126 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
The commanding officer. Colonel Bichardson, pushed on from Bijnee 
with a small escort as far as Sidlee, the seat of a rajah, some 25 miles 
to the north-west of us. He found the road (we will call a winding track 
by that name) passable for the force, and we accordingly marched, going 
on the right and left leg principle as before, the artillery and sappers going 
with the advanced leg. 
The first day's march to Choppagoree proved a tiresome one of 15 to 17 
miles—the sun very fierce, and the scantiness of water making it oppressive 
to the soldier. The country was an open plain covered with grass, some¬ 
times low, and at times rising into a forest of dense jungle. Five miles 
from Bijnee we had to cross the Aye river again; the ford here would only 
just allow the elephants to pass laden—the stream was very rapid, the 
water very cold and beautifully clear. One village of some twenty houses 
we passed half-way; it boasted a good number of goats, pigeons, and fowls, 
and had a little rivulet at hand, in which our men slaked their thirst. 
We passed at the very foot of a considerable hill, of I should say about 
750 to 1000 ft. high; as usual, it rose straight from the unbroken surface of 
the plain, no undulating waves of land marking where it joined, the natural 
ditch of shaking bog surrounded it apparently on all sides, and the interlaced 
forest of trees and creepers covered its slopes; the open ground around was in 
places trodden over by wild game, the tracks of elephants and rhinoceros 
confused in those of herds of buffalo—some freshly made that morning; 
here and there the ground had been scraped up by bears in pursuit of the 
nests of the white ant, of which food they are extremely fond. 
At Choppagoree there was no village, a square of sheds had been erected, 
and a few straw huts of more comfortable pretensions gave shelter to some 
of the officers; for myself I preferred a tent, as these places of general 
entertainment have usually a number of occupants small, exceedingly vicious 
and in great number. 
At this place two officers went out with their rifles at night, hoping to 
see some animals emerge from the jungle at their customary feeding time 
at night; they told us that when the bugles in camp blew tattoo, the jungle 
was filled with the stamping and rushing of wild animals at the strange and 
unusual sound. Later they saw and wounded a bull buffalo, and saw a 
gigantic elephant, the circumference of whose footmark, twice told (the 
usual and very accurate method of measurement) would have given him a 
height of 11 feet. 
The dew at night was here, as at all other places we had passed, extra¬ 
ordinarily heavy—the tents being literally saturated as if by a heavy fall of 
rain, and their greatly increased weight making their carriage a matter of 
difficulty. 
From Choppagoree a short march of seven miles brought us to Sidlee, 
our approach to which place was marked by large tracts of rice fields heavy 
with grain, a narrow nullah, or little rivulet with steep, foul banks of loam 
and clay, gave us a sample of what we might have before .us. The leading 
elephants trod the earth into a perfect swamp, and those behind had to 
use great exertion to free their legs from the sticky mass of deep mud ; even 
men sank into it at places up to their forks—the banks above and below the 
spot we crossed were steep and deep in mud, fringed with high dense forests 
of null or nurkooll grass. 
