rshipped by millions in future ages--thus, according
to popular belief, foretelling that it would become the residence of
a future incarnation, and the scene of Krishna's miracles. The range
was then about twenty miles long, ten having since disappeared under
the ground. It was of full length during Krishna's days; and, on one
occasion, he took up the whole upon his little finger to defend his
favourite town and its milkmaids from the wrath of Indra, who got
angry with the people, and poured down upon them a shower of burning
ashes.

As I rode along this range, which rises gently from the plains at
both ends and abruptly from the sides, with my groom by my side, I
asked him what made Hanuman drop all his burthen here.

'_All_ his burthen!' exclaimed he with a smile; 'had it been all,
would it not have been an immense mountain, with all its towns and
villages? while this is but an insignificant belt of rock. A mountain
upon the back of men of former days, sir, was no more than a bundle
of grass upon the back of one of your grass-cutters in the present
day.'

Nathu, whose mind had been full of the wonders of this place from
his infancy, happened to be with us, and he now chimed in.

'It was night when Hanuman passed this place, and the lamps were seen
burning in a hundred towns upon the mountain he had upon his back--
the people were all at their usual occupations, quite undisturbed;
this is a mere fragment of his great burthen.'

'And how was it that the men of those towns should have been so much
smaller than the men who carried them?' 'God only knew; but the fact
of the men of the plains having been so large was undisputed--their
beards were as many miles long as those of the present day are
inches. Did not Bhim throw the forty-cubit stone pillar, that now
stands at Eran,[3] a distance of thirty miles, after the man who was
running away with his cattle?'

I thought of poor Father Gregory at Agra, and the heavy sigh he gave
when asked by Godby what progress he was making among the people in
the way of conversion.[4] The faith of these people is certainly
larger than all the mustard-seeds in the world.

I told a very opulent and respectable Hindoo banker one day that it
seemed to us very strange that Vishnu should come upon the earth
merely to sport with milkmaids, and to hold up an umbrella, however
large, to defend them from a shower. 'The earth, sir,' said he, 'was
at that time infested with innumerable dem