second and then drops too senseless, his face falling on the goat that he has slain. For two, three, five minutes, I know not how long, there is a dead silence. The sun is at its height and pours down upon the intense crowd, upon the victim lying in its pool of blood, upon the priest a huddled heap beside it. And then with a great sigh the people awake. There is a movement and a murmur. Some elders go and carry away the goat, and the priest is supported to the little temple near by. The blood is covered up with fresh earth, the ceremony is over, and the people break up. * * * * * In the evening my writer Antonio tells me all he knows. What is the god who entered into the priest? I ask, and he shakes his head. "For sure," he answers, "I do not know. They only tell me 'Sawmy, Sawmy'; that is, 'God, God.' They say he want sacrifice, he want people to give him present. I do not know why he want present, except he big God and must be worship. If he not get sacrifice he angry. If he get sacrifice he pleased." So Antonio explains to me the scene. He argues like my books do. Let me consider. They would explain it some way like this. They would say that the "Sawmy" was the Sun God, or some other idealisation; that first of all the Indians imagined this Sawmy out of ghosts or dreams; that having done so they gave this God certain attributes and powers; that subsequently they imagined the God angry and punishing the people, and so they would proceed to a priest suffering from hysteria, which they supposed to be the possession of this Sawmy, and finally arrive at the procession and sacrifice. They would point out how the flesh of the goat was divided among the coolies, thus bringing them into communion with their God. And so they would come at last to the concrete fact, as caused by a long process of imagination, an explanation quite incredible to me. I read the facts differently, much more simply. As to imagination the people have hardly any; they are hopelessly incapable of such a train of thought. The priest himself admits that not one in fifty has the least glimmering of any meaning in the ceremony. Nevertheless they like it, they are awed by it, they would by no means allow it to be omitted. And as to this feast of communion with their divinity, what are the facts? The coolies are poor, they live almost entirely on rice and vegetables. Meat can very rarely be afforded. Yet they long for it, and a few times in the year they all subscribe and buy a goat for food as a very special luxury.