sliding, and from the action of streams, some of which
are large, and. cut deep channels. In one I had the
misfortune to lose my only sheep, which was carried
away by the torrent. These streams were crossed
by means of sticks and ricketty bamboos, and the
steep sides (sometimes twenty or thirty feet high) were
ascended by notched poles.
Leeches swarmed in incredible profusion in the
Streams and damp grass, and among the bushes : they
got into my hair, hung on my eyelids, and crawled up
my back. I repeatedly took upwards of a hundred
from my legs, where the small ones used to collect in
clusters on the instep: the sores which they produced
were not healed for five months afterwards, and I retain
the scars to the present day. Snuff and tobacco leaves
are the best antidote, but when marching in the rain,
it is impossible to apply this simple remedy. The best
plan I found to be rolling the leaves over the feet,
inside the stockings, and powdering the legs with
snuff.
Another pest is a small midge, or sand-fly, which
causes intolerable irritation, and is in this respect the
most insufferable torment in Sikkim; the minutest
rent in one’s clothes is detected by this insatiable
bloodsucker, which is itself so small as to be barely
visible without a microscope. We daily arrived at our
camping ground, streaming with blood, and mottled
with the bites of peepsas, gnats, midges, and mosquitos,
besides being infested with ticks.
As the rains advanced, insects seemed to be called:
into existence in countless swarms; moths, cockr
chafers, glow-worms, and cockroaches, made my tent
a Noah’s ark by night, when the candle was burning;
together with winged ants, May-flies, flying earwigs*
and many beetles, while a very large species of daddy-
long-legs swept across my face as I wrote my journal*
or plotted off my map. After putting out the light, they
gradually departed, except a few which could not find
the way out, and remained to disturb my slumbers.
. Chakoong is a remarkable spot in the bottom of the
valley, at an angle of the Lachen-Lachoong, which
here receives an affluent from a mountain 17,557 feet
high, on the Chola range to the east. There is no
village, but some grass huts used by travellers, which
are built close to the river on a very broad flat, fringed
with alder, hornbeam, and birch : the elevation is 4,400
feet, and many European genera not found about
Dorjiling, and belonging to the temperate Himalaya,
grow intermixed with tropical plants that are found no
further north. The birch, willow, alder, and walnut
grow side by side with wild plantain, and gigantic
bamboos : figs, balsams, peppers, and gigantic climbing
vines, grow mixed with brambles, speedwell, forget-me-
not, and nettles that sting like poisoned arrows. The
wild English strawberry is common, but bears a
tasteless fru it: its inferiority is however counterbalanced
by the abundance of a grateful yellow raspberry*
Parasitical Orchids cover the trunks of oaks, while
Thalictrum and Geranium grow under their shade,
Monotropa and Balanophora, both parasites on the
roots of trees (the one a native of north Europe and
the other of tropical latitudes), push their leafless