300 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOURNEY 
peaks of Chomiomo and Kinchinjhow, so named from its 
* beard ' of icicles, and between them the funnel-mouthed head 
of the valley up which they had come. 
Here [he exclaims], after three months of obstacles, I 
was at last at the back of the whole Himalaya range at its 
most northern trend in the central Himalaya, for this is far 
North of Kinchin -jmiga and Chumalari or the Nepal Passes 
I visited last winter, and opens on to the Thibetan Plateau 
without crossing a snowy ridge to be followed by other 
and other snowed spurs, as Kanglachem and Wallanchoon 
do. Here too I solved another great problem. There was 
not a particle of snow anywhere en route, right or left, or 
on the great mountains for 1500 feet above my position. 
The snow line in Sikkim hes on the Indian face of the 
Himalaya range at below 15,000 feet, on the Thibetan at 
above 16,000. I felt very pleased and made a rude panorama 
sketch on four folio sheets, very rude you may suppose, for 
the keen wind blew a gale and. we were quite wet ; above 
15,000 feet too, I am a ' gone coon,' my head rings with 
acute headache and feels as if bound in a vice, my temples 
throb at every step and I retch with sea-sickness. 
An hour and a half was spent on the Tibetan side, making 
observations. The letter tells how, in spite of the fire they 
made, ' my shivering Lepchas were numb and I gave them 
my cloak, going always well clad myself.' 
Much as Hooker would have liked to stay for some time 
in the high alpine region of Tungu, the question of suppHes 
forbade. The post took twenty days from Darjiling. Still, 
he stayed the rest of the w^eek, exploring the high yak pastures 
and the glaciers, before setting out on the week's march back 
to Choongtam and plenty, 7000 feet lower, a weary march 
over roads in a terrible state with floods, landslips, jungle, 
and impassable places, and warmth attended with tropical 
discomforts. 
I think leeches are the worst ; my legs are, I assure j^ou, 
daily clotted with blood, and I pull my stockings off quite 
full of leeches ; they get into the hair and all over the body. 
I cannot walk ten yards without having dozens on my legs ; 
