Scorpions live in rotten tree-trunks, under stones, on walls, and as they like warmth they often enter houses and huts, and creep into clothes and beds.
The scorpion leaves his dark den at night and sets out on the hunt. He holds his tail turned up over his back, in order to keep his sting from injury and to be ready at once for attack or defence. When he meets with a desirable victim, such as a large spider, he darts quickly forward, seizes it with his claws, which are like those of crabs, raises it above his head in order to examine it with his eyes, which are turned upwards, and gives it the death-stroke with his sting. Then he sucks up the softer parts and grinds the harder between his jaws.
The young ones, which are active as soon as they are born, are like the old ones from the first day, but are light-coloured and soft. They crawl about their mother's back and legs and do not leave her body for some time. When that happens the mother dies, having meanwhile wasted away.
The sting of large scorpions is dangerous even to human beings. Cases have been known of a man dying in great agony twelve hours after being stung. Others get cramp, fever, and pains before they begin to recover. A man who has often been stung becomes at last insensible to the poison.
Many a time I have found scorpions in Asiatic huts, in my tent, on my bed, and under my boxes, but I have never been stung by one. On the other hand, it has been the fate of many of my servants, and they told me that it was difficult to find out where the scorpion had stung them, for their bodies sweated and burned equally intensely all over. In Eastern Turkestan it is the practice to catch the scorpion which has stung a man and crush him into a paste, which is laid over the puncture made by the sting. But whether this is a real cure I do not know.
The Indus
After travelling 1500 miles on camels and dromedaries, the whistle of an engine sounds like the sweetest music to the ear. At Nushki (see map, p. 132), the furthermost station of the Indian railway, I took leave of my Baluchi servants, stepped into a train, and was carried past the garrison town of Quetta south-eastwards to the Indus. Here we find that one branch of the railway follows the river closely on its western bank to Karachi, one of the principal seaports of British India. Our train, however, carries us northwards along the eastern bank to Rawalpindi, an important military station near the borders of Kashmir.
MAP OF NORTHERN INDIA, SHOWING RIVERS AND MOUNTAIN RANGES.
In the large roomy compartment it is as warm as it was lately in Baluchistan, or nearly 107°. To shade the railway carriages from the burning sun overhead, they are provided with a kind of wooden cover with flaps falling down half over the windows. The glass is not white, as in European carriage windows, but dark blue or green, otherwise the reflexion of the sunlight from the ground would be too dazzling. On either side two windows have, instead of glass, a lattice of root fibres which are kept wet automatically night and day. Outside the window is a ventilator, which, set in action by the motion of the train, forces a rapid current of air through the wet network of fibres. Thereby the air is cooled some eighteen or twenty degrees, and it is pleasant to sit partly undressed in the draught.