FROM PATNA TO DARJEELING. 395 
to form an intermediate neutral ground between flat and mountainous 
India. The Terai district I attempted to describe, forms a very irre- 
gular belt, scantily clothed, and intersected by innumerable rivulets 
from the hills, which anastomose on the flat, forming here a plexus and 
there a ganglion of waters, till, emerging from the region of many trees, 
they enter the plains of India, following a somewhat devious course, 
which glistens like a silver thread. The whole horizon is bounded by 
the sea-like expanse of the plains, which stretch away into the region 
of sunshine and fine weather, in one interminable, boundless flat, un- 
broken by any undulation. In the distance, the courses of the Teesta 
and Cosi, the great drainers of the back or snowy Himalayas, and the 
recipients of innumerable smaller rills, are with difficulty traced at this, 
the dry season. The ocean-like appearance of this southern view is 
even less conspicuous in the land than in the heavens, where the clouds 
are seen to arrange themselves after a singularly sea-scape fashion. 
Endless stratifications run in parallel ribbons over the extreme:hori- 
zon ; above these, scattered c cumuli, also in horizontal lines, are dotted 
aptos a clear grey sky, which gradually, as the eye is lifted, passes 
into a deep cloudless blue vault, continuously clear to the zenith ; 
there the cumuli, in white fleecy masses, again appear, and, turning 
round to view the northern celestial hemisphere, these token sat 
assume the leaden hue of nimbi, till they reach the black forests of the 
hills, where they are discharging on my devoted head. The breezes 
are south-easterly, bringing that vapour from the Indian Ocean, which is 
rarified and suspended aloft over the heated plains, but condensed into 
a drizzle when it strikes the cooler flanks of the hills, and into heavy 
rain when it meets their still colder summits. Upon what a gigantic 
scale does nature here operate! Vapours, raised from an ocean whose 
nearest shore is more than 300 miles distant, are safely transported 
without the loss of one drop of water, to support the rank luxuriance 
of this far-distant region. This and other offices fulfilled, the waste 
waters are returned, by the Cosi on my right and Teesta on my left, to 
the ocean, and thence again exhaled, een, expended, re-collected, 
and returned. 
The soil consists of a clayey basis, with much decomposed gneiss. 
It is superficially covered with a stratum of vegetable mould, every- 
where swarming with large and troublesome ants. In the evening, 
the noise of the great Cicade in the trees is absolutely frightful. 
