before we close, direct the attention of our readers to a subject of much importance connected with the celebration of these festivals. We refer to the practice of closing the Government offices on occasion of a large number of these festivals. We do not wish at present to regard the question, as to the propriety of this practice, in a religious aspect, nor to enquire how far it is right for a Christian Government to countenance the practices of idolatry, regarded merely as religious rites. But considering that into the celebration of the greater number of these festivals, a large amount of dissipation and debauchery enters, and enters as an essential and indispensable element, we hold that the Government ought to afford no facilities whatever for the celebration. With respect to some of the festivals, such as the Charak and the Holi, the more respectable of the natives themselves acknowledge their debasing tendency, and would rejoice even at their forcible suppression. But all we ask is the withdrawal of that countenance which is afforded by the cessation of all public business in honor of them.

We confess that we are altogether unable to sympathize, to any extent whatsoever, with the squeamishness of those who would represent the requirement of the attendance of the native officials on these days, as an infringement of the rights of conscience. Conscience has nothing at all to do with the matter, except in so far as a Bengali most conscientiously delights in idleness. In point of fact, the most conscientious Hindus are the men that would find least fault with the change; the only men that would grumble would be the idle and the dissipated.

But the matter may be very easily settled. Let the public offices be kept open, and let it be announced, that all who choose to attend shall receive their full salaries, and that all who absent themselves shall forfeit their day's pay. Thus would the most tender conscience be left intact. We venture to predict that the saving effected to Government would be infinitesimally small.

We do not know any one way in which the Government could more effectually diminish the amount of licentiousness and crime, and elevate to a considerable extent the character of the people, than by withdrawing their sanction from these holidays, and requiring their offices to be kept open on these as on other days.

ART. III.-1. Official Reports on the Province of Kumaon, with a Medical Report on the Mahamurree in Gurhwál, in 1849-50. Edited, under the orders of the Hon'ble the Lieut.-Governor, N. W. Provinces, by J. H. Batten, Esq., C. S., Commissioner of Kumaon. Agra, 1851.

2. The Tarai and outer Mountains of Kumáon, by Major Madden, Bengal Artillery. (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.) 1848.

3. Notes of an Excursion to the Pindri Glacier, in September, 1846, by Capt. Ed. Madden, Bengal Artillery. (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.) 1847.

4. On Himálayan Conifera-being a supplement to the " Brief Observations," &c. Journal of Agricultural and Horticultural Society, Vol. IV. Part IV. By Major E. Madden, Bengal Artillery. (Journal of Agricultural and Horticultural Society.) Calcutta, 1849.

5. Narrative of a Journey to Cho Lagan (Rakas Tal), Cho Mapan (Mánaserówar), and the valley of Pruang in Gnari, Húndés, in September and October, 1846. By Henry Strachy, Lieut., 66th Bengal N. I. (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.) 1848.

6. Description of the Glaciers of the Pindúr and Kuphinee Rivers in the Kumaon Himálaya. By Lieut. R. Strachey, Bengal Engineers. (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.) 1847. 7. Note on the motion of the Glacier of the Pindúr in Kumáon. By Lieut. R. Strachey, Engineers. (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.) Calcutta, 1848.

8. On the Snow-line in the Himálaya; by Lieut. R. Strachey, Engineers. Communicated by order of the Hon'ble the Lieut.Governor, N. W. Provinces. (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.) 1849.

9. On the Geology of Part of the Himálaya Mountains and Tibet. By Capt. R. Strachey, Bengal Engineers, F. G. E. (Proceedings of the Geological Society of London.) June, 1851. 10. On the Physical Geography of the Provinces of Kumáon and Gurhwal in the Himalaya mountains, and of the adjoining parts of Tibet. By R. Strachey, Esq., Bengal Engineers. Read before the Royal Geographical Society of London, on the 12th of May, 1851.

11. Report on the and Gurhwál.

Cultivation and Manufacture of Tea in Kumáon
By William Jameson, Esq., Superintendent,

Botanical Gardens, N. W. Provinces. (Journal of Agricultural and Horticultural Society, Vol. IV.) Calcutta, 1845. 12. Report on the Progress of the Culture of the China Tea Plant in the Himalayas, from 1835 to 1847. By J. Forbes Royle, M. D., F. R. S. (Journal of Royal Asiatic Society.) London, 1849.

13. Report upon the Tea Plantations in the N. W. Provinces, by Robert Fortune. Printed by the Government, N. W. P. Agra,

1851.

14. Suggestions for the Importation of Tea-makers, Implements, and Seeds, from China into the N. W. Provinces. By W. Jameson, Esq., Superintendent, Botanical Gardens, N. W. Provinces. Printed by the Government, N. W. P. Agra, 1852.

SOME seven years ago, we were lamenting, in one of the earlier numbers of this Review (No. VII. Art. VI.,) over the discreditable fact, that after thirty years of British rule, we were still without any trust-worthy accounts of our Himalayan provinces. The list of valuable papers, which stands at the head of this article, will show that much has been done, during the last few years, to remove this reproach. We have not yet obtained all that we could desire. We want something more accessible to the world, and of a more comprehensive character, than papers scattered through the pages of scientific journals and official reports. But a good beginning has been made; we have proof that competent observers have been at work; and we trust that ere long we may obtain the great desideratum, a complete account of a tract of country, which, in its physical characteristics, is perhaps the most interesting and most wonderful in the world.

