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 Answers to review questions from Chapter 2
1. Explain in your own words the difference between a method and a program.

A method computes a value or performs some operation on behalf of the code for a program. A
program executes computation on behalf of a user. A program typically includes many methods.

2. Define the following terms as they apply to methods: call, argument, return.

In programming terminology, the process of invoking a method is referred to as calling that

method. In the process of making a call, the caller can provide data to the method in the form of
arguments, which are a set of local variables that are initialized from the values written inside the
parentheses that designate the call. When the method completes its work, it returns to its caller,
often passing back a value as a result.

3. Can there be more than one return statement in the body of a method?
Yes. A method can include any number of return statements.

4. What is a static method?

A static method is a method associated with a class rather than with a specific object. Static
methods are called by including the class name and a dot before the method name.

5. How would you calculate the trigonometric sine of 45° using the Math class?
Math.sin(Math.toRadians(45))

6. What is a predicate method?

A predicate method is a method that returns a Boolean value.

7. Describe the difference in role between an implementer and a client.

The implementer is responsible for writing the actual code that carries out an operation. The
client invokes that code to perform the operation but need not understand the details for doing
so.

8. What is meant by the term overloading? How does the Java compiler use signatures to implement
overloading?
In Java, the term overloading refers to the fact that you can define several different methods with
the same name, as long as each method has a different signature, which indicates the number and
types of the arguments. When the Java compiler sees a call to an overloaded method with a
particular name, it examines the argument values to see which version of that method is
required.

9. What is a stack frame?

A stack frame is the region of memory used to hold the values of local variables during a method
call. The frame is created when the method is called and deleted when the method returns.

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

10. Describe the process by which arguments are associated with parameters.
Arguments and parameters are matched by their order in the argument list. The names of the
parameters have no bearing on the association process.

11. Variables declared within a method are said to be local variables. What is the significance of the word
local in this context?
Local variables can be used only within that method. Neither the caller nor any method called
from inside a method has access to those local variables.

12. What is the difference between iteration and recursion?

Iteration refers to the process of performing repeated calculations by using a loop to execute the
same code.

13. What is meant by the phrase recursive leap of faith? Why is this concept important to you as a
programmer?
The recursive leap of faith refers to the idea that, in writing a recursive solution, you can assume
that smaller instances of the problem work and then reassemble those solutions to solve the
original problem. If you fail to adopt the recursive leap of faith, you are forced to trace the
operation of the program all the way down to the simple cases, which often makes the process too
complex to follow.

14. In the section entitled “Tracing the recursive process,” the text goes through a long analysis of what
happens internally when fact(4) is called. Using this section as a model, trace the execution of
fib(3), sketching out each stack frame created in the process.

Step 1: Step

2: Step 3:

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

Step 4:

Step 5:

Step 6

Step 7:
Step 8:

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

Step 9:

Step 10:

Step 11:

Step 12:

Step 13:
Step 14:

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

15. What is a recurrence relation?

A recurrence relation is an expression defining each new element of a sequence in terms of earlier
elements.

16. Modify Fibonacci’s rabbit problem by introducing the additional rule that rabbit pairs stop reproducing
after giving birth to three litters. How does this assumption change the recurrence relation? What
changes do you need to make in the simple cases?
The new recurrence relation must subtract out the rabbits that are too old to reproduce, which
are all of those born more than four months ago. The recurrence relation therefore looks like
this:

tn = tn-1 + tn-2 – tn-5

The simple case must now take account of the fact that the value of n may now range into negative
territory, when there were no rabbits. The code for the revised rabbit problem looks like this:

private int rabbits(int n) {

if (n <= 0) {
return 0;
} else if (n == 1) {
return 1;
} else {
return rabbits(n - 1) + rabbits(n - 2) - rabbits(n - 5);
}
}

17. How many times is fib(1) called when fib(n) is calculated using the recursive implementation
given in Figure 2-5?

The method fib(1) is called fib(n) times.

18. What is a wrapper method? Why are wrapper methods often useful in writing recursive methods?

A wrapper method is a method whose only role is to set things up for a call to a more general
recursive method that does all the work. In many situations, the recursive process requires
additional state information that the wrapper method can provide.

19. What would happen if you eliminated the if (n == 1) check from the method additiveSequence,
so that the implementation looked like this:

int additiveSequence(int n, int t0, int t1) {

if (n == 0) return t0;
return additiveSequence(n - 1, t1, t0 + t1);
}

Would the method still work? Why, or why not?

The method would still work. In the absence of the check, the method calls itself recursively with
0 as the first argument and the value of t1 as the second. Since n will then be 0 in the recursive
call, the method will return the original value of t1, just as before.

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sinners and Saints
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Sinners and Saints

Author: Phil Robinson

Release date: January 31, 2017 [eBook #54079]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by the Mormon Texts Project

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SINNERS AND

SAINTS ***
 SINNERS AND SAINTS
A TOUR ACROSS THE STATES, AND ROUND THEM

WITH

THREE MONTHS AMONG THE MORMONS

BY PHIL ROBINSON

AUTHOR OF "IN MY INDIAN GARDEN," "UNDER THE PUNKAH,"

"NOAH'S ARK,'" ETC., ETC.

NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION

LONDON

1892

Inscribed,

WITH AUTHOR'S GRATITUDE, TO A FRIEND, JOHN STUART

DOWNING.
 CONTENTS.
—

CHAPTER I.

FROM NEW YORK TO CHICAGO.

By the Pennsylvania Limited—Her Majesty's swine—Glimpses of Africa

and India—"Eligible sites for Kingdoms"—The Phoenix city—Street
scenes—From pig to pork—The Sparrow line—Chicago Mountain—
Melancholy merry-makers.

CHAPTER II.

FROM CHICAGO TO DENVER.

Fathers of Waters—"Rich Lands lie Flat"—The Misery River—Council

Bluffs—A "Live" town, sir—Two murders: a contrast—Omaha—The
immorality of "writing up"—On the prairies—The modesty of "Wish-ton-
Wish"—The antelope's tower of refuge—Out of Nebraska into Colorado—
Man-eating Tiger.

CHAPTER III.

IN LEADVILLE.

The South Park line—Oscar Wilde on sunflowers as food—In a wash-hand

basin—Anti-Vigilance Committees—Leadville the city of the carbonates
—"Busted" millionaires—The philosophy of thick boots—Colorado miners
—National competition in lions—Abuse of the terms "gentleman" and
"lady"—Up at the mines—Under the pine-trees.

