Himalayan Journals Part 23

The latter part of the journey I performed on elephants during the heat of the day, and a more uncomfortable mode of conveyance surely never was adopted; the camel's pace is more fatiguing, but that of the elephant is extremely trying after a few miles, and is so injurious to the human frame that the Mahouts (drivers) never reach an advanced age, and often succ.u.mb young to spine-diseases, brought on by the incessant motion of the vertebral column. The broiling heat of the elephant's black back, and the odour of its oily driver, are disagreeable accompaniments, as are its habits of snorting water from its trunk over its parched skin, and the consequences of the great bulk of green food which it consumes.

From Siligoree I made a careful examination of the gravel beds that occur on the road north to the foot of the hills, and thence over the tertiary sandstone to Punkabaree. At the Rukti river, which flows south-west, the road suddenly rises, and crosses the first considerable hill, about two miles south of any rock _in situ._ This river cuts a cliff from 60 to 100 feet high, composed of stratified sand and water-worn gravel: further south, the spur declines into the plains, its course marked by the Sal that thrives on its gravelly soil. The road then runs north-west over a plain to an isolated hill about 200 feet high, also formed of sand and gravel.

We ascended to the top of this, and found it covered with blocks of gneiss, and much angular detritus. Hence the road gradually ascends, and becomes clayey. Argillaceous rocks, and a little ochreous sandstone appeared in highly-inclined strata, dipping north, and covered with great water-worn blocks of gneiss. Above, a flat terrace, flanked to the eastward by a low wooded hill, and another rise of sandstone, lead on to the great Baisarbatti terrace.

_Bombax, Erythrina,_ and _Duabanga_ (_Lagaerstraemia grandiflora_), were in full flower, and with the profusion of _Bauhinia,_ rendered the tree-jungle gay: the two former are leafless when flowering.

The Duabanga is the pride of these forests. Its trunk, from eight to fifteen feet in girth, is generally forked from the base, and the long pendulous branches which clothe the trunk for 100 feet, are thickly leafy, and terminated by racemes of immense white flowers, which, especially when in bud, smell most disagreeably of a.s.safoetida. The magnificent Apocyneous climber, _Beaumontia,_ was in full bloom, ascending the loftiest trees, and clothing their trunks with its splendid foliage and festoons of enormous funnel-shaped white flowers.

The report of a bed of iron-stone eight or ten miles west of Punkabaree determined our visiting the spot; and the locality being in a dense jungle, the elephants were sent on ahead.

We descended to the terraces flanking the Balasun river, and struck west along jungle-paths to a loosely-timbered flat. A sudden descent of 150 feet landed us on a second terrace. Further on, a third dip of about twenty feet (in some places obliterated) flanks the bed of the Balasun; the river itself being split into many channels at this season. The west bank, which is forty feet high, is of stratified sand and gravel, with vast slightly-worn blocks of gneiss: from the top of this we proceeded south-west for three miles to some Mechi villages, the inhabitants of which flocked to meet us, bringing milk and refreshments.

The Lohar-ghur, or "iron hill," lies in a dense dry forest.

Its plain-ward flanks are very steep, and covered with scattered weather-worn ma.s.ses of ochreous and black iron-stone, many of which are several yards long: it fractures with faint metallic l.u.s.tre, and is very earthy in parts: it does not affect the compa.s.s. There are no pebbles of iron-stone, nor water-worn rocks of any kind found with it.

The sandstones, close by, cropped out in thick beds (dip north 70 degrees): they are very soft, and beds of laminated clay, and of a slaty rock, are intercalated with them; also an excessively tough conglomerate, formed of an indurated blue or grey paste, with nodules of harder clay. There are no traces of metal in the rock, and the lumps of ore are wholly superficial.

Below Punkabaree the Baisarbatti stream cuts through banks of gravel overlying the sandstone (dip north 65 degrees). The sandstone is gritty and micaceous, intercalated with beds of indurated shale and clay; in which I found the shaft (apparently) of a bone; there were also beds of the same clay conglomerate which I had seen at Lohar-ghur, and thin seams of brown lignite; with a rhomboidal cleavage. In the bed of the stream were carbonaceous shales, with obscure impressions of fern leaves, of _Trizygia,_ and _Vertebraria_: both fossils characteristic of the Burdwan coal-fields (see Chapter I), but too imperfect to justify any conclusion as to the relation between these formations.* [These traces of fossils are not sufficient to identify the formation with that of the sewalik hills of North-west India; but its contents, together with its strike, dip, and position relatively to the mountains, and its mineralogical character, incline me to suppose it may be similar. Its appearance in such small quant.i.ties in Sikkim (where it rises but a few hundred feet above the level of the sea, whereas in k.u.maon it reaches 4000 feet), may be attributed to the greater amount of wearing which it must have undergone; the plains from which it rises being 1000 feet lower than those of k.u.maon, and the sea having consequently retired later, exposing the Sikkim sandstone to the effects of denudation for a much longer period. Hitherto no traces of this rock, or of any belonging to a similar geological epoch, have been found in the valleys of Sikkim; but when the narrowness of these is considered, it will not appear strange that such may have been removed from their surfaces: first, by the action of a tidal ocean; and afterwards, by that of tropical rains.]

