100 OUTER HIMALAYA. Chap. IV. 



deep green glossy foliage. The native enters every morning 

 by a little door, and carefully cleans the plants. Constant 

 heat, damp, and moisture, shelter from solar beams, from 

 scorching heat, and from nocturnal radiation, are thus all pro- 

 cured for the plant, which would certainly not live twenty- 

 four hours, if exposed to the climate of this treeless district. 

 Great attention is paid to the cultivation, which is very 

 profitable. Snakes frequently take up their quarters in 

 these hot-houses, and cause fatal accidents. 



Titalya was once a military station of some importance, 

 and from its proximity to the hills has been selected by 

 Dr. Campbell (the Superintendent of Dorjiling) as the site 

 for an annual fair, to which the mountain tribes resort, as 

 well as the people of the plains. The Calcutta road to 

 Dorjiling by Dinajpore meets, near here, that by which I 

 had come ; and I found no difficulty in procuring bearers 

 to proceed to Siligoree, where I arrived at 6 a.m. on the 

 1 3th. Hitherto I had not seen the mountains, so uniformly 

 had they been shrouded by dense wreaths of vapour : here, 

 however, when within eight miles of their base, I caught a 

 first glimpse of the outer range — sombre masses, of far from 

 picturesque outline, clothed everywhere with a dusky forest. 



Siligoree stands on the verge of the Terai, that low 

 malarious belt which skirts the base of the Himalaya, from 

 the Sutlej to Brahma-kooncl in Upper Assam. Every 

 feature, botanical, geological, and zoological, is new on 

 entering this district. The change is sudden and imme- 

 diate : sea and shore are hardly more conspicuously 

 different ; nor from the edge of the Terai to the limit of 

 perpetual snow is any botanical region more clearly 

 marked than this, which is the commencement of Himalayan 

 vegetation. A sudden descent leads to the Mahanuddec 

 fiver, flowing in a shallow valley, over a pebbly bottom : it 



