1871.] W. T. Blanford— Journey through Sikkim. 395 



Lachung river by the last cane bridge in this valley ; for beyond this 

 the bridges which we saw were of wooden planks. The path soon 

 led into open glades covered with high grass and shrubs. It was 

 curious to note the difference in the two sides of the valley ; to 

 the eastward all was dense forest, firs appearing at about 8000 feet, 

 not far above our heads, whilst on the western slope grass prevailed, 

 the trees being mainly restricted to patches of forest beside the 

 ravines, somewhat like the " Sliolas" of the Nilgiri and other hills 

 in Southern India. 



About 7 or 8 miles " from Kedain, on crossing a small stream, we 

 suddenly left our enemies, the leeches, behind, a little below the 

 elevation at which firs begin to appear in the bottom of the valley. 

 These trees appear at an elevation between 3000 and 4000 feet 

 lower than on the Chola range, but the species are different, that 

 seen lowest in the Lachiing and Lachen valleys being a very hand- 

 some tree, Abies Smithiana, which Hooker calls the spruce. It is 

 far inferior in size to the silver fir, A. Webbiana, which only makes 

 its appearance at about 10000 feet, but its elegant conical shape 

 renders it a very beautiful and conspicuous object. A third pine 

 A. Brunnoniana, also a handsome darkfoliaged tree, appears at nearly 

 the same elevation as the spruce, and around Lachiing, these two 

 trees, with rhododendrons, form the greater part of the forests. 



Lachiing well deserves Hooker's encomiums. It is in a broad part 

 of the valley with, on all sides, the remains of the enormous glacier 

 moraines noticed by Hooker, Yol. II, p. 103. These are peculiarly 

 conspicuous from being, without exception, covered with grass, no 

 forest apparently growing upon them. 



We found the provisions sent forward from Darjiling a month 

 before safe and in good order. Our men had put up in some stone 

 sheds, with roofs of fir planks, on a grassy flat west of the Lachung. 

 The main village, built of fine houses raised above the ground in 

 the usual Indo-Chinese fashion, is to the east of the river. The 

 houses are close together as in Indian villages, not scattered over 

 a large area as in tropical and subtropical Sikkim. This may be 

 due to the people of Lachung being Tibetans, but is partly in 

 consequence, I should think, of their being agriculturists only to a 

 very moderate extent. In fact the population of the Lachen and 



