o had tried third-class
home on a Massagerie boat, and said it wasn't half bad! He was fortunate
in finding an uncrowded cabin.

Outside the little town were charming country scenes, and the village
streets, busy on either side with all sorts of trades, were positively
fascinating. In Bombay you have all the trades of one kind together, the
brass-workers in one street, and another trade occupies the whole of the
next street, and the houses are tall. Here are all sorts of trades side
by side, and two-storied and one-storied houses, with the palms leaning
over them. We bought for a penny or two an armful of curious grey-black
pottery with a silver sheen on its coarse surface. The designs were
classic and familiar; the cruisie, for instance, I saw in use the other
day in Kintyre, shining on a string of fresh herring, and you see it in
museums amongst Greek and Assyrian remains. At one booth were people
engaged making garlands of flowers, petals of roses, and marigolds sewn
together, and heavy with added perfume; at the next were a hundred and
one kinds of grain in tiny bowls, and at a third vegetables, beans, and
fruit.

As we come back to our carriages we pass a rest house or temple, I don't
know which, perhaps both; steps lead up to it, and it is made of square
hewn-stone, all dull-white against an orange sky. It forms as it were a
triptych. As we pass we look into its shadowy porch; in the middle
panel are two oxen, one black the other white, lying down, and a man
standing beyond them, just distinguishable by a little fire-light that
comes from the left panel. In it, there is a man sitting with his arms
over his knees fanning a little fire. In the right panel another native
sits on his heels cooking a meal; a bamboo slopes across the cell behind
him, and supports a poor ragged cloth, a purda, I suppose, and behind,
are just discernible his wife and child. These wayfarers make me at once
think of a new and original treatment for a holy family, but hold! These
passages of light and colour, form fading into nothingness, are they not
worth understanding alone, are they not more pure art without being
nailed to some tale from the past?

[Illustration]

Our table looked very pretty in the evening, with our lamp lighting up
my companions' faces, and the branches of the trees above us, with warm
brown against the night blue sky.

... Now we are off again to Bangalore, loath to leave our leafy siding
and the gentle faces a