mules and hill-men with their heavy creels,
upward bound with the produce of the plains that
sweltered in the sun below, we reached the little
village of Rajpore, through which the road runs
to the town of Deyrah. At Deyrah, tents and
servants having been sent on some days before,
we rested before making our grand start for the
fair, which we were to see in one of its grand
seventh years, when the power of the Ganges is
greater, and the throng of Hindoos with sins to
wash away is greater, than in the intervening
lesser years.

Deyrah capital of its valley, Deyrah Doon,
charms the old Indian with rose-clustered
cottage porches, and not less with a bather's
turreted fountain, that administers on its four sides
the blessing of a shower-bath. We left Deyrah
for a cool night journey in doolies—those long
meat-safes slung on poles—each of us with
sixteen bearers and a couple of torchmen to light
our path and scare away the wild beasts; for,
thirty miles of our way lay through the dense
forest at the foot of the Himalayas. We were
not left to depend on our torches only. At every
mile of the forest road, bonfires, each attended
by two stokers, were lighted. Yet in the dark
our bearers yelled and waved their lights while
we heard elephants crashing in the jungle. Over
a road slippery with night dews, where the owls
hooted around us, we passed, until the cries of
the jackals warned us that a tiger might be near.
But no tiger attacked us, so I went to sleep,
and was aroused at sunrise by the screaming of
the peacocks; but there were the brave little
jungle cocks too—and the jungle cock is great-
great-grandfather to our domestic bird. We
heard the woodcutter's axe under the cool shades
of the banyan; the woodcutter working merrily,
in dread of no attack from elephant or tiger,
for did he not wear the charm bought of the
fakeer? With hop, skip, and jump, a troop of
monkeys crossed our path, and up-stairs they
went, hand over hand, one after another, to
the top of an old tree. I lay with my head out
of the dooly, seeing all that was to be seen, when
the crack of guns and the pi-i-i-ing of bullets a
few feet over our heads startled us all. One of
our men was shot through the hand, another
through the arm. There were four gentlemen
on two elephants tiger-shooting, and this was
an inconvenience consequent on the sport. We
were not precisely in the line of firing, but the
elephants, new to their work, were restless, and
scattered the shot by their unexpected
movements. The fight was in a corn-field; round
about it natives, up in the trees, were looking
on. The man-killer in particular request had
been a terror to the neighbourhood. He carried
off a grasscutter only last night, and was
supposed to be a beast that came down every year
at fair time to lay in wait for stragglers. The
Englishmen killed him, and carried him off in
triumph to the fair.

Walking on from the scene of battle with the
doolies following, we came to the temples on
the banks of the Ganges where the river rushes
through a narrow gorge of the Sevallick range of
the Himalayas. The gorge is called the Gate of
Hurree, Hurreedwar. The hill on the right is
pierced with caves, and at the cave months we
saw many nearly naked men, with matted locks,
and with necklaces of beads and charms: all
holy fakeers who live on alms. Among them
were some of the dreadful sect of the Aghors,
with ashes and yellow-ochre on their skins,
carrying in their hand human skulls; they are
said to have been known to eat man's flesh, and
whose touch is pollution.

As we advanced into the fair, we had to leave
the main street, which was choked up with human
beings, some going and some coming from the
river—the clothes of the latter were dripping,
and the crowd of wet worshippers turned the
road into a quagmire of mud, through which, to
say nothing of the dense throng, walking was
easy for none but the young and nimble. We
afterwards heard that this condition of road led
to fearful results, for on the propitious moment
being announced by the gongs and shell trumpets
from the temples, a rush was made for the river,
in which many of the old and infirm were trodden
to death. The entrances to this, as to most of the
ghauts or bathing-places, being flanked by
masonry, the crush was the more intense, and the
screams of women, the shouts of men roaring
out " Hurru, Hurru" (the name of the tutelar
deity of the place), the blowing of the mysterious-
sounding shell trumpets, and the beating
of gongs, made up a scene of horrible confusion
not to be described. A regiment of Sepoys is
always stationed at the fair to control in some
measure the movements of the bathers, but
they could not do much with a crowd of
hundreds of thousands. Ropes also are stretched
by order of government across the river from
bank to bank, to give a hold to those who may
be swept away by the fierce current, but
notwithstanding all precautions many lives are
annually lost. Most of the temples are on the river-
banks; some lesser ones, however, are scattered
here and there without any apparent system.
Like all Hindoo shrines, they are heavy gloomy
masses, pyramidal, and elaborately carved. They
do not equal in size or grandeur the famous
temple of the Vishnu Pud at Gya, and they are
all much smaller than the Juggernaut temple
in Orissa.

The interiors of Hindoo temples do not in any
way realise the European idea of a place of public
worship. The priests alone officiate at the shrine,
muttering their muntras or incantations, and at
intervals placing a few flowers or pouring a few
drops of milk on the sacred stone, the lingam,
or at the foot of an image. The public is allowed
to file through the vault or chamber, and on
arriving opposite the object of adoration each
worshipper touches the ground with his forehead,
then stands up and joins his palms in front of
his face. He then pours out his libation of
milk or melted butter on the altar, and the rites;
are over.

The devotees being all in wet clothes just
as they came from the river, the temple floor
was at last knee-deep in a compost of milk,