for the supply of the Birman war. Colonel Robertson, however, told me, that the ammunition on which he should most depend for the defence of Chunar are stone cylinders, rudely made, and pretty much like garden-rollers, which are piled up in great numbers throughout the interior of the fort, and for which the rock on which the fort stands affords an inexhaustible quarry. These, which are called "mutwalas" (drunkards), from their staggering motion, are rolled over the parapet down the steep face of the hill, to impede the advances and overwhelm the ranks of an assaulting army; and when a place has not been regularly breached, or where, as at Chunar, the scarped and sloping rock itself serves as a rampart, few troops will so much as face them. Against a native army, Colonel Robertson said, Chunar, if resolutely defended, would, he thought, be impregnable, and except in one quarter it would stand no contemptible siege against an European force. Even there the rock which commands it might easily be so much lowered as to prevent any danger; and the stone of which it consists is so valuable, that the neighbouring Zemindars had offered to cart it away at their own expense, provided Government would give up the duty now laid on Chunarstone when transported to different parts of India; but the offer was declined.

On the top of the rock of Chunar, and within the rampart, is a considerable space, covered with remarkably fine English haygrass, now nearly ripe for cutting, several noble spreading trees, and some excellent houses for the officers, few of whom, however, when not on duty, remain here, the reflection of the sun from the rock being very powerful, and the expense of bringing water for the Tatties great. Within this principal circle, and on a still higher point, are two inner fortifications, one containing the Governor's house, the hospital, and the state-prison, now inhabited by the celebrated Maharatta chieftain Trimbuk-jee, long the inveterate enemy of the British power, and the fomentor of all the troubles of Berar, Malwah, and the Deccan. He is confined with great strictness, having an European as well as a sepoy guard, and never being trusted out of the sight of the sentries. Even his bed-chamber has three grated windows open into the verandah which serves as guard-room. In other respects he is well treated, has two large and very airy apartments, a small building fitted up as a pagoda, and a little garden shaded with a peepul-tree, which he has planted very prettily with balsams and other flowers. Four of his own servants are allowed to attend him, but they are always searched before they quit or return to the fort, and must be always there at night. He is a little, lively, irritable-looking man, dressed, when I saw him, in a dirty cotton mantle, with a broad red border, thrown carelessly over his head

and shoulders. I was introduced to him by Colonel Alexander, and he received me courteously, observing that he himself was a brahmin, and in token of his brotherly regard, plucking some of his prettiest flowers for me. He then showed me his garden and pagoda, and after a few common-place expressions of the pleasure I felt in seeing so celebrated a warrior, which he answered by saying, with a laugh, he should have been glad to make my acquaintance elsewhere, I made my bow and took leave. He has been now, I believe, five years in prison, and seems likely to remain there during life, or till the death of his patron and tool, Bajee Row, may lessen his power of doing mischief. He has often offered to give security to any amount for his good behaviour, and to become a warmer friend to the Company than he has ever been their enemy, but his applications have been vain. He attributes, I understand, their failure to Mr. Elphinstone, the governor of Bombay, who is, he says, "his best friend, and his worst enemy," the faithful trustee of his estate, treating his children with parental kindness, and interesting himself, in the first instance, to save his life, but resolutely fixed on keeping him in prison, and urging the Supreme Court to distrust all his protestations. His life must now be dismally monotonous and wearisome. Though a brahmin of high caste, and so long a minister of state and the commander of armies, he can neither write nor read, and his whole amusement consists in the ceremonies of his idolatry, his garden, and the gossip which his servants pick up for him in the town of Chunar. Avarice seems at present his ruling passion. He is a very severe inspector of his weekly accounts, and one day set the whole garrison in an uproar about some ghee which he accused his khansaman of embezzling; in short, he seems less interested with the favourable reports which he from time to time receives of his family, than with the banking accounts by which they are accompanied. Much as he is said to deserve his fate, as a murderer, extortioner, and a grossly perjured man, I hope I may be allowed to pity him.

In the last enclosure of the fortress, on the very summit of the mountain, and calculated to make a defence even after all the lower works had fallen, are several very interesting buildings. One of them is the old Hindoo palace, a central dome surrounded by several vaulted apartments, with many remains of painting and carving, but dark, low, and impervious to heat; on one side of this is a loftier and more airy building, now used as an armoury, but formerly the residence of the Mussulman governor, with handsome rooms, and beautifully carved oriel windows, such as one reads of in Mrs. Radcliffe's castles. A little further on in the bastion is an extraordinary well or reservoir, about fifteen feet in diameter, and cut to a great depth in the solid rock, VOL. I.-34

but the water of which is not sufficiently good to be used, except in case of necessity. In front of the Hindoo palace, in the pavement of the court, are seen four small round holes, just large enough for a man to pass through, below which is the state prison of ancient times. Well is it for Trimbuk-jee that his lot is thrown in better days! This is a horrible dungeon indeed, with neither light, air, nor access, except what these apertures supply to a space of forty feet square. It is now used as a cellar. But the greatest curiosity of all remains to be described. Colonel Robertson called for a key, and unlocking a rusty iron door in a very rugged and ancient wall, said he would show me the most holy place in all India. Taking off his hat, he led the way into a small square court, overshadowed by a very old peepul-tree, which grew from the rock on one side, and from one of the branches of which hung a small silver bell. Under it was a large slab of black marble, and opposite on the walls, a rudely carved rose enclosed in a triangle. No image was visible, but some sepoys who followed us in, fell on their knees, kissed the dust in the neighbourhood of the stone, and rubbed their foreheads with it. On this stone, Colonel Alexander said, the Hindoos all believe that the Almighty is seated, personally, though invisibly, for nine hours every day, removing during the other three hours to Benares. On this account the sepoys apprehend that Chunar can never be taken by an enemy, except between the hours of six and nine in the morning, and for the same reason, and in order by this sacred neighbourhood to be out of all danger of witchcraft, the kings of Benares, before the Mussulman conquest, had all the marriages of their family celebrated in the adjoining palace. I own I felt some little emotion in standing on this mimic mount Calasay. I was struck with the absence of idols, and with the feeling of propriety which made even a Hindoo reject external symbols in the supposed actual presence of the Deity, and I prayed inwardly that God would always preserve in my mind, and in his own good time instruct these poor people, in what manner, and how truly he is indeed present both here and every where.

