I was here overtaken by a messenger with letters from Dr. Campbell, announcing that the Sikkim Rajah had disavowed the refusal to the Governor-General's letter, and authorising me to return through any part of Sikkim I thought proper. The bearer was a Lepcha attached to the court: his dress was that of a superior person, being a scarlet jacket over a white cotton dress, the breadth of the blue stripes of which generally denotes wealth; he was accompanied by a sort of attache, who wore a magnificent pearl and gold ear-ring, and carried his master's bow, as well as a basket on his back; while an attendant coolie bore their utensils and food. Meepo, or Teshoo (in Tibetan, Mr.), Meepo, as he was usually called, soon attached himself to me, and proved an active, useful, and intelligent companion, guide, and often collector, during many months afterwards.
The vegetation round Mywa Guola is still thoroughly tropical: the banyan is planted, and thrives tolerably, the heat being great during the day. Like the whole of the Tambur valley below 4000 feet, and especially on these flats, the climate is very malarious before and after the rains; and I was repeatedly applied to by natives suffering under attacks of fever. During the two days I halted, the mean temperature was 60 degrees (extremes, 80/41 degrees), that of the Tambur, 53 degrees, and of the Mywa, 56 degrees; each varying a few degrees (the smaller stream the most) between sunrise and 4 p.m.: the sunk thermometer was 72 degrees.
As we should not easily be able to procure food further on, I laid in a full stock here, and distributed blankets, etc., sufficient for temporary use for all the people, dividing them into groups or messes.
CHAPTER IX.
Leave Mywa — Suspension bridge — Landslips — Vegetation — Slope
of riverbed — Bees' nests — Glacial phenomena — Tibetans,
clothing, ornaments, amulets, salutation, children, dogs — Last
Limboo village, Taptiatok — Beautiful scenery — Tibet village of
Lelyp — Opuntia — Edgeworthia — Crab-apple — Chameleon and
porcupine — Praying machine — Abies Brunoniana — European plants
— Grand scenery — Arrive at Wallanchoon — Scenery around — Trees
— Tibet houses — Manis and Mendongs — Tibet household — Food —
Tea-soup — Hospitality — Yaks and Zobo, uses and habits of —
Bhoteeas — Yak-hair tents — Guobah of Walloong — Jhatamansi —
Obstacles to proceeding — Climate and weather — Proceed —
Rhododendrons, etc. — Lichens — Poa annua and Shepherd's purse —
Tibet camp — Tuquoroma — Scenery of pass — Glaciers and snow —
Summit — Plants, woolly, etc.
On the 18th November, we left Mywa Guola, and continued up the river to the village of Wallanchoon or Walloong, which was reached in six marches. The snowy peak of Junnoo (alt. 25,312 feet.) forms a magnificent feature from this point, seen up the narrow gorge of the river, bearing N.N.E. about thirty miles. I crossed the Mewa, an affluent from the north, by another excellent suspension bridge. In these bridges, the principal chains are clamped to rocks on either shore, and the suspended loops occur at intervals of eight to ten feet; the single sal-plank laid on these loops swings terrifically, and the handrails not being four feet high, the sense of insecurity is very great.
The Wallanchoon road follows the west bank, but the bridge above having been carried away, we crossed by a plank, and proceeded along very steep banks of decomposed chlorite schist, much contorted, and very soapy, affording an insecure footing, especially where great landslips had occurred, which were numerous, exposing acres of a reddish and white soil of felspathic clay, sloping at an angle of 30 degrees. Where the angle was less than 15 degrees, rice was cultivated, and partially irrigated. The lateral streams (of a muddy opal green) had cut beds 200 feet deep in the soft earth, and were very troublesome to cross, from the crumbling cliffs on either side, and their broad swampy channels.
Five or six miles above Mywa, the valley contracts much, and the Tambur (whose bed is elevated about 3000 feet) becomes a turbulent river, shooting along its course with immense velocity, torn into foam as it lashes the spurs of rock that flank it, and the enormous boulders with which its bed is strewn.* [In some places torrents of stone were carried down by landslips, obstructing the rivers; when in the beds of streams, they were often cemented by felspathic clay into a hard breccia of angular quartz, gneiss, and felspar nodules.] From this elevation to 9000 feet, its sinuous track extends about thirty miles, which gives the mean fall of 200 feet to the mile, quadruple of what it is for the lower part of its course. So long as its bed is below 5000 feet, a tropical vegetation prevails in the gorge, and along the terraces, consisting of tall bamboo, Bauhinia, Acacia, Melastoma, etc.; but the steep mountain sides above are either bare and grassy, or cliffs with scattered shrubs and trees, and their summits are of splintered slaty gneiss, bristling with pines: those faces exposed to the south and east are invariably the driest and most grassy; while the opposite are well wooded. Rhododendron arboreum becomes plentiful at 5000 to 6000 feet, forming a large tree on dry clayey slopes; it is accompanied by Indigofera, Andromeda, Spiraea, shrubby Compositae, and very many plants absent at similar elevations on the wet outer Dorjiling ranges.
In the contracted parts of the valley, the mountains often dip to the river-bed, in precipices of gneiss, under the ledges of which wild bees build pendulous nests, looking like huge bats suspended by their wings; they are two or three feet long, and as broad at the top, whence they taper downwards: the honey is much sought for, except in spring, when it is said to be poisoned by Rhododendron flowers, just as that, eaten by the soldiers in the retreat of the Ten Thousand, was by the flowers of the R. ponticum.
Above these gorges are enormous accumulations of rocks, especially at the confluence of lateral valleys, where they rest upon little flats, like the river-terraces of Mywa, but wholly formed of angular shingle, flanked with beds of river-formed gravel: some of these boulders were thirty or forty yards across, and split as if they had fallen from a height; the path passing between the fragments.* [The split fragments I was wholly unable to account for, till my attention was directed by Mr. Darwin to the observations of Charpentier and Agassiz, who refer similar ones met with in the Alps, to rocks which have fallen through crevasses in glaciers.—See "Darwin on Glaciers and Transported Boulders in North Wales." London, "Phil. Mag." xxi. p. 180.] At first I imagined that they had been precipitated from the mountains around; and I referred the shingle to land-shoots, which during the rains descend several thousand feet in devastating avalanches, damming up the rivers, and destroying houses, cattle, and cultivation; but though I still refer the materials of many such terraces to this cause, I consider those at the mouths of valleys to be due to ancient glacial action, especially when laden with such enormous blocks as are probably ice-transported.