approaches the precipitous character of the Bernese Alps' valleys,
Kandersteg, Lauterbrunnen, and Grindelwald.]

The river is fourteen yards broad, and neither deep nor rapid: the
village is on the east bank, and is large for Sikkim; it contains
fully 100 good wooden houses, raised on posts, and clustered together
without order. It was muddy and intolerably filthy, and intersected
by some small streams, whose beds formed the roads, and, at the same
time, the common sewers of the natives. There is some wretched
cultivation in fields,* [Full of such English weeds as shepherd's
purse, nettles, _Solanum nigrum,_ and dock; besides many Himalayan
ones, as balsams, thistles, a beautiful geranium, mallow, _Haloragis_
and Cucurbitaceous plants.] of wheat, barley, peas, radishes, and
turnips. Rice was once cultivated at this elevation (8000 feet), but
the crop was uncertain; some very tropical grasses grow wild here, as
_Eragrostis_ and _Panicum._ In gardens the hollyhock is seen: it is
said to be introduced through Tibet from China; also _Pinus excelsa_
from Bhotan, peaches, walnuts, and weeping willows. A tall poplar was
pointed out to me as a great wonder; it had two species of _Pyrus_
growing on its boughs, evidently from seed; one was a mountain ash,
the other like _Pyrus Aria._

Soon after camping, the Lachoong Phipun, a very tall, intelligent,
and agreeable looking man, waited on me with the usual presents, and
a request that I would visit his sick father. His house was lofty and
airy: in the inner room the sick man was stretched on a board,
covered with a blanket, and dying of pressure on the brain; he was
surrounded by a deputation of Lamas from Teshoo Loombo, sent for in
this emergency. The principal one was a fat fellow, who sat
cross-legged before a block-printed Tibetan book, plates of raw meat,