158 CROSS THE KALAMOIN RANGE. 



Rungamuttea, and I started on the 20th to cross the Kalamoin range to 

 join Gool Budden. He had captured thirty-two elephants unassisted, but 

 the rest of the herd had not been enclosed in the stockade, and were still 

 at large within the circle of coolies. In eight hours' marching from G-asban 

 with ten elephants, about sixteen miles, through bamboo and tree jungle, 

 pretty clear and fairly level, we readied the top of the Kalamoin range. 

 Here there was a small village, where I had a granary cleared out, and 

 slept very comfortably. It was 10° warmer on the mountain-range than 

 in the valleys, and the fog in the morning was all below us. The view 

 of the valleys filled with the motionless white vapour, the hill-tops showing 

 through it like islands in a sea of milk, was very beautiful. 



I did a little doctoring before starting in the morning. A child of a 

 few months old had been terribly burnt on the back, from the nape of the 

 neck to the hips, through getting its little shirt on fire when left alone in 

 a hut some days before. I melted Holloway's ointment and applied it, and 

 gave the father a piece in a leaf to use again, as occasion required. I am 

 afraid to say much in praise of the above useful compound, lest I should 

 appear in advertisements in connection with the world-famed salve, and lay 

 myself open to the suspicion amongst my readers of being in collusion with 

 the great piller of the medical world. I may, however, say that in wild 

 countries nothing is more convenient or effective for wounds of all kinds, 

 from a cut finger to sore-back in an elephant. For a man suffering from 

 phthisis I could only recommend a change to the warm plains out of the 

 jungle, which of course he would not take, so I might have kept the advice 

 to myself ; and I was obliged to decline altogether to treat a blind girl. Her 

 father was anxious I should try, as he said she was " such a fine girl, other- 

 wise he would not have troubled me ! " 



I walked down the opposite side of the range rifle in hand in advance 

 of the elephants. I saw no signs of game except the prints of a tiger. The 

 jungle was open bamboo and large timber. At the bottom of the slope 

 flowed a shallow stream with a firm gravelly bottom, and we kept along 

 this for some distance till it joined a larger stream, when I mounted my 

 pad-elephant and led the way. The bed of the large stream formed the 

 most easy road for passing through a high range which we had to cross 

 before reaching the Myanee vale. 



Owing to the remarkable absence of rock in the Chittagong hills, in 

 common with almost the whole of Eastern Bengal, whether hill or plain, 

 the river had a very gentle flow, having cut its way down to so easy 

 a gradient in. the soft soil that further erosion had practically ceased. On 

 each side the banks rose to about five hundred feet in height, and as nearly 



