Himalayan Journals — Volume 2: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
History
Himalayan Journals — Volume 2: 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
On the south side of the Myrung valley is Nungbree wood, a dense
jungle, occupying, like all the other woods, the steep north exposure
of the hill; many good plants grow in it, including some gigantic
_Balanophorae, Pyrola,_ and _Monotropa._ The bungalow stands on soft,
contorted, decomposing gneiss, which is still the prevalent rock,
striking north-east. On the hills to the east of it, enormous hard
blocks lie fully exposed, and are piled on one another, as if so
disposed by glacial action; and it is difficult to account for them
by denudation, though their surface scales, and similar blocks are
scattered around Myrung exactly similar to the syenite blocks of
Nunklow, and the granite ones of Nonkreem, to be described hereafter,
and which are undoubtedly due to the process of weathering. A great
mass of flesh-coloured crystalline granite rises in the centre of the
valley, to the east of the road: it is fissured in various
directions, and the surface scales concentrically; it is obscurely
stratified in some parts, and appears to be half granite and half
gneiss in mineralogical character.
We twice visited a very remarkable hill, called Kollong, which rises
as a dome of granite 5,400 feet high, ten or twelve miles south-west
of Myrung, and conspicuous from all directions. The path to it turns
off from that to Nunklow, and strikes westerly along the shallow
valley of Monai, in which is a village, and much rice and other
cultivation. Near this there is a large square stockade, formed of
tall bamboos placed close together, very like a New Zealand "Pa;"
indeed, the whole country hereabouts much recalls the grassy clay
hills, marshy valleys, and bushy ridges of the Bay of Islands.
The hills on either side are sometimes dotted with pinewoods,
sometimes conical and bare, with small clumps of pines on the summit
only; while in other places are broad tracts containing nothing but
young trees, resembling plantations, but which, I am assured, are not
planted; on the other hand, however, Mr. Yule states, that the
natives do plant fir-trees, especially near the iron forges, which
give employment to all the people of Monai.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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