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danger from panjis, an alternative route |
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Wrote up journal, discussed & looked up the geog of this quarter of the Hills. Did some bird work. Bkfasted abt 12 o/c & started abt 1.30 o/c to do some sketching along the ridge N of the village to which we first ascended. After leaving the village where the path became closed in by the grass I thought I had scrunched something now & again under foot for I was walking a short distance ahead when hitting my foot against something made me look down & I found the path was studded here & there with short panjis - little bamboo spikes which for men with naked feet are terrible things & inflict most serious wounds in the soles. About in the grass & just on the very edge were stuck the thin long kind sloping at 45 degrees [sketch]. Ogle very nearly got one into his leg again. I had passed it & not observed it, for I pulled all I could find out. This however passed through his woolen stocking on the outside curve of his calf. Finding these things so numerous & the pace of the calashies & sepoys through them very slow I returned & got a villager to show another way which he did by plunging right into the jungle on the right & down the hill side which brought us onto one of the main paths into the village & this continued on along the ridge to a fine open knoll where we got a famous stand for the PT & both did a large crop of work. The hills were perfectly clear & I managed to fix the positions of many of the numerous parallel ridges. So much fir now covers the hills on this Eastern side the whole aspect is changed by it & the spurs cutting the sky on the slopes below Gaziphimah have the jagged outline peculiar to fir clad hills, while the green quite alters the coloration of the more distant Hills. Got back to camp at dusk. Butler & [Coasseloes?] met on the path down the hill. He had been down to the river. (192 burnt.) (35) The villagers on this side smoke much more than those on the Sijjo & Zullo. The pipe is a kind of hukka, the smoke passing through water which is placed in the lower portion (a) [sketch |
