BURDWAN. 7 
put you out of patience with the natives. The dust, when the slides 
are open, and the stifling heat when shut during a tropical shower, are 
conclusive against the conveyance; and when you get out with aching 
bones and giddy head at the journey’s end, you shake the dust off your 
whole person, and wish never to see a Palkee again. Then, too, you 
pass plants and cannot stop to gather them; trees, and don’t know 
what they are; houses, temples, and objects strange to the traveller’s 
eye, and have no one to teach where and what they may be; no fellow- 
traveller with whom to change one curious remark. 
On the morning of January 29th, I was passing through the strag- 
gling villages close to Burdwan, native hovels with the Mango and Fig 
bythe road, and Palm slanting over the roof. Crossing the nearly empty 
bed of the Dummoodah, I was set down at Mr. M‘Intosh’s, and never 
more thoroughly enjoyed a hearty welcome and a breakfast. 
In the evening we visited the Rajah of Burdwan’s palace and gardens, 
and I had there the first glimpse of oriental gardening: the roads 
were generally raised, running through Rice fields, now dry and hard. 
Tanks were the prominent features: chains of them, full, in some cases, 
of Water Lilies and other aquatic plants, were fringed with rows of the 
Borassus, and occasionally Phenix sylvestris. The trees along the 
drives were the very common Bengal ones, mentioned above, with the 
Jack, Bamboos, Melia, Casuarina, &c. Close to the house was a rather 
good menagerie, where I saw some old friends, a pair of kangaroos 
in high health and condition, the mother with young in her pouch, 
which I had not seen since leaving Australia. 
Towards night I was again in the Palkee and hurrying on to Tal- 
dangah, near Mungulpur. The night was cool and clear, very different 
from the damp and foggy atmosphere I had left at Calcutta. On the 
morning of Jan. 30th I was travelling over a flat and apparently rising 
country, along an excellent road, with groves of Bamboos and stunted 
jungly trees on either hand, few villages or Palms, and little cultiva- 
tion, no large trees, a gravelly sterile soil, with stunted grass, alto- 
gether a country as unlike what I had expected on the plains of India, 
as well might be. To the west were seen conical isolated hills of a 
1000 feet or so, and a long low ridge, but to the east and north, and 
immediately around, all was a dead flat, or table-land ; out of which the 
hills in front rose abruptly, covered with a low forest of dusky green 
or yellow, from the prevalence of the Bamboo. The lark was singing 
