land, I found little to detain me in collecting. The aspect of the valley below the road was very different from what it had been sixteen years ago; almost the whole of the slope was now cultivated, and only small patches of jungle and a few trees remained by the side of the small ravines round which the path winds, I shot a few swifts, Collocalia nidifica, and martins, Chelidon nipalensis, which were flying in flocks, and I saw also a few of the large spine-tailed swifts, Acanthylis caudacuta, which on account of their extraordinary rapid flight are difficult to procure. All these birds probably breed in the high mountains of the interior, and had now left their breeding-places preliminary to migration; but the breeding-places of the Great Swift, which are said to be in high rocks close under the snow, have not been discovered, and the pace at which the bird flies might carry it in an hour 100 miles from its home. About eight miles from Kalimpong the road enters the skirts of the forest which covers the higher part of the Dhumsong hill, and there I found at 5,500 to 6,000 feet several plants which I had not previously observed, though they are no doubt found elsewhere, A little pink terrestrial orchid, the graceful though not large flowered Hedychium aureum C.B. Clarke, Didymocarpus pulchra and Chirita calva were growing among others on mossy wet rocks. A few butterflies also made their appearance. So far I had taken nothing but Hesperidæ, Neptes and Terias, besides some large showy day-flying moths of the genus Euschema, but now I saw the beautiful Limenitis zayla settled here and there on the path. After about ten miles the path branches on both sides. The left hand one goes up to the spot where a small fort or stockade formerly existed; the centre crossed the saddle of the hill and then descends to Pedong, which is the frontier village on the Tibet road; the right-hand path turns along the south side of the ridge to the eastward, and after passing for two or three miles through a dense dripping forest, which contained a bamboo not previously noticed, reaches the new and very prettily situated bungalow at Rississum. This is on a small bare spot 200 feet above the road, and commands a beautiful view over Sikkim and the Kanchenjunga group on the west and of the Cho-la range on the north-east.
The ridge falls steeply close to the bungalow on the north where one looks over on to the deep valley of the Rilli river and the slopes of Rhenok beyond. There is a good deal of clearing in the lower part of the valley and a large village inhabited by Bhutias and Limboos, whose clearings are encroaching on the forest in many places. The bungalow stands at 6,400 feet, and there is a Nepalese settlement near where fowls, eggs, milk and Indian corn can be had. I arrived about four and at once sent off a messenger with a note to the Abbe Desgodins, who lived at Pedong about four miles away. This gentleman was a French Lazarist missionary priest who has resided many years in Eastern Tibet, and had taken up his abode in this isolated spot with two younger priests, in the hope of finding a favourable field for missionary work among the Bhutias. In the evening after a short but heavy thunderstorm, which recurred almost every day that I was in Rississum, the weather cleared, and on the follow¬ ing morning I had a superb view of the whole country up to the Donkia
pass. It was a fine sunny morning, and I started early to collect butter-
7
