"After the riot had been suppressed, the worst difficulty still remained. In the early part of the quarrel, the Mussulmans, in order to be revenged on the Hindoos, for the defeat they had sustained, had taken a cow and killed it, on one of the holiest ghats, and mingled its blood with the sacred water of the Gunga. This act of double sacrilege was looked on by the Brahmans, as having destroyed the sacredness of the holy place, if not of the whole city, so that salvation in future might not be attainable, by pilgrimage to Benares. They were, therefore, all in the greatest affliction; and all the Brahmans in the city, many thousands in number, went down, in deep sorrow, to the river side, naked, and fasting, and with ashes on their heads, and sat down on the principal ghats, with folded hands, and heads hanging down, to all appearance inconsoleable, and refusing to enter a house, or to taste food. Two or three day’s abstinence, however, tired them, and a hint was given to the magistrates, and other public men, that a visit of condolence, and some expression of sympathy would comfort them, and give them some excuse for returning to their usual course of life. Accordingly the British functionaries went to the principal ghat, and expressed their sorrow for the distress in which they saw them ; but reasoned with them on the absurdity of punishing themselves, for an act in which they had no share, and which they had done all they could to prevent, or avenge. This prevailed, and after much bitter weeping, it was resolved, that “ Gunga was Gunga still,” and that a succession of costly offerings from the laity of Benares, the usual Brahmanical remedy for all evils, might wipe out the stain which their religion had received, and that the advice of the judges was the best and most reasonable. Mr. Bird, who was one of the ambassadors on this occasion, said, “ that the scene was very impressive, and even awful. The gaunt, sqnallid figures of the devotees — their visible, and apparently unaffected anguish and dismay — the screams and outcries of the women who surrounded them, and the great numbers thus assembled, altogether constituted a spectacle of wo, such as few cities but Benares could supply.”"