Next morning, the rite of _Boyetarni_ being performed, preparations are made to carry the sick man to the river side: all the nearest relations and friends assemble, and the patient, then in the full possession of his senses, is brought outside and laid on the _charpoy_; his forehead is daubed with the mud of the Ganges, and a _toolsee_ plant is placed about his head. He is told to repeat the name of his guardian deity, and one man going up to him says, let's go to visit the mother Gunga, at which he nods; this serves as a signal for lifting the _charpoy_, and putting it on the shoulders of four strong persons of equal size. The heart-rending scene that ensues hereupon among the females cannot be adequately described. Their falling on the ground, their loud and affecting cries, the tearing of their dishevelled locks, the wringing of their breast, the contortions of their bodies, all produce a mournful scene of anguish and despair which my feeble pen can hardly pourtray. The sick man is thus carried, perhaps a distance of two or three miles, in a state of consciousness[115] exposed to all the dangers of inclement weather, fully aware of his approaching end, the carriers exchanging their shoulders every now and then, and shouting out every five minutes, "Hurry, Hurrybole, Gunga Narain, Brahma, Shiva Rama," until they reach their destination, which, in Calcutta, is Nimtollah Ghaut, on the banks of the Hooghly.[116] When the _charpoy_ on which the sick man is borne is placed on the ground, some one calls out to the patient to see the sacred stream, which he does in a state of mind that can be better imagined than described. On opening his eyes he beholds a dark, gloomy scene, the ghastliness of which is enough to strike horror into the heart of the most callous and indifferent. Here a dying man suffering from the convulsive agony of acute pain, is, perhaps, gasping for breath, there a fellow mortal is taken in a hurry to the very edge of the holy water to breathe out the last flicker of life; to deepen the gloom perhaps a corpse borne on a Hindoo hearse is just brought to the Ghaut amidst the vociferous cries of "Hurry, Hurrybole," which is a significant death-warrant. "'Tis too horrible; The weariest and most loathed earthly life Which age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death?"