Joseph Dalton Hooker

“ We descended rapidly for many miles through beautiful rocky woods, with villages nestling amongst groves of banana and trellised climbers; and from the brow of a hill looked down upon a slope covered with vegetation and huts, which formed the mart of Chela, and below which the Boga-panee flowed in a deep gorge. The view was a very striking one: owing to the steepness of the valley below our feet, the roofs alone of the cottages were visible, from which ascended the sounds and smells of a dense native population, and to which there appeared to be no way of descending. ”

“ Tilotho, a beautiful village, is situated in a superb grove of Mango, Banyan, Peepul, Tamarind, and Bassia. The Date or toddy-palm and fan-palm are very abundant and tall: each had a pot hung under the crown. The natives climb these trunks with a hoop or cord round the body and both ancles, and a bottle-gourd or other vessel hanging round the neck to receive the juice from the stock-bottle, in this aerial wine-cellar. These palms were so lofty that the climbers, as they paused in their ascent to gaze with wonder at our large retinue, resembled monkeys rather than men. ”

“ On the following morning I was travelling over a flat and apparently rising country, along an excellent road, with groves of bamboos and stunted trees on either hand, few villages or palms, a sterile soil, with stunted grass and but little cultivation; altogether a country as unlike what I had expected to find in India as well might be. All around was a dead flat or table-land, out of which a few conical hills rose in the west, about 1000 feet high, covered with a low forest of dusky green or yellow, from the prevalence of bamboo. ”

“ This is a very handsome plant, to which even the beautiful drawing now prepared for publication hardly does justice, one of the specimens gathered on Campbell's Island measuring nearly a span across the leaves, from whose bases arose no fewer than thirteen flowering scapes, ten of them with the blossoms fully expanded. The delicacy of the rays, tipped with a faint rose-colour, forms a striking contrast with the dark purple eye and the glossy varnished deep green foliage. ”

“ The whole horizon is bounded by the sea-like expanse of the plains, which stretch away into the region of sunshine and fine weather, in one boundless flat.
In the distance, the courses of the Teesta and Cosi, the great drainers of the snowy Himalayas, and the recipients of innumerable smaller rills, are with difficulty traced at this, the dry season. The ocean-like appearance of this southern view is even more conspicuous in the heavens than on the land, the clouds arranging themselves after a singularly sea-scape fashion. Endless strata run in parallel ribbons over the extreme horizon ”

“ The views from the margins of this plateau are magnificent: 4000 feet below are bay-like valleys, carpetted as with green velvet, from which rise tall palms, tree-ferns with spreading crowns, and rattans shooting their pointed heads, surrounded with feathery foliage, as with ostrich plumes, far above the great trees. Beyond are the Jheels, looking like a broad shallow sea with the tide half out, bounded in the blue distance by the low-hills of Tipperah. ”

“ If they serve a good hills-man like themselves, they will follow him with alacrity, sleep on the cold, bleak mountain exposed to the pitiless rain, without a murmur, lay down the heavy burden to carry their master over a stream, or give him a helping hand up a rock or precipice—do anything, in short, but encounter a foe, for I believe the Lepcha to be a veritable coward. ”

“ Paintings, remarkable only for their hideous proportions and want of perspective, are daubed in vermilion, ochre, and indigo. The elephant, camel, and porpoise of the Ganges, dog, shepherd, peacock, and horse, are especially frequent, and so is a running pattern of a hand spread open, with a blood-red spot on the palm. A still less elegant but frequent object is the fuel, which is composed of the manure collected on the roads of the city, moulded into flat cakes, and stuck by the women on the walls to dry, retaining the sign-manual of the artist in the impressed form of her outspread hand. ”

“ I pitched my tent close to a little shed, at the gently sloping base of a mountain that divided the Lachoong river from a western tributary. It was a wild and most exposed spot: long stony mountains, grassy on the base near the river; distant snowy peaks, stupendous precipices, moraines, glaciers, transported boulders, and rocks rounded by glacial action, formed the dismal landscape which everywhere met the view. There was not a bush six inches high, and the only approach to woody plants were minute creeping willows and dwarf rhododendrons, with a very few prostrate junipers and Ephedra. ”

