2 
PLANTS OF CHUTIA NAGPUR 
From Calcutta to Sillee we have been passing through a cultivated 
country of chiefly rice-land and have not encountered much scrub 
jungle or forest woodland; but here the jungle proper may be said to 
begin, as we rise the Lohardugga plateau — the first step up, to two 
thousand feet — and the road passes through hilly, wooded country 
until we get to rice-land again at the top. For about twenty miles 
this wooded ascent continues and wherever the Lohardugga plateau 
descends to the plains a similar belt of wood is found. 
The section now passes through the Lohardugga plateau for 
between 50 and 60 miles close on the 2,000 level. To the North, a 
dozen miles off, is seen Bara Gai, a mountain about 4,000 feet high ; 
and closer to Ranchi are several beit«-shaped gneiss hills. As we 
approach the town of Lohardugga there appears against the western 
sky a level line which we may call the 3,000 level. North, to the 
right, it ends in hills which dip into Toree and Palamow, some 
thousand feet below us, where the Damuda River on the east and the 
Koel River on the west have their sources. On the south, left, the 
sky-line seems to go on for ever. 
The sides of this plateau are here steeper-looking than the ascent 
from Sillee to the Lohardugga level. Here we have no continuous 
table-land like that just passed over or like Hazaribagh, for within 
these higher lands are wide level valleys at, say, 2 500 feet, reached 
by passes through the steeper wall. I cannot do better than quote 
here Dalton’s “Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal,” page 221 : — 
“ The country jointly occupied by the Mundas proper and the Oraons extends 
in a westerly direction to longitude 84° 30' east, and on reaching that meridian at 
about latitude 23° 15' north, we find ourselves in the centre of a dependency of 
Chutia Nagpur, called Barwah, connected and bounded by the plateau of Chutia 
Nagpur-, Sirguja, and Jashpur, a combination of hiil and dale, well-cultivated 
plains and forest-clad mountains, just suited, to the mixed population that dwell 
in it,” 
Arrived in one of these valleys, a still higher level-topped arrange- 
ment is observed, with sides densely-clad with jungle. Whereas some 
hills can attain to flat tops at 3,000 feet — such as Netter Hat, which 
boasts to cultivate tea — others carry on higher and closely approach 
four thousand feet. These, called Pats, are open plains with a few 
scattered bushes, and are still more broken up than the 3,000 level. 
The Jamera Pat is a good example, and further south the Main Pat 
rises to 3,850 feet from the Sirguja Plain, which is about the 2,000 
level. It measures 16 miles by 12. The tops of the Pats, now used 
as pasturage, were once good hunting ground for Nilgai and Antelope. 
