ent on these terms, but I think we may be pretty sure that, from
sanitary motives, if from no others, they would in future take the
Sacrament in a place where they would not be liable to such contact. Their
feelings and senses would be shocked by such contact as I have imagined,
but their sensations would merely bear the same proportion to the
sensations of a high-caste vegetarian Hindoo who had to drink after a
Pariah that a trifling cause of disgust would bear to the most intolerable
and lasting degradation. Now, to people in this country, this may seem an
extraordinary thing; but they will think it less extraordinary when I tell
them that, if I could not take the Sacrament unless amongst Pariahs, I
would never take it again, unless perhaps, I were to put myself bodily
into one of Professor Tyndall's cotton-gauze air-cleansers, and drink the
sacramental wine after it had been boiled at a temperature of 212 degrees,
and passed through a filter. And when I talk of the lowest castes as
carrion-eaters, I must tell the reader that I am not in the slightest
degree guilty of exaggeration, and that they are carrion-eaters in exactly
the same sense that vultures are carrion-eaters. In fact, these men never
get any meat unless that of animals that have died of disease; and as in
these climates decomposition is extremely rapid, the reader can imagine
the result of coming in contact with a man who has, perhaps, a few hours
before been eating a mass of diseased and half decomposed meat. And in
case the reader should not be able to imagine what the result is, I may
mention the following circumstance. A few days after I had killed a bison
I had occasion to point out some pieces of sawn wood which I wished to be
removed from the jungle to my house, and I accordingly took with me a
native overseer, and two coolies to carry the timber. When I was pointing
out the pieces to them, I smelt a strong smell of putrid meat, which
seemed to fill the air so entirely that I at once concluded that a tiger
must have killed some animal and left the carcase near the spot. My
overseer and myself looked about everywhere, but at last happening to pass
the coolies, I at once perceived that the smell arose from their breath,
and on questioning them, I found that before coming to work they had been
feasting on decayed bison flesh. In fact, after killing a bison, we could
never go near our coolies for some days afterwards. But to see a party of
these men sitt