160 PESTILENTIAL REGION GOITRE REGION. 



Indus, the lower mountains are separated from it by a wide 

 interval occupied by the lofty valley of Cashmere ; and to 

 the south and south-west is a mountainous country, which 

 on the north bounds the Punjaub or country of the five 

 rivers. When in December Turner returned from Thibet, 

 then covered with ice and snow, in Bootan every thing "was 

 green, and the trees were loaded with apples and oranges, — 

 so great is the diflerence of climate. Notwithstanding 

 this, the summer temperature of Tassisudon in Bootan re- 

 sembles that of the winter of Bengal, and the Bootan winter 

 is too severe for the rajahs, who descend and spend that 

 season in the warmer Chickacotta. The Bengalese clothe 

 themselves in silk and muslin ; the Bootanese in wool ; 

 the Thibetians in wool and fur ; and not less characteristic 

 is the contrast between the feeble Hindoo in Bengal and 

 the Herculean Bootanese, or the active, abstemious Thibe- 

 tian. The Hindoo, accustomed to the moist and suhry at- 

 mosphere of Bengal, cannot exist in the cold and dry 

 alpine air of Thibet, and conversely the Thibetian cannot 

 live in the sultry India. 



Pestilential Region. — A zone of unequal breadth, of a 

 peculiar nature, lies between the northern mountainous and 

 hilly boundary of India and the low country. It extends 

 from the frontiers of Assam almost uninterruptedly to the 

 banks of the Ganges and Jumna, at Hurdwar and Serinagur. 

 It is thirty miles broad on the Bootan frontier, and he»e, as 

 elsewhere, is filled with swamps, and covered with a dense 

 and luxuriant vegetation. It forms the natural boundary 

 between Bengal and Assam, Bootan and Nepaul. None 

 of the neighbouring nations have been able to obtain an 

 ascendency in this melancholy region ; for man flies its 

 marshes, which are inhabited principally by amphibious and 

 other offensive creatures ; and where the woods penetrate 

 among the lower hills, numerous herds of elephants range 

 from Assam to Hurdwar. The exhalations arising from 

 the multitude of springs which the vicinity of the mountains 

 produces are collected and confined by those almost imper- 

 vious woods, and generate an atmosphere through which 

 no traveller ever passed with impunity. Its effects were 

 fatal to Captain Jones, and to a great part of his troops, in 

 1773. 



Gottre Reg-ion. — The pestilential region is not without 



