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THE SUBLIME HIMALAYA.
41

everything connected therewith, but as my object is Tibet, I cannot spend much space on the inner Himalayas of Nepāl. I shall only mention briefly what will be considered interesting by my readers in general.

On the third day of our departure from Kātmāndu, we travelled for more than forty miles, and arrived at a small trading town called Chunge, situated on the west bank of the Kirong river (Tirsuli Gandak). Just north of the town, on the bank of that river there is a pretty forest in which we slept well through the night, in a lonely spot, lulled by the rolling sounds of the mountain-rivers' grand music. Early on the following morning we started on the north-western path leading to Pokhra, although there is a short way, only five days' journey from the place to Kirong in Tibet; but there the officers of the frontier guard the passes against all strangers. In three days' journey after this we made about forty miles, passed the villages Bareng-Bareng and Sareng, and, crossing the river Agu, we arrived at a famous town, Algata. I have not met with any maps which mention this name. The town is situated on the west bank of the river which the natives called Buri-Gaṅgā (Buria Gandak); this river is crossed by an iron hanging bridge. The town itself is important on account of its trade with Tibet; I saw more than fifty people from Tibet and from Nishang—a northern frontier province of Nepāl. During the nine days after leaving Algata we passed many valleys, rocky mountains, streams, hill pastures, forests full of rhododendrons, and deep forests of fir, oak and pine, with the peaks of the snowy range in view. We also passed several villages—Nimareshi, Daramhaje, Rutel, Manicheka and Sātmuni.

We made a distance of something less than one hundred miles, and then reached a town called Pokhra. Pokhra looked like a town of villas at home, the site being chosen