IMPRESSIONS AND REMINISCENCES 281 
A few passages from the Himalayan Journals may be cited 
as bringing out personal impressions of the journey and the 
spirit of the traveller. Mountain scenery below the snow line 
is compared, as ever, to the perfection of our Scottish High- 
lands. In the Tambur valley is an old lake-bed, outspread 
under lofty hills. Through it 
meandered the rippling stream, fringed with alder. It was 
a beautiful spot, the clear, cool, murmuring river, with its 
rapids and shallows, forcibly reminding me of trout-streams 
in the highlands of Scotland. 
Elsewhere the mountains rising out of the sea of valley 
mists are like the mountains by Norwegian fiords or Scotch 
salt-water lochs. A little lake, a rarity in these valleys, recalls 
the tarn at the entrance of Glencoe. We realise instantly the 
charm of the pool set in shining meadow^ greenery against the 
dark precipices beyond. It was a home-like delight to espy 
abundance of a common Scotch fern, Cryjptogramma crisjpa, 
growing in the clefts of a rocky moraine under the Choonjerma 
pass, at 13,000 feet. High on the Wallanchoon pass, again, 
the same lichens coloured the rocks as in Scotland, and the 
dwarf rhododendrons and masses of a Httle Andromeda imitated 
a heathery hill side. Here, also, the magic of the familiar in 
the remote wilderness stirs the imagination : 
Along the narrow path I found the two commonest of 
all British weeds, a grass {Poa annua), and the shepherd's 
purse ! They had evidently been imported by man and 
yaks, and as they do not occur in India, I could not but 
regard these little wanderers from the north with the deepest 
interest. Such incidents as these give rise to trains of 
reflection in the mind of the naturalist traveller ; and the 
farther he may be from home and friends, the more wild 
and desolate the country he is exploring, the greater the 
difficulties and dangers under which he encounters these 
subjects of his earliest studies in science, so much keener 
is the delight with which he recognises them, and the more 
lasting is the impression which they leave. At this moment 
these common weeds more vividly recall to me that wild 
scene than does all my journal, and remind me how I went 
