Where the villages are near the great thoroughfares, the carrying of sedan chairs is a very favourite method with the farmers of earning a few extra cash to help to meet the expenses of the home. After the crops have been gathered in, and the rush of work is over, they are accustomed to stand at various points on the roadside, and watch for the coming of sedan chairs that may be passing up or down. No sooner do they come opposite them than they call out and ask the bearers whether they do not wish to engage some one to give them a rest for a few miles and to carry their burden for them. If the men they address have been carrying for some hours and have grown weary, negotiations ensue which end in their dropping the chair on the road, and its being hoisted on to the shoulders of the new men, who, full of vigour and anxious to get their job finished, rush on like racehorses over the rough, uneven road. The payment for this toilsome labour is of the most meagre and unsatisfactory description. One day I was travelling over one of these great thoroughfares, and the men that were carrying me were becoming somewhat exhausted. The road, which had been very much left to nature to repair, was in a shockingly bad condition. It ran, moreover, through a very hilly country, and sometimes it wound up the sides of hills, and again it descended by rough, circuitous windings into the valley far beneath. The men had the greatest difficulty in keeping from falling. The chair on their shoulders was heavy, and the road was strewed with stones, and tiny waterways that the rains and the streams from the hills had cut into it had to be jumped. Very often I had to hold my breath in terror lest in passing over the face of a sloping rock the men's feet should slip, and I should find myself rolling down the hillside into a miniature rapid that fretted and foamed as it whirled and tossed in its wild career towards the plain below. My two bearers, who would have trotted along on an even road with only an occasional grunt, or a muttered expression as to the hardness of their lot in life, broke into expressions of disgust as the various difficulties of the way came one by one upon them; still they struggled manfully on, till finally we reached a small oasis in the hills, where a few houses embowered amid splendid banyan-trees offered refreshments to the travelling public as well as to our panting, perspiring chair-bearers, who dragged their weary limbs under the shadow of the great boughs of the trees, and dropping the chair in the middle of the road, threw themselves utterly exhausted and worn out on the benches that had been provided for those who intended to purchase refreshments before they proceeded further on their journey.