tree. a double enclosure of bamboo, similarly ornamented, left an inner circle for the performers, and an outer for the spectators: the whole was lighted with oil lamps and chinese paper lanterns. the musicians sat on one side, with cymbals, tomtoms, and flutes, and sang choruses. the performances began by a copper-coloured cupid entering and calling the virgins with a flute; these appeared from a green-room, to the number of thirty or forty, of all ages and sizes. each had her hair dressed in a topknot, and her head covered with a veil; a scarlet petticoat loaded with tinsel concealed her naked feet, and over this was a short red kirtle, and an enormous white shawl was swathed round the body from the armpits to the waist. a broad belt passed over the right shoulder and under the left arm, to which hung gold and silver chains, corals, etc., with tinsel and small mirrors sewed on everywhere: the arms and hands were bare, and decorated with bangles and rings. many of the women were extremely tall, great stature being common amongst the munniporees. they commenced with a prostration to cupid, around whom they danced very slowly, with the arms stretched out, and the hands in motion; at each step the free foot was swung backwards and forwards. cupid then chose a partner, and standing in the middle went through the same motions, a compliment the women acknowledged by curtseying and whirling round, making a sort of cheese with their petticoats, which, however, were too heavy to inflate properly. the nagas are another people found on this frontier, chiefly on the hills to the north: they are a wild, copper-coloured, uncouth jungle tribe, who have proved troublesome on the assam frontier. their features are more tartar than those of the munniporees, especially amongst the old men. they bury their dead under the threshold of their cottages. the men are all but naked, and stick plumes of hornbills' feathers in their hair, which is bound with strips of bamboo: tufts of small feathers are passed through their ears, and worn as shoulder lappets. a short blue cotton cloth, with a fringe of tinsel and tufts of goat's hair dyed red, is passed over the loins in front only: they also wear brass armlets, and necklaces of cowries, coral, amber, ivory, and boar's teeth. the women draw a fringed blue cloth tightly across the breast, and wear a checked or striped petticoat. they are less ornamented than the men, and are pleasing looking; their hair is straight, and cut short over the eyebrows. the naga dances are very different from those of the munniporees; being quick, and performed in excellent time to harmonious music. the figures are regular, like quadrilles and country-dances: the men hold their knives erect during the performance, the women extend their arms only when turning partners, and then their hands are not given, but the palms are held opposite. the step is a sort of polka and balancez, very graceful and lively. a bar of music is always played first, and at the end the spectators applaud with two short shouts. their ear for music, and the nature of their dance, are as tibetan as their countenances, and different from those of the indo-chinese tribes of the frontier. we had the pleasure of meeting lieutenant raban at silchar, and of making several excursions in the neighbourhood with him; for which colonel lister here, as at churra, afforded us every facility of elephants and men. had we had time, it was our intention to have visited munnipore, but we were anxious to proceed to chittagong. i however made a three days' excursion to the frontier, about thirty miles distant, proceeding along the north bank of the soormah. on the way my elephant got bogged in crossing a deep muddy stream: this is sometimes an alarming position, as should the animal become terrified, he will seize his rider, or pad, or any other object (except his driver), to place under his knees to prevent his sinking. in this instance the driver in great alarm ordered me off, and i had to flounder out through the black mud. the elephant remained fast all night, and was released next morning by men with ropes. the country continued a grassy level, with marshes and rice cultivation, to the first range of hills, beyond which the river is unnavigable; there also a forest commences, of oaks, figs, and the common trees of east bengal. the road hence was a good one, cut by sepoys across the dividing ranges, the first of which is not feet high. on the ascent bamboos abound, of the kind called tuldah or dulloah, which has long very thin-walled joints; it attains no great size, but is remarkably gregarious. on the east side of the range, the road runs through soft shales and beds of clay, and conglomerates, descending to a broad valley covered with gigantic scattered timber-trees of jarool, acacia, _diospyros, urticeae,_ and _bauhiniae,_ rearing their enormous trunks above the bamboo jungle: immense rattan-canes wound through the forest, and in the gullies were groves of two kinds of tree-fern, two of _areca, wallichia_ palm, screw-pine, and _dracaena._ wild rice grew abundantly in the marshes, with tal grasses; and _cardiopteris_* [a remarkable plant of unknown affinity; see brown and bennett, "flora java:" it is found in the assam valley and chittagong.] covered the trees for upwards of sixty feet, like hops, with a mass of pale-green foliage, and dry white glistening seed-vessels. this forest differed from those of the silhet and khasia mountains, especially in the abundance of bamboo jungle, which is, i believe, the prevalent feature of the low hills in birmah, ava, and munnipore; also in the gigantic size of the rattans, arger palms, and different forest trees, and in the scanty undergrowth of herbs and bushes. i only saw, however, the skirts of the forest; the mountains further east, which i am told rise several thousand feet in limestone cliffs, are doubtless richer in herbaceous plants. the climate of cachar partakes of that of the jheels in its damp equable character: during our stay the weather was fine, and dense fogs formed in the morning: the mean maximum was degrees, minimum . degrees.* [the temperature does not rise above degrees in summer, nor sink below degrees or degrees in january: forty-seven comparative observations with calcutta showed the mean temperature to be . degrees lower at silchar, and the air damper, the saturation point being, at calcutta . , at silchar . .] the annual rain-fall in was . inches, according to a register kindly given me by captain verner. there are few mosquitos, which is one of the most curious facts in the geographical distribution of these capricious bloodsuckers; for the locality is surrounded by swamps, and they swarm at silhet, and on the river lower down. both on the passage up and down, we were tormented in our canoes by them for eighty or ninety miles above silhet, and thence onwards to cachar we were free. on the th of november, we were preparing for our return to silhet, and our canoes were loading, when we were surprised by a loud rushing noise, and saw a high wave coming down the river, swamping every boat that remained on its banks, whilst most of those that pushed out into the stream, escaped with a violent rocking. it was caused by a slip of the bank three quarters of a mile up the stream, of no great size, but which propagated a high wave. this appeared to move on at about the rate of a mile in three or four minutes, giving plenty of time for our boatmen to push out from the land on hearing the shouts of those first overtaken by the calamity; but they were too timid, and consequently one of our canoes, full of papers, instruments, and clothes, was swamped. happily our dried collections were not embarked, and the hot sun repaired much of the damage. we left in the evening of the nd of december, and proceeded to silhet, where we were kindly received by mr. stainforth, the district judge. silhet, the capital of the district of the same name, is a large mahometan town, occupying a slightly raised part of the jheels, where many of the teelas seem joined together by beds of gravel and sand. in the rains it, is surrounded by water, and all communication with other parts is by boats: in winter, jynteapore and pundua may be reached by land, crossing creeks innumerable on the way. mr. stainforth's house, like those of most of the other europeans, occupies the top of one of the teelas, feet high, and is surrounded by fine spreading oaks,* [it is not generally known that oaks are often very tropical plants; not only abounding at low elevations in the mountains, but descending in abundance to the level of the sea. though unknown in ceylon, the peninsula of india, tropical africa, or south america, they abound in the hot valleys of the eastern himalaya, east bengal, malay peninsula, and indian islands; where perhaps more species grow than in any other part of the world. such facts as this disturb our preconceived notions of the geographical distribution of the most familiar tribes of plants, and throw great doubt on the conclusions which fossil plants are supposed to indicate.] _garcinia,_ and _diospyros_ trees. the rock of which the hill is composed, is a slag-like ochreous sandstone, covered in most places with a shrubbery of rose-flowered _melastoma,_ and some peculiar plants.* [_gelonium, adelia, moacurra, linostoma, justicia, trophis, connarus, ixora, congea, dalhousiea, grewia, myrsine, buttneria_; and on the shady exposures a _calamus, briedelia,_ and various ferns.] broad flat valleys divide the hills, and are beautifully clothed with a bright green jungle of small palms, and many kinds of ferns. in sandy places, blue-flowered _burmannia, hypoxis,_ and other pretty tropical annuals, expand their blossoms, with an inconspicuous _stylidium,_ a plant belonging to a small natural family, whose limits are so confined to new holland, that this is almost the only kind that does not grow in that continent. where the ground is swampy, dwarf _pandanus_ abounds, with the gigantic nettle, _urtica crenulata_ ("mealum-ma" of sikkim, see chapter xxiv). the most interesting botanical ramble about silhet is to the tree-fern groves on the path to jynteapore, following the bottoms of shallow valleys between the teelas, and along clear streams, up whose beds we waded for some miles, under an arching canopy of tropical shrubs, trees, and climbers, tall grasses, screw-pines, and _aroideae._ in the narrower parts of the valleys the tree-ferns are numerous on the slopes, rearing their slender brown trunks forty feet high, with feathery crowns of foliage, through which the sun-beams trembled on the broad shining foliage of the tropical herbage below. silhet, though hot and damp, is remarkably healthy, and does not differ materially in temperature from silchar, though it is more equable and humid.* [during our stay of five days the mean maximum temperature was degrees, minimum . degrees: that of thirty-two observations compared with calcutta show that silhet is only . degrees cooler, though mr. stainforth's house is upwards of degrees further north, and feet more elevated. a thermometer sunk two feet seven inches, stood at . degrees. the relative saturation-points were, calcutta . , silhet . .] it derives some interest from having been first brought into notice by the enterprise of one of the lindsays of balcarres, at a time when the pioneers of commerce in india encountered great hardships and much personal danger. mr. lindsay, a writer in the service of the east india company, established a factory at silhet, and commenced the lime trade with calcutta,* [for an account of the early settlement of silhet, see "lives of the lindsays," by lord lindsay.] reaping an enormous fortune himself, and laying the foundation of that prosperity amongst the people which has been much advanced by the exertions of the inglis family, and has steadily progressed under the protecting rule of the indian government. from silhet we took large boats to navigate the burrampooter and megna, to their embouchure in the bay of bengal at noacolly, a distance of miles, whence we were to proceed across the head of the bay to chittagong, about miles farther. we left on the th of december, and arrived at chattuc on the th, where we met our khasia collectors with large loads of plants, and paid them off. the river was now low, and presented a busy scene, from the numerous trading boats being confined to its fewer and deeper channels. long grasses and sedges (_arundo, saccharum_ and _scleria_), were cut, and stacked along the water's edge, in huge brown piles, for export and thatching. on the th december, we entered the broad stream of the megna. rice is cultivated along the mud flats left by the annual floods, and the banks are lower and less defined than in the soormah, and support no long grasses or bushes. enormous islets of living water-grasses (_oplismenus stagninus_) and other plants, floated past, and birds became more numerous, especially martins and egrets. the sun was hot, but the weather otherwise cool and pleasant: the mean temperature was nearly that of calcutta, . degrees, but the atmosphere was more humid.* [the river-water was greenish, and a little cooler ( . degrees) than that of the soormah ( . degrees), which was brown and muddy. the barometer on the soormah stood . inch higher than that of calcutta (on the mean of thirty-eight observations), whereas on the megna the pressure was . higher. as calcutta is eighteen feet above the level of the bay of bengal, this shows that the megna (which has no perceptible current) is at the level of the sea, and that either the soormah is upwards of thirty feet above that level, or that the atmospheric pressure there, and at this season, is less than at calcutta, which, as i have hinted at chapter xxvii, is probably the case.] on the th we passed the dacca river; below which the megna is several miles wide, and there is an appearance of tide, from masses of purple _salvinia_ (a floating plant, allied to ferns), being thrown up on the beach like sea-weed. still lower down, the vegetation of the sunderbunds commences; there is a narrow beach, and behind it a mud bank several feet high, supporting a luxuriant green jungle of palms (_borassus_ and _phoenix_), immense fig-trees, covered with _calami,_ and tall betel-palms, clothed with the most elegant drapery of _arostichum scandens,_ a climbing fern with pendulous fronds. towards the embouchure, the banks rise ten feet high, the river expands into a muddy sea, and a long swell rolls in, to the disquiet of our fresh-water boatmen. low islands of sand and mud stretch along the horizon: which, together with the ships, distorted by extraordinary refraction, flicker as if seen through smoke. mud is the all prevalent feature; and though the water is not salt, we do not observe in these broad deltas that amount of animal life (birds, fish, alligators, and porpoises), that teems in the narrow creeks of the western sunderbunds. we landed in a canal-like creek at tuktacolly,* ["colly" signifies a muddy creek, such as intersect the delta.] on the th, and walked to noacolly, over a flat of hard mud or dried silt, covered with turf of _cynodon dactylon._ we were hospitably received by dr. baker, a gentleman who has resided here for twenty-three years; and who communicated to us much interesting information respecting the features of the gangetic delta. noacolly is a station for collecting the revenue and preventing the manufacture of salt, which, with opium, are the only monopolies now in the hands of the east india company. the salt itself is imported from arracan, ceylon, and even europe, and is stored in great wooden buildings here and elsewhere. the ground being impregnated with salt, the illicit manufacture by evaporation is not easily checked; but whereas the average number of cases brought to justice used to be twenty and thirty in a week, they are now reduced to two or three. it is remarkable, that though the soil yields such an abundance of this mineral, the water of the megna at noacolly is only brackish, and it is therefore to repeated inundations and surface evaporations that the salt is due. fresh water is found at a very few feet depth everywhere, but it is not good. when it is considered how comparatively narrow the sea-board of the delta is, the amount of difference in the physical features of the several parts, will appear most extraordinary. i have stated that the difference between the northern and southern halves of the delta is so great, that, were all depressed and their contents fossilised, the geologist who examined each by itself, would hardly recognise the two parts as belonging to one epoch; and the difference between the east and west halves of the lower delta is equally remarkable. the total breadth of the delta is miles, from chittagong to the mouth of the hoogly, divided longitudinally by the megna: all to the west of that river presents a luxuriant vegetation, while to the east is a bare muddy expanse, with no trees or shrubs but what are planted on the west coast the tides rise twelve or thirteen feet, on the east, from forty to eighty. on the west, the water is salt enough for mangroves to grow for fifty miles up the hoogly; on the east, the sea coast is too fresh for that plant for ten miles south of chittagong. on the west, fifty inches is the cuttack fall of rain; on the east, to at noacolly and chittagong, and at arracan. the east coast is annually visited by earthquakes, which are rare on the west; and lastly, the majority of the great trees and shrubs carried down from the cuttack and orissa forests, and deposited on the west coast of the delta, are not only different in species, but in natural order, from those that the fenny and chittagong rivers bring down from the jungles.* [the cuttack forests are composed of teak, sal, sissoo, ebony, _pentaptera, buchanania,_ and other trees of a dry soil, and that require a dry season alternating with a wet one. these are unknown in the chittagong forests, which have jarool (_lagerstroemia_) _mesua, dipterocarpi,_ nutmegs, oaks of several kinds, and many other trees not known in the cuttack forests, and all typical of a perennially humid atmosphere.] we were glad to find at noacolly that our observations on the progression westwards of the burrampooter (see chapter xxvii) were confirmed by the fact that the megna also is gradually moving in that direction, leaving much dry land on the noacolly side, and forming islands opposite that coast; whilst it encroaches on the sunderbunds, and is cutting away the islands in that direction. this advance of the fresh waters amongst the sunderbunds is destructive to the vegetation of the latter, which requires salt; and if the megna continues its slow course westwards, the obliteration of thousands of square miles of a very peculiar flora, and the extinction of many species of plants and animals that exist nowhere else, may ensue. in ordinary cases these plants, etc., would take up their abode on the east coast, as they were driven from the west; but such might not be the case in this delta; for the sweeping tides of the east coast prevent any such vegetation establishing itself there, and the mud which the eastern rivers carry down, becomes a caking dry soil, unsuited to the germination of seeds. on our arrival at calcutta in the following february, dr. falconer showed us specimens of very modern peat, dug out of the banks of the hoogly a few feet below the surface of the soil, in which were seeds of the _euryale ferox_:* [this peat dr. falconer also found to contain bones of birds and fish, seeds of _cucumis madraspatana_ and another cucurbitaceous plant, leaves of _saccharum sara_ and _ficus cordifolia._ specks of some glistening substance were scattered through the mass, apparently incipient carbonisation of the peat.] this plant is not now known to be found nearer than dacca (sixty miles north-east, see chapter xxvii), and indicates a very different state of the surface at calcutta at the date of its deposition than that which exists now, and also shows that the estuary was then much fresher. the main land of noacolly is gradually extending seawards, and has advanced four miles within twenty-three years: this seems sufficiently accounted for by the recession of the megna. the elevation of the surface of the land is caused by the overwhelming tides and south-west hurricanes in may and october: these extend thirty miles north and south of chittagong, and carry the waters of the megna and fenny back over the land, in a series of tremendous waves, that cover islands of many hundred acres, and roll three miles on to the main land. on these occasions, the average earthy deposit of silt, separated by micaceous sand, is an eighth of an inch for every tide; but in october, , these tides covered sundeep island, deposited six inches on its level surface, and filled ditches several feet deep. these deposits become baked by a tropical sun, and resist to a considerable degree denudation by rain. whether any further rise is caused by elevation from below is doubtful; there is no direct evidence of it, though slight earthquakes annually occur; and even when they have not been felt, the water of tanks has been seen to oscillate for three-quarters of an hour without intermission, from no discernible cause.* [the natives are familiar with this phenomenon, of which dr. baker remembers two instances, one in the cold season of - , the other in that of - . the earthquakes do not affect any particular month, nor are they accompanied by any meteorological phenomena.] noacolly is considered a healthy spot, which is not the case with the sunderbund stations west of the megna. the climate is uniformly hot, but the thermometer never rises above degrees, nor sinks below degrees; at this temperature hoar-frost will form on straw, and ice on water placed in porous pans, indicating a powerful radiation.* [the winds are north-west and north in the cold season (from november to march), drawing round to west in the afternoons. north-west winds and heavy hailstorms are frequent from march to may, when violent gales set in from the southward. the rains commence in june, with easterly and southerly winds, and the temperature from degrees to degrees; may and october are the hottest months. the rains cease in the end of october (on the th of november in , and th of november in , the latest epoch ever remembered): there is no land or sea breeze along any part of the coast. during our stay we found the mean temperature for twelve observations to be precisely that of calcutta, but the humidity was more, and the pressure . ower.] we left noacolly on the th for chittagong; the state of the tide obliging us to go on board in the night. the distance is only miles, but the passage is considered dangerous at this time (during the spring-tides) and we were therefore provided with a large vessel and an experienced crew. the great object in this navigation is to keep afloat and to make progress towards the top of the tide and during its flood, and to ground during the ebb in creeks where the bore (tidal wave) is not violent; for where the channels are broad and open, the height and force of this wave rolls the largest coasting craft over and swamps them. our boatmen pushed out at in the morning, and brought up at , in a narrow muddy creek on the island of sidhee. the waters retired along channels scooped several fathoms deep in black mud, leaving our vessel aground six or seven feet below the top of the bank, and soon afterwards there was no water to be seen; as far as the eye could reach, all was a glistening oozy mud, except the bleak level surfaces of the islands, on which neither shrub nor tree grew. soon after p.m. a white line was seen on the low black horizon, which was the tide-wave, advancing at the rate of five miles an hour, with a hollow roar; it bore back the mud that was gradually slipping along the gentle slope, and we were afloat an hour after: at night we grounded again, opposite the mouth of the fenny. by moonlight the scene was oppressively solemn: on all sides the gurgling waters kept up a peculiar sound that filled the air with sullen murmurs; the moonbeams slept upon the slimy surface of the mud, and made the dismal landscape more ghastly still. silence followed the ebb, broken occasionally by the wild whistle of a bird like the curlew, of which a few wheeled through the air: till the harsh roar of the bore was heard, to which the sailors seemed to waken by instinct. the waters then closed in on every side, and the far end of the reflected moonbeam was broken into flashing light, that approached and soon danced beside the boat. we much regretted not being able to obtain any more accurate data than i have given, as to the height of the tide at the mouth of the fenny; but where the ebb sometimes retires twenty miles from high-water mark, it is obviously impossible to plant any tide-gauge. on the st we were ashore at daylight on the chittagong coast far north of the station, and were greeted by the sight of hills on the horizon: we were lying fully twenty feet below high-water mark, and the tide was out for several miles to the westward. the bank was covered with flocks of white geese feeding on short grass, upon what appeared to be detached islets on the surface of the mud. these islets, which are often an acre in extent, are composed of stratified mud; they have perpendicular sides several feet high, and convex surfaces, owing to the tide washing away the earth from under their sides; and they were further slipping seawards, along the gently sloping mud-beach. few or no shells or seaweed were to be seen, nor is it possible to imagine a more lifeless sea than these muddy coasts present. we were three days and nights on this short voyage, without losing sight of mud or land. i observed the barometer whenever the boat was on the shore, and found the mean of six readings (all reduced to the same level) to be identical with that at calcutta. these being all taken at elevations lower than that of the calcutta observatory, show either a diminished atmospheric pressure, or that the mean level of high-water is not the same on the east and west coasts of the bay of bengal: this is quite possible, considering the widely different direction of the tides and currents on each, and that the waters may be banked up, as it were, in the narrow channels of the western sunderbunds. the temperature of the air was the same as at calcutta, but the atmosphere was damper. the water was always a degree warmer than the air. we arrived at chittagong on the rd of december, and became the guests of mr. sconce, judge of the district, and of mr. lautour; to both of whom we were greatly indebted for their hospitality and generous assistance in every way. chittagong is a large town of mahometans and mugs, a birmese tribe who inhabit many parts of the malay peninsula, and the coast to the northward of it. the town stands on the north shore of an extensive delta, formed by rivers from the lofty mountains separating this district from birma. these mountains are fine objects on the horizon, rising to feet; they are forest-clad, and inhabited by turbulent races, who are coterminous with the cookies of the cachar and tipperah forests; if indeed they be not the same people. the mountains abound with the splendid timber-trees of the cachar forests, but like these are said to want teak, sal, and sissoo; they have, besides many others,, magnificent gurjun trees (_dipterocarpi_), the monarchs of the forests of these coasts. the natives of chittagong are excellent shipbuilders and active traders, and export much rice and timber to madras and calcutta. the town is large and beautifully situated, interspersed with trees and tanks; the hills resemble those of silhet, and are covered with a similar vegetation: on these the european houses are built. the climate is very healthy, which is not remarkable, considering how closely it approximates in character to that of silhet and other places in eastern bengal, but very extraordinary, if it be compared with arracan, only miles further south, which is extremely unhealthy. the prominent difference between the physical features of chittagong and arracan, is the presence of mangrove swamps at the latter place, for which the water is too fresh at the former. the hills about the station are not more than or feet high, and are formed of stratified gravel, sand, and clay, that often becomes nodular, and is interstratified with slag-like iron clay. fossil wood is found; and some of the old buildings about chittagong contain nummulitic limestone, probably imported from silhet or the peninsula of india, with which countries there is no such trade now. the views are beautiful, of the blue mountains forty to fifty miles distant, and the many-armed river, covered with sails, winding amongst groves of cocoa-nuts, areca palm, and yellow rice fields. good european houses surmount all the eminences, surrounded by trees of _acacia_ and _caesalpinia._ in the hollows are native huts amidst vegetation of every hue, glossy green _garciniae_ and figs, broad plantains, feathery _cassia_ and acacias, dark _mesua_, red-purple _terminalia,_ leafless scarlet-flowered _bombax,_ and grey _casuarina._* [this, which is almost exclusively an australian genus, is not indigenous at chittagong: to it belongs an extra-australian species common in the malay islands, and found wild as far north as arracan.] seaward the tide leaves immense flats, called churs, which stretch for many miles on either side the offing. we accompanied mr. sconce to a bungalow which he has built at the telegraph station at the south head of the harbour: its situation, on a hill feet above the sea, is exposed, and at this season the sea-breeze was invigorating, and even cold, as it blew through the mat-walls of the bungalow.* [the mean temperature of the two days ( th and th) we spent at this bungalow was . degrees, that of calcutta being . degrees; the air was damp, and the barometer . lower at the flagstaff hill, but it fell and rose with the calcutta instrument.] to the south, undulating dunes stretch along the coast, covered with low bushes, of which a red-flowered _melastoma_ is the most prevalent,* [_melastoma,_ jasmine, _calamus, aegle marmelos, adelia, memecylon, ixora, limostoma, congea,_ climbing _coesalpinia,_ and many other plants; and along their bases large trees of _amoora, gaurea,_ figs, _mesua,_ and _micromelon._] and is considered a species of _rhododendron_ by many of the residents! the flats along the beach are several miles broad, intersected with tidal creeks, and covered with short grass, while below high-water mark all is mud, coated with green _conferva._ there are no leafy seaweeds or mangroves, nor any seaside shrub but _dilivaria ilicifolia._ animal life is extremely rare; and a _cardium_-like shell and small crab are found sparingly. coffee has been cultivated at chittagong with great success; it is said to have been introduced by sir w. jones, and mr. sconce has a small plantation, from which his table is well supplied. both assam and chinese teas flourish, but chinamen are wanted to cure the leaves. black pepper succeeds admirably, as do cinnamon, arrowroot, and ginger. early in january we accompanied mr. lautour on an excursion to the north, following a valley separated from the coast by a range of wooded hills, feet high. for several marches the bottom of this valley was broad, flat, and full of villages. at sidhee, about twenty-five miles from chittagong, it contracts, and spurs from the hills on either flank project into the middle: they are to feet high, formed of red clay, and covered with brushwood. at kajee-ke-hath, the most northern point we reached, we were quite amongst these hills, and in an extremely picturesque country, intersected by long winding flat valleys, that join one another: some are full of copsewood, while others present the most beautiful park-like scenery, and a third class expand into grassy marshes or lake-beds, with wooded islets rising out of them. the hillsides are clothed with low jungle, above which tower magnificent gurjun trees (wood-oil). the whole contour of this country is that of a low bay, whose coast is raised above the sea, and over which a high tide once swept for ages. the elevation of hazari-ke-hath is not feet above the level of the sea. it is about ten miles west of the mouth of the fenny, from which it is separated by hills feet high; its river falls into that at chittagong, thirty miles south. large myrtaceous trees (_eugenia_) are common, and show a tendency to the malayan flora, which is further demonstrated by the abundance of gurjun (_dipterocarpus turbinatus_). this is the most superb tree we met with in the indian forests: we saw several species, but this is the only common one here; it is conspicuous for its gigantic size, and for the straightness and graceful form of its tall unbranched pale grey trunk, and small symmetrical crown: many individuals were upwards of feet high, and fifteen in girth. its leaves are broad, glossy, and beautiful; the flowers (then falling) are not conspicuous; the wood is hard, close-grained, and durable, and a fragrant oil exudes from the trunk, which is extremely valuable as pitch and varnish, etc., besides being a good medicine. the natives procure it by cutting transverse holes in the trunk, pointing downwards, and lighting fires in them, which causes the oil to flow.* [the other trees of these dry forests are many oaks, _henslowia, gordonia, engelhardtia, duabanga, adelia, byttneria, bradleia,_ and large trees of _pongamia,_ whose seeds yield a useful oil.] illustration--gurjun tree. on the th of january we experienced a sharp earthquake, preceded by a dull thumping sound; it lasted about twenty seconds, and seemed to come up from the southward; the water of a tank by which we were seated was smartly agitated. the same shock was felt at mymensing and at dacca, miles north-west of this.* [earthquakes are extremely common, and sometimes violent, at chittagong, and doubtless belong to the volcanic forces of the malayan peninsula.] we crossed the dividing ridge of the littoral range on the th, and descended to seetakoond bungalow, on the high road from chittagong to comilla. the forests at the foot of the range were very extensive, and swarmed with large red ants that proved very irritating: they build immense pendulous nests of dead and living leaves at the ends of the branches of trees, and mat them with a white web. tigers, leopards, wild dogs, and boars, are numerous; as are snipes, pheasants, peacocks, and jungle-fowl, the latter waking the morn with their shrill crows; and in strange association with them, common english woodcock, is occasionally found. the trees are of little value, except the gurjun, and "kistooma," a species of _bradleia,_ which was stacked extensively, being used for building purposes. the papaw* [the papaw tree is said to have the curious property of rendering tough meat tender, when hung under its leaves, or touched with the juice; this hastening the process of decay. with this fact, well-known in the west indies, i never found a person in the east acquainted.] is abundantly cultivated, and its great gourd-like fruit is eaten (called "papita" or "chinaman"); the flavour is that of a bad melon, and a white juice exudes from the rind. the _hodgsonia heteroclita_ (_trichosanthes_ of roxburgh), a magnificent cucurbitaceous climber, grows in these forests; it is the same species as the sikkim one (see chapter xviii). the long stem bleeds copiously when cut, and like almost all woody climbers, is full of large vessels; the juice does not, however, exude from these great tubes, which hold air, but from the close woody fibres. a climbing _apocyneous_ plant grows in these forests, the milk of which flows in a continuous stream, resembling caoutchouc (it is probably the _urceola elastica,_ which yields indian-rubber). the subject of bleeding is involved in great obscurity, and the systematic examination of the motions in the juices of tropical climbers by resident observers, offers a fertile field to the naturalist. i have often remarked that if a climbing stem, in which the circulation is vigorous, be cut across, it bleeds freely from both ends, and most copiously from the lower, if it be turned downwards; but that if a truncheon be severed, there will be no flow from either of its extremities. this is the case with all the indian watery-juiced climbers, at whatever season they may be cut. when, however, the circulation in the plant is feeble, neither end of a simple cut will bleed much, but if a truncheon be taken from it, both the extremities will. the ascent of the hills, which are densely wooded, was along spurs, and over knolls of clay; the rocks were sandy and slaty (dip north-east degrees. the road was good, but always through bamboo jungle, and it wound amongst the low spurs, so that there was no defined crest or top of the pass, which is about feet high. there were no tall palms, tree-ferns, or plantains, no _hymenophylla_ or _lycopodia,_ and altogether the forest was smaller and poorer in plants than we had expected. the only palms (except a few rattans) were two kinds of _wallichia._ from the summit we obtained a very extensive and singular view. at our feet was a broad, low, grassy, alluvial plain, intersected by creeks, bounding a black expanse of mud which (the tide being out) appeared to stretch almost continuously to sundeep island, thirty miles distant; while beyond, the blue hills of tipperah rose on the north-west horizon. the rocks yielded a dry poor soil, on which grew dwarf _phoenix_ and cycas-palm (_cycas circinalis_ or _pectinata_). descending, we rode several miles along an excellent road, that runs to tipperah, and stopped at the bungalow of seetakoond, twenty-five miles north of chittagong. the west flank of the range which we had crossed is much steeper than the east, often precipitous, and presents the appearance of a sea-worn cliff towards the bay of bengal. near seetakoond (which is on the plain) a hill on the range, bearing the same name, rises , feet high, and being damper and more luxuriantly wooded, we were anxious to explore it, and therefore spent some days at the bungalow. fields of poppy and sun (_crotalaria juncea_), formed most beautiful crops; the latter grows from four to six feet high, and bears masses of laburnum-like flowers, while the poppy fields resembled a carpet of dark-green velvet, sprinkled with white stars; or, as i have elsewhere remarked, a green lake studded with water-lilies. the road to the top of seetakoond leads along a most beautiful valley, and then winds up a cliff that is in many places almost precipitous, the ascent being partly by steps cut in the rock, of which there are . the mountain is very sacred, and there is a large brahmin temple on its flank; and near the base a perpetual flame bursts out of the rock. this we were anxious to examine, and were extremely disappointed to find it a small vertical hole in a slaty rock, with a lateral one below for a draught; and that it is daily supplied by pious pilgrims and brahmins with such enormous quantities of ghee (liquid butter), that it is to all intents and purposes an artificial lamp; no trace of natural phenomena being discoverable. illustration--seetakund hill. on the dry but wooded west face of the mountain, grows _falconeria,_ a curious euphorbiaceous tree, with an acrid milky juice that affects the eyes when the wood is cut. beautiful _cycas_ palms are also common, with _terminalia, bignonia, sterculia,_ dwarf _phoenix_ palm, and gurjun trees. the east slope of the mountain is damper, and much more densely wooded; we there found two wild species of nutmeg trees, whose wood is full of a brown acrid oil, seven palms, tree-ferns, and many other kinds of ferns, several kinds of oak, _dracaena,_ and figs. the top is , feet above the sea, and commands an extensive view to all points of the compass; but the forests, in which the ashy bark of the gurjun trees is conspicuous, and the beautiful valley on the west, are the only attractive features. the weather on the east side of the range differs at this season remarkably from that on the west, where the vicinity of the sea keeps the atmosphere more humid and warm, and at the same time prevents the formation of the dense fogs that hang over the valleys to the eastward every morning at sunrise. we found the mean temperature at the bungalow, from january th till the th, to be . degrees. we embarked again at chittagong on the th of january, at p.m., for calcutta, in a very large vessel, rowed by twelve men: we made wretchedly slow progress, for the reasons mentioned earlier, being for four days within sight of chittagong! on the th we only reached sidhee, and thence made a stretch to hattiah, an island which may be said to be moving bodily to the westward, the megna annually cutting many acres from the east side; and the tide-wave depositing mud on the west. the surface is flat, and raised four feet above mean high-water level; the tide rises about feet up the bank, and then retires for miles; the total rise and fall is, however, much less here than in the fenny, higher up the gulf. the turf is composed of _cynodon_ and a _fimbristylis_; and the earth being impregnated with salt, supports different kinds of _chenopodium._ two kinds of tamarisk, and a thorny _cassia_ and _exoecaria,_ are the only shrubs on the eastern islands; on the central ones a few dwarf mangroves appear, with the holly-leaved _dilivaria,_ dwarf screw-pine (_pandanus_), a shrub of _compositae,_ and a curious fern, a variety of _aristichum aureum._ towards the northern end of hattiah, talipot, cocoa-nut and date-palms appear. on the nd we entered the sunderbunds, rowing amongst narrow channels, where the tide rises but a few feet. the banks were covered with a luxuriant vegetation, chiefly of small trees, above which rose stately palms. on the th, we were overtaken by a steamer from assam, a novel sight to us, and a very strange one in these creeks, which in some places seemed hardly broad enough for it to pass through. we jumped on board in haste, leaving our boat and luggage to follow us. she had left dacca two days before, and this being the dry season, the route to calcutta, which is but sixty miles in a straight line, involved a detour of three hundred. from the masts of the steamer we obtained an excellent _coup-d'oeil_ of the sunderbunds; its swamps clothed with verdure, and intersected by innumerable inosculating channels, with banks a foot or so high. the amount of tide, which never exceeds ten feet, diminishes in proceeding westwards into the heart of these swamps, and the epoch, direction, and duration of the ebb and flow vary so much in every canal, that at times, after stemming a powerful current, we found ourselves, without materially changing our course, suddenly swept along with a favouring stream. this is owing to the complex ramifications of the creeks, the flow of whose waters is materially influenced by the most trifling accidents of direction. receding from the megna, the water became saltier, and _nipa fruticans_ appeared, throwing up pale yellow-green tufts of feathery leaves, from a short thick creeping stem, and bearing at the base of the leaves its great head of nuts, of which millions were floating on the waters, and vegetating in the mud. marks of tigers were very frequent, and the footprints of deer, wild boars, and enormous crocodiles: these reptiles were extremely common, and glided down the mud banks on the approach of the steamer, leaving between the footmarks a deep groove in the mud made by their tail. the _phoenix paludosa,_ a dwarf slender-stemmed date-palm, from six to eight feet high, is the all-prevalent feature, covering the whole landscape with a carpet of feathery fronds of the liveliest green. the species is eminently gregarious, more so than any other indian palm, and presents so dense a mass of foliage, that when seen from above, the stems are wholly hidden.* [_sonneratia, heritiera littoralis,_ and _careya,_ form small gnarled trees on the banks, with deep shining green-leaved species of _carallia rhizophora,_ and other mangroves. occasionally the gigantic reed-mace (_typha elephantina_) is seen, and tufts of tall reeds (_arundo_).] the water is very turbid, and only ten to twenty feet deep, which, we were assured by the captain, was not increased during the rains: it is loaded with vegetable matter, but the banks are always muddy, and we never saw any peat. dense fogs prevented our progress in the morning, and we always anchored at dusk. we did not see a village or house in the heart of the sunderbunds (though such do occur), but we saw canoes, with fishermen, who use the tame otter in fishing; and the banks were covered with piles of firewood, stacked for the calcutta market. as we approached the hoogly, the water became very salt and clear; the nipa fruits were still most abundant, floating out to sea, but no more of the plant itself was seen. as the channels became broader, sand-flats appeared, with old salt factories, and clumps of planted _casuarina._ on the th of january we passed saugor island, and entered the hoogly, steamed past diamond harbour, and landed at the botanic garden ghat, where we received a hearty welcome from dr. falconer. ten days later we bade farewell to india, reaching england on the th of march, . appendix. a. meteorological observations in behar, and in the valleys of the soane and ganges. most of the instruments which i employed were constructed by mr. newman, and with considerable care: they were in general accurate, and always extremely well guarded, and put up in the most portable form, and that least likely to incur damage; they were further frequently carefully compared by myself. these are points to which too little attention is paid by makers and by travellers in selecting instruments and their cases. this remark applies particularly to portable barometers, of which i had five at various times. although there are obvious defects in the system of adjustment, and in the method of obtaining the temperature of the mercury, i found that these instruments invariably worked well, and were less liable to derangement and fracture than any i ever used; the best proof i can give of this is that i preserved three uninjured during nearly all my excursions, left two in india, and brought a third home myself that had accompanied me almost throughout my journey. in very dry climates these and all other barometers are apt to leak, from the contraction of the box-wood plug through which the tube passes into the cistern. this must, in portable barometers, in very dry weather, be kept moist with a sponge. a small iron bottle of pure mercury to supply leakage should be supplied with every barometer, as also a turnscrew. the vernier plate and scale should be screwed, not soldered on the metal sheath, as if an escape occurs in the barometer-case the solder is acted upon at once. a table of corrections for capacity and capillarity should accompany every instrument, and simple directions, etc., in cases of trifling derangement, and alteration of neutral point. the observations for temperature were taken with every precaution to avoid radiation, and the thermometers were constantly compared with a standard, and the errors allowed for. the maximum thermometer with a steel index, i found to be extremely liable to derangement and very difficult to re-adjust. negretti's maximum thermometer was not known to me during my journey. the spirit minimum thermometers again, are easily set to rights when out of order, but in every one (of six or seven) which i took to india, by several makers, the zero point receded, the error in some increasing annually, even to - degrees in two years. this seems due to a vaporisation of the spirit within the tube. i have seen a thermometer of this description in india, of which the spirit seemed to have retired wholly into the bulb, and which i was assured had never been injured. in wet-bulb observations, distilled water or rain, or snow water was used, but i never found the result to differ from that obtained by any running fresh water, except such as was polluted to the taste and eye. the hours of observation selected were at first sunrise, a.m., p.m., sunset, and p.m., according to the instructions issued to the antarctic expedition by the royal society. in sikkim, however, i generally adopted the hours appointed at the surveyor general's office, calcutta; viz., sunrise, h. m. a.m., noon, h. m. p.m., p.m., and sunset, to which i added a p.m. observation, besides many at intermediate hours as often as possible. of these the h. m. a.m. and p.m. have been experimentally proved to be those of the maximum and minimum of atmospheric pressure at the level of the sea in india, and i did not find any great or marked deviation from this at any height to which i attained, though at , or , feet the morning maximum may occur rather earlier. the observations for nocturnal (terrestrial) radiation were made by freely suspending thermometers with naked bulbs, or by laying them on white cotton, wool, or flannel; also by means of a thermometer placed in the focus of a silvered parabolic reflector. i did not find that the reflector possessed any decided advantage over the white cotton: the means of a number of observations taken by each approximated closely, but the difference between individual observations often amounted to degrees. observations again indicative of the radiation from grass, whether dewed or dry, are not strictly comparable; not only does the power of radiation vary with the species, but much more with the luxuriance and length of the blades, with the situation, whether on a plane surface or raised, and with the subjacent soil. of the great effect of the soil i had frequent instances; similar tufts of the same species of grass radiating more powerfully on the dry sandy bed of the soane, than on the alluvium on its banks; the exposure being equal in both instances. experiments for the surface-temperature of the soil itself, are least satisfactory of any:--adjoining localities being no less affected by the nature, than by the state of disintegration of the surface, and by the amount of vegetation in proximity to the instrument. the power of the sun's rays in india is so considerable, and protracted through so long a period of the day, that i did not find the temperature of springs, or of running water, even of large deep rivers, so constant as was to be expected. the temperature of the earth was taken by sinking a brass tube a yard long in the soil. a thermometer with the bulb blackened affords the only means the traveller can generally compass, of measuring the power of the sun's rays. it should be screened or put in a blackened box, or laid on black wool. a good photometer being still a desideratum, i had recourse to the old wedge of coloured glass, of an uniform neutral tint, the distance between whose extremes, or between transparency and total opacity, was one foot. a moveable arm carrying a brass plate with a slit and a vernier, enables the observer to read off at the vanishing point of the sun's limb, to one five-hundredth of an inch. i generally took the mean of five readings as one, and the mean of five of these again i regarded as one observation; but i place little dependence upon the results. the causes of error are quite obvious. as far as the effects of the sun's light on vegetation are concerned, i am inclined to think that it is of more importance to register the number of hours or rather of parts of each hour, that the sun shines, and its clearness during the time. to secure valuable results this should be done repeatedly, and the strength of the rays by the black-bulb thermometer registered at each hour. the few actinometer observations will be found in another part of the appendix. the dew-point has been calculated from the wet-bulb, by dr. apjohn's formula, or, where the depression of the barometer is considerable, by that as modified by colonel boileau.* [journal of asiatic society, no. ( ), p. .] the saturation-point was obtained by dividing the tension at the dew-point by that at the ordinary temperature, and the weight of vapour, by daniell's formula. the following summary of meteorological observations is alluded to at vol. i., chapter i. i.--_table-land of birbhoom and behar, from taldanga to dunwah. average elevation , feet._ it is evident from these observations, that compared with calcutta, the dryness of the atmosphere is the most remarkable feature of this table-land, the temperature not being high; and to this, combined with the sterility of the soil over a great part of the surface, must be attributed the want of a vigorous vegetation. though so favourably exposed to the influence of nocturnal radiation, the amount of the latter is small. the maximum depression of a thermometer laid on grass never exceeded degrees, and averaged degrees; whereas the average depression of the dew-point at the same hour amounted to degrees in the morning. of course no dew was deposited even in the clearest star-light night. february . hour sunrise a.m. p.m. p.m. temperature mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . range . . . . wet-bulb mean . . . . max. depression . . . . min. depression . . . . elasticity of vapour . . . . dew-point mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . * . max. depression . . . . min. depression . . . . weight of vapour in cubic feet . . . . saturation mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . number of observations extreme variations of temperature . degrees extreme variations of relative humidity . extreme diff. solar and nocturnal radiation . degrees *taken during a violent n.w. dustt-storm. solar radiation morning hour th. black bulb diff. phot. . a.m. . . ... a.m. . . . a.m. . . ... a.m. . . . a.m. . . ... a.m. . . . --------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . afternoon hour th. black bulb diff. phot. . p.m. . . ... p.m. . . . p.m. . . . . p.m. . . . p.m. . . . --------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . nocturnal radiation sunrise exposed th. on earth on grass temperature . . . mean diff. from air . . . max. diff. from air . . . number of observations nine p.m. exposed th. on earth on grass temperature . . . mean diff. from air . . . max. diff. from air . . . number of observations on one occasion, and that at night, the dew-point was as low as . degrees, with a temperature of degrees, a depression rarely equalled at so low a temperature: this phenomenon was transient, and caused by the passage of a current of air loaded with dust, whose particles possibly absorbed the atmospheric humidity. from a comparison of the night and morning observations of thermometers laid on grass, the earth, and freely exposed, it appears that the grass parts with its heat much more rapidly than the earth, but that still the effect of radiation is slight, lowering its temperature but degrees below that of the freely exposed thermometer. as compared with the climate of calcutta, these hills present a remarkable contrast, considering their proximity in position and moderate elevation. the difference of temperature between calcutta and birbhoom, deduced from the sunrise, morning and afternoon observations, amounts to degrees, which, if the mean height of the hills where crossed by the road, be called , feet, will be equal to a fall of one degree for every feet. in the dampness of its atmosphere, calcutta contrasts very remarkably with these hills; the dew-point on the hoogly averaging . degrees, and on these hills degrees, the corresponding saturation-points being . and . . the difference between sunrise, forenoon and afternoon dew-points at calcutta and on the hills, is . degrees at each observation; but the atmosphere at calcutta is relatively drier in the afternoon than that of the hills; the difference between the calcutta sunrise and afternoon saturation-point being . , and that between the hill sunrise and afternoon, . . the march of the dew-point is thus the same in both instances, but owing to the much higher temperature of calcutta, and the greatly increased tension of the vapour there, the relative humidity varies greatly during the day. in other words, the atmosphere of calcutta is loaded with moisture in the early morning of this season, and is relatively dry in the afternoon: in the hills again, it is scarcely more humid at sunrise than at p.m. that this dryness of the hills is partly due to elevation, appears from the disproportionately moister state of the atmosphere below the dunwah pass. ii. _abstract of the meteorological observations taken in the soane valley (mean elevation feet)._ the difference in mean temperature (partly owing to the sun's more northerly declination) amounts to . degrees of increase in the soane valley, above that of the hills. the range of the thermometer from day to day was considerably greater on the hills (though fewer observations were there recorded): it amounted to . degrees on the hills, and only . degrees in the valley. the range from the maximum to the minimum of each day amounts to the same in both, above degrees. the extreme variations in temperature too coincide within . degrees. the hygrometric state of the atmosphere of the valley differs most decidedly from that of the hills. in the valley dew is constantly formed, which is owing to the amount of moisture in the air, for nocturnal radiation is more powerful on the hills. the sunrise and p.m. observations in the valley, give a mean depression of the dew-point below the air of . degrees, and those at the upper level of . degrees, with no dew on the hills and a copious deposit in the valley. the corresponding state of the atmosphere as to saturation is . on the hills and . in the valley. the vegetation of the soane valley is exposed to a less extreme temperature than that of the hills; the difference between solar and nocturnal radiation amounting here only to . degrees, and on the hills to . degrees. there is no material difference in the power of the sun's rays at the upper and lower levels, as expressed by the blackbulb thermometer, the average rise of which above one placed in the shade, amounted to degrees in both cases, and the maximum occurred about a.m. the decrease of the power of the sun's rays in the afternoon is much the most rapid in the valley, coinciding with a greater reduction of the elasticity of vapour and of humidity in the atmosphere. the photometer observations show a greater degree of sun's light on the hills than below, but there is not at either station a decided relation between the indications of this instrument and the black-bulb thermometer. from observations taken elsewhere, i am inclined to attribute the excess of solar light on the hills to their elevation; for at a far greater elevation i have met with much stronger solar light, in a very damp atmosphere, than i ever experienced in the drier plains of india. in a damp climate the greatest intensity may be expected in the forenoon, when the vapour is diffused near the earth's surface; in the afternoon the lower strata of atmosphere are drier, but the vapour is condensed into clouds aloft which more effectually obstruct the sun's rays. on the birbhoom and behar hills, where the amount of vapour is so small that the afternoon is but little drier than the forenoon, there is little difference between the solar light at each time. in the soane valley again, where a great deal of humidity is removed from the earth's surface and suspended aloft, the obstruction of the sun's light is very marked. dunwah to soane river, and up soane to tura, february - th. hour sunrise a.m. p.m. p.m. temperature mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . range . . . . wet-bulb mean . . . . max. depression . . . . min. depression . . . . elasticity of vapour . . . . dew-point mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . max. depression . . . . min. depression . . . . weight of vapour in cubic feet . . . . saturation mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . number of observations extreme variations of temperature . degrees extreme variations of relative humidity . extreme diff. solar and nocturnal radiation . degrees nocturnal radiation sunrise exposed th. on earth on grass temperature . . . mean diff. from air . . . max. diff. from air . . . number of observations nine p.m. exposed th. on earth on grass temperature . . . mean diff. from air . . . max. diff. from air . . . number of observations solar radiation morning time temp. black bulb diff. phot. a.m. . . . a.m. . . . . a.m. . . . a.m. . . . a.m. . . ... . a.m. . . ... ---------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . afternoon time temp. black bulb diff. phot. p.m. . . ... p.m. . . . p.m. . . . p.m. . . ... ---------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . nocturnal radiation from plants sunrise air temp. . . calotropis ... . diff. ... . argemone . . diff. . . nine p.m. temp. . . . calotropis ... ... . diff. ... ... . argemone . . . diff. . . . iii. valley of soane river, tura to sulkun (mean elev. feet), february th to march rd. hour sunrise a.m. p.m. p.m. temperature mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . range . . . . wet-bulb mean . . . . max. depression . . . . min. depression . . . . elasticity of vapour . . . . dew-point mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . max. depression . . . . min. depression . . . . weight of vapour in cubic feet . . . . saturation mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . number of observations extreme variations of temperature . degrees extreme variations of relative humidity . extreme diff. solar and nocturnal radiation degrees nocturnal radiation sunrise exposed th. on earth on grass temperature . . . mean diff. from air . . . max. diff. from air . . . number of observations nine p.m. exposed th. on earth on grass temperature . . . mean diff. from air . . . max. diff. from air . . . number of observations solar radiation morning time temp. black bulb diff. phot. . a.m. . . ... . a.m. . . ... noon . . . noon . . ... noon . . ... noon . . ... ---------------------------------------------------- mean . . . afternoon time temp. black bulb diff. phot. p.m. . . ... p.m. . . ... p.m. . . ... p.m. . . ... p.m. . . ... ---------------------------------------------------- mean . . ... nocturnal radiation from plants sunrise mean air temp. . . . . . . . . . barley ... . diff. . . . . . . . ... . calotropis . . ... ... ... . ... ... . diff. . . ... ... ... . ... ... . argemone . . . ... ... ... ... . . diff. . . . ... ... ... ... . . nine p.m. mean air temp. . . . . . . . ... . barley ... ... ... ... . . . ... . diff. ... ... ... ... . . . ... . calotropis ... . . . ... . ... ... . diff. ... . . . ... . ... ... . argemone . . . ... ... ... ... ... . diff. . . . ... ... ... ... ... . the upper course of the soane being in some places confined, and exposed to furious gusts from the gullies of the kymore hills, and at others expanding into a broad and flat valley, presents many fluctuations of temperature. the mean temperature is much above that of the lower parts of the same valley (below tura), the excess amounting to . degrees. the nights and mornings are cooler, by . degrees, the days hotter by degrees. there were also degrees increase of range during the thirteen days spent there; and the mean range from day to day was nearly as great as it was on the hills of bengal. there being much exposed rock, and the valley being swept by violent dust-storms, the atmosphere is drier, the mean saturation point being . , whereas in the lower part of the soane's course it was . . a remarkable uniformity prevails in the depression of thermometers exposed to nocturnal radiation, whether laid on the earth, grass, or freely exposed; both the mean and maximum indication coincide very nearly with those of the lower soane valley and of the hills. the temperature of tufts of green barley laid on the ground is one degree higher than that of short grass; _argemone_ and _calotropis_ leaves maintain a still warmer temperature; from the previous experiments the _argemone_ appeared to be considerably the cooler, which i was inclined to attribute to the smoother and more shining surface of its leaf, but from these there would seem to be no sensible difference between the radiating powers of the two plants. iv. table-land of kymore hills (mean elev. feet), march rd to th, . hour sunrise a.m. p.m. p.m. temperature mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . range . . . . wet-bulb mean . . . . max. depression . . . . min. depression . . . . elasticity of vapour . . . . dew-point mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . max. depression . . . . min. depression . . . . weight of vapour in cubic feet . . . . saturation mean . . . . max. . . . . min. . . . . number of observations extreme variations of temperature . degrees extreme variations of relative humidity . extreme diff. solar and nocturnal radiation . degrees nocturnal radiation sunrise exposed th. on earth on grass temperature . . . mean diff. from air . . . max. diff. from air . . . number of observations nine p.m. exposed th. on earth on grass temperature . . . mean diff. from air . . . max. diff. from air . . . number of observations the rapid drying of the lower strata of the atmosphere during the day, as indicated by the great decrease in the tension of the vapour from a.m. to p.m., is the effect of the great violence of the north-west winds. from the few days' observations taken on the kymore hills, the temperature of their flat tops appeared degrees higher than that of the soane valley, which is feet below their mean level. i can account for this anomaly only on the supposition that the thick bed of alluvium, freely exposed to the sun (not clothed with jungle), absorbs the sun's rays and parts with its heat slowly. this is indicated by the increase of temperature being due to the night and morning observations, which are . degrees and . degrees higher here than below, whilst the a.m. and p.m. temperatures are half a degree lower. the variations of temperature too are all much less in amount, as are those of the state of the atmosphere as to moisture, though the climate is rather damper. on the subject of terrestrial radiation the paucity of the observations precludes my dwelling. between p.m. and sunrise the following morning i found the earth to have lost but . degrees of heat, whereas a mean of nine observations at the same hours in the valley below indicated a loss of degrees. though the mean temperature deduced from the few days i spent on this part of the kymore is so much above that of the upper soane valley, which it bounds, i do not suppose that the whole hilly range partakes of this increase. when the alluvium does not cover the rock, as at rotas and many other places, especially along the southern and eastern ridges of the ghats, the nights are considerably cooler than on the banks of the soane; and at rotas itself, which rises almost perpendicularly from the river, and is exposed to no such radiation of heat from a heated soil as shahgunj is, i found the temperature considerably below that of akbarpore on the soane, which however is much sheltered by an amphitheatre of rocks. v. _mirzapore on the ganges._ during the few days spent at mirzapore, i was surprised to find the temperature of the day cooler by nearly degrees than that of the hills above, or of the upper part of the soane valley, while the nights on the other hand were decidedly warmer. the dew-point was even lower in proportion, . degrees, and the climate consequently drier. the following is an abstract of the observations taken at mr. hamilton's house on the banks of the ganges (below). it is remarkable that nocturnal radiation as registered at sunrise is much more powerful at mirzapore than on the more exposed kymore plateau; the depression of the thermometer freely exposed being degrees greater, that laid on bare earth degrees, and that on the grass . degrees greater, on the banks of the ganges. during my passage down the ganges the rise of the dew-point was very steady, the maximum occurring at the lowest point on the river, bhaugulpore, which, as compared with mirzapore, showed an increase of degrees in temperature, and of . degrees in the rise of the dew-point. the saturation-point at mirzakore was . , and at the corresponding hours at bhaugulpore . . mirzapore (elev. feet), march th to th, . hour sunrise a.m. p.m. p.m. temperature mean . . . . max. . . ... ... min. . . ... ... range . . ... ... wet-bulb mean . . . . max. difference . . . . min. difference . . ... ... elasticity of vapour . . . . dew-point mean . . . . max. . ... ... ... min. . ... ... ... max. difference . . . . min. difference . . ... ... weight of vapour in cubic feet . . . . saturation mean . . . . max. . . ... ... min. . . ... ... number of observations terrestrial radiation. mean air in shade. sunrise . . . . . exposed th. . . . . . difference . . . . . exposed on earth ... . . . . difference ... . . . . exposed on grass . . . . . difference . . . . . appendix b. on the mineral constituents and algae of the hot-springs of behar, the himalaya, and other parts of india, etc., including notes on the fungi of the himalaya. (by dr. r. d. thomson and the rev. m. j. berkeley, m.a., f.l.s.) the following remarks, for which i am indebted to the kindness of the able chemist and naturalist mentioned above, will be highly valued, both by those who are interested in the many curious physiological questions involved in the association of the most obscure forms of vegetable life with the remarkable phenomena of mineral springs; or in the exquisitely beautiful microscopic structure of the lower algae, which has thrown so much light upon a branch of natural history, whose domain, like that of astronomy, lies to a great extent beyond the reach of the unassisted eye.--j.d.h. . mineral water, soorujkoond, behar (vol. i., chap. ii), contains chloride of sodium and sulphate of soda. . mineral water, hot springs, yeumtong, altitude , feet (see vol. ii., chap. xxii). disengages sulphuretted hydrogen when fresh.--this water was inodorous when the bottle was opened. the saline matter in solution was considerably less than in the soorujkoond water, but like that consisted of chloride of sodium and sulphate of soda. its alkaline character suggests the probability of its containing carbonate of soda, but none was detected. the rocks decomposed by the waters of the spring consist of granite impregnated with sulphate of alumina. it appears that in this case the sulphurous waters of yeumtong became impregnated in the air with sulphuric acid, which decomposed the felspar,* [i have, in my journal, particularly alluded to the garnets (an aluminous mineral) being thus entirely decomposed.-j.d.h.] and united with its alumina. i found traces only of potash in the salt. sulphuretted hydrogen waters appear to give origin to sulphuric acid, when the water impregnated with the gas reaches the surface; and i have fine fibrous specimens of sulphate of lime accompanied with sulphur, from the hot springs of pugha in west tibet, brought by dr. t. thomson. . mineral water, momay hot springs, (vol. ii., chap. xxii).--when the bottle was uncorked, a strong smell of sulphuretted hydrogen was perceived. the water contains about twenty-five grains per imp. gallon, of chloride of sodium, sulphate and carbonate of soda; the reaction being strongly alkaline when the solution was concentrated. . effloresced earth from behar (vol. i., chap. i), consists of granite sand, mixed with sesquicarbonate of soda. _on the indian algae which occur principally in different parts of the himalayan range, in the hot-sprinys of soorujkoond in bengal, pugha in tibet, and momay in sikkim; and on the fungi of the himalayas. by the rev. m. j. berkeley, m.a. it is not my intention in the present appendix to give specific characters or even accurately determined specific names to the different objects within its scope, which have come under investigation, as collected by dr. hooker and dr. thomson. to do so would require far more time than i have at present been able to devote to the subject, for though every species has been examined microscopically, either by myself or mr. broome, and working sketches secured at the same time, the specific determination of fresh water algae from herbarium specimens is a matter which requires a very long and accurate comparison of samples from every available locality, and in the case of such genera as _zygnema, tyndaridea,_ and _conferva,_ is, after all, not a very satisfactory process. the object in view is merely to give some general notion of the forms which presented themselves in the vast districts visited by the above-mentioned botanists, comprising localities of the greatest possible difference as regards both temperature and elevation; but more especially in the hot-springs which occur in two distant parts of the himalayas and in behar, and these again under very different degrees of elevation and of extrinsic temperature. the algae from lower localities are but few in number, and some of these of very common forms. we have for instance from the ganges, opposite bijnour, a _batrachospermum_ and _conferva crispata,_ the former purple below, with specimens of _chantransia,_ exactly as they might occur in the thames. the _conferva,_ or more properly _cladophora,_ which occurs also under various forms, at higher elevations, as in the neighbourhood of simla and iskardo, swarms with little parasites, but of common or uninteresting species. in the bijnour specimens, these consist of common forms of _synedra, meridion circulare,_ and a _cymbella,_ on others from dacca, there are about three species of _synedra,_* {two of these appear to be _s. vaucheriae_ and _s. inaequalis._] a minute _navicula_ and _gomphonema curvatum._ nothing, in fact, can well be more european. one splendid alga, however, occurs at fitcoree, in behar, on the banks of nullahs, which are dry in hot weather, forming a purple fleece of coarse woolly hairs, which are singularly compressed, and of extreme beauty under the microscope, from the crystalline green of the articulated string which threads the bright red investing sheath. this curious alga calls to mind in its colouring _caenocoleus smithii,_ figured in english botany, t. , but it has not the common sheath of that alga, and is on a far larger scale. one or two other allied forms, or species, occur in east nepal, to which i purpose giving, together with the behar plant, the generic name of _erythronema._ from the soane river, also, is an interesting alga, belonging to the curious genus _thwaitesia,_ in which the division of the endochrome in the fertile cells into four distinct masses, sometimes entirely free, is beautifully marked. in some cases, indeed, instead of the ordinary spores, the whole moss is broken up into numerous bodies, as in the fertile joints of _ulothrix,_ and probably, as in that case, the resultant corpuscles are endowed with active motion. in silhet, again, is a magnificent _zygnema,_ allied to _z. nitidum,_ with large oval spores, about / part of an inch long, and a dark golden brown colour, and containing a spiral green endochrome. leaving, however, the lower parts of india, i shall first take the species which occur in khasia, sikkim, eastern nepal, and the adjoining parts of tibet. in the hot valleys of the gtreat rungeet, at an elevation of about feet, we have the _erythronema,_ but under a slightly different form; at nunklow, at about the same height; in khasia, again, at twice that elevation; in eastern nepal, at , ; and, finally, at momay, reaching up to , feet. in water, highly impregnated with oxide of iron, at feet in sikkim, a _leptothrix_ occurred in great abundance, coloured with the oxide, exactly as is the case with algae which grow in iron springs in europe. at elevations between and feet, several european forms occur, consisting of _ulothrix, zygnema, oscillatoria, lyngbya, sphaerozyga, scytonema, conferva,_ and _cladophora._ the species may indeed not be identical with european species, but they are all more or less closely allied to well-known hydrophytes. one very interesting form, however, either belonging to the genus _zygnema,_ or possibly constituting a distinct genus, occurs in streams at feet in sikkim, consisting of highly gelatinous threads of the normal structure of the _zygnema,_ but forming a reticulated mass. the threads adhere to each other laterally, containing only a single spiral endochrome, and the articulations are very long. amongst the threads are mixed those of some species of _tyndaridea._ there is also a curious _hormosiphon,_ at a height of feet; forming anastomosing gelatinous masses. a fine new species of _lyngbya_ extends up as high as , feet. at , feet occurs either some simple _conferva_ or _zygnema,_ it is doubtful which from the condition of the specimens; and at the same elevation, in the nearly dry bed of the stream which flows from the larger lake at momay, amongst flat cakes, consisting of felspathic silt from the glaciers above, and the debris of algae, and abounding in diatomaceae, some threads of a _zygnema._ at , feet, an _oscillatoria,_ attached or adherent to _zannichellia_; and, finally, on the bare ground, at , feet, on the donkia mountains, an obscure species of _caenocoleus._ on the surface of the glaciers at kinchinjhow, on silt, there is a curious _palmella,_ apparently quite distinct from any european form. amongst the greater part of the algae, from feet to , feet, various diatomaceae occur, which will be best noticed in a tabular form, as follows; the specific name, within brackets, merely indicating the species to which they bear most resemblance:-- himantidium (_soleirolii_) to ft. sikkim odontidium (_hiemale,_ forma minor) to ft. sikkim epithemia, _n. sp._ ft. sikkim cymbella -- sikkim navicula, _n. sp._ -- sikkim tabillaria (_flocculosa_) to ft. sikkim odontidium (_hiemale_) , ft. sikkim himantidium , ft. momay odontidium (_turgidulum_) , ft. momay epithemia (_ocellata_) -- tibet fragillaria , ft. momay odontidium (_turgidulum_) -- momay dictyocha (_gracilis_) -- momay odontidium (_hiemale_) -- kinchinjhow we now turn to those portions of tibet or the neighbouring regions, explored by dr. thomson and captain strachey. the principal feature in the algology is the great prevalence of species of _zygnema_ and _tyndaridea,_ which occur under a variety of forms, sometimes with very thick gelatinous coats. in not a single instance, however, is there the slightest tendency to produce fructification. _conferva crispata_ again, as mentioned above, occurs in several localities; and in one locality a beautiful unbranched _conferva,_ with torulose articulations. at iskardo, dr. thomson gathered a very gelatinous species of _draparnaldia,_ or more properly, a _stygeoclonium,_ if we may judge from a little conglomeration of cells which appeared amongst the threads. a _tetraspora_ in piti, an obscure _tolypothrix,_ and one or two _oscillatoriae,_ remarkable for their interrupted mode of growth, complete the list of algae, with the exception of one, to be mentioned presently; as also of _diatomaceae,_ and of the species of _nostoc_ and _hormosiphon,_ which occurred in great profusion, and under several forms, sometimes attaining a very large size (several inches across), especially in the districts of le and piti, and where the soil or waters were impregnated with saline matters. it is well known that some species of _nostoc_ form an article of food in china, and one was used for that purpose in a late arctic expedition, as reported by dr. sutherland; but it does not seem that any use is made of them in tibet, though probably all the large species would form tolerable articles of food, and certainly, from their chemical composition, prove very nutritious. one species is mentioned by dr. thomson as floating, without any attachment, in the shallow water of the pools scattered over the plains, on the parang river, separated only by a ridge of mountains from piti, broad and foliaceous, and scarcely different from the common _nostoc,_ which occurs in all parts of the globe. i must not, however, neglect to record a very singular new genus, in which the young threads have the characters of _tyndaridea,_ but, after a time, little swellings occur on their sides, in which a distinct endochrome is formed, extending backwards into the parent endochrome, separated from it by a well defined membrane, and producing, either by repeated pullulation, a compound mass like that of _calothrix,_ or simply giving rise to a forked thread. in the latter case, however, there is no external swelling, but a lateral endochrome is formed, which, as it grows, makes its way through an aperture, whose sides are regularly inflected. i have given to this curious production the name of _cladozygia thomsoni._ the whole of the above algae occurred at heights varying from , to , feet. as in the southern himalayan algae, the specimens were infested with many diatomaceae, amongst which the moat conspicuous were various _cymbellae_ and _epithemiae. the following is a list of the species observed. cymbella (_gastroides_). -- (_gracilis_). -- (_ehrenbergii_) and three others. odontidium (_hiemale_). 	-- (_mesodon_). -- _n. sp._ epithemia _n. sp._ synedra (_arcus_). --	(_tenuis_). --	(_aequalis_). denticula (_obtusa_). gomphonema (_abbreviatum_). meridion circulare. there is very little identity between this list and that before given from the southern himalayas, as is the case also with the other algae. till the species, however, have been more completely studied, a very accurate comparison cannot be made. in both instances the species which grow in hot springs have been reserved in order to make their comparison more easy. i shall begin in an inverse order, with those of the springs of pugha in tibet, which attain a temperature of degrees. two _confervae_ only occur in the specimens which have been preserved, viz., an _oscillatoria_ allied to that which i have called _o. interrupta,_ and a true _conferva_ extremely delicate with very long articulations, singularly swollen at the commissures. the _diatomaceae_ are:-- odontidium (_hiemale_). -- 	 (_mesodon_). -- _n. sp.,_ same as at piti on _conferva._ denticula (_obtusa_). navicula. cymbella, three species. epithemia. scarcely any one of these except the _navicula_ is peculiar to the locality. a fragment apparently of some _closterium,_ the only one which i have met with in the collection, accompanies one of the specimens. the hot springs of momay, (temp. degrees) at , feet, produce a golden brown _caenocoleus_ representing a small form of _c. cirrhosus,_ and a very delicate _sphaerozyga,_ an _anabaina,_ and _tolypothrix_; and at , feet, a delicate green _conferva_ with long even articulations. with the latter is an _odontidium_ allied to, or identical with _o. turgidulum,_ and with the former a fine species of _epithemia_ resembling in form, but not in marking, _e. faba, e. (zebra)_ a fine _navicula,_ perhaps the same with _n. major_ and _fragilaria (virescens)._* [mr. thomas brightwell finds in a portion of the same specimen _epithemia alpestris, surirella splendida, s. linearis,_ smith, _pinnularia viridis,_ smith, _navicula (lanceolata)_ and _himantidium (arcus)._] in mud from one of the momay springs (_a_), i detected _epithemia (broomeii n.s.),_ and two small _naviculae,_ and in the spring (_c_) two species of _epithemia_ somewhat like _e. faba,_ but different from that mentioned above. the hot springs of soorujkoond, of the vegetation of which very numerous specimens have been preserved, are extremely poor in species. in the springs themselves and on their banks, at temperatures varying from degrees to degrees, at which point vegetation entirely ceases, a minute _leptothrix_ abounds everywhere, varying a little in the regularity of the threads in different specimens, but scarcely presenting two species. between degrees and degrees there is an imperfect _zygnema_ with very long articulations, and where the green scum passes into brown, there is sometimes an _ scillatoria,_ of a very minute stellate _scytonema,_ probably in an imperfect state. _epithemia ocellata_ also contributes often to produce the tint. an _anabaina_ occurs at a temperature of degrees, but the same species was found also in the stream from the springs where the water had become cold, as was also the case with the _zygnema._ the diatomaceae consisted of:-- epithemia broomeii, _n. s._ 	-- thermalis, _n. sp._ epithemia inaequalis, _n. sp._ navicula beharensis, _n. sp._ the vegetation in the three sets of springs was very different. as regards the _confervae,_ taking the word in its older sense, the species in the three are quite different, and even in respect of genera there is little identity, but amongst the _diatomaceae_ there is no striking difference, except in those of the behar springs where three out of the four did not occur elsewhere. in the pugha and momay springs, the species were either identical with, or nearly allied to those found in neighbouring localities, where the water did not exceed the ordinary temperature. a longer examination will doubtless detect more numerous forms, but those which appear on a first examination are sure to give a pretty correct general notion of the vegetation. the species are certainly less numerous than i had expected, or than might be supposed from the vegetation of those european hot springs which have been most investigated. in conclusion, i shall beg to add a few words on the fungi of the himalayas, so far as they have at present been investigated. as regards these there is a marked difference, as might be anticipated from the nature of the climates between those parts of tibet investigated by dr. thomson, and the more southern regions. the fungi found by dr. thomson were but few in number, and for the most part of very ordinary forms, differing but little from the produce of an european wood. some, however, grow to a very large size, as for instance, _polyporus fomentarius_ on poplars near iskardo, exceeding in dimensions anything which this species exhibits in europe. a very fine _aecidium_ also infests the fir trees (_abies smithiana_), a figure of which has been given in the "gardeners' chronicle," , p. , under the name of _aecidium thomsoni._ this is allied to the hexenbesen of the german forests, but is a finer species and quite distinct. _polyporus oblectans, geaster limbatus, geaster mammosus, erysiphe taurica,_ a _boletus_ infested with _sepedonium mycophilum, scleroderma verrucosum,_ an _aecidium,_ and a _uromyces,_ both on _mulgedium tataricum,_ about half-a-dozen agarics, one at an altitude of , feet above the nubra river, a _lycoperdon,_ and _morchella semilibera,_ which is eaten in kashmir, and exported when dry to the plains of india, make up the list of fungi. the region of sikkim is perhaps the most productive in fleshy fungi of any in the world, both as regards numbers and species, and eastern nepal and khasia yield also an abundant harvest. the forms are for the most part european, though the species are scarcely ever quite identical. the dimensions of many are truly gigantic, and many species afford abundant food to the natives. mixed with european forms a few more decidedly tropical occur, and amongst those of east nepal is a _lentinus_ which has the curious property of staining every thing which touches it of a deep rhubarb yellow, and is not exceeded in magnificence by any tropical species. the _polypori_ are often identical with those of java, ceylon, and the philippine isles, and the curious _trichocoma paradoxum_ which was first found by junghuhn in java, and very recently by dr. harvey in ceylon, occurs abundantly on the decayed trunks of laurels, as it does in south carolina. the curious genus _mitremyces_ also is scattered here and there, though not under the american form, but that which occurs in java. though _hymenomycetes_ are so abundant, the _discomycetes_ and _ascomycetes_ are comparatively rare, and very few species indeed of _sphoeria_ were gathered. one curious matter is, that amongst the very extensive collections which have been made there is scarcely a single new genus. the species moreover in sikkim are quite different, except in the case of some more or less cosmopolite species from those of eastern nepal and khasia: scarcely a single _lactarius_ or _cortinarius_ for instance occurs in sikkim, though there are several in khasia. the genus _boletus_ through the whole district assumes the most magnificent forms, which are generally very different from anything in europe. appendix c.