1. To Yalloong two days; crossing Kanglanamo pass, 15,000 feet high.
3. To foot of Choonjerma pass, descending to 10,000 feet.
4. Cross Choonjerma pass, 15,260 feet, and proceed to Kambachen, 11,400 feet.
5. Cross Nango pass, 15,770, and camp on Yangma river, 11,000 feet.
6. Ascend to foot of Kanglachem pass, and camp at 15,000 feet.
7. Cross Kanglachem pass, probably 16,500 feet; and
8–10. It is said to be three marches hence to the Tibetan custom-house, and that two more snowy passes are crossed.
This allows no day of rest, and gives only five miles—as the crow flies—to be accomplished each day, but I assume fully fourteen of road distance; the labour spent in which would accomplish fully thirty over good roads. Four snowed passes at least are crossed, all above 15,000 feet, and after the first day the path does not descend below 10,000 feet. By this route about one-third of the circuit of Kinchinjunga is accomplished. Supposing the circuit were to be completed by the shortest practicable route, that is, keeping as near the summit as possible, the average time required for a man with his load would be upwards of a month.
To reach Tashirukpa by the eastern route from Yoksun, being a journey of about twenty-five days, requires a long detour to the southward and eastward, and afterwards the ascent of the Teesta valley, to Kongra Lama, and so north to the Tibetan Arun.
My first operation after encamping and arranging my instruments, was to sink the ground thermometer; but the earth being frozen for sixteen inches, it took four men several hours’ work with hammer and chisel, to penetrate so deep. There was much vegetable matter for the first eight or ten inches, and below that a fine red clay. I spent the afternoon, which was fine, in botanising. When the sun shone, the smell of the two rhododendrons was oppressive, especially as a little exertion at this elevation brings on headache. There were few mosses; but crustaceous lichens were numerous, and nearly all of them of Scotch, Alpine, European, and Arctic kinds. The names of these, given by the classical Linnæus and Wahlenberg, tell in some cases of their birth-places, in others of their hardihood, their lurid colours and weather-beaten aspects; such as tristis, gelida, glacialis, arctica, alpina, saxatilis, polaris, frigida, and numerous others equally familiar to the Scotch botanist. I recognised many as natives of the wild mountains of Cape Horn, and the rocks of the stormy Antarctic ocean; since visiting which regions I had not gathered them. The lichen called geographicus was most abundant, and is found to indicate a certain degree of cold in every latitude; descending to the level of the sea in latitude 52° north, and 50° south, but in lower latitudes only to be seen on mountains. It flourishes at 10,000 feet on the Himalaya, ascending thence to 18,000 feet. Its name, however, was not intended to indicate its wide range, but the curious maplike patterns which its yellow crust forms on the rocks.
Of the blocks of gneiss scattered over the Jongri spur, many are twenty feet in diameter. The ridge slopes gently south-west to the Choroong river, and more steeply north-east to the Ratong, facing Kinchin: it rises so very gradually to a peaked mountain between Jongri and Kubra, that it is not possible to account for the transport and deposit of these boulders by glaciers of the ordinary form, viz., by a stream of ice following the course of a valley; and we are forced to speculate upon the possibility of ice having capped the whole spur, and moved downwards, transporting blocks from the prominences on various parts of the spur.