nability to remember all
the movements of draperies and colours; this country needs a Philip and
a Velasquez in one, to do it justice.

On the way home I pass a tank with two wide nights of steps down to it,
banyan trees hang over it, and monkeys gambol on the ground, and about
the dusty trunks. Up and down the steps women are passing with stately
steps and slow, they loiter at the water's edge and gossip, then fill
their dark earthenware bowls, lift them on to their heads with the help
of a neighbour, and come slowly up the steps. The little brass bowls
they carry on hip or at arm's length glitter with lights that hit the
eye like electric sparks. One figure alone would make an artist's study
for days. The colour from the red soil reflects under their raised arms
and under their cheeks and into the classic folds of their draperies,
strong blue, and deep red, in their shadows and throw up rich
reflections to the undersides of the wet earthenware bowls; the water
laps over their brims, and the sky reflects like sapphire on their upper
surfaces.... Who will say, that colour is not the most beautiful thing
in the world--the very flower of love and light and fire; the sign of
preponderant katabolism or anabolism as the naturalist might possibly
put it, to be perfectly explicit!

[Illustration]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

People dined with us, and inside we had music of the masters by a
mistress of music; and outside, some of us discussed names of stars; and
dogs and jackals were stirred to the depths of their feelings by the
moon: one especially at the end of the compound howled as if it was in a
steel trap. At the side of the bungalow the guests' white cattle slept
unyoked in the deep shadows of the trees, beside their white covered
dumbies, all soft and blurred in silvery haze except where the light
fell on a splash-board and shone like a jewel. And in front of us
Eucharist lilies and China asters drooped their heads and slept.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Though this is an express train we stop at lots of stations, which, of
course, is just what we want, for there are fascinating groups to study
all the way, and the slight changes in the character of the country are
interesting. We go through first, what I take to be the black cotton
soil, and later red soil again.

At one little station a Government official gets out of the train