From Cawnpore to Agra.

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minism with a vengeance. The Bengalee Baboo carries idolatry wherever he goes. Alexander left cities to mark the track of his conquests. The Bengalee Baboo leaves idols to mark the track of his peregrination. It is English enterprise to set up schools and found hospitals. It is Bengalee enterprise to erect temples and put up idols. The Englishman teaches the Bengalee to bridge rivers and open railroads. The Bengalee teaches hook-swinging to the Santhal, and idol-making to the Hindoostanee. The Baboo who has set up the image of Doorga at Cawnpore is said to have brought artisans from Calcutta, because in Hindoostan they knew not how to make an idol riding upon a lion with ten arms.

October 29th.-Left for Agra by Lallah Joteeprosaud's dawk. It was one of his brethren, Lallah Tantimul, who first started the project of an Inland Transit Company. Immediately out of Cawnpore, the suburbs are raviney. But soon the country assumes a level surface, and fields succeed to fields spreading an uninterrupted sheet of cultivation. The tall stalks of the jowara, with their tufted crests, appear to stand like close-arrayed regiments. Groves of mangoes at intervals make the landscape highly picturesque. But the dusty road is a positive nuisance. Dawking also soon turns out to be a sore method of locomotion. The horse at the third stage was a most stubborn animal. He was brought out and harnessed, but an attempt to start him made him rear violently, and to stand straight on his hind legs. Our companions had a better luck, and scampered off past by us, hallooing and hurrahing

in a John Gilpin style,-while, left at a dead stand, we had to cry out for the Mazeppa of Byron.

The Doab, like Bengal, is flat and alluvial. The vast plain is uninterrupted by a single eminence;* but the soil and climate differ in the same degree as does a Hindoostanee from a Bengalee. The Doab has not the matchless fertility of that 'vast expanse of emerald meadow,' which is saturated with the moisture of the Bay of Bengal. The cocoa and palmyra thrive not in a nitrous soil. But the tract which derives its fruitfulness from the copious streams of the Ganges and Jumna, ranks next in the luxuriance of its vegetation and the greenness of its landscapes. The signs of a better climate are visible in the tall and robust figure, the firm step, the stern eye, and the erect bearing of the manly Hindoostanee. There are seldom the mists and rains, which, brought up by a soft southern wind from a boundless ocean, make Bengal a pestilential swamp, exhaling frightful diseases, and stinting the growth of its men and cattle. The sharp west wind of Upper India rapidly dries up the soil, to improve the quality of its grain, vegetables, and fruitery. Rarely is a taint left on the air to carry off men by periodic epidemics. The effect of more nutritive food and climatic salubrity, is not more manifested in the greater physical development than in the superior intellectual stamina of the Hindoostanees. In Bengal, because nature does so

*The hill of Prabasha, near ancient Kausambi, on the Jumna, about thirty miles above Allahabad, is the only rock on the Doab of the Ganges and Jumna.'- Cunningham.

much, the lazy people will do nothing. Here, hardihood must toil for bread. The insufficiency of rainfall has to be made up by artificial irrigation. No tanksin their place the country is scattered with a frequency of wells, tapped to the depth of fifty to eighty feet. Each field has its own well-and down an inclined bank of earth, the husbandman drives his team, drawing up water in a huge leathern bag to irrigate his crops. The villages are built in open tracts, with scarcely any vegetation about them. This is in marked contrast with the sylvan villages of Bengal. It is to be ascertained, which of them has the greater advantage in point of sanitation. The huts are all mud-walled and mud-terraced. They are decidedly inferior in appearance to an Arcadian cottage of Bengal, which, says Elphinstone, with its trim curved thatched roof and cane walls, is the best looking in India.'

Chowbeypore is picturesquely situated-it has a fine masonry well by the road-side. In this petty village had been stationed a squadron of Native cavalry. On the afternoon of the 9th June, 1857, the officers in command had sat down over their luncheon. The sound of a bugle interrupted their repast, and gave them the alarm. Flinging themselves on horseback, they rode for dear life. But the captain was shot down in his saddle, and cut in pieces where he lay. Two subalterns had taken to the water like hunted stags, and there miserably perished. Two others had sought refuge in a neighbouring village, but had been driven back to fall into the hands of their pursuers. One lieutenant alone,

by dint of hard riding, escaped to Cawnpore with a bullet-hole in his cheek.

Mera-ka-serai is the charitable institution of a Mahomedan. It is an elegant and commodious caravanserai for the accommodation of merchants and travellers. The buildings enclose a spacious square, planted here and there with trees to spread their shade. In the middle of the square is a large masonry-built well, with excellent water. Both Hindoos and Mahomedans halt at this serai. In one room does the Kanougian Brahmin cook his meal of dall and chuppatee,—in the other does the Mussulman boil his onion-kechree. The fierce noonday-heat, the toil and fatigue of journey, for a while make them forget their mutual antipathies. Hunger and thirst have no caste.

Three miles north of Mera-ka-serai, and across some indigo fields, lie the ruins of Kanouge—the once mighty city of thirty miles circumvallation, of thirty thousand betel-shops, and of sixty thousand public dancers and singers.' The steps of the traveller are naturally turned to a scene, of which such romantic accounts have been left both by Hindoo and Mahomedan writers. But he has to tread only upon prostrate walls and broken gateways, and contemplate a blank of shapeless ruins. Year after year, for six long centuries, have the solstitial rains of an Indian autumn washed away the vestiges; or the dust-storms of Upper India, rolling over the spot, have embedded them beneath an accumulated soil. The towers and palaces of the proud Rahtores have been laid low for many a century. The ancient population has

Kanouge.

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long disappeared. Upon the spot there linger only a few thousand Brahmins, weavers, artisans, and peasants, -in the same manner that Arabs hut or encamp upon the ruins of Palmyra and Balbec.' The appearance of Kanouge is exceedingly desolate-it stands 'childless and crownless in a voiceless woe.'

Of Kanouge-the Kanya-kubja of Puranic geography-the earliest mention is found in Menu, as identified with Punchala. The limits of its kingdom as assigned in the Mahabarat nearly agree with those assigned in the 'Rajasthan.' It was an important city in the age of Buddha, who had preached here a lecture on the instability of human existence. To commemorate this event, Asoca had built a stupa or mound 200 feet high. It is then noticed by Ptolemy in his Geography. Fa Hian and Hwen Thsang next visited it-the one in the beginning of the fifth, the other in the middle of the seventh century. Though in Hwen Thsang's time there reigned a Rajah by the name of Harsha Vardhana, ruling from Cashmere to Assam, and from Nepal to the Nerbudda, the city had not then been of a larger size than three half-miles in length, and three-quarters of a mile in breadth. It was surrounded by strong walls and deep ditches, and washed by the Ganges along its eastern face. Two hundred and fifty years later, Kanouge is spoken as 'a great city' by Abu Zaid. In A.D. 915, the well-known geographer Masudi speaks of it as 'the capital of one of the four great kings of India.' Just a century afterwards, the historian of Mahmood relates that he there saw a city which raised its head