304 DR. HOOKER'S MISSION TO INDIA. 
and was waiting, in despair of my arrival, for another gentleman on the 
opposite bank, who could however not get across the stream, to 
my great comfort. 
At nine the following morning my Palkee was set down at Mr. 
Griffth's door in Purneah, thirty miles from Caragola Ghat. He is 
the Civil Surgeon and Post-master, and from him I received a kind in- 
vitation to breakfast, and to pass the day ; but my anxiety to reach the 
hills urged me on at noon for Kishengunge. "The whole country, since 
leaving Caragola, wears a greener garb than I had seen anywhere south 
of the Ganges: the climate is evidently more kumid, and has been 
gradually becoming so from Mirzapore. The first decided change 
was a few miles below the Soane mouth, at Dinapore and Patna; 
and the few hygrometrical observations I took at Bhaugulpore con- 
firmed the much further increase of moisture. The proximity to the 
sea and great Delta of the Ganges sufficiently accounts for this ; as does 
the approach to the hills for the still greater dampness and brighter ver- 
dure of Purneah. I was right glad to feel myself within the influence 
of the long looked-for Himalaya; and I narrowly watched every change 
in the character of the vegetation. A Fern, growing by the road-side, 
was the first and most tangible evidence of this ; together with the ab- 
sence of Butea, Boswellia, Catechu, Grislea, Carissa, and all the com- 
panions of my former trips, but most especially of the Zizyphi. 
Purneah is a large station, and considered very unhealthy during 
and after the rains. From it the road passed through some pretty 
lanes, with large trees of Hriodendron, groves of planted Guava and 
Annona bushes, a few Phenix palms, and a Calamus, the first I had seen. 
Though no hills are nearer than the Himalaya, the road undulates re- 
markably for this part of India; and a jungly vegetation ensues, consisting 
of the above plants, with the yellow-flowered Opuntia re-placing the Fu- 
phorbias, which were hitherto much more common. Odina and Spondias 
are new to me in such profusion, and so is the cultivated cepta 
tana ? or Plumiera, which scents the air. Acacia Arabica is very rare ; 
is Argemone. Y observed no Castor-oil nor Calotropis. Though still 100 
miles distant from the hills, mosses appear on the banks, and more Ferns 
are just sprouting above ground. Birds and butterflies are numerous. 
The Bamboo is a very different species from any I have hitherto met 
with, and it forms groves of straight trees some fifteen to twenty feet 
high, thin of foliage, with a narrow erect coma, not unlike poplars. The 
