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Updated: July 16, 2025
Eight miles from Rummai we came on a small river from the mountains, with a Cooch village close by, inhabited during the dry season by timber-cutters from Jeelpigoree it is situated upon a very rich black soil, covered with Saccharum and various gigantic grasses, but no bamboo. These long grasses replace the Sal, of which we did not see one good tree.
In front of the house rose Lashnagar, the home of desolation, a billowing waste of sand rising to about a thousand feet at the crest. Curlews called and sea-gulls screamed over Lashnagar; heather grew upon it, purple and olive-green; fennel and cooch and henbane sprang side by side with dwarfed stink-nettles, stunted by the salt sand in which they were rooted.
It was distinctly an invitation to be treasured and gratefully accepted. The five-hundred-mile journey between Calcutta and Cooch Behar was unquestionably a varied one.
Cooch Behar is now, I believe, directly linked up with Calcutta by rail. We left Calcutta a party of four. My nephew, General Sir Henry Streatfeild, and his wife, another of the Viceroy's aides-de-camp, myself, and a certain genial Calcutta business magnate, most popular of Anglo-Indians.
Grasses Bamboos Cottages Rajah of Cooch Behar Condition of people Hooli festival Ascend Teesta Canoes Cranes Forest Baikant-pore Rummai Religion Plants at foot of mountains Exit of Teesta Canoe voyage down to Rangamally English genera of plants Birds Beautiful Scenery Botanizing on elephants Willow Siligoree Cross Terai Geology Iron Lohar-ghur Coal and sandstone beds Mechi fisherman Hailstorm Ascent to Khersiong To Dorjiling Vegetation Geology Folded quartz-beds Spheres of feldspar Lime deposits.
Of cultivation there was very little, and the only habitations were a few grass-huts of the boatmen or buffalo herdsmen, a rare Cooch village of Catechu and Sal cutters, or the shelter of timber-floaters, who seem to pass the night in nests of long dry grass. Our servants not having returned with the elephants from Rummai, we spent the following day at Rangamally shooting and botanizing.
As he did not do things by halves, he had had a rough road made connecting Cooch Behar with his great camp, and had caused temporary bridges to be built over all the streams on the way.
'I wonder if they are going to take me to task about matters utterly unknown to me. But the officers bowed with unwonted courtesy. "'Honored Sir, we are sent to welcome you on behalf of the Prince of Cooch Behar. He is pleased to invite you to his palace tomorrow morning. "I speculated awhile on the prospect. For some obscure reason I felt sharp regret at this interruption in my quiet trip.
Some fine muscular Cooches were here brought for Mr. Hodgson's examination, but we found them unable or unwilling to converse, in the Cooch tongue, which appears to be fast giving place to Bengalee.
Thirty odd miles to the south of the foothills the jungle ended abruptly, and beyond its ragged fringe lay the flat and fertile fields of Eastern Bengal. A dark spot seen indistinctly through the hot-weather haze marked where the little city of Cooch Behar lay.
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