We spent two days at Pundua, waiting for our great boats (which drew several feet of water), and collecting in the vicinity. The old bungalow, without windows and with the roof falling in, was a most miserable shelter; and whichever way we turned from the door, a river or a swamp lay before us. Birds, mosquitos, leeches, and large wasps swarmed, also rats and sandflies. A more pestilential hole cannot be conceived; and yet people traverse this district, and sleep here at all seasons of the year with impunity. We did so ourselves in the month of June, when the Sikkim and all other Terais are deadly: we returned in September, traversing the Jheels and nullahs at the very foot of the hills during a short break of fine weather in the middle of the rains; and we again slept here in November,* [At the north foot of the Khasia, in the heavily timbered dry Terai stretching for sixty miles to the Burrampooter, it is almost inevitable death for a European to sleep, any time between the end of April and of November. Many have crossed that tract, but not one without taking fever: Mr. H. Inglis was the only survivor of a party of five, and he was ill from the effects for upwards of two years, after having been brought to death's door by the first attack, which came on within three weeks of his arrival at Churra, and by several relapses.] always exposed in the heat of the day to wet and fatigue, and never having even a _soupcon_ of fever, ague, or rheumatism. This immunity does not, however, extend to the very foot of the hills, as it is considered imprudent to sleep at this season in the bungalow of Terrya, only three miles off. The elevation of Pundua bungalow is about forty feet above the sea, and that of the waters surrounding it, from ten to thirty, according to the season. In June the mean of the barometer readings at the bungalow was absolutely identical with that of the Calcutta barometer, In September it was 0.016 inch lower, and in November 0.066 lower. The mean annual temperature throughout the Jheels is less than 2 degrees below that of Calcutta.