secure a place on one of the many boats that
were carrying cargoes of people to the various
places of safety; and most of those places were
at least thirty or forty miles distant. To
my great joy a large white sail hove in sight;
I knew it to be the sail of some European
boat, and I made a signal by tying a red
pocket-handkerchief to a bamboo and waving
it aloft. The signal was answered, and the
boat bore down upon us. A French gentleman,
an indigo planter, who was sailing to
Patna across the country, came out of his
cabin and spoke to me. I explained to him
the difficulty of my position, and he very
kindly invited me to come on board his craft
and to bring my palkee, bearers, and traps
along with me.

We were twelve miles from the banks of
the Ganges, sailing northward with a strong
wind, over, or rather through, the tops of tall
trees. The scene in itself would have been
beautiful, but the horrors which met our
view on all sides gave it a most melancholy
and deplorable aspect; boats containing dense
crowds of poor wretches—men, women, and
children all huddled together, and howling
over the losses they had sustained by the flood.
Here and there you would see bullocks
struggling to keep afloat, and endeavouring
to follow the boats; but sinking from sheer
exhaustion. Dead goats, sheep, pigs, fowls,
ducks, and geese, roofs of houses, clothes,
boxes, baskets, cooking vessels, ricks of hay
and straw—these were strewed upon the
surface of the water near every village which
the inundation had destroyed. At night,
when it was impossible to thread our way
through the trees, we made a rope fast to a
strong bough; and thus, instead of anchoring,
tied ourselves up till daylight. The
Frenchman's boat was commodious, and very
comfortably furnished. There were an abundance
of supplies on board; so that, as far as we
were personally concerned, we did not
experience any pinching want; but it was
otherwise with our native companions, who
were forced to keep body and soul together
by chewing dry grain, for even the green corn
was now unprocurable.

We were obliged to keep in the country at
a distance from the river, for the stream was
running so rapidly in and near the Ganges,
that it would have been impossible to make
headway against it. We knew not where
we were exactly; although we could guess at
the spot after consulting the map. At last we
came to some high ground, on which there
was a village; and from the villagers—who
told us they were starving and were about
to take boat for Dulsing Serai, an indigo
factory in Tirhoot—we learnt that we were not
very far from Dulsing. It was of the greatest
importance to me to be present in Tirhoot
on a certain day; and I, therefore, resolved on
bidding my French friend adieu, and accompanying
the natives; who assured me that after
Dulsing Serai I could travel in my palankeen;
which luckily proved to be true. After a very
tedious journey of two days and a night, I
found myself in luxurious quarters at the
pleasant station of Mozufferpore.

A famine in India is an awful spectacle;
but, while it lasts, an inundation is even more
horrible. The wretched people do not beg,
while they weep. Money can procure nothing
when there is no single article to be sold. It
is not until the dangers are over that they ask
for assistance. There had not been known
for forty years such an inundation as the one
I have briefly and feebly described. Even
from the south of Bengal thousands upon
thousands crowded to Calcutta, for a pittance
whereon to subsist. So rapid was the rise
of the water in many places that before the
indigo planters could bring their boats to remove
the plant which had been cut, it was carried
away and lost. Native women who were
living in upper roomed houses—women who
had never before shown themselves to any but
their own families—were forced to desert
their dwellings, and to sell their gold ornaments
to buy food for themselves and their children,
after escaping narrowly with their lives. In
obedience to Lord Hardinge's orders, boats
laden with rice were despatched to several
districts; and, by these means many thousands
were rescued from death. But the number
that perished in that awful visitation was
much greater than the reader, perhaps, would
credit. It is one thing for a mass of rich
people to afford charity to a destitute few;
it is another thing for a few, who have to
work for their own living, to feed millions of
despairing mendicants thrown suddenly on
the world. The scene, when the waters rapidly
surround a village, is heart-rending in the
extreme.

              PHOTOGRAPHY.

WE have been ringing artists' bells. We
have been haunting the dark chambers of
photographers. We have found those gentlemen
—our modern high priests of Apollo, the
old sun god—very courteous, and not at all
desirous to forbid to the world's curiosity a
knowledge of their inmost mysteries.

We rang a bell in Regent Street—which was
not all a bell, for it responded to our pull not
with a clatter; but with one magical stroke—
and instantly, as though we had been sounding
an enchanted horn, the bolts were drawn
by unseen hands, and the door turned upon
its hinges. Being well read in old romance,
we knew how to go on with the adventure.
There were stairs before us which we mounted;
swords we had none to draw. In a few
seconds we reached another open door, that
led into a chamber, of which the walls and
tables were in great part overlaid with metal
curiously wrought. A thousand images of
human creatures of each sex and of every
age—such as no painter ever has produced—
glanced at us from all sides, as if they would