* [the tables referred to, at v. i. chapter ii, as under appendix c., will be found under appendix a.] on the soils of sikkim. there is little variety in the soil throughout sikkim, and, as far as vegetation is concerned, it may be divided into vegetable mould and stiff clay--each, as they usually occur, remarkably characteristic in composition of such soils. bog-earth is very rare, nor did i find peat at any elevation. the clay is uniformly of great tenacity, and is, i believe, wholly due to the effect of the atmosphere on crumbling gneiss and other rocks. it makes excellent bricks, is tenacious, seldom friable, and sometimes accumulated in beds fourteen feet thick, although more generally only about two feet. in certain localities, beds or narrow seams of pure felspathic clay and layers of vegetable matter occur in it, probably wholly due to local causes. an analysis of that near dorjiling gives about per cent. of alumina, the rest being silica, and a fraction of oxide of iron. lime is wholly unknown as a constituent of the soil, and only occasionally seen as a stalactitic deposit from a few springs. a layer of vegetable earth almost invariably covers the clay to the depth of from three to twelve or fourteen inches. it is a very rich black mould, held in its position on the slopes of the hills by the dense vegetation, and accumulated on the banks of small streams to a depth at times of three and four feet. the following is an analysis of an average specimen of the surface-soil of dorjiling, made for me by my friend c. j. muller, esq., of that place:-- _a._--dry earth. anhydrous . water . ------ . _b._--anhydrous earth. humic acid . humine . undecomposed vegetable matter . peroxide of iron and manganese . alumina . siliceous matter, insoluble in dilute hydrochloric acid . traces of soda and muriatic acid -- ------ . _c._--soluble in water, gr. . per cent., consisting of soda, muriatic acid, organic matter, and silica. the soil from which this example was taken was twelve inches deep; it abounded to the eye in vegetable matter, and was siliceous to the touch. there were no traces of phosphates or of animal matter, and doubtful traces of lime and potash. the subsoil of clay gave only . per cent. of water, and . of organic matter. the above analysis was conducted during the rainy month of september, and the sample is an average one of the surface-soil at to , feet. there is, i think, little difference anywhere in the soils at this elevation, except where the rock is remarkably micaceous, or where veins of felspathic granite, by their decomposition, give rise to small beds of kaolin. appendix d. (vol. i., chapter ii.) an aurora seen from baroon on the east bank of the s ane river. lat. degrees minutes n.; long. degrees minutes e.; alt. feet. thee following appearances are as noted in my journal at the time. they so entirely resembled auroral beams, that i had no hesitation in pronouncing them at the time to be such. this opinion has, however, been dissented from by some meteorologists, who consider that certain facts connected with the geographical distribution of auroras (if i may use the term), are opposed to it. i am well aware of the force of these arguments, which i shall not attempt to controvert; but for the information of those who may be interested in the matter, i may remark, that i am very familiar with the aurora borealis in the northern temperate zone, and during the antarctic expedition was in the habit of recording in the log-book the appearance presented by the aurora australis. the late mr. williams, mr. haddon, and mr. theobald, who were also witnesses of the appearances on this occasion, considered it a brilliant display of the aurora. _feb. th,_ p.m.--bax. corr. . ; temp. degrees; d.p. . degrees; calm, sky clear; moon three-quarters full, and bright. observed about thirty lancet beams rising in the north-west from a low luminous arch, whose extremes bore w. degrees s., and n. degrees e.; altitude of upper limb of arch degrees, of the lower degrees. the beams crossed the zenith, and converged towards s. degrees e. the extremity of the largest was forked, and extended to degrees above the horizon in the s.e. by s. quarter. the extremity of the centre one bore s. degrees e., and was degrees above the horizon. the western beams approached nearest the southern horizon. all the beams moved and flashed slowly, occasionally splitting and forking, fading and brightening; they were brightly defined, though the milky way and zodiacal light could not be discerned, and the stars and planets, though clearly discernible, were very pale. at p.m., the luminous appearance was more diffused; upper limb of the arch less defined; no beams crossed the zenith; but occasionally beams appeared there and faded away. between and , the beams continued to move and replace one another, as usual in auroras, but disappeared from the south-east quarter, and became broader in the northern hemisphere; the longest beams were near the north and north-east horizon. at half-past , a dark belt, degrees broad, appeared in the luminous arch, bearing from n. degrees w. to n. degrees w.; its upper limb was degrees above the horizon: it then gradually dilated, and thus appeared to break up the arch. this appeared to be the commencement of the dispersion of the phenomenon. at . p.m. the dark band had increased so much in breadth that the arch was broken up in the north-west, and no beams appeared there. eighteen linear beams rose from the eastern part of the arch, and bore from north to n. degrees e. towards p.m., the dark band appeared to have replaced the luminous arch; the beams were all but gone, a few fragments appearing in the n.e. a southerly wind sprang up, and a diffused light extended along the horizon. at midnight, i saw two faint beams to the north-east, and two well defined parallel ones in the south-west. appendix e. physical geography of the sikkim himalaya, east nepal, and adjacent provinces of tibet. sikkim is included in a section of the himalaya, about sixty miles broad from east to west, where it is bounded respectively by the mountain states of bhotan and nepal. its southern limits are easily defined, for the mountains rise abruptly from the plains of bengal, as spurs of to , feet high, densely clothed with forest to their summits. the northern and north-eastern frontier of sikkim is beyond the region of much rain, and is not a natural, but a political line, drawn between that country and tibet. sikkim lies nearly due north of calcutta, and only four hundred miles from the bay of bengal; its latitude being degrees minutes to degrees n., and longitude degrees to degrees e. the main features of sikkim are kinchinjunga, the loftiest hitherto measured mountain, which lies to its north-west, and rises , feet above the level of the sea; and the teesta river, which flows throughout the length of the country, and has a course of upwards of ninety miles in a straight line. almost all the sources of the teesta are included in sikkim; and except some comparatively insignificant streams draining the outermost ranges, there are no rivers in this country but itself and its feeders, which occupy the largest of the himalayan valleys between the tambur in east nepal, and the machoo in western bhotan. an immense spur, sixty miles long, stretches south from kinchin to the plains of india; it is called singalelah, and separates sikkim from east nepal; the waters from its west flank flow into the tambur, and those from the east into the great rungeet, a feeder of the teesta. between these two latter rivers is a second spur from kinchinjunga, terminating in tendong. the eastern boundary of sikkim, separating it from bhotan, is formed for the greater part by the chola range, which stretches south from the immense mountain of donkia, , feet high, situated fifty miles e.n.e. of kinchinjunga: where the frontier approaches the plains of india, the boundary line follows the course of the teesta, and of the rinkpo, one of its feeders, flowing from the chola range. this range is much more lofty than that of singalelah, and the drainage from its eastern flank is into the machoo river, the upper part of whose course is in tibet, and the lower in bhotan. the donkia mountain, though feet lower than kinchin, is the culminant point of a much more extensive and elevated mountain mass. it throws off an immense spur from its north-west face, which runs west, and then south-west, to kinchin, forming the watershed of all the remote sources of the teesta. this spur has a mean elevation of , to , feet, and several of its peaks (of which chomiomo is one) rise much higher. the northern boundary of sikkim is not drawn along this, but runs due west from donkia, following a shorter, but stupendous spur, called kinchinjhow; whence it crosses the teesta to chomiomo, and is continued onwards to kinchinjunga. though the great spur connecting donkia with kinchin is in tibet, and bounds the waters that flow directly south into the teesta, it is far from the true himalayan axis, for the rivers that rise on its northern slope do not run into the valley of the tsampu, or tibetan burrampooter, but into the arun of nepal, which rises to the north of donkia, and flows south-west for many miles in tibet, before entering nepal and flowing south to the ganges. sikkim, thus circumscribed, consists of a mass of mountainous spurs, forest-clad up to , feet; there are no flat valleys or plains in the whole country, no lakes or precipices of any consequence below that elevation, and few or no bare slopes, though the latter are uniformly steep. the aspect of sikkim can only be understood by a reference to its climate and vegetation, and i shall therefore take these together, and endeavour, by connecting these phenomena, to give an intelligible view of the main features of the whole country.* [this i did with reference especially to the cultivation of rhododendrons, in a paper which the horticultural society of london did me the honour of printing. quarterly journ. of hort. soc., vol. vii., p. .] the greater part of the country between sikkim and the sea is a dead level, occupied by the delta of the ganges and burrampooter, above which the slope is so gradual to the base of the mountains, that the surface of the plain from which the himalayas immediately rise is only feet above the sea. the most obvious effect of this position is, that the prevailing southerly wind reaches the first range of hills, loaded with vapour. the same current, when deflected easterly to bhotan, or westerly to nepal and the north-west himalaya, is intercepted and drained of much moisture, by the khasia and garrow mountains (south of assam and the burrampooter) in the former case, and the rajmahal hills (south of the ganges) in the latter. sikkim is hence the dampest region of the whole himalaya. viewed from a distance on the plains of india, sikkim presents the appearance--common to all mountainous countries--of consecutive parallel ridges, running east and west: these are all wooded, and backed by a beautiful range of snowy peaks, with occasional breaks in the foremost ranges, through which the rivers debouch. any view of the himalaya, especially at a sufficient distance for the remote snowy peaks to be seen overtopping the outer ridges, is, however, rare, from the constant deposition of vapours over the forest-clad ranges during the greater part of the year, and the haziness of the dry atmosphere of the plains in the winter months. at the end of the rains, when the south-east monsoon has ceased to blow with constancy, views are obtained, sometimes from a distance of nearly two hundred miles. from the plains, the highest peaks subtend so small an angle, that they appear like white specks very low on the horizon, tipping the black lower and outer wooded ranges, which always rise out of a belt of haze, and from the density, probably, of the lower strata of atmosphere, are never seen to rest on the visible horizon. the remarkable lowness on the horizon of the whole stupendous mass is always a disappointing feature to the new comer, who expects to see dazzling peaks towering in the air. approaching nearer, the snowy mountains sink behind the wooded ones, long before the latter have assumed gigantic proportions; and when they do so, they appear a sombre, lurid grey-green mass of vegetation, with no brightness or variation of colour. there is no break in this forest caused by rock, precipices, or cultivation; some spurs project nearer, and some valleys appear to retire further into the heart of the foremost great chain that shuts out all the country beyond. from dorjiling the appearance of parallel ridges is found to be deceptive, and due to the inosculating spurs of long tortuous ranges that ran north and south throughout the whole length of sikkim, dividing deep wooded valleys, which form the beds of large rivers. the snowy peaks here look like a long east and west range of mountains, at an average distance of thirty or forty miles. advancing into the country, this appearance proves equally deceptive, and the snowy range is resolved into isolated peaks, situated on the meridional ridges; their snow-clad spurs, projecting east and west, cross one another, and being uniformly white, appear to connect the peaks into one grand unbroken range. the rivers, instead of having their origin in the snowy mountains, rise far beyond them; many of their sources are upwards of one hundred miles in a straight line from the plains, in a very curious country, loftier by far in mean elevation than the meridional ridges which run south from it, yet comparatively bare of snow. this rearward part of the mountain region is tibet, where all the sikkim, nepal, and bhotan rivers rise as small streams, increasing in size as they receive the drainage from the snowed parts of the ridges that bound them in their courses. their banks, between and , feet, are generally clothed with rhododendrons, sometimes to the almost total exclusion of other woody vegetation, especially near the snowy mountains--a cool temperature and great humidity being the most favourable conditions for the luxuriant growth of this genus. the source of this humidity is the southerly or sea wind which blows steadily from may till october in sikkim, and prevails throughout the rest of the year, if not as the monsoon properly so called, as a current from the moist atmosphere above the gangetic delta. this rushes north to the rarefied regions of sikkim, up the great valleys, and does not appear materially disturbed by the north- west wind, which blows during the afternoons of the winter months over the plains, and along the flanks of the outer range, and is a dry surface current, due to the diurnal heating of the soil. when it is considered that this wind, after passing lofty mountains on the outer range, has to traverse eighty or one hundred miles of alps before it has watered all the forest region, it will be evident that its moisture must be expended before it reaches tibet. let the figures in the accompanying woodcut, the one on the true scale, the other with the heights exaggerated, represent two of these long meridional ridges, from the watershed to the plains of india, following in this instance the course of the teesta river, from its source at , feet to where it debouches from the himalaya at . the lower rugged outline represents one meridional ridge, with all its most prominent peaks (whether exactly or not on the line of section); the upper represents the parallel ridge of singalelah (d.e.p.), of greater mean elevation, further west, introduced to show the maximum elevation of the sikkim mountains, kinchinjunga ( , feet), being represented on it. a deep valley is interposed between these two ridges, with a feeder of the teesta in it (the great rungeet), which runs south from kinchin, and turning west enters the teesta at r. the position of the bed of the teesta river is indicated by a dotted line from its source at t to the plains at s; of dorjiling, on the north flank of the outer range, by _d_; of the first point where perpetual snow is met with, by p; and of the first indications of a tibetan climate, by c. illustration--section of the sikkim himalaya along the course of the teesta river. a warm current of air, loaded with vapour, will deposit the bulk of its moisture on the ridge of sinchul, which rises above dorjiling (_d_), and is , feet high. passing on, little will be precipitated on _e_ whose elevation is the same as that of sinchul; but much at _f_ ( , feet), where the current, being further cooled, has less capacity for holding vapour, and is further exhausted. when it ascends to p ( , feet) it is sufficiently cooled to deposit snow in the winter and spring months, more of which falling than can be melted during the summer, it becomes perennial. at the top of ginchin very little falls, and it is doubtful if the southerly current ever reaches that prodigiously elevated isolated summit. the amount of surface above , feet is, however, too limited and broken into isolated peaks to drain the already nearly, exhausted current, whose condensed vapours roll along in fog beyond the parallel of kinchin, are dissipated during the day over the arid mountains of tibet, and deposited at night on the cooled surface of the earth. other phenomena of no less importance than the distribution of vapour, and more or less depending on it, are the duration and amount of solar and terrestrial radiation. towards d the sun is rarely seen during the rainy season, as well from the constant presence of nimbi aloft, as from fog on the surface of the ground. an absence of both light and heat is the result south of the parallel of kinchin; and at c low fogs prevail at the same season, but do not intercept either the same amount of light or heat; whilst at t there is much sunshine and bright light. during the night, again, there is no terrestrial radiation between s and p; the rain either continues to pour--in some months with increased violence--or the saturated atmosphere is condensed into a thick white mist, which hangs over the redundant vegetation. a bright starlight night is almost unknown in the summer months at to , feet, but is frequent in december and january, and at intervals between october and may, when, however, vegetation is little affected by the cold of nocturnal radiation. in the regions north of kinchin, starlight nights are more frequent, and the cold produced by radiation, at , feet, is often severe towards the end of the rains in september. still the amount of clear weather during the night is small; the fog clears off for an hour or two at sunset as the wind falls, but the returning cold north current again chills the air soon afterwards, and rolling masses of vapour are hence flying overhead, or sweeping the surface of the earth, throughout the summer nights. in the tibetan regions, on the other hand, bright nights and even sharp frosts prevail throughout the warmest months. referring again to the cut, it must be borne in mind that neither of the two meridional ridges runs in a straight line, but that they wind or zigzag as all mountain ranges do; that spurs from each ridge are given off from either flank alternately, and that the origin of a spur on one side answers to the source of a river (_i.e.,_ the head of a valley) on the other. these rivers are feeders of the main stream, the teesta, and run at more or less of an angle to the latter. the spurs from the east flank of one ridge cross, at their ends, those from the west flank of another; and thus transverse valleys are formed, presenting many modifications of climate with regard to exposure, temperature, and humidity. the roads from the plains of india to the watershed in tibet always cross these lateral spurs. the main ridge is too winding and rugged, and too lofty for habitation throughout the greater part of its length, while the river-channel is always very winding, unhealthy for the greater part of the year below feet, and often narrow, gorge-like, and rocky. the villages are always placed above the unhealthy regions, on the lateral spurs, which the traveller repeatedly crosses throughout every day's march; for these spurs give off lesser ones, and these again others of a third degree, whence the country is cut up into as many spurs, ridges, and ranges, as there are rills, streams, and rivers amongst the mountains. though the direction of the main atmospheric current is to the north, it is in reality seldom felt to be so, except the observer be on the very exposed mountain tops, or watch the motions of the upper strata of atmosphere. lower currents of air rush up both the main and lateral valleys, throughout the day; and from the sinuosities in the beds of the rivers, and the generally transverse directions of their feeders, the current often becomes an east or west one. in the branch valleys draining to the north the wind still ascends; it is, in short, an ascending warm, moist current, whatever course be pursued by the valleys it follows. the sides of each valley are hence equally supplied with moisture, though local circumstances render the soil on one or the other flank more or less humid and favourable to a luxuriant vegetation: such differences are a drier soil on the north side, with a too free exposure to the sun at low elevations, where its rays, however transient, rapidly dry the ground, and where the rains, though very heavy, are of shorter duration, and where, owing to the capacity of the heated air for retaining moisture, day fogs are comparatively rare. in the northern parts of sikkim, again, some of the lateral valleys are so placed that the moist wind strikes the side facing the south, and keeps it very humid, whilst the returning cold current from the neighbouring tibetan mountains impinges against the side facing the north, which is hence more bare of vegetation. an infinite number of local peculiarities will suggest themselves to any one conversant with physical geography, as causing unequal local distribution of light, heat, and moisture in the different valleys of so irregular a country; namely, the amount of slope, and its power of retaining moisture and soil; the composition and hardness of the rocks; their dip and strike; the protection of some valleys by lofty snowed ridges; and the free southern exposures of others at great elevations. the position and elevation of the perpetual snow* [it appears to me, as i have asserted in the pages of my journal, that the limit of perpetual snow is laid down too low in all mountain regions, and that accumulations in hollows, and the descent of glacial ice, mask the phenomenon more effectually than is generally allowed. in this work i define the limit, as is customary, in general terms only, as being that where the accumulations are very great, and whence they are continuous upwards, on gentle slopes. all perpetual snow, however, becomes ice, and, as such, obeys the laws of glacial motion, moving as a viscous fluid; whence it follows that the lower edge of a snow-bed placed on a slope is, in one sense, the termination of a glacier, and indicates a position below that where all the snow that falls melts. i am well aware that it is impossible to define the limit required with any approach to accuracy. steep and broken surfaces, with favourable exposures to the sun or moist winds, are bare much above places where snow lies throughout the year; but the occurrence of a gentle slope, free of snow, and covered with plants, cannot but indicate a point below that of perpetual snow. such is the case with the "jardin" on the mer de glace, whose elevation is , feet, whereas that of perpetual snow is considered by professor j. forbes, our best authority, to be , feet. though limited in area, girdled by glaciers, presenting a very gentle slope to the east, and screened by surrounding mountains from a considerable proportion of the sun's rays, the jardin is clear, for fully three months of the year, of all but sporadic falls of snow, that never lie long; and so are similar spots placed higher on the neighbouring slopes; which facts are quite at variance with the supposition that the perpetual snow-line is below that point in the mont blanc alps. on the monte rosa alps, again, dr. thomson and i gathered plants in flower, above , feet on the steep face of the weiss-thor pass, and at , feet on the top of st. theodule; but in the former case the rocks are too steep for any snow to lie, they are exposed to the south-east, and overhang a gorge feet deep, up which no doubt warm currents ascend; while at st. theodule the plants were growing on a slope which, though gentle, is black and stony, and exposed to warm ascending currents, as on the weiss-thor; and i do not consider either of these as evidences of the limit of perpetual snow being higher than their position.] vary with those of the individual ranges, and their exposure to the south wind. the expression that the perpetual snow lies lower and deeper on the southern slopes of the himalayan mountains than on the northern, conveys a false impression. it is better to say that the snow lies deeper and lower on the southern faces of the individual mountains and spurs that form the snowy himalaya. the axis itself of the chain is generally far north of the position of the spurs that catch all the snow, and has comparatively very little snow on it, most of what there is lying upon north exposures. a reference to the woodcut will show that the same circumstances which affect the distribution of moisture and vegetation, determine the position, amount, and duration of the snow. the principal fall will occur, as before shown, where the meridional range first attains a sufficiently great elevation, and the air becomes consequently cooled below degrees; this is at a little above , feet, sporadic falls occurring even in summer at that elevation: these, however, melt immediately, and the copious winter falls also are dissipated before june. as the depth of rain-fall diminishes in advancing north to the higher parts of the meridional ranges, so does that of the snow-fall. the permanence of the snow, again, depends on-- . the depth of the accumulation; . the mean temperature of the spot; . the melting power of the sun's rays; . the prevalence and strength of evaporating winds. now at , feet, though the accumulation is immense, the amount melted by the sun's rays is trifling, and there are no evaporating winds; but the mean temperature is so high, and the corroding powers of the rain (which falls abundantly throughout summer) and of the warm and humid ascending currents are so great, that the snow is not perennial. at , feet, again, it becomes perennial, and its permanence at this low elevation (at p) is much favoured by the accumulation and detention of fogs over the rank vegetation which prevails from s nearly to p; and by the lofty mountains beyond it, which shield it from the returning dry currents from the north. in proceeding north all the circumstances that tend to the dispersion of the snow increase, whilst the fall diminishes. at p the deposition is enormous and the snow-line low-- , feet; whilst at t little falls, and the limit of perpetual snow is , and , feet. hence the anomaly, that the snow-line ascends in advancing north to the coldest himalayan regions. the position of the greatest peaks and of the greatest mass of perpetual snow being generally assumed as indicating a ridge and watershed, travellers, arguing from single mountains alone, on the meridional ridges, have at one time supported and at another denied the assertion, that the snow lies longer and deeper on the north than on the south slope of the himalayan ridge. the great accumulation of snow at , feet, in the parallel of p, exercises a decided influence on the vegetation. the alpine rhododendrons hardly reach , feet in the broad valleys and round-headed spurs of the mountains of the tunkra and chola passes; whilst the same species ascend to , , and one to , feet, at t. beyond the latter point, again, the great aridity of the climate prevents their growth, and in tibet there are generally none even as low as , and , feet. glaciers, again, descend to , feet in the tortuous gorges which immediately debouch from the snows of kinchinjunga, but no plants grow on the debris they carry down, nor is there any sward of grass or herbage at their base, the atmosphere immediately around being chilled by enormous accumulations of snow, and the summer sun rarely warming the soil. at t, again, the glaciers do not descend below , feet, but a greensward of vegetation creeps up to their bases, dwarf rhododendrons cover the moraines, and herbs grow on the patches of earth carried down by the latter, which are thawed by the more frequent sunshine, and by the radiation of heat from the unsnowed flanks of the valleys down which these ice-streams pour. looking eastward or westward on the map of india, we perceive that the phenomenon of perpetual snow is regulated by the same laws. from the longitude of upper assam in degrees e to that of kashmir in degrees e, the lowest limit of perpetual snow is , to , feet, and a shrubby vegetation affects the most humid localities near it, at , to , feet. receding from the plains of india and penetrating the mountains, the climate becomes drier, the snowline rises, and vegetation diminishes, whether the elevation of the land increases or decreases; plants reaching , and , feet, and the snow-line, , feet. to mention extreme cases; the snow-level of sikkim in degrees minutes is at , feet, whereas in latitude degrees minutes dr. thomson found the snow line , feet on the mountains near the karakoram pass, and vegetation up to , feet--features i found to be common also to sikkim in latitude degrees. the himalaya, north of nepal, and thence eastward to the bend of the yaru-tsampu (or tibetan burrampooter) has for its geographical limits the plains of india to the south, and the bed of the yaru to the north. all between these limits is a mountain mass, to which tibet (though so often erroneously called a plain)* [the only true account of the general features of eastern tibet is to be found in mm. huc and gabet's travels. their description agrees with dr. thomson's account of western tibet, and with my experience of the parts to the north of sikkim, and the information i everywhere obtained. the so-called _plains_ are the flat floors of the valleys, and the terraces on the margins of the rivers, which all flow between stupendous mountains. the term "maidan," so often applied to tibet by the natives, implies, not a plain like that of india, but simply an open, dry, treeless country, in contrast to the densely wooded wet regions of the snowy himalaya, south of tibet.] forms no exception. the waters from the north side of this chain flow into the tsampu, and those from the south side into the burrampooter of assam, and the ganges. the line, however tortuous, dividing the heads of these waters, is the watershed, and the only guide we have to the axis of the himalaya. this has never been crossed by europeans, except by captain turner's embassy in , and captain bogle's in , both of which reached the yaru river. in the account published by captain turner, the summit of the watershed is not rigorously defined, and the boundary, of tibet and bhotan is sometimes erroneously taken for it; the boundary being at that point a southern spur of chumulari.* [between donkia and chumulari lies a portion of tibet (including the upper part of the course of the machoo river) bounded on the east by bhotan, and on the west by sikkim (see chapter xxii). turner, when crossing the simonang pass, descended westwards into the valley of the machoo, and was still on the indian watershed.] eastwards from the sources of the tsampu, the watershed of the himalaya seems to follow a very winding course, and to be everywhere to the north of the snowy peaks seen from the plains of india. it is by a line through these snowy peaks that the axis of the himalaya is represented in all our maps; because they _seem_ from the plains to be situated on an east and west ridge, instead of being placed on subsidiary meridional ridges, as explained above. it is also across or along the subsidiary ridges that the boundary line between the tibetan provinces and those of nepal, sikkim, and bhotan, is usually drawn; because the enormous accumulations of snow form a more efficient natural barrier than the greater height of the less snowed central part of the chain beyond them. though, however, our maps draw the axis through the snowy peaks, they also make the rivers to rise beyond the latter, on the northern slopes as it were, and to flow southwards through gaps in the axis. such a feature is only reconcilable with the hypothesis of the chain being double, as the cordillera of peru and chili is said to be, geographically, and which in a geological sense it no doubt is: but to the cordillera the himalaya offers no parallel. the results of dr. thomson's study of the north-west himalaya and tibet, and my own of the north-east extreme of sikkim and tibet, first gave me an insight into the true structure of this chain. donkia mountain is the culminant point of an immensely elevated mass of mountains, of greater mean height than a similarly extensive area around kinchin junga. it comprises chumulari, and many other mountains much above , feet, though none equalling kinchinjunga, junnoo, and kubra. the great lakes of ramchoo and cholamoo are placed on it; and the rivers rising on it flow in various directions; the painomchoo north-west into the yaru; the arun west to nepal; the teesta south- west through sikkim; the machoo south, and the pachoo south-east, through bhotan. all these rivers have their sources far beyond the great snowed mountains, the arun most conspicuously of all, flowing completely at the back or north of kinchinjunga. those that flow southwards, break through no chain, nor do they meet any contraction as they pass the snowy parts of the mountains which bound the valleys in which they flow, but are bound by uniform ranges of lofty mountains, which become more snowy as they approach the plains of india. these valleys, however, gradually contract as they descend, being less open in sikkim and nepal than in tibet, though there bounded by rugged mountains, which from being so bare of snow and of vegetation, do not give the same impression of height as the isolated sharper peaks which rise out of a dense forest, and on which the snow limit is , or , feet lower. the fact of the bottom of the river valleys being flatter towards the watershed, is connected with that of their fall being less rapid at that part of their course; this is the consequence of the great extent in breadth of the most elevated portion of the chain. if we select the teesta as an example, and measure its fall at three points of its course, we shall find the results very different. from its principal source at lake cholamoo, it descends from , to , feet, with a fall of feet to the mile; from , to , feet, the fall is feet to the mile; in the third part of its course it descends from , to feet, with a fall of feet to the mile; and in the lower part the descent is from feet to the plains of india at feet, giving a fall of feet to the mile. there is, however, no marked limit to these divisions; its valley. gradually contracts, and its course gradually becomes more rapid. it is worthy of notice that the fall is at its maximum through that part of its valley of which the flanks are the most loaded with snow; where the old moraines are very conspicuous, and where the present accumulations from landslips, etc., are the most extensive.* [it is not my intention to discuss here the geological bearings of this curious question; but i may state that as the humidity of the climate of the middle region of the river-course tends to increase the fall in a given space, so i believe the dryness of the climate of the loftier country has the opposite effect, by preserving those accumulations which have raised the floors of the valleys and rendered them level.] with reference to kinchinjunga, these facts are of importance, as showing that mere elevation is in physical geography of secondary importance. that lofty mountain rises from a spur of the great range of donkia, and is quite removed from the watershed or axis of the himalaya, the rivers which drain its northern and southern flanks alike flowing to the ganges. were the himalaya to be depressed , feet, kubra, junnoo, pundim, etc., would form a small cluster of rocky islands to feet high, grouped near kinchinjunga, itself a cape , feet high, which would be connected by a low, marrow neck, with an extensive and mountainous tract of land to its north-east; the latter being represented by donkia. to the north of kinchin a deep bay or inlet would occupy the present valley of the arun, and would be bounded on the north by the axis of the himalaya, which would form a continuous tract of land beyond it. since writing the above, i have seen professor j. forbes's beautiful work on the glaciers of norway: it fully justifies a comparison of the himalaya to norway, which has long been a familiar subject of theoretical enquiry with dr. thomson and myself. the deep narrow valleys of sikkim admirably represent the norwegian fiords; the lofty, rugged, snowy mountains, those more or less submerged islands of the norwegian coast; the broad rearward watershed, or axis of the chain, with its lakes, is the same in both, and the yaru-tsampu occupies the relative position of the baltic. along the whole chain of the himalaya east of kumaon there are, i have no doubt, a succession of such lofty masses as donkia, giving off stupendous spurs such as that on which kinchin forms so conspicuous a feature. in support of this view we find every river rising far beyond the snowy peaks, which are separated by continuously unsnowed ranges placed between the great white masses that these spurs present to the observer from the south.* [at vol. i. chapter viii, i have particularly called attention to the fact, that west of kinchinjunga there is no continuation of a snowy himalaya, as it is commonly called. so between donkia and chumulari there is no perpetual snow, and the valley of the machoo is very broad, open, and comparatively flat.] from the khasia mountains (south-east of sikkim) many of these groups or spurs were seen by dr. thomson and myself, at various distances ( to miles); and these groups were between the courses of the great rivers the soobansiri, monass, and pachoo, all east of sikkim. other masses seen from the gangetic valley probably thus mark the relative positions of the arun, cosi, gunduk, and gogra rivers. another mass like that of chumulari and donkia, is that around the mansarowar lakes, so ably surveyed by the brothers captains r. and h. strachey, which is evidently the centre of the himalaya. from it the gogra, sutlej, indus, and yaru rivers all flow to the indian side of asia; and from it spring four chains, two of which are better known than the others. these are:-- . the eastern himalaya, whose axis runs north of nepal, sikkim, and bhotan, to the bend of the yaru, the valley of which it divides from the plains of india. . the north-west himalaya, which separates the valley of the indus from the plains of india. behind these, and probably parallel to them, lie two other chains. . the kouenlun or karakoram chain, dividing the indus from the yarkand river. . the chain north of the yaru, of which nothing is known. all the waters from the two first of these chains, flow into the indian ocean, as do those from the south faces of the third and fourth; those from the north side of the kouenlun, and of the chain north of the yaru, flow into the great valley of lake lhop, which may once have been continuous with the amoor river.* [the chinese assert that lake lhop once drained into the hoang-ho; the statement is curious, and capable of confirmation when central asia shall have been explored.] for this view of the physical geography of the western himalaya and central asia, i am indebted to dr. thomson. it is more consonant with nature, and with what we know of the geography of the country and of the nature of mountain chains, than that of the illustrious humboldt, who divides central asia by four parallel chains, united by two meridional ones; one at each extremity of the mountain district. it follows in continuation and conclusion of our view that the mountain mass of pamir or bolor, between the sources of the oxus and those of the yarkand river, may be regarded as a centre from which spring the three greatest mountain systems of asia. these are:-- . a great chain, which runs in a north-easterly direction as far as behring's straits, separating all the rivers of siberia from those which flow into the pacific ocean. . the hindoo koosh, continued through persia, and armenia into taurus. and, . the muztagh or karakorum, which probably extends due east into china, south of the hoang-ho, but which is broken up north of mansarowar into the chains which have been already enumerated. appendix f. on the climate of sikkim. the meteorology of sikkim, as of every part of the himalayan range, is a subject of growing interest and importance; as it becomes yearly more necessary for the government to afford increased facilities for a residence in the mountains to europeans in search of health, or of a salubrious climate for their families, or for themselves on retirement from the exhausting service of the plains. i was therefore surprised to find no further register of the weather at dorjiling, than an insufficient one of the rain-fall, kept by the medical officer in charge of the station; who, in this, as in all similar cases,* [the government of india has gone to an immense expense, and entailed a heavy duty upon its stationary medical officers, in supplying them with sometimes admirable, but more often very inaccurate, meteorological instruments, and requiring that daily registers be made, and transmitted to calcutta. in no case have i found it to be in the officer's power to carry out this object; he has never time, seldom the necessary knowledge and experience, and far too often no inclination. the majority of the observations are in most cases left to personal native or other servants, and the laborious results i have examined are too frequently worthless.] has neither the time nor the opportunity to give even the minimum of required attention to the subject of meteorology. this defect has been in a measure remedied by dr. chapman, who kept a twelve-months' register in , with instruments carefully compared with calcutta standards by the late james prinsep, esq., one of the most accomplished men in literature and science that india ever saw. the annual means of temperature, rain-fall, etc., vary greatly in the himalaya; and apparently slight local causes produce such great differences of temperature and humidity, that one year's observations taken at one spot, however full and accurate they may be, are insufficient: this is remarkably the case in sikkim, where the rainfall is great, and where the difference between those of two consecutive years is often greater than the whole annual london fall. my own meteorological observations necessarily form but a broken series, but they were made with the best instruments, and with a view to obtaining results that should be comparable _inter se,_ and with those of calcutta; when away from dorjiling too, in the interior of sikkim, i had the advantage of mr. muller's services in taking observations at hours agreed upon previous to my leaving, and these were of the greatest importance, both for calculating elevations, and for ascertaining the differences of temperature, humidity, diurnal atmospheric tide, and rain-fall; all of which vary with the elevation, and the distance from the plains of india. mr. hodgson's house proved a most favourable spot for an observatory, being placed on the top of the dorjiling spur, with its broad verandah facing the north, in which i protected the instruments from radiation* [this is a most important point, generally wholly neglected in india, where i have usually seen the thermometer hung in good shade, but exposed to reflected heat from walls, gravel walks, or dry earth. i am accustomed from experience to view all extreme temperatures with great suspicion, on this and other accounts. it is very seldom that the temperature of the free shaded air rises much above degrees, except during hot winds, when the lower stratum only of atmosphere (often loaded with hot particles of sand), sweeps over the surface of a soil scorched by the direct rays of the sun.] and wind. broad grass-plots and a gravel walk surrounded the house, and large trees were scattered about; on three sides the ground sloped away, while to the north the spur gently rose behind. throughout the greater part of the year the prevailing wind is from the south-east, and comes laden with moisture from the bay of bengal: it rises at sunrise, and its vapours are early condensed on the forests of sinchul; billowy clouds rapidly succeed small patches of vapour, which rolling over to the north side of the mountain, are carried north-west, over a broad intervening valley, to dorjiling. there they bank on the east side of the spur, and this being partially clear of wood, the accumulation is slow, and always first upon the clumps of trees. very generally by a.m., the whole eastern sky, from the top of dorjiling ridge, is enveloped in a dense fog, while the whole western exposure enjoys sunshine for an hour or two later. at or a.m., very small patches are seen to collect on tonglo, which gradually dilate and coalesce, but do not shroud the mountain for some hours, generally not before a.m. or noon. before that time, however, masses of mist have been rolling over dorjiling ridge to the westward, and gradually filling up the valleys, so that by noon, or p.m., every object is in cloud. towards sunset it falls calm, when the mist rises, first from sinchul, or if a south-east wind sets in, from tonglo first. the temperature is more uuiform at mr. hodgson's bungalow, which is on the top of the dorjiling ridge, than on either of its flanks; this is very much because a good deal of wood is left upon it, whose cool foliage attracts and condenses the mists. its mean temperature is lower by nearly degrees than that of mr. muller's and dr. campbell's houses, both situated on the slopes, feet below. this i ascertained by numerous comparative observations of the temperature of the air, and by burying thermometers in the earth it is chiefly to be accounted for by the more frequent sunshine at the lower stations, the power of the sun often raising the thermometer in shade to degrees, at mr. muller's; whereas during the summer i spent at mr. hodgson's it never rose much above degrees, attaining that height very seldom and for a very short period only. the nights, again, are uniformly and equally cloudy at both stations, so that there is no corresponding cold of nocturnal radiation to reduce the temperature. the mean decrease of temperature due to elevation, i have stated (appendix i.) to be about degree for every feet of ascent; according to which law mr. hodgson's should not be more than . degrees° colder than mr. muller's. these facts prove how difficult it is to choose unexceptionable sites for meteorological observatories in mountainous countries; discrepancies of so great an amount being due to local causes, which, as in this case, are perhaps transient; for should the top of the spur be wholly cleared of timber, its temperature would be materially raised; at the expense, probably, of a deficiency of water at certain seasons. great inequalities of temperature are also produced by ascending currents of heated air from the great rungeet valley, which affect certain parts of the station only; and these raise the thermometer degrees (even when the sun is clouded) above what it indicates at other places of equal elevation. the mean temperature of dorjiling (elev. , feet) is very nearly degrees, or degrees higher than that of london, and degrees below that of calcutta ( degrees,* [prinsep, in as. soc. journ., jan. , p. .] or . degrees in the latest published tables* [daniell's met. essays, vol. ii. p. .]); which, allowing degree of diminution of temperature for every degree of latitude leaves degree due to every feet of ascent above calcutta to the height of dorjiling, agreeably to my own observations. this diminution is not the same for greater heights, as i shall have occasion to show in a separate chapter of this appendix, on the decrement of heat with elevation. a remarkable uniformity of temperature prevails throughout the year at dorjiling, there being only degrees difference between the mean temperatures of the hottest and coldest months; whilst in london, with a lower mean temperature, the equivalent difference is degrees. at , feet this difference is equal to that of london. in more elevated regions, it is still greater, the climate becoming excessive at , feet, where the difference amounts to degrees at least.* [this is contrary to the conclusions of all meteorologists who have studied the climate of the alps, and is entirely due to the local disturbances which i have so often dwelt upon, and principally to the unequal distribution of moisture in the loftier rearward regions, and the aridity of tibet. professor james forbes states (ed. phil. trans., v. xiv. p. ):-- . that the decrement of temperature with altitude is most rapid in summer: this (as i shall hereafter show) is not the case in the himalaya, chiefly because the warm south moist wind then prevails. . that the annual range of temperature diminishes with the elevation: this, too, is not the case in sikkim, because of the barer surface and more cloudless skies of the rearward loftier regions. . that the diurnal range of temperature diminishes with the height: that this is not the cane follows from the same cause. . that radiation is least in winter: this is negatived by the influence of the summer rains.] the accompanying table is the result of an attempt to approximate to the mean temperatures and ranges of the thermometer at various elevations. altitude , feet , feet , feet mean shade . . . mean warmest month . . . mean coldest month . . . mean daily range of temperature . . . rain-fall in inches . . . degree equals feet feet feet supposing the same formula to apply (which i exceedingly doubt) to heights above , feet, degrees would be the mean annual temperature of the summit of kinchinjunga, altitude , feet, the loftiest known spot on the globe: this is a degree or two higher than the temperature of the poles of greatest cold on the earth's surface, and about the temperature of spitzbergen and melville island. the upper limit of phenogamic vegetation coincides with a mean temperature of degrees on the south flank of kinchinjunga, and of degrees in tibet; in both cases annuals and perennial-rooted herbaceous plants are to be found at elevations corresponding to these mean temperatures, and often at higher elevations in sheltered localities. i have assumed the decrease of temperature for a corresponding amount of elevation to be gradually less in ascending ( degree= feet at to , feet, degree= feet at , to , feet). my observations appear to prove this, but i do not regard them as conclusive; supposing them to be so, i attribute it to a combination of various causes, especially to the increased elevation and yet unsnowed condition of the mass of land elevated above , feet, and consequent radiation of heat; also to the greater amount of sunshine there; and to the less dense mists which obstruct the sun's rays at all elevations. in corroboration of this i may mention that the decrease of temperature with elevation is much less in summer than in winter, degree of fahr. being equivalent to only feet in january between and , feet, and to upwards of feet in july. again, at dorjiling ( , feet) the temperature hardly ever rises above degrees in the summer months, yet it often rises even higher in tibet at , to , feet. on the other hand, the winters, and the winter nights especially, are disproportionately cold at great heights, the thermometer falling upwards of degrees below the dorjiling temperature at an elevation only feet higher. the diurnal distribution of temperature is equally and similarly affected by the presence of vapour at different altitudes. the lower and outer ranges of to , feet, first receive the diurnal charge of vapour-loaded southerly winds; those beyond them get more of the sun's rays, and the rearward ones more still. though the summer days of the northern localities are warmer than their elevation would indicate, the nights are not proportionally cold; for the light mist of , feet, which replaces the dense fog of feet, effectually obstructs nocturnal radiation, though it is less an obstacle to solar radiation. clear nights, be it observed, are as rare at momay ( , feet) as at dorjiling, the nights if windy being rainy; or, if calm, cold currents descend from the mountains, condensing the moist vapours of the valleys, whose narrow floors are at sunrise bathed in mist at all elevations in sikkim. the rise and dispersion of these dense mists, and their collection and recondensation on the mountains in the morning, is one of the most magnificent phenomena of the himalaya, when viewed from a proper elevation; it commences as soon as the sun appears on the horizon. the mean daily range of the thermometer at feet is degrees in cleared spots, but considerably less in wooded, and certainly one-third less in the forest itself. at calcutta, which has almost an insular climate, it amounts to degrees; at delhi, which has a continental one, to . degrees; and in london to . degrees. at , feet it amounts to about degrees, and at , feet to degrees. these values vary widely in the different months, being much less in the summer or rainy months. the following is probably a fair approximation:-- at , feet it amounts to - degrees in aug. and sept., and degrees in dec. at , feet it amounts to degrees in aug. and sept., and degrees in dec. at , feet it amounts to degrees in aug. and sept., and degrees in dec. at london it amounts to degrees in aug. and sept., and degrees in dec. the distribution of temperature throughout the day and year varies less at dorjiling than in most mountainous countries, owing to the prevailing moisture, the effect of which is analogous to that of a circumambient ocean to an island: the difference being, that in the case of the island the bulk of water maintains an uniform temperature; in that of dorjiling the quantity of vapour acts directly by interfering with terrestrial and solar-radiation, and indirectly by nurturing a luxuriant vegetation. the result in the latter case is a climate remarkable for its equability, and similar in many features to that of new zealand, south-west chili, fuegia, and the damp west coasts of scotland and ireland, and other countries exposed to moist sea winds. the mean temperature of the year at dorjiling, as taken by maxima and minima thermometers* [the mean of several of the months, thus deduced, often varies a good deal from the truth, owing to the unequal diurnal distribution of heat; a very few minutes' sunshine raises the temperature l degrees or degrees above the mean of the day; which excessive heat (usually transient) the maximum thermometer registers, and consequently gives too high a mean.] by dr. chapman, is nearly the same as that of march and october: january, the coldest month, is more than . degrees colder than the mean of the year; but the hottest month is only . degrees warmer than the same mean: at calcutta the months vary less from the mean; at delhi more; and in london the distribution is wholly different; there being no rains to modify the summer heat, july is degrees hotter, and january degrees colder than the mean of the year. this distribution of the seasons has a most important effect upon vegetation, to which sufficient attention has not been paid by cultivators of alpine indian plants; in the first place, though english winters are cold enough for such, the summers are too hot and dry; and, in the second place, the great accession of temperature, causing the buds to burst in spring, occurs in the himalaya in march, when the temperature at feet rises degrees above that of february, raising the radiating thermometer always above the freezing point, whence the young leaves are never injured by night frost: in england the corresponding rise is only degrees, and there is no such accession of temperature till may, which is degrees warmer than april; hence, the young foliage of many himalayan plants is cut off by night frosts in english gardens early in the season, of which _abies webbiana_ is a conspicuous example. the greatest heat of the day occurs at dorjiling about noon, owing to the prevalent cloud, especially during the rainy months, when the sun shines only in the mornings, if at all, and the clouds accumulate as the day advances. according to hourly observations of my own, it occurred in july at noon, in august at p.m., and in september (the most rainy month) there was only four-tenths of a degree difference between the means of noon, p.m., and p.m., but i must refer to the abstracts at the end of this chapter for evidence of this, and of the wonderful uniformity of temperature during the rainy months. in the drier season again, after september, the greatest heat occurs between and p.m.; in calcutta the hottest hour is about . p.m., throughout the year; and in england also about p.m. the hour whose temperature coincides with the mean of the day necessarily varies with the distribution of cloud and sunshine; it is usually about a.m. and p.m.; whereas in calcutta the same coincidence occurs at a little before a.m., and in england at about a.m. next to the temperature of the air, observations on that of the earth are perhaps of the greatest value; both from their application to horticulture, and from the approximation they afford to the mean temperature of the week or month in which they are taken. these form the subject of a separate chapter. nocturnal and solar radiation, the one causing the formation of dew and hoar-frost when the air in the shade is above freezing, end killing plants by the rapid abstraction of heat from all their surfaces which are exposed to the clear sky, and the other scorching the skin and tender plants during the day, are now familiar phenomena, and particularly engaged my attention during my whole indian journey. two phenomena particularly obstruct radiation in sikkim--the clouds and fog from the end of may till october, and the haze from february till may. two months alone are usually clear; one before and one after the rains, when the air, though still humid, is transparent. the haze has never been fully explained, though a well-known phenomenon. on the plains of india, at the foot of the hills, it begins generally in the forenoon of the cold season, with the rise of the west wind; and, in february especially, obscures the sun's disc by noon; frequently it lasts throughout the twenty-four hours, and is usually accompanied by great dryness of the atmosphere. it gradually diminishes in ascending, and have never experienced it at , feet; at , however, it very often, in april, obscures the snowy ranges miles off, which are bright and defined at sunrise, and either pale away, or become of a lurid yellow-red, according to the density of this haze, till they disappear at a.m. i believe it always accompanies a south-west wind (which is a deflected current of the north-west) and dry atmosphere in sikkim. the observations for solar radiation were taken with a black-bulb thermometer, and also with actinometers, but the value of the data afforded by the latter not being fixed or comparative, i shall give the results in a separate section. (see appendix k.) from a multitude of desultory observations, i conclude that at , feet, . degrees, or + degrees above the temperature of the air, is the average maximum effect of the sun's rays on a black-bulb thermometer* [from the mean of very many observations, i find that degrees is the average difference at the level of the sea, in india, between two similar thermometers, with spherical bulbs (half-inch diam.), the one of black, and the other of plain glass, and both being equally exposed to the sun's rays.] throughout the year, amounting rarely to + degrees and + degrees in the summer months, but more frequently in the winter or spring. these results, though greatly above what are obtained at calcutta, are not much, if at all, above what may be observed on the plains of india. this effect is much increased with the elevation. at , feet in december, at a.m., i saw the mercury mount to degrees with a difl: of + degrees, whilst the temperature of shaded snow hard by was degrees; at , feet, in january, at a.m., it has stood at degrees, diff. + . degrees; and at a.m., at degrees, diff. + . degrees, whilst the radiating thermometer on the snow had fallen at sunrise to . degree. in december, at , feet, i have seen it degrees, diff. + degrees; at a.m., , feet; degrees, diff: + degrees. this is but a small selection from many instances of the extraordinary power of solar radiation in the coldest months, at great elevations. nocturnal and terrestrial radiation are even more difficult phenomena for the traveller to estimate than solar radiation, the danger of exposing instruments at night being always great in wild countries. i most frequently used a thermometer graduated on the glass, and placed in the focus of a parabolic reflector, and a similar one laid upon white cotton,* [snow radiates the most powerfully of any substance i have tried; in one instance, at , feet, in january, the thermometer on snow fell to . degree, which was . degrees below the temperature at the time, the grass showing . degrees; and on another occasion to l. degrees, when the air at the time (before sunrise) was . degrees; the difference therefore being degrees. i have frequently made this observation, and always with a similar result; it may account for the great injury plants sustain from a thin covering of ice on their foliage, even when the temperature is but little below the freezing-point.] and found no material difference in the mean of many observations of each, though often degree to degrees in individual ones. avoiding radiation from surrounding objects is very difficult, especially in wooded countries. i have also tried the radiating power of grass and the earth; the temperature of the latter is generally less, and that of the former greater, than the thermometer exposed on cotton or in the reflector, but much depends on the surface of the herbage and soil. the power of terrestrial, like that of solar radiation, increases with the elevation, but not in an equal proportion. at , feet, the mean of all my observations shows a temperature of . degrees. during the rains, degrees to degrees is the mean maximum, but the nights being almost invariably cloudy, it is scarcely on one night out of six that there is any radiation. from october to december the amount is greater = degrees to , and from january till may greater still, being as much as degrees. during the winter months the effect of radiation is often felt throughout the clear days, dew forming abundantly at to feet in the shaded bottoms of narrow valleys, into which the sun does not penetrate till a.m., and from which it disappears at p.m. i have seen the thermometer in the reflector fall degrees at a.m. in a shaded valley. this often produces an anomalous effect, causing the temperature in the shade to fall after sunrise; for the mists which condense in the bottom of the valleys after midnight disperse after sunrise, but long before reached by the sun, and powerful radiation ensues, lowering the surrounding temperature: a fall of degree to degrees after sunrise of air in the shade is hence common in valleys in november and december.* [such is the explanation which i have offered of this phenomenon in the hort. soc. journal. on thinking over the matter since, i have speculated upon the probability of this fall of temperature being due to the absorption of heat that must become latent on the dispersion of the dense masses of white fog that choke the valleys at sunrise.] the excessive radiation of the winter months often gives rise to a curious phenomenon; it causes the formation of copious dew on the blanket of the traveller's bed, which radiates heat to the tent roof, and this inside either an open or a closed tent. i have experienced this at various elevations, from to , feet. whether the minimum temperature be as high as degrees, or but little above zero, the effect is the same, except that hoar-frost or ice forms in the latter case. another remarkable effect of nocturnal radiation is the curl of the alpine rhododendron leaves in november, which is probably due to the freezing and consequent expansion of the water in the upper strata of cells exposed to the sky. the first curl is generally repaired by the ensuing day's sun, but after two or three nights the leaves become permanently curled, and remain so till they fall in the following spring. i have said that the nocturnal radiation in the english spring months is the great obstacle to the cultivation of many himalayan plants; but it is not therefore to be inferred that there is no similar amount of radiation in the himalaya; for, on the contrary, in april its amount is much greater than in england, frequently equalling degrees of difference; and i have seen degrees at , feet; but the minimum temperature at the time is degrees, and the absolute amount of cold therefore immaterial. the mean minimum of london is degrees, and, when lowered . degrees by radiation, the consequent cold is very considerable. mr. daniell, in his admirable essay on the climate of london, mentions degrees as the maximum effect of nocturnal radiation ever observed by him. i have registered degrees in april at dorjiling; nearly as much at feet in february; twice degrees, and once . degrees in september at , feet; and degrees in october at , feet; nearly degrees in january at feet; . degrees in february at that elevation, and, on several occasions, . degrees at , feet in november. the annual rain-fall at dorjiling averages inches (or feet), but varies from to in different years; this is fully three times the amount of the average english fall,* [the general ideas on the subject of the english rain-fall are so very vague, that i may be pardoned for reminding my readers that in , the year of extraordinary rain, the amounts varied from . inches in essex, to inches at cirencester, and . (average of five years) at plympton st. mary's, and . at holme, on the dart.] and yet not one-fourth of what is experienced on the khasia hills in eastern bengal, where fifty feet of rain falls. the greater proportion descends between june and september, as much as thirty inches sometimes falling in one month. from november to february inclusive, the months are comparatively dry; march and october are characterised by violent storms at the equinoxes, with thunder, destructive lightning, and hail. the rain-gauge takes no account of the enormous deposition from mists and fogs: these keep the atmosphere in a state of moisture, the amount of which i have estimated at . as the saturation-point at dorjiling, . being that of london. in july, the dampest month, the saturation-point is . ; and in december, owing to the dryness of the air on the neighbouring plains of india, whence dry blasts pass over sikkim, the mean saturation-point of the month sometimes falls as low as . . the dew-point is on the average of the year . degrees, or degrees below the mean temperature of the air. in the dampest month (july) the mean dew-point is only eight-tenths of a degree below the temperature, whilst in december it sinks degrees below it. in london the dew-point is on the average . degrees below the temperature; none of the english months are so wet as those of sikkim, but none are so dry as the sikkim december sometimes is. _on the weight of the atmosphere in sikkim; and its effects on the human frame._ of all the phenomena of climate, the weight of the atmosphere is the most remarkable for its elusion of direct observation, when unaided by instruments. at the level of the sea, a man of ordinary bulk and stature is pressed upon by a auperincumbent weight of , pounds or . tons. an inch fall or rise in the barometer shows that this load is lightened or increased, sometimes in a few hours, by nearly , pounds; and no notice is taken of it, except by the meteorologist, or by the speculative physician, seeking the subtle causes of epidemic and endemic domplaints. at dorjiling ( , feet), this load is reduced to less than , pounds, with no appreciable result whatever on the frame, however suddenly it be transported to that elevation. and the observation of my own habits convinced me that i took the same amount of meat, drink, sleep, exercise and work, not only without inconvenience, but without the slightest perception of my altered circumstances. on ascending to , feet, owing to the diminished supply of oxygen, exercise brings on vertigo and headache; ascending higher still, lassitude and tension across the forehead ensue, with retching, and a sense of weight dragging down the stomach, probably due to dilatation of the air contained in that organ. such are the all but invariable effects of high elevations; varying with most persons according to the suddenness and steepness of the ascent, the amount and duration of exertion, and the length of time previously passed at great heights. after having lived for some weeks at , feet, i have thence ascended several times to , , and once above , feet, without any sensations but lassitude and quickness of pulse;* [i have in a note to vol. ii. chapter xxiii, stated that i never experienced in my own person, nor saw in others, bleeding at the ears, nose, lips, or eyelids.] but in these instances it required great caution to avoid painful symptoms. residing at , feet, however, my functions were wholly undisturbed; nor could i detect any quickness of pulse or of respiration when the body was at rest, below , feet. at that elevation, after resting a party of eight men for an hour, the average of their and my pulses was above degrees, both before and after eating; in one case it was degrees, in none below degrees. not only is the frame of a transient visitor unaffected (when at rest) by the pressure being reduced from , to , pounds, but the tibetan, born and constantly residing at upwards of , feet, differs in no respect that can be attributed to diminished pressure, from the native of the level of the sea. the averaged duration of life, and the amount of food and exercise is the same; eighty years are rarely reached by either. the tibetan too, however inured to cold and great elevations, still suffers when he crosses passes , or , feet high, and apparently neither more nor less than i did. liebig remarks (in his "animal chemistry") that in an equal number of respirations,* [for the following note i am indebted to my friend, c. muller, esq., of patna.-- according to sir h. davy, a man consumes , cubic inches of oxygen in twenty-four hours, necessitating the inspiration of , cubic inches of atmospheric air.--at pressure inches, and temp. degrees this volume of atmospheric air (dry) would weigh , � grains.-at pressure in., temp. °, it would weigh , . gr. the amount of oxygen in atmospheric air is . per cent. by weight. the oxygen, then, in , cubic inches of dry air, at pressure in., temp. degrees, weighs , . gr.; and at pressure in., temp. degrees, it weighs , . gr. hence the absolute quantity of oxygen in a given volume of atmospheric air, when the pressure is in., and the temp. degrees, is . per cent. less than when the pressure is in. and the temp. degrees. when the air at pressure in:, temp. degrees, is saturated with moisture, the proportion of dry air and aqueous vapour in cubic inches is as follows:-- dry air . vapour 	 . at pressure in., temp. degrees, the proportions are:-- dry air . vapour 		 . the effect of aqueous vapour in the sir on the amount of oxygen available for consumption, is very trifling; and it must not be forgotten that aqueous vapour supplies oxygen to the system as well as atmospheric air.] we consume a larger amount of oxygen at the level of the sea than on a mountain; and it can be shown that under ordinary circumstances at dorjiling, . per cent. less is inhaled than on the plains of india. yet the chest cannot expand so as to inspire more at once, nor is the respiration appreciably quickened; by either of which means nature would be enabled to make up the deficiency. it is true that it is difficult to count one's own respirations, but the average is considered in a healthy man to be eighteen in a minute; in my own case it is sixteen, an acceleration of which by three or four could not have been overlooked, in the repeated trials i made at dorjiling, and still less the eight additional inhalations required at , feet to make up for the deficiency of oxygen in the air of that elevation. it has long been surmised that an alpine vegetation may owe some of its peculiarities to the diminished atmospheric pressure; and that the latter being a condition which the gardener cannot supply, he can never successfully cultivate such plants in general. i know of no foundation for this hypothesis; many plants, natives of the level of the sea in other parts of the world, and some even of the hot plains of bengal, ascend to , and even , feet on the himalaya, unaffected by the diminished pressure. any number of species from low countries may be cultivated, and some have been for ages, at , to , feet without change. it is the same with the lower animals; innumerable instances may with ease be adduced of pressure alone inducing no appreciable change, whilst there is absence of proof to the contrary. the phenomena that accompany diminished pressure are the real obstacles to the cultivation of alpine plants, of which cold and the excessive climate are perhaps the most formidable. plants that grow in localities marked by sudden extremes of heat and cold, are always very variable in stature, habit, and foliage. in a state of nature we say the plants "accommodate themselves" to these changes, and so they do within certain limits; but for one that survives of all the seeds that germinate in these inhospitable localities, thousands die. in our gardens we can neither imitate the conditions of an alpine climate, nor offer others suited to the plants of such climates. the mean height of the barometer at mr. hodgson's was . , but varied . between july, when it was lowest, and october, when it was highest; following the monthly rise and fall of calcutta as to period, but not as to amount (or amplitude); for the mercury at calcutta stands in july upwards of half an inch ( . prinsep) lower than it does in december. the diurnal tide of atmosphere is as constant as to the time of its ebb and flow at dorjiling as at calcutta; and a number of very careful observations (made with special reference to this object) between the level of the plains of india, and , feet, would indicate that there is no very material deviation from this at any elevation in sikkim. these times are very nearly . a.m. and about p.m. for the maxima, the . a.m. very constantly, and the p.m. with more uncertainty; and a.m. and p.m. for the minima, the afternoon ebb being most true to its time, except during the rains. at . a.m. the barometer is at its highest, and falls till p.m., when it stands on the average of the year . of an inch lower; during the same period the calcutta fall is upwards of one-tenth of an inch ( . prinsep). it has been proved that at considerable elevations in europe, the hours of periodic ebb and flow differ materially from those which prevail at the level of the sea; but this is certainly not the case in the sikkim himalaya. the amplitude decreases in amount from . at the foot of the hills, to . at , feet; and the mean of selected unexceptionable observations, taken at nine stations between and , feet, at . a.m. and p.m., gives an average fall of . of an inch; a result which is confirmed by interpolation from numerous horary observations at these and many other elevations, where i could observe at the critical hours. that the calcutta amplitude is not exceptionally great, is shewn by the register kept at different places in the gangetic valley and plains of india, between saharunpore and the bay of bengal. i have seen apparently trustworthy records of seven* [calcutta, berampore, benares, nagpore, moozufferpore, delhi, and saharunpore.] such, and find that in all it amounts to between . and . inch, the mean of the whole being . of an inch. the amplitude is greatest ( . ) in the spring months (march, april, and may), both at dorjiling and calcutta: it is least at both in june and july, ( . at dorjiling), and rises again in autumn (to . in september). the horary oscillations also are as remarkably uniform at all elevations, as the period of ebb and flow: the mercury falls slowly from . a.m. (when it is at its highest) till noon, then rapidly till p.m., and slowly again till p.m.; after which there is little change until sunset; it rises rapidly between and p.m., and a little more till p.m.; thence till a.m. the fall is inconsiderable, and the great rise occurs between and a.m. it is well known that these fluctuations of the barometer are due to the expansion and contraction by heat and moisture of the column of atmosphere that presses on the mercury, in the cistern of the instrument: were the air dry, the effect would be a single rise and fall;* [this law, for which we are indebted to professor dove, has been clearly explained by colonel sabine in the appendix to his translation of humboldt's "cosmos," vol. i. p. .] the barometer would stand highest at the hottest of the twenty-four hours, and lowest at the coldest; and such is the case in arid continental regions which are perennially dry. that such would also be the case at calcutta and throughout the himalaya of sikkim, is theoretically self-evident, and proved by my horary observations taken during the rainy months of . an inspection of these at the end of this section (where a column contains the pressure of dry air) shows but one maximum of pressure, which occurs at the coldest time of the twenty-four hours (early in the morning), and one minimum in the afternoon. in the table of mean temperatures of the months, also appended to this section, will also be found a column allowing the pressure of dry air, whence it will be seen that there is but one maximum of the pressure of dry air, occurring at the coldest season in december, and one minimum, in july. the effect of the vapour is the same on the annual as upon the diurnal march of the pressure, producing a double maximum and minimum in the year in one case, and in the twenty-four hours in the other. i append a meteorological register of the separate months, but at the same time must remind the reader that it does not pretend to strict accuracy. it is founded upon observations made at dorjiling by dr. chapman in the year , for pressure temperature and wet-bulb only; the other data and some modifications of the above are supplied from observations of my own. those for terrestrial and nocturnal radiation are accurate as far as they go, that is to say, they are absolute temperatures taken by myself, which may, i believe, be recorded in any year, but much higher are no doubt often to be obtained. the dew-points and saturations are generally calculated from the mean of two day observations ( a.m. and p.m.) of the wet-bulb thermometer, together with the minimum, or are taken from observations of daniell's hygrometer; and as i find the mean of the temperature of a.m., p.m., and the minimum, to coincide within a few tenths with the mean temperature of the whole day, i assume that the mean of the wet-bulb observations of the same hours will give a near approach to that of the twenty-four hours. the climate of dorjiling station has been in some degree altered by extensive clearances of forest, which render it more variable, more exposed to night frosts and strong sun-heat, and to drought, the drying up of small streams being one direct consequence. my own observations were taken at mr. hodgson's house, elevated , feet, the position of which i have indicated at the commencement of this section, where the differences of climate due to local causes are sufficiently indicated to show that in no two spots could similar meteorological results be obtained. at mr. hodgson's, for instance, the uniformity of temperature and humidity is infinitely more remarkable than at dr. chapman's, possibly from my guarding more effectually against radiation, and from the greater forests about mr. hodgson's house. i have not, however, ventured to interfere with the temperature columns on this account. dorjiling meteorological register. jan. feb. mar. apr. may june pressure of atmosphere* . . . . . . range of pressure . . . . . . mean shade . . . . . . max. shade . . . . . . max. sun . . . . . . greatest diff. . . . . . . mean max. shade . . . . . . minim. shade . . . . . . minim. rad. . . . . . . greatest diff. . . . . . . mean minim. shade . . . . . . mean daily range of temp. . . . . . . sunk therm. . . . . . . mean dew-point . . . . . . mean dryness . . . . . . force of vapour . . . . . . pressure of dry air . . . . . . mean saturation . . . . . . rain in inches . . . . . . july aug. sep. oct. nov. dec. mean pressure of atmosphere* . . . . . . . range of pressure . . . . . . . mean shade . . . . . . . max. shade . . . . . . . max. sun . . . . . . . greatest diff. . . . . . . . mean max. shade . . . . . . . minim. shade . . . . . . . minim. rad. . . . . . . . greatest diff. . . . . . . . mean minim. shade . . . . . . . mean daily range of temp. . . . . . . . sunk therm. . . . . . . . mean dew-point . . . . . . . mean dryness . . . . . . . force of vapour . . . . . . . pressure of dry air . . . . . . . mean saturation . . . . . . . rain in inches . . . . . . sum . *these are taken from dr. chapman's table; and present a greater annual range (= . ) than my observations in - , taken at mr. hodgson's, which is higher than dr. chapman's; or mr. muller's, which is a little lower, and very near. _horary observations at jillapahar, dorjiling, alt. , feet._ july, no. of observations hour a.m. noon p.m. barom. corrected . . . +. . . . . . temp. air . . . . . . . . . d.p. . . . . . . . . . diff. . . . . . . . . . tens. of vapour . . . . . . . . . weight of vapour . . . . . . . . . humidity . . . . . . . . . press. of dry air . . . . . . . . . no. of observations hour p.m. m.n. barom. corrected . -. . . . . . +. . temp. air . . . . . . . . . d.p. . . . . . . . . . diff. . . . . . . . . . tens. of vapour . . . . . . . . . weight of vapour . . . . . . . . . humidity . . . . . . . . . press. of dry air . -. . . . . . . +. august no. of observations hour a.m. noon p.m. barom. corrected . . . +. . . . . . temp. air . . . . . . . . . d.p. . . . . . . . . . diff. . . . . . . . . . tens. of vapour . . . . . . . . . weight of vapour . . . . . . . . . humidity . . . . . . . . . press. of dry air + . . . . . . . . . no. of observations hour p.m. m.n. barom. corrected . -. . . . . +. . . temp. air . . . . . . . . . d.p. . . . . . . . . . diff. . . . . . . . . . tens. of vapour . . . . . . . . . weight of vapour . . . . . . . . . humidity . . . . . . . . . press. of dry air -. . . . . . . . . december no. of observations hour a.m. noon p.m. barom. corrected . . +. . . . . . -. temp. air . . . . . . . . . d.p. . . . . . . . . . diff. . . . . . . . . . tens. of vapour . . . . . . . . . weight of vapour . . . . . . . . . humidity . . . . . . . . . press. of dry air . . . . . . . . -. no. of observations hour p.m. m.n. barom. corrected . . . . . +. . . temp. air . . . . . . . . d.p. . . . . . . . . diff. . . . . . . . . tens. of vapour . . . . . . . . weight of vapour . . . . . . . . humidity . . . . . . . . press. of dry air . . . . . . . +. october ( days) no. of observations hour - . a.m. noon p.m. barom. corrected . . . . +. . . . . . temp. air . . . . . . . . . . d.p. . . . . . . . . . . diff. . . . . . . . . . . tens. of vapour . . . . . . . . . . . weight of vapour . . . . . . . . . . humidity . . . . . . . . . . press. of dry air + . +. . . . . . . . . no. of observations hour p.m. m.n. barom. corrected . -. . . . . +. . . temp. air . . . . . . . . . d.p. . . . . . . . . . diff. . . . . . . . . . tens. of vapour . . . . . . . . . weight of vapour . . . . . . . . . humidity . . . . . . . . . press. of dry air -. . . . . . . . . appendix g. on the relative humidity, and absolute amount of vapour contained in the atmosphere at different elevations in the sikkim himalaya. my observations for temperature and wet-bulb being for the most part desultory, taken at different dates, and under very different conditions of exposure, etc., it is obvious that those at one station are hardly, if at all, comparative with those of another, and i have therefore selected only such as were taken at the same date and hour with others taken at the calcutta observatory, or as can easily be reduced; which thus afford a standard (however defective in many respects) for a comparison. i need hardly remind my reader that the vapour-charged wind of sikkim is the southerly one, which blows over calcutta; that in its passage northwards to sikkim in the summer months, it traverses the heated plains at the foot of the himalaya, and ascending that range, it discharges the greater part of its moisture ( to inches annually) over the outer himalayan ranges, at elevations of to feet. the cooling effect of the uniform covering of forest on the sikkim ranges is particularly favourable to this deposition, but the slope of the mountains being gradual, the ascending currents are not arrested and cooled so suddenly as in the khasia mountains, where the discharge is consequently much greater. the heating of the atmosphere, too, over the dry plains at the foot of the outer range, increases farther its capacity for the retention of vapour, and also tends to render the rain-fall less sudden and violent than on the khasia, where the south wind blows over the cool expanse of the jheels. it will be seen from the following observations, that in sikkim the relative humidity of the atmosphere remains pretty constantly very high in the summer months, and at all elevations, except in the rearward valleys; and even there a humid atmosphere prevails up to , feet, everywhere within the influence of the snowy mountains. the uniformly high temperature which prevails throughout the summer, even at elevations of , and , feet, is no doubt proximately due to the evolution of heat during the condensation of these vapours. it will be seen by the pages of my journal, that continued sunshine, and the consequent heating of the soil, is almost unknown during the summer, at any elevation on the outer or southward ranges of dorjiling: but the sunk thermometer proves that in advancing northward into the heart of the mountains and ascending, the sun's effect is increased, the temperature of the earth becoming in summer considerably higher than that of the air. with regard to the observations themselves, they may be depended upon as comparable with those of calcutta, the instruments having been carefully compared, and the cases of interpolation being few. the number of observations taken at each station is recorded in a separate column; where only one is thus recorded, it is not to be regarded as a single reading, but the mean, of several taken during an hour or longer period. i have rejected all solitary observations, even when accompanied by others at calcutta; and sundry that were, for obvious reasons, likely to mislead. where many observations were taken at one place, i have divided them into sets, corresponding to the hours at which alone the calcutta temperature and wet-bulb thermometer are recorded,* [sunrise; . a.m.; noon; . p.m.; p.m., and sunset.] in order that meteorologists may apply them to the solution of other questions relating to the distribution of heat and moisture. the dorjiling observations, and those in the immediate neighbourhood of that station, appeared to me sufficiently numerous to render it worth while classing them in months, and keeping them in a series by themselves. the tensions of vapour are worked from the wet-bulb readings by apjohn's formula and tables, corrected for the height of the barometer at the time. the observations, except where otherwise noted, are taken by myself. series i. _observations made at or near dorjiling._ january, dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- the dale* ft. . a.m. . . . . mr. muller's ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- the dale* ft. . a.m. . . . . mr. muller's ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- *observations to which the asterisk is affixed were taken by mr. muller. dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, vapour in cubic foot of atmosphere . gr. ,, . gr. january, dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. sunrise . . . . mr. hodgson's ... . a.m. . . . . ... ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . ... ... miscel. . . . . saddle of road ft. do. . . . . at sinchul. pacheem. ft. do. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. sunrise . . . . mr. hodgson's ... . a.m. . . . . ... ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . ... ... miscel. . . . . saddle of road ft. do. . . . . at sinchul. pacheem. ft. do. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. february dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. sunrise . . . . ... . a.m. . . . . ... ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . the dale* ft. miscel. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. sunrise . . . . ... . a.m. . . . . ... ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . the dale* ft. miscel. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. march dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . pacheem. ft. misc. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . pacheem. ft. misc. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. april dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . dr. campbell's ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . dr. campbell's ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... sunset . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. may dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- smith's hotel, ft. misc. . . . . colinton,* ft. misc. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- smith's hotel, ft. misc. . . . . colinton,* ft. misc. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. june dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- colinton* ft. misc. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- colinton* ft. misc. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. july dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . the dale,* ft. a.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . the dale,* ft. a.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. august dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . the dale,* ft. a.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . the dale,* ft. a.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. september dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . the dale,* ft. a.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. . a.m. . . . . ... noon . . . . ... ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . the dale,* ft. a.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. october dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. noon . . . . ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . goong. ft. misc. . . . . ditto ft. ditto . . . . the dale* ft. a.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar, ft. noon . . . . ... . p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . goong. ft. misc. . . . . ditto ft. ditto . . . . the dale* ft. a.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . ... ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. november and december dorjiling no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- the dale,* ft. a.m. . . . . nov. & dec. ... p.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . december, ... p.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- calcutta no. of obs. place elev. hour tp. d.p. diff. tens. --------------------------------------------------------------------- the dale,* ft. a.m. . . . . nov. & dec. ... p.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . december, ... p.m. . . . . ... p.m. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... mean . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling.--humidity . calcutta . ,, weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. _comparison of dorjiling and calutta._ humidity no. of diff. obs. month dorjiling calcutta dorjiling --------------------------------------------------------- january -. . +. february . . +. march . -. +. april . . +. may . . +. june . . +. july . . +. august +. +. +. september . . +. october . . +. nov. and dec. . . +. ---------------------------------------------------------- mean . . +. weight of vapour in cubic foot of air no. of diff. obs. month dorjiling calcutta calcutta -------------------------------------------------------- january - . - . + . february . . + . march . . + . april . . + . may . . + . june . . + . july . . + . august + . + . + . september . . + . october . . + . nov. and dec. . . + . -------------------------------------------------------- mean . . + . it is hence evident, from nearly , comparative observations, that the atmosphere is relatively more humid at dorjiling than at calcutta, throughout the year. as the southerly current, to which alone is due all the moisture of sikkim, traverses miles of land, and discharges from sixty to eighty inches of rain before arriving at dorjiling, it follows that the whole atmospheric column is relatively drier over the himalaya than over calcutta; that the absolute amount of vapour, in short, is less than it would otherwise be at the elevation of dorjiling, though the relative humidity is so great. a glance at the table at the end of this section appears to confirm this; for it is there shown that, at the base of the himalaya, at an elevation of only feet higher than calcutta, the absolute amount of vapour is less, and of relative humidity greater, than at calcutta. series ii.--_observations at various stations and elevations in the himalaya of east nepal and sikkim._ elevation to feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- katong ghat. dec. . . . . teesta river great rungeet, at bridge april . . . . ditto may . . . . tambur river, e. nepal nov. . . . . ditto nov. . . . . bhomsong, teesta river dec. . . . . ditto may . . . . little rungeet jan. . . . . pemiongchi, great rungeet dec. . . . . punkabaree march . . . . ditto may . . . . guard house april . . . . (gt. rungeet) --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- katong ghat. dec. . . . . teesta river great rungeet, at bridge april . . . . ditto may . . . . tambur river, e. nepal nov. . . . . ditto nov. . . . . bhomsong, teesta river dec. . . . . ditto may . . . . little rungeet jan. . . . . pemiongchi, great rungeet dec. . . . . punkabaree march . . . . ditto may . . . . guard house april . . . . (gt. rungeet) --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation to feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- singdong dec. . . . . mywa guola, e. nepal nov. . . . . pemmi river, e. nepal nov. . . . . tambur river, e. nepal nov. . . . . blingbong (teesta) may . . . . lingo (teesta) may . . . . serriomsa (teesta) dec. . . . . lingmo (teesta) may . . . . ditto dec. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . elevation to feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- singdong dec. . . . . mywa guola, e. nepal nov. . . . . pemmi river, e. nepal nov. . . . . tambur river, e. nepal nov. . . . . blingbong (teesta) may . . . . lingo (teesta) may . . . . serriomsa (teesta) dec. . . . . lingmo (teesta) may . . . . ditto dec. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation to feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- kulhait river jan. . . . . ratong river jan. . . . . tambur river nov. . . . . chingtam nov. . . . . tikbotang dec. . . . . myong valley oct. . . . . iwa river dec. . . . . ratong river jan. . . . . tukcham nov. . . . . pacheem village jan. . . . . yankoon dec. . . . . mikk may . . . . sunnook dec. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- kulhait river jan. . . . . ratong river jan. . . . . tambur river nov. . . . . chingtam nov. . . . . tikbotang dec. . . . . myong valley oct. . . . . iwa river dec. . . . . ratong river jan. . . . . tukcham nov. . . . . pacheem village jan. . . . . yankoon dec. . . . . mikk may . . . . sunnook dec. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation to feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- yangyading dec. . . . . gorh may. . . . . namgah oct. . . . . taptiatok (tambur) nov. . . . . myong valley oct. . . . . jummanoo nov. . . . . nampok dec. . . . . chakoong may . . . . singtam may . . . . namten dec. . . . . purmiokshong nov. . . . . rungniok jan. . . . . singtam o.&n. . . . . cheadam dec. . . . . sablakoo dec. . . . . bheti nov. . . . . temi may . . . . lingtam may . . . . khersiong jan. . . . . ditto march . . . . tassiding dec. . . . . lingcham dec. . . . . dikkeeling dec. . . . . tehonpong jan. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- yangyading dec. . . . . gorh may. . . . . namgah oct. . . . . taptiatok (tambur) nov. . . . . myong valley oct. . . . . jummanoo nov. . . . . nampok dec. . . . . chakoong may . . . . singtam may . . . . namten dec. . . . . purmiokshong nov. . . . . rungniok jan. . . . . singtam o.&n. . . . . cheadam dec. . . . . sablakoo dec. . . . . bheti nov. . . . . temi may . . . . lingtam may . . . . khersiong jan. . . . . ditto march . . . . tassiding dec. . . . . lingcham dec. . . . . dikkeeling dec. . . . . tehonpong jan. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation to feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- nampok may . . . . tengling jan. . . . . choongtam, sunrise may . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, may . . . . ,, noon ,, may . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, may . . . . ,, p.m. ,, may . . . . ,, sunset ,, may . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, aug. . . . . ,, noon ,, aug. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, aug. . . . . ,, p.m. ,, aug. . . . . ,, sunset ,, aug. . . . . salloobong nov. . . . . lingdam dec. . . . . makaroumbi nov. . . . . khabang dec. . . . . lingdam dec. . . . . yankutang dec. . . . . namtchi may . . . . yoksun jan. . . . . ditto ,, jan. . . . . loongtoong nov. . . . . sakkiazong nov. . . . . phadong a.m. nov. . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, nov. . . . . ,, noon ,, nov. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, nov. . . . . ,, p.m. ,, nov. . . . . ,, sunset ,, nov. . . . . tumloong nov. . . . . ,, . a.m. ) . . . . ,, noon ,, ) nov. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, _ and . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) dec. . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . elevation to feet. calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- nampok may . . . . tengling jan. . . . . choongtam, sunrise may . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, may . . . . ,, noon ,, may . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, may . . . . ,, p.m. ,, may . . . . ,, sunset ,, may . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, aug. . . . . ,, noon ,, aug. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, aug. . . . . ,, p.m. ,, aug. . . . . ,, sunset ,, aug. . . . . salloobong nov. . . . . lingdam dec. . . . . makaroumbi nov. . . . . khabang dec. . . . . lingdam dec. . . . . yankutang dec. . . . . namtchi may . . . . yoksun jan. . . . . ditto ,, jan. . . . . loongtoong nov. . . . . sakkiazong nov. . . . . phadong a.m. nov. . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, nov. . . . . ,, noon ,, nov. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, nov. . . . . ,, p.m. ,, nov. . . . . ,, sunset ,, nov. . . . . tumloong nov. . . . . ,, . a.m. ) . . . . ,, noon ,, ) nov. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, _ and . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) dec. . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation to feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- runkpo nov. . . . . leebong feb. . . . . ditto ,, jan. . . . . dholep may . . . . iwa river dec. . . . . dengha aug. . . . . kulhait river dec. . . . . latong oct. . . . . doobdi jan. . . . . pemiongchi jan. . . . . keadom aug. . . . . hee-hill jan. . . . . dumpook jan. . . . . changachelling jan. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- runkpo nov. . . . . leebong feb. . . . . ditto ,, jan. . . . . dholep may . . . . iwa river dec. . . . . dengha aug. . . . . kulhait river dec. . . . . latong oct. . . . . doobdi jan. . . . . pemiongchi jan. . . . . keadom aug. . . . . hee-hill jan. . . . . dumpook jan. . . . . changachelling jan. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation to feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- pemiongchi jan. . . . . goong nov. . . . . kampo-samdong may/ . . . . aug. hee-hill jan. . . . . ratong river jan. . . . . source of balasun oct. . . . . goong ridge oct. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- pemiongchi jan. . . . . goong nov. . . . . kampo-samdong may/ . . . . aug. hee-hill jan. . . . . ratong river jan. . . . . source of balasun oct. . . . . goong ridge oct. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- dorjiling mean . . . . from mean of above and dorjiling: humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation to feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- sinchul jan. . . . . ditto ,, april . . . . ascent of tonglo may . . . . tambur river nov. . . . . sakkiazong nov. . . . . chateng oct. . . . . buckim jan. . . . . ditto ,, jan. . . . . chateng may . . . . lachoong a.m. ) . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) . . . . ,, noon ,, ) aug. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, _ and . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) oct. . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . ,, miscellaneous ,, ) . . . . lamteng a.m. ) may . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) june . . . . ,, noon ,, _ july . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, ) and . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) aug. . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . zemu sundong a.m. ) . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) june . . . . ,, noon ,, ) and . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, _ july . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) . . . . goong nov. . . . . tendong (top) may . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- sinchul jan. . . . . ditto ,, april . . . . ascent of tonglo may . . . . tambur river nov. . . . . sakkiazong nov. . . . . chateng oct. . . . . buckim jan. . . . . ditto ,, jan. . . . . chateng may . . . . lachoong a.m. ) . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) . . . . ,, noon ,, ) aug. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, _ and . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) oct. . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . ,, miscellaneous ,, ) . . . . lamteng a.m. ) may . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) june . . . . ,, noon ,, ) july . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, _ and . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) aug. . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . zemu sundong a.m. ) . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) june . . . . ,, noon ,, _ and . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, ) july . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) . . . . goong nov. . . . . tendong (top) may . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation to , feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- yangma guola nov. . . . . nanki nov. . . . . singalelah dec. . . . . sakkiazong nov. . . . . zemu river june . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- yangma guola nov. . . . . nanki nov. . . . . singalelah dec. . . . . sakkiazong nov. . . . . zemu river june . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation , to , feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- tonglo , may . . . . nanki , nov. . . . . yalloong river , dec. . . . . tonglo top , may . . . . yeunga , oct. . . . . zemu river , june . . . . wallanchoon , nov. . . . . laghep , nov. . . . . ditto ,, nov. . . . . thlonok river a.m. , june . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, june . . . . ,, noon ,, june . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, june . . . . ,, p.m. ,, june . . . . ,, sunset ,, june . . . . yangma valley , dec. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- tonglo , may . . . . nanki , nov. . . . . yalloong river , dec. . . . . tonglo top , may . . . . yeunga , oct. . . . . zemu river , june . . . . wallanchoon , nov. . . . . laghep , nov. . . . . ditto ,, nov. . . . . thlonok river a.m. , june . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, june . . . . ,, noon ,, june . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, june . . . . ,, p.m. ,, june . . . . ,, sunset ,, june . . . . yangma valley , dec. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation , to , feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- barfonchen , nov. . . . . punying , aug. . . . . kambachen village , dec. . . . . tallum a.m. , july . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, july . . . . ,, noon ,, july . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, july . . . . ,, p.m. ,, july . . . . ,, sunset ,, july . . . . kambachen valley , dec. . . . . yeumtong a.m. , ) . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) aug. . . . . ,, noon ,, ) sep. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, _ and . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) oct. . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . ,, miscellaneous ,, oct. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- barfonchen , nov. . . . . punying , aug. . . . . kambachen village , dec. . . . . tallum a.m. , july . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, july . . . . ,, noon ,, july . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, july . . . . ,, p.m. ,, july . . . . ,, sunset ,, july . . . . kambachen valley , dec. . . . . yeumtong a.m. , ) . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) aug. . . . . ,, noon ,, ) sep. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, _ and . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) oct. . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . ,, miscellaneous ,, oct. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation , to , feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- zemu river a.m. , ) . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) june . . . . ,, noon ,, _ and . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, ) july . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . yangma valley , nov. . . . . zemu river , june . . . . chumanako , nov. . . . . tungu a.m. , july . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, july . . . . ,, noon ,, july . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, july . . . . ,, sunset ,, july . . . . ,, sunrise ,, oct. . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, oct. . . . . ,, noon ,, oct. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, oct. . . . . ,, p.m. ,, oct. . . . . ,, sunset ,, oct. . . . . ,, miscellaneous ,, oct. . . . . ,, ditto ,, july . . . . tuquoroma , nov. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- zemu river a.m. , ) . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, ) june . . . . ,, noon ,, _ and . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, ) july . . . . ,, p.m. ,, ) . . . . ,, sunset ,, ) . . . . yangma valley , nov. . . . . zemu river , june . . . . chumanako , nov. . . . . tungu a.m. , july . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, july . . . . ,, noon ,, july . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, july . . . . ,, sunset ,, july . . . . ,, sunrise ,, oct. . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, oct. . . . . ,, noon ,, oct. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, oct. . . . . ,, p.m. ,, oct. . . . . ,, sunset ,, oct. . . . . ,, miscellaneous ,, oct. . . . . ,, ditto ,, july . . . . tuquoroma , nov. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. ,, . gr. elevation , to , feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- mon lepcha , jan. . . . . ditto , jan. . . . . tunkra valley , aug. . . . . jongri , jan. . . . . zemu river , june . . . . choonjerma , dec. . . . . yangma village , nov./ . . . . dec. wallanchoon road , nov. . . . . kambachen, below pass , dec. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- mon lepcha , jan. . . . . ditto , jan. . . . . tunkra valley , aug. . . . . jongri , jan. . . . . zemu river , june . . . . choonjerma , dec. . . . . yangma village , nov./ . . . . dec. wallanchoon road , nov. . . . . kambachen, below pass , dec. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. . gr. elevation , to , feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- yangma valley , dec. . . . . choonjerma pass , dec. . . . . lachee-pia , aug. . . . . momay, a.m. ,, sept. . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, sept. . . . . ,, noon ,, sept. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, sept. . . . . ,, p.m. ,, sept. . . . . ,, sunset ,, sept. . . . . ,, miscellaneous ,, sept. . . . . ,, ,, ,, oct. . . . . sittong , oct. . . . . palung , oct. . . . . kambachen pass , dec. . . . . yeumtong , sept. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- yangma valley , dec. . . . . choonjerma pass , dec. . . . . lachee-pia , aug. . . . . momay, a.m. ,, sept. . . . . ,, . a.m. ,, sept. . . . . ,, noon ,, sept. . . . . ,, . p.m. ,, sept. . . . . ,, p.m. ,, sept. . . . . ,, sunset ,, sept. . . . . ,, miscellaneous ,, sept. . . . . ,, ,, ,, oct. . . . . sittong , oct. . . . . palung , oct. . . . . kambachen pass , dec. . . . . yeumtong , sept. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. . gr. elevation , to , feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- kanglachem pass , dec. . . . . tunkra pass , aug. . . . . wallanchoon pass , nov. . - . . . teumtso , oct. . . . . cholamoo lake , oct. . . . . donkia mountain , sept. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- kanglachem pass , dec. . . . . tunkra pass , aug. . . . . wallanchoon pass , nov. . . . . teumtso , oct. . . . . cholamoo lake , oct. . . . . donkia mountain , sept. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. . gr. elevation , to , feet. eastern nepal and sikkim. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- kinchinjhow , sept. . . . . sebolah pass , sept. . . . . donkin mountain , sept. . . . . bhomtso , oct. . . . . donkia pass , sept. . . . . ditto , oct. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . calcutta. no. of obs. locality elev. month tem. d.p. diff. tens --------------------------------------------------------------------- kinchinjhow , sept. . . . . sebolah pass , sept. . . . . donkin mountain , sept. . . . . bhomtso , oct. . . . . donkia pass , sept. . . . . ditto , oct. . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- mean . . . . humidity . calcutta . weight of vapour . gr. . gr. summary. humidity weight of vapour no. of elevations sta- sik- cal- diff. sik- cal- diff. obs. in feet tions kim cutta sikkim kim cutta sikkim ---------------------------------------------------------------------- to . . +. . . - . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to , . . . . . . , to , . . . . . . , to , . . . . . . , to , . . . . . . , to , . . -. . . . , to , . . +. . . . , to , . . . . . . , to , . . -. . . . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- considering how desultory the observations in sikkim are, and how much affected by local circumstances, the above results must be considered highly satisfactory: they prove that the relative humidity of the atmospheric column remains pretty constant throughout all elevations, except when these are in a tibetan climate; and when above , feet, elevations which i attained in fine weather only. up to , feet this constant humidity is very marked; the observations made at greater elevations were almost invariably to the north, or leeward of the great snowy peaks, and consequently in a drier climate; and there it will be seen that these proportions are occasionally inverted; and in tibet itself a degree of relative dryness is encountered, such as is never equalled on the plains of eastern bengal or the gangetic delta. whether an isolated peak rising near calcutta, to the elevation of ,ooq feet, would present similar results to the above, is not proven by these observations, but as the relative humidity is the same at all elevations on the outermost ranges of sikkim, which attain , feet, and as these rise from the plains like steep islands out of the ocean, it may be presumed that the effects of elevation would be the same in both cases. the first effect of this humid wind is to clothe sikkim with forests, that make it moister still; and however difficult it is to separate cause from effect in such cases as those of the reciprocal action of humidity on vegetation, and vegetation on humidity, it is necessary for the observer to consider the one as the effect of the other. there is no doubt that but for the humidity of the region, the sikkim himalaya would not present the uniform clothing of forest that it does; and, on the other hand, that but for this vegetation, the relative humidity would not be so great.* [balloon ascents and observations on small mountainous islands, therefore, offer the best means of solving such questions: of these, the results of ballooning, under mr. welsh's intrepid and skilful pioneering (see phil. trans. for ), have proved most satisfactory; though, from the time for observation being short, and from the interference of belts of vapour, some anomalies have not been eliminated. islands again are still more exposed to local influences, which may be easily eliminated in a long series of observations. i think that were two islands, as different in their physical characters as st. helena and ascension, selected for comparative observations, at various elevations, the laws that regulate the distribution of humidity in the upper regions might be deduced without difficulty. they are advantageous sites, from differing remarkably in their humidity. owing partly to the indestructible nature of its component rock (a glassy basalt), the lower parts of ascension have never yielded to the corroding effects of the moist sea air which surrounds it; which has decomposed the upper part into a deep bed of clay. hence ascension does not support a native tree, or even shrub, two feet high. st. helena, on the other hand, which can hardly be considered more favourably situated for humidity, was clothed with a redundant vegetation when discovered, and trees and tree-ferns (types of humidity) still spread over its loftiest summits. here the humidity, vegetation, and mineral and mechanical composition reciprocate their influences.] the great amount of relative humidity registered at to feet, arises from most of the observations having been made on the outer range, where the atmosphere is surcharged. the majority of those at , to , feet, which also give a disproportionate amount of humidity, were registered at the zemu and thlonok rivers, where the narrowness of the valleys, the proximity of great snowy peaks, and the rank luxuriance of the vegetation, all favour a humid atmosphere. i would have added the relative rain-fall to the above, but this is so very local a phenomenon, and my observations were so repeatedly deranged by having to camp in forests, and by local obstacles of all kinds, that i have suppressed them; their general results i have given in appendix f. i here add a few observations, taken on the plains at the foot of the sikkim himalaya during the spring months. _comparison between temperature and humidity of the sikkim terai and calcutta, in march and april, ._ elev. no. above temp. d.p. tension sat. of sea. obs. locality feet c. t. c. t. c. t. c. t. --------------------------------------------------------------------- rummai . . . . . . . . belakoba . . . . . . . . rangamally . . . . . . . . bhojepore . . . . . . . . thakyagunj . . . . . . . . bhatgong . . . . . . . . sahigunj . . . . . . . . titalya . . . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- means . . . . . . . . may, ) . k . . k . . k. . k. kishengunj) --------------------------------------------------------------------- vapour in a cubic foot--kishengunj . terai . calcutta . calcutta . mean difference of temperature between terai and calcutta, from observations in march, as above, excluding minima terai-- . mean difference from observations in march, including minima terai-- . mean difference of temperature at siligore on may , -- . mean difference of temperature at kishengunj on may , -- . from the above, it appears that during the spring months, and before the rains commence, the belt of sandy and grassy land along the himalaya, though only . degrees north of calcutta, is at least degrees or degrees colder, and always more humid relatively, though there is absolutely less moisture suspended in the air. after the rains commence; i believe that this is in a great measure inverted, the plains becoming excessively heated, and the temperature being higher than at calcutta. this indeed follows from the well known fact that the summer heat increases greatly in advancing north-west from the bay of bengal to the trans-sutledge regions; it is admirably expressed in the maps of dove's great work "on the distribution of heat on the surface of the globe." appendix h. on the temperature of the soil at various elevations. these observations were taken by burying a brass tube two feet six inches to three feet deep, in exposed soil, and sinking in it, by a string or tied to a slip of wood, a thermometer whose bulb was well padded with wool: this, after a few hours' rest, indicates the temperature of the soil. such a tube and thermometer i usually caused to be sunk wherever i halted, if even for one night, except during the height of the rains, which are so heavy that they communicate to the earth a temperature considerably above that of the air. the results proved that the temperature of the soil at dorjiling varies with that of the month, from degrees to . degrees, but is hardly affected by the diurnal variation, except in extreme cases. in summer, throughout the rains, may to october, the temperature is that of the month, which is imparted by the rain to the depth of eleven feet during heavy continued falls (of six to twelve inches a day), on which occasions i have seen the buried thermometer indicating a temperature above the mean of the month. again, in the winter months, december and january, it stands degrees above the monthly mean; in november and february degrees to degrees; in march a few degrees below the mean temperature of the month, and in october above it; april and may being sunny, it stands above their mean; june to september a little below the mean temperature of each respectively. the temperature of the soil is affected by:-- . the exposure of the surface; . the nature of the soil; . its permeability by rain, and the presence of underground springs; . the sun's declination; . the elevation above the sea, and consequently the heating power of the sun's rays: and , the amount of cloud and sunshine. the appended observations, though taken at sixty-seven places, are far from being sufficient to supply data for the exact estimation of the effects of the sun on the soil at any elevation or locality; they, however, indicate with tolerable certainty the main features of this phenomenon, and these are in entire conformity with more ample series obtained elsewhere. the result, which at first sight appears the most anomalous, is, that the mean temperature of the soil, at two or three feet depth, is almost throughout the year in india above that of the surrounding atmosphere. this has been also ascertained to be the case in england by several observers, and the carefully conducted observations of mr. robert thompson at the horticultural society's gardens at chiswick, show that the temperature of the soil at that place is, on the mean of six years, at the depth of one foot, degree above that of the air, and at two feet . degrees. during the winter months the soil is considerably (l degree to degrees) warmer than the air, and during summer the soil is a fraction of a degree cooler than the air. in india, the sun's declination being greater, these effects are much exaggerated, the soil on the plains being in winter sometimes degrees hotter than the air; and at considerable elevations in the himalaya very much more than that; in summer also, the temperature of the soil seldom falls below that of the air, except where copious rain-falls communicate a low temperature, or where forests interfere with the sun's rays. at considerable elevations these effects are so greatly increased, that it is extremely probable that at certain localities the mean temperature of the soil may be even degrees warmer than that of the air; thus, at jongri, elevation , feet, the soil in january was . degrees, or . degrees above the mean temperature of the month, immediately before the ground became covered with snow for the remainder of the winter; during the three succeeding months, therefore, the temperature of the soil probably does not fall below that of the snow, whilst the mean temperature of the air in january may be estimated at about degrees, february degrees, march degrees, and april degrees. if, again, we assume the temperature of the soil of jongri to be that of other sikkim localities between , and , feet, we may assume the soil to be warmer by degrees in july (see tungu observations), by degrees or degrees in september (see yeumtong); by l degrees in october (see tungu); and by degrees to l degrees in november (see wallanchoon and nanki). these temperatures, however, vary extremely according to exposure and amount of sunshine; and i should expect that the greatest differences would be found in the sunny climate of tibet, where the sun's heat is most powerful. were nocturnal or terrestrial radiation as constant and powerful as solar, the effects of the latter would be neutralised; but such is not the case at any elevation in sikkim. this accumulated heat in the upper strata of soil must have a very powerful effect upon vegetation, preventing the delicate rootlets of shrubs from becoming frozen, and preserving vitality in the more fleshy, roots, such as those of the large rhubarbs and small orchids, whose spongy cellular tissues would no doubt be ruptured by severe frosts. to the burrowing rodents, the hares, marmots, and rats, which abound at , to , feet in tibet, this phenomenon is even more conspicuously important; for were the soil in winter to acquire the mean temperature of the air, it would take very long to heat after the melting of the snow, and indeed the latter phenomenon would be greatly retarded. the rapid development of vegetation after the disappearance of the snow, is no doubt also proximately due to the heat of the soil, quite as much as to the increased strength of the sun's direct rays in lofty regions. i have given in the column following that containing the temperature of the sunk thermometer, first the extreme temperatures of the air recorded during the time the instrument was sunk; and in the next following, the mean temperature of the air during the same period, so far as i could ascertain it from my own observations. series i.--_soane valley_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- locality muddunpore date feb. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ----------------------------------------------------- locality nourunga date feb. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. . ----------------------------------------------------- locality baroon date feb. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. . ----------------------------------------------------- locality tilotho date feb. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. . ----------------------------------------------------- locality akbarpore date feb. to elevation feet depth ( therm.) ft. in. ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. . ----------------------------------------------------- series ii.--_himalaya of east nepal and sikkim._ ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality base of tonglo date may elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced diff. between air and sunk therm. ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality simsibong date may elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced diff. between air and sunk therm. ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality tonglo saddle date may to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality tonglo summit date may elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality simonbong date may elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality nanki date nov. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality sakkiazong date nov. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality mywa guola date nov. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality banks of tambur date nov. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality banks of tambur higher up river date nov. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality wallanchoon date nov. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality yangma village date nov. , dec. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality yangma river date dec. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality bhomsong date dec. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality tchonpong date jan. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jongri date jan. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality buckeem date jan. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality choongtam date may to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality junction of thlonok and zemu date june to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality tungu date july to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality tungu date oct. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality lamteng date aug. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality choongtam date aug. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality lachoong date aug. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality yeumtong date sept. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality momay date sept. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality yeumtso date oct. to elevation , . feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality lachoong date oct. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality great rungeet date feb. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality leebong date feb. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality kursiong date apr. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality leebong date apr. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality punkabaree date may elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date aug. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date aug. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date aug. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date aug. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date sept. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date sept. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date oct. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date oct. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date feb. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date march to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date april to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality jillapahar (mr. hodgson's) date april elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality superintendent's house date april to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- *sheltered by trees, ground spongy and wet. series iii.--_plains of bengal_ ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality kishengunj date may to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . (dry sand) extreme temperature of air observed . to . (dry sand) approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality dulalgunj date may elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality banks of mahanuddy river date may elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality banks of mahanuddy river date may elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality banks of mahanuddy river may elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality maldah date may elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality mahanuddy river date may elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality ganges date may elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality bauleah date may to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality dacca date may to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- * soil, a moist sand. series iv.--_khasia mountains._ ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality churra date june to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality churra date oct. to nov. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality kala-panee date june to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality kala-panee date aug. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality kala-panee date sept. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality kala-panee date oct. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . * extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality moflong date june to july elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality moflong date july to aug. elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality moflong date oct. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality syong date july to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality syong date oct. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality myrung date july to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality myrung date july to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality myrung date oct. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality myrung date oct. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality nunklow date july to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality nunklow date oct. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality pomrang date sept. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality pomrang date oct. to elevation , feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- * hole full of rain-water. series v.--_jheels, gangetic delta, and chittagong._ ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality silchar date nov. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality silhet date dec. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality noacolly date dec. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality chittagong date dec. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality chittagong date jan. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality chittagong flagstaf hill date dec. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality hat-hazaree date jan. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality sidhee date jan. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality hattiah date jan. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . (shaded by trees) extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality seetakoond date jan. to elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- locality calcutta* date jan. to feb. elevation feet depth ft. in. temp. of sunk therm. . to . extreme temperature of air observed . to . ** approximate mean temp. of air deduced . diff. between air and sunk therm. + . ------------------------------------------------------------------- * observations at the mint, etc., by mr. muller. ** observations for temperature of air, taken at the observatory. appendix i. on the decrement of temperature in ascending the sikkim himalaya mountains and khasia mountains. i have selected as many of my observations for temperature of the sir as appeared to be trustworthy, and which, also, were taken contemporaneously with others at calcutta, and i have compared them with the calcutta observations, in order to find the ratio of decrement of heat to an increase of elevation. the results of several sets of observations are grouped together, but show so great an amount of discrepancy, that it is evident that a long series of months and the selection of several stations are necessary in a mountain country to arrive at any accurate results. even at the stations where the most numerous and the most trustworthy observations were recorded, the results of different months differ extremely; and with regard to the other stations, where few observations were taken, each one is affected differently from another at the same level with it, by the presence or proximity of forest, by exposure to the east or west, to ascending or descending currents in the valleys, and to cloud or sunshine. other and still more important modifying influences are to be traced to the monthly variations in the amount of humidity in the air and the strength of its currents, to radiation, and to the evolution of heat which accompanies condensation raising the temperature of elevated regions during the rainy season. the proximity of large masses of snow has not the influence i should have expected in lowering the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere, partly no doubt because of the more rapid condensation of vapours which it effects, and partly because of the free circulation of the currents around it. the difference between the temperatures of adjacent grassy and naked or rocky spots, on the other hand, is very great indeed, the former soon becoming powerfully heated in lofty regions where the sun's rays pass through a rarefied atmosphere, and the rocks especially radiating much of the heat thus accumulated, for long after sunset. in various parts of my journals i have alluded to other disturbing causes, which being all more or leas familiar to meteorologists, i need not recapitulate here. their combined effects raise all the summer temperatures above what they should theoretically be. in taking calcutta as a standard of comparison, i have been guided by two circumstances; first, the necessity of selecting a spot where observations were regularly and accurately made; and secondly, the being able to satisfy myself by a comparison of my instruments that the results should be so far strictly comparable. i have allowed degree fahr. for every degree in latitude intervening between sikkim and calcutta, as the probable ratio of diminution of temperature. so far as my observations made in east bengal and in various parts of the gangetic delta afford a means of solving this question, this is a near approximation to the truth. the spring observations however which i have made at the foot of the sikkim himalaya would indicate a much more rapid decrement; the mean temperature of titalya and other parts of the plains south of the forests, between march and may being certainly degrees- degrees lower than calcutta: this period however is marked by north-west and north-east winds, and by a strong haze which prevents the sun's rays from impinging on the soil with any effect. during the southerly winds, the same region is probably hotter than calcutta, there being but scanty vegetation, and the rain-fall being moderate. in the following observations solitary readings are always rejected. i.--_summer or rainy season observations at dorjiling._ observations taken during the rainy season of , at mr. hodgson's (jillapahar, dorjiling) alt. , feet, exposure free to the north east and west, the slopes all round covered with heavy timber; much mist hence hangs over the station. the mean temperatures of the month at jillapahar are deduced from horary observations, and those of calcutta from the mean of the daily maximum and minimum. no. of obs. temp. equiv. of month at jillapahar temp. calcutta degree f. ------------------------------------------------------------- july . . feet august . . feet september . . feet october . . feet ------------------------------------------------------------- , mean feet il--_winter or dry season obaervatians at dorjiling._ . observations taken at mr. j. muller's, and chiefly by himself, at "the dale;" elev. , feet; a sheltered spot, with no forest near, and a free west exposure. observations. months: november, december, january, and february degree= ft. . observations at dr. campbell's (superintendent's) house in april; elev. , feet; similar exposure to the last. observations in april degree= ft. . observations by mr. muller at colinton; elev. , feet; free exposure to north-west; much forest about the station, and a high ridge to east and south. observations in winter months degree= ft. . miscellaneous ( ) observations at leebong; elev. feet; in february; free exposure all round degree= ft. . miscellaneous observations at "smith's hotel;" dorjiling, on a cleared ridge; exposed all round; elev. , feet. april and may 	 degree= ft. ----------------- mean of winter observations degree= ft. mean of summer observations degree= ft. ----------------- mean ft. iii.--_miscellaneous observations taken at different places in dorjiling, elevations , to , feet, with the differences of temperature between calcutta and dorjiling._ number difference equivalent month				of observ. of temperature 	 degree f.= ------------------------------------------------------------- january . ft. february . march . april . march and april . july . august . september . october . ------------------------------------------------------------- sum mean . mean ft. these, it will be seen, give a result which approximates to that of the sets i and ii. being deduced from observations at different exposures, the effects of these may be supposed to be eliminated. it is to be observed that the probable results of the addition of november and december's observations, would be balanced by those of may and june, which are hot moist months. iv.--_miscellaneous cold weather observations made at various elevations between and , feet, during my journey into east nepal and sikkim, in november to january and . the equivalent to degree fahr. was deduced from the mean of all the observations at each station, and these being arranged in sets corresponding to their elevations, gave the following results._ number of number of equivalent elevation stations observations degree f.= --------------------------------------------------------------- , to , ft. ft. , to , ft. , to , ft. , to , ft. --------------------------------------------------------------- sum sum mean ft. the total number of comparative observations taken during that journey, amounted to , and the mean equivalent was degree= feet, but i rejected many of the observations that were obviously unworthy of confidence. v.--_miscellaneous observations (chiefy during the rainy season) taken during my journey into sikkim and the frontier of tibet, between may nd and december th, . the observations were reduced as in the previous instance. the rains on this occasion were unusually protracted, and cannot be said to have ceased till mid-winter, which partly accounts for the very high temperatures._ number of number of equivalent elevation stations observations degree f.= --------------------------------------------------------------- , to , ft. ft. , to , ft. , to , ft. , to , ft. --------------------------------------------------------------- sum sum mean ft. the great elevation of the temperature in the lowest elevations is accounted for by the heating of the valleys wherein these observations were taken, and especially of the rocks on their floors. the increase with the elevation, of the three succeeding sets, arises from the fact that the loftier regions are far within the mountain region, and are less forest clad and more sunny than the outer himalaya. a considerable number of observations were taken during this journey at night, when none are recorded at calcutta, but which are comparable with contemporaneous observations taken by mr. muller at dorjiling. these being all taken during the three most rainy months, when the temperature varies but very little during the whole twenty-four hours, i expected satisfactory results, but they proved very irregular and anomalous. the means were-- at stations of greater elevation than dorjiling degree= ft. at stations lower in elevation degree= ft. vi.--_sixty-four contemporaneous observations at jillapahar, , feet, and the bed of the great rungeet river, feet; taken in january and february, give degree= feet. vii.--_observations taken by burying a thermometer two and a half to three feet deep, in a brass tube, at dorjiling and at various elevations near that station._ month february and march upper stations jillapahar, , feet lower stations leebong, feet degree= feet month february upper stations jillapahar, , feet lower stations guard-house, great rungeet, , feet degree= feet month april upper stations leebong, feet lower stations guard-house, great rungeet, , feet degree= feet month april upper stations jillapahar, , feet lower stations khersiong, , feet degree= feet month march and april upper stations khersiong, , feet lower stations punkabaree, , feet degree= feet month march, april, may upper stations jillapahar, , feet lower stations punkabaree, , feet degree= feet mean degree= feet the above results would seem to indicate that up to an elevation of , feet, the temperature diminishes rather more than degree fahr. for every feet of ascent or thereabouts; that this decrement is much leas in the summer than in the winter months; and i may add that it is less by day than by night. there is much discrepancy between the results obtained at greater or less elevations than feet; but a careful study of these, which i have arranged in every possible way, leads me to the conclusion that the proportion map be roughly indicated thus:-- degree= feet, for elevations from to feet. degree= feet, for elevations from to , feet. degree= feet, for elevations from , to , feet. degree= feet, for elevations from , to , feet. viii.--_khasia mountain observations._ churra poonji date june to calcutta observations . degrees number of observations churra observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet date august to september calcutta observations . degrees number of observations churra observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet date october to november calcutta observations . degrees number of observations churra observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet total calcutta observations total churra observations mean degree= feet kala-panee date june, aug., sept. calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet moflong date june, july, aug., oct. calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet syong date calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet myrung date august calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet myrung date october calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet nunklow calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet mooshye date september calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet pomrang date september calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet amwee date september calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet joowy date september calcutta observations . degrees number of observations khasia observations . degrees number of observations degree= feet altitude above the sea , feet total calcutta observations total khasia observations mean degree= feet the equivalent thus deduced is far greater than that brought out by the sikkim observations. it indicates a considerably higher temperature of the atmosphere, and is probably attributable to the evolution of heat during extraordinary rain-fall, and to the formation of the surface, which is a very undulating table-land, and everywhere traversed by broad deep valleys, with very steep, often precipitous flanks; these get heated by the powerful sun, and from them, powerful currents ascend. the scanty covering of herbage too over a great amount of the surface, and the consequent radiation of heat from the earth, must have a sensible influence on the mean temperature of the summer months. appendix j. on the measurement of altitudes by the boiling-point thermometer. the use of the boiling-point thermometer for the determination of elevations in mountainous countries appearing to me to be much underrated, i have collected the observations which i was enabled to take, and compared their results with barometrical ones. i had always three boiling-point thermometers in use, and for several months five; the instruments were constructed by newman, dollond, troughton, and simms, and jones, and though all in one sense good instruments, differed much from one another, and from the truth. mr. welsh has had the kindness to compare the three best instruments with the standards at the kew observatory at various temperatures between degrees and the boiling-point; from which comparison it appears, that an error of l. degrees may be found at some parts of the scale of instruments most confidently vouched for by admirable makers. dollond's thermometer, which dr. thomson had used throughout his extensive west tibetan journeys, deviated but little from the truth at all ordinary temperatures. all were so far good, that the errors, which were almost entirely attributable to carelessness in the adjustments, were constant, or increased at a constant ratio throughout all parts of the scale; so that the results of the different instruments have, after correction, proved strictly comparable. the kettle used was a copper one, supplied by newman, with free escape for the steam; it answered perfectly for all but very high elevations indeed, where, from the water boiling at very low temperatures, the metal of the kettle, and consequently of the thermometer, often got heated above the temperature of the boiling water. i found that no confidence could be placed in observations taken at great elevations, by plunging the thermometer in open vessels of boiling water, however large or deep, the abstraction of heat from the surface being so rapid, that the water, though boiling below, and hence bubbling above, is not uniformly of the same temperature throughout. in the himalaya i invariably used distilled, or snow or rain-water; but often as i have tried common river-water for comparison, i never found that it made any difference in the temperature of the boiling-point. even the mineral-spring water at yeumtong, and the detritus-charged glacial streams, gave no difference, and i am hence satisfied that no objection can be urged against river waters of ordinary purity. on several occasions i found anomalous rises and falls in the column of mercury, for which i could not account, except theoretically, by assuming breaks in the column, which i failed to detect on lifting the instrument out of the water; at other times, i observed that the column remained for several minutes stationary, below the true temperature of the boiling water, and then suddenly rose to it. these are no doubt instrumental defects, which i only mention as being sources of error against which the observer must be on the watch: they can only be guarded against by the use of two instruments. with regard to the formula employed for deducing the altitude from a boiling-point observation, the same corrections are to a great extent necessary as with barometric observations: if no account is taken of the probable state of atmospheric pressure at the level of the sea at or near the place of observation, for the hour of the day and month of the year, or for the latitude, it is obvious that errors of to feet may be accumulated. i have elsewhere stated that the pressure at calcutta varies nearly one inch ( feet), between july and january; that the daily tide amounts to one-tenth of an inch (= feet); that the multiplier for temperature is too great in the hot season and too small in the cold; and i have experimentally proved that more accuracy is to be obtained in measuring heights in sikkim, by assuming the observed calcutta pressure and temperature to accord with that of the level of the sea in the latitude of sikkim, than by employing a theoretical pressure and temperature for the lower station. in the following observations, the tables i used were those printed by lieutenant-colonel boileau for the east india company's magnetic observatory at simla, which are based upon regnault's table of the 'elastic force of vapour.' the mean height of the barometrical column is assumed (from bessel's formula) to be . at temp. degrees, in lat. degrees, which, differing only . from the barometric height corresponding to degrees fahrenheit, as determined experimentally by regnault, gives . as the pressure corresponding to degrees at the level of the sea. the approximate height in feet corresponding to each degree of the boiling-point, is derived from oltmann's tables. the multipliers for the mean temperature of the strata of atmosphere passed through, are computed for every degree fahrenheit, by the formula for expansion usually employed, and given in baily's astronomical tables and biot's astronomie physique. for practical purposes it may be assumed that the traveller, in countries where boiling-point observations are most desired, has never the advantage of a contemporaneous boiling-point observation at a lower station. the approximate difference in height is hence, in most cases, deduced from the assumption, that the boiling-point temperature at the level of the sea, at the place of observation, is degrees, and that the corresponding temperature of the air at the level of the sea is hotter by one degree for every feet of difference in elevation. as, however, the temperature of boiling water at the level of the sea varies at calcutta between july and january almost from . degrees to . degrees, i always took the calcutta barometer observation at the day and hour of my boiling-point observation, and corrected my approximate height by as many feet as correspond to the difference between the observed height of the barometer at calcutta and . ; this correction was almost invariably (always normally) subtractive in the summer, often amounting to upwards of feet: it was additive in winter, and towards the equinoxes it was very trifling. for practical purposes i found it sufficient to assume the calcutta temperature of the air at the day and hour of observation to be that of the level of the sea at the place of observation, and to take out the multiplier, from the mean of this and of the temperature at the upper station. as, however, feet is a near approach to what i have shown (appendix i.) to be the mean equivalent of degree for all elevations between and , feet; and as the majority of my observations were taken between these elevations, it results that the mean of all the multipliers employed in sikkim for forty-four observations amounts to . degrees fahrenheit, using the calcutta and upper station observations, and . degrees on the assumption of a fall of degree for every feet. to show, however, how great an error may accrue in individual cases from using the formula of degree to , i may mention that on one occasion, being at an elevation of , feet, with a temperature of the air of degrees, the error amounted to upwards of feet, and as the same temperature may be recorded at much greater elevations, it follows that in such cases the formula should not be employed without modification. a multitude of smaller errors, arising from anomalies in the distribution of temperature, will be apparent on consulting my observations on the temperature at various elevations in sikkim; practically these are unavoidable. i have also calculated all my observations according to professor j. forbes's formula of degree difference of temperature of boiling-water, being the equivalent of feet at all elevations. (see ed. phil. trans., vol xv. p. .) the formula is certainly not applicable to the sikkim himalaya; on the contrary, my observations show that the formula employed for boileau's tables gives at all ordinary elevations so very close an approach to accuracy on the mean of many observations, that no material improvement in its construction is to be anticipated. at elevations below feet, elevations calculated from the boiling-point are not to be depended on; and dr. thomson remarked the same in north-west india: above , feet also the observations are hazardous, except good shelter and a very steady fire is obtainable, owing to the heating of the metal above that of the water. at all other elevations a mean error of feet is on the average what is to be expected in ordinary cases. for the elevation of great mountain masses, and continuously elevated areas, i conceive that the results are as good as barometrical ones; for the general purposes of botanical geography, the boiling-point thermometer supersedes the barometer in point of practical utility, for under every advantage, the transport of a glass tube full of mercury, nearly three feet long, and cased in metal, is a great drawback to the unrestrained motion of the traveller. in the khasia mountains i found, from the mean of twelve stations and twenty-three observations, the multiplier as derived from the mean of the temperature at the upper station and at calcutta, to be . degrees, and as deduced from the formula to be . degrees. here, however, the equivalent in feet for degree temp. is in summer very high, being degree= feet. (see appendix i.) the mean of all the elevations worked by the boiling-point is upwards of feet below those worked by the barometer. the following observations are selected as having at the time been considered trustworthy, owing to the care with which they were taken, their repetition in several cases, and the presumed accuracy of the barometrical or trigonometrical elevation with which they are compared. a small correction for the humidity of the air might have been introduced with advantage, but as in most barometrical observations, the calculations proceed on the assumption that the column of air is in a mean state of saturation; as the climate of the upper station was always very moist, and as most of the observations were taken during the rains, this correction would be always additive, and would never exceed sixty feet. it must be borne in mind that the comparative results given below afford by no means a fair idea of the accuracy to be obtained by the boiling-point. some of the differences in elevation are probably due to the barometer. in other cases i may have read off the scale wrong, for however simple it seems to read off an instrument, those practically acquainted with their use know well how some errors almost become chronic, how with a certain familiar instrument the chance of error is very great at one particular part of the scale, and how confusing it is to read off through steam alternately from several instruments whose scales are of different dimensions, are differently divided, and differently lettered; such causes of error are constitutional in individual observers. again, these observations are selected without any reference to other considerations but what i have stated above; the worst have been put in with the best. had i been dependent on the boiling-point for determining my elevations, i should have observed it oftener, or at stated periods whenever in camp, worked the greater elevations from the intermediate ones, as well as from calcutta, and resorted to every system of interpolation. even the following observations would be amended considerably were i to have deduced the elevation by observations of the boiling-point at my camp, and added the height of my camp, either from the boiling-point observations there, or by barometer, but i thought it better to select the most independent method of observation, and to make the level of the sea at calcutta the only datum for a lower station. series i.--_sikkim observations._ elev. by barom. or temp. elev. place. month. trigonom. b.p. air by b.p. error (feet) (feet) (feet) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ great rungeet river feb. b . . + bhomsong dec. , . . , - guard house, gt rungeet april , . . , + choongtam aug. , . . , - dengha aug. , . . , - mr. muller's (dorjiling) feb. tr , . . , + dr. campbell's (do.) april , . . , - mr. hodgson's (do.) feb. b , . . , - sinchul jan. tr , . . , - lachoong aug. b , . . , + lamteng aug. , . . , + zemu samdong july , . . , - mainom dec. tr , . . , - junct. of zemu & thlonok july b , . . , + tallum july , . . , - yeumtong sept. , . . , - zemu river june , . . , + tungu july & , . . , - oct. jongri jan. , . . , - zemu river june , . . , + lachee-pia aug. , . . , - momay sept. , . . , - palung oct. , . . , - kongra lama july , . . , + snow-bed above yeumtong sept. , . . , - tunkra pass aug. , . . , + yeumtso oct. , . . , - donkia sept. , . . , + mountain above momay sept. , . . , + sebolah pass sept. , . . , - kinchinjhow sept. , . . , + donkia mountain sept. , . . , - ditto sept. , . . , + bhomtso oct. , . . , - donkia pass sept. , . . , - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ mean - series ii.--_khasia mountains._ elev. elev. place month bar. b.p. tm. air by b.p. diff. (feet) (feet) (feet) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- churra june , . . , - amwee sept. , . . , - nurtiung oct. , . . , - nunklow july , . . , - kala-panee june, july, , . . , - sept., oct. myrung july , . . , - syong july , . . , - moflong july, aug., , . . , - oct., nov. chillong nov. , . . , - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mean , , - appendix k. acttnometer observations. the few actinometer observations which i was enabled to record, were made with two of these instruments constructed by barrow, and had the bulbs of their thermometers plunged into the fluid of the chamber. they were taken with the greatest care, in conformity with all the rules laid down in the "admiralty guide," and may, i think, be depended upon. in the sikkim himalaya, a cloudless day, and one admitting of more than a few hours' consecutive observations, never occurs--a day fit for any observation at all is very, rare indeed. i may mention here that a small stock of ammonia-sulphate of copper in crystals should be supplied with this instrument, also a wire and brush for cleaning, and a bottle with liquid ammonia: all of which might be packed in the box. active . . time always mean. _jillapahar, dorjiling, elev. feet, lat. degrees minutes n., long. degrees minutes e._ a.-- april th, . _watch slow minute seconds mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . day unexceptional, . to . . wind s.w., after . to . . . . . a.m. squally. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . dense haze over . to . . . . . snowy mts. ------------------------------------------------------------------ b.--april th tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . dense haze, . to . . . . . s.e. wind, . to . . . . . cloudless sky. ------------------------------------------------------------------ _superintendent's house, dorjiling. elev. feet._ c.--april st. _watch slow minute mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . day very fine, . to . . . . . snowy mts. in . to . . . . . dull red haze, . to . . wind s.e. faint. ------------------------------------------------------------------ _rampore bauleah (ganges). elev. feet. lat. degrees minutes n., long. degrees minutes e._ may th, . _watch slow seconds mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . s.e. wind, very . to . . . . . hazy to west, sky . to . . . . . pale blue. . to . . . . . wind west, rising. . to . . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ _churra, khasia mountains. elev. feet, lat. degrees minutes n., long. degrees minutes e._ a--november th, . _watch slow minutes mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . sky faint blue, . to . . . . . cloudless, . to . . . . . wind s.w., . to . . . . . clouding. . to . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ b.--november th. _watch slow minutes mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced air ----------------------------------------------------- a.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . ----------------------------------------------------- black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . wind s.w., . to . . . . clouds rise and . to . . . . disperse. . to . . . . sky pale. . to . . to . . to . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ c.--november th. _watch slow minutes mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . sunrise, , pale . to . . . . yellow red, . to . . . . cloudless. . to . . . . . cirrhus below. . to . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ d.--november th. tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . thick cumulus low . to . . . . . on plains. . to . . . . . sunrise yellow . to . . . . . red. . to . . . . . cloudless. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . clouds rise. ------------------------------------------------------------------ e.--november th. tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ hour d.p. diff. sat. ------------------------------------------------------------- a.m. . to . . . . sky cloudless. . to . . . . wind n.e. . to . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------- _silchar (cachar), elev. feet, lat. degrees minutes n., long. degrees e. (approximate)._ november th, _watch slow minutes seconds mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ hour d.p. diff. sat. ------------------------------------------------------------- a.m. . to . . . . dense fog till . to . . p.m. . to . . . . wind north. clear. . to . . . . . to . . . . wind. n.e. light p.m. . to . . . . cirrhus low. . to . . . . . to . . . . streaks of cirrhus . to . . . . aloft. . to . . . . . to . . . . sun sets in hazy cirrhus. ------------------------------------------------------------- _chittagong, elev. feet, lat. degrees minutes n., long. degrees minutes e._ a.--december st, . _watch slow minutes seconds mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . cloudless. . to . . . . . mountains clear. . to . . . . wind e.n.e. cool. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . wind n.w. . to . . . . . . to . . . . wind s.w. p.m. . to . . . . . to . . to . . . . clouds about in . to . patches. ------------------------------------------------------------------ b.-- january , . _watch slow minutes seconds mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . mist rises and . to . . . . . drifts westward . to . . . . . till . a.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . wind n.w., clouds p.m. . to . . . . . rise. . to . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . to . . . . . to . . to . . to . . . . sunset cloudless. . to . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ c.--january , . _watch slow minutes mean time._ tem. act. hour act. act. reduced barom. air ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . p.m. . to . . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . . . to . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ black hour d.p. diff. sat. bulb ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.m. . to . . . . . low, dense fog at . to . . . . sunrise, clear at p.m. . to . . . . . a.m. . to . . . . hills hazy and . to . . . . . horizon grey. . to . ------------------------------------------------------------------ appendix l. table of elevations. in the following tables i have given the elevations of places, chiefly computed from barometric data. for the computations such observations alone were selected as were comparable with contemporaneous ones taken at the calcutta observatory, or as could, by interpolation, be reduced to these, with considerable accuracy: the calcutta temperatures have been assumed as those of the level of the sea, and eighteen feet have been added for the height of the calcutta observatory above the sea. i have introduced two standards of comparison where attainable; namely, . a few trigonometrical data, chiefly of positions around dorjiling, measured by lieutenant-colonel waugh, the surveyor-general, also a few measured by mr. muller and myself, in which we can put full confidence: and, . a number of elevations in sikkim and east nepal, computed by simultaneous barometer observations, taken by mr. muller at dorjiling. as the dorjiling barometer was in bad repair, i do not place so much confidence in these comparisons as in those with calcutta. the coincidence, however, between the mean of all the elevations computed by each method is very remarkable; the difference amounting to only thirty feet in ninety-three elevations; the excess being in favour of those worked by dorjiling. as the dorjiling observations were generally taken at night, or early in the morning, when the temperature is below the mean of the day, this excess in the resulting elevations would appear to prove, that the temperature correction derived from assuming the calcutta observations to correspond with eighteen feet above the level of the sea at sikkim, has not practically given rise to much error. i have not added the boiling-point observations, which afford a further means of testing the accuracy of the barometric computations; and which will be found in section j of this appendix. the elevation of jillapahar is given as computed by observations taken in different months, and at different hours of the day; from which there will be seen, that owing to the low temperature of sunrise in the one case, and of january and october in the others, the result for these times is always lowest. moat of the computations have been made by means of oltmann's tables, as drawn up by lieutenant-colonel boileau, and printed at the magnetic observatory, simla; very many were worked also by bessell's tables in taylor's "scientific memoirs," which, however, i found to give rather too high a result on the averages; and i have therefore rejected most of them, except in cases of great elevation and of remarkable humidity or dryness, when the mean saturation point is an element that should not be disregarded in the computation. to these the letter b is prefixed. by far the majority of these elevations are not capable of verification within a few feet; many of them being of villages, which occupy several hundred feet of a hill slope: in such cases the introduction of the refinement of the humidity correction was not worth the while. series i.--_elevations on the grand trunk-road. february, ._ no. of elevation obs. name of locality feet --------------------------------------------------------------------- burdwan gyra fitcoree tofe choney maddaobund paras-nath saddle b. ,, cast peak ,, flagstaff ,, lower limit of _clematis_ and _berberis_ doomree highest point on grand trunk-road belcuppee hill th mile-stone burree hill rd mile-stone chorparun dunwah bahra th mile-stone sheergotty muddunpore th mile-stone naurungabad baroon (on soane) dearse --------------------------------------------------------------------- series ii.--_elevations in the soane valley. march, ._ no. of elevation obs. name of locality feet --------------------------------------------------------------------- tilotho akbarpore rotas palace tura soane-pore kosdera panchadurma bed of soane above panchadurma pepura bed of soane river chahuchee hirrah kotah kunch sulkun --------------------------------------------------------------------- series iii.--_elevations on the kymore hills. march, ._ no. of elevation obs. name of locality feet --------------------------------------------------------------------- roump shahgunj amoee goorawul mirzapore (on the ganges) --------------------------------------------------------------------- series iv.--_elevations near dorjiling. to ._ no. of elevation obs. name of locality feet --------------------------------------------------------------------- jillapahar (mr. hodgson's house) ,, sunrise ,, . p.m. ,, noon ,, . p.m. ,, p.m. ,, sunset ------- ------- sum mean ======= _ditto by monthly observations._ ======= january february march april july august september october ------- ------- sum mean ======= ======= the dale (mr. muller's) b. ,, by trigonometry superintendent's house b. ,, by trigonometry colinton (mr. muller's) b. leebong b. ,, by trigonometry * summit of jillapahar b. smith's hotel monastery hill below the dale b. . the dale by barometer ------- monastery hill by trigonometry . ======= ging (measured from dale) b. guard-house at great rungeet b. bed of great rungeet at cane-bridge guard-house at little rungeet sinchul top ,, by trigonometry saddle of road over shoulder of sinchul senadah (pacheem) bungalow pacheem village kursiong bungalow b. punkabaree rungniok village b. tonglo, summit b. . ,, ,, by trigonometry . . ,, saddle below summit b. . ,, rocks on ascent of b. source of balasun ,, by dorjiling goong ridge -------------------------------------------------------------------- * to summit of chimney, which may be assumed to be feet above where the barometer was hung. series v.