The following summary of hospital admissions affords
the best test of the healthiness of the climate, embracing,
as the period does, the three most fatal months to
European troops in India. Out of a detachment
(105 strong) of H.M. 80th Regiment stationed at Dorjiling,
in the seven months from January to July inclusive,
there were sixty-four admissions to the hospital,
or, on the average, 4-1/3 per cent. per month; and
only two deaths, both of dysentery. Many of these
men had suffered frequently in the plains from acute
dysentery and hepatic affections, and many others
had aggravated these complaints by excessive drinking,
and two were cases of delirium tremens. During
the same period, the number of entries at Calcutta
or Dinapore would probably have more than trebled
this.
CHAPTER V.
View from Mr. Hodgson’s of range of snowy mountains — Their extent
and elevation — Delusive appearance of elevation — Sinchul, view
from and vegetation of — Chumulari — Magnolias, white and purple —
Rhododendron Dalhousiae, arboreum and argenteum — Natives of
Dorjiling — Lepchas, origin, tradition of flood, morals, dress,
arms, ornaments, diet — cups, origin and value — Marriages —
Diseases — Burial — Worship and religion — Bijooas — Kampa Rong,
or Arratt — Limboos, origin, habits, language, etc. — Moormis —
Magras — Mechis — Comparison of customs with those of the natives
of Assam, Khasia, etc.
The summer, or rainy season of 1848, was passed at
or near Dorjiling, during which period I chiefly occupied
myself in forming collections, and in taking meteorological
observations. I resided at Mr Hodgson’s
for the greater part of the time, in consequence of
his having given me a hospitable invitation to consider
his house my home. The view from his windows
is one quite unparalleled for the scenery it embraces,
commanding confessedly the grandest known landscape
of snowy mountains in the Himalaya, and hence in the
world.* [For an account of the geography of these
regions, and the relation of the Sikkim Himalaya to
Tibet, etc., see Appendix.] Kinchinjunga (forty-five
miles distant) is the prominent object, rising 21,000
feet above the level of the observer out of a sea of
intervening wooded hills; whilst, on a line with its
snows, the eye descends below the horizon, to a narrow
gulf 7000 feet deep in the mountains, where the Great
Rungeet, white with foam, threads a tropical forest
with a silver line.
To the north-west towards Nepal, the snowy peaks of
Kubra and Junnoo (respectively 24,005 feet and 25,312
feet) rise over the shoulder of Singalelah; whilst
eastward the snowy mountains appear to form an unbroken
range, trending north-east to the great mass of Donkia
(23,176 feet) and thence south-east by the fingered
peaks of Tunkola and the silver cone of Chola, (17,320
feet) gradually sinking into the Bhotan mountains
at Gipmoochi (14,509 feet).
