of night--where the people are. There is the sudden burst
and s-s-swish of the rockets as they rush up into the night, and fall in
showers of colours on the black mass and the water; and there is the
hoarse roar of many voices, mingled with the bleat of many goats. I
stand and look, and know what is going on. They are killing those
goats--thirty thousand of them--killing them now.

Is Pan dead? . . .

Morning, blazing sun, relentless sun, showing up all that is going on.
We are crossing the river-bed in our cart. "Don't look!" says my
comrade, and I look the other way. Then we separate. She goes among the
crowds in the river bed, where the sun is hottest and the air most
polluted and the scenes on every side most sickening, and I go up the
bank among the people. We have each a Tamil Sister with us, and farther
down the stream another little group of three is at work. In all seven,
to tens of thousands. But we hope more will come later on.

We have arranged to meet at the cart at about ten o'clock. The bandy-man
is directed to work his way up to a big banyan tree near the temple. He
struggles up through a tangle of carts, and finds a slanting
standing-ground on the edge of the shade of the tree.

All the way up the bank they are killing and skinning their goats. You
look to the right, and put your hands over your eyes. You look to the
left, and do it again. You look straight in front, and see an extended
skinned victim hung from the branch of a tree. Every hanging rootlet of
the great banyan tree is hung with horrors--all dead, most mercifully,
but horrible still.

We had thought the killing over, or we should hardly have ventured to
come; but these who are busy are late arrivals. One tells oneself over
and over again that a headless creature cannot possibly feel, but it
looks as if it felt . . . it goes on moving. We look away, and we go on,
trying to get out of it,--but thirty thousand goats! It takes a long
time to get out of it.

We see groups of little children watching the process delightedly. There
is no intentional cruelty, for the god will not accept the sacrifice
unless the head is severed by a single stroke--a great relief to me. But
it is most disgusting and demoralising. And to think that these children
are being taught to connect it with religion!

With me is one who used to enjoy it all. She tells me how she twisted
the fowls' heads off with her own hands. I look at the fine little brown
hands, suc