52 ZEMU VALLEY. Chap. XIX. 



sometimes dark before we got back to our tents, tired, 

 with torn clothes and cut feet and hands, returning to a 

 miserable dinner of boiled herbs ; but never did any of 

 them complain, or express a wish to leave me. In the 

 evenings and mornings they were always busy, changing 

 my plants, and drying the papers over a sulky fire at my 

 tent- door ; and at night they slept, each wrapt in his own 

 blanket, huddled together under a rock, with another 

 blanket thrown over them all. Provisions reached us so 

 seldom, and so reduced in quantity, that I could never 

 allow more than one pound of rice to each man in a day, 

 and frequently during this trying month they had not 

 even that ; and I eked out our meagre supply with a few 

 ounces of preserved meats, occasionally " splicing the main 

 brace " with weak rum and water. 



At the highest point of the valley which I reached, water 

 boiled at 191*3, indicating an elevation of 11,903 feet. The 

 temperature at 1 p.m. was nearly 70°, and of the wet 

 bulb 55°, indicating a dryness of 0*462, and dew point 

 47*0. Such phenomena of heat and dryness are rare and 

 transient in the wet valleys of Sikkim, and show the 

 influence here of the Tibetan climate.* 



After boiling my thermometer on these occasions, I 

 generally made a little tea for the party ; a refreshment 

 to which they looked forward with child-like eager- 

 ness. The fairness with which these good-hearted people 

 used to divide the scanty allowance, and afterwards the 

 leaves, which are greatly relished, was an engaging trait in 

 their simple character ■ I have still vividly before me their 

 sleek swarthy faces and twinkling Tartar eyes, as they lay 



I gathered here, amongst an abundance of alpine species, all of European and 

 arctic type, a curious trefoil, the Parochetus communis, which ranges through 9000 

 feet of elevation on the Himalaya, and is also found in Java and Ceylon. 



