Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/427

 anchored off the little village of Kheil: rambling on the river's bank, I saw five peacocks in the shimoul (the silk-cotton tree), and called Jinghoo Bearer, who ran off to fetch a matchlock, which he loaded with two bullets; the birds were so unmolested, they showed no fear when I went under the tree with the dogs, and only flew away when Jinghoo fired at them; the report aroused two more peacocks from the next tree; a flock of wild geese, and another of wild ducks, sprang up from the sands; and the solitary chakwā screamed āw! āw! The shimoul is a fine high-spreading tree, the flower a brilliant one; and the pod contains a sort of silky down, with which mattresses and pillows are often stuffed. The natives object to pillows stuffed with silk-cotton, saying it makes the head ache. The large silk-cotton tree (bombax ceiba) is the seat of the gods who superintend districts and villages; these gods, although minor deities, are greatly feared. Punchaits, or native courts of justice, are held beneath the shimoul, under the eye of the deity in the branches. There are fields of kāpās, the common white cotton plant, (gossypium herbaceum,) on the side of the river; the cotton has just been gathered; a few pods, bursting with snowy down, are hanging here and there, the leavings of the cotton harvest: the plant is an annual. In my garden at Prāg are numerous specimens of the Bourbon cotton, remarkably fine, the down of which is of a brown colour.

I have met hundreds of enormous boats, laden with cotton, going down to Calcutta, and other parts of the country; they are most remarkably picturesque. I said the report startled the solitary chakwā. The chakwā is a large sort of reddish-brown wild duck (anas cæsarca), very remarkable in its habits. You never see more than two of these birds together; during the day they are never separate,—models of constancy; during the night they are invariably apart, always divided by the stream; the female bird flies to the other side of the river at night, remains there all solitary, and in the morning returns to her mate, who during the livelong night has been sitting alone and crying āw! āw! The male calls āw! some ten or twelve times successively; at length the female gives a single response, "nā'īch!" Leaving