The Plant Hunters: Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains

by Mayne Reid

The “Alps of India” are not without this geological peculiarity. Along their whole southern flank, facing the hills of Hindustan, extends a belt of foot-hills, often above fifty miles in breadth; and characterised by steep ascents, deep dales and ravines, rapid foaming torrents, difficult paths and passes, and, consequently, by wild and picturesque scenery.

The lower part of this belt—that is, the portion which lies contiguous to the Lot plains, is known to Europeans as the “Teräi.”

The Terai is an irregular strip, of from ten to thirty miles in width, and extends along the whole base of the Himalayas, from the Sutledge River, on the west, to Upper Assam. Its character is peculiar. It differs both from the plains of India and from the Himalaya Mountains, possessing a botany and zoology almost totally distinct from either. It differs from both, in the malarious and unhealthy character of its climate, which is one of the deadliest in the world. In consequence of this, the Teräi is almost uninhabited; the few scattered settlements of half-savage Mechs, its only inhabitants, lying remote and distant from each other.

Most of the Terai is covered with forest and thick jungle; and, notwithstanding its unhealthy climate, it is the favourite haunt of the wild beasts peculiar to this part of the globe. The tiger, the Indian lion, the panther and leopard, the cheetah, and various other large Jelidae, roam through its jungly coverts; the wild elephant, the rhinoceros, and gyal, are found in its forests; and the sambur and axis browse on its grassy glades. Venomous snakes, hideous lizards, and bats, with the most beautiful of birds and butterflies, all find a home in the Terai.

Several days’ marching carried our travellers beyond the more settled portions of the country, and within the borders of this wild, jungle-covered district. On the day they entered the Teräi, they had made an early start of it; and, therefore, arrived at their camping-ground some hours before sunset. But the young botanist, filled with admiration at the many singular and novel forms of vegetation he saw around him, resolved to remain upon the ground for several days.

Our travellers had no tent. Such an incumbrance would have been troublesome to them, travelling, as they were, afoot. Indeed, all three had their full loads to carry, as much as they could well manage, without the additional weight of a tent. Each had his blanket, and various other impedimenta; but one and all of them had often slept without roof or canvas, and they could do so again.

At their present halting-place, they had no need for either. Nature had provided them with a cover quite equal to a canvas-tent. They had encamped under a canopy of thick foliage, the foliage of the banyan tree.

Young reader, you have heard of the great banyan of India; that wonderful tree, whose branches, after spreading out from the main trunk, send down roots to the earth, and form fresh stems, until a space of ground is covered with a single tree, under whose shade a whole regiment of cavalry may bivouac, or a great public meeting be held! No doubt, you have read of such a tree, and have seen pictures of one? I need not, therefore, describe the banyan very particularly. Let me say, however, that it is a fig-tree; not the one that produces the eatable fig, of which you are so very fond, but another species of the same genus—the genus Ficus. Now, of this genus there are a great many species; as many, perhaps, as there are of any other genus of trees. Some of them are only creeping and climbing plants; adhering to rocks and the trunks of other trees, like vines or ivy. Others, like the banyan, are among the largest trees of the forest. They are chiefly confined to tropical countries, or hot regions lying on the borders of the tropics; and they are found in both hemispheres, that is, both in America and the Old World. Some splendid species belong also to Australia. All of them possess, more or less, the singular habit of throwing out roots from their branches, and forming new stems, like the banyan; and frequently they embrace other trees in such a manner, as to hide the trunks of the latter completely from view!

This curious spectacle was witnessed by our travellers where they had encamped. The banyan which they had chosen as their shelter was not one of the largest—being only a young tree, but out of its top rose the huge fan-shaped leaves of a palm-tree of the kind known as the palmyra palm (Borassus flagelliformis). No trunk of the palm-tree was visible; and had not Karl Linden been a botanist, and known something of the singular habit of the banyan, he would have been puzzled to account for this odd combination. Above spread the long radiating fronds of the palmyra directly out of the top of the trunk of the fig, and looking so distinct from the foliage of the latter as to form a very curious sight. The leaves of the banyan being ovate, and somewhat cordate or heart-shaped, of course presented quite a contrast to the large stiff fronds of the palmyra.

Now the puzzle was, how the palm got there. Naturally one would suppose that a seed of the palm had been deposited on the top of the banyan, and had there germinated and thrown out its fronds.