trifling tax is levied on each animal. The cattle are
very carelessly herded, and many are carried off by
tigers.
Having returned to Titalya, Mr. Hodgson and I set
off in an eastern direction for the Teesta river, whose
embouchure from the mountains to the plains I was
anxious to visit. Though the weather is hot, and
oppressively so in the middle of the day, there are few
climates more delicious than that of these grassy
savannahs from December to March. We always
started soon after daybreak on ponies, and enjoyed a
twelve to sixteen miles’ gallop in the cool of the
morning before breakfast, which we found prepared
on our arrival at a tent sent on ahead the night
before. The route led across an open country, or
followed paths through interminable rice-fields, now
dry and dusty. On poor soil a white-flowered Leucas
monopolised the space, like our charlock and poppy:
it was apparently a pest to the agriculturist, covering
the surface in some places like a sprinkling of snow.
On the second day we arrived a t Jeelpigoree, a large
straggling village near the hanks of the Teesta, a good
way south of the forest: here we were detained for
several days, waiting for elephants with which to
proceed northwards. The natives are Cooches, a
Mogul (Mongolian) race, who inhabit the open country
of this district, replacing the Mechis of the Terai
forest. They are a fine athletic people, not very dark,
and formed the once powerful house of Cooch Behar.
Latterly the upper classes have adopted the religion of
the Brahmins, and have had caste conferred upon them;
while the lower orders have turned Mahometans: these,
chiefly agriculturists, are a timid, oppressed class,
who everywhere fled before us, and were with difficulty
prevailed upon even to direct us along our road. A
rude police is established by the British Government
all over the country, and to it the traveller applies for
guides and assistance; but the Cooches were so shy
and difficult to deal with, that we were generally
obliged to depend on our own resources. Turf is the
prevailing feature of the country, there being few
shrubs, and still fewer trees. Goats and the common
Indian cow are plentiful, hut it is not swampy enough
for the buffalo, and sheep are scarce, on account of
the heat of the climate. This uniformity of feature over
so immense an area is, however, due to the agency of
man, and is of recent introduction; as all concur in
affirming, that within the last hundred years the face
of the country was covered with the same tall jungle -
grasses which abound in the Terai forest ; and the
troops cantoned at Titalya (a central position) from
1816 to 1828, confirm this statement as far as that
immediate neighbourhood is concerned.
These gigantic grasses seem to be destroyed by fire
with remarkable facility at one season of the y e a r; and
it is well that this is the case ; for, whether as a retainer
of miasma, a shelter for wild beasts, both carnivorous
and herbivorous, alike dangerous to man, or from their
liability to ignite, and spread destruction far and wide,
the grass-jungles are most serious obstacles to civilisation.
Next to the rapidity with which it can be cleared,
the adaptability of a great part of the soil to irrigation