62 
NOTKS FROM A JOURNEY TO NEPAL. 
valley of Nepal does not produce well ; I visited one at a village 
called Gurkhdh. The plants cultivated are mentioned on page 71 
forward. The court of Prwithi Narayan was at Niakot for a time after 
the conquest of Nepdl in 1764, while the Gurkhas were still widening 
their kingdom. Thither, therefore, went Kirkpatrick in 1793, as 
envoy from the Governor-General of India, by a road from Chitlong 
which he describes as ascending through stunted oak scrub [i.e.i much 
lopped Quercus semecarpifolid) to a crest over the Doona bidsi beauti- 
fully wooded W’ith trees, just as is the crest of Chdndagiri.* The 
old palaces can be seen still under Niakot by the Tadi : they were 
too loW to be healthy and the court moved from the riverside up the 
hill, and then finally to the much more salubrious neighboarhood of 
Kh^tmandu. 
In discussing the vegetation I shall begin with the terai and I shall 
in no way concern myself with what is west of Bikna Thori. 
The bhavar or Sal forest under the moiiiitains. 
The atlas of India does not represent correctly the limits where the 
open terai abuts against the “ bhavar or S^l forest on the east side of 
the Bagmati river, though it represents it approximately correctly on 
the west. It Is incorrect in that it represents forest as extending to 
the limits of British territory whereas one must go so much nearer to 
the foot-hills as eight miles north of Janikpur before the edge is 
reached. 
Roughly over this part of the country the bhavar or Sal forest 
spreads from the foot-hills for upwards" of ten miles on to the plain. 
At Simulbasa it begins very abruptly— a long wall of forest stretching 
east and west with cultivated fields abutting on it ; and its definiteness 
is obviously due to cultivation. Probably this is the general condition. 
The soutlieru limits of the Sal forest in the eighteenth century and. 
now. 
I had wished in this place to discuss the age of this forest line ; but 
there are not data enough for the purpose. This much is certain, that 
125 years ago the edge of the great forest was as now near Simalbasa : 
and it may be stated that evidence does not exist to show that it has 
been of much wider extent during the Christian era, though the extent 
of the waste lands on its borders have varied. Father Marc, who resided 
in Bettiah from 175S to 1 768, narrates how in his time in going from 
• He mentions (page 79 sissoo and pines as growing in the chasms under the shoul- 
ders : the first probably does not grow there: what pine the second is it would be 
interesting to ascertain. 
