NEARING SHAZADPUR,

_January_ 1891.


We left the little river of Kaligram, sluggish as the circulation in a
dying man, and dropped down the current of a briskly flowing stream which
led to a region where land and water seemed to merge in each other, river
and bank without distinction of garb, like brother and sister in infancy.

The river lost its coating of sliminess, scattered its current in many
directions, and spread out, finally, into a _beel_ (marsh), with here
a patch of grassy land and there a stretch of transparent water, reminding
me of the youth of this globe when through the limitless waters land had
just begun to raise its head, the separate provinces of solid and fluid as
yet undefined.

Round about where we have moored, the bamboo poles of fishermen are
planted. Kites hover ready to snatch up fish from the nets. On the ooze at
the water's edge stand the saintly-looking paddy birds in meditation. All
kinds of waterfowl abound. Patches of weeds float on the water. Here and
there rice-fields, untilled, untended,[1] rise from the moist, clay soil.
Mosquitoes swarm over the still waters....

[Footnote 1: On the rich river-side silt, rice seed is simply scattered
and the harvest reaped when ripe; nothing else has to be done.]

We start again at dawn this morning and pass through Kachikata, where the
waters of the _beel_ find an outlet in a winding channel only six or
seven yards wide, through which they rush swiftly. To get our unwieldy