ild elephant, the
rhinoceros, and gyal, are found in its forests; and the sambur and axis
browse on its grassy glades. Venomous snakes, hideous lizards, and
bats, with the most beautiful of birds and butterflies, all find a home
in the Terai.

Several days' marching carried our travellers beyond the more settled
portions of the country, and within the borders of this wild,
jungle-covered district. On the day they entered the Terai, they had
made an early start of it; and, therefore, arrived at their
camping-ground some hours before sunset. But the young botanist, filled
with admiration at the many singular and novel forms of vegetation he
saw around him, resolved to remain upon the ground for several days.

Our travellers had no tent. Such an incumbrance would have been
troublesome to them, travelling, as they were, afoot. Indeed, all three
had their full loads to carry, as much as they could well manage,
without the additional weight of a tent. Each had his blanket, and
various other _impedimenta_; but one and all of them had often slept
without roof or canvas, and they could do so again.

At their present halting-place, they had no need for either. Nature had
provided them with a cover quite equal to a canvas-tent. They had
encamped under a canopy of thick foliage, the foliage of the _banyan_
tree.

Young reader, you have heard of the great banyan of India; that
wonderful tree, whose branches, after spreading out from the main trunk,
send down roots to the earth, and form fresh stems, until a space of
ground is covered with a single tree, under whose shade a whole regiment
of cavalry may bivouac, or a great public meeting be held! No doubt,
you have read of such a tree, and have seen pictures of one? I need
not, therefore, describe the banyan very particularly. Let me say,
however, that it is a fig-tree; not the one that produces the eatable
fig, of which you are so very fond, but another species of the same
genus--the genus _Ficus_. Now, of this genus there are a great many
species; as many, perhaps, as there are of any other genus of trees.
Some of them are only creeping and climbing plants; adhering to rocks
and the trunks of other trees, like vines or ivy. Others, like the
banyan, are among the largest trees of the forest. They are chiefly
confined to tropical countries, or hot regions lying on the borders of
the tropics; and they are found in both hemispheres, that is, both in
America and the O