The night was magnificent, brilliant starlight, with a pale mist over the mountains: the thermometer fell to 15.5 degrees at 7.30 p.m., and one laid upon wood with its bulb freely exposed, sank to 7.5 degrees: the snow sparkled with broad flakes of hoar-frost in the full moon, which was so bright, that I recorded my observations by its light. Owing to the extreme cold of radiation, I passed a very uncomfortable night. The minimum thermometer fell to 1 degrees in shade.* [At sunrise the temperature was 11.5 degrees; that of grass, cleared on the previous day from snow, and exposed to the sky, 6.5 degrees; that on wool, 2.2 degrees; and that on the surface of the snow, 0.7 degrees.] The sky was clear; and every rock, leaf, twig, blade of grass, and the snow itself, were covered with broad rhomboidal plates of hoar-frost, nearly one-third of an inch across: while the metal scale of the thermometer instantaneously blistered my tongue. As the sun rose, the light reflected from these myriads of facets had a splendid effect. Before sunrise the atmosphere was still, and all but cloudless. To the south-east were visible the plains of India, at least 140 miles distant; where, as usual, horizontal layers of leaden purple vapour obscured the horizon: behind these the sun rose majestically, instantly dispersing them, while a thin haze spread over all the intervening mountains, from its slanting beams reaching me through otherwise imperceptible vapours: these, as the sun mounted higher, again became invisible, though still giving that transparency to the atmosphere and brilliant definition of the distances, so characteristic of a damp, yet clear day. Mon Lepcha commands a most extensive view of Sikkim, southward to Dorjiling. At my feet lay the great and profound valley of the Ratong, a dark gulf of vegetation. Looking northward, the eye followed that river to the summit of Kinchinjunga (distant eighteen miles), which fronts the beholder as Mont Blanc does when seen from the mountains on the opposite side of the valley of Chamouni. To the east are the immense precipices and glaciers of Pundim, and on the west those of Kubra, forming great supporters to the stupendous mountain between them. Mon Lepcha itself is a spur running south-east from the Kubra shoulder: it is very open, and covered with rounded hills for several miles further north, terminating in a conspicuous conical black hummock* [This I have beau told is the true Kubra; and the great snowy mountain behind it, which I here, in conformity with the Dorjiling nomenclature, call Kubra, has no name, being considered a part of Kinchin.] called Gubroo, of 15,000 feet elevation, which presents a black cliff to the south.