About ten miles north of Rangamally, we came to an extensive flat, occupying a recess in the high west bank, the site of the old capital (Bai-kant-pore) of the Jeelpigoree Rajah. Hemmed in as it is on three sides by a dense forest, and on all by many miles of malarious Terai, it appears sufficiently secure from ordinary enemies, during a great part of the year. The soil is sandy, overlying gravel, and covered with a thick stratum of fine mud or silt, which is only deposited on these low flats; on it grew many naturalized plants, as hemp, tobacco, jack, mango, plantain, and orange.
About eight miles on, we left the river-bed, and struck westerly through a dense forest, to a swampy clearance occupied by the village of Rummai, which appeared thoroughly malarious; and we pitched the tent on a narrow, low ridge, above the level of the plain.
It was now cool and pleasant, partly due, no doubt, to a difference in the vegetation, and the proximity of swamp and forest, and partly also to a change in the weather, which was cloudy and threatening; much rain, too, had fallen here on the preceding day.
Brahmins and priests of all kinds are few in this miserable country: near the villages, and under the large trees, are, every here and there, a few immature thatched cottages, four to six feet high, in which the tutelary deities of the place are kept; they are idols of the very rudest description, of Vishnu as an ascetic (Bai-kant Nath), a wooden doll, gilt and painted, standing, with the hands raised as if in exhortation, and one leg crossed over the other. Again, Kartik, the god of war, is represented sitting astride on a peacock, with the right hand elevated and holding a small flat cup.
Some fine muscular Cooches were here brought for Mr. Hodgson’s examination, but we found them unable or unwilling to converse, in the Cooch tongue, which appears to be fast giving place to Bengalee.
We walked to a stream, which flows at the base of the retiring sand-cliffs, and nourishes a dense and richly-varied jungle, producing many plants, as beautiful Acanthaceæ, Indian horse-chesnut, loaded with white racemes of flowers, gay Convolvuli, laurels, terrestrial and parasitic Orchideæ, Dillenia, casting its enormous flowers as big as two fists, pepper, figs, and, in strange association with these, a hawthorn, and the yellow-flowered Indian strawberry, which ascends 7,500 feet on the mountains, and Hodgsonia, a new Cucurbitaceous genus, clinging in profusion to the trees, and also found 5000 feet high on the mountains.
In the evening we rode into the forest (which was dry and very unproductive), and thence along the river-banks, through Acacia Catechu, belted by Sissoo, which often fringes the stream, always occupying the lowest flats. The foliage at this season is brilliantly green; and as the evening advanced, a yellow convolvulus burst into flower like magic, adorning the bushes over which it climbed.
It rained on the following morning; after which we left for the exit of the Teesta, proceeding northwards, sometimes through a dense forest of Sal timber, sometimes dipping into marshy depressions, or riding through grassy savannahs, breast-high. The coolness of the atmosphere was delicious, and the beauty of the jungle seemed to increase the further we penetrated these primæval forests.
Eight miles from Rummai we came on a small river from the mountains, with a Cooch village close by, inhabited during the dry season by timber-cutters from Jeelpigoree it is situated upon a very rich black soil, covered with Saccharum and various gigantic grasses, but no bamboo. These long grasses replace the Sal, of which we did not see one good tree.
We here mounted the elephants, and proceeded several miles through the prairie, till we again struck upon the high Sal forest-bank, continuous with that of Rummai and Rangamally, but much loftier: it formed one of many terraces which stretch along the foot of the hills, from Punkabaree to the Teesta, but of which none are said to occur for eight miles eastwards along the Bhotan Dooars: if true, this is probably due in part to the alteration of the course of the Teesta, which is gradually working to the westward, and cutting away these lofty banks.