tours we were put to
no small inconvenience, and we were not strangers to hardship; but we
look back to them with much pleasure, and think how much we would like
to set out on them again if circumstances permitted.

[Sidenote: VOYAGING ON THE GANGES.]

At an early stage of our residence at Benares voyaging on the Ganges was
a favourite mode of enjoying the cold season. There were budgerows,
vessels with two tolerably sized rooms, available for hire at a moderate
charge. It was indispensable to have with the budgerow a small boat for
the accommodation of servants and for the cooking of food. On a few
occasions I took a trip on a vessel of this description with my family,
moving up and down the river, and halting towards evening near a town
or village, which I could visit for the purpose of speaking to the
people about the Saviour. The country is so populous that there was no
difficulty in mooring our little craft in the evening near some place
where hearers could be collected. It was seldom on any tour in the
North-West we were allowed to forget that we were in the region of the
sacred river, which receives from the people divine honours, and which
in their belief confers inestimable benefit on all who bathe in its
waters. When on the bank of the river, its alleged virtues formed a
frequent subject of remark and discussion. There, as elsewhere, we had
to tell them that Ganges water, however good for refreshing and
cleansing the body, cannot wash away one spot from the soul. We had to
tell them frequently, that as the washerman who puts clothes into a box
and carefully washes it with the expectation of their coming out clean
and white will be acting a very foolish part, so they were acting an
equally futile part if they supposed that the water of the Ganges, so
useful for the body, had any effect on the spirit. In answer to the
remark that Ganges water could not do what other water could not, as it
had nothing peculiar in its composition, I have been gravely told that
two things exactly the same to the senses may be essentially different;
and the proof given was that the river Kurumnasa, which means the
destroyer of merit, takes away all merit from those who bathe in it,
while bathing in the Ganges secures an untold degree of merit, extending
not only to one's own past and future, but to an untold number of
ancestors and descendants!

When on the Ganges or its banks one continually sees proof of the
implicit trust pla