"I read a story in an old schoolbook Uncle Moses had used when he didn't weigh as much as I do now, which was called 'The Half is Better than the Whole;' and it proved the proposition with which it started out. That is just what is the matter now." "But you have been seeing new things all the time, and learning something," added Louis. "That's very true; but we have seen all the big mosques and things, and enough is as good as a feast," suggested Scott. "I suppose if we stayed here a couple of years more we should not see the whole of the country. We have got a specimen brick of the principal cities; and a dozen specimens of the same thing don't amount to much." "But you haven't seen Calcutta yet, and that is the biggest toad in the puddle," said Felix. "The ship will be there, and if you are homesick you can go on board of her." But the call for attention from Captain Ringgold interrupted the conversation, and Sir Modava had seated himself in front of the company to give one of his "talks." "Our route will be along the Ganges till we come to Luckieserai Junction, where the loop-line falls into the main line," the Hindu gentleman began. "Is it much of a fall, sir?" asked Felix. "I don't understand you, Mr. McGavonty," replied the speaker blankly. "The expression 'falls into the main line' is somewhat different from what we use at home; but the young man ought to have understood you," interposed the commander. "What would you have said, Captain?" "The loop-line we call a branch, and we say connects with instead of falls into," replied the captain. "But your meaning was plain enough, and our boys must fall into the methods of expression used here." "Though you have seen the Ganges several times, not much has been said about it; and I will tell you a little more concerning it before we leave, not to see it again. It rises in Gahrwal, one of the Hill states, north-east of Delhi. It has its source in an ice-cave nearly fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is not called the Ganges till it has received the flow of two other rivers, a hundred and fifty miles or more from its lofty source. Just below Allahabad it takes in the Jumna, itself a mighty stream. "As you have learned, it is the holy river of the Hindus; and it deserves their homage, for, aside from the religious character they give to it, three hundred thousand square miles are drained and fertilized by the Ganges and its tributaries. Of its sanctity, that it washes away sin, and that death in its waters or on its shores is the passport to eternal bliss, you have learned. But it renders a more immediate and practical service to the people; for it is navigable for small craft from the point where it enters the lowlands, seventy or eighty miles north of Delhi.