00 ZEMU VALLEY. Chap. XIX. 



being the starch, which exists in small quantities, and which 

 they have not the skill to separate by grating and washing. 

 This preparation only keeps a few days, and produces 

 bowel complaints, and loss of the skin and hair, especially 

 when insufficiently fermented. Besides this, the " chokli-bi," 

 and many other esculents, abounded here ; and we had great 

 need of them before leaving this wild uninhabited region. 



I repeatedly ascended the north flank of Tukcham along 

 a watercourse, by the side of which were immense slips of 

 rocks and snow-beds ; the mountain-side being excessively 

 steep. Some of the masses of gneiss thus brought down 

 were dangerously poised on slopes of soft shingle, and daily 

 moved a little downwards. All the rocks were gneiss and 

 granite, with radiating crystals of tourmaline as thick as 

 the thumb. Below 12,000 to 13,000 feet the mountain- 

 sides were covered with a dense scrub of rhododendron 

 bushes, except where broken by rocks, landslips, and 

 torrents : above this the winter's snow lay deep, and black 

 rocks and small glaciers, over wdiich avalanches were con- 

 stantly falling with a sullen roar, forbade all attempts to 

 proceed. My object in ascending was chiefly to obtain 

 views and compass-bearings, in which I was generally dis- 

 appointed : once only 1 had a magnificent prospect of 

 Kinchinjunga, sweeping down in one unbroken mass of 

 glacier and ice, fully 14,000 feet high, to the head of the 

 Thlonok river, whose upper valley appeared a broad bay 

 of ice ; doubtless forming one of the largest glaciers in the 

 Himalaya, and increased by lateral feeders that flow 

 into it from either flank of the valley. The south side of 

 this (the Thlonok) valley is formed by a range from Kinchin- 

 junga, running east to Tukcham, where it terminates : 

 from it rises the beautiful mountain Liklo,* 22,582 feet 



r D 2 of the peaks laid down in Colonel Waugh's " Trigonometrical Survey from 



