Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/238



the month of June, 1850, it was decided that two members of the Mission should make a tour, for the double purpose of preaching in the villages and surveying the ground for a new station in the interior. Our preparations were necessarily more complicated than those of the American traveller, who breakfasts in Philadelphia, dines in New York, and sups in Boston, and who, at his journey's end, can find food and lodging, bedding and light in a well-furnished hotel. The steam-car had not yet made its appearance on the plains of the Carnatic; so that we must take a somewhat slower conveyance—the palankeen.

A bullock-cart having been sent on in advance, with our tent and a large supply of tracts and Scriptures, our palankeens were brought to the house to be packed. Mine was fresh from the maker's hands, and with its well-var- 204