zodiac, meridian line, and astronomical appliances
are still distinctly traced upon heavy stones, arranged for celestial
observations. This proves that astronomy was well advanced at Benares
hundreds of years before Galileo was born, and it will be remembered
that the astronomers of India first settled the fact of the rotation of
the earth. The Man-Mundil, as this observatory is called, forms a most
important historic link between the days of the Pharaohs and the
nineteenth century.

Here, as in many other Eastern cities, we found men, women, and children
lying down and sleeping in the streets and on the roadways, wherever
fatigue overcame them,--all places were the same to them, vast numbers
knowing no other home than the ground upon which they stood. And here,
as in Calcutta, we saw the bodies of the dead being cremated in public,
in the open air, along the river's bank, the pyres being prepared as
already described. On one of the bodies brought to the funereal pile,
covered with a plain sheet, it was observed that flowers had been
strewn, and pale, white rose-buds were in the folded hands. It was the
body of a young girl, thus decked by loving hands for her bridal of
death, a token of affection and tenderness no one could fail to respect.
Five or six women followed, with downcast eyes, the four men who bore
the body upon a stretcher, the sad and simple cortege of one who had
doubtless been well beloved, "too early fitted for a better state."
Something held us riveted to the spot, though we knew very well what
must follow. After a few moments the red, scorching flames wound
themselves gluttonously about that youthful figure, as though reveling
in their victim, and quickly all was blackness and smouldering ashes.

To such extremes do the pilgrims who visit Benares often carry their
religious fanaticism, that it has been found necessary by the English
government to organize a police system to prevent their deliberately
drowning themselves in the sacred waters, actuated by a firm belief that
their souls will be at once wafted to paradise. Women are especially
prone to the crime of infanticide, imagining that they can do nothing
better for their female children than to intrust them to the bosom of
the Ganges, which will bear them safely to the ocean of eternity. Poor
creatures! From their stand-point of poverty, with its endless
deprivations and hardships, and the hopeless condition of their sex in
the East, who can be