The grass under which we stood, like insects under
a rhubarb leaf, waved its feathery many-colored plumes much above
the head of Gulab-Sing (who stood six feet and a half in his stockings),
and of Narayan, who measured hardly an inch less. From a distance
it looked like a waving sea of black, yellow, blue, and especially
of rose and green. On landing, we discovered that it consisted of
separate thickets of bamboos, mixed up with the gigantic sirka reeds,
which rose as high as the tops of the mangos.
It is impossible to imagine anything prettier and more graceful
than the bamboos and sirka. The isolated tufts of bamboos show,
in spite of their size, that they are nothing but grass, because
the least gush of wind shakes them, and their green crests begin
to nod like heads adorned with long ostrich plumes. There were
some bamboos there fifty or sixty feet high. From time to time
we heard a light metallic rustle in the reeds, but none of us
paid much attention to it.
Whilst our coolies and servants were busy clearing a place for
our tents, pitching them and preparing the supper, we went to pay
our respects to the monkeys, the true hosts of the place. Without
exaggeration there were at least two hundred.
