58 DR. HOOKER'S MISSION TO INDIA. 
reference to the map you will see that the rainy wind, the south-eastern 
monsoon from the Arracan coast, in its progress north-west, first strikes 
the Cossiah (Khasyah) hills, which it deluges with a vastly greater 
amount of rain than falls on any other part of India: the rest is 
expended in Sikkim, and then striking the Himalaya, is deflected west, 
and becomes comparatively a drier and drier wind (though always 
rainy) till it reaches the extreme north-western Himalaya. 
Sikkim is therefore more rainy* than Bhootan and Nepal, or at least 
more humid.  Encircled by hills, it is sheltered from other winds; 
and the superabundant moisture is not carried off in vapour by the 
sun, but clogs the valleys and is again deposited at night, equally 
intercepting the solar rays and nocturnal radiation, diminishing, in 
short, the day's heat and night's cold, and producing a climate, which, 
all the world over, in the western Highlands and Wales near home, or 
on the remote shores of South Chili and Fuegia, is eminently prejudicial 
to cultivation, whether of grains or fruits. It, moreover, causes the 
dispersion of the human population :—for few parts of a country, $0 
uniform in features, are more favoured than the rest ; warmth and com- 
parative dryness are sought in the narrow valleys and their southern 
exposed slopes, above which the heated vapours are raised by the morning 
sun, to be condensed on the cooler mountain forests, whose murky 
atmosphere and dark dripping vegetation the poor Lepcha peoples with 
the bad spirits of his demonology. 
. I do not think that the similarity of these features in the Himalaya 
of Sikkim with those of the other far-distant countries mentioned, 
and their mutual effect upon organized life in both, exists in my 
own fancy: it is further traceable in the native vegetation, and is 
eminently conspicuous in the paucity of animal life, especially quadru- 
peds and birds. My attention was irresistibly called to the subject 
before I had ascended 6,000 feet on my road to Darjeeling; and to the 
present hour I am more struck by this fact than by the many grander 
and more novel phenomena which these mountains present. I am 
everywhere reminded of the damp west coast of Tasmania, of the 
New Zealand Islands, of the humid portion of extra-tropical South 
_ America, of the Hebridean Islands, the north-western coast of Scotland, 
. and some parts of Wales. A scattered population, rude cultivation, 
* The mean fall probably does not exceed 100 inches, as measured by the pluvio- 
. meter, an instrument which takes little or no account of the enormous deposition in 
.. the shape of mists and fogs. 
