A NIGHT BY A JUNGLE POOL 



EVENING shadows were lengthening apace, and 

 the last mellow shafts of the declining sun 

 bathed the jungly hillside in a warm glow and 

 threw into relief the heavy heads of the scattered 

 mango trees under which we passed a silent party of 

 four as we wound in file down the little woodcutter's 

 path, through the long yellow spear-grass, leading to the 

 already hazy bed of the stream some hundreds of feet 

 below. 



It was past seven o'clock, and an hour since I had left 

 camp, with the intention of passing the night of the full 

 moon at a solitary pool, deep in the heart of a great 

 ravine, several miles from any other water, and in this 

 parching Indian hot weather the last resource as a drink- 

 ing-place of all the game within a long distance. 



The ravine into which we were descending forms the 

 headwaters of a large tributary of the Tapti River, and is 

 a deep and fiercely raging torrent in the rainy weather. 

 Like most of its neighbours, it has a short course over 

 more or less flat-topped plateaux, from whose edge it 

 plunges over a precipice of black basalt into a deep glen 

 winding a couple of thousand feet below, in a tangle 

 of miasmatic vegetation. Shrinking up quickly through 

 the cold-season months, the commencement of the hot 

 weather sees but a few scattered pools in all its mountain 

 course, and a couple of months more of fierce sun exhausts 

 all moisture, save a solitary puddle or two in such spots as 



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