. Behind
them was a forest of spires, domes, and cupolas.

"You ought to have left the ghat before sunrise," said the captain, who was
walking up and down the deck, with an eye on the Hindu pilot. "Then you
would have been in time to see the sight of the day, for the appearance of
the sun is the holy moment for the natives to plunge into the holy river.
For miles along the shore the ghats are thronged at the first appearance of
the orb of day, and there is a continuous murmur of voices. No matter how
cold the water is, they dive in and swim like fishes. You can see a
thousand heads in the water along the shore at any moment. Then they
support themselves on the surface, and gaze motionless at the sun as it
mounts in the sky."

"Are you a sailor, Captain Carlisle?" asked Louis, who thought he was
rather poetic for an uneducated man.

"Not as the commander of your ship would understand it, though I was in
command of a Thames steamer, and fell into the same business when I came to
India," replied the captain, laughing at the question. "My father was a
good Baptist; he wanted to make a minister of me, and I was educated far
enough to enter the university; but I concluded that I did not like the
business, and took to steamboating."

"But aren't the women as religious as the men?" inquired Captain Ringgold.

"More so, if anything. But they come down to the river before sunrise and
take their swim. If you had been here this morning you would have seen them
coming out of the water just as the men are ready to go in, and you would
have observed them in their white garments, dripping like drowned rats.
That pagoda you see ahead of us with the bell tower and shining in gilt is
the only temple the Buddhists have in Benares."

"We are coming now to the Munikurnika Ghat. It is a five-syllable word, but
you can easily pronounce it," said Sir Modava, who thought he would "spell"
the captain for a time; and he was quite as familiar with the banks of the
Ganges.

"And it is quite musical," added the captain.

"Pronounce u like double o, and the rest of the letters as in English, and
you can speak it without choking," said the Hindu gentleman. "But there are
some letters in Hindu that have no equivalents in English."

"Moo-ui-koor-ni-ka Ghat," added Louis, pronouncing the word. "But what is
it all about?"

"It is the place for burning the dead, such as you saw in Bombay, but on a
much larger scale," replied Sir Modava. "You see