CHAPTER V 



ON THE ORISSA COAST 



At False Point. A Melancholy Shore. A Holy Land : the Temples 

 of Jaganath and Kanarak. The Chilka Lake. A Deserted 

 Village. Surf Boats and Boatmen. Strange Jelly-fishes and 

 Zoophytes. Messmates of the Sea. The Concert of the Sea : 

 Musical Crabs and Fishes. Courtship among Fishes. Mothers 

 and Mother's-milk among Fishes. Lancelets, Scientific and 

 Economic Possibilities of the Orissa Coast. 



On the 12th of December 1888, the Investigator 

 reached False Point in Orissa, and from that day 

 until the 21st of March following, the officers were 

 busily occupied in all the ways that I have already 

 in a former chapter described, charting the coast and 

 its anchorages from that wretched port southwards, 

 along the Mahanaddi Delta, to Gopalpur in the 

 district of Ganjam. 



Though this part of India is not to be commended 

 for its scenery, which consists chiefly of slimy creeks 

 and screw-pine swamps alternating with long stretches 

 of drifting sand washed by a muddy sea, yet to the 

 Hindu world it is one of the most interesting spots 

 in existence, because it contains, in the shrine of 



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