Not only is gold-leaf used for covering idols and shrines, but it is also used by native artists in the decorations of the walls. Earth colours are used for painting figures and scenery; but whenever a figure requires a golden crown or ornament, or the representation of a shrine or temple requires a golden decoration, then gold-leaf is always used, and the contrast between the bright reflecting surface of the metal and the dull appearance of the washes of the earth colours is very striking. A favourite subject for religious pictures is the representation of the different hells, of which there are eight. Though the account of the infernal regions as given below may seem very gruesome, there is nothing repulsive in their pictorial presentation by the native artist, owing to utter lack of any effect of realism. In fact, most Europeans require an interpreter in order to understand their meaning. The eight major hells are all places of fearful torment. In the first of the series the condemned creature is cut into infinitesimal pieces, every cut producing its own agonies, as the sense of feeling is never destroyed. When the body has thus been mutilated, a wind possessing life-restoring properties, blows over the torn remains and renovates them once more into a perfect human being, which is again mutilated by the attendants. The torment is repeated indefinitely; but a time arrives at last when the restored body is cast into another portion of the same hell to be the sport of cruel monsters. In this first hell one day is equal in length to nine hundred thousand years. In the second hell the floor is of molten iron, and as the lost ones tread the liquid metal they sink into it and die in frightful pain. A new life follows the recent death, and again and again is the terrible punishment inflicted through long periods of time, where one day is measured by thirty-six million years upon earth. The inhabitants of the third hell have lost a portion of their human form. Either they have human heads, and animals' bodies, or their human bodies possess animals' heads. They are the playthings of innumerable fiends who drive them with thongs from one mountain to another, and ever as they run, great masses of rock fall upon them, wounding and killing them. But as in all the other regions inhabited by the guilty, a new life springs from the dead bodies, that the cruel torment may be re-inflicted. The fourth hell is beautiful to look upon. Its floor is covered with the sacred lotus, but hidden amongst its rosy petals are sharp-pointed iron spikes. And as the damned come to the edges of hell, they are seized by the powerful arms of diabolical monsters, who fling them with Titanic force upon the treacherous flowers below. They are flung times without number, their wailing and moaning echoing and re-echoing through the corridors of hell for a space of four thousand years whose every day is equal to seventy-six million years upon earth.