Himalayan Journals, vol 1, J. D. Hooker [13 ebook reader .txt] 📗

A sudden descent leads to the Mahanuddee river, flowing in a shallow valley, over a pebbly bottom: it is a rapid river, even at this season; its banks 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 brushwood, choked with long grasses, and with but few trees, chiefly of Acacia, Dalbergia Sissoo, and a scarlet fruited Sterculia.

The soil is a red, friable clay and gravel. At this season only a few spring plants were in flower, amongst which a very sweet-scented Crinum, Asphodel, and a small Curcuma, were in the greatest profusion. 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 brushwood and climbers of Convolvulus, Vines, Hiraea, Leea, Menispermeae, Cucurbitaceae, and Bignoniaceae. Their pent-up waters, percolating the gravel beds, and partly carried off by evaporation through the stratum of ever-increasing vegetable mould, must be one main agent in the production of the malarious vapours of this pestilential region. Add to this, the detention of the same amongst the jungly herbage, the amount of vapour in the humid atmosphere above, checking the upward passage of that from the soil, the sheltered nature of the locality at the immediate base of lofty mountains; and there appear to me to be here all necessary elements, which, combined, will produce stagnation and deterioration in an atmosphere loaded with vapour. 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 are the Mechis, often described as a squalid, unhealthy people, typical of the region they frequent; but who are, in reality, more robust than the 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 cleared spots; and, though so sequestered and isolated, they rather court than avoid intercourse with those whites whom they know to be kindly disposed.

 

After proceeding some six miles along the gradually ascending path, I came to a considerable stream, cutting its way through stratified gravel, with cliffs on each side fifteen to twenty feet high, here and there covered with ferns, the little Oxalis sensitiva, and other herbs. The road here suddenly ascends a steep gravelly hill, and opens out on a short flat, or spur, from which the Himalaya rise abruptly, clothed with forest from the base: the little bungalow of Punkabaree, my immediate destination, nestled in the woods, crowning a lateral knoll, above which, to east and west, as far as the eye could reach, were range after range of wooded mountains, 6000 to 8000

feet high. I here met with the India-rubber tree (_Ficus elastica_); it abounds in Assam, but this is its western limit.

 

From this steppe, the ascent to Punkabaree is sudden and steep, and accompanied with a change in soil and vegetation. The mica slate and clay slate protrude everywhere, the former full of garnets. A giant forest replaces the stunted and bushy timber of the Terai Proper; of which the Duabanga and Terminalias form the prevailing trees, with Cedrela and the Gordonia Wallichii. Smaller timber and shrubs are innumerable; a succulent character pervades the bushes and herbs, occasioned by the prevalence of Urticeae. Large bamboos rather crest the hills than court the deeper shade, and of the latter there is abundance, for the torrents cut a straight, deep, and steep course down the hill flanks: the galleys they traverse are choked with vegetation and bridged by fallen trees, whose trunks are richly clothed with Dendrobium Pierardi and other epiphytical Orchids, with pendulous Lycopodia and many ferns, Hoya, Scitamineae, and similar types of the hottest and dampest climates.

 

The bungalow at Punkabaree was good—which was well, 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 botanising, 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 convolvuluslike Thunbergia, and other Acanthaceae were the predominant features of the shrubby vegetation, and very handsome.

 

All around, the hills rise steeply five or six thousand feet, clothed in 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 are very thickly wooded, and enclose broad, dead-flat, hot and damp valleys, apparently covered with a dense forest. Secondary spurs of clay and gravel, like that immediately below Punkabaree, rest on the bases of the mountains, and seem to form an intermediate neutral ground between flat and mountainous India. 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 many 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 ocean-like 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. Endless strata run in parallel ribbons over the extreme horizon; above these, scattered cumuli, also in horizontal lines, are dotted against a clear grey sky, which gradually, as the eye is lifted, passes into a deep cloudless blue vault, continuously clear to the zenith; there the cumuli, in white fleecy masses, again appear; till, in the northern celestial hemisphere, they thicken and assume the leaden hue of nimbi, discharging their moisture on the dark forest-clad hills around. 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, exported, expended, recollected, and returned.

