50 THE FOREST AND THE FIELD, 



chul). This great natural barrier is a scarcely- 

 known mountainous district about fourteen hundred 

 miles in length, by from seventy to a hundred and 

 twenty in breadth, consisting of a succession of 

 snowy ranges rising one behind another, unassail- 

 able to man except in those places where the beds 

 of rivers intersect it and afford him access to its 

 wild fastnesses. 



Every variety of temperature, from tropical heat 

 to the cold of the Arctic regions, is to be found 

 in the Himalaya, and as the nature of the forest 

 changes with the climate, the variety of game the 

 sportsman meets with in this district is something 

 extraordinary. 



A dense belt of forest from ten to twenty miles 

 in width, usually called "The Terai," skirts the 

 base of the mountains, and thickly-wooded spurs, 

 jutting far out into the plain, form hot, damp, 

 swampy valleys covered with long grasses, that at 

 certain times of the year are almost impassable for 

 Europeans on account of the pernicious exhalations 

 and fatal malaria there engendered, which bring on 

 the most deadly of jungle fevers. These virgin pri- 



