Thousands Of Boats And Larger Vessels Were Constantly To Be Seen There, As No Hindoo Believed He Could Die In Peace Without Having Visited The Place.

Numerous Fakirs had established themselves here, strengthening the poor pilgrims with unctuous exhortations, and taking in return their pious gifts.

The neighbourhood has, however, at present, lost its reputation for sanctity, and the offerings received are scarcely sufficient to maintain two or three Fakirs.

In the evening we stopped near Monghyr, {160a} a tolerably large town, with some old fortifications. The most conspicuous object is a cemetery, crowded with monuments. The monuments are so peculiar, that had I not seen similar ones in the cemeteries of Calcutta, I should never have imagined that they belonged to any sect of Christians. There were temples, pyramids, immense catafalques, kiosks, etc., all massively built of tiles. The extent of this cemetery is quite disproportioned to the number of Europeans in Monghyr; but the place is said to be the most unhealthy in India, so that when a European is ordered there for any number of years, he generally takes a last farewell of all his friends.

Six miles hence, there are some hot springs, which are looked upon by the natives as sacred.

We had lost sight of the Rajmahal Hills at Bogulpore; on both sides of the river, nothing was now to be seen but an uninterrupted succession of flat plains.

24th December. Patna, {160b} one of the largest and most ancient cities of Bengal, with a population of about 300,000 souls, {161} consists of a long, broad street, eight miles long, with numerous short alleys running into it. The houses, which are mostly constructed of mud, struck me as particularly small and wretched. Under the projecting roofs are exposed for sale goods and provisions of the simplest kind. That part of the street in which the greatest number of these miserable shops are situated, is dignified by the grand name of the "Bazaar." The few houses of a better description might easily be counted without any very great trouble; they are built of tiles, and surrounded by wooden galleries and colonnades prettily carved. In these houses were to be found the best and finest shops.

The temples of the Hindoos, the Ghauts (flights of steps, halls, and gateways) on the Ganges, like the mosques of the Mahomedans, always look a great deal better at a distance than they do on a nearer inspection. The only objects worthy of notice which I saw here, were a few bell-shaped mausoleums, like those in Ceylon, which they greatly surpassed in size, although not in artistic beauty; they were certainly more than 200 feet in circumference, and eighty feet in height. Excessively narrow entrances, with simple doors, conduct into the interior. On the outside, two small flights of steps, forming a semicircle, lead up to the top. The doors were not opened for us, and we were obliged to content ourselves with the assurance that, with the exception of a small, plain sarcophagus there was nothing inside.

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