CHAPTER IV.
 FROM LEADVILLE TO SALT LAKE CITY.

What is the conductor of a Pullman car?—Cannibalism fatal to lasting

friendships—Starving Peter to feed Paul—Connexion between Irish
cookery and Parnellism—Americans not smokers—In Denver—"The
Queen City of the Plains"—Over the Rockies—Pride in a cow, and what
came of it—Sage-brush—Would ostriches pay in the West?—Echo Canyon
—The Mormons' fortifications—Great Salt Lake in sight.

CHAPTER V.

THE CITY OF THE HONEY-BEE.

Zion—Deseret—A City Of Two Peoples—"Work" the watch-word of

Mormonism—A few facts to the credit of the Saints—The text of the
Edmunds Bill—In the Mormon Tabernacle—The closing scene of the
Conference.

CHAPTER VI.

LEGISLATION AGAINST PLURALITY.

A people under a ban—What the Mormon men think of the Anti-Polygamy

Bill—And what the Mormon women say of polygamy—Puzzling
confidences—Practical plurality a very dull affair—But theoretically a
hedge-hog problem—Matrimonial eccentricities—The fashionable milliner
fatal to plurality—Absurdity of comparing Moslem polygamy with
Mormon plurality—Are the women of Utah happy?—Their enthusiasm for
Women's Rights.

CHAPTER VII.

SUA SI BONA NORINT.

A Special Correspondent's lot—Hypothecated wits—The Daughters of Zion

—Their modest demeanour—Under the banner of Woman's Rights—The
discoverer discovered—Turning the tables—"By Jove, sir, you shall have
mustard with your beefsteak!"
 CHAPTER VIII.

COULD THE MORMONS FIGHT?

An unfulfilled prophecy—Had Brigham Young been still alive?—The

hierarchy of Mormonism—The fighting Apostle and his colleagues—
Plurality a revelation—Rajpoot infanticide: how it was stamped out—
Would the Mormons submit to the process?—Their fighting capabilities—
Boer and Mormon: an analogy between the Drakensberg and the Wasatch
ranges—The Puritan fanaticism of the Saints—Awaiting the fulness of time
and of prophecy.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SAINTS AND THE RED MEN.

Prevalent errors as to the red man—Secret treaties—The policy of the

Mormons towards Indians—A Christian heathen—Fighting-strength of
Indians friendly to Mormons.

CHAPTER X.

REPRESENTATIVE AND UNREPRESENTATIVE MORMONISM.

Mormonism and Mormonism—Salt Lake City not representative—The

miracles of water—How settlements grow—The town of Logan: one of the
Wonders of the West—The beauty of the valley—The rural simplicity of
life—Absence of liquor and crime—A police force of one man—Temple
mysteries—Illustrations of Mormon degradation—Their settlement of the
"local option" question.

CHAPTER XI.

THROUGH THE MORMON SETTLEMENTS.

Salt Lake City to Nephi—General similarity of the settlements—From Salt

Lake Valley into Utah Valley—A lake of legends—Provo—Into the Juab
valley—Indian reminiscences—Commercial integrity of the saints—At
Nephi—Good work done by the saints—Type of face in rural Utah—
Mormon "doctrine" and Mormon "meetings."

CHAPTER XII.

FROM NEPHI TO MANTI.

English companies and their failures—A deplorable neglect of claret cup—

Into the San Pete Valley—Reminiscences of the Indians—The forbearance
of the red man—The great temple at Manti—Masonry and Mormon
mysteries—In a tithing-house.

CHAPTER XIII.

FROM MANTI TO GLENWOOD.

Scandinavian Mormons—Danish ol—Among the orchards at Manti—On

the way to Conference—Adam and Eve—The protoplasm of a settlement—
Ham and eggs—At Mayfield—Our teamster's theory of the ground-hog—
On the way to Glenwood—Volcanic phenomena and lizards—A suggestion
for improving upon Nature—Primitive Art.

CHAPTER XIV.

FROM GLENWOOD TO MONROE.

From Glenwood to Salina—Deceptiveness of appearances—An apostate

Mormon's friendly testimony—Reminiscences of the Prophet Joseph Smith
—Rabbit-hunting in a waggon—Lost in the sage-brush—A day at Monroe
—Girls riding pillion—The Sunday drum—Waiting for the right man: "And
what if he is married?"—The truth about apostasy: not always voluntary.

CHAPTER XV.

AT MONROE.

"Schooling" in the Mormon districts—Innocence as to whisky, but

connoisseurs in water—"What do you think of that water, sir?"—Gentile
dependents on Mormon charity—The one-eyed rooster—Notice to All!
 CHAPTER XVI.

JACOB HAMBLIN.

A Mormon missionary among the Indians—The story Of Jacob Hamblin's

life—His spiritualism, the result of an intense faith—His good work among
the Lamanites—His belief in his own miracles.

CHAPTER XVII.

THROUGH MARYSVALE TO KINGSTON.

Piute County—Days of small things—A swop in the sage-brush; two

Bishops for one Apostle—The Kings of Kingston—A failure in Family.

CHAPTER XVIII.

FROM KINGSTON TO ORDERVILLE.

On the way to Panguitch—Section-houses not Mormon homes—Through

wild country—Panguitch and its fish—Forbidden pleasures—At the Source
of the Rio Virgin—The surpassing beauty of Long Valley—The Orderville
Brethren—A success in Family Communism.

CHAPTER XIX.

MORMON VIRTUES.

Red ants and anti-Mormons—Ignorance of the Mormons among Gentiles in

Salt Lake City—Mormon reverence for the Bible—Their struggle against
drinking-saloons in the city—Conspicuous piety in the settlements—Their
charity—Their sobriety (to my great inconvenience)—The literature of
Mormonism utterly unreliable—Neglect of the press by the Saints—
Explanation of the wide-spread misrepresentation of Mormonism.

CHAPTER XX.

DOWN THE ONTARIO MINE

 CHAPTER XXI.

FROM UTAH INTO NEVADA.

Rich and ugly Nevada—Leaving Utah—The gift of the Alfalfa—Through a

lovely country to Ogden—The great food devouring trick—From Mormon
to Gentile: a sudden contrast—The son of a cinder—Is the red man of no
use at all?—The papoose's papoose—Children all of one family.

