Another night in a caravanserai, where rival proprietors of rows of little chowkees contend for the privilege of supplying me char-poy, dood, and chowel, and where thousands of cawing rooks blacken the trees and alight in the quadrangular serai in noisy crowds, and I enter upon the home-stretch to Allahabad.

In proof that the cycle is making its way in India it may be mentioned that at both Cawnpore and Allahabad the native postmen are mounted on strong, heavy bicycles, made and supplied from the post-office workshops at Allighur.  They are rude machines, only a slight improvement upon the honored boneshaker; but their introduction is suggestive of what may be looked for in the future.  As evidence, also, of the oft-repeated saying that “the world is small,” I here have the good fortune to meet Mr. Wingrave, a wheelman whom I met at the Barnes Common tricycle parade when passing through London.

There is even a small cycle club in quasi existence at Allahabad; but it is afflicted with chronic lassitude, as a result of the enervating climate of the Indian plains.  Young men who bring with them from England all the Englishman’s love of athletics soon become averse to exercise, and prefer a quiet “peg” beneath the punkah to wheeling or cricket.  During the brief respite from the hades-like temperature afforded by December and January, they sometimes take club runs down the Ganges and indulge in the pastime of shooting at alligators with small-bore rifles.

The walks in the beautiful public gardens and every other place about Allahabad are free to wheelmen, and afford most excellent riding.

Messrs. Wingrave and Gawke, the two most enterprising wheelmen, turn out at 6 a.m. to escort me four miles to the Ganges ferry.  Some idea of the trying nature of the climate in August may be gathered from the fact that one of my companions arrives at the river fairly exhausted, and is compelled to seek the assistance of a native gharri to get back home.  The exposure and exercise I am taking daily is positively dangerous, I am everywhere told, but thus far I have managed to keep free from actual sickness.

The sacred river is at its highest flood, and hereabout not less than a mile and half wide.  The ferry service is rude and inefficient, being under the management of natives, who reck little of the flight of time or modern improvements.  The superintendent will bestir himself, however, in behalf of the Sahib who is riding the Ferenghi gharri around the world:  instead of putting me aboard the big slow ferry, he will man a smaller and swifter boat to ferry me over.  The “small boat” is accordingly produced, and turns out to be a rude flat-boat sort of craft, capable of carrying fully twenty tons, and it is manned by eight oarsmen.  Their oars are stout bamboo poles with bits of broad board nailed or tied on the end.