March, 1849. TITALYA. GRASSY SAVANNA II. 383 



The old and new Mechi rivers are several miles apart, 

 but flow in the same depression, a low swamp many 

 miles broad, which is grazed at this season, and cultivated 

 during the rains. The grass is very rich, partly owing 

 to the moisture of the climate, and partly to the retiring 

 waters of the rivers ; both circumstances being the effects 

 of proximity to the Himalaya. Hence cattle (buffalos 

 and the common humped cow of India) are driven from 

 the banks of the Ganges 300 miles to these feeding 

 grounds, for the use of which a trifling tax is levied on 

 each animal. The cattle are very carelessly herded, and 

 many are carried off by tigers. 



Having returned to Titalya, Mr. Hodgson and I set off 

 in an eastern direction for the Teesta river, whose embou- 

 chure from the mountains to the plains I was anxious to 

 visit. Though the weather is hot, and oppressively so in 

 the middle of the day, there are few climates more delicious 

 than that of these grassy savannahs from December to March. 

 We always started soon after daybreak on ponies, and enjoyed 

 a twelve to sixteen miles' gallop in the cool of the morning 

 before breakfast, which we found prepared on our arrival 

 at a tent sent on ahead the night before. The road led 

 across an open country, or followed paths through inter- 

 minable rice -fields, now dry and dusty. On poor soil a 

 white-flowered Leucas monopolized the space, like our 

 charlock and poppy : it was apparently a pest to the 

 agriculturist, covering the surface in some places like a 

 sprinkling of snow. Sometimes the river-beds exposed 

 fourteen feet of pure stratified sand, with only an inch of 

 vegetable soil above. 



At this season the mornings are very hazy, with the 

 thermometer at sunrise 60°; one laid on grass during 

 the night falling 7° below that temperature : dew forms. 



