There was a painful want of organization about the procession, and the usual mixture of the sumptuous and tawdry, the rich and squalid, to which one is accustomed in India. A feature of the Dasahra festival is the number of men, disfigured with paint and ashes, who go about with iron skewers or pieces of cane passed through the skin of their arms, legs, sides, and throat, or even through the tongue. I once called up a party of these men and examined them. In answer to my remark, thrown out as a feeler, that the skewers had been passed through old perforations, the leader of the party indignantly pulled a young man before me, pinched up a good bit of the skin of his forearm, and there and then passed a blunt iron needle through it, which could not have been much thinner than an ordinary lead pencil. No blood flowed, and certainly the man operated upon did not wince in the slightest degree. After this the leader of the party, having satisfied me that the skin of his own neck below the chin was perfectly sound, passed a skewer through it with his own hand. In both cases a tolerable amount of force was necessary to pass the iron through the skin, but no blood flowed. These men, who are looked upon with a sort of awe by the vulgar, assured me that they were protected from pain or injury by a secret _mantra_ of Guru Gorucknath’s known only to themselves. They have probably learned, by the experience of many generations, safe places for the insertion of their skewers; but I was told by a native medical man that serious consequences sometimes follow their senseless ill-treatment of their own persons. The present of a rupee sent these absurd fellows away apparently well satisfied. [Illustration: [_To face p. 76._] MEN WITH KNIVES AND SKEWERS PASSED THROUGH THEIR FLESH. (From a photograph by W. C. Oman.)] Near the temple of Vishnu, by Rattan Singh’s Serai, arrangements had been made for a dramatic representation of Rama’s famous history. When I first came upon the spot there were five or six hundred people assembled. The women and children, arrayed in their holiday best, crowded the roofs of the surrounding buildings to witness the performance and, with the gay red and yellow of their dresses and their tinkling anklets, gave colour and animation to the scene. Men and boys were below. Three merry-go-rounds of the kind patronized by the people, were in full operation, creaking hideously.