Himalayan Journals, vol 1 by J. D. Hooker (best thriller books to read txt) 📕

At 10 a.m. the sun became uncomfortably hot, the thermometer being 77 degrees, and the black-bulb thermometer 137 degrees. I had lost my hat, and possessed no substitute but a silken nightcap; so I had to tie a handkerchief over my head, to the astonishment of the passers-by. Holding my head down, I had little source of amusement but reading the foot-marks on the road; and these were strangely diversified to an English eye. Those of the elephant, camel, buffalo and bullock, horse, ass, pony, dog, goat, sheep and kid, lizard, wild-cat and pigeon, with men, women, and children’s feet, naked and shod, were all recognisable.

It was noon ere I arrived at Lieutenant Beadle’s, at Belcuppee (alt.

1219 feet), glad enough of the hearty welcome I received, being very hot, dusty, and hungry. The country about his bungalow is very pretty, from the number of wooded hills and large trees, especially of banyan and peepul, noble oak-like Mahowa (_Bassia_), Nauclea,

Mango, and Ficus infectoria. These are all scattered, however, and do not form forest, such as in a stunted form clothes the hills, consisting of Diospyros, Terminalia, Gmelina, Nauclea parvifolia, Buchanania, etc. The rocks are still hornblende-schist and granite, with a covering of alluvium, full of quartz pebbles. Insects and birds are numerous, the latter consisting of jays, crows, doves, sparrows, and maina (_Pastor_); also the Phoenicophaus tristis

(“Mahoka” of the natives), with a note like that of the English cuckoo, as heard late in the season.

I remained two days with Lieutenant Beadle, enjoying in his society several excursions to the hot springs, etc. These springs (called Soorujkoond) are situated close to the road, near the mouth of a valley, in a remarkably pretty spot. They are, of course, objects of worship; and a ruined temple stands close behind them, with three very conspicuous trees—a peepul, a banyan, and a white, thick-stemmed, leafless Sterculia, whose branches bore dense clusters of greenish foetid flowers. The hot springs are four in number, and rise in as many ruined brick tanks about two yards across. Another tank, fed by a cold spring, about twice that size, flows between two of the hot, only two or three paces distant from one of the latter on either hand. All burst through the gneiss rocks, meet in one stream after a few yards, and are conducted by bricked canals to a pool of cold water, about eighty yards off.

The temperatures of the hot springs were respectively 169 degrees, 170 degrees, 173 degrees, and 190 degrees; of the cold, 84 degrees at 4 p.m., and 75 degrees at 7 a.m. the following morning. The hottest is the middle of the five. The water of the cold spring is sweet but not good, and emits gaseous bubbles; it was covered with a green floating Conferva. Of the four hot springs, the most copious is about three feet deep, bubbles constantly, boils eggs, and though brilliantly clear, has an exceedingly nauseous taste. This and the other warm ones cover the bricks and surrounding rocks with a thick incrustation of salts.

Confervae abound in the warm stream from the springs, and two species, one ochreous brown, and the other green, occur on the margins of the tanks themselves, and in the hottest water; the brown is the best Salamander, and forms a belt in deeper water than the green; both appear in broad luxuriant strata, wherever the temp. is cooled down to 168 degrees, and as low as 90 degrees. Of flowering plants, three showed in an eminent degree a constitution capable of resisting the heat, if not a predilection for it; these were all Cyperaceae, a Cyperus and an Eleocharis, having their roots in water of 100 degrees, and where they are probably exposed to greater heat, and a Fimbristylis at 98 degrees; all were very luxuriant.

From the edges of the four hot springs I gathered sixteen species of flowering plants, and from the cold tank five, which did not grow in the hot. A water-beetle, Colymbetes(?) and Notonecta, abounded in water at 112 degrees, with quantities of dead shells; frogs were very lively, with live shells, at 90 degrees, and with various other water beetles. Having no means of detecting the salts of this water, I bottled some for future analysis.* [For an account of the Confervae, and of the mineral constituents of the waters, etc. see Appendix B.]

On the following day I botanized in the neighbourhood, with but poor success. An oblique-leaved fig climbs the other trees, and generally strangles them: two epiphytal Orchideae also occur on the latter, Vanda Roxburghii and an Oberonia. Dodders (_Cuscuta_) of two species, and Cassytha, swarm over and conceal the bushes with their yellow thread-like stems.

I left Belcuppee on the 8th of February, following Mr. Williams’

camp. The morning was clear and cold, the temperature only 56

degrees. We crossed the nearly dry broad bed of the Burkutta river, a noble stream during the rains, carrying along huge boulders of granite and gneiss. Near this I passed the Cholera-tree, a famous peepul by the road side, so called from a detachment of infantry having been attacked and decimated at the spot by that fell disease; it is covered with inscriptions and votive tokens in the shape of rags, etc. We continued to ascend to 1360 feet, where I came upon a small forest of the Indian Olibanum (_Boswellia thurifera_), conspicuous from its pale bark, and spreading curved branches, leafy at their tips; its general appearance is a good deal like that of the mountain ash. The gum, celebrated throughout the East, was flowing abundantly from the trunk, very fragrant and transparent. The ground was dry, sterile, and rocky; kunker, the curious formation mentioned at Chapter 1, appears in the alluvium, which I had not elsewhere seen at this elevation.

