1859.] Itinerary in the district of Amherst, Tenasserim. 445 



species of underwood, Cloaca seu Stercus olens, worse actually than 

 the " Soo bok ben" of evil memory, which had regaled us on the 

 Taylo. Here I had breakfast. Aneroid 24° 6. Thermometer 71° 

 at noon. At 2 p. m. continued our journey and reached the foot of 

 Mooley-it, after going through a belt of smail reed or cane-like bam- 

 boos, at 4|- p. m. — distance four miles. It was thundering, and 

 looking dreary iu the dark hollow, and overhead the clouds were 

 scudding past the peak. So hoping to get above the level of the 

 threatening rain, pushed on, on foot, and after a steep ascent reached 

 the plateau of Mooley-it at 5 p. m. It was hazy and bitterly cold, 

 but so charming to see an open down like a Cumberland "fell" 

 after the monotonous jungle, that I ran about in extasies, to the 

 amazement of my retinue. Ther. 51° at sun-set. They had made 

 me up a snug little hut or booth under the lee of some dense 

 copse-wood which sheltered our encampment from the driving mist 

 and bitter wind, and it only wanted a congenial companion to make 

 everything perfect. 



February 28th. — 6 a. M. Ther. 51. The open down or upland 

 which forms the plateau of Mooley-it is about six or eight acres 

 in extent. It is covered with a short harsh grass, the soil every 

 where trodden and pitted by Graur's feet.* Over this are scattered 

 little insulated patches of rocks (granite) and stunted shrubs, 

 among which the Botan tea (a species of Camellia) and a showy 

 white Rhododendron were most conspicuous. This open space, 

 everywhere undulating, slopes down to the East, and after a 

 deseent of three or four hundred feet is met by the jungle, dp its 

 steep western face we had ascended yesterday. To the North it 

 appeared extended in a jungly ridge at right angles to the one we 

 had journeyed along, and to the South, out of a belt of dense 

 copse-wood (very like the Cape bush jungle), rose the peak of Mooley- 

 it, a bare granite dome, about five hundred feet higher than the 

 plateau. Though the situation of the plateau is beautiful, its area is 

 too limited for a Sanitarium, and moreover water is scanty and has 

 to be brought up a toilsome ascent of some five hundred feet from 



* These animals come up from the valleys in great numbers during the rains, 

 to graze on this upland : secure during that inclement season, in the unbroken 

 solitude of the mountain. 



3 M 



