It is a Roman Catholic region, and not even Benares is more deeply or pervasively or intelligently devout.

In my diary of those days I find this: "We took a long drive yesterday around about the lovely country roads.

But it was a drive whose pleasure was damaged in a couple of ways: by the dreadful shrines and by the shameful spectacle of gray and venerable old grandmothers toiling in the fields.

The shrines were frequent along the roads--figures of the Saviour nailed to the cross and streaming with blood from the wounds of the nails and the thorns.
"When missionaries go from here do they find fault with the pagan idols?
I saw many women seventy and even eighty years old mowing and binding in the fields, and pitchforking the loads into the wagons." I was in Austria later, and in Munich.

In Munich I saw gray old women pushing trucks up hill and down, long distances, trucks laden with barrels of beer, incredible loads.