214 Leaves from an Indian Jungle. 



But the country itself has not changed much. In the 

 western portions the ordinary dry central Indian forest 

 covers its undulating features and clothes its rugged 

 hills ; but to the eastward the sdl forests begin, their 

 western limit strangely marked, so that a bird's eye 

 view shows their green line cutting north and south as if 

 their plantation had been arranged by human agency 

 instead of by Nature herself. The reason of this abrupt 

 termination on a north and south line may be known to 

 the expert forester ; but my companion and I, although 

 we examined the geological features of the country, were 

 unable to account for it. Hence, for hundreds of miles 

 eastward, the highly gregarious sdl spreads its glossy 

 green, almost to the entire exclusion of other timber, 

 except where there are tracts capped by trap or basaltic 

 rock, where of course the characteristic salai and stunted 

 teak of this formation re-asserts itself. From east to west 

 of this country passes the river, leaving mountain ranges 

 on each hand, through which it has worn an arduous 

 granite-bound course to join the greater river on the west. 

 Its higher waters pass over an upland plain for many miles 

 somewhat sluggishly till they plunge over a fine fall 

 stretching right across its bed in the abrupt manner we see 

 in the falls of the Coogo and Zambesi. Hence it seeks a 

 lower level with much greater rapidity, partaking of the 

 nature of a highland stream. Indeed its rapids and pools 

 irresistibly remind the traveller of a Scottish salmon river. 

 When the writer viewed his companion, salmon- rod in hand, 

 industriously beguiling the wily mahasir, heard the rush of 

 the waters as they tumultuously entered a broad deep pool, 

 and, above their roar, the musical screaming of the winch, 

 he shut his eyes to the vivid green of the sdl forests around 

 him, and to the piercing rays of the declining tropic sun, 



