erside, and still others
demanded hurried prayers for the dying, whose last breath would be drawn
by the bank of the sacred river. Incidentally the priests sold charms
and amulets guaranteed to bring good fortune. Most of the payments were
in copper pice, four of which make one of our cents, but many of these
priests had great heaps of this coin in front of them, showing that
though India may be suffering from a bad harvest the faker may always
feed on the fat of the land.

The spectacle, however, which stamps Benares upon the memory is the
burning of the dead at a ghat by the Ganges. This ghat is reserved
exclusively for the cremation of Hindoo dead. No Mussulman can use it.
It was about eight o'clock in the morning when my boat reached this
burning ghat. Already one body had been placed on a funeral pyre of
wood. The guide said this body was that of a poor man who had no
relatives or friends, as the place where the relatives sit until the
cremation is complete was empty. Soon, however, two men came rushing
down the stone steps with a corpse strapped to a bamboo stretcher. The
body was that of a woman, dressed in red garments, which signified that
she was a married woman. Unmarried women are arrayed in yellow and other
colors, while men must be content with white. The stretcher-bearers
placed their burden with its feet in the Ganges and then went in search
of wood which is purchased from a dealer. Soon they had a supply, which
they piled up in the form of a bier, and on this they placed the woman's
corpse. Then one of the men, who, the guide said, was the dead woman's
husband, with tears streaming from his eyes, bore some of the water of
the Ganges to the bier, exposed the face of the dead and poured the
sacred water upon her mouth and her eyes. Then while his companion piled
wood above the body the husband sought the low-caste Hindoos who sell
fire for burning the body. He soon returned with several large bundles
of coarse straw, one of which was smoking. Seven times the husband
passed around the bier with the smoking straw before he applied the
flame to the wood. The fire licked greedily at the wood, and soon the
flames had reached the body. Then the husband and his friend repaired to
a stand near by, from which they watched the cremation.

Meanwhile two other bodies had been rushed down to the water's edge. One
was evidently that of a wealthy woman, dressed in yellow silk and borne
by two richly garbed attendants.