--_elevations in east nepal, october to december, ._ no. by by of calcutta dorjiling obs. name of locality barometer barometer --------------------------------------------------------------------- feet feet source of myong river , myong valley, camp in , , myong valley , , purmiokzong , , shoulder of nanki , ,, shepherds' hut on do. , summit of nanki , , ,, camp on nanki , , jummanoo , , sulloobong , , bheti village , sakkiazong village , , camp on ridge of mountain , , peak on sakkiazong , , makarumbi , , pemmi river , , tambur river at junction with pemmi , , camp on tambur, nov. , , ,, nov. , chintam village , mywa guola , , tambur river, nov. , , ,, nov. , , taptiatok village , , loontoong village , , tambur river, nov. , , wallanchoon village , , tuquoroma , , wallanchoon pass b. , , foot of pass-road , , yangma guola , , base of great moraine , , top of moraine above ditto b. yangma village camp b. , , lake bed in valley , upper ditto (pabuk) b. , yangma valley camp, dec. , , kambachen pass b. , camp below ditto , , kambachen village , camp in valley , , choonjerma pass b. , camp below ditto , , yalloong river-terrace , camp side of valley , , yankatang village , , saddle on road south of khabili , khabang village , , spur of sidingbah, crossed nov. , , yangyading village , , sablakoo , , iwa river, dec. , , ,, dec. , , singalelah, camp on , , islumbo pass , -------------------------------------------------------------------- series vi.-- _elevations in sikkim, december, , and january, ._ no. by by of calcutta dorjiling obs. name of locality barometer barometer --------------------------------------------------------------------- feet feet kulhait valley, camp in , , lingcham village , , bed of great rungeet, december , , lingdam village, december , , nampok village , , bhomsong , , mainom top tr. , b. , neon-gong goompa , pass from teesta to rungeet , lingdam village , , great rungeet below tassiding , tassiding tamples , sunnook, camp on , , bed of ratong , pemiongchi temple , camp at pemiongchi village , , tchonpong village , , bed of rungbi river , camp on ratong river , , doobdi goompa , , yoksun , , dumpook , , buckim , , mon lepcha top , , jongri b. , , ratong below mon lepcha , , ,, below yoksun , , catsuperri lake , , ,, temple , , tengling village , , rungbee river bed , , changachelling temple , , kulhait river , , saddle of hee hill , camp on hee hill , , -------------------------------------------------------------------- series vii.--_elevations in the sikkim terai and plains of india, gangetic delta and jheels._ no. of elevation obs. name of locality feet ------------------------------------------------------------------- siligoree bungalow titalya sahibgunj (west of titalya) bhatgong thakya-gunj bhojepore rummai rangamally belakoba mela-meli kishengunj mahanuddy river between kishengunj and maldah ,, ,, maldah and rampore bauleah rampore (mr. bell's) dacca (mr. atherton's) jheels, dacca and pundua *-. megna river (june st- th) +. soormah (june th) +. pundua (june th and th) +. ,, (sept. th) -. ,, (nov. th and th) - . ------------------------------------------------------------------- * the observations marked thus * are the differences in inches between the readings of my barometer at the station, and that at the calcutta observatory, which is feet above the sea-level. series vii-- _elevations in sikkim, may to december, ._ no. by by of calcutta dorjiling obs. name of locality barometer barometer --------------------------------------------------------------------- feet feet mik, on tendong , namtchi, camp on spur , tendong summit b. , temi, teesta valley , tr. , nampok, teesta valley b. , lingmo, teesta valley b. , , lingtam spur, teesta valley b. , , gorh, ,, b. , , bling-bong, ,, b. , , linga village, ,, b. , , singtam, may to b. , , singtam (higher on hill) oct. to nov. b. , niong , namgah , chakoong , , choongtam, may , , choongtam, august , , dholep, lachen , , dengha, lachen , , latong, lachen , , kampo samdong , , chateng , , chateng, lower on spur , , lamteng village , , zemu samdong , , snow bed across zemu river , camp on banks of zemu , , junction on thlonok and zemu , , camp on banks of zemu river , , zemu river, june , zemu river, higher up, june , yeunga (lachen valley) , tallum samdong , , tungu, july , , tungu, october , , palung plains , sitong , kongra lama pass , , yeumtso (in tibet) , bhomtso (in tibet) , cholamoo lakes (in tibet) , donkia pass, october , donkia pass, september , momay samdong , , measured from momay donkia, september , , kinchinjhow, september , , sebolah pass , , south shoulder of donkia, september , , mountain north of momay, september b. , west shoulder of donkia mountain, sept. b. , _the following were measured trigonometrically._ forked donkia mountain tr. , kinchinjhow mountain tr. , tomo-chamo, east top of kinchinjhow tr. , thlonok mount, peak on tr. , chango-khang mountain tr. , tukcham mountain, from dorjiling tr. , chomiomo mountain tr. , summit of donkia (from donkia pass and bhomtso) tr. , tunkra mountain, from dorjiling tr. , by dorjiling barometer yeumtong , , yeumtong, october , by yeumtong barometer snow bed above yeumtong b. , , punying b. , by dorjiling barometer lachoong village, august b. , , lachoong village, october b. , lacheepia b. , , tunkra pass b. , rock on ascent to ditto b. , , keadom b. , tukcham village b. , rinkpo village b. , laghep b. , phieungoong b. , barfonchen b. , chola pass b. , chumanako b. , phadong b. , tumloong, nov. rd and th b. , higher on hill, nov. th to dec. th b. , yankoong b. , tikbotang b. , camp, dec. th b. , serriomsa b. , dikkeeling b. , singdong b. , katong ghat, teesta b. namten b. , cheadam b. , ------------------------------------------------------------------- series ix.--_khasia mountains, june to november, ._ no. of elevation obs. name of locality feet ------------------------------------------------------------------- churra (mr. inglis's) , churra bungalow opposite church, august , churra bungalow opposite church, oct., nov. , kala-panee bungalow , moflong , chillong hill , syong bungalow , hill south of ditto , myrung bungalow, july , myrung bungalow, sept. , chela nunklow , noukreem , mooshye , pomrang , amwee , joowye , nurtiung , ------------------------------------------------------------------- series x.--_soormah, silhet, megna, chittagong, etc._ no. of elevation obs. name of locality feet ------------------------------------------------------------------- silhet (mr. stainforth's) soormah river, between silhet and megna silchar megna river +. * noacolly (dr. baker's) -. noacolly on voyage to chittagong . ** chittagong (mr. sconce's) chittagong flagstaff-hill at south head of harbour seetakoond hill , seetakoond bungalow -. * hat-hazaree -. hattiah -. sidhee -. chittagong to megna -. ** eastern sunderbunds +. ------------------------------------------------------------------- * difference between barometer at station and calcutta barometer. ** the observations were taken only when the boat was high and dry, and above the mean level of the waters. index. a _abies, brunoniana,_ i. , , , , ; ii. , , , ; _smithiana,_ ii. , , ; _webbiana,_ i. , , , ; ii. , . _abrus precatorius_ (note), i. . _acacia arabica,_ i. , ; _catechu,_ i. , , , ; _serissa,_ i. . _acarus,_ ii. . _aconitum,_ himalayan, ii. ; _palmatum,_ i. ; _napellus,_ i. ; _variegatum_ (note), ii. . acorns, abundance of, i. . _acorus calamusa,_ i. . actinolites, ii. . _adamia cyanea,_ i. . _adenanthera pavonina,_ ii. . _aegle marmelos,_ i. , , (note) i. . agates, i. , . _ailurua ochraceus,_ ii. . akshobya, image of, i. . alligator, i. , ; droppings of in river banks, ii. . alluvium, gangetic, i. , . _alsophila gigantea,_ i. , ; (note), ii. . _spinulosa_ (note), ii. . amber used in sikkim, ii. . _ameletia indica,_ i. . american plants in himalaya, ii. . _amherstia,_ ii. . amlah, sikkim, ii. ; examination by, ii. . amulet, tibetan, i. . amwee, ii. . _andromeda,_ ii. , ; _fastigiata,_ i. . _andropogon acicularis,_ i. ; _muricatus,_ i. . animals at tungu, ii. . antelope, ii. . _antilope hodgsoni,_ ii. . ants' hills, white, i. . _aponogeton,_ i. . apoplexy, symptoms of at great elevations, ii. . apple, crab, ii. ; wild, i. ; ii. . _aquilaria agallocha,_ ii. . _aralia_ used for fodder, i. ; pith yielding rice-paper, i. . ararat, mount, ii. . _areca gracilis,_ ii. (note), i. . _arenaria rupifraga,_ ii. . _argemone mexicana,_ i. . _arisoema,_ i. . _aristolochia saccata,_ ii. . arrat, name of lepchas, i. . arrow-root, i. . _artemisia,_ headache produced by, ii. ; _indica_ (note), ii. . arums, food prepared from, ii. ; poisoning by, ii. . arun river, i. ; ii. , ; sources of, ii. . _asarum,_ ii. . assam valley, view of, ii. . ass, wild, ii. . (see _equus hemionus_ and kiang). _astragalus,_ used for making paper, ii. ; tibetan (note), ii. . atmosphere, dry, i. ; transparency of, ii. , . atmospheric vapours, strata of, i. , . attar of roses, i. . _aucuba,_ i. ; ii. . aurora borealis, i. ; appendix, p. . b baghoda, i. . baikant-pore, i. . bails, or thuggee stations, i. . baisarbatti terrace, i. . baker, dr., ii. . balanites, i. . _balanophora,_ ii. , ; cups made from, i. ; knots caused by, i. . balasun river, i. , . bamboo, dwarf, i. ; eatable grain of, i. ; flowering of, i. , ; kinds of in khasia, ii. ; kinds and uses of in sikkim, i. , ; planted, i. . _bambusa stricta,_ i . bananas, wild, i. , ; scarlet-fruited, ii. . ban, or lepcha knife, i. . banyan tree, i. ; of calcutta gardens, ii. . barnes, mr., i. ; mr. charles, i. . barometer, accident to, ii. ; observations on jheela, ii, . baroon on soane river, i. . _bassia butyracea,_ i. ; _latifolia,_ i. . bath, hot, at bhomsong, i. ; at momay, ii. ; at yeumtong, ii. . beadle, lieut., i. . _beaumontia,_ i. . bee, alpine, ii. ; boring, i. ; leaf-cutting, i. . beejaghur, i. . bees'-nests, i. ; ii. . _begonia,_ alpine, ii. . behar, hills of, i. . belcuppee, i. . bellows, himalayan, ii ; of khasia, ii. ; of leaves, i. . benares, i. ; observatory at, i. . _berberis asiatica_ (note), i. ; _concinna,_ ii. ; _insignis,_ i. . betel-pepper, i. ; ii. . bhaugulpore, i. ; gardens at, i. . bhel fruit, i. . bhomsong, i. ; ii. ; temperature of soil at, i. . bhomtso, ii. , , ; elevation, temperature etc., at, ii. . bhotan, called dhurma country (note), i. ; (note). bhotanese (note), i. ; ii. . bhotan himalaya, i. ; ii. , . bhoteeas, i. , . bhote (note), i. . _bignonia indicta,_ i. . bijooas, or lepcha priests, i. . bikh poison, i. ; ii. . bind hills, i. . birds at momay, ii. ; of khasia, ii. ; of terai, i. . black-rock of colonel waugh (note), ii. . blocks, granite, ii. , ; split, i. ; syenite, ii. . boat on ganges, i. . boga-panee, ii. , . bombax, i. . boodhist banners, i. ; monuments, i. ; temple, i. ; worship, i. , ; worship introduced into sikkim, i. . _borassus,_ i. . bore, or tidal-wave, ii. . bor-panee, ii. , . _borrera,_ ii. , . borr (_pandanus),_ i. ; ii. . _boswellia thurifera,_ i. , . _botrichium virginicum,_ i. . boulders in river-beds, i. ; of gneiss on jongri, i. ; on mon lepcha, i. . _bowringia,_ ii. . bread, tibetan, i. . breccia, modern formation of, i. . bridge, at amwee, ii. ; living, ii. ; of canes, i. ; ii. . _buceros,_ i. . _buchanania,_ i. . _bucklandia,_ ii. . buckwheat, cultivated at jigatzi, ii. ; wild, ii. . _bufo scabra,_ ii. . bugs, flying, i. . burdwan, i. ; coal-fields, i. . burkutta river, i. . burrampooter, altered course of, ii. , ; old bed of, ii. ; tibetan, _see_ yaru-tsampu; view of from khasia, ii. , . _butea frondosa,_ i. , , , . butter, churning, ii. , ; ornaments made of, ii. . butterflies, painted lady, ii. ; at various elevations, ii. , , , ; tropical, i. . c cachar, ii. ; rain-fall at, ii. . _coesalpinia paniculata,_ i. . cajana, i. . _calami,_ species of in himalaya, i. . _calamus,_ ii. . calcutta, journey to, ii. . _callitriche verna?_ (note), ii. . _calotropis,_ i. , ; _c. arborea,_ i. ; temperature of, i. . _caltha palustris_ (note), ii. ; _scaposa_ (note), ii. . camels, i. ; at lhassa, ii. . campbell, dr., joins me in terai, i. ; meet at bhomsong, i. ; at choongtam, ii. ; seizure of, ii. ; sent as superintendent of dorjiling, i. ; treatment of as prisoner, ii. . cane bridge at choongtam, ii. ; at lachoong, ii ; over great rungeet, i. . canoes of teesta, i. , ; of tambur, i. ; swamped, ii. . _capparis acuminata,_ i. . _cardamine hirsuta,_ i. . _cardiopteris,_ ii. . _carex moorcroftii,_ ii. . _carissa carandas,_ i. , . carroway, ii. . _carthancus,_ i. . _caryota urens,_ i. . cascades of khasia, ii. ; of mamloo, ii. . _cassia fistula,_ i. . _casuarina_ (note), ii. . catechu, collecting, i. . _cathcartia,_ ii. . catsuperri, i. ; lake, i. ; temples, i. . cave, lieut., garden at churra, ii. . _cedrela toona,_ i. , ; ii. . _cedrus libami_ (note), i. . central india, hills of, i. . _cervus wallichii,_ antlers of, ii. . chachoo river, ii. . chahuchee, i. . chait, description of, i. ; (note), i. . chakoong, ii. , . _chamaerops khasiana,_ ii. . chameleon, i. . changachelling, i. . chango-khang, ii. , , . chattuc, ii. , , . chaulmoogra (_see_ took), i. . cheadam, ii. . cheer-pine, i. . chela, ii. . chepanga, ii. . cherry, alpine wild, ii. . cheytoong, lepcha boy, ii. . chillong hill, ii. . chinese plants in khasia, ii. ; in sikkim, i. ; ii. . chingtam, i. . chirring (red rose), ii. . chiru. _see_ tchiru, ii. . chittagong, ii. ; leave, ii. . chokli-bi (_smilacina_), ii. . chola, i. ; summit of pass, ii. ; view of from donkia, ii. . cholamoo lake, ii. , , . chomachoo river, i. ; ii. . chomiomo, ii. , , . choombi, ii. . choongtam, ii. , , , ; insects at, ii. ; vegetation of, ii. . choonjerma pass, i. . chumulari, i. , ; ii. ; discussion on, ii. ; view of from khasia, ii. . chunar, i. . chung (limboos), i. . churra-poonji, ii. ; rain-fall at, ii. ; table-land of, ii. ; temperature of, ii. . _cicada,_ i. , ; ii. ; upper limit of, ii. . _cicer arietinum,_ i. . _cinnamomum,_ i. . cinnamon of khasia, ii. . _cirrhopetalum_ (note), ii. . clay of sikkim, i. ; appendix, . _clematis nutans_ (note), i. . _clerodendron,_ i. . climbers, bleeding of, ii. ; of sikkim, i. . coal, of burdwan, i. ; churra, ii. , , ; terai, i. . cobra, mountain, ii. . _cochlospermum,_ i. . cocks, sikkim, i. . _coelogyne,_ i. ; _wallichii,_ i. ; ii. . coffee, cultivation of, at chittagong, ii. ; at bhaugulpore, i. . _coix,_ cultivation of, ii. . coles, i. , . colgong, i. . colvile, sir j., i. . comb of lepchas, ii. ; of mechis, i. . conch shells, in boodhist temples, i. , ; cut at dacca, ii. . conduits of bamboo, i. . _confervae_ of hot springs, i. ; appendix, . conglomerate, ii. , , , , , . _coniferae,_ himalayan, i. . _conocarpus latifolius_ (note), i. . cooch-behar, i. . cooches, i. . cookies, ii. . corbett, dr., i. . cornelians, i. . cornwallis, lord, mausoleum of, i. . corpses, disposal of in sikkim and tibet, i. . cosi river, i. . cowage plant, i. . cows, sikkim, i. ; ii. . crab, fresh-water, ii. . cranes, i. ; (note) ii. . _crawfurdia,_ ii. . crows, red-legged, ii. . _cruciferae,_ rarity of in himalaya, i. . _cryptogramma crispa,_ i. ; ii. , . crystals in gneiss, ii. . _cupressus funebris,_ i. , , . cups, tibetan, i. . currants, wild, i. . currents, ascending, i. . curruckpore hills, i. . cuttack forests, ii. . _cycas pectinata,_ i. , ; ii. ; (note), i. ; trees in calcutta garden, ii. . cyclops, figure resembling (note), ii. . _cynodon dactylon,_ i. . cypress funereal, i. , , . _cypripedium,_ ii. , . d dacca, ii. . dacoits, i. . _dalbergia sissoo,_ i. . dallisary river, ii. . damooda valley, i. . dandelion, ii. . _daphne,_ paper from, ii. . _see_ paper. date-palm, i. , ; dwarf, ii. . datura seed, poisoning by, i. . davis, mr. c. e., i. . _decaisnea,_ new edible fruit, ii. . deer, barking, i. . _delphinium glaciale,_ i. ; ii. . demons, exorcisement of, ii. . _dendrobium densiflorum,_ ii. ; _farmeri,_ etc., ii. ; _nobile,_ ii. ; _pierardi,_ i. . _dentaria_ (a pot-herb), ii. . denudation of himalaya, i. ; of khasia, ii. . deodar (note), i. . dewan, sikkim, i. ; ii. ; arrival at tumloong, ii. ; conferences with, ii. , ; dinner with, ii. ; disgrace of, ii. ; hostility to british, i. ; house of, i. . dhal, i. . dhamersala, i. . dhob grass, i. . dhurma country, name for bhotan, (note), i. ; people (note), i. ; rajah, i. ; seal of, i. . digarchi, ii. . _see_ jigatzi. dijong (name of sikkim), i. . _dilivaria ilicifolia,_ ii. . _dillenia,_ i. , . dinapore, i. . dingcham, ii. , . dingpun, at chola, ii. , ; tibetan, ii. ; tinli, ii. . _diospyros embryopteris,_ i. ; fruit, ii. . _dipterocarpi,_ ii. ; _d. turbinatus,_ ii. . diseases attributed in tibet to elements, ii. . djigatzi, ii. . _see_ jigatzi. dog, loss of, ii. ; tibetan, i. ; wild, i. . do-mani stone, i. . donkia, i. ; ii. ; ascent of, ii. ; forked, ii. ; pass, ii. , ; temperature of, ii. ; tops of, ii. . doobdi temples, i. . dookpa, boodhist sect (note), i. . doomree, i. . dorje, i. . dorjiling, i. ; ceded to british, i. ; climate, i. , ; elevation of, i. ; leave, ii. ; origin of, i. ; prospects of, ii. ; threat of sacking, ii. ; trade at, i. . _duabanga grandiflora,_ i. . dunkotah (east nepal), i. . dunwah pass, i. . dust-storm, i. , . dye, yellow, ii. . e eagle-wood, ii. . earthquake, chittagong, ii. ; noacolly, ii. ; titalya, i. . _edgeworthia gardneri,_ i. , ; ii. , . efflorescence of nitrate of lime, i. ; of soda, i. . eggs of water-fowl in tibet, ii. . ek-powa ghat, i. . _elaeagnus,_ i. . _eleocharis palustris_ (note), ii. . elephants, at teshoo loombo, ii. ; bogged, ii. ; discomforts of riding, i. ; geologising with, i. ; path of, i. ; purchase of, i. ; wild, ii. . _eleusine coracana,_ i. . _enkianthus,_ i. . _ephedra,_ ii. , . _ephemera_ at , feet, ii. . _epipactis,_ ii. . equinoctial gales, ii. . _equus hemionus,_ ii. . _eranoboas_ (note) i. , . _erigeron alpinus_ (note), ii. . _ervum lens,_ i. . _erythrina,_ ii. . _euphorbia ligulata,_ i. ; _pentagona,_ i. ; _neriifolia,_ i. , ; _tereticaulis,_ i. . european plants in himalaya, ii. . _euryale ferox,_ ii. ; seeds of, in peat, ii. . f fair, ; at titalya, i. . falconer, dr., house of, ii. . _falconeria,_ ii. . falkland islands, quartz blocks of, (note), ii. . fan-palm, ii. . fear, distressing symptoms of, ii. . felle, mr., i. . felspar, concretions of, i. . fenny river, mouth of, ii. . ferns, eatable, i. ; european, ii. , . _feronia elephantum,_ i. , , (note), i. . _festuca ovina,_ ii. , (note) ii. . fever, recurrence of at elevations, ii. . _ficus elastica,_ i. ; _infectoria,_ i. . figs, i. . fire, grasses destroyed by, i. ; in forests, i. . fire-wood, sikkim, ii. . fish, dried, ii. ; tibet (note), ii. . fishing basket of mechis, i. . flame, perpetual, ii. . flood, tradition of, i. ; ii. . florican, i. , . forests of sikkim, i. . fossil plants of coal, i. ; of khasia, ii. ; of terai, i. . frogs, sikkim, i. . fruits of sikkim, i. ; ii. . _funaria hygrometrica,_ ii. . fungi, european, ii. . g ganges, fall of, i. ; scenery of, i. . gangetic delta, ii. ; head of, ii. . gangtok kajee, ii. . gardeners, native, i. . gardens, bhaugulpore, i. ; burdwan, i. ; calcutta botanic, i. , ii. ; lieutenants raban and cave's, ii. ; sir lawrence peel's, i. . garnets, amorphous, (note) ii. ; sand of, i. , . garrows, ii. . _gaultheria,_ ii. , . gelookpa, boodhist sect. (note) i. . geology of choongtam, ii. ; khasia mountains, ii. ; outer himalaya, i. , paras-nath, i. . _geranium,_ ii. . ghassa mountains, (note) ii. . ghazeepore, i. . giantchi, ii. , (note) ii. . glaciers of chango-khang, ii. ; donkia, ii. ; himalaya, ii. ; kambachen, i. ; kinchinjhow, ii. , ; lachen valley, ii. ; yangma valley, i. . glory, ornament resembling, ii. ; round deities' heads, ii. . _gnaphalium luteo-album,_ i. . gnarem mountain, ii. . gneiss, characters of, (note) ii. ; cleavage of, ii. ; flexures of, i. . gnow, (wild sheep), ii. . goa, (antelope), ii. . goats, poisoned by rhododendrons, ii. ; shawl-wool, ii. . godowns, opium, i. . goitre, i. . goliath beetles, ii. . goomchen, (tail-less rat), ii. . goong ridge, i. . _gordonia wallichii,_ i. , . gorh, ii. ; lama of, ii. . goruck-nath, figure of, ii. , (note) i. . gossamer spiders, i. , _goughia,_ ii. . gram, i. . grand trunk-road, i. , . granite, blocks of, ii. ; cleavage planes of (note), i. ; of kinechinjhow (note), ii. , (note), ii. ; phenomena of, i. . grant, dr., i. ; mr. j. w., report on dorjiling, i. , grapes, cultivation of, i. ; wild in sikkim, ii. . grasses, absence of on outer himalaya, i. ; gigantic, i. . gravel terraces and beds in terai, i. , , , . great rungeet river, cross, i. ; excursion to, i. . greenstone of khasia, ii. . griffith, dr., i. ; (note) ii. , . _grislea tomentosa,_ (note) i. . grouse, himalayan, ii. . grove, sacred in khasia, ii. . _guatteria longifolia,_ i. . gubroo, i. . guitar, tibetan, i. . gum arabic, i. ; of _cochlospermum,_ i. ; of _olibanum,_ i. . gunpowder, manufacture of, i. . guobah of wallanchoon, i. , . gurjun trees, ii. , . _gyrophora,_ ii. . h hailstorm, i. . halo, i. ; seen from donkia, ii. . _hamamelis chinensis,_ ii. . hamilton, mr. c., i. . _hardwickia binata,_ i. , . hares, terai, i. ; tibetan, ii. . harrum-mo, (wild tribe), ii. . hattiah island, removal of land from, ii. . haze on plains, i. , . hee hill, i. . _helicteres asoca_ (note), i. . _helwingia,_ i. . herbert, major, report on dorjiling, i. . _hierochloe,_ ii. . himalaya, distant view of, i. ; vegetation and scenery of outer, i. ; view of from khasia, ii. , , . _hippophae,_ ii. . _hodgsonia,_ i. ; ii. ; _heteroclita,_ ii. . hodgson, mr., i. ; join in terai, i. ; view from house, i, . _holigarna,_ varnish from, ii. . hollyhock, ii. . honey poisoned by rhododendron flowers, i. ; preservation of bodies in, ii. ; seekers, ii. . hooli festival, i. , . hopkins, mr., on elevation of mountains, i. . hornbills, i. . hornets, ii. . horse-chestnut, indian, i. . horse, wild, ii. . hot-springs, boy passes night in, ii. ; of momay, ii. , ; seetakoond, i. ; soorujkoond, i. ; yeumtong, ii. . house, lama's, i. ; tibetan, at yangma, i. ; wallanchoon, i. . _houttynia,_ ii. . _hydnocarpus,_ ii. . _hydropeltis_ (note), ii. . i ice, accumulation of, ii. ; action of, i. (note), ii. ; transport of plants in, ii. . _imperata cylindrica,_ i. . india-rubber tree, i. ; ii. . indo-chinese races, i. . _infusoria_ at , feet, ii. . inglis, mr. h., ii. . insects at feet, ii. ; choongtam ( feet), ii. ; dorjiling (note), ii. ; lamteng ( feet), ii. ; momay ( , feet), ii. ; tallum ( , feet), ii. ; tunga ( , feet), ii. ; zemu river ( , feet) ii. ; zemu samdong ( feet), ii. . iron forges, chime of hammers, ii. ; sand, ii. ; smelting of, in khasia, ii. ; stone, i. . irvine, dr., i. . islumbo pass, i. . ivy, ii. . j jaws, i. , . japanese plants in sikkim, i. ; ii. . jarool (_lagerstroemia_), ii. . jasper rocks, i. . jatamansi, i. . jeelpigoree, i. ; rajah of, i. . jerked meat, i. ; ii. . jews' harp, tibetan, i. ; ii. . jhansi-jeung, _see_ giantchi, ii. . jheels, ii. , ; brown waters of, ii. . jigatzi (note), ii. , ; temperature of, ii. . job's tears, cultivation of, ii. . jongri, i. . joowye, ii. . jos, image of, at yangma, i. . jummul river, ii. . _juncus bufonius,_ i. , . jung bahadoor, ii. , . juniper, black, sketch of, ii. . _juniperus recurva,_ ii. , . junnoo mountain, i. , , . jyntea hills, ii. . k _kadsura,_ ii. . kajee, i. . kala-panee, ii. . kambachen, or nango pass, i. ; top of, i. ; village, i. . kambajong, ii. . kanglachem pass, i. . kanglanamo pass, i. , , . katior-pot (_hodgsonia_), ii. . katong-ghat, ii. . kaysing mendong (note), i. , . keadom, ii. . kenroop-bi (_dentaria_), ii. . khabili valley, i. . khamba mountains, ii. . khasia, climate of, ii. ; geology of, ii. ; leave, ii. ; people of, ii. . khawa river, i. . khutrow (_abies smithiana_), ii. . kiang, ii. . kiang-lah mountains, ii. , . kidnapping, i. . kinchinjhow, ii. , , , ; glacier of, ii. , . kinchinjunga, i. ; circuit of, i. ; view of from bhomtso, ii. ; from choongtam, ii. , ; from donkia pass, ii. ; from dorjiling, i. ; from sebolah, ii. ; from thlonok, ii. . kishengunj, i. ; ii. . kollong rock, ii. . kongra lama, ii. ; pass, ii. . kosturah (musk-deer), i. . kubra, i. , . kulhait river, i. , ; valley, i. . kumpa lepchas i. ; rong, i. . kunker, i. , , , , : kursiong, i. , , . kurziuk, i. . kuskus, i. . kymore hills, geology of, i. ; sandstone of, i. . l lac, i. . lacheepia, ii. . lachen-lachoong river, ii. , . lachen phipun, ii. , , ; conduct of, ii. ; tent of, ii. . lachen river, ii. ; length of, and inclination of bed, ii. . lachoong phipun, ii. ; valley, headstreams of, ii. ; village, ii. ; revisited, ii. . _lagerstroemia grandiflora,_ i. . _reginae,_ ii. . laghep, ii. . _lagomys badius,_ ii. . _lagopus tibetanus,_ i. . lailang-kot, ii. . lake-beds in yangma valley, i. , , , . lakes caused by moraines, ii. . lamas, arrival of at tumloong, ii. ; dance of, i. ; music of, i. ; ii. ; pemiongchi, ii. ; of sikkim, i. ; of simonbong, i. ; worship of, i. ; ii. . lamteng, ii. , , . landslips, ii. , , , . larch himalayan, i. ; sketch of, ii. . _larix griffithii,_ i. ; ii. . lassoo kajee, ii. . laurels, i. . lautour, mr., ii. . leaf-insect, ii. . lebanon, cedar of, i. . _lecidea geographica,_ i. , ; ii. ; _oreina,_ ii. . leebong, i. . leeches, i. , ; ii. ; upper limit of, ii. . _leguminosae,_ absence of in himalaya, i. . lelyp, i. . _lemma minor,_ i. . lemon-bushes, wild, ii. . lepchas, i. ; diseases of, i. ; dress and ornaments of, i. ; ii. ; food of, i. ; music of, i. ; peaceable character of, i. , . _lepus hispidus,_ i. ; _oiostolus,_ ii. . _leucas,_ a weed in fields, i. . _leuculia gratissima,_ i. , ; _pinceana,_ ii. . _leycesteria,_ i. . lhassa (note), ii. ; notices of, i. ; ii. , . lichens, arctic, i. ; ii. , , . _licuala peltata_ (note), i. . lignite, i. . liklo mountain, ii. . _lilium giganteum_ (note), ii. . little rungeet, cross, i. , ; guardhouse at, i. ; source of, i. . limboos, i. ; language of, i. . lime, deposit of, i. ; ii. ; nitrate of, i. . limestone, at rotas, i. ; nummulite, ii. , ; of churra, ii. ; spheres of, i. ; tibetan, ii. . lime-tuff, impression of leaves on, i. . _limosella aquatica,_ i. . _linaria ramosissima,_ i. . lingcham, i. , ; kajee of, i. , , . lingo cane-bridge, ii. . _linum trigynum_ (note), i. . lister, colonel, ii. . lizard, i ; ticks on, i. . lohar-ghur, i. . luminous wood, ii. . lushington, mr., sent to dorjiling, ii. . _lycopodium clavatum,_ ii. . _lyellia crispa,_ ii. . _lymnaea hookeri,_ ii. . m machoo valley, ii. . maddaobund, i. . _magnolia, campbellii,_ i. , ; _excelsa,_ i. ; distribution of (note), i. . magras, aborigines of sikkim, i. . mahaldaram, i. . mahanuddy river, i. , ; ii. . mahaser, a kind of carp, i. . mahowa, i. , . maidan (term as applied to tibet), ii. . mainom mountain camp on, i. ; summit of, i. . maitrya, the coming boodh, i. . maize, hermaphrodite, i. ; roasted, ii. . malayan plants in himalaya, ii. . maldah, ii. . mamloo, village and waterfalls of, ii. . mango, blossoming, i. . mani, or praying-cylinder, i. , , ; turned by water, i. . _mantis_ of khasia, ii. . _marlea,_ ii. . marmot, i. ; head and feet of, ii. . martins' nest, spiders in, i. . may-fly at , feet, ii. . m'lelland, dr., i. . mealum-ma (nettle), ii. , . mechi fisherman, i. ; river, i. ; tribe, i. , . _meconopsis,_ i. ; ii. ; _nepalensis,_ ii. . meepo, i. ; house of, ii. ; joined by, ii. ; wife of, ii. . megna, altered course of, ii. ; navigation of, ii. . _melastoma,_ ii. . mendicant, tibetan, ii. . mendong, i. , ; kaysing (note), i. . _menziesia,_ ii. . _mesua ferrea,_ ii. . midsummer, weather at, ii. . mirzapore, i. . moflong, ii. . momay samdong, arrival at, ii. ; climate of, ii. ; second visit to, ii. . monastic establishments of sikkim, i. . monghyr, i. . monkeys, i. ; ii. . mon lepcha, i. . _monotropa,_ ii. . monuments of khasia, ii. . moormis, i. . mooshye, ii. . moosmai, ii. . moraines, ancient, at lachoong, ii. ; at tallum, ii. ; at yangma, i. , ; extensive, ii. ; indicating changes of climate, i. . morung of nepal, i. , . mountains, deceptive appearance of, ii. . moss of puff-ball, ii. . mudar (_calotropis_), i. . muddunpore, i. . mugs at chittagong, ii. . mulberry, wild, i. . mules, tibetan (note), ii. . mungeesa peak, i. . munnipore dance, ii. ; frontier, ii. ; (note), ii. . _murraya exotica,_ i. . murwa beer, i. , , , ; grain, i. . mushroom, eatable, ii. . musk-deer, i. ; ii. . muslin, dacca, ii. . mutton, dried saddles of, ii. . myong valley (east nepal), i. . myrung, ii. . mywa guola, i. ; sunk thermometer at, i. . n nagas, ii. . nageesa (_mesua ferrea_), ii. . namten, ii. . nango mountain i. ; or kambachen pass, i. . nanki mountain, i. . napleton major, i. . _nardostachys jatamansi,_ i. ; (note), ii. . _nauclea cordifolia,_ i. ; _parvifolia,_ i. . neongong temple, i. . nepal, east, journey to, i. . nepalese himalaya, i. , nepenthes, ii. . nettles, i. ; gigantic, i. ; ii. . nightingales, i. . nimbus of the ancients (note), ii. . ningma, boodhist sect (note), i. . _nipa fruticans,_ i. ; ii. . nishung, or moormis, i. . noacolly, ii. ; extension of land at, ii. . nonkreem, ii. . nummulites of khaaia limestone, ii. . nunklow, ii. . nunnery at tumloong, ii. . nursing, i. , . nurtiung, ii. . nut, himalayan, ii. . nutmegs, wild, ii. . _nymphaea pygmaea,_ ii. . oaks, i. ; distribution of in india (note), ii. ; sikkim, i. ; upper limit of, ii. . observatory at benares, i. . oil of _bassia butyracea,_ i. ; of _b. latifolia,_ i. ; kuskus, i. ; mustard, linseed, and rape, i. ; uggur, ii. ; wood, ii. . _olax scandens,_ i. . _olibanum,_ indian, i. . olivine (note), ii. . omerkuntuk, i. . onglau (mushroom), ii. . opium, east indian, cultivation and manufacture of, i. ; quality of, i. . _opuntia,_ i. . _orchideae,_ growth of in khasia, ii. ; of khasia, ii. . _orobanche,_ himalayan, i. ; _indica,_ i. . ortolan, i. . otters, i. . _ovis ammon,_ i. ; ii. ; skulls of, i. . _oxalis sensitiva,_ i. . _oxytropis chiliophylla_ (note), ii. . p pacheem, i. ; vegetation of, . painom river, ii. . palibothra, i. . palms, distribution of in sikkim, i. ; fan, i. ; of khasia, ii. . palung plains, ii. , ; view of from sebolah, ii. . _pandanus,_ i. ; ii. . papaw, ii. . paper, manufactory at dunkotah, i. ; of _astragalus,_ ii. ; of _daphne_ and _edgeworthia,_ i. , ; ii. ; of tibet, ii. . _papilio machaon,_ ii. ; (note), ii. . paras-nath, i. , ; geology of, i. ; summit of, i. . _paris,_ ii. . _parochetus communis,_ ii. . patchouli plant, ii. . patna, i. . pawn, i. . peaches, sikkim, i. ; cultivation of, ii. . peacock wild, i. . peat at calcutta, ii. . pea-violet, ii. . peel, sir l., garden of, i. . peepsa, i. . pelicans, mode of feeding, i. . pemberton, capt., treatment of his embassy in bhotan (note), ii. . pemiongchi temple, i. . pemmi river (east nepal), i. . pepper, betel, i. . perry mr., i. . peuka-thlo, ii. . phadong goompa, ii. ; confinement at, ii. . phari, ii. . pheasant (kalidge), i. ; horned, ii. . phedangbos (limboo priests), i. . phenzong goompa, ii. . phieungoong, i. ; ii. . phipun, lachen, ii. , ; of lachoong, ii. . _phoenix acaulis,_ i. ; (note), i. , ; dwarf, i. , ; _paludosa,_ i. ; ii. ; _sylvestris,_ i. . phosphorescent wood, ii. . _photinia,_ ii. . phud (tibet mendicant), ii. . _phyllanthus emblica,_ i. ; (note), i. . _picrorhiza,_ i. . pigeons, ii. . pines, gigantic, ii. ; himalayan, i. ; ii. , ; rarity of in sikkim, i. . _pinguicula,_ ii. . _panus excelsa, ii. , ; _khasiana,_ ii. , , ; _longifolia,_ i. , , , ; ii. , . _piptanthus nepalensis,_ ii. . pitcher-plant, ii. . _plantago_ leaves, used to dress wounds, ii. . plantain, scarlet-fruited, ii. ; wild, i. . plants, english, on soane river, i. ; english, on ganges, i. ; temperature of, i. ; of english genera in terai (note), i. . _plectocomia,_ i. . plumbago, i. ; ii. . _poa annua,_ i. , ; _laxa,_ ii. poa (fibre of _boemeria_), i. . _podocarpus neriifolia_ (note), i. . _podostemon_ (note), ii. . poisoners, i. . poisoning of goats by rhododendrons, ii. ; of bhoteeas by arum-roots, ii. . _polygonum cymosum,_ ii. . _polypodium proliferum,_ i. . pomrang, ii. . pony, tibetan, i. ; ii. ; (note), ii. . poppy, cultivation of, i. ; ii. . porcupine, i. . _potamogeton natans,_ i. . potatos, culture of in east nepal, i. ; khasia, ii. ; sikkim, i. . _pothos,_ ii. . praong (bamboo), i. , . _primula petiolaris,_ i. ; _sikkimensis,_ ii. . _prinsepia_ (note), ii. , . _procapra picticaudata,_ ii. . _prunella,_ ii. ; _vulgaris,_ ii. . _prunus,_ used for fodder, i. . _pteris aquilina,_ ii. ; (note), ii. . pullop-bi (_polygonum_), ii. . pulse accelerated at great elevations, ii. , . pundim mountain, i. ; cliff of, i. . pundua, ii. . punkabaree, i. , , . purnea, i. . _pyrola,_ ii. . q quartz-beds folded, i. ; blocks in falkland islands (note), ii. . _quercus semecarpifolia,_ i. . quoits, i. . r raban, lieut., ii ; garden of at churra, ii. . radiation, powerful in valleys, i. . rageu (deer), ii. . rain-fall at churra, ii. ; at noacolly, ii. ; diminution of at rotas, i. ; in sikkim (appendix), ; silchar, ii. . rajah, sikkim, audience of, i. ; poverty of, i. ; (note), ii. ; presents from, ii. ; punishment of, ii. ; residence of, ii. , . raj-ghat i. . rajmahal hills, i. . raklang pass, i. . ramchoo lake (of turner), ii. , . rampore bauleah, ii. . ranee of sikkim, presents from, ii. . rangamally, i. . _ranunculus aquatilis,_ ii. ; _hyperboreus_ (note), ii. ; _sceleratus,_ i. , . ratong river, i. . rat, tail-less, ii. . red snow, absence of in himalaya, ii. . release from confinement, ii. . reptiles of khasia, ii. ; of sikkim, ii. . _rhododendrons,_ i. , ; alpine, i. ; ii. ; _anthopogon,_ i. , ; _arboreum,_ i. , , , , ; ii. ; _argenteum,_ i. , ; ii. ; _aucklandii,_ ii. ; _barbatum,_ i. , ; _campylocarpum,_ i. ; _dalhousiae,_ i. , ; ii. ; distribution of at chola (note), ii. ; _edgeworthii,_ ii. ; _falconeri,_ i. , , ; flowering of at different elevations, ii. ; _formosum,_ ii. ; _hodgsoni,_ i. , ; leaves curled by cold, ii. ; _nivale,_ ii. , ; of churra, ii. ; poisoning of goats by, ii. ; _setosum,_ i. , ; superb at choongtam, ii. . rhubarb, gigantic, ii. ; used as tobacco, ii. . rice-paper plant (note), i. . rice, sikkim, i. ; upper limit of cultivation, ii. . ringpo, ii. . ripple-mark on sandstone, i. , . rivers, diurnal rise and fall of, ii. ; of west bengal, i. ; temperature of, ii. ; velocity of, ii. . rocks, absence of scratched in sikkim, ii. ; falling, ii. ; moutonneed, ii. ; moved by frosts, etc., ii. ; retention of heat by, i. ; strike of in tibet, ii. . rong (name of lepchas), i. . _rosa involucrata,_ ii. ; _macrophylla,_ ii. ; _sericea,_ i. . rose gangetic, (_rosa involucrata_), ii. ; gardens, i. ; large-flowered, ii. . rotas-ghur, i. ; palace, i. . _rottlera tinctoria,_ i. . rummai, i. . ryott valley, ii. . s saddle, tibetan, i. . sakkya, invocation of, i. ; sing, i. ; thoba, i. . sakkyazong, i. , ii. . sal, i. . _salix tetrasperma,_ i. ; _babylonica,_ ii. . _salmonidae,_ distribution of in asia, (note) ii. . salt, country in tibet, ii. ; monopoly of by indian government, ii. . _salvinia,_ ii. . sandal-wood, red, ii. . sandstone of kala-panee, ii. ; of khasia, ii. ; of kymore hills, i. ; of terai, i. , ; slabs of, . sara (crane) breeding in tibet (note), ii. . sar-natb, i. . satpura range, i. . _satyrium nepalense_ (note), ii. . _saussurea,_ bladder-headed, ii. ; _gossypina,_ i. . _saxifraga,_ arctic, i. ; _ciliaris,_ ii. ; (note) ii. . _scirpus triquetra_ (note), ii. . _scitamineae,_ ii. . sconce, mr., ii. . scorpions, i. . scratched rocks, absence of in sikkim, ii. . seal of bhotan rajah, i. . seasons of vegetation in sikkim, ii. . sebolah pass, ii. . seetakoond bungalow and hill, ii. ; hot springs of, i. ; perpetual flame at, ii. . sepoys, lepcha and tibetan, ii. . shahgunj, i. . shales, carbonaceous in terai, i. . sheep, breeding of, ii. ; feeding on rhododendron leaves, i. ; grazed at , feet, ii. ; at , feet, ii. ; tibetan, i. ; wild, i. , ii. . sheergotty, i. . shell-lac, i. . shells, ii. ; alpine, ii. . shepherd's purse, i. . shigatzi (_see_ jigatzi). shooting, prejudice against, ii. . showa (stag) antlers of, ii. . shrubs, northern limits of, ii. . siberian plants in himalaya, ii, , , , . sidingbah (note), i. , . sikkim, climate of, i. ; rajah, i. , ; vegetation, i. ; dewan, i. . silchar, ii. . silhet, ii. , ; leave, ii. . siligoree, i. , . silok-foke, lama of, ii. . simonbong temple, i. . _simulium,_ i. . sinchul, ascent of, i. , ; plants of, i. . singdong, ii. . singtam soubah, ii. ; at chola, ii. ; dismissal of, ii. ; illness of, ii. ; joined by, ii. . singtam village, ii. . sissoo, i. . sitong, ii. . _skimmia,_ i. ; _laureola,_ i. . sleeman, major, reports on thuggee, i. . slopes, inclination of in sikkim, i. . _smilacina_ (a pot-herb), ii. . snake-king, image of, i. , (note) i. . snakes, ii. , . snow, perpetual ii. , , ; phenomena of (note), i. ; shades, i. ; storms, i. . snowy himalaya, views of from tonglo i. ; very deceptive appearance of, i. . soane, i. ; cross, i. , , ; elevation of bed, i. ; mouth of, i. ; pebbles, i. , ; plants in bed of, i . soda, sesqui-carbonate of, i. ; effloresced, ii. . soil, temperature of, i. , , , , , , , ; at bhomsong, i. . songboom, i. . soormah river, ii. ; basin of, ii. . soorujkoond, hot-springs of, i. . sound, produced by boulders in rivers, ii. ; transmission of, i. . _sparganium ramosum_ (note), ii. . _sphaerostema,_ ii. . _sphynx atropos,_ i. . spiders in martins' nests, i. , _spondias mangifera,_ i. . squirrels, i. . stainforth, mr., house at pomrang, ii. ; at silhet, ii. . _sterculia foetida,_ i. . stick lac, i. . sticks, warming (note), ii. . _stipa,_ ii. . _stauntonia,_ i. . strawberry of the plains, i. ; alpine, ii. . _struthiopteris,_ ii. . _strychnos potatorum,_ i. . _stylidium,_ ii. . _styloceras ratna,_ i. . sulkun, i. . sultangunj, rocks of, i. . sundeep island, deposit of silt on, ii. . sunderbunds, ii. ; compared with jheels, ii. ; vegetation of, ii. . _sunipia_ (note), ii. . sunnook, i. . sunrise, false, i. . sunset, false, i. ; in tibet, ii. . suspension bridge, iron, i. . syenite, blocks of, ii. . _symplocos,_ dye from, ii. . syong, ii. . t taktoong river, ii. . _talauma hodgsoni,_ i. . taldangah, i. . tallum samdong, ii. , . tamarind tree, i. . tamarisk, i. . tambur river, i. ; elevation and slope of bed, i. . tanks, plants in, i. ; movements of water in, ii. . taptiatok (e. nepal), i. . tassichooding temples, i. . tassiding, i. , ; temples, i. ; foundation, i, . tchebu lama, i. ; ii. , ; house and chapel of, ii. . tchiru (antelope), ii. . tchuka (rhubarb), ii. . tea, buttered, ii. ; brick, i. ; made of _photinia,_ etc., ii. ; tibetan, ii. . teal, english, ii. . tea-plants, i. ; cultivation of in sikkim, i. ; cut by hail at dorjiling, i. ; at myrung, ii. ; chittagong, ii. . teelas, ii. , . teesta river, at bhomsong, i. ; exit from mountains, i. ; in plains, i. ; junction with great rungeet, i. ; signification of, i. ; temperature of, i. ; ii. . teeta (febrifuge), i. . temples of catsuperri, i. ; changachelling, i. ; choongtam, ii. ; doobdi, i. ; neongong, i. ; pemiongchi,i. ; phadong, ii. ; simonbong, i. ; tassichooding, i. ; tassiding, i. ; wallanchoon, i. ; yangma, i. ; various, i. ; mode of building, i. ; worship in, i. , ; ii. . tendong, i. ; ii. .; summit of, ii. . terai, i. , ; definition of, i. ; excursion to, i. ; meteorology of, i. ; of khasia, ii. ; seizure of, ii. ; vegetation of, i. . terraces, at baisarbatti, i. ; junction of zemu and thlonok, ii. ; momay, ii. ; yalloong, i. ; yangma, i. , . terya, ii. . teshoo loombo (note), ii. . _tetrao-perdrix nivicola,_ ii. . _thalictrum,_ i. ; _alpinum,_ ii. ; _glyphocarpum_ (note), i. . thermometer, black bulb, i. ; boiling-point, ii. , , appendix, ; lost, ii. ; minimum left on donkia pass, ii. ; sunk, i. ; appendix, , . thigh-bone, trumpet of, i. , . _thlaspi arvense,_ ii. . thlonok river, ii. . thomson, dr., joined by, ii. . thugs, river, i. ; suppression of, i. . tibet, animals of, ii. , , ; enter, ii. ; inhospitality of climate, i. ; snow-line, elevation of in, ii. , . tibetans, i. ; blackening faces of women, ii. ; camp of, ii. ; charm-box, i. ; child's coral, ii. ; churns, ii. ; cups, i. ; diet, i. ; dingpun, ii. ; dogs, i. ; drunk, i. ; guitar, i. ; headdresses, ii. ; hospitality, ii. ; household, i. ; houses, ii. ; pipe, i. ; salute, i. ; sepoys, ii. , , ; tea, i. ; ii. ; tents, ii. . ticks, i. , ; ii. . tidal-wave, ii. . tide in bay of bengal, ii. ; in sunderbunds, ii. . tiger hunt, i. . tikbotang, ii. . tingri, ii. . titalya, i. , . toad, javanese, ii. . tobacco, chinese, ii. ; made from rhubarb, ii. . toddy-palm, i. , , . tofe choney, i. . tomo-chamo mountain, ii. . tong (arum-roots prepared for food), ii. ; collection and preparation of, ii. . tonglo, i. ; camp on, i. ; elevation of, i. ; excursion to, i. ; summit of, i. ; temperature of, i. ; vegetation of, i. . took (_hydnocarpus_), ii. . (_see_ chaulmoogra). toon (_cedrela_), i. , . tourmalines, i. ; ii. . toys, children's in sikkim, i. . travelling equipment, i. . tree-fern, i. ; ii. ; in silhek, ii. . end of volume ii of himalayan journals. generously made available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/climbingonhimala collrich transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. the carat character (^) indicates that the following character(s) enclosed in curly brackes is/are superscripted (examples: k^{ }, e^{ }). climbing on the himalaya and other mountain ranges * * * * * * _printed at the edinburgh university press_, by t. and a. constable, for david douglas. london simpkin, marshall, hamilton, kent and co., ltd. cambridge macmillan and bowes. glasgow james maclehose and sons. * * * * * * [illustration: a stormy sunset.] climbing on the himalaya and other mountain ranges by j. norman collie, f.r.s. member of the alpine club edinburgh david douglas all rights reserved preface after a book has been written, delivered to the publisher, and the proofs corrected, the author fondly imagines that little or no more is expected of him. all he has to do is to wait. in due time his child will be introduced to the world, and perhaps an enthusiastic public, by judicious comments on the virtues of the youngster, will make the parent proud of his offspring. before, however, this much-desired event can take place, custom demands that a preface, or an introduction of the aforesaid youngster to polite society, must be written. unfortunately also the parent has to compile a list or index of the various items of his progeny's belongings that are of interest; so that nothing be left undone that may be of service to the young fellow, what time he makes his bow before a critical audience. in books on travel, nowadays, it is customary often somewhat to scamp this necessary duty, and, after a few remarks in the preface, on subjects not always of absorbing interest, to conclude with the hope that the reader will be as interested in the description of places he has never seen as the author has been in writing about them. of course, formerly these matters were better managed. in the 'epistle dedicatorie,' the author would at once begin with:--'to the most noble earle'--then with many apologies, all in the best english and most perfect taste, he, under the patronage of the aforesaid noble earle, would launch his venture on to the wide seas of publicity, or perhaps growing bolder, would put forth his wares with some such phrases as the following:--'and now, oh most ingenuous reader! can you find narrated many adventures, both on the high mountains of the earth, and in far countries but little known to the vulgar. here are landscapes brought home, and so faithfully wrought, that you must confess, none but the best engravers could work them. here, too, may'st thou find described diverse parts of thine own native land.' 'choose that which pleaseth thee best. not to detain thee longer, farewell; and when thou hast considered thy purchase, may'st thou say, that the price of it was but a charity to thyself, so not ill spent.' j. n. c. campden grove, london, _ th march _ note four of the chapters in this book have appeared before in the pages of the scottish mountaineering club _journal_ (a chuilionn, wastdale head, a reverie, and the oromaniacal quest). they all, however, have been partly rewritten, so the author trusts that he may be excused for offering to the public wares which are not entirely fresh. the fragment from a lost ms., and part of the chapter on the lofoten islands, were first printed in the _alpine journal_. the author also takes this opportunity of thanking mr. colin b. phillip, first, for allowing photogravure reproductions to be made of two of his pictures (the coolin and the macgillicuddy's reeks), and secondly, for the great trouble mr. phillip took in producing the three sketches of the himalayan mountains which are to be found in the text. contents the himalaya-- chap. page i. general history of mountaineering in the himalaya, ii. our journey out to nanga parbat, iii. the rupal nullah, iv. first journey to diamirai nullah and the diamirai pass, v. second journey to diamirai nullah and ascent to , feet, vi. ascent of the diamirai peak, vii. attempt to ascend nanga parbat, viii. the indus valley and third journey to diamirai nullah, the canadian rocky mountains, the alps, the lofoten islands, a chuilionn, the mountains of ireland, prehistoric climbing near wastdale head, a reverie, the oromaniacal quest, fragment from a lost ms., notes on the himalayan mountains, index, list of illustrations a stormy sunset, _frontispiece_ a himalayan camp, to face page a himalayan nullah, " " the diamirai pass from the red pass, " " the mazeno peaks from the red pass, " " the diamirai peak from the red pass, " " view of the diamirai peak from the red pass, " " on nanga parbat, from upper camp, " " nanga parbat from the diamirai glacier, " " do. do. do., " " view of diama glacier from slopes of diamirai peak, " " the diama pass from the rakiot nullah, " " the chongra peaks from the red pass, " " the freshfield glacier, " " a crevasse on mont blanc, " " lofoten, " " the coolin, " " the macgillicuddy's reeks, " " list of maps map of kashmir, to face page map of nanga parbat, " " canadian rocky mountains. map of the ice-fields and the mountains, " " chapter i general history of mountaineering in the himalaya 'let him spend his time no more at home, which would be great impeachment to his age in having known no travel in his youth.' shakespeare. at some future date, how many years hence who can tell? all the wild places on the earth will have been explored. the cape to cairo railway will have brought the various sources of the nile within a few days' travel of england; the endless fields of barren ice that surround the poles will have yielded up their secrets; whilst the vast and trackless fastnesses of that stupendous range of mountains which eclipses all others, and which from time immemorial has served as a barrier to roll back the waves of barbaric invasion from the fertile plains of hindustan--these himalaya will have been mapped, and the highest points in the world above sea-level will have been visited by man. most certainly that time will come. yet the himalaya, although conquered, will remain, still they will be the greatest range of mountains on earth, but will their magnitude, their beauty, their fascination, and their mystery be the same for those who travel amongst them? i venture to think not: for it is unfortunately true that familiarity breeds contempt. be that as it may, at the present time an enormous portion of that country of vast peaks has never been trodden by human foot. immense districts covered with snow and ice are yet virgin and await the arrival of the mountain explorer. his will be the satisfaction of going where others have feared to tread, his the delight of seeing mighty glaciers and superb snow-clad peaks never gazed upon before by human eyes, and his the gratification of having overcome difficulties of no small magnitude. for exploration in the himalaya must always be surrounded by difficulties and often dangers. that which in winter on a scotch hill would be a slide of snow, and in the alps an avalanche, becomes amongst these giant peaks an overwhelming cataclysm shaking the solid bases of the hills, and capable with its breath alone of sweeping down forests. [illustration: _a himalayan camp._] the man who ventures amongst the himalaya in order that he may gain a thorough knowledge of them must of necessity be a mountaineer as well as a mountain traveller. he must delight not only in finding his way to the summits of the mountains, but also in the beauties of the green valleys below, in the bare hill-sides, and in the vast expanses of glaciers and snow and ice; moreover his curiosity must not be confined to the snows and the rock ridges merely as a means for exercising an abnormal craze for gymnastic performances, or he will show himself to be 'a creature physically specialised, perhaps, but intellectually maimed.' for in order to cope with all the difficulties as they arise, and to guard against all the dangers that lurk amidst the snows and precipices of the great mountains, a high standard, mental as well as physical, will be required of him who sets out to explore the himalaya: he must have had a long apprenticeship amidst the snow-peaks and possess, too, geographical instincts, common sense, and love of the mountains of no mean order. during these latter years few sports have developed so rapidly as mountaineering; nor is this to be wondered at, for no sport is more in harmony with the personal characteristics of the englishman. when he sets out to conquer unknown peaks, to spend his leisure time in fighting with the great mountains, it is usually no easy task he places in front of himself; but in return there is no kind of sport that affords keener enjoyments or more lasting memories than those the mountaineer wrests from nature in his playground amongst the hills. mountaineering, moreover, is a sport of which we as a nation should be proud, for it is the english who have made it what it is. there are many isolated instances of men of other nationalities who have spent their time in climbing snow-peaks and fighting their way through mountainous countries; but when we inquire into the records of discovery amongst the mountain ranges of the world--in the alps, the frosty caucasus, the mighty himalaya, in the andes, in new zealand, in norway, wherever there are noble snow-clad mountains to climb, wherever there are difficulties to overcome--it is usually englishmen that have led the way. for the pure love of sport they have fought with nature and conquered; others have followed after; and the various alpine clubs which have been founded during the last twenty years are witnesses of the fact that mountaineering is now one of the pastimes of the world. it has taken its place amongst our national sports, and every year sees a larger number of recruits filling the ranks. in one volume of that splendid collection of books which could have been produced nowhere else but in england--the 'badminton library of sports and pastimes'--we find mr. c. e. mathews writing: 'i can understand the delight of a severely contested game of tennis or rackets, or the fascination of a hard-fought cricket-match under fair summer skies. football justly claims many votaries, and yachting has been extolled on the ground (amongst others) that it gives the maximum of appetite with the minimum of exertion. i can appreciate a straight ride across country on a good horse, and i know how the pulse beats when the university boats shoot under barnes bridge with their bows dead level, to the music of a roaring crowd; and yet there is no sport like mountaineering.' this was written for a book on mountaineering, but it may be truthfully said, without making distinctions between sports of various kinds, all of which have their votaries, that a sport that demands from those who would excel in its pursuit the utmost efforts, both physical and mental, not for a few hours only, but day after day in sunshine and in storm--a sport whose followers have the whole of the mountain ranges of the world for their playground, where the most magnificent scenery nature can lavish is spread before them, where success means the keenest of pleasure, and defeat is unattended by feelings of regret; where friendships are made which would have been impossible under other circumstances--for on the mountains the difficulties and the dangers shared in common by all are the surest means for showing a man as he really is--a sport which renews our youth, banishes all sordid cares, ministers to mind and body diseased, invigorating and restoring the whole--surely such a sport can be second to none! but as access to the alps and other snow ranges becomes easier year by year, the mountaineer, should he wish to test his powers against the unclimbed hills, must perforce go further afield. there are still, however, unclimbed mountains enough and to spare for many years yet to come. in the himalaya the peaks exceeding , feet in height, that have been measured, number over fifty,[a] whilst those above , feet may be counted by the thousand. every year, officers of the indian army and others in search of game wander through the valleys which come down from the great ranges, but up to the present time only a few mountaineering expeditions have been made to this marvellous mountain land. for this there are many reasons. the distance of india from england precludes the busy man from spending his summer vacation there; the natural difficulties of the country, the lack of provisions, the total absence of roads, and lastly, the disturbed political conditions, make any ordinary expedition impossible. moreover, although the english are supposed to hold the southern slopes of the himalaya, yet it is a curious fact that almost from the eastern end of this range in bhutan to the western limit in the hindu kush above chitral we are rigorously excluded. about the eastern portion of the himalaya in bhutan, and the mountains surrounding the gorge through which the bramaputra flows, we know very little, as only some of the higher peaks have been surveyed from a distance. next in order, to the westward, comes sikkim, one of the few districts in the himalaya where europeans can safely travel under the very shadows of the great peaks. next comes the native state of nepaul, stretching for five hundred miles, the borders of which no white man can cross, except those who are sent by the indian government as political agents, etc., to the capital, katmandu. it is evident at once to any one looking at the map of india, that nepaul and bhutan hold the keys of the doors through which chinese trade might come south. the breaks in the main chain in many places allow of trade-routes, and in times gone by even chinese armies have poured through these passes and successfully invaded nepaul. the idea of establishing friendly relations between india and this trans-himalayan region was one of the many wise and far-reaching political aspirations of warren hastings. on it he spent much of his time and thought. his policy was carried out consistently during the time he was governor-general of india, and commercial intercourse during that period seemed to be well established. four separate embassies were sent to bhutan, one of which extended its operations to tibet. this first british mission to penetrate beyond the himalaya was that under mr. george bogle in . but on the removal of warren hastings from india, these admirable methods of establishing a friendly acquaintance with the powers in bhutan and tibet were at once abandoned. it is true that a quarter of a century later, in , mr. thomas manning, a private individual, performed the extraordinary feat of reaching lhasa, and saw the dalai lama, a feat that to this day has not been repeated by an englishman. but when the guiding hand and head of warren hastings no longer ruled india, this commercial policy sank into complete oblivion. from that day to the present little intercourse of any kind seems to have been held between the english government and those states in that border land between india and china.[b] on the west of nepaul lie kumaon, garhwal, kulu, and spiti. through most of these districts the englishman can wander, which is also the case with kashmir to a certain extent. the sources of the rivers that emerge from these himalayan mountains are almost unknown, except in the case of the ganges, which rises in the gangootri peaks in garhwal. the upper waters of the indus, the sutlej, the bramaputra (or sanpu), and the numberless rivers emerging from nepaul and flowing into the ganges, in almost every case come from beyond the range we call the himalaya. their sources lie in that unknown land north of the so-called main chain. whether there is a loftier and more magnificent range behind is at present doubtful, but reports of higher peaks further north than devadhunga (mount everest) reach us from time to time. the indian government occasionally sends out trained natives from the survey department to collect information about these districts where englishmen are forbidden to go, and it is to their efforts that the various details we find on maps relating to these countries are due. some day the lower ranges leading up to the great snow-covered mountains will be opened to the english. sanatoria will be established, tea plantations will appear on the slopes of the nepaulese hills, as is now the case at darjeeling, and then only will the exploration of the mountains really begin, for which, at the present day, as far as tibet and nepaul are concerned, we have even less facilities than the schlagintweits and hooker had forty to fifty years ago. from the mountaineer's point of view, little has been accomplished amongst the himalaya, and of the thousands of peaks of , feet and upwards hardly twenty have been climbed. the properly equipped expeditions made to these mountains merely for the sport of mountaineering may be said to be less than half a dozen. of course the officers in charge of the survey department have done invaluable work, which, however, often had to be carried out by men unacquainted (from a purely climbing point of view) with the higher developments of mountain craft. to this, however, there are exceptions, notably mr. w. h. johnson, who worked on the karakoram range. to omit work done by the earlier travellers, the first prominent piece of mountaineering seems to have been achieved by captain gerard in the spiti district. in the year he attempted the ascent of leo porgyul, but was unsuccessful after reaching a height of , feet (trigonometrically surveyed). ten years later he made the first successful ascent of a mountain (unnamed) of , feet. speaking of his wanderings in - , he says: 'i have visited thirty-seven places at different times between , and , feet, and thirteen of my camps were upwards of , feet.' during the years - - sir joseph hooker made his famous journeys into the himalaya from darjeeling through sikkim. obtaining leave to travel in east nepaul, he traversed a district that since then has been entirely closed to europeans. by travelling to the westward of darjeeling he crossed into nepaul, explored the tambur river as far as wallanchoon, whence he ascended to the head of a snow pass, , feet, leading over to the valley of the arun river, which rises far away northward of kanchenjunga. on the pass he experienced his first attack of mountain sickness, suffering from headache, giddiness, and lassitude. at this point he was probably nearer to devadhunga[c] (mount everest) than any european has ever been, the mountain being only fifty miles away. from the summit of another pass in east nepaul, the choonjerma pass, , feet, he no doubt saw devadhunga. from here he returned to sikkim, and travelled to mon lepcha, immediately at the south-west of kanchenjunga. during the next year he visited the passes on the north-east of kanchenjunga leading into tibet and ascended three of them, the kongra lama pass, , feet; the tunkra pass, , feet; and the donkia pass, , feet. from bhomtso, , feet, the highest and most northerly point reached by him, a magnificent view to the northward into tibet was obtained; and dr. hooker mentions having seen from this point two immense mountains over one hundred miles distant to the north of nepaul. it was during his return to darjeeling that he and dr. campbell were made prisoners by the raja of sikkim. during the years - the two brothers, adolf and robert schlagintweit wandered through a large portion of the himalaya. they were the first explorers who possessed any real knowledge of snow work, having gained their experience in the alps. starting from nynee tal they followed the pindar river to its source, just under the southern slopes of nanda devi. then crossing to the north-east by a pass about , feet high, they reached milam on the gori river, whence they penetrated into tibet over several passes averaging , feet. in this district, never since visited by europeans, they made more than one glacier expedition, finally returning over the main chain, close to kamet or ibi gamin ( , feet), on the slopes of which they remained for a fortnight, their highest camp being at , feet. an unsuccessful attempt was made on the peak, for they were forced to retreat after having reached an altitude of , feet. returning over the mana pass to the valley of the sarsuti river, they descended to badrinath. the upper valley of the indus north of kashmir was next explored, and adolf, having crossed the karakoram pass, was murdered at kashgar.[d] in the _journal_ of the royal asiatic society of bengal (vol. xxxv.) will be found a paper by the two brothers on the 'comparative hypsometrical and physical features of high asia, the andes, and the alps,' which deals in a most interesting manner with the respective features of these several mountain ranges. in the years - mr. w. h. johnson, whilst engaged on the kashmir survey, established a large number of trigonometrical stations at a height of over , feet. one of his masonry platforms on the top of a peak , feet high is said to be visible from leh in ladâk. the highest point he probably reached was during an expedition made from the district changchenmo north of the pangong lake in the year . travelling northwards he made his way through the mountains to the yarkand road, and at one point, being unable to proceed, he found it necessary to climb over the mountain range at a height of , feet, where the darkness overtook him, and he was forced to spend the night at , feet. in the next year, , on his journey to khutan he was obliged to wait for permission to enter turkestan; and being anxious to obtain as much knowledge of the country to the north as possible, he climbed three peaks--e^{ }, , feet; e^{ }, , feet; and e^{ }, , feet (?). the heights of the first two mountains have been accurately determined by a series of trigonometrical observations, but there has probably been some error made in the height of the last, e^{ }. mr. johnson was a most enthusiastic mountaineer, and, owing to a suggestion made by him and mr. drew to the asiatic society of bengal, efforts were made in to form a himalayan club, but through want of support and sympathy the club was never started. mountaineering was indeed in those days so little appreciated by the political department of india that this journey of mr. johnson's in was made the excuse for a reprimand, owing to which he left the service and took employment under the maharaja of kashmir. about the same time that johnson was exploring the district to the north and north-east of ladák, the officers of the survey, captain t. g. montgomerie, h. h. godwin austen, and others, were actively at work on the astor gilgit and skardu districts. they pushed glacier exploration much further than had been done before; and it is quite remarkable how much they accomplished when one considers that in those days climbers had only just learned the use of ice-axes and ropes, and the knowledge of ice and snow even in the alps was very limited. the exploration of the baltoro glacier, the discovery of the second highest peak in the himalaya--k^{ }, , feet--and the peaks gusherbrum and masherbrum, by h. h. godwin austen, and his ascent of the punmah glacier to the old mustagh pass will remain as marvels of mountain exploration. in the next ten or fifteen years but little mountaineering was done in the himalaya. the government survey in garhwal, kumaon, and sikkim was carried on, and more correct maps of the mountain ranges in these parts were issued. on kamet about , feet was reached. in sikkim, captain harman, during his work for the survey, made several attempts to climb some of the loftier peaks. he revisited the donkia pass, and, like dr. hooker, saw from it the two enormous peaks far away to the north of nepaul. in order to measure their height trigonometrically, he remained on the summit of the pass ( , feet) all night, but unfortunately was so severely frost-bitten that ultimately he was invalided home. in the year mr. w. w. graham started for india with the swiss guide joseph imboden, on a purely mountaineering expedition; he first went to sikkim, then attacked the group round nanda devi in garhwal, and later returned to sikkim and the mountains near kanchenjunga. this expedition of graham's remains still the most successful mountaineering effort that has been made amongst the himalaya. no less than seven times was he above , feet on the mountains, the three highest ascents being, kabru (sikkim), , feet, a^{ } or mount monal (garhwal), , feet, and a height of , - , feet on dunagiri (garhwal). it is perhaps to be regretted that graham did not write a book setting forth in detail all his experiences, though a short account of his travels and ascents may be found in vol. xii. of the alpine club _journal_. arriving at darjeeling early in , he and imboden made their way to jongri just under kanchenjunga on the south-west, and climbed a peak, kang la, , feet. the guicho la (pass), , feet, between kanchenjunga and pundim, was ascended, but as the end of march was much too early in the year for climbing, they returned to darjeeling, and imboden then went back to europe. it was not till the end of june that graham was joined by emil boss and ulrich kauffmann, who came out from grindelwald. they started from nynee tal to attack nanda devi, travelling to rini on the dhauli river, just to the westward of nanda devi. from rini they proceeded up the rishiganga, which runs down from the glaciers on the west of nanda devi, but they were stopped in the valley by an impassable gorge that had been cut by a glacier descending from the trisuli peaks. obliged to retreat, they next attacked dunagiri, , feet; after climbing over two peaks, , and , feet, they camped at , feet, and finally got to a point from which they could see the top of a^{ }, , feet over the top of a^{ }, , feet, and must therefore have been at least at a height of , feet. unfortunately hail, wind, and snow drove graham and boss off the peak within feet of the top--kauffmann had given in some distance lower down--and it was only with difficulty that they were able to return to their camp, which was reached in the dark. the weather then obliged them to return to rini, from which place they again started for nanda devi. this time they went up the north bank of the rishiganga. after illness, the desertion of their coolies, and all the sufferings produced by cold and wet weather, they reached the glacier in four days, only to find that again they were cut off from it by a perpendicular cliff of feet, down which the glacier torrent poured. their attempt to cross the stream was also fruitless; so, baffled for the second time, they were forced to return to their camping-ground under dunagiri at dunassau, from which place they climbed a^{ }, , feet, by the western ridge, calling it mount monal. they then tried a^{ }, , feet, but were stopped by difficult rocks after reaching a point about , feet. by the middle of august graham was back again in sikkim and got to jongri by september . with boss and kauffmann he explored the west side of kabru and the glacier which comes down from kanchenjunga. but the weather was continuously bad; they started to climb jubonu, but were turned back. then they crossed the guicho la to ascend pundim, but found it impossible; more bad weather kept them idle till the end of the month. they then managed to ascend jubonu, , feet. a few days later they went up the glacier which lies on the south-east of kabru, camping at , feet; and starting at . a.m. they succeeded, owing to a favourable state of the mountain, in reaching the summit, , feet (or rather, the summit being cleft into three gashes, they got into one of these, about feet from the true top). it was not till p.m. that they returned to their camp. the last peak they ascended was one , feet on the nepaul side of the kang la. thus ended this most remarkable series of ascents, carried out often under the most difficult circumstances. graham, from his account of his travels, was evidently not a man to talk about all the discomforts and hardships of climbing at these altitudes, and this lack of information about his feelings and sensations above , feet has been urged against him as a proof that he never got to , feet at all. but any one who will take the trouble to read his account of the ascent of kabru, cannot fail to admit that he must have climbed the peak lying on the south-west of kanchenjunga, viz. kabru, for there is no other high peak there which he could have ascended from his starting-point except kanchenjunga itself; moreover, unless he had climbed kabru, neither he nor emil boss could have seen devadhunga nor the two enormous peaks to the north-west, which they distinctly state must be higher than devadhunga. now, if they climbed kabru, they were at a height of , feet whether they had a barometer with them or not, for that is the height determined by the ordnance survey. the heights reached in all their other completed ascents are vouched for in the same way, for if a mountain has been properly measured by triangulation, its height is known with a greater degree of accuracy than can ever be obtained by taking a barometer to the summit. the next real mountaineering expedition after that of graham was in , when sir martin conway, together with major bruce, and m. zurbriggen as guide, explored a large part of the mustagh range. in all they made some sixteen ascents to heights of , feet and upwards, the highest being pioneer peak, , feet. arriving at gilgit in may, when much winter snow still lay low down on the mountains, they first explored the bagrot nullah. here they ascended several glaciers and surveyed the country. but huge avalanches continually falling entirely stopped any high climbing. they therefore went into the hunza nagyr valley as far as nagyr. in the meantime, as the weather was bad, they investigated first the samayar and afterwards the shallihuru glaciers. at the head of the former a pass was climbed, the daranshi saddle, , feet, and a peak called the dasskaram needle, , feet. they then returned to the nagyr valley and reached the foot of the great hispar glacier, , feet. from here they travelled to the hispar pass, , feet, nearly forty miles, thence down the biafo glacier, another thirty miles. the hispar pass is therefore the longest snow pass traversed outside the arctic regions. about half way up the hispar glacier bruce left conway and climbed over the nushik la, but joined him again later at askole. from askole the baltoro glacier was ascended. near its head the summit of crystal peak, , feet, on the north side of the valley, was reached. from the summit, the mustagh tower, a rival in height to k^{ }, , feet, was seen. to quote conway's description: 'away to the left, peering over a neighbouring rib like the one we were ascending, rose an astonishing tower. its base was buried in clouds, and a cloud-banner waved on one side of it, but the bulk was clear, and the right-hand outline was a vertical cliff. we afterwards discovered that it was equally vertical on the other side. this peak rises in the immediate vicinity of the mustagh pass, and is one of the most extraordinary mountains for form we anywhere beheld.' two days later they made another climb on a ridge to the east, and parallel to the one previously climbed. from here they first saw k^{ }. amongst the magnificent circle of peaks that surrounded them at this spot, many of which were over , feet, one only seemed to offer any chance of being climbed. this was the golden throne. it stands at the head of the baltoro glacier, differing greatly in form and structure from its neighbours; and of all the mountains it seemed most accessible. amongst, however, the enormous glaciers and snow-fields that eclipse probably those of any other mountains in ordinary latitudes, even to arrive at the beginning of the climbing was a problem of much difficulty. to again quote: 'we struggled round the base of the golden throne, up feet of ice-fall to a plateau where we camped; then we forced a camp on to a second, and again on to a third platform ... we got daily weaker as we ascended ... we finally reached the foot of the ridge which was to lead us, as we supposed, to the top of the golden throne. it was an ice-ridge, and not as we hoped of snow, and it did not lead us to the top but to a detached point in the midst of the two main buttresses of the throne.' this peak they named pioneer peak, , feet. after this climb they returned to kashmir. major bruce, who accompanied sir m. conway in this expedition, has been climbing in the himalaya for many years. in , whilst at chitral with capt. f. younghusband, he ascended ispero zorn. in july of the same year he made several ascents near hunza on the dhaltar peaks--the highest point reached being , feet. during august of the same year he climbed to , feet above phekkar near nagyr, with captain b. e. m. gurdon, and even in december, at dharmsala, he had some mountaineering. major bruce has done some excellent mountaineering in a district that may be said to be his alone, namely in khaghan, a district south-west of nanga parbat and north of abbottabad. here, in company with harkabir thapa and other gurkhas, a great deal of climbing has been accomplished, the district having been visited almost every year since . the best piece of climbing in khaghan was the ascent of the most northern ragee-bogee peaks ( , feet), by harkabir thapa alone. this peak is close to the shikara pass, though separated by one peak from it. another district visited by major bruce in was in ladák east of kashmir--the nun kun range. several new passes were traversed, and peaks up to , feet were climbed.[e] there is certainly no mountaineer who has a record of himalayan climbing to compare with major bruce's, ranging as it does from chitral on the west to sikkim on the east. in fact, to show how the mountains exercise a magnetic influence on him, in the summer of he saw, what no one had ever seen before, in the short space of two months, the three highest mountains in the world: devadhunga, k^ , and kanchenjunga. in dr. and mrs. bullock workman traversed several passes in ladák, nubra, and suru; and in , with m. zurbriggen as guide, went to askole and up the biafo glacier to the hispar pass. then they climbed the siegfried horn, , feet, and mount bullock-workman, , feet, both near the skoro la. afterwards, returning to the shigar valley, mount koser gunge, , feet, was ascended. the last mountaineering expedition to the himalaya was that of mr. douglas freshfield, who, in company with signor v. sella, mr. e. garwood, and a. maquignaz as guide, made the tour of kanchenjunga, crossing the jonsong la, , feet. footnotes: [a] see p. . [b] _narratives of the mission of george bogle to tibet and of the journey of thomas manning to lhasa._ by clements r. markham, c.b., f.r.s. . [c] tibetan name: jomo-kang-kar. [d] cp. _travels in ladâk tartary and kashmir_, lieut.-colonel torrens, , pp. - , appendix. [e] _alpine journal_, vol. xx. p. . chapter ii our journey out to nanga parbat 'and go eastward along the sea, to mount the lands beyond man's dwelling, and the rising steeps that face the sun untrodden and unnamed.-- know to earth's verge remote thou then art come, the scythian tract and wilderness forlorn, through whose rude rocks and frosty silences no path shall guide thee then, ... there as thou toilest o'er the treacherous snows.' r. bridges. amongst mountaineers, who has not at some time or another looked at the map of india, wishing at the same time for an opportunity to visit the himalaya? to see kanchenjunga, devadhunga, nanda devi, nanga parbat, or any of the hundreds of snow-clad mountains, every one of which is higher than the loftiest peaks of other lands? to wander through the valleys filled with tropical vegetation until the higher grounds are reached, where the great glaciers lie like frozen rivers amidst the white mountains, while the green pasturages and pine woods below bask in the sunshine? to travel through the land where all natural things are on a big scale, a land of great rivers and mighty mountains, a land where even the birds and beasts are of larger size, a land that was peopled many centuries ago with civilised races, when western europe was in a state of barbarism? but these himalaya are far away, and often as one may wish some day to start for this marvellous land, yet the propitious day never dawns, and less ambitious journeys are all that the fates will allow. although it had seemed most unlikely that i should ever be fortunate enough to visit the himalaya, yet at last the time arrived when my dream became a reality. i have seen the great mountains of the hindu kush and the karakoram ranges, from tirach mir over chitral to k^{ } at the head of the baltoro glacier; i have wandered in that waste land, the marvellous gorge of the indus. i have stopped at chilas, one of the outposts of civilisation in the wild shinaki country, where not many years ago no white man could venture. i have passed through the defile at lechre, where in a landslip from the northern buttress of nanga parbat dammed back the whole indus for six months, until finally the pent-up masses of water, breaking suddenly through the thousands of feet of debris, burst with irresistible force down through that unknown mountain-land lying below chilas for many hundreds of miles, till at last the whirling flood, no longer hemmed in by the hills, swept out on to the open plains near attock, and in one night annihilation was the fate of a whole sikh army. also i have seen the northern side of the mighty nanga parbat, the greatest mountain face in the whole world, rising without break from the scorching sands of the bunji plain, first to the cool pine woods and fertile valleys five thousand feet above, next to the glaciers, and further back and higher to the ice-clad avalanche-swept precipices which ring round the topmost snows of nanga parbat itself, whose summit towers , feet above sea-level, and , feet above the indus at its base: whilst further to the northward rakipushi and haramosh, both , feet high, seem only to be outlying sentinels of grander and loftier ranges behind. it was in that the late mr. a. f. mummery and mr. g. hastings arranged that if they could obtain permission from the indian government to visit that part of kashmir in which nanga parbat lies, they would start from england in june , and attempt the ascent. early in i made such arrangements (owing to the kindness of professor ramsay of london university college) that i was able to join the expedition. we left england on june , joining the p. and o. steamer _caledonia_ at brindisi. the voyage was delightful till we left aden--even in the red sea the temperature never rising above °,--but once in the indian ocean we experienced the full force of the monsoon; and it was exceedingly rough from there to bombay, which we reached on july . two days later we arrived at rawul pindi, having had a very hot journey on the railway, a maximum of ° being experienced between umballa and rawul pindi. at the latter place the foothills of the himalaya were seen for the first time, rising out of the plains of the panjab. and that night, amidst a terrific thunderstorm, the breaking of the monsoon on the hills, we slept in dak bungalow just short of murree. from rawul pindi to baramula, in the vale of kashmir, an excellent road exists, along which one is able to travel in a tonga. these strongly built two-wheel carriages complete the journey of about one hundred and seventy miles in two or three days. owing, however, to the monsoon rain, we found the road in many places in a perilous condition. bridges had been washed away, great boulders many feet thick had rolled down the mountain-side sometimes to find a resting-place in the middle of the road, sometimes to go crashing through it; in one place the whole mountain-side was slowly moving down, road and all, into the jhelum river below at the bottom of the valley. but on the evening of july we safely reached baramula. [illustration: map of kashmir j. bartholomew & co., edin^r.] beyond baramula it is necessary to take a flat-bottomed boat or punt, called a dunga, traversing the vale of kashmir by water. this valley of kashmir, about which so much has been written, is beyond all adequate description. situated as it is, feet above sea-level, in an old lake basin amongst the himalaya, its climate is almost perfect. a land of lakes and waterways, splendid trees and old ruins, vines, grass-lands, flowers, and pine forests watered by cool streams from the snow ranges that encircle it, with a climate during the summer months like that of the south of france--no wonder this valley of kashmir is beautiful. in length about eighty miles, and twenty-five miles in breadth, it lies surrounded by giant peaks. haramukh, , feet, is quite close; to the eastward rise the nun kun peaks, , feet; whilst to the north nanga parbat, , feet high, can be seen from the hill stations. the atmospheric colours in the clear air are for ever changing, and no better description of them can be given than one by walter r. lawrence in his classical work on the _valley of kashmir_, where as settlement officer he spent several years. he says, 'in the early morning the mountains are often a delicate semi-transparent violet, relieved against a saffron sky and with light vapours clinging round their crests. then the rising sun deepens shadows and produces sharp outlines and strong passages of purple and indigo in the deep ravines. later on it is nearly all blue and lavender with white snow peaks and ridges under a vertical sun, and as the afternoon wears on these become richer violet and pale bronze, gradually changing to rose and pink with yellow and orange snow, till the last rays of the sun have gone, leaving the mountains dyed a ruddy crimson, with snows showing a pale creamy green by contrast. looking downward from the mountains, the valley in the sunshine has the hues of the opal; the pale reds of the karéwá, the vivid light greens of the young rice, and the darker shades of the groves of trees, relieved by sunlit sheets, gleams of water, and soft blue haze, give a combination of tints reminding one irresistibly of the changing hues of that gem. it is impossible to do justice to the beauty and the grandeur of the mountains of kashmir, or to enumerate the lovely glades and forests visited by so few.' nowadays kashmir is a prosperous country. but before the settlement operations were taken in hand ( ) by lawrence the country-people were suffering from every kind of abuse and tyranny. now it is all changed, and under the rule of maharaja pratab singh, who resolved that this settlement should be carried out and gave it his loyal support, the country-folk are contented and prosperous; the fields are properly cultivated, without fear that the harvest will be reaped by some extortionate official; the houses are rebuilt, and the orchards, gardens, and vineyards are well looked after. it was not till my return from the mountains that i had a chance of spending a few days in this fascinating valley. after leaving baramula our route lay for some time up the jhelum river, which drains most of the vale of kashmir; but soon we emerged on the woolar lake, and in the grey morning light the hills that completely encircle the valley could be partly seen through the long streams of white mist that draped them. the lake was perfectly calm, and reflected on its surface the nearer hills. soon we came to miles of floating water-lilies in bloom, whilst on the banks quaint mud houses and farms, encircled with poplar, walnut, and chenar trees, were visible; and, beyond, great distances of grass lands and orchards stretched back to the mountains. but we were not across the lake. from the westward a rain-cloud was approaching, and soon the whole face of nature was changed. small waves arose; then a blast of wind swept down part of the matting which served as an awning to our boat, and in a moment we were in danger of being swamped. the rowers at once began to talk wildly, evidently in great fear of drowning. several other dungas, which were near and in the same plight as our own, came up, so all the boats were lashed together by ropes. meanwhile the women and children (for the kashmiri lives on the dunga with his wife and family) were screaming and throwing rice on the troubled waters, presumably to propitiate the evil beings who were responsible for the perilous state of affairs, and seemingly this offering to the gods was effective, for the angry deity, the storm-cloud, passed on, the wind dropped, and without further adventure we made land at bandipur on the northern shore of the lake in warm sunshine. here we found ponies which had been hired for us by major c. g. bruce of the th gurkhas. he had travelled all the way from khaghan to kashmir in order to engage servants, ponies, etc., and had spent a fortnight out of a month's leave in arranging these matters for us who were strangers to him. since that time i have seen much more of bruce, but i shall always remember this kindness. i may also say that during the whole of our expedition the military and political officers, and others whom we met, invariably helped us in every way possible. on july we loaded the ponies with our baggage and started for nanga parbat. our route lay over the tragbal or raj diangan pass, , feet. on the further side we descended to kanjalwan in the valley of the kishnganga river. up this valley about twelve miles is the village of gurais, where we were nearly stopped by the tahsildar, a most important village official. we wanted more ponies, which he of course promised, but next morning they were not forthcoming. messages were useless, and seemingly persuasion also was of no avail, he assuring us that there were no ponies, and telling us every kind of lie with the utmost oriental politeness. mummery was, however, equal to the occasion. he wrote out a telegram, which of course he never intended to send, the contents of which he had translated to the tahsildar. it was addressed to the british resident at srinagar, asking what should be done with a miserable official at gurais who would give us neither help nor ponies. the effect was magical. in less than ten minutes we had three times as many ponies as we wanted, and that too in a district where everything with four legs was being pressed into the service of the gilgit commissariat. the tahsildar rode several miles up the valley with us, finally insisting that mummery should ride his pony, and return it after two or three days when convenient. just above gurais we left the valley of the kishnganga, and turned to the left or north-east up the valley of the burzil. from this valley two passes lead over the range into the country that drains down the astor nullah to the indus: the first is the kamri, , feet, the second the burzil or dorikoon pass, , feet, over which the military road to gilgit has been made. both these passes ultimately lead to astor. we chose the kamri, for we were told that better forage for our ponies could be obtained on the northern slopes. we crossed the pass on july , finding still some of the winter snows unmelted on the top. from the summit we had our first view of nanga parbat, over forty miles away, but rising in dazzling whiteness far above all the intervening ranges. there is nothing in the alps that can at all compare with it in grandeur, and although often one is unable to tell whether a mountain is really big, or only appears so, this was not the case with nanga parbat as seen from the kamri. it was huge, immense; and instinctively we took off our hats in order to show that we approached in a proper spirit. two days later we camped at rattu, where we found lieutenant c. g. stewart encamped with his mountain battery. he showed us the guns (weighing cwt. each) which he had taken over the shandur pass in deep snow when accompanying colonel kelly from gilgit to the relief of chitral. during this passage he became snow-blind. the forcing of the shandur pass was one of the hardest pieces of work in the whole of the relief of chitral, and the moral effect produced was invaluable. for the chitralis were under the impression that even troops without guns could not cross the pass. imagine their consternation when a well-equipped force, together with a mountain battery, was at the head of the mastuj river leading down to chitral. after we had been hospitably entertained by lieutenant stewart, and duly admired his splendid mule battery, we left the next day, july , and finally, in the dark that night, camped at the base of nanga parbat. during the day the ponies that we had hired only came as far as a village named zaipur, where we paid off our men, and sent them and the ponies back to bandipur. we did not, however, wish to camp at zaipur, which lay on the south side of the rupal torrent, but were anxious to cross to chorit, a village opposite, and then go on to tashing. how this was to be accomplished was not at first sight very plain. but the villagers were most willing to help, and those of the chorit village came down on the further bank, in all about fifty to sixty men. then bridge-building began; tons of stones and brushwood were built out into the raging glacier torrent; next pine trunks were neatly fixed on the cantilever system in these piers on both sides, and when the two edifices jutted far enough out into the stream, several thick pine trunks, about fifty feet long, were toppled across, and prevented from being washed down the stream by our alpine ropes, which were tied to their smaller ends. several of these trunks were then placed across between the two piers, and after three hours' hard work the bridge was finished. for this magnificent engineering achievement the headmen of the two villages were presented with two rupees. we did not camp at tashing, but crossed the glacier immediately above the village, and in a hollow amongst a grove of willows set up our tents. we had taken twenty-seven days from london travelling continuously, but the weather was perfect. we were on the threshold of the unknown, and the untrodden nullahs round nanga parbat awaited us. chapter iii the rupal nullah 'and thus these threatening ranges of dark mountain, which, in nearly all ages of the world, men have looked upon with aversion or with terror, are, in reality, sources of life and happiness far fuller and more beneficent than the bright fruitfulnesses of the plain.'