64 
NfiTF.S hROM A JOURNEY TO NEPAL. 
forest ; for cities as large as Semraon (2 miles square) cannot exist 
without cultivation round them. I am quite aware that Georgi, 
describing from hearsay the road from Myhsi to Makwanpur via the 
Sakti-khola pass and referring to Semraon describes it as if it were 
then ruins in the middle of the great forest : but in the light of Kirkpa- 
trick’s remarks that north of Semraon in 1793, was a jungle of Butea 
frondosa infested by bears, it is evident that Georgi wrote loosely, 
and that Semraon was not truly in the middle of the great forest. 
The waste grass taiuls of the tcrai ; their want of history and migra- 
tory population. 
The long grass which Father Marc mentions is the vegetative 
formation often spoken of as kharaul Father Marc's wide stretch 
of kharaul has now given way to almost uninterrupted tilled fields, 
except that one small area persists just north of Bettiah, and there 
are a few others elsewhere. 
The kharaul south of the forest in Father Marc’s time grazed large 
herds of cattle much bought by the East India Company as draught 
animals : and the fires kindled yearly by the graziers, when they 
returned after the rains, kept the country under grass, destroying the 
young trees and maintaining the forest limit definite. 
It is a pity that none of the old pilgrims has left any record of the 
condition of this country iii his times. There has been for ages a 
pilgrim route east of the Gandak from ^aisali or somewhere near the 
Ganges by the Bikna Thori pass into NepdI. Fa Hian went over part 
of it in the fourth century, but left no record. Sung Yun in 518 did the 
same. Huien Tsang gives little information ; and regarding this great 
traveller Watters (On Yuan Chwang, in the- publications of the 
Oriental Translation Fund, vol. xv, 1904, page 83) even doubts if he 
visited Nepal from Vaisali ; Kusindgara, which he did visit, coming 
from tlie west and returning south-west, may have been west of the 
Gandak or if east of that river, must have been not nearly so far east 
as Bikna 1 hori. Wang-hiuen-tze in 648 and 657 probably crossed the 
Bikna Thori pass, but left no information. 
West of the Gandak according to Huien Tsang were ruined cities 
and near them forests with insecure roads, marks of the decay of old 
power : it is probable that in his time the east side of the Gandak was 
equally in a state of decay, out of which in time rose Semrdon, to fall 
♦ Kharaul is to be distinguished clearly from darbi or thatching grass which occurs 
in abundant small areas up and down the country, and it to be classed under cultivation 
as a meadow. 
