THE GODAVARI COAST 209 



the coast, and made a few zoological observations of 

 some interest. 



As for the coast, it is very much like what one 

 imagines of those plains of the black and sluggish 

 Cocytus, which, as Horace warns the pious Postumus, 

 we must all one day cross. First comes an intermin- 

 able mud swamp, and then an interminable waste of 

 sand-dunes, held together by the leather-leaved con- 

 volvulus {Ip07ncEa\ and the long, bristly strands of the 

 ''sea-pink," yet slowly drifting landwards; with here a 

 small village of rude huts, and there a grove of coconut 

 palms. Of course, if one goes a few miles inland, the 

 scene is very different, for then one strikes that vast 

 sea of rice-fields, which has been called into existence 

 mainly by the irrigation - engineers of the British 

 Government. 



At my visits to the seine-nets I was glad to find 



that the things I most wanted, namely, sharks and 



rays, were regarded as useless and unprofitable by the 



fishermen, who let me take what I liked ; but they 



objected to my pickling any of the multitudes of sea 



snakes which they inadvertently captured. These they 



always carefully put back into the sea, not for pity's 



sake, but to appease the offended gods. So far did their 



superstitious reverence for these venomous reptiles go, 



that even when — as happened to a poor little boy one 



morning, shortly before my visit — a person was bitten 



and died, their resentrnent was not in the least aroused. 



o 



