ver great our sympathy, we could not but suppose that
probably the woes of the maiden Ganga do not affect her sources. In
Hardwar the color of Ganges is crystal aqua marina, and the waters run
gaily murmuring to the shore-reeds about the wonders they saw on their
way from the Himalayas.

The beautiful river is the greatest and the purest of goddesses, in the
eyes of the Hindus; and many are the honors given to her in Hardwar.
Besides the Mela celebrated once every twelve years, there is a month in
every year when the pilgrims flock together to the Harika-Paira, stairs
of Vishnu. Whosoever succeeds in throwing himself first into the river,
at the appointed day, hour and moment, will not only expiate all his
sins, but also have all bodily sufferings removed. This zeal to be first
is so great that, owing to a badly-constructed and narrow stair leading
to the water, it used to cost many lives yearly, until, in 1819, the
East India Company, taking pity upon the pilgrims, ordered this ancient
relic to be removed, and a new stairway, one hundred feet wide, and
consisting of sixty steps, to be constructed.

The month when the waters of the Ganges are most salutary, falls,
according to the Brahmanical computation, between March 12th and April
10th, and is called Chaitra. The worst of it is that the waters are
at their best only at the first moment of a certain propitious hour,
indicated by the Brahmans, and which sometimes happens to be midnight.
You can fancy what it must be when this moment comes, in the midst of a
crowd which exceeds two millions. In 1819 more than four hundred people
were crushed to death. But even after the new stairs were constructed,
the goddess Ganga has carried away on her virgin bosom many a disfigured
corpse of her worshipers. Nobody pitied the drowned, on the contrary,
they were envied. Whoever happens to be killed during this purification
by bathing, is sure to go straight to Swarga (heaven). In 1760, the
two rival brotherhoods of Sannyasis and Bairagis had a regular battle
amongst them on the sacred day of Purbi, the last day of the religious
fair. The Bairagis were conquered, and there were eighteen thousand
people slaughtered.

"And in 1796," proudly narrated our warlike friend the Akali, "the
pilgrims from Punjab, all of them Sikhs, desiring to punish the
insolence of the Hossains, killed here about five hundred of these
heathens. My own grandfather took part in the fight!"

Later on we veri