87 
E O OTA K. 
of the hills of Bootan, immediately' bordering upon Bengal, and in 
the tract of low country watered by the rivers that flow from them 
to the south, beyond the space of a degree of latitude; but it is not 
peculiar to these regions. The same malady prevails among the 
people inhabiting the Morung, Nipal, and Almora hills, which, 
joined to those of Bootan, run in continuation, and bound to the 
northward, that extensive tract of low land, embraced by: the Ganges 
and the Berhampooter. Both these rivers, originally flowing from 
nearly the same source, upon quitting this chain, take their final leave 
of the mountains, at the wide distance of near a thousand miles from 
Or 
each other, and both afterwards run through a flat country, in copioils 
navigable streams, until they join together, and flow into the sea. 
This same disease is also mom particularly met with in the low lands, 
adjacent to these hills. From the frontier of Assam, which I reckon to 
be in the twenty-seventh degree of north latitude and ninety-first de¬ 
gree of east longitude, it is to be traced through Bijnee, Gooch Bahar, 
Rungpore, Dinagepore, Purnea, Tirroot, and Betiah, along the north¬ 
ern boundary of Owd, in Gooracpore, Barraiteh, Pillibeat, and on the 
confines of Rohilcuncb to Hurdewar, which is situated in thirty degrees 
north latitude, and seventy-eight degrees twenty-five minutes east lon¬ 
gitude. This wen, as I before observed, in Europe is called Goiter, 
and has the effect, or rather is accompanied with the effect, arising 
from the same cause, of debilitating both the bodies and the minds of 
those who are affected with it. The whole extent of this- low land,, 
immediately joining to the hills, is skirted by a broad belt, from ten 
to twenty miles in depth, abounding with the most exuberant vege- 
