Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/91

 the incident and possibly some gratification, for Seaton had friends and relatives on the council who sympathised with him rather than with Pitt.

The shape of the island has been slightly altered since those days and the river reduced in breadth, but Nature remains the same. The birds that haunt its borders are unchanged. The timid sandpiper still runs over the mud-banks by the water's edge after the still fleeter land-crab that scuds along like a piece of thistle-down blown by the wind. The kites sail overhead with their melancholy scream, and the vulgar voice of the crow sounds in the trees. The fluttering kingfisher drops like a stone upon the unwary fish as it comes for its draught of air to the surface of the water. There is a splash and the fisher-bird is on the wing once more, a dazzling spot of black and white in the sunlight, the silver fish in its beak. As I passed by road and bridge I bade the coachman stop that I might take my fill of the tropical sights. He obeyed the order without a shadow of wonder upon his placid face. Now and then his eye would follow the flight of a bird or mark the passing of a human being. He would watch apprehensively for the ominous spotted owlet, lest it should settle in a tree hard by, and with one shrill screech tell him that grim death was overshadowing his family; or for man, woman, or animal whose approach would signify bad luck. If he pondered at all on my eccentric conduct in sitting by the roadside in the carriage where there was nothing to wait for, he probably came to the conclusion that I too was looking for omens and reading the future in the face of Nature.

Good dressing goes a long way towards giving dignity to a woman ; good bridging does the same for a river. The Cooum is spanned by no fewer than ten bridges between Chetput and the sea. Nine of them are of stone