Himalayan Journals, vol 2, J. D. Hooker [small books to read txt] 📗

aim at her ribs; these animals were changing their long winter's wool for sleek hair, and the former hung about

them in ragged masses, like tow. Their calves gambolled by their

sides, the drollest of animals, like ass-colts in their antics,

kicking up their short hind-legs, whisking their bushy tails in the air, rushing up and down the grassy slopes, and climbing like cats to the top of the rocks.

The Soubah and Phipun came early to take me to Kongra Lama, bringing ponies, genuine Tartars in bone and breed. Remembering the Dewan's

impracticable saddle at Bhomsong, I stipulated for a horse-cloth or pad, upon which I had no sooner jumped than the beast threw back his ears, seated himself on his haunches, and, to my consternation, slid backwards down a turfy slope, pawing the earth with his fore-feet as he went, and leaving me on the ground, amid shrieks of laughter from my Lepchas. My steed being caught, I again mounted, and was being led forward, when he took to shaking himself like a dog till the pad

slipped under his belly, and I was again unhorsed. Other ponies

displayed equal prejudices against my mode of riding, or having my

weight anywhere but well on their shoulders, being all-powerful in

their fore-quarters; and so I was compelled to adopt the high

demi-pique saddle with short stirrups, which forced me to sit with my knees up to my nose, and to grip with the calves of my legs and

heels. All the gear was of yak or horse-hair, and the bit was a curb and ring, or a powerful twisted snaffle..

The path ran N.N.W. for two miles, and then crossed the Lachen above its junction with the Nunee* [I suspect there is a pass by the Nunee to the sheds I saw up the Zemu valley on the 2nd of July, as I

observed yaks grazing high up the mountains: the distance cannot be great, and there is little or no snow to interfere.] from the west: the stream was rapid, and twelve yards in breadth; its temperature

was 48 degrees. About six miles above Tungu, the Lachen is joined by the Chomio-choo, a large affluent from Chomiomo mountain. Above this the Lachen meanders along a broad stony bed; and the path rises over a great ancient moraine, whose level top is covered with pools, but both that and its south face are bare, from exposure to the south

wind, which blows with fury through this contracted part of the

valley to the rarified atmosphere of the lofty, open, and dry country beyond. Its north slope, on the contrary, is covered with small trees and brushwood, rhododendron, birch, honeysuckle, and mountain-ash.

These are the most northern shrubs in Sikkim, and I regarded them

with deep interest, as being possibly the last of their kind to be

met with in this meridian, for many degrees further north: perhaps

even no similar shrubs occur between this and the Siberian Altai, a distance of 1,500 miles. The magnificent yellow cowslip (_Primula

Sikkimensis_) gilded the marshes, and Caltha,* [This is the

C. scaposa, n. sp. The common Caltha palustris, or "marsh

marigold" of England, which is not found in Sikkim, is very abundant in the north-west Himalaya.] Trollius, Anemone, Arenaria, Draba,

Saxifrages, Potentillas, Ranunculus, and other very alpine

plants abounded.

At the foot of the moraine was a Tibetan camp of broad, black,

yak-hair tents, stretched out with a complicated system of ropes, and looking at a distance--(to borrow M. Huc's graphic simile)--like

fat-bodied, long-legged spiders! Their general shape is hexagonal,

about twelve feet either way, and they are stretched over six short posts, and encircled with a low stone wall, except in front. In one of them I found a buxom girl, the image of good humour, making butter and curd from yak-milk. The churns were of two kinds; one being an

oblong box of birch-bark, or close bamboo wicker-work, full of

branched rhododendron twigs, in which the cream is shaken: she

good-naturedly showed me the inside, which was frosted with

snow-white butter, and alive with maggots. The other churn was a

goat-skin, which was rolled about, and shaken by the four legs.

The butter is made into great squares, and packed in yak-hair cloths; the curd is eaten either fresh, or dried and pulverised (when it is called "Ts'cheuzip").

Except bamboo and copper milk-vessels, wooden ladles, tea-churn, and pots, these tents contained no furniture but goat-skins and blankets, to spread on the ground as a bed. The fire was made of sheep and

goats'-droppings, lighted with juniper-wood; above it hung tufts of yaks'-hair, one for every animal lost during the season,* [The

Siberians hang tufts of horse-hair inside their houses from

superstitious motives (Ermann's "Siberia," i., 281).] by which means a reckoning is kept. Although this girl had never before seen a

European, she seemed in no way discomposed at my visit, and gave me a large slice of fresh curd.

Beyond this place (alt. 14,500 feet), the valley runs up north-east, becoming very stony and desolate, with green patches only by the

watercourses: at this place, however, thick fogs came on, and

obscured all view. At 15,000 feet, I passed a small glacier on the

west side of the valley, the first I had met with that descended

nearly to the river, during the whole course of the Teesta.

Five miles further on we arrived at the tents of the Phipun, whose

wife was prepared to entertain us with Tartar hospitality:

magnificent tawny Tibet mastiffs were baying at the tent-door, and

some yaks and ponies were grazing close by. We mustered twelve in

number, and squatted cross-legged in a circle inside the tent, the

Soubah and myself being placed on a pretty Chinese rug. Salted and

buttered tea was immediately prepared in a tea-pot for us on the mat, and in a great caldron for the rest of the party; parched rice and

wheat-flour, curd, and roasted maize* [Called "pop-corn" in America, and prepared by roasting the maize in an iron vessel, when it splits and turns partly inside out, exposing a snow-white spongy mass of

farina. It looks very handsome, and would make a beautiful dish for dessert.] were offered us, and we each produced our wooden cup, which was kept constantly full of scalding tea-soup, which, being made with fresh butter, was very good. The flour was the favourite food, of

which each person dexterously formed little dough-balls in his cup, an operation I could not well manage, and only succeeded in making a nauseous paste, that stuck to my jaws and in my throat. Our hostess'

hospitality was too exigeant for me, but the others seemed as if

they could not drink enough of the scalding tea.

