merged, water lilies, little white
herons, and women in bright colours washing clothes in reflections! What
subjects for pictures--rather shoppy this for you? The buffaloes walked
sometimes entirely under water for some two or three yards--and then
they came up and blew like seals!--by all the saints, isn't this just
the Kelpie we have heard of from Sandy and Donald and Padruigh--and how
"It" comes up from the dark water and the lilies in the dusk, like a
great black cow, with staring eyes and dripping weeds hanging from its
mouth and shoulders!

[Illustration]

I found the party under the shade of pepal trees beside the inverted
boat, and the lunch basket, surrounded by the villagers of all ages. In
front on the dust, in sunlight, a brown woman danced and whipped her
bare flesh with a cord like a serpent, and another woman in soft,
hanging, Madonna-like draperies, with a kid astride her hip and asleep
on her breast, beat a tom-tom vigorously. The dancing woman's steps were
the first of our sword dance--you see them round the world; she had
ragged black hair, dusty brown skin, with various bits of coloured
clothes twisted round her hips. Of the violent light and shade, and hot
reflected light from the sandy red ground, and restless movements, I
could only make this ghost of a sketch. Behind the women was a box, open
on the side next us, fitted up as a shrine; in it sat an Indian goddess
in vermilion and gold, with minor deities round her, all very fearsome.
I was told it was a cholera goddess, and the dancing was to propitiate
her and drive cholera out of the village. I'd fain remember the light
and shade and colour, but it is difficult to do these unfamiliar scenes
from memory; of scenes at home one can grasp more in the time, for many
forms are familiar and others one can reason from these--that they must
be so--this last a risky business--and query: is it Art or
Fake?--forgive shop again, awfully sorry.

[Illustration]

The drive home in mid-day sun with no shade was pretty considerably hot,
through miles of unsheltered, hot, dusty road, but with regular tiger
jungle on either side! Some of us slept--for me there was too much heat
and too much to see for that.

[Illustration]

I think we got fourteen duck. There were pochard and pintail and one
like a mallard. The pochard are good to eat here.

To-morrow we go South--both sorry and glad to go--sorry to leave the
little social circle and glad to be on the roa