. Wanderings east of Suez in Ceylon, India, China and Japan. 0, 1693. A single story proves Charnocks independenceof character. He went with his ordinary guard ofsoldiers to witness the burning of the body of aHindu grandee, whose wife was reputed more thanl^assing fair. It was known that the rite of thesuttee was to be i^erformed—the widow was tosacrifice herself upon the blazing pyre of the de-ceased, in keeping with Hindu custom. Char-nock was so impressed by the young widowscharms that he ordered his soldiers to rescue herand by force take her to his home. They werespeedily married, had se
. Wanderings east of Suez in Ceylon, India, China and Japan. 0, 1693. A single story proves Charnocks independenceof character. He went with his ordinary guard ofsoldiers to witness the burning of the body of aHindu grandee, whose wife was reputed more thanl^assing fair. It was known that the rite of thesuttee was to be i^erformed—the widow was tosacrifice herself upon the blazing pyre of the de-ceased, in keeping with Hindu custom. Char-nock was so impressed by the young widowscharms that he ordered his soldiers to rescue herand by force take her to his home. They werespeedily married, had several children and livedhappily for many years. Instead of convertingher to Christianity, she made him a proselyte topaganism, and the only shred of Christianitythereafter remarkable in him was the burying ofher decently when she was removed by death; butCharnock is said to have observed in true paganmanner each anniversary of her demise, even tomaking animal sacrifices before the image of thegoddess Khali. Calcutta has improved greatly since Kipling 210. GENERAL POST-OFFICE. Indias Modern Capital wrote of it as the ■ City of Dreadful Night; butit is yet a place of striking contrasts, of officialsplendor and native squalor, of garish palacesabutting in rear allies upon filthy hovels. Thegood is extremely good—that is for the Britishofficial; the bad is worse than awful—and that isfor the native. Viewed superficially, Calcutta looks like a pros-perous city in Europe, perhaps in England; butrear streets and suburbs are as filthy and conges-ted as any town in vast India. What the averagetourist beholds is spick and span in a modernsense; and what he does nt see is intensely Asi-atic, with all that the word can mean. Being a cityof extremes, the visitor may be brought to hisfront windows by the warning cries of the foot-men of a sojourning maharajah driving in stateto a function, while through the rear windows floatthe plaintive notes of the muezzin calling thefaithful to p
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