VENOMOUS SNAKES. 23 



market, or pays visits to friends, but the women and children 

 seldom leave their homes for months together. The few 

 stunted and miserable cattle owned by the inhabitants are 

 tied down by the head, just below high water mark, so that 

 they stand knee and hock deep, and being unable, of course, 

 to graze, are fed with coarse grass and rushes cut and 

 brought in daily, till the inundation subsides, when they are 

 once more permitted to forage for themselves in the " jheels," 

 into which they wade deep for such succulent weeds as they 

 may chance to find till January or February, when the 

 bottoms are left dry and covered with a thick growth of a 

 good and nourishing kind of grass. 



It is needless to say that these basins of almost still water 

 swarm with fish of many varieties and of all sizes up to 

 such as measure five and six feet in length, and form, together 

 with the water-fowl, which are trapped now and then, the 

 choicest food of the people, for of fruit and vegetables there 

 are none, except a few plantains and a kind of bean, or 

 here and there a pumpkin. In the cold season, between 

 November and April, another crop of rice is raised, and 

 the inhabitants again find some use in their legs beyond 

 standing upon them on land, or upon their boats. At 

 that season, too, wild-fowl of all sorts, from the snipe 

 and the grebe to ducks, geese, aud giant storks, abound 

 all over this country, and provide excellent sport both 

 on foot and from light canoes ; but in walking and 

 wading one needs to tread with caution among weeds and 

 along narrow paths on account of the venomous snakes which 

 also abound, and which descend from the roofs of the houses 

 in which they have harboured during the inundation, to 

 spread over the drying fields now swarming with their prey. 



Of the frightful numbers of these reptiles sometimes 

 collected upon dry places, we had on the trip I have referred 

 to a fair example. Stepping out of the " bujra " into our 

 howdahs, brought alongside its roof, we formed line upon a 

 small islet of about eight or ten acres covered with low bushes, 

 a likely spot to hold a tiger, or even a family of tigers, a 



