88 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



The alley-ways which intersect the town are none 

 too wide to accommodate the stream of passers-by ; 

 but as almost every square foot of public highway 

 is privately appropriated progress becomes almost 

 impossible. Here a merchant has his brass and tin 

 wares spread upon the pavement; a little farther 

 along, a farmer squats among his vegetables in the 

 middle of the way; a step more and you have to 

 pass gingerly by a barber who sits on his haunches 

 before the employer of his services, both in the same 

 attitude, occupying all but a fraction of the high- 

 way. Then conies a sacred bullock, wandering 

 lazily along, bedecked with the flowers of pious wor- 

 shippers ; he stops to help himself casually from the 

 vegetables and fruits of the poor but unresisting 

 farmer, and continues his course among the wares 

 of the merchants, which he scatters to right and 

 left, while pedestrians edge up against the walls of 

 adjacent buildings to give him ample room. There 

 are many hundreds of these sacred animals in 

 Benares, and to injure or restrain them in the pur- 

 suit of their fancies would be an act of impiety 

 which would be visited by the utmost wrath of the 

 protecting gods. 



Filthy temples open from the alleys, as I have 

 said, at every few steps, and within, filthy priests 

 receive contributions of money and food for the pro- 



