great mountain range north of the Kulhait, with the
temples and convents of Pemiongchi and Changa-
chelling, towering in the air. The latter range dips
suddenly to the Great Rungeet, where Tassiding, with
its chaits and cypresses, closed the view. The day was
half cloud, half sunshine; and the various effects of
light and shade, now bringing out one or other of the
villages and temples, now casting the deep valleys into
darker gloom, were wonderfully fine.
Yoksun was the earliest civilised corner of Sikkim,
and derived its name (which signifies in Lepcha “ three
chiefs ”) from having been the residence of three
Lamas of great influence, who were the means of introducing
the first Tibetan sovereign into the country.
At present it boasts of hut little cultivation, and a
scattered population, inhabiting a few hamlets, 5,500
feet above the se a : beautiful lanes and paths wind
everywhere over the gentle slopes, and through the
copsewood that has replaced the trees of a former
period. Mendongs and chaits are very numerous,
some of great size; and there are also the ruins of two
very large temples, near which are some magnificent
weeping cypresses, eighty feet high. These fine trees
are landmarks from all parts of the flat; they form
irregular cones of pale bright green, with naked gnarled
tops ; the branches weep gracefully, but not like the
picture in Macartney’s Embassy to China, whence originated
the familiar “ willow-pattern ” of our crockery.
The ultimate branchlets are very slender and pendulous
; my Lepcha hoys used to make elegant chaplets
of them, binding the withes with scarlet worsted. The
trunk is quite erect, smooth, cylindrical, and pinelike
; it harbours no moss, but air-plants, Orchids, and
ferns, nestle on the limbs, and pendulous lichens, like
our beard-moss, wave from the branches.
In the evening I ascended to Doobdi. The path
TEMPLE AND WEEPING CYPRESS.
was broad, and skilfully conducted up a very steep
slope covered with forest; the top, which is nearly
1000 feet above Yoksun, is a broad partially paved
platform, on which stand two temples, surrounded by
beautiful weeping cypresses: one of these trees (perhaps
the oldest in Sikkim) measured sixteen and a half feet
in girth, at five from the ground, and was apparently