FOOD.—­The most common food is rice; and with this curry is often mixed to give it a relish.  What is curry?  It is a mixture of herbs, spices, and oil.

Very poor people cannot afford to eat either rice or curry; and they eat some coarse grain instead.  A lady who made a feast for the poor provided nothing but rice, and she found that it was thought as good as roast beef and plum pudding are thought in England.  The day after the feast some of the poor creatures came to pick up the grains of rice that were fallen upon the ground.

The rich Hindoos eat mutton and venison, but not beef; this they think it wicked to eat, because they worship bulls and cows.

A favorite food is clarified butter, called “ghee,” white rancid stuff, kept in skin bottles to mix with curry.

Water is the general drink, and there could not be a better.  Yet there are intoxicating drinks, and some of the Hindoos have learned to love them, from seeing the English drink too much.  What a sad thing that Christians should set a bad example to heathens!

PRODUCTIONS.—­There are many beautiful trees in India never seen in England, and many nice fruits never tasted here.

The palm-tree, with its immense leaves, is the glory of India.  These leaves are very useful; they form the roof, the umbrella, the bed, the plate, and the writing-paper of the Hindoo.

The most curious tree in India is the banyan, because one tree grows into a hundred.  How is that?  The branches hang down, touch the ground, strike root there, and spring up into new trees—­joined to the old.  Under an aged banyan there is shade for a large congregation.  Seventy thousand men might sit beneath its boughs.

There is a sort of grass which grows a hundred feet high, and becomes hard like wood.  It is called the bamboo.  The stem is hollow like a pipe, and is often used as a water-pipe.  It serves also for posts for houses, and for poles for carriages.

There are abundance of nice fruits in India; and of these the mangoe is the best.  You might mistake it for a pear when you saw it, but not when you tasted it.  Pears cannot grow in India; the sun is too hot for grapes and oranges, excepting on the hills.

The chief productions of India are rice and cotton; rice is the food, and cotton is the clothing of the Hindoo:  and quantities of these are sent to England, for though we have wheat for food, we want rice too; and though we have wool for clothing, we want cotton too.

RELIGION.—­There is no nation that has so many gods as the Hindoos.  What do you think of three hundred and thirty millions!  There are not so many people in Hindostan as that.  No one person can know the names of all these gods; and who would wish to know them?  Some of them are snakes, and some are monkeys!

The chief god of all is called Brahm.  But, strange to say, no one worships him.  There is not an image of him in all India.