1853.] Notes upon a Tour in the SikJcim Hhnalayah Mountains. 613 



the ridge of Singaleelah is split into two ridges, the whole being 

 composed of precipices and naked masses of gneiss rock affording 

 in its crevices a place for a sweetly scented rhododendron, a pretty- 

 white primula and a large ox-eye looking composite flower growing 

 upon a long stem. For half an hour after leaving this curious spot, 

 our track lay under a vast precipice of gneiss from which the earth- 

 quakes, which are so frequent in these mountains, have hurled down 

 large masses of rock, and in this dangerous spot the G-urungs have 

 ventured to erect their huts even under the most dangerous and 

 incoherent rocks. The whole face of the precipice is split into 

 cuboidal masses, piled one upon the other and which threaten hourly 

 descent. In one of the detached cubes of gneiss I noticed a band 

 of greenstone six inches in width extending for sixty feet along the 

 front of the rock. Under this insecure-looking rock were the 

 remains of a Gurung encampment. This mountain is the Dumdongla 

 of Hooker ; a footpath leading from Sikkim towards Nepal, here 

 crosses Singaleelah and is called the Dumdongla pass. 



At 2 p. m. we again regained the crest of Singaleelah, where we 

 saw an old springe set for the capture of pheasants ; a few minutes 

 afterwards a covey rose close to us, from which I managed to bag 

 a brace ; of these welcome birds our Lepchas made us a delicious 

 curry in the evening, the first hot meal we had had for nine days. 



Encamped for the night at the southern foot of Kanglanamo 

 mountain at an elevation of 12,317 feet in a dense fog which during 

 the night condensed into heavy rain. At the foot of this mountain 

 the Lepchas collected a quantity of a white lichen which grows in 

 long white filaments ; they called it, Bukh ; it is used as incense to 

 burn before their gods. 



August 11th, 1852. — A most lovely clear morning, the perpetual 

 snow is only eight miles ahead of us ; the air very cold, Thermome^ 

 ter standing at 41° at sunrise ; half an hour's walking brought us 

 at 7.45 a. m. to the base of the conical-shaped Kanglanamo, and 

 three quarters of an hour more and we stood upon the summit at 

 about 13,000 feet elevation towering over every peak to the south. 

 At the base of the mountain there are quantities of a dark and 

 glossy hornblende slate mixed with the gneiss apparently split and 

 fractured by the snow and frost of winter. In Hooker's Map of 



4 i 2 



