Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/116

94 bers in this district. It is a large building, standing some two hundred yards from the street, in a spacious enclosure. Beside it is a neat tank for ablution. The front of the mosque is entirely open, and the whole interior plastered with lustrous milk-white chunam; and being now illuminated with a multitude of lamps, its appearance was very beautiful. Yet, when the eye turns from the beauty of the edifice to the stream of men pouring in to worship in the name of Mohammed, the thought of a whitened sepulchre of souls was forced upon the mind. Though not idolaters, and less debased by superstition, they are, as a class, as deeply debauched, and as deceitful, and more bigoted than the idolatrous Hindus. The power has passed from their hands, or the Christian missionary would not now be preaching at his will in the towns and villages of Hindustan.

In my former views of Madras I had seen much that was new, and strange, and interesting, but it was in my walk through Triplicane that I was first astonished. Here I was astonished, and not astonished only, but astounded and oppressed; and that not so much by the novelty of the scene, as by the denseness of the mass of immortal men that thronged its streets.