water-worn boulders; 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: there is considerable traffic
along i t ; 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 appeared 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 sugarcane,
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.
Homed 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 MywaGuola; 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 formed of a hollow
trunk of Toon thirty feet long, and 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 Boodhist 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; its banks were very steep for 600
feet above the stream, though the mountains which
flanked it did not exceed 4000 to 5000 feet: this is a
constant phenomenon in the Himalaya, and the paths,
when within a few hundred feet of the rivers, 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 ingenuity: often the
bank was abandoned altogether, and we ascended
several thousand feet to descend again. Owing to the
steepness of these banks, and the reflected heat, the
valley, even at this season, was excessively hot and close
during the day, even when the temperature was below
70°, and tempered by a brisk breeze which rushes
upwards from sunrise to sunset. The sun’s rays at this
season do not, in many places, reach the bottom of
these valleys until 10 a .m ., and are withdrawn by 3 p .m . ;
and the radiation to a clear sky is so powerful that dew
frequently forms in the shade, throughout the day, and
it is common at 10 a .m . to find the thermometer sink
from 70° in a spot dried by the sun, to 40° in the shade