NEAR AND FAR
worn bodies to and fro in their ebb and flow, carrying disease and death through all the land. Down in the lower reaches, where the great river rushes to the sea, frenzied devotees cast their helpless children, or flung themselves amid the swirling waters where the hungry jaws of alligators waited to devour them. And everywhere, up and down the hundreds of miles of the mighty river's course, on its banks were reared the ghastly funeral pyres, on which the living and the dead were consumed together in the awful rite of suttie.
Every one has heard of the inhuman custom of suttie, but few can realize what the terrible reality meant. The following account, taken from the Calcutta Gazette of 10th February, 1785, presents a vivid picture, all the more striking for the plain matter-of-fact language in which it is couched:—
"An Account of a Woman burning herself. (By an Officer.)—A few days since, going in a budgerow from Ghyretty to dine at Chinsurah, I perceived near Chandernagore a vast crowd assembled on the shore; upon inquiry, I found this large concourse of people were gathered to see a Gentoo [1] woman burn herself with her husband. As I had read many accounts of this
- ↑ Hindoo.
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