still or be mentally inactive. The view of the landscape below is
claimed to be the most beautiful in the whole world. Beneath the
terraces on which we walk are seen smiling valleys, one below another,
away down far into the plains of Bengal, variegated by rivers, forests,
cities and many-colored fields, and far away to the distant north
against the blue horizon, one great mountain rises above and beyond
another, capped with eternal crowns of snow high up among the restless
clouds--twenty thousand feet higher than Darjieling, and twenty-nine
thousand feet above the sea,--over five miles in height.

The loftiest peaks are Kinchinjunga forty-five miles, and Mount Everest,
sixty miles distant from Darjieling. It is claimed that these peaks can
be seen for a distance of three hundred miles in clear weather. There
these mighty giants stand clad in snowy garbs, like sentinels at the
portals of infinite space, seemingly belonging more to heaven than to
earth. No wonder that the Hindoos look at them with solemn awe, for cold
and insensible to beauty and grandeur must he be, who does not, at this
sight, feel his own littleness and the inconceivable greatness of the
creator.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Cholera and other Diseases--The Causes of Cholera--How the Soldiers are
Protected Against it--Sudden Deaths--Fevers--The Teraj--Contempt for
Death--The Cholera Hospital--The Sisters of Mercy--The Princes
Tagore--Hindoo Family Customs--Hindoo Gallantry--A Hindoo Fete.

The cholera has its home proper in India, and breeds in the Bengal
lowlands after the rainy season, which closes in the fall. Its ravages
are most pronounced in the month of December, but cases are quite
frequent the whole year round. During my second year's sojourn in India
it was very violent in December, but I would scarcely have known of it
at all if my official duties had not made it incumbent on me to report
from the board of health of India to that of the United States at
Washington. Now and then I was reminded of the existence of the malady
by the sudden deaths of my acquaintances. On three different occasions I
enjoyed a pleasant evening entertainment in company with a number of
friends, one of whom was not only dead, but even buried before the next
morning.

Although India is ravaged by different deadly diseases, especially a
kind of fever of which people die after one or two days' sickness;
still, disease and death are scarcely ever mentioned among