NEAR AND FAR
special department of police, hunted them down, and, breaking up their gangs, relieved the country of their baneful presence on the highways.
Another military station in the neighbourhood of Calcutta is Dum Dum, lying away from the river, about four miles to the north-east of the town. In the old days, before the country had been drained, the Great Salt Water Lake, which lies to the east of Calcutta, ran up as far as Dum Dum. At that time the jungle-grown shores of the lake were the haunt of tigers and other wild beasts, and its waters of duck, and teal, and innumerable birds. Now it is a wide, treeless stretch of low-lying level land, the clay soil dry and cracked in the winter months, but flooded in the rainy season, when it springs into verdure, and for mile upon mile the rice crop of the villages waves green. Just beyond this low land lies Dum Dum, and Dum Dum House, a well-built house, standing on a low artificial hill, or rather mound, once surrounded by a moat, portions of which still remain. The late Mr. R. C. Sterndale, who once occupied Dum Dum House, had a theory that the mound had been thrown up and fortified in very ancient times, and that later it had been a stronghold of robbers, who, passing through the Salt Water Lake in their long and narrow swift-rowing boats, plundered inland
235
