146 Notes of a trip tip the Salween. [No. 3 T 



one of the wildest places imaginable. Had it been on a rising ground 

 on a high, bank alone, or on any prominent point on the river, I 

 should have suspected that a band bad planted it : but it was on a low 

 and sloping part of the bank, struggling for life with Calamus, Bauhi- 

 71 ia and tall grasses and sucb other tangied stuff as forms the common 

 vegetation of our river banks in the wildest places ; and behind again 

 was dense jungle of the tallest trees. However,, notwithstanding all 

 this, bad it been seen in a fairly peopled district, I s-boulcl have 

 doubted ; but in such a wild uninhabited country as the Yoonzalin 

 is, I see no reason for suspecting that it was not a genuine native.* 

 Had Wallich's first tree been here,. I am satisfied that the idea of its- 

 not being wild would never for a moment bave occurred to him. I 

 am perfectly satisfied that the tree seen by me was a wild one. That 

 the Amherstia in a wild state may be very scarce is not improbable, 

 but that it sbould not exist any longer in that state, thougb possible,. 

 i<, to say the least, very unlikely. Probably it is confined to a small 

 area ; and I am inclined to think still, as I always have thought, that 

 its habitat is the banks of the Salween, and of the Yoonzalin, which 

 runs nearly parallel with tbe Salween in about the latitude where I 

 suppose it grows. Very few Europeans, who would care to notice 

 the vegetation of the country, have ascended either the Yoonzalin, o^ 

 the Salween above the Great Rapid, that is to say, have been conti- 

 nuously along its banks, so that a rare tree may,, not improbably, 

 exist there, although it has not been seen on the latter river at all,, 

 nor on the former, except by myself, as I have described. 

 I append a rough but tolerably accurate map of the country. 



* The Amherstia has never been formd wild before. Wallich discovered it, 

 i. e. first saw it, at a place called Parjat, some twenty or thirty miles- up the- 

 Salween. The trees which he saw are still there, at least seme of them, and 

 are manifestly planted trees, being near an artificial tank, at the entrance to 

 some sacred caves, 



I have long had an idea that the native habitat of the Amherstia wonld be 

 found to be somewhere high up the Salween. This is not at all unlikely, be- 

 cause very little, indeed almost nothing, is known of the banks of this rivers 

 above the H'd-gyee, or Great Rapid, which is about 100 miles up the river,. 



