Himalayan Journals — Volume 2: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
History
Himalayan Journals — Volume 2: 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
Noacolly is considered a healthy spot, which is not the case with the
Sunderbund stations west of the Megna. The climate is uniformly hot,
but the thermometer never rises above 90 degrees, nor sinks below 45
degrees; at this temperature hoar-frost will form on straw, and ice
on water placed in porous pans, indicating a powerful radiation.*
[The winds are north-west and north in the cold season (from November
to March), drawing round to west in the afternoons. North-west winds
and heavy hailstorms are frequent from March to May, when violent
gales set in from the southward. The rains commence in June, with
easterly and southerly winds, and the temperature from 82 degrees to
84 degrees; May and October are the hottest months. The rains cease
in the end of October (on the 8th of November in 1849, and 12th of
November in 1850, the latest epoch ever remembered): there is no land
or sea breeze along any part of the coast. During our stay we found
the mean temperature for twelve observations to be precisely that of
Calcutta, but the humidity was more, and the pressure 0.040 1ower.]
We left Noacolly on the 19th for Chittagong; the state of the tide
obliging us to go on board in the night. The distance is only 100
miles, but the passage is considered dangerous at this time (during
the spring-tides) and we were therefore provided with a large vessel
and an experienced crew. The great object in this navigation is to
keep afloat and to make progress towards the top of the tide and
during its flood, and to ground during the ebb in creeks where the
bore (tidal wave) is not violent; for where the channels are broad
and open, the height and force of this wave rolls the largest
coasting craft over and swamps them.
Our boatmen pushed out at 3 in the morning, and brought up at 5, in a
narrow muddy creek on the island of Sidhee. The waters retired along
channels scooped several fathoms deep in black mud, leaving our
vessel aground six or seven feet below the top of the bank, and soon
afterwards there was no water to be seen; as far as the eye could
reach, all was a glistening oozy mud, except the bleak level surfaces
of the islands, on which neither shrub nor tree grew. Soon after 2
p.m. a white line was seen on the low black horizon, which was the
tide-wave, advancing at the rate of five miles an hour, with a hollow
roar; it bore back the mud that was gradually slipping along the
gentle slope, and we were afloat an hour after: at night we grounded
again, opposite the mouth of the Fenny.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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