on the Bhotan frontier. The place looked what it really was -wholly deserted. The rain I had experienced in the valley, had here been snow, and the appearance of the broad snowed patches clear of trees, and of the many houses without smoke or inhabitant, and the tall scattered trees with black bark and all but naked branches, was dismal in the extreme. The effect was heightened by an occasional Hindoo, who flitted here and there along the road, crouching and shivering, with white cotton garments and bare legs.

The delight of my Lepcha attendants at finding themselves safely at home again, knew no bounds; and their parents waited on me with presents, and other tokens of their goodwill and gratitude. I had no lack of volunteers for a similar excursion in the following season, though with their usual fickleness, more than half failed me, long before the time arrived for putting their zeal to the proof.

I am indebted to Dr. Campbell for the accompanying impression and description of the seal of the Dhurma Rajah, or sovereign pontiff of Bhotan, and spiritual head of the whole sect of the Dookpa, or red-mitred Lama Boodhists. The translations were made by Aden Tchebu Lama, who accompanied us into Sikkim in 1849, and I believe they are quite correct. The Tibetan characters run from left to right. The seal of the Dhurma Rajah is divided into a centre portion and sixteen rays. In the centre is the word Dookyin, which means "The Dookpa Creed;" around the "Dookyin" are sixteen similar letters, meaning "I," or "I am." The sixteen radial compartments contain his titles and attributes, thus, commencing from the centre erect one, and passing round from left to right:

1. I am the Spiritual and Temporal Chief of the Realm.

2. The Defender of the Faith.

3. Equal to Saruswati in learning.

4. Chief of all the Boodhs.

5. Head expounder of the Shasters.

6. Caster out of devils.

7. The most learned in the Holy Laws.

8. An Avatar of God (or, by God's will). 9. Absolver of sins.

10. I am above all the Lamas of the Dookpa Creed.

11. I am of the best of all Religions-the Dookpa.

12. The punisher of unbelievers.

13. Unequalled in expounding the Shasters.

14. Unequalled in holiness and wisdom.

15. The head (or fountain) of all Religious

Knowledge.

16. The Enemy of all false Avatars.

CHAPTER XVII.

EXCURSION TO TERAI.

Dispatch collections-Acorns - Heat - Punkabaree-Bees-Vegetation-Haze -Titalya-Earthquake-Proceed to Nepal frontier-Terai, geology of-Physical features of Himalayan valleys-Elephants, purchase of, &c.-River-beds -Mechi river-Return to Titalya-Leave for Teesta-Climate of plainsJeelpigoree-Cooches-Alteration in the appearance of country by fires, &c.— Grasses-Bamboos-Cottages-Rajah of Cooch Behar-Condition of peopleHooli festival-Ascend Teesta- Canoes - Cranes-Forest- Baikant-pore — Rummai-Religion-Plants at foot of mountains-Exit of Teesta-Canoe voyage down to Rangamally-English genera of plants-Birds-Beautiful scenery-Botanizing on elephants-Willow-Siligoree-Cross Terai-Geology -Iron-Lohar-ghur-Coal and sandstone beds-Mechi fisherman-Hailstorm -Ascent to Khersiong-To Dorjiling-Vegetation-Geology-Folded quartzbeds-Spheres of feldspar-Lime deposits.

HAVING arranged the collections (amounting to eighty loads) made during 1848, they were conveyed by coolies to the foot of the hills, where carts were provided to carry them five days' journey to the Mahanuddy river, which flows into the Ganges, whence they were transported by water to Calcutta.

On the 27th of February, I left Dorjiling to join Mr. Hodgson, at Titalya on the plains. The weather was raw, cold, and threatening: snow lay here and there at 7000 feet, and all vegetation was very backward, and wore a wintry garb. The laurels, maples, and deciduous-leaved oaks, hydrangea and cherry, were leafless, but the abundance of chesnuts and evergreen oaks, rhododendrons, Aucuba, Limonia, and other shrubs, kept the forest well clothed. The oaks had borne a very unusual number of acorns during

the last season, which were now falling, and strewing the road in some places so abundantly, that it was hardly safe to ride down hill.

The plains of Bengal were all but obscured by a dense. haze, partly owing to a peculiar state of the atmosphere that prevails in the dry months, and partly to the fires raging in the Terai forest, from which white wreaths of smoke ascended, stretching obliquely for miles to the eastward, and filling the air with black particles of grassstems, carried 4000 feet aloft by the heated ascending currents that impinge against the flanks of the mountains.

