The sun has just risen from the plain through which old Ganges wanders, a plain of mud and vegetation still overshadowed by the mists of night; and waiting there for the first red rays of dawn lie the granite temples of Benares, the rosy pyramids, the golden shafts, and all the sacred city, extended in terraces, as if to catch the first light and deck itself in the glory of the morning.
This is the hour which, since the Brahmin faith began, has been sacred to prayer and to religious ecstasy, and it is now that Benares pours forth all its people, all its flowers, all its garlands, all its birds, and all its living things on to the banks of the Ganges. Awakened by the kiss of the sun, all that have received souls from Brahma rush joyously down the granite steps. The men, whose faces beam with calm serenity, are garbed in Kashmir shawls, some pink, some yellow, and some in the colours of the dawn. The women, veiled with muslins in the antique style, form white groups along the road, and the reflection from their copper ewers and drinking vessels shimmer amongst the silvery glints of their many bracelets, necklets, and the rings which they wear round their ankles. Nobly beautiful both of face and gait, they walk like goddesses, while the metal rings on their arms and feet murmur musically.
And to the river, already encumbered with garlands, each one comes to offer a new wreath. Some have twisted ropes of jasmine flowers which look like white necklets, others garlands of Indian pinks whose flowers of golden yellow and pale sulphur gleam in contrast, resembling the changing colours of an Indian veil.
And the birds that had been sleeping all along friezes of the houses and the palaces awake too and fill the air with chirpings and with song in the mad joy of dawn.
In all the temples the gods have their morning serenades, and the angry roar of the tom-toms, the wail of the bag-pipes, and the howling of the sacred trumpets, are heard from every side.
Naked children holding each other by the hand come in gay throngs; yoghis and slowly-moving fakirs descend the steps; the sacred cattle advance with deliberate steps, while people stand respectfully aside offering them fresh wreaths of reeds and flowers. They, too, seem to look on the splendours of the sun, and in their harmless fashion appear to understand and pray.
Next come the sheep and goats; then dogs and monkeys hurry down the steps.
All the granite temples scattered on the steps that serve as niches and altars, some for Vishnu, some for the many-armed Ganesa, protrude into the sunlight their squat little gods--gods which are grey with mud, for they have slept many months under the troubled waters of the river to which the ashes of the dead are consigned.
Now that the rays of the sun are fierce the people shelter under large umbrellas whose shade awaits them. For these huge parasols, which resemble gigantic mushrooms clustering under the walls of the city, are always left open.
The many rafts and the lower steps are thronged with Brahmins, who, after setting down their flowers and ewers, hasten to disrobe. Pink and white muslins and cashmeres of all colours lie mingled on the ground, or are hung over bamboo canes, and now the matchless nude forms appear, some of pale bronze, others of a deeper shade.
The men, slim and of athletic build, plunge to their waists into the sacred waters. The women, still wearing a veil of muslin round their shoulders and waists, merely plunge their many-ringed arms and ankles into the Ganges; then they kneel at the extremest edge and let fall their long unknotted coils of hair into the water. Then, raising their heads once more, they allow the water dripping from their drenched hair to fall upon their necks and bosoms. And now with their tightly-clinging draperies they look like some statue of a “winged Victory,” more beautiful and more voluptuous than if they had been nude.
From all sides the bowing people shower their garlands and their flowers into the Ganges; all fill their ewers and jars and then, stooping, fill their hollowed hand and drink. Here religious feeling reigns supreme, and no sensual thought ever seems to assail these beauteous mingled forms. They come into unconscious contact with each other, but only heed the river, the sun, and the splendour of the morning in a dream of ecstasy. And when the long ritual is ended, the women retire to their homes, while the men, seated on the rafts amid their garlands dispose themselves for prayer.
Oh! the joyful awakenings of this primeval race, praying in daily unison to God, where the poorest may find room amongst the splendours of the sun, the waters, and the flowers.
