o FIRST LIST OF THE BIRDS OF THE SOUTH KONKAN. 



their homes in May with their savings just in time to prepare 

 their fields for the coming monsoon crop. Thus are both ends 

 made to meet. Numbers also of the able-bodied males, Marathas, 

 Kanbis, Mahars, and Chambhars, enlist in the native army and 

 police, while the Konkani Brahmans, everywhere noted for 

 their keen intelligence, find ready employment in the various 

 public offices in the Presidency. Thus Ratnagiri, which is the 

 nursery of the Bombay Army and the home of thousands of 

 pensioners of all grades, civil and military, pays its way, and, 

 despite the poverty of its fields and pastures, manages to con- 

 tribute its fair quota to the public revenues. 



Returning once more from the people to the land, you will 

 note that riding, save on the beaten tracks, is a game not 

 worth the candle ; that you cannot get across country without 

 encountering a succession of loose boulders, high field embank- 

 ments, and sheets of slippery laterite; that to mount the hills 

 you must have an animal who can walk up and down flights of 

 stone steps and is as sure-footed as a moke. Pigsticking is, of 

 course, an impossibility. No first or last spears have ever been 

 won in Ratnagiri ; no right-minded pig would allow such dangers 

 to be encountered for his sake; soif chance should ever locate you 

 in the South Konkan you will, if you are wise, get rid of your 

 valuable Arab, as an objet de luxe, and a source of constant 

 anxiety. If you must have a mount, you will, if the Cabul 

 Field Force has left any, get a sturdy Deccan tat, slow and 

 sure; or else will take to " Shank's mare," with the occasional 

 variety for a long march of the country dooly, which, carried 

 by means of cross bars on the heads of jungly rustics, who 

 insist on keeping step, will shew you in perfection the poetry of 

 motion and the doubtful "rapture of repose." Or you will, 

 after a few weeks of this sort of thing, avoid the land, and, " all 

 comfort scorning," go from port to port in emotional coasting 

 steamers, and creep in country boats up the tidal creeks. 



Lucky will you be if you reach your destination within 

 twelve hours of the time you fondly appointed in your ignorance 

 of tides and the ways of native boatmen. Horrors untold 

 should your servants have neglected to bring an ample store of 

 provisions. When becalmed and tidebound, you rock to and 

 fro through the hottest hours of the. day, whistling for a wind 

 that never comes, and singing anything but a peaceful lullaby. 

 Sometimes the monotony is pleasantly relieved by your boat 

 sticking hopelessly in the mud. The boatmen shew an aggra- 

 vating nonchalance, and pass round the hubble-bubble, but make 

 no effort to extricate you. They told you there was no water, 

 but you knew better. You had consulted a tide table, and there 

 you are, and there you must stick for hours. . . 



