Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/293

Rh upon this benighted and priest-ridden land, and to lie down to rest. Spreading our mattresses on the ground, we slept undisturbed, except by the intrusion of stray dogs from the town, the hooting of owls, and the melancholy howling of packs of jackals wandering in search of food.

With the first gray dawn of morning we were up, but we were not early enough to anticipate the gathering of an audience. I wished to read, but had to give it over to speak to the people who were assembled in and about the tent. They sat down on the ground around me, and listened attentively for some time, when suddenly, in the midst of our discourse, a Brahmin, rushing up with furious gesticulations, roared out, that our pariah cook had entered the agragrama, (the Brahminic street;) he demanded, with many threats, that the sinful wretch should be immediately beaten.

The poor cook, on finding out what he had done, had fled to the tent, and now sheltered himself behind us, trembling with fear, and declaring his ignorance of its being a Brahmin street. Of course, we refused to give him up for punishment. On this the rage of the