WATERS OF WESTERN INDIA. 15 
The women help to work the boat with an efficiency worthy of 
Black-eyed Susan, but it issaid that they ought not, by rule, to catch 
fish, nor the men to trespass on their province of selling it. They 
are stalwart viragos, and stout asserters of women’s rights, to an 
extent which shocks all good Mussalmans of Sind. The “ Dhundis” 
generally work in great fleets, and assemble at riverside camps, 
which become fishing-ports for the time being, where their owners 
settle accounts with the contractors who have bought the fishery 
of each district from Government, or the great riparian landholders. 
The due of these is usually one-third of the take, and they generally 
purchase most of the rest, with much squabbling, stoppages of pay, 
frequent strikes, and an enormous amount of cheating in a sort 
of “Tommy shop” barter. However, all are pretty well matched, 
and cannot dispense with cach other. 
In any country but India, capital, law, and education (such as it 
is, viz. knowing how to cast an account) would be too much for the 
operative. But the Mohana caste is a vast localized trade’s union, 
and the contractor who could not come to some settlement with the 
fishermen of his own district would not be able to import others. 
The Mohana himself is troubled with no scruples, or rather his wife, 
who does the bargaining, is not, and so everytbing finds its level 
comfortably enough in the end. 
In this sketch of the waters of Sind, I have omitted one of the 
most remarkable, the Manchar Lake, because enough has been said 
about it in this Journal by Captain Becher. TI have, moreover, been 
somewhat more sketchy than usual in dealing with the superior 
vertebrates, but these havea local authority of their own, Mr. 
Murray, whose work is probably in the hands of all those working 
on the spot, and people at a distance want only the more striking 
outlines of such a matter. He has not, I think, yet published the 
part of that work relating to fishes, but it is not my business, in such 
rough notes as these, to forestall him; and the molluscs have been 
noticed in a paper in his own Magazine. 
I might indeed have dwelt upon the rare Horse Marine and River 
Pirate, who occur (me teste) on the Indus, in the Khairpur State. 
But these animals, with the extinct Centaur and Sphynx, and the 
barely surviving Hesperian Gormagon, belong rather to the domain 
of the Anthropological Society. 
There is, however, one very remarkable thing to be noticed in 
the zoology of the Indus, which may fitly be dealt with here. 
