As we travel on, we notice how very bad the roads are. We are on what is called the "Great Road," for it is a great thoroughfare, and for more than two thousand miles it runs over great plains, and winds up and down hills and mountains, and crosses great rivers and countless streams, and penetrates great and populous cities, and yet, excepting at occasional places, it never averages more than ten feet wide. It seems, too, to be in a chronic state of disrepair. The rains fall, and the storms and the typhoons spend their fury on it, and try their very utmost to obliterate it. The countless feet, too, of weary travellers, and of coolies with burdened shoulders, and chair-bearers with their weighty fares tread it down and fill it with ruts, and wear away the stones, and disfigure its surface with heights and hollows that make travelling in the rainy season a serious trial to those who have to journey along it. If this be the case with the "Great Roads" it may easily be imagined what the character of the "Small Roads" must be. These latter are practically but footpaths that exist like a huge network throughout the Empire, and are reserved for the local traffic that goes on between village and village, and between market town and market town, and whilst on the whole they aim at being as straight and as direct as possible, they are from the very nature of the case generally very winding and roundabout. Fields have to be crossed and private property has to be invaded, and so the traveller has to accommodate himself to the necessities of the case, and follow the windings and the turnings by which the least damage may be done to those whose farms or homesteads have been invaded by those who never dream of paying any compensation for the liberty they have taken. In travelling on these "Great Roads," one finds that about every two miles or so apart there are recognized stages or resting-places where refreshments of a very primitive kind may be obtained, and where men wearied with the strain of walking, or oppressed with the great flaring, scorching sun may find some respite from the strain that has been put upon them. But here is one of these stages, and as the rule of the road demands that the chair-bearers shall stop at it, we shall be able to see for ourselves exactly what they are like. At first sight it has a very tempting, picturesque appearance. Several magnificent banyan-trees send out huge spreading boughs, which, with their great forest of leaves, cast a most refreshing shade over the road and over the eating-houses that stand by the wayside. These latter are of the simplest and most elementary kind, and consist of one large room that is practically a kitchen, where the rice and the sweet potatoes are cooked and where the owner and his wife carry out the orders that their customers may give them.