Volume 1

Himalayan journals, or, notes of a naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia mountains, &c / by Joseph Dalton Hooker.

  • Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Himalayan journals, or, notes of a naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia mountains, &c / by Joseph Dalton Hooker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    82/468 (page 42)
    ■12 succeeded by tlie saudstoiic dift' cut into steps, wliicli led from ledge to ledge and ga]) to gap, well guarded with walls and ail archway of solid masonry. Through this we passed on to the flat summit of the Kymore hills, covered with grass and forest, intersected by paths in all directions. The ascent is about 1200 feet—a long pull in the blazing sun of Tebriiary. The turf consists chiefly of spear-grass and Androj^ogon micricatits, the kus-kus, which yields a hivourite fragrant oil, used as a. medicine in India. The trees are of the kinds mentioned before. A pretty octa- gonal summer-house, with its roof supported by pillars, occupies one of the highest points of the plateau, and com- mands a superb view of the scenery before described. From this a walk of three miles leads through the woods to the palace. The buildings are very extensive, and though now ruinous, bear evidence of great beauty in the architecture: light galleries, supported by slender columns, long cool arcades, screened squares and terraced Avalks, are the principal features. The rooms open out upon flat roofs, commanding views of the long endless table-land to the west, and a sheer precipice of 1000 feet on the other side, with the Soane, the amphitheatre of hills, and the village of Akbarpore below. This and Beejaghur, higher up the Soane, were amongst the most recently reduced forts, and this was further the last of those wrested from Baber in 1542. Some of the rooms are still habitable, but the greater part are ruinous, and covered with climbers, both of wild floAvers and of the naturalised garden plants of the adjoining shrubbery; the Arbor-tristis, with Hibiscus, AbutUon, &c., and above all, the little yelloAv-floAvered Linaria ramosissima, craAvling over every ruined Avail, as Ave see the Avails of our old English castles clothed with its congener L. Cymhalaria.