a beautiful species, which forms a stately pyramid,
with branches spreading like the cedar, and drooping
gracefully on all sides. I t is unknown on the outer
ranges of Sikkim, and in the interior occupies a belt
about 1000 feet lower than the silver fir. Many sub-
alpine plants occur here, as rose, thistles, alder, birch,
ferns, berberry, holly, anemone, strawberry, raspberry,
the alpine bamboo, and oaks. The scenery is as grand
as any pictured by Salvator Bosa; 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.
I now found the temperature getting rapidly cooler,
both that of the air, which here at 8,066 feet fell to 32°
in the night, and that of the river, which was always
below 40°. I t 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.
I arrived at the village of Walloong, or Wallanchoon,
on the 23rd of November. Its situation is fine and open,
the Tambur valley there 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. There was but little snow on the
TAMBUK RIVEK AT THE LOWER LIMIT OP FIRS.