CHAPTER XXII.

FROM NEVADA INTO CALIFORNIA.

Of bugbears—Suggestions as to sleeping-cars—A Bannack chief, his hat

and his retinue—The oasis of Humboldt—Past Carson Sink—A
reminiscence of wolves—"Hard places"—First glimpses of California—A
corn miracle—Bunch-grass and Bison—From Sacramento to Benicia.

CHAPTER XXIII.

San Franciscans, their fruits and their falsehoods—Their neglect of

opportunities—A plague of flies—The pigtail problem—Chinamen less
black than they are painted—The seal rocks—The loss of the Eurydice—A
jeweller's fairyland—The mystery of gems.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Gigantic America—Of the treatment of strangers—The wild-life world—

Railway Companies' food-frauds—California Felix—Prairie-dog history—
The exasperation of wealth—Blessed with good oil—The meek lettuce and
judicious onion—Salads and Salads—The perils of promiscuous grazing.

CHAPTER XXV.

The Carlyle of vegetables—The moral in blight—Bee-farms—The city of

Angels—Of squashes—Curious vegetation—The incompatibility of camels
and Americans—Are rabbits "seals"?—All wilderness and no weather—An
"infinite torment of flies."
 CHAPTER XXVI.

THROUGH THE COWBOYS' COUNTRY.

The Santa Cruz valley—The cactus—An ancient and honourable pueblo—

A terrible beverage—Are cicadas deaf?—A floral catastrophe—The
secretary and the peccaries.

CHAPTER XXVII.

American neglect of natural history—Prairie-dogs again; their courtesy and

colouring—Their indifference to science—A hard crowd—Chuckers out—
Makeshift Colorado.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Nature's holiday—Through wonderful country—Brown negroes a libel on

mankind—The Wild-flower State—The black problem—A piebald flirt—
The hippopotamus and the flea—A narrow escape—The home of the
swamp-goblin—Is the moon a fraud?

CHAPTER XXIX.

Frogs, in the swamp and as a side-dish—Negroids of the swamp age—

Something like a mouth—Honour in your own country—The Land of
Promise—Civilization again.
 CHAPTER I.
FROM NEW YORK TO CHICAGO.

By the Pennsylvania Limited—Her Majesty's

swine—Glimpses of Africa and India
—"Eligible sites for Kingdoms"—The
Phoenix city—Street scenes—From pig to
pork—The Sparrow line—Chicago Mountain
—Melancholy merry-makers.

"DOES the fast train to Chicago ever stop?" was the question of a
bewildered English fellow-passenger, Westward-bound like myself, as I
took my seat in the car of the Pennsylvania Limited mail that was to carry
me nearly half the distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific. "Oh, yes," I
replied, "it stops—at Chicago."

By this he recognized in me a fellow-innocent, and so we foregathered at

once, breakfasted together, and then went out to smoke the calumet
together.

To an insular traveller, it is a prodigiously long journey this, across the

continent of America, but I found the journey a perpetual enjoyment. Even
the dull country of the first hour's travelling had many points of interest for
the stranger—scattered hamlets of wooden houses that were only joined
together by straggling strings of cocks and hens; the others that seemed to
have been trying to scramble over the hill and down the other side but were
caught just as they got to the top and pinned down to the ground with
lightning conductors; the others that had palings round them to keep them
from running away, but had got on to piles as if they were stilts and
intended (when no one was looking) to skip over the palings and go away;
the others that had rows of dwarf fir-trees in front of them, through which
they stared out of both their windows like a forward child affecting to be
shy behind its fingers. These fir-trees are themselves very curious, for they
give the country a half-cultivated appearance, and in some places make the
hillsides and valleys look like immense cemeteries, and only waiting for the
tombstones. Even the levels of flooded land and the scorched forests were
of interest, as significant of a country still busy over its rudiments.

"All charcoal and puddles," said a fellow-traveller disparagingly; "I'm very

glad we're going so fast through it."

Now for my own part I think it looks very uncivil of a train to go with a
screech through a station without stopping, and I always wish I could say
something in the way of an apology to the station-master for the train's bad
manners. No doubt people who live in very small places get accustomed to
trains rushing past their platforms without stopping even to say "By your
leave." But at first it must be rather painful. At least I should think it was.
On the other hand, the people "in the mofussil" (which is the Anglo-Indian
for "all the country outside one's own town") did not pay much attention to
our train. Everybody went about their several works for all the world as if
we were not flashing by. Even the dogs trotted about indifferently, without
even so much as noticing us, except occasionally some distant mongrel,
who barked at the train as if it was a stray bullock, and smiled complacently
upon the adjoining landscape when he found how thoroughly he had
frightened it away.

There seemed to me a curious dearth of small wild life. The English

"country" is so full of birds that all others seem, by comparison, birdles.
Once, I saw a russet-winged hawk hovering over a copse of water-oak as if
it saw something worth eating there; once, too, I saw a blue-bird brighten a
clump of cedars. Now and again a vagabond crow drifted across the sky.
But, as compared with Europe or parts of the East which I know best, bird-
life was very scanty.

And presently Philadelphia came sliding along to meet us with a stately

decorum of metalled roads and well-kept public grounds, and we stopped
for the first of the twelve halts, worth calling such, which I had to make in
the 3000 miles between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
How treacherously the trains in America start! There is no warning given,
so far as an ordinary passenger can see, that the start is under
contemplation, and it takes him by surprise. The American understands that
"All aboard" means "If you don't jump up at once you'll be left behind." But
to those accustomed to a "first" and a "second" and a "third" bell—and
accustomed, too, not to get up even then until the guard has begged them as
a personal favour to take their seats—the sudden departure of the American
locomotive presents itself as a rather shabby sort of practical joke.

The quiet, unobtrusive scenery beyond Philadelphia is English in character,

and would be still more so if there were hedges instead of railings. By the
way, whenever reading biographical notices of distinguished Americans I
have been surprised to find that so many of them at one time or other had
"split rails" for a subsistence. But now that I have followed the "course of
empire" West, I am not the least surprised. I only wonder that every
American has not split rails, at one time or another, or, indeed, gone on
doing it all his life. For how such a prodigious quantity of rails ever got
split (even supposing distinguished men to have assisted in the industry in
early life) passes my feeble comprehension. All the way from New York to
Chicago there are on an average twenty lines of split rails running parallel
with the railway track, in sight all at once! And after all, this is only one
narrow strip across a gigantic continent. In fact, the two most prominent
"natural features" of the landscape along this route are dwarf firs and split
rails. But no writer on America has ever told me so. Nor have I ever been
told of the curious misapprehension prevalent in the States as to the liberty
of the subject in the British Isles.

