of the path, and, excepting only the magnolia, are the
most striking flowers upon the road.
These magnolias are strange plants. They seem to
turn colour as they reach the limit of their growth, and
the pure white is lost in a tinge of purple. Unlike the
magnolias which occasionally overpower the scents of an
entire rectory garden in England, the waxen flowers
grow on naked lilac stickery. The wide, enamelled
leaves, which seem so indispensable at home, are gone.
I do not know whether they appear later, but the magnolia
seems to be outside ordinary rules of plant life.
One species has even the depressing habit of dropping
its flowers unopened on the ground below. Oaks
grow here, though in a chastened way. An English
tree which takes fuller advantage of the rank vegetable
mould and steamy hothouse climate of Sikkim is the
juniper. This, which is best known to the inhabitants
of towns in the shape of “ cedar ” pencils, grows to a
height of forty or fifty feet, and Mr. White has, on two
occasions, made an attempt to develop a regular trade
with the manufacturers. They admitted that the wood
sent was as good as any they could buy, but the contracts
they had entered into for the supply of this wood bound
them for some years to come. Another industrial product
of this jungle is madder, and the dark crimson
robes of both Tibetan churches, Red and Yellow alike-S
for the distinction is shown only in the cap— owe their
richness to the hill sides of Sikkim. Elephant creeper
winds up the forest trees, the huge leaves nuzzling into
the bark all round like a swarm of gigantic bees. The
common white orchid, which is wired to make a. two-
guinea spray in London, is a weed at Gangtok. Its
quaintly writhen blossoms of snow hang overhead in
RHODODENDRON AND MAGNOLIA 67
such profusion that one welcomes a shyer blossom,
trumpet shaped, and of the colour and coolness of a
lemon-ice. The orchids are not the only epiphytes ;
other parasites than they crown the living branch with
their coronals of leaves, more lovely than the trees
they feed upon.
The Residency, Gangtok.
The game here is very scanty : the reason is not
uninteresting. For dormant or active, visible or invisible,
the curse of Sikkim waits for its warm-blooded visitor.
The leeches of These lovely valleys have been described
again and again by travellers. Unfortunately the
description, however true in every particular, has,
as a rule, but wrecked the reputation of the chronicler.
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