enty
feet high, with scrub between, and the varied foliage shows an autumnal
touch of the dry season. Now we pass an open space with a small
whitewashed temple in the middle of a green patch of corn; a goatherd
walks on the sand between us and it with his black and white flock; he
is well wrapped up, head and all in cotton draperies, as if there was a
chill in the morning air, but it looks and feels very comfortable to us
in our carriage: the sky is dove coloured, streaked with pale blue. Now
some women show in the crops, the corn stands high over them, and from
this distance they are things of beauty. Their draperies are purple or
deep blue, and their skins rich brown, set off by white teeth and the
glint of silver bangles and brass pots. They have pretty naked children
beside them. Every hundred yards or so there is something fascinatingly
beautiful, so the early morning hours go past quickly.

Just before Belgaum Station, our delight in watching these new scenes is
brought to a fine point by the arrival of a boy with tea and toast, all
hot! Positively it is difficult to take it, for here comes a fort we
must look at--miles of sloping coppery-coloured crenellated stone wall
of moresque design. Graceful trees grow inside, and over its walls you
see an occasional turbaned native's head, one is vivid yellow another
rose; we pass so close we almost cross the moat, and the women stop
washing clothes and look up. More park scenes follow, then market
gardens and native cottages of dried mud, and we can see right into
their simple domestic arrangements.

At Belgaum our friends of last night get off with their camp equipment,
and I make a dive into a brand new suit in haste to bid them good-bye
and _au revoir_, and as I make finishing touches, we steam away and the
farewell is unsaid! These three lone ladies have gone to see jungle
life; the eldest only recently lost her husband in the jungle--killed
and eaten, by a tiger.

The soil in the railway cuttings gets gradually a deeper bronze colour
as we go south, about Bombay it was grey or light yellow. Now it is from
yellow ochre to red ochre, with a coppery sheen where it is
weather-worn. The trees become higher and the glades more like Watteau
or Corot scenes, but neither Watteau nor Corot ever saw more naturally
beautiful tinted figures; their many coloured draperies are so faded and
blended in the strong sun that it is difficult to tell where one
coloured cloth begins and