110 OUTER HIMALAYA. Chap. IV. 



higher latitudes in the southern hemisphere (as in New 

 Zealand, Tasmania, South Chili, &c.) than they do in the 

 northern. 



Along this ridge I met with the first tree-fern. This 

 species seldom reaches the height of forty feet ; the black 

 trunk is but three or four in girth, and the feathery 

 crown is ragged in comparison with the species of many 

 other countries : it is the Alsophila gigantea, and ascends 

 nearly to 7000 feet elevation. 



Kursiong bungalow, where I stopped for a few hours, is 

 superbly placed, on a narrow mountain ridge. The Avest 

 window looks down the valley of the Balasun river, the 

 east into that of the Mahanuddee : both of these rise 

 from the outer range, and flow in broad, deep, and steep 

 valleys (about 4000 feet deep) which give them their re- 

 spective names, and are richly wooded from the Terai to 

 their tops. Till reaching this spur, I had wound upwards 

 along the western slope of the Mahanuddee valley. The 

 ascent from the spur at Kursiong, to the top of the moun- 

 tain (on the northern face of which Dorjiliiig is situated), is 

 along the eastern slope of the Balasun. 



From Kursiong a very steep zigzag leads up the moun- 

 tain, through a magnificent forest of chesnut, walnut, oaks, 

 and laurels. It is difficult to conceive a grander mass of 

 vegetation : — the straight shafts of the timber-trees shooting 

 aloft, some naked and clean, with grey, pale, or brown 

 bark ; others literally clothed for yards with a continuous 

 garment of epiphytes, one mass of blossoms, especially the 

 white Orchids Coelogynes, which bloom in a profuse manner, 

 whitening their trunks like snow. More bulky trunks were 

 masses of interlacing climbers, Araliacece, Leguminosce y 

 Vines, and Menispermece, Hydrangea, and Peppers, en- 

 closing a hollow, once filled by the now strangled 



