Grassy or stony mountains slope upwards, at an angle of 20 degrees,*
[At Lamteng and up the Zemu the slopes are 40 degrees and 50 degrees,
giving a widely different aspect to the valleys.] from these flats to
15,000 feet, but no snow is visible, except on Kinchinjhow and
Chomiomo, about fifteen miles up the valley. Both these are
flat-topped, and dazzlingly white, rising into small peaks, and
precipitous on all sides; they are grand, bold, isolated masses,
quite unlike the ordinary snowy mountains in form, and far more
imposing even than Kinchinjunga, though not above 22,000 feet
in elevation.

Herbaceous plants are much more numerous here than in any other part
of Sikkim; and sitting at my tent-door, I could, without rising from
the ground, gather forty-three plants,* [In England thirty is, on the
average, the equivalent number of plants, which in favourable
localities I have gathered in an equal space. In both cases many are
seedlings of short-lived annuals, and in neither is the number a test
of the luxuriance of the vegetation; it but shows the power which the
different species exert in their struggle to obtain a place.] of
which all but two belonged to English genera. In the rich soil about
the cottages were crops of dock, shepherd's-purse, _Thlaspi arvense,
Cynoglossum_ of two kinds (one used as a pot-herb), balsams, nettle,
_Galeopsis,_ mustard, radish, and turnip. On the neighbouring hills,
which I explored up to 15,000 feet, I found many fine plants,
partaking more or less of the Siberian type, of which _Corydalis,
Leguminosae, Artemisia,_ and _Pedicularis,_ are familiar instances.
I gathered upwards of 200 species, nearly all belonging to north
European genera. Twenty-five were woody shrubs above three feet high,
and six were ferns; [_Cryptogramma crispa, Davallia,_ two _Aspidia,_