of mules and ponies to ascend to Churra, where we were received with
the greatest hospitality by that gentleman, who entertained us till
the end of June, and procured us servants and collectors. To his kind
offices we were also indebted throughout our travels in the Khasia,
for much information, and for facilities and necessaries of all
kinds: things in which the traveller is more dependent on his fellow
countrymen in India, than in any other part of the world.

We spent two days at Pundua, waiting for our great boats (which drew
several feet of water), and collecting in the vicinity. The old
bungalow, without windows and with the roof falling in, was a most
miserable shelter; and whichever way we turned from the door, a river
or a swamp lay before us. Birds, mosquitos, leeches, and large wasps
swarmed, also rats and sandflies. A more pestilential hole cannot be
conceived; and yet people traverse this district, and sleep here at
all seasons of the year with impunity. We did so ourselves in the
month of June, when the Sikkim and all other Terais are deadly: we
returned in September, traversing the Jheels and nullahs at the very
foot of the hills during a short break of fine weather in the middle
of the rains; and we again slept here in November,* [At the north
foot of the Khasia, in the heavily timbered dry Terai stretching for
sixty miles to the Burrampooter, it is almost inevitable death for a
European to sleep, any time between the end of April and of November.
Many have crossed that tract, but not one without taking fever:
Mr. H. Inglis was the only survivor of a party of five, and he was
ill from the effects for upwards of two years, after having been
brought to death's door by the first attack, which came on within
three weeks of his arrival at Churra, and by several relapses.]
always exposed in the heat of the day to wet and fatigue, and never
having even a _soupcon_ of fever, ague, or rheumatism. This immunity