108 OUTEK HIMALAYA. Chap. IV. 



the rocky ravines. Elephants, tigers, and occasionally the 

 rhinoceros, inhabit the foot of these hills, with wild boars, 

 leopards, &c. ; but none are numerous. The elephant's 

 path is an excellent specimen of engineering — the opposite 

 of the native track, for it winds judiciously. 



At about 1000 feet above Punkabaree, the vegetation 

 is very rich, and appears all the more so from the many 

 turnings of the road, affording glorious prospects of the 

 foreshortened tropical forests. The prevalent timber is 

 gigantic, and scaled by climbing Leguminosce, as Bauldnias 

 and Robinias, which sometimes sheath the trunks, or span 

 the forest with huge cables, joining tree to tree. Their 

 trunks are also clothed with parasitical Orchids, and still 

 more beautifully with Pothos (Scindapsus), Peppers, Gnetum, 

 Vines, Convolvulus, and Bignonice. The beauty of the 

 drapery of the Pothos-1 eaves is pre-eminent, whether for 

 the graceful folds the foliage assumes, or for the liveliness 

 of its colour. Of the more conspicuous smaller trees, the 

 Avild banana is the most abundant, its crown of very 

 beautiful foliage contrasting with the smaller-leaved plants 

 amongst which it nestles ; next comes a screw-pine 

 (Pandanus) with a straight stem and a tuft of leaves, each 

 eight or ten feet long, waving on all sides. Araliacece, 

 with smooth or armed slender trunks, and Mappa-like 

 Eupliorbiacece, spread their long petioles horizontally forth, 

 each terminated with an ample leaf some feet in diameter. 

 Bamboo abounds everywhere : its dense tufts of culms, 

 100 feet and upwards high, are as thick as a man's thigh 

 at the base. Twenty or thirty species of ferns (including 

 a tree-fern) were luxuriant and handsome. Poliaceous 

 lichens and a few mosses appeared at 2000 feet. Such is 

 the vegetation of the roads through the tropical forests of 

 the Outer-Himalaya. 



