th mouse-deer and button-quail. What a list of
water-fowl there would be, and where would turtle go?--under Game or
Fish? They lay their eggs on the sandbanks in numbers, and these fetch
quite a big price, four annas each. I'd willingly sacrifice a night's
sleep to see one come out of the water up the sand, and to "turn it"
would make me feel at the Ultima Thule of the world abroad.

[Illustration]

All the way along the edge of the river, where there are not trees,
there is Kaing or elephant grass--grass that waves some eighteen feet
high and runs far inland, and here and there are bits of tree jungle.
Every now and then we see some bird or beast which we have not seen
before outside of a Zoo; a grand eagle is in sight just now, no vulture
this fellow; he looks twice the size of our golden eagle, and sits
motionless on a piece of driftwood in the middle of a sandbank. I can
only just make out his or her mate soaring against the woods on the
hills behind. On a bank to our right there's a whole crowd of large
birds--as we get closer I can count their feathers with my glasses; they
are not beauties--vultures of some kind, and gorged at that, to judge
from their lazy movements; their plumage is a grey, chocolate colour;
their lean bare neck and heads are black or deep plum colour. On the
very edge of the sandbank there's a string of white sea-swallows,
sitting each on its own reflection. There are several kinds, and they
rise as we pass, and I see, for the first time, the Roseate Tern, a
sea-swallow with deep lavender and black feathers, rather telling with
its scarlet bill. To complete this menagerie's inventory we pass four
elephants bathing; two on the bank are dry, and blow sand over
themselves from their trunks, and are the same dry khaki colour as the
banks; the other two lie in the water, their great tubby sides, big as a
whale's back, are black as sloes. Through the glass we see them rise
slowly and stalk up the bank, getting their little feet all sandy again.

We went aground about five or six P.M., and are aground, and will
probably take root here. The Chittagong crew are _talking_ and working
like niggers to kedge her off, and she won't budge. I'm sorry for the
Captain; it seems running things rather fine to expect him to take his
ship drawing four feet, over a bar only covered three feet.

In the pause, with the glasses I spy geese on a distant point, so with
the steward as interpreter, engage a dug-out that