ade of yellowish sun-dried clay, and are often roofed
with clay also--made flat on top with a little trench or gutter for
drainage. Perhaps the majority, however, have thick sloping roofs of
straw, the eaves being hardly as high as a man's head. Very thick are
the mud walls of the houses, eighteen inches or more in most cases,
and as the floor is also the bare earth, there is no woodwork about
such a dwelling except the doors and a few poles to hold up the roof.
In one or two small rooms of this kind without a window or chimney
(oftener perhaps in one room than in two) a whole family lives, cooks,
and sleeps.

{213}

[Illustration: A HINDU FAQUIR.]

[Illustration: SOME FASHIONABLE HINDUS.]
The faquirs do not like to be photographed, and this follow in the
upper picture was snapped just in the act of rising from his bed of
spikes. This is only one of many methods of self-torture practised
in the hope of winning the favor of the gods.

{214}

[Illustration: HINDU CHILDREN--NOTICE THE FOREHEAD CASTE MARKS.]

{212 continued}

The streets, if such they may be called, are often little more than
crooked water-rutted paths, so narrow that one may reach from the mud
walls of the houses on one side to the mud walls on the other, and so
crooked that you are likely to meet yourself coming back before you
get to the end. Or perhaps you wind up unexpectedly in some
_mahullah_--a group of huts representing several families of kinsfolk.
Enclosed by a mud wall, the little brown bright-eyed, black-haired,
half-naked children are playing together in the little opening around
which the houses are bunched, and the barefooted mothers are cooking
_chapatis_, spinning cotton on knee-high spinning wheels, weaving in
some wonderfully primitive way, gathering fuel, or are engaged in
other household tasks. The equipment of one of these human ant-hills,
called a home, is about as primitive as the building itself. There is,
of course, a bed or cot: it is about {215} half knee-high, and the heavy
twine or light rope knitted together after the fashion of a very
coarse fish-net is the only mattress. The coarse grain which serves
for food is stored in jars; the meagre supply of clothing hangs in one
corner of the room; there are no chairs, knives or forks. The stove or
fireplace is a sort of small clay box for the fire, with an opening on
top for the kettle or oven. In one corner of the room is the fuel: a
few small sticks