enterprise, and extensive
tea-plantations are already in full process of successful yielding,
sending tea annually to the London market. At first it seems strange to
see the tea-plant flourishing at such an altitude, covering hundreds of
acres of the mountain's sides, on the road descending from Darjeeling,
towards the plains of Hindoostan, but it must be remembered that the
latitude of this region is just about that of Florida and the West
Indies. As to the product of these tea-fields, one realizes no
difference in its flavor from that of the Chinese leaf. In England it is
known as Assam tea.

As we descend towards the level country, amid many other flowering
trees, the magnolia is most prominent. The wild and abundant growth of
the rhododendron, which here becomes a forest tree, mingles with a
handsome species of cedar, which rises in dark and stately groups and
forms a marked feature in the landscape. The general luxuriance of the
vegetation is conspicuous, thickly clothing the branches of the trees
with mosses, ferns, and creeping vines. Here we observe the cotton-tree,
with its red blossoms, which yields a coarse material for native use.
Also a species of lotus called "Queen of the Forest," the leaves of
which are used by the common people in place of tea. Many bright and
exquisitely delicate ferns spring up among the damp undergrowth about
the places where we stop to take water for our little, noisy,
spluttering engine. Brilliant butterflies float like motes in the
sunshine, contrasting with the repulsive whip-snakes seen hanging from
the low branches of the trees. Vegetation and animal life seem to be
singularly abundant and prolific in these foot-hills of the famous
mountain range.

Our course now lies towards Benares, over the plains of Middle India,
some five hundred miles from Calcutta. The people on the route seem to
be wretchedly poor, living in the most primitive mud cabins thatched
with straw. Such squalor and visible poverty can be found nowhere else
in any country outside of Ireland, and yet we are passing through a
famous agricultural district which ought to support thrifty farmhouses
and smiling villages. It abounds in productive rice, wheat, sugar-cane,
and vast poppy fields,--these last treacherously beautiful,--and from
which the opium of commerce is derived. The presence of such abundance
makes the contrast in the condition of the peasantry all the more
puzzling. There must be something radical