NOTES FROM A JOURNEY TO NEPAL 
6l 
the temperate forest belt. In this belt it climbs to 6,800 feet, to a pass 
on the hills called Chandagiri, whetic(t the traveller sees like a map 
spread out below, the wide valley of Nepal with its three cities, and many 
towns and villages. The irregularities of the broad valley are not large 
and are little noticeable from this height : w'e see only a ring of wooded 
hills* on one part of which we stand, and below a wide stretch of culti- 
vation with here and there a town or city and here and there a small 
patch of woodland. t I was allowed to cross this ring of hills at four 
places, (/) by Pherphing, (?V) by the Ch^indagiri pass, (///) by Kakni, 
and {iv) by the Sangli khola : as already said, none of the passes crossed 
are of any height ; but visiting them gave me some slight acquaint- 
ance with the variety of vegetation existing. I left the valley, when 
returning to the plains, by Pherphing; I travelled to Nidkot by Kakni 
and returned by the Sdngli khola, 
Niakot stands at about 3,000 feet on a hill crest between the junc- 
tion of the Tadi and Trisuli rivers.. The town itself is in the cultiva- 
tion belt, but the valleys, which are 1,000 feet below, are in the belt of 
the tropical forests. They are full of crops of rice" and sugarcane, and 
contain sdl forest. The rices are the rices of the terai, and not the 
hill rices of Nepal proper; they are reaped in December just like those 
of northern Champaran and Darbhanga indeed they are for a large 
part identical J. 
The use of two local words — ‘ bidsi ’ and ‘ tar * is well exempli- 
fied in the valleys under Niakot. A biasi is a low flat place irrigated 
generally; a tar is a place which can not be irrigated and so produces 
rain-crops only. The snow-river Trisuli rushes down a narrow valley 
past Niakot under cliffs ; and the bits of even ground above the cliffs 
are tars : the Likhu and TAdi fall more evenly through moderately 
broad flats, whither irrigation channels bring water to crops : these 
flats are biasis. On a cold December morning, these biasis give off 
a thick fog; but none rises in the Trisuli valley. The I'Adi is capable 
in the rains of being a fierce stream : it has destroyed many bridges 
built over it (Oldfield, Sketches from Nepal, 1880, p. 33); and when in 
1792 the Chinese and Gurkhas fought on its banks, it swept away 
more men than actually fell in battle. In the valleys near Niakot are 
some royal gardens, whence is drawn a supply of that fruit which the 
• Kirkpatrick in h\s~Account of the Kingdom of Nef>al exagi^eratos In regard to these 
hills. There is no call for the expression " stupendous mountain of Sheoopoori,” that he 
uses (page 69). 
t The reader should note that properly speaicirg, this valley is NepAl its centre is 
the old temple of Kh^tm5ndu ; and the kingdom which it rules is ihe " Kingdom of 
Nep41.’' 
J Cj . Brian Houghton Hedgson s Essays, ii, page 56. 
