valuable portions of the entire work; and if the eye of the pilgrim sometimes wandered from the sacred temples to the fairer portion of the worshippers, his remarks only add a human interest to scenes, which, after all, are somewhat strange and unintelligible to European minds. In 1866 he paid a second visit to Delhi, and his antiquarian notices of that city and its ancient suburbs display an amount of investigation and research which are highly creditable to the writer, and his results are worthy of far more notice than can be awarded them in the present Introduction.

As regards the narrative generally, the Baboo has evidently endeavoured to combine all such legendary and positive history of the places he visited as would prove interesting to readers and travellers. He has presented pictures of varied scenes in the light and colouring in which they appeared before his own eyes; and has diversified the details of his information by references to local traditions, objects of antiquarian interest, social and religious institutions, and the manners, customs, and thoughts of his countrymen. In a word, whilst he has dwelt upon scenes and objects with the view of affording materials for Indian history, he has portrayed Hindoo life as it meets the eye in the present day.

Indeed, a journey up the valley of the Ganges and Jumna from Calcutta to Delhi is unequalled in objects of human interest by any other journey in the world. From Calcutta, the city of palaces, the finest European city in the Eastern hemisphere, and where European civilization reigns supreme, the Oriental pilgrim is carried perhaps in the first instance to Benares, the city beloved by the gods, with its mass of temples, ghâts, and dwelling-houses, crowding the banks of the holy stream for a distance of some miles. The narrow busy streets with pagodas on all sides; the gay bazars teeming with Native manufactures; the mysterious

temples with sacred bulls stabled in the holy precincts; the thousands and thousands of people washing away their sins in the Ganges; the idols, flowers, sprinklings with waters, readings of sacred books, prayers of Brahmans, clamouring of beggars for alms, and tokens of religious worship in all directions;—all tend to wean away the mind from European ideas, and impress it with a deep sense of ignorance as regards the yearnings and aspirations of millions of fellowcreatures. From Benares again the traveller may be carried to Allahabad, where the holy rivers of Jumna and Ganges are united in a single stream; and the religious mind of the Hindoo is filled with a deep reverential awe at the mingling of the waters, which has its source in a fetische worship which is as old as the hills, and flourished in patriarchal times. This religious feeling finds expression in a great festival which is held at the junction of the rivers; and the European is distracted by the thousand and one nondescript scenes which meet the eye at a Hindoo fair; the jumbling up of the pilgrimages of the Middle Ages with the civilization of the nineteenth century; the conjurors, jugglers, faqueers, women and children in countless numbers; the hundreds of vehicles, the endless stalls, idols, and lucifer matches, books and sweetmeats, brass pots, gilt caps, cedar pencils, toys, note paper, marbles, red powder, and waving flags. From thence the traveller may be conducted to Agra and Delhi, from the centres of Hindooism to the centres of Islam in India. The marble palaces with graceful arches, slender columns, and screens like lace-work. The magnificent Taj with its dome of white marble, and its exquisite interior inlaid with flowers and birds in coloured gems, which, in the language of Heber, seems to have been built by giants and finished by jewellers. Above all there are the wondrous mosques, decorated with holy texts from the Koran; the cloistered gardens in vast quadrangles

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where fountains are ever playing; and the marble tombs to which streams of pious Mussulmans are ever going on pilgrimage to scatter a few flowers upon the sacred shrines, and to offer up prayers to the prophet of Islam. But there is no space here to dwell longer upon the scenes which our Hindoo traveller has described so well; and with this brief Introduction of himself and his Travels, we leave him to tell his own story, assuring the European reader that, notwithstanding the novelty of the names and scenes, it will well repay a careful perusal.

Calcutta, 9th September, 1868.

J. TALBOYS WHEELER.

TRAVELS OF A HINDO0.

CHAPTER I.

If any man would keep a faithful account of what he had seen and heard himself, it must, in whatever hands, prove an interesting thing.-Horace Walpole.

FROM the diary kept of our several journeys, the date of our first and earliest trip up the Hooghly appears to be the 11th of February, 1845. This is now so far back as to seem quite in the 'olden time'-in the days of the budgerow and bholio, of tow-ropes and punt-poles, all now things of the past, and irrevocably gone to obsoletism. It being the order of the day to 'get over the greatest possible amount of ground in the smallest possible amount of time,' the reader, perhaps, trembles at the mention of by-gones, but let him take courage, and we promise not to be a bore, but let him off easily.

In the times to which we allude, one was not so independent of the elements as now. The hour, therefore, of our embarkation was as propitious as could be wished. Both Neptune and Eolus seemed to look