hich may be the last chance.

CHAPTER XX.

Benares, the Holy City of the Hindoos--Its Temples and Worshipers--The
Sacred Monkeys.

Returning from Allahabad I visited Benares, the holy city of India and
the centre of Hindooism or Brahminism, its religion, art and literature.
It is situated on an elevation on the east bank of the Ganges about four
hundred and seventy-six miles from Calcutta. Benares is to the Hindoos
what Jerusalem was to the Jews, Rome to the mediaeval Christians, and
what Mecca is to the Mohammedans, and it is visited by thousands of
pilgrims and penitents every year. The learned men or Pundits of India
have their academies and gatherings there, and many of its princes and
nobles have their costly palaces in which they usually spend a few weeks
every year.

The whole city seems abandoned to sacrificing priests and idolatry in
its most disgusting forms. There are one thousand four hundred temples
for idols, and nearly three hundred mosques, besides hundreds of
shrines, holy graves, wells, trees and other objects of Hindoo worship.
Benares is a very old city; great and renowned when Babylon and Nineveh
were competing with each other; when Tyre sent out her colonists; when
Athens was in her infancy; before Rome existed, and long before
Nebuchadnezzar had carried the Israelites into captivity.

We are accustomed to look at hoary ruins with reverent interest, and it
is no wonder that the first sight of the historical monuments of Benares
made a profound impression on my mind. I felt almost as if transported
to a time far back in the misty past, and found it difficult to realize
that I walked the same streets, lanes and market places where the
Babylonian heralds of war and the ambassadors of Alexander the Great
were received by the same people whose descendants still inhabit the
same city, and have retained the same civilization and the same
institutions through all the intervening centuries.

[Illustration: HINDOO TEMPLES.]

The sun cast its last rays over the memorable city when I had the
pleasure of seeing it for the first time. At a distance of two miles I
could see the palaces and temples with their domes, cupolas, and
minarets merged into a confused mass, and on the summit of the hill
towered the renowned mosque of Emperor Arungzebes with two minarets, the
spires of which rise two hundred and fifty feet above the level of the
Ganges. It was a beautiful oriental picture, the most beauti