a brick wall. The apartment which is next to the street is
covered by a roof, but the one next to the harbor is open at the top.
The floor is made of clay, excepting the spots under the funeral pyres,
where it consists of large flagstones. I have often stood at this place,
and it always seemed to me that our cemeteries with their monuments,
grass plots, trees, and flowers are dear places which, to some extent,
reconcile man to stern death, while here everything seemed dead and
hopeless. I will describe for the reader what I saw at one of my visits
to this place of desolation. On the flagstones in the roofless apartment
were six separate pyres, two of which were already reduced to ashes when
I entered, two others were about half consumed by the fire, only a few
bones being visible among the fire-brands; but on each of the other two
was a naked corpse, the outside of which was scorched by the flames,
while blood and water were slowly oozing out of mouth and nostrils,
while the burning flesh hissed and sputtered where the heat was most
intense, so that the whole presented a shocking sight. A score of
half-naked Brahmins were busy around the pyres muttering prayers and
making signs over the dead, while the nearest relatives walked around
the corpses uttering cries of lamentation. Particularly violent was the
grief of a young woman whose mother had just been laid upon the pyre,
deep sorrow and heart-rending lamentations testifying to the love she
had borne the deceased.

[Illustration: NIMTOOLAGHAT--PLACE OF CREMATION.]

Now the fine-split wood is piled up into a new pyre about six feet long,
two feet wide, and two and one-half feet high, and four men bring the
corpse of a man on a bier. It is covered with a white sheet, which is
taken away, so as to leave only a small piece of cloth covering the
corpse. This is the body of a Fakir, a stately man with fine features,
and past the prime of life. As soon as the body is placed on the pyre,
two Brahmins pile fine-split wood around and over it so that only the
face is visible. Then comes the eldest son of the deceased and rubbing
the face with fresh butter lays several lumps of it on the pyre. He then
walks three times around the corpse and lights with a fire-brand a whisk
of straw in his father's pyre. The fire spreads rapidly through the dry
wood. The melting butter flows through it, the flames roar and crackle,
and the dead body makes writhing muscular motions under the influen