206 EAST NEPAL. Chap. IX. 



geranium, berberry, clematis, and shrubby Vaccinia, which 

 all made their appearance at Loongtoong, another Bhoteea 

 village. Here, too, I first saw a praying machine, turned 

 by water ; it was enclosed in a little wooden house, and 

 consisted of an upright cylinder containing a prayer, and 

 with the words, " Om mani padmi om," (Hail to him of 

 the Lotus and Jewel) painted on the circumference : it was 

 placed over a stream, and made to rotate on its axis by a 

 spindle which passed through the floor of the building 

 into the water, and was terminated by a wheel. 



Above this the road followed the west bank of the river ; 

 the latter was a furious torrent, flowing through a gorge, 

 fringed with a sombre vegetation, damp, and dripping with 

 moisture, and covered with long TJsnea and pendulous 

 mosses. The road was very rocky and difficult, sometimes 

 leading along bluff faces of cliffs by wooden steps and 

 single rotten planks. At 8000 feet I met with pines, 

 whose trunks I had seen strewing the river for some miles 

 lower down : the first that occurred was Abies Brunoniana, 

 a beautiful species, which forms a stately blunt pyramid, 

 with branches spreading like the cedar, but not so stiff, 

 and drooping gracefully on all sides. It is unknown on the 

 outer ranges of Sikkim, and in the interior occupies a belt 

 about 1000 feet lower than the silver fir {A. Webbiana). 

 Many sub-alpine plants occur here, as Leycesteria, Tha- 

 lictrum, rose, thistles, alder, birch, ferns, berberry, holly, 

 anemone, strawberry, raspberry, Gnaphalium, the alpine 

 bamboo, and oaks. The scenery is as grand as any 

 pictured by Salvator Rosa ; a river roaring in sheets of 

 foam, sombre woods, crags of gneiss, and tier upon tier of 

 lofty mountains flanked and crested with groves of black 

 firs, terminating in snow-sprinkled rocky peaks. 



I now found the temperature getting rapidly cooler, 



