The night was bright and clear, with much lightning, the latter attracted to the spur, and darting down as it were to mingle its fire with that of the forest; so many flashes appeared to strike on the flames, that it is probable the heated air in their neighbourhood attracted them. We were awakened between 3 and 4 a.m., by a violent dust-storm, which threatened to carry away the tents. Our position at the mouth of the gulley formed by the opposite hills, no doubt accounted for it. The gusts were so furious that it was impossible to observe the barometer, which I returned to its case on ascertaining that any indications of a rise or fall in the column must have been quite trifling. The night had been oppressively hot, with many insects flying about; amongst which I noticed earwigs, a genus erroneously supposed rarely to take to the wing in Britain. At 8.30 a.m. it suddenly fell calm, and we proceeded to Chanchee (alt. 500 feet), the native carts breaking down in their passage over the projecting beds of flinty rocks, or as they burned down the inclined planes we cut through the precipitous clay banks of the streams. Near Chanchee we passed an alligator, just killed by two men, a foul beast, about nine feet long, of the mugger kind. More absorbing than its natural history was the circumstance of its having swallowed a child, that was playing in the water as its mother was washing her utensils in the river. The brute was hardly dead, much distended by the prey, and the mother was standing beside it. A very touching group was this: the parent with her hands clasped in agony, unable to withdraw her eyes from the cursed reptile, which still clung to life with that tenacity for which its tribe are so conspicuous; beside these the two athletes leaned on the bloody bamboo staffs, with which they had all but despatched the animal. This poor woman earned a scanty maintenance by making catechu: inhabiting a little cottage, and having no property but two cattle to bring wood from the hills, and a very few household chattels; and how few of these they only know who have seen the meagre furniture of Danga hovels. Her husband cut the trees in the forest and dragged them to the hut, but at this time he was sick, and her only boy, her future stay, it was, whom the beast had devoured. This province is famous for the quantity of catechu its dry forests yield. The plant (_Acacia_) is a little thorny tree, erect, and bearing a rounded head of well remembered prickly branches. Its wood is yellow, with a dark brick-red heart, most profitable in January and useless in June (for yielding the extract).