From Madras the steamer continued her course up the coast, and touched at two or three ports, where the boys went on shore and wandered for a few hours about the towns and villages; but they did not find much to interest them after what they had already seen. As they returned from one of these excursions the captain of the ship informed them that he had an interesting piece of intelligence to convey, as he was about to stop at a port which was not on the regular programme.
Frank asked what the place was, and on learning its name he immediately went to Doctor Bronson to tell the good news.
"The captain says we are to stop at Pooree," the youth exclaimed; "and Pooree is another name for Juggernaut."
"And we'll see the famous idol of Juggernaut," said Fred, "that crushes thousands of people under its wheels every year."
The Doctor smiled, and asked if they wanted to see the great procession and witness the crushing. Thereupon Frank and Fred turned pale, and began to wish that the steamer would not stop there, as they did not desire to see any suffering that it was in their power to prevent. The deaths of these hundreds of fanatics who throw themselves under the wheels of the car of Juggernaut would be a horrible spectacle, and they wanted to be as far from the scene as possible.
"I may as well tell you now as later," said Doctor Bronson, "that the story of the car of Juggernaut and its terrible slaughter is almost entirely a fiction. The car exists, and it makes its annual procession from the temple to the country-house of the god, where it is dragged by thousands of worshippers. Here are the facts of the case as given by Mr. W. W. Hunter, who lived a long time in the district of Orissa, and was director-general of the statistical survey of India. He published a book on Orissa a few years ago, and gave particular attention to the history of the car of Juggernaut. Here is what he says of the slaughter of the pilgrims:
INHABITANTS OF POOREE.