trunks axe richly clothed with epiphytical Orchids,
pendulous Lycopodia and many ferns, and similar
types of the hottest and dampest climates.
The bungalow at Punkabaree was good—which was
fortunate, as my luggage-bearers were not come up,
and there were no signs of them along the Terai road,
which I saw winding below me. My scanty stock of
paper being full of plants, I was reduced to the strait
of gathering, and throwing away my specimens. The
forest was truly magnificent along the steep mountain
sides. The apparently large proportion of deciduous
trees was far more considerable than I had expected;
partly, probably, due to the abundance of the Dillenia,
Cassia, and Sterculia, whose copious fruit was all the
more conspicuous from the leafless condition of the
plant. The white or lilac blossoms of the convolvulus -
like Thuribergia, and other Acanihacece, were the
predominant features of the shrubby vegetation, and
very handsome.
All around, the hills rise steeply five or six thousand
feet, clothed with a dense deep-green dripping forest.
Torrents rush down the slopes, their position indicated
by the dipping of the forest into their beds, or the
occasional cloud of spray rising above some more
boisterous part of their course. From the road, at and
a little above Punkabaree, the view is really superb, and
very instructive. Behind (or north) the Himalaya rise
in steep confused masses. Below, the hill on which
I stood, and the ranges as far as the eye can reach
east and west, throw spurs on to the plains of India.
These spurs are very thickly wooded, and enclose
broad, dead-flat, hot and damp valleys, apparently
covered with a dense forest. The Terai district forms
a very irregular belt, scantily clothed, and intersected
by innumerable rivulets from the hills, which unite and
divide again on the flat, till, emerging from the region
of trees, they enter the plains, following devious
courses, which glisten like silver threads. The whole
horizon is bounded by the sea-like expanse of the
plains, which stretch away into the region of sunshine
and fine weather, in one boundless flat.
In the distance, the courses of the Teesta and Cosi,
the great drainers of the snowy' Himalayas, and the
recipients of innumerable smaller rills, are with
difficulty traced at this, the dry season. The oceanlike
appearance of this southern view is even more
conspicuous in the heavens than on the land, the clouds
arranging themselves after a singularly sea-scape
fashion. The breezes are south-easterly, bringing that
vapour from the Indian Ocean, which is rarefied and
suspended aloft over the heated plains, but condensed
into a drizzle when it strikes the cooler flanks of the
hills, and into heavy rain when it meets their still
colder summits. Upon what a gigantic scale does
nature here operate! Vapours, raised from an ocean
whose nearest shore is more than 400 miles distant,
are safely transported without the loss of one drop of
water, to support the rank luxuriance of this far
distant region. This and other offices fulfilled, the
waste waters are returned, by the Cosi and Teesta, to
the ocean, and again exhaled, imported, expended,
re-collected, and returned.
VOL. I .