II 
THE INGHAM RACES 
25 
off at once to get me others, and before evening I 
had work enough to keep me going for a good many 
days. 
The air here is heavy with the scent of tropical 
flowers, and a bush of gardenias outside my bedroom 
window is one dense mass of ivory white blossom. 
Beside it is a jacaranda with its blue, tube-like flowers, 
while beyond is the bhel tree, sacred to the gods, 
and a medley of brilliant colouring,-— poinsettias, ala- 
mandas, begonias, poincianas, thunbergias, stephanotis, 
hibiscus trees, erythrinas, ixoras, oleanders, and a host 
of others. 
We breakfast on the verandah and almost live on 
fruits ; in the garden there are mangoes, conquats, 
loquats, guavas, gran ad ill as, oranges, and lemons, besides 
many Indian fruits. We spend our evenings on the 
verandah, lounging in our chairs, telling stories and 
listening to the songs of night birds. One, the 
“ chopper ” bird, comes to the same place each evening 
and keeps up his perpetual little hammer note until 
one’s throat almost aches for him. 
We made up a party and drove to some country 
races at a small town called Ingham a day or two ago ; 
it was even a hotter day than that on which I arrived, 
being 103° on the verandah at eight in the morning. 
We drove for ten miles through clouds of dust. It 
is a clean, pretty-looking country town, and the races 
and “ show ” were very amusing, the latter consist- 
ing of a small stall of unripe-looking fruit, a bag of 
sugar from Macnade (there were no others to compete, 
so it won the prize of £$), a pen of fowls, a bull-dog 
tied to a post, looking like any kind of mongrel, a half- 
bred Newfoundland, three bunches of wild flowers, and 
a dozen samples of school children’s work. The stand 
was filled mostly with children, eating buns and other 
