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The Soane is here three miles wide, its nearly dry bed being a desert of sand, resembling a vast arm of the sea when the tide is out: the banks are very barren, with no trees near, and but very few in the distance. The houses were scarcely visible on the opposite side, behind which the Kymore mountains rise. Sons is also the Sanskrit for gold.
From Tura our little army again crossed the Soane, the scarped cliffs of the Kymore approaching close to the river on the west side. The bed is very sandy, and about one mile and a half across.
Dew had formed every night since leaving Dunwah, the grass being here cooled 12 degrees below the air. On the 19th of February we marched up the Soane to Tura, passing some low hills of limestone, between the cliffs of the Kymore and the river.
Through this we passed on to the flat summit of the Kymore hills, covered with grass and forest, intersected by paths in all directions. The ascent is about 1200 feet a long pull in the blazing sun of February. The turf consists chiefly of spear-grass and Andropogon muricatus, the kus-kus, which yields a favourite fragrant oil, used as a medicine in India.
It is, however, well developed on the Kymore and Paras-nath hills, 1200 to 1500 feet above the Ganges valley, and I have no doubt was deposited in very deep water, when the relative positions of these mountains to the Ganges and Soane valleys were the same that they are now.
A spur of the Kymore, like that of Rotas, here projects to the bed of the river, and was blazing at night with the beacon-like fires of the natives, lighted to scare the tigers and bears from the spots where they cut wood and bamboo; they afforded a splendid spectacle, the flames in some places leaping zig-zag from hill to hill in front of us, and looking as if a gigantic letter W were written in fire.
Every night that we spent in Tibet, we enjoyed a magnificent display of sunbeams converging to the east, and making a false sunset. I detailed this phenomenon when seen from the Kymore mountains, and I repeatedly saw it again in the Khasia, but never in the Sikkim Himalaya, whence I assume that it is most frequent in mountain plateaus.
The nearly horizontal arrangement of the strata is as conspicuous here, as in the sandstone of the Kymore hills in the Soane valley, which these mountains a good deal resemble; but they are much higher, and the climate is widely different.
Doomree Vegetation of table-land Lieutenant Beadle Birds Hot springs of Soorujkoond Plants near them Shells in them Cholera-tree Olibanum Palms, form of Dunwah Pass Trees, native and planted Wild peacock Poppy fields Geography and geology of Behar and Central India Toddy-palm Ground, temperature of Barroon Temperature of plants Lizard Cross the Soane Sand, ripple marks on Kymore hills Ground, temperature of Limestone Rotas fort and palace Nitrate of lime Change of climate Lime stalagmites, enclosing leaves Fall of Soane Spiders, etc.
From the top, the view of rock, river, forest, and plain, was very fine, the eye ranging over a broad flat, girt by precipitous hills; West, the Kymore or Vindhya range rose again in rugged elevations; South, flowed the Soane, backed by ranges of wooded hills, smoking like volcanos with the fires of the natives; below, lay the bed of the stream we had left at the foot of the hills, cutting its way through the alluvium, and following a deep gorge to the Soane, which was there hidden by the rugged heights we had crossed, on which the greater part of our camp might be seen still straggling onwards; east, and close above us, the bold spur of Mungeesa shot up, terminating a continuous stretch of red precipices, clothed with forest along their bases, and over their horizontal tops.
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