unusual excitement and merriment; and all Bombay is abroad to see the fair and the processions that take place. Thousands from all parts of the island, assemble upon the sea- shore in Back Bay, even so far as Malabar Point, being accompanied by priests, jogees, gosaens, and bearers and attendants, who bring with them gilt cocoa-nuts, flowers, mimic temples, deities, packages of cinnabar, and all sorts of things to be presented as offerings to the ocean. Faquirs; and a host of other idle and worthless characters, mad with opium, bhoeng, and arrack, vary the amusements of the pleasure-seeking multitude, by acting the part of clowns in the most grotesque and ridiculous manner, with their faces, arms, and legs daubed with paint, and their bodies decked out with scraps of ragged finery. They make up a sort of procession, and go down to the sea, and cast in their gilt cocoa-nuts, which they try to make the unitiated in Hindoo mysteries and frauds believe, are of solid gold, but unfortunately they too often float. Temples, flowers, and tinsel ornaments, follow one another as propitiatory offerings; and every good Hindoo is now supposed to offer up a prayer to the effect, that when they venture once more to tempt the wave in their frail barks, success may attend their expeditions, and that they may never suffer shipwreck. After these vain ceremonies are over, the roads are once more lined with thousands who are making their way to the native village, where a grand fair and festival is going on in honour of the day. The night

is usually passed in drunkenness and rioting by the rabble portion; though the respectable Hindoo, after prostrating himself in the temple, or bathing in the sacred tank, returns home at an early hour to recount the many events witnessed to the female portion of his family; women being seldom allowed to participate in those pleasures so eagerly sought after by their selfish lords. It is a curious sight to stroll along the shore the day after this festival of cocoa-nuts, and find it covered for miles with heaps of painted wood, flowers, and tinsel, which the ocean, one would fancy, had indignantly cast back again upon the beach; after this day a few of the fool-hardy venture out on their short fishing excursions, though the storms of the last three months still continue unabated. The monsoon is not over until the end of September; and no sensible merchant will allow his vessel to go to sea until after the Elephanta gales have passed away; yet the Hindoo sailors look now upon shipwreck as impossible, as they feel a sort of conviction, after this ceremony, that old Father Ocean's anger has been appeased, and if any of them are lost through, their religious belief, which is often the case, particularly during the dreadful hurricanes of the Elephanta, it is put down to the score of not having made a proper offering.

And now, for many weeks the country is rich and lovely in all the glories of its floral productions, and India may, in very truth, be called a land of sunshine and flowers. Perhaps there are few countries where

They enter Turbans are

flowers are more loved and thought of. into all Indian feasts and festivals! ornamented with bunches of the large white jessamine, tied up with a rose in the centre; flowers are strewed over the marriage-bed, and hung in wreaths round the necks of the favourite deities in all the temples and sacred places.

I have now brought the monsoons to a close, and have endeavoured to recall a few events connected with this remarkable feature of the Indian year. From their termination to February, the cold months occur, but they are hardly to be distinguished from the hot and dry season that follows. The coast of Bombay experiences the full effects of the south-west monsoon. In July the rain increases in quantity, and may be said to attain its maximum. Slowly decreasing in August, and more rapidly in September, it departs amidst terrific thunder-storms about the first or second week in October.

CHAPTER IV.

"AND near those mighty temples stand,
The miracles of mortal hand,

Where hidden from the common eye

The past long buried secrets lie;

Those mysteries of the first great creed

Whose mystic fancies were the seed

Of every wild and vain belief

That held o'er man their empire brief."

The Old Temples of India.

Hypogæa, or Subterraneous Caverns.

Traditions of the East. Priests and People. Temples of Aboo. Why Islands were selected. Pious journeyings. Mr. and Mrs. H. Missionary-bit fanatics. A Pic-nic. Beauties of an Indian morning. Scenery in the harbour. Native boats, Sea Birds and picturesque objects. Closer view of Elephanta. The Landing. Delicious shade from the Sun. Stone Horse and Elephant. The handiwork of Father Time. Tamarind Tree and Flowers. Punkah Painting. Native Village. Excavated Rock. Birds of Night. Land scape changes. The Great Temple of Elephanta. Tale of a Tiger. Description of the Interior of the Cavern. Parting with Friends, &c., &c.

THE old temples of India have long claimed from the antiquary a large share of attention; not only on account of the peculiarity of their construction, but also because the period of their erection appears in almost every case to be involved in the deepest

obscurity. The hypogaæa, or subterraneous cavern structures, concerning which we have, at present, to speak, are, perhaps, the most remarkable monuments of human labour and perseverance to be met with in Asia. Their prodigious extent, massiveness of structure, and variety of design, lead us almost to doubt whether many of them were not originally natural cavities, enlarged and beautified by the hand of man. In the mountains of the Soubah of Cashmere, no fewer than twelve thousand of these grotto caverns have been explored, and found to be composed of a series of apartments and recesses supposed to be hewn out of the solid rock. Those of Kailasa, near Ellora, which are 247 feet long, and nearly 15 wide, are said to contain all the mythological deities of the Hindoos, though much injured and defaced by time. Many of them contain statues of colossal dimensions, and their walls are covered over with elaborate embellishments of the most fanciful description. But we can place no dependance on the current traditions of the East respecting them, and it would be fruitless to attempt to trace their early history. The ancient chronologers of India would seem to have had extraordinary notions of time ; seeing that they tell us of kings, who reigned thousands of years; and of rajahs, who attained an age far beyond the nine hundred and sixty-nine years of the Methuselah, mentioned in the sacred Scriptures. The Brahmins are regarded by the people of India, as were the monks of old in our