out the light, they gradually departed, except a few which could not
find the way out, and remained to disturb my slumbers.

Chakoong is a remarkable spot in the bottom of the valley, at an
angle of the Lachen-Lachoong, which here receives an affluent from
Gnarem, a mountain 17,557 feet high, on the Chola range to the east.*
[This is called Black Rock in Col. Waugh's map. I doubt Gnarem being
a generally known name: the people hardly recognise the mountain as
sufficiently conspicuous to bear a name.] There is no village, but
some grass huts used by travellers, which are built close to the
river on a very broad flat, fringed with alder, hornbeam, and birch:
the elevation is 4,400 feet, and many European genera not found about
Dorjiling, and belonging to the temperate Himalaya, grow intermixed
with tropical plants that are found no further north. The birch,
willow, alder, and walnut grow side by side with wild plantain,
_Erythrina, Wallichia_ palm, and gigantic bamboos: the _Cedrela
Toona,_ figs, _Melastoma, Scitamineae,_ balsams, _Pothos,_ peppers,
and gigantic climbing vines, grow mixed with brambles, speedwell,
_Paris,_ forget-me-not, and nettles that sting like poisoned arrows.
The wild English strawberry is common, but bears a tasteless fruit:
its inferiority is however counterbalanced by the abundance of a
grateful yellow raspberry. Parasitical Orchids (_Dendrobium nobile,_
and _densiflorum,_ etc.), cover the trunks of oaks, while
_Thalictrum_ and _Geranium_ grow under their shade. _Monotropa_ and
_Balanophora,_ both parasites on the roots of trees (the one a native
of north Europe and the other of a tropical climate), push their
leafless stems and heads of flowers through the soil together: and
lastly, tree-ferns grow associated with the _Pteris aquilina_ (brake)
and _Lycopodium clavatum_ of our British moors; and amongst mosses,
the superb Himalayan _Lyellia crispa,_* [This is one of the most