HE tourist across THE India from Allahabad to Bombay, or vice versa, usually breaks the long railway journey (eight hundred and fifty miles and thirty-six hours) at JABALPUR, a large and flourishing city in the Central Provinces, in order to visit the Marble Rocks, one of the most remarkable scenes of natural beauty to be found in India. Jabalpur is two hundred and thirty miles from Allahabad and a thousand feet above the sea; it is overlooked by a range of hills, consisting of granite, gneiss, hornblende, dolomite, and always covered with verdure. The Marble Rocks are eleven miles from Jabalpur; and on the way you pass Mudden Mahal, with curious hills commanding an extensive view of Jabalpur and the country round, and crowned with a ruined temple on the top of a huge black boulder, while about the base are numerous tanks and mango groves. At the Marble Rocks the deep blue Narbada for two miles flows between two radiant snow-white walls a hundred feet in height. The river, now entering the gorge with a leap, has excavated this deep channel for itself, and can be traversed in a flat-bottomed boat, which is rowed or poled along as far as the cascade. The rocks rise precipitously from the water, and are in parts extremely white, seamed by veins of dark green or black volcanic rock. The boat passes through the gradually contracting gorge, amid the hum of bees, the chattering of monkeys, and the rustling of forest leaves. Above the rocks the river is a hundred yards broad; here it is compressed into some twenty yards; it has a great depth, and glides very smoothly. When a full strong light from sun or moon is thrown upon the rocks above, the combined effect of the marble and its reflection is quite dazzling. The play of light forms a striking contrast with the deep hues of the waters; by moonlight the rocks look ghost-like and mysterious. But the place is not free from danger. High up above you hang from the cliffs the semicircular combs of bees, which infest the gorge, and which, if disturbed by the firing of a gun or otherwise, swarm down upon the intruders, and there is no means of avoiding their cruel stings. Nevertheless the natives, by means of bamboo ladders suspended from the cliffs, manage at night to smother the bees with torches, and to rob the honey. On the summit of a low hill overlooking the Marble Rocks there are several Hindu Sivoid temples, and the Hindus still hold annually a religious gathering and a fair, attended by thousands during the moonlight of November. In the neighbourhood of Jabalpur are the Mopani coal-fields and mines of hæmatite ore; but the amount of coal raised is not more than about a thousand tons per month, and even when sold at ten rupees a ton barely covers working expenses. In the Bombay Presidency English coal is used, and of course the prices are very high. Few stations in India can show such majestic mango-trees as Jabalpur; and it is remarkable for its pine-apples. Here also the sâl, a tree whose habit is to occupy, where it grows at all, the whole area to the exclusion of others, is found to rule supreme. Its seeds have a marvellous power of self-propagation, sprouting immediately on reaching the ground. It is almost the only evergreen tree in India. Many of the young forests of sal resemble more the regularly tended saplings of an English plantation than self-sown trees. The timber of the sal, if inferior to the teak for some purposes, is superior for others, and it is almost the only timber tree of Upper India. Singly the sal is a little formal in outline, and possesses a fine firm appearance, from its horizontal branches. It has bright leaves like broad lance-heads, and straight tapering stem with grey and deeply-fissured bark. Its great charm, however, resides in the fresh cool aspect of the clumps and belts in which it chiefly grows. The TIGERS. bamboo thickets of the higher hills, with their light feathery foliage, beautifully supplement the heavier masses of the sâl that climb their skirts. The graciousness of nature in furnishing such plentiful shade cannot but be admired. Just at the time when the face of the country begins to quiver in the fierce sun and burning blasts of April, the banyan and peepul figs and the ever-present mango throw out a fresh crop of leaves; those of the banyan being then, morcover, charged with a thick milky juice that forms an impenetrable nonconductor to the sun's rays. These are in substance the observations of the late Captain Forsyth, who spent a considerable time in the Narbada Valley. While a keen observer of nature, he was an ardent sportsman, and has left us some interesting facts relating to the TIGER, the inhabitant of the Indian jungle, and the devastator of the country in days gone by. Though tiger-hunting is inferior, as a mere exercise or an effort of skill, to some other pursuits, yet it furnishes a test of coolness and nerve; and there is an excitement unsurpassed in attacking an animal before whom every other beast of the forest quails, and unarmed man is helpless as the mouse under the paw of a cat. It is difficult to get information from natives as to the whereabouts of tigers. The hunter and his train of overbearing, swindling servants are shunned by the poor inhabitants. The tiger himself is, in fact, far more endurable than those who, encamping against him, demand grain and other supplies, and force the natives to beat for the tiger, with a considerable chance of getting killed, and very little chance of being paid for their services. The native, moreover, regards the tiger as a sort of protector, destroying the wild animals which feed upon the crops. The confirmed man-eater, however, is a deadly foe, and much real courage is shown in tiger-hunting, when it is not carried on in large multitudinous companies. Tigers are now very much rarer to meet with than they once were, when Government offered a reward for each tiger's head sufficient to maintain a peasant's family in comfort for three months. All this is now changed, and it is a frequent complaint that one can so seldom get a shot at a tiger. The only animal, says Dr. W. W. Hunter, that has defied the energy of the British officia! is the snake. The ascertained number of persons who died from snake-bite in 1875 was seventeen thousand, out of a total of twenty-one thousand three hundred and ninety-one killed by snakes and all other wild animals. Leaving Jabalpur, the great Indian Peninsula Railway conveys us through the picturesque valley of the Narbada, wild, woody, uncultivated and thinly peopled. The railway stations are like oases, few and distant from each other, bright with flowers and well supplied with refreshments, in the midst of jungle. At Khandwa, the branch line to Indore turns northwards towards Delhi, opening up a very fertile and productive country for cotton, tobacco, and opium. Indore itself is an ill-built city with a few |