Next morning, when we issued into the streets of Nashik once more, the scene that presented itself to our astonished gaze was that of a vast multitude gone mad. Crowds of women dressed in fantastic attire, especially in white- and yellow-spotted muslin sarees, men in curious garbs, boys dressed like sprites or wholly nude and besmeared with yellow paint, fakeers, gossains, ascetics, Hindoos, and Brahmans, were seen in the streets shouting, laughing, throwing red paint about; rude jests were being passed; women were addressed in obscene or ribald language; persons blindfolded in the streets were left to grope their way until they removed the bandage from their eyes, friends sent on bootless errands, etc. In fact, it was a complete saturnalia of the rudest and most grotesque description. It was the festival of the _Holi_,[79] held in honor of Krishna's sportive character on the night of the full moon in the month of February. That evening we went out on the banks of the Godaveri to see the termination of the festival, and it is simply impossible to describe the wild enthusiasm of this vast concourse of people. The banks of the river, the steps of the numberless temples, the courts within courts, the shrines, the altars, the great halls and music-galleries with forests of carved pillars, were closely packed with countless throngs of white-robed priests, half-naked gossains, or sparkling dancing-girls, while thousands of men, women, and children lined the banks of the Godaveri, eager and enthusiastic participants in the gay, bewildering scene. As we stood gazing at the strange spectacle we heard the wild, discordant sounds of various musical instruments, the shrill blast of innumerable conch-shells, and the deafening beat of the tom-toms, whereupon huge fires began to blaze almost simultaneously from shore to shore at regular distances, and everywhere round them groups of strangely dressed boys performed weird circular dances, holding each other's hands and going around them; then, suddenly letting loose, they darted and leaped round and round one another and round the fire at the same time. This dance is ostensibly performed to commemorate the dance of the god Krishna with the seven gowpiahs, or milkmaids, but there is scarcely a doubt that this festival originally meant to typify the revolution of the planets round the sun. The light from these blazing fires streaming out upon the moonlit river, the wild discordant music, the hilarious shouts, the frantic dancers, the sparkle of the dancing-girls, the white-robed figures of the countless multitude, now flashing in sight in the glare of the firelight, and anon vanishing in the deep shadows beyond, the piles of black temples, the great trees with their arms bending down to the river or stretching toward the clear sky,--all combined to render the last night of the festival of the Holi at Nashik a most weird and singularly fantastic sight.