1844.] Notes on the Kasia Hills, and People. 615 



miles, being separated, according to common report, from the Garrows 

 by a dense and unpeopled jungle. 



A traveller from the south first meets the fir tree in the ravine of the 

 ^oga Pani, eighteen miles north of Cherra, but there weak and stunted. 

 The greater part of the country north of this is sprinkled with firs in 

 natural clumps, and sometimes (in the vicinity of iron works) in artifi- 

 cial plantations. In the descent to the Bara Pani the tree attains its 

 utmost height, but in the woodlands of Jaintia, it is found in greatest 

 girth and beauty ; not as a tall mast, but gnarled like the oak, and 

 spreading like the cedar, as we have seen some of the Patriarchs of the 

 Highland forests. On the route from Cherra to Assam the oak is poor 

 and scrubby, scarcely recognizable save by its fruit ; but to the east- 

 ward, though a near inspection shews a difference in the leaf, it has in 

 character, colour and outline, perfectly the aspect of the English 

 oak. 



In the deep vallies of the south the vegetation is most abundant and 

 various. Among the most conspicuous species are, the great India 

 rubber tree scattered here and there in the stony bottoms ; the rattan 

 winding from trunk to trunk and shooting his pointed head above all 

 his neighbours ; higher up the stately sago palm with its branching 

 arms ; and in some shady damp nook, shut out from sun and wind, the 

 tree fern with its graceful coronet. Of bamboos there are whole forests, 

 and a difficult matter it is to force a path through their thick basket- 

 work. Of this most useful plant the Kasias discriminate seven species 

 by name. The cowslip, polyanthus, honeysuckle and ivy, with many 

 other plants near akin to old familiar friends, abound in different parts 

 of the higher hills, and the common English rag- weed (or ben- weed of 

 Scotland,) not the least fertile in home associations, is plentiful at 

 Cherra. 



The most remarkable phenomenon of any kind in the country is un- 

 doubtedly the quantity of rain which falls at Cherra. On a certain 

 occasion thirty inches of rain is said to have fallen at Genoa in 24 hours, 

 and the statement has been doubted ; but no one who has measured the 

 amount of rain in the Kasia Hills, can doubt the possibility at least of 

 such a quantity. It is with some hesitation that I write it, but the 

 unexceptionable mode of measurement, and the many times that I have 

 seen my friend (still resident at Cherra,) who registered the fall, take 



