e the least possible draught. The result
is that the steamers for the north-west (we believe none ply now) had to
make a great detour, to go down the Hoogly to Saugor Island, and then to
proceed by one of the channels there found to the main stream. This
greatly increased the distance to the north-west. Except in the rainy
season, steamers for Benares had to go about eight hundred miles.

[Sidenote: THE SUNDERBUNS.]

Of these three routes this one of the river steamers was in many
respects the most convenient and pleasant, especially for persons new in
the country, and my Calcutta friends kindly arranged that I should be
sent on in this way. I accordingly embarked for Benares on a flat,
tugged by a steamer, in the first week of March. After going down the
Hoogly to Saugor Island, we made our way into the district called the
Sunderbuns by one of the channels of the Ganges. We got into a labyrinth
of streams, every here and there opening up into a wide reach of water,
giving one the impression we were entering a lake; and shortly
afterwards we found ourselves in a channel so narrow that we almost
touched the banks on both sides, and which barely allowed a passage
where there was a sharp turn in the stream. We had native pilots who
knew the region thoroughly, and were in no danger of going astray. The
land down to the water's edge was covered with the densest tropical
vegetation, so that the banks often bounded our view, except when the
trees on it were lower than those beyond. In the waters and out, wild
beasts abound. Alligators were seen dropping from the banks into the
stream on hearing the approach of the steamer. We saw no tigers, but we
heard much about them as we were threading our way through that region.
The previous year, early one morning, the watch on the deck of the flat
was startled by a tiger leaping on board, and, evidently bewildered by
its new circumstances, leaping off on the other side. Messrs. Lacroix
and Gogerly, when on a native boat in the Sunderbuns, were witnesses of
a desperate fight between a tiger and an alligator. The story has been
often told.

Less than two centuries ago there was a large population in what may be
called that amphibious region, the soil when cleared being very rich;
but owing to the incursions of Mug pirates from the coast of Burmah, and
the oppression of Muhammadan rulers of Bengal, the most of the
inhabitants perished, others fled, and so complete was the ruin that the