Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/477

Rh stage, instead of being fresh, they were quite exhausted, and could only be made to draw the carriage by cruel goadings and blows. To eat beef is esteemed a horrible crime by the Hindus; but to kill the poor creatures by hard work does not trouble their consciences, if it put rupees into their purses.

The road westward from Bangalore to Seringapatam runs through a hilly country, whose hill-sides and rolling valleys are well cultivated, and yield fine crops of rice and other grains to the cultivators. It is rendered solitary and deserted in appearance by the absence of the farm-houses, which meet the eye of the traveller in Western lands, enlivening the way at every turn with their clumps of shade-trees, barns, and grazing cattle. Here men live, not each on his own land, but clustered in villages, from which in the morning they issue forth to their labour, returning at evening like bees to their hive. Thus you may travel for miles through a populous country, and not see a house or any sign of life, except the little elevated lodge for the watchman at the time of the ripening of the crops. It is to these solitary sheds in the midst of the fields that Isaiah refers when, describing the desolateness of his people, he says,