Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/564

496 by the Ganges. As you advance, the stream still narrows, the banks cease to be jungly wastes, and little villages of thatched cottages, embowered amid palms, tamarinds, and other tropical trees, give life and beauty to the scene. The exquisite greenness of the rice-fields, the luxuriance of the foliage, and the gracefulness of vegetable life, so characteristic of the lands of the sun, give an indescribable charm to Indian scenery; though those rude huts and verdant fields are the dwelling-places of sin and heathenism, their beauty, as seen across the bosom of the river, is most captivating. Truly, here

The river itself abounds with objects of interest: the ships of many nations—Asiatic, European, African, and American—are going towards the emporium of the East, the metropolis of British India. Boats from the shore, with their noisy and almost naked boatmen, bring fruit, fish, hats, and other articles of trade alongside, and the crews hail your vessel to seek admission to the deck.

It is not only to the voyager fresh from home that the ascent of the Ganges is novel and inte-