however, is due more to
a desire to preserve the peace and prevent collisions between
fanatics and fakirs than for any other reason.

The great temple of Siva, the Golden Temple, is not imposing. It
is a small building with a low dome in the center and a smaller
dome at each corner, above which rises an artistic tower. These
and the roof are covered with beaten gold; hence the name of the
temple. None but Hindus are permitted to cross the threshold,
but strangers are permitted to block up the entrance and see
everything that is going on inside. It is crowded with priests,
pilgrims and sacred bulls and cows. The floor is covered with
filth, the air is fetid and the atmosphere all around it reeks
with offensive odors, suggesting all kinds of disease. There is
always a policeman to protect strangers from injury or insult,
and if you give the priests a little backsheesh they will look
out for you.

Benares is the seventh city in size in India. Ten years ago it
was fifth, but between the years 1891 and 1901 the population
was reduced 10,000 inhabitants by cholera, famine and plague,
and it dropped down two pegs in the list. It is a miracle that
the entire population does not perish, because, notwithstanding
the cautions and efforts of the government, every sanitary law
is violated by thousands of people daily. The temples and other
places frequented by pilgrims are filthy hotbeds of disease, and
the water they drink from the holy wells is absolutely putrid,
so that the odor can be detected a considerable distance. And
yet half a million devotees from every part of India come here
annually, and not only drink the poisonous stuff, but bathe in
the polluted river and carry back to their homes bottles of it
carefully corked and labeled, which the doctors tell us is an
absolutely certain method of distributing disease. While almost
all the large cities of India increased in population during the
the last decade, Bombay and Benares fell off, the former from
plagues and famine and the latter from all kinds of contagious
and other diseases.

It is a city of great wealth and has many handsome and costly
palaces and mansions which have been erected there by pious Hindu
princes, rajahs, merchants, bankers and others who spend a part of
each year within its sacred precincts, renewing their relations
with the gods just as other people go to the springs and seashore
to restore their physical vitality. The residential architecture