"She was then made to leave the palanquin, and as she was scarcely able to walk, her people helped her to drag herself to a pond near the pyre. She plunged into the water with all her clothes and ornaments on, and was immediately afterwards led to the pyre, on which the body of her husband was already laid. The pyre was surrounded by Brahmins, each with a lighted torch in one hand and a bowl of ghee in the other. Her relatives and friends, several of whom were armed with muskets, swords, and other weapons, stood closely round in a double line, and seemed to await impatiently the end of this shocking tragedy. This armed force, they told me, was intended not only to intimidate the unhappy victim in case the terror of her approaching death might induce her to run away, but also to overawe any persons who might be moved by a natural feeling of compassion and sympathy, and so tempted to prevent the accomplishment of the homicidal sacrifice. "At length, the _purohita_ Brahmin gave the fatal signal. The poor widow was instantly divested of all her jewels, and dragged, more dead than alive, to the pyre. There she was obliged, according to custom, to walk three times round the pile, two of her nearest relatives supporting her by the arms. She accomplished the first round with tottering steps; during the second her strength wholly forsook her, and she fainted away in the arms of her conductors, who were obliged to complete the ceremony by dragging her through the third round. Then, at last, senseless and unconscious, she was cast upon the corpse of her husband. At that moment the air resounded with noisy acclamations. The Brahmins, emptying the contents of their vessels on the dry wood, applied their torches, and in the twinkling of an eye the whole pile was ablaze. Three times was the unfortunate woman called by her name. But, alas! she made no answer."[63] =Boys and Girls.= "A son is the most coveted of all blessings that a Hindu craves, for it is by a son's birth in the family that the father is redeemed."[64] This accounted for the difference in the feeling for a boy and for a girl. So strong was the desire for a son that sonless mothers were filled with great care and anxiety lest the child should not be a boy. There is, perhaps, nothing which will so weaken mankind as the life of the mothers before the birth of the children, so what a great influence upon the Hindu race must have been this constant worry of women who were to become mothers. Well might the wives worry, for according to Manu, a wife who had all daughters and no sons could be replaced with another wife in the eleventh year of marriage.