SHADOWS 201 



only a few feet above the sea-level, is that a storm- 

 wave of more than ordinary size may make a clean 

 sweep of them in a few minutes ; and, according to 

 Hunter, one such storm-wave in the year 1867 

 destroyed more than a sixth of the adult male popu- 

 lation of Minnikoy. 



I must confess, however, that I know of these 

 tragedies only from reading about them, and that the 

 worst evil that I myself observed was the mosquito. 

 The island was full of these pestilent insects, whose 

 abundance I attributed to the unlimited number of 

 tanks and wells in which they could breed, and to 

 the absence or paucity of freshwater fishes to feed 

 upon their larvae ; because at the island of Aucutta, 

 where the wells and tanks, though quite as numerous 

 as they are at Minnikoy, positively swarmed with a 

 little species of carp [Barkis), and with two species 

 of sea-fishes acclimatised to fresh water, we did not 

 notice any mosquitoes. So bad was the pest at 

 Minnikoy that the inhabitants were all using mosquito- 

 curtains to their beds, a luxury quite beyond the 

 ideas of people of the same station of life in 

 India. 



Another of the ills which flesh is heir to at 

 Minnikoy is leprosy, and to check its spread the 

 elders of the people have instituted very stringent 

 measures of segregation, thus giving another illustra- 

 tion of their remarkable aptitude for self-government, 