Ascending the stream, these shales are seen _in situ,_ overlain by the metamorphic clay-slate of the mountains, and dipping inwards (northwards) like them. This is at the foot of the Punkabaree spur, and close to the bungalow, where a stream and land-slip expose good sections. The carbonaceous beds dip north 60 degrees and 70 degrees, and run east and west; much quartz rock is intercalated with them, and soft white and pink micaceous sandstones. The coal-seams are few in number, six to twelve inches thick, very confused and distorted, and full of elliptic nodules, or spheroids of quartzy slate, covered with concentric scaly layers of coal: they overlie the sandstones mentioned above. These scanty notices of superposition being collected in a country clothed with the densest tropical forest, where a geologist pursues his fatiguing investigations under disadvantages that can hardly be realized in England, will I fear long remain unconfirmed. I may mention, however, that the appearance of inversion of the strata at the foot of great mountain-ma.s.ses has been observed in the Alleghany chain, and I believe in the Alps.*

[Dr. M'Lelland informs me that in the Curruckpore hills, south of the Ganges, the clay-slates are overlain by beds of mica-slate, gneiss, and granite, which pa.s.s into one another.]

Ill.u.s.tration--A MECH, NATIVE OF THE SIKKIM TERAI.

A poor Mech was fis.h.i.+ng in the stream, with a basket curiously formed of a cylinder of bamboo, cleft all round in innumerable strips, held together by the joints above and below; these strips being stretched out as a balloon in the middle, and kept apart by a hoop: a small hole is cut in the cage, and a mouse-trap entrance formed: the cage is placed in the current with the open end upwards, where the fish get in, and though little bigger than minnows, cannot find their way out.

On the 20th we had a change in the weather: a violent storm from the south-west occurred at noon, with hail of a strange form, the stones being sections of hollow spheres, half an inch across and upwards, formed of cones with truncated apices and convex bases; these cones were aggregated together with their bases outwards. The large ma.s.ses were followed by a shower of the separate conical pieces, and that by heavy rain. On the mountains this storm was most severe: the stones lay at Dorjiling for seven days, congealed into ma.s.ses of ice several feet long and a foot thick in sheltered places: at Purneah, fifty miles south, stones one and two inches across fell, probably as whole spheres.

Ascending to Khersiong, I found the vegetation very backward by the road-sides. The rain had cleared the atmosphere, and the view over the plains was brilliant. On the top of the Khersiong spur a tremendous gale set in with a cold west wind: the storm cleared off at night, which at 10 p.m. was beautiful, with forked and sheet lightning over the plains far below us. The equinoctial gales had now fairly set in, with violent south-east gales, heavy thunder, lightning, and rain.

Whilst at Khersiong I took advantage of the very fair section afforded by the road from Punkabaree, to examine the structure of the spur, which seems to be composed of very highly inclined contorted beds (dip north) of metamorphic rocks, gneiss, mica-slate, clay-slate, and quartz; the foliation of which beds is parallel to the dip of the strata. Over all reposes a bed of clay, capped with a layer of vegetable mould, nowhere so thick and rich as in the more humid regions of 7000 feet elevation. The rocks appeared in the following succession in descending. Along the top are found great blocks of very compact gneiss buried in clay. Half a mile lower the same rock appears, dipping north-north-east 50 degrees. Below this, beds of saccharine quartz, with seams of mica, dip north-north-west 20 degrees. Some of these quartz beds are folded on themselves, and look like flattened trunks of trees, being composed of concentric layers, each from two to four inches thick: we exposed twenty-seven feet of one fold running along the side of the road, which was cut parallel to the strike. Each layer of quartz was separated from its fellows, by one of mica scales; and was broken up into cubical fragments, whose surfaces are no doubt cleavage and jointing places.

I had previously seen, but not understood, such flexures produced by metamorphic action on ma.s.ses of quartz when in a pasty state, in the Falkland Islands, where they have been perfectly well described by Mr. Darwin;* [Journal of Geological Society for 1846, p. 267, and "Voyage of the Beagle".] in whose views of the formation of these rocks I entirely concur.

The flexures of the gneiss are incomparably more irregular and confused than those of the quartz, and often contain flattened spheres of highly crystalline felspar, that cleave perpendicularly to the shorter axis. These spheres are disposed in layers parallel to the foliation of the gneiss: and are the result of a metamorphic action of great intensity, effecting a complete rearrangement and crystallization of the quartz and mica in parallel planes, whilst the felspar is aggregated in spheres; just as in the rearrangement of the mineral const.i.tuents of mica-schists, the alumina is crystallized in the garnets, and in the clay-slates the iron into pyrites.

