Leaving Goalparah, six days were occupied in reaching Gowahatty by water. In Gowahatty, the metropolis of Assam, I perceived a vast change; many buildings of brick had been erected and the foundation of a church laid; numerous native shops evinced increasing prosperity, and much had been accomplished towards rendering the station more salubrious by the removal of jungle and the construction of many beautiful roads. The best and largest bungalows at Gowahatty are all on the banks of the Burrampooter, and the view of the river, the islands, temples, and verdant foliage of the trees forms perhaps one of the most picturesque scenes to be met with in India. The native town of Gowahatty is built entirely of bamboos, reeds, and grass. To the south an extensive marsh almost surrounds the whole station, and the contiguity of many old tanks, choked with jungle, coupled with the vicinity of the hills on every quarter except the north, renders this town, in spite of the improvements already alluded to, one of the most insalubrious in Assam. In the cold season, from the 1st of November to the 1st of February, the fogs at Gowahatty are extremely dense and heavy, and last frequently until ten or eleven o'clock in the day; but it is generally admitted that this state of the atmosphere is by no means unfavourable to health. The rainy months of June, July, August, and September, are here always trying to Europeans, as the moist heat has a much more depressing influence than the rains of the Western Provinces of India. Nearly two months having been passed in boats on the river, from Futtyghur to Gowahatty, I became anxious to reach the end of my journey by a more expeditious mode than that of tracking up against the stream a few miles every day. I accordingly quitted my budgerow and embarked in a canoe formed of a single tree hollowed out. It was forty-eight feet long, and three feet wide, ten feet of the length being covered in with a small mat roof, as an apology for a cabin. In this I felt by no means uncomfortable, though I had only a little more room than served to enable me to lie down at full length.