From this place we returned to Dorjiling, arriving
on the afternoon of the following day.
The most interesting trip to be made from
Dorjiling, is that to the summit of Tonglo, a mountain
on the Singalelah range, 10,079 feet high, due west of
the station, and twelve miles in a straight line, but fully
thirty by the path.
Leaving the station by a native path, the latter
plunges at once into a forest, and descends very
rapidly, occasionally emerging on cleared spurs, where
are fine crops of various millets, with much maize and
rice. Of the latter grain as many as eight or ten
varieties are cultivated, but seldom irrigated, which,
owing to the dampness of the climate, is not necessary :
the produce is often eighty-fold, but the grain is large,
coarse, reddish, and rather gelatinous when boiled.
At about 4000 feet the great bamboo (“ Pao” Lepcha)
abounds; it flowers every year, which is not the case
with all the species of this genus, most of which flower
profusely over large tracts of country, once in a great
many years, and then die away; their place being
supplied by seedlings, which grow with immense
rapidity. This well-known fact is not due, as some
suppose, to the life of the species being of such a
duration, but to favourable circumstances in the season.
The Pao attains a height of 40 to 60 feet, and the
culms average in thickness the human thigh; it is
used for large water-vessels, and its leaves form
. admirable thatch, in universal use for European houses
at Dorjiling. Besides this, the Lepchas are acquainted
with nearly a dozen kinds of bamboo; these occur at
various elevations below 12,000 feet, forming, even in
the pine-woods, and above their zone, in the skirts of
the Rhododendron scrub, a small and sometimes almost
LEPCHA WATER-CARRIER WITH A BAMBOO CHUNGI.
impervious jungle. In an economical point of view
they may be classed as those which split readily, and
those which do not. The young shoots of several are