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light, and, having a cup of old Tony's coffee, am on my horse half an hour before sunrise. Riding is not pleasant much after seven; so that I have had my bath and am ready for breakfast by half-past eight. At nine Mahomed the Moonshee appears (unless on occasion otherwise ordered), and stays till eleven or twelve. I write or read till three, which is our mess hour. At half-past five, when the great heat of the day is over, I take a ride or drive; and as it is quite dark by half-past six, I am in for my tea by seven at latest, and write or read again as long as I can keep awake. . . . But there are various interruptions to this routine: sometimes I attend parade with the colonel; sometimes I command it; and, never having before given the word to more than 200, I find that it requires as much voice as I can muster to make 700 hear me. . . . This sort of life, though it may appear very pleasant on paper, is sadly sleepy and monotonous. To me, as yet, there is such an inexhaustible fund of interest in observing the natives, that if I had but some one being near who cared a little for me, and to whom I could communicate my ideas and feelings, I should be happy enough. I think I shall make a friend of Mahomed. . . . As I had asked some questions about the betel nut, Mahomed brought some one day to chew before me. He put a couple of nuts, something like a small nutmeg, into his mouth, and then about a dozen funny little hoods, each made of a couple of betel leaves, stuck together with lime, of which he carried an additional supply wrapped up in a leaf. He chewed away lustily, and the inside of his mouth, his teeth, and lips, were soon bright vermilion. The nuts, he said, were for the good taste, the leaves for the colour, to produce which, however, the lime, which he

admitted to be bad, was necessary. To complete the mess, he put into his mouth a couple of nuts, which he called 'ilachee' and which are, I find, known in medicine by the name of cardamom (to my taste very particularly nasty), and a single clove. He indulges in this chew twice a day, and added that betel nuts are an article of expense amongst the natives. It is curious that the natives are said to allow their inferiority to Europeans in everything but music. Now let me tell you what their music is one fellow puffs away on a sort of instrument that looks something like a magic lantern with a tube stuck into it for a mouthpiece, and produces a screeching noise, to which you may suppose our bagpipes and the penny trumpet you buy for a child to be father and mother, for it is something betwixt and between; another fellow rattles an accompaniment with his fingers on a little drum, shaped like our kettle-drum. Sometimes there are four or more of them; and you may always see them in the villages of a morning, playing before some native dwelling, and hired probably upon occasion of some domestic festival. Nothing can be more utterly remote from anything like tune or melody; and it is difficult to conceive how any rational or irrational beings can attach any notion of pleasure to such an abominable noise. They look upon bagpipes as the nearest approach that white men have made to harmony divine. At Colonel Hanson's the other day, a juggler was introduced, who was a very clever fellow, and at the close of his performance, to the astonishment of all and terror of some, he suddenly produced, from nobody could conceive where, a cobra di capella. The deadly animal reared itself on its tail, as the conjurer squeaked on the instrument already noticed, and inflated

his hood, on the back of which a pair of old woman's spectacles were as distinctly traced, as if they had been painted on it.

"The town of Madras called Black Town, is situated on the sea-shore near the Fort. There are the Custom House, Merchants' counting houses, principal shops, some public offices, and divers streets, entirely tenanted by, and for ever teeming with, native and half-caste people of all sizes, descriptions, and colours. At rather a greater distance landward and near the Nabob's palace, is the native village, or rather town of Triplicain, where there is a handsome mosque and several small pagodas; but I rode one morning by chance into another native village of much more rural and pleasing character. It is embosomed in cocoa-nut trees, and the streets were so shady that I was induced to prolong my ride much beyond my usual hour, and at last had some difficulty in finding my road home, though within a couple of miles of the Fort; for I had lost my way, and was some time before I met a native who could speak English. Hindostanee would probably have helped me as little, for the lower people speak Malabar, which is a distinct language. In the principal street there is a small pagoda, only remarkable on account of six or seven monstrous idols in a row in the court before it; monstrous in every sense, for they are hideously ugly, and quite colossal: the largest, which considerably overtops his brethren, must be twenty feet high. They are painted gaudily, have something on the head between a helmet and a fool's cap and an enormous club in one hand that rests on the shoulder. The poorer natives live in huts of matting thatched with reeds, looking at a little distance very like wigwams; those who are something better off, in brick or stone houses,

very low, and built round a court, and presenting no opening towards the street but the door, which is always elevated a few steps above the ground, and on a line with which is the floor of a little verandah, where they are always squatted of a morning, cleaning their beautiful teeth with a couple of little sticks. Nothing can be more picturesque than the groups of these people, nothing more interesting than to ride early along the streets of their villages, in which they swarm to such a degree that it is not advisable to put your horse out of a walk. In the same street you see them of every shade and gradation of colour, from a fine deep black, to a brown so pale that, but for its evenness and peculiar tint, it would not be distinguished from European complexion; and their costume is as various as their hue of skin. The Mussulmans particularly are often very gay, wearing scarlet turbans, gowns of various patterns, and coloured silk trousers. The Brahmins are distinguished by their string, by a broad stripe of yellow paint on the forehead between two stripes of white, as well as by their consequential and lazy gait. The fakirs (beggars) wear orange turbans and cloths, and are bedaubed all over with paint and behung with strings of beads, but the majority are naked, with the exception of the turban and waistcloth.

“The women wear a white, coloured, or generally pink checked cloth round the waist, and a similar one thrown over one shoulder, so as to cover the breast and part of the back. Sometimes this second cloth is coiled up at one end on the back of the head, and brought round to cover the breast, leaving the back bare. Nothing can be more graceful, more fitted for the sculptor or the painter, than this costume. From the early habit of carrying burdens on the head, they have an erect carriage, and

they walk well and bear with them an imposing air: the old women, however, neglect themselves, and, with their matted grey locks and shrivelled skins, are often the veriest hags you can imagine. It is one of the most striking proofs of their perverse notions of beauty, that they seem fond of staining their faces, legs, and arms all over with yellow, which gives them a jaundiced appearance. But the children amuse me most; and I often feel surprised that Bishop Heber, who noticed almost everything, should not have been struck by them. They have the rotund body, but not the fleshy limb, of the English child, and seem to get the use of their legs much sooner: minute urchins, naked as they were born, swagger about in all directions, like so many Lilliputian men and women, and look up at you with a sort of pert confidence, that always makes me laugh heartily. The infant is always carried astride on the mother's hip, with its stomach to her, and its back to the world: the woman inclines her body a little to the reverse side, to make a ledge for it to ride on, and puts her arm round it. I have seen them enjoy the maternal nutriment in this position as the woman walked along.

"I shall start to-morrow before daylight on an excursion, from which I promise myself much gratification. Colonel Hanson, the Quarter-Master-General of the Company's army, is going to visit Vellore and some other places on duty, and has asked me to accompany him; an offer which I gladly embraced, as I may have, if we go on to Bengal, no other opportunity of seeing anything of this Presidency.

"I occasionally get a visit from the son of a wealthy native, who died not long ago, and held an appointment in the Treasury, to which the young man