ve among us on such easy
terms without being _kept_?' I asked whether they ever shot them, and
was told that they never killed or molested them, but that any one
who wished to shoot them might do so, since they had here no
religions regard for them.[4] Like the pariah dogs the peacocks seem
to disarm the people by confiding in them--their tameness is at once
the cause and the effect of their security. The members of the little
communities among whom they live on such friendly terms would not
have the heart to shoot them; and travellers either take them to be
domesticated, or are at once disarmed by their tameness.

At Antri a sufficient quantity of salt is manufactured for the
consumption of the people of the town. The earth that contains most
salt is dug up at some distance from the town, and brought to small
reservoirs made close outside the walls. Water is here poured over
it, as over tea and coffee. Passing through the earth, it flows out
below into a small conduit, which takes it to small pits some yards'
distance, whence it is removed in buckets to small enclosed
platforms, where it is exposed to the Sun's rays, till the water
evaporates, and leaves the salt dry.[5] The want of trees over this
vast plain of fine soil from the Sindh river is quite lamentable. The
people of Antri pointed out the place close to my tents where a
beautiful grove of mango-trees had been lately taken off to Gwalior
for _gun-carriages_ and firewood, in spite of all the proprietor
could urge of the detriment to his own interest in this world, and to
those of his ancestors in that to which they had gone. Wherever the
army of this chief moved they invariably swept off the groves of
fruit-trees in the same reckless manner. Parts of the country, which
they merely passed through, have recovered their trees, because the
desire to propitiate the Deity, and to perpetuate their name by such
a work, will always operate among Hindoos as a sufficient incentive
to secure groves, wherever man has be made to feel that their rights
of property in the trees will be respected.[6] The lands around the
village, which had a well for irrigation, paid four times as much as
those of the same quality which had none, and were made to yield two
crops in the year. As everywhere else, so here, those lands into
which water flows from the town and can be made to stand for a time,
are esteemed the best, as this water brings down with it manures of
all kinds.[7] I had a