In America, judging at any rate from the speech of "the average American,"
I find that there is a belief prevalent that the English nation "lies prostrate
under the heel of a tyrant." What a shock to those who think thus, must have
been that recent episode of the queen's pigs at Slough!

Six swine and a calf belonging to her Majesty found themselves, the other
day, impounded by the Slough magistrates for coming to market without a
licence. Slough, from geographical circumstances over which it has no
control, happens to be in Buckinghamshire, and this country has been
declared "an infected district," so that the bailiff who brought his
sovereign's pigs to market, without due authority to do so, transgressed the
law. Two majesties thus came into collision over the calf, and that of the
law prevailed. Such a constitutional triumph as this goes far to clear away
the clouds that appeared to be gathered upon the political horizon, and the
shadows of a despotic dictatorship which seemed to be falling across
England begin to vanish. The written law, contained probably in a very
dilapidated old copy in the possession of these rural magistrates, a dogs'-
eared and, it may be, even a ragged volume, asserted itself supreme over a
monarch's farmyard stock, and dared to break down that divinity which
doth hedge a Sovereign's swine. There are some who say that in the British
Isles men are losing their reverence for the law, and that justice wears two
faces, one for the rich and another for the poor. They would have us believe
that only the parasites of princes sit in high place, and that the scales of
justice rise or fall according to the inclinations of the sceptre, with the
obsequious regularity of the tides that wait upon the humours of the moon.
But such an incident as this, when the Justices of Slough, those intrepid
Hampdens, sate sternly in their places, and, fearless of Royal frowns and all
the displeasure of Windsor, dispensed to the pigs, born in the purple, and to
the calf that had lived so near a throne, the impartial retribution of a fine—
with costs—gives a splendid refutation to these calumnies. Where shall we
look in Republican history for such another incident? or where search for
dauntless magistrates like those of Slough, who shut their eyes against the
reflected glitter of a Court, who fined the Royal calf for risking the health of
Hodge's miserable herd, and gave the costs against the Imperial pigs for
travelling into Buckinghamshire without a licence? Fiat justitia, ruat
coelum. There was no truckling here to borrowed majesty, no sycophant
adulation of Royal ownership; but that fine old English spirit of courageous
independence which has made tyrants impossible in our island and our law
supreme. It was of no use before such men as these, the stout-hearted
champions of equal justice, for the bailiff to plead manorial privilege, or to
threaten the thunders of the House of Brunswick. They were as implacable
as a bench of Rhadamanthuses, and gave these distinguished hogs the grim
choice between paying a pound or going to one. Nor, to their credit be it
said, did either bailiff, calf, or pigs exhibit resentment. On the contrary, they
accepted judgment with that respectful acquiescence which characterizes
our law-abiding race, and the swine turned without a murmur from the
scene of their repulse, and trotted cheerfully before the bailiff out of
Buckinghamshire back to Windsor.

The bailiff, no doubt, bethought him of the past, and wished the good old
days of feudalism were back, when a King's pig was a better man than a
Buckinghamshire magistrate. But if he did, he abstained from saying so. On
the contrary, he paid his fine like a loyal subject, and gathering his innocent
charges round him went forth, more in sorrow than in anger, from the
presence of the magisterial champions of the public interests. The punished
pigs, too, may have felt, perhaps, just a twinge of regret for the days when
they roamed at will over the oak-grown shires, infecting each other as they
chose, without any thought of Contagious Diseases Acts or vigilant justices.
But they said nothing; and the spectacle of an upright stipendiary
dispensing impartial justice to a law-abiding aristocracy was thus complete.

To return to my car. Beyond Philadelphia the country was waking up for

Spring. The fields were all flushed with the first bright promise of harvest;
blackbirds—reminding me of the Indian king-crows in their sliding manner
of flight and the conspicuous way in which they use their tails as rudders—
were flying about in sociable parties; and flocks of finches went jerking up
the hill-sides by fits and starts after the fashion of these frivolous little folk.

A mica-schist (it may be gneiss) abounds along the railway track, and it
occurred to me that I had never, except in India, seen this material used for
the ornamentation of houses. Yet it is very beautiful. In the East they beat it
up into a powder—some is white, some yellow—and after mixing it with
weak lime and water, wash the walls with it, the result being a very
effective although subdued sparkle, in some places silvery, in others golden.

Nearing Harrisburg the country begins to resemble upper Natal very

strongly, and when we reached the Susquehanna, I could easily have
believed that we were on the Mooi, on the borders of Zululand. But the
superior majesty of the American river soon asserted itself, and I forgot the
comparison altogether as I looked out on this truly noble stream, with the
finely wooded hills leaning back from it on either side, as if to give its
waters more spacious way.
And then Harrisburg, and the same stealthy departure of the train. But
outside the station our having started was evident enough, for a horse that
had been left to look after a buggy for a few minutes, took fright, and with
three frantic kangaroo-leaps tried to take the conveyance whole over a wall.
But failing in this, it careered away down the road with the balance of the
buggy dangling in a draggle-tail sort of way behind it.

Nature works with so few ingredients that landscape repeats itself in every
continent. For there is a limit, after all, to the combinations possible of
water, mountain, plain, valley, and vegetation. This is strictly true, of
course, only when we deal with things generically. Specific combinations
go beyond arithmetic. But even with her species, Nature delights in singing
over old songs and telling the tales she has already told. For instance here,
after passing Harrisburg, is a wonderful glimpse of Naini Tal in the Indian
hills—memorable for a terribly fatal landslip three years ago—with its oaks
and rhododendrons and scattered pines. In the valleys the streams go
tumbling along with willows on either bank, and here and there on the
hillsides, shine white houses with orchards about them.