--_modern painters._ our camp in the rupal nullah was certainly most picturesque, pitched on a slightly sloping bank of grass, strewn with wildflowers and surrounded by a species of willow-tree which, during the hot midday sunshine, afforded most welcome shade. firewood could be easily obtained in abundance from the dead stems and branches of the thicket, and water from a babbling stream which descended from the lower slopes of nanga parbat, almost within a stone's-throw of our tents. determined after our week's walk from bandipur to make the most of our delightful camp, we spent the next day, july , in blissful laziness, doing hardly anything. we pretended now and again to busy ourselves with the tents and the baggage. a willow branch which hung in front of our tent door would need breaking off, or a rope tightening. but the day was really a holiday, and our most serious occupation was to bask in the warm sunshine and inhale the keen, bracing mountain air fresh from the snow-fields at the head of the rupal nullah. [illustration: _a himalayan nullah._] the sense of absolute freedom, of perfect contentment with our present lot, blessed gift of the mountains to their true and faithful devotees, was beginning to steal over us. languidly we talked about the morrow, our only regret arising from our inability to catch a glimpse of that monarch of the mountains, nanga parbat, and the ice-fringed precipices which overhang his southern face. the rupal is the largest nullah close to nanga parbat. it runs eastwards from the peaks by the thosho pass under the whole southern face of nanga parbat, till it joins the valley coming down from the kamri pass, some eight miles below tashing. the total length is about twenty-five miles in a straight line, but only those who have wandered in these himalayan nullahs know how that twenty-five miles can be lengthened. the interminable ups and downs, which with endless repetition confront the traveller, now descending on to glaciers by steep moraine walls, now scrambling over loose stones and debris, or crossing from one side of the nullah to the other, all the variations which a mountain path strews with such prodigality in the way, set measurement at defiance, and no man may tell the true length of a nullah twenty-five miles long. the inhabitants are wise; they speak only of a day's journey, and later we easily dropped into their ways, miles being hardly ever mentioned. in fact, to show how deceptive measurement by the map may be, when late in august we left the diamirai nullah with the whole of our camp baggage to reach the next big nullah, the rakiot, the traverse over two easy passes just below the snow-line took us no less than three days from early in the morning till late at night, though the distance as the crow flies is only ten miles. tashing, the village, which lay a few miles below us down the valley, is large and prosperous, the peasants owning many flocks and herds. chickens, eggs, and milk are plentiful, and situated as it is some distance from the gilgit road, any surplus stock of provisions is not depleted to the same extent as is the case with hamlets in the astor valley. sheep, which are small and not easy to obtain at astor, may be purchased without difficulty at tashing. not many years ago tashing used to be periodically raided by the chilas tribesmen, who lived on the western slopes of the nanga parbat range. they, like the old border thieves, would swarm over the mazeno and thosho passes and lift all the sheep and goats they could find, sometimes even taking the women as well. this, however, is now completely stopped since we 'pacified' chilas. mountain robbers of course still harass the land, but they have been driven further to the westward, and now it is the chilas folk themselves who are the victims. in fact we heard later that at the end of july the tribesmen from kohistan and thur (to the south-west of chilas) were pillaging the country at the head of the bunar and barbusar nullahs, where they had killed several shepherds and driven away their flocks. [illustration: map of nanga parbat j. bartholomew & co. edin^r.] the rupal nullah above tashing is fairly fertile, the vegetation stretching up a considerable distance. pine-trees and small brushwood flourish at the foot of the rupal or main glacier, whilst for several miles further on the north side of the valley grass and dwarf rhododendron bushes grow. the glaciers from nanga parbat sweep across the valley much in the same way as the brenva glacier sweeps across the val véni, cutting off the upper pasturages from the villages below. of course the highest peak in the neighbourhood is nanga parbat itself. but those on the south-west of the rupal nullah, rising as they do some to feet above the floor of the valley, present a most magnificent spectacle. one especially (marked , feet) which stands alone at the head of the nullah, charms the eye with its beautiful form and exquisite lines of snow and rock. we christened it the rupal peak, whilst its neighbour further west, almost its equal in size ( , feet), we named the thosho peak. another summit ( , feet) to the eastward might, as it stands at the head of the chiche nullah, appropriately be termed the chiche peak, and the glacier which descends from it to the end of the rupal glacier, the chiche glacier. a very good idea of the relative size and form of the great main range of nanga parbat on the north side of the rupal nullah may be obtained from the top of the kamri pass. the ridge to the westward of the true summit of nanga parbat, stretching as far as the mazeno la, does not culminate in any very pronounced peaks. the lowest point, probably , to , feet, lies a little over a mile directly west of the top of the mountain. we have called this dip in the ridge the nanga parbat pass, and two peaks marked , feet and , feet the mazeno peaks. to the eastward of nanga parbat the rakiot peak, a superb snow-capped mountain, rises to the height of , feet, and here the main ridge turns considerably more to the north-east, ending in the twin chongra peaks, , feet, which overlook astor and the chongra valley. beyond these a sudden and abrupt fall in height of about feet occurs, and the ridge running more and more in a northerly direction, and never rising above , feet in height, constitutes the western boundary of the astor valley. the height of our camp in the rupal nullah was calculated from observations made with a mercurial barometer. the difference in level between the two cisterns was millimetres, from which observation it was feet above sea-level.[f] we finally decided that it would be best to obtain a good view of the south face of nanga parbat before we made up our minds whether we should remain in the rupal nullah. two of us, mummery and i, agreed to start the next day with the intention of combining business with pleasure; in fact, we had vague ideas about climbing the chiche peak, , feet. on july we set out early. our route lay up the north side of the rupal nullah through the fields of the small hamlet of rupal. the morning light, the ripening crops waving in the sunshine, and the fields backed by pine woods, glaciers, and snow-peaks, were very beautiful. unfortunately, as is usual in this part of the rupal nullah, we were unable to obtain any view of the great peak of nanga parbat, our path taking us directly underneath it. above the rupal village the nanga parbat glacier sweeps across the valley from underneath the summit of the peak. this glacier, which owes its formation to avalanches perpetually falling down the southern face of the mountain, lies across the rupal nullah almost at right angles, and forms a huge embankment varying from to feet high. the route up the nullah here turns off to the right, following a hollow which has been formed between the mountain-side and the true left bank of the glacier, and which we found well wooded, with a clear stream running down the centre. in all the larger nullahs the same conditions were conspicuous: usually for several miles up the valley above the end of the glacier a subsidiary valley would exist, between the side moraine of the glacier and the hill-side. these side moraines are often clothed with huge pine-trees, whilst below, birches and willows, dwarf rhododendrons and wild roses, cover the pasturages. a climb of about feet is necessary to take one on to the nanga parbat glacier, which at this point is flush with the top of the moraine, and, like so many others in this district, is littered with stones of all sizes. though much more uneven, it is similar to the lower end of glaciers such as the zmutt or the miage. on the west side of the glacier a steep descent must be made down on to the bottom of the rupal nullah. the floor of the valley here is carpeted with masses of brushwood. as one proceeds up the nullah two more glaciers, similar to the nanga parbat glacier, descend at a steep angle from the big peak, but do not stretch quite across the valley, and can be passed by walking round between their ends and the rupal torrent. just below the rupal glacier itself, a well-wooded stretch of pasture-land opens out, studded with pines and other trees. here it was that we saw, or thought we saw, our first red bear; he was some way off, but the keen-eyed shikari saw the bushes moving, and assured us that the movement was due to a 'balu,' and as there were traces of these animals in every direction, probably the shikari was right. having made up our minds to camp just at the end of the chiche glacier, we tried to effect a crossing over the rupal torrent which looked quite shallow in several places, but these mountain streams are very deceptive. from a distance of a hundred yards nothing seems more easy than to wade across, but to any one in the swirling torrent the aspect of affairs is very different; ice-cold water with insecure and moving stones below is by no means conducive to a rapid crossing, and our shikari, who first essayed it, made but little advance. ultimately he edged his way safely back to land, but still on the same side of the stream. mummery, who was not to be beaten, next made a determined effort, but in his turn had to retreat after having been very nearly swept off his feet. there was, however, an alternative route. by ascending the valley to the end of the rupal glacier a path would doubtless easily be found on the ice which would take us across to our camping-ground for the night. we were not disappointed, and soon found a spot where our tents could be pitched. the day had been more or less misty, but towards sunset the clouds began partially to roll off the peaks. then in the gleaming gold of a himalayan sunset we beheld the southern face of nanga parbat. eagerly we scanned every ridge and glacier, as naturally we preferred to attack the peak if possible from the well-provisioned and hospitable rupal nullah. should we be unable to find a feasible route on this side, then it would be necessary to move our base of operations over the range into the wild chilas country, about which we knew very little, but where we were certain supplies would be difficult to obtain. knight, who was at astor in , writes of the chilas country as follows:-- 'that white horizon so near me was the limit of the british empire, the slopes beyond descending into the unexplored valleys of the indus where dwell the shinaka tribesmen. had i crossed the ridge with my followers, the first human beings we met would in all probability have cut our heads off.' our survey of the south of nanga parbat was not very encouraging; directly above the rupal nullah the mountain rose almost sheer for , to , feet. precipice towered above precipice. hanging glaciers seemed to be perched in all the most inconvenient places, whilst some idea of the average angle of this face may be obtained from the map. the height of the glacier directly under the summit is about , to , feet--that is to say, in about two miles or _less_, measured on the map, there is a difference in height of , feet. in the alps one can only compare it in acclivity with the mer de glace face of the charmoz and grépon. on the south face of the matterhorn or of mont blanc a mile measured on the map would probably only make a difference in height of some and feet respectively. to come to more familiar instances, the top of the matterhorn rises to feet above zermatt, but it is distant some six or seven miles; whilst the summit of mont blanc, which is , feet higher than chamounix, is about eight miles off. one route however seemed to offer some hopes of success. by climbing a very steep rock buttress and then traversing an ice ridge, which looked like a very exaggerated copy of the one on the brenva route up mont blanc, a higher snow-field could be gained, from which the nanga parbat pass seemed easy of access. but as the pass was not much over , feet, at least another feet would have to be ascended, and the rocky ridge which connected it with the summit would tax the climbers' powers to the utmost. an obvious question also arose as to the possibility of pushing camps with provisions up to , feet by this route, for we were agreed that our highest camp must at least be somewhere about that altitude. but the evening mists again drifted over the magnificent range opposite and soon hid the upper part of the mountain. they did not finally disappear till long after sunset. in the meantime we contented ourselves with planning our expedition for the morrow by the light of the camp fire. the height of the camp by mercurial barometer was , feet. before daylight next day we started up the middle of the chiche glacier, accompanied by two of our kashmiri servants. stones without number covered the ice, and our lanterns only sufficed to show how unpleasant our path on the glacier was likely to prove. soon the cold grey of the morning revealed the chiche peak straight in front of us, a dim and colourless shadow. quickly the dawn rose; we saw the bare precipitous ice slopes on its northern face, scored everywhere by avalanche grooves, and the loneliness of the scene impressed itself upon us. we were entering on a new land, a country without visible trace of man; probably we were the first who had ever ventured into its recesses. no breeze stirred, and the eastern sun slanting across the peaks threw jagged shadows over the snows; soon rising higher in the heavens, it topped the ridges and bathed us in its warm glow. at once the glacier wakened into life, and as the stones on the surface were loosened from the frozen grip of night, those which were insecurely perched would ever and again fall down the slippery ice; then would we hear a grating noise followed by a deep thud or booming splash. these luckless stones had 'left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' and deep in the cavernous hollows of each crevasse or below the still green water of the glacier pools they rested, till such time as the crushing heel of the relentless ice should grind them slowly to powder. grand and solemn in the perfect summer's morning was my introduction to the snow world of the mighty himalaya. the great hills were around me once more. the peaks, ridges, ice-clad gullies, and stupendous precipices encircling me, sent the blood tingling through my veins; i was free to climb where i listed, and the whole of a long july day was before me. to those whose paths lie in more civilised and inhabited regions, this enthusiasm about wild and desolate mountains may seem unwarranted, may, perhaps, even savour of an elevation of fancy, a vain belief of private revelation founded neither on reason nor common sense. they probably will agree with dr. johnson, who writes of the western highlands of scotland: 'it will readily occur that this uniformity of barrenness can afford little amusement to the traveller; that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks, heaths, and waterfalls, and that these journeys are useless labours which neither impregnate the imagination nor inform the understanding.' the 'saner' portion of humanity, on the whole, are of one mind with the great doctor, at least if one can judge from their utterances, and the votary of the mountains is often looked upon with pity as one who, being carried away by a kind of frenzy, is hardly responsible for his actions. a sport like mountaineering needs no apology. moreover, it has been so often and so ably defended by writers with ample knowledge of their subject, that nothing remains for me to say to this 'saner portion,' unless perhaps i might be allowed to quote the following oracular remark: '"but it isn't so, no-how," said tweedledum. "contrariwise," continued tweedledee, "if it was so it might be; and if it were so it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. that's logic."' there are, however, those who accuse the mountaineer of worse things than a foolish and misguided enthusiasm about the waste places of the earth. i have often been told that this ardent desire for wild and rugged scenery is an unhealthy mental appetite, the result of the restless and jaded palate of the age, which must be indulged by new sensations, no matter at what cost. why cannot the mountaineer rest content with the fertile valleys, the grass-clad ranges, and the noble forests with the streams flashing in the sunlight? why cannot he be satisfied with these simpler and more homely pleasures? to what end is this eagerness for scenes where desolation and naked nature reign supreme, where avalanches thunder down the mountain-sides, where man has never lived, nay, never could live? to a few the knowledge of the hills is given. they can wander free in the great snow world relying on their mountain craft; and should their imagination not be impregnated nor their understanding informed, then are their journeys indeed useless. for nature spreads with lavish hand before them some of the grandest sights upon which human eye can gaze. delicate, white, ethereal peaks like crystallised clouds send point after point into the deep azure blue sky. driven snow, marvellously moulded in curving lines by the wind, wreathes the long ridges; and in the deep crevasses the light plays flashing backwards and forwards from the shining beryl blue sides: sights such as these delight the soul of the mountaineer and tempt him always onward. the ever-varying clouds, forming, dissolving, and again collecting on the mountains, show, here a delicate spire of rock, undiscernible until the white curling vapour shuts out the black background, there a lesser snow-peak tipped by the sunlight floating slowly across it and rimmed by the white border of the morning mists. but it is needless for the lover of the mountains to describe these sights; the mere stringing together of word-pictures carries little conviction. the sailor who spends his life on the ocean might just as well attempt to awaken enthusiasm for a seafaring life in the minds of inland country-folk, by describing the magnificence of a storm at sea, when the racing waves drive by the ship and the wind shrieks in the rigging, or by telling them of voyages through summer seas when the fresh breezes and the long rolling billows speed the ship on its homeward way through the ever-changing waters. the subject, however, must not be taken too seriously. no doubt the average individual has most excellent reasons for abstaining from climbing hills, whilst the mountaineer is, as a rule, more competent to ascend peaks than to explain their attractions; and to quote from a fragment of a lost ms.,[g] probably by aristotle: 'now, concerning the love of mountain climbing and the excess and deficiency thereof, as well as the mean which is also a virtue, let this suffice.' but i have wandered far from the chiche glacier. whether it was owing to our tremendous burst of enthusiasm which reacted on our ambition, or to a lack of muscle necessary for a hard day's work, nevertheless it must be recorded that presently our anxiety to climb the chiche peak gradually dwindled, and after several tentative suggestions we both eagerly agreed that from a smaller summit just as good a view of nanga parbat could be obtained as from one , feet high. we therefore turned our attention to a spur on our right which ran in a northerly direction from the chiche peak. as the day wore on even this proved too much for us, and after tediously floundering through soft snow, and cutting steps up a small couloir of ice, a strange and fearsome process to our kashmiris, we sat down to lunch, at a height of , feet, and basely gave up any ideas of higher altitudes. we were hopelessly out of condition. below us on our left lay a most enticing rock ridge, where plenty of fun and excitement could be had, and from its precipitous nature in several places, it would evidently take us the rest of the afternoon to get back to our camp. clouds persistently interfered with the view of nanga parbat, but now and again its summit would shine through the drifting vapours, showing precipice above precipice. the eastern face of the chiche peak, which we saw edgeways, was superb. nowhere in the alps is there anything with which one can compare the savage black corrie which nestled right in the heart of the mountain, showing dark, precipitous walls of rock, with here and there a shelf where isolated patches of snow rested. this corrie forms one of the heads of the chiche nullah, which would be worth visiting for this solitary and savage view alone. as we descended our rock-ridge we had to put on the rope, and soon experienced all the pleasures of the initiated. our bold and fearless kashmir servants got more and more alarmed; and the peculiar positions they occasionally thought it necessary to assume made us feel how sweet is the joy of being able to accomplish something that an inexperienced companion regards as impossible. in many places it was only by very great persuasion that they were induced to move. many were the things they told in hindustani, which we understood but imperfectly, though we gathered in a general way that no self-respecting kashmiri would ever attempt to climb down such places, and that even the ibex and markhor would find it an impossibility, a true enough assertion, seeing that many of the small rock faces to be negotiated were practically perpendicular for fifteen or twenty feet. we reached our tents late in the afternoon to find that hastings had come up from the lower camp. a council of war was then held. evidently we were not in condition to storm lofty peaks; and in order to get ourselves into proper training, a walk round to the other side of nanga parbat was considered necessary. hastings as arranged had brought up plenty of provisions, thus enabling the party to brave the snows and uninhabited wilds in front of them. our immediate movements decided upon, we sat round the camp fire, dined, smoked, talked, and finally, when the stars were shining brightly above the precipice-encircled summit of nanga parbat opposite, retired into our sleeping-bags for the night. footnotes: [f] all the heights given, other than those taken from the ordnance survey, are deduced from observations made with a novel and portable form of mercurial barometer, which can be coiled up and carried in a small tin box in the pocket. as we were unable to make comparative readings with a second instrument at a known height, the barometrical readings are, in every case, calculated from the pressure at sea-level being assumed to be inches. this makes the heights, as a rule, about feet _lower_ than if inches were taken as the normal sea-level pressure. [g] cp. page . chapter iv first journey to diamirai nullah and the diamirai pass 'lo! where the pass expands its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, and seems, with its accumulated crags, to overhang the world.' shelley. early the next morning, before the sun had risen, we started for the mazeno la, which should lead us into the wild and unknown chilas country. we soon experienced the kind of walking that afterwards we found to be more often than not the rule. loose stones of every size and description lay piled between the edge of the glacier and the side of the valley, and it was useless to attempt to walk on the glacier itself, for not only was it buried deep with debris, but was crevassed as well. for some distance we followed the northern or left bank, passing by the snout of a small ice-fall that came down from the main range of nanga parbat, and then turned to the right up and over an intervening spur, which finally brought us to the level of the glacier that lay immediately under the mazeno la. across this our path lay in the burning sun of the morning. before us, about feet higher up, was the pass; first the glacier was crossed, and then partly by rocks and partly over soft snow the way led upwards. within a few hundred feet of the summit ( , feet) i experienced a violent attack of mountain sickness, and was hardly able to crawl to the top. this was the only time any of the party suffered at all, and later a slight headache or lassitude was the only symptom that i ever felt, even when at heights up to , feet. the western face of the pass is much more precipitous than the one we had ascended, but by making use of an easy rock arête we soon got down ( feet) to the more level glacier below. the mazeno la on the western side somewhat resembles the zinal side of the triftjoch, but is not quite so difficult. the more active of our coolies, together with servants, were sent on with the instructions to camp on the right-hand side of the glacier as soon as they should come to any bushes out of which a fire could be made, but we were not destined that evening to camp in any comfort. caught on the glacier by the darkness we were forced to sleep for the night on a small plot of grass on the edge of the side moraine, , feet, and not till the next morning did we rejoin our coolies about a mile and a half lower down the valley. after we had obtained sufficient to eat we started down beside the glacier, which i have named the lubar glacier on account of the small shepherds' encampment of that name just below the end of it. on our arrival at lubar we made our first acquaintance with the chilas folk, some of whom looked very wild and unkempt, but throughout our expedition we found them to be friendly enough, and never experienced any difficulty with them. some sour and particularly dirty goats' milk out of huge gourds was their offering to us, and a small sheep, price four rupees, was purchased. our destination, however, was the diamirai nullah on the north-west of nanga parbat, so we did not stay long, and winding away up the hill-side, leaving the lubar stream far below us on the left, we first traversed a beautiful wood of birch-trees, and later got out on to the bare hill-side. only two small ridges separate the diamirai from the lubar nullah, but they are only small in comparison with their bigger neighbours; consequently we did not reach the diamirai nullah that day, but camped on the hill-side by a small stream at , feet. a magnificent view to the west showed all the country stretched out before us, a country untravelled by any european, whilst skirting the horizon were some splendid snow-peaks that lay near the head of the swat valley beyond tangir and darel. next day, july , before coming to the diamirai nullah a herd of markhor was seen on the slope not far in front of us, and by midday we camped on the south side of the huge diamirai glacier that fills up the centre of the nullah, having taken about five hours from our last camp, and having come over some very rough ground. as soon as the baggage was unpacked it was discovered that a pair of steig-eisen had been left at the camp of the night before. one of the goat-herds from lubar had come with us, and he, being promised a rupee should he bring them back, started at about two o'clock, running up the hill-side like a goat, and by half-past six o'clock was back again with them. of course, these men having been trained in the hills are very agile, and able to cover long distances, but considering the height there was to climb, and the nature of the ground traversed, his was a fine performance. the camp ( , feet) was placed amongst some stunted pine-trees and huge boulders that had rolled down the moraine, the glacier itself being high ( feet) above the floor of the valley at the side. the view to the westward was much the same as we had seen the night before, only with this difference: it was enclosed now between the two sides of the diamirai nullah, whilst the glacier fell away down the valley in the foreground, towards the indus, , feet below. beyond, range after range receded to the horizon, the furthest peaks probably being more than one hundred miles distant. there the mountain thieves of darel, tangir, and of the country west of chilas live unmolested. but eastward, at the head of the valley, towered nanga parbat, , feet above us, one mass of ice and snow, with rock ribs protruding here and there, and vast overhanging glaciers ready at any moment to pour down thousands of tons of ice on to the glaciers below. lit up a brilliant orange by the setting sun, and with the shadows on the lower snows of a pale green, it certainly looked most beautiful, but up its precipitous face a way had to be found, and at first sight it did not look very promising. from our camp we could see the whole face, and mummery was not long before he pointed out a route by which we hoped later to gain the upper snow-fields just underneath the summit, and thence the topmost pinnacle which glistened in the sunlight. the provisions brought over from the rupal nullah were only meant to last for a few days, so, after the exploration of the western side of nanga parbat, it became necessary to arrange for the return. the servants and coolies were sent back by the route we had come, whilst we made up our minds to cross the ridge on the south side of the valley sufficiently high up to bring us down either on to the mazeno la, or, if we were fortunate, into the head of the rupal nullah. i went for a walk about four miles up the glacier, but was unable to find a break in the great wall at the head of the diamirai nullah. on my return i nearly ran into the arms of a huge red bear; and i must confess that we both were very much frightened. [illustration: _the diamirai pass from the red pass._] that night, a little before midnight, we started with lanterns, picking our way first through the small rhododendron bushes by the side of the glacier for about a mile, then turning to the right obliquely up the hill-side with the intention of reaching a rock rib which led up to a gap in the great wall that bounded the diamirai nullah on the south side. for a long time we stumbled up what seemed an interminable shoot of loose stones, but by the time the early dawn gave sufficient light to enable us to see where we were, a rock arête came into view on our left.[h] towards this we made our way, finding the climbing was by no means difficult. occasionally the arête would become too perpendicular for us to follow it, and then we had to cut steps along the top of ice- or snow-slopes that were underneath the rocks on the top of the ridge and chance finding our way back up some gully or subsidiary rib of rocks that might branch out from the main arête. we did not seem to waste much time, but long after the sun had risen and the silent ranges of blue mountains had flushed first with the rosy tints of the rising sun and afterwards glistened with the full blaze of the morning, the pass was still far away above us. these himalaya are constructed on a totally different scale from either the alps or any of the ordinary snow mountains. still, point after point had to be surmounted. once in the mist that settled down on us about eleven o'clock, we at last thought the summit was reached, and began to descend an arête that led towards the south. twenty minutes later, when it cleared, great was our vexation to find the pass still a long distance above us on our right, and that we had unconsciously been descending towards the diamirai nullah. upwards again we had to climb, finally finding that the ridge led to the top of a peak on the west of the pass and about a thousand feet higher. in order to save the extra fatigue of climbing to the summit and again descending to the pass, mummery made a bold effort, striking across the face of the mountain. in some places rocks stuck out from the steep face, in others ice slopes had to be crossed, and towards the middle a great circle of soft snow, with steep ice underneath, gave us an anxious time; for should the surface snow have avalanched away, it would not have stopped for certainly several thousand feet. by tying two ropes (eighty and sixty feet long) together, we spread ourselves out as far apart as possible, and very carefully made our way across. it was two in the afternoon before the summit of the pass was reached; its height was , feet. we have named it the diamirai pass. mummery assured us that he had never been over a more sporting pass, and we were delighted with the varied climbing that we had experienced. but our enthusiasm was soon checked; below, on the further side, we could see neither the wished-for rupal nullah nor the mazeno la. easy rocks and snow led down to a small glacier, which, flowing southwards, led into another and larger glacier whose trend was to the west. evidently the larger glacier was the lubar. the position we were in gradually began to dawn on us. in fourteen hours we had made, as the crow flies, three miles; of course we had climbed about six thousand feet, but in front of us lay a descent of three thousand feet, and on to the wrong side of the range, therefore at least five miles away round the corner on the left was the mazeno la, , feet. we also knew that our camp, and probably our first food, was nearly twenty miles on the other side of the mazeno, and to make matters worse we had only a few scraps left, a slice of meat, some sticks of chocolate, and about half a dozen biscuits. there was no time to admire the view, also not much view to admire, for the customary midday mists completely hid nanga parbat and all the higher peaks. as an heroic effort mummery suggested that it might save time to climb up from the pass on the south side, over a peak nearly , feet, in order to drop down on to the mazeno la; but we soon decided that it was imprudent so late in the day to attempt it, especially as it would most certainly involve spending the night out at some very high altitude. we therefore rapidly descended the easy slopes on the south side of this pass, to which, as i have said, we gave the name of diamirai. after running down the foot glacier, the lubar glacier was reached at about half-past five. here we stopped and rested for about an hour and a half, vainly attempting to get away from a bitterly cold wind that was blowing up from the west. but there was no shelter, so the lesser of two evils was chosen, namely to go on. slowly we crawled to the foot of the mazeno la, and about twenty hours after we had started on our expedition, without food, and with only the light of our lanterns, we toiled up the slopes that would bring us at last to the top of our second pass, , feet above sea-level. i shall never forget how tobacco helped me through that night, as i smoked whilst waiting on the summit, in the freezing air and the bright starlight, for mummery and hastings; it almost made me feel that i was enjoying myself; and it stayed the pangs of hunger and soothed away the utter weariness that beset both mind and body. during our wild nocturnal wanderings, first down the mazeno, and then down the rupal glacier, where in the dim candle-light and in a semi-conscious condition we slipped, tumbled, and fell, but always with one dominant idea--namely, we must go on!--that pipe continued to help me. what cared i though hastings growled?--he does not smoke!--or whether poor mummery groaned aloud as he stepped into icy pools of water. so we stumbled frantically forwards, over the vast wilderness of stones and ice; and i remember, as we groped our way onwards, i must have half fallen asleep, for i could not get out of my mind that there was a hut or a small hotel on the top of the mazeno la, and that for our sins we had been doomed to wander for ever in this dismal and waste land of cold and darkness, whilst rest and food were foolishly left behind. but daylight came at last, and, after the sun was well up in the sky, we finally made our way off that dreadful glacier. we also had vague hopes that perhaps after all we might be able to get something to eat before we reached our camp, miles away near tashing. for one of our kashmiri servants had been told to wait at the foot of the glacier--a week if necessary--till we turned up. we were quite uncertain whether he would follow our instructions, but at seven o'clock hastings and i found him camped under a huge rock. at once some provisions and a kettleful of hot tea were sent back to mummery, who was resting some miles up the valley. at half-past ten i left hastings and mummery asleep amongst the flowers in the shade under the rock, and set off alone for the lower camp, if possible to hurry up some ponies to fetch them down the valley. early in the afternoon i met them with two of the rupal coolies: they had crossed the nanga parbat glacier, no easy thing to do, but, the steep face of dried mud and boulders about thirty feet high leading off the glacier, they could not get up. engineering operations at once became necessary; with my ice-axe i cut large footsteps diagonally upwards across this steep face. but the first pony was afraid. after some talking, one of the men led up a wise-looking, grey pony to the bottom, and, talking to it, showed it the staircase. it then climbed up, feeling each step carefully with its forelegs before venturing on to it. these unshod mountain-horses are certainly extremely clever on such kind of ground. several years later, when travelling in the canadian rocky mountains with a whole pack of canadian ponies, a place not one-quarter as difficult entirely stopped the whole outfit, although for making their way through fallen timber and across dangerous streams these canadian ponies are unequalled. between five and six that evening i arrived at our tashing camp and found bruce there. he had obtained a month's leave, bringing with him two gurkhas--ragobir and goman singh. over our dinner we forgot the weary tramping of the last forty hours, celebrating the occasion by drinking all the bottles of bass's pale ale--a priceless treasure in these parts--that we had brought from kashmir. then afterwards, when we turned into our sleeping-bags before the roaring camp-fire, and the twilight slowly passed into the azure night, and overhead the glistening stars were blazing in the clear sky, a worthy ceiling to this mountain land, it was agreed unanimously that it was worth coming many thousand miles to enjoy climbing in the himalaya, and that those who lived at home ingloriously at their ease knew not the joys that were to be found amidst the ice and snows of the greatest of mountain ranges. never would they enjoy the keen air that sweeps across the snow-clad heights, never would they wander homeless and supperless over the vile wastes which surround the mazeno la for the best part of two nights and two days; and, last but not least, never would such joys as the marvellous contentment born of a good dinner, after incipient starvation, nor the delicious rest that comes as the reward after excessive fatigue--never would joys such as these be theirs. footnotes: [h] see illustration facing page . chapter v second journey to diamirai nullah and ascent to , feet 'and this, the naked countenance of earth, on which i gaze, even these primæval mountains, power dwells apart in their tranquillity, remote, serene, and inaccessible.' shelley. next day bruce and i with ragobir and goman singh went for an excursion up the tashing glacier, in order that the two gurkhas might have some experience in ice-work and step-cutting. it was great fun, and although i was perfectly unable to understand any of their conversation, ragobir and goman singh were laughing, chattering, and playing the whole time like two children. on july the same party, with the addition of mummery, started for a ridge which runs south-east towards tashing from the peak marked , feet, which we named chongra peak, as it is at the head of the valley of that name above astor. we crossed the tashing glacier, and camped at , feet by some rocks. next day was spent in a ridge-wander. our intention was to climb a rock peak overlooking the chongra nullah; but laziness was in the air, the day was hot, and the ridge endless. finally a halt was called somewhat short of the peak that we had intended to climb, and for a long time we basked in the sun, smoked, ate our lunch, and enjoyed the superb view of the precipices of nanga parbat on the west and of the karakoram range far away to the northward. out of the masses of snow-clad giants in the remote distance to the north-east, one rose obviously higher than all its neighbours; in shape it resembled the view of k^{ } as seen from turmik.[i] since then, however, bruce has told me that the mountain that was seen from turmik was probably the mustagh tower. these two peaks would be about one hundred miles away, and in that clear atmosphere should be perfectly visible from our position (about , feet), for we were high enough to see over the range on the east of the astor valley. we also saw across the indus and up the shigar valleys, and further still the eye was directed straight up the baltoro with no high peaks or ranges to intercept its view. very much nearer and more to the north just on the other side of the astor nullah a really magnificent double-headed peak, the dichil,[j] sends up a series of perfectly impossible precipices. its height on the map is , feet, but i am positive this measurement must be wrong. much later, whilst returning from the rakiot nullah to dashkin, i was at a point , feet on the ridge just opposite across the astor valley, and seen from there it apparently towered at least feet above me. in the dichil nullah at its foot the valley cannot be more than , feet, and the view of it from this nullah must far surpass that of ushba in grandeur. during the day a curious haze hung over some of the precipices at the head of the tashing glacier just opposite to us, due to perpetual avalanches of stones which were partly falling, partly sliding, down the steep slopes. we returned to camp by a different route. a steep rock ridge led straight down from the peak we were on to the tashing glacier below. on this ridge we had some delightful climbing, ultimately reaching the upper pasturages lying on the left bank of the glacier. it was a long tramp from there home, but just as it became dark we marched into our camp beneath the grove of willows. the th was spent preparing for our start for the diamirai nullah, for mummery had quite given up all idea of attempting to climb the thousands of feet of almost perpendicular wall that ran the whole way along the south face of nanga parbat. the next day we started with a perfect caravan of coolies. our intention was to send goman singh and our servants, together with all the coolies and baggage, over the mazeno la by the route we had first taken, whilst we ourselves with ragobir should try to cross directly from the head of the rupal nullah to the head of the diamirai nullah. this time we hoped to have better luck than on our return over the diamirai pass. but it was with some misgiving that i started, for i alone in my walk a week before up the diamirai glacier had seen the head of that nullah, and although i did not doubt that we might reach the head of some pass from the southern side, i could not remember any place where it would be possible for us to descend on the northern side, and under any conditions our pass would be at least , feet, probably more, for the route lay directly over the spur which leads westward from the summit of nanga parbat to the mazeno la. that night we camped about four to five miles short of the mazeno la at a height of , feet. in the dark we started next morning up excessively steep and broken moraine by the side of an ice-fall, thence we turned on to the steep glacier, and after some difficulty got on to the upper glacier, which came down from the north-east. after following this for some distance we turned to our left up a wide couloir, and partly on rocks and partly on snow slowly climbed upwards. by three in the afternoon bruce, who was not in such good condition as we were, and was suffering from suppressed mumps (although neither he nor we knew it at the time), began to feel tired, but under the stimulation produced by some citrate of caffeine lozenges he went on again bravely. at last we came out on to the ridge at the head of the couloir, and climbed some few hundred feet up the arête, which seemed to lead to the very summit of the peak marked , feet on the map. but the time was five o'clock in the afternoon. the height by mercurial barometer was , feet. we had climbed over feet; but beyond feeling very tired, which was natural, we were hardly affected by the rarefied air. here we stopped for some short time and had our evening meal. bruce and i came to the conclusion that, as we must certainly spend the night out somewhere, a less exalted position was preferable. we selected a new route, which would take us down to the foot of the mazeno la, ragobir coming with us. mummery and hastings would not hear of beating a retreat thus early, so they arranged to go on, and should they find the ridge become too difficult further up, they would return and follow us down, but they hoped for a full moon and the possibility of climbing on during the night. [illustration: _the mazeno peaks from the red pass._] bruce and i did not make much progress, for our ridge soon became both narrower and more precipitous; but finally, as the sun was setting, we found a crack running through the arête into which a flat stone had got jammed just large enough for three people to sit on. here we made up our minds to stop for the night. roughly we were , feet, or feet higher than the mazeno la, and about two to three miles to the eastward of it. a stone thrown out on either side of our small perch would have fallen many hundreds of feet before hitting anything, so we did not take off the rope, but huddled together as best we could to keep warm. i could write a very long description of the wonderful orange sunset we saw beyond the mazeno, how the light faded out of the sky, and the stars came out one by one as the sunset disappeared; how we tried in vain to get into positions such that the freezing wind would not penetrate our clothes, how bruce and ragobir groaned, and how we suffered--but i will refrain. let any one who may be curious on the subject of a night out on a rock ridge at , feet try it; but he must place himself in such a position that, twist and turn as he may, he still encounters the cold, jagged rocks with every part of his body, and though he shelter himself ever so wisely, he must feel the wind steadily blowing beneath his shirt. late in the night we heard noises on the ridge above us. it was mummery and hastings returning. but, although they were within speaking distance of bruce and myself, and i had lit a lantern to show them where we were, they could not reach us, and finally had to select the least uncomfortable place they could. with leaden feet the night paced tardily on, and brilliant stars and moon that had at first shone from the zenith gradually sank towards the west, but how slowly!-- 'yon lily-woven cradle of the hours hath floated half her shining voyage, nor yet is by the current of the morn opposed.' would the morning never come, and with it the warm sunshine? daylight crept up the sky, however, at last, and as soon as they could, mummery and hastings joined us. after we left them, they had climbed some considerable distance further, but as the mists did not lift at sundown and the other side of the range was unknown, they perforce had to return, having nearly reached the summit of the mountain and a height of , feet. it was a long time before we got down on to the mazeno glacier, but somewhere about ten o'clock we arrived on the flat glacier. here the party, overcome by the warmth of the sunshine and a great drowsiness, went to sleep on some of the flat slabs of stone that lay scattered on the ice. personally, nothing would have given me more pleasure than to have followed the example of the rest, but visions of another night out on the lubar glacier troubled me. moreover, we had nothing whatever to eat, the night before having seen the last of our provisions. ragobir and i therefore with weary feet started to cross the mazeno la. very slowly we toiled and toiled upwards through the already softened snow; but long before we reached the summit, more than once ragobir had lain down on the ground exhausted. i found out later that he had eaten nothing whatever the day before. ultimately we got to the top and rested awhile. our mission was to get to lubar, and from there send back up the glacier milk and meat to the remainder of the expedition. it was already midday, and here was i with a gurkha who could hardly crawl, and the rest of the party perhaps in a worse condition far behind. so after a short rest, i started down from the pass on the west side, soon leaving ragobir behind. then i waited for him. repeating these tactics he was enticed onwards again, until crossing an ice-couloir rendered dangerous through falling stones, i walked out on to the level glacier at the bottom to await him. very slowly he crawled down, and when in the centre of the couloir, although i screamed to him to hurry, he was nearly hit by a great stone weighing half a hundredweight that had come from two or three thousand feet above. although it only missed him by a few feet, he never changed his pace; and when at last he reached me, seated on a stone, he dropped full length on the ice, absolutely refusing to move, and groaning. he had eaten nothing for the last forty hours. my position was becoming serious. i could not leave the gurkha, lubar was miles away down the glacier, and some of the rest of the party might be in the same condition as ragobir. i could think of nothing except to smoke my pipe and wait for something to happen. half an hour passed, then an hour; and then, far up on the summit of the mazeno la a black dot appeared, and shortly afterwards two more. so i waited, and at last the whole party was reunited. bruce managed to revive ragobir, who had had over two hours' rest, and we all set off as fast as we could for the shepherds' huts at lubar. as the sun was setting we arrived there, very weary, but buoyed up with the expectation of something to eat. i shall never forget the sight that greeted my eyes when mummery and i, the last of the party, walked into the small enclosure of stones where the goats and sheep were collected. bruce was seated on the small wall in his shirt-sleeves, superintending the slaughter of one of the sheep. and, horrible to relate, in less than half an hour after we entered lubar we were all ravenously devouring pieces of sheep's liver only half cooked on the ends of sticks. the dirty, sour goats' milk, too, was delicious, and as far as i can recollect, each of us drank considerably over a gallon that evening, to wash down the fragments of toasted sheep and chappatties that we made from some flour that had providentially remained behind our caravan with a sick coolie. very soon we got into a somewhat comatose condition, and there was some sort of arrangement made, that should any one wake in the night he should look after the fire. but next morning when i awoke the fire was out and i was covered with hoarfrost. we had all fallen asleep almost in the positions in which we sat in front of the fire. i am afraid i must apologise for this second description of the delights of feeding after a prolonged fast. but few people have any conception of what it feels like to be really starving and worked till one longs to drop down anywhere--even on snow or ice. hunger, exposure, and exhaustion are hard taskmasters, and the relief brought by rest, comfort, and plenty of food is a pleasure never to be forgotten. it is certainly one of the keenest enjoyments i have ever experienced. next morning we started for the diamirai camp, taking with us the coolie and the precious flour. we preferred to strike out a new route, keeping higher up the mountain-side and more to the right. before long we met some of our kashmir servants who had come back from the diamirai to look for us, and, as was their most excellent custom, brought with them as many edibles as they could. these of course were soon finished. we left them to return by the ordinary route to the camp, whilst we followed up the butesharon glacier in a south-easterly direction, reaching at its head a col about , feet. from this pass, on that perfectly clear afternoon, an unsurpassed panorama was spread out before us. the indus valley lay , feet beneath us. beyond stretched that almost unknown land below chilas. a hundred miles away were the snow peaks in the swat country, marked on the map as , feet and , feet high, standing out distinct against the sky, whilst much further still, a little more to the right, rose a vast snow peak nearly flat topped, or at least a ridge of peaks, several thousand feet higher than any others. it was probably tirach mir above chitral, , feet and , feet high. from the summit of the butesharon pass we descended almost straight to the camp, which had been pitched in the old spot, where we had been ten days before. during the next two days, august and , we stopped in camp, and on the th bruce left us, going back to abbottabad _via_ the mazeno la, the kamri, and kashmir. as we heard afterwards, it was anything but a pleasant journey, for, probably owing to the exposure during that night on nanga parbat, his complaint had been aggravated, and the glands of his neck and face had become so swollen, that when he was met by a friend on the kamri he was unrecognisable, and for many months afterwards was unable to wear a collar. the day that bruce left, mummery and i with the gurkhas started to explore the upper end of the diamirai glacier. we camped at the head of the valley on the last grass on the northern side. mummery and ragobir started at midnight for the western face of nanga parbat. during the day they managed to reach the top of the second rib of rocks that lie directly under the summit, a height of about , to , feet. in the meantime i went to look at the diama glacier between the ganalo peak, , feet, and nanga parbat, taking with me goman singh and our kashmir shikari. we climbed up the ridge that comes down from the ganalo peak to about , feet, but unfortunately the day was cloudy, so i was unable satisfactorily to see the whole of the diama valley, and ascertain what chances we should have if we were to attack nanga parbat from that side. however, on returning in the afternoon, i met mummery on the glacier. he was delighted with his exploration, for there was, he said, magnificent climbing, and he had found a place on the top of the second rib of rock where a tent might be pitched. from july , the day we left the kishnganga valley, it had been gloriously fine; but next day, august , the weather broke with heavy rain. of course all our energies now were concentrated on the ascent of nanga parbat. mummery decided that we should push provisions and supplies up the route that he and ragobir had prospected; and he was confident that once beyond the rock ribs and on the upper snow-fields with some provisions and a silk tent, it would be very hard luck indeed should we be driven back before we reached the summit. during august and , mummery, ragobir, lor khan (a chilas shikari, who had come up from gashut in the bunar valley, and insisted on stopping with us), and i spent the time in carrying a waterproof bag of provisions and some odds and ends up the second rib of rock to a height of , feet. here we left it in a safe place on the rocks. we also had considerable quantities of fuel taken up by coolies, to a camp , feet, at the bottom of the rocks under nanga parbat. mummery was not wrong when he said it was magnificent climbing. the only climbing in the alps i can compare it to is that on the chamounix aiguilles. in many places it was similar to that on the west side of the aiguille du plan from the pèlerin glacier. between the first and second ribs of rock the glacier was broken up into the wildest confusion, and it was only by passing a somewhat nasty couloir, down which occasional ice avalanches came, that the rocks of the second rib could be reached; thence to the top of the rib was difficult rock climbing over great slabs and towers of rock set at a very steep angle. i was extremely surprised that lor khan would go, but he did not seem in the least frightened, and with a little help from the rope climbed splendidly. as we returned that night to our camp the rains descended, and we arrived wet through; the weather was getting worse, and no serious attempt could be made for the present on nanga parbat. footnotes: [i] in drew's _jummoo and kashmir territories_, p. , also _alpine club journal_, vol. xvii. p. , there is a sketch showing a mountain supposed to be k^{ }. drew also has drawn k^{ } in no. isometric view of the mountains on the north-east of the indus river. when drew made these sketches the existence of the mustagh tower, which rivals k^{ } in height, was unknown; moreover both from turmik, and also from near gilgit where the isometric view no. was taken, the mustagh tower would be almost exactly in front of k^{ }. [j] there is a drawing of this peak on page of sir w. m. conway's _climbing in the himalaya_. chapter vi ascent of the diamirai peak 'nothing that is mountainous is alien to us; we are addicted to all high places from gaurisankar to primrose hill, wherever man has not forked out nature. no doubt we find a particular fascination in the greatest and boldest inequalities of the earth's surface and the strange scenery of the ice and snow world; but we are attracted by any inequality, so long as it has not a railroad station or a restaurant on the top of it.' douglas freshfield. about this time we were beginning to run short of provisions, though a month earlier we had ordered all sorts of luxuries--jams, kashmir wine, and so forth--from srinagar, and had heard that they had been despatched to bandipur, to be forwarded thence by the government commissariat department. all inquiries were, however, fruitless, but bruce had promised that should he, on his way down country to abbottabad, discover their whereabouts he would hurry them on. eventually he found them reposing at bandipur, so he at once packed them on ponies and sent them to our camp in the rupal nullah, knowing how the commissariat department had to strain every nerve to get the requisite grain supplies for the troops over the passes to gilgit before the bad weather set in and blocked the burzil, and that private baggage and supplies might wait indefinitely till such time as it pleased the department to find ponies to convey them to their destination. personally we did not wish to leave the diamirai nullah, but at the same time it was absolutely necessary that somehow we should replenish our vanishing stock of food. already two of our kashmir servants had been sent down into the bunar district to bring up whatever they were able to collect, but we could not depend on the chilas nullahs to yield us all we might want. this question of provisioning our camp caused perpetual worry. unless one has trustworthy servants, every ten days or so one of the party has to start off to the nearest village for supplies. this may take a week or more, and as the period during which the big mountains are in a condition to climb is at the best but very limited, much valuable time will be wasted. bruce told me that whilst he was with sir w. m. conway, in the karakorams, all the catering was left to rahim ali, his servant. if every fortnight during their stay at the head of the baltoro glacier they had been forced, as we were, personally to forage and seek for dilatory servants, the climbing on pioneer peak would have progressed but slowly. a piece of advice which cannot be too strongly urged upon those who go to the himalaya is to get good servants at any cost, not to grudge the time spent, for it will be regained afterwards a hundredfold. the cook or khansammah ought to be the chief servant in the camp. he ought to be responsible for everything: it is his business to provide food, and a good cook who feeds one well, and takes the responsibility of the endless small details of management and supply off one's shoulders is worth five times the wages which are usually given. accordingly, after some consultation, hastings generously agreed to sacrifice himself and trudge back to our camp in the rupal nullah and thence to astor, not only with the hope of bringing back with him all the luxuries we had weeks before ordered from srinagar, but also with the intention of procuring sheep, flour, rice, and tea from astor. at the same time he hoped to shorten to a great extent the journey to the mazeno by making a new and direct pass over into the lubar nullah immediately south of our camp. in the meantime mummery and i were to stay behind in the diamirai nullah and push provisions up the face of nanga parbat as fast as we could. just south of our camp rose a snow peak, about , feet, which we have called the diamirai peak. on july , in crossing the pass from the diamirai over to the lubar glacier, we had left it on our right. it is not on the main ridge of nanga parbat, but on a side spur running to the westward. camped as we were at its very foot, and looking on it as but a single day's climb, we determined to try to ascend it, whilst we waited for the snow to clear off the rocks on nanga parbat. by this time we had learned that the ascent of any peak , feet high was a laborious undertaking. at first we had talked about the 'twenty thousanders' somewhat contemptuously, and not without reason, for our hopes were fixed on nanga parbat, , feet; surely if a mountain of that height were possible, those whose summits were feet lower ought to be simplicity itself. in fact, we imagined that, as far as difficulty was concerned, they should stand somewhat in the same proportion to each other as an ascent of mont blanc to a climb up the brévent from chamounix during the springtime before all the snow has melted. [illustration: _the diamirai peak from the red pass._] unfortunately they were not quite so easy as we should have liked; not only did they involve an ascent from the camp of to feet, but also a considerable amount of the climbing under a pressure of about half an atmosphere. then the interminable ice slopes, which in the nanga parbat district are very much more common than in the alps, meant many hours of step-cutting, and the softened state of the snow directly after the sun had shone on it added considerably to our labour. besides these drawbacks, which render the ascent of a mountain , feet high not altogether easy, the utter confusion and wearisome monotony of the stony and rugged hill-sides between the valley and the snow-line must not be forgotten. on august the th, we all started early in the morning by lantern light, taking with us ragobir and lor khan (as well as goman singh and two coolies who were to accompany hastings as far as astor). we first climbed up a small moraine coming steeply down the side of the main valley almost to our camp from the glacier on the north-west side of the diamirai peak, and in about an hour and a half came to the glacier itself. here hastings parted company with us, and, crossing a pass (which he has named goman singh pass), to the westward of the diamirai peak, got safely over down to the lubar glacier, whence by way of the mazeno pass he came to our camp in the rupal nullah. mummery and i, accompanied by ragobir and lor khan, turning slightly to the left, made for a gully leading higher up to a snow ridge which ran upwards nearly to the summit of the peak. at the foot of the gully we were confronted by a small bergschrund. this we easily turned, and began scrambling up the rocks on our left hand. gradually the grey dawn melted into a himalayan sunrise. far away over the lower ridges we could see-- 'the ever-silent spaces of the east far folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.' above there was very little colour, pale greens verging into oranges and yellows, whilst below, in the shadows of the valleys, cold, dark steel blues, clear and deep, were the predominating shades. for a long while we watched the orange sunlight, catching first one part of nanga parbat and then another, as slowly the patches widened and spread creeping always down the mountain-side. away to the north, on the opposite side of the diamirai nullah, two minor rock peaks on the ridge were tipped with the rays of the morning sun. at the height we had already gained there was visible over the intervening ridge all the country above gor on the further side of the indus, while to the south of gilgit stretched away mile after mile of mountain ranges. but by far the most striking sight was the enormous snow range beyond gilgit and yasin, the extreme western end of the mustagh or karakoram range. rakipushi we could not see; it was just cut off by the western spur of the ganalo peak, but from a point just west of the kilik pass almost to the mountains above chitral, snow summit after snow summit rose up into the heavens clear cut and distinct in the wonderfully translucent air. [illustration: view of the diamirai peak from the red pass. the dotted lines show our various routes.] [illustration: view of the diamirai peak from the red pass.] with this marvellous view nothing interfered, as the average height of the peaks on this mighty barrier which divides english from russian territory cannot be much less than , feet, and that of the hills which lay between us and these peaks was not more than , feet. high above the great snow range on the horizon, a long-drawn cloud floated like a grey bar of silver, but it did not prevent the rays of the rising sun from covering with their golden light the whole of the distant and lonely snow world, as yet untrodden by the foot of man. as usual, a perfect stillness and calm in the morning air seemed to herald a fine day, but already we had learned to mistrust these signs:-- 'full many a glorious morning have i seene, flatter the mountaine tops with soveraine eie, * * * * * anon permit the basest cloudes to ride with ougly rack on his celestiall face.' few days were there during our stay in the nanga parbat region that were clear after a.m., and this morning was no exception. the sun had risen above nanga parbat, and we knew well how soon the snow would soften under its powerful rays--half an hour usually sufficing under these conditions to thaw through the frozen outer crust. new snow, too, had fallen in considerable quantities, so we did not want to waste any of the valuable early hours on the lower slopes. fortunately about this time the morning mists began to gather as usual, and not only prevented the snow from melting, but protected us from the fearful glare which would have been our fate on a perfectly cloudless day. very narrow and steep was the snow ridge which stretched up the mountain-side above us, but we knew, although we could not see from where we were, that it led almost to the summit. the average angle of the arête was a little over degrees. at first mummery was easily able to nick out steps with the axe, but soon the crust began to give way here and there, leaving us to struggle often knee-deep. on our right the angle was not very steep, but on the left of the ridge was a most forbidding ice slope. every now and then we would make rapid progress, finding a thinner coating of snow upon the ice, with but one or two small crevasses to be crossed. away on our left was an excellent rock ridge, but we could not reach it without cutting across the steep ice-slope. however, our arête, some distance further up, seemed to join the rock ridge, so we pushed on quickly, in the hope that above we should be rewarded by finding easy rocks to climb. before we reached this point a difficult and steep piece on the arête had to be surmounted. if we could have traversed off to the right it would have been easier, but the snow was in a most unstable condition; small zigzags to the right and then back again on to the ridge were resorted to, and ultimately we succeeded in getting up this somewhat nasty place. rapid progress was then made, but we found, much to our disappointment, that the rock ridge ended where it joined the arête, and our hopes of an easy rock climb vanished. finally we arrived just under the first summit of our mountain. here the same difficulty we had experienced down below again presented itself, but in a worse form. the arête was much steeper, sloping probably at an angle of about to degrees. mummery tried the same tactics as before, but soon had to confess that he dared not trust the snow any further, for it was thoroughly sodden upon the surface of the ice, and we might bring the whole face off at any moment. on the arête itself the snow, where it had drifted and been frozen, lay curiously deep, so that even at the thinnest point it did not allow of steps being cut in the ice below. our only chance, therefore, was to try the ice slope on the left of the arête. mummery led, cutting the steps diagonally across the slope, where a thin coating of snow lay some two or three inches deep over the hard ice underneath. as he moved slowly upwards, i came next on the rope, and, to keep my hands employed, passed the time in cutting the steps deeper into the ice. the position was a sensational one--we were crossing the steepest ice slope of any great size i had ever been on; below us it shot straight down some feet without a break, till the angle became less in a small snow basin. the next objects that met the eye were the stone slopes far below in the valley, and unconsciously i began to picture to myself the duration and the result of an involuntary glissade on such a mountain-side. lor khan, who came behind me on the rope, seemed to be enjoying himself immensely; of course he had never been in such a position before, but these chilas tribesmen are famous fellows. what swiss peasant, whilst making his first trial of the big snow peaks and the ice, would have dared to follow in such a place, and that, too, with only skins soaked through by the melting snow wrapped round his feet? lor khan never hesitated for a moment; when i turned and pointed downwards he only grinned, and looked as if he were in the habit of walking on ice slopes every day of his life. we were soon all in a line across this ice face, and whilst i was cutting one of mummery's steps deeper to make it safer for our chilas shikari, i noticed that the rope was hanging down in a great loop between lor khan and myself. at once i cried out to him not to move again till it was absolutely tight between us, and always to keep it so for the future. in the east we found that people were accustomed to obey instantly without asking questions. what the sahib said was law, at least so long as the sahib was there himself to enforce obedience. consequently as i moved onward the rope soon became taut, and fortunately remained in that condition. shortly after this mummery turned upwards and slightly to his right, cutting nearly straight up the face, owing to some bad snow which barred our way. just as i began the ascent of this staircase i heard a startled exclamation below. instinctively i struck the pick of my axe deep into the ice, and at the same moment the whole of the weight of the unfortunate lor khan came on ragobir and on me with the full force of a drop of some five to six feet. he had slipped out of one of the steps, and hung with his face to the glistening ice, whilst under him the thin coating of snow peeled off the face of the slope in great and ever-widening masses, gathering in volume as it plunged headlong down the mountain-side, finally to disappear over the cliffs thousands of feet below. for the time being i was fascinated by the descending avalanche, my whole mind being occupied with but this one thought, that if lor khan began to struggle and jerk at the rope i should without a doubt be pulled out of my steps. my fears proved groundless. although lor khan had lost his footing he never lost either his head or his axe, and was just able to reach with his hand one of the steps out of which he had fallen. after mummery had made himself quite firm above me i found myself, with the help of ragobir, who was last on the rope, just able to haul up our chilas shikari to a step which he had manfully cut for himself. it was, however, a very unpleasant experience; if the fall had been ten feet instead of six, i should never have been able to have borne the strain, and lor khan would have fallen considerably more than that if he had not been opportunely warned that he must keep the rope tight between himself and me. half an hour later we got off our ice slope and stepped almost on to the first summit. all our difficulties were over. after ploughing through some soft snow, at about half-past eleven o'clock we were seated on the true top of our peak, the height of which by the barometer turned out to be , feet. we had climbed between and feet, and mummery had led the whole way. the last feet had been very severe, for at first most of the steps had to be laboriously broken, and later we had to win our way by the use of the axe. but mummery was perfectly fresh and could have gone on for hours, the diminished pressure (fifteen inches of mercury) having apparently no effect on him; neither was ragobir any the worse for his climb; lor khan and i had slight headaches, but otherwise were quite fit for more. as we sat on the top enveloped in mist, mummery and i debated afresh the old question, how should we feel if we ever ascended to , feet? mummery reasoned that it would chiefly depend on our state of training at the time. had i not been dreadfully ill at , feet crossing the mazeno la, whilst here we were all right at , feet? had we not ascended our last feet with hardly a rest and at exactly the same pace as if we had been climbing in the alps? as it always takes two to argue, i perforce had to try my best as the opposition. at once i discovered that my headache was by no means a negligible quantity, and was therefore an excellent test for abnormal altitudes. probably also mountain-sickness was a disease which lurked in the higher mountains and was ready at any moment to rush on and seize its prey. luckily for us the particular bacillus was not just then in the surrounding atmosphere, consequently we had not been inoculated, yet perhaps should we on some future occasion go to , to , feet, we might be suddenly overwhelmed. then i quoted an article i had read somewhere about paralysis and derangement of nerve-centres in the spinal column being the fate of all who insist on energetic action when the barometer stands at thirteen inches. it was no good, mummery only laughed at me; and at this moment the mist clearing for a short space to the southward, we were soon far more interested with the view of the thosho and rupal peaks. the summit we were on fell away on the south directly under our feet in a series of rock precipices. we started on our homeward journey at about one o'clock without catching a single glimpse of nanga parbat. the descent of the steep ice slopes of our upward route was far too dangerous to attempt, so we decided on a rock ridge to the westward which we hoped would lead us down on the pass that hastings had crossed earlier in the day. ragobir was sent to the front. he led us down the most precipitous places with tremendous rapidity and immense enjoyment. it was all 'good' according to him, and his cheery face down below made me feel that there could be no difficulty, till i found myself hanging down a slab of rock with but the barest of handholds, or came to a bulging mass of ice overhanging a steep gully, which insisted on protruding into the middle of my stomach, with direful result to my state of equilibrium. at one place where the ridge was a narrow knife edge, with precipices on both sides, we had a splendid piece of climbing. a sharp descent of about a hundred feet occurred on the arête which seemed at first sight impossible. ragobir tried first on the right hand, but, owing to the smoothness of the rock slabs and the absence of all handholds, was unable to get down further than twenty feet or so. whilst i was dangling the gurkha on the end of the rope, mummery discovered what he considered to be a possible solution of the difficulty. ragobir was to climb about twenty-five feet down a small open chimney on the perpendicular south face of the ridge; he then would be on the top of a narrow flake of rock which was laid against the mountain-side in the same manner as those on the traverse of the aiguille de grépon. we could easily hold him from above whilst he edged sideways along this narrow way. after a short time he called out that it was all right, and i let down lor khan next. when i myself got on to the traverse i was very much impressed, not that it was very difficult, thanks to the splendid handholds, but the face was so perpendicular that without them one could hardly have stood on the narrow top of the slab without falling outwards. a loose stone when thrown out about twenty feet pitched on some snow at least five hundred feet below. i found ragobir and lor khan on a small niche on the ridge which divided the arête into two and at the top of an incipient ice gully. with considerable difficulty i managed to squeeze on to the small platform of rock and direct operations. ragobir cut his way down to the next place where he could rest; and, after carefully hitching the rope as safely as i could, mummery was called on to follow. it was just the kind of place he enjoyed, but it needed some one with iron nerves to descend the somewhat difficult chimney and then edge along the traverse without a steadying-rope from above. after the descent of the ice gully the climbing proved much easier. rapid progress was made in spite of an uncertainty as to where we were going, for everything was hidden by the afternoon mists. our route kept slowly bending away to the south-west, and as hastings's pass lay directly to the west, we hoped that another bend to the north-west would put us straight again. we could not leave the ridge and traverse to our right, so perforce had to keep on descending, and when at last the mists did rise for a short time, we found our fears amply confirmed. the pass lay about a thousand feet above on our right, and, what was still more exasperating, the shortest route to it necessitated a still further descent of at least five hundred feet, followed by a traverse underneath the overhanging end of a glacier. an extra fifteen hundred feet of climbing up the unstable, interminable, and heart-breaking debris, which is so common on the south faces of the himalaya, and that, too, late in the afternoon, was trying even to the best of tempers. i used quite unpublishable language, and even the imperturbable mummery was moved to express his feelings in much more forcible language than was customary. there are occasions when language fails, and even the pen of rudyard kipling is unequal to depict the situation literally, though he does his best. there rises before me his description of that scene in the railway works at jamalpur, where an apprentice is addressing, 'half in expostulation and half in despair, a very much disorganised engine which is sadly in need of repair.' kipling gives us the gist of his language, but owns that after all the youth put it 'more crisply--very much more crisply.' we reached the top at last, but even then we had to traverse to the westward half a mile before beginning the descent. once started we went at racing speed, sometimes getting a long glissade down soft snow, sometimes a run down small stone debris; it was rather hard on poor lor khan, who was not shod for this kind of work, and was soon left far behind. but it was getting late, and we wished to reach the camp before dark. just as the sun was setting over the far-away hills in the wild, unknown tangir, and shining through a thin veil of an evening shower, the tents under the diamirai moraine were sighted; and during the after-dinner smoke opposite a roaring fire of pine logs we went over our day's adventures, and both agreed that we had enjoyed ourselves hugely: and so to bed. chapter vii attempt to ascend nanga parbat 'an ancient peak, in that most lonely land, snow-draped and desolate, where the white-fleec'd clouds like lagging sheep are wandering all astray, till the shrill whistling wind, their shepherd rude, drives them before him at the early dawn to feed upon the barren mountain tops. far from the stately pines, whose branches woo the vagrant breeze with murmuring melody, far from the yellow cornlands, far from streams and dewy lawns soft cradled deep below, naked it stands. the cold wind's goblin prate, of weird lost legends born in days of old, echoes all night amongst its pinnacles; whilst higher more remote a storm-swept dome mocks the pale moon: there nothing living reigns save one old spirit of a forgotten god.' fragment. [illustration: _on nanga parbat from upper camp._] a week before this, on the same day that bruce had left us, our cook and our head shikari, together with some coolies, had been sent to fetch up from the bunar valley any provisions they could find. we knew that if they had travelled with ordinary speed, five days was ample for the whole journey, and they were therefore two days