es, that it is hardly
possible to tell a door from a window. The granite foundations of many
houses are laid almost in the bed of the river, and so, during four
months of the year, they are half covered with water. And behind
this handful of scattered houses, higher up the mountain slope, crowd
snow-white, stately temples. Some of them are low, with thick walls,
wide wings and gilded cupolas; others rise in majestical many-storied
towers; others again with shapely pointed roofs, which look like the
spires of a bell tower. Strange and capricious is the architecture of
these temples, the like of which is not to be seen anywhere else.
They look as if they had suddenly dropped from the snowy abodes of the
mountain spirits above, standing there in the shelter of the mother
mountain, and timidly peeping over the head of the small town below at
their own images reflected in the pure, untroubled waters of the sacred
river.

Here the Ganges is not yet polluted by the dirt and the sins of her
many million adorers. Releasing her worshipers, cleansed from her icy
embrace, the pure maiden of the mountains carries her transparent waves
through the burning plains of Hindostan; and only three hundred and
forty-eight miles lower down, on passing through Cawnpore, do her waters
begin to grow thicker and darker, while, on reaching Benares, they
transform themselves into a kind of peppery pea soup.

Once, while talking to an old Hindu, who tried to convince us that his
compatriots are the cleanest nation in the world, we asked him:

"Why is it then that, in the less populous places, the Ganges is pure
and transparent, whilst in Benares, especially towards evening, it looks
like a mass of liquid mud?"

"O sahibs!" answered he mournfully, "it is not the dirt of our bodies,
as you think, it is not even the blackness of our sins, that the devi
(goddess) washes away... Her waves are black with the sorrow and shame
of her children. Her feelings are sad and sorrowful; hidden suffering,
burning pain and humiliation, despair and shame at her own helplessness,
have been her lot for many past centuries. She has suffered all this
till her waters have become waves of black bile. Her waters are poisoned
and black, but not from physical causes. She is our mother, and how
could she help resenting the degradation we have brought ourselves to in
this dark age."

This sorrowful, poetical allegory made us feel very keenly for the poor
old man; but, howe