s it is mine, you could not
fail to understand my verses, which, alas, describe in such meagre and
inadequate terms the rapturous feelings experienced by every one who
sees her even from a distance!"

I fully sympathize with the enamoured poet, but cannot condemn his
friends who never saw his lady-love, and that is why I tremble lest my
constant rhapsodies on India should bore my readers as much as Saadi
bored his friends. But what, I pray you, is the poor narrator to do,
when new, undreamed-of charms are daily discovered in the lady-love
in question? Her darkest aspects, abject and immoral as they are, and
sometimes of such a nature as to excite your horror--even these aspects
are full of some wild poetry, of originality, which cannot be met with
in any other country. It is not unusual for a European novice to shudder
with disgust at some features of local everyday life; but at the same
time these very sights attract and fascinate the attention like a
horrible nightmare. We had plenty of these experiences whilst our ecole
buissoniere lasted. We spent these days far from railways and from any
other vestige of civilization. Happily so, because European civilization
does not suit India any better than a fashionable bonnet would suit a
half naked Peruvian maiden, a true "daughter of Sun," of Cortes' time.

All the day long we wandered across rivers and jungles, passing villages
and ruins of ancient fortresses, over local-board roads between Nassik
and Jubblepore, traveling with the aid of bullock cars, elephants,
horses, and very often being carried in palks. At nightfall we put up
our tents and slept anywhere. These days offered us an opportunity
of seeing that man decidedly can surmount trying and even dangerous
conditions of climate, though, perhaps, in a passive way, by mere force
of habit. In the afternoons, when we, white people, were very nearly
fainting with the roasting heat, in spite of thick cork topis and such
shelter as we could procure, and even our native companions had to use
more than the usual supplies of muslin round their heads--the Bengali
Babu traveled on horseback endless miles, under the vertical rays of the
hot sun, bareheaded, protected only by his thick crop of hair. The sun
has no influence whatever on Bengali skulls. They are covered only on
solemn occasions, in cases of weddings and great festivities. Their
turbans are useless adornments, like flowers in a European lady's hair.

Bengali Babu