158 THE COCONUT TREE 



it dispassionately. If you wander in any palm 

 grove in Western India, looking upward, it will soon 

 strike you that a large number of the trees do not 

 seem to bear coconuts at all, but black earthen pots. 

 If your visit should chance to be made early in the 

 morning, or late in the afternoon, the mystery will 

 soon be revealed. You will see a dusky, sinewy 

 figure, not of a monkey, but of a man, ascending 

 and descending those trees with marvellous celerity 

 and ease, grasping the trunks with his hands and 

 fitting his naked feet into slight notches cut in them. 

 The distance between the notches is so great that 

 his knee goes up to his chin at each step, but he 

 is as supple as he is sinewy and feels no inconvenience. 

 For he is a Bhundaree, or Toddy-drawer, and his 

 forefathers have been Bhundarees since the time, 

 I suppose, when Manu made his immortal laws. 



His waistcloth is tightly girded about him, in 

 his hand he carries a broad billhook as bright and 

 keen as a razor, and from his caudal region depends 

 a tail more strange than any borne by beast or 

 reptile. It looks like a large brown pot, constructed 

 in the middle. It is, in fact, a large gourd, or cala- 

 bash, hanging by a hook from the climber's waist- 

 band. When he has reached the top of a tree, he 

 gets among the branches and, sitting astride of 

 one of them, proceeds to detach one of the black 

 pots from the stout fruit stem on which it is fastened, 

 and empty its contents into his tail. Then, taking 

 his billhook, he carefully pares the raw end of the 



