had
lately quitted, and containing the same rickety table, greasy with the
unwiped remains of the last traveller's meal, which the book will inform
you was eaten a month ago--the same treacherous chairs, which look sound
until you inadvertently sit upon them--the same doubtful-looking couch,
from which the same interesting round little specimens emerge, much to
the discomfort of the occupant--the same filthy bathroom, which it is
evident the traveller a month ago did not use--the identical old
kitmutgar or bungalow-keeper, who looks as uncivilized as the bungalow
itself, and seems to partake of its rickety and dirty nature--the same
clump of trees before, and the same desert plain behind;--all tend to
induce the belief either that you have never left the bungalow in which
you spent the previous day, or that some evil genius has transported the
said bungalow thirty miles for the express purpose of persecuting you
with its horrors and miserable accommodation.

Thus are 700 miles insensibly accomplished in a month by the traveller,
who only passes a dreamy existence in dak bungalows, to be roused into
violent action on his arrival at some sporting vicinity, a large
cantonment, a native Court, rock temples, or other excitements, which
must occur in the experiences of the Indian traveller.

I went seventy miles in a bullock hackery, the most unpleasant mode of
travelling I conceive that can exist; then one hundred miles in a rickety
phaeton with a pair of horses, which was in a slight degree less
intolerable; and after visiting Mahabuleshwa, the hill station of Bombay,
I reached that mercantile emporium itself, not a little pleased at seeing
the sea on the English side of India. I was disappointed with the far-
famed Bay; but perhaps it is difficult to do justice to scenery after so
much wandering, when the most interesting view is the sight of home.
Certainly one's impressions of a place are regulated in a great degree by
the circumstances under which it is visited. Had Bombay been the port of
debarkation instead of embarkation, the bay would have been lovely and
the various points of view enchanting; as it was, the prettiest object to
my perverted vision was the "Malta" getting up her steam to paddle me
away from that land, whose marble tombs' and rock-cut temples will
continue to afford attractions to the traveller when its Princes no
longer exist sumptuously to entertain them, and whose towering mountains
will still d