THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
139 
The 20th January saw the English forces in possession of all the passes 
and posts—the whole tract of the Dooars in their hands—and this little war 
was presumed to have come to an end; a month more, and with the 
exception of Dalingkote, every one of these posts were again in the hands of 
the Bhooteas. 
But to return: on Sunday, the 22nd, our little column bade adieu to those 
who were to be left as garrison at Bissen Singh, this detachment consisted 
of 200 Ghoorkas under Major Dinning; they were well supplied with ammu¬ 
nition and three months' provisions; the garrison could have held the posi¬ 
tion against any odds, they were men, as before-mentioned, bred in a moun¬ 
tainous country, who had been well schooled in hill warfare; but, alas! 
no medical officer was available, there being only one for the entire column. 
Our return march lay by a different route than that by which we had 
come, we found it a less savage country, void of habitations it is true, but 
we had not to pass through the same dense forests that we had penetrated 
before. The first day took us to a spot which we designated Bumpa Hill, 
we reached it by following the course of the Surrinbundee, until this river 
disappeared below the surface, when we kept by the bed over a most dis¬ 
agreeable road of boulders, windfalls, and gravel, equally bad for riding and 
walking, and most trying to the elephants, the tender soles of whose feet 
became bruised and painful, making their pace a very slow one. 
This disappearance, to a considerable or entire extent, of all the rivers which 
flow from the Himalayas, can be accounted for in two ways; either the soil is 
of a sandy and porous quality, allowing the water to sink through and form a 
subterranean lake or bog, as shewn in Eig. 1, or else the floods of years have 
thrown up a supersoil of rock, stone, and sand through which the water 
pierces, keeping a level, as it is unable by the laws of nature to run up hill, 
Eig. 2; whichever theory is correct, it is this stretch of country, from A to B, 
which is the most deadly, be it here in Bhootan, or in the terrain of Nepal 
and Bohilcund. 
Fig. 2. 
4 
At our halting ground, the springs of water which had risen to the surface 
a few miles back, began to form themselves into little rivers, full of 
deep pools, literally alive with small fish; our camp was formed in a 
network of these streams, at the foot of a hill* covered with a dense 
vegetation and forest. Many went out in the hope of meeting wild 
game, but none was seen, although the fresh spoor of elephant, rhinoceros > 
and buffalo covered the land in every direction—the noise of the camp being 
pitched had scared these animals away. This day, however, I shot a fine 
