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CHAPTER XIV.
INDIA: ITS HISTOEY AND TEEASUBES.
July 4, our country's natal day. The republic that is
to come will be founded in justice, equality, and peace.
We have spent the day rolling and tossing upon the Bay
of Bengal. I shall spell it hereafter JiengaU, emphasizing
the last syllable. It deserves the bitter epithet. For three
full days we endured a terrible monsoon-storm. It was a
cyclone, save the rotary motion usually attending these hurricanes.
The frightened Jews aboard rushed for Moses and
the Prophets, and began to intone the psalms in Hebrew.
The wind, increasing, came in maddened gusts ; the waves
surged and heaved ; the lightnings flashed ; the rain fell
in sheets ; the fore-stay-sail struggled in tatters ; trunks,
tables, upset ; the dishes jingled in scattered fragments
the Fates and the Furies seemed, in fact, to have let loose
the very artillery of the hells ! Oh, it was fearful ! The
following day we passed a wreck. What became of the
crew — what ? Our ship, under the command of Capt. Valiant,
behaved valiantly. It was a relief to sail into the
Hoogly, one of the river-mouths through which the Ganges
empties into the ocean.
Oh, marvelous country !
INDIA.
Land of tree-worship, serpentworship,
the lotus-flower, and the mystic Zm^-land of the
ancient Vedas, and those unparalleled epics the Ramayana
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