“There was a sound of heavy feet staggering over the grass under the weight of a great load, and the coffin was borne past our window towards the door. As we walked down the room a multitude of women and children pressed after us, and while a crowd of men lifted the body into its place on the catafalque, a girl close by us burst into a perfect passion of weeping, intermingled with despairing cries, and expressions of affection for the dead, whom she would never see again. The raja pulled me by the sleeve, saying, ‘Come outside, I cannot bear this,’ and I saw the tears were slowly coursing down his face as we passed the heart-broken child, who, in the abandonment of her grief, had thrown herself into the arms of another girl, and was weeping hysterically on her breast. The mourner was the dead boy’s only sister.
“Meanwhile, the coffin had been placed on the huge wooden bier, and this was now being raised on the shoulders of a hundred men, with at least another hundred crowded round to take turns in carrying it to the place of burial. At this moment the procession moved off, and anything more unlike a funeral, as you and I know it, would be hard to imagine. A band of musicians, Spanish mestizos, in military uniforms, headed the cortège, playing a wild Spanish lament, that seemed to sob and wail and proclaim, by every trick of sound, the passing of the dead. Immediately behind them followed a company of stalwart Indian soldiers with arms reversed. Then a posse of priests and holy men chanting prayers. Next we came, and behind us a row of boys carrying their dead master’s clothes, a very pathetic spectacle. After them the great bier, vast in size, curious in form, and gay with colour, but so unwieldy that it seemed to take its own direction and make straight for the place of burial, regardless of roads and ditches, shrubs and flowers, or the shouts and cries of its bearers and those who were attempting to direct their steps. Last of all, a crowd of men and boys,—friends, retainers, chiefs, sightseers, idlers, gossips and beggars, a very heterogeneous throng.
“The road to the burial-ground wound down one hill and up another, and the band, the escort, the priests, and the mourners followed it. But the catafalque pursued its own devious course in its own blundering fashion, and, by-and-by, was set down on a high bluff, o’erlooking a great shining river, with palm-clad banks, backed by a space of level ground shut in by lofty blue hills. The coffin was then lifted from out the bier and placed upon the ground.
“I stood by the ready-dug grave and waited; while the father of the dead boy moved away a few yards, and an aged chief called out, ‘Now, all you praying people, come and pray.’
“The raja, the priests, and the holy men gathered round the body, and after several had been invited to take up the word and modestly declined in favour of some better qualified speaker, a voice began to intone, while, from time to time, the rest of the company said ‘Amîn.’
“Just then it began to rain a little, and those who had no umbrellas ran for protection to the catafalque and sheltered themselves under its overhanging eaves, while a lively interchange of badinage passed between those who, for the moment, had nothing to do. This was the sort of conversation that reached my ears.
“‘Now, then, all you people, come and pray.’
“‘Why don’t you pray yourself?’
“‘We did all our praying yesterday; I don’t believe you have done any. Now is the time, with all these holy men here.’
“‘I dare say; but you don’t suppose I’m going out into the rain to pray: I’m not a priest.’