Before the time of railways large public travelling carriages, called diligences, were used in France, Switzerland, and other European countries. They were great, cumbrous vehicles carrying many passengers with their luggage. In out-of-the-way country districts, and among the mountains, these old-fashioned diligences are still to be seen, clattering along the dusty roads or toiling up the steep passes across the Alps.
CHAPTER IV
JOURNEYS THROUGH INDIA
We have seen some of the strange vehicles of England and Europe, and now we will travel eastward into Asia. There, as is only right, we must go first to India, for the great peninsula is one of King George's dominions, and its inhabitants, whether they be black, brown, or yellow, Hindoo or Mahomedan, civilised or savage, are as much British subjects as we are ourselves.
State Elephant in India.
India is an immense country, extending as it does from the Himalayas in the north to Point de Galle in the extreme south of Ceylon, and if we travel through the country we shall find many curious vehicles. Some of them are exactly the same as those which were in use hundreds of years ago, for India is a conservative land, and, although there are railways and tramways there now, while fine motor-cars speed along the roads, most of the natives are content with old ways, and travel through the country districts in the quaint bullock carts and palanquins that satisfied their ancestors in the days before the powers of steam and electricity had been discovered.
