NOTFS FROM A WURNEY TO NEPAL. 
65 
in 1325 before a Mahommedan incursion, the country being left worse 
off than before. 
The actual terai has had little history from 1325 until at the end of 
the eighteenth century the British raj and the new power of the 
Gurkhas began to rescue it from its impoverished state. It seems, 
through the intervening centuries, to have been almost alwa3r8 insecure, 
chiefly waste and always unhealthy — the land of the marches where the 
hill rulers at times had the upper hand and at times the plains rulers. 
Bettiah on the southern edge was the end fort of the line of forts that 
Husdin Shah (1493-1518) built to keep out invasion from the north. 
When in the eighteenth century history again begins to notice the 
terai, we find that hill rajas, of places like Makwanpur, hunted in 
it, and contrived to levy dues, and the early missionaries complained of 
the exactions and annoyances of their imposts {vide L^vi^s Le N^pal, 
p. 120 footnote). Ivory was collected. We find too that graziers 
went to it when the hot weather dried up their pastures in the south 
and paying what was demanded to the power of the day, fired the 
grasses and stayed until the unhealthy rains drove them south. We 
find a little later that timber was cut in the forests on its northern 
border and exported through it for boat building on the Ganges and 
for beams and rafters of houses in quantity sufficient, as Prinsep says, 
to bring it into universal use as far as Calcutta. The migratory 
population of graziers, woodcutters, and hunters, persisted still in 
Oldfield’s time (vide page 60 of his Sketches), though diminished. 
Tbe spread of the present state of caltiyatlon into the terai. 
It was in 1 764 that the battle of Buxar made British the plains of 
I'irhut ; and it was in 1768 that the Gurkhas captured Nepdl. From 
these years is to be counted the change in the fortunes of the terai ; 
and in desire to improve its conditions the court of Khatmindu has 
not been less anxious than the British have been south of the border. 
A firm rule has caused cultivated fields to extend uninterruptedly to 
the edge of the forest itself. How cultivation increased through 
northern Champdran may be judged from informatidn to be found in 
O’Malley^s Gazetteer of that district, 1907, page 74, and Oldfield’s 
Sketches, page 55. 
The present cultivation near the forest limit at Simalbasa is not 
so intense as southwards and fallows are very common, but alnrost all 
the land has been brought under the plough. Rice is the chief crop ; 
but in December mustard is also, common. 
