highest elevation of both races.

CHAPTER II

THE HOME OF MANY FAITHS

The land of the Vedas justly boasts of being the mother, or the
foster-mother, of nine great religions.

It has given birth to the greatest ethnic religion the world has seen;
it is also the motherland of one of the three great missionary faiths
of the world. These two religions--Hinduism and Buddhism--count among
their followers more than a third of the human race, and are, in some
respects, as vigorous now as at any time in their history.

It is the foster-mother of Mohammedanism and counts among her sons and
daughters more of the followers of the Prophet of Mecca than are found
in any other land.

It has also been the asylum of many followers of the Nazarene for at
least sixteen centuries; many even claim that Christianity has found a
home here since apostolic days.

There is no land comparable with India in the variegated expressions
of its beliefs which add picturesqueness to the country and diversity
to the people.

I purpose to take the reader with me on a tour with a view to
furnishing glimpses of these religions at those places where they
reveal special interest to the tourist.[1]

[Footnote 1: The principal faiths of the land, with their adherents,
were as follows, according to census of 1901:--

Hindu 207,147,026

Sikh 2,195,339

Jain 1,334,148

Buddhist 9,476,759

Parsee 94,190

Mohammedan 62,458,077

Jewish 18,228

Christian 2,923,241

These figures include Burma.]

India is a land of immense distances. But its thirty thousand miles of
railroad will enable the traveller, within a couple of months, to scan
all its points of interest, and to feast his eyes upon visions of
Oriental charm and splendour, of architectural beauty and grandeur,
and of such monuments of religious devotion as no other land can
present to the traveller and student.

Let not the Westerner indulge his fears about the discomforts and
dangers of travel in this tropical land. To an English-speaking
tourist there are a few lands only which furnish more conveniences and
facilities for travel than this same India; and travelling is cheaper
here than in any other country. Comfortable second-class travelling
rarely costs more than one cent a mile. And many, like the writer,
have travelled thousands of mile