A mahomedan’s story. 
Ill 
CHAPTER IX. 
A mahomedan’s story. 
Before we reached Ghazipoor, as we were taking 
our tiffin* in the budgerow, the conversation hap- 
pened to turn upon the superstitious veneration in 
which the Hindoos hold the sanctity of their respec- 
tive castes. This, indeed, is so great as to baffle, ex- 
cept in a few instances, the efforts of the missionaries 
to turn them from their idolatries to the light of 
Christianity ; and at all times their conversion, when 
it does take place, is extremely equivocal. In the 
course of our conversation I remarked, that the oc- 
casions were rare where Hindoo women had attach- 
ed themselves to persons of a different caste, except 
the most abandoned among them, who lived by pro- 
stitution ,* and that their detestation of Mahomedans 
especially was so nationally rooted as to render it 
doubtful whether a single instance could be cited in 
which a Hindoo woman had allied herself to a wor- 
shipper of the Arabian impostor. 
" Pardon your slave, sahib,” said a Mahomedan 
servant whom I happened to have at this moment 
behind me, but I can prove in my own person that 
such a circumstance has occurred, as my wife was a 
* An Indian luncheon. 
