Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/561



needs but a few days at sea to make the sight of land most grateful and exhilarating; and doubly exciting is it when such associations cluster around the region you approach as those which are connected with Calcutta, the emporium of the East, and the holy river of India, the far-famed Ganges. The Hooghly, which is one of the many streams by which the Ganges empties its waters into the Bay of Bengal, is esteemed the most sacred of its mouths. The river is itself a god, and when Gunga (the Ganges) meets the sea at the island of Gunga-Sagor, (more commonly written Saugur Island,) the spot becomes most holy. Hither tens of thousands of Hindus resort at the annual festival of Gunga-Sagor, the union of river and sea, in the month of January; they descend the river in boats which line the shore in a dense fleet, and, landing, engage in the performance Rh