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The dak bangla was Spartan in its simplicity, the government providing only beds, chairs, tables, and bath-tubs, the stern necessities of comfort in a hot climate. The stillness was as intense as the darkness all night, and after the chota hazri (little breakfast) of the Indian dawn we drove three miles across awakening Madura—a city of low, white houses, with green cocoa-palms and broad banana leaves the only strong color notes. The white houses were dusted and clouded with the red earth surrounding them, all dilapidated and in need of repair, of fall cleaning and whitewash. All Madura was awakening at that dewy hour,—tousled folks who came to the doors, yawned like alligators, stretched their leans arms in air, and scratched their heads vigorously. Men lounged face down on charpoys, or string-beds, or lolled on the high shelves built in the alcoves beside the house doors, and chatted with neighbors who had also spent the night in the open; babies sprawled on the warm red earth, and pious women traced religious symbols in white chalk on the red thresholds. Every door had its sect-mark, its religious symbol and monogram, as much as the foreheads of the people. Every blank wall, too, was plastered over with flat manure cakes, the common and universal fuel of the country, which one sees in process of manufacture and use from end to end of the empire; a fuel whose rank smoke can be detected in everything one eats and drinks in India, from the earliest tea and toast of the morning to the final rice pudding and coffee at night; a fuel whose use deprives the fields of their natural enrichment