winds are concerned, for its great atmospheric current always blows
from the Bay of Bengal, and flows over all northern India, to the
lofty regions of Central Asia.

At Rampore I found the temperature of the ground, at three feet
depth, varied from 87.8 degrees to 89.8 degrees, being considerably
lower than that of the air (94.2 degrees), whilst that of a fine
ripening shaddock, into which I plunged a thermometer bulb, varied
little from 81 degrees, whether the sun shone on it or not. From this
place we made very slow progress south-eastwards, with a gentle
current, but against constant easterly winds, and often violent gales
and thunder-storms, which obliged us to bring up under shelter of
banks and islands of sand. Sometimes we sailed along the broad river,
whose opposite shores were rarely both visible at once, and at others
tracked the boat through narrow creeks that unite the many Himalayan
streams, and form a network soon after leaving their mountain valleys.

A few miles beyond Pubna we passed from a narrow canal at once into
the main stream of the Burrampooter at Jaffergunj: our maps had led
us to expect that it flowed fully seventy miles to the eastward in
this latitude; and we were surprised to hear that within the last
twenty years the main body of that river had shifted its course thus
far to the westward. This alteration was not effected by the gradual
working westwards of the main stream, but by the old eastern channel
so rapidly silting up as to be now unnavigable; while the Jummul,
which receives the Teesta, and which is laterally connected by
branches with the Burrampooter, became consequently wider and deeper,
and eventually the principal stream.

Nothing can be more dreary and uninteresting than the scenery of this