ascending to the region of oaks and magnolias. The
path was soon obstructed, and we had to tear and cut our
way, from 6000 to 10,000 feet, which took two days’
very hard work. Ticks swarmed in the bamboo jungle,
and my body was covered with these loathsome insects,
which got into my bed and hair, and even attached
themselves to my eyelids during the night, when the
constant annoyance and irritation completely banished
sleep. In the daytime they penetrated my trousers,
piercing to my body in many places, so that I repeatedly
took off as many as twelve at one time. I t is indeed
marvellous how so large an insect can painlessly insert
a stout barbed proboscis, which requires great force to
extract it, and causes severe smarting in the operation.
What the tick feeds on in these humid forests is a
perfect mystery to me, for they literally swarmed, where
there was neither path nor animal life. They were,
however, more tolerable than a commoner species of
parasite, from which I found it impossible to escape,
all classes of mountaineers being infested with it.
On the 14th, after an arduous ascent through the
pathless jungle, I camped at 9,300 feet on a narrow
spur, in a dense forest, amongst immense loose blocks
of gneiss. The weather was foggy and rainy, and the
wind cold. I ate my last supply of animal food, a
miserable starved pullet, with rice and Chili vinegar;
my tea, sugar, and all other superfluities having been
long before exhausted.
On the following morning I crossed the Islumbo
pass over Singalelah into Sikkim, the elevation being
11,000 feet. Above my camp the trees were few and
stunted, and I quickly emerged from the forest on a
rocky and grassy ridge, covered with withered Saxifrages,
Umbellifers, Pamassia, Hypericum, &c. There
were no firs on either side of the pass; a very remarkable
peculiarity of the damp mountains of Sikkim,
which I have elsewhere had occasion to notice: I had
left the long-leaved pine (a far from common tree in
these valleys) at 3000 feet in the Tawa three days
before, and ascended to 11,000 feet without passing a
coniferous tree of any kind, except a few yews, covered
with red berries.
The top of the pass was broad, grassy, and bushy,
with dwarf Bamboo, Bose, and Berberry in great
abundance, covered with moss and lichens: it had
been raining hard all the morning, and the vegetation
was coated with ice; a dense fog obscured everything,
and a violent south-east wind blew over the pass in my
teeth. I collected some very curious and beautiful
mosses, putting these frozen treasures into my box, in
the form of exquisitely beautiful glass ornaments, or
mosses frosted with silver.
A few stones marked the boundary between Nepal
and Sikkim, where I halted for half an hour, and hung
up my instruments: the temperature was 33°.
I descended rapidly, proceeding eastward down
the broad valley of. the Kulhait river, an affluent of
the Great Bungeet; and as it had begun to sleet and
snow hard, I kept on until I reached 6400 feet
before camping.
On the following day I continued down the valley,
and reached habitations at 4000 feet: passing many
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