BENGAL COTTAGE SCENERY. The scene now changes to the right bank, the opposite side of the river, at sunset. On the landing-place are natives bathing, and every where the margin of the water is studded with human beings. One man is filling his _gharas_ (earthen water vessels), which he carries suspended by ropes from a bamboo poised on his shoulder. Bengalī women are bringing empty water jars to fill at the river side, and in the shade a woman is returning from the holy stream on her way to some idol, bearing on her hand a brass tray containing a small vessel filled with water, and oil, and rice, and flowers for _pūjā_—that is, worship. A _Dhobī_ is washing clothes by dipping them in the river, and beating them on a rough piece of slanting board, the custom of the washermen in the East. The shop of a _Modī_, a grain merchant and seller of fruit, is now before you. Oranges, melons, limes, jackfruit, pummelos, pine-apples, all that is offered for sale in such abundance and at so small a price in this country are displayed at various seasons most invitingly. The fruit-seller is a very pious man, if we may judge from the pictures of the Hindū deities stuck on the wall of his shop, but which are too much in the shade to be very distinct. On the bamboo support of his thatch is a painting of Hūnūmān, the monkey god, in which he is represented bearing off on his shoulders the god Rām, and Sīta the beloved, from Ceylon: a fac-simile of this painting is in the Pilgrim’s Museum, being one of 32 paintings of the gods purchased at the Great Fair at Allahabad for one rupee! The natives are particularly fond of pigeons: they roost during the day on a frame-work, supported on a bamboo, as here pourtrayed; and the great delight of the pigeon-fancier is to fly his flock against that of another, making his birds wheel and turn, ascend and descend, and obey his every wish, by directing their course with a long thin bamboo. You continually see men and boys of an evening standing on the house-tops, amusing themselves with flying their pigeons. [Illustration] THE FAKĪR. The group in the foreground represents a _Bābū_, a native gentleman, awaiting the cool of the evening before he enters his palanquin; an attendant is supporting a _chatr_, or native umbrella, over his head, and the bearers with the palanquin are in attendance. In front is a Muhammadan _Fakīr_ leading a white bull fancifully adorned with peacocks’ feathers, cowrie shells, coloured worsted tassels, bits of brightly-coloured cloth, and brass bells; the plume on the top of his neck is the tail of the _yāk_, the cow of Tartary, much used in Hindostān in the adornment of holy bulls and of horses. In the back-ground is an Hindū temple, gilded by the rays of the setting sun.