Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/134

 cabins, with one large cabin in the centre, in which the passengers dine together.

7th.—We quitted the Hoogly and anchored in the sunderbands. The sunderbands is a large tract of low muddy land, covered with short thick jungle and dwarf trees. It is an assemblage of islands, the tides flowing between them. A more solitary desolate tract I never beheld. We anchored where three streams met, flowing in from between these low mud islands. When the tide turned in the middle of the night, the steamer swung round on the flat with a crash; several times the two vessels were entangled in this manner; the steamer drove in one of the cabin windows, and it was some time ere every thing was right again. Exposed to the power of the three streams, she was never quiet, never at rest: the children cried, the ducks did not like to be killed, and the vessels were wrestling together for hours—an unquiet night.

8th.—The mud islands are under water at high tide. At this moment we are passing through a very narrow passage; on each side the thick, low, impenetrable jungle comes down to the water's edge. Not a tree of any size to be seen; not a vessel, not an animal. During the whole of this day I have only seen two paddy birds, and one deer. The thick jungle is full of tigers; so much so, that the Hindoos on board are not allowed to go on shore to cook their food on that account. Going along with the tide in our favour, the swiftness of the steamer is terrific; the velocity with which we pass the banks makes me giddy. We have just passed a spot on which an oar is stuck up on end. The captain of the flat pointed it out to me as a sign that a native had been carried off at that spot by a tiger. It is the custom to leave an oar to point out the spot, or to stick up a bamboo with a flag attached to it—as in Catholic countries a cross is erected on the spot where a murder has been committed.

"Kaloo-ray[)u] is a form of Shiv[)u]: the image is that of a yellow man sitting on a tiger, holding in his right hand an arrow, and in his left a bow. A few of the lower orders set up clay images of this god, in straw houses, and worship them at pleasure.