The last train gone, all round the station there was quite a camp of luckless natives lying on the ground, wrapped in white cotton, and sleeping under the stars, so as to be nearer to-morrow to the train[Pg 20] which, perhaps, might carry them away from the plague-stricken city.THE SACRED HILL
Director
The morning mist shrouds everything; the scene insensibly passes through a series of pale tints, to reappear ere long in the clear rosy light, which sheds a powdering of glowing gold on the broad roadstead of Bombay.At the very top of the incline, the enclosing wall, black with age but bright with yellow velvet moss, rises precipitously above the plain, and three light balconies, with columns as slight as flower-stems,[Pg 77] crowned with pointed roofs recurved at the angles, overhang the abyss.High in the air, in the first mausoleum, at the head and foot of the white marble cenotaph, covered with letters that look like creepers, are tablets bearing inscriptions which record the life of the hero; and above the sarcophagus rises an almost impossibly light and airy structurea canopy of white marble supported on columns as slender as flower-stems.