The villagers at Keadom, where we slept on the 26th, were busy cutting the crops of millet, maize, and Amaranthus. A girl who, on my way down the previous month, had observed my curiosity about a singular variety of the maize, had preserved the heads on their ripening, and now brought them to me. The peaches were all gathered, and though only half ripe, were better than Dorjiling produce. A magnificent tree of Bucklandia, one of the most beautiful evergreens in Sikkim, grew near this village; it had a trunk twenty-one feet seven inches in girth, at five feet from the ground, and was unbranched for forty feet.[[299]] Ferns and the beautiful air-plant Cœlogyne Wallichii grew on its branches, with other orchids, while Clematis and Stauntonia climbed the trunk. Such great names (Buckland, Staunton, and Wallich) thus brought before the traveller’s notice, never failed to excite lively and pleasing emotions: it is the ignorant and unfeeling alone who can ridicule the association of the names of travellers and naturalists with those of animals and plants.
[299] This superb tree is a great desideratum in our gardens; I believe it would thrive in the warm west of England. Its wood is brown, and not valuable as timber, but the thick, bright, glossy, evergreen foliage is particularly handsome, and so is the form of the crown. It is also interesting in a physiological point of view, from the woody fibre being studded with those curious microscopic discs so characteristic of pines, and which when occurring on fossil wood are considered conclusive as to the natural family to which such woods belong. Geologists should bear in mind that not only does the whole natural order to which Bucklandia belongs, possess this character, but also various species of Magnoliaceæ found in India, Australia, Borneo, and South America.
We arrived at Choongtam (for the fourth time) at noon, and took up our quarters in a good house near the temple. The autumn and winter flowering plants now prevailed here, such as Labiatæ, which are generally late at this elevation; and grasses, which, though rare in the damp forest regions, are so common on these slopes that I here gathered twenty-six kinds. I spent a day here in order to collect seeds of the superb rhododendrons[[300]] which I had discovered in May, growing on the hills behind. The ascent was now difficult, from the length of the wiry grass, which rendered the slopes so slippery that it was impossible to ascend without holding on by the tussocks.
[300] These Rhododendrons are now all flourishing at Kew and elsewhere: they are R. Dalhousiæ, arboreum, Maddeni, Edgeworthii, Aucklandii and virgatum.
A ragged Tibetan mendicant (Phud) was amusing the people: he put on a black mask with cowrie shells for eyes, and danced uncouth figures with a kind of heel and toe shuffle, in excellent time, to rude Tibetan songs of his own: for this he received ample alms, which a little boy collected in a wallet. These vagrants live well upon charity; they bless, curse, and transact little affairs of all kinds up and down the valleys of Sikkim and Tibet; this one dealt in red clay teapots, sheep and puppies.
We found Meepo at Choongtam: I had given him leave (when here last) to go back to the Rajah, and to visit his wife; and he had returned with instructions to conduct me to the Chola and Yakla passes, in Eastern Sikkim. These passes, like that of Tunkra ([p. 110]), lead over the Chola range to that part of Tibet which is interposed between Sikkim and Bhotan. My road lay past the Rajah’s residence, which we considered very fortunate, as apparently affording Campbell an opportunity of a conference with his highness, for which both he and the Tchebu Lama were most anxious.
On the way down the Lachen-Lachoong, we found the valley still flooded (as described at [p. 20] and [p. 146]), and the alders standing with their trunks twelve feet under water; but the shingle dam was now dry and hard: it would probably soften, and be carried away by the first rains of the following year. I left here the temperate flora of northern Sikkim, tropical forms commencing to appear: of these the nettle tribe were most numerous in the woods. A large grape, with beautiful clusters of round purple berries, was very fair eating; it is not the common vine of Europe, which nevertheless is probably an Himalayan plant, the Vitis Indica.[[301]]
[301] The origin of the common grape being unknown, it becomes a curious question to decide whether the Himalayan Vitis Indica is the wild state of that plant: an hypothesis strengthened by the fact of Bacchus, etc., having come from the East.