and all the heavy baggage possible, so as to more shaggy; but the wool of the sheep was 15th October.-Started at sunrise, and had a very long and weary descent by a very indifferent road, quite discreditable to his grace the rawul, and got to the river Mundagnee about seven, one of the main streams of the Ganges; the Aliknunda and the Mundagnee being the twin contributaries to the same river. I found a good straw rope bridge over the river; a very tremendous torrent, not very broad, but so deep and rapid, as to render swimming ponies across it impossible. After an ascent on the other side, equally steep and laborious, got to Fanta about noon, and pitched camp. The scenery from Nalaputhun (which we passed about eight) up the valley of the Mundagnee, though less extensive than that from Tongnath, is more within one's appreciation, with all the elements for forming the most magnificent landscapes in nature. I could not resist devoting my humble efforts to make a few sketches, in hopes of at some future day expanding them in oil colors; but, oh! how feeble and inadequate; to do such scenes justice would require the mainsail of a ship of the line, with a Royal Academy of artists to transfer them to canvas. Sublime as was the landscape in the brightness of day, it assumed new glories as the day died away exhibiting a series of dissolving views of all the hues of the rainbow; the green tints fading into the yellow, orange, the rose, the purple, the violet, and the indigo, in most beautiful prismatic order, till the cold, hard earth seemed transformed into heaven, leaving dull man alone unchanged and mortal. We are now in a very elevated region, probably eight thousand feet above the sca; vegetation has become scanty, the soil stony and rocky, and the crops less productive; the people more primitive and more warmly clad; the cattle more stunted in growth, their carcases more lean, and their coats The hemp plant grows indigenously in these hills about five or six thousand feet high, and at the end of the rains it becomes quite a jungle, high as a man's head, and as impassable as a field of wheat. A highly intoxicating drug, called ganja, is got from the seeds, and used occasionally by the natives. I think that the cultivation of hemp on a grand scale, for the purpose of exportation to Europe, would be a very profitable speculation. It is worthy of remark, that the cockscomb, or princes' feather, so much cared for in our English gardens, is, at these high altitudes, cultivated for food. It grows to a height of three or four feet, with bunches of flowers as big as a whitening brush. Indeed, it is a staple article of diet, when ground into flour. Rice does not grow at this height, and barley and other grain but very scantily. To meet this inconvenience such villages have, in general, their little farms in low villages, to which they repair in proper seasons for grain cultivation. During the winter the snow falls heavily, and lies long hereabouts, even for many weeks at a time; yet winter is the merriest season of the year, and quite a carnival. Deer of various kinds abound in the forests; their tracks are easily discovered; they have no chance of escape in the deep snow from the hunters provided with snow shoes, and armed with spears. Great numbers are therefore killed annually, supplying abundance of fat venison to make up for the short commons of the summer season. About three years ago, as I was told, the valley of Mundagnee was fearfully ravaged 1 by the Maha-murrie, and in the moderatesized village of Sipjoogee, about forty people were carried off by it. from rain, and with enough of level ground for a small party. Hereabouts, the masses of granite rock are of a most colossal size, 16th October.-Started as usual about sun- many of them being as large as parish rise, and got to Akroat-Kotee (the Oak Vil- churches. All these must have been delage) to breakfast; road very rugged, with tached from precipices many hundred feet heavy ups and downs. Passed some stu- above their present site, and have tumbled pendous cedars, or deodars (God's trees), down the mountain sides like foot-balls, worthy indeed of such a name, for the deo- crushing the patriarchs of the forest like dar is the noblest tree in the forest to look stubble beneath a wagon wheel. The deat, and its wood is almost imperishable, from scent of a large one must have been worth being surcharged with resin. Of all timber going a hundred miles to see. About a mile that grows its wood is most prized for build-above Beem-Oodyar crossed a small stream ing, but as it is not very abundant, it is of clear water strongly impregnated with chiefly used for the construction of temples, or the houses of the priesthood. sulphuretic hydrogen. Halted an hour for breakfast on the skirts of the forest: foliage Descended many