rsian fugitives
who fled to India and settled in Baroda more than a thousand years
ago, and in their temple at Navasari, a thriving manufacturing
town, the sacred fire has been burning uninterruptedly for five
hundred years. The City of Baroda has about 125,000 population.
The principal streets are lined with houses of teakwood, whose
fronts are elaborately carved. Their like cannot be seen elsewhere.
The maharajah keeps up the elephant stables of his predecessor
in which are bred and kept the finest animals in India. He also
breeds the best oxen in the empire.

Through the good offices of Mr. Fee, our consul at Bombay, we
received invitations to a Hindu wedding in high life. The groom
was a young widower, a merchant of wealth and important commercial
connections, a graduate of Elphinstone College, speaks English
fluently, and is a favorite with the foreign colony. The bride
was the daughter of a widow whose late husband was similarly
situated, a partner in a rich mercantile and commission house,
well known and respected. The family ate liberal in their views,
and the daughter has been educated at one of the American mission
schools, although they still adhere to Hinduism, their ancestral
religion. The groom's family are equally liberal, but, like many
prominent families of educated natives, do not have the moral
courage or the independence to renounce the faith in which they
were born. The inhabitants of India are the most conservative of
all peoples, and while an educated and progressive Hindu will
tell you freely that he does not believe in the gods and
superstitions of his fathers, and will denounce the Brahmins as
ignorant impostors, respect for public opinion will not permit
him to make an open declaration of his loss of faith. These two
families are examples, and when their sons and daughters are
married, or when they die, observe all the social and religious
customs of their race and preserve the family traditions unbroken.

The home of the bridegroom's family is an immense wooden house
in the native quarter, and when we reached it we had to pass
through a crowd of coolies that filled the street. The gate and
outside walls were gayly decorated with bunting and Japanese
lanterns, all ready to be lighted as soon as the sun went down.
A native orchestra was playing doleful music in one of the courts,
and a brass band of twenty pieces in military uniforms from the
barracks was waiting its turn. A hallway which l