'"'For Richer for Poorer' 27 



trip to the Sunderbunds. At certain times of the year, 

 when the water is high, the shifting sands of the Hooghly 

 River make it necessary to revise pilot charts every few 

 days, and a number of vessels are constantly employed in 

 this work. But in the dry season they are not so busy, and 

 one was available for our use. 



We sailed from Calcutta down into the vast network 

 ©f waterways which make up the double delta, for the 

 Hooghly River and the Brahmaputra River flow into the 

 Bay of Bengal near together. This region, called the Sun- 

 derbunds, is a maze of islands, and at low water each of 

 these is fringed by wide marginal flats grown with grass 

 and bushes, which are flooded at the height of the rainy 

 season. 



On these open maidans, as they are called, the axis deer, 

 or chital, swarm at night to graze. Tigers abound and feed 

 on the chital, and there is an abundance of wild life of 

 other sorts. We spent several nights in a machan, a platform 

 high in a tree, with tethered goat for bait. We wanted to 

 kill a tiser, but there was too much wild food about, and 

 while we saw fresh tracks and heard tigers, we never saw 

 one. 



Late one morning, after we had slept for some hours 

 following our night's vigil, I took my net and Rosamond 

 her box of papers, and we set to collecting butterflies. 

 There were clumps of flowering shrubs three or four feet 

 high, the plants looking something like our buttonbush. A 

 good many butterflies were coming to these flowers, and 

 the collecting was good. A boy followed us with my dou- 

 ble-barreled Manton Express rifle on his shoulder. I looked 

 back to speak to him for some reason, and saw that he had 



