58 A COLLECTING TRIP 
minutes we came to what looked like a large rathole 
and into this hole the man pointed. Our snake char- 
mer carried a bamboo cane with him and this he 
poked into the hole, but nothing came out; so he be- 
gan to dig with a native instrument, a short-handled 
enormous hoe. Presently he came to the eobra, a 
most tremendous blaek one, and jumped back. Tom 
at once photographed him (the snake). Then this 
awful snake, persuaded by pokes from the stick, 
eame hissing out of his hole and made for us. It 
was quite exciting. Tom snapped photographs by 
the score. When he got through photographing he 
shot him and we have him now preserved in alcohol. 
The history of this snake is quite interesting. You 
see it is contrary to the Hindu religion to kill any- 
thing and so this snake, according to the chief of 
the nearby village, whither we afterwards went, had 
lived there for fifty years and had killed two people. 
They had prayed to it many times to go away, but 
naturally all to no avail, and when they saw it dead 
they could not thank us enough for killing it. The 
snake is over six feet long. 
From Lucknow we went to Benares, the oldest 
religious city in India. The Ganges river, which 
flows through it, is very sacred to the Hindus and 
every faithful Hindu must bathe in this river at 
Benares if possible once before he dies. Over a mil- 
lion pilgrims go there annually. The river is vile, 
it is so filthy. All the dead Hindus are thrown into 
it. We saw hundreds of people bathing in and drink- 
ing this holy water and right by them, floating about, 
half cremated Hindus, eats, goats, dogs and all kinds 
of dead animals. The town is full of funerals; all 
