Himalayan Journals, vol 2 by J. D. Hooker (great reads TXT) 📖

temperature from Silchar, though it is more

equable and humid.* [During our stay of five days the mean maximum

temperature was 74 degrees, minimum 64.8 degrees: that of thirty-two observations compared with Calcutta show that Silhet is only 1.7

degrees cooler, though Mr. Stainforth's house is upwards of 2 degrees further north, and 160 feet more elevated. A thermometer sunk two

feet seven inches, stood at 73.5 degrees. The relative

saturation-points were, Calcutta .633, Silhet .821.] It derives some interest from having been first brought into notice by the enterprise of one of the Lindsays of Balcarres, at a time when the pioneers of commerce in India encountered great hardships and much personal

danger. Mr. Lindsay, a writer in the service of the East India

Company, established a factory at Silhet, and commenced the lime

trade with Calcutta,* [For an account of the early settlement of

Silhet, see "Lives of the Lindsays," by Lord Lindsay.] reaping an

enormous fortune himself, and laying the foundation of that

prosperity amongst the people which has been much advanced by the

exertions of the Inglis family, and has steadily progressed under the protecting rule of the Indian government.

From Silhet we took large boats to navigate the Burrampooter and

Megna, to their embouchure in the Bay of Bengal at Noacolly, a

distance of 250 miles, whence we were to proceed across the head of the bay to Chittagong, about 100 miles farther. We left on the 7th of December, and arrived at Chattuc on the 9th, where we met our Khasia collectors with large loads of plants, and paid them off. The river was now low, and presented a busy scene, from the numerous trading

boats being confined to its fewer and deeper channels. Long grasses and sedges (Arundo, Saccharum and Scleria), were cut, and stacked along the water's edge, in huge brown piles, for export

and thatching.

On the 13th December, we entered the broad stream of the Megna.

Rice is cultivated along the mud flats left by the annual floods, and the banks are lower and less defined than in the Soormah, and support no long grasses or bushes. Enormous islets of living water-grasses

(Oplismenus stagninus) and other plants, floated past, and birds

became more numerous, especially martins and egrets. The sun was hot, but the weather otherwise cool and pleasant: the mean temperature was nearly that of Calcutta, 69.7 degrees, but the atmosphere was more

humid.* [The river-water was greenish, and a little cooler (73.8

degrees) than that of the Soormah (74.3 degrees), which was brown and muddy. The barometer on the Soormah stood 0.028 inch higher than that of Calcutta (on the mean of thirty-eight observations), whereas on

the Megna the pressure was 0.010 higher. As Calcutta is eighteen feet above the level of the Bay of Bengal, this shows that the Megna

(which has no perceptible current) is at the level of the sea, and

that either the Soormah is upwards of thirty feet above that level, or that the atmospheric pressure there, and at this season, is less than at Calcutta, which, as I have hinted at chapter xxvii, is

probably the case.]

On the 14th we passed the Dacca river; below which the Megna is

several miles wide, and there is an appearance of tide, from masses of purple Salvinia (a floating plant, allied to ferns), being

thrown up on the beach like sea-weed. Still lower down, the

vegetation of the Sunderbunds commences; there is a narrow beach, and behind it a mud bank several feet high, supporting a luxuriant green jungle of palms (Borassus and Phoenix), immense fig-trees,

covered with Calami, and tall betel-palms, clothed with the most

elegant drapery of Arostichum scandens, a climbing fern with

pendulous fronds.

Towards the embouchure, the banks rise ten feet high, the river

expands into a muddy sea, and a long swell rolls in, to the disquiet of our fresh-water boatmen. Low islands of sand and mud stretch along the horizon: which, together with the ships, distorted by

extraordinary refraction, flicker as if seen through smoke. Mud is

the all prevalent feature; and though the water is not salt, we do

not observe in these broad deltas that amount of animal life (birds, fish, alligators, and porpoises), that teems in the narrow creeks of the western Sunderbunds.

We landed in a canal-like creek at Tuktacolly,* ["Colly" signifies a muddy creek, such as intersect the delta.] on the 17th, and walked to Noacolly, over a flat of hard mud or dried silt, covered with turf of Cynodon Dactylon. We were hospitably received by Dr. Baker, a

gentleman who has resided here for twenty-three years; and who

communicated to us much interesting information respecting the

features of the Gangetic delta.

Noacolly is a station for collecting the revenue and preventing the manufacture of salt, which, with opium, are the only monopolies now in the hands of the East India Company. The salt itself is imported from Arracan, Ceylon, and even Europe, and is stored in great wooden buildings here and elsewhere. The ground being impregnated with salt, the illicit manufacture by evaporation is not easily checked; but

whereas the average number of cases brought to justice used to be

twenty and thirty in a week, they are now reduced to two or three.

It is remarkable, that though the soil yields such an abundance of

this mineral, the water of the Megna at Noacolly is only brackish,

and it is therefore to repeated inundations and surface evaporations that the salt is due. Fresh water is found at a very few feet depth everywhere, but it is not good.

