Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/306

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294
ON THE CORONANDEL COAST

otherwise they go their ways with unconcern. Through the streets passes the wedding procession with beat of drum and playing of pipes. The dead are carried along the road with wailing and every sign of bitter grief. At the wayside devil-stone or temple the worshipper performs his pujah careless of those who may have the curiosity to stop and look on. A pilgrim in fulfilment of a vow breaks cocoanuts and recites muntrums before an oil-anointed image, upon which he has placed a wreath of jasmin flowers. He, too, takes no notice of the stranger who watches his odd ritual. Mohammedans kneel on their prayer-carpets by the road side, with their faces towards the setting sun, and say their prayers with many prostrations.

As I sat and sketched I had opportunities of seeing various things that escaped the observation of the devotees of tennis. Landscape painting always puzzles natives. Their own art is highly conventional, and they have very little notion of perspective. When they look at a painting they seem unable to distinguish the sky from the ground, or understand which is the top of a picture and which the bottom unless there is a very distinct figure in it. The presence of an English woman sketching always excited the curiosity of the passers-by, and most of them found time to come and look over my shoulder. They did no harm; but at such close quarters they were not always agreeable by reason of what I have already mentioned.

One day I drove out with a friend some distance beyond the old Worriore cantonment to sketch the rock from the north side. We found a charming view from a road that ran along the top of an embankment. The evening sun lighted up the old fortress and touched the town at its foot. In the middle distance were broad stretches of cultivated fields of a rich green, intersected with pools of water reflecting the tints of the sky. In