Himalayan Journals — Complete: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
History
Himalayan Journals — Complete: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton
Himalaya Mountains -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Himalaya Mountains
On the 19th of February we marched up the Soane to Tura, passing some
low hills of limestone, between the cliffs of the Kymore and the river.
On the shaded riverbanks grew abundance of English genera—_Cynoglossum,
Veronica, Potentilla, Ranunculus sceleratus, Rumex,_ several herbaceous
_Compositæ_ and _Labiatæ_; _Tamarix_ formed a small bush in rocky
hillocks in the bed of the river, and in pools were several aquatic
plants, _Zannichellia, Chara,_ a pretty little _Vallisneria,_ and
_Potamogeton._ The Brahminee goose was common here, and we usually saw
in the morning immense flocks of wild geese overhead, migrating
northward.
Here I tried again the effect of solar and nocturnal radiation on the
sand, at different depths, not being able to do so on the alluvium.
Noon,
Temperature
of air, 87° Daylight of
following
morning Surface 110° 52° 1 inch 102° 55° 2
inches 93·5° 58° 4 inches 84° 67° 8 inches 77° sand
wet 73° wet 12 inches 76° sand wet 74°
From Tura our little army again crossed the Soane, the scarped cliffs
of the Kymore approaching close to the river on the west side. The bed
is very sandy, and about one mile and a half across.
The elephants were employed again, as at Baroon, to push the cart: one
of them had a bump in consequence, as large as a child’s head, just
above the trunk, and bleeding much; but the brave beast disregarded
this, when the word of command was given by his driver.
The stream was very narrow, but deep and rapid, obstructed with beds of
coarse agate, jasper, cornelian and chalcedony pebbles. A clumsy boat
took us across to the village of Soanepore, a wretched collection of
hovels. The crops were thin and poor, and I saw no palms or good trees.
Squirrels however abounded, and were busy laying up their stores;
descending from the trees they scoured across a road to a field of
tares, mounted the hedge, took an observation, foraged and returned up
the tree with their booty, quickly descended, and repeated the
operation of reconnoitering and plundering.
The bed of the river is here considerably above that at Dearee, where
the mean of the observations with those of Baroon, made it about 300
feet. The mean of those taken here and on the opposite side, at Tura,
gives about 400 feet, indicating a fall of 100 feet in only 40 miles.
Near this the sandy banks of the Soane were full of martins’ nests,
each one containing a pair of eggs. The deserted ones were literally
crammed full of long-legged spiders (_Opilio_), which could be raked
out with a stick, when they came pouring down the cliff like corn from
a sack; the quantities are quite inconceivable. I did not observe the
martin feed on them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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