When it is considered how comparatively narrow the sea-board of the delta is, the amount of difference in the physical features of the

several parts, will appear most extraordinary. I have stated that the difference between the northern and southern halves of the delta is so great, that, were all depressed and their contents fossilised, the geologist who examined each by itself, would hardly recognise the two parts as belonging to one epoch; and the difference between the east and west halves of the lower delta is equally remarkable.

The total breadth of the delta is 260 miles, from Chittagong to the mouth of the Hoogly, divided longitudinally by the Megna: all to the west of that river presents a luxuriant vegetation, while to the east is a bare muddy expanse, with no trees or shrubs but what are planted On the west coast the tides rise twelve or thirteen feet, on the

east, from forty to eighty. On the west, the water is salt enough for mangroves to grow for fifty miles up the Hoogly; on the east, the sea coast is too fresh for that plant for ten miles south of Chittagong.

On the west, fifty inches is the Cuttack fall of rain; on the east, 90 to 120 at Noacolly and Chittagong, and 200 at Arracan. The east

coast is annually visited by earthquakes, which are rare on the west; and lastly, the majority of the great trees and shrubs carried down from the Cuttack and Orissa forests, and deposited on the west coast of the delta, are not only different in species, but in natural

order, from those that the Fenny and Chittagong rivers bring down

from the jungles.* [The Cuttack forests are composed of teak, Sal,

Sissoo, ebony, Pentaptera, Buchanania, and other trees of a dry

soil, and that require a dry season alternating with a wet one.

These are unknown in the Chittagong forests, which have Jarool

(Lagerstroemia) Mesua, Dipterocarpi, nutmegs, oaks of several

kinds, and many other trees not known in the Cuttack forests, and all typical of a perennially humid atmosphere.]

We were glad to find at Noacolly that our observations on the

progression westwards of the Burrampooter (see chapter xxvii) were

confirmed by the fact that the Megna also is gradually moving in that direction, leaving much dry land on the Noacolly side, and forming

islands opposite that coast; whilst it encroaches on the Sunderbunds, and is cutting away the islands in that direction. This advance of

the fresh waters amongst the Sunderbunds is destructive to the

vegetation of the latter, which requires salt; and if the Megna

continues its slow course westwards, the obliteration of thousands of square miles of a very peculiar flora, and the extinction of many

species of plants and animals that exist nowhere else, may ensue.

In ordinary cases these plants, etc., would take up their abode on

the east coast, as they were driven from the west; but such might not be the case in this delta; for the sweeping tides of the east coast prevent any such vegetation establishing itself there, and the mud

which the eastern rivers carry down, becomes a caking dry soil,

unsuited to the germination of seeds.

On our arrival at Calcutta in the following February, Dr. Falconer

showed us specimens of very modern peat, dug out of the banks of the Hoogly a few feet below the surface of the soil, in which were seeds of the Euryale ferox:* [This peat Dr. Falconer also found to

contain bones of birds and fish, seeds of Cucumis Madraspatana and another Cucurbitaceous plant, leaves of Saccharum Sara and Ficus cordifolia. Specks of some glistening substance were scattered

through the mass, apparently incipient carbonisation of the peat.]

this plant is not now known to be found nearer than Dacca (sixty

miles north-east, see chapter xxvii), and indicates a very different state of the surface at Calcutta at the date of its deposition than that which exists now, and also shows that the estuary was then

much fresher.

The main land of Noacolly is gradually extending seawards, and has

advanced four miles within twenty-three years: this seems

sufficiently accounted for by the recession of the Megna. The

elevation of the surface of the land is caused by the overwhelming

tides and south-west hurricanes in May and October: these extend

thirty miles north and south of Chittagong, and carry the waters of the Megna and Fenny back over the land, in a series of tremendous

waves, that cover islands of many hundred acres, and roll three miles on to the main land. On these occasions, the average earthy deposit of silt, separated by micaceous sand, is an eighth of an inch for

every tide; but in October, 1848, these tides covered Sundeep island, deposited six inches on its level surface, and filled ditches several feet deep. These deposits become baked by a tropical sun, and resist to a considerable degree denudation by rain. Whether any further rise is caused by elevation from below is doubtful; there is no direct

evidence of it, though slight earthquakes annually occur; and even

when they have not been felt, the water of tanks has been seen to

oscillate for three-quarters of an hour without intermission, from no discernible cause.* [The natives are familiar with this phenomenon, of which Dr. Baker remembers two instances, one in the cold season of 1834-5, the other in that of 1830-1. The earthquakes do not affect

any particular month, nor are they accompanied by any meteorological phenomena.]

Noacolly is considered a healthy spot, which is not the case with the Sunderbund stations west of the Megna. The climate is uniformly hot, but the thermometer never rises above 90 degrees, nor sinks below 45

degrees; at this temperature hoar-frost will form on straw, and ice on water placed in porous pans, indicating a powerful radiation.*

[The winds are north-west and north in the cold season (from November to March), drawing round to west in the afternoons. North-west winds and heavy hailstorms are frequent from March to May, when violent

gales set in from the southward. The rains commence in June, with

easterly and southerly winds, and the temperature from 82 degrees to 84 degrees; May and October are the hottest months. The