reduced to rivulets in the midst of a bed of sand.

The whole of this country is a succession of flat sandy plains and low
jungles contiguous to the sea-coast. The intense heat and the glare of
the sun rendered the journey most fatiguing. I at length descried a long
line of noble forest in the distance, and this I conjectured to be near
the river, which turned out to be the case; we were soon relieved from
the burning sun by the shade of as splendid a forest as I have ever
seen. A few hundred yards from the spot at which we had entered, Yalle
river rolled along in a clear stream. In the wet season this is a rapid
torrent of about 150 yards in width, but at this time the bed of the
river was dry, with the exception of a stream of about thirty paces
broad, which ran directly beneath the bank we were descending.

An unexpected scene now presented itself. The wide bed of the river was
shaded on either side by groves of immense trees, whose branches
stretched far over the channel; and not only beneath their shade, but in
every direction, tents formed of talipot leaves were pitched, and a
thousand men, women, and children lay grouped together; some were
bathing in the river, some were sitting round their fires cooking a
scanty meal, others lay asleep upon the sand, but all appeared to be
congregated together for one purpose; and so various were the castes and
costumes that every nation of the East seemed to have sent a
representative. This was the season for the annual offerings to the
Kattregam god, to whose temple these pilgrims were flocking, and they
had made the dry bed of Valle river their temporary halting-place. A few
days after, no less than 18,000 pilgrims congregated at Kattregam.

I was at this time shooting with my friend, Mr. H. Walters, then of the
15th Regiment. We waded up the bed of the river for about a mile, and