Fr.OM BOMBAY TO ETAWAH. 33 



fearfully. One man told me, " If you go to New River, you will 

 get any quantity of birds, a whole boat-load of birds' heggs, and 

 'gators (alligators) by the million ! " I went, and found a great 

 many alligators, that was all. In Trinidad, a wealthy and respect- 

 able English merchant soberly informed me that " at Punta Pied- 

 ra, twenty miles above Bolivar, in the Orinoco, you will find manatee 

 in millions, sir ; get all you want in one day ! " "Lord, how this 

 world is given to lying " about wild animals. As a rule, game 

 grows plentiful directly as the distance from it increases, and vice 

 versa. A collector in search of a certain animal must be guided by 

 the information that is given him, and it was a blessed relief to 

 find a man who gave as careful estimates and opinions as Major 

 Ross. I felt from the first that he never exaggerated or overesti- 

 mated in the least, that his information was always strictly accui*- 

 ate, and there was an abundance of it. He informed me that 

 large gavials were numerous immediately below Etawah, that ravine 

 deer were plentiful in the ravines, and black buck upon the up- 

 lands, and that, if I shot reasonably well, I could probably kill every 

 day one or two specimens of either species I chose to follow up. 



Keeping this fine prospect in reserve, I engaged a small boat 

 and three boatmen, laid in a stock of provisions, and the next 

 morning we were off. Starting from the railway bridge, the boat- 

 men poled our little craft along the shore, which was crowded 

 with natives, in tlie water and out, busily bathing or washing their 

 clothes— a whole mile of bathers. Cleanliness, or rather, bathing, 

 is the only feature of a Hindoo's religion which is not objection- 

 able. It makes an excellent plank in any religious platform, espe- 

 cially in a hot climate, and I have often wished that the negi'oes of 

 the West Indies, who have enough of religion and to spare, had 

 made the bathing obligation an article in their creed. Just think 

 what a grand thing it would be for white folks if a Barbadoes or 

 Demerara negro's religion could beguile him into washing himself 

 once a day. 



"We passed a number of clumsy river boats moored to the shore, 

 and one man in the water, who was neither washing himself nor his 

 clothes. He was dead. He floated there upon the water, naked, 

 bloated, and hideous, with only a few patches of his brown Hindoo 

 epidermis remaining upon his body, which was otherwise perfectly 

 white. Men and women were bathing within ten yards of this dis- 

 gusting object, perfectly indifferent, and one man was actually 

 fishing within two yards of it. I asked one of the boatmen ; 

 8 



