CHAPTER XIV
By many a name of many a creed
We have called upon them since the sands
Fell through time’s hour-glass firs t; a seed
Of life ; and out of many lands
Have we stretched hands.
—Swinburne.
W a te r stre e ts—A S ik h who desired proselytes—Possible fa ith s
' A A sick Sahib—Some tru ism s of life in th e tropics.
I n t e r e s t e d and delighted with my experiences in the
city, I devoted several afternoons to paddling about in
my “ shikar,” watching the gay townsfolk as they strolled
on the bridges, listening to the latest gossip, slowly
moored to the Maharajah’s palace, where all may have
free audience, or sat out either in their flower-decorated
balconies or in the cool vine-covered arbours above the
rivers, smoking, taking snuff, and alas! drinking, for
both Hindus and Mussulman have fallen away from
their old abstemious habits, and indulge freely in
fermented liquors, apple brandy, of which they will
take large quantities, being an especial favourite.
The bathing places, too, were much frequented by
men in the daytime, and by the women as the evening
drew in, for they are a water-loving people, and even
the babies paddled, shrieking with delight as the water
covered their fat, brown toes and splashed their soft,
rounded limbs. The various bridges (Kadal) under
which we passed, the boatmen shouting together in
chorus as they worked their hardest to keep the boat
steadily in the middle of the stream, were all of the
same type; their foundations are of deodar piles, then
logs of wood about, twenty-five to thirty feet long and
two or three feet in girth are led two feet apart at
right angles, alternately with layers of stone. So piers
are built up from about twenty-five to thirty feet in
Rebuilding bridge a fte r floods, 1893
height, and twenty-five feet square. These stand ninety
feet apart, and are spanned by long, undressed deodar
timbers. The force of the stream is broken by abutments
of stones running to a point constructed on the
up-stream side. These answer admirably their purpose,
stemming the wild rush of waters and standing securely
for hundreds of years, save when exceptional floods,