below the shoulders, and from the paralyzed appearance of the animal must have entered the spine; he opened his enormous jaws and uttered a cry of agony. A second bullet missed him; he made an effort, and slipped over into the water, which became deeply dyed with his blood. Every tank is full of alligators. He sank to the bottom, and the dāndees lost a meal, by them considered very agreeable. I roamed on the elephant until it was very dark, when I got into the palanquin; one of the party rode by its side, and amused himself by catching fire-flies in his hand, and throwing them into the palkee. How beautifully the fire-flies flitted about over the high jungle grass that covered the morasses! As they crossed before the dark foliage of the trees, they were seen in peculiar brilliancy.
In the jungle, I saw several pān gardens, carefully covered over. Pān (piper betel), a species of pepper plant, is cultivated for its leaves; the vine itself is perennial, creeping, very long, and rooting at all the joints; the leaves have an aromatic scent and pungent taste. In India, of which it is a native, it is protected from the effect of the weather by screens made of bamboo. The root of the pān, called khoolinjān, as a medicine, is held in high estimation, and is considered an antidote to poison.
In one of the buildings you are shown the kadam sharīf, or the prints of the honoured feet of the prophet; over which is a silken canopy. The door is always fastened, and a pious Musalmān claps his hands three times, and utters some holy words ere he ventures to cross the threshold. This ceremony omitted, is, they say, certain and instantaneous death to the impious wretch: but this penalty only attaches itself to the followers of the prophet, as we found no ill effect from the omission. In the Qanoon-e-islam the history of the kadam-i-rasūl, the footstep of the prophet, is said to be as follows: "As the prophet (the peace and blessing of God be with him!), after the battle of Ohud (one of the forty or fifty battles in which the prophet had been personally engaged), was one day ascending a hill, in a rage, by the heat of his passion the mountain softened into the consistence of wax, and retained, some say eighteen, others forty impressions of his feet. When the angel Gabriel
