and hell combined. No other theory can account for its character. Of this the reader will judge for himself from the facts presented.
Fourteen years have passed since closed that great “wrestling with flesh and blood, with principalities and powers, and wicked spirits in high places.” Eight of those years were spent by the writer amid the scenes of 1857-8, giving him occasion to verify and examine the facts where they transpired, and correct his judgment by as good an opportunity as could be desired. I feel the responsibility to see that such facts shall not drop into oblivion. They should not be allowed to die, especially associated as they are with the history of the Methodist Church in India, whose foundations were laid in such “troublous times.”
It will assist the reader's attention, and promote a more adequate understanding of our subject, to introduce to him at this point the people of whom we are speaking, and also unfold somewhat their character and peculiar civilization. The wood-cuts are mostly from photographs brought from India, and of course are faithful representations of the various classes as they appear there. The first group are Hindoos, as they sit round a Brahmin to listen to the reading of the Vedas.
The Hindoos constitute the great majority of the Empire, and are of the same Caucasian race as ourselves. Their ancestors moved southward from their original home more than three thousand years ago, and occupied the Valley of Scinde, probably on the west bank of the Indus, while only Afghanistan and Persia lay between them and the cradle of the race. There, in that valley, their most ancient Vedas were written—manifestly so from the local allusions—and from thence at a later period they migrated into the richer Valley of the Ganges, driving before them the aborigines of India, who sought shelter in the jungles and mountains, where their descendants are found to-day. The Hindoos have long ceased to be a warlike people. The rich land which they conquered, its fertility, the abundance and cheapness of the means of life, and their inclination to indolence, which a warm climate
