and Mechi rivers. In the months of April and May,
when the magnolias and rhododendrons are in blossom,
the gorgeous vegetation is, in some respects, not to be
surpassed by anything in the tropics; but the effect
is much marred by the prevailing gloom of the
weather. The white-flowered magnolia (M. excelsa)
is the predominant tree at 7000 to 8000 feet; and in
1848 it blossomed so profusely, that the forests on
the broad flanks of Sinchul, and other mountains of
that elevation, appeared as if sprinkled with snow.
The purple-flowered kind again (M. Campbellii) hardly
occurs below 8000 feet, and forms an immense, but
very ugly, black-barked, sparingly branched tree,
leafless in winter and also during the flowering season,
when it puts forth from the end of its branches great
rose-purple cup-shaped flowers, whose fleshy petals
strew the ground. On its branches, and on those of
oaks and laurels, Rhododendron Dalhousice grows as
an epiphyte, a slender shrub, bearing from three to
six white lemon-scented bells, four and a half inches
long and as many broad, at the end of each branch.
In the same woods the scarlet rhododendron (R .
arhoreum) is very scarce, and is outvied by the great
R. argentewn, which grows as a tree forty feet high,
with magnificent leaves twelve to fifteen inches long,
deep green, wrinkled above and silvery below, while
the flowers are as large as those of R. Dalhousice, and
grow more in a cluster. I know nothing of the kind
that exceeds in beauty the flowering branch of R.
argenteum, with its wide-spreading foliage and glorious
mass of flowers.
Oaks, laurels, maples, birch, chesnut,'hydrangea, a
species of fig (which is found on the very summit),
and three Chinese and Japanese genera, are the
principal features of the forest. In spring immense
broad-leaved arums spring up, with green or purple-
striped hoods, that end in tail-like threads, eighteen
inches long, which lie along the ground; and there
are various kinds of beautiful flowering herbs. Nearly
thirty ferns may be gathered on this excursion,
including many of great beauty and rarity, but the
tree-fern does not ascend so high. Grasses are very
rare in these woods, excepting the dwarf bamboo; a
plant now cultivated in the open air in England.
Before proceeding to narrate my different expeditions
into Sikkim and Nepal from Dorjiling, I shall give a
sketch of the different peoples and races composing
the heterogeneous population of Sikkim and the
neighbouring mountains.
The Lepcha is the aboriginal inhabitant of the
country, and the prominent character in Dorjiling,
where he undertakes all sorts of out-door employment.
The race to which he belongs is a very singular one ;
markedly Mongolian in features, and a good deal too,
in habit; still he differs from his Tibetan prototype,
though not so decidedly as from the Nepalese and
Bhotanese, between whom he is hemmed into a tract
of mountain country, barely 60 miles in breadth. The
Lepchas possess a tradition of the flood, during which
a couple escaped to the top of a mountain (Tendong)
near Dorjiling. The earliest traditions which they have
of their history date no further back than some three