Page:Oriental Scenery — One Hundred and Fifty Views of the Architecture, Antiquities, and Landscape Scenery of Hindoostan.djvu/188

Rh scattered about among the hills, often in situations where it might be supposed eagles alone would build their tenements; for they seem accessible only to the fowls of the air, and not to man. But security is a principal source of happiness, and these regions offer few temptations to the ambition and rapacity of those exalted spirits, whose insatiable thirst of glory fills the world with mischief and misery. The peaceful inhabitants of these hills not only enjoy a secure retreat from the perils of polished society, but a luxuriant vegetation supplies them with food, and also with gums and other articles of commerce, with which, by sale or barter, they procure from the distant plains such conveniences as their moderate system of life requires.

 No. XIX.

BUDDELL, OPPOSITE BILCATE, IN THE MOUNTAINS OF SERINAGUR.

village of Buddell is about fourteen miles from Dusa, and separated from it by a very lofty mountainous ridge. It is pleasantly situated on a delicious stream of liquid crystal, called the Ramgunga. On the opposite side of that river is the large village of Bilcate. It being the time of harvest when this view was taken, and the corn gathered in, the mode of treading out the grain by the feet of cattle, is represented in the foreground, and also the collecting and winnowing it; all which operations are performed in the open air.

 No. XX.

VIEW OF THE RAMGUNGA.

view is taken in the vicinity, and between the villages of Buddell and Bilcate, from a most delightful spot insulated by the Ramgunga, whose clear and active streams communicated both freshness and beauty to the scene. The author would have had much pleasure in embodying the charms of the evening scenery of that enchanting, if not enchanted island, a task which unhappily is not within the reach of his art, being the result of various concurring circumstances, and of undefinable and evanescent effects that the pencil cannot trace. The mild temperature of the atmosphere, opposed to the heats of the preceding hours, inflamed by fatigue; the murmuring of the passing streams; the majestic grandeur of the mountains, increased by the visionary effect of the twilight; and to these must be added a circumstance, if possible, still further out of the reach of imitative art, and this was the myriad swarms of the fire-flies, that seemed to fill the lower region of the air, and which, uniting their numerous rays of phosphoric light, illuminated every object, and diffused a magical radiance equally beautiful and surprising; it seemed, in truth, to be a land of romance, and the proper residence of those fanciful beings, the fairies and genii, that appear so often in Asiatic tales. But the delicious sensations produced by causes of such a nature, can, by no effect of genius, be re-excited; they must be seen and felt to be conceived; purchased by toil and privations of every kind; and, after all, they must be met with, and not sought; for pleasures that delight by surprise, vanish before anticipation.

From the villages of Buddell and Bilcate the road to Serinagur continues up the ridge of the mountain that appears in the middle of this view, and leads, by a laborious ascent of eight or ten miles, to the village of Natan; a labour which few, perhaps, except those who have cultivated the pleasures of art, can undergo without complaint or relaxation: but the infinite variety with which the artist's eye is every where regaled in these vast assemblages of picturesque, grand, and magnificent forms, more than counterbalance the toils of his pursuit.

 No. XXI.

VIEW BETWEEN NATAN AND TAKA-CA-MUNDA.

proceeding from Natan towards Serinagur, the road still continues to ascend, and from a point of great elevation this view was taken. The eye is here on a level with the tops of most of the surrounding mountains; the forms of which are more pointed and irregular than those passed before, and resemble the tumultuous agitation of the ocean, roused by a tempest. The general aspect of the whole is dreary and vast; vegetation is scanty; the scattered trees that here and there occur, seem to be embellishments misplaced and inappropriate; although, if trees are admissible, it could certainly be no other than misshapen blights like these.

But the circumstance which, from this point of view, chiefly raises our astonishment is, the appearance of a prodigious range of still more distant mountains, proudly rising above all that we have hitherto considered as most grand and magnificent, and which, clothed in a robe of everlasting snow, seem by their etherial hue to belong to a region elevated into the clouds, and partaking of their nature; having nothing in common with terrestrial forms. It would be in vain to attempt, by any description, to convey an idea of these sublime effects, which perhaps even the finest art can but faintly imitate. These mountains are supposed to be a branch of the Emodus, or Imaus, of the ancients; and, so great is their height, they are sometimes seen in the province of Bahar, and even in Bengal. 