Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/330

 would have eaten up everything, but a centipede two inches long, which would have stung you horribly. Three of the servants gathered together before they dared kill it. They are very numerous here, but I suppose they would hebe [sic] stupefied in a cold climate. Government House, Monday, March 6. George and I walked to a new aviary, or rather pheasantry, that we have been making out of a mock ruin in the garden, and there, in the midst of our new gold pheasants, which we have imported from China at vast expense to ourselves and vast trouble to, was an immense snake, a sort of serpent, hopping and skipping about the trees in the aviary; quite harmless, the native gardener said, only it was fond of eating birds—our birds, our new birds. He caught it and crammed it into a kedgeree pot, where it was precisely a reel in a bottle. It is all very well, and India is a very nice country; but, from early and perhaps bad habits, I prefer a place where we can go and feed the poultry without finding a great flying serpent whisking and wriggling about.