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POLICE AT SERAMPOOR.

have been utterly unable to relieve the sufferers by the late inundation. Of Colonel Krefting every body speaks highly; and I have found great sympathy expressed in his misfortunes and those of his colony. I fear, however, that Government will not be able to grant his petition without authority from England, though they shew him in other respects what kindness and favour they can.

Many persons of different nations, who like a cheaper residence than Calcutta, take houses here. One of these was the abode of Mr. Brown, many years senior Presidency Chaplain, and the friend of Henry Martyn. A deserted pagoda near it, once the temporary residence of the latter, attracted my attention. It was in Mr. Brown's time fitted up with books, and a bed for occasional visitors at his house, but is now quite empty and ruinous.

The administration of Serampoor, as it respects the police, is extremely good, and does much credit to Colonel Krefting and his Danish magistrates. During the late inundation he was called on for more vigorous measures than usual, since a numerous band of " Decoits," or river-pirates, trusting to the general confusion and apparently defenceless state of the place, attacked his little kingdom, and began to burn and pillage with all the horrors which attend such inroads in this country. The Colonel took the field at the head of his dozen sepoys, his silver-sticks, police-men, and sundry volunteers, to the amount of perhaps 30, killed some of the ruffians, and took several prisoners,—

CHRISTMAS-BOXES.

65

whom he hanged next morning without deigning to ask aid from his powerful neighbours at Barrackpoor.

From Serampoor I proceeded to Chandernagore, where I had also to return a visit to Monsieur Pelissier, the French Governor. It is, I think, a smaller town than the former, and with a less striking appearance from the river; the houses are mostly small, and the streets presented a remarkable picture of solitude and desertion. I saw no boats loading or unloading at the quay, no porters with burdens in the streets, no carts, no marketpeople, and in fact only a small native bazar, and a few dismal-looking European shops. In the streets I met two or three Europeans smoking segars, and apparently with little to do, having almost all the characteristic features and appearance of Frenchmen.

I had half an hour's very agreeable conversation with the Governor, and promise myself much pleasure from his acquaintance. He is only just arrived at this place from Pondicherry, where he had passed several years, and of which he seems very fond of the climate of Bengal he complains as being too hot and too cold, and says that his family have suffered in their healths during their residence here.

I had about this time an opportunity of observing a custom which prevails with different classes of Hindoos and Mussulmans, of making presents to their masters or superiors at Christmas, of fruit, game, fish, pastry, and sweetmeats. Some gifts of

this sort came to us from different Baboos of our acquaintance. Our head-servants sent presents of plum-cakes, fish, and fruit; and even our poor bearers came in a body, their faces decorated with an extra quantity of raddle, chalk, and tin-foil, to beg my acceptance of a basket of plantains and oranges. The outer gates of most of the houses in Calcutta and Chowringhee are decorated with garlands of flowers, tinsel, and gilt-paper. These Christmas-boxes are said to be an ancient custom here, and I could almost fancy that our name of box for this particular kind of present, the derivation of which is not very easy to trace in the European languages, is a corruption of " Buckshish," a gift or gratuity, in Turkish, Persian, and Hindoostanee. There have been undoubtedly more words brought into our language from the East than I used to suspect. "Cash," which here means small money, is one of these; but of the process of such transplantation I can form no conjecture.

January 1, 1824.-I this day preached at the Cathedral, it being an old and good custom in India always to begin the year with the solemn observation of the day of the Circumcision; there was a good congregation. I received to-day an explanation of some very singular images, which stand in different streets of Calcutta and its neighbourhood, representing a female figure, or at least the figure of a youth, rudely carved in wood and painted, standing erect on the back of a disproportionately little elephant, and with a monstrous

sort of spire or shrine on his head. They are used, it appears, as a sort of hatchment, being erected on the death of wealthy Hindoos, near their dwelling-houses, but, differing in this respect from hatchments, are generally suffered to remain till they fall in pieces. These are of wood. Most of the Hindoo idols are of clay, and very much resemble in composition, colouring, and execution, though of course not in form, the more paltry sort of images which are carried about in England for sale by the Lago di Como people. At certain times of the year, great numbers of these are, in fact, hawked about. the streets of Calcutta in the same manner, on men's heads. This is before they have been consecrated, which takes place on their being solemnly washed in the Ganges by a Brahmin Pundit. Till this happens they possess no sacred character, and are frequently given as toys to children, and used as ornaments of rooms, which when hallowed they could not be, without giving great offence to every Hindoo who saw them thus employed. I thought it remarkable that though most of the male deities are represented of a deep brown colour, like the natives of the country, the females are usually no less red and white than our porcelain beauties as exhibited in England. But it is evident from the expressions of most of the Indians themselves, from the style of their amatory poetry, and other circumstances, that they consider fairness as a part of beauty, and a proof of noble blood. They do not like to be called black, and though the Abyssinians, who are sometimes met with in the country,

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PORTUGUESE IN INDIA.

are very little darker than they themselves are, their jest books are full of taunts on the charcoal complexion of the "Hubshee." Much of this has probably arisen from their having been so long subjected to the Moguls, and other conquerors originally from more northern climates, and who.continued to keep up the comparative fairness of their stock by frequent importation of northern beauties. India too has been always, and long before the Europeans came hither, a favourite theatre for adventurers from Persia, Greece, Tartary, Turkey, and Arabia, all white men, and all in their turn possessing themselves of wealth and power. These circumstances must have greatly contributed to make a fair complexion fashionable. It is remarkable, however, to observe how surely all these classes of men in a few generations, even without any intermarriage with the Hindoos, assume the deep olive tint, little less dark than a Negro, which seems natural to the climate. The Portuguese natives form unions among themselves alone, or if they can, with Europeans. Yet the Portuguese have, during a three hundred years' residence in India, become as black as Caffres. Surely this goes far to disprove the assertion, which is sometimes made, that climate alone is insufficient to account for the difference between the Negro and the European. It is true, that in the Negro are other peculiarities which the Indian has not, and to which the Portuguese colonist shews no symptom of approximation, and which undoubtedly do not appear to follow so naturally