aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

220 AEOUND THE WORLD.
Unfortunately, we reached India just too late to see the
yearly Juggernaut festival, during which the
great idol-car
in Eastern India is drawn with such gushing enthusiasm.
Believing devotees do not, however, throw themselves
voluntarily under this idolatrous engine to be crushed, as
falsifying churchmen have widely reported. While the
excitement is at a high pitch, careless devotees may accidentally
faU under the rotating wheels, and perish. This
actually happened the present year. And so similar accidents
often occur on Fourth of July occasions in America.
That a few impulsive fanatics in the past may have purposely
rushed under the ponderous wheels, — much as
Christian pilgrims in the Crusade period walked through
Palestine with bared feet, to die by the Holy Sepulchre, — is
But crossing the river on this
delightful morning, by the
banks of which nestled neatness and filth, — Christly and
demoniac men in close proximity, — we were soon strolling
through the Botanical Gardens, admiring tropical flowers,
with the lilies white, golden, and purple, on our way to
the crowning glory of the gardens, the great banyan-tree,
alias the bread-fruit tree of the East. This grand old tree
fully met our expectations, only that it bore berries about
the size of acorns, instead of bread. The natives are very
fond of them. While this gigantic tree is not tall, it is
wide-spreading and symmetrically shaped ; and, though not
an evergreen, it is clothed in a dark-green, glossy foliage,
reflecting at sunrise a thousand vivid tints, varied as
quite probable. Fanaticism has been common to all rehgions.
beautiful.
This Calcutta banj-an-tree, throwing down to the soil
one hundred and thirty creeper-like Kmbs, all forming
trunks, — symbol of the American Union, many in one, —
would afford shade or shelter in a light rain-storm for two
thousand persons. No traveler in the East should miss of
seeing it. Tradition says that Alexander's army of ten