Immediately below is a belt of jungle fringing the slope where it meets the plain; and, stretching forward from it a region of tropical growths, caused and preserved by the umbrageous character of the woodland. Prodigious trees are bound together by creepers, which shake out their blossoms a hundred feet from the ground. Tree-ferns remind us of an older time than even Hindoo tradition reaches; and the grass is so tall that the elephants are heard and felt by their tread before they are seen. In the beds of shrunken streams the oleanders blossom, and the apricot and pomegranate ripen in the sunny spaces. This is still high ground in comparison with that which lies near the sea; and none in India is more sacred in the eyes of its inhabitants. The land, as it slopes northwards from the Jumna, is strewn with temples, and traversed by groups of pilgrims coming up to worship. From the sandy western plains to the watery eastern region of Bengal stretches this rich plateau, through which run the prodigious rivers of Upper India, and where the great cities on their banks tell of the glories of Hindoos and Mohammedans alike. Traditions tell of Canoge, which covered an area equal to modern London; and of the greatness of Delhi, Agra, Cawnpore, and many others. From our perch we look down on them, and see what millions of natives are doing, before they begin to dream of seeing white faces among them as their masters. In the well-drained fields of this upper surface, the husbandmen are sowing their grain seed all mixed, or pulling the stalks separately, with infinite waste of time and produce. Others are more wisely leading water from the tanks among the dry ridges. Under the trees is a loom here and there: the rude arrangements of sticks above a little pit, by which the fine muslins for turbans and female garments, or the gay and tasteful shawl fabrics are to come out, as if by magic. Within the woods the herdsmen are burning the jungul grass, in order to procure a fresh growth for their animals; and the hunters are

distributed in a circle to take account of the wild beasts which will be thus dislodged. The sacred Ganges is all alive with boats; and along its margin are companies of the devout at their ablutions, with here and there an aged or sick sufferer awaiting death from the stream. In the towns, the people are like townsmen everywhere — bargaining in the bazaars, salaaming in the temples, prostrating themselves in the palaces; while, in the domestic courtyards, the women are grinding corn in the handmill, and neighbours sit in a circle at evening, to listen to interminable tales — enjoying the literature of fiction in its primitive style. This is the region now most interesting to us, under the fearful transition of an after time.

What lies below and to the east of this plateau? The basin of the Ganges, a watery realm, where, in seasons of inundations, the villages are seen crowning eminences, like islands amidst the waste of waters, while the tops of the forests are swaying under the gush of the currents and eddies. In the dry season, when the waters are lowest, the people resort to the shade of these forests; the wild beasts slink into the covert again from the hills; the rice fields grow green, and the pestilence drives the rural population to the towns, or a boat life on the great rivers. The highest social cultivation is in this district, where there is somewhat less superstition, more industry, more art, and more communication with varieties of men. The further side of this basin is formed by the high land beyond the Burrampootra, which limits to the east the territory we were surveying.

Thus have we overlooked the domain of Hindostan Proper, or the Bengal Presidency, as we call it now, viz., the area extending from the Himalaya to the Uindhya mountains in one direction, and from the Burrampootra to the Indus in the other. If ever a realm was dignified by its boundaries, it is this. Nature's mightiest barricades hedge it in northward, mountains never yet scaled;

round the shores, an ocean never yet fathomed, and brooded over by the irresistible monsoon; and these mountain and ocean barriers connected by the rivers of a magnitude kindred to both. The Burrampootra and the Indus are indeed gulfs brimming with rushing seas; and where they reach the ocean they threaten to melt down the continent into it. Their deltas are, indeed, fit only for amphibious animals, with which man can establish no understanding; so that entering India by them the sensation is like that of travelling back into a pre-Adamite age from the scenes of common life. H. Martineau.

