gating means, showing that where the jungle now is
had formerly been a cultivated field with crops of grain. Native
shanties were located all about the neighborhood, the people living
mostly out of doors, gypsy fashion. It would be too hot to cook or to
eat within these low-roofed mud walls. We found that flies, mosquitoes,
and scorpions were inclined to dispute the possession of the bungalow
with us; and ugly looking snakes were seen in such proximity to the low
piazza as to suggest their uninvited entrance by doors or windows. India
swarms with vermin, especially in the jungle. We did not fail to examine
our shoes before putting them on in the morning, lest the scorpions
should have established a squatter's right therein. Flying foxes were
seen upon the trees, sometimes hanging motionless by the feet, at others
swinging to and fro with a steady sweep. Ants were now and then
observed moving over the ground in columns a foot wide and three or four
yards long, evidently with a well defined purpose. In the morning light,
after the sun had risen, clouds of butterflies, many-colored,
sunshine-loving creatures, large and small, in infinite variety, flitted
about the bungalow, some with such gaudy spread of wing as to tempt
pursuit--but without a proper net they are difficult to secure. Large
brown, bronze, and yellow beetles walked through the short grass with
the coolness and gait of young poultry. Occasionally a chameleon turned
up its singularly bright eye, as though to take cognizance of our
presence. The redundancy of insect and reptile life is wonderful in
southern India. The railroad stations and the road itself, admirably
constructed and very fairly equipped, are the only evidences of European
possession to be seen between Tuticorin and Tanjore, a distance of four
hundred and fifty miles. The road passes through a generally well
cultivated region where thrifty fields of wheat, barley, and sugar-cane
were to be seen, with here and there broad fields of intensely yellow
mustard, but the appearance of the people and their mud huts indicated
abject poverty.

The principal attraction to the traveler in Madura, which contains some
fifty thousand inhabitants, is a remarkable and ancient pagoda,
supported by two thousand stone columns. It was dedicated to Parvati,
wife of Shiva, and is one of the largest and finest monuments of Hindoo
art in existence, covering in all its divisions, courts, shrines,
colonnades, and tanks twe