[Footnote 406:  In Purchas his Pilgrims, I. 110, is the following notice respecting Mr Newberry:  “Before that,” meaning his journey along with Fitch, “he had travelled to Ormus in 1580, and thence into the Continent, as may appear in fitter place by his journal, which I have, passing through the countries of Persia, Media, Armenia, Georgia, and Natolia, to Constantinople; and thence to the Danube, through Walachia, Poland, Prussia, and Denmark, and thence to England.”]

In this country they have many strange ceremonies.  The bramins, who are their priests, come to the water having a string about their necks, and with many ceremonies lave the water with both their hands, turning the string with both their hands in several manners; and though it be never so cold, they wash themselves regularly at all times.  These gentiles eat no flesh, neither do they kill any thing, but live on rice, butter, milk, and fruits.  They pray in the water naked; and both dress and eat their food naked.  For penance, they lie flat on the earth, then rise up and turn themselves round 30 or 40 times, lifting their hands to the sun, and kiss the earth with their arms and legs stretched out; every time they lie down making a score on the ground with their fingers, that they may know when the prescribed number of prostrations is finished.  Every morning the Bramins mark their foreheads, ears, and throats, with a kind of yellow paint or earth; having some old men among them, who go about with a box of yellow powder, marking them on the head and neck as they meet them.  Their women come in troops of 10, 20, and 30 together to the water side singing, where they wash themselves and go through their ceremonies, and then mark themselves, and so depart singing.  Their daughters are married at ten years of age, and the men may have seven wives each.  They are a crafty people, worse than the Jews.  When they salute one another, they say, Rame, rame.

From Agra I came to Prage[407], where the river Jumna enters into the mighty Ganges, and there loses its name.  The Ganges comes out of the north-west, and runs east to discharge its waters into the gulf of Bengal.  In these parts there are many tigers, and vast quantities of partridges and turtle-doves, besides many other kinds of birds.  There are multitudes of beggars in these countries, called Schesche, which go entirely naked.  I here saw one who was a monster among the rest.  He had no clothes whatever, his beard being very long, and the hair of his head was so long and plentiful, that it covered his nakedness.  The nails on some of his fingers were two inches long, as he would cut nothing from him; and besides he never spake, being constantly accompanied by eight or ten others, who spoke for him.  If any one spoke to him, he laid his hand on his breast and bowed, but without speaking, for he would not have spoken to the king.

[Footnote 407:  At the angle of junction between the rivers Jumna and Ganges, the city of Allahabad is now situated.—­E.]