hundred feet to Jilmin- almost European, the oak, the mountain ash, puttan, a place without any habitation, where the alder, the birch being the last trees to two mountain torrents meet; crossed one be seen. As we advanced the scenery asof them by a wooden bridge, and wended sumed quite a new character, the trees gave our weary way up the right bank of the other place to the dog-rose, the rose to the fern, (the Mundagnee), far above its level, along the fern to the moss, the moss to the lichen, a slender deer track, stretched along the the lichen to absolute sterility. On turning brows of almost precipitous mountains, and a corner, the open valley of Kedarnath came often carried from headland to headland by suddenly into view, walled in by lofty brownmere ladders laid upon the most crazy sup-colored naked rocks, from which numerous ports, that required all my courage to cross streams of water poured forth, the infant them. Scenery exceedingly grand, now and tributaries of the great Ganges. At the end then exposing the snowy peaks overlooking of the valley, apparently at the end of the Kedarnath, no long distance off. Arrived world, stood the most sacred temple of Keat the halting place, Gowreekhoond, about darnath, still a good way off, from which the two P.M., where there is a comfortable little main chain of the highest mountains of the dhurmsala for the accommodation of travel-world rose, rugged, rocky, and precipitouslers, but no room to pitch a tent. Gowreekhoond gets its name from a spring of hot water that bubbles out of the ground, and fills a little tank on its way to the river. The temperature of the spring I judged to be about one hundred and twenty degrees, the water strongly impregnated with iron and sulphuretted hydrogen. Such a spring in Europe would be a valuable estate, but here it is only an object of superstition. Though this is the main stream of the Mundagnee, it here takes the name of the Kaligunga; it is only a few yards broad, but exceedingly deep and impetuous, one continued cascade stunning the ear with its roar. 17th October.-I slept but little owing to the excessive fatigue of yesterday, the coldness of the dhurmsala, and the tremendous roar of the Kaligunga, only a very few yards distant. Started at sunrise. A few miles above Gowreekhoond saw some wild goats, called thars, on the opposite side of the river, but quite beyond reach of the rifle; so I was contented to look at them with a telescope. They looked nearly as large and as heavy as donkeys with very long, hairy coats, of a dark-gray color. About eight passed Beem-Oodyar, a cave formed by a large mass of overhanging rock, affording good shelter hill piled upon hill, glacier resting above glacier, alp piled upon alp, far above the reach of man's ambition, far above the view of the wild goat or ibex, far above the soar of the eagle, in an atmosphere too rarified for animal existence, where the snow-flake, the lightning, and the sunbeam are the only visitants,-where nature sits alone enthroned in unapproachable majesty, and surveys the wonderful creation of God!-Almighty! Though the main chain of the Himmalayah is nearly thirty thousand feet above the sea, yet science has demonstrated that it must at one time have been submerged deep below its surface. Though the general formation be granite, yet stratified rocks can readily be recognized by the telescope, and scientific travellers have found marine fossils in abundance on some of the passes about fifteen thousand feet above the sea. How infinite, then, must that subterranean power have been to have upheaved from oceans' depths into rarified air, such immeasurable masses of mountain matter! How incomprehensibly omnipotent the Creator of such powers! No wonder that the natives hold those sublime mountains in such veneration, that they worship them as the abode of the deity; and that they are ever ready to offer them selves as victims upon the altar of Mahadeo (the great God) in the patriarchic belief that the more valuable the sacrifice the more acceptable it would be to the deity. The temple of Kedarnath, perhaps the most sacred in Hindoo mythology, stands upon a gently sloping plain, resembling a marsh or bog, without a tree or a shrub within many miles of it, and at an elevation of probably eleven thousand feet. It is apparently of modern construction, with a somewhat Grecian façade, and the usual pyramidal tower at one end, still, strange to say, unfinished. The stone consists of mica slate, so soft and friable on being dug out of the quarry that it admits of being sawed into slabs, or cut with a hatchet; but, when exposed to the air, it soon hardens, and becomes durable as granite itself. There is a large suite of office houses near the temple for the accommodation of prilgrims. The season of pilgrimage was now over, and