are Roman Catholics. Of the total number of Christians in India, British and feudatory, the Roman Catholics claim 1,317,782, and the Protestants, 325,000. The superior tactical adaptability to circumstances of the Roman Catholic priesthood may be held in some measure to account for this remarkable discrepancy. If it were part of the business of a Protestant missionary in China to have pictures of the Annunciation in the mission room, he would be content to follow early models of art. The Jesuits know better than that, and their chapels are adorned with pictures of the infant Jesus in a pigtail, and Mary tottering on feet squeezed small enough to please a Mandarin.

The conversions to Protestantism, such as they are, have been the result chiefly of the London Missionary Society, which entered the field in 1798; the Church Missionary Society, which sent out its first representative in 1814; the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which followed in 1826; the Presbyterian Missions, which opened in 1830; and the Wesleyan Methodist Society. Excluding the Scotch Church, of which I have no particulars, the other four societies maintain their position at an annual expenditure of £165,000, contributed from home. In addition to this there are

special funds and money raised in India, which would probably bring the expenditure up to something like a pound per convert per annum.

In the afternoon we were on the river again, rowing to Ramnagar, the palace of the Maharajah of Benares. The castellated front of the palace stands boldly out on the river bank, and through the bright clear atmosphere seemed distant only half an hour's rowing. But this prospect is illusory, and it was after an hour and a half's battling with the current that the men brought the boat to the landingplace at the foot of the castle. The scene on the river in the afternoon is greatly changed from that witnessed in the early morning. The ghâts are almost deserted, though here and there are to be seen tardy worshippers bathing their thinly draped bodies in the holy stream.

Godliness having been cared for in the morning, cleanliness has its due sequence in the afternoon. Men and women, kneeling on the bank or standing ankle deep in the water on the steps of the ghât, were busy scrubbing pots and pans or washing household linen. The Brahmins, save one at a remote ghât, had gone, only their umbrellas remaining to mark the spot sanctified by their presence and ministrations. The broad river, shading from

green to blue, and wonderfully clean considering the hourly pollution of a great city, flowed steadily on, sparkling in the sunlight. Looking back, growing distance added enchantment to the city standing high up on the bank, with its frontage guiltless of a straight line, and the twin minarets of the mosque always the most prominent feature in the picture. Of all possible views of Benares, the best is to be obtained by a journey towards Ramnagar. The city, following the bank of the river, curves outward in crescent form, displaying all its beauty to the south. The opposite bank going towards Ramnagar is a flat plain, a brown bank showing where the river overflows after the rains, and beyond this, fields dressed in the living green of the young shoots of late autumn-planted wheat.

When the Ganges rises after the rains, it does so in a manner worthy of its reputation. At the Maharajah's palace there is a watermark, showing how the river rises in August from thirty to forty feet. On the low bank, now deserted by the stream, a flock of vultures were gathered, discontentedly picking at the ribs of a skeleton. A little further on something was floating in the water, serving as a resting-place for a flock of smaller birds, who diligently pecked at it. We were too far off to

see what this was, but it was too probably a dead body. There is no municipal law at Benares forbidding the casting of dead bodies into the river. This is, however, done only in the cases of people too poor to pay two rupees for wood to light a funeral pyre. It is equivalent to a pauper's funeral; but as there are many paupers in Benares, there are many corpses in the Ganges.

A little apart from the vultures perched on the skeleton, a sirus paced in solemn meditation. The sirus is much like the stork, though with bigger body and broader bill. Its stride is curious, the pompous way in which it slowly draws its foot up and plants it out for another stride, combined with a slight swagger of its tail, being reminiscent of a being something between a churchwarden and a masher. It took no notice of the vultures at their sorry banquet, nor of the smaller birds perched on the vultures' backs, nor of the sky overhead, nor of the river rustling by, nor of the great city in the solemn stillness of the opposite side of the river. It paced up and down with its ridiculous stride, its head hung down in meditation, and the movement of its body suggestive of its having its hands clasped under his coat-tails. Scarcely less comical was its mate, sitting on the bank with its legs, pro

digiously long from knee to claw, spread out flat before it, hooked from the knee, as a man might rest on his elbows.

The sirus is always found in couples, and there is a pretty legend, doubtless founded upon fact, that when one dies, its mate, refusing food or drink, pines away. Caught young and tamed, the sirus will answer the purpose of a watchdog. It makes a curious noise, which gives warning of the approach of strangers by day or night, and has an impartial way of pecking at the legs of unfamiliar visitors, which makes it interesting. Some people who have tried it say the flesh of its breast is very good eating. Broiled with onions, it makes a passable substitute for beefsteak. But its chief commercial value when dead lies in its long legs, which from the knee down to the claw make a pipe stem much affected by the natives.

Still nearer the palace a body was burning under a pile of wood, by the edge of the river, the bereaved relatives sitting on the bank dressed in white. The funeral was not going off very successfully. The wind, such as it was, blowing from the south, had lit up that side of the pile, leaving the other untouched. The undertaker's men, evidently familiar with this mischance, stood at the side, and with what