ns, they
certainly deserve great credit for the praiseworthy employment of their
wealth; and making amends as it were for the backwardness of India as
regards hotels, they supply their places to the friendless traveller, in
a way which our frigid friends at home might imitate with advantage. I
look back upon my stay in Benares with the greatest pleasure, and shall
long remember the kindness I there experienced.

There is much to be seen in the Holy City, and the means of locomotion
which I should recommend the sight-seer to adopt are Tom Johns, or chairs
swung upon poles, with or without hoods, as the case may be. Upon
arriving at the Chouk or Market-place, we hired two of these conveyances
and started to see the residence of Cashmere Mull. But first I must make
an attempt, however unsuccessful, to describe the Chouk: it is a large
square, studded with raised oblong platforms without walls, the roofs
being supported by fluted Ionic columns. The Police Court, in which a
Native magistrate presides, forms one side of the square. On the
platforms sit the vendors of shawls, skull-caps, toys, shells,
sugar-cane, and various other commodities; but to enumerate the
extraordinary diversity of goods exposed for sale, or to describe the
Babel of tongues which confound the visitor as he wanders through the
motley crowd, would be impossible.

We turned out of the Chouk down a narrow street about three feet broad,
gloomy from the height of the houses, and unpleasant from the great crowd
and close atmosphere; every now and then we got jammed into a corner by
some Brahminee bull, who would insist upon standing across the street to
eat the fine cauliflower he had just plundered from the stall of an
unresisting greengrocer, and who, exercising the proud rights of
citizenship, could only be politely coaxed to move his unwieldy carcase
out of the way.

We wended our way through pipe bazaars and vegetable bazaars, where each
shopkeeper has a sort of stall, with about three feet frontage to the
street, but of unknown depth, and a narrow balcony supported by carved
wood-work over his head, out of the latticed windows of which bright eyes
look down upon the passengers. Whenever there is a piece of wall not
otherwise occupied in this compact and busy city, you see depicted, in
gaudy colours, elephants rushing along with dislocated joints in hot
pursuit of sedate parrots, or brilliant peacocks looking with calm
composure upon camels goi