The quartz below this dips north-north-west 45 degrees to 50 degrees, and alternates with a very hard slaty schist, dipping north-west 45 degrees, and still lower is a blue-grey clay-slate, dipping north-north-west 30 degrees. These rest on beds of slate, folded like the quartz mentioned above, but with cleavage-planes, forming lines radiating from the axis of each flexure, and running through all the concentric folds. Below this are the plumbago and clay slates of Punkabaree, which alternate with beds of mica-schist with garnets, and appear to repose immediately upon the carboniferous strata and sandstone; but there is much disturbance at the junction.

On re-ascending from Punkabaree, the rocks gradually appear more and more dislocated, the clay-slate less so than the quartz and mica-schist, and that again far less than the gneiss, which is so shattered and bent, that it is impossible to say what is _in situ,_ and what not. Vast blocks lie superficially on the ridges; and the tops of all the outer mountains, as of Khersiong spur, of Tonglo, Sinchul, and Dorjiling, appear a pile of such ma.s.ses. Injected veins of quartz are rare in the lower beds of schist and clay-slate, whilst the gneiss is often full of them; and on the inner and loftier ranges, these quartz veins are replaced by granite with tourmaline.

Lime is only known as a stalact.i.tic deposit from various streams, at elevations from 1000 to 7000 feet; one such stream occurs above Punkabaree, which I have not seen; another within the Sinchul range, on the great Rungeet river, above the exit of the Rummai; a third wholly in the great central Himalayan range, flowing into the Lachen river. The total absence of any calcareous rock in Sikkim, and the appearance of the deposit in isolated streams at such distant localities, probably indicates a very remote origin of the lime-charged waters.

From Khersiong to Dorjiling, gneiss is the only rock, and is often decomposed into clay-beds, 20 feet deep, in which the narrow, often zigzag folia of quartz remain quite entire and undisturbed, whilst every trace of the foliation of the softer mineral is lost.

At Pacheem, Dorjiling weather, with fog and drizzle, commenced, and continued for two days: we, reached Dorjiling on the 24th of March, and found that the hail which had fallen on the 20th was still lying in great ma.s.ses of crumbling ice in sheltered spots. The fall had done great damage to the gardens, and Dr. Campbell's tea-plants were cut to pieces.

Ill.u.s.tration--POCKET-COMB USED BT THE MECH TRIBES.

END OF VOLUME I OF HIMALAYAN JOURNALS.

HIMALAYAN JOURNALS or NOTES OF A NATURALIST

IN BENGAL, THE SIKKIM AND NEPAL HIMALAYAS, THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS, etc.

JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER, M.D., R.N., F.R.S.

Volume II

First published 1854 Reprinted 1999

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Arrangements for second journey into Sikkim--Opposition of Dewan-- La.s.soo Kajee--Tendong--Legend of flood--Lama of Silok-foke-- Namtchi--Tchebu Lama--Top of Tendong--Gigantic oak--Plants-- Teesta valley--Commencement of rains--Bhomsong--Ascent to Lathiang--View--Bad road--Orchids--Gorh--Opposition of Lama --Arrival of Meepo--Cross Teesta--Difficulties of travelling-- Lepchas swimming--Moxa for sprains--Singtam--Grandeur of view of Kinchinjunga--Wild men--Singtam Soubah--Landslips--Bees'

nests and honey-seekers--Leeches, etc.--Chakoong--Vegetation-- Gravel terraces--Unpleasant effects of wormwood--Choongtam, scenery and vegetation of--Inhabitants--Tibetan salute--Lamas --Difficulty of procuring food--Contrast of vegetation of inner and outer Himalaya--Rhododendrons--Yew--_Abies Brunoniana_-- Venomous snakes--Hornets and other insects--Choongtam temple-- Pictures of Lha.s.sa--Minerals--Scenery.

CHAPTER XIX.

Routes from Choongtam to Tibet frontier--Choice of that by the Lachen river--Arrival of supplies--Departure--Features of the valley--Eatable _Polygonum_--Tumlong--Cross Taktoong river-- Pines, larches, and other trees--Chateng pool--Water-plants and insects--Tukcham mountain--Lamteng village--Inhabitants-- Alpine monkey--Botany of temperate Himalaya--European and American fauna--j.a.panese and Malayan genera--Superst.i.tious objections to shooting--Customs of people--Rain--Run short of provisions--Altered position of Tibet frontier--Zemu Samdong-- Imposition--Vegetation--Uses of pines--Ascent to Thlonok river --Balanophora wood for making cups--Snow-beds--Eatable mushrooms and _Smilacina_--Asarabacca--View of Kinchinjunga--Arum-roots, preparation of for food--Liklo mountain--Behaviour of my party-- Bridge constructed over Zemu--Cross river--Alarm of my party-- Camp on Zemu river.

