CHAPTER XXII.
Leave Lachoong for Tunkra pass------Moraines and their vegetation—Pines
of great dimensions—Wild currants—Glaciers—Summit of pass
E le v a tio n— Y iew s— P l a n t s— W in d s— Lacheepia rock—Extreme c o ld
Kinchinjunga—Himalayan grouse—Return to Lachoong Ascent to
Yeumtong—Flats and deMcles—Buried pine-trunks—Hot-springs—
Behaviour of Singtam Soubah—Leave for Momay Samdong—Upper
limit of trees—Glacial terraces, &c.—Forked Donkia—Ascent to
Donkia pass— Scenery— L ak e s-T ib e t-B h om tso -A ru n r iv e r -
Kiang-lah mountains—Y aru-Tsampu river—Appearance of Tibet—
Kinchinjhow, and Kinchinjunga—Chola range—Deceptive appearance
of distant landscape—Perpetual snow—Pulses—Plants—Tnpe de
roche—Return to Momay—Dogs and yaks—Birds—Insects—Quadrupeds
Hot springs—Marmots—Kinchinjhow glacier.
T h e Singtam Soubah being again laid up here from
the consequences of leech-bites, I took the opportunity
of visiting the Tunkra-lah pass, represented as the
most snowy in Sikkim; which I found to be the case.
The route lay over the moraines on the north flank of
the Tuhkrachoo, which are divided by narrow dry
gullies, and composed of enormous blocks disintegrating
into a deep layer of clay. All are clothed
with luxuriant herbage and flowering shrubs, besides
small larches and firs, rhododendrons, and maples;
with Pyrus, cherry, Pieris, laurel, and Goughia. The
musk-deer inhabits these woods, and at this season I
have never seen it higher, Large monkeys are also
found on the skirts of the pine-forests, and a curious
long-tailed animal, Ailurus ochraceus, peculiar to the
Himalaya, something between a diminutive bear and a
squirrel. In the dense and gigantic forest of Abies
Brunoniana and silver fir, I measured one of the
former trees, and found it twenty-eight feet in girth,
and above 120 in height. The silver fir attains thirty-
five feet in girth, with a trunk unbranched for forty
feet.
The path was narrow and difficult in the wood, and
especially along the bed of the stream, where grew
ugly trees of larch, eighty feet high, and abundance of
a new species of alpine strawberry with oblong fruit,
Currant-bushes also were plentiful, generally growing
on the pine-trunks, in strange association with a «mall
species of Begonia, a hothouse tribe of plants in
England. Emerging from the forest, vast old moraines
are crossed, in a shallow mountain valley, several
miles long and broad, 12,000 feet above the sea,
choked with rhododendron shrubs, and nearly encircled
by snowy mountains. Heavy rain fell in the
afternoon, and we halted under some rocks : as I had
brought no tent, my bed was placed beneath the shelter
of one, near which my followers burrowed.
On the next morning we proceeded up the valley,
towards a very steep rocky barrier, through which
the river cut a narrow gorge, and beyond which
rose lofty snowy mountains; the peak of Tunkra
being to our left hand (north). Saxifrages grew here
in profuse tufts of golden blossoms, with rushes,
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