282 THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



some beautiful pipal and nim trees shading its walks. 

 There are also fine mangoes and stately mahua-trees, 

 which afford dense and delightful shade. Behind is a 

 grove of sissoo and tamarind trees {Tamarindus Indica)* 

 The natural herbage of senna bushes and jungle grass 

 comes up under the trees. A trellis shades the verandah, 

 covered with trailing moon-flower, a giant convolvulus 

 which opens its large white blossoms only at night. The gay- 

 flowering hignonia grandi flora, a mass of orange trumpet 

 flowers, climbs over the porch, and the purple bougain- 

 villea flourishes. The garden is bright with poinsettias ; 

 at seasons with roses, and pomegranates with shiny leaf 

 and scarlet blossoms. A native gardener did his best 

 to grow English vegetables from seed, but was not very 

 successful. He did better with pine-apples and melons, 

 and oranges and lemons, and big pommeloes. Guavas 

 also grew well, bearing fruit like inverted pears, but the 

 mangoes were a wild, ungrafted sort, and very sour and 

 turpentiny, though with scarlet cheeks streaked with 

 bright green. There were some fine old mulberry- trees, 

 which bore a great crop of fruit, which the natives save 

 for their own use. A wooden clapper is fastened in each 

 tree, and made to work by a little boy, who pulls the string 

 to frighten depredating birds away. Lettuce and pine- 

 apples were plentiful in beds, irrigated in the dry season 

 from the cool, deep well. A pair of bullocks walked up 

 and down an inclined plane, with a wooden yoke across 

 their necks. When they came to the top near the well, 

 the bheesty lowered the bucket, consisting of a large bag 



* This is a glorious tree, resembling a giant chestnut in the fashion 

 of its gnarled trunk and branching arms. The foliage is, however, of 

 a deliciously feathery and graceful softness, light green, with finely 

 serrated fronds. There are specimens growing on the river bank 

 whose stems measure 24 feet in girth. The pods, like pea-pods, con- 

 tain sweet eatable seeds, on which sheep feed greedily. 



