way,

feet above the level of the sea, and with the range of Himalaya 25,800 feet high, within forty miles distance. I thought of you again, and wished much for you, while visiting the noble marble palace of Delhi and Agra; and while I was comparing, in recollection, my Rajpoot and Maharatta escorts, with our Cossac friends in the Cuban. By the "Cosâk" is the common word for a predatory horseman all through northern and central India. Still, however, with all these qualifications of curiosity, I have had many things to keep me from forgetting the peculiar and appropriate object of my journey, as you will believe when I mention, that though many of my Sundays were, of course, necessarily passed in wildernesses remote from European or Christian society, yet I have found occasion and opportunity to preach above fifty times since I left Calcutta. And though I have certainly not shut my eyes to the different objects of interest and beauty near which my route carried me, I can truly say that I have never gone out of my way in pursuit of such objects, and have been no where where I had not professional duties to perform, or which was not in the direct road to some scene of such duties. After all, in looking back at the vast and promising field which I have passed, my heart is ready to sink when I recollect how much more I might have done, and how many things I have omitted, or hurried over. Another time, if I am spared to perform the same journey again, I shall know better how to arrange my plans, and Heaven grant that I may be more diligent in carrying them into effect! My wife and little Emily came hither by sea ten days ago.

We are to remain here till after the first fall of rain. Then I purpose to march to Poonah, and after returning hither to sail to Calcutta, taking Cannanore, Cochin, the Syrian Churches, and Ceylon in my way. I trust to be at home again by the beginning of the cool weather. Madras, and the remainder of India, Bangalore, Hydrabad, and Nagpoor, I must reserve to another year. I have much to do in all these places, but I cannot without inconvenience

to the whole diocese, be so long absent from Calcutta as would be necessary for me to visit all India in a single journey.

Dear Thornton,

Ever your obliged and affectionate friend,

REGINALD CALCUTTA.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD GRENVILLE.

Bombay, June 1, 1825.

MY LORD,

I beg your Lordship to accept my best thanks for your obliging letter, as well as for the valuable and interesting present which it announces. The latter is, I trust, awaiting my arrival at Calcutta, the former reached me a few weeks since on my arrival within the bounds of this Government. It will, on every account, give me most sincere pleasure to find myself able in the slightest degree to contribute to the completeness of your Lordship's collection of plants, and I have written to Mr. Traill, a gentleman, who holds the chief civil employment in Kemaoon, and who is more intimately acquainted than most persons whom I know with the forests and glaciers of the Himalaya, requesting him to send down to Calcutta, with the precautions your Lordship suggests, some acorns of the mountain Ilex, and some cones of all the different species of pine which he can obtain within the limits of his jurisdiction, the soil, climate, and productions of which differ, as I understand, in no material respect from those of the other and unconquered provinces of the Nypâlese monarchy. A visit which I paid to those glorious mountains in November and December last, was unfortunately too much limited by the short time at my

disposal, and by the advanced season, to admit of my penetrating far into their recesses, nor am I so fortunate as to be able to examine their productions with the eye of a botanist. But though the woods are very noble, and the general scenery possesses a degree of magnificence such as I had never before either seen or (I may say) imagined, the species of pine which I was able to distinguish were not numerous. The most common is a tall and stately, but brittle, fir, in its general character not unlike the Scottish, but with a more branching head, which in some degree resembles that of the Italian pine. Another, and of less frequent occurrence, is a splendid tree with gigantic arms and dark narrow leaves, which is accounted sacred, and chiefly seen in the neighbourhood of ancient Hindoo temples, and which struck my unscientific eye as very nearly resembling the cedar of Lebanon. But these I found flourishing at near 9000 feet above the level of the sea, and where the frost was as severe at night as is usually met with at the same season in England. But between this, which was the greatest height that I climbed, and the limit of perpetual snow, there is doubtless ample space for many other species of plants, to some of which a Dropmore winter must be a season of vernal mildThe ilex, which was the only species of oak I saw, grows to a great size on the sides of the secondary range, mingled with the walnut, the crab, the small black cherry, and a truly European underwood of blackthorn, brambles, raspberries, dog-roses, and very tall and formidable nettles, whose stings excited much astonishment and some alarm in my Hindoostanee followers, while I know not whether the feelings which the scenery suggested to me were more painful or pleasing, so completely was I often carried back to some parts of Shropshire and Montgomeryshire. I am not ashamed to say that the tears were more than once in my eyes as I rode through thickets, the very air of which breathed England, and by streams and little mountain lakes, as cold, as black, as clear and noisy, as if they had issued from Snowdon, though the spell was dissolved from time to time by the sight of mountains such as

ness.

Europe has not to shew, and by the occasional glimpses of the still lower vallies, dark with the exuberant foliage of an Indian wood, and abounding in the usual eastern accompaniments of monkeys, gigantic snakes, and malignant vapours. These monkeys and snakes are found but a little way up the hills, while on the other hand the chamois is not seen below the highest peaks of the secondary range, and the yâk or Tibet cow pines away when removed from the neighbourhood of its native glaciers. But there are other animals to whom heat and cold seem matters of great indifference. The bear, the wolf, and the hyæna abound wherever there is food and covert, and the tyger is found of undiminished size and ferocity, from the lowest level of the Terrai, or marshy forest, at the foot of the hills, up to the edge of the ice, and I believe even beyond the passes into Chinese Tartary.

Your Lordship will readily believe that I was not inattentive to the question which was much debated at the time of my leaving Europe, respecting the real height of these celebrated hills. I conversed on the subject with several of the officers concerned in the survey, who are men of undoubted talent and science. Their measurements, they all assured me, were taken with high-priced instruments, on repeated trials, and with a careful comparison of their respective operations, sharpened, indeed, by a natural jealousy of the extraordinary results to which those operations conducted them. For For many of the highest peaks they had extremely favourable bases, and I can have no doubt, therefore, that their published tables may be depended on, and that Nundi Devi (which I feel some exultation in saying is completely within the limits of the British empire,) is really somewhere about 25,800 feet above the sea. Budrinâth, Kedernâth, and the three-fold peak above Gangoutree, are all considerably lower, though the Brahmins are very unwilling to allow that these last are not the highest of all. Some of the sepoys who form my escort were of this caste, and I shall

not easily forget the enthusiastic delight which they expressed on first obtaining a view of Meru. I am willing to hope that your Lordship may not be uninterested in these few and imperfect memoranda of the most remarkable and celebrated natural objects which India has to offer.

With the most sincere good wishes for the health and prosperity of your Lordship and your house,

I remain, my Lord,

with much esteem and respect,

your Lordship's obliged and faithful humble servant,

REGINALD CALCUTTA.

TO THE HONOURABLE MRS. DOUGLAS.

Bombay, June 7, 1825.

I have, both for myself and mine, many mercies for which to be thankful, both for my own general good health and personal safety, in countries not the most friendly to the human constitution, and where the safeguard of laws is little known; in my recovery from one sharp fit of fever, of a kind which, though new in India, ran through almost all the Presidency of Bengal during the latter part of the last rains; and, still more, in the recovery and restoration of my wife and children, in repeated attacks of fever, as well as for their safety under the less frequent and more romantic peril of their immediate neighbourhood to a conspiracy, a battle, and what might have been a massacre. From Emily herself you will, probably, have heard the details of the extraordinary and calami