overdue. moreover, in our camp provisions for only one day remained. our position was annoying. of course, as the weather had turned fine again we wished to carry more necessaries up to the camp at the head of the diamirai glacier, just under nanga parbat; but even where we were at the base camp, it was two days' hard travelling from the nearest village and food. this position of affairs produced a long discussion, and finally we agreed that we ourselves must go down to bunar after the dilatory servants. it was most provoking, but there was no help for it. leaving the camp in charge of the goat-herd from the lubar nullah, and our water-carrier or bhisti, mummery and i started off with lor khan and some servants for bunar. the further we went the worse the path became, but by skirting upwards along the hill-side, on the left of the valley, we soon left the diamirai glacier far below us. about this point we met our head shikari, who had come on in front of the remainder of the party from bunar--at least he said so, but we could get very little accurate information out of him. in fact, as we afterwards discovered, he had stopped at the first village he had come to, and remained there doing nothing, or at least nothing connected with getting us provisions, which work he left to the cook. after enjoying himself for three days in this manner, thinking it was time to return, and collecting what he could, namely some grapes and apples, he came back to us with them as a peace-offering. whilst he had been away, however, unfortunately for him, our other servants had explained several curious things which we at the time did not understand. these explanations left in our minds no doubt that this wretched kashmir shikari had not only been robbing us, but also all the coolies as well. we in our ignorance thought that if the coolies were paid with our own hands, the money at least would be safe. in the east this is by no means the case, for the moment we were out of sight, this wily old ruffian would return to the coolies, telling them that they had been overpaid, and that the sahibs commanded them instantly to give back half of the money. our coolies were mostly baltis from the astor district. these poor baltis have been a downtrodden race for centuries, harried by their more warlike and courageous neighbours--the chilasis and the robbers of gilgit and hunza. so the shikari has no difficulty in making them yield to his extortion. mummery for some time listened to his obvious lying, but soon lost his temper. a coolie anxious to go to his home in the rupal nullah here served our purpose. the shikari was told to return to the rupal nullah with him, and at the same time we gave him a letter to hastings. in that letter, which he could not read, we explained the situation, and instructed hastings to pay the shikari off and send him about his business. the route we were following soon turned away to the left, leaving the diamirai nullah on the right. it was afterwards that we found out the reason for this. it seems to be impossible to descend or ascend this portion of the diamirai nullah direct. the valley narrows in below the bottom of the glacier, and finally becomes a deep gorge with cliffs thousands of feet high on either side. our change in direction soon showed us that we should have to cross the tributary lubar nullah. this meant that we had to climb down a very steep rocky face of about feet. at about four in the afternoon we arrived at the bottom, finding an impassable glacier torrent thundering over great boulders and swollen by the melted snows of the morning. walls of rock barred our way either up or down the stream, but lor khan said we were at the ford. in vain we tried to place pine trunks across--they were swept away one by one. it was a fine sight to see lor khan, stripped to the waist, struggling in the icy water with the great pine stems, a magnificent specimen of fearlessness, muscle, and activity. fortunately we had insisted on roping him, for once he was carried off his feet and had to be brought back to land half drowned but laughing. it soon became perfectly evident that we could not cross till early next morning, when the frost on the glaciers above would have frozen up the sources of this turbulent stream. as we were wondering where we could possibly find room to lie down for the night, high above us on the opposite bank a stone came bounding down a precipitous gully. who had started it? some goat or other wild animal; or was it our cook returning with provisions? shouting was useless, for the roar of the torrent drowned every noise. five minutes passed, then ten, finally a quarter of an hour, but we were not destined to be disappointed; at last, more than five hundred feet up the gully opposite, we saw our cook with all the coolies. after they had descended, a rope was thrown across to them, and we succeeded by its aid in hauling a slippery pine trunk into position behind two large stones. over this we crossed and camped on a narrow spit of level ground underneath the perpendicular walls of rock: chickens, sugar, eggs, three maunds of flour, and four sheep were amongst the spoils brought up by our cook from bunar. that evening we ate our meal by the ruddy light of a great camp fire, with the roar of the torrent making it almost impossible to hear our voices, and underneath some gnarled and stunted pines, whose roots were firmly imbedded in the great fissures that ran up the perpendicular rock face. as the question of provisions had been settled for some time, we returned much relieved in our minds to the diamirai nullah. the next day, august th, it again rained hard nearly all day. at a.m. on the th we started once more for the upper camp. we took with us ragobir, lor khan, and a chilasi coolie, whom i had called richard the third, from his likeness to the usual portraits of that monarch. more firewood and provisions and a silk tent were taken up to this camp at the head of the glacier. two rucksacks had already been left high up on the rocks on the th. it was now mummery's intention to take some more odds and ends up to where they were, and if possible push on with about a third of the provisions to about , feet, and leave them there for the final attempt. this necessitated sleeping on the top of the second rib of rocks. by the time i had arrived at the upper camp underneath nanga parbat i began to develop a headache, and, being otherwise ill as well, i had reluctantly to give up any idea of climbing further. mummery, ragobir, and lor khan went on, whilst i spent most of the morning watching them climb like flies up the almost perpendicular rib of rocks above me. [illustration: _nanga parbat from the diamirai glacier._] but i had to get home that night, and also get the coolie home as well. this was no easy matter, for there were some steep ice slopes, with steps cut in them, and crevasses at the bottom, which so frightened poor richard the third, that for a long time i could not induce him even to try. in fact, ultimately i had to threaten him violently with my ice-axe. whether he thought that it was a choice of death by cold steel above, or cold ice below in the crevasse, i don't know, but he chose the latter, and was much surprised to find that he was not going to be sacrificed after all. then, before we got home it began to rain heavily, the mists came down, everything becoming dull and dreary, the wind sighed sorrowfully up and down the valley, and i was sorry for mummery on the inhospitable slopes of the great mountain. mummery spent the night on the top of the second rib of rocks, and next day he climbed about a thousand feet up the third rib, where he left a rucksack with food. the climb was carried out almost entirely in mist; in fact, in the afternoon down at the camp the mist and rain made things thoroughly uncomfortable. i was beginning to get anxious about mummery, for he did not come back by sunset, and the night promised to be one of drenching rain. but later, in the dark, he marched back into camp, entirely wet through, but far more cheerful than the circumstances warranted, and very pleased with the climbing. his account of the ice world on nanga parbat was wonderful. nowhere in the caucasus had he seen anything to compare with it. avalanches had fallen down thousands of feet, set at an angle of over degrees, that would have almost swept away towns. the crevasses were enormous, and the rock-climbing, although difficult, was set at such a steep angle that no time would be lost in making height towards the upper glacier underneath the final peak. if only the weather would clear, mummery was sure that we could get on to this upper glacier. but the weather sulked and was against us, it rained nearly all the next day, finishing up with a tremendous thunderstorm. in hope that fine weather would now set in, we turned into our tents for the night. about midnight, gusts of cold wind began to moan amongst the stunted pines that surrounded our tents; then, gathering in force, this demon of the mountains howled round our tents, and snow came down in driven sheets. the anger of the spirits that inhabited the mountains had been roused, we were being informed of what awaited us, should we persist in our impious endeavours to penetrate into the sanctuaries above. many times in the pitch darkness of the night i thought the small mummery tent i was in would be simply torn in pieces, but towards daylight the hurricane gradually died away, and by nine o'clock the sun came out. the scene, when i emerged from the tent, i shall never forget. bright sunshine and dazzling white snow--but where were all the groves of rhododendron bushes, from four to five feet high, that yesterday had surrounded our camp? loaded with the snow, they had been beaten flat, and lay there plastered and stuck tight to the ground, by the ice and snow of the blizzard of the night before. but under the double action of the sun's heat and the rapid evaporation that takes place when the barometer stands only at about sixteen inches, the snow, which was over six inches deep, soon melted, and by the afternoon had all disappeared from around our camp. on the morrow a cloudless sky and a northerly wind changed the whole aspect of affairs. [illustration: diama glacier. summit ( , feet) nanga parbat pass. nanga parbat from the diamirai glacier. a--upper camp at the base of nanga parbat. b--first rib of rocks. c--second rib of rocks. d--sleeping-place on the top of the second rib of rocks. e--third rib of rocks. f--mr. a. f. mummery's highest point (over , feet). g--the foot of the diama glacier. h--the diamirai glacier. the dotted line shows route taken.] we had a long consultation, mummery arguing that we ought to start for nanga parbat at once, and make an attempt to reach the summit. his only fear was that hastings would feel that we were not treating him fairly by starting before he had returned from astor and could join us in the climb. but the weather had been changeable, and the chilas coolies with us were predicting that when the next snowstorm came, it would be worse than the last, and the snow would not clear away so quickly. there seemed great probability in their predictions. at any rate, with the cold north wind the good weather would last, but we ought to make use of that good weather at once. so, hoping that hastings would forgive us, we started on the final attempt to reach the summit of nanga parbat. our position was as follows:--we had plenty of provisions and firewood at the camp at the head of the glacier, a tent and more provisions with some spirits and a boiling tin on the top of the second ridge of rocks, and a last rucksack with more edibles half way up the third rib of rock. on the evening of the th, mummery, ragobir, and i slept at the camp at the head of the glacier ( , feet), but next morning they went on alone, for the coarse food of the previous three weeks had not agreed with me: flour that is largely composed of grindstone is apt to upset one's digestion. again i sat for a whole morning watching them crawl slowly up that second rib of rock. once they were hidden from my sight in a huge cloud of snow dust, the fringe of one of those tremendous avalanches that i have only seen in the himalaya. at last, becoming too small to follow with the eye, they disappeared from my sight. that night i was again back in the base camp. there i found a note from hastings that had been sent on ahead from the lubar nullah with the goat-herd and a coolie; and the next day hastings himself arrived with large quantities of provisions. he had been as far as astor, and said that without the invaluable help of goman singh he would never have got the coolies back over the mazeno la. late that night mummery and ragobir came into camp. they had passed the second night on the summit of the second rib of rocks. next morning, starting before daylight, they had pushed on up the final rib towards the upper snow-field. the climbing, mummery admitted, was excessively difficult, but the higher he went the easier it became. finally, at a height of over , feet, for he could see over the nanga parbat col on his right, ragobir turned ill: it was therefore folly to attempt to spend another night on the mountain at that height. reluctantly he had to return; and his disappointment was great, for, as he said, most of the difficulties had been overcome below the upper snow-field, and he was confident that had he reached these upper snows and been able to spend another night on the mountain, he might have reached the summit on the following day. thus ended the only attempt mummery made to reach the summit of nanga parbat. i shall always look upon it as one of his finest climbs. part of it i know from personal experience, and from mummery's description of the upper half, there must have been some magnificent climbing, surrounded by an ice world such as can be seen nowhere except on peaks with at least , feet of snow on them. but it was on too large a scale for ordinary mortals, and the difficulties began just above the camp, at the head of the glacier, , feet below the summit of the mountain. although the last feet of the mountain does not look as if it would present much difficulty or danger, yet above , feet one would necessarily make height very slowly, and much step-cutting would be almost impossible at that height. the following two days were spent in discussing what we should do next; for mummery had very sorrowfully come to the conclusion that his route up nanga parbat from the diamirai glacier must be abandoned. ultimately it was agreed that, owing to all the recent snowfalls, a purely snow route was the only one that would give any chance of success. our last chance lay in finding such a route; in the rakiot nullah, there perhaps nanga parbat might be less precipitous. so thither we determined to go. when mummery and ragobir had come down from the mountain, they did not bring with them the rucksacks from the top of the second rib of rocks. these were too valuable to leave behind. mummery, disliking the interminable scrambling over loose stones which he would have to endure should he come with the coolies, suggested that the two gurkhas should be sent early on the rd up the glacier to fetch the rucksacks down to the camp at the head of the diamirai glacier. here later in the day mummery should join them, and from this point he could go up the diama glacier which lay between nanga parbat and the ganalo peak, , feet high. a snow pass (diama pass) would then separate them from the rakiot nullah. he left us on the rd, and took with him lor khan, and rosamir, our head coolie, to carry some extra provisions up to the higher camp. that evening they were joined by ragobir and goman singh, who had successfully brought down the rucksacks. [illustration: view of diama glacier from slopes of diamirai peak. the arrow shows the route taken by mr. a. f. mummery on th august. diama pass. nanga parbat.] next morning, the th august, lor khan and rosamir, having seen them start off up the diama valley to the east, returned down the diamirai valley and joined us later. mummery, ragobir, and goman singh were never seen again. chapter viii the indus valley and third journey to diamirai nullah 'for some ... have drunk their cup a round or two before, and one by one crept silently to rest.' _rubáiyát of_ omar khayy�m. our route with the coolies was to skirt along the lower slopes of nanga parbat as near the snow line as possible. this would lead us first into the ganalo nullah, and thence to the rakiot nullah. there we had arranged to meet mummery by the side of the glacier. having crossed the diamirai glacier, we went straight up the opposite side of the valley for a pass on the ridge south-east of a pointed rock peak at the head of the gonar nullah. this peak we have named the gonar peak, and the pass the red pass (about , feet). from this pass a superb view of the head of the diamirai nullah was obtained, whilst to the south and south-west a beautifully shaped snow mountain, beyond the lubar glacier, probably the thosho peak, shone in the sunlight over the goman singh pass. to the east we saw for the first time the great chongra peaks on the north-east of nanga parbat. on the north side of our pass snow slopes stretched down some hundreds of feet to a small glacier. some of the coolies tried an impromptu glissade here, and seemed rather pleased at the result; but it was a dangerous experiment, for various rocks and stones awaited their arrival at the bottom. at last in the dark after much trouble we managed to get down far enough to collect wood for our camp fires, and put up our tent by the side of a small stream. next day it was found necessary to climb up again at least feet before descending about feet on to the snout of the ganalo glacier. this we crossed on the ice. on the far bank most luxuriant vegetation covered the hill-side, and for a long time we climbed rapidly upwards through woods of pines, birches, and other trees till the rhododendrons were reached late in the afternoon. still we pushed on, hoping to get over into the rakiot nullah, for perhaps mummery would be there awaiting tents and food. but the coolies were dead beat; therefore, when we were still more than feet below the col, we were forced to camp beyond the limit of the brushwood in an open grass valley. next day we went over the pass, about , feet, into the rakiot nullah. from the summit a splendid view of the rakiot glacier and the northern side of nanga parbat could be seen. never have i seen a glacier that presented such a sea of stormy ruin; the waste of frozen billows stretched ever upwards towards the ice-slopes that guarded the topmost towers of the great mountain. thunder and rain welcomed us, and amidst dripping trees and cold mist our camp was pitched on the true left bank of the glacier. from the top of the last pass we had come over we could see the great face down which mummery and the gurkhas would have had to come had they reached the diama pass. it seemed to us quite hopeless. i spent about half an hour looking through a powerful telescope for any traces of steps cut down the only ridge that looked at all feasible. i could see none. hastings and i were therefore of the opinion that mummery had turned back. this he had told us he intended to do should he find the pass either dangerous or very difficult, for, as he pointed out, he was not going to risk anything on an ordinary pass. moreover, he had expressly taken sufficient food with him, leaving it at the upper camp, so that should he have to return and follow our footsteps he would have enough to last him for three days. in the rakiot nullah we could find no traces of him. lor khan and rosamir were at once sent back into the ganalo nullah to meet mummery with extra food, hastings and i in the meantime exploring some distance up the valley. the day was more or less wet, with the mists lying low down on the mountains. it cleared, however, in the evening. the next two days were also wet and disagreeable. we were beginning to get anxious, and when on the th lor khan and the coolie returned, having seen nothing of mummery, something had to be done. [illustration: _the diama pass from the rakiot nullah._] we imagined that when the pass had proved to be too difficult, mummery had turned back to the high camp where the food had been left. from there he would follow our route, but as the weather had been wretched, with mist lying over all the hills, perhaps he had missed his way. or perhaps he might have sprained an ankle and be still in the diamirai nullah. it was therefore agreed that hastings should return towards the diamirai nullah, and as my time was nearly at an end, if i wished to get back to england by the end of september, i should make my way to astor as quickly as i could. once there, i could wait a few days, and hastings promised that as soon as possible he would send a coolie down to the nearest spot on the gilgit-chilas road, where there was a telegraph-station, and telegraph the news to me at astor. thus we parted company, hastings returning along our old route to the diamirai, whilst i with a coolie and the cook set off for astor. about a mile down the valley we were met by some of the wild folk from gor, a village on the opposite side of the indus. these inhabitants of gor have a somewhat evil reputation. not many years before, an officer out shooting in one of their nullahs was nearly murdered. they did succeed in killing his shikari who was with him, but he himself escaped owing to the lucky appearance of some soldiers from gilgit who were going down the valley of the indus towards chilas. bruce also had some experience of these turbulent tribesmen when stopping at darang, on the banks of the indus below gor; for whilst partridge-shooting in the hill-sides the beaters had to be armed with rifles, and played the double _rôle_ of protecting bruce and driving the game. the gor shepherds that i met were, i believe, the only ones on the south side of the indus. owing to the rich pasturage in the rakiot nullah, they kept sheep and goats there. i must say they treated me very well, and two of them accompanied me for a couple of days, carrying the rucksacks and showing us the way. [illustration: _the chongra peaks from the red pass._] the first night we slept in an old and disused shepherd's encampment high up, just at the limits of the pines. next day we had to descend by most precipitous slopes to the bottom of the buldar nullah. our second night was spent high up on the eastern slopes of the nullah and short of the pass which was called the liskom pass by the natives. on the next day we crossed this pass (about , feet). the view of the chongra peaks from here is most striking, backed as it is by the great upper snow-field of the rakiot glacier and nanga parbat behind. just across the astor valley to the east rises the dichil peak, a terrific, double-headed rock pinnacle that is certainly over , feet high. these obliging gor shepherds had accompanied us thus far, but no amount of persuasion could induce them to go one step further. at last, becoming frightened, they put the bags down on the snow and fled down the hill-side back to the buldar nullah, and i was unable to give them anything for all their kindness. that afternoon, st september, i reached dashkin on the gilgit road, and was back again in civilised country. from there i made my way to astor. it was on the th of september that i received a telegram from hastings. he had returned to the diamirai nullah without finding mummery. the camp there was just as we had left it. next day, st september, he made his way up the glacier to the high camp under nanga parbat with rosamir and lor khan; there he found the extra provisions and some other things exactly as they had been placed by mummery on the morning of the th there was only one conclusion to draw--mummery, ragobir, and goman singh had been killed somewhere up the glacier that lies between the ganalo peak and nanga parbat. for there was absolutely no way out, except the way they had gone in. the diama pass over to the rakiot nullah we knew to be impossible on the eastern face, on the south lay nanga parbat, whilst on the north was the ganalo peak, , feet high. if, therefore, they never returned for the provisions, some catastrophe must have overtaken them during their attempt to climb over the pass. from what i have seen of the valley, an avalanche falling from the north face of nanga parbat seems the most probable explanation; but in that vast ice world the hidden dangers are so many that any suggestion must necessarily be the merest guessing, and what happened we shall never know. for hastings to attempt to explore this glacier alone would have been a most hazardous and hopeless task. he had no one with him on whom he could rely, and the area to be explored was also far too large. his only alternative therefore was to go at once with the greatest speed possible to the nearest post where he knew an englishman was, namely at chilas. this he did, but it was not till the th of september that he reached jiliper on the indus and was able to telegraph to me at astor. in the meantime the villagers in the bunar nullah had been ordered by the officer in command at chilas to explore all the valleys round the diamirai, and on the receipt of the telegram at astor, captain stewart, the head political officer of the gilgit district, sent word to the people in the rupal nullah to do the same as far as the mazeno la. i felt, however, that there was no help and no hope. out of that valley up which mummery had gone there was but one way: that was the one by which he had entered it; he had not returned, the provisions were untouched. it was a dreadful ending to our expedition. the mountains amongst which we had spent so many pleasant days together no longer were the same. the sunshine and the beauty were gone; savage, cruel, and inhospitable the black pinnacles of the ridges and the overhanging glaciers of cold ice filled my mind with only one thought. i could not stop at astor. moreover, by descending the valley i should at least meet hastings sooner, for he was returning by forced marches to join me at astor. on the th september we met at doian. beyond what he had already told me in his telegram there was nothing. together we returned to astor to arrange our future movements. there we agreed that it was necessary to return to the diamirai nullah at once, and together explore the upper part of the valley beyond the high camp. provisions and ponies were hastily got, and after having arranged with captain stewart for as much help as possible, we started for the diamirai by way of the indus valley and the bunar nullah. the first day's march down the astor valley brought us to doian. there we were hospitably received by the officers of the pioneer regiment, who, earlier in the year under colonel kelly, had marched over the shandur pass to the relief of chitral. below doian the road descends rapidly by zigzags towards the astor stream: soon all vegetation is left behind, and one enters a parched and barren land. the valley is hemmed in by precipitous cliffs on both sides, and the road in many places has been hewn and blasted out of the solid rock. bones of horses strew the wayside, and occasionally a vulture will sail by. the heat becomes oppressive, and the glare from the hill-sides down which no water runs suggests a mountainous country in the sahara. before this road was built, the old path led over the summit of the hatu pir, and the traveller now misses a marvellous view of haramosh, rakipushi, and the indus valley by plunging down into this bare, desolate nullah, shut in on all sides by precipitous hills. the small post of ramghat, or shaitan nara, where this road finally emerges from the astor nullah into the great valley of the indus, is merely a post for guarding the suspension-bridge across the astor stream. here are stationed some kashmir troops, and here it is that the roads to chilas and gilgit separate. the chilas road follows down the indus on the left bank, through a country which probably has no equal in the world. how this astounding valley was formed it is difficult to say; but the valley is there, and a wilder, grander, more desolate, and more colossal rift cannot occur elsewhere on the earth's surface. 'is this the scene where the old earthquake-dæmon taught her young ruin?' from the summit of nanga parbat to the waters of the indus below is in depth nearly , feet. on the opposite side, the naked hill-sides rising in precipice after precipice are entirely barren of all vegetation. waterworn into innumerable gullies and rock towers, they present a melancholy and arid appearance; and, although their summits are , feet above the indus, they do not form a north side to this gorge in any way comparable with that on the south. the floor of the valley is filled with the debris of countless himalayan deluges, yet the indus looks like a small and dirty stream. to appreciate in any way the gigantic scale of the whole is quite impossible. what is the depth of that stealthily flowing flood and the measure of its waters, who can say? for it is more than six hundred miles from its source, and its tributaries sometimes are almost as big as itself. from the borders of swat and chitral, from the darkot pass, from the kilik beyond hunza, and from the hispar pass, the waters collect to form the gilgit river, one only of the many tributaries of the indus. this tract of the mustagh range is nearly two hundred miles long by eighty broad. the shigar river drains the waters from the mustagh range and k^{ }, perhaps the greatest accumulation of ice and snow that exists outside the arctic regions. the nubra and shayok rivers collect their waters from a yet larger area. but still east of all these tributaries, the indus itself rises three hundred miles away in those unknown lands of tibet behind the himalaya and near the source of that mysterious river of eastern india, the bramaputra. yet all these collected waters are penned into this apparently slow flowing and narrow river, as with silent but stealthy haste it twists and turns through the gigantic chasm at the base of nanga parbat. once, not many years ago, in december , into the upper end of this gorge the side of the hatu pir fell, forming a dam probably over feet high.[k] a lake was formed behind it for miles. the water rose to the level of bunji fort, feet above the river below, and up the gilgit valley this lake, newly formed, reached nearly to gilgit itself. for six months the waters were held back till, topping the vast accumulation, they burst the dam, 'and rushed in dark tumult thundering.' the lake is said to have emptied in one day. a small remnant of the barrier can still be seen near lechre on the chilas road. the heat in this valley is so great after eleven o'clock in the day, that it is impossible to travel, and makes it necessary to seek what shade there may be till the sun has sunk low in the sky. the naked rocks glisten and tremble in the heat, the staring colours of the parched hill-sides, and the intense glare of the sun in this desert land, are in curious contrast to the shady valleys that lie thousands of feet up, hidden away in the recesses of the great mountain. but it is after the evening shadows have one by one lengthened, after the last glow of the hot orange sunset has at last faded out of the sky, and from out the darkness the rising moon lights up this deserted landscape with mysterious shadows and perplexing distances, that the whole scene becomes totally beyond description. the intricacy of form shown by the silent mountains seem to be some magnificent and great imagination from the mind of a turner. the white moonlight, and the grotesque black shadows and leering pinnacles piercing the starlit sky, can only belong to a land dreamt of by a gustave doré as a fitting illustration to the wandering jew, and only be described by shelley:-- 'at midnight the moon arose: and lo! the ethereal cliffs of caucasus, whose icy summits shone among the stars like sunlight, and around whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves bursting and eddying irresistibly rage and resound for ever.' but without doubt the dominant sensation in this strange land is that of fear and abhorrence; and what makes it all the more appalling is that this thing before one is there in all its nakedness; it has no reserve, there is nothing hidden. its rugged insolence, its brutal savagery, and its utter disregard of all the puny efforts of man, crushes out of the mind any idea that this spot belongs to an ordinary world. whether in the day or the night it is the same. during the stifling hours of noon the valley sleeps in the scorching sunlight, but there, always there, is that monstrous flood below, slowly, ceaselessly moving. occasionally the waters will send up an angry and deep-tongued murmur, when some huge eddy, rising to the surface, breaks, and belches out the waters that have come from the lowest depths. at night in the stillness and the heat, as one lies unable to sleep, imagination runs riot; from out the inky shadows that seam the hill-sides in the pale moonlight, dragons and great creeping monsters seemingly appear crawling slowly down to drink at the ebon flood beneath. and imagination easily in restless dreams becomes reality, thus adding tenfold to the already accumulated horrors. but at last in the darkness-- 'before the phantom of false morning dies'-- suddenly a breath of cold air, as from heaven, descends like a splash of cool water. it has wandered down from the upper snows. then a few moments later comes another; and, tired out, real sleep claims one at last. later, when one awakes, the morning sun has risen, sending his light slanting across the hill-sides with a promise that before he sets we may be delivered from the bottom of this singular abyss. no description, however, can possibly give an adequate idea of the immensity, the loneliness, and the feeling of the insignificance of human affairs that is produced by this valley of the indus below rhamghat. it was not till the th that we reached bunar post, a small station for troops at the bottom of the bunar nullah. here we were met by captain de vismes, who was in command of the chilas district. he had most kindly come from chilas to help us with coolies up the bunar nullah, and from there to the diamirai nullah. from bunar post to our destination it took no less than three days' hard travelling; for as i have already pointed out, it is not possible to go straight up the valley. if we had been able to travel direct, it meant an ascent of some feet, but by the only possible route that existed, nearly double that height had to be climbed before we finally, on the th, found ourselves once more in the diamirai nullah. what a change, however, met our gaze! the great masses of wild rose-trees that had welcomed us on our first visit were bare even of leaves. the willow groves now lifted gaunt, leafless branches into the chill air, and sighed mournfully when the cold wind shook them, and the rhododendrons were powdered with snow. winter had set in, as the chilas herdsmen had warned us it would, only a month before; and the contrast was all the more marked when compared with the temperature of nearly ° in the shade, which existed a few miles away by the indus. hastings and i soon saw that any attempt at exploration amongst the higher glaciers was out of the question. we went up the glacier as far as half-way to the old upper camp where the provisions had been found untouched, but even there it was wading through snow nearly a foot deep; ultimately we climbed through heavy powdery snow, perhaps feet up the south side of the valley, to obtain a last look at the valley in which mummery, ragobir, and goman singh had perished. the avalanches were thundering down the face of nanga parbat, filling the air with their dust; and if nothing else had made it impossible to penetrate into the fastnesses of this cold, cheerless, and snow-covered mountain-land, they at least spoke with no uncertain voice, and bade us be gone. slowly we descended, and for the last time looked on the great mountain and the white snows where in some unknown spot our friends lay buried. but although mummery is no longer with us, though to those who knew him the loss is irreparable, though he never can lead and cheer us on up the 'gaunt, bare slabs, the square, precipitous steps in the ridge, and the bulging ice of the gully,' yet his memory will remain--he will not be forgotten. the pitiless mountains have claimed him--and--amongst the snow-laden glaciers of the mighty hills he rests. 'the curves of the wind-moulded cornice, the delicate undulations of the fissured snow,' cover him, whilst the 'grim precipices, the great brown rocks bending down into immeasurable space,' and the snow-peaks he loved so well, keep watch, and guard over the spot where he lies. footnotes: [k] see note, p. . the canadian rocky mountains 'a land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go: * * * * * they saw the gleaming river seaward flow from the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops, three silent pinnacles of aged snow, stood sunset-flushed.' _the lotus-eaters._ far away in the west of north america, west of the great lakes, west of lake winnipeg, west of the endless prairie, lies a 'great lone land': a land almost bare of inhabitants, a land deserted, if we except a few prospectors, trappers, and wandering indians who spend their time amongst the mountain fastnesses, either hunting wild animals or searching for gold and minerals. looking at a map of north america, one sees how a vast range of mountains stretches from far south in the united states to alaska, more than two thousand miles away. this backbone of a continent in reality is made up of a series of ranges, running parallel with one another. in canada there are, roughly, only two: the rocky mountains to the east, and the cascade range to the west, forming the shore of the pacific ocean. in breadth about five hundred miles, in length over fifteen hundred, if one includes the continuation of the cascade range into alaska, where are situated the highest mountains in north america: mount st. elias, , feet, mount logan, , feet, and mount m'kinley (at the head waters of the shushitna river), , feet. much of this country still has 'unexplored' printed large across it, and until a few years ago, when a trans-continental railway connected the atlantic with the pacific ocean, parts of the western portion of the dominion of canada, stretching as it does for thousands of miles, covered with dense forests, watered by unnumbered rivers, was as difficult of access as siberia. the magnitude of the dominion, even at the present day, is hard to realise. it can only be appreciated by those who have travelled through its mighty woods, over its vast lakes and prairies, and explored the fastnesses of those lonely canyons of the west. halifax, in nova scotia, is nearer to bristol than to vancouver on the pacific coast, and klondike is further north of vancouver than iceland is of london. since, however, the canadian-pacific railway has bridged the continent, these mountain solitudes of the far west are much more accessible to the ordinary traveller, and the wild, secluded valleys of the canadian rocky mountains are becoming more frequented by sportsmen and mountaineers. it does not need a prophet to foretell their future. a land where the dark green valleys are filled with primeval forest, where the pine, spruce, and fir, poplars, white maple, and cedar, vie with each other in adding colour to the landscape and beauty to the innumerable rivers, lakes, and streams: a land where endless snow-clad mountains send up their summits into the clear air from great glaciers below, where ridges of crags, pinnacles of rock, and broken mountain-side, catch sometimes the glow of the early dawn or the sunset, or at others bask in the glare of the midday heat, changing their colour perpetually from grey to crimson, from gold to purple, whilst below always lie the mysterious dark pine woods, filled with scents of the trees, and the noise of the wind as it sighs amongst the upper branches: such a land can only be employed by man for one purpose, it must become a playground where the tired people can make holiday. it must become the switzerland of north america, and, like switzerland, no doubt, some day will be completely overrun; at present, however, the valleys are unspoilt; wild, beautiful, untouched and unscarred by the hand of man. fortunately the canadian rocky mountains never can be the centre of any great manufacturing district; and as they are in extent vastly greater than the alps, for a very long time to come they will remain the hunting ground for those who care to spend their spare time in breathing pure air, and in living amidst splendid scenery. at the present time the exploration of these mountains is going rapidly forward, at least in those portions near where the canadian-pacific railway passes through them; and the mountaineer of to-day is offered great opportunities. for should he climb to the summit of any peak, even near the railway, high enough to give an extensive view, by far the greater number of the mountains and peaks that can be seen stretching in every direction, as far as the eye can see to the horizon, are as yet untrodden by human feet. the approach also to this splendid range is exceptionally fine. from the east, as the traveller leaves winnipeg and enters on the prairie, till he reaches the foot of the mountains at morley, nearly nine hundred miles away, the broad endless spread of the open country is seen. on many this apparently desolate, never-ending expanse of rolling grassland produces a sensation of weariness. but it is like the open sea in its size, and, like the ocean, has a charm that ordinary country does not possess. its very immensity gives a mystery to it: sometimes the air is clear as crystal, and the white clouds on the horizon seem to be touching some far-distant fold of the landscape; at others the plain dances in the heat, and great mirage lakes can be seen covering the middle distances; again, thunderstorms pass along the sky, whose piled masses of cumuli clouds send down ribbons of fire, often causing fires that sweep for miles over the open grassland. at early dawn and sunset, however, are produced the great scenic effects of the prairie, and to look down the sky from the zenith to the setting sun, a great red ball just disappearing below the horizon, and count the colours that light up the islands, bays, promontories, and continents of that marvellous cloudland, makes one forget that one is in a railway train, or has anything to do with everyday life; it is like actually seeing for the first time some fairyland that one has read of in one's childhood. afterwards, when the full moon comes out, the distances seem almost greater, and one can lie comfortably in bed and gaze at the landscape sliding swiftly by, comparing the ease and rapidity of modern travel, which does hundreds of miles in one night, with that of the pioneers who first traversed these endless plains a century or more ago. near a station called gleichen, the rocky mountains can be seen more than one hundred miles away, but it is not till one approaches them that it is recognised how abruptly they rise out of the prairie, like a long wall, with apparently not an opening; and, even when a few miles away, they seem an impenetrable barrier. the railway, however, follows the bank of the bow river, which from its size must at least come down a moderate-sized valley, and just above where the kananaskis, a side river, is crossed, a sudden bend of the line takes one through the gateway of the hills and the bow valley is entered, which is then followed westward up to the great divide, or watershed, sixty miles away. the approach to the rocky mountains from the pacific coast is through country of a totally different nature. from vancouver to the great divide is five hundred miles; along the whole of this distance the railway line is surrounded by the most splendid mountain scenery. at first the line runs up the great and broad valley of the fraser river, which when seen in the light of a fine september afternoon is magnificent. for it is shut in on all sides by high mountains (one, mount baker, being , feet), and filled with such timber as only grows on the pacific coast, all of it the natural forest, vast douglas firs of giant girth, cedars, poplars, and maples, with their autumn-colouring of crimson, green, and gold, adding beauty to this lovely valley; whilst winding backwards and forwards across it, flows the vast flood of the fraser. certainly it is one of the finest large valleys i have ever seen. then further up is the world-famous fraser canyon, not so beautiful as the greater valley below, but grand and terrible in its own way. there are fiercer and bigger rivers and gorges in the himalaya. here it is that for over twenty miles the railway track has been hewn in many places out of the solid wall of the canyon, whilst below rush the pent-up waters of the great river, sometimes slowly moving onwards with only the occasional eddy coming up to the surface to show the depth of water, again rushing with wildest tumult between narrow walls of black rock, tossing up the spray, and foaming along, afraid that unless it hastened madly through its rock-girt channel the almost overhanging walls, hundreds of feet high, would fall in and prevent it ever getting down to the open sea. leaving the valley of the fraser, the railway follows the desolate gorge of the thompson river, and after passing through a series of minor mountains, comes down to the valley of the columbia river, which here is running almost due south. if it had been possible to have built the line up the columbia valley to the rocky mountains, no doubt that route would have been followed, but the railway has been taken over the selkirk range instead. it is whilst crossing the selkirks that by far the most wonderful part of this mountain line is to be seen. from the columbia to the summit there is a rise of feet, and the descent on the other side to the columbia river again is feet in less than twenty miles. here are to be seen the miles of snow-sheds through which the train has to go, whilst towering into the sky are all the white snow-peaks of the selkirks, and the glaciers that almost come down to the railway itself. from the columbia to the great divide another ascent has to be made, this time of feet, and the last feet of this is done in the short distance of ten miles. it is not in any way exaggerating to say that these five hundred miles of line give by far the most extensive and varied wild mountain scenery that can be obtained from any railway train in the world. the fraser valley, and canyon, the selkirk mountains, and the scenery of the rocky mountains, before the great divide is reached, are each one of them wonderfully beautiful, and each one of them possesses so much individuality of its own, that to forget the impressions they make would be impossible. the great divide is at the watershed, or on the top of the kicking horse pass. one of the most curious features of the canadian rocky mountains is the lowness of the passes, also their number. the average height of the mountains is between , and , feet, yet none of these passes are much over feet, so that the simplest way to describe the range is to take the various masses of mountains that lie between the passes. twenty miles south of the kicking horse pass lies first the vermilion pass ( feet), next comes the simpson pass ( feet), thirteen miles further south, thus giving three groups of mountains which can be named as follows:-- ( ) _the temple group_ (or bow range); and _the goodsir group_ (or ottertail range). this group is south of the kicking horse pass and north of the vermilion pass. ( ) _the ball group_, which lies south of the vermilion pass and north of the simpson pass. ( ) _the assiniboine group_, which lies south of the simpson pass. north of the kicking horse pass the peaks and glaciers of the rocky mountains have been more carefully explored and for a greater distance than on the south side of the railway. it will be sufficient, however, only to mention the passes through the mountains which are to be found in that tract of country ( miles long), lying south of the athabasca pass, and north of the kicking horse pass. the first pass across the rocky mountains is the howse pass, feet, and thirty miles north of the railway; thirty miles further north is the thompson pass, feet; next comes fortress lake pass, thirty-five miles distant, and only feet high; and lastly, twenty-five miles further, still to the north, the athabasca pass, feet. thus if we omit the mountains north of the athabasca pass, there are four more groups. taking them in order, they are:-- ( ) _the balfour group_ (or wapta range), lying between the kicking horse pass and the howse pass. ( ) _the forbes group_, lying between the howse pass and the thompson pass. ( ) _the columbia group_, lying between the thompson pass and the fortress lake pass. ( ) _the mount hooker group_, lying between the fortress lake pass and the athabasca pass. [illustration: canadian rocky mountains showing the ice fields and the mountains _heights when marked? only approximate_ j. bartholomew & co., edin^r.] in the temple-goodsir group, which is situated just to the south of the canadian pacific railway, are a very large number of rock- and snow-peaks; in fact, probably more varied rock climbing can be found here than in any of the other groups of mountains. mounts temple, lefroy, victoria, stephen, cathedral, vaux, and the chancellor have all been ascended, but goodsir, hungabee, and deltaform, all of them first-class peaks, yet wait for the first party to set foot on their summits. besides the numerous good mountain climbs that can be found in this district, many most charming lakes and pine-clad valleys lie hidden away in the narrow valleys. it would be hard to find in any mountain-land a more perfect picture than that afforded by lake louise, a clear, deep lake, surrounded by pine woods and snow-clad peaks whose reflection in the water seems almost more natural than the reality in the distance. the o'hara lakes and paradise valley also possess the wild grandeur and rich fertility that is one of the chief attractions of the rocky mountains of canada. of the mount ball group nothing need be said, mount ball being the only peak in it which reaches , feet. as seen from the summit of mount lefroy, mount ball is a long, somewhat flat-topped mountain covered with ice and snow. perhaps, however, on the southern side it may be more precipitous and rocky. in the assiniboine group there seems only one important mountain, mount assiniboine itself. but what is wanting in quantity is certainly atoned for by the excessive grandeur and beauty of mount assiniboine. for long called the canadian matterhorn ( , feet), it towers a head and shoulders above its fellows, the highest peak south of the line. for several years it withstood many determined attempts made to scale its sharp, pyramid-shaped summit; but in august of the rev. j. outram, with two swiss guides, was fortunate enough at last to conquer this difficult mountain. the chief feature of the balfour group is the great expanse of upper snow-fields on the wapta névé. the highest peak, mount balfour, , feet, was ascended in by messrs. charles s. thompson, c. l. noyes, and c. m. weed. once on this central reservoir of ice none of the peaks are difficult to climb. the bow river, which has its source at the north-eastern corner of this wapta snow-field, flows down the bow valley, which skirts for more than twenty-five miles the eastern slopes of the balfour group. this bow valley is an excellent example of the numberless valleys that are to be found amongst the rocky mountains, flat-bottomed and filled with pine woods and marshes or muskegs. two beautiful lakes, the upper and lower bow lakes, filled with trout, give good sport to the fisherman; but to fish successfully a raft must be built, for there are no boats as yet on the lakes. the upper bow lake is particularly beautiful, for in many places on its shores are great expanses of open grassland, covered here and there with clumps of dwarf rhododendron bushes, or, it may be, studded with thickets of pine and other trees, whilst on the opposite shore the mountains rise sheer for several thousand feet, and more than one glacier hangs poised high up on the cliffs, above the clear blue water beneath. the next group further north, the forbes group, has not been visited as yet by many mountaineering parties. but it contains possibly the highest peak in the canadian rocky mountains, mount forbes, which is certainly considerably over , feet, and may be as much as , feet high. the bush peak and mount freshfield also must be about , to , feet, and mount lyell is not much less, perhaps , feet. many ice-fields lie underneath these high peaks: the freshfield, bush, and lyell snow-fields being the most important. in this group as yet none of the peaks have been ascended, and up to the present only on the freshfield glacier has any one set foot. this is largely due to the difficulty of getting to the foot of the peaks and the time necessary to expend on such an expedition. to get to the bottom of mount forbes from laggan, the nearest spot on the canadian-pacific railway, would take about nine days, and, should the saskatchewan be in full flood, it might take four or five days more. the columbia group, which is still further north, was only discovered in by messrs. stutfield, woolley, and myself. it is by far the biggest accumulation of glaciers that we have yet seen, covering an area of at least one hundred square miles; moreover, from a geographical point of view, it claims additional interest, for it is the source of the two great rivers, the athabasca, the saskatchewan, and formerly probably of the columbia as well. the mountains also that rise out of these untrodden snow-fields are amongst the highest peaks in the canadian rocky mountains, with the one exception of mount forbes. at present it is impossible to say with certainty whether mount columbia or mount forbes is the higher. personally i should like to give the preference to mount columbia. another peak situated near the centre of this group, the dome, , feet, on whose summit we stood in , is the only mountain in north america the snows of which when melted feed rivers that flow into the three oceans--the atlantic, the arctic, and the pacific. north of mount columbia another peak was discovered, mount alberta, over , feet. this mountain, unlike mount columbia, is a rock-peak and flat-topped. its summit is ringed round with tremendous precipices, and its north-western face must be particularly grand, for it rises straight from the valley of the athabasca for nearly feet. [illustration: _the freshfield glacier._] the outlets from the great columbian ice-field are very numerous; and many large glaciers flow into the valleys to feed the head waters of the saskatchewan, the athabasca, and the tributaries of the columbia. of the mountains in the next group further north practically nothing is known. only three parties in modern times have even penetrated into the valleys of this land south of the athabasca pass--professor coleman ( ), during his search for mounts hooker and brown; and wilcox ( ) and e. habel ( ). it is improbable that there are any peaks as high as , feet, but many covered with ice, snow, and glaciers were seen from the summits of the dome and diadem peak in , when we were on the columbian ice-fields. that this mountain-land remains unexplored is not to be wondered at, for the country is so far away, and so difficult to get at, from any human habitation that it takes weeks of hard work battling with the rivers and forests before even the valleys are reached which lie at the bottom of these ranges of snow-and glacier-covered mountains. when one has got accustomed to it, however, travelling in these vast mountain solitudes becomes by no means either irksome or unpleasant. but before one is capable of understanding all the woodcraft and knowledge requisite for successfully guiding a party through the endless forested valleys, the apparent monotony is apt to weary the traveller; afterwards, however, when a thousand and one things in the woods or on the mountain-side are for the first time seen and understood, then the environment no longer dominates one. for instance, a peculiar notch or 'blaze' on an occasional tree means that some prospector or indian has been there before, or perhaps a newly overturned stone amongst the moss tells how a bear has recently been searching for food; or, again, some half-obliterated mark by the side of a stream means cariboo, or, if higher up, goat or the wild sheep. then, often by the kind of tree one can roughly guess how high one is, for certain poplars, for instance the balsam poplar, i have never seen higher than feet. of course amongst the canadian rockies it is necessary on every expedition to take men and horses. the men are to look after the horses and the camp, and to cut the trail. the horses carry the food or 'grub-pile,' the tents, etc. at first one is quite unaccustomed to the leisurely method of progression, and quite unacquainted with many mysterious things that afterwards appear obvious. now that i look back on my first day with ponies in the rockies i blush for my incompetence and ignorance. to begin with, we were late in starting--our men, with most of the ponies and heavy baggage, had gone up the bow valley, leaving us three ponies for the remainder of the luggage. at the very start, if it had not been for the help of an obliging man at laggan railway station, i do not think we should ever have satisfactorily tied on all the odd packages. to pack an indian pony, and finish all off neatly with a good tight diamond hitch, is an accomplishment not possessed by every one. after three summers' experience i really now can tie it: at least i know i could, but it is a wonderful hitch; and although you think that you have got it all right, when you begin to pull the rope tight, somehow it all comes undone and one must start again from the beginning. the ponies having been packed, we started, but soon lost our way amongst the most dreadful tangle of fallen timber; the men had 'blazed' the way, but we were new at the work, and so soon got out of the trail. after getting the ponies with great difficulty through some miles of this timber, we gradually worked ourselves free, getting into more open ground, but it was out of scylla into charybdis, for now it was a question of how to get through endless swamps or muskegs that filled up the floor of the valley. here the blazes of course stopped, and soon we missed the tracks of the other horses and got hopelessly lost, floundering about in every direction trying to find a way through. several times the luckless ponies, dead tired and overladen, had sunk up to their bellies, but with terrified snorts and plunges had just managed to get out again. at last the sun went down, then daylight disappeared, and finally the moon came out, and we were still in that swamp. ultimately we tried to make for the forest at the side of the valley, but one of the horses got so deep into a hole that only with difficulty we managed to prevent him vanishing altogether. he was at last rescued with an alpine rope; and we also were rescued from a night out in a swamp by our headman, peyto, who had come down the valley to look for us. the horses had to be left for the night, but we, wading through everything, got safely into camp at about midnight. these indian ponies are wonderfully clever in thick timber or in the streams and rivers that have every now and then to be crossed. one old grey that i rode for two different trips was a most wise old animal, rather stiff in the knees, but wonderfully sure-footed, and never once did he even brush my leg against a tree trunk even in the thickest timber. he was also a very gentlemanly old animal, never frightened (unless he got into a muskeg), never in a hurry, very fond of going to sleep, also of having his own way, and his way was usually the right one. to those who wish to spend all their time, during a short holiday, climbing peaks, the canadian rocky mountains cannot be recommended without some explanation. firstly, they are a very long way off; and secondly, many of the finest groups, lying, as they do, perhaps fifty or a hundred miles from the railway, necessitate days of travel with ponies, provisions, etc., before even their base is reached. still undoubtedly the pleasure of the leisurely advance through the charming valleys and dense pinewoods is to 'those who love the haunts of nature, love the shadow of the forest, love the winds among the branches, and the rain-shower and the snowstorm, and the rushing of great rivers' of quite an equal importance to the joys of a first ascent. the absolutely free life that one experiences in camp never palls, let the weather be good or bad; as one jumps out of one's sleeping-bag into the fresh morning air, one is always ready for the day's work. perhaps it is a glorious morning. the men have gone off to find the ponies, which, if they have strayed far afield during the night, can be found by listening for the tinkle of the bell always tied to the neck of the bell-mare. then after a breakfast of porridge, bacon, and whatever else there may be, the horses are packed--an operation which is hard work, and takes perhaps the best part of two hours when there are over a dozen horses to load. each pack has to be finally tied on with the diamond hitch, otherwise in a very short time the pack would work loose, and, if once lost bit by bit in the dense undergrowth of the forest, would never be recovered. then comes the start, and the cavalcade files off into the virgin forest, led by the headman, whose business it is to pick out a trail amidst the dense undergrowth and the fallen trees along which the pack train can go. soon the sound of the axe is heard, and the single file of ponies comes to a standstill whilst some fallen tree which bars the way is cut through. sometimes the path leads along the bank of a swiftly flowing, muddy white river, swollen by the melting snows of the glaciers, which every now and then are seen through more open parts of the forest, glaciers that glimmer and shine high up amongst the peaks that wall in the valley below. it is in places such as this that the greatest danger to the horses and baggage is experienced. the banks of the river may be rotten, or a horse more self-willed than the others may suddenly plunge into the water, and often it is next to impossible to prevent others following; so that in one moment of time perhaps half the outfit may be sweeping down stream to perdition, and the expedition ruined by being left provisionless. fortunately, although i have often seen our horses helplessly drifting down rivers that at first sight seemed hopeless to get out of, owing to the undercut banks, depth of water, and strength of current, yet somehow or other these plucky little ponies always have managed to scramble out again. the silent forests, through which one sometimes has to march for days together, are not so dense, and the trees are not so large on the eastern side of the divide as on the western, that is to say, in the valleys leading to the columbia river. in the valley of the columbia itself, down which we travelled in from donald to the bush river, for several days we hardly saw the sky. the vast forest far surpassed in size anything we had seen on the other side of the range--huge pines, cotton-wood trees, firs, and spruces reaching to a height of feet or more. the undergrowth too was very dense--cedar, white maple, and alder (near the streams), were found; whilst the fallen trunks of dead trees, sometimes six or eight feet in diameter, lay scattered with others of lesser size in every kind of position. some in their fall had been arrested by others, and were waiting for the first gale to bring them crashing to the ground; whilst at the will of every breeze that wandered through the upper branches of the higher trees, these half-fallen monarchs of the forest would break the heavy stillness of the air by their complaints and groans against their more sturdy brethren for thus preventing them lying at peace upon the moss-covered ground below. others that had lain perhaps scores of years in the wet underbush had decayed and rotted, leaving rich masses of decomposing vegetation, from which trees had sprung that in their turn also must fall and suffer the same change. there is a marvellous fascination about these quiet shady fastnesses of the western valleys. as one wanders day after day through this underworld, cut off from the glaring sun of noonday and the blue sky, hardly a sound breaks the stillness, whilst all around the ruin of ancient woods lies piled with a lavishness most absolute--that of nature's self, the tangled wreck of a lifetime, the luxuriant growth of centuries. it is in these western valleys that the rainfall is far greater than on the other side of the range, hence the forests are thicker and the muskegs and streams more dangerous. only in the western valleys also is found that pest of british columbia forests, the devil's club--a plant with large, broad leaves and a stem covered with spikes. amongst the moist undergrowth it grows to a height of from five to six feet, trailing its stems in every direction and emitting a dank, unwholesome smell. woe betide any one who with bare hand should roughly seize one of those stems, for the spikes enter the flesh, and, breaking off, produce poisoned wounds which fester. but whilst cutting trail it is impossible to prevent the long, twisted roots flying up occasionally, leaving their detestable thorns in all parts of one's body. sometimes instead of these virgin forests the trail--and this is especially true when one is near a pass at feet or feet--passes along wide expanses of meadow, with small rhododendron bushes and clumps of pines every here and there. masses of flowers can be seen in every direction, many kinds of anemone, large yellow daisies, and many others. near the watershed of a pass beautiful lakes of pure blue water are often found, and in a quiet summer afternoon the long slanting shadows and the reflection of pines, peaks, and glaciers lie still in the clear water. the contrast of colours often is almost dazzling. one instance in particular i shall never forget: it was in a valley thirty miles north of the line called bear creek, near two lakes where some years before a fire had burnt out several square miles of forest. the gaunt, shining black stems of the trees formed a curious but fitting background--shining like black satin--for the mass of brilliant golden yellow daisies that were in full bloom amongst the stones at their feet. there was no green of grass, in fact no other colour except that of the sky. this blaze of golden orange against satin black tree trunks, with a sapphire sky beyond, formed a contrast of colours but rarely seen in a landscape. these burnt forests are one of the worst obstacles for delaying a party with horses. for a few years the ground is cleared excellently; but soon an undergrowth of pines springs up, then for many years the burnt dead trunks, which never seem to rot after having been charred by the fire, and the new thick undergrowth, make often a mile a day with a pack team good work. often even without burnt timber to delay one, the progression up an unknown valley is very tedious. in , whilst exploring the bush valley on the western side of the mountains, our first view of the valley held out hopes to us that we should soon get to the head waters and the snow peaks fifteen miles away. stretched out at our feet, as we looked down from a neighbouring hill, lay the valley, wide and level. there were no canyons or defiles that might necessitate lengthy détours up precipitous hill-sides. the valley was open and flat. it is true we saw some muskegs at the sides, but along the level bottom stretched shingle flats, with streams all tangled together, looking like a skein of ravelled grey wool thrown down between the dull green hills, whilst the main river, winding first toward one hillside and then towards the other, sometimes branching, again reuniting, formed a veritable puzzle of interlacing channels, islands of pebbles, stretches of swamps, and small lakes all hopelessly intermingled. the first ten miles up that valley took us ten days' incessant work. our way was alternately through immense timber, dense thickets of willows, through swamps, streams, small lakes, along insecure river banks, climbing up the hill-sides, jumping logs, cutting through fallen trees and undergrowth so thick one could hardly see a yard ahead, splashing, fighting, and worrying ahead; we had an experience of almost everything that could delay us, and whether the woods, the streams, or the muskegs were worst, it was impossible to say. so the days go by, and often real mountaineering is a luxury which has to be left till the last. but we were the pioneers; now the trails are partly made, and the way to get at the peaks is known, therefore the expenditure of time in arriving at any particular spot can be calculated with much greater certainty. but with this gain in time-saving comes also the lost pleasure of the uncertainty of an unknown land; now the country is being mapped and all the peaks are being named. however, it will be many a long year before much real change can be made in the valleys that lie thirty or more miles from the line; also the snow peaks, the marvellously clear atmosphere, the woods, lakes, and scenery will remain the same. after a long day through these valleys of the canadian rocky mountains one will be just as able to pitch one's tent and enjoy over the camp fire the stories of the hour, to eat one's dinner with the mountaineer's appetite, to smoke by the light of the smouldering logs, and to go to sleep safely, surrounded by these mysterious and dark forests. i always think that the supreme moments of a mountaineer's existence are, more often, not whilst battling with the great mountains, but afterwards, when the struggle is done and the whole story is gone over again quietly by a camp fire. violent action no doubt appeals to many people, but the delightful sense of content that wraps one round after a long and successful day on the mountains, after the victory has been won, is a very pleasant sensation. one such evening i remember in the bush valley when no victory had crowned our efforts. we were returning, in fact, from an attempt to reach mount columbia which had proved an undoubted failure; still somehow i felt that although beaten, we had been honourably beaten, we had struggled hard, but two things had failed us--time and provisions--and we were retracing our steps towards civilisation. the camp that evening had been pitched on the banks of the bush river. in the foreground, water and shingle stretched in desolate fashion westward to where ridges of dark pine woods sloped down from dusky peaks above, sending out point after point to strengthen the forms of the middle distance; whilst beyond, far away across the columbia, the selkirk mountains raised their snow peaks into the calm, clear sky, a mysterious land unexplored and unknown. through a rift in the clouds in the far west shone the setting sun, tinging the dull grey clouds overhead and the stealthily flowing river below with its many-coloured fires. a faint evening breeze softly moved the upper foliage, a couple of inquisitive chipmunks were chattering near at hand, and a small stream could be heard whispering amongst the thickets near the banks of the river. the great gnarled trunks of pine and fir, festooned with moss, fungi, and grey lichen, the dead, drooping branches, and the half fallen, decaying trunks propped up in dreary, melancholy array, caught for a moment the sunset's ruddy glow, whilst the mysterious shadows of the dense forest darkened by contrast. it was one of those evenings 'when, upon a tranced summer night, those green robed senators of mighty woods, tall oaks, branch charmed to the earnest stars, dream, and so dream all night without a stir, save from one gradual solitary gust, which comes upon the silence, and dies off, as if the ebbing air had but one wave.' such evenings compensate one for many a wet, dreary day spent amongst the mountains. nature suddenly offers them to the traveller without any toil on his part. he has only to sit watching, surrounded by the dark forest, the stretch of waters, and the ever-changing glory of the setting sun; then, unmindful of the worry of yesterday, or the uncertainties of to-morrow, amidst the great stillness, he feels with absolute conviction one thing and one thing only--that it is good to be alive and free. civilised life no doubt teaches us much, but when one has once tasted the freedom of the wilds, a different knowledge comes. the battling with storm, rain, cold, and sometimes hunger, and the doubt of what any day may bring forth, these at least teach that life--that mere existence--is beyond all price. the alps 'remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, i have no pleasure in them.'--_ecclesiastes._ many years ago i remember quoting once some paragraphs which seemed at the time to portray so exactly the attitude of certain people towards the alps, that they were instantly plucked from their seclusion, for the purpose of enforcing some rather flippant and idle remarks of my own. these flippant efforts of mine, i may add, were not intended to be taken seriously. the paragraphs, however, were written in , and can be found in the _alpine journal_.[l] i now presume to use them once more. 