Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/398

 *lily as it floats on the stream, luxuriating in the warmth of the moonbeams, has a powerful rival in the burā luta, the beautiful moon-flower, whose luxuriant blossoms of snowy whiteness expand during the night.

The sorrowful nyctanthes, the harsingahar, is it not also a lover of the moon, its flowers expanding, and pouring forth fragrance only in the night? Gay and beautiful climber, whence your name of arbor tristis? Is it because you blossom but to die? With the first beams of the rising sun your night flowers are shed upon the earth to wither and decay.

The flowers of the harsingahar, which are luxuriously abundant, are collected by perfumers and dyers; the orange-coloured stem of the white corolla is the part used by the latter. The flowers are sold in the bazār, at one and a half or two rupees the sēr. It is one of the most beautiful climbers I have seen.

My humming-birds were sacred; no one dared molest them, not even a rover with a pellet-bow was allowed a shot at my favourites.

Speaking of a pellet-bow, I have seen small birds and butterflies shot with it. One day a gentleman, seeing a pigeon flying across the garden, just above my spaniel's head, brought it down with a pellet. The dog looked up, opened his mouth, and caught the stunned bird as it fell upon him. Ever afterwards, he was constantly in the garden watching the pigeons with his mouth wide open, expecting they also would fall into it!

The bower, which was supported on bamboo posts, was constantly falling in from the havoc occasioned by the white ants. I sent for a hackery (cart) load of the flower-stems of the aloe, and substituted the stems for the bamboos: in consequence, the white ants gave up the work of destruction, having an antipathy to the bitterness of the aloe. It is said the aloe flowers only once in a century; what may be its vagaries in a colder climate I know not; the hedges here are full of the plant, which flowers annually.

I wish I had tried the teeth of the white ants by putting up