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APPROACH TO CALCUTTA.

looking race of mariners, who Captain Manning told me were really bold and expert fellows, and the vessels better sea-boats than their clumsy forms would lead one to anticipate. Bengalee and Chittagong vessels, with high heads and sterns, were also numerous. In both these the immense size of the rudders, suspended by ropes to the vessel's stern, and worked by a helmsman raised at a great height above the vessel, chiefly attracted attention. There were many other vessels, which implied a gradual adoption of European habits, being brigs and sloops, very clumsily and injudiciously rigged, but still improvements on the old Indian ships. Extensive plantations of sugar-cane, and numerous cottages resembling those we had already seen, appeared among the groves of coco-nut and other fruit-trees, which covered the greater part of the shore; a few cows were tethered on the banks, and some large brick-fields with sheds like those in England, and here and there a white staring European house, with plantations and shrubberies, gave notice of our approach to an European capital. At a distance of about nine miles from the place where we had left the yacht, we landed among some tall bamboos, and walked near a quarter of a mile to the front of a dingy, deserted looking house, not very unlike a country gentleman's house in Russia, near some powder mills; here we found carriages waiting for us, drawn by small horses with switch tails, and driven by postillions with whiskers, turbans, bare legs and arms, and blue jackets with tawdry yellow lace.

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CALCUTTA PEONS, OR HURKARUS; AND SAEES, OR GROOM.

APPROACH TO CALCUTTA.

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A " Saees," or groom, ran by the side of each horse, and behind one of them were two decent looking men with long beards and white cotton dresses, who introduced themselves as my " Peons" or "Hurkarus;" their badges were a short mace or club of silver, of a crooked form, and terminating in a tyger's head, something resembling a Dacian standard as represented on Trajan's pillar, and a long silver stick with a knob at the head. We set out at a round trot; the saeeses keeping their places very nimbly on each side of us, though on foot, along a raised, broadish, but bad road, with deep ditches of stagnant water on each side, beyond which stretched out an apparently interminable wood of fruit-trees, interspersed with cottages: some seemed to be shops, being entirely open with verandahs, and all chiefly made up of mats and twisted bamboo. The crowd of people was considerable, and kept up something like the appearance of a fair along the whole line of road. Many were in bullock-carts, others driving loaded bullocks before them, a few had wretched poneys, which, as well as the bullocks, bore too many and indubitable marks of neglect and hard treatment; the manner in which the Hindoos seemed to treat even their horned cattle, sacred as they are from the butcher's knife, appeared far worse than that which often disgusts the eye and wounds the feelings of a passenger through London.

Few women were seen; those who appeared had somewhat more clothing than the men,—a

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coarse white veil, or "chuddah," thrown over their heads without hiding their faces, their arms bare, and ornamented with large silver "bangles," or bracelets. The shops contained a few iron tools hanging up, some slips of coarse coloured cotton, plantains hanging in bunches, while the ground was covered with earthen vessels, and a display of rice and some kind of pulse heaped up on sheets; in the midst of which, smoking a sort of rude hookah, made of a short pipe and a coco-nut shell, the trader was squatted on the ground.

By degrees we began to see dingy brick buildings of more pretensions to architecture, but far more ugly than the rudest bamboo-hut, the abodes of Hindoos or Mussulmans of the middle class, flatroofed, with narrow casement windows, and enclosed by a brick wall, which prevented all curious eyes from prying into their domestic economy. These were soon after mingled with the large and handsome edifices of Garden Reach, each standing by itself in a little woody lawn (a "compound" they call it here, by an easy corruption from the Portuguese word Campaña,) and consisting of one or more stories, with a Grecian verandah along their whole length of front. As we entered Kidderpoor, European carriages were seen, and our eyes were met by a Police soldier, standing sentry in the corner of the street, nearly naked, but armed with a sabre and shield,-a pagoda or two,-a greater variety of articles in the shops, a greater crowd in the streets, and a considerable number

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