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
The natives are far from honest: they robbed one of the tents placed
between two others, wherein a light was burning. One gentleman in it
was awake, and on turning saw five men at his bedside, who escaped with
a bag of booty, in the shape of clothes, and a tempting strong
brass-bound box, containing private letters. The clothes they dropped
outside, but the box of letters was carried off. There were about a
hundred people asleep outside the tents, between whose many fires the
rogues must have passed, eluding also the guard, who were, or ought to
have been, awake.
Chapter III
Ek-powa Ghat—Sandstones—Shahgunj—Table-land, elevation,
etc.—Gum-arabic—Mango—Fair—Aquatic plants—Rujubbund—Storm—False sunset
and sunrise—Bind hills—Mirzapore—Manufactures, imports, etc.—Climate
of—Thuggee—Chunar—Benares—Mosque—Observatory—Sar-nath—Ghazeepore—Rose-
gardens—Manufactory of Attar—Lord Cornwallis’ tomb—Ganges, scenery and
natural history of—Pelicans—Vegetation—Insects—Dinapore—Patna—Opium
godowns and manufacture—Mudar, white and purple—Monghyr islets—Hot
Springs of Setakoond—Alluvium of Ganges—Rocks of
Sultun-gunj—Bhaugulpore—Temples of Mt. Manden—Coles and native
tribes—Bhaugulpore rangers—Horticultural gardens.
On the 3rd of March I bade farewell to Mr. Williams and his kind party,
and rode over a plain to the village of Markunda, at the foot of the
Ghat. There the country becomes very rocky and wooded, and a stream is
crossed, which runs over a flat bed of limestone, cracked into the
appearance of a tesselated pavement. For many miles there is no pass
over the Kymore range, except this, significantly called “Ek-powa-Ghat”
(one-foot Ghat). It is evidently a _fault,_ or shifting of the rocks,
producing so broken a cliff as to admit of a path winding over the
shattered crags. On either side, the precipices are extremely steep, of
horizontally stratified rocks, continued in an unbroken line, and the
views across the plain and Soane valley, over which the sun was now
setting, were superb. At the summit we entered on a dead flat plain or
table-land, with no hills, except along the brim of the broad valley we
had left, where are some curious broad pyramids, formed of slabs of
sandstone arranged in steps. By dark we reached the village of Roump
(alt. 1,090 feet), beyond the top of the pass.
On the next day I proceeded on a small, fast, and wofully high-trotting
elephant, to Shahgunj, where I enjoyed Mr. Felle’s hospitality for a
few days. The country here, though elevated, is, from the nature of the
soil and formation, much more fertile than what I had left. Water is
abundant, both in tanks and wells, and rice-fields, broad and
productive, cover the ground; while groves of tamarinds and mangos, now
loaded with blossoms, occur at every village.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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