n inch between us, and half an inch between their off wheel
and the edge of the road, and the sea ten feet beneath. Then along the
lines of tents, with their curtains open and occupants going to bed....
We too must experience that tent life, but not in town if we can help
it.

By all that's lucky the lift works still! That grand stairway is a
climb, in the sma' hours--a pipe and a chat and this line in this
journal, and under the mosquito curtains to sleep--I hope till past time
for church; all the common prey of the grey mosquito, viceroy, public
servant, private gentleman alike.

Yesterday being Sunday we had a day of rest and did no manner of
work--only painted and wrote up my journal, and in the late afternoon G.
and I drove down to Colaba, the point south of Bombay. This took us
through the cantonments and past officers' houses on the low ground,
amongst barracks, and soldiers in khaki and rolled up shirt sleeves,
smoking their pipes under palms and tropic trees; with the lap of Indian
Ocean on the shore to the west, and Bombay on the left and east. This is
not the healthiest or most fashionable quarter. Our officers cannot
afford to take the best bungalows and situations which are towards
Malabar Hill, for the Hindoos and Parsis, who owe their wealth to our
military protection, can buy them out easily. I'd put that right "If I
were king!" So our officials and officers have to live where their pay
will let them, in low lying bungalows and expensive flats, or in
hotels. Though not fashionable, it was a pleasant enough drive for us. A
glimpse of the open ocean with the setting sun makes you feel that it is
possible to up anchor and go, sooner or later--somewhere.

CHAPTER XI

Here beginneth another week of observations. To begin with, I purchased
E. H. A.'s "Tribes on my Frontier," feeling that a groundwork of study
in this writer's popular books was necessary before leaving Bombay's
coral strand and adventuring to the interior of this interesting
peninsula. My library increases, you observe. I purchased Holdich's
"India," and I now admit I own a red Baedeker-looking book published by
Murray. With these three I consider I have enough reading matter to make
me pretty "tired" in the next three or four months. At home I have only
read bits of "The Tribes on my Frontier," out here everyone has read it;
it is all about bugs and beasts and nature studies, the common beasts
you see here, that no one notices afte