We now went back to Colonel Alexander's, and thence to church, where I had the satisfaction of confirming nearly one hundred persons, fifty-seven of whom were natives, chiefly, as at Benares, soldiers' wives and widows, but all unacquainted with the English language, and perfectly Oriental in their dress and habits. They were most deeply impressed with the ceremony, bowing down to the very pavement when I laid my hand on their heads, and making the responses in a deep solemn tone of emotion which was extremely touching. The elder women, and all the few men who offered themselves, had been Mr. Corrie's

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converts during his residence here; the younger females had been added to the Church, either from Hindooism, Mohammedanism, or Popery, by Mr. Bowley. Of the last there were not many, but strange to tell, they were, he said, as ignorant in the first instance of the commonest truths of Christianity as the Hindoos. After dinner to-day, Colonel Alexander drove me to a beautiful place about three miles from Chunar, a garden of palm and other fruit-trees, containing a mosque, and a very large and beautiful tomb of a certain Shekh Kâseem Solimân and his son. Of their history I could learn nothing further than that they were very holy men, who died here when on a pilgrimage, and that their tombs, and the accompanying mosque, were built and endowed by one of the emperors of Delhi. The buildings and the grove in which they stand are very solemn and striking, and the carving of the principal gateway, and of the stone lattice with which the garden is enclosed, is more like embroidery than the work of the chisel. A party of Mussulmans were at their evening prayers on one of the stone terraces, all, as usual, decent, devout, and carnest. Colonel Alexander expressed a regret that Christians fell short of them in these particulars. I answered at the moment, that perhaps in proportion to the spirituality of our religion, we were too apt to neglect its outward forms. But on consideration, I am not sure that the imputation, which I have heard before, is just, or that Mussulmans when in the act of prayer are really more externally decorous than the majority of Christians. We are all much impressed with religious ceremonies to which we are not accustomed, and while as passing and casual spectators of a worship carried on by persons, in scene and dress, words and posture, all different from our own, but all picturesque and striking, we may easily overlook those less conspicuous instances of listlessness or inattention, which would not fail to attract our notice where the matter and manner are both familiar. I am sure that the Heathens and Mussulmans, and there were many of them, who looked in on our congregation this morning, had no fault to find with the decency and external abstraction either of the native or European worshippers. The night was intensely hot, but I, and by my advice, Colonel Alexander, passed it in very tolerable comfort, by sleeping on a couch in an open verandah.

September 12.-This morning I had the agreeable surprise to find that Messrs. Macleod and Frazer had come over from Benares during the night. We went to church together, where I also found Mr. Morris. I had consequently four clergymen with me, besides the Catechists Bowley and Adlington,-a more numerous body than could, thirty years ago, have been mustered in the whole Presidency of Fort William. The congregation, too, was more numerous than I have seen out of Calcutta. The invalids

of the garrison who attended, amounted to above two hundred Europeans, besides the officers and civil servants and their families, and I should think one hundred natives. About one hundred and thirty staid the Sacrament, of which the natives amounted to nearly seventy, and I was led to observe that the women of their number who had been Mussulmans, pertinaciously kept their veils down, and even received the bread on a corner of the muslin, rather than expose the bare hand. One of the others, a very young woman, who had been confirmed the day before, instead of extending the hand, threw back her veil, and opened her mouth, by which I guessed she had been brought up a Roman Catholic. All were very devout and attentive,-some shed tears, and the manner in which they pronounced "Ameen" was very solemn and touching. The Hindoostanee prayers read extremely well, but they are so full of Arabic and Persian words, that those converts who have not been Mussulmans must, I fear, find some difficulty in understanding them.

After dinner we again attended church, first for Hindoostanee prayer, afterwards for the usual English service. The former was attended by I should suppose two hundred persons, many of whom, however, were Heathens and Mussulmans, who distinguished themselves by keeping their turbans on. Mr. Morris read the prayers, omitting the Psalms and the First Lesson, neither of which, unfortunately, are as yet translated into Hindoostanee, though the latter is in progress, and Mr. Bowley preached a very useful and sensible sermon. He speaks Hindoostanee with the fluency of a native, and I was pleased to find that I could follow the argument of his sermon with far more ease than I expected.

Chunar, or "Chunar-Gurh," that is Chunar Castle, used to be of great importance as a military post before the vast extension of the British frontier westward. It is one of the principal stations for such invalids as are still equal to garrison duty; and on them at the present moment, owing to the low state of the Company's army, and the demand for men in the east, all the duty of Chunar depends, which, from their health, they are barely equal to, though they are, Europeans and sepoys together, above a thousand men. The sepoy invalids have mostly grown old in the service, and are weather-beaten fellows, with no other injury than what time has inflicted. Some of the Europeans are very old likewise; there is one who fought with Clive, and has still no infirmity but deafness and dim sight. The majority, however, are men still hardly advanced beyond youth, early victims of a devouring climate, assisted, perhaps, by carelessness and intemperance; and it was a pitiable spectacle to see the white emaciated hands thrust out under a soldier's sleeve to receive the sacrament,