are to be had in Calcutta of great excellence and beauty. And in one instance, which I omitted to mention before, on the celebration of the festival of the goddess Kali at the pagoda of Kalighât, near Russipugla, I saw the towers at the corners of the building hung round with an immense quantity of gilt paper, tinsel, and flowers, the court crowded with coloured plaister statues as big or bigger than life, representing Sepoys, horse and foot, drawn up in the act of presenting arms, and a figure in their front on an elephant, to represent the Governor-General, also in the act of taking off his cocked hat. In the middle of the court, and before the gate of the sanctuary, was a very large temporary pavilion, I should suppose 60 feet long by about 20, composed of coarse white cotton, but glittering with ribbands, gilding, tinsel, and flounces of various coloured silks, with slender gilded pillars, overshadowing a vast Plateau, for it had exactly this appearance, of plaister filled with painted gods and goddesses, Kali and all her family with all their respective heads and arms, while the whole building rang with the clamour, tinkling, and strumming of gongs, bells, and stringed instruments. Yet there were not many worshippers even then. These pagodas are often endowed with lands as well as rent charges on lands, though some of them depend entirely on voluntary contributions. Most of the larger ones are kept externally very neat, and diligently whitewashed, while the Grecian ornaments of which I have spoken, and which must have been borrowed

from the Europeans, are so many evidences of the repairs bestowed on them occasionally and of late years.

During my stay at Barrackpoor, I witnessed one custom of the Hindoos which I could not comprehend; a jackall was caught in a trap and killed, and as soon as the breath was out of his body, all the servants of that religion ran forward to wash their hands in his blood,-which I am told they always do whenever they kill, or witness the death of a wild beast.

The Indian squirrel, which abounds in the park, is smaller than ours, more of an ash colour, with two black and white streaks down its back; and not only lives in trees, but in the thatch of houses. I saw several playing about the eaves of my bungalow, and at first mistook them for rats, which at a small distance they much resemble.

December 28.-I went this morning to return a visit which I had received from Colonel Krefting, the Danish Governor of Serampoor, a fine old veteran who has been above 40 years resident in Bengal, yet still preserves the apparently robust health and florid old age of Norway, of which country he is a native. With him I found his secretary, an officer of the name of Mansbach, also a Norwegian, whose mother I had met with many years back at the house of Mr. Rosencrantz at Hafslan, on the Falls of the Glommer. My conversation with them renewed some very agreeable recollections on both sides, and I was glad to hear of the health of some of those who had formerly

shewn me kindness, while they were much interested by my account of the Knudtzons, of Penrhyn's travels in the province of Bergen, and of the glacier which he had discovered.

Serampoor is a handsome place, kept beautifully clean, and looking more like an European town than Calcutta, or any of its neighbouring cantonments. The guard, which was turned out to receive me, consisted of, perhaps, a dozen Sepoys in the red Danish uniform; they were extremely clean and soldier-like looking men, and the appearance of the place flourishing. During the long war in which England was engaged, and so long as the Danes remained neutral, it was really so, and a vast deal of commerce was carried on under the benefit of its flag. At the time of the Copenhagen rupture, Lord Minto sent two or three companies of infantry to take possession of it. Since that period the settlement has grievously declined, and so much the faster, because no stipulation was made by the Danish Government at home at the time of the general pacification for the continuance of a grant of 200 chests of opium yearly, which, previous to the rupture, the English East India Company were accustomed to furnish to the Danish Government of Serampoor, at the cost price, thereby admitting them to share in the benefits of this important monopoly. This grant has been earnestly requested since by colonel Krefting, but hitherto without success, and in consequence he complains that the revenues of the settlement do not meet its current expences, and that the Government