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Now, too, we have reached the habitat of the rhododendrons, which are so peculiarly a glory of Sikkim, and it is worth while to pause and take special note of them. Out of the thirty species which are found in Sikkim, all the most beautiful have been introduced chiefly by Sir Joseph Hooker into England, and are grown in many parks and gardens as well as at Kew.
I here bought a little black puppy, to be my future companion in Sikkim: he was of a breed between the famous Tibet mastiff and the common Sikkim hunting-dog, which is a variety of the sorry race called Pariah in the plains. Being only a few weeks old, he looked a mere bundle of black fur; and I carried him off, for he could not walk.
To revert to the little Sikkim rhododendron, I shall give here the description of a still more diminutive specimen, met with by Dr Hooker during his journey, and which he has figured and described in his beautiful work, The Rhododendron of Sikkim-Himalaya. It is called R. nivale, or snow-rhododendron.
A small-growing species, rarely over 6 feet high, with elliptic leaves that are fawn-coloured on the under sides. The campanulate flowers are large and showy, rose or white and purple spotted, at the base of the three upper lobes. In this country it is fairly hardy, but suffers in very severe weather, unless planted in a sheltered site. R. CAMPYLOCARPUM. Sikkim, 1851.
The election to the Sikkim Lamaseries is generally conducted on the principle of self-government, but Pemiongchi and some others are often served by Lamas appointed from Tibet, or ordained there, at some of the great convents.
I do not hence conclude that there is no original connection between the directions of the rivers, and the lines of fracture; but whatever may have once subsisted between the direction of the fissures and that of the strike, it is in the Sikkim Himalaya now wholly masked by shiftings, which accompanied subequent elevations and depressions. Mr.
Arthur Crane, Key West; Saeed Nahvi, Shyan Behrarilal, Pondicherry; Udainarayan Singh, Sikkim; Fred Schechter, French Somaliland; Virginia Orbison, Balearic Islands; Mr. and Mrs. Amín Banání, Greece; Abbás Vakil, Cyprus; Gertrude Eisenberg, Canary Islands; Dick Stanton, Keewatin; Mr. and Mrs.
It is eighty to a hundred yards across, and nearly circular; its depth three or four feet, increased to fifteen or sixteen in the rains; like all similar pools in Sikkim, it contains little or no animal life at this season, and I searched in vain for shells, insects, or frogs. All around were great blocks of gneiss, some fully twelve feet square.
There was no agent on the Sikkim Rajah's part to conduct business at Dorjiling, and the Dewan insisted on sending a creature of his own, who had before been dismissed for insolence.
From the pleasant Vale of Kashmir the Artist would have to make his way up the Sind Valley a valley, typical of those beautiful tributaries which add so much to the whole charm of Kashmir. These are comparatively narrow, and the mountain-sides are steep, but the valleys are not so narrow nor the sides so steep as the valleys of Sikkim, nor are the forests anything like so dense.