paraded up and down, and are taught to pick
up with their trunks the coins thrown down by visitors. Innumerable dark
alcoves invite the crowd to rest, and many a sleeping form is seen at
the foot of the altars. Imagine a festival night with these dimly
lighted courts crowded with worshipers, the fierce and lustful images,
the glorification of the lingam, the secret places of assignation! And
this is the acme of Hindu religion!

There are better things than this to be seen in Madura. The palace of
Tirumala, a raja of the seventh century, is a magnificent specimen of
Moorish architecture with unexpected Gothic tendencies. Its entrance
hall, one hundred and thirty-five feet long, half as wide, and seventy
feet high, has a lofty roof supported by heavy stone pillars with
pointed arches of Saracenic type. It shows that the Moslem, in the
long ago, had at least a temporary hold upon South India. This palace,
which has the structural character of a Gothic building, has now been
partially restored and taken for the law-courts of the British
Government.

The same Tirumala who built the palace, built the Teppa Kulam, an
artificial reservoir outside the town, about one thousand feet on a
side, very symmetrical and the largest of its kind in South India. The
whole "tank" is surrounded with granite walls and parapets, and next the
water there is a granite walk five feet wide running round the whole
structure. Flights of steps lead down to the water, at intervals. In the
center of this small lake is an island, also walled around with granite
slabs, and on it there are five towers, a large one in the center and
one at each of the four corners. The whole effect is very graceful and
it makes a sight long to be remembered, when the "feast of lights" takes
place and the island and the parapets and the granite curbings are
illuminated with hundreds of little oil-lamps. Not far away from the
"tank" is a famous banyan-tree which covers with its shade an area sixty
yards in diameter, has a main stem seventy feet in circumference, and
has besides two hundred branches that have struck root.

But the noblest sight of Madura is its American Congregational Mission.
Beginning in 1836, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions planned and founded their most wise and successful foreign
missions. They have aimed to do one thing well: to make the Madura
station not only complete but well supported, to embrace in it all
stages of educ