terously about their bodies, leaving the lower legs
and the right arm bare. A few cover the face, but the great majority
leave it exposed. Many are hideously disfigured by large nose rings,
while others have small rings or jewels set in one nostril. Nearly every
woman wears bracelets on arms and wrists, heavy anklets and, in many
cases, massive gold or silver rings on the big toes. In some cases what
look like heavy necklaces are wound several times around the ankles. It
is the custom of the lower and middle classes not to put their savings
in a bank, but to melt down the coin and make it into bracelets or other
ornaments, which are worn by their women. Here in Calcutta also one sees
for the first time hundreds of men and women wearing the marks of their
caste on their foreheads, either painted in red or marked in white with
the ash of cow dung.

Although the main streets of Calcutta are distinctly European, a walk of
a few blocks in any direction from the main business section will bring
you into the native or the Chinese quarter, where the streets are
narrow, the houses low between stories and the shops mere holes in the
wall, with only a door for ventilation. In one quarter every store is
kept by a Chinese and here a large amount of manufacturing is done. In
other quarters natives are carrying on all kinds of manufacture, in the
same primitive way that they worked two thousand years ago. The
carpenter uses tools that are very much like those in an American boy's
box of toy tools; the shoemaker does all the work of turning out a
finished shoe from the hide of leather on his wall. Outside these stores
in the street the most common beast of burden is a small bullock of the
size and color of a Jersey cow; These little animals pull enormous
loads, and they are so clever that when they see an electric car
approaching they will start on the run and clear the track.

Many of the houses in the native quarter of Calcutta are built of adobe,
with earthen tiles, which make them bear a strong resemblance to the
adobe dwellings of the Spanish-Californians before the American
occupation. In many cases very little straw is used in this adobe, for
the walls have frequently crumbled away under the heavy rains of winter.
Other houses are built of brick, faced with plaster, which is either
painted or whitewashed.

What impresses any visitor is the squalor and the wretchedness of these
homes of India's poor. The clothing of a whole fam