544 Notes ivpon a Tour in the Sikkim Himalayah Mountains. [No. 6. 



order, the gradual but alternately certain destruction that they 

 bring upon the largest and tallest trees in the forest. In places the 

 young fig, only a few inches in height, may be seen at the foot of a 

 noble oak as a humble plant ; a little further on, it is seen as a hand- 

 some creeper embracing the oak with a thousand tendrils, which 

 expanding and thickening with age, at last coalesce, forming a solid 

 mass of wood which speedily strangles its original support ; which, 

 by decaying and falling away, leaves the fig standing, a hollow 

 cylinder sixty or seventy feet in height, with an umbrageous crown 

 of leaves and branches, a far more noble-looking tree than the oak 

 it has killed. Others again trust to themselves entirely, and seek 

 no foreign support ; this species is met with at 4,000 feet above the 

 sea ; very giants in botany ; they generally rest upon three, five or 

 more beautifully-arched stems forty or fifty feet apart, which unite 

 perhaps seventy feet from the ground into one common trunk ; from 

 this spot the branches spring to about the same height as the point 

 of junction is from the ground. The beauty of these trees is much 

 added to, by being generally covered with the gigantic pothos, or 

 bignonias, or buteas, or with other enormous creepers whose long 

 stems are seen hanging in wild festoons, some like golden threads 

 and others like ragged and frayed cables of ships : some of the finest 

 specimens of these figs are to be seen close to the staging Bungalow 

 at Kursion, on the road up from the plaius to Darjeeljng. 



The Goke spur, wherever the road has laid bare the rocks, is found 

 to be composed of a red micaceous schist, and towards the summit, 

 2,757 feet, of blue slate highly micaceous and separated from the 

 upper or red schist by beds of hornstone. 



At Goke there are eight houses and a guard-house, inhabited by 

 the families of the sepoys on guard at this post. The guard consist 

 of about eight men detached from the sappers and miners at Darjee- 

 ling, their duty is to guard the frontier at this spot, and to give the 

 alarm at the approach of any armed men from Sikkim, and to prevent 

 any of the British subjects being taken away as slaves into Sikkim,. 

 Similar guards are posted all along the Sikkim frontier, generally at 

 spots where cane-bridges cross the Eungeet and Bummam rivers. 



To the north of the Goke spur, and looking down into the valley 

 of the Bummam river, which is seen and heard roaring along its 



