here suffer much from the guinea-worm, and consider it to arise from
drinking the water of the old tank, which is now very dirty and full
of weeds. I have no doubt that it is occasioned either by drinking
the water of this tank, or by wading in it: for I have known European
gentlemen get the worm in their legs from wading in similar lakes or
swamps after snipes, and the servants who followed them with their
ammunition experience the same effect.[9] Here, as in most other
parts of India, the tanks get spoiled by the water-chestnut,
'singhâra' (_Trapa bispinosa_), which is everywhere as regularly
planted and cultivated _in fields_ under a large surface of water, as
wheat or barley is on the dry plains. It is cultivated by a class of
men called Dhîmars, who are everywhere fishermen and palankeen
bearers; and they keep boats for the planting, weeding, and gathering
the 'singhâra'.[10] The holdings or tenements of each cultivator are
marked out carefully on the surface of the water by long bamboos
stuck up in it; and they pay so much the acre for the portion they
till. The long straws of the plants reach up to the surface of the
waters, upon which float their green leaves; and their pure white
flowers expand beautifully among them in the latter part of the
afternoon. The nut grows under the water after the flowers decay, and
is of a triangular shape, and covered with a tough brown integument
adhering strongly to the kernel, which is white, esculent, and of a
fine cartilaginous texture. The people are very fond of these nuts,
and they are carried often upon bullocks' backs two or three hundred
miles to market. They ripen in the latter end of the rains, or in
September, and are eatable till the end of November. The rent paid
for an ordinary tank by the cultivator is about one hundred rupees a
year. I have known two hundred rupees to be paid for a very large
one, and even three hundred, or thirty pounds a year.[11] But the mud
increases so rapidly from this cultivation that it soon destroys all