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 rushed in white foam over their rocky beds.
Kinchinjunga was the most prominent object to the
north-east, with its sister peaks of Kubra (24,005 feet),
and Junnoo (25,312 feet). All these presented bare
cliffs for several thousand feet below their summits,
composed of white rock with a faint pink tin t:—on the
other hand the cliffs of the lofty Nepal mountain in the
far west were all black. 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 down to the Pemmi river, and thence along its
banks, west to the Tambur. I chose the latter.
The descent was very abrupt to the bed of the Pemmi,
2000 feet; and the path was infamously bad, generally
narrow, winding, and rocky, leading among tangled
shrubs and large boulders, brambles, nettles, and
thorny bushes, often in the bed of the torrent, or
crossing spurs covered with forest. 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 grown
as a narcotic.
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, 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 choice hot-house ornaments,
grew in profusion, its gorgeous heads of blossoms
scenting the air.
At the junction of the Pemmi and Khawa rivers,
elevated 2250 feet, appeared many trees and plants of the
Terai and plains, as pomegranate, peepul, and sal; with
extensive fields of cotton, indigo, and irrigated rice.
We followed the north bank of the Khawa, westerly,
through a gorge between high cliffs, and reached the
east bank of the Tambur, on the 13th of November,
at its junction with the Khawa. I t 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, and that of the foaming Khawa twelve to
fifteen yards. 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, &c., with enormous