Mussulman, inasmuch as the different messes seemed all eager to receive their portions, and in the evening at our bivouac their kettles were all supplied with it. The fish was very good, exceedingly firm and white, like a jack, which it a good deal resembled, except that the bones were larger and less numerous. Its name is "râhoo." With occasional supplies of this kind, there is no fear of our provisions falling short, except our bread, which is become mouldy, and which in this part of the country we have no chance of replacing. Our boatmen continued their course to-day later than usual, and it was about seven o'clock when he brought up near a large village, surrounded by marshes and paddy grounds, but with a good deal of pasture intermingled. Its name is Cadampoor, as we were told by an old man, who added the gratuitous information, that he was himself the village "Gaowala," or cowman. This he probably said in hopes that we might purchase some milk, but our goats supply us abundantly. They are taken on shore whenever we stop, to graze on the fiorin, which to my surprise grows in large patches on these sandy banks. On our return from our evening's stroll, we met the Gaowala with his herd, and I had a fresh opportunity of noticing (what had struck me more than once before) the falsehood of the idea, that Indian cattle are particularly wild or surly with white men. These animals in passing us displayed no more shyness than a similar herd would have done in England.

June 21.-Holland itself could not have furnished a thicker or more stinking fog than hung over the banks of the river early this morning. It cleared up towards seven, leaving the promise of a tremendously hot day without a breath of wind. Indeed, for these three days we have had by no means the sort of weather we were told to expect, and if we find water enough for our course, we must, I apprehend, thank the melting snows of the distant Himalaya for it, more than any rain which has yet fallen in Bengal. We had proof this morning of the neighbourhood of Europeans of some description or other, (probably indigo planters,) in two gentlemen, apparently in the pursuit of game, who appeared on the banks, mounted on elephants, and followed by two men with long bamboos, as if to beat the bushes. Though they rode for two or three minutes near us, they showed no disposition to have any communication with our party. I was at first going to hail them, and felt vexed at myself afterwards for the shyness, or whatever it was, which made me lose the opportunity of learning many points respecting our present situation and our future course, on which I wished much to be informed. A number of little boys came to the side of the river, and ran along by our vessel, which the crew were towing slowly along, singing an air extremely like that of "My love to war is going." The words were Bengalee,

and unintelligible to me; but the purport, 1 soon found out, by the frequent recurrence of " Radha," to be that amour of Krishna with the beautiful dairy maid, which is here as popular a subject with the boatmen and peasantry, as the corresponding tale of Apollo and Daphne can have been with the youth of Greece and Hellenized Syria. A few pice were thrown to these young singers by some of my servants. Their mode of begging strongly recalled to my mind something of the same sort which I have seen in England. Dear, dear England! there is now less danger than ever of my forgetting her, since I now, in fact, first feel the bitterness of banishment. In my wife and children I still carried with me an atmosphere of home; but here every thing reminds me that I am a wanderer. This custom of the children singing, I had not met with before, but it seems common in this part of the country. All the forenoon, at different villages, which are here thickly scattered, the boys ran out to sing, not skilfully, certainly, but not unpleasantly. The general tune was like "My boy, Billy," Radha! Radha! forming the burden.

The increase of the population is very striking to-day. It is now apparently as dense as in any part of Bengal which I have seen; and the crowds of villagers bathing, washing linen, &c., the lowing of cattle, barking of dogs, and all other rural sounds except the crowing of cocks, enliven our progress between the high mud-banks, which would else be sufficiently tiresome. Dense, however, as the population is, it seems exclusively Bengalee and agricultural. Except the two Europeans, who might have come from a considerable distance, we have seen no symptoms of white men, nor have we passed a single indigo manufactory, since one a few miles on this side of Ranaghât. The barges, which are very numerous, bring salt from Calcutta, and carry back chiefly mustard seed, which, in the shape of oil, is one of the most indispensable necessaries in a Hindoo family. "We eat mustard-oil, (said my sircar to me one day, when lamenting an additional tax which had been imposed upon this commodity,) we burn it,—we rub ourselves with it,-it is quite as useful as rice."

We have been these last three days in some perplexity about our further progress. The account given us of the depth of water by the crew of the large pulwars which we passed at Seebpoor, appears either to have been exaggerated, or to refer to the largest and most circuitous of three streams which flow out of the great Ganges into that where we are now gliding. The most direct of these, by Catchergatty, is said to be generally at this season tolerably supplied with water for a vessel of our small draught. But the rain has been for these three days suspended, or nearly so. We have the ill luck to observe, by the mark on the bank, that the river has actually been a few inches higher than it is now;

and the different boats which meet us hold very different language as to the probability of our reaching Dacca by that course. The second, or next straightest channel, is notoriously shallower than the Catchergatty, so that there only remains the third, which is nearly by three days more tedious: we are, however, likely to obtain some more certain accounts to-night. The two cavaliers, or elephanteers, whom we passed in the morning, and whom I regretted the not having spoken with, it seems hailed the cookboat after we were gone by, and most civilly and modestly, without introducing themselves, wrote a note, which they committed to my peon, to the native daroga of Catchergatty, ordering him to give me all the assistance and information in his power, and to convey any letters for me, either to Calcutta or Dacca.

We this afternoon passed a very large tortoise, considerably above a foot, I should think, in length, basking on one of the sand-banks.

We moored at about half past six, after a very hot day, and a fatiguing one for the poor men, at a place called Bunybunya, a desolate, sandy spot, but which promised good air. On landing, we found that beyond the immediate vicinity of our birth, the country was really pretty. A considerable indigo work, with an European bungalow, was at a little distance, the owner of which was gone to Kishnagur, but which afforded us an amusing and instructive occupation in walking round the works, and seeing the manner in which indigo is made, by maceration in water in a succession of brick cisterns, and at last, by kiln-drying, to evaporate the moisture from the dye. The daroga, for whom we had the letter, was gone, we found, to a neighbouring village, to hold an inquest over a man who had been found dead in a well.

