THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



.with the voices of the birds. To my mind the birds are half 

 the scenery everywhere, and more than half on an Indian 

 plain. The view addresses the eye, and the birds address the 

 ear, and the two should work together. The man whose ear 

 is untaught to enjoy the harmonious discord of the birds, 

 walks alone when he might have company, and loses half 

 the joys of travel and change of scene. In the pigeonholes 

 of my memory many a glorious gallop over the plains of the 

 Deccan is tied up in the same bundle with the joyous out- 

 pourings of the skylark, and the long whistle of the black- 

 breasted lark, as it rises and falls again with closed wings, 

 and the monotonous voice of that strange bird which flies a 

 few feet up into the air, and then spreads its rufous wings, 

 and comes down like a parachute, revolving slowly as it 

 descends. The loud wranglings of the satbhai are there too, 

 more clamorous than usual. I suspect an eighth brother 

 from some disrupted family has fallen among them. If the 

 crops were still uncut there would be the chattering of a 

 thousand jowaree birds or rosy starlings, broken by impo- 

 tent execrations from the mucJiari* in the middle of the field ; 

 but the crops are cut, and I do not know where the jowaree 



* A high platform from which a man watches the field. 



