offeecial complaint in book kept for that purpose?" "By George! I
will!" answered the man of jute and indigo, hot with indignation. He
was conducted through long passages to the station-master's office at
the back of the building, where a strongly worded complaint was
entered in the book. "And now, may I ask," questioned the irate
business man, "when you mean to start this infernal train?" "Oh, the
terain, sir, has already deeparted these five minutes," answered the
bland native. Fortunately there was a goods train immediately
following the mail, and some four hours afterwards our big friend
alighted from a goods brake-van in a furious temper. He had had
nothing whatever to eat, and was still in pyjamas, bare feet and
slippers at ten in the morning. We had delayed the branch train as no
one seemed in any particular hurry, so all was well.

During a subsequent journey over the same line, we had an awful
experience. Through the Alipore suburb of Calcutta there runs a little
affluent of the Hooghly known as Tolly Gunge. For some reason this
insignificant stream is regarded as peculiarly sacred by Hindoos, and
every five years vast numbers of pilgrims come to bathe in and drink
Tolly Gunge. The stream is nothing now but an open sewer, but no
warnings of the doctors, and no Government edicts can prevent natives
from regarding this as a place of pilgrimage, rank poison though the
waters of Tolly Gunge must be.

A party of us left Calcutta on a shooting expedition during one of
these quinquennial pilgrimages. We found the huge Sealdah station
packed with dense crowds of home-going pilgrims. The station-master
was at his wits' end to provide accommodation, for every third-class
carriage was already full to overflowing, and still endless hordes of
devotees kept arriving. He finally had a number of covered trucks