id climate, and giant creepers swing from tree to tree and
wind among the mass in inextricable confusion.

In this magnificent conservatory of nature big, black-faced monkeys, with
tails four feet long, romp and revel through the trees, nimbly climb the
creepers, and thoroughly enjoy the life amid the sylvan scenes about
them. It is a curious sight to see these big anthropoids, almost as large
as human beings, swing themselves deftly up among the festooned creepers
at my approach--to see their queer, impish black faces peering
cautiously out of their hiding-place, and to hear their peculiar squeak
of surprise and apprehension as they note the strange character of my
conveyance. Sometimes a gang of them will lope awkwardly along ahead of
the bicycle, looking every inch like veritable imps of darkness pursuing
their silent course through the chastened twilight of green-grown,
subterranean passageways, their ridiculously long tails raised aloft, and
their faces most of the time looking over their shoulders.

Youthful lotus-eaters, sauntering lazily about in the vicinity of some
toddy-gatherer's hamlet, hidden behind the road's impenetrable
environment of green, regard with supreme indifference the evil-looking
apes, bigger far than themselves, romping past; but at seeing me they
scurry off the road and disappear as suddenly as the burrow-like openings
in the green banks will admit.

Women are sometimes met carrying baskets of plantains or mangoes to the
village bazaars; sometimes I endeavor to purchase fruit of them, but they
shake their heads in silence, and seem anxious to hurry away. These women
are fruit-gatherers and not fruit-sellers, consequently they cannot sell
a retail quantity to me without violating their caste.

My experiences in India have been singularly free from snakes; nothing
have I seen of the dreaded cobra, and about the only reminder of Eve's
guileful tempter I encounter is on the road this morning. He is only a
two-foot specimen of his species, and is basking in a streak of sunshine
that penetrates the green arcade above. Remembering the judgment
pronounced upon him in the Garden of Eden, I attempt to acquit myself of
the duty of bruising his head, by riding over him. To avoid this
indignity his snakeship performs the astonishing feat of leaping entirely
clear of the ground, something quite extraordinary, I believe, for a
snake. The popular belief is that a snake never lifts more than
two-thirds o