376 A PEST OF SCORPIONS. 



his august presence. He seemed an intelligent youth, and 

 fond of sport. Three days more took me beyond the confines 

 of his territory, to Srinuggur, the capital of British Gurhwal. 



One evening, when encamped in a low warm valley be- 

 tween these two places, I witnessed a most extraordinary 

 display of fireflies. A corn-field just below where my tent 

 was pitched looked literally alive with them, as they glanced 

 to and fro in myriads, like a waving sheet of fire over the 

 tops of the corn. 1 The straggling town of Srinuggur, situated 

 in the low-lying valley of the Alaknanda a tributary of the 

 sacred river Ganges although showing evidences of former 

 importance in its numerous old ruins, seems now only 

 famous for intense heat and scorpions. In this neighbour- 

 hood the latter are said to be such a pest as in some 

 instances even to interfere with the tilling of the stony 

 soil; in one particular locality so much so that it had to 

 be abandoned by the barefooted natives, according to whose 

 account every stone there hid a scorpion. The only one I 

 chanced to see in those parts had got rolled up in one 

 of the loads of baggage, and stung the man who- was 

 carrying it. 



For several days on from here the villages along our route 

 looked desolate and forlorn, their inhabitants having tem- 

 porarily deserted them to escape the ravages of a disease 

 called by the natives " mahamurree " or " gola," 2 which was 

 then rife in this part of the district. In its symptoms this 

 dreadful malady much resembles the plague of Western Asia, 

 and it is quite as deadly. It is endemic in the provinces 

 of Gurhwal and Kumaon, and sometimes takes a virulent 

 epidemic form. It is supposed to originate from the exces- 

 sively dirty mode of living of the villagers, who usually have 



1 There are usually spring and autumn harvests in India, the former chiefly 

 of wheat, the latter of rice, &c. 



2 "Mahamurree," being interpreted, means the great sickness; "gola" 

 means ball, probably so called from the glandular swellings which are among 

 the symptoms of this malignant disease. 



