Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
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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
In the evening, we paid a farewell visit to the Dewan, whom we found
in a bamboo wicker-work hut, neatly hung with bows, arrows, and round
Lepcha shields of cane, each with a scarlet tuft of yak-hair in the
middle; there were also muskets, Tibetan arms, and much horse gear;
and at one end was a little altar, with cups, bells, pastiles, and
images. He was robed in a fawn-coloured silk gown, lined with the
softest of wool, that taken from unborn lambs: like most Tibetans, he
extracts all his beard with tweezers; an operation he civilly
recommended to me, accompanying the advice with the present of a neat
pair of steel forceps. He aspires to be considered a man of taste,
and plays the Tibetan guitar, on which he performed some airs for our
amusement: the instrument is round-bodied and long-armed, with six
strings placed in pairs, and probably comes from Kashmir: the Tibetan
airs were simple and quite pretty, with the time well marked.
During our stay at Bhomsong, the weather was cool, considering the
low elevation (1,500 feet), and very steady; the mean temperature was
52.25 degrees, the maximum 71.25 degrees, the minimum 42.75 degrees.
The sun set behind the lofty mountains at 3 p.m., and in the morning
a thick, wet, white, dripping fog settled in the bottom of the
valley, and extended to 800 or 1000 feet above the river-bed; this
was probably caused by the descent of cold currents into the humid
gorge: it was dissipated soon after sunrise, but formed again at
sunset for a few minutes, giving place to clear starlight nights.
A thermometer sunk two feet seven inches, stood at 64 degrees.
The temperature of the water was pretty constant at 51 degrees: from
here to the plains of India the river has a nearly uniform fall of
1000 feet in sixty-nine miles, or sixteen feet to a mile: were its
course straight for the same distance, the fall would be 1000 feet in
forty miles, or twenty-five feet to a mile.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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