278 TO DAEJILING : FIEST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY 



days' comradeship with so good a friend stood out as a golden 

 time in Hooker's journeyings. On January 2, 1849, he records : 



Here I bade adieu to Dr. Campbell, and toiled up the hill, 

 feeKng very lonely. The zest with which he had entered 

 into all my pursuits, and the aid he had afforded me, to- 

 gether with the charm that always attends companionship 

 with one who enjoys every incident of travel, has so attracted 

 me to him that I found it difficult to recover my spirits. It 

 is quite impossible for any one who cannot from experience 

 realise the soHtary wandering hfe I had been leading for 

 months, to appreciate the desolate feeling that follows the 

 parting from one who has heightened every enjoyment, and 

 taken far more than his share of every annoyance and dis- 

 comfort : the few days we had spent together appeared then, 

 and still, as months. (Himalayan Journals, i. 332.) 



After parting from Campbell, he turned north again to 

 Jongri. This was a deserted yak post, never before visited in 

 winter, consisting of two rude stone huts for summer travellers 

 at an altitude of 13,000 feet on the great spur that runs south 

 from the Kinchinjunga massif and divides Sikkim from Nepaul. 

 Here he was on the veritable Kinchin, some fifteen miles as 

 the crow flies from the actual summit ' whose grand snows 

 rise on all sides on rugged granite precipices which have pierced 

 the Gneiss and Mica-slate rocks, carrying them up in shattered 

 peaks and cliffs to 20,000 feet.' Nearer along the massif stood 

 the lesser giants, Kubra and Gubroo, the saddleback with a 

 25,000 feet peak at either end, and to the north-east the sharp 

 cone of Pundeim dropping five or six thousand feet in a sheer 

 precipice to the sea of glaciers below : the cliff, too steep to 

 carry snow, showing a face of burnt red stratified rocks, so 

 twisted and contorted as to appear like shot silk, permeated 

 with broad white grains of the granite which caps the whole. 



Here, till driven out by a prolonged snowstorm, he stayed 

 three cold January days in his gipsy-like shelter, a blanket 

 stretched for tent from the roof of his followers' hut, with a 

 little stone dyke at the sides and a fireplace in front. The 

 ground was frozen sixteen inches deep ; to dig holes for the 

 ground thermometers w^as a work of hours. Many of the 