most of the priests and the attendants were preparing to migrate to lower and warmer regions during the rigor of the approaching winter. I found the Brahmins sulky, surly, intolerant, and unaccommodating; averse to allow me the use of a hut, or the benefit of a few mats to cover my tent to protect me from the intense cold; repugnant to my pitching my tent within the immediate neighborhood of the temple dedicated to Mahadeo (the great God,) and every article and every locality was tabooed. Mahadeo's temple could not be polluted with the presence of my unclean tent, on the same ground sward; to lend me Mahadoe's mats to cover it would be sacrilege; and to allow me to occupy one of their outhouses where holy Brahmins might next season lodge, could not be permitted. Nevertheless, I selected a dry, level spot about forty yards from the temple, and pitched the tent in defiance of remonstrance, while my followers found shelter in the houses. About two P.M., being provided with an intelligent guide, I set off for the foot of the mountains; and after an hour's gradual ascent over a wet, mossy sward, we came to a chain of rocky hills, from which the feeders of the great Ganges rush out in great numbers, all of which, uniting within the distance of a mile or two, expand into an unfordable river. To bathe in it is esteemed an act of great devotion, and though the temperature was about the freezing point, the Hindoos of my party plunged into the sacred stream over head and ears, though most of them caught severe colds in consequence of their bath. On a near approach to the above chain of hills they were found to be an enormous boulder, or moraine-an accumulation of im mense stones brought down from the overlooking mountains by avalanches, every year adding to their numbers, and thousands of years enlarging the débris to the magnitude of the mountain range. Treading along to the right, the guide brought us to a sort of tarpeian rock, called Byrovajamp, from the summit of which pilgrims were wont to throw themselves as living sacrifices, thus ending their days by being dashed to pieces. Such living sacrifices were considered acts of supreme devotion, insuring the victim the highest rewards in a future state of existence. From this rock the no less celebrated Valley of the Shadow of Death, called Mahapunt, takes its rise, a long ascending slope between two rocky precipices, that ends in perpetual snow. According to Hindoo mythology, this Mahapunt is believed to be the most direct road to the world of spirits. With the assurance of the most favored reception after the journey of this life is over, pilgrims bent upon self-sacrifice took leave of their relations, as before an execution; with the resolution of never returning, and the conviction that if they only persevered long enough and far enough, they would be rewarded with a blessed immortality, they entered the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and eventually perished in the snow. Such sacrifices conferred a solemn celebrity upon the surviving relations of the deceased, perhaps equal in their own little circle to that of Marcus Curtius himself in the proud days of ancient Rome. Of late years these human sacrifices were prohibited by the company's government, under the heaviest penalties to the accomplices; this ordinance has become as obsolete as that of Suttee, but tradition records an incredible destruction of human life in times long gone by. The world will cry out, What an infamous government was that of the old East India Company, that tolerated such enormities so long? How very horrible, indeed! scream out our very good Christian people. What benighted ignorance! howls out Exeter Hall; send out more missionaries-more Bibles; drag those heathens from the error of their ways and convert them by fair means, or by any means! Every good Christian must congratulate humanity on the suppression of such barbarous rites; but however much he may reprobate them, they convey a moral lesson that may have a good effect on our own more enlightened society. Have we, good people, no Byrovajamp amongst ourselves over which our victims of society are daily precipitating themselves, to get rid of a life rendered too intolerable to be endured? Have we no Mahapunt up which our religious devotees clamber in convent chains till they perish in the freezing cloisters of monastic life? Have we no funeral piles on which our brokenhearted widows offer themselves up as victims to their deceased husbands' mal-administration? Have we no Jaggernauth cars before whose wheels our idolatrous daughters prostrate themselves and get crushed to death? Let our fashionable ladies answer. Is infanticide less known amongst us than it formerly was amongst the Rajpoots? Let our match-making fathers and mothers an swer. march to Gopat