The laws affecting the distribution of plants, and
the lower animals, materially influence the migrations
of man also; and as the botany, zoology, and climate
of the Malayan and Siamese peninsula advance far westwards
into India, along the foot of the Himalaya, so do also
the varieties of the human race. These features
are most conspicuously displayed in the natives of
Assam, on both sides of the Burrampooter, as far as
the great bend of that river, beyond which they gradually
disappear; and none of the Himalayan tribes east of
that point practise the bloody and brutal rites in
war that prevail amongst the Cookies, Khasias, Garrows,
and other Indo-Chinese tribes of the mountain forests
of Assam, Eastern Bengal, and the Malay peninsula.
I have not alluded to that evidence of the extraction
of the Sikkim races, which is to be derived from their
languages, and from which we may hope for a clue to
their origin; the subject is at present under discussion,
and involved in much obscurity.
That six or seven different tribes, without any feudal
system or coercive head, with different languages
and customs, should dwell in close proximity and in
peace and unity, within the confined territory of
Sikkim, even for a limited period, is an anomaly; the
more especially when it is considered that except
for a tincture of the Boodhist religion among some
few of the people, they are all but savages, as low
in the scale of intellect as the New Zealander or the
Tahitian, and beneath those races in ingenuity and
skill as craftsmen. Wars have been waged amongst
them, but they were neither sanguinary nor destructive,
and the fact remains no less remarkable, that at the
period of our occupying Dorjiling, friendship and
unanimity existed amongst all these tribes; from the
Tibetan at 14,000 feet, to the Mechi of the plains;
under a sovereign whose temporal power was wholly
unsupported by even the semblance of arms, and whose
spiritual supremacy was acknowledged by very few.
Excursion from Dorjiling to Great Rungeet — Zones of vegetation —
Tree-ferns — Palms, upper limit of — Leebong, tea plantations —
Ging — Boodhist remains — Tropical vegetation — Pines — Lepcha
clearances — Forest fires — Boodhist monuments — Fig — Cane
bridge and raft over Rungeet — Sago-palm — India-rubber — Yel Pote
— Butterflies and other insects — Snakes — Camp — Temperature and
humidity of atmosphere — Junction of Teesta and Rungeet — Return to
Dorjiling — Tonglo, excursion to — Bamboo flowering — Oaks —
Gordonia — Maize, hermaphrodite flowered — Figs — Nettles —
Peepsa — Simonbong, cultivation at — European fruits at Dorjiling
— Plains of India.
