The distance from Myrung to Nunklow is ten miles, along an excellent road. The descent is at first sudden, beyond which the country is undulating, interspersed with jungle (of low trees, chiefly oaks) and marshes, with much rice cultivation. Grasses are exceedingly numerous; we gathered fifty kinds, besides twenty Cyperaceæ: four were cultivated, namely sugar-cane, rice, Coix, and maize. Most of the others were not so well suited to pasturage as those of higher localities. Dwarf Phœnix palm occurs by the roadside at 5000 feet elevation.
Gneiss (with garnets) highly inclined, was the prevalent rock (striking north-east), and scattered boulders of syenite became very frequent. In one place the latter rock is seen bursting through the gneiss, which is slaty and very crystalline at the junction.
Nunklow is placed at the northern extremity of a broad spur that over-hangs the valley of the Burrampooter river, thirty miles distant. The descent from it is very rapid, and beyond it none of the many spurs thrown out by the Khasia attain more than 1000 feet elevation; hence, though the range does not present so abrupt a face to the Burrampooter as it does to the Jheels, Nunklow is considered as on the brink of its north slope. The elevation of the bungalow is 4,688 feet, and the climate being hot, it swarms with mosquitos, fleas, and rats. It commands a superb view to the north, of the Himalayan snows, of the Burrampooter, and intervening malarious Terai forest; and to the south, of the undulating Khasia, with Kollong rock bearing south-west. All the hills between this and Myrung look from Nunklow better wooded than they do from Myrung, in consequence of the slopes exposed to the south being bare of forest.
A thousand feet below the bungalow, a tropical forest begins, of figs, birch, horse-chestnut, oak, nutmeg. Cedrela, Engelhardtia, Artocarpeæ, and Elæocarpus, in the gullies, and tall pines on the dry slopes, which are continued down to the very bottom of the valley in which flows the Bor-panee, a broad and rapid river that descends from Chillong, and winds round the base of the Nunklow spur. Many of the pines are eighty feet high, and three or four in diameter, but none form gigantic trees. The quantity of balsams in the wet ravines is very great, and tree-ferns of several kinds are common.
The Bor-panee is about forty yards wide, and is spanned by an elegant iron suspension-bridge, that is clamped to the gneiss rock (strike north-east, dip north-west) on either bank; beneath is a series of cascades, none high, but all of great beauty from the broken masses of rocks and picturesque scenery on either side. We frequently botanised up and down the river with great success: many curious plants grow on its stony and rocky banks; and amongst them Rhododendron formosum at the low elevation of 2000 feet. A most splendid fern, Dipteris Wallichii, is abundant, with the dwarf Phœnix palm and Cycas pectinata. Wild animals are very abundant here, though extremely rare on the higher part of the Khasia range; tigers, however, and bears, ascend to Nunklow. We saw troops of wild dogs (“Kuleam,” Khas.), deer, and immense quantities of the droppings of the wild elephant; an animal considered in Assam dangerous to meet, whereas in other parts of India it is not dreaded till provoked. There is, however, no quadruped that varies more in its native state than this: the Ceylon kind differs from the Indian in the larger size and short tusks, and an experienced judge at Calcutta will tell at once whether the newly caught elephant is from Assam, Silhet, Cuttack, Nepal, or Chittagong. Some of the differences, in size, roundness of shoulders and back, quantity of hair, length of limb, and shape of head, are very marked; and their dispositions are equally various.
The lowest rocks seen are at a considerable distance down the Bor-panee; they are friable sandstones that strike uniformly with the gneiss. From the bridge upwards the rocks are all gneiss, alternating with chert and quartz. The Nunklow spur is covered with enormous rounded blocks of syenite, reposing on clay or on one another. These do not descend the hill, and are the remains of an extensive formation which we could only find in situ at one spot on the road to Myrung (see earlier), but which must have been of immense thickness.[[360]] One block within ten yards of the bungalow door was fifteen feet long, six high, and eight broad; it appeared half buried, and was rapidly decomposing from the action of the rain. Close by, to the westward, in walking amongst the masses we were reminded of a moraine of most gigantic sized blocks; one which I measured was forty feet long and eleven above the ground; its edges were rounded, and its surface flaked off in pieces a foot broad and a quarter of an inch thick. Trees and brushwood often conceal the spaces between these fragments, and afford dens for bears and leopards, into which man cannot follow them.
[360] The tendency of many volcanic rocks to decompose in spheres is very well known: it is conspicuous in the black basalts north of Edinburgh, but I do not know any instance equal to this of Nunklow, for the extent of decomposition and dimensions of the resulting spheres.
Sitting in the cool evenings on one of these great blocks, and watching the Himalayan glaciers glowing with the rays of sunset, appearing to change in form and dimensions with the falling shadows, it was impossible to refrain from speculating on the possibility of these great boulders heaped on the Himalayan-ward face of the Khasia range, having been transported hither by ice at some former period; especially as the Mont Blanc granite, in crossing the lake of Geneva to the Jura, must have performed a hardly less wonderful ice journey: but this hypothesis is clearly untenable; and unparalleled in our experience as the results appear, if attributed to denudation and weathering alone, we are yet compelled to refer them to these causes. The further we travel, and the longer we study, the more positive becomes the conviction that the part played by these great agents in sculpturing the surface of our planet, is as yet but half recognised.