Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/290

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was near sunset when we entered the town of Perumanaloor, and a dreary, desolate spot it was. Our bearers picked their way cautiously and slowly through heaps of stones and rocky hillocks; even the temples upon the craggy hills looked repulsively ruinous, and decay breathed in the silent air. The houses in sight were dilapidated; every thing seemed to be falling to decay.

Getting out of our palankeens, we began to look for a place in which to pitch our tent. One of the bearers entered a street more respectable than the others, to ask for information, when two or three young Brahmins, horror-struck that one of this low caste should pollute the street in which they lived with his impure presence, rushed out in a state of much excitement, and with insolent violence bade him begone immediately. Although we had not entered their street, for this turned out to be the agragrama, in which Brahmins alone live, and where low-caste men are not allowed to come, they cried out to us also, in the same