Chapter 52 - Page 2

enjoyment many times more; for, of course, the palaces and temples would
grow more and more beautiful every time one saw them, for that happens
with all such things; also, I think one would not get tired of the
bathers, nor their costumes, nor of their ingenuities in getting out of
them and into them again without exposing too much bronze, nor of their
devotional gesticulations and absorbed bead-tellings.

But I should get tired of seeing them wash their mouths with that
dreadful water and drink it. In fact, I did get tired of it, and very
early, too. At one place where we halted for a while, the foul gush from
a sewer was making the water turbid and murky all around, and there was a
random corpse slopping around in it that had floated down from up
country. Ten steps below that place stood a crowd of men, women, and
comely young maidens waist deep in the water-and they were scooping it up
in their hands and drinking it. Faith can certainly do wonders, and this
is an instance of it. Those people were not drinking that fearful stuff
to assuage thirst, but in order to purify their souls and the interior of
their bodies. According to their creed, the Ganges water makes
everything pure that it touches--instantly and utterly pure. The sewer
water was not an offence to them, the corpse did not revolt them; the
sacred water had touched both, and both were now snow-pure, and could
defile no one. The memory of that sight will always stay by me; but not
by request.

A word further concerning the nasty but all-purifying Ganges water. When
we went to Agra, by and by, we happened there just in time to be in at
the birth of a marvel--a memorable scientific discovery--the discovery
that in certain ways the foul and derided Ganges water is the most
puissant purifier in the world! This curious fact, as I have said, had
just been added to the treasury of modern science. It had long been
noted as a strange thing that while Benares is often afflicted with the
cholera she does not spread it beyond her borders. This could not be
accounted for. Mr. Henkin, the scientist in the employ of the government
of Agra, concluded to examine the water. He went to Benares and made his
tests. He got water at the mouths of the sewers where they empty into
the river at the bathing ghats; a cubic centimetre of it contained
millions of germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead. He caught
a floating corpse, towed it to the shore, and from beside it he dipped up
water that was swarming with cholera germs; at the end of six hours they
were all dead. He added swarm after swarm of cholera germs to this
water; within the six hours they always died, to the last sample.
Repeatedly, he took pure well water which was bare of animal life, and