84 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
impetus. The mother was busily employed in wash- 
ing her long black hair, when a sharp quick shriek 
from one of the bathers called her attention to the 
spot on which she had laid her infant. She only saw 
the ripple on the surface of the stream, but this was 
enough to satisfy her that the object of her maternal 
yearning was in jeopardy. She instantly threw her 
dripping hair back upon her shoulders, her dark eye 
dilating with the intense expression of her resolved 
and holy purpose, and dashed fearlessly into the deep 
turbid waters. She rose buoyantly upon their surface, 
and, having reached the spot where her child had 
sunk, disappeared beneath them. She rose again at 
a considerable distance, made for the shore, and cast 
herself upon the ground in despair. Her agony was 
intense ; and as every expression of consolation from 
her companions seemed only to aggravate it, she was 
soon left by the other bathers upon the ground be- 
wailing her bereavement. I could not venture to in- 
trude upon the sacred privacy of her grief, as I knew 
it would only be adding the pain of imagined pollution, 
which my immediate presence would have inflicted, 
to that of her present desolation. 
The issue of this melancholy event was still more 
sad. The body of the child was recovered some hours 
after it had fallen into the river, and the wretched 
mother mourned over it day after day, until it was in 
such a state of dreadful decomposition, that no one 
could approach it without disgust. The poor woman 
was a few days after attacked with fever, and died. 
She was the wife of a Sepoy. I had the curiosity 
to go and see her the day after the accident. She was 
