Around it lay heaps of sacrificial flowers,
rice, betel leaves and incense. This hall was, in consequence, so
damp that we preferred to spend the night on the verandah in the
open air, hanging, as it were, between sky and earth, and lit from
below by numerous fires kept burning all the night by Gulab-Sing's
servants, to scare away wild beasts, and, from above, by the light
of the full moon. A supper was arranged after the Eastern fashion,
on carpets spread upon the floor, and with thick banana leaves for
plates and dishes. The noiselessly gliding steps of the servants,
more silent than ghosts, their white muslins and red turbans, the
limitless depths of space, lost in waves of moonlight, before us,
and behind, the dark vaults of ancient caves, dug out by unknown
races, in unknown times, in honor of an unknown, prehistoric religion--
all these, our surroundings, transported us into a strange world,
and into distant epochs far different from our own.
We had before us representatives of five different peoples, five
different types of costume, each quite unlike the others. All
five are known to us in ethnography under the generic name of Hindus.
Similarly eagles, condors, hawks, vultures, and owls are known to
ornithology as "birds of prey," but the analogous differences are
as great. Each of these five companions, a Rajput, a Bengali, a
Madrasi, a Sinhalese and a Mahratti, is a descendant of a race,
the origin of which European scientists have discussed for over
half a century without coming to any agreement.
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