ssion at Ranee Khet, about twenty miles
north-west from Almora.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XX.

KUMAON.

(1) ITS SCENERY AND PRODUCTS.

Kumaon is a sub-Himalayan region, with Nepal to the east, the snowy
range, separating it from Tibet, to the north, Gurhwal and Dehra Doon to
the west, and Rohilkund to the south. Including the hill country of
Gurhwal, and the belt of forest and swamp lying immediately under it, of
which only a small part has been reclaimed, Kumaon is about half the
size of Scotland.

[Sidenote: THE SCENERY OF KUMAON.]

The province presents a remarkable contrast to the great level country
beneath. Over it you travel in some directions hundreds of miles, and
scarcely any elevation or depression in the land can be discerned. As
you travel northward, and approach the limit of the plains, you see
hills rising before you, tier after tier; and behind them, on a clear
day, the higher Himalaya, with their snowy peaks, as if touching the
heavens.

Kumaon is very mountainous, with as great irregularity as if the land
had been fluid, had in the midst of a storm been suddenly solidified,
and had then received its permanent shape. Here and there are valleys of
some extent, table-lands and open fields are occasionally seen; but over
a great part of the province hill is separated from hill by a space so
narrow that it can only be called a ravine. The consequence is that
cultivation is carried on mainly in terraces. Where the slope is
gradual, and the soil fit for cultivation, these terraces, some very
narrow and others of considerable width, rise one above the other to the
distance of miles, with the hamlets of the cultivators scattered over
the hill-side, presenting to the eye of the traveller an aspect of
scenery which is not to be seen in Europe, so far as I am aware. At any
rate, we saw nothing resembling it on the vine-clad hills rising from
the Rhine, or in the mountains of Switzerland.

The country is well watered. It has innumerable streams, varying from
tiny rills to large rivers. In travelling, we have been for days within
the constant sound of running water. It has a few lakelets, but it has
no large bodies of water, like the lakes which contribute so largely to
the beauty and picturesqueness of Switzerland and Scotland. It looks as
if the deep hollows, of which so many are to be seen, had been unable to
retain the water poured into them, and had let it all flow away. A large
part of the