DANDIES. 
103 
with US; and regularly furnished our meals., or pro- 
vided any intermediate supply that we might choose 
to call for. This day we counted no less than thirty 
alligators basking upon the sand; and during the 
morning we witnessed an exceedingly agreeable sight 
of one hundred boats, of all shapes and sizes peculiar 
to this country, making their rapid way down the 
river from Patna to Calcutta. The scene was as full 
of life as of novelty: they did not pass us by in 
silence ; the regular cadence of the rowers’ song, as 
they kept time to the measured dash of their oars, 
and the buzz of voices with which it was constantly 
mingled, gave some variety to the chaunts of our 
own native attendants and of our boat’s crew, to 
which we had by this time become so long familiar 
that all the charm of novelty had vanished from our 
minds. 
As we advanced, we found the current more 
rapid, running strongly against us, and the course of 
the river occasionally obstructed by large banks of 
sand. Our dandies* were frequently up to their 
shoulders in water, into which they plunged in de- 
fiance of the alligators, and many were in view, urging 
the heavy bark against the stream where the oars 
could not be brought into play on account of the nar- 
rowness of the shoals between the sands, which now 
so frequently interposed as to render our passage as 
tedious as it was slow. The danger was occasionally 
much greater than we had at first apprehended, for the 
sands being perfectly covered, the impediment did not 
appear ; so that we perpetually ran the hazard of 
* Dandies are native boatmen. 
