ash out the wound, draw the lips carefully
together and secure them, binding up the bruised head in a handkerchief,
was the work of only a few moments. We were simply compensated by the
reviving smile of the little sufferer; but it was impossible to prevent
the grateful mother from lying prone upon the ground and kissing our
feet.

From Umritsar to Agra is four hundred and fifty miles. One night and day
of uninterrupted travel brought us to its interesting borders, where we
found a large and well-conducted hotel--one of the best we had chanced
upon in the country. This journey was through the plains of middle
India, and afforded some attractive and quite varied scenery, including
large sugar plantations in full stalk, thrifty mango groves, tall
palm-trees, orange-trees with their golden fruit, and far-reaching,
graceful fields of waving grain, mingled with thrifty patches of the
castor bean. These objects were interspersed with groups of cattle and
goats tended by herdsmen, who often stood leaning on long poles in
picturesque attitudes, wrapped about in flowing, sheet-like robes of
white cotton, relieved by a scarlet belt and yellow turban. These men
and their surroundings formed just such figures as a painter would
delight to throw into a picture, with the animals feeding in the
background. Now and again a group of minarets, with a central dome,
would come into view on the horizon, breaking the deep blue of the sky
with their dark shadows; or a ruined temple was seen close at hand,
charred and crumbled by the wear of the elements for centuries.

India abounds in these forsaken and half-decayed shrines, once, no
doubt, centres of busy life and religious ceremonials. Tall cranes,
pelicans, ibises, and other large water-birds rose occasionally from the
ponds, and fanned themselves slowly away. On portions of the road the
telegraph wires, running parallel with the track, were covered with tiny
birds of indigo-blue, decked with long slim tail-feathers. As we passed,
they would rise in clouds, circle about for a moment, and again settle
upon the wires where they had been roosting. Little clusters of
rice-birds, scarcely larger than butterflies, floated like colored vapor
over the fields, glistening in the warm sunlight. Wild peacocks were
seen feeding near the rails, but not in populous districts. In the early
gray of the morning, more than once on the lonely plains, a tall, gaunt
wolf was observed coolly watching the passi