Doomree — Vegetation of table-land — Lieutenant Beadle — Birds — Hot springs of Soorujkoond — Plants near them — Shells in them — Cholera-tree — Olibanum — Palms, form of — Dunwah Pass — Trees, native and planted — Wild peacock — Poppy fields — Geography and geology of Behar and Central India — Toddy-palm — Ground, temperature of — Barroon — Temperature of plants — Lizard — Cross the Soane — Sand, ripple marks on — Kymore hills — Ground, temperature of — Limestone — Rotas fort and palace — Nitrate of lime — Change of climate — Lime stalagmites, enclosing leaves — Fall of Soane — Spiders, etc. — Scenery and natural history of upper Soane valley — Hardwickia binata — Bhel fruit — Dust-storm — Alligator — Catechu — Cochlospermum — Leaf-bellows — Scorpions — Tortoises — Florican — Limestone spheres — Coles — Tiger-hunt — Robbery.
In the evening we returned to our tamarind tree, and the next morning regained the trunk road, following it to the dawk bungalow of Doomree. On the way I found the Caesalpinia paniculuta, a magnificent climber, festooning the trues with its dark glossy foliage and gorgeous racemes of orange blossoms. Receding from the mountain, the country again became barren: at Doomree the hills were of crystalline rocks, chiefly quartz and gneiss; no palms or large trees of any kind appeared. The spear-grass abounded, and a detestable nuisance it was, its long awns and husked seed working through trowsers and stockings.
Balanites was not uncommon, forming a low thorny bush, with Aegle marmelos and Feronia elephantum. Having rested the tired elephant, we pushed on in the evening to the next stage, Baghoda, arriving there at 3 a.m., and after a few hours' rest, I walked to the bungalow of Lieutenant Beadle, the surveyor of roads, sixteen miles further.
The country around Baghoda is still very barren, but improves considerably in going westward, the ground becoming hilly, and the road winding through prettily wooded vallies, and rising gradually to 1446 feet. Nauclea cordifolia, a tree resembling a young sycamore, is very common; with the Semul (Bombax), a very striking tree from its buttressed trunk and gaudy scarlet flowers, swarming with birds, which feed from its honeyed blossoms.
At 10 a.m. the sun became uncomfortably hot, the thermometer being 77 degrees, and the black-bulb thermometer 137 degrees. I had lost my hat, and possessed no substitute but a silken nightcap; so I had to tie a handkerchief over my head, to the astonishment of the passers-by. Holding my head down, I had little source of amusement but reading the foot-marks on the road; and these were strangely diversified to an English eye. Those of the elephant, camel, buffalo and bullock, horse, ass, pony, dog, goat, sheep and kid, lizard, wild-cat and pigeon, with men, women, and children's feet, naked and shod, were all recognisable.
It was noon ere I arrived at Lieutenant Beadle's, at Belcuppee (alt. 1219 feet), glad enough of the hearty welcome I received, being very hot, dusty, and hungry. The country about his bungalow is very pretty, from the number of wooded hills and large trees, especially of banyan and peepul, noble oak-like Mahowa (Bassia), Nauclea, Mango, and Ficus infectoria. These are all scattered, however, and do not form forest, such as in a stunted form clothes the hills, consisting of Diospyros, Terminalia, Gmelina, Nauclea parvifolia, Buchanania, etc. The rocks are still hornblende-schist and granite, with a covering of alluvium, full of quartz pebbles. Insects and birds are numerous, the latter consisting of jays, crows, doves, sparrows, and maina (Pastor); also the Phoenicophaus tristis ("Mahoka" of the natives), with a note like that of the English cuckoo, as heard late in the season.
I remained two days with Lieutenant Beadle, enjoying in his society several excursions to the hot springs, etc. These springs (called Soorujkoond) are situated close to the road, near the mouth of a valley, in a remarkably pretty spot. They are, of course, objects of worship; and a ruined temple stands close behind them, with three very conspicuous trees—a peepul, a banyan, and a white, thick-stemmed, leafless Sterculia, whose branches bore dense clusters of greenish foetid flowers. The hot springs are four in number, and rise in as many ruined brick tanks about two yards across. Another tank, fed by a cold spring, about twice that size, flows between two of the hot, only two or three paces distant from one of the latter on either hand. All burst through the gneiss rocks, meet in one stream after a few yards, and are conducted by bricked canals to a pool of cold water, about eighty yards off.
The temperatures of the hot springs were respectively 169 degrees, 170 degrees, 173 degrees, and 190 degrees; of the cold, 84 degrees at 4 p.m., and 75 degrees at 7 a.m. the following morning. The hottest is the middle of the five. The water of the cold spring is sweet but not good, and emits gaseous bubbles; it was covered with a green floating Conferva. Of the four hot springs, the most copious is about three feet deep, bubbles constantly, boils eggs, and though brilliantly clear, has an exceedingly nauseous taste. This and the other warm ones cover the bricks and surrounding rocks with a thick incrustation of salts.
Confervae abound in the warm stream from the springs, and two species, one ochreous brown, and the other green, occur on the margins of the tanks themselves, and in the hottest water; the brown is the best Salamander, and forms a belt in deeper water than the green; both appear in broad luxuriant strata, wherever the temp. is cooled down to 168 degrees, and as low as 90 degrees. Of flowering plants, three showed in an eminent degree a constitution capable of resisting the heat, if not a predilection for it; these were all Cyperaceae, a Cyperus and an Eleocharis, having their roots in water of 100 degrees, and where they are probably exposed to greater heat, and a Fimbristylis at 98 degrees; all were very luxuriant. From the edges of the four hot springs I gathered sixteen species of flowering plants, and from the cold tank five, which did not grow in the hot. A water-beetle, Colymbetes(?) and Notonecta, abounded in water at 112 degrees, with quantities of dead shells; frogs were very lively, with live shells, at 90 degrees, and with various other water beetles. Having no means of detecting the salts of this water, I bottled some for future analysis.* [For an account of the Confervae, and of the mineral constituents of the waters, etc. see Appendix B.]
On the following day I botanized in the neighbourhood, with but poor success. An oblique-leaved fig climbs the other trees, and generally strangles them: two epiphytal Orchideae also occur on the latter, Vanda Roxburghii and an Oberonia. Dodders (Cuscuta) of two species, and Cassytha, swarm over and conceal the bushes with their yellow thread-like stems.