AHMEDABAD.

The imperial city of Ahmedabad is situated in the latitude of 23° north, and in 72° 37′ east longitude, and is built on the river Sabermatty, which washes its western walls. From being formerly one of the largest capitals in the east, it is now only five miles and three quarters in circumference, surrounded by a high wall, with irregular towers every fifty yards, in the usual style of Indian fortifications: there are twelve principal gates, and several smaller sallyports.

On every side, nodding minarets, decaying palaces, and mouldering aqueducts, indicate the former magnificence of Ahmedabad. It was then enriched by commerce, peopled by industry, and adorned, by wealth. Long wars, unstable and oppressive governments, and the fluctuations of human establishments, have brought it to a state of decay from which it seems doomed never to recover.

Ahmedabad, like other proud capitals, seemed hastening to its dissolution; from covering an extent of thirty miles, it had dwindled to less than six; much of that space, even within the walls, was covered with ruins, or appropriated to cornfields and fruit-gardens. Some of the streets were broad, but not planted with rows of trees, as men tioned by Mandesloe, and other travellers; neither are they paved. The triumphai arches, or three united gates, in the principal streets, with the grand entrance to the durbar, still remain. The mosques and palaces of the Pattans still give evidence of their original magnificence. The streets were spacious and regular; the

temples, aqueducts, fountains, ca ravansaries, and courts of justice, well arranged. Commerce, art, and science, met with every encouragement; when a splendid court was kept in this city, it was then the resort of merchants, artists, and travellers of every description; it now exhibits solitude, poverty, and desolation!

DELHI.

The ruins of serais, mosques, mausoleums, and other magnificent structures, commenced about three or four miles before the entrance of the present city. Amidst the melancholy heaps, the tomb of the emperor Humaioon, still in perfect preservation, stands conspicuous; the obelisk of Cutbal Deen is equally so, at a distance on the left. About a mile and a half from the gate of the new city of Shah Jehanabad is the old fort, standing in the midst of the ruins of the old city of Delhi; it is a most ponderous structure, and of great antiquity; but the excellence of its masonry, notwithstanding it was totally neglected, has in general withstood the ra vages of time.

The old city of Delhi is an entire scene of desolation; not a buman being to be seen in the ancient metropolis of this vast empire.

We entered the new city at the Delhi gate, leading to a long street of a miserable appearance, containing one very handsome musjid, with gilded domes; from thence we were conducted along one face of the fort, to the house, or rather palace, allotted for our accommodation. It was a spacious edifice, or rather a multiplication of courts and edifices, built by Sufder Jung; still belonging to his descendant, Asuph ul-Dowlah, and

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lately occupied by his vackeel, the eunuch Lutafut, a man of great consequence at this period. Here we found convenient quarters for all our party, totally distinct from each other; also for our cattle and attendants.

In the evening, on taking a more complete view of this Mogul mansion, we were surprised to find the apartments just mentioned formed only a very small part of this immense pile, which occupied six squares, corresponding with that in which we immediately reside. Each of them comprised an elegant mansion, capable of accommodating, in a magnificent style, half a dozen numerous families, while the various ranges of inferior rooms, lodges, and outoffices of every description, were amply sufficient to cover, at the least, five thousand troops; there were also stables for five hundred horses.

The morning after our arrival we visited the jumma musjid, a noble building which does honour to the magnificent taste of its founder, the Emperor Shah Jehan, who erected this superb edifice five years after the completion of the Taje Mabal at Agra. The en. trances are all extremely grand, the lofty minars elegantly fluted, and the whole in good preservation. Besides the jumma musjid, are many smaller mosques: some with gilded domes make a dazzling appearance, the majority are of plainer materials, and many falling to decay.

Our limited stay at Delhi prevented us from seeing more of the city than came within the compass of this morning's ride. On leaving the jumma musjid, we proceeded through several streets, des

picably poor, and thinly inhabited. Two or three of a larger size seemed more populous, were of considerable breadth, and occupied by the aqueduct already mentioned in the centre, now in a state of dilapidation.

THE ZINORE COUNTRY.

In the Zinore purgunna, a country little known in the annals of Hindostan, I saw human nature almost in primitive simplicity, but far removed from the savage con. dition of the Indians of America, or the natives of the South-sea islands. The state of civil society in which the Hindoos are united in those remote situations, seems to admit of no change or amelioration. The brahmins pass their lives in listless indolence within the precincts of the temples, with little profit either to themselves or the community. Among the inferior castes, whose minds are uncultivated, and who have no communication with the rest of the world, I found it next to an impossibility to introduce a single im provement in agriculture, building, or any useful art or science. In any nation, where the art of printing is unknown, and no books are introduced, the higher classes can enjoy but little intellectual pleasure.

I sometimes frequented places where the natives had never seen an European, and were ignorant of every thing concerning us: there I beheld manners and customs simple as were those in the patriarchal age; there, in the very style of Rebecca and the damsels of Mesopotamia, the Hindoo villagers treated me with that artless hospitality so delightful in the

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poems of Homer, and other ancient records. On a sultry day, near a Zinore village, having rode faster than my attendants, while waiting their arrival under a tamarind tree, a young woman came to the well; I asked for a little water, but neither of us having a drinking vessel, she hastily left me, as I imagined, to bring an earthen cup for the purpose, as I should have polluted a vessel of metal; but as Jael, when Sisera asked for water, gave him milk, and "brought forth butter in a lordly dish," so did this village damsel, with more sincerity than Heber's wife, bring me a pot of milk and a lump of butter on the delicate leaf of the banana," the lordly dish" of the Hindoos. The former I gladly accepted; on my declining the latter, she immediately made it up into two balls, and gave one to each of the oxen that drew my hackery. Butter is a luxury to these animals, and enables them to bear additional fatigue.

The more I saw of the Hindoos in those remote districts, the more I perceived the truth of Orme's remark, that Hindostan has been inhabited from the earliest antiquity, by a people who have no resemblance, either in their figure or manners, with any of the nations contiguous to them; and that although conquerors have established themselves at different times, in various parts of India, yet the original inhabitants have lost very little of their original character.

Those towns on the banks of the Nerbudda, so famous for brahmin seminaries, contain numerous schools for the education of other boys; these are generally in the open air, on the shady side of the

house. The scholars sit on mats, or cow-dung floors, and are taught as much of religion as their caste admits of; also reading, writing, and arithmetic; the two latter by making letters and figures in sand upon the floor. Education, like every thing else among the Hindoos, is extremely simple: that of the girls is generally confined to domestic employments.

Near Zinore were several monuments in memory of those devotees, so often mentioned, who bury themselves alive, in hopes of expiating their sins, or of pleasing the destructive powers by such a sacrifice; and under the lofty banks of the Nerbudda, as on the shore of the Ganges, I was told the Hindoos sometimes drown their sick and aged parents. In this respect they certainly act directly contrary to our ideas of filial affection, and common humanity; but I am willing to hope it proceeds from a good motive. Similar customs prevailed in many ancient nations.

In the out-skirts of Zinore, separated from all other inhabitants of the town, were a number of poor Chandalahs, the outcasts of society; objects of compassion to every thinking mind, from the deprivations and degradations they are compelled to submit to by impolitic and inhuman laws. Their condition appears the more humiliating, when contrasted with the luxurious brahmins, in their calm recesses, surrounded by the ramjannees, and every kind of indulgence allowed to their privileged caste: the one pampered by voluptuous indolence, the other degraded below the monkeys which surround them, and deprived of religious ordinances.

POETRY.