eat as ever
to-day." He was amused at the little men's big heads, covered with a
hundred and fifty feet, or more, of turban material, which made so
many of them look like exaggerated tulips. He noticed the phenomena of
religion, the trees smeared with paint, the Buddhist caves, the
Parsee Towers of Silence, the phallic emblems of nature-worship.
Evidently he was not converted to cremation, for he wrote, "The earth
is our mother, and it is sweeter to lie on her bosom amid blooming
flowers or beneath bending elms and sighing pines in God's Acre." He
noticed how rapidly the railways were breaking down caste. "The
locomotive, like a ploughshare turning the sward of the prairies, is
cutting up a faith whose roots run down deep into bygone ages.... The
engine does not turn out for obstructions, such as in former days
impeded the car of progress."

Though caste was stronger than the instincts of humanity, this relic
of the brutishness of conquest was not allowed to have sway in railway
carriages.

Carleton sums up his impressions of the religions of India in this
sentence: "The world by wisdom knew not God." He found his
preconceived ideas of central India all wrong. Instead of jungles,
were plateaus, forest-covered mountains, groves, and bamboo. With the
thermometer at 105 deg. in the shade, the woodwork shrunk so that the
drivers of the dak or ox-cart wound the spokes of the wheels with
straw and kept them wet, so that Carleton noticed them "watering their
carriage as well as horses." Whether it was his head that swelled or
his hat which shrunk, he found the latter two sizes too small at
night. In India, between June and October, little business is done.
The demand for cotton, caused by the American war, had set India
farmers to growing the bolls over vast areas, but the cost of carriage
to the seaboard was so great that new roads had to be built.

"Sahib Coffin" at the garrison towns was amused at both the young
British officers, with their airs, and at the old veterans, who were
as dignified as mastiffs. Living in the central land of the world's
fairy tales, he enjoyed these legends which "give perfume to
literature, science, and art." At Allahabad, in the middle of the
fort, he saw a pillar forty-two feet high, erected by King Asoka, 250
B. C., bearing an inscription commanding kindness to animals. In one
part of India, at the golden pagoda of Benares, he found the monkeys
worshipped as gods, or at least honored as di