We shall not enter now into any elaborate criticisms of the papers that we have referred to. We propose in the present article to endeavour to show how vast and interesting a field of enquiry here lies open to the instructed observer, and to give a sketch, necessarily a very general and imperfect one, of some of the chief characteristics of our Himalayan provinces of Kumáon and Gurhwál. We shall touch more particularly on some points which have received hitherto the least elucidation; we do not pretend to give in an article of a Review, a complete physical description of a country like this; and some of the most interesting and important branches of the subject we shall be compelled to pass by altogether.

The British provinces of Kumáon and Gurhwál comprehend

L

that part of the Himalaya mountains situated between the Alaknanda, the main stream of the Ganges, on the west, and the Káli or Sárdah on the east. The former river, and its affluent, the Mandakini, separate the British territory from the protected state of Gurhwál; the latter forms the boundary between Kumaon and the Nepalese province of Doti. The plains of India are the limit of these districts to the south, while the water-shed line of the main range of the Himalaya forms the frontier with Tibet to the north.

These districts consist entirely of mountains. From the plains to the cordillera of the snowy range, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, not only do we find nothing that can be called a plain, but hardly a valley of any considerable breadth. The direction of the main range of the Himalaya is here, as elsewhere, from about north-west to south-east; and the inferior ridges, which rise immediately above the plains of India, preserve a general parallelism with the line passing through the great peaks of the chain.

Perhaps in no part of the world does a traveller behold Nature under more various and more wonderful aspects within so small a space, than he who passes from the plains of India into the Himalaya. Leaving behind him the flourishing cities and the rich cultivation of Rohilkhand, he enters gradually into a tract covered with tall reeds and grasses, and intersected by sluggish streams that rise from pestilential swamps, with here and there a wretched village, inhabited by a squalid and miserable race. This tract, usually called the Tarai, lies between the cultivated districts of Rohilkhand, and the great forest which extends along the base of the Himalaya. Its average breadth is perhaps ten miles, but it has generally no very marked limits; although, taken as a whole, it is perfectly distinct in aspect and character from the country on either side. The traveller, after passing through this region of swamp and prairie, comes into a tract of a very different character, the magnificent forest, which extends uninterruptedly along the foot of the Himálaya. The breadth of this forest-belt is generally from ten to fifteen miles.

The change from the Tarai is not only one from grassy swamps to the splendour of a tropical forest. The geological phenomena present a change not less striking than the botanical. In the Tarai the tall reeds and grasses everywhere betoken the marshy ground from which they spring; the streams, which carry off only a portion of the superfluous water, run sluggishly, doubling back constantly on their course; the soil consists of moist alluvial matter, without a sign of rock, either

in fragments or in site. In the forest, on the other hand, no water rises from the ground. Throughout its whole extent, not a single spring, nor any water, can be seen, except occasionally where one of the larger rivers of the Himálaya takes its course. In the rainy season alone, numerous torrents cut into the ground, and the ravines thus formed exhibit characteristic geological sections of this remarkable tract. They show that the superb forest derives but scanty support from the soil on which it stands. A few feet of earth rest on a vast dry bed of boulder and of shingle, through which all rain that falls sinks rapidly, and which absorbs in the same way, with the few exceptions of the great rivers, all the drainage of the lower ridges of the Himalaya.

It is necessary briefly to explain the causes of this remarkable contrast; or rather, we should say, to explain the only theory which, so far as we are aware, affords any satisfactory interpretation of the physical peculiarities which this tract exhibits. All along the foot of the mountains lies this great bed of shingle, sand, and boulder. No rivers can be supposed to have laid out such a vast deposit, and we can only conclude that we see here the bottom of an ancient ocean, which once washed the base of the Himalayan chain. We must suppose that the boulders and shingle were spread out only to a distance of ten or fifteen miles from the mountains from which they were derived, and that only the finer particles of the detritus were carried out into the sea beyond. When the plains of India were upheaved, and what was once the bed of the ocean had become dry land, this great boulder deposit was left along the base of the Himalaya, and into it, instead of into the sea, the mountain streams now pour their waters. When they reach the loose stones and shingle, they begin at once to be absorbed: their course is too rapid to let a fresh deposit of more impervious character accumulate; and what was a considerable stream before it left the hills, has vanished altogether soon after it has entered the plains. The waters find their way below the boulder deposit, and at its southern limit, where it has thinned out into the alluvial plain, they begin again to appear in the swamps of the Tarai, and thence they flow on as the rivers of Rohilkhand.

This theory, even if it should be incorrect, will serve at any rate to convey to the mind some notion of the actual phenomena which this tract exhibits.

We have then, between the fertile plains of Rohilkhand and the outer ridges of the Himalaya, two belts of country, each about ten miles broad, the region of grass and swamp called