DARJEELING TO THE BORDERS OF BHOTAN. 215 
elevation it attains here is not above 3,000 or 2,500 feet. In Bhotan, 
where there is more barren country, it ranges about the same, and in 
the north-western provinces from 2,500 to 7,000 feet. 
The Lepcha never inhabits one spot for more than three successive 
years; after which, an increased rent is demanded by the Rajah. He 
therefore sywats (as the Americans say) in any place which he can 
render profitable for that period, and then shifts to another. The 
first operation, after selecting his site, 1s to burn the jungle; then he 
clears away the trees and cultivates between the stumps. At this 
season, firing the jungle is a frequent practice, and the effect by night 
is exceedingly fine. A forest, so dry and full of bamboo, and spreading 
over such steep hills, affords grand blazing spectacles. Heavy clouds 
canopy the mountains above, and, stretching across the valleys, shut 
out the firmament; the air is a dead calm, as usual in such deep 
valleys, and the fires, invisible by day, are now seen raging all around, 
and (to an inexperienced eye) appear in all but dangerous proximity. 
The voice of insects and birds being hushed, nothing is audible but 
the harsh roar of the Rungeet and Rungmo, and occasionally, far above 
it, rises that of the forest-fires. We are literally surrounded with 
them: some smoulder like the shale-heaps at a colliery, others bicker 
and burst forth fitfully, whilst still others stalk along with a steadily 
increasing and enlarging lambent flame, shooting up great tongues 
of fire, which spare nothing as they advance in their might. Their 
triumph is in reaching a great bamboo clump, when the yell of 
the flames drowns that of the torrents, and as the great stem-joints 
burst, from the expansion of the confined air, the noise is that of a 
salvo from a park of artillery. I have seen houses and ships on fire, 
but such a jubilee of flame as the burning of the Himalayan forest I 
never beheld. From Darjeeling, 5,000 feet above this, you may see - 
the blaze and hear the deadened report of the bamboos bursting, all 
night long; but in the valley, and within a mile of the scene of de- 
struction, the effect is most grand, being heightened by the glare re- 
flected from tbe masses of mist which hover above. 
But so it is with everything Himalayan :—all is Titanian; most 
conspieuous in the elements and natural phenomena; no less marked 
in its 15,000 feet of perpendicular height clothed with vegetation, than 
in its zoology, from the lammergeyer of its snows, to the elephant, 
rhinoceros, and python of its skirting forests. The voleano and ocean 
