and render them useful instead of useless and isolated members of society. There is small hope of so desirable a change as long as baseless pretensions are nourished.''

Old Bhogwangola is now twelve miles from new Bhogwangola. The former was the port of Moorshedabad in Ali Verdi's time, when it stood upon the Bhagiruttee, now flowing some five miles westward. In old Bhogwangola are remains that testify to its having been 'a very extensive town or a series of large villages, now overgrown with forests, and dotted with numerous tanks and other signs of population.' New Bhogwangola is a great corn-fair, in which, says Bishop Heber, 'the small but neat mat-houses are scattered over a

large green common, fenced off from the river by a high grassy mound, which forms an excellent dry walk, bordered with mango-trees, bamboos, and the datepalm, as well as some fine banians. The common was covered with children and cattle, a considerable number of boats was on the beach, different musical instruments were strumming, thumping, squealing, and rattling from some of the open sheds, and the whole place exhibited a cheerfulness, and an activity and bustle, which were extremely interesting and pleasing.' But a second time has the Ganges played its freaks with Bhogwangola, and devoured a great portion of it that is spoken of by Heber.

Nearly forty miles above Moorshedabad is Jungipore, said to have been named after the emperor Jehangeer. It stands on the eastern bank, and was formerly noted

Jungipore.-Sooty.

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for its largest silk filature. Lord Valentia, in 1802, describes the place as the greatest silk station of the East India Company, and employing 3000 persons.' The Charter of 1833 doomed Jungipore and all other silk and cotton ports of Bengal to decay, and the place is now a toll-station, by which about 50,000 boats annually pass, paying a tax on average of 3 Rs. for each boat.

Twenty-one miles again from Jungipore is Sooty, where the Bhagiruttee has branched off from the Ganges. The neighbourhood of Sooty is remarkable for the battle of Gheriah, fought between Ali Verdi and Serefraz Khan in 1740. There was another battle fought in 1763 between Meer Cossim and the English. The mouth at Sooty appears to have seldom had a free, navigable stream. Tavernier, writing in 1665, mentions that there was a sand-bank before Sooty, which rendered it impassable in January, so that Bernier was obliged to travel by land from Rajmahal to Hooghly.' It seems to have had an open passage at the time of Suraja-a-Dowla, who, ‘alarmed at the capture of Chandernagore, and afraid that the English would bring their ships up the Pudma and into the Bhagiruttee, sunk vessels near Sooty' to provide against such a contingency.

·

Passing Sooty, the voyager falls into the waters of the Great Ganges, that, rolling on for a thousand of miles in one unbroken current, has here first turned its course to flow with the swelled tribute of a hundred streams into the great reservoir of the sea.

'Vast as a sea the Ganges flows,
And fed by Himalaya's snows,
Or rushing rains, with giant force
Unwearied runs its fated course.'

The low marshy country, extending from Rajmahal to Nuddea, and measuring a distance of 100 miles, is where tradition points out the former bed of the Ganges before the formation of the Pudma, and before also the existence of the present Bhagiruttee. It is inscrutable now to understand the legend of Bhagiruth having brought the Ganges, but, doubtless, it refers to some natural phenomenon which probably occurred in the reign of that Hindoo prince, and on which scientific researches may throw some light on a future day.

The ruins of Gour.-No one sailing up from Sooty, and passing so near the spot, should omit to see the ancient, the historic, and the most interesting of all places in Bengal-Gour, which stands upon the opposite bank, and is but half a day's journey. Desolate as it now is, it is invested with the associations of a thousand years—with reminiscences of the Pala and Sena Rajahs, and of Mussulman princes till near the end of the sixteenth century. The city of Deva Pala and Mahindra Pala, of Adisura and Bullala Sena, offers a fair field for archæological investigation. No very ancient remains are said to exist there, but this is an assertion made, we think, without proper and sufficient inquiries.

Much uncertainty exists as to the origin of Gour. In the opinion of Rennel, 'Gour, called also Lucknouti, the ancient capital of Bengal, and supposed to be the Gangia regia of Ptolemy, stood on the left bank of the

The Ruins of Gour.

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Ganges, about twenty miles below Rajmahal. It was the capital of Bengal 730 years before Christ, and was repaired and beautified by Hoomayoon, who gave it the name of Jennuteabad; which name a part of the Circar, in which it was situated, still bears.' No doubt, the antiquity of Gour stretches back many a century, but it cannot be believed to extend to so remote a period as the eighth century before Christ. Buddha would then have most likely visited it on his way to Kooch Vihar, and the fact would have been mentioned in Buddhistical writings. The Mahabarat does not speak of it as having been seen by the Pandava brothers in their peregrinations. The Puranas speak of Bengal under the name of Bungo, and not of Gour, by which it was subsequently called. Ptolemy's Gangia regia must refer to some other place, and not to Gour. Fa Hian visited India in the beginning of the fifth, and Hwen Thsang in the early part of the seventh century, and they do not speak of Gour. The date assigned by Wilford-A.D. 648, seems to be the most probable period when Gour was founded, on the independence of Bengal from the dominion of Magadha. Bengal, called by Akber, the paradise of countries, appears to have first had its own sovereigns on the fall of the Andra dynasty in the middle of the seventh century. True, that the Mahabarat speaks of a king of Bengal, but he went to the Great War as an ally of the king of Magadha. It was not till the time specified by Wilford that Bengal had its independent kings, and Gour became the capital of those kings.

If copper tablets and stone columns do not perpetuate falsehoods, it is now more than a thousand years past, since from the capital of the richest province of India with the most pusillanimous Hindoo population,' that warriors issued forth and war-boats sailed up the Ganges, to bring Kamrupa on the east, and Camboja on the west, and Kalinga on the south, to acknowledge the supremacy of its sovereigns. It is doubtful whether any vestiges of this most glorious period in the history of the Bengalees can now be found in Gour. From an inscription upon a temple of Buddha in Benares, it is seen that a Pala Rajah was reigning in Bengal in the year 1026. The overthrow of that dynasty by the Senas, the conquest of Benares by the Rahtores, the destruction of Sarnath, and the ascendancy of Shaivaism, are all events that seem to have occurred within a few years of each other. Probably Adisura established himself on the throne of Gour about the same time that Anangpal II. retired to and re-built the capital of Delhi. Kannouge had been abandoned by the Tomaras for Barri, and did not flourish again under the Rahtores till about the year 1050. It must have been subsequent to this period, that Adisura, finding no worthy Brahmins among the illiterate and heretic Barendros of Buddhistical Bengal to celebrate his Yugiya, had sent to invite five orthodox Brahmins from Kannouge. Bullala Sena, commonly supposed to be his son, but really his great-great-grandson, is found on reliable authority to have been reigning in 1097. The son and successor of Bullala was The Sena Rajahs of Bengal,' by Baboo Rajendro Lall Mitter.