70 
NOTES FROM A JOURNEY TO NEPAL, 
Tbe ?ale of the Rapti pat out of cnltivatioii by order. 
Hettaunda is a poor hamlet, living on the trade which passes 
through it. The small area of land that had been ploughed was, in 
December, a waste of tall weeds chiefly Ageratum, Siegesbeckia, 
Nicandra physaloides, Cassia Tor a, Euphorbia piluliferay E, nerii- 
folia y and Jatropha Curcas : Boerhaavia sp. and Achyranthes aspera 
were present also, as followers of man. East of Hettaunda is the 
Makwanpur mdri or vale of Makwanpur, said formerly to have been 
much cultivated, but now nearly all under forest ; westward the forest 
extends down the wide vale of the Ripti getting thinner and thinner 
until it almost disappears. In 1815 this lower valley was reported abun- 
dantly cultivated : but now the forest is pressing in more on to 
Hettaunda than it used to do a century ago, when, as Hamilton, for 
instance, said (Account of Nepal, p. 197) the country had few trees." 
The policy of the Nepalese Government after the Gurkha wars was to 
build a barrier of malarious forest under the hills that no invading army 
should there obtain a base : and without doubt the Makwanpur miri 
was put out of cultivation by order. It is as Oldfield says (Sketches, 
p. 49) that previous to the first Nepal war, the dhuns of Chitdun and 
Makwanpur were extensively cultivated, but since the peace of 1816 
the Gurkha Government from motives of policy has caused the inhabi- 
tants to abandon the greater part of them and they have been allowed 
to revert to their natural state of forest and grass jungle.^' Kirkpatrick 
had seen ‘^abundance and great variety of rice" grown in the Makwan- 
pur mari (Account of Nepal, p. 23). The Gurkhas had had very good 
reason to appreciate the value to them of^^he malarious forest ; for in 
1764 it took heavy toll from Captain Kinloch^s force at Bhareh 
on its skirt under the Sakti khola pass. 
Clematis Gouriana and Drymaria cordata appear at Hettaunda 
representing two distinctly temperate orders of plants. 
Dense tangled forest of the outer face of the mountains and gorge of 
Bbainsi Buban. 
North of Hettaunda the hills consisting chiefly of limestones and 
quartzites {y)ide Medlicott in Records of the Geological Survey of India, 
viii, 1875, p. 95) rise abruptly to 6,000 feet and carry forest quite 
unlike that southwards,— dense forest with tangles of creepers, aroids, 
epiphytes, screw pines, etc,, and having nearly the appearance of the 
wet forests of lower Sikkim. Where the gorge, up which the road 
runs,> is at its deepest, the cold weather sunshine at midday hardly 
falls direct on the damp tangle of vegetation in hollows on the hill face 
