present occasion, I stopped at the foot of some rocks below the
bridge, botanizing, and Kinchin having scrambled up the rocks, ran on
to the bridge. I could not see him, and was not thinking about him,
when suddenly his shrill, short barks of terror rang above the
roaring torrent. I hastened to the bridge, but before I could get to
it, he had lost his footing, and had disappeared. Holding on by the
cane, I strained my eyes till the bridge seemed to be swimming up the
valley, and the swift waters to be standing still, but to no purpose;
he had been carried under at once, and swept away miles below.
For many days I missed him by my side on the mountain, and by my feet
in camp. He had become a very handsome dog, with glossy black hair,
pendent triangular ears, short muzzle, high forehead, jet-black eyes,
straight limbs, arched neck, and a most glorious tail curling over
his back.* [The woodcut at vol. i. chapter ix, gives the character of
the Tibet mastiff, to which breed his father belonged; but it is not
a portrait of himself, having been sketched from a dog of the pure
breed, in the Zoological Society's Gardens, by C. Jenyns, Esq.]

A very bad road led to the village of Keadom, situated on a flat
terrace several hundred feet above the river, and 6,609 feet above
the sea, where I spent the night. Here are cultivated plantains and
maize, although the elevation is equal to parts of Dorjiling, where
these plants do not ripen.

The river above Keadom is again crossed, by a plank bridge, at a
place where the contracted streams flow between banks forty feet
high, composed of obscurely stratified gravel, sand, and water-worn
boulders. Above this the path ascends lofty flat-topped spurs, which
overhang the river, and command some of the most beautiful scenery in
Sikkim. The south-east slopes are clothed with _Abies Brunoniana_ at