o a comparatively distant date, we propose to rely on the
narrative of a recent traveller.

From time immemorial, he says, the system of landing and embarking
passengers and cargo has been by means of native Massulah boats,
constructed of mango wood, calked with straw, and sewn together with
cocoa-nut fibre. The ships drop their anchors in the roads half a mile
from the shore; the Massulah boat pulls off alongside, receives its cargo
at the gangway, and is then beached through the surf. It is no uncommon
circumstance for the boat alongside, assisted by the rolling of the ship,
to rise and fall twenty-five feet relatively to the height of the ship's
deck at each undulation. Ladies are lashed into chairs, and from the
ship's yard-arm lowered into the boat. In 1860 some improvement was
effected by the construction of an iron pier, about nine hundred feet in
length, and twenty feet in height. But a spacious and sheltered harbour
is now being provided, by means of piers running out from the shore five
hundred yards north and south respectively of the screw pile pier now
existing, so as to enclose a rectangular area of one thousand yards in
length by eight hundred and thirty yards in width, or one hundred and
seventy acres. The foundation-stone was laid by the Prince of Wales in
the course of his Indian progress in 1876.

Madame Pfeiffer stayed but a few hours at Madras, and her notes
respecting it are of no value. We will proceed at once to Calcutta, the
"City of Palaces," as it has been called, and the capital of our Indian
Empire.

She speaks of the Viceroy's Palace as a magnificent building, and one
that would ornament any city in the world. Other noticeable edifices are
the Town Hall, the Hospital, the Museum, Ochterlony's Monument, the Mint,
and the Cathedral. Ochterlony's Monument is a plain stone column, one
hundred and sixty-five feet high, erected in commemoration of a sagacious
statesman and an able soldier. From its summit, to which access is
obtained by two hundred and twenty-two steps, may be obtained a noble
view of the city, the broad reaches of the Ganges, and the fertile plains
of Bengal.

The Cathedral is an imposing pile. Its architecture is Gothic, and the
interior produces a very fine effect by the harmony of its proportions
and the richness of its details. The ill-famed "Black Hole," in which
the Rajah Surajah Dowlah confined one hundred and fifty English men and
women, when he obtained