Ranching, Sport and Travel | Page 5

pulp. This
pulp is the edible portion and has an indescribable flavour and
consistence. You can safely eat all you want of it, and the more you eat
the more you will want. To eat durian, as Mr Wallace says, is alone
worth a voyage to the East. But it has one strange quality--it smells so

badly as to be at first almost nauseating; some people even can never
bring themselves to touch it. Once this repulsion is mastered the fruit
will probably be preferred to all other foods. The natives give it
honourable titles, exalt it, and even wax poetical over it.
Of course we all know the multitudinous uses of the bamboo. This
grass is one of the most wonderful, beautiful and useful of Nature's
gifts to uncivilized man. And yet one more use has been found for it. In
the East a new industry has sprung up, viz., the making of "Panama"
hats of bamboo strips or threads. In texture and pliability these hats are
said to even surpass the genuine "Panamas," are absolutely impervious
to rain, and can be produced at a much lower cost.
The Looshais killed pigs, and even tigers, by ingeniously setting
poisoned arrows in the woods, which were released by the animals
pressing on a string. One of my coolies was unfortunate enough to be
shot and killed in this way.
Growing on decayed tree stumps I frequently found a saprophyte
(hymenophallus), much larger than its English representative, indeed a
monster in comparison, and possessing a vile and most odious smell,
yet attractive to certain depraved insects.
I made a very fine collection of butterflies, moths and beetles, which,
however, was entirely destroyed by worms or ants during its passage to
England. The magnificent Atlas moth was common in Sylhet and
Cachar. What an extraordinarily beautiful creature it is, sometimes so
large as to cover a dinner-plate. I never was privileged to see it fly. It
seemed to be always in a languid or torpid condition.
Thunderstorms occur almost daily during the wet season. By lightning I
lost several people. In one case, whilst standing watching a man
remove seedlings from a nursery bed, standing indeed immediately
behind and close to him, there came a thrilling flash of lightning. It
shook myself as well as several women who stood by. The man in front
of me, who had been sitting on his haunches with a steel-ribbed
umbrella over him, remained silent and still. At last I called on him to
continue his work and pulled back the umbrella to see his face. He was

stone dead. Examination showed a small blackish spot where the steel
rib had rested and conveyed the fatal shock.
The approach of the daily rainstorm, usually about noon, was a
remarkable sight. Immense fan-shaped, thunderous-looking clouds
would come rolling up, billow upon billow, travelling at great speed
and accompanied by terrific wind. A flash of lightning and a crashing
peal of thunder and the deluge began, literally a deluge. The rainfall
averaged about 180 inches in seven months. At Cherrapunji, in the
Kassia Hills, within sight of my place and only about twenty miles
distant, the rainfall was and is the greatest in the world, no other district
approaching it in this respect, viz., averaging per annum 450 inches;
greatest recorded over 900 inches; and there is a record of one month,
July, of a fall of nearly 400 inches; yet all this precipitation takes place
during the six or seven wet months, the rest of the year being absolutely
dry and rainless. These measurements are recorded at the Government
Observatory Station and need not be disputed. It may readily be
supposed that the wet season, summer, with its high temperature and
damp atmosphere, was very trying to the European, and even to the
imported coolies. Imagine living for six continuous months in the
hottest palm-house in Kew Gardens; yet the planter is out and about all
day long; nearly always on pony back, however, an enormously thick
solah toppee hat or a heavy white umbrella protecting his head. The dry,
or cold season, however, was delightful.
Close to Lucky Cherra Garden was a tract of bustee land on which
some Bengali cultivators grew rice and other crops. Our Company's
boundary line in some way conflicted with theirs, and a dispute arose
which soon developed into a series of, first, most comical mix-ups, and
afterwards into desperate "lathi" fights. The land in dispute was being
hurriedly ploughed by buffalo teams belonging to the Bengalis; to
uphold our claim I also secured teams and put them to ploughing on the
same piece of ground. This could only lead to one thing--as said before,
terrific lathi fights between the teamsters. For several days I went down
to see the fun, taking with