Kassy, opposite to Okeemuth. Fired at two Khakur deer or Montjack about three hundred yards off, but missed them. Shot a brace of fine Calidge pheasants, male and female, very desirable additions to the larder, now almost empty. These birds have the habit of hiding themselves in the dense foliage of trees when flushed by dogs, and sit in fancied security. I had some difficulty in discovering them even when under the tree, and shot them as they sat. Horresco referens, but a hungry man cannot afford to adhere at all times to the etiquette of sporting. Another snowstorm has to-day whitened the mountains; but a large portion of surface continues black and bare, owing to the perpendicular formation of the rocks. This is a very sublime encampment. The great square mountain mass of Budrinath on the right, the serrated range Kedarnath on the left; with the intermediate field filled up with ranges of mountains, like the waves of the ocean in a storm, of all tints from russet brown to cobalt blue. Let us consult the records of the Coroner's Courts, the Divorce Courts, the Insolvent Courts, our courts of inquest and our courts of fashion, and we shall find that for one primitive Hindoo, that sacrificed his life for what he considered the good of his soul, a hundred of our fellow-countrymen-aye, and of our fellow-countrywomen, have fallen victims to their own acts and their own hands. Mais revenir a nos moutons. There being no glaciers hereabouts to interest one, and the snow line being at present a great deal too high to reach it so late in the afternoon, I made my way back to my little tent. I found the Clouds of locusts still hover about in forBrahmins more complaisant than when I first lorn hopes of being able to cross the snowy arrived, and willing to let me have the use range. Saw several cases of goitre here, of the house, but they were all so absurdly but the disease is not uncommon in this low as not to admit of standing upright in quarter of the province. Many would feel them, and so suspicious looking as to fleas, lonely and wretched in travelling so long that I declined using them. With two good without seeing a white face, or having_ocmats to cover my hut, and an abundant lit-casion to speak a word of English; but I do ter of dry grass upon the ground, I made not, and no one capable of appreciating myself as comfortable as circumstances permitted to pass a very cold night. Learned from a register book shown to me that during the last twenty-three years only twenty-eight Europeans had visited Kedarnath. 18th October.-Spent a miserably uncomfortable night, though I went to bed with my clothes on; the poor dogs felt more than I did, and actually whined with the cold, and I had to keep them quiet by casting off their chains, and letting them lie at the foot of the bed. This morning the ground was white with hoar frost, with ice on every pool. I felt quite benumbed with cold, with great giddiness, singing of the ears, violent headache, rapidity of pulse, increased frequency of breathing, and loss of vital energy, all, no doubt, the consequence of a rarified atmosphere. The weather had become cloudy and threatening, and a fall of snow thought probable, so I resolved to descend forthwith, and hastened down to Akroatkotee. Fortunate it was that I did so, for a heavy fall of snow took place the same afternoon, whitening the mountains, and possibly rendering the road for a time impassable. was 19th October.-Made a long retrograde such wonderfully fine scenery ought to be discontented. There is a fine old bird or beast, perhaps a monitor, to be heard about the altitude of eight thousand feet, and oft in the stilly night its familiar call of "what! what!" repeated at intervals of a few seconds, is very pleasant company. 26th October.-Entered upon a new route homeward, and made a very long descent to Bhery, on the main chain of the Mundagnee. crossed over the river on a good bridge, and then found my ponies and my heavy baggage all safe and sound. Mounted right gladly, rode up a very long ascent, and encamped in very fine forest scenery at the village of Kanara. Was informed that about three years ago the Maha-murrie raged dreadfully hereabouts, carrying off twenty and thirty people in small villages, and sixty or seventy in large ones. 21st October. Started at sunrise as usual, and after many ups and downs got to the first ridge of a lofty chain of mountains, overlooking the Pokree valley, and continuing about the same level through oaks and rhododendron, and very beautiful scenery, arrived at Pokree about two P.M. Here I found the commissioner of Kumaon, and became his guest; he was occupying a small ponies across with little trouble, the stream being very gentle. Continued to ascend the left bank of the great river for an hour or more to Kurnpray, at the junction of