The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-12-02
HOW THEY TRAVEL ON THE
 TRAIN IN INDIA.

"In India the prospective traveller sets off for the station with native servant, who will get the tickets, choose the seats in the train, look after the babbage and on the journey make all necessary purchases" says a writer. At the station he finds a motley croWd-the larger stations always seem to be rowded-compossed for the most part of natives. Both the women and the men display gorgeous colors-even to the lowest castes. The latter show turbans of many hues, while the form- CT, in addition to being arrayed in robes of gladstone dyes, have silver, glass and other gems, many very val uable, in their noses and as earrings. Some, perhaps the majority, have been waiting about the station for an hour or so, for the Indian natives are rich in time, if in nothing else. The men are circulating the hubble-hubble, or slow ly chewing the pansupari-that is, tho betel-nut quid, the universal and per- petual solace of India. You will try it once, but never again. It consists of chips of the areca nut, broken up by a sort of steel nut cracker, and mingled with a pinch of lime, the whole being wrapped in a leaf of the pepper vine and fastened with elove. The women, poor gentle souls, have some chuppat- ties-cakes-in cloth, with hand of bananas or a basket of mangoes and perhaps a water jug.
 Even the tourist carries 'tifin' basket filled with potted meat. bis- cults, wine soda water and machinery for brewing tea. He has also his own light bedding with him, two silk or cot ton rezals, well wadded, and pillow; a pillow case, calico sheets and bask- et The seats in the train carriages are unusually deep and are so arranged as to form touches for the night. All the frst-class compartments have double roof to them, to soften the fierce fm- pact of monday sunshine, and the win dows are duplicated with purple or green glass and shutters, to exclude the 1 hot winds and the choking dust. On some lines, too, the third and fourth , class carriages are fashioned in stories, so that there are layers of humble travellers berthed over the heads of the others. In this luxurious fashion will
 the Hindoo, with his family, contented-
 ly journey day and night and go upon pilgrimages, being easily satisfied if he can only get over the ground cheaply.
 For miles and miles the journey is to Se beguiled by watching the mon- keys, Eae bandarlog, those strange four
 handed folk, who come down to sit in the babui trees and to look at the pas sing trains and the travellers. They perch by families on the branches of ! the trees lining the track, with their 1 long tails swinging and their furry | jaws busy with the fruit which they have stolen. Or they squat in com 1 panies about the fields of millet and
 grain, the old gossips together and the l youngsters merrily playing. One of the
 most extraordinary sights is the wan
 dering tribes offering tributes to the
 passing locomotives, and even prostrat-
 ing themselves before the telegraph
 wire, which they style the devils
 string. Nearly all of the engine driv-
 CTS are Europeans, for neither the Hin-
 doc nor Mahommedan has, as yet, the
 courage or the knowledge to drive the , terrible, and wonderful fire horse."