Thus the eyes of Thomason, as he entered upon his new charge, would be greeted by an amazing variety of scenery. Beginning at the extreme north-east he finds primaeval forests, ancient and widespreading groves, impenetrable thickets, and rank marshy vegetation requiring drainage. Proceeding westwards he traverses the Doáb, or Mesopotamia of the Ganges and the Jumna; the broadest sheet of cultivation in all India, and the great wheat-producing tract. This champaign is in summer one dreary expanse of drab and yellow ochre tints, studded continuously with villages of the same hues, and dotted here and there with trees or groves. In the winter it puts on, so to speak, a garb of verdure from the rising crops. Advancing still westwards and crossing the Jumna, past the wealth and prosperity of Delhi the new, in juxtaposition with the long extended ruins of Delhi the old, he enters upon the Delhi territory till he approaches the Sutlej. Here he sees naught but a landscape blank and naked, with undulations low and endless, destitute of vegetation and broken only by red sandstone cropping up over the surface of the land. Turning northwards, he crosses the ill-omened Terai, or belt of malarious jungle, which guards the base of the Himálaya. Ascending the mountains, he reaches an elevated plateau where the northern horizon is bounded by a line of snow-clad giants rearing their heads 24,000 feet above sea level. Again crossing the centre of the country just described, on and on towards the southern limit, he perceives the Narbadá, sometimes tumbling in broad cascades
