Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/269

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COONATOOR.
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might be seen going home with his plough upon his shoulder—a light wooden stick, with a pointed coulter tipped with iron. Here and there was a hamlet with its little temple, sometimes no larger than a dog-kennel; and in one village we passed a poor Ganesha of stone, with his vehicle, the rat, before him, but without a shelter for his bare elephant-head.



Villages of the Carnatic.

We reached Coonatoor, a town with a thousand inhabitants, just at dusk, and pitched our tent amid some tamarind-trees on the edge of the village tank. Our bearers, released from labour, clustered merrily around their fire, at a little distance from us, and cooked their curry; while troops of women from the town passed our tent, with their water-jars upon their head, and descending to the tank, Rebecca-like, drew water for their households. In the accompanying illustration, we have a Hindu female bearing her vessel to the well for water. In her right hand she carries a rope for the purpose of lowering the vessel, when the water

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