Nor can I overlook our countrywomen in Allahabad. There is here a "Zenana Mission," supported by the society of the good Mrs. Doremus, and also two ladies connected with the Presbyterian Board, one of whom, Miss Wilson, devotes herself to visiting in the Zenanas, while the other, Miss Seward, is a physician, practising with great success in many of the best native families, thus rendering a physical as well as a spiritual service. She is a niece of the late Secretary of State, William H. Seward, who when in India paid her a visit, and was so impressed with what she was doing so quietly and yet so effectively; with the access which her medical skill and her feminine tact gave her to the interior life of the people; that on his return to America he summed up the result of all his observations of missions in this brief counsel: "Make all your missionaries women, and give them all a medical education."
Allahabad has a proud name--the City of God; but one sees not much to render it worthy of that exalted title. It is however, in the estimation of the Hindoos a sacred city, as it stands at the junction of the Jumna and the Ganges, the two sacred rivers of India, which issuing out of the glaciers of the Himalayas, hundreds of miles to the north, here unite, and flow on in a broader stream, and with an increased volume of sanctity. The point of junction is of course a very holy place--one of the most sacred in India--and draws to it more pilgrims than Mecca. Every year hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, come from all parts of India to bathe in these holy waters. This is the Méla--or great religious festival--which was now in progress. The missionaries congratulated us that we had arrived at such an opportune moment, as we had thus an opportunity of witnessing a spectacle which would show more of Hindooism than any other that we could see in India, unless it might be in the holy city of Benares.
On a Saturday evening we rode down to the place of the encampment, which we found covering a wide sandy plain at the junction of two rivers. It was a camp-meeting of magnificent dimensions. The tents or booths were laid out in streets, and sometimes grouped in a hollow square, which for the time being was a compact and populous city. As the evening was not the hour for bathing, we did not go down to the river bank, but strolled among the camps to see the people. At every tent fires were burning, and they were cooking their food.