But these few tiresome days have come between, and now I find many of the details have grown hazy. Another reason for this is the sea, which in Puri lies before me night and day. It has captured the whole of my attention, leaving me no opportunity to hark back to the incidents of the journey.
After our midday meal on Saturday, B—— babu, Balu and I placed our rugs on the back seat of a hired phaeton, leaned back against our pillows, and, with a servant mounted on the coach box, made a start.
Where our road crossed the Katjuri[1] river we had to leave the carriage and get into palanquins. The grey sands of the river stretched away in every direction. They rightly call it the bed of the river in English. It is indeed like a bed which the sleeper has left in the morning. Every movement of the river, as it rolled from side to side, and pressed with the weight of its water now here now there, is left impressed on the hollows and billows of its sand bed, which has not been made since.
At the further edge of this vast sandy course, the thin crystal-clear stream of the river is seen. In the Meghaduta of Kalidas there is a description of a Yaksha woman, pining for her banished hus-
- ↑ One of the branches of the Mahanadi.
