while masses of beautiful red and violet balsams grew
under every hedge and rock.
We procured a good house after many delays, for
the people were far from friendly to Europeans; it was
a clean, very long cottage, with low thatched eaves
almost touching the ground, and was surrounded by a
high bamboo paling that enclosed out-houses built on
a well-swept floor of beaten earth. Within, the woodwork
was carved in curious patterns, and was particularly
well fitted. The old lady to whom it belonged got
tired of us before two days were over, and first tried to
smoke us out by a large fire of green wood at that end
of the cottage which she retained; and afterwards by
inviting guests to a supper, with whom she kept up a
racket all night. Her son, a tall, sulky fellow, came
to receive the usual gratuity on our departure, which
we made large to show we bore no ill-will: he,
however, behaved so scornfully, pretending to despise
it, that I had no choice but to pocket it again; a
proceeding which was received with shouts of laughter,
at his expense, from a large crowd of bystanders.
On the 30th of September we proceeded north-east
from Joowye to Nurtiung, crossing the watershed of
the Jyntea range, which is scarcely raised above the
mean level of the h ills ; it is about 4,500 feet elevation.
To the north the descent is rather abrupt to a
considerable stream, beyond which is the village of
Nurtiung.
The ascent to the village from the river is by steps
cut in a narrow cleft of the rocks, to a flat, elevated
4,178 feet above the s e a : we here procured a cottage,
and found the people remarkably civil. The general
appearance is the same as at Joowye, but there are
here extensive and very unhealthy marshes, whose
evil effects we experienced, in having the misfortune to
lose one of our servants by fever. Except pines, there
are few large tree s; but the quantity of species of
perennial woody plants contributing to form the jungles
is quite extraordinary: we enumerated 140, of which
60 were trees or large shrubs above twenty feet high.
Nurtiung contains a most remarkable collection of
those sepulchral and other monuments, which form so
curious a feature in the scenery of these mountains,
and in the habits of their native population. They
are all placed in a fine grove of trees, occupying a
hollow; where several acres are covered with gigantic,
generally circular, slabs of stone, from ten to twenty-
five feet broad, supported five feet above the ground
upon other blocks. For the most part they are buried
in brushwood of nettles and shrubs, but in one place
there is an open area of fifty yards encircled by them,
each with a gigantic headstone behind it. Of the
latter the tallest was nearly thirty feet high, six broad,
and two feet eight inches in thickness, and must have
been sunk at least five feet, and perhaps much more,
in the ground. They are erected by dint of sheer
brute strength, the lever being the only aid.
Splendid trees of Bombax, fig and banyan, overshadowed
them : the largest banyan had a trunk five
feet in diameter, clear of the buttresses, and numerous
small trees of Celtis grew out of it, and an immense
flowering tuft of Vanda ccerulea (the rarest and most