How is that? The branches hang down, touch the ground, strike
root there, and spring up into new trees--joined to the old. Under an
aged banyan there is shade for a large congregation. Seventy thousand men
might sit beneath its boughs.
There is a sort of grass which grows a hundred feet high, and becomes
hard like wood. It is called the bamboo. The stem is hollow like a pipe,
and is often used as a water-pipe. It serves also for posts for houses,
and for poles for carriages.
There are abundance of nice fruits in India; and of these the mangoe is
the best. You might mistake it for a pear when you saw it, but not when
you tasted it. Pears cannot grow in India; the sun is too hot for grapes
and oranges, excepting on the hills.
The chief productions of India are rice and cotton; rice is the food, and
cotton is the clothing of the Hindoo: and quantities of these are sent to
England, for though we have wheat for food, we want rice too; and though
we have wool for clothing, we want cotton too.
RELIGION.--There is no nation that has so many gods as the Hindoos. What
do you think of three hundred and thirty millions! There are not so many
people in Hindostan as that. No one person can know the names of all
these gods; and who would wish to know them? Some of them are snakes, and
some are monkeys!
The chief god of all is called Brahm. But, strange to say, no one
worships him. There is not an image of him in all India.
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