consignees. A clearance of the whole on such terms. could not always be effected. And when the undisposed-of commissions came to the hammer, cheap bargains and "alarming sacrifices" were sometimes made, and so the establishment gained a name for cheap goods and bonâ-fide sales.

But the most amusing lounge, during the hottest, coldest or wettest weather that prevailed throughout the year, used to be the horse, dog, and carriage sale -the Tattersalls of Calcutta. These sales were held twice a week throughout the year, except when the Indian festivals interfered to prevent the native portion of the community from attending them. A fancy for horse-flesh may be said to be the most pervading one throughout Bengal; in fact, with many it is an affliction. Everybody possesses one horse of some description or other, and most men have three or four; yet, in the latter number, one pair of decent legs is seldom to be detected throughout the whole sixteen. This hippomania no doubt arises from the absolute necessity of the animal to Europeans, and the apish propensities of the natives. The power of the sun precludes Europeans from walking about under its influence without the shelter of a chatta, as coup de soleil, fever of varied description, dysentery and cholera issue forth in torrents on its beams, falling with terrible and unerring certainty on all heads exposed to their fires. Formerly, tramcars,

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railways, &c., were not so common as now, and every European, high and low, assumed that he must have a conveyance in order to travel about with any degree of safety. Thus it will be seen, that what is a luxury and scarcely required in England was, and may almost say still is to a great extent, an indispensable necessity in Bengal. The resident thought nothing of being waited on by the hairdresser in his Stanhope-phaeton. Nor if the equipage was a firstrate and fashionable bit of building and horse-flesh such as would not disgrace either of the parks on a show-day, was he much surprised. With a sudden and sharp pull up, the driver brought his horse almost on his haunches as he approached your doorway, and the announcement was made by your servant that "Mr. Davies, or Brigadier Kainchee has waited on you to shave you, or dress your hair." His equipage had probably been the fancy lot at the last Tullock's auction, and the object of some competition between the African barber Davies and a newly arrived merchant's clerk on a hundred rupees a month. Perhaps more contrasts were seen rubbing against each other, during the time of sale, at this Indian Tattersalls, than in any other public establishment in Calcutta.

The arena of auction was a covered straight ride of about thirty yards in length, with a colonnade on each side for the accommodation of the horses. At

the end of the ride was situated the auctioneer's pulpit, and contiguous to it was the deputy's box where its occupant was seen sticking, as it were, like a tiger behind the cab of a swell. There the little incubus sat, and wrote down the several lots as they progressively came before the auctioneer and his audience.

The auctioneer himself was generally a coarse type of man with a shrill strong voice and harder face, the fittings up of which ought to have been, and generally were, of brass. His air, as well as that of his audience partook a good deal of the lot he was selling. His head was turned on one side, there was a knowing look with his eye, a saucy and flaunting familiarity of manner, which was immediately conducted by natural communicators to his audience.

When a horse was brought before them for admiration and competition, their hats (whether the heads in them were or not) were generally turned on one side, and following the manner of the auctioneer, they all tried to look as equine as possible.

Most of the spectators carried a stick, rather a thick unvarnished ashen one, which they kept rubbing about their mouths as if they had forgotten to brush their teeth that morning; and with eyes fixed on the pulpit, they preserved a continual nodding sort of acquaintance with it.

Behind the auctioneer, and against one of the pillars of the building, was suspended a large print of a horse's head in a narrow black frame similar to the moulding of one of the hearses belonging to Mr. Llewellin, the Cossitōllah undertaker.

This print, no doubt, reflected a sort of horse feeling also over the countenances of the assembly, and many a horse-laugh was provoked by a likeness (a supposed one) between it and the head of the auctioneer.

Groups of amateur jockeys promenaded up and down the open space, discussing the several merits, pedigrees, and qualities of the different lots awaiting the fall of the hammer. These Nimrods showed a knowledge of the owners through whose hands the animal had passed vastly superior to that possessed by the owner himself, who, on passing, would pause on heel to listen, being quite astonished at what the animal was celebrated for; and although the horse had never been in any one's hands from the time of his importation except the dealer's and his own, yet he heard of mighty deeds in flood and field done by him when in Mr. So-and-so's possession, that quite destroyed all further belief in his own senses ever afterwards. "Tant pis!"

Such was the fashion of the day.

This establishment at the times of sale furnished a rendezvous where most of the sporting men congre

gated, and passed their judgment on the various stages of disease that the different horses were afflicted with, in which defects lay concealed the reason why owner and horse so often parted company. In short Tullock's horse mart could not be dispensed with in the great city, for it furnished amusement as well as horseflesh to most men on their first arrival in India, continual weekly lounges to the denizens of Calcutta, and the best market for the disposal of rips in the universe.

The sale-room for general goods was celebrated for the enormous quantity there disposed of twice a week throughout the year, the endless variety of which was only to be exceeded by the miscellaneous and villainous compound of smells that were encountered within its walls, arising from the bodies of oilvarnished natives, who of course were the most numerous class of purchasers who frequented the

No European with any fineness of olfactory nerve could remain within the mists of this mephitic animal steam during the period necessary for the disposal of a single lot; consequently the attendance was almost entirely composed of natives. Any further description of this Arabia Felix has for me no inducement or attraction. I shall therefore pass on to an important establishment at the north end of the square called the Exchange, which has a noble room not only for the meeting of nautical men but also men

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