It is four miles to Sekrole, the European quarter, and to reach it we drove through the narrow, crowded lanes of the native town, clustering most thickly near the river. Mud has been a mighty factor in the making of Benares. It is of mud that the walls of the huts are built; mud that forms the fence around fields and compounds; mud that protects the newly planted trees; and, lastly, it is mud in which the little brown babies in the streets are dabbling to their heart's content.
There are hedges and bushes—rather trees I should call them—of cacti growing in all directions. Here we saw weaving being carried on by the roadside, in a very primitive fashion. A double row of stakes were placed at long intervals, and women, walking up and down, were winding the thread in and out. It produced a very pretty effect when the thread was of bright red, and the simple loom some yards in extent. Then we saw for the first time that comical little native carriage called the ekka. The trappings of the pony are gaudy, and the bamboo shafts are attached by coloured cords to the high-peaked Spanish collar. The carriage itself is like a diminutive gig with a bamboo head, producing exactly the effect of a "curricle" standing on end.
On arriving at Clark's Hotel we found we were just in time for evening service, for which the bell was tolling from the church in the compound opposite.
Monday, January 19th.—By seven o'clock we found ourselves driving down to the banks of the Ganges, to see one of the most animated and picturesque sights of India.
The bathing-ghât is a bright-coloured hive, swarming with a religious people performing the ceremony of bathing in the sacred waters. A "budgerow," or ancient barge, glides slowly with us up and down along this splendid river frontage. For one mile these palaces and temples line the bank, facing every way, joining each other at right angles, with ancient stairways and broken walls hidden under the foliage of some sacred peepul or feathery tamarind.
These palaces take pink or green or yellow tints—those tender shades, those pale varieties, seen only in eastern climes, under the true azure clearness of an eastern sky. The dark weather stains and the crumbling cornices are all in harmony. The basement of these palaces presents a plain surface of wall, and the living rooms are in the two upper stories, whence spring the arches and the pillars, the fretwork of the balconies, the carvings,—all those varieties and medleys of architecture which render these palaces so quaintly curious. For the most part they belong to the native princes, the maharajahs and rajahs, who, beside their provincial palaces, each have one at Benares, where they come yearly to perform a cleansing pilgrimage. The women of the zenana and the members of the household are brought here also to die.
Benares Bathing Ghât.
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