save a ride on another day.  Not knowing anything of the country I acquiesced, and we reached Fusseah in time to see the place, and do all that was needful.  It was a miserable tumbledown little spot, with four pair of vats; it had formerly been a good working factory, but the river had cut away most of its best lands, and completely washed away some of the villages, while the whole of the cultivation was fast relapsing into jungle.

‘Debnarain Singh’ the gomorsta or head man, asked us to stay for the night, as he said we could never get home before dark.  F. however scouted the idea, and we resumed our way.  The track, for it could not be called a road, led us through one or two jungle villages completely hidden by the dense bamboo clumps and long jungle grass.  You can’t see a trace of habitation till you are fairly on the village, and as the rice-fields are bordered with long strips of tall grass, the whole country presents the appearance of a uniform jungle.  We got through the rice swamps, the villages, and the grass in safety, and as it was getting dark, emerged on the great plain of undulating ridgy sandbanks, that form the bed of the river during the annual floods.  We had our syces (grooms) and two peons with us.  We had to ride over nearly two miles of sand before we could reach the ghat where we expected the ferry-boats, and, the main stream once crossed, we had only two miles further to reach the factory.  We were getting both tired and hungry; a heavy dew was falling, and the night was raw and chill.  It was dark, there was no moon to light our way, and the stars were obscured by the silently creeping fog, rising from the marshy hollows among the sand.  All at once F., who was leading, called out that we were off the path, and before I could pull up, my poor old tired horse was floundering in a quicksand up to the girths; I threw myself off and tried to wheel him round.  H. was behind us, and we cried to him to halt where he was.  I was sinking at every movement up to the knees, when the syce came to my rescue, and took charge of the horse.  F.’s syce ran to extricate his master and horse; the two peons kept calling, ‘Oh! my father, my father,’ the horses snorted, and struggled desperately in the tenacious and treacherous quicksand; but after a prolonged effort, we all got safely out, and rejoined H. on the firm ridge.

We now hallooed and shouted for the boatmen, but beyond the swish of the rapid stream to our right, or the plash of a falling bank as the swift current undermined it, no sound answered our repeated calls.  We were wet and weary, but to go either backward or forward was out of the question.  We were off the path, and the first step in any direction might lead us into another quicksand, worse perhaps than that from which we had just extricated ourselves.  The horses were trembling in every limb.  The syces cowered together and shivered with the cold.  We ordered the two peons to try and reach the ghat, and see what had become of the boats, while we awaited their return where we were.  The fog and darkness soon swallowed them up, and putting the best face on our dismal circumstances that we could, we lit our pipes and extended our jaded limbs on the damp sand.