_April_ 12.--I awoke at 4 a.m., and found my palkee on the ground, and the bearers coolly smoking their hookahs under a tree (it was raining hard): they had carried me the length of their stage, twelve miles, and there were no others to take me on. I had paid twenty-four pounds for my dawk, from Caragola to the hills, to which I had been obliged to add a handsome douceur; so I lost all patience. After waiting and entreating during several hours, I found the head-man of a neighbouring village, and by a further disbursement induced six out of the twelve bearers to carry the empty palkee, whilst I should walk to the next stage; or till we should meet some others. They agreed, and cutting the thick and spongy sheaths of the banana, used them for shoulder-pads: they also wrapped them round the palkee-poles, to ease their aching clavicles. Walking along I picked up a few plants, and fourteen miles further on came again to the banks of the Mahanuddee, whose bed was strewn with pebbles and small boulders, brought thus far from the mountains (about thirty miles distant). Here, again, I had to apply to the head-man of a village, and pay for bearers to take me to Titalya, the next stage (fourteen miles). Some curious long low sheds puzzled me very much, and on examining them they proved to be for the growth of Pawn or Betel-pepper, another indication of the moisture of the climate. These sheds are twenty to fifty yards long, eight or twelve or so broad, and scarcely five high; they are made of bamboo, wattled all round and over the top. Slender rods are placed a few feet apart, inside, up which the Pepper Vines climb, and quickly fill the place with their deep green glossy foliage. The native enters every morning by a little door, and carefully cleans the plants. Constant heat, damp, and moisture, shelter from solar beams, from scorching heat, and from nocturnal radiation, are thus all procured for the plant, which would certainly not live twenty-four hours, if exposed to the climate of this treeless district. Great attention is paid to the cultivation, which is very profitable. Snakes frequently take up their quarters in these hot-houses, and cause fatal accidents. Titalya was once a military station of some importance, and from its proximity to the hills has been selected by Dr. Campbell (the Superintendent of Dorjiling) as the site for an annual fair, to which the mountain tribes resort, as well as the people of the plains. The Calcutta road to Dorjiling by Dinajpore meets, near here, that by which I had come; and I found no difficulty in procuring bearers to proceed to Siligoree, where I arrived at 6 a.m. on the 13th. Hitherto I bad not seen the mountains, so uniformly had they been shrouded by dense wreaths of vapour: here, however, when within eight miles of their base, I caught a first glimpse of the outer range--sombre masses, of far from picturesque outline, clothed everywhere with a dusky forest.