 . FROM PATNA TO DARJEELING. 307 
to which the mountain-tribes resort, as well as the people of the plains. 
The Caleutta road to Darjeeling by Dinagepore meets, near here, that by 
Which I had come ; and there is a Dawk, Bungalow, and Post ; so that 
l found no difficulty in procuring bearers to proceed to Silligoree, 
Where I arrived at 6 a. m., on the 13th. 
Hitherto I had not seen the mountains, so uniformly were they 
shrouded by dense wreaths of vapor. This morning, when within eight 
miles of their base, I caught a glimpse of the outer range—sombre 
masses of far from picturesque outline, clothed everywhere with a dusky 
forest. They promise to be rich in plants. 
Silligoree stands on the verge of the Terai, or that low swampy 
malarious belt which skirts the base of the sub-Himalaya, from the 
Sutledge to Brahma-kund in Upper Assam. Every feature, botanical, 
geological, and zoological, is at once new on entering this district, and 
foreign to the plains of India. The change is sudden and immediate ; 
sea and shore are hardly more conspicuously different ; nor, from the 
edge of the Terai, to the limit of perpetual snow, is any botanical 
region more strictly defined and clearly marked than this. The Hi- 
malayan vegetation commences here ; properly to examine which (the 
object of my long-cherished desire) I must begin now, and follow Flora 
às high as she ascends, in my endeavour to connect the various vege- 
tations, that will successively present themselves, with those physical 
Characters of soil, aspect, elevation, and climate, to which they are 
attributable, 
ince arriving at Darjeeling, I have been able to acquire a much 
better knowledge of the Terai district than many years of personal 
observation could have supplied, though my friend Mr. Hodgson, 
Whose intimate acquaintance with its every feature, both here and 
in Nepal, where the malarious belt is much broader, has enabled 
him to define three zoologieal provinces due to geological formation 
and the nature of the soil; and which are accompanied by characteristic 
features in the vegetation.* 
* I must, however, caution you that a description of the Terai district of Sikkim 
gives a very in equate con ie of this great feature of Indian geography - 
botany, and that this is not the only peculiarity of the Sikkim- Himalaya. In the 
first place the whole Him (though its snows reach a higher ie ie 
either E. or W. The Terai is narrower, eight or ten miles in ! 
thirty, which is a most advantageous cireumstance ; and the "sausage rs 
the snowy ridge, their united breadth being about six es -r d Ars 
nsual average. The great Sal forest, which invariably occupies the oute , 
223 