THE MOUTH OF THE HOOGHLY.-HINDOO TEMPLES.

for all rivers are noble

THIS morning the noble river which are big, dirty, and have plenty of ships, though this stream is full of danger as the Mississippi is of snags has narrowed considerably. We lay to during the night to suit some phase of tide or bank, and now we are screwing up against the very muddy, boiling current, increased in force by an ebb tide. By and by the banks on each side strike out boldly to meet us, and the faint verge of green which refreshed the eye last night turns into a belt of cocoa-nuts worthy of Ceylon. Villages there are also in muddy creeks, which put one in mind of tide-deserted eyots at Chiswick, suddenly tenanted by quaint boats, and people who had just bathed in the Thames and had not scraped the black mud off them. Near to most of these villages, there is one building, certainly, that we should not see near the Thames. Heavy-domed, squat, and to my mind ungraceful, the Hindoo temple, surrounded by a clump of trees, raises its white cupola amid their tops, though it has not beauty of elevation, and is utterly deficient in the simple beauty of the Mussulman mosque. Men and women are working

in the fields naked to the waist, and reflecting the rays of the sun from their dark glistening bodies. The high banks of the river, which seem of artificial make, permit only the farther portions of the wide-spread plains, which melt into dense groves in the distance, to be seen. There are apparently no roads, and no traffic between the villages, but innumerable watercourses and cuts winding between muddy banks, and, no doubt, with internal communications. The Sonderbund, river-junguls which we passed on our right, the wide-spreading islands and deltas of the rivers which here join the sea, afford the greatest possible facility for canalisation; but up to the present moment, in spring, when the rivers are low, a steamer coming down from Patna or Allahabad is obliged at least to double the length of her voyage, owing to the want of a channel of sufficient depth; and this, amid islands and streams which want but little comparatively to be done to render them available as the banks and watercourses of a permanent and unvarying navigation. The river itself is not interesting; the tropical vegetation and hues which give such a charm and novelty to Ceylon have disappeared, and the cocoa-nut trees which fringe the banks are wearisome to the eye, owing to their uniformity of size, foliage, and color. The muddy river, churned into yellowish, buttery foam where it chafes against the sandbanks, is of the color and breadth of the Mersey at New Brighton. Meanwhile, the river narrows, and the navigation becomes more dangerous. The masts of a full-rigged ship, which rise above the surface close to us, at an obtuse angle, point out the place where one fine vessel was lost a few days ago. The tides and currents are so very strong and rapid, that when a ship touches the banks she is capsized the moment her keel strikes, and the suddenness of the exploit is in proportion to the fineness of her lines and the depth of her keel.

About noon we have advanced to a more civilised country; the villages are larger, the fields better cultivated.

After a time, detached houses with high sloping roofs, like those of the olden Swiss farm-houses on the Bernese overland, come into view, mostly on the right bank of the river. A few of them are two-storied, and the sides are protected by deep verandahs and porticoes. They are painted white and buff, or light-blueish grey, and stand in detached gardens, fenced in by trees, plantations, and shrubberies. I make my first bow to a "pucka" house. In the balconies, sheltered from the sun, are groups of Europeans - mostly women, for the bread-winners have gone up to Calcutta · who salute imaginary friends and wave their handkerchiefs as the vessel surges upwards. Then the houses become more dense and continuous, and appear on both sides of the stream. Plantations and fences grow down to the water's edge; the throng of drifting vessels, the number of stalwart little steam-tugs carrying off their big ships as ants run off with a grain of corn, impede our progress. A bend of the river shows us the stream; higher up, interlaced with hulls, and masts, and rigging, which in the distance blacken and harden, as it were, into impassable chevaux-de-frise.* White houses, as close set as the villas at Richmond, run into lines of streets on the upper banks, which are fringed with trees, and with a broad walk covered with natives and carriages. Out of a green bank, dotted with black teeth, a flag-staff carries aloft the union-jack. Close at hand, on the right, is a long wharf, whereat lie many ships. Inside the wharf, gardens, hedge-rows, and fine houses mostly two stories in height, and behind them a few spires, which do not, however, appear very distinct, owing to the haze caused by the heat.

"And about the dead Hindoos in the river?" said I to my friend, as we were going off in our boat towards the ghaut (or boarding-house), in a strong muddy tideway, gurgling through cables and hawsers of many ships.

* Chevaux (sing. cheval) de frise (pron. shehvó deh freez), beams bristling with spikes, used to defend a passage or stop a breach.