[Illustration:  THE PORT OF CALCUTTA.]

The Sunderbunds—­as the natives term that alluvial region which terminates the delta of the Ganges—­can scarcely be considered either land or sea, but rather a multitudinous reticulation of streams, the meshes of which are represented by islands in all the various stages of consistency between water and dry land.  Sometimes we floated along the lovely curves of canals which flowed underneath ravishing arches formed by the meeting overhead of great trees which leaned to each other from either bank; while again our course led us between shores which were mere plaits and interweavings of the long stems and broad leaves of gigantic water-plants.  The islands were but little inhabited, and the few denizens we saw were engaged either in fishing or in the manufacture of salt from the brackish water.  Once we landed at a collection of huts where were quartered the laborers of another company which had been successfully engaged in prosecuting the same experiment of rice-culture which our friend had just undertaken.  It was just at the time when the laborers were coming in from the fields.  The wife of the one to whose hut my curiosity led me had prepared his evening meal of rice and curry, and he was just sitting down to it as I approached.  With incredible deftness he mingled the curry and the rice together—­he had no knife, fork or spoon—­by using the end-joints of his thumb and fingers:  then, when he had sufficiently amalgamated the mass, he rolled up a little ball of it, placed the ball upon his crooked thumb as a boy does a marble, and shot it into his mouth without losing a grain.  Thus he despatched his meal, and I could not but marvel at the neatness and dexterity which he displayed, with scarcely more need of a finger-bowl at the end than the most delicate feeder you shall see at Delmonico’s.

The crops raised upon the rich alluvium of these islands were enormous, and if the other difficulties attending cultivation in such a region could be surmounted, there seemed to be no doubt of our friend the babou’s success in his venture.  But it was a wild and lonesome region, and as we floated along, after leaving the island, up a canal which flamed in the sunset like a great illuminated baldric slanting across the enormous shoulder of the world, a little air came breathing over me as if it had just blown from the mysterious regions where space and time are not, or are in different forms from those we know.  A sense of the crudity of these great expanses of sea-becoming-land took possession of me; the horizon stretched away like a mere endless continuation of marshes and streams; the face of my companion was turned off sea-ward with an expression of ineffably mellow tranquillity; a glamour came about as if the world were again formless and void, and as if the marshes were chaos.  I shivered with a certain eager expectation of beholding the shadowy outline of a great and beautiful spirit moving over the face of the waters to create a new world.  I drew my gaze with difficulty from the heavens and turned toward my companion.