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We proceeded up the Burrampooter, crossing it obliquely; its banks were on the average five miles apart, and formed of sand, without clay, and very little silt or mud: the water was clear and brown, like that of the Jheels, and very different from that of the Jummul. We thence turned eastwards into the delta of the Soormah, which we traversed in a north-easterly direction to the stream itself.
We found the bold Colonel, "Rough with slaughter and red with fight," enjoying himself hugely among the jheels, and we prepared to join in the fray; but our chasse was put an end to by the discovery that the 14th, and not the 15th, was the last legal day for shooting. So we packed away our guns and towed up to Srinagar, which we reached on Sunday afternoon.
Not but what it sarved me right, for what business had I at my time of life to be wastin' shore leave by poppin' at little dicky birds in the dirty slimy jheels, as they call 'em, round about Calcutta! "Well, I was put ashore, as was on'y natural, and 'twas a marvel I pulled through for it en't many as take the cramp in Bengal and live to tell it.
The water, as I have above said, is of a rich chesnut-brown in the narrow creeks of the Jheels, and is golden yellow by transmitted light, owing no doubt, as in bog water and that of dunghills, to a vegetable extractive and probably the presence of carburetted hydrogen.
The falconers enlivened the journey by several flights at herons and cranes, which were very numerous in the marshes that bordered occasional lakes or jheels. We had the opportunity of observing the sagacity of a peregrine falcon, which, immediately upon being unmasked, rose straight in the air, instead of following the heron on its direct course.
The soil, which is sandy along the Burrampooter, is more muddy and clayey in the centre of the Jheels, with immense spongy accumulations of vegetable matter in the marshes, through which we poked the boat-staves without finding bottom: they were for the most part formed of decomposed grass roots, with occasionally leaves, but no quantity of moss or woody plants.
At this season the general surface of the Jheels is marshy; but during the rains, which are excessive on the neighbouring mountains, they resemble an inland sea, the water rising gradually to within a few inches of the floor of the huts; as, however, it subsides as slowly in autumn, it commits no devastation.
In June the mean of the barometer readings at the bungalow was absolutely identical with that of the Calcutta barometer, In September it was 0.016 inch lower, and in November 0.066 lower. The mean annual temperature throughout the Jheels is less than 2 degrees below that of Calcutta. The rock at Terrya is a nummulitic limestone, worn into extensive caverns.
Friday, April 14. A very fairly fine morning enabled us to strike camp yesterday, and get the baggage off in good time. The Smithsons decided to make for the jheels near the river, in order to give the duck a final worry round before the season closes on the 15th. My shikari having reported a good bara singh in a small nullah off the Erin, I arranged to go in search of him.
From this place the Khasia mountains are seen as a long table-topped range running east and west, about 4000 to 5000 feet high, with steep faces towards the Jheels, out of which they appear to rise abruptly. Though twelve miles distant, large waterfalls are very clearly seen precipitating themselves over the cliffs into a bright green mass of foliage, that seems to creep half way up their flanks.
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