are calving. The roots are bruised with the pestles, and thrown into
these holes with water. Acetous fermentation commences in seven or
eight days, which is a sign that the acrid poisonous principle is
dissipated: the pulpy, sour, and fibrous mass is then boiled and
eaten; its nutriment being the starch, which exists in small
quantities, and which they have not the skill to separate by grating
and washing. This preparation only keeps a few days, and produces
bowel complaints, and loss of the skin and hair, especially when
insufficiently fermented. Besides this, the "chokli-bi," and many
other esculents, abounded here; and we had great need of them before
leaving this wild uninhabited region.

I repeatedly ascended the north flank of Tukcham along a watercourse,
by the side of which were immense slips of rocks and snow-beds; the
mountain-side being excessively steep. Some of the masses of gneiss
thus brought down were dangerously poised on slopes of soft shingle,
and daily moved a little downwards. All the rocks were gneiss and
granite, with radiating crystals of tourmaline as thick as the thumb.
Below 12,000 to 13,000 feet the mountain-sides were covered with a
dense scrub of rhododendron bushes, except where broken by rocks,
landslips, and torrents: above this the winter's snow lay deep, and
black rocks and small glaciers, over which avalanches were constantly
falling with a sullen roar, forbade all attempts to proceed.
My object in ascending was chiefly to obtain views and compass-
bearings, in which I was generally disappointed: once only I had a
magnificent prospect of Kinchinjunga, sweeping down in one unbroken
mass of glacier and ice, fully 14,000 feet high, to the head of the
Thlonok river, whose upper valley appeared a broad bay of ice;
doubtless forming one of the largest glaciers in the Himalaya, and
increased by lateral feeders that flow into it from either flank of