After proceeding some six miles along the gradually ascending path, I came to a considerable stream, cutting its way through stratified gravel, with cliffs on each side fifteen to twenty feet high, here and there covered with ferns, the little _Oxalis sensitiva,_ and other herbs. The road here suddenly ascends a steep gravelly hill, and opens out on a short flat, or spur, from which the Himalaya rise abruptly, clothed with forest from the base: the little bungalow of Punkabaree, my immediate destination, nestled in the woods, crowning a lateral knoll, above which, to east and west, as far as the eye could reach, were range after range of wooded mountains, 6000 to 8000 feet high. I here met with the India-rubber tree (_Ficus elastica_); it abounds in Assam, but this is its western limit. From this steppe, the ascent to Punkabaree is sudden and steep, and accompanied with a change in soil and vegetation. The mica slate and clay slate protrude everywhere, the former full of garnets. A giant forest replaces the stunted and bushy timber of the Terai Proper; of which the _Duabanga_ and _Terminalias_ form the prevailing trees, with _Cedrela_ and the _Gordonia Wallichii._ Smaller timber and shrubs are innumerable; a succulent character pervades the bushes and herbs, occasioned by the prevalence of _Urticeae._ Large bamboos rather crest the hills than court the deeper shade, and of the latter there is abundance, for the torrents cut a straight, deep, and steep course down the hill flanks: the galleys they traverse are choked with vegetation and bridged by fallen trees, whose trunks are richly clothed with _Dendrobium Pierardi_ and other epiphytical Orchids, with pendulous _Lycopodia_ and many ferns, _Hoya, Scitamineae,_ and similar types of the hottest and dampest climates. The bungalow at Punkabaree was good--which was well, as my luggage-bearers were not come up, and there were no signs of them along the Terai road, which I saw winding below me. My scanty stock of paper being full of plants, I was reduced to the strait of botanising, and throwing away my specimens. The forest was truly magnificent along the steep mountain sides. The apparently large proportion of deciduous trees was far more considerable than I had expected; partly, probably, due to the abundance of the _Dillenia, Cassia,_ and _Sterculia,_ whose copious fruit was all the more conspicuous from the leafless condition of the plant. The white or lilac blossoms of the convolvuluslike _Thunbergia,_ and other _Acanthaceae_ were the predominant features of the shrubby vegetation, and very handsome.