BOOTAN, 
SI 
grain, rising with an easy ascent, and bounded by thick woods. 
Several cottages were interspersed over the com fields. It is to be 
remarked, that the husbandmen here level the ground they cultivate 
on the sides of the hills, by cutting it in shelves, and forming beds of 
such a size as the slope will admit; and these beds being bordered 
with a low mound of earth, the water may be retained on them, or let 
off, at will. Having heard that there was cinnamon growing in this 
neighbourhood, I sent a native into the woods to search after the tree-; 
he returned to me within half an hour, with a great quantity both of 
its roots and branches. Its value is well known in this country, and 
it is used both for culinary and medicinal purposes. Its leaves are 
much used in cookery in Bengal, and known by the denomination of 
Teezpaut. It appears to me, that the cinnamon in this species is the 
rind of the root only, the bark of the tree having little or no spicy 
flavour; but the plant being neither in blossom nor bearing fruit, it 
was impossible to pronounce, whether it were the true cinnamon, or 
that inferior kind termed cassia. The leaf, however, corresponded 
with the (description given of the true cinnamon, by Linnaeus. 
We gathered strawberries and raspberries in the fields here, and 
found peach trees in great abundance, all laden with fruit. 
I cannot quit Murichom, without taking notice of one remarkable 
antiquity ; it was an old woman, who was almost deprived of all 
her strength and faculties, by age. I never beheld in a human being 
marks of age so strong: she sat in the sun, all day; the skin of her 
face was drawn into innumerable wrinkles; her arms were almost en¬ 
tirely devoid of flesh, the bones being covered with a skin, which by 
H 
