A NEW KB A IT FROM OUDh. 611 



flooded for miles. Across the river, where there are patches of ground 

 here and there not submerged, creatures have congregated in swarms, 

 including such large beasts as wild pig and nilghai. A private in the 

 regiment here, who had been out shooting on islands left in the flood, 

 told me on that day that these places were crawling with snakes, and he 

 brought me 17 in support of his statement. 



From my waking moments when I was dimly conscious from the 

 buzz of subdued conversation in my verandah that snakes were await- 

 ing me, up till 8 o'clock when 1 retired to dinner, fresh arrivals bearing 

 snakes alive and dead made their appearance almost every five minutes 

 in the day, and although " the bank broke, and the shutters were up" at 

 about 4 p.m., still they came. It was the red-letter day of my life, and 

 no miner striking the richest reef could experience a greater degree of 

 enthusiastic joy than was elicited from me the entire day. At intervals 

 I emerged to interview those waiting, and the scene was a remarkable 

 one. Boys of all sizes and men were to be seen bearing specimens of 

 every size, in every stage of vitality, and in every manner. Here 

 a solitary little specimen with its head bashed to pulp borne by 

 a brat, nearly as diminutive, there one of formidable proportions 

 in the hands of a man, liking the job none too well, but attracted 

 by-- " bakshish ". Here a batch of half-a-dozen tied into a bundle with 

 grass or rags, the proceeds of a partnership including two or three 

 urchins, there another partnership with a collection of 15 corpses 

 jammed into an empty kippered herring tin. Here a small collection 

 in the rose of a watering pot, stopped up with a plug of mud, 

 evidently imprisoned with some degree of life, judging from the 

 disappointment manifested by the partnership concerned when the 

 three occupants were shaken out dead ; there an active sis-footer 

 liberated from a cloth on to the floor by some impatient fellow in 

 order to wrest my attention from less worthy objects. Here a wrig- 

 gling object, suspended from a bamboo, held at the remotest distance 

 from the bearer, there again, others more or less alive, attached by 

 their bodies to lengths of grass, rush or strips hastily ripped from cloth- 

 ing, and displaying an activity commensurate in the first place, with 

 the extent of their injuries, and in the second with the amount of stimula- 

 tion meted out by small boys treading violently on their tails in order 

 to warrant the eager announcement "jeta hai, Sahib/' and merit the major 

 reward. The spectacle will linger vividly in my memory all my life. 

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