THE MANGO TREE. 151 



the early morning, there is no provision basket leaves 

 without its hundred or half-hundred mangoes. The poor 

 live on them, and the rich indulge. Few there are 

 who do not eat them some time in the day, most all three 

 times at breakfast, lunch, and dinner ; and ladies retire 

 to their apartments, that nobody may be the wiser how 

 many they may eat. 



If in the Mafuzil country a man should sally forth 

 in careless wandering, he may see over that interminable 

 plain Midan clumps of trees here and there to break the 

 sameness of the place. He may wander from the scorch 

 ing heat into one of their shades ; his senses are in every 

 way delighted ; he is under the deep foliage of the mango 

 tree ; its perfume regales him, and all in and around is 

 as if it were all creation associating in one united family. 

 There lies the shepherd in the shade, his goats and sheep 

 resting by his side. Even the wide-spread herd of ante 

 lopes come to sniff the sweet odor, and would fain lay 

 themselves down were it not for man s presence. Fur 

 ther off skulks the savage wolf and his few companions. 

 Around, from leaf to leaf and from flower to flower, the 

 butterfly flutters and the bees display their varied hues, 

 and hum forth their song. The grasshopper and the mole- 

 cricket are found in every variety. There the crows sit 

 picking the sheep ; there the familiar mina hops from the 

 sheep to the goat, and from the goat to the shepherd ; and 

 then mounts the crow s back, as if desirous to amuse his 

 neighbors ; there is the widow-bird floating through the 

 air, with its long and graceful train ; there is the brilliant 

 jay, the golden oriole, the scarlet tuddy bird ; there are 

 the parrakeets ; there is the sweet bulbul ; there is the 

 tree-duck and the tree-teal, and the smaller and larger 



