BODIES FLOATING DOWN THE GANGES. 191 
and thus it frequently happens that numbers of dead 
bodies are seen floating down the Ganges in the course 
of a day, with birds of prey perched upon them, 
glutting their foul appetites, with all the ravenous 
eagerness of their nature, on those unsightly relics of 
mortality. How did my soul sicken at the sight, 
when, day after day, these frightful objects were forced 
upon my view, our budgerow every now and then 
coming in most unwelcome contact with 
“ A carcass 
Now falFn into disgrace, that in the nostril 
Smelt horrible.” 
Human bodies are seen at all times of the year 
floating down the Ganges in every state of decay, 
exhaling the foul steams of putrefaction, and thus 
loading the quiet air with the seeds of pestilence. 
They are looked upon by the natives with what 
among some may pass for philosophic indifference, but 
in my perhaps less intellectual view of the matter, 
with a most bestial apathy. I could not help regard- 
ing with a feeling of disgust the heartless manner in 
which the boatmen plunged their oars into - those 
lifeless frames that had so lately been animated by an 
immortal spirit, in order to prevent their contact with 
our budgerow ; there was no expression of sympathy 
in their dark and rigid lineaments — they seemed to 
look upon every deformed relic of a brief existence 
which floated down the lazy current as 
“ A carrion-death, within whose empty eye” 
there was nothing either to excite human emotion or 
to arrest one sad reflection. I have never forgotten 
