fpence for
the night. When in the evening we were near these places we went to
them, and saw the poor weary travellers setting to the preparation of
their simple meal--with most the only cooked meal of the day--with
apparently as great contentedness as we have when after a fatiguing day
we reach an hotel, and, having given our orders, know that speedily we
shall sit down to an ample repast. Many of these Suras have been built
at the expense of well-to-do natives impelled by different motives, for
love of name--_nam ke liye_, as the natives say, a motive for which
their countrymen continually give them credit--for the acquisition of
religious merit, and from benevolent feeling. These places are called
Dhurmsalas, places erected by righteous, good men.

[Sidenote: "WELLS OF SALVATION."]

On this our first long journey in the country, we were impressed by the
amount of traffic we saw on the road; and this impression was deepened
on future occasions. We seldom travelled a few miles without seeing
carts drawn by bullocks and laden with goods. We saw rows of camels,
walking in single file, each attached to the one before and the one
behind by a string. These belonged chiefly, though not exclusively, to
Afghans, and were laden to a large extent with the products of their
country. Every now and then we came across elephants, sometimes with a
stack of tender branches on their back, which form a large part of
their food, and at other times with persons seated sometimes on a
howdah, sometimes on a pad. There were many foot-passengers, not a few
with heavy loads on their heads. When these came in sight of a well, how
quickly did they step up to it, throw off their burden, drop into it
their brass vessel attached to a string, draw it up, and take a long,
deep draught of the precious water! As I have observed them I have
thought of the words, "With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of
salvation." To these poor toiling people the wells did appear wells of
salvation. On some days we met bands of persons--chiefly men, with a
woman here and there among them--with bamboo rods across their shoulders
with a basket at each end, their travelling gear in and on one basket,
and a vessel with Ganges water in the other. Thousands of these pilgrims
travel every year over Northern India, going from one shrine to another,
and pouring on certain images the water of the sacred river.

In our journeyings we had a singular immunity from thieves