The Bathing and Burning Ghats 



119 



Morning Strollers on the River Bank, Benares 



panic haste, for it is as good to give the 

 death rattle on Mother Ganges' breast 

 as on the Benares shore. 



The traveler coming up from Calcutta 

 gets a bewildering and better view of the 

 splendid city front as he crosses the high 

 railway bridge across the Ganges — the 

 fortified iron structure made real to 

 every one in Mrs Flora Annie Steel's 

 "Voices of the Night." Then the long 

 fantastic line of the ghats is succeeded 

 by three miles of suburbs, of dingy plas- 

 ter and adobe walls and dusty tamarind 

 trees, the commonplace railway station, 

 and the vast spaces of the Cantonment, 

 or European settlement. A British regi- 

 ment is always quartered beside this hot- 

 bed of fanaticism, political conspiracy, 

 and disaffection and all heathenish pos- 

 sibilities. The officers and the many offi- 

 cials of the civil service give Benares a 

 considerable English communitv, that 



has its church and club, its tennis courts 

 and polo ground. 



Sight-seeing begins at Benares before 

 daybreak, and one drives through the 

 two miles of uninteresting streets in the 

 starlight and gray gloaming, across to 

 the boats at the river bank. In mid- 

 winter, the "cold-weather" months of 

 Indian travel, it is bitterly cold at that 

 hour — hoar frost on the ground, blue 

 and lilac frost haze in the air. One 

 needs all the fur wraps and rugs he can 

 get to drive down to the river, yet is 

 glad for the shelter of a sun umbrella 

 before noon. 



Every one at that hour was hurrying 

 in the one direction, and when we had 

 raced down the great steps and the 

 houseboat was poled oft' from the bank, 

 all the river front was before us like a 

 theater stage lighted by the rising sun 

 striking full upon it. As the sun shone 



