—on decrepit chairs which, rocking on uncertain legs, threatened momently to fall beneath us, if the torn and sagging rush seats did not sooner engulf us. "If the dak bangla's chairs were then as they are now, no wonder Buddha sat for six years under the Bo-tree," wrote the one American visitor of six seasons in the visitors' book. In time we ate an early and hurried tiffin—our daily goat-chop, garnished with green peas that rattled upon the plate like so much bird-shot, and the usual cold and sodden Indian rice poured over with a blackish curry mixture diversified by pools of clear grease—the worst-made curry in the world, always served one at Indian hotels, dak banglas, and railway refreshment-rooms. "Chutney? Chutney? No!" came the regular Indian response of surprise when we asked for some palliative, some condiment to make the dish of the country go down protesting throats; but the khansamah boasted that he would be able to produce "a vary splendid dinner, with cauliflower, mem," in the evening.
The road southward for seven miles to Buddha-Gaya was broad, smooth, and well made, shaded with tamarisk and bo-trees, strung along with little hamlets and mud huts, and following the banks of the Phalgu River. Each group of dwellings had its common well, and, under some wide-spreading tree, a plastered-up terrace or altar supported a tiny shrine, or the greasy image of a Hindu god,—this the same pagan, heathen India, the life little changed since the all-perfect Gautama Buddha used to pass this way in his yellow robes, with his golden