The houses men build for themselves when they are thinking only of shelter
are ugly enough. Elegance, like the nightingale, is a creature of summer-
time, when the hard-working months of the year are over and Nature sits in
her drawing-room, so to speak, playing the fine lady, painting the roses and
sweetening the peaches. But, ugly though they are, these scattered
homesteads are by far the finest lines in all the great poem of this half-wild
continent, and lend a grand significance to every passage in which they
occur. And the pathos of it! Look at those two horses and a man driving a
plough through that scrap of ground yonder. There is not another living
object in view, though the eye covers enough ground for a European
principality. Yet that man dares to challenge all this tremendous Nature! It is
David before Goliath, before a whole wilderness of Goliaths, with a plough
for a sling and a ploughshare for a pebble.

Here all of a sudden is another man, all alone with some millions of trees
and the Alleghanies. And he stands there with an axe in his hands, revolving
in that untidy head of his what he shall do next to the old hills and their
reverend forest growth. The audacity of it, and the solemnity!
It would be as well perhaps for sentiment if every man was quite alone. For
I find that if there are two men together one immediately tries to sell the
other something; and to inform him of its nature, he goes and paints the
name of his disgusting commodities on the smooth faces of rocks and on
tree-trunks. Now, any landscape, however grand, loses in dignity if you see
"Bunkum's Patent" inscribed in the foreground in whitewash letters six feet
high.

What a mercy it is these quacks cannot advertise on the sky—or on running

water!

For the river is now at its grandest and it keeps with us all the afternoon,
showing on either side splendid waterways between sloping spurs of the
hills densely wooded and strewn with great boulders. But on a sudden the
mountains are gone and the river with them, and we speed along through a
region of green grass-land and abundant cultivation. Land agents might
truthfully advertise it in lots as "eligible sites for kingdoms."

And so on, past townships, whose names running (at forty miles an hour) no
man can read, and round the famous "horseshoe curve"—where it looks as
if the train were trying to get its head round in order to swallow its tail—
down into valleys already taking their evening tints of misty purple, and
pink, and pale blue. And then Derry.

Just before we arrived there, two freight trains had selected Derry as an
opportune spot for a collision, and had collided accordingly. There could
have been very little reservation about their collision, for the wreck was
complete, and when we got under way again we could just make out by the
moonlight the scattered limbs of carriages lying heaped about on the bank.
In some places it looked as if a clumsy apprentice had been trying to make
packing-cases out of freight wagons, but had given up on finding that he
had broken the pieces too small. And they were too big for matches. So it
was rather a useless sort of collision, after all—and no one was hurt.

But "the Pennsylvania Limited" has very little leisure to think about other
people's collisions, and so we were soon on our way again through the
moonlit country, with the hills in the distance lying still and black, like
round-backed monsters sleeping, and the stations going by in sudden
snatches of lamplight, and every now and then a train, its bell giving a wail
exactly like the sound of a shell as it passes over the trenches. And so to
Pittsburg, and, our "five minutes" over, the train stole away like a hyena,
snarling and hiccoughing, and we were again out in the country, with
everything about us beautified by the gracious alchemy of the moonlight
and the stars.

And the Ohio River rolled alongside, with its steamers ploughing up
furrows of ghostly white froth, and unwinding as they went long streamers
of ghostly black—and then I fell asleep.

When I awoke next morning I was in Indiana, and very sunny it looked
without a hill in sight to make a shadow. The water stood in lakes on the
dead level of the country, and horses, cattle, sheep, and here and there a pig
—a pregustation of Chicago—grazed and rooted, very well satisfied
apparently with pastures that had no ups and downs to trouble them as they
loitered about. And as the morning wore on, the people woke up, and were
soon as busy as their windmills. In the fields the teams were ploughing; in
the towns, the children were trooping off to school. But the eternal level
began at last, apparently, to weary the Pennsylvania Limited, for it
commenced slackening speed and finding frivolous pretexts for coming
nearly to a standstill—the climax being reached when we halted in front of
a small, piebald pig. We looked at the pig and the pig looked at us, and the
pig got the best of it, for we sneaked off, leaving the porker master of the
situation and still looking.

But these great flats—what a paradise of snipe they are, and how golf-
players might revel on them! Birds were abundant. Crows went about in
bands recruiting "black marauders" in every copse; blackbirds flew over in
flocks, and small things of the linnet kind rose in wisps from the sedges and
osiers. And there was another bird of which I did not then know the name,
that was a surprise every time it left the ground, for it sate all black and flew
half scarlet. Could not these marsh levels be utilized for the Indian water-
nut, the singhara? In Asia where it is cultivated it ranks almost as a local
staple of food, and is delicious.

A noteworthy feature of the country, by the way, is the sudden appearance

of hedge-rows. No detail of landscape that I know of makes scenery at once
so English. And then we find ourselves steaming along past beds of osiers,
with long waterways stretching up northwards, with here and there painted
duck, like the European sheldrake, floating under the shadows of the fir-
trees, and then I became aware of a great green expanse of water showing
through the trees, and I asked "What is that? The water must be very deep
to be such a colour." "That is Lake Michigan," was the answer, "and this is
Chicago we are coming to now."

And very soon we found ourselves in the station of the great city by the
lake, with the masts of shipping alongside the funnels of engines. But not a
pig in sight!

I had thought that Chicago was all pigs.

And what a city it is, this central wonder of the States! As a whole, Chicago
is nearly terrific. The real significance of this phoenix city is almost
appalling. Its astonishing resurrection from its ashes and its tremendous
energy terrify jelly-fishes like myself. Before they have got roads that are fit
to be called roads, these Chicago men have piled up the new County Hall,
to my mind one of the most imposing structures I have ever seen in all my
wide travels.

Chicago does not altogether seem to like it, for every one spoke of it as "too
solid-looking," but for my part I think it almost superb. The architect's
name, I believe, is Egan; but whence he got his architectural inspiration I
cannot say. It reminds me in part of a wing of the Tuileries, but why it does
I could not make up my mind.

Then again, look at this Chicago which allows its business thoroughfares to
be so sumptuously neglected—some of them are almost as disreputable-
looking as Broadway—and goes and lays out imperial "boulevards" to
connect its "system of parks." These boulevards, simply if left alone for the
trees to grow up and the turf to grow thick, will before long be the finest in
all the world. The streets in the city, however, if left alone much longer,
would be a disgrace to—well, say Port Said. The local administration, they
say, is "corrupt." But that is the standing American explanation for
everything with which a stranger finds fault. I was always told the same in
New York—and would you seriously tell me that the municipal
administration of New York is corrupt?—to account for congestion of
traffic, fat policemen, bad lamps, sidewalks blocked with packing-cases,
&c., &c. And in Chicago it accounts for the streets being more like rolling
prairie than streets, for cigar stores being houses of assignation, for there
being so much orange peel and banana skin on the sidewalks, &c., &c. But
I am not at all sure that "municipal corruption" is not a scapegoat for want
of public spirit.