CHAPTER XX.

Camp on Zemu river--Scenery--Falling rocks--Tukcham mountain-- Height of glaciers--Botany--Gigantic rhubarb--Insects--Storm --Temperature of rivers--Behaviour of Lachen Phipun--Hostile conduct of Bhoteeas--View from mountains above camp--Descend to Zemu Samdong--Vegetation--Letters from Dorjiling--Arrival of Singtam Soubah--Presents from Rajah--Parties collecting arum-roots--Insects--Ascend Lachen river--Thakya-zong--Tallum Samdong village--Cottages--Mountains--Plants--Entomology-- Weather--Halo--Diseases--Conduct of Singtam Soubah--His character and illness--Agrees to take me to Kongra Lama--Tungu-- Appearance of country--Houses--Poisoning by aram-roots--Yaks and calves--Tibet ponies--Journey to Kongra Lama--Tibetan tents --b.u.t.ter, curds, and churns--Hospitality--Kinchinjhow and Chomiomo--Magnificent scenery--Reach Kongra Lama pa.s.s.

CHAPTER XXI.

Top of Kongra Lama--Tibet frontier--Elevation--View-- Vegetation--Descent to Tungu--Tungu-choo--Ponies--Kinchinjhow and Chango-khang mountains--Palung plains--Tibetans--Dogs-- Dingcham province of Tibet--Inhabitants--Dresses--Women's ornaments--Blackening faces--Coral--Tents--Elevation of Palung--Lama--Shawl-wool goats--Shearing--Siberian plants-- Height of glaciers, and perpetual snow--Geology--Plants, and wild animals--Marmots--Insects--Birds--Choongtam Lama--Religious exercises--Tibetan hospitality--_Delphinium_--Perpetual snow-- Temperature at Tungu--Return to Tallum Samdong--To Lamteng-- Houses--Fall of barometer--Cicadas--Lime deposits--Landslips --Arrival at Choongtam--Cobra--Rageu--Heat of climate-- Velocity and volume of rivers measured--Leave for Lachoong valley --Keadom--General features of valley--Lachoong village--Tunkra mountain--Moraines--Cultivation--Lachoong Phipun--Lama ceremonies beside a sick-bed.

CHAPTER XXII.

Leave Lachoong for Tunkra pa.s.s--Moraines and their vegetation-- Pines of great dimensions--Wild currants--Glaciers--Summit of pa.s.s--Elevation--Views--Plants--Winds--Choombi district-- Lacheepia rock--Extreme cold--Kinchinjunga--Himalayan grouse-- Meteorological observations--Return to Lachoong--Oaks--Ascend to Yeumtong--Flats and debacles--Buried pine-trunks--Perpetual snow--Hot springs--Behaviour of Singtam Soubah--Leave for Momay Samdong--Upper limit of trees--Distribution of plants--Glacial terraces, etc.--Forked Donkia--Moutonneed rocks--Ascent to Donkia pa.s.s--Vegetation--Scenery--Lakes--Tibet--Bhomtso-- Arun river--Kiang-lah mountains--Yaru-Tsampu river--Appearance of Tibet--Kambajong--Jigatzi--Kinchinjhow, and Kinchinjunga-- Chola range--Deceptive appearance of distant landscape--Perpetual snow--Granite--Temperatures--Pulses--Plants--Tripe de roche --Return to Momay--Dogs and yaks--Birds--Insects--Quadrupeds --Hot springs--Marmots--Kinchinjhow glacier.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Donkia glaciers--Moraines--Dome of ice--Honey-combed surface-- Rocks of Donkia--Metamorphic action of granite veins--Accident to instruments--Sebolah pa.s.s--Bees and May-flies--View-- Temperature--Pulses of party--Lamas and travellers at Momay-- Weather and climate--Dr. Campbell leaves Dorjiling for Sikkim-- Leave Momay--Yeumtong--Lachoong--r.e.t.a.r.dation of vegetation at low elevations--Choongtam--Landslips and debacle--Meet Dr.

Campbell--Motives for his journey--Second visit to Lachen valley --Autumnal tints--Red currants--Lachen Phipun--Tungu-- Scenery--Animals--Poisonous rhododendrons--Fire-wood--Palung --Elevations--Sitong--Kongra Lama--Tibetans--Enter Tibet-- Desolate scenery--Plants--Animals--Geology--Cholamoo lakes-- Antelopes--Return to Yeumtso--Dr. Campbell lost--Extreme cold --Headaches--Tibetan Dingpun and guard--Arms and accoutrements --Temperature of Yeumtso--Migratory birds--Visit of Dingpun-- Yeumtso lakes.