from Gowhatty to Cherra. Clarke had ordered coolies who are not always easy to procure at this season and who receive high pay, eight annas a day, for carrying much lighter loads than in Sikkim. They did not get off till past ten o’clock, and as the first day’s march to Syeng is about sixteen miles, they were rather late in arriving. The first ten miles of the road is rather uninteresting, over open grassy country with many small ravines but no high hills, and only scattered fir trees here and three. The villages are few and far between and only small patches are cultivated with potatoes, Indian corn and Coix (Job’s tears), a poor hard grain which grows in a thin crop at 4,000 to 6,000 feet and is eaten by the poorer Khasia people. Turning off the main road to Cherra about ten miles from Shillong, we crossed a rocky hill and descended into a wide marshy flat, two or three miles across, where the path is in some places wet and bad, but always passable for ponies. On the other side of this there is an ascent of about 500 feet to the village of Syeng, at the entrance to which the road passes along the upper side of one of the so-called sacred groves, which are preserved in a state of nature near most of the villages on the plateau; these are almost the only bits of real primaeval forest left in the country. Then passing through one of the square stone-built enclosures with seats all round it, which are found at the entrance to many Khasia villages and used as resting-places by loaded coolies, we entered the scattered and very picturesque but dirty village of Syeng, below which a small and rather dilapidated bungalow afforded us shelter for the night.
The wood at Syeng seemed richer in birds than any I had yet seen; it was mostly composed of oaks, laurels and Castanopsis, and many of the trees were laden with ferns and orchids, Hedychiums and other epiphytes. Ivy was also growing on some of them, which, though botanically identical with the European ivy, H. helix, was of different habit. The people at Syeng, who were idling about their dirty hovels, most of which had a large cesspool at the very door, did not seem to be much used to the presence of Europeans; but they supplied us with firewood, and, after making a large fire and getting the bungalow swept out, we made ourselves comfortable for the night. A few moths came to the lamp in the evening, but I did not find any place where I stayed in the Khasia at all comparable to Darjeeling for moth collecting at night, and I only procured about a hundred species by day and night during the month I spent in these hills. In the morning I went to the wood before breakfast and collected a few butterflies, but it was too early and too wet to do much. I found the lovely green Ilerda androcles, which is so common in Sikkim, and a Large Blue of the Argiolus group which was new to me, abundant along the hedges of Prinsepia, which, according to Sir J. Hooker, is only found at 8,000 feet in Sikkim. Mr. Clarke’s habit of breakfasting before starting, which I believe was also adopted by Sir Joseph Hooker, is perhaps better adapted for botanical collecting than my own plan, which was, whenever possible, to halt for breakfast on the march. It is not every man who, after a long residence in India, can eat a hearty breakfast early in the morning, and by doing so one misses the two or three morning hours which of all others are the best for collecting birds. But Clarke in many respects was one of the most remarkable men in India, and at fifty-five
