ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 97 



which looks very odd when lit up by the sunshine. They 

 are dexterous in spearing fish, and also in shooting them 

 with short arrows attached by a cord to a blow-pipe. These 

 pipes are reeds, of a very hard surface, and are wonderfully 

 carved and decorated ; they are seven or eight feet long 

 and not more than an inch thick. 



Men, women, and children all get about the river on 

 gourds, hollowed out and made water-tight. The gourds 

 are of all sizes and of eccentric shapes ; convenient ones 

 too, and there is no difficulty in mounting them : the rider 

 sits astride, perfectly safe, and buoyed up in the strongest 

 current. It was quite a sight to watch a large ring of these 

 fisher-folk — some two or three dozen perhaps — bobbing 

 about on their odd little saddles, holding up a great net in 

 mid-stream, and making fine hauls, chanting melodiously 

 the while. F. tried one of these gourds, and found that its 

 use required no practice, as by no possibility can you go 

 under if your gourd be trustworthy. That, of course, you 

 must make sure of. 



The year we were at Serimungalem was the seventh, 

 or seeding year, of the bamboo, when malaria, always 

 present in these low-lying regions, is said to be more than 

 usually rife, and especially virulent. The thirteenth day is 

 the critical time after leaving a fever locality ; not invari- 

 ably with all types, but it was so with the sort of fever 

 and ague that we and those with us were alike subject to. 

 Tide over that day and you might consider yourself safe 

 for the nonce, though if none in the camp were down with 

 it by then it would be such a wonder as never happened. 



One may become case-hardened to a certain extent, when 

 it may take to affecting one in a fresh form ; but malarial 

 fever is not a thing to be resisted by any effort of will — by 

 ' not giving in to it,' as people say so glibly of other people's 

 ailments : it is stronger than the strongest, playing havoc 

 with, and breaking down, the grandest constitution. From 



G 



