ract the ignorant; and this was undoubtedly the
governing policy of a religion embodying emblems so outrageous to
Christian sensibility. This grand pagoda at Tanjore, taken as a whole,
was the most remarkable religious monument we saw in India. The city
has, as prominent local industries, the manufacture of silk, cotton, and
muslins. It is also surrounded by vast rice-fields the product of which
it largely exports to the north. Another day upon the cars traveling due
north brought us to Madras, where we found a good hotel and excellent
accommodations, to which we were in a frame of body and mind to do ample
justice.

In traveling through southern India to this point, we observed
frequently on the route of the railroad strange monuments and many ruins
of temples, pagodas, and odd structures of stone, manifestly serving in
by-gone ages some religious purpose. Now and again in open fields, or
more generally by small groves of trees, there were mammoth stone
elephants, horses, bulls and cows, more or less crumbled and decayed by
the wear of centuries, but evidently objects of worship by the people
who constructed them, being still held too sacred to be meddled with by
the ignorant and superstitious natives, whose mud hovels cluster about
them. At several points, away from any present villages or hamlets,
large irregular circles of heavy, unwrought stones were observed in open
fields, or near to some mounds of grass grown earth, perhaps covering
the remains of former shrines. These seemed of the same character and
called to mind the ancient debris which still exists at Stonehenge, and
undoubtedly marked the spot of ancient sacrifice. Large flocks of goats
tended by herdsmen were distributed over the plains, and so level is the
country that the eye could make out these groups for miles away on
either side of the track. Well cultivated plantations of sugar-cane,
plantains, rice, wheat, and orchards of fruit were constantly coming
into view from the cars. The olden style of irrigation was going on by
means of the shaduf, worked by hand, the same as was done in the East
four thousand years ago; while the very plow, rude and inefficient,
which is used upon these plains to-day, is after the fashion belonging
to the same period. Indeed, except that the railroad runs through
southern India, there seems to have been no progress there for thousands
of years. A lethargy of the most hopeless character appears to possess
the people. Thei