an. But sleep is next to impossible; the morning finds me
feeling but little refreshed and with a decided yearning to remain all
day long in the shade instead of taking to the road. Not a moment's
respite is possible from the oppressive heat; an hour in the saddle
develops a sensation of grogginess and an amphibian inclination for
wallowing in some road-side tank.

South of Sirhind the country develops into low, flat jungle, with much of
it partly overflowed. The road through these semi-submerged lowlands is
an embankment, rising many feet above the general level, and provided
with numerous culverts and bridges to prevent the damming of the waters
and the danger of washing away the road. The jungle is full of busy life.
The air is thick with the low, murmuring hum of busy insect-life, birds
shriek, whistle, call, hoot, peep, chirp, and sing among the intertwining
branches, and frogs croak hoarsely in the watery shallows beneath.
Noises, too, are heard, that would puzzle, I venture to say, many a
scholarly, book-wise and specimen-wise naturalist to define as coming
from the articulatory organs of bird, beast, or fish. The slow, measured
sweep of giant wings beating the air is heard above, and the next moment
a huge bustard floats down through the trees and alights in a moist
footing of jungle-grass and water.

A little Brahman village at the railway station of Rajpaira is reached in
the middle of the afternoon; but it provides little or nothing in the way
of accommodation for a European. The chow-keedar of the dak bungalow
blandly declares his inability to provide anything eatable for a Sahib,
and the Eurasian employes at the railway station are unaccommodating and
indifferent, owing to the travel-stained and ordinary appearance of my
apparel. The Eurasians, by the by, impress me far less favorably as a
race than do the better-class full-blood natives. It seems to be the
unfortunate fate of most mixed races to inherit the more undesirable
qualities of both progenitors, and the better characteristics of neither.
No less than the mongrel populations of certain West Indian islands, the
Spanish-speaking republics, and the mulattoes of the Southern States, do
the Eurasians of India present in their character eloquent argumentation
against the error of miscegenation.

A little Brahman village is anything but, an encouraging place for a
traveller to penetrate in search of eatables. A thin, yellow-skinned
Brahman, with a calic