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A DIFFICULT PATH
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travelling on this route, ordered it to be built and maintained at her own expense. Each fountain is in the form of an ornamental pillar, on each side of which is a representation of the donor's hand holding a spout, from which a continuous stream of water flows into a tank.

Twenty miles from Raxaul, and after about ten miles of the Terai, the road debouches on to the village of Bichako, which heralds a further change of scene. From here the track boldly plunges into the wide dry bed of the stream known as Bichaliola Naddi, and utilizes this rough but convenient watercourse as a highway for seven miles until Churia is reached. This is an extremely trying part of the journey, and at an average rate of a mile an hour the caravan scrambles over boulders, fords, streams, and skirts great fallen trees, in its painful progress. Darkness soon set in, and it seemed a never-ending phantasmagoria of large loose stones, huge dead trees apparently purposely arranged as obstacles, and foaming torrents, some of which almost swept the party off its feet. Not a vestige of a path revealed itself, and in places the fallen branches of "the old