The ascent was alternately over steep rocky slopes, and broad shelf-like flats; many more plants grew here than I had expected, in inconspicuous scattered tufts.* [Besides those before mentioned, there were Fescue-grass (_Festuca ovina_ of Scotland), a strong-scented silky wormwood (_Artemisia_), and round tufts of _Oxytropis chiliophylla,_ a kind of _Astralagus_ that inhabits eastern and western Tibet; this alone was green: it formed great circles on the ground, the centre decaying, and the annual shoots growing outwards, and thus constantly enlarging the circle. A woolly _Leontopodium, Androsace,_ and some other plants assumed nearly the same mode of growth. The rest of the vegetation consisted of a _Sedum, Nardostachys Jatamansi, Meconopsis horridula,_ a slender _Androsace, Gnaphalium, Stipa, Salvia, Draba, Pedicularis, Potentilla_ or _Sibbaldia, Gentiana_ and _Erigeron alpinus_ of Scotland. All these grow nearly up to 18,000 feet.] The rocks were nearly vertical strata of quartz, hornstone, and conglomerate, striking north-west, and dipping south-west 80 degrees. The broad top of the hill was also of quartz, but covered with angular pebbles of the rocks transported from Kinchinjhow. Some clay-stone fragments were stained red with oxide of iron, and covered with _Parmelia miniata_;* [This minute lichen, mentioned at chapter xxxii, is the most Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine in the world; often occurring so abundantly as to colour the rocks of an orange red. This was the case at Bhomtso, and is so also in Cockburn Island in the Antarctic ocean, which it covers so profusely that the rocks look as if brightly painted. See "Ross's Voyage," vol. ii. p. 339.] this, with _Borrera,_ another lichen, which forms stringy masses blown along by the wind, were the only plants, and they are among the most alpine in the world. Bhomtso is 18,590 feet above the sea by barometer, and 18,305 by boiling-point: it presented an infinitely more extensive prospect than I had ventured to anticipate, commanding all the most important Sikkim, North Bhotan, and Tibetan mountains, including Kinchinjunga thirty-seven miles to the south-west, and Chumulari thirty-nine miles south-east. Due south, across the sandy valley of the Lachen, Kinchinjhow reared its long wall of glaciers and rugged precipices, 22,000 feet high, and under its cliffs lay the lake to which we had walked in the morning: beyond Kongra Lama were the Thlonok mountains, where I had spent the month of June, with Kinchinjunga in the distance. Westward Chomiomo rose abruptly from the rounded hills we were on, to 22,000 feet elevation, ten miles distant. To the east of Kinchinjhow were the Cholamoo lakes, with the rugged mass of Donkia stretching in cliffs of ice and snow continuously southwards to forked Donkia, which overhung Momay Samdong.