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Updated: May 18, 2025
To the south the eye wandered down the valley of the Lachoong to the mountains of the Chola range, which appear so lofty from Dorjiling, but from here are sunk far below the horizon: on comparing these with the northern landscape, the wonderful difference between their respective snow-levels, amounting to fully 5000 feet, was very apparent.
We staid two days at Lachoong, two of my lads being again laid up with fever; one of them had been similarly attacked at the same place nearly two months before: the other lad had been repeatedly ill since June, and at all elevations. Both cases were returns of a fever caught in the low unhealthy valleys some months previously, and excited by exposure and hardship.
In my blanket tent the heat rose to upwards of 100 degrees in calm weather. Whilst here I ascertained the velocity of the currents of the Lachen and Lachoong rivers. Both were torrents, than which none could be more rapid, short of becoming cataracts: the rains were at their height, and the melting of the snows at its maximum.
I pitched my tent close to a little shed, at the gently sloping base of a mountain that divided the Lachoong river from a western tributary.
The talus which had lately been poured into the valley formed a gently sloping bank, twenty feet high, over which the Lachen- Lachoong rolled, from a pool above, caused by the damming up of its waters.
Our fire was principally of wet rhododendron wood, with masses of the aromatic dwarf species, which, being full of resinous glands, blazed with fury. Next day, after a very transient glimpse of the Kinchinjunga snows, I descended to Lachoong, where I remained for some days botanizing.
I found traces of stratified pebbles and sand on the north flank of the Lavanchi moraine however, which I failed to discover in those of Lachoong. The river is fourteen yards broad, and neither deep nor rapid: the village is on the east bank, and is large for Sikkim; it contains fully 100 good wooden houses, raised on posts, and clustered together without order.
Leave Lachoong for Tunkra pass Moraines and their vegetation Pines of great dimensions Wild currants Glaciers Summit of pass Elevation Views Plants Winds Choombi district Lacheepia rock Extreme cold Kinchinjunga Himalayan grouse Meteorological observations Return to Lachoong Oaks Ascent to Yeumtong Flats and debacles Buried pine-trunks Perpetual snow Hot springs Behaviour of Singtam Soubah Leave for Momay Samdong Upper limit of trees Distribution of plants Glacial terraces, etc.
The west flank is lofty and precipitous, with narrow gullies still retaining the winter's snow, at 12,500 feet; the east gradually slopes up to the two snowy domes seen from Lachoong; the bed of the valley is alternately a flat lake-bed, in which the river meanders at the rate of three and a half miles an hour, and sudden descents, cumbered with old moraines, over which it rushes in sheets of Loam.
About five miles to the north the valley forks; two conspicuous domes of snow rising from the intermediate mountains. The eastern valley leads to lofty snowed regions, and is said to be impracticable; the Lachoong flows down the western, which appeared rugged, and covered with pine woods.
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