in length.  From the main street, with its quaint little shops sheltered from the sun by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking, weather-stained shingles, or rotting bamboo mats, various little lanes and alleys diverged, leading one into a collection of tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up apparently by chance, and presenting the most incongruous appearance that could possibly be conceived.  One or two pucca houses, that is, houses of brick and masonry, shewed where some wealthy Bunneah (trader) or usurious banker lived, but the majority of the houses were of the usual mud and bamboo order.  There is a small thatched hut where the meals were cooked, and where the owner and his family could sleep during the rains.  Another smaller hut at right angles to this, gives shelter to the family goat, or, if they are rich enough to keep one, the cow.  All round the villages in India there are generally large patches of common, where the village cows have free rights of pasture; and all who can, keep either a cow or a couple of goats, the milk from which forms a welcome addition to their usual scanty fare.  In this second hut also is stored as much fuel, consisting of dried cow-dung, straw, maize-stalks, leaves, etc., as can be collected; and a ragged fence of bamboo or rahur[1] stalks encloses the two unprotected sides, thus forming inside a small court, quadrangle, or square.  This court is the native’s sanctum sanctorum.  It is kept scrupulously clean, being swept and garnished religiously every day.  In this the women prepare the rice for the day’s consumption; here they cut up and clean their vegetables, or their fish, when the adjacent lake has been dragged by the village fishermen.  Here the produce of their little garden, capsicums, Indian corn, onions or potatoes—­perchance turmeric, ginger, or other roots or spices—­are dried and made ready for storing in the earthen sun-baked repository for the reception of such produce appertaining to each household.  Here the children play, and are washed and tended.  Here the maiden combs out her long black hair, or decorates her bronzed visage with streaks of red paint down the nose, and a little antimony on the eyelids, or myrtle juice on the finger and toe nails.  Here, too, the matron, or the withered old crone of a grandmother, spins her cotton thread; or, in the old scriptural hand-mill, grinds the corn for the family flour and meal; and the father and the young men (when the sun is high and hot in the heavens) take their noonday siesta, or, the day’s labours over, cower round the smoking dung fire of a cold winter night, and discuss the prices ruling in the bazaar, the rise of rents, or the last village scandal.