GOPALPUR 111 



Anglo-Indian history. At least, these were my im- 

 pressions twelve years ago, but since then the new 

 East Coast Railway may have brought them into the 

 working-day world again for all I know. 



Gopalpur, whence our survey started, is a clean 

 and pretty little town peeping out of a sombre grove 

 of casuarinas, which were planted, partly to check the 

 inland drift of the sand, and partly to make the place 

 more conspicuous from the sea. Some man of sanguine 

 imagination and good intentions once formed the design 

 of fitting the port with a pier, like a first-class English 

 watering-place ; but when he had run the pier out 

 into the very worst part of the surf he repented 

 him of his undertaking, and left it to the waves 

 as an object of perpetual derision. On one of the 

 hills to the north-west of the town is a ruined 

 fort, without a name or a history, and a few miles 

 to the south is a vast jheel — formed by the insidious 

 spread of sand-dunes across the mouth of a feeble 

 stream — which affords winter pasture to innumerable 

 migratory wildfowl of every kind. 



The sea that washes this coast is shallow, the 

 lOO-fathom line being from t8 to 23 miles from shore; 

 but it is fairly clear, and therefore is not nearly so 

 rich in surface life as the muddy sea further north. 

 In the course of three months, however, we managed 

 to get together a very good collection of animals of 

 all sorts, and I propose to devote this chapter to an 



