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Gaze, the master, she passed the stockade, and by eleven o'clock was anchored above the bar in deep water. Before daylight, the Admiral returned to her, and all the squadron, except the Powerful and the troop-ship, which had not yet floated, weighed with the sea-breeze, and stood for the narrow passage between Madura and Java.
Thus the Hinduism of Madura and of all South India is Brahmanism plus devil-worship. And the people are to-day much more absorbed in pacifying the devils which infest every village than they are in worshipping purely Hindu deities.
We left early in the afternoon in order to visit Tanjore, Trichinopoly, and Madura, and for two days sleeping-cars were to be our home. There are no hotels in these cities, the wonderful temples serving as a substitute, while the English railway restaurant afforded us a certain amount of sustenance.
In the religious instinct which led the Buddhists to build, at such enormous expense of time and money, the cave-temples of Elephanta, Ellora, and Carlee; in the idolatrous Hindoo temples of Madura and Tanjore, the shrines of Ceylon, the pagodas of China, and the temples of Japan, one detects an underlying and elevating sentiment, a grand and reverential idea, in which there may be more of acceptable veneration than we can fully appreciate; but in the Pyramids we have no expression of devotion, only an embodiment of personal vanity, which hesitated at nothing for its gratification, and which proved a total failure.
For the present, at least, Palestine is a fascinating country to travel in. A traveler in Ceylon and India writes to a religious paper of his journey. He says, "Colombo has little to interest the tourist, yet it is a fine city." One who reads between the lines understands that the fact that it is a fine city is the cause of its uninterestingness. His impression of Madura was more satisfactory.
J. P. Jones, the well-known writer on Indian affairs, said to me as we were coming home one nightfall, "and the people of Madura pay them a tribute amounting to thousands of rupees a year. They have a god of their own whom they always consult before making a raid.
On the 14th we passed the island of Madura, and on the 17th we made the high land of Cheribon, which bore S.W. from us. This morning we saw a great ship right ahead, to which I sent our pinnace for news. She was a ship of Batavia of 600 tons and fifty guns, plying to some of the Dutch factories for timber.
"From Ceylon I proceeded to India, touching the great peninsula first at Cape Comorin, and continuing northward by way of Pondicherry, Madura, and Madras; and thence to the tableland of Bangalore and the Western Ghauts, testing many kinds of wood at every point, but particularly the palm and bamboo families.
A strong breeze carried us quickly along; and one morning, when I came on deck, I found that we were standing through the Straits of Madura, the shore of that island exhibiting a belt of the richest tropical vegetation, white cliffs and lofty rocks appearing here and there above it, while the Java coast seemed very low, and bordered by extensive mangrove swamps.
But ninety per cent. of the population consists of Hindus, and the social and religious supremacy of Hinduism has never been seriously assailed. Nowhere has Hindu architecture taken such majestic shape, the massive pylons of Madura and Tanjore recalling the imperishable grandeur of the noblest Egyptian temples on the Nile.
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