270 HIGH GRASS JUNGLES. 



Colonel Forrest, among others, writing in the early 

 part of this century, gives a good description of such 

 a tangle, seen while out shooting, which is worth 

 repeating : 



" The height of the grass struck me as particularly won- 

 derful. I was mounted on a very fine elephant, not less 

 than eleven feet high. The howdah must have been full 

 two feet higher. Now when standing upright, the attitude 

 usually adopted by sportsmen in order to see better around 

 them, my head must have been very near nineteen feet above 

 the ground. But the grass was generally three, and in some 

 places six feet higher than my head. The stalks were fully 

 one and a half inches in diameter, and it would be almost 

 impossible to force a passage on foot, independent of the 

 chance of meeting a tiger suddenly." * [This grass jungle was 

 near Fatehpur, close to the Bahar boundary.] 



In many tropical lands, a wide belt of unhealthy 

 jungle country extends along the coast line, and forms 

 a serious impediment to opening up the country to 

 commerce, or to the movements of travellers, and others 

 desirous of passing rapidly through it, in order to reach 

 the less densely wooded and more salubrious highlands 

 of the interior. This state of things is notably found 

 to exist along the sea-board of both sides of the African 

 continent, as well as in many other parts of the world. 



The pernicious fevers which guard the pass into 

 Western Africa, for instance, have from time imme- 

 morial rendered the settlement of Europeans, except at 

 a few points, impossible; and have preserved those 

 regions almost as a terra incognita to the present day. 



* P^cturesq^le Tottr along the Rivers Ganges and Jumna, by 

 Lieut. -Colonel Chas. R. Forrest, H.M. Staff Corps, Illustr., 4to, 1824, 

 p. 134. (There are beautiful illustrations of Indian scenery in this 

 book). 



