Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/309

265 against the floor, (a mode which I have not seen practiced,) while another fans it by pouring it from a basket in the open air. Two women on the right are busily pounding the grain in a mortar, to separate the chaff from the rice.

On nearing Wandiwash, the attention of travellers is arrested by a tall and rugged granite mountain, rising abruptly from the plain some two miles from the bungalow. We learned, upon inquiry, that it was a place of note, and at a certain festival the resort of a great multitude of pilgrims, who ascended and worshipped on its summit. The Hindus, like most idolaters in ancient and modern times, deem themselves nearer to heaven on the mountain-top than in the plain. They reverence mountains and high hills as dwelling-places of the gods, and consider it a work of much merit to perform a pilgrimage to the temples which they build upon their summits. In some cases, they go farther, and consider the mountain itself to be a god.

Although we were not encouraged to do so by the Brahmins, who do not wish the shrine to be visited by Europeans, we resolved to go to the mountain-top, and get a view of the country around.

At three and a half o'clock in the morning,