the poorest, and have to travel fourth class, and you will see the Brahman sitting side by side with the Pariah. The railway is the great antagonist to caste in India.

Tanjore is a large city of a hundred thousand inhabitants. In former times it was the seat of Brahminical learning, and it contains several pagodas in large green areas or gardens, and two large walled forts. As you approach the city, the Great Pagoda with its lofty gopura is a conspicuous object, impressive and graceful. Its base measures eighty feet square, and

the pyramid rises fourteen stories to the height of two hundred feet. The top-stone or dome is a huge monolith, beautifully carved and said to weigh eighty tons. The courts are not covered over as at Madura, but are open to light and air, and within the precincts is a large open square six hundred feet by two hundred. Here is the colossal bull Nundi, fifteen feet long and twelve feet high, in a couching posture, of stone saturated with oil. It rests upon a platform which you ascend by twelve steps, and has over it a large canopy supported by granite pillars. This bull, sacred to Siva, faces

TANJORE.

the magnificent temple, an oblong building of red sandstone, with the huge gopura rising nobly over the shrine. Farther on to the left, but within the enclosure, is another but much smaller shrine, of beautifully carved stone, and cloisters surround the court covered with coarse pictures of heroes. To the right, within the court, is the Temple of Soubramanya, "as exquisite a piece of decorative architecture," says Mr. Fergusson, "as is to be found in the south of India." The steps up to its entrance are supported by small carved elephants with men in singular attitudes, sitting on or falling from their

trunks. The palace of the Princess of Tanjore contains an open court, with singular figures in stone, and a statue in white marble of the late Rajah. In the Protestant mission church built by Schwartz, his remains lie, and a slab behind the pulpit with an inscription marks the spot. The country about Tanjore looked peculiarly rich and fertile. The great river Kâveri here opens out into a delta, and irrigation works of considerable extent distribute its fertilising waters.

The Danes were the first among Protestant nations to send the Gospel

to India, for in the year 1705 Ziegenbalg came to Tranquebar on the east coast, and made his way to Tanjore, dressed in native costume. The Rajah at first objected, but afterwards sanctioned the mission. Ziegenbalg, having translated the New Testament into Tamil, died in 1719, and his work was resumed by Schultze, and several congregations of Christians grew up in the kingdom of Tanjore. Then followed the war between France and England. which ended in the conquests of the latter under Clive, and the chaplaincy of the garrison of Trichinopoly by the equally eminent soldier, although of the Prince of Peace, the well-known Schwartz, whom the Rajah requested to remove from Trichinopoly and to reside at Tanjore. Here he was employed upon several occasions to treat with the native princes. "Let them send the Christian," said they; "he will not deceive us." On two occasions, when

the Fort of Tanjore was threatened with famine, and the Rajah was powerless to obtain supplies, Schwartz, at his earnest request, undertook to relieve it, and succeeded in saving its inmates from starvation. A few hours before his death the Rajah requested Schwartz to act as guardian to his infant son. Schwartz in fact was revered as a father by the people as well as by the Rajah of Tanjore. The Tanjore mission was his chief work, and he continued its guiding spirit to the end. At his death in 1798, after fortyeight years spent in the country, a long and bitter cry of lamentation arose from multitudes, and the Rajah shed a flood of tears over his body, and covered it with a gold cloth. The Christian Knowledge Society sustained the mission after Schwartz's death, and the Leipzig missionaries commended their Christianity to the Hindus by the adoption of caste, a step which has made the prosecution of Christian work very difficult. But the Propagation Society

PONDICHERRY.

has nine central missions in the provinces of Tanjore and Trichinopoly, and at Combaconum there are many converts, though chiefly from the lower castes.

The new railway between Tanjore and Madras was not yet complete, the bridges over the estuary of one of the rivers (the Peravanur) not being built; and in the middle of the night we were conveyed in bullock waggons inland and across this estuary, thus giving us an idea of what travelling must have been in the country before railways were made. The entire journey is about two hundred miles, and it is now accomplished in eighteen hours, four of which were occupied in the bullock waggon over half-a-dozen miles.

The line runs along the tract of country long known as the Coromandel Coast, which stretches for about four hundred miles north from Adam's Bridge. Throughout its whole extent this coast does not afford any secure port or harbour. A heavy surf rolls in upon the flat sandy shore. The soil near the coast is a mixture of sea-sand and loam, often in dry weather covered with salt. Farther inland low hills commence, and the soil when irrigated is fertile, but the upper part of the hills is sterile.

This coast, though destitute of harbours, has been the favourite country for European settlements. Here is PONDICHERRY, still belonging to the French, divided into two portions, the white town orderly, neat, with beautiful boulevards, the black, or native town, with a large pagoda. Its lower or square part is quite plain, but from its cornice upwards there are large and fantastic figures, those in the centre somewhat resembling Buddha, and indicating the influence of his system even in South India. No doubt the gopura has undergone alteration and repair, for in portions figures are introduced representing European soldiers. In fact, nothing can be too fantastic for these carvings; figures the most grotesque and caricatures are introduced. The summit seems to represent the trisula ornament, symbolical of the Buddhist trinity.

Pondicherry is a town of fifty thousand inhabitants, including about a thousand Europeans. The Missions étrangères de France have a settlement here. They are successful among the natives; but they conform in great part to their idolatrous customs and caste prejudices. The priests have assumed the character of Brahmans of a superior caste from the Western world. In fact, at one time they were wont to wear the cavy, or orange robe peculiar to the most venerated Brahmans, and carried on their foreheads the sacred spot of sandal-wood powder. If," says the Abbé Dubois, "any mode of Christian worship is calculated to gain ground in India, it is no doubt the Catholic form, which Protestants consider idolatry. Its external pomp and show are well suited to the genius of the natives. It has a pooja, or sacrifice, viz. the mass; processions, images, and statues; tirtan, or holy water; feasts, fasts, and prayers for the dead; invocation of saints, and other practices which bear more or less resemblance to that of the Hindus."

Here, too, is Cuddalore, now a handsome town of forty thousand inhabitants, formerly belonging to the French, but yielded by treaty in 1795. Here again

is Tranquebar, once a Danish settlement. The entire district abounds in specimens of Dravidian architecture. Far south by Paumban Passage is the great Pagoda of Ramessveram, exhibiting all the beauties of the Dravidian style, with four stone gopuras and corridors with columns elaborately carved.

On the railway, twenty-four miles north-east from Tanjore, we pass Combaconum, a town of forty-five thousand inhabitants, one of the old capitals of the native Chola kingdom, once called the Oxford of Southern India, account of its learning, with its richly ornamented gopura, twelve

on