366 DR. HOOKER’S MISSION TO INDIA. 
ascend slowly and steadily from the bottom of the great valley, ex- 
panding majestically, filling many miles with mist, and still rising till 
they overtop the hills, and again are contracted into ‘white clouds, 
resuming after this apotheosis their natural shape in their original place. 
You ean have no idea of the apparent solidity and definition of the 
clouds in these vast valleys, nor could you readily believe with what 
precision one can foretell the fate of each mass. I have often sat and 
watched them from Darjeeling as they float through this middle region 
of the atmosphere, and know many a hill and gully which are the 
Scylla and Charybdis of these restless bodies. Like ships on the sea, 
they obey laws common to both the aqueous and aérial ocean, and it is 
natural to suppose they should; but one does not often see such 
eonspieuous proofs of it. 
lately as I had left the busy plains of India, the solitude of these 
gloomy forests could not but arrest the attention. Below, it is difficult to 
get out of reach of the noise of the Hindoo, his tomtoms, and the sight of 
his fires as he makes poojah by night to his gods ;—here the profound 
stillness of night is broken only by three sounds :—1. the r roar of 
up that peculiar, hollow, zolian roar, whose tone is the same with that 
of the sea-surf, or the heavy gale in the forest, and which we never 
hear imitated,—it is an accompaniment, confined, I believe, tothe motion 
of the elements, moving on a grand scale; 2. by the harsh cough of 
the little barking deer; and 3. by the melancholy double hoot of a 
nocturnal bird. Nothing can be more doleful than the cry of this 
latter winged creature; it reminded me of the voice of the penguin, 
far at sea in the stormy Antarctic Ocean ; it wakes the night when least 
expected, and where its voice tells best on the already excited feelings. 
It was very late before I arrived at Pacheem bungalow, the most 
sinister-looking rest-house I ever saw, stuck on a little cleared spur 
of the hill, surrounded by dark forests, and enveloped in mists and 
rain, hideous in architecture, being a miserable attempt to unite the 
Swiss cottage with the suburban gothic;— it combined a maxi- 
mum of discomfort with a minimum of good looks or good cheer. I 
was some time in finding the dirty house-keeper, in an outhouse hard 
by, and then in waking him. Ashe led me up the crazy verandah, 
and into a broad ghostly room, without glass in the windows, or fire, 
