Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/270

230 is drawn from a well or deep tank. From her nose hangs a ring, others are in her ears, and a necklace around her neck; and on her wrist she wears bangles, a kind of bracelet. Her arm is marked below the shoulder with sacred ashes, in honour of the god Siva.

Men, boys, women, and girls, with one accord, united in gazing with astonished curiosity at the strange apparition of two white men with their attendants upon the banks of their retired tank. It was too late to preach: we therefore got our tea—nowhere more refreshing than amid the langour and exhaustion of an Indian journey—and after bathing, spread our palankeen mattresses upon the ground, and slept undisturbed, except by the intrusion of half-starved dogs, searching for any thing worth carrying off.

Long before sunrise, the little birds in the tamarind-trees waked us with their morning song. Already the women were coming to the tank for water, and the men gathered round, curious to watch our movements. Our toilet duties and morning devotions seemed equally interesting to them; and, as we had only the upper covering of a tent without its walls, we were fully open to observation. Our break-