Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/286

 In one, elephants are seen shuffling along, each followed by two or three spearmen, ready to goad the monster into submission should he get beyond the control of his driver, the mahaut, seated astride of his neck. In another a camel rears his uncouth head above the passers-by. Pack-bullocks share the roadway with four-horsed coaches, palanquins, sedans, and the native bullock-carriage. Dignified figures, in flowing robes, pace leisurely, under the shade of large mat umbrellas; while half-naked porters hurry along, carrying their loads slung on either end of a stout yet pliant bamboo, the banghy, laid across one shoulder. Beggars crouch in the wayside dust; a pariah dog slinks by; kites and crows hover above, and great adjutant birds—the Argala, bone-swallower—stand apart from the traffic, in sedate and watchful groups.

Many a ghastly tragedy was enacted in these same streets, along which haggard penitents passed, measuring with their own outstretched length every foot of the way to Kali's shrine; and ash-bedaubed jogies, religious mendicants, insolently proud of their degraded hideousness, demanded gifts in the name of alms, and cursed with horrid imprecation any who incurred their displeasure. When cholera swept the town, the dead lay on the roadside, where they were