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Updated: June 23, 2025
In the evening we were visited by the Dewan, the head and front of all our Sikkim difficulties, whose influence was paramount with the Rajah, owing to the age and infirmities of the latter, and his devotion to religion, which absorbed all his time and thoughts.
This plant is occasionally hermaphrodite in Sikkim, the flowers forming a large drooping panicle and ripening small grains; it is, however, a rare occurrence, and the specimens are highly valued by the people. The tops of two are eaten, as are several species of Procris.
The valleys on this side of the mountain run northwards, and discharge their streams into great rivers, which, coming from the snow, wind amongst the hills, and debouche into the Teesta, to the east, where it divides Sikkim from Bhotan.
Abies Webbiana begins here, and continues onwards, but, as on Tonglo, Mainom, and the other outer wetter Sikkim ranges, there is neither larch, Pinus excelsa, Abies Smithiana, or A. Brunoniana.
The foot of the Sikkim Himalaya has, I believe, been connected with Calcutta by the great trigonometrical survey, but I am given to understand that the results are not published.
The view of the snowy range from this temple is one of the finest in Sikkim; the eye surveying at one glance the vegetation of the Tropics and the Poles.
We accordingly started again the following morning, and still keeping in a western direction, crossed the posts in the forest dividing Sikkim from Nepal, and descended into the Myong valley of the latter country, through which flows the river of that name, a tributary of the Tambur.
But the tea-gardens have attracted a primitive people, the Santals, who are typical of the true Dravidian stock of India a jolly, cheerful, easy-going, and, on the whole, law-abiding, truthful, and honest people who love a roaming life, with plenty of hunting and fishing. The Lepchas of Sikkim have risen above the first primitive stage. They clothe themselves well and dwell in well-built houses.
Like all the natives of Tibet and Sikkim, the priests are intolerably filthy; in some cases so far carrying out their doctrines as not even to kill the vermin with which they swarm. All are nominally bound to chastity, but exemptions in favour of Lamas of wealth, rank, or power, are granted by the supreme pontiffs, both in Tibet and Sikkim.
Above Simonbong, the path up Tonglo is little frequented: it is one of the many routes between Nepal and Sikkim, which cross the Singalelah spur of Kinchinjunga at various elevations between 7000 and 15,000 feet.
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