All the life of Benares centres round the river. People come from the palaces and jungles to die on its sacred banks, and the old and the sick are brought here by their families to await their end. The relatives never return to their homes in the country after the death has taken place, and so Benares, which already contains three hundred thousand inhabitants, increases rapidly in size. For those who feel their end approaching this is the spot so eagerly desired.
Oh! to die at Benares. To die on the banks of the Ganges! To have one’s body bathed for the last time, and then to have one’s ashes strewn into the river!
THE COLORADO
HENRY GANNETT
The country drained by the Colorado River is a peculiar region. It is a country of plateaus and canons, the plateaus mainly arid and sterile, where the few streams flow in deep gorges far below the surface.
The longest and most northern branch of the Colorado is Green River, which heads in the Wind River Mountains, against the sources of the Bighorn and Snake Rivers. This stream, in its long course towards the south, receives the waters of the Uinta from the west, and the Yampa and White Rivers from the east. Near latitude 38° 15′ and longitude 110° it is joined by Grand River, a stream of nearly equal size, which heads in Middle Park, Colorado, drawing its first supplies of water from the snowfields of Long Peak. The stream below the junction of these two forks is known as the Colorado.
Below their junction, the principal branches of the Colorado from the east are the San Juan, the Colorado Chiquito, Williams Fork, and the Gila; on the west, the “Dirty Devil,” Paria, and Virgin.
This region is limited on the east, north, and north-west by high mountain ranges. Its surface is nearly flat, but by no means unbroken. There is little rolling or undulating country. Changes of level take place by very gentle, uniform slopes, or by abrupt, precipitous steps. A large part of the surface consists of bare rocks, with no soil or vegetation. A part is covered with a thin sandy soil, which supports a growth of sage and cacti, or even a few pinon pines and cedars. The only vegetation is that characteristic of an arid country.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY DETROIT PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPANY THE COLORADO]
This aridity has modified orographic forms to an astonishing degree. Where, under different climatic conditions, there would be produced a region similar in most respects to the prairies of the Mississippi valley, we find a country, flat indeed, or inclined at low angles, but one whose water-courses are far beneath the general level, deep down in cañons, hundreds, thousands of feet beneath the surface.
Great cliffs, thousands of feet in height, and extending like huge walls for hundreds of miles, change the level of the country at a single step.
Isolated buttes and mesas, of great height, are scattered over the plateaus, indicating the former height of the plain of which they formed parts.
“The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock--cliffs of rock, tables of rock, terraces of rock, crags of rock--ten thousand strangely carved forms. Rocks everywhere, and no vegetation: no soil, no land. When speaking of these rocks, we must not conceive of piles of boulders, or heaps of fragments, but a whole land of naked rock, with giant forms carved on it; cathedral-shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet; cliffs that cannot be scaled, and cañon walls that shrink the river into insignificance, with vast hollow domes and tall pinnacles, and shafts set on verge overhead, and all highly coloured--buff, grey, red, brown, and chocolate; never lichened, never moss-covered, but bare and often polished.”
The above description by Major J. W. Powell, who has explored the cañons of the Colorado, gives a graphic pen-picture of the lower and more arid plateaus of this region.
Nearly every watercourse, whether the stream be perennial or not, is a cañon; a narrow valley, with precipitous walls. In many cases, these cañons are so numerous that they cut the plateau into shreds--a mere skeleton of a country. Of such a section Lieutenant Ives, who explored the course of lower Colorado, writes: “The extent and magnitude of the system of cañons in that direction is astounding. The plateau is cut into shreds by these gigantic chasms, and resembles a vast ruin. Belts of country, miles in width, have been swept away, leaving only isolated mountains standing in the gap; fissures so profound that the eye cannot penetrate their depths are separated by walls whose thickness one can almost span; and slender spires, that seem tottering on their base, shoot up a thousand feet from vaults below.”