for friendship.

On the 22nd, being convalescent, he visited me, looking wofully
yellow. After a long pause, during which he tried to ease himself of
some weighty matter, he offered to take me to Tungu with my tent and
people, and, thence to Kongra Lama, if I would promise to stay but
two nights. I asked whether Tungu was in Cheen or Sikkim; he replied
that after great enquiry he had heard that it was really in Sikkim;
"Then," said I, "we will both go to-morrow morning to Tungu, and I
will stay there as long as I please:" he laughed, and gave in with
apparent good grace.

After leaving Tallum, the valley contracts, passing over great
ancient moraines, and again expanding wider than before into broad
grassy flats. The vegetation rapidly diminishes in stature and
abundance, and though the ascent to Tungu is trifling, the change in
species is very great. The _Spiraea,_ maple, _Pieris,_ cherry, and
larch disappear, leaving only willow, juniper, stunted birch, silver
fir, white rose, _Aralia,_ berberry, currant, and more rhododendrons
than all these put together;* [_Cyananthus,_ a little blue flower
allied to _Campanula,_ and one of the most beautiful alpines I know,
covered the turfy ground, with _Orchis, Pedicularis, Gentian,
Potentilla, Geranium,_ purple and yellow _Meconopsis,_ and the
_Artemisia_ of Dorjiling, which ascends to 12,000 feet, and descends
to the plains, having a range of 11,500 feet in elevation. Of ferns,
_Hymenophyllum, Cistopteris,_ and _Cryptogramma crispa_ ascend thus
high.] while mushrooms and other English fungi* [One of great size,
growing in large clumps, is the English _Agaricus comans,_ Fr., and I
found it here at 12,500 feet, as also the beautiful genus
_Crucibulum,_ which is familiar to us in England, growing on rotten