5i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ably shave their hair off. They say it cools them. You never hear 

 of a sunstroke. 



We will now turn into the main street of Madras. The large 

 building to the left is a sort of emporium, where every thing is sold. 

 The building on the right is the Bank of Madras. Passing through 

 this, at the end we come to the bazaar, and we will just pass through 

 a comer of it and see one or two of the shops, such as everybody is 

 obliged to use if he is not prepared to go to one of the few Europeans 

 in the place. There you see the cap used by the natives as a substitute 

 for a hat it is nothing but a piece of linen folded in a peculiar shape. 

 You see the two men who are making these caps are wearing similar 

 ones. Another shop is that of a native tailor. The natives themselves 

 never wear much that requires any shaping, and consequently there 

 is little for them to do in the way of cutting out. But they are won- 

 derfully good hands, nevertheless. 



Having passed these, we soon get to the hotel, hoping to find peace 

 and rest. But when the Peninsular and Oriental steamers come in 

 everybody knows it, and hundreds of the natives are on the lookout 

 to get money. They see what hotel you go to, and then begins the 

 cry for bakshish nothing but bakshish. But first of all let us 

 look at the picota, the machine that is used for drawing water. There 

 it is, and the natives run along the top of the long pole to press it 

 down, and then they turn round and run backward and foreward, 

 keeping the machine at work all day ; and in the rice-season it is very 

 disagreeable, and even perfect purgatory, to live near where one of 

 these machines is, and hear the two bits of wood rubbing together, 

 and going on "cah, cab" all night and all day. It drives you almost 

 mad. "Woe betide the unhappy fellow who gets a bed near one of 

 these picotas. 



Arrived at the hotel, you find a lot of fellows asking for bakshish, 

 and playing drums. You give them some money, only too glad to 

 be rid of them. They are succeeded by fellows who play tricks with 

 some stuff dipped in turpentine, through which a man jumps backward 

 and forward. When they are gone, they are succeeded by a conjurer 

 who shows you the way to get rid of your wife if you have got one ; or, 

 if you have not, the way you can if you get one and don't like her. 

 He ties the woman up tightly in a net first, and, when he has done that, 

 he puts a basket on the ground. He then takes the top off, and pro- 

 ceeds to put her into the basket. There is the unhappy wife in the 

 basket. The little boy plays the tom-tom, beating it all the time, the 

 fellow standing looking on. As soon as the woman is packed up, he 

 covers up the basket, and, seizing a sword, he plunges it in. The 

 woman shrieks and yells frightfully, the blood pours out in torrents, 

 the ladies who are looking on faint, and the gentlemen curse and 

 swear, and pull him away. When they tear open the basket, they find 

 it empty, and the woman comes out of the house where you are staying 



