For many miles one is literally going up a flight of steps by rail.
The word Ghát indeed means the steps leading up from pools or rivers,
whose frequent occurrence in India attests the need of easy access
to water, arising from the important part which it plays both in the
civil and religious economies of the Hindu. The Gháts are so called
from their terraced ledges, rising one above another from the shores
of the ocean like the stairs leading up from a pool. In achieving the
ascent of these gigantic stairs all the expedients of road-makers have
been resorted to: the zigzag, the trestle, the tunnel, the curve, have
been pushed to their utmost applications; for five continuous miles
on the Thull Ghát Incline there is a grade of one in thirty-seven,
involving many trying curves, and on nineteen miles of the Bhore Ghát
Incline there are thirty tunnels.

That which gives tone and character to a general view of the interior
of a railway-car in traveling is, from the nature of things, the
head-covering of the occupants, for it is this which mostly meets the
eye; and no one who has traveled in the United States, for example,
can have failed to observe the striking difference between the aspect
of a car in the South, where the felt slouch prevails, and of one
in the North, where the silk hat is more affected. But cars full
of turbans! There were turbans of silk, of muslin, of woolen; white
turbans, red, green and yellow turbans; turbans with knots, turbans
with ends hanging; neat turbans, baggy turbans, preternatural turbans,
and that curious spotted silk inexpressible mitre which the Parsee
wears.

[Illustration: GÓNDS.]

Bhima Gandharva was good enough to explain to me the turban; and