On the morning of April fourth we bought our tickets for passage on the afternoon steamer, and set out to bid farewell to our acquaintances in the city. It was almost time to sail, when Haywood burst in upon us at Almeida’s.
“I hear,” he shouted, “that you fellows are off for India.”
We nodded.
“I’m going along,” he declared.
We scowled. We didn’t want him to go with us. But how could we stop him? He had the same right to travel on that steamer that we had. We kept silent, therefore; and, determining to shake off our unwelcome companion as soon as we landed, marched down to the dock with him, and tumbled with a crowd of coolies into a barge that soon set us aboard the steamship Kasara.
We landed in the early morning in a village of mud huts and bamboo bazaars. Here we waited only long enough to catch the train that, rumbling through the village, carried us northward.
I settled back in my seat and looked out of the window at the flying landscape. It was not much like the country of Ceylon. On either hand stretched treeless flat-lands, as parched and brown as Sahara, a desert blazed by a fiery sun, and unwatered for months. A few naked farmers toiled over the baked ground, scratching the dry soil with worthless wooden plows. A short distance beyond, we flew past wretched mud huts, too low to stand in, where the farmers burrow by night and squat on their heels by day.
I take a last ’rickshaw ride before boarding the steamer for India.
A hundred miles north of the sea-coast we halted to visit the famous Brahmin temple of Madura. Brahminism is another religion of India—older than Buddhism and much like it. Its followers believe in caste. In ancient times they inflicted severe punishment on themselves for the purification of the soul.