Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/447

Rh bats, and bow before the throne of Jehovah, the one true God.

Three miles from Wallaja-pettah you reach Arcot, and there cross the Palar River. Now, as when I had previously crossed this river, its bed was a vast field of sand. On arriving at its bank, our horse was unharnessed, not that we might take a boat, but for our bandy to be dragged across by men. From a village on the bank of the river, some twenty or thirty men, each with but a strip of cloth about his middle, rushing out with ropes in their hands, fastened them to our bandy. Tugging, straining, and shouting, they dragged it through the deep sand to the opposite shore. The pay for this service, which was about seventy cents to be divided among the whole, seemed a small sum for so many, but was a full compensation, and entirely satisfactory to them. At any time, on the arrival of a traveller's bandy, they throw down every thing, and run to secure the job.

On our return from the hills, we recrossed the Palar when it was dry almost from shore to shore; but on the next day, when I accompanied Mr. S. to preach on the opposite side of the river, it was an unbroken stream of tur-