386 



TERAI. Chap. XVII. 



where the soil is wetter, Ameletia Indica is abundant, 

 giving a heather-like colour to the turf, with its pale purple 

 flowers : wherever there is standing water, its surface is 

 reddened by the Azolla, and Salvinia is also common. 



At Jeelpigoree we were waited upon by the Dewan, who 

 governs the district for the Rajah, a boy about ten years 

 old, whose estates are locked up during the trial of an 

 interminable suit for the succession, that has been instituted 

 against him by a natural son of the late Rajah : we found 

 the Dewan to be a man of intelligence, who promised 

 us elephants as soon as the great Hooli festival, now 

 commenced, should be over. 



The large village, at the time of our visit, was gay with 

 holiday dresses. It is surrounded by trees, chiefly of 

 banyan, jack, mango, peepul, and tamarind : interminable 

 rice-fields extend on all sides, and except bananas, slender 

 betel-nut palms, and sometimes pawn, or betel-pepper, 

 there is little other extensive cultivation. The rose-apple, 

 orange, and pine-apple are rare, as are cocoa-nuts : there 

 are few date or fan-palms, and only occasionally poor crops 

 of castor-oil and sugar-cane. In the gardens I noticed 

 jasmine, Jiisticia Adhatoda, Hibiscus, and others of the 

 very commonest Indian ornamental plants ; while for 

 food were cultivated Chenopodium, yams, sweet potatos, 

 and more rarely peas, beans, and gourds. Bamboos were 

 planted round the little properties and smaller clusters of 

 houses, in oblong squares, the ridge on which the plants 

 grew being usually bounded by a shallow ditch. The 

 species selected was not the most graceful of its family ; 

 the stems, or culms, being densely crowded, erect, as 

 thick at the base as the arm, copiously branching, and 

 very feathery throughout their whole length of sixty feet. 

 A gay-flowered Osbeckia was common along the road- 



