CHAPTER XVI 



FORESTS OF THE BHABAR AND FOOT-HILLS 



The great sal forest covers the dry hot regions of the 

 foot-hills and the Bhabar, which extends in a belt of from 

 ten to twenty miles wide the entire length of India, from 

 the Punjab, where it is less developed, right away through 

 the North-West Provinces, Oudh, and Bengal to Assam 

 and the Brahmaputra, clothing with its dark, dense foliage 

 the whole of the foot-hills up to 3,000 or 4,000 feet. It 

 is probably the most extensive forest of one particular 

 tree in the world. It grows also — or rather grew, for 

 the woodman's axe has laid low aU the fine big timber — 

 in portions of the Central Provinces, Nagpur, and the 

 Mysore hills and Tenasserim. Sal* has always been 

 considered in India the most valuable of timbers, even 

 stronger and heavier than teak. It is a dark-brown, close- 

 grained, hard wood, with straight interlaced fibre. It is 

 used in the gun-carriage factories for the limbers, and is 

 considered the strongest and most durable timber. It 

 had been so extensively used for building purposes, 

 carpenters' work, and latterly for sleepers, that the great 

 trees which abounded all through the forests had disap- 

 peared, and nothing remained but saplings and young 

 trees, all growing as close together as possible, their 

 straight black stems and shiny green heads forming a 

 complete thicket. Occasionally, in the inaccessible places 



* Shorea robusta according to Roxburgh, also Vatica robusta. 



