ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 219 



has changed in recent years. A friend of mind, well known 

 throughout the Presidency for her work in the Zenanas, 

 told me that she had seen a slave-woman hanging near the 

 bottom of a deep well, the water — in which water-snakes 

 were swimming — reaching to her knees. She was unable 

 to escape from the snakes by raising her cramped limbs out 

 of the icy, underground water, or — a poor alternative — end 

 her sufferings by drowning herself. When she had hung 

 there long enough they would haul her up, in what condition 

 I cannot imagine, not having seen her ; but in this special 

 instance, at the visitor's request, the woman was brought 

 to the surface sooner. She was crying feebly, but made 

 no complaint. 



Knowing the ways of natives in general, if not the usages 

 of Zenanas, pretty well by then, it was foolish of me to ask 

 why the whole place where such things were done was not 

 routed out. Could not Mrs. F., with her intimacy in these 

 Zenanas, effect what no one else could ? The answer she 

 gave me was so obviously true that I might have guessed 

 it beforehand. No, and for that very reason. Were she to 

 publish abroad the wrongs she witnessed, and which it was 

 her lifework to strive to remedy, there would be an end for 

 ever of that work from the inside, where no authority could 

 reach. Moral influence was all she could even try to use ; 

 for it would take more than the ill-treatment or murder of 

 a slave-girl to rouse their lord against his favourites. She 

 would be much more likely to get herself shut out if she 

 attempted it, and then good-bye to any future hopes of 

 improvement as far as she herself was concerned in them. 

 From the outside nothing whatever could be done. That 

 also is India. 



Mrs. F. told me that a very hard part of her work lay in 

 controlling herself when an eye-witness of indignities un- 

 speakable — of outrages inflicted on womanhood by women, 

 of hopeless slavery ; in trying to appear as though she did 



