The country continued a grassy level, with marshes and rice cultivation, to the first range of hills, beyond which the river is unnavigable; there also a forest commences, of oaks, figs, and the common trees of east Bengal. The road hence was a good one, cut by Sepoys across the dividing ranges, the first of which is not 500 feet high. On the ascent bamboos abound, of the kind called Tuldah or Dulloah, which has long very thin-walled joints; it attains no great size, but is remarkably gregarious. On the east side of the range, the road runs through soft shales and beds of clay, and conglomerates, descending to a broad valley covered with gigantic scattered timber-trees of jarool, acacia, _Diospyros, Urticeae,_ and _Bauhiniae,_ rearing their enormous trunks above the bamboo jungle: immense rattan-canes wound through the forest, and in the gullies were groves of two kinds of tree-fern, two of _Areca, Wallichia_ palm, screw-pine, and _Dracaena._ Wild rice grew abundantly in the marshes, with tal1 grasses; and _Cardiopteris_* [A remarkable plant of unknown affinity; see Brown and Bennett, "Flora Java:" it is found in the Assam valley and Chittagong.] covered the trees for upwards of sixty feet, like hops, with a mass of pale-green foliage, and dry white glistening seed-vessels. This forest differed from those of the Silhet and Khasia mountains, especially in the abundance of bamboo jungle, which is, I believe, the prevalent feature of the low hills in Birmah, Ava, and Munnipore; also in the gigantic size of the rattans, 1arger palms, and different forest trees, and in the scanty undergrowth of herbs and bushes. I only saw, however, the skirts of the forest; the mountains further east, which I am told rise several thousand feet in limestone cliffs, are doubtless richer in herbaceous plants. The climate of Cachar partakes of that of the Jheels in its damp equable character: during our stay the weather was fine, and dense fogs formed in the morning: the mean maximum was 80 degrees, minimum 58.4 degrees.* [The temperature does not rise above 90 degrees in summer, nor sink below 45 degrees or 50 degrees in January: forty-seven comparative observations with Calcutta showed the mean temperature to be 1.8 degrees lower at Silchar, and the air damper, the saturation point being, at Calcutta 0.3791, at Silchar 0.4379.] The annual rain-fall in 1850 was 111.60 inches, according to a register kindly given me by Captain Verner. There are few mosquitos, which is one of the most curious facts in the geographical distribution of these capricious bloodsuckers; for the locality is surrounded by swamps, and they swarm at Silhet, and on the river lower down. Both on the passage up and down, we were tormented in our canoes by them for eighty or ninety miles above Silhet, and thence onwards to Cachar we were free.