But let the public spirit be as it may, there can be no doubt as to the private
enterprise in Chicago. Take the iron industry alone—what prodigious
proportions it is assuming, and how vastly it will be increased when that
circum-urban "belt line" of railways is completed! Take, again, the Pullman
factories. They by themselves form an industry which might satisfy any
town of moderate appetite. But Chicago is a veritable glutton for
speculative trade.

The streets at all times abound with incident. Here at one corner was a
Hansom cab, surely the very latest development of European science, with
two small black children, looking like imps in a Drury Lane pantomime,
trying to pin "April Fool" on to the cabman's dependent tails. Could
anything be more incongruous? In the first place, what have negro children
to do with April fooling? and in the next, imagine these small scraps in
ebony taking liberties with a Hansom! A group of cowboy-and-miner
looking men were grouped in ludicrous attitudes of sentimentality before a
concertina-player, who was wheezing out his own version of "old country"
airs. On the arm of one of the group languished a lady with a very dark
skin, dressed in a rich black silk dress, with a black satin mantle trimmed
with sumptuous fur, and half an ostrich on her head by way of bonnet and
feathers. The men there, as in most of America, strike me as being very
judicious in the arrangement of their personal appearance, especially in the
trimming of their hair and moustachios; but many of the women—I speak
now of Chicago—sacrificed everything to that awful American institution,
the "bang."

I know of no female head-dress in Asia, Africa, or Europe so absurd in itself

or so lunatic in the wearer as some of the Chicago bangs. Ugliness of face is
intensified a thousandfold by "the ring-worm style" of head-dress with
which they cover their foreheads and half their cheeks. Prettiness of face
can, of course, never be hidden; but I honestly think that neither a black
skin, nor lip-rings and nose-rings, nor red teeth, nor any other fantastic
female fashion that I have ever seen in other parts of the world, goes so far
towards concealing beauty of features as that curly plastering which, from
ignorance of its real name, I have called "the ring worm style of bang."

Here, too, in Chicago I found a man selling "gophers." Now, I do not know
the American name for this vanish-into-nothing sort of pastry, but I do
know that there is one man in London who declares that he, and he alone in
all the world, is aware of the secret of the gopher. And all London believes
him. His is supposed to be a lost art—but for him—and I should not be
surprised if some lover of the antique were to bribe him to bequeath the
precious secret to an heir before he dies. But in Chicago peripatetic vendors
of this cate are an every-day occurrence, and even the juvenile Ethiop
sometimes compasses the gopher. What its American name is I cannot say;
but it is a very delicate kind of pastry punched into small square
depressions, and every mouthful you eat is so inappreciable in point of
matter that you look down on your waistcoat to see if you have not dropped
it, and when the whole is done you feel that you have consumed about as
much solid nutriment as a fish does after a nibble at an artificial bait. Have
you ever given a dog a piece of warm fat off your plate and seen him after
he had swallowed it look on the carpet for it? So rapid is the transit of the
delicious thing that the deluded animal fancies that he has as yet enjoyed
only the foretaste of a pleasure still to be, the shadow only of the coming
event, the promise of something good. It is just the same with yourself after
eating a gopher.

Of course I went to see the stock-yards, and my visit, as it happened, had

something of a special character, for I saw a pig put through its
performances in thirty-five seconds. A lively piebald porker was one of a
number grunting and quarrelling in a pen, and I was asked to keep my eye
on him. And what happened to that porker was this.[1] He was suddenly
seized by a hind leg, and jerked up on to a small crane. This swung him
swiftly to the fatal door through which no pig ever returns. On the other
side stood a man—
That two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite
no more,

and the dead pig shot across a trough and through another doorway, and
then there was a splash! He had fallen head first into a vat of boiling water.
Some unseen machinery passed him along swiftly to the other end of the
terrible bath, and there a water-wheel picked him up and flung him out on
to a sloping counter. Here another machine seized him, and with one
revolution scraped him as bald as a nut. And down the counter he went,
losing his head as he slid past a man with a hatchet, and then, presto! he
was up again by the heels. In one dreadful handful a man emptied him, and
while another squirted him with fresh water, the pig—registering his own
weight as he passed the teller's box—shot down the steel bar from which he
hung, and whisked round the corner into the ice-house. One long cut of a
knife made two sides of pork out of that piebald pig. Two hacks of a hatchet
brought away his backbone. And there, in thirty-five seconds from his last
grunt—dirty, hot-headed, noisy—the pig was hanging up in two pieces,
clean, tranquil, iced!

The very rapidity of the whole process robbed it of all its horrors. It even
added the ludicrous to it. Here one minute was an opinionated piebald pig
making a prodigious fuss about having his hind leg taken hold of, and lo!
before he had even made up his mind whether to squeal or only to squeak,
he was hanging up in an ice-house, split in two! He had resented the first
trifling liberty that was taken with him, and in thirty-five seconds he was
ready for the cook!

That the whole process is virtually painless is beyond all doubt, for it is
only for the first fraction of the thirty-odd seconds that the pig is sentient,
and I doubt if even electricity could as suddenly and painlessly extinguish
life as the lightning of that unerring poniard, "the dagger of mercy" and the
instantaneous plunge into the scalding bath.

Of the Chicago stock-yards, a veritable village, laid out with its miniature
avenues intersecting its mimic streets and numbered blocks, it is late in the
day to speak. But it was very interesting in its way to see the poor doomed
swine thoughtlessly grunting along the road, and inquisitively asking their
way, as it seemed, of the sheep in Block 9 or of the sulky Texan steer
looking out between the palings of Block 7; to watch the cattle, wild-eyed
from distress and long journeying, snorting their distrust of their
surroundings, and trying at every opportunity to turn away from the terribly
straight road that leads to death, into any crossway that seemed likely to
result in freedom; to see for the first time the groups of Western herdsmen
lounging at the corners, while their unkempt ponies, guarded in most cases
by drowsy shepherd-dogs, stood tethered in bunches against the palings. All
day long the air is filled with porcine clamour, and some of the pens are
scenes of perpetual riot. For the pig does not chant his "nunc dimittis" with
any seemliness. His last canticles are frivolous. It is impossible to translate
them into any "morituri te salutant," for they are wanting in dignity, and
even self-respect. With the cattle it is very different. But few of them were
in such good case as to make high spirits possible, and many were wretched
objects to look at. Dead calves lay about in the pens, and there was a
general air of distress that made the scene abundantly pathetic. But, after
all, it does not pay to starve or overdrive cattle, and we may confidently
expect therefore, that in Chicago, of all places in the world, they are neither
starved nor overdriven systematically.

