374 TERAI. Chap. XVII. 



the last season, which were now falling, and strewing the 

 road in some places so abundantly, that it was hardly safe 

 to ride down hill. 



The plains of Bengal were all but obscured by a dense 

 haze, partly owing to a peculiar state of the atmosphere 

 that prevails in the dry months, and partly to the fires 

 raging in the Terai forest, from which white wreaths of 

 smoke ascended, stretching obliquely for miles to the east- 

 ward, and filling the air with black particles of grass- 

 stems, carried 4000 feet aloft by the heated ascending- 

 currents that impinge against the flanks of the mountains. 



In the tropical region the air was scented with the white 

 blossoms of the Vitew Agnns-castus, which grew in profusion 

 by the road- side ; but the forest, which had looked so 

 gigantic on my arrival at the mountains the previous year, 

 appeared small after the far more lofty and bulky oaks and 

 pines of the upper regions of the Himalaya. 



The evening was sultry and close, the heated surface of 

 the earth seemed to load the surrounding atmosphere with 

 warm vapours, and the sensation, as compared with the cool 

 pure air of Dorjiling, was that of entering a confined 

 tropical harbour after a long sea-voyage. 



I slept in the little bungalow of Punkabaree, and was 

 wakened next morning by sounds to which I had long- 

 been a stranger, the voices of innumerable birds, and the 

 humming of great bees that bore large holes for their 

 dwellings in the beams and rafters of houses : never before 

 had I been so forcibly struck with the absence of animal 

 life in the regions of the upper Himalaya. 



Breakfasting early, I pursued my way in the so-called 

 cool of the morning, but this was neither bright nor fresh ; 

 the night having been hazy, there had been no terrestrial 

 radiation, and the earth was dusty and parched ; while the 