 

Illustration — PUNKABAREE BUNGALOW AND BASE OF THE HIMALAYA.

 

The soil and bushes everywhere swarmed with large and troublesome ants, and enormous earthworms. In the evening, the noise of the great Cicadae in the trees was almost deafening. They burst suddenly into full chorus, with a voice so harshly croaking, so dissonant, and so unearthly, that in these solitary forests I could not help being startled. In general character the note was very similar to that of other Cicadae. They ceased as suddenly as they commenced. On the following morning my baggage arrived, and, leaving my palkee, I mounted a pony kindly sent for me by Mr. Hodgson, and commenced a very steep ascent of about 3000 feet, winding along the face of a steep, richly-wooded valley. The road zigzags extraordinarily in and out of the innumerable lateral ravines, each with its water course, dense jungle, and legion of leeches; the bite of these blood-suckers gives no pain, but is followed by considerable effusion of blood.

They puncture through thick worsted stockings, and even trousers, and, when full, roll in the form of a little soft ball into the bottom of the shoe, where their presence is hardly felt in walking.

 

Not only are the roadsides rich in plants, but native paths, cutting off all the zigzags, run in straight lines up the steepest hill-faces, and thus double the available means for botanising; and it is all but impossible to leave the paths of one kind or other, except for a yard or two up the rocky ravines. Elephants, tigers, and occasionally the rhinoceros, inhabit the foot of these hills, with wild boars, leopards, etc.; but none are numerous. The elephant’s path is an excellent specimen of engineering—the opposite of the native track, for it winds judiciously.

 

At about 1000 feet above Punkabaree, the vegetation is very rich, and appears all the more so from the many turnings of the road, affording glorious prospects of the foreshortened tropical forests.

The prevalent timber is gigantic, and scaled by climbing Leguminosae, as Bauhinias and Robinias, which sometimes sheath the trunks, or span the forest with huge cables, joining tree to tree. Their trunks are also clothed with parasitical Orchids, and still more beautifully with Pothos (_Scindapsus_), Peppers, Gnetum,

Vines, Convolvulus, and Bignoniae. The beauty of the drapery of the Pothos-leaves is pre-eminent, whether for the graceful folds the foliage assumes, or for the liveliness of its colour. Of the more conspicuous smaller trees, the wild banana is the most abundant, its crown of very beautiful foliage contrasting with the smaller-leaved plants amongst which it nestles; next comes a screw-pine (Pandanus) with a straight stem and a tuft of leaves; each eight or ten feet long, waving on all sides. Araliaceae, with smooth or armed slender trunks, and Mappa-like Euphorbiaceae, spread their long petioles horizontally forth, each terminated with an ample leaf some feet in diameter. Bamboo abounds everywhere: its dense tufts of culms, 100

feet and upwards high, are as thick as a man’s thigh at the base.

Twenty or thirty, species of ferns (including a tree-fern) were luxuriant and handsome. Foliaceous lichens and a few mosses appeared at 2000 feet. Such is the vegetation of the roads through the tropical forests of the Outer-Himalaya.

 

At about 4000 feet the road crossed a saddle, and ran along the narrow crest of a hill, the top of that facing the plains of India, and over which is the way to the interior ranges, amongst which Dorjiling is placed, still twenty-five miles off. A little below this a great change had taken place in the vegetation, marked, first, by the appearance of a very English-looking bramble, which, however, by way of proving its foreign origin, bore a very good yellow fruit, called here the “yellow raspberry.” Scattered oaks, of a noble species, with large lamellated cups and magnificent foliage, succeeded; and along the ridge of the mountain to Kursiong (a dawk bungalow at about 4800 feet), the change in the flora was complete.

 

The spring of this region and elevation most vividly recalled that of England. The oak flowering, the birch bursting