The English sparrow has multiplied with characteristic industry in Chicago,

but further west I lost it. I saw none between Omaha and Salt Lake City. So
the sparrow line, I take it, must be drawn for the present somewhere west of
Clinton. I do not think it has crossed the Mississippi yet from the east. But it
is steadily advancing its frontiers—this aggressive fowl—from both sea-
boards, and just as it has pushed itself forward from the Atlantic into
Illinois, so from the Pacific it has got already as far as Nevada. The tyranny
of the sparrow is the price men pay for civilization. Only savages are
exempt. Here in America, they have developed into a multitudinous evil,
dispossessing with a high hand the children of the soil, thrusting their Saxon
assumption of superiority upon the native feathered flock of grove and
garden, and driving them from their birthright. They have no respect for
authorities, and entertain no awe even for the Irish aldermen of New York.
In Australia it is the same. Imported as a treasure, they have presumed upon
the sentiment of exiled Englishmen until they have become a veritable
calamity. So they have been publicly proclaimed as "vermin," and a price
set upon their heads "per hundred." Indeed, legislatures threaten to stand or
fall upon the sparrow question. Here in America, men and women began by
putting nesting-boxes for the birds in the trees and at corners of houses; I
am much mistaken if before long they do not end by putting up ladders
against the trees to help the cats to get up to catch the sparrows.

I looked everywhere for "Chicago Mountain"—a New England joke against

the Phoenix City—and at last found it behind a house at the corner of Pine
and Colorado streets. They say (in Boston) that Chicago, being chaffed
about having no high land near it, set to work to build itself a mountain, but
that when it had reached its present moderate elevation of a few feet, the
city abandoned the project. But I am inclined to think that this fiction is due
to the spite of the New Englanders, who, it is notorious, have to sharpen the
noses of their sheep to enable them to reach the grass that grows between
the stones; for on looking at the mountain in question I perceived it to be
merely a natural sand-dune which it has not been thought worth while to
clear away. Further to acquaint myself with the city, I went into sundry
"penny gaffs," or cafés chantants, and found them to my surprise patronized
by groups of men sad almost to melancholy. It was the music, I think, that
made them feel so. Its effect on me I know was very chastening. I felt
inclined to lift up my voice and howl. But the intense gravity of the
company restrained me, and I left. Yet I am told that inside these very
places men stab each other with Bowie knives and shoot each other with
revolvers, and are even sometimes quite disagreeable in their manners. But
so far as my own experience goes I seldom saw a gathering so unanimously
solemn. I might even say so tearful. It is possible, of course, that the music
eventually maddens them, that it works them up about midnight into a
homicidal melancholy. But there was no profligacy of blood-shedding while
I was there.

They did not even offer to murder a musician.

Footnotes:

1. Need I say that I do not refer to the small field-rat of that name?
 CHAPTER II.
FROM CHICAGO TO DENVER.

Fathers of Waters—"Rich Lands lie Flat"—

The Misery River—Council Bluffs—A
"Live" town, sir—Two murders: a contrast—
Omaha—The immorality of "writing up"—
On the prairies—The modesty of "Wish-ton-
Wish"—The antelope's tower of refuge—Out
of Nebraska into Colorado—Man-eating
Tiger.

FROM Chicago to Omaha by the Chicago and "Northwestern" route is not

an exhilarating journey. When Nature begins to make anything out here in
America she never seems to know when to stop. She can never make a few
of anything. For instance, it might have been thought that one or two
hundred miles of perfectly flat land was enough at a time. But Nature,
having once commenced flattening out the land, cannot leave off. So all the
way from Chicago to Omaha there is the one same pattern of country, a
wilderness of maize-stubble and virgin land, broken only for the first half of
the way by occasional patches of water-oak, and for the second half of
willows.

Just on the frontier-line of these two vegetable divisions of the country lies
a tract of bright turf-land. What a magician this same turf is! It is Wendell
Holmes, I think, who says that Anglo-Saxons emigrate only "in the line of
turf."

The better half of the journey passed on Sunday, and the people were all out
in loitering, well-dressed groups "to see the train pass," and at the stations
where we stopped, to see the passengers, too. Where they came from it was
not easy to tell, for the homesteads in sight were very few and far between.
Yet there they were, happy, healthy, well-to-do contented-looking families,
enjoying the Day of Rest—the one dissipation of the hard-worked week.
What a comfortable connecting link with the outer world the railway must
be to these scattered dwellers on this prairie-land!

So through Illinois to the Mississippi. How wonderfully it resembles the

Indus where it flows past Lower Sind. A minaret or two, a blue-tiled cupola
and a clump of palms would make the resemblance of the Mississippi at
Clinton to the Indus below Rohri complete. And both rivers claim to be "the
Father of Waters." I would not undertake to decide between them. In
modern annals, of course, the American must take pre-eminence; but what
can surpass the historic grandeur that dignifies the Indian stream?

And so into Iowa, just as flat, and as rich, and as monotonous as Illinois,
and with just the same leagues of maize-stubble, unbroken soil, water-oaks
and willows. And then, in the deepening twilight, to Cedar Rapids, with the
pleasant sound of rushing water and all the townsfolk waiting "to see the
train" on their way from church, standing in groups, with their prayer-books
and Bibles in their hands.

By the way, what an admirable significance there is in he care with which

these young townships discharge their duties to their religion and the dead.
The church or prayer-house seems to be always one of the first and finest
buildings. With only half-a-dozen homesteads in sight in some places, there
is the church and while all the rest are of the humblest class of frame
houses, the church is of brick. The cemeteries again. Before even the plots
round the living are set in order, "God's acre" (often the best site in the
neighbourhood) is neatly fenced and laid out.

