CATECHU. 195 



sils in the river. The brute was hardly dead,, much dis- 

 tended by its prey, and the mother standing beside it. A 

 very touching group was this ! the parent, with her hands 

 clasped in agony, unable to withdraw her eyes from the 

 cursed reptile, which still clung to life with that tenacity 

 for which its tribe is so noted, and beside her the two 

 athlete leaning on their bloody bamboo staffs, with which 

 they had all but despatched the animal. 



"The poor woman who lost her child earns a scanty 

 maintenance by making catechu. She inhabits a little 

 cottage and has no property but her two Bhiles (oxen) to 

 bring wood from the hills, and a very few household chat- 

 tels, and how few these are is known only to persons who 

 have seen the meagre furniture of the Dangha hovels. 

 Her husband cuts the trees in the forest, and drags them 

 to the hut; but he is now sick; and her only son, her 

 future stay, was he whose end I have just related. 



" Her daily food is rice, with beans from the beautiful- 

 flowered Dolichos, trailing round the cottage ; and she is in 

 debt to the contractor, who has advanced her two rupees, 

 to be worked off in three months, by the preparation of 

 240 lbs. of catechu. The present was her second husband, 

 an old man ; by him she never had any children, and in 



