Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/501

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mountains by early morning, so as to meet a conveyance sent down for us by friends to whom we had written, as our “shigram-po" would not ascend the heights. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, however, when we reached the Bandipoor bungalow, a rest-house on a hill-top, and twenty miles of jungle were yet between us and the mountain's base. To go on would have compelled us to spend the night amid the malaria of the jungle, with an almost certainty of contracting the deadly "jungle-fever;" and to stop would be to render it uncertain whether we should find any means of ascending the mountains on our arrival at Seegoor. We stopped, however, and spent the night at the lonely bungalow, as it seemed the less evil of the two. We managed to procure a chicken for ourselves and one for the bandymen, and had a dinner of the never-failing rice and curry. Our little sick boy owed his supper of milk to the fact that a tiger had the night before carried off two kids from the flock of a company of Kuravers who were encamped close by. These Kuravers are semi-savages, and wander from place to place, carrying with them their houses, which are mere bamboo baskets inverted. They do not usually milk