In the tropical region the air was scented with the white blossoms of the Vitex Agnus-castus, which grew in profusion by the road-side; but the forest, which had looked so gigantic on my arrival at the mountains the previous year, appeared small after the far more lofty and bulky oaks and pines of the upper regions of the Himalaya.

The evening was sultry and close, the heated surface of the earth seemed to load the surrounding atmosphere with warm vapours, and the sensation, as compared with the cool pure air of Dorjiling, was that of entering a confined tropical harbour after a long sca-voyage.

I slept in the little bungalow of Punkabaree, and was wakened next morning by sounds to which I had long been a stranger, the voices of innumerable birds, and the humming of great bees that bore large holes for their dwellings in the beams and rafters of houses: never before had I been so forcibly struck with the absence of animal life in the regions of the upper Himalaya.

Breakfasting early, I pursued my way in the so-called cool of the morning, but this was neither bright nor fresh ; the night having been hazy, there had been no terrestrial radiation, and the earth was dusty and parched; while the

sun rose through a murky yellowish atmosphere with illdefined orb. Thick clouds of smoke pressed upon the plains, and the faint easterly wind wafted large flakes of grass charcoal sluggishly through the air.

Vegetation was in great beauty, though past its winter prime. The tropical forest of India has two flowering seasons; one in summer, of the majority of plants; and the other in winter, of Acanthacea, Bauhinia, Dillenia, Bombax, &c. Of these the former are abundant, and render the jungle gay with large and delicate white, red, and purple blossoms. Coarse, ill-favoured vultures wheeled through the air, languid Bengalees had replaced the active mountaineers, jackal-like curs of low degree teemed at every village, and ran howling away from the onslaught of my mountain dog; and the tropics, with all their beauty of flower and genial warmth, looked as forbidding and unwholesome as they felt oppressive to a frame that had so long breathed the fresh mountain air.

Mounted on a stout pony, I enjoyed my scamper of sixteen miles over the wooded plains and undulating gravelly slopes of the Terai, intervening between the foot of the mountains and Siligoree bungalow, where I rested for an hour. In the afternoon I rode on leisurely to Titalya, sixteen miles further, along the banks of the Mahanuddy, the atmosphere being so densely hazy, that objects a few miles off were invisible, and the sun quite concealed, though its light was so powerful that no part of the sky could be steadily gazed upon. This state of the air is very curious, and has met with various attempts at explanation,*

Dr. M'Lelland ("Calcutta Journal of Natural History," vol. i., p. 52), attributes the haze of the atmosphere during the north-west winds of this season, wholly to suspended earthy particles. But the haze is present even in the calmest weather, and extreme dryness is in all parts of the world usually accompanied by an obscure horizon. Captain Campbell (" Calcutta Journal of Natural History," vol. ii., p. 44.)

all unsatisfactory to me: it accompanies great heat, dryness, and elasticity of the suspended vapours, and is not affected by wind. During the afternoon the latter blew with violence, but being hot and dry, brought no relief to my still unacclimated frame. My pony alone enjoyed the freedom of the boundless plains, and the gallop or trot being fatiguing in the heat, I tried in vain to keep him at a walk; his spirits did not last long, however, for he flagged after a few days' tropical heat. My little dog had run thirty miles the day before, exclusive of all the detours he had made for his own enjoyment, and he flagged so much after twenty more this day, that I had to take him on my saddle-bow, where, after licking his hot swollen feet, he fell fast asleep, in spite of the motion.

After leaving the wooded Terai at Siligoree, trees became scarce, and clumps of bamboos were the prevalent features; these, with an occasional banyan, peepul, or betel-nut palm near the villages, were the only breaks on the distant. horizon. A powerfully scented Clerodendron, and an Osbeckia gay with blossoms like dog-roses, were abundant; the former especially under trees, where the seeds are dropped by birds.

At Titalya bungalow, I received a hearty welcome from Mr. Hodgson, and congratulations on the success of my Nepal journey, which afforded a theme for many conversations.

In the evening we had three sharp jerking shocks of an earthquake in quick succession, at 98 P.M., appearing to come up from the southward: they were accompanied by a hollow rumbling sound like that of a waggon passing over a wooden bridge. The shock was felt strongly at Dorjiling, and registered by Mr. Muller at 9:10 P.M.: we had

also objects to Dr. M'Clelland's theory, citing those parts of Southern India which are least likely to be visited by dust-storms, as possessing an equally hazy atmo sphere; and further denies its being influenced by the hygrometric state of the atmosphere.