And I thought it somehow a beautiful touch of national character, this

reverent providence for the dead that are to come. And just before I went to
sleep, I saw out in the moonlit country a cemetery, and on the crest of the
rising ground stood one solitary tombstone, the pioneer of the many—the
first dead settler's grave. In this new country the living are as yet in the
majority!

Awakening, find myself still in Iowa, and Iowa still as flat as ever. Not
spirit enough in all these hundred miles of land to firk up even a hillock, a
mound, a pimple. But to make a new proverb, "Rich lands lie flat;" and
Iowa; in time, will be able to feed the world—aye, and to clothe it too.

In the mean time we are approaching the Missouri, through levels in which
the jack-rabbit abounds, and every farmer, therefore, seems to keep a
greyhound for coursing the long-eared aborigines. The willows, conscious
of secret resources of water, are already in leaf, and overhead the wild
ducks and geese are passing to their feeding-grounds. Here I saw "blue"
grass for the first time, and I must say I am glad that grass is usually green.
Elsewhere in the States, English grass is called "blue grass;" but in some
parts, as here in this part of Iowa, there is a native grass which is literally
blue. And it is not an improvement, so far as the effect on the landscape
goes, upon the old fashioned colour for grass. And then the Missouri, a
muddy, shapeless, dissipated stream. The people on its banks call it
"treacherous," and pronounce its name "Misery." It is certainly a most
unprepossessing river, with its ill-gotten banks of ugly sand, and its lazy
brown waters gurgling along in an overgrown, self-satisfied way. It is a
bullying stream; gives nobody peace that lives near it; and is perpetually
trying in an underhanded sort of way to "scour" out the foundations of the
hollow columns on which the bridges across it are built. But the abundance
of water-fowl upon its banks and side-waters is a redeeming feature for all
who care to carry a gun, and I confess I should like to have had a day's
leisure at Council Bluffs to go out and have a shot. The inhabitants of the
place, however, do not seem to be goose-eaters, for, close season or not, I
cannot imagine their permitting flocks of these eminently edible birds to fly
circling about over their houses, within forty yards of the ground. The wild-
goose is proverbially a wary fowl, but here at Council Bluffs they have
apparently become from long immunity as impertinent and careless as
sparrows.

Council Bluffs, as the pow-wow place of the Red Men in the days when
Iowa was rolling prairie and bison used to browse where horses plough, has
many a quaint legend of the past; and in spite of the frame houses that are
clustered below them and the superb cobweb bridge—it has few rivals in
the world—that here spans the Missouri, the Bluffs, as the rendezvous of
Sagamore and Sachem, stand out from the interminable plains eloquent of a
very picturesque antiquity. And so to Omaha.
"But I guess, sir, Om'a's a live town. Yes, sir, a live town."

My experiences of Omaha were too brief for me to be just, too disagreeable

for me to be impartial. Before breakfast I saw a murder and suicide, and
between breakfast and luncheon a fire and several dog-fights. Perhaps I
might have seen something more. But a terrible dust-storm raged in the
streets all day. Besides, I went away.

I am beginning already to hate "live" towns.

I.

It was during the Afghan War. I had just ridden back from General Roberts'
camp in the Thull Valley, on the frontiers of Afghanistan, and found myself
stopped on my return at the Kohat Pass. "It is the orders of Government,"
said the sentry: "the Pass is unsafe for travellers."

But I had to get through the Pass whether it was "safe" or not, for through it
lay the only road to General Browne's camp, to which I was attached. So I
dismounted, and after a great deal of palaver, partly of bribes, partly of
untruths, I not only got past the native sentries, but got a guide to escort me,
through the thirty miles of wild Afridi defiles that lay before me. The
scenery is, I think, among the finest in the world, while, added to all is the
strange fascination of the knowledge that the people who live in the Pass
have cherished from generation to generation the most vindictive blood
feuds. The villages are surrounded by high walls, loopholed along the top,
and the huts in the inside are built against the wall, so that the roofs of them
can be used by the men of the village as lounges during the day, and as
ramparts for sentries during the night. Within these sullen squares each clan
lives in perpetual siege. The women and children are at all times permitted
to go to and fro; but for the men, woe to him who happens to stray within
reach of the jezails that lie all ready loaded in the loopholes of the next
village. The crops are sown and reaped by men with guns slung on their
backs, and in the middle of every field stands a martello-tower, in which the
peasants can take shelter if neighbours sally out to attack them while at
work. Rope-ladders hang from a doorway half-way up the tower, and up
this, like lizards, the men scramble, one after the other, as soon as danger
threatens, draw in the ladder, and through the loop-holes overlook their
menaced crops.

A wonderful country truly, and something in the air to day that makes my
guide ride as hard as the road will permit, with his sword drawn across the
saddle before him. My revolver is in my hand. And so we clatter along, mile
after mile, through the beautiful series of little valleys, grim villages, and
towers. Now and again a party of women will step aside to let us pass, or a
dog start up to bark at us, but not a single man do we see. Yet I know very
well that hundreds of men see us ride by, and that a jezail is lying at every
loophole, and covering the very path we ride on.

We reach a sudden turn of the path; my guide gallops round it. He is hardly
out of my sight when Bang! bang! It is no use pulling up, and the next
instant I am round the corner too. A man, with his jezail still smoking from
the last shot, starts up from the undergrowth almost under my horse's feet,
and narrowly escapes being ridden down. Another man comes running
down the hillside towards him. In front of me, some fifty yards off, is my
guide, with his horse's head towards me and his sword in his hand, and on
the path, midway between us, lies a heap of brightly-coloured clothing—a
dead Afridi! For a second both guide and I thought that it was we who had
drawn the fire from the ambushed men. But no, it the poor Afridi lad lying
there in the path before us, and the victim of a blood feud. He had tried, no
doubt, to steal across from his own village to some friendly hamlet close by,
but his lynx-eyed enemies had seen him, and, lying there on either side of
his path, had shot him as he passed.

But what a group we were! Myself, with my revolver in my hand, looking,

horror-stricken, now at the dead, and now at his murderers; my guide, in the
splendid uniform of the Indian irregular cavalry, emotionless as only
Orientals can be; the two murderers talking together excitedly; in the
middle of us the dead lad! But there was still another figure to be added, for
suddenly, along the very path by which the victim had come, there came
running an old woman—perhaps she had followed the lad with a mother's
tender anxiety for his safety—and in an instant she saw the worst. Without a
glance at any of us, she flung herself down with the cry of a breaking heart,
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