106 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



CHAPTER X 



Home by canal — Maidenhair fern — Canal women and crocodiles — Bath- 

 ing mats — Pishashas — A ' cat-eyed ' peon — Chowry, the gardener's 

 child — Ways of detecting crime — Chowry' s hair — The tattooing of 

 Chinniah. 



Our business on this tour being completed, we were to go 

 home to Calicut, by water still ; but instead of our journey 

 being along a lovely, romantic river it was to be by a canal, 

 which when nearing Calicut merged into the backwater. 

 Though sounding more prosaic beforehand, it proved quite 

 as charming as the other. 



We were poled along in a roomy house-boat with a 

 movable tilt : nothing pleasanter could have been devised. 

 The servants had their house-boat too, the cook manipulat- 

 ing his stove very cleverly aboard, though always under 

 protest ; for he said that everything tasted the same — of 

 kerosene — liking it best when a halt was called, so that 

 he could land and do himself justice with an impromptu 

 stove-range. 



Fish innumerable were caught, and wild duck also were 

 plentiful, tasting very like fish themselves. 



Sometimes we glided between perpendicular banks thirty 

 feet high, each an unbroken sheet of maidenhair fern ; 

 not the kind with very minutely divided fronds, but the true 

 maidenhair with delicate brown stems and tremulous 

 leafage. The boatmen were made to stop that whole 

 squares might be cut out for removal to our own home, 

 and more was brought to us later. There were no flowers 

 on these cliffs, but a few other sorts of fern interspersed with 

 the maidenhair. The climate — steamy hot — suited them 



