Every feature, botanical, geological, and zoological, is
new on entering tbis district. The change is sudden
and immediate: sea and shore are hardly more conspicuously
different; nor from the edge of the Terai to
the limit of perpetual snow is any botanical region
more clearly marked than this, which is the commencement
of Himalayan vegetation. A sudden descent
leads to the Mahanuddee, flowing in a shallow valley,
over a pebbly bottom: it is a rapid river, even at this
season; its hanks are fringed with bushes, and it is
as clear and sparkling as a trout stream in Scotland.
Beyond it the road winds through a thick brush-wood,
choked with long grasses, and with but few trees,
chiefly of Acacia, Dalbergia Sissoo, and a scarlet-fruited
Sterculia. A t this season only a few spring plants
were in flower; leaves of terrestrial Orchids appeared,
with ferns and weeds of hot damp regions. I crossed
the beds of many small streams: some were dry, and
all very tortuous; their banks were richly clothed
with brush-wood and climbers of Convolvulus, Vines,
Bignonias, &c.
Fatal as this district is, and especially to Europeans,
a race inhabit it with impunity, who, if not numerous,
do not owe their paucity to any climatic causes. These
áre the Mechis, often described as a squalid, unhealthy
people, typical of the region they frequent; but who
are, in reality, more robust than Europeans in India,
and whose disagreeably sallow complexion is deceptive
as indicating a sickly constitution. They are a mild,
inoffensive people, industrious for Orientals, living by
annually burning the Terai jungle and cultivating the