Monday, 18th.—­Delayed by bad weather.

Tuesday, 19th.—­Continued to pass through same kind of country, but less jheelly.  The Cook boat was left behind on the 17th in a squall, and has not come up yet, so that I dine with the boatmen.

The black and white long-toed water-hen continues plentiful:  when alarmed by kites, etc. it pursues them uttering a low mournful scream, until it has succeeded in getting its enemy off to some distance; it then returns, I suppose to its young; otherwise its cry is something like the mewing of a cat, or rather a low hollow moan.  The hills are plainly visible to-day, lying towards the north.

The males of the white and black water-hen have tails something like those of a pheasant.  There are two other species:  one that is found on the Tenasserim coast; the other is much larger,—­the size, of a large domestic fowl:  one of the sexes, has red wattles on its head.  The white and black one is far the most common; it feeds apparently, in flocks:  the Maulmain one is the least common.  These with Ardea Indica, the white, black-toed, yellow-beaked Ardea, Ciconia nudiceps a small brown chat?, Pica vagabunda, are the birds of the jheels or rather the dry spots in them.  I saw yesterday a flock of the black Ibis, flying in a triangle (>) without a base, the party was headed by one of the white paddy-birds!  Villages have become very numerous, and the population abundant and flourishing.  The cattle are, as I have said, stalled and fed with paddy grass, quantities of boats being employed for its conveyance.  Oplismenus stagninus appears less common about here.

Thursday, 21st.—­Still among jheels; our progress is necessarily very slow; we are indeed scarcely moving, there being no tracking ground:  jheels occur in every direction, although the hills are not 15 miles distant.  Pelicans with white and black marked wings occur, together with the slate-colored eagle with white tail, barred at tip with black; it is common in the low wooded places surrounded by jheels.  Black-bellied Tern occurs, but not that of Assam.

Friday, 22nd.—­Arundo and two species of Saccharum occur, among which S. spontaneum, is very common and of large size.  We reached the Soorma river about 12 o’clock, 3 or 4 miles above Mr. Inglis’s house.

I arrived at Chattuc on the 21st, which place I left for Pundoa the following day.  There are no mountains of this name as would seem from the habitat of some plants given in Roxburgh’s Flora Indica.  The mountains therein called Pundoa are the Khasya or Cossiah range; Pundoa, is the name of a village called by the natives Puddoa.  The jheels are for a great part under cultivation.  The paddy cultivation is of two kinds; it is either sown in the jheels just at the commencement of the inundation, or it is sown on higher portions, and then transplanted into the jheels.  Jarool, Lagerstraemia Regina is the chief timber, it comes from Kachar; it is a dear and not a durable wood.