A NIGHT BY A JUNGLE POOL. 



Evening shadows were lengthening apace, and the last 

 mellow shafts of the declining sun bathed the jungly hill- 

 side 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 wood* 

 cutter'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 drinking-place of 

 all the game within a long distance. 



The ravine into which we were descending forms the head- 

 waters 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 are favoured by peculiar 

 geological conditions for the retention of water. 



All that now remains of the verdure of the rainy season 

 is a mass of dead scorched creepers, festooning the bare 



