April, 1848. CHUMULARI AND SINCHUL MOUNTAINS. 185 



Dorjiling : from its summit Chumulari (23,929 feet) is 

 seen to the north -east, at eighty -four miles distance, 

 rearing its head as a great rounded mass over the snowy 

 Chola range, out of which it appears to rise, although in 

 reality lying forty miles beyond ; — so deceptive is the 

 perspective of snowy mountains. To the north-west again, 

 at upwards of 100 miles distance, a beautiful group of 

 snowy mountains rises above the black Singalelah range, 

 the chief being, perhaps, as high as Kinchinjunga, from 

 which it is fully eighty miles distant to the westward ; 

 and between them no mountain of considerable altitude 

 intervenes ; the Nepalese Himalaya in that direction sinking 

 remarkably towards the Arun river, which there enters 

 Nepal from Tibet. 



The top of Sinchul is a favourite excursion from Dorjiling, 

 being very easy of access, and the path abounding in rare 

 and beautiful plants, and passing through magnificent 

 forests of oak, magnolia, and rhododendron ; while the 

 summit, besides embracing this splendid view of the snowy 

 range over the Dorjiling spur in the foreground, commands 

 also the plains of India, with the courses of the Teesta, 

 Mahanuddee, Balasun and Mechi rivers. In the months of 

 April and May, when the magnolias and rhododendrons are 

 in blossom, the gorgeous vegetation is, in some respects, not 

 to be surpassed by anything in the tropics ; but the effect is 

 much marred by the prevailing gloom of the weather. The 

 white-flowered magnolia {M. excelsa, Wall,) forms a pre- 

 dominant tree at 7000 to 8000 feet; and in 1848 it 

 blossomed so profusely, that the forests on the broad flanks 

 of Sinchul, and other mountains of that elevation, appeared 

 as if sprinkled with snow. The purple-flowered kind again 

 {M. Campbellii) hardly occurs below 8000 feet, and forms 

 an immense, but very ugly, black-barked, sparingly branched 