Descending to the village of Burshoot, we lost sight of the Boswellia, and came upon a magnificent tope of mango, banyan, and peepul, so far superior to anything hitherto met with, that we were glad to choose such a pleasant halting-place for breakfast.

There are a few lofty fan-palms here too, great rarities in this soil and elevation: one, about eighty feet high, towered above some wretched hovels, displaying the curious proportions of this tribe of palms: first, a short cone, tapering to one-third the height of the stem, the trunk then swelling to two-thirds, and again tapering to the crown. Beyond this, the country again ascends to Burree (alt.

1169 feet), another dawk bungalow, a barren place, which we left on the following morning.

So little was there to observe, that I again amused myself by watching footsteps, the precision of which in the sandy soil was curious. Looking down from the elephant, I was interested by seeing them all in relief, instead of depressed, the slanting rays of the sun in front producing this kind of mirage. Before us rose no more of those wooded hills that had been our companions for the last 120 miles, the absence of which was a sign of the nearly approaching termination of the great hilly plateau we had been traversing for that distance.

Chorparun, at the top of the Dunwah pass, is situated on an extended barren flat, 1320 feet above the sea, and from it the descent from the table-land to the level of the Soane valley, a little above that of the Ganges at Patna, is very sudden. The road is carried zizgag down a rugged hill of gneiss, with a descent of nearly 1000 feet in six miles, of which 600 are exceedingly steep. The pass is well wooded, with abundance of bamboo, Bombax, Cassia, Acacia, and Butea, with Calotropis, the purple Mudar, a very handsome roadside plant, which I had not seen before, but which, with the Argemone Mexicana, was to be a companion for hundreds of miles farther. All the views in the pass are very picturesque, though wanting in good foliage, such as Ficus would afford, of which I did not see one tree. Indeed the rarity of the genus (except F. infectoria) in the native woods of these hills, is very remarkable. The banyan and peepul always appear to be planted, as do the tamarind and mango.

Dunwah, at the foot of the pass, is 620 feet above the sea, and nearly 1000 below the mean level of the highland I had been traversing. Every thing bears here a better aspect; the woods at the foot of the hills afforded many plants; the bamboo (_B. stricta_) is green instead of yellow and white; a little castor-oil is cultivated, and the Indian date (low and stunted) appears about the cottages.

In the woods I heard and saw the wild peacock for the first time.

Its voice is not to be distinguished from that of the tame bird in England, a curious instance of the perpetuation of character under widely different circumstances, for the crow of the wild jungle-fowl does not rival that of the farm-yard cock.

In the evening we left Dunwah for Barah (alt. 480 feet), passing over very barren soil, covered with low jungle, the original woods having apparently been cut for fuel. Our elephant, a timid animal, came on a drove of camels in the dark by the roadside, and in his alarm insisted on doing battle, tearing through the thorny jungle, regardless of the mahout, and still more of me: the uproar raised by the camel-drivers was ridiculous, and the danger to my barometer imminent.

We proceeded on the 11th of February to Sheergotty, where Mr.

Williams and his camp were awaiting our arrival. Wherever cultivation appeared the crops were tolerably luxuriant, but a great deal of the country yielded scarcely half-a-dozen kinds of plants to any ten square yards of ground. The most prevalent were Carissa carandas, Olax scandens, two Zizyphi, and the ever-present Acacia Catechu. The climate is, however, warmer and much moister, for I here observed dew to be formed, which I afterwards found to be usual on the low grounds. That its presence is due to the increased amount of vapour in the atmosphere I shall prove: the amount of radiation, as shown by the cooling of the earth and vegetation, being the same in the elevated plain and lower levels.* [See Appendix C.]

The good soil was very richly cultivated with poppy (which I had not seen before), sugar-cane, wheat, barley, mustard, rape, and flax.

At a distance a field of poppies looks like a green lake, studded with white water-lilies. The houses, too, are better, and have tiled roofs; while, in such situations, the road is lined with trees.

A retrospect of the ground passed over is unsatisfactory, as far as botany is concerned, except as showing how potent are the effects of a dry soil and climate during one season of the year upon a vegetation which has no desert types. During the rains probably many more species would be obtained, for of annuals I scarcely found twenty. At that season, however, the jungles of Behar and Birbhoom, though far from tropically luxuriant, are singularly unhealthy.

In a geographical point of view the range of hills between Burdwan and the Soave is interesting, as being the north-east continuation of a chain which crosses the broadest part of the peninsula of India, from the Gulf of Cambay