Let us then draw a veil, as novel-writers say, over this period of suffering and misery, and behold us, ere many days are over, emerging from our cabins radiant in the proud consciousness of having come into possession of our sea-legs, and of having passed through the ordeal, after paying the usual tribute of wretchedness and-ahem! et cætera-at Neptune's watery shrine. I will not detain you at St. Vincent (Cape Verde), that aridest and barrenest of isles, of which all that can be said is that it is hot, rocky, and uninteresting; nor is any very long description of the tropics necessary; we found them much the same as usual, hot, calm, and flying-fishy; the "line," I may as well remark, in order to remove all doubts which may exist on the subject, is not marked or traced upon the surface of the deep possibly having been washed out. We saw several ships, and shot at porpoises, and ate, and drank, and slept a great deal, and examined the compass and the chart very attentively, and looked over the vessel's side at the glittering waves, and up aloft at the tapering masts, and yawned, and read books, and wrote letters, and got up a newspaper, which died a natural death after a few weeks, owing to the contributors, from confinement, want of exercise, indigestion, and general bad humour, becoming splenetic and personally abusive. And so the days passed by, and we speeded on-on-on upon our outward

way.

Then by degrees we got into lower latitudes, where we saw whales disporting themselves, and Cape pigeons, and albatrosses, and we were very nearly frightened into not firing at the latter birds by a perusal of the "Ancient Mariner;" and then we wearied, and yawned again, and slept, and ate, and looked at the chart again, and on the whole felt more bored than ever we had done in our life. Oh, and then the bad jokes we made!-faute de mieux; they were quite miraculous in their short-comings. I distinctly recollect our being so hard up on one occasion that we actually accepted as a bon mot a paltry attempt to obtain notoriety by talking of getting into other latitudes by degrees!! And the extent to which we played ship-quoits and bull, and tried every means from champagne to chaff to make the days slip quickly by, as we sped on, still on upon our outward way.

Our voyage, as above described, continued with but little to break its weary monotony until our arrival at the Cape, when we heard, and some anxious hearts were soothed and comforted by the news, that Havelock's force had effected a junction with that small body of English men and English women, on whom, as they held those few square yards in Lucknow against all rebel Oude, opposing with calm heroism the desperate attacks of fanatics or the wily devices of traitors, the eyes of all Europe had been fixed with an earnest, anxious gaze, a gaze which was but withdrawn from time to time to glance hurriedly and nervously at the progress made by the advancing succours, which, we now had the pleasure of hearing, had at last reached them. Here, too, we heard of the fall of Delhi, so long hoped for and so long expected; and, in fact, affairs in India generally had apparently assumed so favourable a hue, that many of us thought, not without a pang, that we should be too late to have a crack at the niggers after all; and anxious to get on, impatient of delay, we were not sorry when we once more felt the heavy trembling motion of the revolving screw, and found ourselves steaming merrily away into

the Indian Ocean. Again long days of sea and sky, and nothing more; again tossing up and down upon the wide open sea, the steady beat of the engines seeming as it were slowly to mark the weary time which lazily slipped by.

But stay!-the scene shifts. Ceylon, with its scented breezes and its shady groves is reached at last. Beautiful Ceylon! with your tropical scenery and rich and varied vegetation, almost realising a dream of fairyland, and justifying the enthusiasm of that traveller whose fancy, tempted him to fix on you as the Garden of Eden of old, worthy a Byron to sing sweet praises of thy charms, worthy the pencil of a Claude to immortalise on canvas thy fair and blooming landscapes!

Oh! island fait à peindre, fain would I tell of the pleasant stroll which we enjoyed that warm summer evening beneath thy graceful cocoa-nuttrees, whose tall heads waved lightly to and fro, fanned by a gentle breeze; fain would I tell how enraptured we were by thy beauties, and how we revelled in the luxuriance of thy charms; of thy cottages, halfhidden behind budding banks, o'erhung by thick and fruitful foliage, of thy woodland walks and shady dells, &c. &c., until I speak with a grateful reminiscence of the delightfully Oriental sensation of sitting, for the first time, at dinner beneath the cooling influence of a punkah, of the epicurean pleasure we derived from that never-to-be-forgotten bonne bouche a prawn curry, and how, as we looked around and saw black servants waiting on us, Indian chairs with elongated and luxurious arms, provoking to a sweet after-dinner dolce far niente, and a general Indian indolence prevailing, we thought to ourselves, as we complacently reclined in the chairs aforesaid, puffing white wreaths of smoke from our delicate Manillas, and sipping our iced brandy-and-water, that now indeed did we feel purely and thoroughly Oriental, unconsciously striving the while to give an Eastern tone to our conversation, and talking of tiffin, and calling for more brandy pawnee with an air a rajah might have envied.

