n reach, would make me, I think, tolerate living
in Madras for a little. We had a great causerie over pictures of home
scenes, and of many places in India. Then we got into a double-scull
Thames boat and slipped away down towards the bar with wind and
current--extremely delightful, I thought it, getting into such a
well-appointed boat on such a pretty piece of river. As we sailed fish
played round us; some, like bream or silvery perch, skipped out of the
water in a series of leaps like miniature penguins! The wind fell and we
rowed, down to the sand spit and heard the surf on the other side and
got out and felt that we were at last actually on "India's Coral
Strand." There were pretty delicately coloured shells, and here and
there a pale pink convolvulus growing low, with grey-green leaves. The
river just managed to cut its way through the sand-bar into the surf;
beyond it, three or four miles to the north, we could see the two spires
in Madras above the palms, St Thome's and St Mary's in the Fort; to the
south-west, the sand and palms and the line of surf stretched in
perspective till they faded together on the horizon.

[Illustration]

As the sun got low the sky became gorgeous red--what tropical colour
there was--the hard sand flushed and paled, yellow to brown in a long
waving ribband at the edge of the receeding wave, then turned lavender
laced with dull foam, as the first of the following breakers came
running up, wetting the sand again to renew the golden glow. The outer
sea and the horizon were purple and the white of the surf seemed almost
green against the orange and red of the sky. Our friends told me they
often came to this beach; and as they are artists, that is not to be
wondered at: and I suppose some Madras people occasionally come down the
river from the boat club a mile or two above, to picnic. I saw two men
in flannels and two ladies--very fair ladies they were too--in the
flattering twilight; when a white dress turns the colour of a violet
shell, and muslins die like a dream into the soft colours of the sand,
and pale faces flush with the golden glow of the setting sun. We lost no
pity on those exiles and their wandering on this foreign strand. A
native or two passed; nice and easy it is for them getting along the
coast to Madras! They just walked up the river a few yards and walked
in, swam across and down stream, waded out on the far side, and never as
much as shook themselves.

We shoved off ag