COOLIES COOKING.
Soon after daylight our friends looked out on the landscape through which the train was moving. They saw a flat country, with villages of mud-huts scattered here and there, and with broad fields, where men were at work clearing the ground for the next season's crop. The Doctor said they were in the midst of the opium country, and the fields around them would be waving with poppies a few months later. In some places the villages were close to the track of the railway, and as it was near the hour of breakfast a good many of the natives were engaged in cooking their morning meal. The apparatus they used was exceedingly simple, as it comprised an earthen pot, in which a tiny fire was kindled, and a shallow pan for steaming the rice, which is the universal article of food. The low price of labor in India can be readily understood when we bear in mind the simple process of cooking, and the monotony of the bill of fare. From the beginning to the end of the year the only food of the native is boiled or steamed rice, and it is a remarkable fact that he never wearies of it.
A little after seven o'clock the train stopped at Mokameh station, and the conductor or guard came to tell the strangers that they would find breakfast there if they wished it, and could have a more substantial meal at Dinapoor, three hours farther on. Accordingly they took their chota hazree at Mokameh, "just to hold themselves together," as the Doctor expressed it, and when they reached Dinapoor they had good appetites, that quickened their steps to the table.
SCENE ON THE RIVER.
Occasionally the course of the railway took them near the Ganges, and at some of the points where they reached it the river was full of animation. Boats were moving on the water or tied up to the banks, and in the latter case the boatmen were gathered in picturesque groups along the shore. Some surrounded the cooking-pots, and others were assembled in front of the little shops where rice for their use was retailed. All were lightly dressed, and it was evident to the boys that the outlay of a Ganges boatman for clothing was not very heavy.
