Arrangements were made for supplies of rice following me by
instalments; our daily consumption being 80 lbs., a man's load.
After crossing into Sikkim, I mustered my party at the Great Rungeet
river. I had forty-two in all, of whom the majority were young
Lepchas, or Sikkim-born people of Tibetan races: all were active and
cheerful looking follows; only one was goitred, and he had been a
salt-trader. I was accompanied by a guard of five Sepoys, and had a
Lepcha and Tibetan interpreter. I took but one personal servant, a
Portuguese half-caste (John Hoffman by name), who cooked for me: he
was a native of Calcutta, and though hardy, patient, and
long-suffering, and far better-tempered, was, in other respects, very
inferior to Clamanze, who had been my servant the previous year, and
who, having been bred to the sea, was as handy as he was clever; but
who, like all other natives of the plains, grew intolerably weary of
the hills, and left me.

The first part of my route lay over Tendong, a very fine mountain,
which rises 8,613 feet, and is a conspicuous feature from Dorjiling,
where it is known as Mount Ararat. The Lepchas have a curious legend
of a man and woman having saved themselves on its summit, during a
flood that once deluged Sikkim. The coincidence of this story with
the English name of Ararat suggests the probability of the legend
being fabulous; but I am positively assured that it is not so, but
that it was current amongst the Lepchas before its English name was
heard of, and that the latter was suggested from the peculiar form of
its summit resembling that given in children's books as the
resting-place of the ark.

The ascent from the Great Rungeet (alt. 818 feet) is through dry
woods of Sal and Pines (_P. longifolia_). I camped the first night at