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These tall, gaunt edifices sometimes give place to clumps of cottages, and a mass of dusty ruins, the unsavoury retreats of vermin and filth, where the Calotropis arborea generally spreads its white branches and glaucous leaves a dusty plant.
The pass is well wooded, with abundance of bamboo, Bombax, Cassia, Acacia, and Butea, with Calotropis, the purple Mudar, a very handsome road-side plant, which I had not seen before, but which, with the Argemone Mexicana, was to be a companion for hundreds of miles farther.
Some fine bells from Nepal were evidently the lion of the temple. I emerged, adorned with a chaplet of magnolia flowers, and with my hands full of Calotropis and Nyctanthes blossoms. It was a horrid place for noise, smell, and sights. Thence I went to a holy well, rendered sacred because Siva, when stepping from the Himalaya to Ceylon, accidentally let a medicine chest fall into it.
Its exposed leaves maintained a temperature of 80 degrees, nearly 25 degrees cooler than the similarly exposed sand and alluvium. On the same night the leaves were cooled down to 54 degrees, when the sand had cooled to 51 degrees. Before daylight the following morning the sand had cooled to 43 degrees, and the leaves of the Calotropis to 45.5 degrees.
Along the sandy shores the ever-present plants are mostly English, as Dock, a Nasturtium, Ranunculus sceleratus, Fumitory, Juncus bufonius,, Common Vervain, Gnaphalium luteo-album, and very frequently Veronica Anagallise. On the alluvium grow the same, mixed with Tamarisk, Acacia Arabica, and a few other bushes. Bushes are few, except the universally prevalent Adhatoda and Calotropis.
Surface 104 degrees 22.5 inches 93 degrees 5 inches 88 degrees Sand at this depth 78 degrees. 5 a.m. Surface 51 degrees 28 inches 68 degrees Finding the fresh milky juice of Calotropis to be only 72 degrees, I was curious to ascertain at what depth this temperature was to be obtained in the sand of the river-bed, where the plant grew.
The charcoal here used is made from an Acacia: the Seiks, I believe, employ Justicia Adhatoda, which is also in use all over India: at Aden the Arabs prefer the Calotropis, probably because it is most easily procured. The grain of all these plants is open, whereas in England, closer-grained and more woody trees, especially willows, are preferred.
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