was intended for singing, but sounded like shrieking. Meantime,
sweetmeats, fruits, and sherbet were handed round.

As a contrast to this gay scene, Madame Pfeiffer describes the
performance of the wretched fanatics called fakeers. These men inflict
upon themselves the most extraordinary tortures. Thus: they stick an
iron hook through their flesh, and allow themselves to be suspended by it
at a height of twenty or five-and-twenty feet. {105} Or for long hours
they stand upon one foot in the burning sunshine, with their arms rigidly
extended in the air. Or they hold heavy weights in various positions,
swing round and round for hours together, and tear the flesh from their
bodies with red-hot pincers. Madame Pfeiffer saw two of these
unfortunate victims of a diseased imagination. One held a heavy axe over
his head, in the attitude of a workman bent on felling a tree; in this
position he stood, rigid as a statue. The other held the point of his
toe to his nose.

* * * * *

In her tour through India our traveller passed through Allahabad,
situated at the junction of the Jumna and the Ganges, and the resort of
many pilgrims; Agra, where she admired, as so many travellers have
admired, the lovely Taj-Mahal, erected by the Sultan Jehan in memory of
his favourite wife,--and the Pearl Mosque, with its exquisitely delicate
carving; Delhi, the ancient capital of the Moguls, which figured so
conspicuously in the history of the Sepoy rebellion; the cave-temples of
Ajunta and Ellora; and the great commercial emporium of Bombay.

Quitting the confines of British India, Madame Pfeiffer, ever in quest of
the new and strange, sailed to Bassora, and ascended the historic Tigris,