without, however, the former warming the soil: hence my tent was
constantly wet, nor did I once sleep in a dry bed till the 1st of
June, which ushered in the month with a brilliant sunny day. At night
it generally rained in torrents, and the roar of landslips and
avalanches was then all but uninterrupted for hour after hour:
sometimes it was a rumble, at others a harsh grating sound, and often
accompanied with the crashing of immense timber-trees, or the murmur
of the distant snowy avalanches. The amount of denudation by
atmospheric causes is here quite incalculable; and I feel satisfied
that the violence of the river at this particular part of its course
(where it traverses those parts of the valleys which are most snowy
and rainy), is proximately due to impediments thus accumulated in
its bed.

It was sometimes clear at sunrise, and I made many ascents of
Tukcham, hoping for a view of the mountains towards the passes; but I
was only successful on one occasion, when I saw the table top of
Kinchinjhow, the most remarkable, and one of the most distant peaks
of dazzling snow which is seen from Dorjiling, and which, I was told,
is far beyond Sikkim, in Tibet.* [Such, however, is not the case;
Kinchinjhow is on the frontier of Sikkim, though a considerable
distance behind the most snowy of the Sikkim mountains.] I kept up a
constant intercourse with Choongtam, sending my plants thither to be
dried, and gradually reducing my party as our necessities urged my so
doing; lastly, I sent back the shooters, who had procured very
little, and whose occupation was now gone.

On the 2nd of June, I received the bad news that a large party of
coolies had been sent from Dorjiling with rice, but that being unable
or afraid to pass the landslips, they had returned: we had now no