32 T\rO TEARS IN THE JUNGLE. 



cautiously ■wading, and the earth no longer has that dry and 

 parched appearance observed from Bombay to near Jubbulpora 

 After riding through two cold nights and one hot and dusty day, 

 the morning of the second day finds us crossing the great iron via^. 

 duct over the Jumna into Allahabad. This is a grand structure, 

 2,870 feet long, with the bottoms of its piers sixty feet below the 

 bottom of the river. English, every inch of it, or, in other words, 

 built to stand forever. 



Allahabad, the "city of God," also called by the irreverent, 

 " Fakirabad," or " city of beggars," stands at the confluence of the 

 Ganges and the Jumna, both of which rivers rise in the Himalayas 

 in the same latitude and flow southeastward, almost parallel to each 

 other, to their point of meeting here. The gavial, or Gangetic 

 crocodile (Gavialis Gangeticus), inhabits both these rivers and their 

 ti'ibutaries, and my task was to find where they were most plentiful 

 and grew to the largest size. Professor Wai'd had tried in vain to 

 buy skins and skeletons of this crocodile, had made most tempting 

 offers to Indian naturahsts without success, and at last decided that 

 I should go to the Ganges, spend about sis weeks time, and get 

 about twenty-five specimens. At last, after a journey of 10,500 

 miles, nearly half-way round the world, I found myself in the gav- 

 ial region, and ready to begin collecting in earnest. Sight-seeing 

 was at an end, and what remained was hard work. 



Upon presenting my letter to IVIi-. Koss, I was fortunate enough 

 to meet Major Eoss also, Avho had come down from Etawah for a 

 few days, both of whom received me with the utmost cordiality, 

 and we three sat down directly to a council of war in reference to 

 my movements. It was decided that the Jumna was a better river 

 for gavials than the Ganges, and that I shovdd tiy in the former 

 above the city. If that ventiu-e failed me, i.e., if I found no large 

 gavials, which was all I asked, then I should pack up and go on to 

 Etawah, a civil and miUtary station 206 miles up the Jumna, near 

 which Major Ross had for some time been engaged in surveying 

 upon the Ganges Canal and its branches. 



When a naturalist goes hunting for any particular and impor- 

 tant animal, he is quite in the hands of those who undertake to give 

 him reliable information. A long series of disappointments grow- 

 ing out of exaggerated infonnation, has taught me how to gauge 

 the value of a friend's advice as accurately as a hydrometer marks 

 the strength of alcohol. The universal tendency of people in the 

 game districts of both North and South America is to exaggerate 