Hoist the blue-peter, weigh anchor, and once more away nine knots an hour through the blue waters, the land momentarily growing dimmer in the distance till the fair isle is out of sight, and we think of it but as a past and pleasant dream, as we gaze once more on sea and sky, tossing up and down upon the wide and open sea, and once more speeding on, still on, upon our outward way. A few days, and "Land, ahoy calls our attention to the flat, low outline of the Madras coast, towards which we are proceeding for the purpose of landing a portion of our living freight. Steadily we steam onward, till at last, plain and distinct, Madras is before us: not as we had expected-not a noble town, Easternlooking and magnificent-not surrounded by fine trees, or backed up by high and rugged hills, but a comparatively insignificant-looking placewith some fine buildings, of course-a large proportion of "black town," and a large fort, the whole situated on an arid, open coast, with not a bay, or creek, or curve to break its monotonous outline, and the whole place looking dull, hot, and not the least like the capital of a flourishing and extensive presidency. A high surf is breaking angrily upon the open beach, and around us crowd a noisy fleet of those very extraordinary Mussoola boats in vogue on this Coromandel coast, the thin planks of which are not nailed but sewn together, and built light and pliable as

leather, to carry them safely over the foaming waves that come rolling in across the Bay of Bengal, and in which no English boat could live when the swell runs high.

Natives in dresses forcibly reminding one of night-shirts by their scantiness and simplicity, and others in no dresses at all, flock on board. What they all want Heaven knows. The dark crews of the Mussoola boats talk all at once, waving their black, skinny arms, and gesticulating inelegantly with their dusky, naked forms, and quite realising one's beauidéal of imps and others the inhabitants of " another place" (as they say in Parliament), to which, in point of heat, even India must yield the palm; and a shudder involuntarily comes over one as he reflects that to the merciless cruelty and savage devices of fiends of this form and dye were our poor countrymen and women exposed; and, perchance, the same idea flashed across the minds of the soldiers, for they exhibited an unjust but somewhat natural desire to throw every nigger as he came on board over the vessel's side, while a John Bullish longing on the part of muscular individuals to measure their strength and enter into a single combat then and there with a "round dozen of 'em" became apparent, and seemed at one time, if not checked by the strong arm of discipline, to be on the point of being indulged.

Presto! away once more! and, like a shifting scene in a dissolving view, the Coromandel coast, with its fringe of white foam, fades swiftly away, and once more we see the blue sea gliding rippling by, till on the succeeding slide of this the ever-varying magic lantern of nature appears painted, in dull reddish colours, the low muddy outline of the Sunderbunds, those deadly swamps where the sway of the royal Bengal tiger is divided with King Death, who here holds high court, with all his obsequious myrmidons, Messrs. Fever, Malaria, and Co.; and that he asserts his supremacy and power to the utmost in these dreary marshes may be seen by the emaciated faces and tottering forms of those adventurous sportsmen who, considering the skin of a tiger to be cheaply purchased at the price of a ruined constitution, have dared to beard the cruel monarch in this his securest stronghold, and have paid-how heavily, judge by those pallid cheeks-for their temerity and love of sport.

Steadily beat the engines, and swiftly do we approach this fatal tract, and at last enter one of the hundred mouths of the celebrated Ganges. The river narrows as we go steaming up it, guided and directed along our tortuous and difficult course by the experienced hand and eye of one of the numerous pilots in the service of the H.E.I.C., and cheered on our way by traditions redolent of shipwreck and disasters connected with those hidden shoals and sneaking banks which we are passing so rapidly, related to us by the pilot with a sort of professional gusto which is peculiarly charming, but traditions, nevertheless, sufficiently awful to make one begin fervently to wish one was well out of it.

One

That night we anchored at Diamond Harbour, about forty or fifty miles from Calcutta; on the morrow our voyage would be completed!—for one hundred days had it been dragging its weary length along. hundred days at sea!-an age! a lifetime! and yet, long and dreary as this time may have been, there is a peculiar feeling, almost that of parting with an old friend, in the knowledge that to-morrow your voyage will have ended; you hate the sea, you detest being aboard ship, you are

not the least bit nautical in word, thought, or deed, but still it seems hard to realise that this life, to which you have resigned yourself with a passive reluctance for a century of days, shall to-morrow be at an end, and you begin to look more kindly on the old ship now you are going to leave her; and the tanned and weather-beaten faces of the tarry, dirty, hardworking sailors assume a more friendly aspect; you find that you have imperceptibly contracted friendships, the strength of which you were ignorant of until it comes to the time for dissolving them.

