66 CONTKIBUTIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



brother. Moreover some of the tribe had been with him on 

 collecting" expeditions during his former visit ; and knew his 

 harmless madness for collecting what they considered utterly- 

 useless articles. 



So the Rutland Island chief (the Munshi as the Europeans 

 and convicts call him), his wife and some dozen of his followers, 

 male and female, were duly waiting- for us, with a score or so 

 of fine nautili, fish, crabs, and sundry other natural products. 



We stopped the barge, and they were soon alongside, and 

 speedily scrambled up. They were little square built, very 

 powerfully made folks — stark naked, — only the ladies wore, 

 instead of the traditional fig leaf, a single small narrow linear 

 lanceolate leaf, fixed by a thread, which descended from a 

 ring of beads worn round the waist. Climbing up on to the 

 deck of the barge, these leaves got naturally a good deal displaced, 

 some turned on one side, some cocked right up, but this put 

 the ladies in no way out of countenance, and with easy grace 

 they readjusted them (just as one sees other ladies in society 

 adjust their dorsal protuberances on rising,) patting them from 

 side to side till they had assumed that perfectly vertical position 

 so essential, at any rate if any thing was to be veiled from 

 public gaze. 



As the ladies completed their toilettes, each gently abstracted 

 a cheroot from one of our mouths and placed it between their 

 own charming lips. After a few minute's enjoyment of the 

 fragrant weeds they indicated a desire to return them to their 

 owners. We, however, with ready politeness pointed to the 

 male members of the party to whose appreciative mouths they 

 were at once transferred. 



The princess now first caught sight of our Invertebrate, who 

 it appears had been present at her wedding some six months' 

 previously, and eagerly hurrying up to him with many self- 

 satisfied little pats on the rounded central portion of her 

 figure she proclaimed to him with a ludicrous expression of 

 conscious pride that she was already in that way, that ladies 

 fain would be who love their lords. 



The gestures were tolerably significant, but the words intei-- 

 preted to us by one of the old convicts were conclusive, and 

 I fear that the trusted recipient of this delicate confidence had 

 little peace on the subject in which it was assumed that he must 

 have some very special personal interest. 



Be it however understood that in reality these poor naked, 

 monkey-men and women are virtuous to a degree ; such a 

 thing as unchastity is absolutely unheard of, and despite this 



