Page:Volunteering in India.djvu/37

Rh conditions, peaceful and soothing surroundings, sweet sparkling streams, and ever-echoing cataracts, clear and brilliant as diamonds. Here, too, in and along these fresh and charming valleys, melodious with the songs of beautiful birds, the various forests contain innumerable handsome and gigantic trees of many English species, such as the oak, chestnut, pine, birch, etc.; and among those of native growth I will mention only the superb Magnolia as really the Queen of the Forest, when in her spring toilet and crowned with the lovely bloom that scents the air with its honeyed fragrance. Then again, conspicuous among the indigenous fruit trees, are the cherry, walnut, fig, medlar, etc. — not to exclude such modest dainties as raspberries, strawberries, nuts, etc. — all growing literally wild. As to the infinite varieties of the fern and flora, my feeble pen would droop in attempting to portray their rare and surpassing beauty— unfading beauty, ever lovable, yet never admired; ever blooming, yet never seen, except by the wild beasts and birds that hold sway over the neglected tracts of which I have here drawn a brief and rough sketch. But there can be little doubt that, in years to come, Colonisation will stretch its enterprising arms over these magnificent mountains, to the advantage of England's prestige, in spreading her civilising influence among the semi-barbarous and heterogeneous people (and their name is legion), inhabiting the border-lands, and mysterious unknown countries stretching away from the Great Himalaya Chain into remote and Central Asia. 