ds a tall Sikh
policeman to show me in. The temple is only a small tapering marble
edifice about thirty feet high, surmounted by a gilded crescent, and
resting on a hollow plinth, the hollow of which provides quarters for the
priest. One is expected to remove his foot-gear before going inside, the
same as in a Mohammedan mosque. A taper is burning in a niche of the
wall; mural paintings of snakes, many-handed gods, bulls, monsters, and
mythical deities create a cheap and garish impression. In the centre of
the floor is a marble linga, and grouped around it a miniature man,
woman, and elephant; before these are laid offerings of flowers. The
interior of the temple is not more than eight feet square, a mere cell in
which the deities are housed; the worshippers mostly perform their
prostrations on the plinth outside. The villagers gather in a crowd about
the temple and watch every movement of my brief inspection; they seem
pleased at the sight of a Sahib honoring their religion by removing his
shoes and carefully respecting their feelings. When I descend from the
plinth they fall back and greet me with smiles and salaams.

The rain clears up and I forge ahead, finding the kunkah road-bed none
the worse for the drenching it has just received. Hour by hour one gets
more surprised at the multitudes of pedestrians on the road; neither rain
nor sun seems to affect their number. Some of the costumes observed are
quite startling in their ingenuity and effect. One garment much affected
by the Rajput women are yellowish shawls or mantles, phool-karis, in
which, are set numerous small circular mirrors about the circumference of
a silver half-dollar; the effect of these in the bright Indian sun, as
the wearer trudges along in the distance, is as though she were all
ablaze with gems. Whenever I wheel past a group of Rajput females, they
either stand with averted faces or cover up their heads with their
shawls.

The road-inspector's bungalow at Chattee affords me shelter, and an
intelligent native gentleman, who speaks a misleading quality of English,
supplies me with a supper of curried rice and fowl. Hard by is a Hindoo
temple, whence at sunset issue the sweetest chimes imaginable from a peal
of silver-toned bells. My charpoy is placed on the porch facing the east,
and soon the rotund face of the rising moon floats above the trees, and
the silvery tinkle of the bells is followed by a chorus of jackals paying
their noisy compliments