went on to Sadras, a spot about a mile beyond, where our tents and servants were expecting us, and where we found our companions, Captain Harkness and Dr. Hyne.

Sadras is a large but poor-looking town, once a Dutch settlement, and still containing many families of decayed burghers, like those of Ceylon, the melancholy relics of a ruined factory. Some of them have little pensions from the charity of the British Government, and there is a Dutch Missionary, a very poor and modest, and apparently, a good man, who lives among them, does duty in Dutch and Portuguese, and has a little school for both Christian and Heathen children. His salary is paid by a religious society in the Netherlands. A small old pagoda is in the entrance of the town, whose principal inmates, the presiding Brahmin and the dancing-girl, followed me to my tent. This was the first specimen which I had seen of the southern Bayadêre, who differ considerably from the nâch girls of northern India, being all in the service of different temples, for which they are purchased young, and brought up with a degree of care which is seldom bestowed on the females of India of any other class. This care not only extends to dancing and singing, and the other allurements of their miserable profession, but to reading and writing. Their dress is lighter than the bundles of red cloth which swaddle the figuranté of Hindostan, and their dancing is said to be more indecent, but their general appearance and manner seemed to me far from immodest, and their air

even more respectable than the generality of the lower classes of India. The poor girl whom I saw at Sadras, making allowance for the difference of costume and complexion, might have passed for a smart, but modest, English maid-servant. The money which they acquire in the practice of their profession is hallowed to their wicked gods, whose ministers are said to turn them out without remorse, or with a very scanty provision, when age or sickness renders them unfit for their occupation. Most of them, however, die young. Surely, the more one sees of this hideous idolatry, the more one must abhor it, and bless God for having taught us better. I had heard that the Bayadêres were regarded with respect among the other classes of Hindoos, as servants of the gods, and that, after a few years' service, they often married respectably. But, though I made several enquiries, I cannot find that this is the case; their name is a common term of reproach among the women of the country, nor could any man of decent caste marry one of their number. Yet the gods are honoured who receive such sacrifices! I have always looked on these poor creatures with no common feelings of sorrow and pity.

Our little camp was on the sea-shore, about two miles beyond the town of Sadras, and I found abundant reason to acknowledge the liberal kindness of Government in the number and excellence of the tents, camels, and elephants which they had provided for me.

March 15.-We set out this morning at half

past three, and rode over a very sandy, but rather pretty country, much resembling the coast of Ceylon, being covered with coco and palmyra-trees, and intersected with several streams.

CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES W. WILLIAMS

WYNN.

MY DEAR WYNN,

Barrackpoor, October 29th, 1823.

The first quiet morning which I have had since my arrival in India I cannot employ more agreeably than in writing to those dear and kind friends, the recollection of whom I feel binding me still more strongly to England, the farther I am removed from it.

The first sight of India has little which can please even those who have been three months at sea. The coast is so flat as only to be distinguished, when very near it, by the tall coco-trees which surround the villages; and Juggernauth, which is a conspicuous sea-mark, shews merely three dingy conical domes, like glass-houses. The view of Saugor is still worse, being made up of marshes and thick brush-wood, on the same level line of shore, and conveying at once the idea, which it well deserves, of tygers, serpents, and fevers. During the night of our anchoring under its lee, however, few