APPENDIX. 335 



stork, known as the " adjutant bird," sitting or standing upon the 

 roofs of the houses, and gazing with the utmost dignity at the 

 scene below. 



From Calcutta I crossed India by rail. The terminus of the 

 East Indian Railway on the Howrah side of the Hooghly, with 

 its many tracks, reminds one of the Pennsylvania road at Phila- 

 delphia. The ascent from the coast is very gradual, and there is 

 much sameness in the landscape for several hundred miles. A 

 novel feature, that I note as we fly along, is the telegraph poles, 

 which are mostly made of iron, although here and there is a shaft 

 of granite, which serves as an intermediate stretcher for the wires. 

 The stations, many of them, are covered with the beautiful morn- 

 ing-glory creeper, which grows here in great luxuriance over trel- 

 lised-walls and buildings, presenting a very beautiful appearance, 

 and furnishing a grateful shade. Here and there I saw threshing- 

 floors, a hard, smooth, circular piece of ground, upon which sheaves 

 of unthreshed grain are thrown and cattle driven round and round 

 upon it — the veritable old threshing-floors of Scripture — and I 

 noticed that none of the cattle were muzzled, although it is not 

 probable that the scriptural law, " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox," 

 etc., is known and obeyed here. Everywhere also I saw irrigation- 

 wells, from which oxen were raising, by means of a pulley and 

 huge leathern bucket, water for irrigating the surrounding plain. 

 In the south also I saw this being done by men, sometimes half 

 a dozen at once being perched high in the air upon enormous 

 well-sweeps, upon which they scrambled backward and forward, 

 alternately raising and depressing the long end of the sweep, and 

 raising the water by means of their weight acting on the sweep 

 as a lever. It seems strange that they should not have utilized 

 wind-power for this pui-pose, when windmills are so successfully 

 used elsewhere. 



I made my first stop at Benares, the holy city of the Hin- 

 doos. This is perhaps one of the most interesting points in India 

 — a great city, situated on the banks of the Ganges, containing a 

 large population, a majority of which, it is estimated, are pilgrims 

 who are constantly coming from all parts of India to confess their 

 sins before the celebrated gods, and to wash them away in the 

 waters of the river, which are also esteemed sacred. Almost 



