DARJEELING AND THE BENGAL TARAI 239 
often display unexpected violence at flood-time, 
when much damage is done to railway bridges and 
embankments, and silt and stones are deposited, to 
the detriment of the hardly-won gardens. These 
disasters have their origin in the hills of Sikhim, 
and a recent examination of the forests of that 
country showed that up to a level of about 
7,000 feet the forests had been much cut over, so 
that the silt and boulders that descended to British 
territory represented, to some extent, the surface 
soil and the underlying stratum of Sikhim fields. 
It would be well both for the Sikhim peasantry and 
for the tea-planters if this evil could be remedied. 
But the same difficulty presents itself farther west, 
where Bhutan has encouraged Nepalese settlers 
who destroy the forest without providing any 
adequate protection to the exposed soil by terracing 
or draining ; it is, in fact, prominent in all Provinces 
where the sources of the water-supply are outside 
the control of the British Government, and that, 
unfortunately, is but too frequently the case. 
In the olden days we possessed ourselves of the 
fertile plains, and refrained from following the 
defeated foe to his fastnesses in the hills; we did 
not comprehend that the fertility of the land we 
took possession of depended, to a great extent, on 
the control of the water-supply exercised by the 
forest above, nor did we anticipate that the quietude 
that followed our rule would so shortly lead to an 
increase in population, and that this population 
would find vent for its energies, on the one hand in 
destroying the forest, so as to permit of extended 
cultivation, on the other in the inauguration of 
