Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
History
Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton
Himalaya Mountains -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Himalaya Mountains
without hesitation, slowly but steadily, and with perfect confidence.
Illustration -- CANE BRIDGE.
A deep broad pool below the bridge was made available for a ferry:
the boat was a triangular raft of bamboo stems, with a stage on the
top, and it was secured on the opposite side of the stream, having a
cane reaching across to that on which we were. A stout Lepcha leapt
into the boiling flood, and boldly swam across, holding on by the
cane, without which he would have been carried away. He unfastened
the raft, and we drew it over by the cane, and, seated on the stage,
up to our knees in water, we were pulled across; the raft bobbing up
and down over the rippling stream.
We were beyond British ground, on the opposite bank, where any one
guiding Europeans is threatened with punishment: we had expected a
guide to follow us, but his non-appearance caused us to delay for
some hours; four roads, or rather forest paths, meeting here, all of
which were difficult to find. After a while, part of a
marriage-procession came up, headed by the bridegroom, a handsome
young Lepcha, leading a cow for the marriage feast; and after talking
to him a little, he volunteered to show us the path. On the flats by
the stream grew the Sago palm (_Cycas pectinata_), with a stem ten
feet high, and a beautiful crown of foliage; the contrast between
this and the Scotch-looking pine (both growing with oaks and palms)
was curious. Much of the forest had been burnt, and we traversed
large blackened patches, where the heat was intense, and increased by
the burning trunks of prostrate trees, which smoulder for months, and
leave a heap of white ashes. The larger timber being hollow in the
centre, a current of air is produced, which causes the interior to
burn rapidly, till the sides fall in, and all is consumed. I was
often startled, when walking in the forest, by the hot blast
proceeding from such, which I had approached without a suspicion of
their being other than cold dead trunks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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