Nihatchisui, a station to which the timber from Mt. Randai is floated down the Dakshui river during the rains and cut up at a saw-mill for export to China; but the price of this fine Hinoki timber was too high then to allow it to be exported to Europe. After a few hours’ plant collect¬ ing we went to Nanto, the chief town of the Horisha district, where we slept in a good Japanese inn, and next morning went back as far as the station of Lama, where we put our baggage on push-cars and went nine miles through a pretty country in the Dakshui valley to a Chinese village called Chip-chip, where there is a good inn. On the road Price photo¬ graphed a fine old tree of Bischoffia javanica, about 65 feet by 20 feet, and an old Liquidambar about 75 feet by 12 feet. This is one of the common trees of the lower hills in this valley. In the jungle near here grows a plant known to the Chinese as Ka-lang-kao , which means "Bite-man-dog,” a species of Laportea, which, if touched, stings very severely, and is much dreaded by bare-legged natives. It seems very similar to the dangerous stinging-nettle described by Hooker, in his Himalayan Journals , as growing in the hot valleys of Sikkim.
From Chip-chip I was carried on a chair and our baggage by coolies, to a place ten miles farther up the Dakshui river known as Togun, where there is a police-station at the foot of Mt. Randai. On this mountain, said to be about 10,000 feet high, a good deal of fine timber has been cut, and brought down to the river by means of a timber slide. Our camp here was surrounded by steep forest-clad hills, where the vegetation was very tropical and a stemless palm was common. Savage tribes live near here, and there had been fighting very recently with them, so that the police would not let us go further up the valley. I heard afterwards that the police here had been attacked soon after our visit, and some of them killed. On March 12th Price started early with Kanehira and eight coolies to ascend Mt. Rantai as far as possible, but, as the trail is steep and difficult, I did not attempt the trip. These natives carry loads on their backs on wooden frames, like those used by the Lepchas of Sikkim, but shorter and wider; they do not take such heavy loads, fifty or sixty pounds being about their burden. I collected round Togun in very tropical sur¬ roundings, but did not find anything very remarkable, except a climbing white-flowered Hydrangea , an immense mass of an orchid Sarchochilus sp„ on a tree overhanging the river and a pair of green fruit-pigeons, Sphencercus formosa. Near camp I shot a nightjar, Caprimulgus monticola, and a Ruficilla rufiventris. In the afternoon and night it rained very heavily, which made the river rise so much that the temporary bridge by which we had crossed became dangerous, and we might easily have been cut off for some days.
The next evening Price returned after having ascended to about 7,800 feet, where he camped in a Cypress forest, where the trees were not so large as at Arisan. He was much pleased at finding four large trees of Cunninghamia Konishii , a remarkable conifer which has only been found here as yet and is extremely scarce. It appears that the wood of this tree was highly valued by the Chinese for making coffins, for which very high prices were paid. He found the stump of a tree 7 feet in diameter, and was only able to procure cones by shooting an upper branch off with.
