softer parts and grinds the harder between his jaws.

The young ones, which are active as soon as they are born, are like the
old ones from the first day, but are light-coloured and soft. They crawl
about their mother's back and legs and do not leave her body for some
time. When that happens the mother dies, having meanwhile wasted away.

The sting of large scorpions is dangerous even to human beings. Cases
have been known of a man dying in great agony twelve hours after being
stung. Others get cramp, fever, and pains before they begin to recover.
A man who has often been stung becomes at last insensible to the poison.

Many a time I have found scorpions in Asiatic huts, in my tent, on my
bed, and under my boxes, but I have never been stung by one. On the
other hand, it has been the fate of many of my servants, and they told
me that it was difficult to find out where the scorpion had stung them,
for their bodies sweated and burned equally intensely all over. In
Eastern Turkestan it is the practice to catch the scorpion which has
stung a man and crush him into a paste, which is laid over the puncture
made by the sting. But whether this is a real cure I do not know.

THE INDUS

After travelling 1500 miles on camels and dromedaries, the whistle of an
engine sounds like the sweetest music to the ear. At Nushki (see map, p.
132), the furthermost station of the Indian railway, I took leave of my
Baluchi servants, stepped into a train, and was carried past the
garrison town of Quetta south-eastwards to the Indus. Here we find that
one branch of the railway follows the river closely on its western bank
to Karachi, one of the principal seaports of British India. Our train,
however, carries us northwards along the eastern bank to Rawalpindi, an
important military station near the borders of Kashmir.

[Illustration: MAP OF NORTHERN INDIA, SHOWING RIVERS AND MOUNTAIN RANGES.]

In the large roomy compartment it is as warm as it was lately in
Baluchistan, or nearly 107 deg. To shade the railway carriages from the
burning sun overhead, they are provided with a kind of wooden cover with
flaps falling down half over the windows. The glass is not white, as in
European carriage windows, but dark blue or green, otherwise the
reflexion of the sunlight from the ground would be too dazzling. On
either side two windows have, instead of glass, a lattice of root
fibres which are kept wet automatically night and day. Outside the
window