146 Notes of a trip up the Salween. [No. 3, 
one of the wildest places imaginable. Had it been on a rising ground 
on a high bank alone, or on any prominent point on the river, I 
should have suspected that a hand had planted it : but it was on a low 
and sloping part of the bank, struggling for life with Calamus, Bauhi- 
nia and tall grasses and such other tangled stuff as forms the common 
vegetation of our river banks in the wildest places; and behind again ~ 
was dense jungle of the tallest trees. However, notwithstanding all 
this, had it been seen in a fairly peopled district, I should have 
doubted; but in such a wild uninhabited country as the Yoonzalin 
is, I see no reason for suspecting that it was not a genuine native.* 
Had Wallich’s first tree been here, I am satisfied that the idea of its 
not being wild would never for a moment have occurred to him. I 
am perfectly satisfied that the tree seen by me was a wild one. That 
the Amherstia in a wild state may be very scarce is not improbable, 
but that it should not exist any longer in that state, though possible, 
is, to say the least, very unlikely. Probably it is confined to a small 
area; and I am inclined to think still, as I always have thought, that 
its habitat is the banks of the Salween, and of the Yoonzalin, which 
runs nearly parallel with the Salween in about the latitude where I 
suppose it grows. Very few Europeans, who would care to notice 
the vegetation of the country, have ascended either the Yoonzalin, or 
the Salween above the Great Rapid, that is to say, have been conti- 
nuously along its banks, so that a rare tree may, not improbably, 
exist there, although it has not been seen on the latter river at all, 
nor on the former, except by myself, as I have described. 
IT append a rough but tolerably accurate map of the country. 
* The Amherstia has never been found wild before. Wallich discovered it, 
i. e, first saw it, at a place called Pagdt, some twenty or thirty miles up the 
Salween. The trees which he saw are still there, at least some of them, and 
are manifestly planted trees, being near an artificial tank, at the entrance to 
some sacred caves, 
I have long had an idea that the native habitat of the Amherstia would be 
found to be somewhere high up the Salween, This is not at all unlikely, be- 
cause very little, indeed almost nothing, is known of the banks of this river 
above the Hat-gyce, or Great Rapid, which is about 100 miles up the river. 
III een 