June 22.-After unmooring again, we were disappointed to learn that we had passed the nearest way to Dacca. There were still, however, two rivers opening before us, and that which lay to our right, we were told, was nearer than the other by some days: the Serang went off in his jolly-boat to obtain intelligence from a little village. He brought back word that there was water enough, but that there were some bad and narrow places, where we should have some difficulty in getting the pinnace along. I could not conjecture what sort of narrow places we could have to apprehend, inasmuch as the river was here almost a quarter of a mile broad, and rocks, I knew, were things unheard of in Bengal. But whatever were the hinderance, I determined on proceeding this way, since the rapid rise of the river, which might now inevitably be reckoned on, would clear away every thing of the sort, most probably in a less time than would be lost by taking a circuitous route, even if (which we could not be sure of) that route also should not produce its impediments. We therefore turned

into this branch, which tended directly south-east, and where we found the wind indeed against us, but a strong, whirly, dimpling stream, urging us merrily forwards. In both these respects we had previously experienced the contrary; so that we found that to this point we had been ascending one branch of the Matabunga, flowing westward towards the Hooghly, but that the present was another, which reverted by a southerly course, and with greater rapidity, to the mighty Ganges, from which it at first had issued. Our sails were now useless, but so fine a stream promised our boatmen easy work with the tow-line. If, however, the poor fellows formed any such expectation, they were soon undeceived. They had, indeed, no occasion to urge the boat forwards: sternforemost, or broadside-foremost, or whirling round and round like a reel, she was hurried on with more than sufficient rapidity. But they had continually to bring her up short by main strength, or to jump into the water, and with long bamboos, or with their arms and shoulders, to stave her off, or push her over, different obstacles. This is not a peaceable stream like the one we had quitted, but hurries with it trees and bushes, as well as throwing up numerous sand banks, between which our course was indeed very often narrow and perplexing, though in the bed of the river there was always a considerable depth of water, a circumstance which, obliging our boatmen to swim every ten or twenty yards, materially increased their labours. At the more difficult of these places we generally found a Mussulman fakir or two established, who came, or sometimes swam, to beg alms, pleading the efficacy of their prayers in getting us past the dangers, and supplying at the same time, in many instances, some useful hints as to the best course for our vessel; a service cheaply rewarded by a few pice, which indeed few would grudge, who are aware how often this is the sole resource of unfortunate boatmen, victims to disease or premature old age, brought on by the severity of their labours. Our own men, though all in the prime of youth, well fed, and with figures such as a statuary might delight to model after, themselves show too many symptoms of the ill effects occasioned by their constant vicissitudes of water, sun, and toil. The backs and skins of many of them were scaly, as if with leprosy, and they spoke of this complaint as a frequent consequence of their way of life; though this particular eruption, they said, always left them if they remained any time at home, and re-appeared on their return to their aquatic labours. The same thing I have heard of among the boatmen of Madras, where it is, ignorantly enough, mistaken for a saline incrustation from the sea-water. Here the water is fresh, yet the same spectacle is presented, and must therefore, I suppose, be attributed to checked perspiration.

After advancing six or eight miles in this manner, sometimes

hanging on the sunken trees, sometimes scraping against sandbanks, but still trundling on at a rate faster than might have been expected, we arrived in a broad deep pool, with unusually still water, on seeing which the Serang immediately brought to, and leapt on shore, exclaiming that we were near one of the difficult places. It was now about four o'clock, and the day pleasantly cool and cloudy, so that Stowe and I followed his example, in the hope of seeing what was the obstacle. We found, about 100 yards farther, a regular dam of earth, sand, and clay, thrown up across the river, (a quarter of a mile wide,) by the force of this restless stream, which now struggled on through the impediments which it had itself raised, with great violence and impetuosity, through two narrow and irregular channels, with a considerable fall, into a lower and troubled, but still deep basin, some three feet below. No vessel larger than a jolly-boat could pass these channels in their present condition, and the question was whether we were to return up the rapid stream which we had descended, or get labourers to widen the most promising, though the narrowest, of these sluices. This was a question, however, very easily decided. The bank was evidently nothing but earth easily worked, and of which the rubbish would be as easily washed away by the stream, and I therefore sent Abdullah to Matabunga, the nearest village, with directions to find the daroga first, or if he were not forthcoming, to hire work-people without delay. In the mean time, I sat down to make a drawing of the scene before me, and to enjoy the delightful sound and coolness of the rushing water, as well as to observe the success of a crowd of people, men, women, and children, who covered every part of the bank, catching fish with long spears, scoop and casting nets. In the use of these instruments they were very dexterous. I never in my life saw a net so thrown, either for the extent of water covered, the precision of aim, or the apparent absence of effort, as by one young man, a very little fellow too, who stood near us. these people we had in the first place applied to help us, but they excused themselves, saying they had no tools. They were indeed already very fully and profitably employed, since the water was teeming with fish of all sizes, and the young man whom I have mentioned told us that, at this time of year, nobody eat any thing but fish, and that every body might have it. He said that a few days ago there had been no passage here at all, for the river had been standing in tanks all the way to "Burra Gunga," but that now the rains had once forced their way, they would soon widen the channel, and that some large vessels which he pointed out to us above and below the fall, had been waiting several days for this to happen, but that now they would get through at our expense. "Ucha oon ke waste." "Good for them," he added.

Το