108 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
as much as possible of the freshness and vigour of the 
original, I lost no opportunity while I was in India 
of making memoranda of all the tales, and histori- 
cal or other information which I gathered from the 
natives, as nearly as possible in their words. For my 
own amusement, indeed, I used frequently to note 
down whole dialogues which I had enjoyed with these 
story-telling people, and they now serve to carry my 
memory back to the scene with a truth and nicety 
which I am confident I could not otherwise have re- 
tained. Wherever I am able to do so, I prefer giving 
the reader the benefit of these living pictures, in prefer- 
ence to dull recital of my own, and in illustration of the 
present subject I think I shall need no apology for leav- 
ing my narration almost entirely in the mouth of my 
informant. It will however be first necessary for me 
to clear the stage, to set up my scene, to declare the 
time and place, and to explain the entrees and exits ; 
this shall be done in as few words as may be. 
During a long and tedious voyage down the river 
Jumna, at a season when the navigation of that river is 
always difficult and somewhat hazardous, I found my 
patience rapidly giving way under the influence of a 
contrary breeze, and shoal waters traversed in all di- 
rections with sunken rocks. The scenery around me 
was wild in the extreme. On either side of its nar- 
row bed the pent up stream was shut in with rough 
percipitous cLflfs, in many places overhanging with 
perilous menace my nutshell of a skiff. These tower- 
