The thrones and palaces of Babylon and Ninevah from sea to sea; a thousand miles on horseback .. . dol priests. Near a temple, and within a large tank,are twenty of those hideous creatures, which are treatedwith more than human kindness. Pilgrims come fromafar to offer sheep and goats to these horrid the neighboring plains, the priestly shepherds keeplarge flocks to supply the pious market at a cost of tworupees per head. As an act of devotion, the pilgrimthrow^s the purchased sheep to the alligators, ^vhich fightover the offering in a most ungodlike manner. Butfeeding them with sh
The thrones and palaces of Babylon and Ninevah from sea to sea; a thousand miles on horseback .. . dol priests. Near a temple, and within a large tank,are twenty of those hideous creatures, which are treatedwith more than human kindness. Pilgrims come fromafar to offer sheep and goats to these horrid the neighboring plains, the priestly shepherds keeplarge flocks to supply the pious market at a cost of tworupees per head. As an act of devotion, the pilgrimthrow^s the purchased sheep to the alligators, ^vhich fightover the offering in a most ungodlike manner. Butfeeding them with sheep is a great improvement com-pared with the horrid custom of the past, when mothersthrew their infants to the monsters that sported in theIndus and the Ganges. At eight oclock in the morning, the Burmali startedfor Guadur, two hundred and eighty miles from Kur-rachee, and nearly eight hundred miles from air was hazy, filled with a fine sand blown from thedistant shore of Beloochistan. On our rio-ht was HasMalan, where recently a whale had become entangled 28 THRONES AND PALACES OF. FEEDING THE SACRED CROCODILES. with the submarine cable, and, failing to extricate him-self, had been completely devoured by the sharks. Thenumber of our passengers had been increased by an ad-dition of many Turks, Arabs, Persians, Jews, Parsees, and BABYLON AND NINEVEH. 09 Armenians. Whatever their wealth and their style ofliving at home, these Orientals never travel as first-classpassengers. Their resj^ect for caste, their religious super-stition, their mode of cooking and eating, their pastimeamusements, and their national self-conceit, render themexclusive. They prefer to sleep on the deck rather thanin a vi^ell-furnished state-room, and to eat on their matrather than sit with Christians in an elegant saloon. Asthey constitute the majority of travelers on all the steam-ers in the Far East, their wishes are respected, and thewhole deck is accorded to them. They prefer midships,and the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbabylon, bookyear1876