'so far as the alps are concerned, we can now, i fear, expect nothing free altogether from the taint of staleness. for us the familiar hunting grounds exist no longer as they once existed.' again: 'those waters of oblivion which have overwhelmed the jungfraus and finsteraarhorns of our youth.' and, 'it only remains for us to dally awhile with the best recollections of the now degraded mountains.' as i have said, when i first quoted these sentences i did not believe one word of them. it is true that then i was younger and more enthusiastic; moreover, the alps were new to me, and i was still able to appreciate to the full the beauties of that region of streams, glaciers, and snow peaks: then the sun still shone, then the morning and the evening, arrayed in their coat of many colours, called either to action or bid a cheerful good-night, and even then the fleeting clouds, flung abroad like 'banners on the outer wall,' would often make me stop and watch, till the mists dissolved into thin air left the high battlements of the mighty mountains once more clear against the blue sky. yes! although i quoted these paragraphs, yet at that period, to me it was impious to question the sway of the monarchs of the earth. degraded mountains, taint of staleness, waters of oblivion, jungfraus overwhelmed, a truly depressing picture! but when one comes to examine into the real truth of the matter, the fact remains that the mountains are still there, and really after all in much the same condition as they were fifty years ago. of course one must admit that many parts of switzerland below the snow line and some infinitesimal bits higher up possibly have been degraded, but not by a natural process. this degradation is the work of the animal, man; and it is difficult to say why he alone of all the inhabitants of this world, wherever he sets himself down, should always besmirch and befoul the face of nature. some literary and inquiring spirit should write a monograph on the subject. [illustration: _a crevasse on mont blanc._] what sight is more depressing than the gaunt, soot-begrimed trees that struggle for a pitiful existence around our centres of so-called civilisation? where can a more squalid picture be either seen or imagined than a back slum in one of our manufacturing towns where the teeming millions are born, bred, and die? the inhabitants of a london back street never see this earth as nature made it, beyond perhaps occasionally a green field. they know nothing of the great face of the world. what do mountains, streams, pinewoods, and lakes ruffled by the wind, mean to them? they only have seen the lower thames and its mud banks. expanses of heather moorland where the birds, the breezes, and the many summer scents wander to and fro: probably their nearest approach to these is hampstead heath and oranges! the nations of the east can teach western civilisation several things, and the people of the staffordshire black country would not lose were they to copy some of the methods of living in japan. now the worst of all this is that as the nations expand and communication becomes easier, the several, as yet unspoilt, corners of the world, where man has not yet 'forked out' nature, are in grave danger of being swept bodily into civilisation's net. unfortunately the majority of mankind is hopelessly lacking in imagination, they are incapable of accommodating themselves to their environment, trying always instead to force their surroundings to fit their own small ideas. brighton becomes more civilised in direct ratio as it becomes more like london; and switzerland--that is to say, where many unimaginative tourists go, and nowadays they go to most places from lucerne to the tops of the highest mountains--is thus degraded. it becomes a herding place during august for the nations, each brings his own special atmosphere, his family, his newspaper, and himself. the money pours in, the state becomes civilised, and the hotels flourish. if zermatt possessed first-class beer halls, a golf course, and plenty of motor cars, a very large number of the german, english, and french tourists would gladly amuse themselves each with his particular native pastime, and would never bother themselves about whether monte rosa was covered with ice and snow, or was merely a mud heap, or whether glaciers, matterhorns, dent blanches were or were not. it would be foolish to deny that the interest of mankind in man must necessarily be stronger than the mere abstract pleasure obtained from the contemplation of wild and beautiful scenery. so it follows that when a vast concourse gathers, such as is seen during the season at zermatt, mankind naturally dominates the environment, and the study of man, not of scenery, prevails. this must be so. take, for instance, any of our best novelists: of course they deal with people, not things. when clive newcome and j. j. (artists too, if you please) crossed the alps, does thackeray give us a long account of the scenery? certainly not: the whole matter is disposed of at once, and in a sentence they are whisked from baden to rome. on the other hand, the descriptions of the beauties of nature by sir walter scott or by wordsworth, who reads them now except with an occasional yawn? far more interesting, and properly so too, are narratives of real, live people, their thoughts, their hopes, their disappointments. _soldiers three_ appeals to every one; but should one begin to talk about the merits of claude and turner as painters of hills, and even quote some of ruskin's very finest passages about alps and archangels, your neighbour at _table d'hôte_ will either think that you are a great bore, or, perhaps, an extremely clever person; but will be far more interested, when the old lady opposite begins to tell how mr. jones was caught that very afternoon proposing to miss robinson, and how the bishop of x. is really coming to stop at the hotel for a few days. all this is meant to show that by far the greater number of the hordes that invade switzerland every year does not in reality take any interest at all, or at best a very feeble one, in the only really national dish that switzerland has to offer. they neither care for it, nor do they understand it. naturally, therefore, the majority with their outside influence, with their own objects, ends, and atmosphere, entirely swamps the small remainder who appreciate the natural beauties of the land, and who fifty years ago practically held undivided possession. in those days the tourists, and they were few in the land, did not in the least mind suffering certain minor hardships owing to the absence of hotels: it was nothing compared with the pleasure that they obtained from the free life and the scenery; also, should they be mountaineers and scale some of the till then unvisited summits, on their descent into the valleys they were looked upon with wonder by the simple village folk and the herders of cattle of the small hamlets; these inhabitants would crowd round, when with arm extended and finger pointing to the distant peak of snow they described how yesterday, at such a time, they and their friend the chamois hunter of the district were on its summit. this sort of thing has most certainly gone, gone for ever. in this respect the alps are as dead as queen anne--they have been overwhelmed in the waters of oblivion. the self-sufficient modern traveller now holds undivided sway in the chief central places of the alps; and were it possible for him to impress his puny individuality on the great crags and the snow-fields of the mountains, to interfere with the colours of the sunset or the dawn, or to compel the clouds, then perhaps we might agree with the bitter cry of ruskin, who, speaking of the artistic creative faculty of the present day, says that we 'live in an age of base conceit and baser servility--an age whose intellect is chiefly formed by pillage, and occupied in desecration; one day mimicking, the next destroying, the works of all noble persons who made its intellectual or art life possible to it: an age without honest confidence enough in itself to carve a cherry-stone with an original fancy, but with insolence enough to abolish the solar system, if it were allowed to meddle with it.' fortunately they cannot meddle with the mountains and the snow-fields. still, as in those bygone days, man there is a mere speck. the peaks are as high and the snows as deep. above, the glories of the sunset and the sunrise are the same, amidst the ice, the snow, and the black rocks; there the taint, and the adverse influence of this invasion of civilisation, is unfelt, although it may have overwhelmed the valleys below. the jungfrau and the finsteraarhorn still are as untouched and unspoiled, as far from vulgarisation as in the days when they were first conquered. it is only when we descend from the mountains, and at the huts once more enter into contact with this other world, that the change begins to be felt, or when we have returned to our hotel, donned our dress clothes, and are seated before a bad imitation of a dinner, that we finally recognise that the waters of the great modern sea of vulgarity and mediocrity have engulfed us. forty years ago switzerland, or at least the finest part of switzerland, belonged to the tourist or traveller, call him which you will, who really cared for the healthy, out-of-door existence and the scenery; and to the mountaineer, who, as a rule, appreciated both the natural grandeur of the alps, and at the same time the pleasure of spending his holidays high up amidst the ice and snow. at that time we find in the _alpine journal_ (a record of mountain adventure) endless papers on the climbing and the exploration of the alps. but if we examine the pages of the _alpine journal_ of to-day, a distinct scarcity of papers on the alps is at once apparent. in the year , out of fourteen articles only five dealt with the alps, for there nowadays exploration and new climbs are almost impossible. moreover, records of mere mountain adventure without any description of an ascent of some unconquered peak have become too common. therefore it is not remarkable that the mountaineer is driven further afield, preferring to win laurels amidst new ranges. but still the alps are both broad and wide, and after all it is only along certain lines that the great civilised mob disports itself. it is true that all the mountains have been ascended, but surely that only destroys a minor attraction; moreover, fortunately almost anywhere on the italian side of the watershed one is free from that lamentable state of affairs that obtains at such places as chamonix, grindelwald, and zermatt; and should the mountaineer possess a tent and a sleeping-bag he can always camp out, thus being entirely free. there are places on the south side of mont blanc, in the rutor or in the grand paradiso district, in the valpelline, and in many others, where delightful camps can be made and where one would hardly ever see a stranger for weeks together. there the mountaineer can live practically undisturbed in his own hunting ground of peaks, passes, and glaciers. amongst the most pleasant recollections i have of the alps are those connected with our camps. we always had sleeping-bags, and i may say that during all the years i spent climbing with mummery only twice have i slept in a hut with him. there are few more pleasurable sensations than to be comfortable and warm under the lee of some great boulder, watching the stars as they slowly move westward; or to sit by a camp fire after the sun has set, and to recall all the enjoyment of the climb just finished; a feeling of most profound contentment with everything in the world steals over the party; the conversation becomes more and more disjointed as first one and then another turns over and sleeps. when i look back and think of all the various places where mummery, hastings, slingsby, and i have slept out in the open, far away from the haunts of men, and remember how we enjoyed ourselves, i for one would go back year after year to the alps if those times could be brought back again. in those days the glass of time, when shaken, ran in golden sands. now all that is left of them is the memory. it was in those days long ago, that i remember, how on one perfect evening at the beginning of august, we camped high up by the side of the brenva glacier, having been well prepared for struggling with the tremendous southern face of mont blanc by the delightful dinners of m. bertolini. the sun went down behind the pétéret ridge--a ridge which always seems to me to be unsurpassed in the alps--and we hoped that in another twenty-four hours we should be on the other side of the great mountain. but one of the great charms of mountaineering is its uncertainty, and instead of twenty-four it was forty-eight hours before we arrived at the grands-mulets. it would be distinctly perverting the truth to say that, at the time, we enjoyed the whole of our expedition, but often have i during winter evenings recalled that climb. i cannot now reproduce the unpleasant sensations, but the satisfaction and recollection of success becomes more pleasing as lapse of years adds enchantment to the memory of that fierce battle with mont blanc. i shall never forget how, hour after hour, mummery, following a wrong direction of e. rey's (who, as it turned out afterwards, had never been up mont blanc by this brenva route), persistently kept towards the left; how at last the hard blue ice became so steep that it was almost impossible to cut steps in it; and how the ice also had a sticky feel when touched with the fingers, for we were in the shadow of the mountain. unfortunately we were feet from the summit; and as the daylight was only good for a few more hours, we had reluctantly to turn and make our way down that icy staircase. at one place where hastings had thrown a portion of his breakfast into a small crevasse, we carefully recovered the discarded provisions, coming at last, just before darkness enveloped everything, to a small rock jutting out of that almost vertical face. the brenva glacier was thousands of feet below us. one of the penalties of guideless climbing is that when prolonged step-cutting has to be undertaken, no amateur can compete with a first-class guide. naturally, therefore, nights out on the mountains are often the price paid. our penance on this particular expedition was to sit on that rock all night. the cold was intense, and it was not till the sun had risen next day that we were capable of moving. once started, the blood began again to circulate, and keeping this time more to the right, a passage was forced with very great difficulty indeed through the almost overhanging edge of the great snow cap of mont blanc. in more than one place we had to use the axes forced home to their heads as a staircase for the first man. it was a magnificent climb, in fact the finest i have ever had. that ice world on the south side of mont blanc is on a larger scale than anything i know of outside the himalaya. on the afternoon of the third day out from courmayeur i arrived on the summit by crawling up on my hands and knees. but although the ascent had taken so long, the descent was accomplished much more expeditiously. in two hours we reached the grands-mulets. there, being supplied with omelette after omelette, i basely refused to roam any further; but hastings and mummery, unsatisfied, rushed down the remainder of the mountain, to lose themselves in the pine woods below in the darkness, reaching couttet's and luxury late that night. if i was to recount all the splendid expeditions that we were taken by mummery--how we sometimes failed, but much more often succeeded--this chapter could be made into a dozen; and yet, in spite of all these ascents, my knowledge of the alps is extremely limited. curiously, however, i have found that sometimes those who most loudly complain of the alps being played out are quite unacquainted with, or at least have never attempted, most of those ascents which it was my good fortune to make with mummery. certainly they were mostly made in the mont blanc range, a part which does not seem to commend itself so much to mountaineers of the present day as the eastern portion of the alps. yet where can be found anywhere else, in the whole range, rock pinnacles that are finer than the aiguille noire de pétéret. few people know that its west face is a sheer precipice of several thousand feet. in i was camping for a couple of days with major bruce and harkabir thapa, just opposite to it on the ridge between the brouillard and fresnay glaciers. it was then i watched a slab of rock fall from about twenty feet below the summit. it was a mass weighing perhaps fifty or a hundred tons. for over feet it touched nothing, then striking on a ledge it burst into a thousand fragments with a noise like thunder, and hardly one of the fragments touched rock again, but descended straight to the snows of the fresnay glacier beneath. we were investigating the south-west corner of mont blanc, intending if possible to make the ascent by the continuation of the brouillard ridge. with this prospect in view, we ascended the brouillard glacier to near the top of the aiguille l'innominata, but went no further. the brouillard is a glacier that to try and descend on a hot summer afternoon would be foolish, to say the least of it. for, set at a very high angle, and broken up in the wildest fashion, although presenting a magnificent spectacle, it does not lend itself to safe mountaineering. harkabir was much disappointed that we refused to go on, for he thought he could see his way up the rock escarpment at the head of the glacier, and, were that possible, probably no more difficulty would be met with from there to the summit. but in spite of the climber of the party being confident we could proceed, i as conductor insisted on turning back, being only a 'mere mountaineer.' one thing at least i was certain of: bertolini lived at courmayeur, not chamonix, and forty-year old barolo, together with countless other delicacies, was to be obtained from him alone. to return, however, from the excellences of the cuisine at bertolini's to those of the range of mont blanc, should the jaded climber of 'degraded' mountains want more rock peaks, the ascent of the lesser dru, in my opinion, can be repeated profitably. not even amongst the dolomites can one get the sensation of dizzy height and appalling depth to the same extent as on this mountain; moreover, there is a most sporting though small glacier to cross before one begins the rock ascent. then the charmoz and the grépon are not to be despised. for a most varied climb, requiring every kind of mountain craft, the traverse of the aiguille du plan is to be recommended, from the glacier des pèlerins over the summit, down the glacier du plan, and back by the glacier du géant. again, without doubt, the finest snow and ice climb in the alps, surrounded the whole time by superb scenery, is from the montanvert to the hut behind the aiguille du midi, thence over mont blanc du tacul and the mont maudit to the summit of mont blanc, and down to the grands-mulets. of course, i know that to recommend any one to climb mont blanc will certainly be regarded as a bold suggestion by those who have noticed a taint of staleness in the great mountains. for of all the peaks that have been overwhelmed by the waters of oblivion, surely mont blanc outrivals both the jungfraus and the finsteraarhorns of the happy childhood of the alps. personally, however, i am a staunch adherent of the 'ancient monarch of the mountains.' but as leslie stephen says, the 'coarse flattery of the guide-books has done much to surround him with vulgarising associations.' surely, though, mont blanc is far too magnificent, far too splendid to be much affected by such associations, and as if to shake them off every now and then, after he has been patted on the back by those of every nationality who swarm over his sides, he arises in his anger, hangs out his danger signal above his summit, and sweeps his glaciers and snows clear of the invading crowd. the föhn wind and the angry clouds envelop him, his snow-fields glare with a ghastly dead white colour, and whirlwinds of clouds, snow, and gloom descend. but the storm passes, and once more he emerges clean and glistening in all his beauty. but at chamonix the föhn wind of vulgarity seems to blow perpetually, enveloping always the great mountain in pale and dim eclipse, and obscuring the romance, the charm, and all honest appreciation of the old monarch. fortunately one can easily run away, leaving this depressing atmosphere behind, and can bask once more in the sunshine, and camp amidst the unspoiled valleys near the snows. why there are not more mountaineers who take small tents to the alps is always to me a mystery. for long ago most of the huts have become abominations, whilst the free life that is afforded by camp life adds a very great charm to mountain expeditions. having tried it so often in the himalaya, in skye, in norway, in the canadian rocky mountains, and switzerland, perhaps i may be biassed, but even if i never again had a chance of climbing a first-class peak in the alps, i would return there to live the lazy, delightful, disreputable life in a tent, near the ice and the snows and the pine woods, to smell the camp fire, lie on my back all day amidst the grass and the flowers, listening to the wind, and looking at the sky and the great silent peaks. on the other hand, the idea of spending a month at swiss hotels, arising in the darkness to wander forth in a bad temper, chilled to the bone, in order merely to finish off the remaining peaks of some district, so that i might say i had been up them all, and therefore never be bothered to return again--rather than perpetrate such a hideous waste of time i would go to some secluded spot on the western coast of these islands where the waves were for ever rolling in with that long, lazy, monotonous sweep that is only seen on the shores of the atlantic, and there i would lie day after day on my back on the sands watching the ever-changing colours of the sea. these things, however, can be done in their proper season, but until there are restaurants all over mont blanc, and railways up most of the peaks, illuminations of the matterhorn every night by means of electricity and coloured fires, and all the avalanches are timed to be let loose only twice a day, namely at a morning and an afternoon performance--until that time arrives mountaineering in the alps will still be worth while indulging in occasionally. till then there will be plenty of space for the enthusiast who likes to wander amidst the snow-and ice-covered mountains. the ledges of rock high up, with the grey lichen on them, will still afford a resting-place from which the long glaciers far down below can be seen as they descend to the green-hued woods and the hazy valleys filled with sunshine. the overhanging cornices high above, for ever on the point of breaking off, will still hang poised in unstable equilibrium. the storms will sweep as frequently as of old across that mountain land, hiding for a brief space all in gloom; the lightning flashes, the roar of the thunder, the driving snow, and the keen biting wind will hunt the too presumptuous climber back to lower altitudes, as they have done often before; and afterwards the sun will again shine, dissolving the clouds, drying the lower slopes, and showing how the old mountains have once more put on a clean garment, which in magnificence, in glittering splendour, is as unmatched or unequalled as the deep, glowing colour of that 'solitary handmaid of eternity,' the open ocean, or the glories of the heavens at dawn or at sunset. those who have learned to understand the language of the hills can appreciate the many-voiced calls of the mountains, and, i am sure, are not in the least afraid that, for the present, the alps will be wholly ruined or degraded. for my own part, they will always possess an attraction which i care neither to analyse nor to destroy. i shall go back there just as the swallow at the end of summer goes south; and if by an unfortunate combination of circumstances anything should happen to prevent me ever returning from that world of snow, my ghost, could it walk, would then at any rate be surrounded by nothing common nor unclean, which might perhaps not be so should it be compelled to wander amongst the tombstones of a london cemetery. footnotes: [l] vol. iv. p. . the lofoten islands 'near the outer lands of the silent mist, the waves moan wearilie; yet hidden there lie the isles of the blest, the lonely isles of the sea.' _olav's quest._ many years ago i remember the first time i read that marvellous description of the maelström by edgar allan poe, where he tells how a fisherman from the lofoten islands, driven by a hurricane, was caught in the maelström's grip, and descended 'into the mouth of that terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice--half-shriek, half-roar--such as not even the mighty cataract of niagara ever lifts up in its agony to heaven'; and i remember how i used to picture to myself precipitous, polished cliffs of terrific height and grandeur encircling a writhing pool of dusky waters; above, the rocks glowing red and golden in the light of a stormy sunset; below, stray flakes of foam ever and again flashing back the fiery glories of the angry sky, as they glided with a stealthy, increasing haste for ever nearer and nearer and yet nearer to the awful abyss of the devouring whirlpool. this, like so many tales of one's youth, although told by that consummate artist poe, must be relegated to the realms of fiction. but his description of one of the lofoten islands--of the 'sheer, unobstructed precipices of black, shining rock,' against which the ocean surf howled and shrieked, and of the endless array of gloomy mountains, 'outstretched like ramparts of the world, hideously craggy and barren'--is far nearer the truth; for in it is much that is characteristic of the outer islands. but after all he has only portrayed the lofoten islands when enveloped in storm. of course, when the south-west gales sweep on to the rock-bound coast of röst and moskenesö, even poe himself could hardly do justice to the scene, for the battle between the great waves coming in from the open ocean and the tremendous tides that surge past the outer islands must be magnificent. truly the picture would have to be of 'an iron coast and angry waves, you seemed to hear them rise and fall and roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves, beneath the windy wall.' [illustration: lofoten.] but these mere rude phases of nature's moods do not for ever encircle lofoten in flying surf and with winds that shriek and howl. in the summer months, at least, the sun shines, and often one may look in vain over the untroubled water, rippled by the warm west wind, for the dreaded maelström, whose thunderous voice and angry whirlpool for the moment is stilled; whilst in its stead a gentle murmur rises from the clear water which possesses just sufficient motion for the waves to lazily rise and fall against the bare rocky shore, and yet is calm enough for the reflection of the white clouds and craggy hill-sides to repose sleepily on its surface. from their geographical position these islands should have a very different climate from that which they possess; and perhaps it may be due partly to this cause that the mountains are so craggy and barren. for the rainfall during several months is excessive, and is quite capable of washing away any superincumbent earth from the sides of the numerous needle-shaped peaks that are to be found on most of the lofoten islands; moreover, in the valleys the whole country has been worn down to the bone in prehistoric times by enormous glaciers, and to-day the abnormal summer rainfall and the frosts of the long arctic nights are continuing the work of denudation. although the lofoten islands are south of the north cape, yet one does not at once appreciate how far north they lie. from london they are more than twelve hundred miles; and they are one hundred miles nearer the north pole than the northernmost part of iceland. moreover, most of siberia, bering straits, and klondike are all further south than the lofoten islands. if it were not for that warm current which, starting from the gulf of mexico, after thousands of miles sweeps past this northern coast of norway, these islands would during the whole year be covered with ice and snow, and be surrounded by a frozen ocean. the influence of the gulf stream on the temperature of the northern coast of norway is well illustrated by the fact that every winter the sea round the lofoten islands, and even further north at hammerfest and the north cape, is always open; yet in southern norway, six hundred miles to the southward, the kristiania fjord, which the gulf stream does not touch, is during the winter months covered with ice. the exact reverse in climate is experienced in newfoundland, the shores of which are washed by the labrador current, coming from the frozen north out of baffin bay. in the straits of belle isle, which are in the same latitude as london, and which separate newfoundland from labrador, may be seen snow-drifts on the seashore even in july, whilst the bare uplands behind are covered with far-stretching fields of snow. the icebergs, too, which drift south on this labrador current, are sometimes found in such low latitudes that if on the map the latitude were followed due east it would be found to pass through cairo, and not many miles north of lahore in india. the approach to the lofoten islands from the south after one has passed the arctic circle is particularly grand and beautiful. the mountains, owing to excessive prehistoric glaciation, possess forms at once curious and peculiar, giving an individuality to the view which is lacking further south on the norwegian coast. lofoten, however, is not seen till the great west fjord is reached; then far away across thirty miles of blue waters, which slowly pulsate with the long waves of the open sea, appears a wonderful land of sharp-pointed peaks that with a deep sapphire colour outshines the deeper purple of the restless sea. the west coast of scotland can give similar views. rum, skye, and the hebrides, as seen from the mainland at arisaig or loch maree, in some respects resemble these islands, but the lofoten mountains are far wilder and far more fantastic in shape, and the number of peaks infinitely greater than in the western islands of scotland. ages ago the west fjord must have held an enormous glacier, although it is improbable that the great ice-sheet which then covered the country ever was thick enough to submerge the loftier summits of the lofoten islands, the highest of which now stand feet above sea-level; yet this ice-sheet must have been thousands of feet thick, for from any mountain-top it is easy to see how whole masses of solid rock appear to have been cut away, leaving valleys whose cross-section is a perfect half-circle. to those who are sceptical of what ice will do, a visit to the mainland opposite the lofoten islands would prove very instructive. even the most gigantic of himalayan glaciers are feeble in comparison with an arctic ice-sheet such as that on greenland or on the antarctic continent. on nanga parbat i have seen a vast glacier turned to one side by its own moraine. near elvegaard on the ofoten fjord there exist valleys whose sides for miles are perpendicular walls of rock sometimes a couple of thousand feet high, and which undoubtedly have been excavated and then polished by the power of the ice. for many years i had been anxious to see the lofoten islands, for i had heard rumours that they were more beautiful than skye and the coolin. but it was not till that i was able to go there. it was in good company that i went; woolley, hastings, and priestman, all of whom had been there before in , were the other members of the party. they were able to advise where to go, how to best overcome the difficulties of provisioning our camp, and, what was still better, were all able to speak norsk fluently. we landed from the steamer at svolvaer, a curious harbour amongst a maze of ice-polished rocks. svolvaer is the point where all the large steamers call, although on a rough day as the vessel approaches the harbour it looks as if there was not even a passage for a rowing-boat anywhere along the rock-bound shore. the small town of svolvaer is built on a series of rocky islands, consequently the only convenient way of getting from one part of the town to another is by boat, and of course there is no such thing as a road in the town. the finest mountains in the lofoten islands congregate round the raftsund, a narrow waterway which separates the islands of hindö and �st vaagö; but further down the islands are other isolated peaks whose pointed spires of rock look almost inaccessible. vaage kallen is one, whilst several in moskenesö also would give excellent climbing. as far as i could see, these mountains to the south-west are without glaciers, which is not the case of those round the raftsund. the highest peak in lofoten, mösadlen by name, had been climbed, but the next three highest, higraf tind, feet; gjeitgaljar, feet; and rulten, feet, had as yet summits untrodden by the foot of man. moreover, of all the lesser mountains only about half a dozen had been ascended. here, then, should the climbing be good, was a mountaineer's paradise. on august , with the help of two men and a couple of boats, woolley, hastings, priestman, and i conveyed our camp-baggage from svolvaer to a spot marked austavindnes near the head of the �stnes fjord. a norwegian porter, e. hogrenning, who had been with hastings before on the mountains for more than one season, also came and helped to pull the heavily laden boats through the waves of the fjord. it was a pleasing sight to me as i sat idle in the stern of the boat in which were the two local fishermen, to watch hastings and priestman in their shirt-sleeves pulling the second boat, and trying their best to show that englishmen were just as capable of rowing as norwegians. in this they were successful, for we soon parted company, hastings' boat finally disappearing on the opposite side of the fjord. in time, however, they came back again to us, but what they had been doing was not quite clear--hastings had probably been trying to borrow something from a house on the shore, a pole or a cooking-stove, or some nails or a spade. all these things and many more were ultimately collected by hastings, and before we left our camp a fortnight later there were few houses on the �stnes fjord that had not contributed something towards our wants. hastings' tent in the meantime had assumed the appearance of a really first-class gipsy encampment. the place where we had decided to camp was finally reached, and all our provisions, tents, and baggage landed on the beach. one of the boats we kept, and our two fishermen, bidding us farewell, returned to svolvaer. the views from our camp, although rather restricted, were occasionally most beautiful, when during the long summer nights the peaks at the head of the �stnes fjord to the north-west were a dark purple against the evening sky. opposite to us was the peak gjeitgaljar, a veritable little dru in appearance, and in front of it a ridge of pinnacles that looked hopelessly inaccessible. every few moments some change in light and shade or in colour would shift over the landscape. as soon as we had got our camp into order, woolley and i determined to start the attack on the mountains at once. as far as we knew, all the peaks on the east side of the fjord were unclimbed. we were not joined by hastings and priestman, they having to return to svolvaer for some more baggage. straight behind our camp the hill-side rose sheer; up these precipitous slabs of glacier-worn rock we made our way, using the small ledges on which grew grass and moss. so steep was the mountain-side that when a spot was reached fully a thousand feet above our camp, it looked as if we could almost have thrown a stone on to the white tents below by the water's edge. after that we came to more easy travelling, still, however, over glaciated rocks, finally reaching a small glacier. all along the head of the glacier were precipitous rocks, rising here and there to peaks forming the watershed of the island. at the head and towards the right lay a snow col, filling a deep gap in the rock wall in front of us. towards this we made our way. the ascent of the ridge from this col to the left was by no means easy climbing, and we soon found that ridge-climbing in the lofoten, even though there was no ice on the rocks, was often difficult and sometimes impossible. eventually, by a series of traverses on the south-east side and by climbing up some cracks, we succeeded in reaching our first summit. here a cairn was built, and i photographed an exceedingly tame ptarmigan in the foreground against an excessively savage-looking peak in the background named rulten. we were at a height of about feet. rulten, from where we were, looked hopelessly inaccessible; but higraf tind, the second highest peak in lofoten, when examined through a glass, promised not only a fine climb, but also success. one of the great charms of climbing in lofoten is that to hurry is unnecessary, for it is daylight through all the twenty-four hours: a night out on the mountains in darkness is impossible. moreover, owing to the comparative smallness of the mountains more than one first ascent may be made in a morning or an afternoon. as woolley and i saw several more summits on our ridge (the langstrandtinder) towards the north-east, we started off for them after we had fully exhausted the view, and smoked as many pipes as were necessary to produce a sensation of rest. in fact, to me one of the chief reasons for moving on to the next peak was that again i might have the excuse for being lazy, again look at the sky, the far-off mountains, and the endless expanse of the sea beyond. the climbing along the ridge was easy, and two more summits were ascended; a small cairn was left on each of their tops. further progress along the ridge was, however, impossible, for a deep gap of about five hundred feet cut us off from the next peak. we therefore descended on the north side of the mountain to a steep snow slope, which led down for several hundreds of feet to the glacier below. thence following our route of the morning we descended the steep rock face above our camp, and got home in time for dinner. during the next two days we paid a part of our penalty for being on the shores of the gulf stream. clouds hid the mountains, and rain and dull weather kept us at sea-level. but magnificent weather followed on august , and we were all impatient to start for the virgin peak, higraf tind, feet, the second highest mountain in lofoten. in order to get to the base of the mountain we rowed in our boat across the small arm of the �stnes fjord, by whose shores we were camped, and beached our boat at liland. thence making our way through the thickets of dwarf birch up the lower stretches of the small valley of lilandsdal, we arrived at the foot of the great precipice which constitutes the upper part of the mountain. rimming the head of the valley was the rocky ridge which connects higraf tind with gjeitgaljar. to follow this ridge to the summit of our mountain would have necessitated climbing over various pinnacles and notches, and as we were very sceptical as to whether we should be able to surmount these difficulties, we turned to our left along a small ledge which appeared to run in and out of the gullies that seamed this southern face of higraf tind. on more than one occasion we found ourselves in places where great care was necessary, and our spirits rose and fell as we either found a narrow ledge which would safely lead us into one of the many rock gullies and out again on the far side, or were forced back to try higher up or lower down on the face of the mountain. eventually we emerged on the arête which led up to the topmost peak. the summit of the mountain consisted of huge monoliths of what i should call granite (it may, however, be gabbro), similar in appearance to those on the top of the charmoz, and also similar to the charmoz in being very narrow with tremendous precipices on each side. a short distance below the top a small promontory on the ridge afforded a splendid point from which a photograph could be taken. woolley was sent on so that he might be photographed, proudly planting his ice-axe on the topmost pinnacle. in due time he appeared clear cut against the sky; but immediately afterwards from his gesticulations i could see that something was wrong. the reason was obvious when after a few moments i joined him. twenty feet away was another summit a few feet higher, and between the two a gulf was fixed. below us the rock fell sheer for over thirty feet with never a crack in it, whilst on the opposite side of the chasm the great blocks overhung, so that even had we descended hand over hand on the rope into the gap, direct ascent on the other side was hopeless. but remembering our tactics lower down we tried further back for a traverse, and soon found that by climbing down a crack between two huge blocks on the eastern side we could get round into the gap. so far so good, but how to surmount the difficulties on the further side! an attempt to traverse on the western side was seen to be hopeless, but an obliging ledge on the other face ran round a corner. where would it lead to? cautiously we edged along it, passing under the summit of the mountain. another crack between great slabs was found; up this we clambered, and once at its top all difficulty disappeared. we had conquered higraf tind, and all that remained for us to do was to crown the vanquished mountain with a cairn. then we returned to the lower summit, where the cameras and baggage had been left. after toil came repose. the afternoon was perfect, only a few clouds floated in the clear sky. far away to the south-west could be seen the outer lofoten islands, a mass of tangled mountain forms, in colour every conceivable shade of atmospheric blue and purple, whilst beyond lay the calm glittering ocean, and far, far away the last and loneliest of the lofoten, the island of röst. nearer and beneath us were numberless peaks, the majority of them unclimbed; of them, next in height to higraf tind were gjeitgaljar and rulten. in the distance across the raftsund in the island of hindö we could see mösadlen and its two attendant pinnacles of rock. these pinnacles, from their appearance, should be excessively difficult to climb. at our feet lay the blaaskovl glacier with the troldfjordvatn beyond, a solitary iceberg floating on its waters, and further the trold fjord and glimpses of the raftsund. all these combined to give an effect of space and depth to the view far in excess of what one would expect from mountains not feet above their base. we lingered for a long time on the summit; but in a land where, at that time of year, night never comes, what need was there to hurry? the extraordinary atmospheric colours, the ever-changing forms of the clouds, and the slowly slanting rays of the sun, flashing first on one peak and then on another, produced a wonderful picture. also it was the first time that i had been able to master the complicated geography of the district, and the peaks store trold tind, svartsund tind, isvand tind, and others that my friends had climbed when they were last camped by the raftsund, were pointed out to me. no icy wind shrilled across the mountains, darkness would not visit this land for many days yet; to hasten would have been as foolish as it was unnecessary. after our victory over higraf tind came the deluge; for three nights and days the heavens were opened and the rains descended. had it not been for strenuous efforts on our part in trench digging, our camp would have been bodily washed into the fjord. on one morning an aluminium pan out in the open served as an amateur rain-gauge; in three hours about three inches of water were registered, proving that lofoten can easily compete with our atlantic coast as regards rainfall. on the return of fine weather we determined to attack rulten. in our boat we rowed to his base, landing in a small bay named flaeskvik. the lower slopes of the mountain were very steep, and the usual climbing from ledge to ledge and up gullies had to be resorted to. after a toilsome climb, for the day was moist and warm, we finally emerged on to the true south-west arête, having discovered on our way up a most remarkable window in one of the ridges. the difficulties now began, for the ridge at once steepened; moreover, in slimness it almost resembled the grépon. i tried to climb straight up the ridge, but perpendicular slabs, with only small cracks in them, barred the way. to be entirely outside the mountain, when in a peculiarly difficult place, is by no means pleasant. the imagination is far less troubled with ideas of what might happen should one fall, when the extreme steepness is partially hidden from one's view in the privacy of a rock chimney. baffled in my attempt to make a direct ascent, i looked to the left for some convenient traverse. there was none; vertical slabs, many hundreds of feet high, entirely stopped the way. to the right hand a ledge was found which led for a short distance along the side of the mountain, but smooth rocks, bending over into space, brought my investigations there also to an abrupt conclusion. it might have been possible from the end of this traverse to climb upwards on to the ridge, but later we saw, on our return journey, that should we have surmounted this difficulty, further along the sky-line more than one gap would almost certainly have prevented our reaching the top. the point where we stopped was below feet, therefore there was at least feet more of the mountain to climb. rulten is undeniably a difficult peak; at present i have seen no likely way up it, but no doubt by a systematic attack, by trying first one side and then another, a weak spot would be discovered. during the day we had seen the �stnes fjord dotted over with thousands of boats, and as we descended on to the beach, we found many of the fisherfolk on shore drying their herring-nets on the rocks, for it was the herring fishery that had brought them into the fjord. these nets are often as much as feet long by to feet deep, and a really fortunate haul will bring in often many hundreds of pounds worth of fish; enough, in fact, to fill more than one small steamer. it is, of course, in the early spring, from january to april, that the great cod fishery is carried on, for it is then that the cod migrate to the coast. the fish are caught with hooks and lines, and it is the cod fishery which forms the chief trade of the lofoten islands. there are two usual methods of preparing the fish for the market, either by drying (törfisk) or salting (klipfisk). the former is the old-fashioned method, and is carried out by drying the cod on wooden scaffolds, after they have been cleaned and the heads removed. and an ancient rule forbade fish being hung up after april th, or taken down before june th. by far the greater portion of the cod, however, are exported as klipfisk, spain being the chief customer, taking about three-fifths of the whole amount exported. of the remainder of the cod, the liver produces cod-liver oil, the roe is exported to france for sardine bait, and the heads and other parts are turned into manure. the next day was gloriously fine, so we stretched our alpine ropes to their fullest extent, between the birch trees, and hung everything in the camp on them to dry. then we bathed in the clear water of the fjord, taking headers into the deep water from the smoothly polished rocks on the shore. ever since we had pitched our tents by the side of the fjord, gjeitgaljar tind had waited patiently. day by day we had seen the mists play hide-and-seek behind his jagged pinnacles of rock; now we thought the time had arrived for us to attack this formidable looking aiguille. in appearance by far the most difficult peak we had seen, it turned out the most easy to climb; in fact, there was no difficulty experienced anywhere on the ascent. our route lay up a deep gully partly filled with snow, on the left of the peak, which led us on to a small snow-field behind the summit. on the way up this gully a splendid view of the pinnacle ridge, in front of the top of the mountain, was obtained. a more formidable series of rock towers i have never seen. from the snow-field to the highest point is easy climbing. the top consists of some flat slabs of rock, but the eastern edge is most sensational, and is best investigated by lying on one's stomach before looking over, for it drops sheer for many hundreds of feet. a small stone let fall from the outstretched hand is almost out of sight before it hits the vertical side of the mountain. a more ideal summit for a cairn could hardly be imagined; moreover, there were plenty of loose stones, so hogrenning was set to build one worthy of the mountain. he produced one seven feet high, and big enough to proclaim to all interested the fact that somebody at least had scaled that impossible looking rock pinnacle gjeitgaljar. on the next day we broke up our camp, putting on board the steamer _röst_ all our baggage; but it was not till late on the day following that we arrived back again at svolvaer, for the _röst_ had to call at all the small hamlets on the outer islands, almost as far down as the end of moskenesö. we stopped just short of the historic maelström, but had we gone further the maelström would not have been seen, for we voyaged through summer seas. hastings now left us in order to go to the lyngen peninsula, whilst woolley, priestman, and i went to digermulen on the raftsund. from there, that most extraordinary fjord, the trold fjord was visited, and we also walked up to the troldfjordvatn. this mountain tarn, hidden away amongst the mountains and flanked with dark and forbidding precipices, has a beauty all its own, and in some respects reminds one of loch coruisk. at its head is a small glacier, whose snout, occasionally breaking off, produces icebergs. the precipices along its shore fall sheer into its dark waters, and the surrounding peaks are wild and savage, but its sides lack the wonderful soft-coloured clothing of the heather, and the rocks are not of such rich hues as the gabbro of skye. perhaps i may be wrong, yet it seemed to me that the mountains themselves are not so graceful, neither are the long curving lines so fine as those that can be seen amongst the coolin from the shores of coruisk. from digermulen we attempted the ascent of another of the unclimbed peaks of �st vaagö. it is an unnamed peak north of rörhop vand. but the weather was bad, and clouds prevented us ever seeing the summit of our peak. we had, however, a most delightful climb, first up a small glacier, marked dijerna on the map, thence up some steep rocks to the ridge, which joined our mountain with the troldtinder. following this ridge, we ultimately got into a gap, but beyond this we could see no possible way; traversing for a short distance on the western face only showed us that there was little likelihood of our ever getting back again on to the arête, so reluctantly we returned, and got back to digermulen in the rain. the weather then went from bad to worse. so we boarded the steamer _röst_ once more, and went for a trip in mist, rain, and storm round langö, one of the outer islands of vesteraalen. all that we saw were the grey seas, the clouds lying low on the mountains, and most extraordinary places bristling with rocks, into which our captain took the small _röst_, tossed to and fro by the great rolling waves of the arctic ocean. the voyage in fine weather must be superb. on our return to svolvaer, woolley and i travelled south with priestman, as far as trondhjem, and from there went home to england. it is a very curious fact that so few mountaineers go to lofoten. as far back as the rev. st. john tyrwhitt read a paper before the alpine club, in which he says, 'an exploration of the loffodens would be a work worthy of the club in every sense of the words.' again, in , professor bonney, who visited these islands with e. walton, speaks 'strongly of the wonderful grandeur and beauty of some parts of the lofotens,' and then the next paper in the _alpine club journal_ is that of priestman in nearly thirty years later. it is true that the peaks are only feet high, and therefore cannot compete with those of , feet; also, they possess no large glaciers, neither are the valleys filled with pine forests, and the foregrounds, as a rule, are desolate and the rocks without much colour: but the rock climbing is as good as any one could wish to get, the rock resembling in many respects that of the chamonix aiguilles. moreover, and herein lies the strong charm of this mountain-land, it is a land of exquisite atmospheric effects. for those who care to climb where great expanses of sky and clouds arch slowly down to the far-off horizon, and where lonely islands are set in open spaces of blue water, these remote lofoten mountain fastnesses beyond the arctic circle are difficult to equal. the low circling sun making it for ever afternoon, flooding sky and mountain-land in warm, luminous colour, which deepens the distances, and adds perspective to ridge after ridge of serrated and barren peaks, all these purely æsthetic qualifications are possessed in a high degree by the lofoten islands. also for those who are willing to spend a lazy, delightful summer holiday in camp by the side of the many-voiced sea, far from busy crowds and the worries of civilisation, there are few spots more peaceful, more fascinating, or more beautiful than these lofoten islands, where the wondrous summer skies slowly change their exquisitely rich colouring of long-drawn-out evening for the more delicate tints of the early dawn, and where the restless waves of the great arctic ocean are for ever washing against the precipitous sides of the bare, rock-girt mountains. a chuilionn 'but in the prime of the summer-time give me the isle of skye.' a. nicolson. once upon a time, as the story-books say, dr. samuel johnson was bold enough to forsake his beloved fleet street, and, at the age of sixty-four, journey northwards in company with boswell to the hebrides, the ultima thule of those days. he finally arrived in the island of skye, 'without any memorable accident,' about the beginning of september , where he experienced all the severities of ordinary skye weather--much rain and many gales--and this state of things continuing throughout the month, the doctor found some difficulty in getting back again to the mainland. he writes, 'having been detained by storms many days in skie, we left, as we thought with a fair wind; but a violent gust which bos had a great mind to call a tempest, forced us into col, an obscure island.' the wild and beautiful scenery of the island of skye does not seem to have made any impression on johnson, and he leaves with no regret, merely admitting, that he has 'many pictures in his mind which he could not have had without his journey,' and that these pictures 'will serve later for pleasing topics of conversation.' what these pictures were he does not say, but they probably had little to do with what we now call the beauties of the highlands; for he mentions that he found little entertainment in the wildernesses of the hebrides, the universal barrenness oppressed him, and he points out that 'in those countries you are not to suppose that you shall find villages or enclosures. the traveller wanders through a naked desert, gratified sometimes but rarely with sight of cows, and now and then finds heaps of loose stones and turf in a cavity between the rocks, where a being, born with all those powers which education expands, and all those sensations which culture refines, is condemned to shelter itself from the wind and the rain.' also, that 'a walk upon ploughed fields in england is a dance upon carpets, compared to the toilsome drudgery of wandering in skie.' but it is not surprising that johnson at the age of sixty-four looked upon hilly country with aversion--the mountains interfered with his convenience. he only mentions the hills in skye once. 'here are mountains that i should once have climbed,' he writes to his friend mrs. thale; 'but to climb steeps is now very laborious, and to descend them dangerous.' no doubt at the doctor's age he was right; still we feel somewhat disappointed that during his stay at talisker, he was apparently unconscious of the coolin, and we receive but small consolation from his elegant epistolary communications, when they tell us instead, that he was gratified sometimes but rarely with sight of cows, and that mr. boswell was affected almost to tears by the illustrious ruins at iona. [illustration: the coolin.] all this shows us, how the attitude of people towards the wilds of the highlands has become completely changed in one century, for johnson was not in any way peculiar in his ideas. look where we will in the literature of that time, we find the same sentiments. pennant, who visited skye the year before dr. johnson, describes the coolin as 'a savage series of rude mountains,' whilst blaven, 'affects him with astonishment.' thirty years later the only natural objects in the island that interested forsyth, at least so far as one can judge from what he writes in _the beauties of scotland_, were 'an obelisk of uncommon magnitude' in the parish of snizort, (probably the storr rock,) and a waterfall and sea cave near portree. but a new school was growing up, and sir walter scott was one of the first to insist, that a visit to the highlands would reveal objects more interesting than cows, waterfalls, and sea caves. people were beginning to find in the torrents, mountains, lochs, and pine woods, beauties they had not seen before. no longer were the hills chaotic masses of rock, ready at any moment to fall and overwhelm the valleys, nor were the moors and glens expanses of uniform barrenness or gloomy mountain fastnesses. robson, at the beginning of last century ( ), writing of one of the most remote and wild regions of the highlands, namely the head of glen tilt, says: 'of all the romantic scenes which are presented to those who explore the recesses of the grampians, none will be found to possess a more picturesque combination of wild and characteristic beauty than this'; and in the preface to his accurate and delightful volume on the scenery of the grampian mountains, he writes: 'with the man of taste few districts in this kingdom have equal claim to admiration.' robson was not a scotchman, but a london artist; yet one has only to look at his sketches, and read the letterpress of his book to see how well he appreciated mountain form, and how he understood, in no uncertain manner, that which now delights us nearly a century later in the highlands. his water-colour picture of loch coruisk[m] is an honest attempt to accurately reproduce the wonderful colour and savage beauty of the grandest of all scotch lochs, and one is only sorry that he has introduced into the foreground a fully dressed highlander--a legacy, no doubt, of that old feeling that made dr. johnson crave for cows, and that even now survives at the present time in the pretty sketches of scotch hills, where the foreground is animated by highland cattle. since robson's time, many people have been to the highlands and to skye and the coolin. turner visited them, and the impression produced may be seen from his drawing of loch coriskin. this drawing is described by ruskin in _modern painters_ as 'a perfect expression of the inferior mountains,' yet any one who had really seen the coolin would hardly be justified in asserting that turner's drawing (fig. , vol. iv., _modern painters_) was the perfect expression of the hills round sgurr dubh, even though it may be the perfect expression of an inferior mountain. fortunately the coolin are never inferior mountains, unless we measure them by the number of feet they rise above the sea. 'comparative bulk and height,' says the late sheriff nicolson, 'are of course important elements in mountain grandeur, but outline and features are, as with human beings, even more important.' clachlet at easter, covered with snow and seen across the moor of rannoch at a distance of a few miles, towers up into the heavens just as grandly as a peak five times its altitude does in the himalaya, when that peak is seen from a point thirty miles away. it is the atmosphere that adds both dignity and charm to these scotch hills, making them appear far bigger than they would in the clearer air of the larger mountain ranges, and giving them all the softened colour and perspective so necessary to emphasise the real beauty of true mountains. their form also helps them in no small degree. the long-flowing lines of the lower slopes gradually rising from the moorland below, and the beautifully carved corries that nestle into their sides, all tend to strengthen and serve as a fit substructure for their more wild and broken summits. at their feet lie no valleys with dirty-white glacier streams tearing down between mud banks, and never a proper pool in them; their sides are not disfigured with monotonous pine forests of a uniform light green colour, but the heather and the grey rocks, lichen-covered, mingle together on their slopes, lighting up with every flash of sunshine, or deepening into every shade of brown and purple gloom, as the storm clouds sweep over their summits; whilst, below, brown trout streams wander between wild birches and scotch firs, staying here in some dark pool hidden away under the rocks covered with ferns and heather, flashing out again there into the sunshine over the pebbles, and across the low-lying moor. those who have seen the coolin from the moors above talisker in the twilight, or who have watched them on a summer's evening from kyle akin, apparently clothed in deep purple velvet broidered with gold, and rising out of the 'wandering fields of barren foam,' whilst 'the charmed sunset linger'd low adown in the red west'; or lazily spent a whole day on the sand beaches of arisaig point, gazing, towards rum and skye lying light blue on the horizon, and across a sea brilliant in colour as the mediterranean amongst the ionian islands; or lingered at the head of loch coruisk till the last pale light has faded out of the heavens behind sgurr alasdair, and only the murmur of the streams breaks the stillness of the night air--those who have thus seen the coolin will know that they are beautiful. but the fascination that these mountains exercise over those that know them well is manifold; there are more pleasures that the coolin can offer than those of being merely very beautiful. for the mountaineer who wanders in the heart of this marvellous mountain land there are rock climbs without end. he can spend hour after hour exploring the corries, or threading the intricacies of the narrow rock edges that form so large a part of the sky-line. from the summits he can watch the mists sweeping up from below, and hurrying over the bealachs in tumbled masses of vapour, or he can dreamily follow the white sails of the boats, far out to sea, as they slowly make for the outer islands; then clambering down the precipitous faces he can repose in some sheltered nook and listen to the sound of a burn, perhaps a thousand feet below, echoed across from the sheer walls of rock on the other side of the corrie; there is always something new to interest him--it may be a gully that requires the utmost of his skill as a mountaineer, or it may be a view of hill, moor, and loch backed by the atlantic and the far-off isles of the western sea. nowhere in the british islands are there any rock climbs to be compared with those in skye, measure them by what standard you will--length, variety, or difficulty. should any one doubt this, let him some fine morning walk up from the head of coruisk to the rocky slabs at the foot of sgurr a'ghreadaidh. there he will see the bare grey rocks rising out from the heather not feet above the level of the loch, and there walls, ridges, and towers of weather-worn gabbro stretch with hardly a break to the summit of the mountain, feet above him. measured on the map, it is but half a mile, but that half mile will tax his muscles; he must climb up gullies that the mountain torrents have worn out of the precipices, and over slabs of rock sloping down into space at an angle that makes handhold necessary as well as foothold; he must creep out round edges on to the faces of perpendicular cliffs, only to find that after all the perpendicular cliff itself must be scaled before he can win back again to the ridge that is to lead him to the topmost peak. there are many such climbs in the coolin. the pinnacles of sgurr nan gillean, the four tops of sgurr a'mhadaidh, and the ridge from sgurr dearg to sgurr dubh, are well known, but the face climbs have been neglected. the face of sgurr a'mhadaidh from tairneilear, the face of sgurr alasdair from coire labain, are both excellent examples of what these mountains can offer to any one who wants a first-rate scramble on perfect rock. sgurr a'coir' an lochain on the northern face gives a climb as good as one could anywhere wish to get, yet it is only a preliminary one to those on the giants sgurr alasdair and sgurr dearg that lie behind. but splendid though the climbing on the coolin may be, it is only one of the attractions, possibly a minor attraction, to these hills, and there are many other mountain ranges where rock-climbing can be found. it is the individuality of the coolin that makes the lover of the hills come back again and again to skye, and this is true also of other mountain districts on the mainland of scotland. to those who can appreciate the beauty of true hill form, the ever-changing colour and wonderful power and character of the sea-girt islands of the west, the lonely grandeur of rannoch moor, the spacious wooded valley of the spey at aviemore, backed by the cairngorm mountains, wild glen affric prodigal of gnarled pines abounding in strange curves of strength, or the savage gloom of glencoe--all these scenes tell the same tale, and proclaim in no doubtful manner, that the scotch mountain land in its own way is able to offer some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in the world. the highlands of scotland contain mountain form of the very finest and most subtle kind--form not so much architectural, of which ruskin writes, 'these great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock, pavements of clouds, choirs of streams and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars,' but form where the savage grandeur, the strength, and the vastness of the mountains is subordinate to simpler, yet in a way more complicated, structures. scotch mountains have something finer to give than architectural form. in their modelling may be seen the same beauties that in perfection exist in greek statuary. the curving lines of the human figure are more subtle than those of any cathedral ever built. the aiguilles round mont blanc are architectural in the highest degree, but the mighty summit rising up far above them into the blue sky, draped in wonderful and sweeping lines of snow and ice, marvellously strong, yet full of moderation, is far more mysterious, far more beautiful, than all the serrated ridges and peaks that cluster round its base. it is in the gentleness of ascent in many of the highland hills, in the restraint and repose of the slopes 'full of slumber,' that we can trace all the finer and more delicate human lines; and it is due to the strength of these lines that the bigger mountains seem to rise without an effort from the moors and smaller hills that surround them. to many people the cairngorm range is composed of shapeless, flat-topped mountains devoid almost of any character. they do not rise like the matterhorn in savage grandeur, yet the sculptured sides of braeriach, seen from sgoran dubh mhor, are in reality far more full of rich and intricate mountain sculpture, than the whole face of the matterhorn as seen from the riffel alp. the individuality of the coolin is not seen in their summits, which are often almost ugly, but in the colour of the rocks, the atmospheric effects, the relative largeness and harmony of the details compared with the actual size of the mountains, and most of all in the mountain mystery that wraps them round: not the mystery of clearness such as is seen in the alps and himalaya, where range after range recedes into the infinite distance, till the white snow peaks cannot be distinguished from the clouds, but in the secret beauty born of the mists, the rain, and the sunshine, in a quiet and untroubled land, no longer vexed by the more rude and violent manifestations of the active powers of nature. once there was a time when these peaks were the centre of a great cataclysm; they are the shattered remains of a vast volcano that ages since poured its lavas in mighty flood far and wide over the land; since then the glaciers in prehistoric times have polished and worn down the corries and the valley floors, leaving scars and wounds everywhere as a testimony of this power; but the fire age and the ice age are past; now the still, clear waters of coruisk ripple in the breeze, by the lochside lie the fallen masses of the hills, and the shattered debris left by the glaciers of bygone days; these harbour the dwarf hazel, the purple heather, and the wildflowers, whilst corrie, glen, and mountain-side bask in the summer sunlight. but when the wild atlantic storms sweep across the mountains; when the streams gather in volume, and the bare rock faces are streaked with the foam of a thousand waterfalls; when the wind shrieks amongst the rock pinnacles, and sky, loch, and hillside all are one dull grey, the coolin can be savage and dreary indeed. perhaps, though, the clouds towards evening may break; then the torn masses of vapour tearing in mad hunt along the ridges will be lit up by the rays of the sun slowly descending into the western sea, 'robing the gloom with a vesture of divers colours, of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries flame'; and as the light flashes from the black rocks, and the shadows deepen in the corries, the superb beauty, the melancholy, the mystery of these mountains of the isle of mist will be revealed. but the golden glory of the sunset will melt from off the mountains, the light that silvered the great slabs will slowly fail; from out the corries darkness heralding the black night will creep with stealthy tread, hiding all in gloom; then, last of all, beyond the darkly luminous, jagged, and fantastic outline of the coolin the glittering stars will flash from the clear sky, no wind will stir the great quiet, and only the far-off sound, born of the rhythmic murmur of the sea-waves beating on the rock-bound shore of lonely scavaig, remains as a memory of the storm. 'in conclusion, let us sum up the lessons that the mountains of the british isles can teach us. they can give healthy exercise, and cultivate in us the power of appreciating the beauties and grandeur of nature.... amongst them we may learn the proper uses of our legs.... we may learn to climb difficult rocks, to avoid dislodging loose stones, and to guard against those dangers that are peculiar to grassy mountains.... we can cultivate perseverance, courage, the quiet, uncomplaining endurance of hardships, and last, but not least important, those habits of constant care and prudence without which mountaineering ceases to be one of the finest sports in the world, and may degenerate into a gambling transaction with the forces of nature, with human life for the stake.' charles pilkington. turning over the pages one day of the index of the _alpine club journal_, i looked for information on the mountains of ireland. greece, greenland, patagonia, the peepsa fly, and mountain midgets were all mentioned, but ireland and its many ranges of hills i sought for in vain. this obviously was a most monstrous injustice, and it almost seemed, at first sight, as if a tour of exploration into this apparently unknown land might be undertaken for the purpose of climbing the numerous and neglected heights. years ago, however, i had visited several parts of ireland, the mourne mountains, the north of antrim, and a great part of donegal, and i knew that there were cairns at least on the summits of most of the mountains; presumably, therefore, they had been visited by man before my arrival. still it is strange that ireland, with so many groups of hills, and some of them so wonderfully beautiful, should not attract more notice in the mountaineering world. why should not an irish club, like the climbers' club, the cairngorm club, or the scottish mountaineering club, be formed? mr. h. c. hart, in his introduction to ireland in _climbing in the british isles_, has very ably given both the possibilities and the limits of irish climbing, and i cannot do better than quote his words: 'but there are ample opportunities for acquiring the art of mountain craft, the instinct which enables the pedestrian to guide himself alone from crest to crest, from ridge to ridge, with the least labour. he will learn how to plan out his course from the base of cliff or gully, marking each foot and hand grip with calm attention; and knowing when to cease to attempt impossibilities, he will learn to trust in himself, and acquire that most necessary of all climbers' acquirements, a philosophic, contemplative calm in the presence of danger or difficult dilemmas. if the beginner is desirous of rock practice, or the practised hand requires to test his condition or improve his form, there is many a rocky coast where the muscles and nerves and stamina can be trained to perfection. kerry and donegal are competent to form a skilled mountaineer out of any capable aspirant. ice and snow craft is an accomplishment which must of course be learnt elsewhere.' [illustration: _the macgillicuddy's reeks._] all this being true, it seems incomprehensible that ireland should not be looked upon more favourably as a possible mountaineering country. i am afraid nowadays, however, that unless a considerable amount of rock gymnastics can be made part of a climb, the modern mountaineer is not satisfied. merely beautiful scenery is insufficient to lure him to the mountains. still, as mr. hart says, kerry and donegal are good training-grounds for the novice. this i can vouch for; the cliffs of slieve league, feet, form one of the finest sea cliffs in the british isles, and much of the best scenery amongst the macgillicuddy's reeks can only be obtained by those who are willing to do some rock scrambling. now the modern mountaineer, owing to this specialisation in rock climbing, is apt to lose much that the earlier mountain climbers enjoyed; whilst, in days gone by, the wanderer amongst the mountains also missed much by being unable to deal with difficult rocks. on the other hand, the expert of to-day gains in both directions, but he must beware of spending all his time in mere gymnastics or the pure athletics of mountaineering. one of ireland's most famous literary men, the rev. j. p. mahaffy, more than a quarter of a century ago in _social life in greece_, points out the dangers of immoderate specialisation in bodily exercise, and how alien it was to greek education. 'the theoretical educators,' he says, 'knew quite well what most of us do not, that field sports are vastly superior to pure athletics in their effects upon the mind.' again: 'the greeks knew what we ignore, that such sports as require excessive bodily training and care are low and debasing in comparison to those which demand only the ordinary strength and quickness, daring and decision in danger, resource and ingenuity in difficulties.' in these days the old greek virtue of moderation is hard to follow. but perhaps in the sport of mountaineering it is more easily observed than in many others, for he who wanders amongst the hills is not driven forward by strenuous competition, no crowd applauds the success of some daring feat, and as a rule these immoderate efforts can be avoided. the extent of wild mountainous country in ireland where the mountaineer can enjoy his sport is much greater than is generally supposed; the kerry mountains occupy a larger area than the snowdon group in north wales; then there are the wicklow mountains, the mourne mountains, the donegal highlands, the galtee more group, and the mountainous country of connemara and mayo, which last is about forty miles long by thirty miles wide. over all these scattered groups the mountaineer can wander at his will; he will be stopped by no one. moreover, this west coast of ireland has more to offer than mountains. should the visitor not be extraordinarily enthusiastic and wish to walk over the hills every day in the week, from kerry to donegal there are always plenty of rivers and lakes where salmon and trout can be caught; the scenery, too, is often of the finest description, wonderfully wild sea lochs to explore, with a magnificent rock-bound coast, on whose shores the restless atlantic breaks, also numberless lonely islands far out in the sea. to those who care for beautiful soft atmospheric lights, for great stretches of heather lands, of sky, or of clouds, for a clean sea with often miles of yellow sands or splendid cliffs, all these can be found on ireland's atlantic coast, and they surely are a sufficient enticement to bring far more visitors to this beautiful country than are to be found there at the present time. it is now many years since i was stopping at carrick in donegal bay. not many miles west of carrick is slieve league. although it is not quite feet high, yet it needs a good climber to ascend this hill from the seashore at its feet. i do not know what the average angle may be, but on one summer afternoon it took me a very long time to accomplish the ascent. of course there is a great deal of heather and grass set at the steepest angle on which they will grow; but a climber ought to be able to be as safe on such a mountain-side as he is on hard rock or on snow or ice, and unless experience is obtained, he will remain a novice in this particular kind of climbing. there was more than one place on the way up slieve league from the seashore that needed considerable care, and i well remember those 'nasty ravines, iron-floored and steep-edged,' that mr. hart mentions in his description of the place. another unique experience, not however a mountaineering one, that i had whilst stopping at carrick, was in the sea caves in the cliffs just west of slieve league. it is only in the finest weather that a boat can venture near them, for even after several days of east wind off the land the atlantic swell is still big enough, unless great care is taken, to break a rowing boat to pieces on the rocks. the cliffs where the cave is situated come down sheer into the dark water below; the entrance is a great doorway with a somewhat slanting roof, into which the full force of the waves from the open ocean can play; and as the boat rises and falls on the water, the danger of hidden rocks underneath the surface adds a certain amount of anxiety to the other feelings that possess one, as the daylight begins to fade away in the mysterious recesses of the cavern. for about three hundred yards this tunnel is straight; by looking back the opening can be seen growing smaller and smaller and more distant. at length a great dome-shaped chamber is reached, from which branch out other caves in various directions. here the dim light of candles, the washing of the water on the rocks, the thunderous booming of the surge in unknown passages far away in the bowels of the mountain, where, every sound being greatly magnified and echoed backwards and forwards, all these produce most weird and awe-inspiring sensations. the mystery and the sense of remoteness from the world, the uncanny feeling that a thousand feet of solid rock lies between one and the sunshine, also add to the effect. but when besides these things, we had been listening to dreadful tales from our boatmen, of mermaids, of sea pigs light green in colour with pink spots and human heads, that at night would come 'wondering' round the boat, and finally of a 'great big beast, a serpent,' as large as the steeple of a church, which was supposed not only to feed on human beings when opportunity offered, but what was worse, was said to inhabit the inner recesses of the very cave in which we were, it is unnecessary to say how easy it was to be frightened at anything. the only unblocked waterway where a boat could pass on out of this domed hall was to the right, and up this we were preparing to go in search of seal, when some exceptionally large waves, tortured in some narrow passages, sent a terrific boom with multitudinous echoes reverberating through the caverns; at the same time a most curious phenomenon, half sound, half vibration of the air occurred. it seemed as though the whole body of the air in the cave pulsated, producing a swishing sound with periods of about one second, which gradually became fainter and fainter till it died away. probably the cave had been converted into a gigantic organ pipe, and the note was one so low down in the scale that the vibrations were about one per second. unfortunately i suggested that it was the 'great big beast, the serpent,' and that finished the expedition. our boatmen were at once terrified, shouting to each other, pushing and half rowing the boat in a frenzy of fear. amidst the bellowing noises of the various caverns leading out of the central hall, and the angry hisses of 'the beast, the serpent,' we departed most hurriedly for the outer air. slieve league, however, if the ordnance survey maps are to be trusted, is not the finest cliff in ireland. on the western coast of achill island are the cliffs of croaghaun, feet high. but my friend, colin phillip, who was there in the summer of , made a somewhat startling discovery. a piece of land to the west of croaghaun, more than _a square quarter of a mile_, has been left out altogether from the map. where this land should be a bay is marked; perhaps, however, his own words will describe better how the discovery was made. 'the seaward face of croaghaun is usually spoken of as an almost perpendicular cliff of over feet. this is not true. it is a fine, rocky, more or less buttressed mountain face, dropping to the sea at an angle of perhaps degrees in places. but its general inclination would not be so much. there appears to be a curious error in the ordnance survey map with regard to the sea front of this hill. expecting to find a grand view of this giant amongst the cliffs of ireland, i made for a point marked on the map as a headland, projecting well out to sea on the west side of croaghaun, from which a complete survey of the face should have been obtained. i was astonished to find, instead of a broad bay, with the great cliff of the mountain descending into it, a narrow inlet, like a 'geo' in shetland, on the other side of which, almost completely blocking the view, was the south-west buttress of croaghaun, and certainly not steeper than degrees.' the whole bay, therefore, as marked on the ordnance map, is now occupied by the lower part of the mountain; consequently, instead of a sheer cliff, this western side of the mountain is no more than an easy slope which may be traversed in many places. another piece of information of phillip's which may be novel, is that perhaps sir walter scott was right when he called the hills in skye the cuchullin hills. during a discussion on the skye hills with mr. seaton f. milligan (past vice-president of the royal society of antiquaries of ireland), whom phillip met on the west coast of ireland, mr. milligan said that the hills had been named after the irish hero cuchulain; and the reason he gave was the following:-- in those early days the sons of the kings of ireland were often sent to skye to learn the art of war. at the end of their first year, a test of their progress was whether they were able to walk across what was called 'the bridge of the cliffs'; this bridge is supposed to have been part of the ridge of the coolin. the bridge is thus described in the legend:-- 'wonderful was the sight the bridge afforded, when any one would leap upon it, for it narrowed until it became as narrow as the hair of one's head, the second time it shortened till it became short as an inch, and the third time it grew slippery until it was as slippery as an eel of the river, and the fourth time it rose up on high against you as the mast of a ship.' that this description agrees with the ridges of sgurr nan gillean (the peak of the young men) no one can deny, and the story goes on to say how cuchulain at once performs the feat at the first trial, so astonishing the onlookers that the bridge was named after him. in opposition, however, to this, we have the weighty statement of the late alexander nicolson, who says,[n] 'they are known to the natives of skye and always have been as "a chuilionn." there was an ossianic hero of the name cuchulain, said to have been brought up at dun-sgàthaich, an ancient fort near ord in skye, but the natives never called the great mountain range by his name. in this view i am supported by our greatest celtic archæologist, dr. skene.' but to return to ireland: besides the cliffs on achill, all along the north coast of mayo are excessively wild and grand precipices often of hard quartzite rock, and this part of the west coast is perhaps the finest and most picturesque in all ireland. east and south of achill lie a series of detached mountains and ranges of mountains, all of which are more or less interesting as they command wide views of sea, valley, and moorland. south of the killary lies perhaps the most beautiful of all the mountainous districts in ireland, the district of connemara. in fact, it is not exaggeration to say that there are few finer groups of hills in britain than the twelve bens of connemara, and this is the more remarkable when one considers that they are only feet high. to again quote phillip: 'the views from some of the summits are enchanting, in particular from the easily got at summit w.s.w. of leenane. from this point the killary can be traced from the ocean to its head. the valley of the erriff river carries the eye over the plains of mayo northwards to the far away hills in sligo. to the eastward the formnamore mountains, with glimpses through their gaps of loughs maske and corrib, beyond which the plains extend through mayo, galway, to clare. then maam turk blocks the view, which opens again, however, to the south, with wild moorland and the whole of the twelve bens. through the gaps of these mountains the atlantic is seen in more than one direction, fringed by rocky headlands and white sandy bays, carrying the eye back again to the westward and the solemn killary, beyond which, lying almost hidden amongst the hills, is the beautiful valley of delphi and glimpses of the dhu lough.' i have left the kerry hills till the last, because they are the most important and the highest in ireland. the connemara hills are perhaps, on the whole, more beautiful, but the hills of kerry possess a grandeur and such characteristic form, that one at once thinks of them as mountains and not hills. this is not surprising, for they easily surpass the english hills in height, carran tuohill, feet, been keragh, feet, caher, feet, and brandon, feet, being the highest. moreover their bases are in some cases (brandon, for instance) on the seashore. the chief points of this group, which in some respects differentiate them from the other ranges of mountains in the british isles, are the numberless wild mountain tarns that lie hidden in their corries, the masses of vegetation that clothe even the rock precipices, and the curious capping of peat that is to be found on some of the hill-tops. in some instances, after climbing up hundreds of feet of rock from the corrie below, one finds that the last twenty feet of the mountain is up a steep slope of peat, occasionally almost corniced by the overhanging fringe of heather. then, too, the luxuriant growth of the trees in some of the valleys, especially those near killarney and at the head of caragh lake, is wonderful, and it is almost needless to say that the upper part of the lake of killarney itself, beneath the macgillicuddy's reeks, is unrivalled in the british isles for rich beauty. there are larger lakes surrounded by far wilder scenery in scotland, for instance in glen affric, or lakes like loch katrine that lie between wonderful forested shores and beneath shapely mountains, or rydal water or parts of derwentwater in the lake district; but the upper lake at killarney, as an example of winding stretches of clear waters, with rocky shores clothed in oaks, firs, hollies, and other trees, the foliage stretching upwards to the heather-covered mountains behind, this particular part of the kerry mountain land certainly in its own way stands alone; it has no competitor. the warm moist atlantic climate has had almost the effect of a hothouse on the flora of these sheltered valleys, whilst above, on the summits of the mountains the first snow and storms of the winter and early spring produce a rugged wildness that is only to be found in the british islands on mountains over feet high. carran tuohill, the highest of the macgillicuddy's reeks, also the highest mountain in ireland, lies some distance away from killarney. its eastern and northern faces are especially grand. at its foot can be found more than one mountain tarn; lough gouragh, at the head of the hag's glen, being very fine, for the greatest mountain precipice in ireland rises from its shores almost to the summit of carran tuohill, about feet above. on the other side of the mountain, another tarn, coomloughra, is of a more ordinary type, even although it is encircled by the three highest peaks in ireland. notwithstanding that the face of caher, which overlooks coomloughra, is precipitous for more than feet, yet there is no very good climbing to be obtained on it, for the rocks are treacherous; also, they run diagonally up and across the face of the mountain. the views from all these mountains that surround coomloughra are very fine. that from been keragh perhaps is the best for the surrounding peaks; for, looking across the hag's glen at the black precipices of carran tuohill and at the savage ridge which connects it with been keragh, one wonders that such wild and desolate scenery can exist so near to the rich and luxuriant vegetation of the valleys only a few miles away. from carran tuohill it is towards the west and south-west that the finest outlook is obtained. across the valley in which coomloughra lies are the cliffs of caher; dursey island is seen in the distance at the mouth of the kenmare river; the small but shapely skellig rocks jut out of the open sea far away in the west; and brandon, one of the most beautiful of mountains, stands alone and solitary on the shores of the wild atlantic beyond the blue waters and the yellow sands of dingle bay. heather moorland, desolate loughs, and peat mosses extend for miles, and the great dome of the sky, perhaps flecked with soft clouds, bends down to the far off horizon of the outer ocean. to the west of the macgillicuddy's reeks, in a part of the country but little visited, is lough coomacullen, one of the most wonderfully beautiful mountain tarns i have ever seen. hidden away amongst the hills, and difficult of access, it has attracted but little attention, yet with its glacier-worn sides of bare rock that descend in many places sheer into the black waters below, and the circle of cliffs which surround the upper part of the lough, one might almost imagine one was in norway, except that the deep velvet brown of the heather, the few well-grown hollies clinging to the broken rock walls, and the rich colours of the mosses, lichens, and ferns that find nourishment on the ledges and faces of the precipices, at once show that one is on the atlantic coast and in a softer and warmer clime. five hundred feet below this small tarn lies the larger lake, coomasaharn; it too has a shore line much wilder and more rugged than the majority of british lakes. great boulders and masses of glacier-worn rocks surround it, whilst at its head the precipices extend almost to the summit of coomacarrea ( feet). in some places these precipices give good rock scrambling, but it is rather surprising, after a couple of hours' climbing on good hard rock, to find that the top of the mountain is a flat peat moor which in some places almost overhangs the wild corrie below. this capping of peat on several of even the wilder mountains seems to be characteristic of many of the summits on the west coast of ireland. the highest summits of the reeks, however, are quite free from peat. there are, of course, many other mountainous districts besides those i have already mentioned. the mourne mountains, where the mountaineer may, if he chooses, collect topaz and beryls of a most exquisite blue, the wicklow, tipperary, or waterford groups, all possess wild mountain scenery, and many rare plants can be found there. but after all, undoubtedly it is the picturesque side of the mountain land that makes to the wanderer in ireland the most forcible appeal of all. it is the atmospheric softness, and the rich vegetation, which, on the west of ireland, covers the valleys, glens, and the mountain-sides, it is the colour of the deep and lovely tarns, of the expanses of heather, and of the distances, and lastly, it is the rugged, rock-bound coast, a coast of many bays, of desolate islands, of solitary sea stacks, of cliffs, of sandy beaches, and wonderful sea caves, a coast that has for ages withstood the attacks of the mighty waves of the storm-driven atlantic; these are the beauties of which this irish mountain land can boast, which after all are of more worth than the attractions of many inaccessible pinnacles and many ranges of ugly but excessively steep and high mountains. footnotes: [m] it used to be in the loan collection at the south kensington museum. [n] _the scottish mountaineering club journal_, vol. ii. p. . prehistoric climbing near wastdale head 'though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase, and marvel men should quit their easy chair, the toilsome way, and long, long league to trace, oh, there is sweetness in the mountain air and life, that bloated ease can never hope to share.' _childe harold._ to the mountaineer who makes his way from seascale or from drigg to wastdale head, the cumberland hills with their long, rolling outlines, their flanks concealed by superincumbent soil and vegetation, do not seem to promise well as far as rock climbing is concerned. only here and there do the ridges break into rocky precipices; nowhere is seen the rugged grandeur of the highlands of scotland; such valleys as glencoe with its rock-built walls, or the splintered summits of the coolin, or of an teallach, do not exist. yet the rock-climber who stops at the inn at the head of wastdale may spend weeks before he has exhausted the district. he will be lucky indeed, and a first-rate climber to boot, if he has done the best of the climbs without further aid than that afforded by what the mountaineer calls the 'moral' support of the rope. once upon a time a celebrated climber of alpine repute came to wastdale for the first, alas! also for the last time. 