Himalayan Journals, vol 1 - J. D. Hooker (polar express read aloud txt) 📗

class="calibre1">The river is here navigated by canoes, thirty to forty feet long, some being rudely cut out of a solid log of Sal, while others are built, the planks, of which there are but few, being sewed together, or clamped with iron, and the seams caulked with the fibres of the root of Dhak (Butea frondosa), and afterwards smeared with the gluten of Diospyros embryopteris. The bed of the river is here threequarters of a mile across, of which the stream does not occupy one-third; its banks are sand-cliffs, fourteen feet in height. A few small fish and water-snakes swarm in the pools.

 

The whole country improved in fertility as we advanced towards the mountains: the grass became greener, and more trees, shrubs, herbs, and birds appeared. In front, the dark boundary-line of the Sal forest loomed on the horizon, and to the east rose the low hills of Bhotan, both backed by the outer ranges of the Himalaya.

 

Flocks of cranes were abundant overhead, flying in wedges, or breaking up into “open order,” preparing for their migration northwards, which takes place in April, their return occurring in October; a small quail was also common on the ground. Tamarisk (“Jhow”) grew in the sandy bed of the river; its flexible young branches are used in various parts of India for wattling and basket-making.

 

In the evening we walked to the skirts of the Sal forest. The great trunks of the trees were often scored by tigers’ claws, this animal indulging in the cat-like propensity of rising and stretching itself against such objects. Two species of Dillenia were common in the forest, with long grass, Symplocos, Emblica, and Cassia Fistula,

now covered with long pods. Several parasitical air-plants grew on the dry trees, as Oberonia, Vanda, and Aerides.

 

At Rangamally, the height of the sandy banks of the Teesta varies from fifteen to twenty feet. The bed is a mile across, and all sand;*

[Now covered with Anthistiria grass, fifteen feet high, a little Sissoo, and Bombax.] the current much divided, and opaque green, from the glacial origin of most of its head-streams. The west bank was covered with a small Sal forest, mixed with Acacia Catechu, and brushwood, growing in a poor vegetable loam, over very dry sand.

 

The opposite (or Bhotan) bank is much lower, and always flooded during the rains, which is not the case on the western side, where the water rises to ten feet below the top of the bank, or from seven to ten feet above its height in the dry season, and it then fills its whole bed. This information we had from a police Jemadar, who has resided many years on this unhealthy spot, and annually suffers from fever. The Sal forest has been encroached upon from the south, for many miles, within the memory of man, by clearing in patches, and by indiscriminate felling.

 

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 (Baikant-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 riverbed, 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 (Baikant 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 Acanthaceae, Indian horse-chesnut, loaded with white racemes of flowers, gay Convolvuli, laurels, terrestrial and parasitic Orchideae, 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 riverbanks, 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 primaeval 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.

 

The elephant-drivers appeared to have taken us by mistake to the exit of the Chawa, a small stream which joins the Teesta further to the eastward. The descent to the bed of this rivulet, round the first spur of rock we met with, was fully eighty feet, through a very irregular depression, probably the old bed of the stream; it runs southwards from the hills, and was covered from top to bottom with slate-pebbles. We followed the river to its junction with the Teesta, along a flat, broad gulley, bounded by densely-wooded, steep banks of clay slate on the north, and the lofty bank on the south: between these the bed was strewed with great boulders of gneiss and other rocks, luxuriantly clothed with long grass, and trees of wild plantain, Erythrina and Bauhinia, the latter gorgeously in flower.

 

The Sal bank formed a very fine object: it was quite perpendicular, and beautifully stratified with various coloured sands and gravel: it tailed off abruptly at the junction of the rivers, and then trended away south-west, forming the west bank of the Teesta. The latter river is at its outlet a broad and rapid, but hardly impetuous stream, now fifty yards across, gushing from between two low, forest-clad spurs: it appeared about five feet deep, and was beautifully fringed on both sides with green Sissoo.

 

Some canoes were here waiting for us, formed of hollowed trunks of trees, thirty feet long: two were lashed together with bamboos, and the boatmen sat one at the head and one at the stern of each: we lay along the bottom of the vessels, and in a second we were darting down the river, at the rate of at least ten or fifteen miles an hour, the bright waters leaping up on all sides, and bounding in jets-d’eau between prows and sterns of the coupled vessels.

Sometimes we glided along without perceptible motion, and at others jolted down bubbling rapids, the steersmen straining every nerve to keep their bark’s head to the current, as she impatiently swerved from side to side in the eddies. To our jaded and parched frames, after the hot forenoon’s ride on the elephants, the effect was delicious: the fresh breeze blew on our heated foreheads and down our open throats and chests; we dipped our hands into the clear, cool stream, and there was “music in the waters” to our ears.

Fresh verdure on the banks, clear pebbles, soft sand, long English river-reaches, forest glades, and deep jungles, followed in rapid succession; and as often as we rounded a bend or shot a rapid, the scene changed from bright to brighter still; so continuing until dusk, when we were slowly paddling along the then torpid current opposite Rangamally.* [The following temperatures of the waters of the Teesta were taken at intervals during our passage from its exit to Rangamally, a distance of fifteen linear miles, and thirty miles following the bends:—

 

Water. Air.

Exit 2h. 30m. p.m. 62 degrees

3 62.2 degrees 74 degrees 3.30 63.2 degrees

4 64 degrees

4.30 65 degrees

5 65.4 degrees 72.5 degrees opposite Rummai 5.30 66 degrees

6 66 degrees 71.7 degrees opposite Baikant]

 

The absence of large stones or boulders of rock in the bed of the Teesta is very remarkable, considering the great volume and rapidity of the current, and that it shoots directly from the rocky hills to the gravelly plains. At the embouchure there are boulders as big as the head, and in the stream, four miles below the exit, the boatmen pointed out a stone as large as the body as quite a marvel.

 

They assured us that the average rise at the mouth of the river, in the rains, was not more than five feet: the mean breadth of the stream is from seventy to ninety yards. From the point where it leaves the mountains, to its junction with the Megna, is at this season thirteen days’ voyage, the return occupying from twenty to twenty-five days, with the boats unladen. The name “Teesta” signifies “quiet,” this river being so in comparison with other Himalayan torrents further west, the Cosi, Konki, etc., which are devastators of all that bounds their course.

 

We passed but two crossing-places: at one the river is divided by an island, covered with the rude chaits and flags of the Boodhists.

We also saw some Cooch fishermen, who throw the net much as we do: a fine “Mahaser” (a very large carp) was the best fish they had.

Of cultivation there was very little, and