The manufacture of economic products is not neglected.
Excellent coffee is grown; and arrow-root, equal to
the best West Indian, is prepared, at 18s. 6d. per
bottle of twenty-four ounces, about a fourth of the
price of that article in Calcutta.
In most respects the establishment is a model of what
such institutions ought to be in India; not only of
real practical value, in affording a good and cheap
supply of the best culinary and other vegetables that
the climate can produce, but as showing to what departments
efforts are best directed. Such gardens diffuse
a taste for the most healthy employments, and offer
an elegant resource for the many unoccupied hours
which the Englishman in India finds upon his hands.
They are also schools of gardening; and a simple inspection
of what has been done at Bhagulpore is a valuable lesson
to any person about to establish a private garden of
his own.
I often heard complaints made of the seeds distributed
from these gardens not vegetating freely in other
parts of India, and it is not to be expected that
they should retain their vitality unimpaired through
an Indian rainy season; but on the other hand I almost
invariably found that the planting and tending had
been left to the uncontrolled management of native
gardeners, who with a certain amount of skill in handicraft
are, from habits and prejudices, singularly unfit
for the superintendence of a garden.
Leave Bhagulpore — Kunker —
Colgong — Himalaya, distant view of —
Cosi, mouth of — Difficult navigation —
Sand storms — Caragola-Ghat —
Purnea — Ortolans — Mahanuddee,
transport of pebbles, etc. — Betel-pepper,
cultivation of — Titalya — Siligoree
— View of outer Himalaya — Terai
— Mechis — Punkabaree —
Foot of mountains — Ascent to Dorjiling
— Cicadas — Leeches —
Animals — Kursiong, spring vegetation of
— Pacheem — Arrive at Dorjiling
— Dorjiling, origin and settlement of —
Grant of land from Rajah — Dr. Campbell
appointed superintendent — Dewan, late and
present — Aggressive conduct of the latter
— Increase of the station — Trade
— Titalya fair — Healtby climate
for Europeans and children — Invalids,
diseases prejudicial to.
I took as it were, a new departure, on Saturday, April
the 8th, my dawk being laid on that day from Caragola-Ghat,
about thirty miles down the river, for the foot of
the Himalaya range and Dorjiling.
Passing the pretty villa-like houses of the English
residents, the river-banks re-assumed their wonted
features the hills receded from the shore; and steep
clay cliffs, twenty to fifty feet high, on one side,
opposed long sandy shelves on the other. Kunker
was still most abundant, especially in the lower bed
of the banks, close to the (now very low) water.
The strata containing it were much undulated, but
not uniformly so; horizontal layers over or under-lying
the disturbed ones. At Colgong, conical hills
