We were now veritably in ancient Hindustan. It was among these level plains through which we were rolling that the antique Brahmins came and propounded that marvelous system which afterward took the whole heart of the land. Nothing could have been more striking than to cast one's eye thus over the wide cotton-fields--for one associates cotton with the New--and find them cultivated by these bare-legged and breech-clouted peasants of the Douab, with ploughs which consisted substantially of a crooked stick shod with iron at the end, and with other such farming-implements out of the time that one thinks of as forty centuries back. Yet in spite of this primitive rudeness of culture, and of an aridity of soil necessitating troublesome irrigation, these plains have for a prodigious period of time supported a teeming population; and I could not help crying out to Bhima Gandharva that if we had a few millions of these gentle and patient peasants among the cotton-fields of the United States, the South would quickly become a Garden of Delight and the planters could build Jammah Masjids with rupees for marble. [Illustration: PEASANTS OF THE DOUAB.] The conservatism which has preserved for so long a time the ancient rude methods of industry begins to grow on one as one passes between these villages of people who seem to be living as if they were perfectly sure that God never intended them to live any other way. "It is not long," said my friend, "since a British officer of engineers, on some expedition or other, was encamped for the night at no great distance from here. His tent had been pitched near one of those Persian water-wheels such as you have seen, which, although of great antiquity, are perhaps as ingeniously adapted to the purpose of lifting water as any machine ever invented. The creaking of the wheel annoyed him very much, and after a restless night, owing to that cause, he rose and went out of his tent and inquired of the proprietor of the wheel (a native) why in the name of Heaven he never greased it. 'Because,' said the conservative Hindu, 'I have become so accustomed to the noise that I can only sleep soundly while it is going on: when it stops, then I wake, and knowing from the cessation of the sound that my bullock-driver is neglecting his duty, I go out and beat him.' Thus, even the conservation of the useless comes in time to create habits which are useful." "It is true," I replied, "and it recalls to me a somewhat unusual illustration. A summer or two ago a legal friend of mine, who is the possessor of a large family of children, came into the court-room one morning with very red eyes, and to my inquiry concerning the cause of the same he replied: 'To tell you the truth, I can't go to sleep unless a child is crying about the house somewhere; but my wife left town yesterday for the summer with all the children, and I haven't had a wink the whole night.'"