and well lodged in neat-looking houses,
mostly two stories in height. The streets are broad and well kept, with
bright, bubbling fountains here and there. Our excursions in this
neighborhood are made upon camels or elephants. Wild animals are
abundant, the tiger especially being much dreaded. Here, as at
Singapore, men, women and children are daily sacrificed to their
rapacious appetites in various parts of the district. It is said to be a
fact, that these animals having once tasted human flesh, will be
satisfied with none other, but will leave the antelope and smaller game
unmolested, though they are known to abound in the vicinity, and lie in
wait for days to capture human prey, even invading the villages at
night. English hunters visit Jeypore in large numbers annually to
capture this dangerous game.

From this native city to Bombay is a distance of seven hundred miles by
railway, most of the route being very sparsely inhabited. The larger
portion of India is an immense plain, so that the road is generally very
monotonous. Nearly seven hundred thousand acres of these plains are
cultivated with poppies. A large share of these opium farms, as they may
be called, belong to the English government, and are cultivated by their
agents. Those which are conducted on private account are very heavily
taxed, and are mostly carried on in the interest of the Parsee merchants
of Bombay, who have for many years controlled the largest share of the
opium trade. We frequently see near these gorgeous poppy-fields ripening
acres of grain, which would be stripped of their valuable property by
the great flocks of birds, noticed at all times, floating like clouds
over our heads, were precautions not taken to drive them away. For this
purpose a tall platform is raised upon poles to a height of twenty feet
in the centre of each grain-field, with a slight straw shelter over it,
upon which a young boy or girl is stationed, and whence they overlook
several acres of grain. They have no firearms, but are supplied with a
simple sling and a few well-chosen stones: should a bird be seen too
near the precious grain, an unerring stone will find him, and his body
becomes a warning to the rest of the flock. The precision with which
these girls and boys will throw a stone a long distance is marvellous.
The monkeys which so abound in Southern India are not to be got rid of
in so easy a manner. Birds will not fly after dark, nor much before
sunrise, but the