way with its
crowds of picturesque scenes--pictures every yard in the mile!
Fortunately for us our host and hostess are as fond as we are of looking
at things and trying to remember them, and delight in showing us places
they have remarked for their picturesque interest. Of one of these
characteristic tanks I have made a jotting in colour. Soft foliaged
trees along a road on the top of a green enbankment were reflected in
the calm water; at its edge, on stone steps and amongst the reeds,
little copper-coloured women in rich colours stooped and washed brightly
coloured clothes. The surface of the water was speckled with wild duck,
which splashed and swam about making silvery ripples break into the warm
reflection, and a faint smoke from the village softened the whole
effect. White draped figures passed to and fro on the bund under the
trees, sometimes aglow with rays that shot between the tree trunks, or
again silhouetted violet against golden light--for "white is never
white," as the drawing-master has it.

We were a very happy party of four at dinner, with many pleasant
subjects to discuss--the journey out, and our friends on the _Egypt_,
and the various people "we knew to speak to;" then we had to retail the
most recent gossip from Dharwar, in which place R. was quartered for
some years, and he told us old amusing stories about that station and
its doings. Then there were questions of dress to be discussed by the
Memsahibs, and we men had problems from home to solve--as to rearing of
fish and game, and what we had done, and what we would like to do! and
besides, what was serious, we had plans for future movements to make.
There are so many sights to see here, and in front of us, and so many,
it appears, we ought to have stopped to see between Bombay and here;
however we realise that unless American born we can only assimilate what
an American would consider to be a very little in a very long time, so
we are going along slowly. We should properly go to see the Cauvery
Falls,[14] the water of which drives the dynamos there for the Kolar
gold fields, sending the current that equals 11,000 horse power
ninety-three miles by wire to Kolar, and fifty-seven to this place, to
light the streets. Four hundred feet the water falls, in pipes, and
drives the turbines; so in this, the dry season, there is little water
to be seen. I can almost fancy I see this, and I may read about the
engineering at home!

[14] See graphic descrip