of the Old World. 135 



deep jungle, a little off the roadside. Here I laid 

 down to rest, protected from the piercing rays of the 

 sun by the shade of a beautiful natural bower formed 

 by two trees, which were bent down with the weight 

 of an immense mass of various kinds of parasitical 

 plants, in addition to their own foliage. 



The mournful silence and strange stillness that 

 reigned was only broken at times by the distant 

 scream of peafowl, or the shrill crowing of a jungle- 

 cock, who, unsuspicious of our presence, was scratch- 

 ing up the ground and clacking to his hens in an 

 adjoining thicket. The shrill and peculiarly wild 

 notes of these birds seem as if they were ordained by 

 Nature to accord with the calm, still solitude and 

 sublime grandeur of scenery of "the deep jungle." 

 They inhabit that deep jungle of which Ferishta says 

 truly, " that death dwells in the water, and poison in 

 the breeze ; where the grass is tough as the teeth of 

 serpents, and the air fetid as the breath of dragons." 

 For so it is : the deadliest fevers lurk in these places 

 most beautiful to the eye, the air being poisoned and 

 impregnated by the exhalations of decayed leaves and 

 other decomposed vegetable matter. 



I must have slept several hours, for when I awoke 

 I found the sun sinking low in the horizon ; how 

 ever, I got up considerably refreshed for my nap, 

 and, giving myself a shake, prepared for the task 

 I had undertaken. 



