456 JOUENAL, BOMBAY NATUBAL mSTOBY SOCIETY, 1S92. 



and tlien begin tlie real ascent of some 1,800 feet, through, the 

 heavy band of evergreen forest already mentioned as growing on 

 the " talus" at the foot of the great scarp. 



This point is called the '^ Eaja's Garden," very much, I fancy, as 

 a similar spot as Matheran is " Ram's garden." There is not water 

 enough for any real gardening ; and no hardy imported plant has 

 naturalized itself, and survived, as commonly happens in hill forts 

 wherever there has been anything of the sort. Nor is there any 

 tree on the hill which can be supposed to have been eveo planted b}'^ 

 the founder. From the top, however, one can see in a pass, east 

 of the hill, a huge Kinjal tree {Terminalia paniculata) under 

 which he may have ridden. I have here no note of its girth ; nor 

 is there any legend about it, but looked full 300 years old, and the 

 Raja is only dead 212 years. In various spots round the foot of 

 Raigarh there are remains of gardens, with ruins in them which 

 tradition and reasonable probability connect with the fort. It was 

 natural that such places should grow up near the residence of a king 

 and nobles, with money to pay for fruit and flowers, and a natural 

 desire to come down out of the clouds at times. 



On the top of the hill itself there can have been little of the sort. 

 Water is abundant now, in huge cisterns cut in the rock, some of 

 them undoubtedly the quarries whence came the building stone. 

 But the surface is mostly a sheet of basalt, thinly covered with an inch 

 or so of mould, and in very few places softening into a rock capable 

 of forming " muram." Only one wild flower abounds there in the 

 fine weather ; and this, curiously enough, is that of a bush as hardj^ 

 a foot above high water mark as here at nearly 3,000 feet, ( Vitece 

 Negundo) the " Nirgude." One tree has rooted itself in the heaps of 

 rubbish within the walls, and another in the cracks of the walls 

 themselves. The former, as with the flower, is a tree of the Plains ; 

 and indeed of the neighbourhood of w&t&v, {Ficus Glomerata), the 

 " Umbar" or Guler. It is according to some shastras the right 

 wood of which to make a throne ; but here it has turned the tables, 

 and occupies the actual ancient place of the throne. The other tree 

 is the Ashte or mountain Pipal. I do not know whether it has a 

 specific name, but I think it a good species, for it is exclusively of 

 parasitic habit, at all ages, (the common pipal outgrows its hosts, or 



