CHAPTER IV.

Obsequious land sharks-Sircar, or agent-Mode of watering the streets-Improved municipal and sanitary regulations -Scenes in a Hindoo cemetery-Harbour scenes-Sailor's home Steam flour-mills-Prejudices against them-Disappointed expectations-Hand mills-Bank of Bengal and Banks Hall--The Mint-The Government House-Town Hall-Wide-awake gastronomes.

"Non missura cutem, nisi plena cruoris hirudo.”—Horace. "Like a leech which does not quit the skin until it is full of blood."

WHEN a European for the first time sets his foot on Chaundpall Ghat he is, in an instant, surrounded by crowds of assiduous natives, who immediately press on "master's" attention the very great service and use they will all be to him by his accepting of their several attentions and attendance; that in fact his future success and prosperity in India will mainly depend on his retention of their respective services. Thus numberless umbrella holders, palankeen bearers, naukars, khidmatgars and darzees press, and are pressed on his attention; but among this motley group there is one description of person, who forms so very important a distinction both in appear

ance at the time, and very often in after-life, that he may as well at the outset be more particularly introduced to the reader. The personage is the sircar or agent, through whose hands the business of every transaction in the life of the master shall pass.

Behold him advancing towards the doorway of the palankeen in which the new arrival is extended. Dressed in snow-white drapery and clean pagree or turban, he bows his head, and pressing the heel of his right hand on his brow, he in a sleek and insidious manner pronounces his salaam, and then in broken English offers his assistance in every possible way, from the purchase of a shirt button to the loan of a thousand rupees.

SIRCAR OR AGENT.

He then, having indelibly fixed your likeness on the retina of his memory and having read your inmost soul, modestly retires from the pressing throng, and, hastening away, either prepares for commencing his labours of thraldom himself, or sets some one else of the same class, though suitable for master's condition or habits,

about the person of the stranger. Finally, the voyager is borne off to some accommodating hotel, or boarding-house, followed of course in light skirmishing order by money-changers, barbers, itinerant vendors of fans paper and sealing wax; also by street tradesmen of every kind and description, in whose company we will for a time leave him in the enjoyment of all the novelty and every affliction which the first initiation into the mysteries of living in India entails on most new arrivals at the city of palaces.

Close to Chaundpall Ghat stands a powerful steam engine for raising water from the Hoogly, which is then conveyed by means of aqueducts along the sides of the streets, and is used for watering them. The most usual manner of accomplishing this is by water-men baling it out in leathern buckets, and flinging it over the road. This arrangement though primitive is very beneficial and a source of much comfort to the inhabitants of the several streets in which it is performed, which is pretty general throughout the European quarters of the city. It tends not only to allay the whirlwinds of brick-dust, which are very disagreeable, but also deprives the surrounding atmosphere of some of the direful heat reflected from brickmade roads, which, after long exposure to the burning sun of Bengal, become almost unbearable.

When the reader is informed that the Delta

around Calcutta occupies a tract of country equal in extent to the whole principality of Wales, and is entirely of fluviatile origin, he will at once conceive how very important a factor bricks must be in the formation of roads and in the erection of buildings.

The watering of the roads of Calcutta, together with other conservancy departments, have been placed on a much better footing than formerly, though even now they cannot be declared to be supremely efficient or pronounced incapable of improvement.

A river conservancy was establised to prevent the hawsers of ships becoming entangled in the mass of decayed humanity which used to float down the Hoogly, and through their endeavours that dreadful unseemly exposure no longer disgusts the eye or offends the senses.

No longer do the river's banks exhibit those revolting spectacles of human carcases in every stage of horrible decomposition from the Chitpore road to Fort William; a distance which constitutes and borders the whole face of the western part of the city of Calcutta.

For those whose poverty refuses them the accustomed funeral pyre, an ustrina or masān has been formed at the extreme south end of the Strand.

There the dead bodies of the pauper class of Hindoos are burned, instead of being placed, as formerly, on the banks of the sacred stream, to be

carried away by the tide and current. This improvement has been effected too at a much less cost than that of the ineffective police formerly employed to keep the river clear, or rather free, of these festering plague creating masses of corruption.

The ustrina or masan just alluded to was formed during Lord William Bentinck's administration, and he thereby conferred a blessing both on Europeans and the native community. It is open on the side next the river, and is sufficiently large to meet the refuse of Death's doings, even in his most angry