CHAPTER I.
TEA PLANTING In Cachar--Apprenticeship--Tea Planting described--Polo--In Sylhet--Pilgrims at Sacred Pool--Wild Game--Amusements--Rainfall--Return to Cachar--Scottpore--Snakes--A Haunted Tree--Hill Tribes--Selecting a Location--Return to England.
Having no inclination for the seclusion and drudgery of office work, determined to lead a country life of some kind or other, and even then having a longing desire to roam the world and see foreign countries, I had arranged to accompany a friend to the Comoro Islands, north of Madagascar; but changing my mind and accepting the better advice of friends, my start was made, not to the Comoro Islands, but to India and the tea district of Cachar.

Accordingly the age of twenty-two and the year 1876 saw me on board a steamer bound for Calcutta.
Steamers were slow sailers in those days, and it was a long trip via Gibraltar, Suez, Malta, the Canal and Point de Galle; but it was all very interesting to me.
Near Point de Galle we witnessed from the steamer a remarkable sight, a desperate fight, it seemed to be a fight and not play, between a sea-serpent, which seemed to be about fifteen feet long, and a huge ray.
The battle was fought on the surface of the water and even out of it, as the ray several times threw himself into the air.

How it ended we could not see.

Anyway we had seen the sea-serpent, though not the fabulous monster so often written about, and yet whose existence cannot be disproved.

The sea-serpent's tail is flattened.
At Calcutta I visited a tea firm, who sent me up to Cachar to help at one of the gardens till a vacancy should occur.