marched on, and finally fording a broad and shallow stream, entered that “venerated town” to find that even so “sacred” a place of pilgrimage had not escaped the mischievous villainy of scomidrels, revelling in the wanton destruction of property, and in all kinds of devilry.
Throughout the Bengal Presidency, Gyah is known and reverenced by the Hindus as a holy town, replete with hallowed mythological traditions; and, in a sentence, a “holy town” in India means a place crammed with quaint temples and grotesque shrines, where astounding idolatry reigns supreme, where pilgrims flock in crowds all the year round, and where those insolent and painted vagabonds, the pagan priests, luxuriate and fatten on the superstitious liberality of a bigoted and deluded people, while under pretences of sanctimonious priestcraft, they cloak sensual intrigue and sin with impunity. At the same time, however, they maintain — as numberless priests of other nationalities maintain — that they are not necessarily bound, because they are priests, to live and lead the lives of saints!
Whatever charms of antiquity Gyah may have possessed, we had no time to explore them; for immediately on our arrival there, we prepared to start in pursuit of another body of mutineers hovering about the districts bordering on the frontier of Nipal..