'climbing in the caucasus,' mummery said, 'was easy and safe; in the alps too it was usually easy and safe, though sometimes difficult; but climbing as practised at wastdale head was both difficult and dangerous.' the great delight of the climber in the cumberland hills is in gullies or 'ghylls,' and no wonder, for there are endless gullies both great and small, the climbs in which vary with the state of the weather, and may be easy or difficult, wet or dry, or dirty, according to circumstances. then again, the climber must have a perfect contempt for streams, and especially waterfalls, for the ascent of a perpendicular 'pitch' through a delightfully cold and invigorating shower bath will be one of his earliest experiences. but there are plenty of other climbs besides those in ghylls. hidden away in the recesses of the hills are sharp and jagged pinnacles of hard porphyritic rock, precipices smooth, flawless, and sometimes overhanging, whose firm grey bastions have withstood the storms of ages; whilst only at their feet, where lie the remnants which have yielded, flake by flake, from the massive buttresses above, does the ruin proclaim that the hand of time carves the rocks on the mountain-side as well as the valleys below. this was written several years ago, before all the rock problems, and also before all their variations, had been worked out. when first i visited wastdale head it was at christmas time. i knew there was a pinnacle of rock on great gable, also that another rock climb could be obtained on the pillar mountain--that was all. mr. jones had never visited wastdale, and his work was unwritten. the entries in the climbers' book at the inn were only just begun. w. p. haskett smith, j. w. robinson, c. slingsby, and g. hastings were the pioneers of those days; they first really drew the attention of mountaineers to the fact that rock climbing of every degree of difficulty could be indulged in amongst the hills that surrounded the head of wastdale. it is true that for many years previously members of the alpine club had been in the habit of spending some time every year in the district, but they had gone there more for the ice and the snow and for the enjoyment of the mountain scenery than for indulgence in extraordinary performances in the ghylls and on the rock faces. may we not call theirs the golden age? whilst that sterner time which followed, full of fierce fighting, of victory and of defeat, was the age of iron. it was my good fortune to be associated with those who were responsible for this second period, and many a long day have i spent on the mountains in their company. in those days at easter time there was usually a great gathering of the mountaineering clans in the inn at wastdale head. they came from all points of the compass, and swooped down on wastdale, bringing with them every sort of mountain appliance. into the inn they would rush, soon to emerge again clothed in wonderful suits of clothes, carrying cameras, ropes, ice-axes, and luncheons; and they used to remind me of an instructive toy machine presented to a friend of mine in the days of his early youth--'morality made easy' he afterwards called it, when he had arrived at man's estate and was able to grasp the true inwardness of the ingenious apparatus. its object was to inculcate at an early age the virtue of moderation, and it represented a public house. you slowly turned a handle, making a procession of respectably dressed citizens, with eager, smiling faces, enter the front door, over which was written in large letters:-- 'they quietly enter the doorway within for an hour's indulgence in riot and sin.' another turn of the handle, which should now be done rapidly and with shaking hand, and at once the scene changed. from out the back door dishevelled and staggering figures emerged, with no resemblance whatever to the former ones. above was another couplet:-- 'then rushing out wildly, their senses departed, on ruin's dark pathway the victims are started!' alas! those delightful toys of one's youth, where have they all gone? the toys of the present day are feeble, and lack that educational value which those of thirty years ago never failed to possess. how can we compare them? it is _the bad boys book of beasts_ to dr. watts's _poems_. the first of the two couplets mentioned above, in the case of the mountaineer, however, needs emendation; perhaps 'quiet lunchin'' at the end of the second line would be more appropriate. but i have wandered from my subject. the inn at the head of wastdale lies in the very centre of the hills, and from it two or three hours at the most will take the climber to his work. on the south are the gullies of the screes; the great gully opposite wastdale hall will occupy an ordinary party at least three hours. the first three or four hundred feet are by no means easy, and are thoroughly typical of ghyll climbing. on the south-east of wastdale is scawfell, with its splendid precipices where there are three first-rate ghyll climbs, moss ghyll, steep ghyll, and deep ghyll. at the top of the last is scawfell pinnacle, a delightful short climb if taken from the top of scawfell; but if ascended from the foot of the precipice, _via_ steep ghyll, and then by the arête which lies between steep ghyll and deep ghyll, it will give several hours of really good rock work. next to scawfell are the pikes and great end. on both of these interesting scrambles can be found. to the eastward, almost above the inn, the slopes of great gable stretch up towards the napes rocks, where can be found the napes needle and several rock ridges. further away, on the north, lies the pillar mountain, with its great buttress of rock jutting out into ennerdale. up the pillar rock there are at least half a dozen different routes, and none of them can be called perfectly easy. but these are by no means all the climbs that can be found near wastdale head. there are gullies on the langdale pikes and on pavey arc, and another on dow crag near coniston. my first climb was on the napes needle. since then i have been up it many times, but it always remains as interesting as ever. i must confess that the first time i tried it, it was too difficult for me, and i was very glad of a helping hand from the first man up, for we were climbing without a rope and had no nails in our boots, our proper mountaineering equipment having been delayed at drigg station; and as we afterwards learned, we had shocked dan tyson of the inn by going to the hills in what he considered were our sunday clothes. but the pillar rock is the most famous crag near wastdale. it lies on the far side of the pillar mountain, and is not a great distance below the summit. it consists of a mass of rock standing far out from the side of the mountain, its precipices overhanging the head of ennerdale. the end nearest the pillar mountain is cut off from the hill-side by a great gash, whilst the other end plunges down almost perpendicularly for about eight hundred feet. the great ennerdale climb is up this ennerdale face. at the bottom a broad grassy band, 'the great doupe,' runs across the foot of the precipice. it is from here that the climb must be begun, but every way up this face finally converges towards one spot, called the 'split-block.' above is a vertical rock face, whilst below, four hundred feet straight down, is the grassy band. for nine years all attacks on the ennerdale face of the pillar rock ended here. only in was it conquered. two of the party were lowered down into a savage-looking gully, from which they ascended to a spot some thirty feet higher than the split-block, and by lowering a rope were able to pull up the last man direct, who could not descend alone into the gully. this sounds as if the last man had a comparatively easy climb. but as the ascent is literally made through the air, unless an extra rope is sent down to help him with a noose at the end which can be used as a stirrup, he will arrive up above in a somewhat congested state. moreover, he must insist that the two ropes be worked by reasonable people, otherwise he will be unfortunate enough to probably complete his ascent in an inverted position, and be apt to lose faith in the use of the alpine rope. it has already been pointed out that above the split-block is a vertical precipice. across this face about twenty-five feet above the split-block there is another way up, which does away with the necessity of descending into the savage gully. it was first climbed by g. solly. but it is a most dangerous climb, for the leader must traverse across this perpendicular face hanging on by his hands alone, and--here is where the danger comes in--should he be unable to finish the climb, and the worst piece which needs the expenditure of most energy is at the very end, the leader is quite unable to return: there he hangs till he can hold on no longer, then he drops! i myself have seen this happen. the subsequent escape, not only of the leader but of the rest of the party, was the most marvellous piece of luck i have ever seen on the mountains, and even now makes me shudder when i think of it. collier has also varied this climb by getting up directly from the end of the ledge beyond the split-block; but, after all, the original manner employed by the first party in still remains the most satisfactory method for overcoming the difficulty at this spot on the pillar climb. above this, a gully leads to within two or three hundred feet of the top, which can be reached by an interesting rock climb of no great difficulty. this ascent of the pillar rock is certainly a remarkably fine one. it is full of variety, and nearly the whole of it is on bare rock; moreover, owing to the great steepness during the greater part of the climb, it produces an exhilarating feeling of being perched in mid-air most of the time. i should think nowadays it cannot be difficult to find, but when we first tried it, a few scratches here and there on the rock were our only guides. of the ghyll climbs, the one on the screes already mentioned is well worth trying. it was first climbed by hastings, robinson, and myself; and i could not have been in better company. robinson is _the_ great authority on the hills of the lake district; there is not a rock on a mountain-side that he does not know. in sunshine or mist, in daylight or at midnight, he will guide one safely over passes or down precipitous mountain-sides. every tree and every stone is a landmark to him. it was on a perfect winter's morning, many years ago now, that we started for the great gully in the screes. not a breath of air stirred; hoar frost covered the ground; the trees were a mass of silver, glittering in the morning sun. if from the road by wastdale hall the rock face opposite be examined, it does not seem to be much broken, but as one approaches the gullies deepen, and in reality are great gashes penetrating far into the hillside. the bottom of the gully is reached by ascending a mass of loose stones which stretch almost down to the lake-side. in the gully there is no great difficulty at first, but after a short time it branches off into two, and it is the left-hand branch which has to be followed. the stream was frozen, forming a beautiful cascade of ice, and we were forced on to the buttress that divides the two gullies. hastings was sent on to prospect, whilst i had to back him up as far as possible. with considerable trouble he managed to traverse back to the left into the main gully, using infinitesimal knobs of rock for foot and hand hold. we then followed, to find ourselves in a narrow cleft cut far into the side of the hill. perpendicular walls rose on both sides for several hundred feet; above us stretched cascade after cascade of solid ice, always at a very steep angle and sometimes perpendicular. up these we cut our way with our axes, sometimes being helped by making the steps close to the walls, and using any small inequalities on the rock face to steady us in our steps. at last we came to the final pitch. far above us at the top, the stream coming over a hanging ledge on the right had frozen into masses of insecure icicles, some twenty or more feet long, and thus prevented us from getting up on that side. however, at the left-hand corner, at the top of the pitch, a rock was wedged, overhanging the gully, but leaving underneath a cave of considerable size. we managed to get as far up as the cave; there we placed robinson, in a position of great importance and responsibility, for he had to hitch himself to a jammed boulder at the back, and hold both hastings and me steady on the other end of the rope. i placed myself in the most secure position i could: my right foot occupied a capacious hole cut in the bottom of the icicles, whilst my left was far away on the other side of the gully, on a small but obliging shelf in the rock face. in this interesting attitude, like the colossus of rhodes, i spanned the gulf, and was anchored to the boulder as well as to robinson. next, hastings, with considerable agility, climbed on to my shoulders; from that exalted position he could reach the edge of the overhanging stone, underneath which robinson was shivering, and, after great exertions, was able finally to pull himself up on to the top. then robinson and i followed on the rope. no doubt when the gully is dry, with neither ice nor water in it, the climb would be much modified. above this pitch the climbing is easy as the gully opens out, and the route to the top may be varied according to taste; some ways are difficult and some are easy. there is one more climb, the recollection of which always gives me pleasure; indeed it was one of the most delightful i ever had in this splendid land of rock scrambles. on the great precipice of scawfell, moss ghyll is the most easterly of the three gullies which look towards the pikes. when we attacked it, this ghyll had not been climbed, although several parties had been up a considerable distance. the highest point attained was just underneath a huge overhanging block of rock, weighing hundreds of tons, which formed the roof of a great cave. robinson, hastings, and i were anxious to see whether it was not possible in some way to circumvent this objectionable block. we had already carefully prospected the upper part of the ghyll from above, finding that there was no difficulty once this obstacle was passed. we therefore next attacked the ghyll from the bottom, hoping that we should be able to discover a way where others had failed. starting from below we chose the easiest route up the rock face on the right hand of the ghyll. here the climbing chiefly consisted in getting from one ledge to another, up slabs of rock. we soon, however, got into the gully itself, where we found a perpendicular wall, up which we had to climb, before reaching a ledge, which the first party of exploration had called the 'tennis court' on account of its large size when compared with those lower down. if it were to grow vigorously, perhaps in its manhood it might become just large enough to run about on, but when we first made its acquaintance it must have been in its early childhood. from here we traversed back into the ghyll and got underneath the great overhanging block. we found that below the great slab which formed the roof another smaller one spanned the ghyll, forming the top of a great door to the cave behind. under this we passed, and clambered up on to the top of it. over our heads the great rock roof stretched some distance over the ghyll. our only chance was to traverse straight out to the right, over the side of the ghyll, till one was no longer overshadowed by the roof above, and then, if possible, climb up the face of rock, and traverse back again above the obstacle into the ghyll once more. this was easier to plan than to carry out; absolutely no handhold could be found, but only one little projecting ledge jutting out about a quarter of an inch and about a couple of inches long to stand on; moreover, a lip of rock overhung this little ledge, making it impossible to grip it satisfactorily with one's foot. beyond this there were six or eight feet of the nearly perpendicular rock wall to traverse. i was asked to try it. so, being highly pleased at being intrusted with such delicate operations, i with great deliberation stretched out my foot and tried to grip the little edge with the side nails of my boot. just as i was going to put my whole weight on to this right foot, the nails, unable to hold on such a minute surface, gave way, and if hastings had not instantly with a mighty pull jerked me back, i should have been swinging on the rope in mid-air. but we were determined not to be beaten. hastings's ice-axe was next brought into requisition, and what followed i have no doubt will be severely criticised by more orthodox mountaineers than myself: as it was my suggestion i must take the blame. _i hacked a step in the rock!_[o] it was very hard work, but that upper lip to the step had to go, and hastings's ice-axe, being an extraordinary one, performed its work admirably, and without damage to anything else than the rock. i then was able to get a much firmer foothold, and getting across this 'bad step,' clambered up the rock till i reached a spot where a capital hitch could be got over a jutting pin of rock, and the rest of the party followed. we then climbed out of the ghyll on the left up some slabs of rock. a few days later, moss ghyll was again climbed by a party led by j. collier. they did not follow our track to the left after the overhanging rock had been passed, but climbed straight up, using a crack which looks almost impossible from below, thus adding an extra piece of splendid climbing to this expedition. that collier did not follow our route was, i believe, entirely due to robinson, who, being so excessively delighted with having at last conquered moss ghyll, wrote a long account of it in the climbing book at the inn, and being in this particular instance far more capable of successfully climbing moss ghyll than describing how it was done, produced a tale where the points of the compass got, so to speak, 'snarked.' but to return to our climb: just as it was getting dark we emerged on to the top of scawfell. the sun-god had plunged once more into the baths of ocean, leaving behind him the golden splendour of a perfect evening. in the far distance lay the sea, with banks of sullen mist brooding over it; nearer, like a purple curtain, stretched the low hills by the coast; whilst far away in the south, towering into the sunset glow, out of a level surface of sea mists rose the peaks of snowdon and the two carnedds in wales. towards the east, range after range of mountain crests encompassed the horizon as far as the eye could see, from the yorkshire moors, with their strong, massive outline crowned by ingleboro and whernside, to skiddaw and the scotch hills beyond the sands of the solway. delicate pearl-grey shadows creep in amongst the wealth of interlacing mountain forms in the clear air, deepening towards the far east into the darkness of approaching night. no sound breaks the stillness, all around are piled the tumbled fragments of the hills, hoary with the memories of forgotten years. the present fades away, and is lost in the vast ocean of time; a lifetime seems a mere shadow in the presence of these changeless hills. slowly this inscrutable pageant passes, but blacker grow the evening shadows; naught remains but the mists of the coming night, and darkness soon will fall upon this lonely mountain-land. 'a land of old, upheaven from the abyss by fire, to sink into the abyss again; where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt, and the long mountains ended in a coast of ever-shifting sand, and far away the phantom circle of a moaning sea.' footnotes: [o] during climbing in ice and snow one is allowed, in fact, one is expected, to cut steps. but it is held to be entirely contrary to the laws which govern the great sport of mountaineering to make similar holes in rock. this is remarkable, though nevertheless true. a reverie '... restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone, but rush upon me thronging, and present times past.' milton. on winter evenings, when out of doors the fogs and dirt of london reign supreme, it is the wisest course to sit at home in one's arm-chair, warmed by the blaze of a comfortable fire, and with some favourite book for a companion, to watch the smoke curl upwards from one's pipe. but after a time the book falls on to one's knees, and all sorts and conditions of pictures float lazily through the tobacco mists. i have been told that effects are due to causes. perhaps these undisciplined wanderings of my brain may be only the inevitable result of a good dinner; perhaps the quiet content that i feel may be caused only by a spirit of contradiction--a knowledge that the arm-chair and the desultory visions of my brain should be ruthlessly put aside, to give place to exact, well-regulated thoughts concentrated on necessary labour. be it what it may, i will not work to-night. a nebulous peace of mind has claimed and absorbed me which it would be impious to dispel. i shall let my memory lift the curtain behind which lies the past. the thousand and one small duties of the present, mostly absurd trivialities, the insignificance of which is only equalled by their persistence, can be neglected for once, and shall be as dust in the balance, without weight to disturb the equipoise of my mind. letters from people i do not know, requesting information on subjects that do not concern me--letters which, as far as i can see, merely stamp the writers as belonging to that class of human animal incapable of thinking for itself--these shall remain unanswered. why should such shallow creatures be allowed to worry the more robust portion of the universe by their energetic yet irritating display of letter-writing? why have i to spend much ink and thought in answering them? truly this is a weary world! man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. worries and bothers are for ever at one's elbow. but here i am thus early inveighing against the petty annoyances of the present instead of enjoying those reminiscences of former years that, viewed through the mists of time, have their pleasures enhanced and their pains discounted; when i can allow my memory a free field from which it may pick the fairest flowers that have blossomed in those bygone years. ah! a quotation comes wandering by: when it is at home it may be found in an 'ode to the terrestrial globe,' by an unhappy wretch:-- 'it's true my prospects all look blue-- but don't let that unsettle you! never you mind. roll on!' (_it rolls on._) and as it rolls on down the distances of my mind, it leaves me, being in a very contrary frame of mind, somewhat comforted. moreover, it opens up new channels for thought, and those exquisite lines on golf that occur somewhere in _paradise lost_ are of course at once suggested, but i am too lazy to find the context:-- 'so eagerly with horrid voice the fiend cries "fore!" as he o'er the far bunker drives the errant ball; it with the setting sun dropp'd from the zenith like a falling star, alas! untruly urged, it lies in hell.' then i muse over all the golf-courses that i have played on or seen, from st. andrews to an improvised one above astor amongst the stately pines on the himalayan mountains, when the snow peaks and the glaciers, glistening in the marvellous sunshine, play hide-and-seek with the white fleecy clouds that drift over their summits. those wonderful mountains! what magnificent outlines, what grandeur, what mystery, what!... stop! can i be growing sentimental? it must have been the dinner that has produced this particular physiological sensation. however, the sensation is passing, and my thoughts have flown back naturally to the subject of dinners. yes, many dinners--what a subject!--glorious, unapproachable, exhaustless dinners! i could write pages, volumes, in praise of dinners; but not for the vulgar, not for the uninitiated--that surely were sacrilege. dinners that with subtle and insinuating address came and went, leaving behind them fascinating and precious memories, even though 'good digestion did not wait on appetite.' dinners, too, eaten under the stars. yes, now i think of it, that _was_ a dinner! when four of us ate a whole sheep, after two weary days and nights spent starving on the icy slopes of nanga parbat. mountaineering, truly thou art a marvellous and goodly provoker of hunger! those mortals who may be in search of sensations--big, boisterous, blustering sensations not to be denied--should sacrifice often on thy altars, o goddess of the hills! in the mountains, however, these sensations, these inspired ecstasies of mind and body, may be pushed sometimes rather far; then the recoil comes, and with it contrast, which however is often agreeable. but these memories of unpleasant alpine half-hours grow faint as one sits in a satisfying arm-chair--they are easily discounted in a process of mental dissipation, by which one cheats oneself; and finally, it is easy to believe that there is no sport like mountaineering. of course this conclusion is fallacious--conclusions sometimes are. again my thoughts are interrupted. outside in the cold, the rain, and the darkness some poor wretch is making night hideous by attempting to sing-- 'there is a 'appy land, for for awye.' most true! most philosophical! the islands of the blest usually are some distance away. we have been told by the poet that neither are they to be attained by omnibuses, nor to be approached by 'a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.' therefore why disturb the darkness, o most miserable one, by dismal reiteration of a well-known fact? but still the song moans out its cockney dialect, false notes, and falser sentiment; and the singer, drenched to the skin, possibly starving, with probably only one desire, and that for drink, goes his way. i hear the melancholy music die into the distance. of a truth his sensations cannot be pleasant; but with these few coppers changed into the equivalent of alcohol perhaps he also may 'life's leaden metal into gold transmute,' and cheat himself into the belief that life is worth living. that last sentence, now i come to read it over again, seems perhaps a trifle cynical; _seems_, certainly, but are we not told that things often 'are not what they seem'? i have heard the late poet laureate accused (and by a scotchwoman, too!) of writing slang. 'did i look on great orion sloping slowly towards the west.' my thoughts, too, are 'sloping' in a westerly direction. i am on a personally-conducted tour--my brain is in command, and i am the spectator. if only i can forget that those letters have to be answered, and if no other miserable wretch comes to sing touching refrains outside in the rain, my brain and i shall thoroughly enjoy each other's company; whilst the firelight sheds its dim radiance over glimpses of the metamorphised past and the indeterminable future, till all is so blended together that i cannot tell whether these things have been or are to be. i see long stretches of rannoch moor as stevenson saw it, 'where the mists rise and die away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; only the moorfowl and the peewees crying upon it, and far over to the east a herd of deer moving like dots. much of it is red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools; some had been burnt black in a heath fire; and in another place there are quite a forest of dead firs, standing like skeletons.' northward over the moor ponderous ben alder lifts his bleak and barren top in massive strength above lonely loch ericht, whilst beyond the loch, schehallion's slender summit, deep blue in the evening sky, tells of that fierce day when the body of the dead graham lay on the hillside and the sun went down on a lost cause. southward are the peaks of the black mount and the peaceful hills that feed the upper waters of glen lyon; then buchaille etive and all those wild, rocky mountains further west, dominating wild glencoe, stir the memory with the story of how campbell of glen lyon betrayed and murdered the whole of the m'ians with treachery as black as the cliffs of the aonach dubh and as cruel as the winter winds that sweep mercilessly across the corries and pinnacles of bidean nam bian, the peak of the storms. or in imagination i follow alan breck with davie balfour as they flee by the sea-loch that separates appin from mamore up and across to the great moor, toiling and resting, but ever onward, till amongst the labyrinth of glens in the heart of the forest of ben alder they found cluny macpherson. yes, rannoch moor is wild and desolate; and could the grey blocks of stone or the bare slabs of granite that lie amongst the brown heather speak, surely there would be many more tales of bygone adventures to listen to and wonder over. from rannoch my mind wanders across the stretches of blue water, past stormy ardnamurchan to the island of mull. i am on the summit of ben more; below lies a ridge smothered in snow and ice. i am trying all i can with words of sweet persuasion to entice my companion, colin phillip, down what is obviously the shortest route to the next peak, a chioch. but he says it is impossible, he will not trust himself on that slope of snow and ice. now my thoughts fly to the shores of loch earn. i am listening to one, a geologist, who expounds to me the marvels of the prehistoric glacier; he also, with words of sweet persuasion, is trying to make me believe that loch morar was excavated by a glacier. those wonderful geological truths, how simple, how all-sufficient they are to explain to the uninitiated the why and wherefore of the ancient mountains; but put not your trust in them; they suffer by the process of evolution, and are changed. without doubt, in those days phillip believed that i was totally ignorant of mountaineering; whilst now, perhaps, that geologist thinks that i am equally ignorant of the truth. whether it is the truth about loch morar that i mean, or about that geologist's statement, or about my own, i really don't know. in imagination i am hurried on; i see myself, footsore and weary, wandering through ardgour and moidart, or across from invercannich through affric's wild glens down to shiel house, by the western sea; now i am glissading down beinn alligin, or hacking my way through a cornice, apparently hundreds of feet high, on aonach mor, my companion travers meanwhile slowly freezing on the brink of an _absolutely_ perpendicular ice slope, the daylight waning, and our retreat cut off. then comes a glimpse of the platform at kingshouse station. i am addressing winged words to colin phillip, and he is engaged in a contentious refutation of my argument. the subject is not at all interesting--only the comparative usefulness of painting and photography as a means for reproducing mountain form; but the result is most disgraceful, for presently we are seen sitting at different ends of the platform waiting for the train, and thinking--well, it doesn't matter what we thought. was it yesterday, or when, that all these things happened? still it cannot be so very long ago that phillip climbed sgurr alasdair, the finest peak of the coolin in skye. would that on that occasion, just below the summit, i had possessed a camera, for then could i have shown phillip that photography at least was capable of very faithfully reproducing his manly and superior form, as he was seen approaching the cairn, even though it might be useless in giving us the true proportions of inferior mountains. neither do i think that i should be overstepping the bounds of prudence should i assert that colin phillip has a marked dislike for stone walls. i have hopes, however, that some day a happy combination of the despised camera--the stone wall and phillip--may yield interesting results. little did phillip think, that evening at kingshouse, that a time would come when the maligned camera would turn--turn its eye on phillip and on that stone wall--and wink with malicious pleasure. but in spite of winged words, weary feet, and endless eggs and bacon, these were fine times--from sutherland to the galloway highlands, from mull to the mountains on deeside, colin phillip and i have wandered in fair weather and in foul. we have waxed enthusiastic over the cairngorm mountains. we have watched the last light of day fade far away over the atlantic behind the islands of the west; and although we may have disagreed in many things, yet we have always acknowledged that for wild beauty, for colour, for atmospheric effects and lonely grandeur, we know of no country that is equal to the highlands of scotland. but a younger century has arrived, and 'the old order changeth, yielding place to new.' somewhere have i seen some remarks about the coolin, where no mention is made of the mountains as being capable of stirring the imagination or gratifying the mind; no, the subject was 'the ridiculously easy nature of the climbing in skye,' 'the gabbro of the coolin being too good,' and so on, the new mountaineer merely looking upon these peaks and ribs of splintered rock as a useful spot where gymnastic feats might be performed, and even compares the coolin unfavourably with the decomposing granite slabs at the head of glen sannox. truly the glory of the mountains is departing. the progressive, democratical[p] finger of the 'new mountaineer' is laid with equal irreverence and mockery on sgurr nan gillean and cir mhor, and this spirit of irresponsible criticism 'fulfils itself in many ways.' it is not the first time that the coolin have been 'slandered.' have they not been called 'inferior mountains'? (_modern painters_). now the climbers 'run' over the pinnacle ridge of sgurr nan gillean, and no doubt the next generation (if they have wise fathers) will be induced to take their maternal grandmothers up the inaccessible summit of sgurr dearg. one by one the recollections of all our most cherished climbs will be punctured, flat and unprofitable as a collapsed bicycle tire; they will rotate over the rough roads of bygone memories, whilst that progressive democratical finger will guide the new nickel-plated, pneumatic-cushioned, electrically-driven modern mountaineer on his fascinating career. but to return. i am still sitting in my comfortable arm-chair, and looking at my own fingers to see whether they possess a progressive democratical appearance. before me passes the vision of a mountain, a beautiful, many-headed mountain, hidden away from democratical enemies of mountaineering, and without the line of vulgarity. carefully enclosed on its western face lies a corrie named coire mhic fhearchair. i see a party wandering up its glacier-worn entrance. at its head the mist lies low down, but not low enough to hide the precipices that encircle the lochan in its centre. on the right, snow-filled gullies sweep with graceful curves from a dome-shaped peak. but it is the rock escarpment at the back of the corrie that fascinates their gaze. as the mists begin to clear one by one, they suggest climbs on its face, for there are feet of bare rock in front of them, broken up into three distinct buttresses with two splendid gullies dividing them. at last they choose the right-hand gully, and, having roped themselves, proceed to cut steps up the steep snow that has drifted into it and obliterated any perpendicular pitches there may be. i am sorry that there are no perpendicular pitches--it is most unfortunate; for i should like to see that party performing all these daring feats so well known to, and beloved by, the professional rock climber, 'how things began to look rather blue.' 'how for a minute or two one of the party remained spread-eagled on the face of a cliff almost despairing of getting up, the desired crack being a good two feet out of reach, till, with a supreme effort, he was propelled from below by a sudden and powerful jerk, his outstretched fingers seize the desired crack.' nor can i describe how 'the heavy man of the party, his finger tips playing upon the face of the cliff with the delicacy of touch of a professional pianist, his every movement suggestive of the bounding lightness of the airy thistle-down,' followed. no, i am sorry i have no such wildly exciting adventures to relate, nor such poetical fancies wherewith to eke out a plain story. i see that party merely climbing up that gully, in a most uninteresting yet simple manner, by cutting steps. they come to where it ends against a perpendicular and overhanging cliff at least a couple of hundred feet high. only feet, but higher they cannot go, for none of the party are sufficiently muscular to propel the leader with a jerk upwards that paltry feet. therefore they climb out to their left, along a narrow and somewhat broken ledge, on to the middle buttress, where a place is found large enough for them all to sit down. they gaze upwards at the last feet that separate them from the summit, but it is steep, very steep, 'a.p.'[q] also, it is late in the afternoon; so they comfort themselves by building a cairn, and eating all these delicious things that are so good on a mountain-side--meat sandwiches which have remained from lunch, and taste so full of mustard and so delightfully dry; old, old prunes encrusted with all kinds of additional nutriment from the bottom of some one's pocket; a much-worn stick of chocolate, or perhaps an acidulated drop--on such fare does the hardy mountaineer feed. i see them once more in the gully, but they descend more rapidly than they climbed up it, for the more daring of the party glissade down the lower part, and so home. on the morrow, however, i see three of the party again setting forth for that precipice. this time, instead of approaching it from the north-west by the allt toll a'ghiubhais, they hire a machine, and drive as far as the foot of sgurr bàn on the southern side; then mounting to the peak just to the west of sgurr bàn by a well-made deer path, they soon arrive at the summit of the middle buttress, overlooking coire mhic fhearchair. they climb out to the very end of the nose and look down, straight below, and only feet away is the little cairn built on the preceding afternoon, but, as i have remarked before, that feet is very steep. a photograph taken from the most southerly of the three buttresses, so as to get the middle buttress in profile, shows the angle of the last feet to be about degrees, not quite but very nearly 'a.p.' however, they think that they may as well see how far they can descend. the rocks on the left-hand (southern) side of the buttress are obligingly broken up, so that by a series of small climbs the party are enabled to get from one small platform to the next, always edging towards the outside of the buttress. at last they all congregate together. a perpendicular slab, which has partly come away from the front of the crags, bars their way to the right, and, below, a quite perpendicular drop of about feet on to the ledge quietly but firmly impresses on them the fact that that way is not for them. but always in mountaineering, just as things become quite hopeless and 'blue,' then it is the duty of the person who describes the adventure to appeal to the feelings of the public (who, presumably, are unacquainted with that particular climb). it is his duty to picture these unfortunate individuals, fearful that their retreat is cut off, yet unable to proceed; how, having dangled on the ends of ropes, swinging backwards and forwards in the breeze, they return to the ledge baffled; or having climbed on each other's shoulders, they find 'the desired crack two good feet out of reach,' and there is not always one in the party powerful enough to 'propel' the leader 'from below by a sudden and powerful jerk, so that he can with outstretched fingers clutch that desired crack.' but still, with a little imagination, we can see these things. a good imagination is necessary, i may say very necessary, to the enthusiastic climber; much pleasure is otherwise lost. the party i see, evidently has none of this precious imagination. they are obviously wasting their opportunities most shamefully on that rock face. i see one of them climb out on to the face just under the great loose slab, and disappear round the corner; then the rest follow, and find themselves on the topmost of a series of ledges, and about feet above the small cairn below. i will not describe that traverse, but will merely mention that the party seem quite pleased with it. then they begin the descent. first they get down a narrow slit between a slab and the buttress, and with a drop of about feet get into the next ledge. next they have to climb down another slab, bulging over into space, or a perpendicular gully gives them an interesting piece of climbing. about feet from the bottom they build a small cairn, and then, without much further difficulty, they finally find themselves where they had ended their climb on the afternoon of the day before. they do not, however, descend to the bottom of the gully, but about half-way down, traversing out to the left, they make for the ridge connecting sail mhòr with the rest of the mountain. it is now evening, and i ought, if orthodox, here 'to burst out in sentences which swell to paragraphs, and in paragraphs which spread over pages; to plunge into ecstasies about infinite abysses and overpowering splendours, to compare mountains to archangels, lying down in eternal winding-sheets of snow, and to convert them into allegories about man's highest destinies and aspirations. this is good when it is well done. yet most humble writers will feel that if they try to imitate mr. ruskin's eloquence, they will pay the penalty of becoming ridiculous. it is not every one who can with impunity compare alps to archangels.'[r] yet there is always something about sunsets which is horribly fascinating--from a literary point of view; it is so easy to become suddenly enthusiastic and describe how 'the sun-god once more plunges into the baths of ocean.' the sea too is always useful at such moments. 'banks of sullen mist, brooding like a purple curtain,' etc., sounds well; and one must not forget 'the shadows of approaching night,'--they form a fitting background for the gloomy and introspective spirit which ought to seize upon one at this particular psychological moment. 'the tumbled fragments of the hills, hoary with memories of forgotten years,' come next, with a vague suggestion of solitude, which should be further emphasised by allusions to 'the present fading away, and being lost in the vast ocean of time, a lifetime being merely a shadow in the presence of these changeless hills.' then, to end up, mass the whole together, and call it an 'inscrutable pageant'; pile on the shadows, which must grow blacker and blacker, till 'naught remains but the mists of the coming night and darkness'; and if you have an appropriate quotation, put it in! footnotes: [p] 'they are still within the line of vulgarity, and are _democratical_ enemies of truth,'--browne's _vulg. errours_. [q] _absolutely_ perpendicular. [r] _the playground of europe._--leslie stephen. the oromaniacal quest _to all ingeniously elaborate students in the most divine mysteries of the oromaniacal quest: an account in which is set forth the eminent secrets of the adepts; whereunto is added a perfect and full discoverie of the way to attaine to the philosopher's heavenly chaos._ 'whose noble practise doth them teach to vaile their secrets wyth mystie speach.' _the hunting of the greene lyon._ after that the three most respectable travellers and searchers after vast protuberances of the earth, in the land of the caledones, had with haste, joyousness, and precision arrived at those parts, where with observation, snow-covered mountains together with rocks and ice in abundance, and also many other things may be perceived which commend themselves to true worshippers of that most mystagorical and delectable pursuit--the oromaniacal quest into the secret and hidden mysteries of sublime mountains--they at once determined to so haste, walk, run, climb, and otherwise betake themselves to the uppermost parts of the hills, that by continual patience a new entrance towards the topmost pinnacle should be discovered, which should in all respects yield that quintessential pleasure they believed could be extracted from such pursuit of the enigmatical process. there be, however, many who deny that the quintessence of the true enjoyment can so be attained. these indeed do maintain that it resides in that subtill art, the striking of a ball violently with a stick, but this also is a mystery; therefore i will not launch my little skiff further into the wide ocean of the dispute, neither will i argue with such fellows, for do they not offend philosophically, and therefore should be admonished to the end that they meddle not with the quest of the true brethren? thou askest, why? i say thou hast not tasted of these things! hast thou not tarried with those that are below, or, ascending, hast thou not proceeded upwards by help of mules, jackasses, and other auxiliaries, or even in these swift, luxurious and delectable vehicles drawn by the demon of water ten times heated in the furnace? i bid thee search that treasure-house of clouds, fountains, fogs, and steep places on thine own ten toes, and peradventure thou shalt find that which is above resembleth not that which is beneath, neither are the high places of the earth like unto the groves and hedgerows, or the places where people do most congregate, in towns, villages, courts, gardens, to the end that they may hold discourse, spagyrising, philosophising, lanternising, whereby is the engendering of fools a most mystical matter furthered--also the concocting of many poculations; truly these fellows are vulgar tosspots, they attaine not the first matter, nor the whole operation of the work; neither do they approach to the enchanted treasure-house sought for by that worthy quintessencer and most respectable traveller, master beroalde of fragrant and delectable memory.[s] also are these fellows most injurious to well-deserving philosophers, for they comprehend not the writings, and through 'misunderstanding of the possibilities of nature do commit foul mistakes in their operations, and therefore reap a ridiculous harvest.' our record is writ neither for simple, vulgar, and pitiful sophisters, nor for such owls, bats, and night-birds, who, blinded by the full light of the quest lye hidden in gloomy nooks, crannies, and holes below. but return we to our purpose. when our three travellers had arrived at that place in the northland, hight castrum guillelmi, they tarried there awhile seeking diligently if perchance even in that place the great mysterie, the quintessential pleasure of devout philosophers, could by searching be attained. 'good,' said they; 'now are we near the fulfilment, the entrance into secret places, the consummation, the marriage of the impossible with the real, the knowledge of this mastery.' so it came to pass that on the day following, early and with great joyousness, did they start forth by the straight road. nor did they issue forth unprepared, for they bore with them the proper, peculiar, fit, exact, and lawful insignia of the brotherhood, a mystic thread, coiled even as the sable serpent, likewise staves curiously shapen did they take in their hands, for 'peradventure,' said they, 'the way may be steep and full of toil, the dangers many; behold go we not forth in a savage land, where liveth the white dragon and eke basilisks, spoken of by the ingenious j. j. scheuchzerus, doctor of medicine, what time he did wander in the far country of the helvetii? good, now come we to it! for saith not aristotle in his _physicks_, "_ab actionibus procedit speculatio_," "now are all things propitious, let us seek the delphinian oracle"; phoebus like unto the fiery dragon shines bravely, conquering the hydropical vapours and transforming them into subtill aerial sublimations; soon shall we come to the high places where abideth the great water the lochan meal an't suidhe. it shall we leave on the dexter hand, for the path lieth not there but onwards, straight without twist or turn along the valley at the feet of the red mountains, whose hue is multiplied, transmuted, and purified even unto seven times seven, a wonder to the sight, and tincted by the ruddy colour of sol the golden, what time he goeth down at eventide, slavering the deep waters of the western sea so that they be all of a gore bloud.' but let not these things turn us from the true quest, the hidden mysteries, which in the opinion of the vulgar rude are by many deemed nought but delusions. for over against and opposite across the valley, abideth the immensity of greatness, the majestic silence, the prodigious dampness, the depth, in shape like a great dome, whereof the base is in the flouds and the waters, whence issueth forth delectable springs welling up for ever, continually ascending yet ever flowing downwards; here perchance shall we find the mysterie of the heavenly chaos, and the great abyss, the way to attaine to happiness, even the quintessential mystagorical delight and oromaniacal quest, so highly extolled yet so deeply concealed by the true philosophers. thus did they fare onward toward the midst of the valley placed between the red hill and the great mountain. then behold before them rose hugeous rocks and bulky stones standing on end facing to the north where the ice and snow tarry from one winter even unto the following; for in those places the sun shines not, neither are found the comfortable, soft, juicy, and foeculent breezes of the south; there the brood of the black crow and the white smoak or vapour, and comprehensive congelations of the mistus scotorum are produced. so were the brethren sore amazed, but as yet could not see even the first matter of the work. 'see,' said one, 'the way leadeth upward where the spirit arising like unto a volatisation, a separation or sublimation or wind, has much bewhited the mighty petrolific ridge full of points towers and pinnacles. there the pursuit may be pursued, there the volatisation which is an ascension may be compleatly demonstrated, and the operation of the great work may be begun. first must we fashion in the snow and ice great stairs of steps, by aid of which, through prolongation, extension, reduplication, and multiplication shall we be brought on to the ridge even at the beginning.' so did they enter upon the work in this lowest period of obscurity, multiplying the steps in a certain mystic manner which had been revealed to them; and it came to pass that they attained at last on to the ridge, whereon might be perceived far above, towers, pinnacles, points, and other pleasant places, suitable and useful for the furtherance of the quest. first did they traverse a narrow edge of snow fashioned by the wind. then said one, 'follow me, but look not either to the right or to the left, for there lyeth the abyss.' so they followed him, with the mystic thread fastened to their girdles. they saw how that, far above, the heavens were separated from the white snow, which was curled and twisted, also falling, overhanging, and extended, so that they could perceive no way whereby they might pass through. but above and beyond lay the summit of the great mountain, where clouds are concocted in the natural furnace; there also may be seen in the proper season, 'the whole operation of the sons of wisdom, the great procession and the generation of storms, the marriage of the stars and the seven circulations of the elements.' so did they fare onwards; and by inspection were they aware how others had travelled on the same way, for on the stones and rocks were certain petrographical scratchings and curious markings deeply graven and very evident. but presently came they to a great rock, a majestic tower. here were they perforce compelled to depart to the right hand, placing themselves in steep and perilous positions on slopes of ice, which downwards seemed to end in empty air, even in the great void. then were the three exceeding joyful, for is it not written in the secret books of the brethren, many operations must they perform amidst the great mountains and the snowy ice, especially and creditably, ere they be so transmuted, mystagorified and metagrabolised, that they may be numbered with the true, the pious, the elect, even amongst those who are considered worthy of the most mystical and allegorical symbol, a.c., by many variously interpreted. for some hold that it signifies, 'adepti cragorum,' whilst others 'angelorum confederatio,' for these latter maintain that the quest can only be rightly pursued, or satisfactorily continued, by the aid of wings; but in this matter they are deceived, and argue foolishly after the wisdom of the flesh. still all things have an end at last--good wine, pinnacles, spires, cabalistic emblems, and oromaniacal wanderings, even the green sauce of the philosophers and the pythagoric mustard of the great master himself, spoken of by alcofribas nasier in his merrie work. so did the three find the perilous passage across the headlong steep of that ruinous place finish. then did they pass onward to the labyrinth, the rocky chaos, and greatly did they marvel at the exceeding steepness thereof; so that only by great perseverance, turning now to the left and now to the right, were they able to break themselves free from the bonds and entanglements, and climb sagaciously upwards to the summit of the great tower. whereon did they find a heaped up accumulation of stones curiously erected, a cabalistic pyramid, set there doubtless by a former seeker in the work, to the end that true searchers might not despair, but continue the matter of the work with fresh hope and industry. but when they had gazed for a short space, they perceived how that the consummation, the great fulfilment, was nigh at hand. behind and far below, imprinted in the snow, were the steps by which they had mounted upwards, winding now this way, now that, looking like scarce seen veins in whitest marble. but before them lay the narrow way, the ridge, the cleft, and the white slope, leading even unto the utmost height, the sovereign summit of the mightie mountain. thither therefore did their footsteps trend. first did they pass along the narrow way, treading with exceeding care and exactness, for there was but foothold for one alone; the path being no broader than a man's hand. next did they descend into the cleft, which thing is also emblematical and symbolical of the precious secret of all philosophies, for without this key can no one unlock the hermetic garden, the arcanum of the alchemists, spoken of by paracelsus in his _archidoxis_. now before them stretched the white slope, which lay beneath the topmost summit, and steeper became the path, going upwards with a great steepness; now whilst the three travellers did toil and seek, endeavouring to meet the perils of the way, yet almost despairing, lo! from out the clouds a thread descended and a voice was heard afar off: 'fear not, now have ye attained to the consummation, enter into the mystagorical, quintessential, and delectable pleasure-house of devout oromaniacs!' thus therefore do the true philosophers distinguish that which is superior from that which is inferior, for it is a thing deeply concealed by the envious, let therefore the same be thy subject to work upon, thy first basis, for the white must first come out of the red, and black following with multiplicative virtue rise above according to the nature of all things. hear then the meaning of the four degrees. thy first degree maketh to sweat but gently. in the second much travail followeth, whereby thy sweat increaseth, whilst _tertius excedit et cum tolerantia laedit_, for our way ascendeth speedilie where the black rocks fall and rise continually. congelation and circulation cometh next, when in the fourth degree the blackness wears away, which, believe me, is a gallant sight. 'then shalt thou see thy matter appear, shining, sparkling, and white even like to a most glorious heaven-born mercury the subject of wonders. then if thou art fortunate shall the fumes cease and our congelation will glitter incomparably and wonderfully, and thickening more and more it will sprout like the tender frost in a most amiable lustre. now thou needest no further instruction, only this let me tell you, understand this well, and you will not be amazed any longer with the distinction of our operations. for all is but a successive action and passion of him who seeks for the work. which carrying him up and down like a wheel, returns thither whence it proceeded, and then beginneth again and turns so long till it finds its rest. so he thus attains a _plusquam_ perfection through the marvellous co-operation of art and nature.'[t] 'who knoweth not this in knowledge is blind, he may forth wander as mist in the wind, wotting never with profit where to light, because he understands not our words aright.' therefore, with what joy, think you, did the three progress onward after the long and troublous ascent? after _scrambling_, _slipping, gathering,_ _pulling, talking,_ _pushing, stepping,_ _lifting, grumbling,_ _gasping, anathematising,_ _looking, scraping,_ _hoping, hacking,_ _despairing, bumping,_ _climbing, jogging,_ _holding on, overturning,_ _falling off, hunting,_ _trying, straddling,_ _puffing, and at last_ _loosing, attaining,_ for know ye that by these methods alone are the most divine mysteries of the quest reached. so at last they came even unto the very topmost point, and were aware how that priests from the heavenly temple, which is placed on the top of that mountain, had come forth to guide them, without further difficulty, across a level plain of white snow to the gates of the temple itself. but the perils of the way were not ended. at the threshold were there many steps leading down and underground to the temple's innermost recesses, through a domed vault or doorway built of the plastered snow. now were these steps both slippery and very treacherous, having been fashioned in a truly sopho-spagyric manner, likewise did they seem reduplicated and multiplied even by the pythagorical tetrad. moreover, above the portal were there magical characters engraven, even after the same fashion as those seen by the wise pantagruel what time he sought the oracle of the bottle in the land of lanterns. but beyond the portal a very thick mistie and cimmerian darkness, an eclipsation, apprehended them, and the three did stumble now this way and now that, so did they greatly fear even at this very end of their quest, that beasts and creeping things of monstrous shape awaited them, dangers far worse than those on the steep places of the mountain. 'art thou here?' said one. 'prithee guide my steps!' quoth another. 'alas, we are undone!' cried a third. 'zoons, why are ye afraid?' answered a voice; 'when ye have passed the three-square corner and the darkness ye are safe in the sanctum sanctorum even of the elect, in the philosopher's heavenly chaos, where may ye understand all mysteries. but first answer ye me, whence come ye?' 'from without and below.' 'and how?' 'by the seven-fold stairs nigh unto the great abyss where liveth the brood of the black crow, and the engendering of the mistus scotorum proceedeth perpetually.' 'good, but how did ye proceed?' 'thence came we by the rocky labyrinth, and by the perilous passage to the great tower, and the mystic pyramid, which is set on the further side of the narrow way and the cleft, emblematic of hidden things; thence by the white slope to the topmost summit. so have we sought the divine mysteries of this great quest with much toil, so may we attaine to the philosopher's heavenly chaos.' then said the voice, 'enter into the abode of knowledge, through the open entrance to the shut palace of the king,[u] into the outer chamber of the most sophistical retreat of the sons of wisdom, where are perpetually and endlessly produced many reasonable meteorological prognostications; also divinations, concentrations, observations, and conglomerations are recorded in divers registers, all of them most deducible, for are they not stored with great care in sundry leathern bags for the delectation of wise men? thou hast been led as it were by the hand through many a desert and waste spot, now lift up your eyes and behold where you are; welcome into the garden of the philosophers, which is walled about with a very high wall.' so were they shown by the dwellers in the temple many and marvellous wonders. in the centre stood a furnace for all transmutations and agitations by heat; whilst on shelves did they see great store of divers bottles, pans, boxes, and bags, wherein could be found succulent sauces and philosophical essences, to the end that the delectable concoctions of the pious might be completed. likewise great numbers of books. in some could be found treatises of the true science, also devices, hieroglyphic interpretations and perspicuous renderings of great wisdom, in others histories of joyous diversions. also were there 'curious and ingenious engines for all sorts of motions, where were represented and imitated all articulate sounds and letters, and conveyed in trunks and strange lines and distances. also helps for the sight representing things afar off in the heavens and remote places, as near, and making feigned distances.'[v] likewise mathematical instruments, exquisitely made, for the discovering of small and minute bodies in the air. 'also divices for natural divination of tempests, great inundations, temperatures of the yeare and diverse other things.'[w] also were they shown many and marvellous things pertaining to the harmony of the heavenly spheres. then did they drink the mixed draught, the comfortable potation, joyously, philosophically, and with discernment, for at last had they attained to the divine secrets of the philosophers, even unto the mystagorical delight, the great fulfilment of the spagyrick quest of devout oromaniacs. footnotes: [s] the spagyric quest of beroaldus cosmopolita. [t] _the first gate._ by the chanon of bridlington. [u] introitus apertus ad occlusum regis palatium. [v] _the new atlantis._ f. bacon. [w] _ibid._ fragment from a lost ms., probably by aristotle, entitled, [greek: peri athlêtikês, k.t.l.]; or a treatise concerning the sports and pastimes of the athenian youth with regard to their ethical significance. we come now to investigate the position of the mountaineer, or climber of hills. now, we may rightly call him the true mountaineer or climber of hills, who possesses the true love of mountain climbing, which, being a mean between two extremes, may be fitly termed a virtue. first, indeed, it is right to call the love of mountain climbing an active virtue, and not one of contemplation, for to no one is the ascent of a hill possible by contemplation alone; still, the virtue of a mountain climber is for a truth not wholly active, but is partly contemplative, as we shall show further on. moreover, the love of hill climbing, like fortitude or other virtues, has its defects, its mean, and its excess. now, as we have said, virtue being a mean of which the extremes are the excess or the deficiency, he who is defective in this matter is one who either has not this love of climbing, or is indifferent in the matter; this man, indeed, is pitied by the hill climber, and indeed may be called the 'irrational man.' now by the 'irrational man' we do not mean him who is unreasonable without qualification, but rather the man who is possessed of unreason from the point of view of the mountaineer, and truly amongst 'irrational men' are to be found the fathers of families, many learned men and others. moreover, the 'irrational man' prefers rather to ascend hills by means of the telescope, or in a railway train, and if interrogated on the subject, expresses great scorn for those who rise at midnight, or in the early hours of the morning, for the purpose of imperilling their lives on the end of a rope. again, he goes not to places where there are no hostels, alleging that he likes to be comfortable and enjoy himself. the scarcity of inns, however, in mountainous countries is a matter which, in these times, has in some few instances been remedied, for we are credibly informed that on the topmost summit of the lofty mount snowdon, in the principality of wales, an hostel exists, where the 'irrational man' may find gratification for his baser appetites, and perhaps may also at the same time experience, in a limited manner, that happiness which in its full degree is experienced by the true lover of hill climbing, whom we may call the 'mountaineer.'[x] further, the 'irrational man' is inclined often to treat the adventures of the 'mountaineer' as travellers' tales, but in this respect he is unable rightly to distinguish between the true climber of hills and the 'pseudo-mountaineer' who haunts the smoking-rooms of certain hostels. this man climbs, but in imagination only. he will relate how he has ascended certain high and difficult, nay, even inaccessible peaks, and will brand the names of many hills on staves, that when he returns to his native land he may win much reverence. but although the 'pseudo-mountaineer' pretends to greater things than he has accomplished, and is, therefore, a depraved person, on the whole, perhaps, he appears more a vain than a bad man, for it is not for the sake of money that he would have the unwary traveller and the people of his nation believe his stories, but for the sake of honour and glory, which in itself is praiseworthy. now both the 'pseudo-mountaineer' and the 'irrational man' err by way of defect, being indifferent to the true joys of mountaineering. but the 'mountaineer' is he who has this virtue in the right measure. he delights not in climbing this hill or that, but in climbing itself. he loves to wander in mountainous lands; ascents of great mountains, clad in frozen snow, to him are not unprofitable. mountain-huts ill-ventilated, nights spent under rocks, amidst snow, wind, mist, or rain, these things will he endure. moreover, to help him, will he even pay much money to the more hardy inhabitants of the hills, who are able to guide him with skill and safety through the inhospitable fastnesses, which he loves to explore. thus much knowledge will he gain, making observations on the heights of hills, the efficacy of meat lozenges, the movement of glaciers by day, and the _pulex irritans_ by night. he is a searcher after sensations. but when, owing to misfortune, he finds that his desire for climbing is in inverse ratio to his opportunity for so doing, then will he spend his leisure hours in adorning his maps with red lines, or he will write papers, yea, even books, describing his former exploits, so that perchance other 'mountaineers' may receive benefit therefrom. but, as we have already said, the love of mountain climbing, like fortitude and other virtues, has its mean and its defect; as to the mean, we have seen that it is the virtue of the 'mountaineer,' whilst the defect constitutes the habit of the 'pseudo mountaineer' and the 'irrational man.' but the extreme is found in the man who has the desire to climb hills out of all reason, therefore we call him the 'oromaniac,' or he who is incontinent in the matter. he it is who ascends hills on the wrong side, and cares not to travel in the line of least resistance; also should he hear that a pinnacle of rock is inaccessible, he is at once seized with a great desire to climb that pinnacle. for he climbs not mountains for the exercise, or the love of climbing itself, but for the mere base desire to beat all records or to outdo an enemy, or that he may see his name blazoned in the local papers. and not unfrequently do accidents befall such an one, and he hurts himself grievously; hence come those accidents which we may call indefinite, for of this kind of accident there is often no definite cause, for the cause of it is casual, and that is indefinite. thus such an one may have fallen. now if it was not his intention so to do, and he either slipped or was otherwise moved in a direction suddenly downwards, it happened accidentally. the accident, therefore was generated, and is, but not so far as itself is, but as something else is. moreover, in this kind of accident, as we have already stated, it often happens that the 'oromaniac' suffers many woes; breaking sometimes a limb, or, if still more unfortunate, his neck, or he suffers mutilation[y] in respect to his garments. again, accidents may be called that which is inherent to something, and of which something may be truly asserted; as for instance, if any one going up one mountain in a mist should, after much fatigue, find himself at the summit of another, the ascent would be an accident to him who climbs the mountain. nor, if any one climbs one mountain, does he for the most part climb another. accident is after another manner denominated, that which essentially belongs--'the inseparable,' for instance, the mountains themselves. hence, indeed, it happens that accidents of this kind are perpetual, which is not the case with any others. now concerning the love of mountain climbing, and the excess and deficiency thereof, as well as the mean which is also a virtue, and concerning also accidents both separable and inseparable of mountain climbing, let this suffice. footnotes: [x] the great lexicographer defines the word as 'an inhabitant of the mountains, a savage, a freebooter, a rustick.' can the word be here used in this sense? [y] of the mutilated we have spoken elsewhere. 'a man is mutilated when some part is taken away, and this not any part indifferently, but which, when wholly taken away, cannot again be generated. hence, men that are bald are not mutilated.'--_metaphysics_, book v. chap. xxvii. notes on the himalayan mountains the great flood of the indus in seems to have been one of the most tremendous cataclysms recorded as having occurred on the continent of india. the exact reason of it was for many years unknown. major cunningham suggested that it was due to the bursting of an ice-dammed lake on the shayok river. major becher seems, however, to have been the first who expressed a belief that it was caused by a landslip blocking the indus near gor. in a letter (_journ. asiat. soc. bengal_, vol. xxviii. p. ) he writes that a mountain called ultoo kunn, near gor, owing to an earthquake, subsided into the valley of the main indus. drew, in his book on kashmir (p. ), gives the following description: 'the flood of was in this wise. it occurred, as near as i can make out, in the beginning of june of that year. at atak, a place twelve or fifteen miles below where the latitude-parallel of ° crosses the indus, the river had been observed during several months, indeed from december of the previous year onwards, to be unusually low; in the spring it had risen a little from the snow melting, but only a little, so that at the end of may (when in ordinary years the volume has greatly increased) it was still extraordinarily low. this in itself should have been enough to warn the people who dwelt by its banks, but so little was it thought of that a portion of the sikh army was encamped on the low plain of chach which bordered the river. one day in the beginning of june, at two in the afternoon, the waters were seen by those who were there encamped to be coming upon them, down the various channels, and to be swelling out of these to overspread the plain in a dark, muddy mass, which swept everything before it. the camp was completely overwhelmed; five hundred soldiers at once perished; only those who were within near reach of the hill-sides could hope for safety. neither trees nor houses could avail to keep those surprised in the plain out of the power of the flood, for trees and houses themselves were swept away; every trace of cultivation was effaced; and the tents, the baggage, and the artillery, all were involved in the ruin. the result was graphically described by a native eye-witness, whose words were, "as a woman with a wet towel sweeps away a legion of ants, so the river blotted out the army of the raja."' drew was probably the first to actually visit the place where the block occurred. and a villager from gor pointed out to him the exact spot where the debris of the landslip blocked the river. these floods seem to be of somewhat frequent occurrence. in one came from the tshkoman valley above gilgit. in another did great damage at naushahra. the indus at attock (atak) on th august was very low. in the early morning it rose ten feet in two hours, and five hours later it had risen no less that fifty feet, and continued rising till it stood no less than ninety feet higher than in the morning. it is probable that this flood came from the hunza valley. smaller floods in the narrow himalayan valleys are of frequent occurrence. for instance at tashing, in , a large lake was formed in the rupal nullah by the snout of the tashing glacier crossing the valley till it was jammed against the rock wall on the opposite side, thus blocking the rupal torrent. probably this will again happen, for when we were there in the tashing glacier had once more blocked the valley to the depth of at least feet, the rupal stream finding its way underneath the ice; should this passage become in any way stopped, a huge lake must at once form behind the glacier. the extreme narrowness, and often the great depth, of many of these himalayan valleys will always be favourable to the production of these floods. should a landslip occur, or should a glacier, such as the tashing glacier, block the valley, a flood must be the inevitable result. on the indus there are many places where a dam might easily be formed. in the bend underneath haramosh, at lechre under nanga parbat, or further down below chilas in that unknown country where the indus begins to flow in a southerly direction. for there on the map the indus is made to flow between two peaks, _not three miles apart_: one is marked , feet, and the other , feet, thus making the depth of this ravine over , feet. list of some of the mountains in the himalaya that are over , feet in height the following list of mountains that are more than , feet has been taken from various maps. it gives most of the peaks that have been trigonometrically measured, but probably there are at least as many more in those great mountain ranges, the hindu kush, the mustagh, the kuen lun, and the himalaya, that are over , feet high. the next highest peak in the world outside asia is aconcagua, , feet high. feet. devadhunga, gaurisanka, or mt. everest, in nepaul, , k^{ } in the mustagh range, , kanchenjunga ( ), north peak in sikkim, , kanchenjunga ( ), south peak, , makalu, s.e. of devadhunga, , dhaolagiri ( ), in nepaul, , unnamed peak n.w. of katmandu, , nanga parbat, or diama, in kashmir, , unnamed peak n. of pokra nepaul , k^{ } in the mustagh range, , hidden peak in the mustagh range, , gusherbrum ( ), in the mustagh range, , gosai than, n.e. of katmandu, , gusherbrum ( ), , unnamed, n. of pokra nepaul, , gusherbrum ( ), , unnamed peak, n.w. katmandu, , unnamed peak, n.w. katmandu, , masherbrum ( ), in the mustagh range, , nanda devi ( ), in kumaon, , masherbrum ( ), , nanga parbat or diama ( ), , rakipushi, in kashmir, , unnamed, n. of hispar glacier, mustagh range, , unnamed, n. of hispar glacier, , dhaolagiri ( ), , ibi gamin, or kamet, in kumaon, , k^{ }, in the mustagh range, , boiohagurdaonas ( ), n.w. of hunza, , jannu, in sikkim, , k^{ } in the mustagh range, , nubra peak ( ), n. of leh, mustagh range, , k^{ } in the mustagh range, chogolisa peak, , bride peak, baltoro glacier, mustagh range, , dhaolagiri ( ), , boiohagurdaonas ( ), , unnamed, n. of pokra nepaul, , nubra peak ( ), , tirach mir ( ), n. of chitral hindu kush, , unnamed, near rakipushi, kashmir, , muz tagh ata, pamirs, , nanda devi ( ) (nanda kot), , k^{ } in the mustagh range, , tirich mir ( ), , unnamed, n. of katmandu nepaul, , haramosh, near gilgit kashmir, , boiohagurdaonas ( ), , unnamed, s. of devadhunga, nepaul, , kabru, in sikkim, , chumaliri, in bhutan, , aling gangri, in tibet, , k^{ } in the mustagh range, , literature dealing with the himalaya bogle, g., account of tibet. philosophical transactions, no. , part , and annual register, . turner, capt. s., account of an embassy to the court of the teshoo lama, in tibet, vol., . webb and raper, journey to explore the sources of the ganges. asiatic researches, vol. x. colebrooke, h., on the height of the himala mountains. asiatic researches, vol. xi. moorcroft, w., journey to the lake mánasarówara. asiatic researches, vol. xii. kirkpatrick, col. w., an account of the kingdom of nepaul, vol., . hamilton, francis, m.d., an account of the kingdom of nepal, vol., . fraser, j. b., tour through part of the snowy range of the himalya mountains, vol., . hodgson, b. h., essays on nepál and tibet, etc., vols., ; also no less than papers to various periodicals, chiefly the journal of the asiatic society of bengal. cp. report on the mineralogical survey of the himala mountains. j. a. s. b. xi., part , p. x. vigne, g. t., travels in cashmir, ladak, etc., vols., . thomson, t., m.d., western himalaya and tibet, vol., . moorcroft, w. and g. trebeck, travels in the himalayan provinces, etc., vols., . gerard, capt. a., account of koonawur, in the himalaya, vol., . gerard and lloyd, tours in the himalaya, vols., . cunningham, sir a., ladák, physical, statistical, and historical, vol., . strachey, r., physical geography of kumaon and gurhwal and the adjoining parts of tibet. r. g. s. journal, xxi., p. . strachey, capt. h., physical geography of western tibet. r. g. s. journal, xxiii., p. , published separately, vol., ; also journey to lake mánasarówar, vol., . 'mountaineer' (wilson), a summer ramble in the himalayas and cashmere, vol., . hooker, sir j. d., himalayan journals, vols., . saunders, trelawny w., sketch of the mountains and river basins of india, in two maps, with explanatory memoirs. geographical department, india office, . gordon, lieut.-col. t. e., the roof of the world, vol., . wilson, andrew, the abode of snow, vol., . indian alps and how we crossed them. by a lady pioneer, vol., . markham, clements r., a memoir on the indian surveys, vol., ; nd ed., . montgomerie, major t. g., reports on the trans-himalayan explorations, - , , and (indian survey). shaw, r., visits to high tartary, yârkand, and kâshgar, vol., . torrens, lieut.-col. h. d., travels in ladak, tartary, and kashmir, vol., . bellew, dr. h. w., kashmir and kashgar, vol., . drew, f., jummoo and kashmir territories, vol., . bogle, g., and t. manning, narratives of their journeys to tibet and lhasa, edited by clements r. markham, vol., . godwin-austen, col. h. h., royal geographical society journal, vol. xxxiv., p. . knight, capt., diary of a pedestrian in cashmere and tibet, vol., . schlagintweit, h. and b., the last journeys and death of adolph schlagintweit, . conway, sir w. m., climbing in the karakoram himalayas, vol., . knight, e. f., where three empires meet, vol., . maccormick, a. d., an artist in the himalayas, vol., . waddell, l. a., among the himalayas, vol., . younghusband, f. e., the heart of a continent, vol., . boeck, k., indische gletcherfahrten, . deasy, h. h. p., in tibet and chinese turkestan, vol., . durand, a., making of a frontier, vol., . holdich, col. sir t. h., indian borderland, vol., . bose, p. n., glaciers of kabru, vol., . workman, mrs. f. b. and dr. w. h., in the ice-world of himalaya, vol., . index a a^{ }. see mount monal. a^{ }, , . achill island, cliffs of, . a chuilionn, . see coolin hills. alberta, mount, . alps, the, mountaineering in, _et seq._ assiniboine group of mountains, , . astor, , , . astor valley, road down, . athabasca pass, . avalanche of stones, . b bagrot nullah explored, . baker, mount, . balfour group of mountains, , . ball group of mountains, , . baltoro glacier ascended, , , . ---- ---- survey of the, . bandipur, . baramula, . bear, red, , . been keragh, , . ben eighe, climb on, _et seq._ ben nevis, ascent of tower ridge of, _et seq._; observatory on summit of, . biafo glacier, , . blanc, mont, ascent of, by brenva route, . bogle, g., mission to tibet, . boss, emil, . bow range, . brandon, , . brown, mount, . bruce, major c. g., , , ; ascents near chitral, ; do. near hunza, ; do. near nagyr, ; do. of ragee-bogee peaks, ; meets us at tashing, ; returns to abbottabad, ; climbing in the alps by, . buldar nullah, . bullock-workman, mount, ascent of, . ---- dr. and mrs., climbing in ladak and suru by, . butesharon glacier, ; pass, . bunar post, . burzil or dorikoon pass, . bush peak, . c caher, , . camping, , . canada, size of, . carran tuohill, , . chiche peak, ; glacier, ascent of, . chilas, ; road to, . ---- tribesmen, raids by, . chongra peaks, , , . choonjerma pass, . chorit, . collier, j., , . columbia group of mountains, , . ---- mount, . ---- river, . connemara, the twelve bens of, . conway, sir w. martin, mountain exploration by, , , . coolin hills, appearance and description of, _et seq._, . coomacarrea, . coomacullen, lough, . croaghann, . crystal peak ascended, . d daranshi saddle climbed, . dashkin, . dasskaram needle ascended, . devadhunga, , , , , . dhaltar peaks, ascent of, . diama glacier, ; pass, , . diamirai glacier explored, , . ---- nullah, ; camp in, ; return to, ; storm in, ; upper camp in, , , ; leave, ; last visit to, . ---- pass crossed, . ---- peak, ; view from slopes of, ; summit of, ; south-west arête of, . dichil peak, , . divide, great, , . doian, . dome peak, . donegal, . donkia pass, , . drew, . dunagiri, ; attempted ascent of, . e elias, mount st., . everest. see devadhunga. f forbes group of mountains, , . forsyth, . fortress lake pass, . fraser river, ; canyon, . freshfield, d., tour of kanchenjunga, . ---- mount, . g ganalo nullah crossed, ; glacier, ; camp in, . ---- peak, , , . garhwal, . garwood, e., . gerard, captain, ascents by, . gjeitgaljar, ; ascent of, . glaciers, effect of, . godwin, austen h. h., survey of mountains by, . golden throne, . goman singh, ; takes servants, etc., over mazeno la, , , . ---- ---- pass, , . gonar peak, . goodsir group of mountains, , . gor, inhabitants of, . graham, w. w., ascents by, . guicho la, , . gurais, . gurdon, capt. b. e. m., ascent near nagyr, . gusherbrum, . h haramosh, . haramukh, . harkabir thapa, , . harman, capt., visits donkia pass, . hart, h. c., , . haskett-smith, w. p., . hastings, g., ; arrives at chiche glacier camp, ; returns to rupal nullah and astor, ; crosses mazeno la, ; returns to diamirai nullah to search for mummery, , , , , , . ---- warren, frontier policy, . hatu pir, view from, , . higraf tind, ; ascent of, . himalaya, peaks over , feet, , . ---- exclusion from, . ---- mountaineering club, . hindu kush range, . hispar pass crossed, , . hooker, sir joseph, sikkim journeys, . ---- group of mountains, . ---- mount, . howse pass, . i ibi-gamin. see kamet. imboden, joseph, . indus valley, ; heat in, . j johnson, dr., , ; description of skye by, . ---- w. h., ascents by, . jonsong la crossed, . jubonu, ; ascent of, . k k^{ }, , , ; seen from slopes of nanga parbat, . kabru, , ; ascent of, ; objections to claimed ascent of, . kamet, attempted ascents of, , . kamri pass crossed, . kanchenjunga, , , , , . kang la, ascent of peak near, . karakoram range. see mustagh range. ---- pass, . kashmir, journey from rawul pindi to, ; valley of, . kauffmann, ulrich, . kerry hills, _et seq._ khaghan, . kicking horse pass, . kishnganga valley, description of, . kongra-lama pass, . koser gunge, ascent of, . kulu, . kumaon, . l langstrandtinder, ascent of, . laurence, w. r., description of valley of kashmir, . lechre, landslip blocks indus at , . leo porgyul, . liskom pass, . lofoten islands, ; fish trade of, ; rain in the, ; visits to the, ; climate of, ; scenery of, . logan, mount, . lor khan, , ; accident to, ; . louise lake, . lubar nullah, camp in, . ---- glacier, . ---- torrent, . lyell, mount, . m macgillicuddy's reeks. see kerry hills, . maelström, description of, . manning, t., mission to tibet, . markhor, . masherbrum, . mazeno la, ; cross the, ; cross second time, ; cross third time, ; bruce crosses the, ; hastings crosses, . ---- peaks, . m'kinley, mount, . monal, mount, ; ascent of, , . montgomerie, capt. t. g., survey of mountains by, . mösadlen, . moss ghyll, climb up, . mountains, description of himalayan, ; canadian rocky, . lofoten ; scotch, ; irish, . mummery, a. f., ; explores western face of nanga parbat, ; ascends diamirai peak, ; starts for bunar, ; takes provisions up rocks of nanga parbat, , ; spends night on rocks of nanga parbat, , ; starts for ascent of nanga parbat, ; starts for diama pass, ; probable fate of, ; climbing in alps, ; climbing near wastdale head, . murree, . mustagh range, view of, , . ---- pass, . ---- tower, description of, . n nanda devi, , , , . nanga parbat, ; view of from kamri pass, ; glacier, ; south face, view of, ; western face, view of, ; mummery explores western face, ; provisions left on, ; climbing on, ; avalanches on, , , , , ; attempted ascent of, ; northern face of, . nepaul, enormous peaks north of, , . nicholson, a., derivation of the name of the coolin, . night out at , ft., . nun kun peaks, , . nushik la crossed, . o ottertail range, . p pennant, . phillip, colin b., , , . pillar rock, climbing on, . pioneer peak, , . prairie, description of, . priestman, h., . pundim, , . punmah glacier, . r ragee-bogee peaks ascended, . ragobir thapa, , , , , , . rakiot nullah, ; arrive in, ; explore, . rakiot glacier, . ---- peak, . rakipushi, . ramghat, . rattu, . red pass, . robinson, j. w., , , . robson, description of grampians by, . rocky mountains, canadian, ; future of, ; approach to, , ; travelling in, ; dense forests on west side of, . rosamir, head coolie, . rulten, ; attempted ascent of, . rupal nullah, arrival in, ; description of, ; journey up, . ---- peak, ; glacier, . s samayar glacier, . schlagintweit, adolf and robert, exploration of himalaya, . screes, climb up the great gully of the, . selkirk mountains, . sella, signor v., . sgurr a'ghreadaidh, climb on, . shallihuru glacier, . shandur pass, . sheep, price of, . shikara pass, . shikari, robbed by, . sickness, mountain, , , . siegfried horn, ascent of, . simpson pass, . slieve league, climbing on, ; sea caves near, . slingsby, c., . solly, g., . spiti, . stewart, capt., . ---- lieut. c. g., chitral relief expedition, . swat country, peaks in, , . t tashing, , . ---- river crossed, . ---- glacier ascended, ; descended, . temple group mountains, , . thompson pass, . thosho pass, ; peak, . tirich mir, ; seen from slopes of nanga parbat, . tragbal or raj diangan pass, . travers, m. w., . trisuli peaks, . trold fjord, , . troldfjordvatn, , . tunkra pass, . v vaage kallen, . vermilion pass, . w wapta range, , . wastdale head, climbing near, _et seq._ wicklow mountains, , . woolar lake, description of, ; storm on, . woolley, h., . y younghusband, captain f., climb with major bruce, . z zaipur, . zurbriggen, m., , . edinburgh: printed by t. and a. constable now ready. _in one volume, royal vo, with illustrations, price s. net._ * * * * * the alps in a private journal by a. w. moore edited by alex. b. w. kennedy, ll.d., f.r.s. member of the alpine club moore's privately printed journal of has long been one of the rarest and most coveted books of alpine adventure. the author was a climber of marvellous energy, and climbed, for the pure pleasure of climbing, in days when the alps were not 'hung in chains,' and when virgin peaks and passes still remained in comparative plenty. few of his contemporaries had so wide a knowledge of the mountains as he had, and few were able to make so many first ascents; while few, it may be said without offence, spoke and wrote of their doings in so simple, genial, and unaffected a fashion. 'the writer succeeds in bringing the actual conditions of the climb home to the reader in a manner calculated at times almost to take his breath away. he makes one believe that it would be possible to go and repeat the exact route merely from his description. as we follow him over the ice-wall and along the _arêtes_ of the ecrins, through the hurricanes on the dom, across the awful barrier of the moming pass, and up the hanging glaciers of the brenva, we feel as if we were ourselves standing amid the snows and rocks of the alpine giants as we sit in our arm-chair waiting till the return of a summer holiday sends us once again to the happy hunting ground.'--_spectator._ 'the work will prove not only a monument to the memory of a man of rare culture, of great public capacity, and of unusual mountaineering experience, but also a notable addition to permanent alpine literature.'--_birmingham post._ 'the keynote of the whole book is its frank, hearty, straightforward naturalness. it breathes the very air of the mountains, and is instinct in every page with the spirit of the true mountaineer.'--_birmingham gazette._ 'contains a better collection of alpine plates than we have ever before seen brought together in a book. the volume would be worth buying for the plates alone.'--_times._ 'one of the most vivid and fascinating books of alpine travel which has ever been written.'--_alpine journal._ 'moore's book will be classed with the very best in its department of literature with the works of mummery and mr. whymper and mr. leslie stephen.'--_glasgow herald._ 'mr. moore was an ardent and successful mountain climber,' with a remarkable topographical faculty and a retentive and accurate memory. he wrote in an easy style with much descriptive power and quiet humour.'--_standard._ * * * * * _in preparation, one volume, with illustrations_ a book on climbing in norway _with chapters on the physical features, etc., of the country_. by wm. cecil slingsby. * * * * * edinburgh: david douglas, castle street. * * * * * transcriber's note: obvious misspellings and omissions were corrected. errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted. the illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.