Appendix E. DECEPTIVE APPEARANCES OF MOUNTAIN RANGES. 389 



sink behind the wooded ones, long before the latter have assumed 

 gigantic proportions ; and when they do so, they appear a sombre, 

 lurid grey-green mass of vegetation, with no brightness or variation 

 of colour. There is no break in this forest caused by rock, precipices, 

 or cultivation ; some spurs project nearer, and some valleys appear to 

 retire further into the heart of the foremost great chain that shuts out 

 all the country beyond. 



From Dorjiling the appearance of parallel ridges is found to be 

 deceptive, and due to the inosculating spurs of long tortuous ranges 

 that run north and south throughout, the whole length of Sikkim, 

 dividing deep wooded valleys, which form the beds of large rivers. 

 The snowy peaks here look like a long east and west range of moun- 

 tains, at an average distance of thirty or forty miles. Advancing 

 into the country, this appearance proves equally deceptive, and the 

 snowy range is resolved into isolated peaks, situated on the meridional 

 ridges ; their snow-clad spurs, projecting east and west, cross one 

 another, and being uniformly white, appear to connect the peaks 

 into one grand unbroken range. The rivers, instead of having their 

 origin in the snowy mountains, rise far beyond them ; many of 

 their sources are upwards of one hundred miles in a straight line from 

 the plains, in a very curious country, loftier by far in mean elevation 

 than the meridional ridges which run south from it, yet compara- 

 tively bare of snow. This rearward part of the mountain region is 

 Tibet, where all the Sikkim, Nepal, and Bhotan rivers rise as small 

 streams, increasing in size as they receive the drainage from the 

 snowed parts of the ridges that bound them in their courses. 

 Their banks, between 8000 and 14,000 feet, are generally clothed 

 with rhododendrons, sometimes to the almost total exclusion of 

 other woody vegetation, especially near the snowy mountains — a 

 cool temperature and great humidity being the most favourable con- 

 ditions for the luxuriant growth of this genus. 



The source of this humidity is the southerly or sea wind which 

 blows steadily from May till October in Sikkim, and prevails 

 throughout the rest of the year, if not as the monsoon properly so 

 called, as a current from the moist atmosphere above the Gangetic 

 delta. This rushes north to the rarefied regions of Sikkim, up the 

 great valleys, and does not appear materially disturbed by the north- 



