asting her eyes upward, said, 'Why have they kept me five days from
thee, my husband?' On coming to the sentries her supporters stopped;
she walked once round the pit, paused a moment, and, while muttering
a prayer, threw some flowers into the fire. She then walked up
deliberately and steadily to the brink, stepped into the centre of
the flame, sat down, and leaning back in the midst as if reposing
upon a couch, was consumed without uttering a shriek or betraying one
sign of agony.

A few instruments of music had been provided, and they played, as
usual, as she approached the fire, not, as is commonly supposed, in
order to drown screams, but to prevent the last words of the victim
from being heard, as these are supposed to be prophetic, and might
become sources of pain or strife to the living.[6] It was not
expected that I should yield, and but few people had assembled to
witness the sacrifice, so that there was little or nothing in the
circumstances immediately around to stimulate her to any
extraordinary exertions; and I am persuaded that it was the desire of
again being united to her husband in the next world, and the entire
confidence that she would be so if she now burned herself, that alone
sustained her. From the morning he died (Tuesday) till Wednesday
evening she ate 'pans' or betel leaves, but nothing else; and from
Wednesday evening she ceased eating them. She drank no water from
Tuesday. She went into the fire with the same cloth about her that
she had worn in the bed of the river; but it was made wet from a
persuasion that even the shadow of any impure thing falling upon her
from going to the pile contaminates the woman unless counteracted by
the sheet moistened in the holy stream.

I must do the family the justice to say that they all exerted
themselves to dissuade the widow from her purpose, and had she lived
she would assuredly have been cherished and honoured as the first
female member of the whole house. There is no people in the world
among whom parents are more loved, honoured, and obeyed than among
the Hindoos; and the grandmother is always more honoured than the
mother. No queen upon her throne could ever have been approached with
more reverence by her subjects than was this old lady by all the
members of her family as she sat upon a naked rock in the bed of the
river, with only a red rag upon her head and a single-white sheet
over her shoulders.

Soon after the battle of Trafalgar I heard a yo