60 ON THE ORISSA COAST 



and capricious harbour, formed by a low sand-spit 

 which has gradually drifted up across one of the 

 deeper outlets of the Mahanaddi river. Town there 

 is none, the only pucca building, which is raised on 

 high foundations of stone out of reach of storm-waves, 

 being the port-office. In the jungle on the sea-face 

 opposite, protected from tigers by a stout wall, is a 

 lighthouse. 



The inevitable mound and wooden cross record 

 the fate of a port-officer and his family, who were 

 swept away in the cyclone of 1885, before the present 

 substantial port-office was built. 



Besides the port staff and their attendants, the 

 evident population of False Point consists chiefly of 

 Ocypode crabs and little amphibious fishes of the 

 goby family ; but we heard many tales of tigers and 

 crocodiles. 



We often put in to False Point for coal, and it 

 was here that our seine, which we used sometimes to 

 lay out as a drift-net, was, with its sinkers weighing 

 over 450 pounds, carried bodily away by an enormous 

 shark, round whose remains it was found some days 

 afterwards, tied in a hundred knots, past all surgery. 



Between False Point and Puri, a distance of about 

 60 miles, the coast has nothing to show in the way 

 of civilisation except a few miserable encampments — 

 for they can hardly be called villages — of Oorya 

 fishermen. Though these poor people had hardly a 



