glance would often sweep
in a twinkling from a European clothed in garments of the latest mode
to a Hindu whose sole covering was his _dhotee_, or clout about the
loins, taking in between these two extremes a number of distinct
stages in the process of evolution through which our clothes have
gone. In the evening we visited the _Sangam_, where the small streams
of the Moola and the Moota come together. It is filled with cenotaphs,
but, so far from being a place of weeping, the pleasant air was full
of laughter and of gay conversation from the Hindus, who delight to
repair here for the purpose of enjoying the cool breath of the evening
as well as the pleasures of social intercourse.

[Illustration: HINDU TEMPLES NEAR POONA.]

But I did not care to linger in Poona. The atmosphere always had to me
a certain tang of the assassinations, the intrigues, the treacheries
which marked the reign of that singular line of usurping ministers
whose capital was here. In the days when the Peishwas were in the
height of their glory Poona was a city of a hundred and fifty thousand
inhabitants, and great traffic was here carried on in jewelry and
such luxuries among the Mahratta nobles. The Mahrattas once, indeed,
possessed the whole of India practically; and their name is composed
of _Mahu_, a word meaning "great," and often to be met with in the
designations of this land, where so many things really _are_ great,
and _Rachtra_, "kingdom," the propriety of the appellation seeming to
be justified by the bravery and military character of the people. They
have been called the Cossacks of India from these qualities combined
with their horsemanship. But the dynasty of the usurping ministers had
its origin in iniquity; and the corruption of its birth quickly broke
out again under the stimulus of excess and luxury, until it culminated
in the destruction of the Mahratta empire in 1818. So, when we had
seen the palace of the Peishwa, from one of whose balconies the young
Peishwa Mahadeo committed suicide by leaping to the earth in the
year 1797 through shame at having been reproved by his minister
Nana Farnavese in presence of his court, and when we had visited the
Hira-Bagh, or Garden of Diamonds, the summer retreat of the Peishwas,
with its elegant pavilion, its balconies jutting into the masses of
foliage, its cool tank of water, reposing under the protection of the
temple-studded Hill of Pararati, we took train again for Bombay.

The Great I