Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/271

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IN INDIA.
251

There was formerly a good hotel at Darjiling, but it has lately been given up from want of visitors, and the only public accommodation available is the staging bungalow. Houses equal to the demand, furnished,may be got for rent,but supplies of all sorts must be provided from Calcutta by the residents themselves.

The rains and fogs are excessively heavy, much more so than farther westward. They are almost incessant during June, July, and August, as much falling each month as thirty inches. Severe frost and heavy snow prevail in winter.

Darjiling has not answered general expectation, and has of late retrograded rather than advanced. It is used as a Sanitarium for European troops belonging to regiments in the lower provinces.

10.NAINEE-THAL.—Nainee-thal is situated in the province of Kumaon, in N. lat. 29-36, E.Ion. 79-20; elevation, 7,000 to 8,000 feet. It is distant from Bareilly and Moradabad about seventy miles. Kalidoongee stands at the foot of the hills in a forest of bamboos, &c., on dry hard shingle; its distance from the Thai is 16 miles, and the journey up is easily made in one day either by a pony, a jampan, or a dandy, any of which could be provided from the Thal. The best conveyance for' a lady or an invalid up the hill is a jampan, a sort of covered chair, supported upon two poles, and carried by four or six