Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/412

390 markets, and the serais where Mohammedan pilgrims stop on their way to and from Mecca. At the large serai we met the three tuneful Bokhara beggars we had seen in the serai at Amritsar. They were still red-cheeked and cheerful, still wrapped in their north-country wadded clothes on that warm morning, and they showed proudly their Cook coupon ticket for the pilgrim-ship and further journey to Mecca. For the rest, Bombay was a European city; the hotel life, the teas, the drives, all of the West only. It was hardly India to us, save as Delhi jewelers salaamed in recognition and sang to us beseechingly: "Please buy my niklass. Please take that griddle."

We had but a few days to wait for the ship to Ismailia,—hot days, when the thermometer stood at 90° for hours; a haze hung over the ocean, and the evening drives to the Breach of Kandy and Malabar Hill were none too refreshing. All Bombay turned out of doors at sunset, to drive, to walk at the edge of the ocean, to linger by the band-stands long after dark. The groups of white-clad Mohammedans gathered together to pray and to listen to the Koran, and the groups of Parsis playing cards by electric light as they sat on the grass by the Queen's statue, were the sharpest pictures in memory after Bombay and the mainland hills had faded on the horizon, and one turned gratefully toward lands where it is not always afternoon.

" you enjoy India?" my friends continued to ask me, with unhappy choice of words; and, to be literal, the answer could only be negative.