As the Island contains no local Dewta, the Bhattias are careful to keep a Vishnu in the house, and to travel about, if possible, with a cow: in places like Pangani, where the horned god cannot live, they supply its place by a Hanuman (a small monkey, like the Presbyter Entellus of India) trapped in the jungle. Pagodas not being permitted, they meet for public devotions at a house in the southern quarter of the city, where most of them live, and lately they have been allowed to build a kind of fane at Mnazi Moyya. As usual with Banyans, the Bhattias have no daily prayers: on such festivals as the Pitri-paksha—the ‘Manes-Fortnight,’ from the 13th to the 18th of the month Bhadrapad—they call in, and fee a Brahman to assist them. Their proper priests are the Pokarna, who, more scrupulous than others, refuse to cross the sea: the Sársat Brahmans, so common in Sind and Cutch, are the only high-caste drones who to collect money will visit Zanzibar and Maskat. With a characteristic tenderness, these Banyans cook grain at the landing-places for the wild slaves, half-starved by the ‘middle-passage,’ and inclination as well as policy everywhere induces them to give alms largely. Apostasy is exceedingly rare: none Islamize, except those who have been perverted by Moslems in their youth, or who form connections with strange women. The Comoro men, here the only energetic proselytizers, have, however, sometimes succeeded: a short time ago two Bhattias became Mohammedans, and their fellow caste-men declared that the Great Destruction was drawing nigh. Yet Vishnu slept, and still sleeps the sleep of the just. When a Bhattia’s affairs become hopelessly involved he generally ‘levants’: sometimes, however, he will go through the Diwali or bankruptcy, a far more troublesome process than the ‘Gazette.’ The unfortunate places in his store-front a lighted lamp, whence the name of the ceremony, and with head enveloped in a sheet, he silently occupies the furthest corner. Presently a crowd of jeering Moslems collects to see the furious creditors ranting, scolding, and beating the bankrupt, who weeps, wails, calls upon his god, and swears to be good for all future time. These degrading scenes, however, are now becoming rare. They remind us of the Tuscans and the Boeotians of old, ‘who brought their bankrupts into the market-place in a bier, with an empty purse carried before them, all the boys following, where they sat all day, _circumstante plebe_, to be infamous and ridiculous.’