the Pindur road, exceedingly rough, rocky, and stairy, a masterpiece of engineering-scenery wonderfully fine. What a splendid song might be written on the meeting of the waters at Kurnpray. What an immortal picture it would make! rude bungalow of two rooms, formerly usual crazy straw rope bridge, swam the erected by the superintendent of some copper mines, but the speculation did not answer, and the mining was stopped. The valley of Pokree is very pretty, with extensive rice cultivation, but much sickness at present prevails amongst the people, and great numbers came to me for medicine and advice; my little stock was soon exhausted, but I promised if they would bring any of their invalids into Almorah I would do my best to restore them to health, a promise that only half satisfied them, for their petitions for present relief were so urgent, that I felt quite vexed I could not comply with their urgent demands. Visited the copper mines, found the shafts nearly horizontal, most of them filled with water or blocked up with rubbish. Found some women collecting the ore from the refuse formerly thrown out by the miners. They first beat the mass pretty fine with a wooden mallet, then they drew it upon an inclined wooden board with grooves, cut out horizontally upon it, over which trickled a stream of water, the metallic particles settled upon the grooves, while the earthy parts being light were washed away. 22d. October.-Started at the usual hour of sunrise, and though the descent was continuous the whole way, did not get to Bamoath, on the bed of the Aliknunda till near noon. Here the Aliknunda is a very mighty river, having absorbed the waters of the Pindur far above this point. Crossed over by the Here a Sepoy of my regiment was carried up to my tent, being very sick and quite unable to proceed homewards; his legs were enormously swollen from the bites of the venomous flies in these low places, with numerous ulcers-in fact, he was in a most distressing condition, so I gave him my dandy engaged four bearers, and sent him onwards to Athbudree. Next day when I reached Athbudree, I found that he had died on the way; the putwarry took possession of his effects to be sent into Almorah to the captain of his company. The body was buried with all funeral ceremonies by the Brahmins. As I am now returning over travelled ground, I shall not continue this journal further than stating that I arrived at Almorah on the 28th October, very much satisfied with my trip to the Snow, very much disposed to pity my messmates for pottering about the hill-tops, contenting themselves with looking at the grandest scenery of the world through their telescopes. FERINGEE. A NEW HIPPOPOTAMUS.-Another hippopotamus was born in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris on the 18th of May. He was received at noon on the brink of the basin of the rotunda, in the arms of his keeper, and immediately taken away. The maternal hippopotamus had no time to see her offspring, and yet she indulged in a long fit of anger. Without the aid of an enormous whip with which the keeper was furnished, he could hardly have secured his retreat; but by its aid he succeeded in getting out of the basin and shutting the grate behind him. MM. Isidore Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire and Florent Prévost were immediately called in, and they found that the new-comer was a very wellformed male. He was placed in a basin exposed to the sun, and he immediately took to swimming and splashing about as though he had taken lessons from his father and mother. He was fed on warm cow's milk, which he drank with avidity; in four days he consumed nearly three gallons of it. He slept a good part of each day on a bed of straw covered with a flannel blanket; the rest of the time he amused himself in a basin of warm water. His keeper, who did not leave him for a moment, could not make the least movement but his nursling would open his eyes enough to assure himself that his adopted father was not going to leave him. At night he slept with his head on his keeper's breast, and slept well until daybreak. When he wanted to drink he roared like a calf, which indeed he somewhat resembled in form. He measured about four feet in length and weighed one hundred and thirty pounds at birth. His skin, soft, moist, and mellow to the touch, had nothing of that rose-tint which characterized the two other hippopotamuses born in the menagerie in 1858 and 1859. It was blackish in some places, and in others of a grayish white. There was also a very queer orange tint about his lips. On the 2d instant it was noticed that his mouth was bloody, and on examination it was found that several teeth were coming through. While they were wondering at this precocity, the poor animal was taken with convulsions and died in a few minutes. |