We weigh anchor for the last time! Beat away merrily ye engines, for to-night shall ye be at rest! Rumble away old screw to your heart's content, and show to us this Calcutta, of which we have heard, and read, and thought so much!

A pretty river is the Hooghly, though somewhat muddy, twisting and meandering about between pleasant banks, covered with the most luxuriant vegetation; the cocoa and the palm-trees proudly rearing their stately heads above the thick tangled jungle, which crouches in dense masses round their feet, clothed in all the varied hues of Nature's sylvan livery, from the dull green of the thick rank grass, growing tall and high in the rich shiny soil, to the bright reddish yellow of the falling, fading leaf, or the yet more cheerful colours of those glowing flowers which appear to have wandered by mistake into this dark labyrinth of vegetation, and to be now peeping out their gaudy heads in an endeavour to discover a means of escape to some more genial spot where their bright faces will no longer be shaded from the sun's burnished rays, nor their "sweetness wasted"-as it now is-" upon the desert air;" prickly pears, too, hug in a close embrace the scarce less prickly brier, and many another plant, whose name is unknown to me, grows in that closely-packed group of botanic marvels-plants with broad flat leaves, plants with long thin leaves, plants with short stumpy leaves, bearing now berries, now fruit, now flowers, and mixed up in prodigal and bewildered confusion, as though Nature wished to make up for the flatness of the scenery, and to give to the stranger, as he passes these thickly-clad banks, samples of all the various materials with which she has adorned this same country of Hindostan, and to acquaint him by this lavish display of her charms with the diversified and extensive nature of the wardrobe wherefrom she clothes alike the snow-capt mountains of the Himalaya and the burnt, widespreading plains of the ever-summery South. Sly creeks, which try hard to look like rivers, and wind about under this delusion in the most selfimportant manner, stroll away independently from the main course of the stream, but, apparently becoming alarmed at the idea of losing their way in that dark-wooded shore, stop short abruptly, after feebly swaggering a short distance, and remain shy and embarrassed, trying not to look like elongated duck-ponds, or vainly endeavouring to hide their shame and confusion by getting under the black shadow of friendly trees, or, in some cases, brazening it out by taking up a position near a village, and assuming the most ridiculous airs, as if those clumsy, old broken-down native boats were huge and prosperous East Indiamen, freighted with rich merchandise, and the slimy mud in which they lie, quietly rolling away, was the clear water of some vast and navigable stream. This village, too, upon thy banks, oh! little vain-glorious creek! is as unlike a vast mercantile capital as can be!--such quaint, unassuming, tropical

looking little places, reader, affording no display of Gothic, Elizabethan, or other architecture, save that which may possibly have existed in the rudest periods of the antediluvian era. A strange, dull stillness (so unbroken that you fancy you can almost hear the subdued hum of a million summer insects, rendering it yet more palpable) hangs like a pall over these mud-built cottages, against the low brown walls of which, or against the dark trunks of the surrounding trees, white-clad forms stand out in strong relief as they flit to and fro-a somewhat ghostly reminder that these Indian villages really are the habitations of men. Here and there a few naked children, more black than rosy, are rolling about on the hot-baked ground, as though making a desperate effort to amalgamate themselves with their original element, to which sooner or later we must all return, and which, as regards colour, they so nearly resemble.

A diversion is here effected; we run to the vessel's side to have a look at a few corpses which are floating leisurely down the stream, with large, unclean birds calmly seated upon them, with outstretched wings, and glutting their obscene maws, disputing savagely with one another the pieces of flesh which they tear off the black carcase, the spirit of which has long since fled.

More cocoa and palm-trees on the banks, more tangled jungle, more mud villages, more sly creeks, more white spectral forms, more naked children, till the ever-twisting river discloses to our view scenery of a somewhat more civilised description: a house! actually and literally a habitable house! with a nice little garden, then a bit more jungle, then another house! two! three! opening upon us in quick succession as we enter "Garden Reach," till the banks present one long vista of pretty villas, with their green verandahs, looking bright and pleasant in the warm sun, while the fast narrowing river enables us to dispense with glasses, as our eyes roam delighted over the fair scene. English faces peep from the windows, ayahs (native nurses) carrying English children stroll about the beautiful gardens which stretch down to the water's edge, and so rapid has been the transition from barbarous wilds to civilised scenes, that one can hardly credit that the eye, which now runs over the fair proportions of these villa-palaces, and the blooming gardens laid out with English taste and neatness, was but five minutes since gazing on rude mud villages, surrounded by naught save the dense and savage jungle.

V. D. M.