there are three curiosities of the vegetable kingdom. One is a row of two dozen palása trees (Butea frondosa) in the southern division of the village. When these are in flower, they present a most imposing spectacle. The whole of every tree, branches, trunk and all, becomes covered with gorgeous flowers; and to a spectator looking at them from a distance, it is a truly enchanting vision. The second curiosity is a gigantic Vakula tree, which has a leafy circumference of several hundred feet, and which affords shelter every night to thousands of birds. The Vakula tree is a great favourite of the people of Bengal; it is one of the most graceful of all trees; it has a small flower of delicate sweetness; and its head, naturally large, is so smooth and rounded in shape that a foreigner would suppose that the pruning-knife had been used. But the remarkable feature of this particular Vakula tree is, its size. I have not seen its equal in the whole district of Vardhamána. The third curiosity of the vegetable kingdom at Kánchanpur is a magnificent vata tree (Ficus Indica) which grows near the hát to the south-west of the village; it covers many acres of

ground; it has sent forth hundreds of branches downwards, which have taken root in the soil, and become separate trees. It affords not only shelter to thousands of the feathery race at night, but grateful shade at noon to scores of peasant boys tending their COWS in the adjacent meadows.

Milton must have had one of these trees in his mind's 's eye when he sang of the big tree which

In Malabar or Deccan spreads her arms
Branching so broad and long, that in the ground
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother-tree, a pillar'd shade
High over-arch'd, and echoing walks between:
There oft the Indian herdsman shunning heat
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
At loop-holes cut through thickest shade.

Sir Henry Maine, in his ingenious and thoughtful work entitled "Village Communities in the East and West," adopting the language of the Teutonic township, speaks of three parts of an Indian village :first the village itself or the cluster of homesteads inhabited by the members of the community; secondly, the "arable mark” or lands under cultivation surrounding the village; and thirdly, the

66

66

common mark," or waste lands for pasturage. Of the first we have already spoken. The second, or the arable mark, of Kánchanpur consists of some thousands of bighús of land, encompassing the village, and forming a circle of cultivation the radius of which is about half a mile. Paddy of various kinds is the staple produce of the bulk of the land, though there are not wanting different species of pulse, rye, barley, cotton, tobacco, hemp, flax, and sugarcane. As almost every inch of the land around the village was under cultivation, there was no common mark" or waste connected with it. Nor were waste lands needed for pasturage, as there was not a single flock of sheep in the village; and the cows and bullocks, of which there was a large number, grazed on the verdant spots on the roadside, on the sloping sides of tanks with high embankments, on the green balks separating one field from another, on the grass-covered areas of mango topes and tamarind groves, and on those patches of untilled land situated near pools of water which ever and anon relieve the eye amid the infinite expanse of never-ending paddy.

CHAPTER IV.

DESCRIBES A RURAL SCENE, AND USHERS OUR HERO INTO THE WORLD.

Young elms, with early force, in copses bow,
Fit for the figure of the crooked plough :
Of eight feet long, a fastened beam prepare-
On either side the head, produce an ear;
And sink a socket for the shining share.
Georgics.

Ir was midday. The cruel sun, like a huge furnace, was sending forth hot flames all around. There was hardly any breeze, the broad leaves of the tall palmyra hung quite motionless; the cows were resting in the shade of trees, and were chewing the cud; and the birds were enjoying their mid-day siesta. At such a time, when all Nature seemed to be in a state of collapse, a solitary husbandman was seen ploughing a field on the eastern side of the village

1

of Kánchanpur. In the previous evening there had been a shower, accompanied with a thunderstorm, and Mánik Sámanta was taking advantage of that circumstance, to prepare the soil for the early crop of Áus dhán, so-called from the fact of that sort of paddy ripening in less time than is taken by the Áman, or the winter paddy. As some of our readers may not have seen a Bengal plough, it is as well to describe it here; and we do not think the object is too low to be described, especially when we remember that it exercised in antiquity the genius of two such poets as Hesiod and Virgil. The Calcutta cockney, who glories in the Mahratta Ditch, despises. the scenery of the country, and plumes himself upon the fact of his having never seen in his life the rice-plant, may well be addressed in the language of the poet of the "Seasons

وو

:

Nor ye who live

In luxury and ease, in pomp and pride,

Think these last themes unworthy of your ear:
Such themes as these the rural Maro sung

To wide imperial Rome, in the full height
Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined.
In ancient times the sacred plough employed
The kings and awful fathers of mankind.