hus, who have built
themselves grass huts in a very picturesque spot, where the Ganges
River emerges from the Himalaya Mountains, and commences its long
course through the densely-populated plains of India. It is at Hardwar
that the great Ganges Canal, one of the great engineering feats of the
British rule, has been taken from the river to vivify thousands of
acres of good land in the United Provinces to the south, and supply
their teeming populations with bread. A little above the town of
Rurki a massive aqueduct carries the whole volume of the canal high
above a river flowing beneath, and yet higher up two river-beds are
conducted over the canal, which passes beneath them. The uniqueness
of this piece of engineering is dependent on two other factors--the
crystalline limpidity of the blue water and the glorious scenery
which forms a setting to all.

I no longer needed to inquire why the common consent of countless
generations of Hindus had made this neighbourhood their Holy Land;
the appropriateness of it flashed on my mind the moment the glorious
vista opened before me. There beyond me were the majestic Himalayas,
the higher ranges clothed in the purest dazzling white, emblem of the
Great Eternal Purity, looking down impassive on all the vicissitudes
of puny man, enacting his drama of life with a selfish meanness so
sordid in contrast with that spotless purity; and yet not unmoved,
for is there not a stream of life-giving water ever issuing from those
silent solitudes, without which the very springs of man's existence
would dry up and wither? And then, in the nearer distance, the lower
ranges clothed in the richest verdure of the primeval forest, vast
tracts not yet subdued by the plough of man, where the religious
devotee can strive to rise from Nature to Nature's God, amid those
solitudes and recesses where no handiwork of man distracts the soul
from the contemplation of the illimitable and mysterious First Cause.

While looking down from the elevation of the canal, there was
spread out at our feet a bucolic scene of peace and plenty, where
villages and hamlets, surrounded by green fields and cultivation, lay
scattered among sylvan glades, drinking in vivifying streams which
had journeyed down by chasm and defile, through valley and meadow,
from those distant solitudes.

How natural it seemed that in those early Vedic ages, when the
reverence for the forces of Nature was still unsullied by the
man-worship engend