28 THE FOREST 



walnut grow side by side with wild plantains, palms, 

 and gigantic bamboos. Brambles, speedwells, for- 

 get-me-nots, and nettles grow mixed with figs, 

 balsams, peppers, and huge climbing vines. The 

 wild English strawberry is found on the ground, 

 while above tropical orchids like the dendrobiums 

 cover the trunks of the oaks. The bracken and the 

 club-moss of our British moors grow associated with 

 tree-ferns. And English grow alongside Himalayan 

 mosses. 



The valley itself continues of the same 

 character — deep with its steep sides clothed in 

 forest and the path scrambling over spurs, making 

 wide detours up side valleys, or scraping along the 

 sides of cliffs which stand perpendicularly over the 

 raging river below. Only here and there are clear- 

 ings in the forest where Lepchas or Nepalese have 

 built themselves a few wooden houses and roughly 

 cultivated the land. Otherwise we are under the 

 same green mantle of forest which extends every- 

 where over the mountains ; and though we are now 

 piercing straight through the main axis of the 

 Himalaya, we seldom catch even a glimpse of the 

 snowy heights which must be so near. 



But the vegetation is distinctly changing in 

 character as we ascend — the most tropical trees and 

 plants gradually disappearing, and more and more 

 flowers of the temperate zone coming into evidence. 

 And as we pierce farther into the mountains the 

 climate becomes sensibly drier and the forest lighter. 

 There is still a heavy enough rainfall to satisfy any 

 ordinary plant or human being. But there is not 

 the same deluge that descends upon the outer ridges. 