“ Mon Lepcha commands a most extensive view of Sikkim, southward to Dorjiling. At my feet lay the great and profound valley of the Ratong, a dark gulf of vegetation. Looking northward, the eye followed that river to the summit of Kinchinjunga (distant eighteen miles) , which fronts the beholder as Mont Blanc does when seen from the mountains on the opposite side of the valley of Chamouni. To the east are the immense precipices and glaciers of Pundim, and on the west those of Kubra, forming great supporters to the stupendous mountain between them. ”

“ A sudden descent leads to the Mahanuddee river, flowing in a shallow valley, over a pebbly bottom: it is a rapid river, even at this season; its banks are fringed with bushes, and it is as clear and sparkling as a trout stream in Scotland. Beyond it the road winds through a thick brushwood, choked with long grasses, and with but few trees, chiefly of Acacia, Dalbergia Sissoo, and a scarlet fruited Sterculia. The soil is a red, friable clay and gravel. ”

“ The same infallible guide cuts off mountain-tops and deeply snowed ridges, which to the unaided eye appear far lower than the point from which they are viewed; but which, from the quantity of snow on them, must be many thousand feet higher, and, from the angle they subtend in the instrument, must be at an immense distance. The want of refraction to lift the horizon, the astonishing precision of the outlines, and the brilliancy of the images of mountains reduced by distance to mere specks, are all circumstances tending to depress them to appearance. ”

“ From the top the view of the Ratong valley was very fine: to the north lay Yoksun, appearing from this height to occupy a flat, two miles long and one broad, girdled by steep mountains to the north and east, dipping very suddenly 2,200 feet to the Ratong on the west. To the right was a lofty hill, crowned with the large temple and convents of Doobdi, shadowed by beautiful weeping cypresses, and backed by lofty pine-clad mountains. Northward, the gorge of the Ratong opened as a gloomy defile, above which rose partially snowed mountains, which shut out Kinchinjunga. ”

“ The top of the pass was broad, grassy, and bushy with dwarf Bamboo, Rose, and Berberry, in great abundance, covered with mosses and lichens: it had been raining hard all the morning, and the vegetation was coated with ice: a dense fog obscured everything, and a violent south-east wind blew over the pass in our teeth. I collected some very curious and beautiful mosses, putting these frozen treasures into my box, in the form of exquisitely beautiful glass ornaments, or mosses frosted with silver. ”

“ A gulf of moraines, and enormous ridges of débris, lay at our feet, girdled by an amphitheatre of towering, snow-clad peaks, rising to 17,000 and 18,000 feet all around. Black scarped precipices rose on every side; deep snow-beds and blue glaciers rolled down every gulley, converging in the hollow below, and from each transporting its own materials, there ensued a complication of moraines, that presented no order to the eye. ”

“ Towards the embouchure, the banks rise ten feet high, the river expands into a muddy sea, and a long swell rolls in, to the disquiet of our fresh-water boatmen. Low islands of sand and mud stretch along the horizon: which, together with the ships, distorted by extraordinary refraction, flicker as if seen through smoke. Mud is the all prevalent feature; and though the water is not salt, we do not observe in these broad deltas that amount of animal life (birds, fish, alligators, and porpoises) , that teems in the narrow creeks of the western Sunderbunds. ”

“ Hence I descended to the Kulhait river, on my route back to Dorjiling, visiting my very hospitable tippling friend, the Kajee of Lingcham, on the way down: he humbly begged me to get him a pair of spectacles, for no other object than to look wise, as he had the eyes of a hawk; he told me that mine drew down universal respect in Sikkim, and that I had been drawn with them on, in the temple at Changachelling; and that a pair would not only wonderfully become him, but afford him the most pleasing recollections of myself. ”