enturies;
and at Kannoge, if tradition speak true, the same articles which were
manufactured upwards of two thousand years ago, and which retain the
colour of the brightest red, resemble more the hardest stone than the
things we call bricks of the present day. After the minutest examination
of these relics of ancient labour, I am disposed to think that the clay
must have been more closely kneaded, and the bricks longer exposed to the
action of fire than they are by the present mode of manufacturing them;
and such is their durability, that they are only broken with the greatest
difficulty.

The killaah was originally a fortified castle, and is situated near the
river Kaullee Nuddie,[4] a branch or arm of the Ganges, the main stream of
which flows about two miles distant. During the periodical rains, the
Ganges overflows its banks, and inundates the whole tract of land
intervening between the two rivers, forming an extent of water more
resembling a sea than a river.

At the time we occupied the old castle, scarcely one room could be called
habitable; and I learned with regret after the rains of 1826 and 1827,
which were unusually heavy, that the apartments occupied since the
Honourable East India Company's rule by their taasseel-dhaars,[5]
(sub-collectors of the revenue), were rendered entirely useless as a
residence.

The comfortless interior of that well-remembered place was more than
compensated by the situation. Many of my English acquaintance, who
honoured me by visits at Kannoge, will, I think, agree with me, that the
prospect from the killaah was indescribably grand. The Ganges and the
Kaullee Nuddee were presented at one view; and at certain seasons of the
year, as far as the eye could reach, their banks, and well-cultivated
fields, clothed in a variety of green, seemed to recall the mind to the
rivers of England, and their precious borders of grateful herbage. Turning
in another direction, the eye was met by an impenetrable boundary of
forest trees, magnificent in growth, and rich in foliage; at another
glance, ruins of antiquity, or the still remaining tributes to saints; the
detached villages; the sugar plantations; the agriculturists at their
labour; the happy peasantry laden with their purchases from the bazaars;
the Hindoo women and children, bearing their earthen-vessels to and from
the river for supplies of water:--each in their turn formed objects of
attraction from without, that more than repaid the a