May, 1848. ENTER SIKKIM. BURNT FOREST. 151 



where any one guiding Europeans is threatened with 

 punishment : we had expected a guide to follow us, 

 but his non-appearance caused us to delay for some 

 hours ; four roads, or rather forest paths, meeting here, 

 all of which were difficult to find. After a while, part 

 of a marriage-procession came up, headed by the bride- 

 groom, a handsome young Lepcha, leading a cow for 

 the marriage feast ; and after talking to him a little, 

 he volunteered to show us the path. On the flats 

 by the stream grew the Sago palm (Cycas pectinata), with 

 a stem ten feet high, and a beautiful crown of foliage ; the 

 contrast between this and the Scotch-looking pine (both 

 growing with oaks and palms) was curious. Much of the 

 forest had been burnt, and we traversed large blackened 

 patches, where the heat was intense, and increased by the 

 burning trunks of prostrate trees, which smoulder for 

 months, and leave a heap of white ashes. The larger 

 timber being hollow in the centre, a current of air is 

 produced, which causes the interior to burn rapidly, till 

 the sides fall in, and all is consumed. I was often startled, 

 when walking in the forest, by the hot blast proceeding 

 from such, which I had approached without a suspicion of 

 their being other than cold dead trunks. 



Leaving the forest, the path led along the river bank, 

 and over the great masses of rock which strewed its course. 

 The beautiful India-rubber fig was common, as was Bassia 

 butyracea, the " Yel Pote " of the Lepchas, from the seeds 

 of which they express a concrete oil, which is received and 

 hardens in bamboo vessels. On the forest-skirts, Hoy a, para- 

 sitical Orc/iidecs, and Eerns, abounded ; the Chaulmoogra, 

 whose fruit is used to intoxicate fish, was very common ; as 

 was an immense mulberry tree, that yields a milky juice and 

 produces a long green sweet fruit. Large fish, chiefly 



