Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/52

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30
WINTER INDIA

much architectural and historical information about Chidambram, Conjeveram, and Mahabalipur, that we said: "Why, you must have read Fergusson?"

"Yes, your ladyship. I have the book. Ten rupees."

"Then you had better go with us as guide."

"Yes, your ladyship," and he went and made our way so plain, so smooth and interesting, that we compared all other guides in India with him to their detriment.

A Catholic priest in cool white robes tiffined also at the station, and told of some of the great successes in mission work in the south; how whole villages have become Christian when the priest permits them to retain their caste. "It is among our converts, or in places where we have worked before them, that your Protestant missionaries have most success," he said.

From the rock of Trichinopoli we had seen the great pagoda tower of Tanjore on the horizon, and as we rumbled the thirty miles across the Kaveri plain in the early, showery afternoon it rose in height as we advanced, and the train stopped fairly in its shadow. Leaving David to watch the luggage at the station, Samuel Daniel hurried us to the temple gate and under the two gopuras to the striped inner court, where the thirteen-story vimana, or tower, of Shiva tapers away until its great trisul seems to touch the very sky.

"Ah! you see here the cleverosity of the Old World builders and the numerosity of their carvings," said Daniel, proudly.