8 SPORT EN' BENGAL. 



spontaneously have cut down an entire field to feed our 

 elephants. It is painful to write thus of a people among 

 whom I have lived so many years, but I write only what I 

 have seen and experienced. 



Many persons deuy that there is any beauty at all in the 

 somewhat monotonous scenery of Bengal and Behar. Of 

 that of Chota Xagpoor and Orissa none will venture to assert 

 so much I think ; but there is to my mind a prettiness in the 

 former, and combinations of foliage and tints that are de- 

 cidedly attractive. The mixture of palms, of three or four 

 varieties of bananas, canes, ferns, and bamboos, with trees 

 and shrubs of endless shades of green and yellow, springing 

 almost out of deep streams on which their shadows fall 

 darkly, seems to me worthy of being styled something more 

 than pretty. 



Away from the flat plains there are views, in the Hima- 

 layan and the Khassia ranges, which cannot be surpassed the 

 wide world over. I have heard it stated by a great traveller 

 that the view from the summit of the Shillong Peak com- 

 mands a more extensive field, from its peculiar position, than 

 any in the known world. I know not how that may be, but 

 I have seen nothing to approach in grandeur the view of the 

 great peaks of the Himalayas on a clear morning in October, 

 when the rising sun has tipped them with gold, as they 

 :ch away east and west for hundreds of miles, while the 

 foot-hills and the foreground are still dark and indistinct in 

 the lingering shadows of night. 



In the Chittagong Hill tracts, in the pathless wilderness 

 of forests south of Cachar and Sylhet, in Santhalia, and in 

 Chota Xagpoor, there are many lovely bits of scenery which 

 would be hard to beat. A ride or a drive from Giridi to 

 Doomree on the Grand Trunk Road will repay anyone who 

 loves the beauties of nature in her wild garb. The passes 

 between Hazaribagh and Ranchi are extremely pretty, and 

 the rapids and falls of the Kurnafoolee at Barkul, and those 

 of the Soobunrikha cannot easily be matched in their parti- 

 cular style. 



