“Yes,” said Bhima Gandharva when I mentioned it to him, “I understand exactly what you mean.  On reaching an unbroken expanse of level country, after leaving the tops of mountains, I always feel as if my soul had come bump against a solid wall of rock in the dark.  I seem to hear a dull thud of discouragement somewhere back in my soul, as when a man’s body falls dead on the earth.  Nothing, indeed, could more heighten such a sensation than the contrast between this and the Bombay side of the Ghats.  There we had the undulating waters, the lovely harbor with its wooded and hilly islands, the ascending terraces of the Ghats:  everything was energetic, the whole invitation of Nature was toward air, light, freedom, heaven.  But here one spot is like another spot; this level ground is just the same level ground there was a mile back; this corn stands like that corn; there is an oppressive sense of bread-and-butter about; one somehow finds one’s self thinking of ventilation and economics.  It is the sausage-grinding school of poetry—­of which modern art, by the way, presents several examples—­as compared with that general school represented by the geniuses who arise and fly their own flight and sing at a great distance above the heads of men and of wheat.”

Having arrived and refreshed ourselves at our hotel, whose proprietor was, as usual, a Parsee, we sallied forth for a stroll about Poona.  On one side of us lay the English quarter, consisting of the houses and gardens of the officers and government employes, and of the two or three hundred other Englishmen residing here.  On the other was the town, extending itself along the banks of the little river Moota.  We dreamed ourselves along in the lovely weather through such of the seven quarters of the town as happened to strike the fancy of my companion.  Occasionally we were compelled to turn out of our way for the sacred cattle, which, in the enjoyment of their divine prerogatives, would remain serenely lying across our path; but we respected the antiquity, if not the reasonableness, of their privileges, and murmured not.

Each of the seven quarters of Poona is named after a day of the week.  As we strolled from Monday to Tuesday, or passed with bold anachronism from Saturday back to Wednesday, I could not help observing how these interweavings and reversals of time appeared to take an actual embodiment in the scenes through which we slowly moved, particularly in respect of the houses and the costumes which went to make up our general view.  From the modern-built European houses to the mediaeval-looking buildings of the Bhoodwar quarter, with their massive walls and loop-holes and crenellations, was a matter of four or five centuries back in a mere turn of the eye; and from these latter to the Hindu temples here and there, which, whether or not of actual age, always carry one straight into antiquity, was a further retrogression to the obscure depths of time.  So, too, one’s glance would