ive you a diagram sketched by your special artist on the
spot.

[Illustration]

This is an excellent representation of a first-class railway carriage
in India without meretricious embellishments.

The second-class compartments, for which two-thirds of the
first-class rates are charged, have six narrow bunks instead
of four, the two extras being in the middle supported by iron
rods fastened to the floor and the ceiling. The woodwork of all
cars, first, second, and third class, is plain matched lumber,
like our flooring, painted or stained and varnished. The floor is
bare, without carpet or matting, and around on the wall, wherever
there is room for them, enormous hooks are screwed on. Over the
doors are racks of netting. The bunks are plain wooden benches,
covered with leather cushions stuffed with straw and packed as
hard as tombstones by the weight of previous passengers. The
ceiling is of boards pierced with a hole for a glass globe, which
prevents the oil dripping upon your bald spot from a feeble and
dejected lamp. It is too dim to read by and scarcely bright enough
to enable you to distinguish the expression upon the lineaments
of your fellow passengers. A scoop net of green cloth on a wire
springs back over the light to cover it when you want to sleep:
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The toilet room
is Spartan in its simplicity, and the amount of water in the
tanks depends upon the conscientiousness of a naked heathen of
the lowest caste, who walks over the roofs of the cars and is
supposed to fill them from a pig skin suspended on his back.
You furnish your own towel and the most untidy stranger in the
compartment usually wants to borrow it, having forgotten to bring
one himself. You acquire merit in heaven, as the Buddhists say, by
loaning it to him, but it is a better plan to carry two towels,
in order to be prepared for such an emergency.

As we were about starting upon a tour that required several thousand
miles of railway travel and several weeks of time, the brilliant
idea of avoiding an risks and anxiety by securing a private car
was suggested, and negotiations were opened to that purpose,
but were not concluded because of numerous considerations and
contingencies which arose at every interview with the railway
officials. They are not accustomed to such innovations and could
not decide upon their own terms or ascertain, during the period
before departure, what the connecting lines would