An Idol On The Shore.

A Sacred Cow.

One Of The Many.

Sensation Rock.

Heart-sick from an inspection of these temples we turned to study a few of those who came to worship here. Despite their personal unattractiveness, these people rivet attention and awaken thought. They are a part of that vast caravan which for at least thirty centuries has been marching with unbroken ranks toward this mysterious river and its hallowed shrines. It has been estimated that from three to five hundred thousand people assemble annually at certain localities on the Ganges. The long procession never stops. Its coming is as certain as the stream itself. Its individuals disappear progress, come by rail, packed, cattle-like, in third-class cars; but many must still make the pilgrimage on foot, toiling for months on dusty roads beneath a burning sun, and begging by the way for sufficient rice and water to sustain them. Some poor fanatics actually cover spaces of from five hundred to seven hundred miles by marking off the distance with their bodies on the dusty ground, as we would measure it with a five-foot pole. Thou-sands of aged men and women who start upon this pilgrimage, never see their homes again; but this to them is nothing, if they can only hold out long enough to bathe their trembling limbs in the hallowed Ganges.

A Brahmin And His Attendant.

A Few Pilgrims To The Ganges.

Then they are satisfied to die. Formerly Hindu parents used to throw their children into the river to propitiate its deity; but this is now forbidden by the British Government.

We saw at Benares one of the old cars of Juggernaut. I was surprised to find it a comparatively light vehicle; but I was told that, when loaded with heavy idols and numerous priests, it would quickly crush the life out of any victim who cast himself beneath its wheels, - a mode of suicide now prohibited by the English. The one redeeming feature in these scenes of superstition and idolatry is the terrible sincerity behind them all. Of course, there are among these people many impostors, and Hindu priests are always trading on the fears and the ignorance of their deluded victims. But where the hypocrites may number perhaps fifty thousand, there are in India to-day one hundred and ninety million Hindus, striving by tears and sweat and blood to win the favor of their gods. Life is to them a desperate struggle to escape from future suffering - a struggle as intense and agonizing as that by which a man, imprisoned in a railroad wreck, endeavors to free himself from the approaching flames.

Nowhere on earth are such appalling sacrifices made by religious devotees as in this valley of the Ganges. Some stand for months and years with an extended arm until it withers and becomes immovable; others will clench the hand until the nails grow through the flesh; some hang from hooks inserted in their backs, or leap through sacrificial fires, while others still live destitute and naked like wild beasts. A religious faith which can inspire fortitude to endure sufferings like these, is, no doubt, cruel and degrading; but it is at least sincere. Hence, Hinduism is the most important fact the Government of India has to deal with ; for it controls nearly two hundred million people in the most minute details of life.

A Car Of Juggernaut.

I do not know of any race on earth which fills me with such pity as this race of India. One hundred and fifty millions of them live in hovels. Thousands, no doubt, are always suffering from the pangs of hunger. With either too much or too little rain, the lives of millions are endangered. In 1876, in spite of the expenditure by the British Government of fifty-five million dollars, five million natives died in India from famine, or more than the entire population of the State of Pennsylvania. From carefully prepared statistics it is estimated that in the district of Bengal thirteen millions are always half-starved; and that in the whole of British India, two-fifths of the people are fairly well off, two-fifths have to struggle constantly for an existence, while the remaining onefifth (at least fifty millions) are in a condition of chronic hunger. But even worse than this appalling poverty of the body is the thraldom of the soul. Nowhere else on earth does there prevail such social tyranny as has existed here for more than three thousand years, under the name of Caste. This is a system so gigantic in extent, and so deeply rooted in the prejudices of mankind, that now its code appears as insurmountable as the Himalayas and the dividing lines between the various castes as pitiless as walls of fire. If there were no other reason why the Hindu religion, as it exists, should be condemned, the fact that it has created and maintains today this monstrous system of oppression would be enough to make it utterly alien to all the noblest instincts of the human heart.