My dear Children--If you will look at the map of Asia, and find the
country of Hindostan, you will see running through it a very celebrated
river--the river Ganges. It is called the Ganges, after the goddess
Gunga. The Hindoos say that the goddess Gungu--who was produced from the
sweat of Vrishnoo's foot, which Brumha caught and preserved in his
alms-dish--came down from heaven, and divided herself into one hundred
streams, which are the mouths of the river Ganges. All classes and
castes worship her. The sight, the name, or the touch of the river
Ganges is said to take away all sin. To die on the edge of the river, or
to die partly buried in the stream, drinking its waters, while their
bodies are besmeared with mud, is supposed to render them very holy. On
this account, when it is expected that a person will die, he is hurried
down to the river, whether willing or unwilling. Sometimes the wood
which the people bring to burn their bodies after death, is piled up
before their eyes. O, how inhuman is this. After it is supposed that
they are dead, and they are placed on the pile of wood, if they should
revive and attempt to rise, it is thought that they are possessed with
the devil, and they are beaten down with a hatchet or bamboo.

Were you standing on the banks of the Ganges you might, perhaps, in one
place see two or three young men carrying a sick female to the river. If
you should ask what they are going to do with her, perhaps they would
reply, We are going to give her up to Gunga, to purify her soul, that
she may go to heaven; for she is our mother. In another place you might
see a father and mother sprinkling a beloved child with muddy water,
endeavoring to soothe his dying agonies by saying, "It is blessed to die
by Gunga, my son; to die by Gunga is blessed, my son." In another place
you might see a man descending from a boat with empty water-pans tied
around his neck, which pans, when filled, will drag down the poor