CHAPTER YI. 



ANIMAL LIFE ALONG THE JUMNA. 



Boating on fhe Jumna. — A Long Prayer. — The Saras Crane. — Queer Antics. — 

 The Jabiru. — Nests of the Scavenger Vulture. — Peacocks. — A Jungle Cat 

 Surprised. — The Jackals' Serenade. — Turtles. — The Gangetic Porpoise. — 

 Native Villages. — The People. — Female Ugliness. — Friends and Foes. — A 

 Native Funeral. — Cremation a mere Form. — An Adjutant Shot. — Goodbye 

 to the River. 



"We worked on down the Jumna until we reached the mouth of 

 the river Chumbul, which flows into it from the south. Here the 

 banks began to grow muddy, and almost destitute of both gavials 

 and birds, so we decided to work back up toward Etawah. Com- 

 ing do^vn the river is a very easy matter, for it is only necessary to 

 steer the boats, but going up, the boatmen have to tow them 

 against a cun-ent running from two to three miles per hour. We 

 often mot large boats laden with wheat floating rapidly down, 

 steered with long sweeps, Uke lumber rafts. Many others passed 

 up the river empty, some of which required ten to twenty men to 

 tow them. It was a strange sight to see one of those huge, clumsy 

 crafts coming round a bend in the river with fifteen to twenty long, 

 slender grass lines radiating from the top of the mast, like a beam 

 of hght faUing far ahead upon a long line of nearly naked Hindoos 

 toiUng slowly along the bank. 



One night we tied up to the shore near one of these grain-boats, 

 and in the still small hours of the morning, we heard a Hindoo 

 say his prayers. It was one of the boatmen, lying comfortably 

 stretched out on the bags of the wheat, who was perhaps wake- 

 ful toward morning and took occasion to indulge in a season of 

 prayer. Shortly after three o'clock we were awakened from a 

 sound sleep by this boatman's singing out " Sita-lRa,ixx-Si-Sita-Rsiin-Si- 

 iSiVa-Ram-a-5ita-Eam-a-(S'ito-Kam," which was kept up with slight 

 variations until morning. There was a kind of sameness to this 



