In some parts the ryot gets paid so much per bundle of plants delivered at the vats, but generally in Behar, at least in north Behar, he is paid so much per acre or _Beegah_. On the whole, the hand fishing is uninteresting, but it serves to wile away an odd hour when hunting and shooting are hardly practicable. The brilliant kingfisher, resplendent in crimson and emerald, sat on the withered branch of a prostrate mango-tree close by, pluming his feathers and doubtless meditating on the vanity of life. She is the recognised jungle goddess, and is held in great veneration by all the wild tribes and half-civilized denizens of the gloomy sal jungle. It is often, also, a delicate mode of flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and often conveying in a tone, a look, a gesture, that though the speaker is 'greel,' poor, humble, despised, it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who are mighty, exalted, and powerful. The village putwarries and head men are all there with their voluminous accounts. I cowered over the miserable sputtering flame, and longed and wished for the morning. The energy and intelligence of the planter has breathed on the stagnant waters of the Hindoo intellect the breath of life, and the living tide is heaving, full of activity, purging by its resistless ever-moving pulsations the formerly stagnant mass of its impurities, and making it a life-giving sea of active industry and progress. Work at home tigress and cub were reported to be in a dense patch of _nurkool_ jungle, on the banks of the creek which divided the General's cultivation from mine. In pursuit of their quarry, they steal noiselessly along, and love to make their spring unawares. We soon get the frightened boatmen quieted down, and after another hour's weary work we spy the white outline of the tents above the bank.
They were dry and stunted, and when we dropped a few lights amongst such combustible material, the fire was splendid beyond description.