H. Blochmann — Koch Bihar and A'sdm. 
1872 .] 
are high bamboo-shrubs. There are many wild and cultivated flowers, and 
behind the bamboos, as far as the hills, there are fields and gardens. So it 
is also along the road from Lak’hugar to Gliargaon. There is a high and 
wide dl, or raised road, up to Ghargaon. 
The fields and the gardens are made so oven in this country, that the 
eye up to the far horizon rejoices to see neither depression nor elevation. On 
the whole, the Uttarkol is better cultivated ; hut as the Dak’hinkol is better 
fortified by nature and less easy to cross, the Rajahs of Asam have 
generally lived in this part. The climate of all parts near the Brahma- 
putra is healthy for natives and strangers ; but the districts remote from 
the river are deadly to strangers, though they may be healthy enough for the 
natives of the place. The rains often last for eight months ; even the cold 
season is not tree from rain. 
In the cold season, fluxes and fevers attack the natives and spare 
strangers ; in the hot season, strangers suffer more than natives, especially from 
bilious complaints. But the natives of A'sarn are free from several disgusting 
diseases, as leprosy, white leprosy, elephantiasis, abscesses, swellings of the neck 
and the testicles, which last complaint is so common in Bengal, and from 
other diseases. The air and the water in the hills are fatal to natives and 
strangers. The fruits and flowers of Bengal are found in A'sam ; but there 
are many that are neither to be had in Bengal, nor in other parts of India. 
Cocoanut and Nun are rare; but filfil (pepper) , sadaj (spikenard),* 
and different kinds of lemons are common. The mangoes are plentiful, but 
full of worms ; sweet ones without strings are rare. The pine apples are 
large and taste well ; the black, red, and white sugarcane is sweet, but so 
hard as to break one’s teeth ; ginger is large and delicate, and not stringy 
either, Paniulahs, a kind of amlah, are very fine, and many prefer them to 
plums. 
The staple food of the country is rice ; but the superior kinds are rare. 
Wheat, barley, vetches, are not sown, though the ground is suitable for their 
cultivation. In fact, everything grows well. Salt is very dear. At the foot 
of the hills, salt is, indeed, found, but it has a bitter, biting taste. Some of the 
natives dry the kelah plant in the sun, bum it, and collect the ashes in a 
white sheet, which they fix on four poles. They then pour gradually water 
on the ashes, and catch whatever percolates in a vessel below the sheet. 
Ihe liquid is saltpetre-like and very bitter ; but they use it as salt. Ducks 
and fowls are very large. Then- fighting cocks are very plucky, and rarely 
run away. If a weak cock fight with a strong one and get its head broken 
and its brain scattered about, or be dying, it will never take its eyes from 
* Vansittart says that sadaj is the same as tezpat, Lauras cassia, laurel leaf. Sir 
W Jones has an article on the Asamese spikenard in the Asiatic Researches, Vol. II, 
405 . 
