CHAPTER VI - SIBNIBASHI TO DACCA

Summary

June 19.–We again proceeded, still for the most part in a northerly or north-westerly direction. The river this day was much broader than we had yet seen it, with sandy banks, covered with low silky rushes. Many cormorants, cranes, and porpoises were seen, but no alligators or crocodiles, though these shores I should have thought were well adapted to them. The day was very hot. We anchored at a place called Kishenpol, where the river had a decidedly western course. This place is not marked by Rennel, who is indeed nearly useless here. The neighbourhood is dry, sandy, and open, but with a good many villages in sight, each with its adjacent wood, and the parts near the river cultivated with indigo, which I am told delights in a sandy soil. Some scattered ears of maize were growing among it. The banks were precipitous, and covered with fine long silky rushes, evidently of a kind which would be very valuable for cordage, &c. like the “espanto” of Spain. Here they are only used as thatch, for which they are reckoned better than straw. This sort of cover is, I understand, the favourite haunt of the tyger, who likes the neighbourhood of water, and the power at the same time of lying dry and clean. Abdullah told us several circumstances about the tyger, which at least were curious, as shewing the popular notions respecting him in India: “He not fierce, but very civil when he not provoked or very hungry; he then meddle with nobody.”