Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/241

 afterwards, they descended into the river to bathe and change their clothes; such an assortment of ugly limbs I never beheld! A native woman thinks no more of displaying her form as high as the knee, or some inches above it, than we do of showing our faces. This being rather too great an exhibition, I proposed to my companion to proceed a little further, that the lovely damsels might bathe undisturbed.

25th.—I have been more disgusted to-day than I can express: the cause is too truly Indian not to have a place in my journal; I fancied I saw the corpse of a European floating down the Ganges just now, but, on looking through the telescope, I beheld the most disgusting object imaginable.

When a rich Hindoo dies, his body is burned, and the ashes are thrown into the Ganges; when a poor man is burned, they will not go to the expense of wood sufficient to consume the body. The corpse I saw floating down had been put on a pile, covered with ghee (clarified butter), and fire enough had been allowed just to take off all the skin from the body and head, giving it a white appearance; any thing so ghastly and horrible as the limbs from the effect of the fire was never beheld, and it floated almost entirely out of the water, whilst the crows that were perched upon it tore the eyes out. In some parts, where the stream forms a little bay, numbers of these dreadful objects are collected together by the eddy, and render the air pestiferous, until a strong current carries them onwards. The poorer Hindoos think they have paid all due honour to their relatives when they have thus skinned them on the funeral pile, and thrown them, like dead dogs, into the Ganges.

The Musulmāns bury their dead—generally under the shade of trees, and erect tombs to their memory, which they keep in repair; they burn lights upon the graves every Thursday (Jumarāt), and adorn the tomb with flowers.

27th.—As we floated down the stream this evening, I observed the first ghāt was lighted up, and looked very brilliant, with hundreds of little lamps; the Dāndees said, it was not on account of any particular festival, but merely the merchant, to whom the ghāt and temple belonged, offering lamps to Gunga-jee.