I 



IMPRESSIONS AND REMINISCENCES 281 



A few passages from the Himalayan Journals may be cited 

 as bringing out personal impressions of the journey and the 

 spirit of the traveller. Mountain scenery below the snow line 

 is compared, as ever, to the perfection of our Scottish High- 

 lands. In the Tambur valley is an old lake-bed, outspread 

 under lofty hills. Through it 



meandered the rippling stream, fringed with alder. It was 

 a beautiful spot, the clear, cool, murmuring river, with its 

 rapids and shallows, forcibly reminding me of trout-streams 

 in the highlands of Scotland. 



Elsewhere the mountains rising out of the sea of valley 

 mists are like the mountains by Norwegian fiords or Scotch 

 salt-water lochs. A little lake, a rarity in these valleys, recalls 

 the tarn at the entrance of Glencoe. We reahse instantly the 

 charm of the pool set in shining meadow greenery against the 

 dark precipices beyond. It was a home-like delight to espy 

 abundance of a common Scotch fern, Cryptogramma cris'pa, 

 growing in the clefts of a rockj^ moraine under the Choonjerma 

 pass, at 13,000 feet. High on the Wallanchoon pass, again, 

 the same lichens coloured the rocks as in Scotland, and the 

 dwarf rhododendrons and masses of a little Andromeda imitated 

 a heathery hill side. Here, also, the magic of the familiar in 

 the remote wilderness stirs the imagination : 



Along the narrow path I found the two commonest of 

 all British weeds, a grass {Poa annua), and the shepherd's 

 purse ! They had evidently been imported by man and 

 yaks, and as they do not occur in India, I could not but 

 regard these little wanderers from the north with the deepest 

 interest. Such incidents as these give rise to trains of 

 reflection in the mind of the naturalist traveller ; and the 

 farther he may be from home and friends, the more wild 

 and desolate the country he is exploring, the greater the 

 difficulties and dangers under which he encounters these 

 subjects of his earliest studies in science, so much keener 

 is the delight with which he recognises them, and the more 

 lasting is the impression which they leave. At this moment 

 these common weeds more vividly recall to me that wild 

 scene than does all my journal, and remind me how I went 



