[83] Juniper, 3; yew, Abies Webbiana, Brunoniana, and Smithiana: Larch, Pinus excelsa, and longifolia, and Podocarpus neriifolia.
[84] Larch, Cupressus funebris, Podocarpus neriifolia, Abies Brunoniana.
[85] A juniper (the European communis), Deodar (possibly only a variety of the Cedar of Lebanon and of Mount Atlas), Pinus Gerardiana, P. excelsa, and Crupressus torulosa.
[86] Since writing the above, I have seen, in the magnificent Pinetum at Dropmore, noble cedars, with the length and hue of leaf, and the pensile branches of the Deodar, and far more beautiful than that is, and as unlike the common Lebanon Cedar as possible. When it is considered from how very few wild trees (and these said to be exactly alike) the many dissimilar varieties of the C. Libani have been derived; the probability of this, the Cedar of Algiers, and of the Himalayas (Deodar) being all forms of one species, is greatly increased. We cannot presume to judge from the few cedars which still remain, what the habit and appearance of the tree may have been, when it covered the slopes of Libanus, and seeing how very variable Coniferæ are in habit, we may assume that its surviving specimens give us no information on this head. Should all three prove one, it will materially enlarge our ideas of the distribution and variation of species. The botanist will insist that the typical form of cedar is that which retains its characters best over the greatest area, namely, the Deodar; in which case the prejudice of the ignorant, and the preconceived ideas of the naturalist, must yield to the fact that the old familiar Cedar of Lebanon is an unusual variety of the Himalayan Deodar.
At the bottom of the valley we turned up the stream, and passing the Tassichooding convents[[87]] and temple, crossed the river—which was a furious torrent, about twelve yards wide—to the village of Kambachen, on a flat terrace a few feet above the stream. There were about a dozen houses of wood, plastered with mud and dung, scattered over a grassy plain of a few acres, fenced in, as were also a few fields, with stone dykes. The only cultivation consists of radishes, potatos, and barley: no wheat is grown, the climate being said to be too cold for it, by which is probably meant that it is foggy,—the elevation (11,380 feet) being 2000 feet less than that of Yangma village, and the temperature therefore 6° to 7° warmer; but of all the mountain gorges I have ever visited, this is by far the wildest, grandest, and most gloomy; and that man should hybernate here is indeed extraordinary, for there is no route up the valley, and all communication with Lelyp,[[88]] two marches down the river, is cut off in winter, when the houses are buried in snow, and drifts fifteen feet deep are said to be common. Standing on the little flat of Kambachen, precipices, with inaccessible patches of pine wood, appeared to the west, towering over head; while across the narrow valley wilder and less wooded crags rose in broken ridges to the glaciers of Nango. Up the valley, the view was cut off by bluff cliffs; whilst down it, the scene was most remarkable: enormous black, round-backed moraines, rose, tier above tier, from a flat lake-bed, apparently hemming in the river between the lofty precipices on the east flank of the valley. These had all been deposited at the mouth of a lateral valley, opening just below the village, and descending from Junnoo, a mountain of 25,312 feet elevation, and one of the grandest of the Kinchinjunga group, whose top—though only five miles distant in a straight line—rises 13,932 feet[[89]] above the village. Few facts show more decidedly the extraordinary steepness and depth of the Kambachen valley near the village, which, though nearly 11,400 feet above the sea, lies between two mountains only eight miles apart, the one 25,312 feet high, the other (Nango), 19,000 feet.
[87] These were built by the Sikkim people, when the eastern valleys of Nepal belonged to the Sikkim rajah.
[88] Which I passed, on the Tambur, on the 21st Nov. See [page 204.]
[89] his is one of the most sudden slopes in this part of the Himalaya, the angle between the top of Junnoo and Kambachen being 2,786 feet per mile, or 1 in 1·8. The slope from the top of Mont Blanc to the Chamouni valley is 2,464 feet per mile, or 1 in 2·1. That from Monte Rosa top to Macugnaga greatly exceeds either.
The villagers received us very kindly, and furnished us with a guide for the Choonjerma pass, leading to the Yalloong valley, the most easterly in Nepal; but he recommended our not attempting any part of the ascent till the morrow, as it was past 1 p.m., and we should find no camping-ground for half the way up. The villagers gave us the leg of a musk deer, and some red potatos, about as big as walnuts—all they could spare from their winter-stock. With this scanty addition to our stores we started down the valley, for a few miles alternately along flat lake-beds and over moraines, till we crossed the stream from the lateral valley, and ascending a little, camped on its bank, at 11,400 feet elevation.
In the afternoon I botanized amongst the moraines, which were very numerous, and had been thrown down at right-angles to the main valley, which latter being here very narrow, and bounded by lofty precipices, must have stopped the parent glaciers, and effected the heaping of some of these moraines to at least 1000 feet above the river. The general features were modifications of those seen in the Yangma valley, but contracted into a much smaller space.