women exhibit various degrees of progress in
that absorbing ceremony.

Numbers pass us, men and women, singly or
in groups, going to, or returning from, the river.
The women, some with their clothes still
dripping on their shoulders, some with naked
infants toddling by their sides or carried astride
on one hip, all with their long black hair wet and
hanging down their backs. In the low verandahs
of many houses on either side of the street,
we see men at their toilette. Some, squatted on
the ground, are studiously consulting a looking-
glass, and doing up their hair for the day, with
as much care and precision as an English lady
bestows on her own auburn locks. Some, whose
religion allows them to retain but a scant
amount of hair, having soon completed their
hair-dressing, are chatting with their friends,
exchanging greetings with those of the passers-
by whom they happen to know, or passing
round from mouth to mouth the morning
hubble-bubble. In one verandah, the village
barber is shaving his customer's hair according
to the peculiar articles of his religion, producing
an effect which inclines one to believe that
he has placed a cup on the top of his patient's
head, and shaved off all his hair but that
covered by the vessel.

If you look down the street, you may see a
crowd collected round a gentleman, who, from
the cut of his coat, and the want of cut in his
hair, which comes a considerable way down his
shoulders, appears to be "the missionary."
It is he, and the crowd are listening attentively
and respectfully to his matutinal discourse,
He preaches there in the same spot every
morning, and is always honoured with a
considerable and intelligent audience.

In another minute we reach the ghat, or
landing-place. The steps leading down to the
river are crowded. People are busily ascending
and descending. Old men and women,
lads, lasses and children, are all collected here.
All ages of both sexes are taking their morning
bath, exchanging greetings, holding a lively
gossip, or carrying on a gentle flirtation as they
take a dip and come up to the surface again.
When they have brought their business and
their pleasure to a satisfactory conclusion, the
women fill their ghurras (which during their
ablutions they have left to float about on their
own account), raise them on their heads, or carry
them supported by one arm against their sides,
and make their way slowly home. This is the
Hindu woman's meeting-place. The ghat is
her rendezvous, her Rotten-row, her promenade;
and the early morning is the fashionable
hour. In another hour the ghat will be
deserted. The morning toilette, at least that
part of it which is performed at the river, will
be completed; the gossip and latest news will
be exhausted; the day's supply of water will
have been fetched; and the groups will have
broken up.

Even at this distance from the bazaar you
can hear the hum and bustle of trade, the
discordant street cries, and the shouts of eager
bargainers. A "native" never speaks in a
moderate tone of voice, unless he has mixed much
with English people. Every word he utters is
delivered with the full voice and dramatic pitch
of an orator. This is the bazaar, corresponding
to the High-street of an English country town.
It is a narrow street, with scarcely sufficient
room for two of the country carts or hackeries
to pass each other, thronged with natives, and
lined on either side with low houses, in the
verandahs of which, on a level with the road,
are displayed the various goods for sale. Many
a shop appears to be a pedlar's box on a large
scale, exhibiting a multifarious assortment of
those trinkets and gewgaws so prized and
admired by our country, folk. Or it might be a
stall in a fair, for its contents are formed of small
looking-glasses, tin-cups, money-boxes, glass,
jewellery, plates for good boys, penny trumpets,
moving dolls, and a jumble of childish trumpery.
At the cloth merchant's, or linendraper's, you
may purchase fabrics from every loom in Europe,
but you will find an extremely limited stock of
Indian goods. The village shoemaker's
productions bear a very brown-papery appearance;
and the confectioner's pastries and sweetmeats
might be set before any English schoolboy
without much fear of his being tempted to
indulge his appetite to an injurious extent. The
fruiterer shows but a small and very uninviting
selection of fruits. Bunches of plaintains and
bananas, heaps of cocoa-nuts, a few insipid
vegetables, and bags of dried peaches, figs,
almonds, and raisins. Numberless are the grain
merchants, their many-coloured seeds spread
out in heaps or stored in earthen jars. Butchers,
poulterers, and dairymen have no existence in
our bazaars; they reside in the more sequestered
hamlets, away from the bustle of the
town, and have no regular establishment,
retaining their stock in the raw state of nature,
until required for the spit or the pot. Jewellers,
and gold and silversmiths, though they
have shops in the bazaar, make no display of
their goods; but keep their bracelets, brooches,
and other ornaments carefully packed in tin
boxes ranged by their side as they sit at work.
The hubbub and confused noise of the street
is distracting. Naked, pot-bellied children
are running about, shouting and playing, or,
squatted on the ground, are amusing themselves
in the manufacture of that world-wide production,
a mud-pie. Several goats are straying
up and down, jocosely butting at interfering
passengers, or returning the caresses of old
friends. The thoroughfare is too crowded to
be the ordinary resort of Pariah dogs; but there
are one or two specimens of that degraded race
sneaking down the street, casting a wary glance
on either side to avoid the missile which they
momentarily expect, and which, when it reaches
them, they receive with a howl and a quickened
flight. Offensive alike to the eye and the ear
is the Pariah dog. He is a sneaking, mean-
spirited animal, with a coat and a snout like
those of the jackal, and with a language
evidently borrowed from, if not a dialect of, that
employed by his untamed relation. His internal
howl or snarl corrupts the tongue of any Anglo-