Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
History
Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: 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
We passed a village where a large fair was being held, and singularly
familiar its arrangements were to my early associations. The women
and children are the prime customers; for the latter
whirl-you-go-rounds, toys, and sweetmeats were destined; to tempt the
former, little booths of gay ornaments, patches for the forehead,
ear-rings of quaint shapes, bugles and beads. Here as at home, I
remarked that the vendors of these superfluities occupy the
approaches to this Vanity-Fair. As, throughout the East, the trades
are congregated into particular quarters of the cities, so here the
itinerants grouped themselves into little bazaars for each class of
commodity. Whilst I was engaged in purchasing a few articles of
native workmanship, my elephant made an attack on a sweetmeat stall,
demolishing a magnificent erection of barley-sugar, before his
proceedings could be put a stop to.
Mr. Felle's bungalow (whose garden smiled with roses in this
wilderness) was surrounded by a moat (fed by a spring), which was
full of aquatic plants, _Nymphaea, Damasonium, Villarsia cristata,
Aponogeton,_ three species of _Potamogeton,_ two of _Naias, Chara_
and _Zannichellia_ (the two latter indifferently, and often together,
used in the refinement of sugar). In a large tank hard by, wholly fed
by rain water, I observed only the _Villarsia Indica,_ no
_Aponogeton, Nymphaea,_ or _Dammonium,_ nor did these occur in any of
the other tanks I examined, which were otherwise well peopled with
plants. This may not be owing to the quality of the water so much as
to its varying quantity in the tank.
All around here, as at Roump, is a dead flat, except towards the
crest of the ghats which overhang the valley of the Soane, and there
the sandstone rock rises by steps into low hills. During a ride to a
natural tank amongst these rocky elevations, I passed from the
alluvium to the sandstone, and at once met with all the prevailing
plants of the granite, gneiss, limestone and hornstone rocks
previously examined, and which I have enumerated too often to require
recapitulation; a convincing proof that the mechanical properties and
not the chemical constitution of the rocks regulate the distribution
of these plants.
Rujubbund (the pleasant spot), is a small tarn, or more properly the
expanded bed of a stream, art having aided nature in its formation:
it is edged by rocks and cliffs fringed with the usual trees of the
neighbourhood; it is a wild and pretty spot, not unlike some
birch-bordered pool in the mountains of Wales or Scotland,
sequestered and picturesque. It was dark before I got back, with
heavy clouds and vivid lightning approaching from the south-west.
The day had been very hot (3 p.m., 90 degrees), and the evening the
same; but the barometer did not foretell the coming tempest, which
broke with fury at 7 p.m., blowing open the doors, and accompanied
with vivid lightning and heavy thunder, close by and all round,
though no rain fell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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