. Winter India . axed railwaytransportation, as one rumbles by rail to Manda-lay, where the fantastic gilt and mirror-coveredtemples, monasteries, and palaces equal onesdreams of the gorgeous East. Only seeing canconvince one w^hat Buddhism can do for a peoplein contrast with Hinduism or Mohammedanism, andthat the pagoda is always in sight in Burma—theswelling, white bodies tapering to needle spiresoften gilded and tipped with jewels—the sites ofdeserted cities like Amarapura and Pagan on thelower Irawadi dotted as thickly with temples andpagodas as ever they could have been with ma
. Winter India . axed railwaytransportation, as one rumbles by rail to Manda-lay, where the fantastic gilt and mirror-coveredtemples, monasteries, and palaces equal onesdreams of the gorgeous East. Only seeing canconvince one w^hat Buddhism can do for a peoplein contrast with Hinduism or Mohammedanism, andthat the pagoda is always in sight in Burma—theswelling, white bodies tapering to needle spiresoften gilded and tipped with jewels—the sites ofdeserted cities like Amarapura and Pagan on thelower Irawadi dotted as thickly with temples andpagodas as ever they could have been with many chapters would be required for anythinglike an adequate exploitation of this picturesquecountry and attractive people; but until the greatEuropean mail-steamers touch at Rangoon the plea-sure traveler is warned against the slow coastingsteamers on which one lives with the heat and thesmells and the motion at the very stern, and wherehuge brown tropical roaches swarm, past any figuresof speech to give CALCUTTA IN CHRISTMAS WEEK 93 There were brilliant panoramas on Calcutta streets,those ^littering noondays and golden afternoons,but the hotels had only increased in numbers, andadvanced in price in the few years. Hotels inIndia are all conducted on the pension or Americanplan of a fixed rate per day, with everything savewine included, and the charges had risen from theaverage five and seven rupees to ten and fifteenrupees, to the indignation of Anglo-Indians, who,in no gentle terms, blame increasing tourist travelfor the increased cost of living. I was conducted across a back yard and up aflight of outer steps to a room whose reed mattinghad not been disturbed in many seasons. But theBishop of New York occupied that room last yearand made no complaint, said the landlady, dramat-ically. Think how much more Christian fortitude andsaving grace a bishop has to have —and she coun-termanded the order for a new matting to be laid ontop of the old one in shiftless Indian f
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