200 EAST NEPAL. Chap. IX. 



plank, and proceeded along very steep banks of decomposed 

 chlorite schist, much contorted, and very soapy, affording 

 an insecure footing, especially where great landslips had 

 occurred, which were numerous, exposing acres of a reddish 

 and white soil of felspathic clay, sloping at an angle 

 of 30°. Where the angle was less than 15°, rice was 

 cultivated, and partially irrigated. The lateral streams (of 

 a muddy opal green) had cut beds 200 feet deep in 

 the soft earth, and were very troublesome to cross, from 

 the crumbling cliffs on either side, and their broad swampy 

 channels. 



Five or six miles above Mywa, the valley contracts much, 

 and the Tambur (whose bed is elevated about 3000 feet) 

 becomes a turbulent river, shooting along its course with 

 immense velocity, torn into foam as it lashes the spurs of rock 

 that flank it, and the enormous boulders with which its bed 

 is strewn.* From this elevation to 9000 feet, its sinuous 

 track extends about thirty miles, which gives the mean fall 

 of 200 feet to the mile, quadruple of what it is for the 

 lower part of its course. So long as its bed is below 

 5000 feet, a tropical vegetation prevails in the gorge, and 

 along the terraces, consisting of tall bamboo, Bauliinia, 

 Acacia, Melastoma, &c. ; but the steep mountain sides above 

 are either bare and grassy, or cliffs with scattered shrubs 

 and trees, and their summits are of splintered slaty gneiss, 

 bristling with pines : those faces exposed to the south and 

 east are invariably the driest and most grassy ; while the 

 opposite are well wooded. Rhododendron arbor eum becomes 

 plentiful at 5000 to 6000 feet, forming a large tree on dry 

 clayey slopes ; it is accompanied by Indigofera, Andromeda, 



* In some places torrents of stone were carried down by landslips, obstructing 

 the rivers ; when in the beds of streams, they were often cemented by felspathic 

 clay into a hard breccia of angular quartz, gneiss, and felspar nodules. 



