It is the foster-mother of Mohammedanism and counts among her sons and daughters more of the followers of the Prophet of Mecca than are found in any other land. It has also been the asylum of many followers of the Nazarene for at least sixteen centuries; many even claim that Christianity has found a home here since apostolic days. There is no land comparable with India in the variegated expressions of its beliefs which add picturesqueness to the country and diversity to the people. I purpose to take the reader with me on a tour with a view to furnishing glimpses of these religions at those places where they reveal special interest to the tourist.[1] [Footnote 1: The principal faiths of the land, with their adherents, were as follows, according to census of 1901:-- Hindu 207,147,026 Sikh 2,195,339 Jain 1,334,148 Buddhist 9,476,759 Parsee 94,190 Mohammedan 62,458,077 Jewish 18,228 Christian 2,923,241 These figures include Burma.] India is a land of immense distances. But its thirty thousand miles of railroad will enable the traveller, within a couple of months, to scan all its points of interest, and to feast his eyes upon visions of Oriental charm and splendour, of architectural beauty and grandeur, and of such monuments of religious devotion as no other land can present to the traveller and student. Let not the Westerner indulge his fears about the discomforts and dangers of travel in this tropical land. To an English-speaking tourist there are a few lands only which furnish more conveniences and facilities for travel than this same India; and travelling is cheaper here than in any other country. Comfortable second-class travelling rarely costs more than one cent a mile. And many, like the writer, have travelled thousands of miles in third-class compartments at less than half a cent a mile, and without much other inconvenience than an excess of dust and stiffened bones. The writer has seen many globe-trotters pass through India of whom few were not surprised at the relative comforts of travel here during the winter months, and no other time of the year should be chosen for travelling in India.