We were suddenly startled from our repast by a noise like loud

thunder, crash following crash, and echoing through the valley.

The Phipun got up, and coolly said, "The rocks are falling, it is

time we were off, it will rain soon." The moist vapours had by this time so accumulated, as to be condensed in rain on the cliffs of

Chomiomo and Kinchinjhow; which, being loosened, precipitated

avalanches of rocks and snow. We proceeded amidst dense fog, soon

followed by hard rain; the roar of falling rocks on either hand

increasing as these invisible giants spoke to one another in voices of thunder through the clouds. The effect was indescribably grand:

and as the weather cleared, and I obtained transient peeps of their precipices of blue ice and black rock towering 5000 feet above me on either hand, the feeling of awe produced was almost overpowering.

Heavy banks of vapour still veiled the mountains, but the rising mist exposed a broad stony track, along which the Lachen wandered, split into innumerable channels, and enclosing little oases of green

vegetation, lighted up by occasional gleams of sunshine. Though all around was enveloped in gloom, there was in front a high blue arc of cloudless sky, between the beetling cliffs that formed the stern

portals of the Kongra Lama pass.

CHAPTER XXI.

Top of Kongra Lama -- Tibet frontier -- Elevation -- View --

Vegetation -- Descent to Tungu -- Tungu-choo -- Ponies -- Kinchinjhow and Changokhang mountains -- Palung plains -- Tibetans -- Dogs --

Dingcbam province of Tibet -- Inhabitants -- Dresses -- Women's

ornaments -- Blackening faces -- Coral -- Tents -- Elevation of

Palung -- Lama -- Shawl-wool goats -- Shearing -- Siberian plants --

Height of glaciers, and perpetual snow -- Geology -- Plants, and wild animals -- Marmots -- Insects -- Birds -- Choongtam Lama -- Religious exercises -- Tibetan hospitality -- Delphinium -- Perpetual snow --

Temperature at Tungu -- Return to Tallum Samdong -- To Lamteng --

Houses -- Fall of Barometer -- Cicadas -- Lime deposit -- Landslips -- Arrival at Choongtam -- Cobra -- Rageu -- Heat of Climate --

Velocity and volume of rivers measured -- Leave for Lachoong valley -- Keadom -- General features of valley -- Lachoong village -- Tunkra mountain -- Moraines -- Cultivation -- Lachoong Phipun -- Lama

ceremonies beside a sick-bed.

We reached the boundary between Sikkim and Tibet early in the

afternoon; it is drawn along Kongra Lama, which is a low flat spur

running east from Kinchinjhow towards Chomiomo, at a point where

these mountains are a few miles apart, thus crossing the Lachen

river:* [The upper valley of the Lachen in Tibet, which I ascended in the following October, is very open, flat, barren, and stony; it is bounded on the north by rounded spurs from Chomiomo, which are

continued east to Donkia, forming a watershed to the Lachen on the

south, and to the Arun on the north.] it is marked by cairns of

stone, some rudely fashioned into chaits, covered with votive rags on wands of bamboo. I made the altitude by barometer 15,745 feet above the sea, and by boiling water, 15,694 feet, the water boiling at

184.1 degrees; the temperature of the air between 2.40 and 4 p.m.

varied from 41.3 degrees to 42.5 degrees, the dew-point 39.8 degrees; that of the Lachen was 47 degrees, which was remarkably high. We were bitterly cold; as the previous rain had wetted us through, and a keen wind was blowing up the valley. The continued mist and fog

intercepted all view, except of the flanks of the great mountains on either hand, of the rugged snowy ones to the south, and of those

bounding the Lachen to the north. The latter were unsnowed, and

appeared lower than Kongra Lama, the ground apparently sloping away in that direction; but when I ascended them, three months afterwards, I found they were 3000 feet higher! a proof how utterly fallacious

are estimates of height, when formed by the eye alone. My informants called them Peuka-t'hlo; "peu" signifies north in Tibetan, and

"t'hlo" a hill in Lepcha.

Isolated patches of vegetation appeared on the top of the pass, where I gathered forty kinds of plants, most of them being of a tufted

habit characteristic of an extreme climate; some (as species of

Caryophylleae) forming hemi-spherical balls on the naked soil;

others* [The other plants found on the pass were; of smooth hairless ones, Ranunculus, Fumitory, several species of _Stellaria,

Arenaria, Cruciferae, Parnassia, Morina, saxifrages, _Sedum,

primrose, Herminium, Polygonum, Campanula, Umbelliferae, grasses

and Carices: of woolly or hairy once, _Anemone, Artemisia,

Myosotis, Draba, Potentilla, and several _Compositae, etc.] growing in matted tufts level with the ground. The greater portion had no

woolly covering; nor did I find any of the cottony species of

Saussurea, which are so common on the wetter mountains to the

southward. Some most delicate-flowered plants even defy the biting

winds of these exposed regions; such are a prickly Meconopsis with slender flower-stalks and four large blue poppy-like petals, a

Cyananthus with a membranous bell-shaped corolla,