338 JHEELS OF EAST BENGAL. Chap. XXXI. 



{Arundo, Saccharum and Scleria), were cut, and stacked 

 along the water's edge, in huge brown piles, for export and 

 thatching. 



On the 13th December, we entered the broad stream 

 of the Megna. Rice is cultivated along the mud flats 

 left by the annual floods, and the banks are lower and 

 less defined than in the Soormah, and support no long 

 grasses or bushes. Enormous islets of living water-grasses 

 {Oplismenus stagnhius) and other plants, floated past, and 

 birds became more numerous, especially martins and egrets. 

 The sun was hot, but the weather otherwise cool and plea- 

 sant : the mean temperature was nearly that of Calcutta, 

 69 0, 7, but the atmosphere was more humid.* 



On the 14th we passed the Dacca river; below which the 

 Megna is several miles wide, and there is an appearance of 

 tide, from masses of purple Salvinia (a floating plant, allied 

 to ferns), being thrown up on the beach like sea- weed. 

 Still lower down, the vegetation of the Sunderbunds com- 

 mences ; there is a narrow beach, and behind it a mud 

 bank several feet high, supporting a luxuriant green 

 jungle of palms (Borassus and Phceniw), immense fig-trees, 

 covered with Calami, and tall betel-palms, clothed with the 

 most elegant drapery of Acrostichum scandens, a climbing 

 fern with pendulous fronds. 



Towards the embouchure, the banks rise ten feet high, 

 the river expands into a muddy sea, and a long swell rolls 



* The river-water was greenish, and a little cooler (73° -8) than that of the 

 Soormah (74°"3), which was brown and muddy. The barometer on the Soormah 

 stood 0-028 inch higher than that of Calcutta (on the mean of thirty-eight 

 observations), whereas on the Megna the pressure was 0*010 higher. As Calcutta 

 is eighteen fe'et above the level of the Bay of Bengal, this shows that the Megna 

 (which has no perceptible current) is at the level of the sea, and that either the 

 Soormah is upwards of thirty feet above that level, or that the atmospheric 

 pressure there, and at this season, is less than at Calcutta, which, as I have hinted 

 at p. 259, is probably the case. 



