At Pemiongchi a superior Lama met me with another overwhelming present: he was a most jolly fat monk, shaven and girdled, and dressed in a scarlet gown: my Lepchas kotowed to him, and he blessed them by the laying on of hands.
Illustration—PEMIONGCHI GOOMPA AND CHAITS.
There is a marsh on this spur, full of the common English Acorus Calamus, or sweet-flag, whose roots being very aromatic, are used in griping disorders of men and cattle. Hence we descended suddenly to the Great Rungeet, which we reached at its junction with the Kulhait: the path was very steep and slippery, owing to micaceous rocks, and led along the side of an enormous Mendong,* [This remarkable structure, called the Kaysing Mendong, is 200 yards long, 10 feet high, and 6 or 8 feet broad: it is built of flat, slaty stones, and both faces are covered with inscribed slates, of which there are upwards of 700, and the inscriptions, chiefly "Om Mani," etc., are in both the Uchen and Lencha Ranja characters of Tibet. A tall stone, nine feet high, covered also with inscriptions, terminates it at the lower end.] which ran down the hill for several hundred yards, and had a large chait at each end, with several smaller ones at intervals. Throughout its length were innumerable inscriptions of "Om Mani Padmi om," with well carved figures of Boodh in his many incarnations, besides Lamas, etc. At the lower end was a great flat area, on which are burnt the bodies of Sikkim people of consequence: the poorer people are buried, the richer burned, and their ashes scattered or interred, but not in graves proper, of which there are none. Nor are there any signs of Lepcha interment throughout Sikkim; though chaits are erected to the memory of the departed, they have no necessary connection with the remains, and generally none at all. Corpses in Sikkim are never cut to pieces and thrown into lakes, or exposed on hills for the kites and crows to devour, as is the case in Tibet.
We passed some curious masses of crumpled chlorite slate, presenting deep canals or furrows, along which a demon once drained all the water from the Pemiongchi spur, to the great annoyance of the villagers: the Lamas, however, on choosing this as a site for their temples, easily confounded the machinations of the evil spirit, who, in the eyes of the simple Lepchas, was answerable for all the mischief.
I crossed the Great Rungeet at 1840 feet above the sea, where its bed was twenty yards in width; a rude bridge, composed of two culms of bamboo and a handrail, conducted me to the other side, where we camped (on the east bank) in a thick tropical jungle. In the evening I walked down the banks of the river, which flowed in a deep gorge, cumbered with enormous boulders of granite, clay-slate, and mica-slate; the rocks in situ were all of the latter description, highly inclined, and much dislocated. Some of the boulders were fully ten feet in diameter, permeated and altered very much by granite veins which had evidently been injected when molten, and had taken up angular masses of the chlorite which remained, as it were, suspended in the veins.
It is not so easy to account for the present position of these blocks of granite, a rock not common at elevations below 10,000 feet. They have been transported from a considerable distance in the interior of the lofty valley to the north, and have descended not less than 8000 feet, and travelled fully fifteen miles in a straight line, or perhaps forty along the river bed. It may be supposed that moraines have transported them to 8000 feet (the lowest limit of apparent moraines), and the power of river water carried them further; if so, the rivers must have been of much greater volume formerly than they are now.
Our camp was on a gravel flat, like those of the Nepal valleys, about sixty feet above the river; its temperature was 52 degrees, which felt cool when bathing.
From the river we proceeded west, following a steep and clayey ascent up the end of a very long spur, from the lofty mountain range called Mungbreu, dividing the Great Rungeet from the Teesta. We ascended by a narrow path, accomplishing 2,500 feet in an hour and a quarter, walking slowly but steadily, without resting; this I always found a heavy pull in a hot climate.
At about 4000 feet above the sea, the spur became more open and flat, like those of the Kulhait valley, with alternate slopes and comparative flats: from this elevation the view north, south, and west, was very fine; below us flowed the river, and a few miles up it was the conical wooded hill of Tassiding, rising abruptly from a fork of the deep river gorge, crowned with its curious temples and mendongs, and bristling with chaits: on it is the oldest monastery in Sikkim, occupying a singularly picturesque and prominent position. North of this spur, and similar to it, lay that of Raklang, with the temple and monastery of the same name, at about this elevation. In front, looking west, across the Great Rungeet, were the monasteries of Changachelling and Pemiongchi, perched aloft; and south of these were the flat-topped spurs of the Kulhait valley, with their villages, and the great mendong which I had passed on the previous day, running like a white line down the spur. To the north, beyond Tassiding, were two other monasteries, Doobdee and Sunnook, both apparently placed on the lower wooded flanks of Kinchinjunga; whilst close by was Dholing, the seventh religious establishment now in sight.
We halted at a good wooden house to refresh ourselves with Murwa beer, where I saw a woman with cancer in the face, an uncommon complaint in this country. I here bought a little black puppy, to be my future companion in Sikkim: he was of a breed between the famous Tibet mastiff and the common Sikkim hunting-dog, which is a variety of the sorry race called Pariah in the plains. Being only a few weeks old, he looked a mere bundle of black fur; and I carried him off, for he could not walk.