1845.] Visit to the Hills near the Soobanshiri River. 253 



sinewy limbs over the deep waters, which reflect them ; and the fibres 

 that descend from them, finding no earth below in which to fix them- 

 selves, swing in the breeze. 



As we advance the river becomes still narrower, but not less deep or 

 smooth. Gockain Potana, a rock not less than 800 feet in height, rises 

 perpendicularly from the stream. The face is almost smooth to the top 

 which is clad with trees ; on the opposite side a similar cliff, but not so 

 high : on the summit of the former a god killed a deer ; and, walking 

 (clever fellow) down the face of the smooth rock with his quarry over 

 the shoulder, he ascended with it the opposing cliff, unde nomen. From 

 above, the rock called the Gockain Potana looks like a huge church - 

 steeple rising from the stream. We stopped for sometime at a place 

 called Pabo Ghaut to collect cane to be used in towing the canoes up the 

 rapids on ahead. The Ghaut is so called from its having been some 

 50 years ago the watering place of a tribe of Meris called Pabon. One of 

 the young men of this tribe stole from her village a young virgin of 

 Tema's tribe, then under the management of his father Temees. For 

 this offence the insulted Temeeans waged a war of extermination against 

 the Pabo tribe. The villages of the latter were attacked by night when 

 the inhabitants slept, and men, women and children were promiscuously 

 slaughtered or carried away, and sold into hopeless captivity amongst the 

 Abors. The tribe, consisting of two large villages, were utterly extin- 

 guished. Not far from this we halted for the night, on the right base of 

 the river, at the mouth of a beautiful stream called the Gaien Panee, 

 issuing from a dark glen and dashing down the rocks into the well- 

 bound channel through which the Soobanshiri noiselessly flows. Notwith- 

 standing the absence of large timber which appears to grow only near 

 and on the summits of these precipitous hills, the verdure of this val- 

 ley is very beautiful : the rocks themselves are frequently covered with 

 moss and ferns of the brightest emerald green ; whilst springing from the 

 soil above them bamboos of a peculiarly light and feathery appearance, 

 the shafts not thicker than the most delicate trout rod, curve and waive 

 in the slightest breeze. The pine-apple tree, the drooping leaves of 

 which are found upwards of sixteen cubits in length ; the Toka palm, 

 varieties of cane and the mountain plantain, are all characteristic of this 

 scenery, and blend together in luxuriant mass. 



