ove and
trustfulness, and after a season spent in her temples, at her shrines,
and by her sacred stream, she sends them forth overflowing with merit
and zeal, to carry her fame to the outposts of the faith, even to
Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and to the nomadic tribes peopling Tibet
and other lands beyond the mighty Himalayas.

[Illustration: SCENE ON THE GANGES, BENARES]

Somebody with a gift for nebulous mathematics has stated that more than
two hundred thousand gods of the Hindu religion are represented at
Benares. Whether the count be valid matters little, for the city is
pre-eminent as the special domain of the fundamental god of India's
slavish religion, Siva, whose ensign--a gilt trident and perforated
disk--flashes from the pinnacles of hundreds of temples and palaces.
This uncanny city on the Ganges is naturally the Brahmins' paradise, for
these devotees constitute a governing force in the city's control, and
from this fountainhead spread their influence throughout the land of
Hind. These insinuating men of religion line the river bank, and infest
the temples, sitting like spiders waiting for their prey. Their
emissaries are everywhere in India, promoting pilgrimages, or hovering
about the entrances to the city to make certain of the arrival of the
unwary enthusiast with well lined purse. Rich and poor, high caste and
low, all come to the sacred city. Some travel in state by lordly
elephant or camel caravan, others by railway; but none follow a surer
avenue to eternal grace than those who plod on foot over the Great Trunk
highway, sweeping diagonally across India, after the manner of Kipling's
holy man from Thibet whose footsteps were watched over by _Kim_. The
"business" of Benares being the bestowal of holiness, the manufacture of
brass goods appealing to tourists is incidental in importance and
revenue. No other city of its population can have a more insignificant
trade measureable by statistics.

For three miles the religious section of Benares runs along the brow of
the plateau overlooking the chocolate-hued stream, and every foot of
this distance is curious and interesting. Falling below the disgusting
temple resorted to by pilgrims from Nepal, the Hindu region beyond
India's frontier and "the snows," is the ghat (a ghat is a large stone
stairway descending to the river), where the good Hindu gives his dead
to the flames, and the muddy inlet from the Ganges where this occurs is
dedicated to Vishnu, "t