192 EAST NEPAL. Chap. VIII. 



though I question whether a traveller from more favoured 

 climes would see more in this, than a thinly inhabited country, 

 with irregular patches of poor cultivation, a vast amount of 

 ragged forest on low hills of rather uniform height and 

 contour, relieved by a dismal back-ground of frowning 

 black mountains, sprinkled with snow ! Kinchinjunga was 

 again the most prominent object to the north-east, with its 

 sister peaks of Kubra (24,005 feet), and Junnoo (25,312feet). 

 All these presented bare cliffs for several thousand feet below 

 their summits, composed of white rock with a faint pink 

 tint : — on the other hand the lofty Nepal mountain in the 

 far west presented cliffs of black rocks. Prom the summit 

 two routes to the Tambur presented themselves ; one, the 

 main road, led west and south along the ridge, and then 

 turned north, descending to the river; the other was shorter, 

 leading abruptly down to the Pemmi river, and thence along 

 its banks, west to the Tambur. I chose the latter. 



The descent was very abrupt on the first day, from 

 9,500 feet to 5000 feet, and on that following to the bed 

 of the Pemmi, at 2000 feet ; and the road was infamously 

 bad, generally consisting of a narrow, winding, rocky path 

 among tangled shrubs and large boulders, brambles, nettles, 

 and thorny bushes, often in the bed of the torrent, or 

 crossing spurs covered with forest, round whose bases it 

 flowed. A little cultivation was occasionally met with on 

 the narrow flat pebbly terraces which fringed the stream, 

 usually of rice, and sometimes of the small-leaved variety of 

 hemp [Cannabis), grown as a narcotic. 



The rocks above 5000 feet were gneiss ; below this, 

 cliffs of very micaceous schist were met with, having a 

 north-west strike, and being often vertical ; the boulders 

 again were always of gneiss. The streams seemed rather 

 to occupy faults, than to have eroded courses for themselves ; 



