ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 109 



was given in the form of a question. ' As their children 

 all played more in the water than on land, what were 

 they to do with them anywhere else ? ' I could only stare 

 in amazement at such notions and such mothers, telling 

 them that though we had no loose crocodiles in England, 

 children were brought up successfully even away from 

 water to play in. Yet that there was no lack of love and 

 pride in these women was plain to see as they crowded round 

 our boat, which had been grounded, holding out their chil- 

 dren, and putting them into it without the least shyness ; 

 and all the while, as they pushed past, that crocodile was 

 lying there, as still as the Sphinx. It was simply a lifelong, 

 inherited familiarity with the conditions of their lives that 

 caused them to ignore what to us seemed a danger. As to 

 any risk of being drowned, ' How could any one be drowned 

 where there was no current ? Everybody there could 

 swim ; the babies learned to swim just as they learned to 

 crawl ; they were tied to a bough in case they should go 

 too far, that was all, and would not drown any more than 

 the young frogs in the rushes ' — I give as near a translation 

 of her words as possible. 



Everybody bathed, too, disporting themselves in the 

 cooling water at all leisure times ; and the way the women 

 contrived to do so in public, yet in perfect privacy, was 

 most ingenious because so very simple. No stranger would 

 have guessed that there were any women there, all that 

 met the eye being large cane mats, some six feet square, 

 bobbing about of their own accord — in no way remarkable. 

 Under these they bathed unseen, a narrow band in the 

 centre holding one firmly on to the head of each, in the 

 same way as the hats earlier mentioned. The merest 

 glimpses were to be caught of quick, formless movements in 

 the dark, almost black, shadows immediately beneath, in 

 which they danced and sported, the brown limbs merging 

 and mingling with the swirling water in a way you would 



