April, 1848. TERAI. lul 



is a rapid river, even at this season ; its banks are fringed 

 with bushes, and it is as clear and sparkling as a trout 

 stream in Scotland. Beyond it the road winds through a 

 thick brushwood, choked with long grasses, and with but 

 few trees, chiefly of Acacia, Dalberaia Sissoo, and a scarlet- 

 fruited Sterculia. The soil is a red, friable clay and 

 gravel. At this season only a few spring plants were in 

 flower, amongst which a very sweet-scented Crinuii/, 

 Asphodel, and a small Curcuma, were in the greatest 

 profusion. Leaves of terrestrial Orchids appeared, with 

 ferns and weeds of hot damp regions. I crossed the 

 beds of many small streams ■ some were dry, and all 

 very tortuous ; their banks were richly clothed with 

 brushwood and climbers of Convolvulus, Vines, Hircea, 

 Leea, MenispermecB, Cucurbitacece, and Bignoniacece. 

 Their pent-up waters, percolating the gravel beds, and 

 partly carried off by evaporation through the stratum of 

 ever-increasing vegetable mould, must be one main agent 

 in the production of the malarious vapours of this 

 pestilential region. Add to this, the detention of the 

 same amongst the jungly herbage, the amount of vapour 

 in the humid atmosphere above, checking the upward 

 passage of that from the soil, the sheltered nature of the 

 locality at the immediate base of lofty mountains ; and 

 there appear to me to be here all necessary elements, 

 which, combined, will produce stagnation and deterioration 

 in an atmosphere loaded with vaponr. Fatal as this district 

 is, and especially to Europeans, a race inhabit it with 

 impunity, who, if not numerous, do not owe their paucity 

 to any climatic causes. These are the Mechis, often 

 described as a squalid, unhealthy people, typical of the 

 region they frequent ; but who are, in reality, more robust 

 than the Europeans in India, and whose disagreeably 



