CHAPTER XIV. 



Tassiding, view of and from — Funereal cypress — Camp at Sunnook — Hot vapours 

 — Lama's house — Temples, decorations, altars, idols, general effect — Chaits 

 — Date of erection — Plundered by Ghorkas — Cross Ratong — Ascend to 

 Pemiongchi — Relation of river-beds to strike of rocks — Slopes of ravines — 

 Pemiongchi, view of — Vegetation — Elevation — Temple, decorations, &c. — 

 Former capital of Sikkim — History of Sikkim — Nightingales — Campbell 

 departs — Tchonpong — Edgeworthia — Cross Rungbee and Ratong — Hoar-frost 

 on plantains — Yoksun — Walnuts — View — Funereal cypresses — Doobdi — 

 Gigantic cypresses — Temples — Snow-fall — Sikkim, &c. — Toys. 



Tassiding hill is the steep conical termination of a long- 

 spur from a pine-clad shoulder of Kinchinjunga, called 

 Powhungri : it divides the Great Rungeet from its main 

 feeder, the Ratong, which rises from the south face of 

 Kinchin. We crossed the former by a bridge formed of 

 two bamboo stems, slung by canes from two parallel arches 

 of stout branches lashed together. 



The ascent for 2,800 feet was up a very steep, dry, 

 zigzag path, amongst mica slate rocks (strike north-east), 

 on which grew many tropical plants, especially the " Tukla," 

 (Rottlera tinctoria), a plant which yields a brown dye. 

 The top was a flat, curving north-west and south-east, 

 covered with temples, chaits, and mendongs of the most 

 picturesque forms and in elegant groups, and fringed with 

 brushwood, wild plantains, small palms, and apple-trees. 

 Here I saw for the first time the funereal cypress, of which 

 some very old trees spread their weeping limbs and pensile 



