was below 40 degrees.

On these occasions, the energy of Meepo, Nimbo (the chief of the
coolies) and the Lepcha boys, was quite remarkable, and they were as
keenly anxious to reach the holy country of Tibet as I could possibly
be. It was sometimes dark before we got back to our tents, tired,
with torn clothes and cut feet and hands, returning to a miserable
dinner of boiled herbs; but never did any of them complain, or
express a wish to leave me. In the evenings and mornings they were
always busy, changing my plants, and drying the papers over a sulky
fire at my tent-door; and at night they slept, each wrapt in his own
blanket, huddled together under a rock, with another blanket thrown
over them all. Provisions reached us so seldom, and so reduced in
quantity, that I could never allow more than one pound of rice to
each man in a day, and frequently during this trying month they had
not even that; and I eked out our meagre supply with a few ounces of
preserved meats, occasionally "splicing the main brace" with weak rum
and water.

At the highest point of the valley which I reached, water boiled at
191.3, indicating an elevation of 11,903 feet. The temperature at 1
p.m. was nearly 70 degrees, and of the wet bulb 55 degrees,
indicating a dryness of 0.462, and dew point 47.0. Such phenomena of
heat and dryness are rare and transient in the wet valleys of Sikkim,
and show the influence here of the Tibetan climate.* [I gathered
here, amongst an abundance of alpine species, all of European and
arctic type, a curious trefoil, the _Parochetus communis,_ which
ranges through 9000 feet of elevation on the Himalaya, and is also
found in Java and Ceylon.]