this roof I laid my bed on a mass of rhododendron and
jmiper-twigs. The men did the same against other
boulders, and lighting a huge Are opposite the mouth
o my ground-nest, I sat cross-legged on the bed to eat
my supper; my face scorching, and my back freezing.
Eice, boded with a few ounces of greasy dindon anx
truffes was now my daily dinner, with chili-vinegar and
ea, and I used to relish it ke en ly ;’this finished, I
smoked a cigar, and wrote up my journal (in short
intervals between wanning myself) by the light of the
fire took observations by means of a dark-lantem;
and when all this was accomplished, I went to roost
On looking out the Mowing 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
alien; thence my eye wandered down their black faces
to the slope of dibris 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 eat for
breakfast; it is a small bird, common above 12,000
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 crop was distended with juniper berries, of
which the flesh tasted strongly, and it was the very
hardest and toughest bird I ever did e a t
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. I t 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. I t is found as far west as the heads
of the Cosi river; but does not inhabit Central nor
West Nepal, nor the North-west Himalaya.
This larch is one of the few Conifers confined to the
Eastern Himalaya, where several of the western ones,
as the Deodar, are absent. I have elsewhere 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. 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,* 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,
* 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.