I have just related a story of birds attacking a snake, and I may as well tell another story in which one of his tribe was the aggressor. When returning from my cottage at Kang-joop-kool, after a day spent there in October, I saw an enormous python poised up on the high embanked road with its head erect, and body and tail in coils on the slope, ready to spring on some young buffaloes grazing near; it must have been at the lowest estimate thirty feet long and of proportionate thickness. I was too near, and riding too fast, to stop my pony, so gave a loud shout, and urged him to speed, and the snake turned itself back and fell with a crash into a morass by the road side, and I saw no more of it. I spoke to Thangal Major about it, and he told me that pythons were known to exist about the place where I saw this. I once shot a young one on the Diphoo Panee river, near Sudya, which measured nine feet, and a sepoy of my old regiment shot one near Borpathar fifteen feet in length.
Several very deadly snakes abound in Manipur, notably the "Tanglei" and the "Ophiophagus," a terrible looking creature, eight to twelve feet in length. No house is safe from snakes, and in the old Residency one fell from the roof once in my bedroom, from where a few minutes previously the baby's bassinette had hung, so the child had a narrow escape. I never dare let the children play alone in the garden for fear of their being bitten.
The extreme loneliness of Manipur, and the necessity of leaving my wife and children quite alone sometimes, made me very anxious to get some trustworthy English nurse for her, but we quite failed in doing so. In this emergency, one of her sisters volunteered to come out, which was a great help and relief. As I had to go to Calcutta to see the Viceroy in December, we asked her to meet us there. We left Manipur on November 27th, 1878, and returned on January 23rd, bringing her with us. Kohima was occupied by the Political Agent of the Naga Hills (Mr. Damant), in November, and before leaving for Calcutta I had some correspondence with him, and, at his request, sent my escort--then consisting of Cachar Frontier Police; men, for service qualities in the hills, far superior to the Native Infantry I had--to his assistance.