it
cane chairs, and the rowers below with makeshift oars gradually pulled
us up and down the face of the Ghats--what oars, and what a ramshackle
tub of a boat--too old and tumble-down for a fisherman's hen run at
home.

Holy Gunga! What a crowd of men and women line the edge of these steps
knee deep in the water, and babble and jabber and pray, day after day,
and pretend to wash themselves, without soap! Only one man of the
thousands I saw was proportionably shaped; and one woman was white, an
Albino, I wish I could forget her bluey whiteness! and I saw boys doing
Sandow exercises, evidently trying to bring up their biceps--poor little
devils--how can they? They haven't time--they will be married and
reproducing other little fragilities like themselves, before they are
out of their teens!

The monkey temple is full of monkeys, and they have less apish
expressions than the priests. The Prince of Wales saw it the patron told
me, and added, "Princess give handsome presents--also Maharajahs--from
100 rupees to 50." So I gave one, very willingly, to get out, and
thought it cheap at the price. Besides the nastiness of the monkeys,
there was much blood of sacrifices drying on the ground and altars, and
this was covered with flies; there are some abominable rites in this
temple, but they are now _not supposed_ to sacrifice children.

Perhaps it was because I was tired with sight-seeing, perhaps because
the Ghats are really so terrible that I felt their picturesqueness was
lost on me, so I told my guide to direct my rowers' little energy
towards the far side of the river where there are no houses, and there
is quiet and clean river sand.

[Illustration]

On the sands we found a fakir had established his camp--quite a low
church fellow, I suppose, to the Brahmin mind. He sat over against this
sacred Benares, and told those freethinkers, who came across at times,
that his was the only one and true religion, and that the Phallic
saturnalia on the opposite shore was damned, and the Ganges water was of
no use whatever in the way of religion.

His camp covered an acre of sand and was fenced with cane, and he had
camels and cows and many followers, and though they had only one yellow
waist-cloth between them all, which he wore, he must have been well
enough off to provide the loaves and fishes for so many. He sat all the
time with his legs crossed, and read Sanskrit in a low, very well
modulated voice, whilst people from far an